Oyster Roundup! Whales, FROGs, and Alligator Shirts.
~Thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!
Here’s a plate of slurpable stories to start your week. Source links are in the title. Start shucking!
An Alaska judge on Friday ordered that failed U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller pay more than $17,300 in legal costs incurred by the state in fighting Miller’s challenge to last year’s election.
Don’t even get me started.
OK, I’ll start. First the disclaimer – I didn’t vote for Joe, would never vote for him, am ideologically opposed to his political philosophy, and have written extensively on all of these things. I am no Joe apologist. BUT. He was absolutely correct to challenge Alaska’s outdated and flawed election system. The machines used to count votes here in Alaska have been outlawed in California. They decommissioned thousands of them at great expense. And now because Miller challenged the vote, he’ll be footing the bill, sending a message to future candidates who step out on that limb to try to fix the system. For a full wrap-up of all the reasons Miller had a point, click HERE. And HERE. And HERE.
The only thing that might distract me from fuming over this is a…
If you’re going to be sneaky, at least do it with style and grammatical consistency. That’s what I say. And it seems that the National Security Agency (NSA) agrees. Yes, boys and girls, the NSA has a “Style Guide.” In addition to grammar tips and advice on usage,
We learn that C3 is a symbol for command, control and communications, FROG is an acronym for “Free Rocket Over Ground” (Not to be referred to as a missile) and “conducted operations” and “likely scenario” are listed under “hackneyed phrases.”
“Missile?” “Likely scenario?” That is soooo last year.
In the never-ending world of Palin…stuff, there is always more. First the spin, then the anti-spin. It’s a wonder we’re not just wearing helmets and clutching our midsections to keep from throwing up.
Oh, wait.
As your theatrical anti-venom to the latest Palin puffumentary “The Undefeated,” veteran filmmaker Nick Broomfield presents a film that will cast a critical eye on the ex-half-governor. It will be filled with interviews, and is due to screen next week in L.A. for potential buyers.
A trailer for the film features interviews with former Alaska legislative director John Bitney and former state senate president Lyda Green, both of whom describe an “unengaged” Palin who made of a habit of texting on her mobile during important meetings and legislative sessions.
“I never felt that Sarah was ever connected to the business that was going on in the Capitol,” says Green, a Republican who retired from politics two years ago. “It was always, I thought, a rather cursory attendance when she was there; lack of interest, and she’d generally have her two Blackberries and was texting most of the time.”
Seems like Rod Blagojevich, who dared to challenge the great state of Alaska in the Crazy Governor Craze-Off, has finally gotten his comeuppance. His retrial is over, and a jury has convicted him for essentially trying to sell Obama’s former senate seat. He’ll spend the next 6 1/2 10-20 years in the Grey Bar Hotel despite his pleas for mercy from the jury. (Grab your hankies, everyone)
Blagojevich seemed to believe he could talk his way out of trouble from the witness stand. Indignant one minute, laughing the next, seemingly in tears once, he endeavored to counteract the blunt, greedy man he appeared to be on FBI wiretaps. He apologized to jurors for the four-letter words that peppered the recordings.
“When I hear myself swearing like that, I am an F-ing jerk,” he told jurors.
He clearly sought to solicit sympathy. He spoke about his working-class parents and choked up recounting the day he met his wife, the daughter of a powerful Chicago alderman. He reflected on his feelings of inferiority at college where other students wore preppy “alligator” shirts.
One of Blagojevich’s classmates (who may or may not have been wearing an “alligator shirt”) was none other than former Attorney General under the Palin administration, Talis Colberg who stepped down shortly after telling administration officials and Todd Palin, who had received legislative subpoenas that they didn’t really have to show up. Small world.
And a rapidly warming one…
A grey whale was spotted recently off the coast of Israel. At first, this sounds like good news. Grey whales have been extinct in the Atlantic when they were hunted to extinction there in the 1700s. But microscopic plankton have migrated across polar regions to the Atlantic for the first time in 800,000 years as well. The effects of shrinking ice in the northern polar region is beginning to have an effect.
“The implications are enormous. It’s a threshold that has been crossed,” said Philip C. Reid, of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England.
“It’s an indication of the speed of change that is taking place in our world in the present day because of climate change,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.
Reid said the last time the world witnessed such a major incursion from the Pacific was 2 million years ago, which had “a huge impact on the North Atlantic,” driving some species to extinction as the newcomers dominated the competition for food.
While I agree that Joe Miller was not the man to be your senator, and that the Alaskan election system probably needs an overhaul, the article below states that the judge(s) did not think Joe was challenging the election results because of fraud, or tampering with the machines, but because Joe wanted to be Senator with a big salary and perks.
It WOULD be interesting to see if the Diebold machines had been messed with during the Republican Primary… and you would have expected Lisa to have challenged it for those reasons perhaps… but then that would have REALLY opened up a can of worms in Alaska, wouldn’t it !?!
I would think the Board of Elections would be hot on fixing their system NOW, before the next elections roll around… as should Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, etc.,
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110625/pl_nm/us_alaska_election_miller
benlomand2 – I am 100% with you on this. Although it might be interpreted that Miller’s contesting the election results had a positive spin that had to be purely accidental and more likely a big negative that he/they considered and decided to go ahead with because no one would notice the glaring flaws of the Diebold systems. So I don’t buy it.
Returning to first priciples, everything the RWNJs are doing is a case of projection. When they claim voter fraud you can be sure they have jiggered the results in their favor. Wisconsin is the latest and most extravagent example.
The truly chilling thing in all of this is the obvious fact that law, the principles upon which civil unity is founded, is being systematically subverted to favor the interests of a few over the majority.
Sadly, I really don’t think Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, etc. will be changing their election laws anytime soon.
They like them just the way they are.
We now have an election system that can be bought … and hacked. I wonder if there’s any turning back.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a whale show up in some soggy Iowa cornfield. All the rivers around NW Iowa are out of their banks and there is enough water to float a battleship.Imagine Kevin Costner on his Johnny popper getting scarfed down by a crusty cetacean or whatever they call whales nowadays. Costner-your heading the same route as William Shatner. You are trying to be the most over-acting actor of your generation. Give it-and us a rest.
OMG… Bristol Palin is on Hannity touting her new book and claiming that she was so drunk from her first time drinking a couple of wine coolers, that she doesn’t even remember the whoopie when Levi got her pregnant… The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree regarding this one…
If she was so druck, how can she be sure its even Levi’s child?
Alls I know is that my Momma and Papa would just be sooooooooooo proud of me going on the national talk circuit to tell the whole world how I lost my virginity. And how drunk I got before I did. And how I ended up pregnant as a 17-yo. Yup — just so danged proud. [/snark]
Is there *nothing* about Bristol’s reproductive life that is off-limits? Is there *nothing* she (and her parents) won’t sell to the highest bidder? Can we look forward to similar ‘updates’ from Willow and Piper when they, too, have their first sexual encounters? And what about Track and his bride – when will we hear about *their* bedroom romps… G_d, what a bunch of low-class stomach-turners — they truly make the scummiest actions of humanity’s certifiably low-life scum look positively admirable. beth.
Nice roundup…
I don’t quite understand how a whale off the coast of Israel is in the Atlantic. The Mediterranean, sure. I guess the implication is it had to have swum through the Atlantic at some point to get to the Mediterranean? (I doubt it went the Suez Canal route unnoticed.)
Scary climate change story.
Actually the Suez is an option for a whale, it has no locks. But the implications are still serious even if the reporting is half assed and more or less worthless. Extreme shifts in the phytoplankton biota are not in any sense normal. The bottom line is simply we have no idea what this means, and we are way behind the curve in terms of trying to figure out what it means because we spend far more of our resources blowing up things in third world countries who can’t really resist much than we do trying to understand what our heedless indulgence of greed will ultimately lead to. John said it pretty clearly in the first comment. He may be wrong about the generational ratio, but he is spot on with respect to the end result.
I think of it as an analog to an individual’s life. Sooner or later you have to accept the responsibility of adulthood. No one is going to fix everything for you if you screw up. Sooner or later, we as a species with extraordinary sentience will have to outgrow the pleasant delusion of paternal care, or go extinct.
My theory is this whale is on a mission to the Orient to hunt and/or haunt nations that hunt whales. He got distracted somehow and was fortunate that Israelis didn’t blow him/her out of the water on suspicion of being a smuggler.He/she needs to drop the questions and stick to the assignment. Mr/Mrs Grey Whale- you need to go to the mountains and get yourself focused right pronto.I have spoken.
I’m surprised that the NSA even acknowledged that they had a style guide! They never cop to anything, let alone something as important as a style guide. “No Such Agency” used to be their nickname.
Don’t laugh too hard about the “FROG” attack: think of the old WWII newsreels and the massive bombardments caused by such things as the “Stalin organ,” “Katyusha,” and others. Totally indiscriminate targeting: a rocket is not guided, while a missile is. Not fun, just ask the people of Misrata, Libya about them…
On the other hand, there is nothing quite like a whole mess of little tree frogs peeping away on an early summer’s night to bring a smile to one’s face. 🙂
Well, put, you saved me a pedantic lecture. It should perhaps be added that frogs, real frogs that is, are even more sensitive indicators of environmental problems than the proverbial canaries in the coal mines.
The frog chorus is a benchmark of all the regions of the world that I have visited, even some of the extremely high and austere reaches of the Andes have their compliment of operatic amphibians.
Good night sweet prince, may flights of frogs sing thee to thy rest.
Just for the sake of clarity, sentencing for our horribly embarrassing former governor is several months away. If you were to add up the possible limits for each conviction he could go away for 350 years. Most “experts” this afternoon have been guesstimating in the end it will be somewhere around 12 years. He’s in his mid-50’s.
For the past couple of years I’ve really seen a lot of similarities between Blagojevich and Mrs.Todd Palin. Each seem to mask serious feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability with big, bold, confident, macho behaviors. They are both easy liars, and it doesn’t seem to phase them or weigh on them in the slightest. They are perpetual victims, everything they have done is for a good cause and the bad guys were out to stop them and get them. They shamelessly use their kids for sympathy.
Both of these losers have text book personality disorders. It is a crying shame, and a cautionary tale, that they had to wreck so many other people’s lives in persuing whatever strange voices guided their behavior.
It’s pretty clear that Rod is going to pay for it. Here’s hoping the same is true for Sarah Palin.
The whale in the Atlantic is scary. Rachel Carson warned us years ago in Silent Spring. If we don’t start acting like intelligent beings soon, our great grandchildren won’t be alive to be mad at us for messing up the earth.
The spirit of Rachel lives on in so many current documentaries about our food and water supply and they are being mostly ignored just as Silent Spring was. If anyone’s interested take a peek at “Food, Inc.” “Fed Up” or one called “Ingredients”. For water issues there’s “Tapped” and “Thirsty” Then if you’re not yet upset and concerned, see the doc exposing Monsanto’s takeover of seeds and pesticides entitled “The Future of Food”. All of these can be live-streamed for Netflix subscribers but I’m not sure about Hulu or other sites. Probably available on the $1 rental kiosks if requested but highly recommend each one. I think some of the political posturing by the candidates is aimed at keeping us deflected from addressing some serious but almost fixable problems facing this planet. Most of the viable and necessary solutions would seriously hamstring mega-Corporations and we sure can’t have that can we!!! That is well covered in “The Corporation”.