Oyster Roundup – Theft, Shakedown, Hot Sauce and More…
~Thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!
[The Walrus and the Carptenter, Lewis Carroll]
A half dozen on the half shell. Slurp ’em up! (Links in the titles)
Rick Perry, Evangelical Economist
Rick Perry thinks that God crashed the economy on purpose to teach us a lesson and return us to Biblical principles.
I think that God inflicted Texas with Rick Perry for not allowing gay marriage.
I have conflicting feelings about art theft. While I understand more the impulse and obsession to own great art, rather than simply a desire for a pile of stolen bills, it still remains a fact that art theft deprives us of the joy and appreciation that can only come from a unique object of beauty.
That said – they caught the refined SOBs with the exquisite taste and returned the stolen Rembrandt.
Guess what, Alaskans! You know that giant span across Cook Inlet that now looks like a big watery hole into which we pour endless amounts of money to pay people to think about a bridge? Well, be prepared because KABATA (the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority) has told us how it’s gonna be.
Consultants on the billion-dollar Knik Arm bridge project were pretty clear Thursday the financial plan for the bridge is for the state to foot the bill for any difference between how much money is collected in tolls and how much the private developer will be paid.
That’s right. You may now expect the invisible bony hand of KABATA to grab you by your ankles and shake you over the Boondoggle Pit until your pockets are empty. Have a nice day.
Is punishing a 7-year-old by putting Tapatio sauce in his mouth torture? How about forcing him, sobbing and screaming, into a cold shower?
What does it mean to do these things to a child, at least in part, for the sake of publicity?
An Anchorage jury is looking at these questions this week in the case of Jessica Beagley, an Anchorage mother charged with misdemeanor child abuse after a video of her angry hot sauce and cold shower punishment session appeared on the “Dr. Phil” show.
Julia O’Malley at the Anchorage Daily News tweeted from what has been dubbed the “Hot Sauce Mom” trial, yesterday. Check out her excellent assessment of the whole sad mess.
Reports finally came today that divers in the North Sea have managed to stem a secondary leak in what has been the worst oil spill in those waters in decades.
Divers closed a relief valve which was the source of a small secondary leak, discovered after the first major leak in the pipeline at the Gannet Alpha platform had been plugged last week. Government officials are now opening an investigation into how the leak occurred and whether the correct procedures were followed. They will also have to decide whether Shell should pay for government expenses incurred in the clean-up operation.
Who is the culprit? What oil company was drilling in these northern waters, and was mandated with the job over oversight and stewardship of the North Sea and the life it supports? Royal Dutch Shell.
“Is that the same Royal Dutch Shell that is trying to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the North coast of Alaska?” you ask. “Why, yes. It is one and the same,” I answer. And to save your next string of questions, I’ll just answer them first. Yes, these are the people that tell us they can drill offshore amid pack ice, and never spill. Yes, the nearest Coast Guard base to the Beaufort and Chukchi is more than 2000 miles away, and is closer to Seattle than the drilling site. Yes, the entire congressional delegation of Alaska -Murkowski (R), Begich (D), and Rep. Young (R) – think it’s a swell idea to drill there without requirements for acoustic triggers to collapse a leaking well, or relief wells, or a nearby Coast Guard Station equipped to handle a disaster.
To become further incensed at the stubborn ignorance of those who favor unsafe drilling, please read the excellent piece in The New York Times. At least someone out there “gets it.”
I have to tell my friends in Alaska their Senator Begich sounds like a Dino who apparently feels oil companies must be the butter on his bread. I can’t vote for him and he’s certainly turning out to be a disappointment to me.
The Hot Sauce mom bothers me on a personal level. I was adopted. Granted, I was nearly a perfect child (LOL), but my mother would never have done anything like that as discipline, thank God. I always knew I had the best mom in the world, but now I realize how lucky I was.
I hope they throw that “mom” in jail and give the child to someone who will love and care for him the way any child should be cared for. And I’m not usually one who says that an adoptive parent should lose custody of a child. But then, most of them don’t make such horrific choices in raising a child.
Hot Sauce mom is just an example of the media over saturation culture we live in. She would do anything to get on TV no matter how stupid. (kind of like Sarah Palin)
Maybe she can hook up with Snooky?
Reality television has done enormous damage to our society as people have to do increasingly outrageous things to get attention. People are encouraged to act irresponsibly and dangerously in order to capture media coverage. Cruelty, lying and deception are encouraged and rewarded.
The rate of suicides, crime and addiction among people who have been featured on reality TV shows is truly frightening.
This article includes the stories of 11 people who committed or attempted suicide after being involved in reality shows. The article is more than 2 years old so I’m sure there have been more victims since then, including the young girl from the story below.
http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/thewrap-investigates-11-players-have-committed-suicide-3409?page=0,0
This one is truly heartbreaking. An 11 year old girl appeared on three dance reality shows in India. Her parents decided that the time she was spending on practicing, taking lessons and performing was beginning to interfere with her school work and pulled her out of her dance academy. They would not allow her to compete in any more contests or television shows. She committed suicide by hanging herself from the curtain rod in the living room when she was home alone and was found by her younger sister returning home from school.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-01-04/tv/28149350_1_dance-academy-suicide-note-boogie-woogie
Wow – and they also found a new skim of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. BP says it is not from the site of the big problem last year, but that there are other capped wells underwater that are NOT checked on a regular basis. Could be one of them…are we supposed to feel relieved??