Quotes of the Week – A Sixpack
Oh no they di’int!
It’s been quite a week for the gum-flappers, the yammerers, and the makers of opinion – some good, some bad, and some that make you just want to slam you head on the desk until they go away. Let’s dig in.
Sarah Palin on Race
What better way to start the week in which we celebrate civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. than with a little race baiting from our ex-half governor?
Not sure if judging someone by the content of their character is really where she wants to go.
Rush Limbaugh on Chris Christie
Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey divulged this week that the Lt. Governor of the state pulled her aside at an event to tell her that if she wanted her devastated town to received federal funds for Hurricane Sandy recovery, the mayor needed to play ball with the Governor and fast-track a high dollar development project that was important to him. The mayor backed up her account with a contemporaneous diary entry, and has gone to the authorities, facing perjury charges if she’s lying.
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, and NJ Lt. Gov Kim Guadagno. Photos from News 4 NY
But bloviating, misogynistic windbag Rush Limbaugh still has concerns over who’s telling the truth.
“This is tough trying to figure which one of these women is lying. One of ’em has to be. So the lieutenant governor is blonde, and the mayor is brunette. Is that relevant in determining which one of ’em’s telling the truth? I don’t know. Just asking. The lieutenant governor seems a little bit more at home with makeup than the mayor. Is there anything to learn from that? I’m just asking.”
Because Republican blondes with makeup are more traditional and trustworthy. Democratic brunettes with “natural” looking makeup? Sneaky environmental lesbian fibbers.
Lisa Murkowski on Joe Miller
After 2010, which will go down in Alaska history as one of the most ugly and unpredictable senate races of all time, Alaskans weren’t left with any illusions about how Republican nominee Joe Miller, and incumbent-running-as-independent write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski feel about each other. Venemous loathing, for those of you who’ve been hanging out in a cave.
AP Photo/Michael Dinneen
Miller will now be running against Alaska’s other Senator, Democrat Mark Begich in a three-way primary with current Lt. Gov Mead Treadwell, and Commissioner of DNR Dan Sullivan. Murkowski says she won’t be endorsing a candidate in the primary, and went on to say:
“If Joe Miller wins, I’m not probably going to be working too hard.”
Oh, snap!
Mark Begich on Pebble Mine
It’s about time! Finally, one of Alaska’s congressional delegation has spoken out in the least politically risky issue of the day in Alaska, other than hating on genetically modified Frankenfish. Polls consistently show between 65 and 70 percent of Alaskans disapprove of the mine, including the communities that jobs will supposedly benefit. Senator Mark Begich had this to say this week about the beleaguered proposed Pebble Mine plan:
“Wrong mine, wrong place, too big,” Begich said in an interview. “Too many potential long-term impacts to a fishery that is pretty critical to that area but also to Alaska, to world markets.”
Senator with a delegation representing the anti-Pebble Mine Group, United Tribes of Bristol Bay. (Photo Sen. Begich’s office)
Kasilof Man on Rogue Snake
George Pierce found a snake in his yard. This raises more questions than it answers. There aren’t supposed to be snakes in Kasilof. Was the garter snake an escape from a nearby elementary school? Did it arrive as a stowaway in cargo from points south? Is climate change going to usher in the era of the Alaskan snake? We may never know.
It is possible that the garter snake (which is the only snake found in Alaska) may just have been a rare but natural event. The snake isn’t talking. Found coiled and frozen under the snow, it may not have been the weather that killed it – especially considering how warm it’s been this winter. Pierce may have run it over with his snow blower.
“It’s an odd thing to find here especially this time of year,” he said. “Like it fell out of the sky. Not something you see everyday.”
High School Student Bridget Galvin on Alaska Legislators
Students are not oblivious to what their elected leaders are doing to their education, and their future prospects. Deep cuts and a refusal of the Republican dominated legislature to raise the base student allocation even to meet inflation has resulted in deep administrative cuts, elimination of programs, and now 6% of Anchorage’s teachers will lose their jobs in May to bridge the budget gap. A group of students at Steller Secondary School are speaking out. KTVA reported on the group, and you can support these kids by “liking” their Facebook page, and donating dollars or airline miles to send these future leaders to Juneau so they can make their thoughts clear to those who have voted against the best interest of Alaska’s kids. Galvin explains:
“Lawmakers and our district need to invest in us because we are the future of Alaska and we are the future of the U.S. So it’s important that [they] really focus on what students need and want in order to be successful.”
It is SHAMEFUL that in such a wealthy state, oil and gas companies are a higher priority for funding than schools, the children who attend them, and the teachers who work in them. And I have a dream that $carah Payme will get a rilly bad case of laryngitis and be forced to STFU for her own damned good.
It’s not just the cuts that astound me. It is the complete indifferance to the closing of the schools, the ever-increasing class size, the constant chipping away at the quality of the education we are providing. I see these comments repeated over and over:
“Throwing money at the problem won’t solve it”
“there are fewer kids, so we should be spending less”
“Those teachers and their unions have been bleeding the system for years”
Anchorage is the largest city in the richest state in the richest nation in the world, and we are nickel-and-diming our kids out of an ‘adequate’ education, instead of giving them the best education possible. We can afford the best, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for not giving it to them. We don’t lack money, we lack political will.
Is that Buf barking? Even if it isn’t, I agree completely. Dogs frequently have a clearer perspective on life than most people do. If that sounds odd, okay, but we’ve had over a foot of snow in the last 24 hours and the temperature is going to fall from its present 17 degrees F all through the day and will rise only to about 6 degrees F tomorrow. We’ve put a call into the roof clearing guys. About 50 inches of snow since they last cleared the roof in December – and not much melting because the temperatures have only tickled the 30-degree mark a couple of times since mid-December. I think we’re now over our annual seasonal average of 101 inches of snow. And this is not Alaska or Maine or somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, just Northwest Lower Michigan, and January is not over yet.
And here we sit in Southeast Alaska with at least 5 new high temp records and 2 high rainfall records for January. Until last night we had not dipped below freezing at night for the whole month. Sheesh!
Education is only for the wealthy, just like health care. Just keep electing trepublicans and that is the Alaska we will have!
“School District President Sally Saddler says the Budget Committee reacted to the news with “absolute shock”. Saddler says she is “numb” with the reality that the district needs to cut another $4.5 million to live within the available projected revenue stream for 2015 on top of the $11 million that the district had to cut in the past three years. She says it is, “depressing” when you look at a community and a district of having to have “140 people fewer to work with Juneau kids than we had four years ago.”
http://www.kinyradio.com/juneaunews/latest_juneau_news.html
You go Bridget Galvin!
We are NOT treating our young people as our future, as our hope, as the best of what we will pass on. We are treating them like dirt.
“Twenty-seven rural Alaska schools have shut down in the last 13 years in a trend that arches from the Panhandle in Southeast Alaska to the tundra in Western Alaska. ”
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/rural-alaska-villages-fight-extinction-once-schools-close
More have closed since this 2012 article.
We do NOT take care of our kids.
Fairbanks schools are cutting ~ 40-50 staff. Anchorage is cutting 6%.
And we are giving 2 BILLION a year, for five friggin years to big oil.
Enough said. Gonna go vent elsewhere or AKM might have to boot me off for my own protection.