Actor’s Disappointing Role: Pebble Shill
By Shannyn Moore As much time as we spend watching movies, it’s easy to believe that actors take jobs because they identify with some part of a film. The wool was ripped from my eyes this week. I’ve watched actor Wes Studi in films for years — “Geronimo,” “Dances with Wolves” and “Avatar,” to name a few. He’s beautiful — a classic, stoic American Indian; a noble face absent of fear and seemingly full of ancient knowledge. He’s only acting, and I shouldn’t be disappointed. I got my movie ticket’s worth. But that’s why we buy tickets in the first…
Mourning Joe
I wrote this last winter but didn’t post it then. Sadly, it still stands. By Shannyn Moore It’s hard to describe how surreal it was to meet the man who wrote a book I grew up with. I remember the cover. Joe McGinniss had written one of the best books about Alaska, though controversial in the late 70’s, but if Alaska is anything, it’s controversial. I guess I thought he was just a guy who probably lived up the Anchor River from our cabin, why would anyone write about Alaska unless they didn’t have anything better to write about. Then…
Open Thread – Um. No.
This campaign slogan was used by Barry Goldwater in 1964. Things were going really well, until the opposition countered with “In Your Guts, You Know He’s Nuts.” I’m just sayin’.
The Koch Brothers Invade Alaska: Nation, Guard Your Salmon
I was checking out the #nopebble hashtag on Twitter the other day, to see what links or comments had come in addressing what would be the continent’s largest open pit copper and gold mine situated at the headwaters of the world’s largest red salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska. It doesn’t take a fisheries expert or a biochemist to know that a project that would require 700 foot tall earthen dams in one of the world’s most active seismic zones to completely hold back lakes of deadly toxins forever, is a recipe for disaster. Our Hero Alaskan fishermen and thinking…
Almost a Year Later, APOC Will Render a Verdict on Rep. Bill Thomas
By Linda Kellen Biegel Mudflatters, think wayyyyyy, wayyyyyy back to October of 2010 and you might remember Representative William Thomas, Jr., a Republican legislator from the beautiful little town of Haines, Alaska. Representative Thomas is not someone who generally comes to my attention way over here in Anchorage. However, in September of 2010 while Rep. Thomas was running a reelection campaign, I was alerted to some very strange discrepancies regarding some regular ads running in Haines’s only newspaper, The Chilkat Valley News. After doing much research, I filed a complaint with Alaska Public Offices Commission on October 13th: The…
Pray for Me While I Kick Some Ass – From the Cutting Room Floor of Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin
By Ken Morris and Jeanne Devon As outlined in our last piece Obsessive Perfection and Anger Mismanagement, Sarah Palin’s temperament, emotional instability, and what others suggested were psychological disorders that bordered on, or actually crossed into pathology, necessarily leads to the inescapable conclusion that she would, as Frank Bailey stated in Blind Allegiance, be a “disaster of Biblical proportions” if ever elected to high public office. According to individuals who knew her for decades, the compulsion to be perceived as perfect in both physical and intellectual terms drove Sarah Palin to “botox addiction,” bulimia, and abuse of diet pills even…
The Only Reason to Stop Pebble is to Keep Fish, Says Pebble Supporter.
Ah, Paul Jenkins. You may remember him as one of our “odd bedfellows” during the reign of Sarah Palin. Normally, wildly off the mark, Mr. Jenkins was actually spot on about Sarah, and surgically shredded her in the Anchorage Daily News on a regular basis. He did this not because he had suddenly seen the error of his political ways, but because she stuck it to the oil companies. And Mr. Jenkins and his oily, resource extractin’ at any price pals were not amused. It’s sad, because Mr. Jenkins is not stupid, nor is he a bad writer. And during…
“One Anchorage” Takes the Case for LGBT Rights to the People
Last week, an organization called Equality Works launched the One Anchorage Campaign for a ballot initiative to be voted on by Anchorage residents in the Spring 2012 Municipal Election. The initiative would add sexual orientation and transgender identity to the Municipality’s Equal Rights Code. Per the Press Release from Equality Works: One Anchorage Files Initiative Application for Legal Protections The One Anchorage campaign filed an application this morning with the Anchorage Municipal Clerk’s Office to place an initiative on the April 2012 ballot asking voters to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Alaskans in the same legal protections already…
Open Thread – Are You Ready to Par-TEA?!
Are you ready to par-tea? Not only “Yeah,” but “HELL yeah” sayeth the dozens of mildly enthusiastic Tea Partiers in New Hampshire this weekend. This video from Dave Wiegel was filmed between speakers Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle. Even though my politics may differ radically from those at the event, I really hope nobody got hurt in that crushing rush to the stage. This is the kind of situation where people are likely to get trampled if they’re not careful. The electricity of the crowd, and the raw adrenaline that can only come from communing with masses of like-minded people…
A Lawsuit in Gov. Sean Parnell’s Future? Stonewalling Angers Anti-Coal Groups.
~The mouth of the Chuit River, between Tyonek and Beluga, Alaska Remember, way back last year when I rode a bus in a snowstorm to go hear testimony in Kenai? It was all about whether to designate the land around the Chuit River “unsuitable” for coal mining. The way it stands now, PacRim Coal plans to (for the first time ever) actually dig up eleven miles of productive salmon stream for a giant open pit coal mine. “Don’t worry,” they say. “We’ll just put it back the way it was when we’re done.” Well, it doesn’t take a biologist to…