Springsteen Takes on The Governor [Christie]
Last night, Bruce Springsteen (aka The Boss) was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Bruce was promoting his new album High Hopes (which is fantastic). He joined Fallon in a parody of his classic hit Born to Run. Bruce and Jimmy changed the lyrics to discuss the “Governor Chris Christie Fort Lee New Jersey Traffic Jam” scandal. The pair shared the singing and the guitar playing – dressed in Bruce’s famous bandana and sleeveless denim jacket. Lyrics: [Transcription by TheMudflats] In the day we sweated out on the streets, stuck in traffic on the GWB, They shut down the toll…
TPP 101 in Less than 4 Minutes. Go.
You’ve likely heard about the “TPP” in the news lately. You know it has 3 letters. You may even know that they stand for Trans Pacific Partnership. You may know that it’s considered a bad thing by the left, the right, and everyone in between. You may know it has something to do with trade… aaaand you may have gotten overwhelmed. Or you may be frustrated that other fairly engaged people seem not to know what it’s all about and why it matters. Here’s a great primer that takes less than four minutes, featuring Amy Goodman from Democracy Now interviewing…
BREAKING: Conoco Rakes in Your Money
ConocoPhillips makes a lot of money. This seems like an obvious statement, but its one that Governor Sean Parnell, and his oily ilk in the Alaska legislature are hoping you and everyone you know will forget when it comes time to vote on the repeal of SB21. So they run around with their hair on fire yelling things like “Incentivize production!” and “It’s complicated!” and tell us that if we don’t start sobbing and throwing cash at the big 3 oil producers, and if we repeal SB21, well… they’re going to leave us for someone else like Libya or North…
Torches and Pitchforks for Parnell
There are certain times when a government crosses a line, and there’s really no other way to adequately express one’s feelings about it than by deploying torches and pitchforks. The glinting of the tines in the firelight, the surging of the crowd, the bellowing of moral outrage… Ahhh. There’s really nothing like it to get the ol’ blood pumping. Well, I guess there is another way, but I’m reasonably sure it’s illegal, and though it might be satisfying the irony of retaliating against a bully by tarring and feathering him could not be overlooked, and might garner said bully some…
Alaska Defends Abuse of First Alaskans
I read a story in the Daily News last week and felt sick. A tribe found a non-tribal man unfit to parent a child from the tribe. The man then proved their judgment sound when he kidnapped the child’s mother and almost beat her to death. The Parnell administration has now swooped in, four years later, to defend the abuser. Why now? Why this guy? Why are state resources going to defend a convicted wife-beater? I realize Michael Geraghty, the state’s attorney general, doesn’t want to explain these decisions to “lay people” like you and me. That’s unfortunate because we…
Parnell & Crew “Summit” Mt. Hypocrisy
Two weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming, state-sponsored “Federal Overreach Summit.” Well, Alaska, they dug to the bottom of the barrel and managed to make a meeting of it — trotting out all the usual tea party nonsense about how tapping Alaska resources without having to answer to the feds on environmental issues is the embodiment of democracy. But this summit wasn’t just a pathway to pillaging resources. It was a dog-whistle concert for every wing nut they could get in the door. The governor’s policy director, Randy Ruaro, said there had been a funding request for “proactive science.”…