Open thread - Thursday

I wonder if the view from this window inflated the purchase price of Marieke02's home... Thank you for sharing, Marieke.

UPDATE: Some people are curious about the weather on Marieke's photo. It came with this message: "...here's a picture I took just after a rip-roarer of a storm late last November. Somehow the emergent sunlight seems appropriate."

Now you know...

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I forgot to mention a few things in yesterday's open thread post.

The weekly roundups seem unnecessary now. We have fewer comments on the main posts, which stay on topic and are easier to navigate. The twitter section was amusing, but not crucial. BTW, I'm not a Twitter person. If any readers would like to tweet links to the main posts, go for it. Thank you... The one thing from the roundups I think is worth keeping is the Links of the Week section. A collection of important links each week would be an easy to access resource. Any volunteers?

I also forgot to say that the blog roll now shows only the 25 most recently updated blogs. To access all the other links, please click on "Show all" and they'll appear. Showing fewer blogs at a time speeds up the loading of the page without compromising the list.

Dairygate refreshed

I promised to review some of original gates involving Sarah Palin and put them into the context of more recent events. Only her record as a politician would produce gates as such. The suffix entered the English language because the first of all gates, Watergate, involved a politician, not a celebrity. Celebrities may produce scandals, not gates and are not accountable to voters. That's why we can't have a Twittergate or a Facebookgate. Sarah Palin doesn't hold any political office at the moment. She was chosen by half a dozen people to do what she's doing now as a celebrity. But she was elected by the people of Alaska to be their governor and will remain accountable to them for a few more months. Let's take a trip down memory lane and shine a fresh light on some of her deeds.

Dairygate

"We took government out of the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands - where it should be." From Sarah Palin's resignation speech, July 3, 2009.

Since her resignation, Sarah Palin has criticized every effort president Obama has made to get the economy back on track and preserve jobs in some important industries. Sarah Palin doesn't like goverment and doesn't like bailouts.

Matanuska Maid was a state run dairy. It was failing and the management board at the time had voted to close it down. Enter the governor, our very own Sarah Palin, to save the day. In a series of ambushes and staged media opportunities, she destroyed the reputation of the people who had been running the dairy for many years, fired all the members of the Board of Agriculture and Conservation (BAC) and replaced them with old friends from high school (including a woman whose sole qualification for the job was having a liking for cows when she was a child). The new board, chaired by Kristan Cole (Sarah Palin's legal fund sole trustee), immediately voted themselves as the operating board for the dairy business, eliminating a whole tier in the management chain. Money was pumped into the new venture in the form of several bailouts. After staging a dodgy auction to make some capital from the old equipment, the dairy turned private, now in the hands of assorted incompetent people who favoured a handful on dairy farmers from the Valley (one of them related to a member of the Board).

The shiny new private dairy couldn't make money and kept applying for some more, in the form of loans from the Agriculture Revolving Loan Fund. These loans are considered and approved by that lovely bunch of friends of the new owners. It couldn't be a more comfortable arragement for them. Some of the loans were taken without any collateral and some were loans to pay for earlier loans. One of the new managers was caught doing some dodgy cash deals and a nasty smell of fraud lingered around the place.

When searching for more recent news about Matanuska Creamery, I found two articles from the local the media. ADN and The Mat-Su Frontiersman interviewed Karen Olson, the CEO of the company, and the articles read as free PR for the creamery, with Olson waxing lyrical about their success. It seems to have been a trend throughout the fiasco. While we read Andrew Halcro's well documented articles about all the wrongdoings of these enterprising people and their inability to make ends meet, the media ran their success stories, marvelling at them for helping Alaskan children drink real Alaskan milk produced by real Alaskan cows from the Valley!

Back to Sarah Palin for a recap. She took a failing but honestly run state business and gave it to a bunch of incompetent people who happened to be her friends from high school or from the Valley. State and Federal money was poured into the new venture and it still failed to show any results despite obtaining generous (but somewhat suspect) loans on several occasions. Money and equipment were used in many fiddles and things were not properly accounted for. Dare I say that Sarah Palin made a bad situation worse for the state but a lot better for her cronies? Some fiscal conservative, ethical governor!

I'd like to make a parallel between Sarah Palin's actions to save her local dairy and Obama's bailout of the auto industry. I didn't read or hear anything about Obama replacing the management of any of the car factories with his high school buddies or appointing a director whose only qualification for the job was a passion for his Hot Wheels when he was a little boy...


Who would you rather have making decisions or giving opinions about the economy, the American industry and other equally important issues?

***

Previous posts about Dairygate, containing full details about all the people involved in the fiasco, their shady dealings and very useful links may be read HERE.

Should you wish to concentrate on different details of the case, bit by bit, instead of reading all four Dairygate posts at once, here's a guide to the contents of each post in the series:

Original Dairygate post: First overview.

First recap: Strange cash deals going on.

Second recap: The loans.

Third recap: Dodgy auctions, the loans and full cast of characters.

Andrew Halcro wrote extensively about this topic. The results of the search for Matanuska Creamery may be found HERE and the posts should help give you a good idea about the extent of the corruption going on over the years.

If you'd like to read the e-mails from the Crivella West database, click on THIS LINK, then click on search and enter the terms "dairy" and "mat-maid" in the search box. The database is still live and working, but searching it is not terribly intuitive.

Open thread - Wednesday

Real life took me away from the blog for most of the day, so we have back-to-back open threads. It's not the end of the world, Sarah Palin and her gates are not going away in a hurry.

First things first. The weather has gone wild all over the place and we have been worried about people in the US and further afield.

This is the situation in Illinois, photos sent if by shapeshifterbelly:

Too much snow (edit: better photo)

Our friend going to fetch her mail. Obsessed with it, I'm told...

This is Queensland in better days:

Cairns

Great Barrier Reef

Our thoughts are with all of you facing extreme weather, wherever you are. Please stay warm and stay safe. And keep us posted.

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Today marks the second anniversary of Palingates. I find it a bit silly to have the blog as a topic on the blog, so let's talk about it here, away from the main posts.

Palingates took a new direction and this has been received in a very positive way by most readers. It wasn't a very smooth transition, but looking back on the past few days, good things came out of it. There are now two blogs instead of one, covering topics of interest and doing their best to offer meaningful, relevant reading. Good luck to us all.

I owe a big thank you to all who offered me support at a very difficult and confusing time. I was very scared and you provided me with a much needed safety net. I'm very grateful to each of you.

Pam B, thank you for your generosity, if you're reading. I couldn't reach you by e-mail.

We had issues with what was happening in the comments section of Palingates. There was a very strong sense of community, but it had become a tad exclusive. I share some of the blame for making the piggies the stars of the blog to the detriment of the content. That, plus a need to feel together, led to the birth of the "palingaters." It's heartwarming to see people show genuine concern for each other and the exchange of real life experiences enriched the discussions.

But...

Palingates turned into a club and certain requirements were imposed for membership. That didn't come from those running the blog, but it became part of the ethos of Palingates. A positive force slowly transformed itself into a detrimental aspect of the blog. Please, no more gaters or palingaters. We're all in this together and not everybody wears labels comfortably but still have the right to have their words heard.

Friendships and conviviality are not things to be to be discarded. They are a very desirable and warm part of our lives and should be encouraged. Which brings us to the daily open threads.

I would like to invite readers to share their stories about their loved ones, their pets, their travels, their worries. The themed photo feature is very popular and it would be lovely to learn the stories behind the photos. Every picture tells a story, but not every story has a picture. If you'd like to share something that doesn't have a photo to go with it, perhaps you could trust my knack to find the right image to illustrate your story.

The next subject is the sidebar. I'm trying to make it lighter and more pleasing to the eye (I confess to being a bit anal about presentation). All the archives and resources remain intact, but shedding some of the graphics should make the pages load faster. Not all of us have fast connections and many access Palingates on their i-phones. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help make life easier for you.

I'm not the most technically minded person and definitely not a typist. Today I took delivery of a shiny, slimline new keyboard because the "s" key was sssssssssssticking. Finding a qwerty keyboard in the land of azerty is not the easiest thing in the world. I went to Amazon France, logged on and typed "qwerty clavier" in the ssssssearch box. Three items were found, I chose the one I liked, paid for it and waited. The postmen around here can't be bothered to come upstairs to my apartment and ring the bell. They put a note in the postbox downstairs and I have to collect my orders from the post office. I picked up the box and went to some friends' house to say goodbye, as they're setting off to England tomorrow for a short visit. I returned home excited about my keyboard, ready to get on with a possssssst.

The big box contained a smaller box, beautifully adorned with the photo of a qwerty keyboard. I opened it, plugged the thing in, tried to type something to test it and... gobbledigook. I had a closer look and, hello! it was an azerty keyboard posing as a qwerty. It was configured as a qwerty, but the keys were all in the wrong place. I have to look at the keyboard, I type with two fingers! OK, I'll return it and get a refund, no big deal. I plugged in the old keyboard and tried to get on with things. Nothing. Plug, unplug, plug, unplug. Nothing. Ah! I'll restart the computer! Phew... it worked.

Conclusion: I didn't have time to write a proper post today, but I rang my friends from earlier and asked them to buy me a genuine qwerty keyboard, no impostors this time. I should be able to type comfortably in a few dayssssssssssss.

Open thread - Tuesday

(Please click on the photos to see them in full glory)

Photographers have been exploring the beauty of different textures for a long time. Ripley in CT has a particularly good eye for spotting these contrasts. Thank you for this beautiful photo, Ripley.

UPDATE

Ripley sent me a sister photo of the previous one and I think they go very well together.

***

Please don't imagine for a minute that I don't have a sense of humour. I was sent this joke today (couldn't link the sender to a commenter, but thank you for the laugh, whoever you are):

I bought a new Chevy Avalanche and returned to the dealer yesterday because I couldn't get the radio to work.

The salesman explained that the radio was voice activated.

'Nelson,' the salesman said to the radio. The radio replied, 'Ricky or Willie?'

'Willie!' he continued and 'On The Road Again' Came from the speakers.

Then he said, 'Ray Charles!', and in an instant ' Georgia On My Mind' replaced Willie Nelson.

I drove away happy, and for the next few days, Every time I'd say, 'Beethoven,'

I'd get beautiful classical music, and if I said, 'Beatles,' I'd get one of their awesome songs.

Yesterday, some guy ran a red light and nearly creamed my new truck, but I swerved in time to avoid him.

I yelled, 'Ass Hole!'

Immediately the radio responded with, "Which one, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, or Sarah Palin?"

Damn I love this truck..............................................

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Technical note:

If anybody doesn't see the "x number of comments" at the bottom of the post when arriving on the main page, don't panic. Disqus is being its charming, childish self. Just click on the title of the post you're viewing and ta-da, they appear!

Taking a vow of silence - or not

There is a campaign going on, urging people to take a pledge of silence about all things regarding Sarah Palin for a whole month.

I'm as tempted as anybody else who can't take much more of this (silly, shallow, vengeful, lying, ignorant, scandal prone, vitriolic, rabble-rousing) person to take this pledge.

The last paragraph became convoluted because of the many adjectives used to describe Sarah Palin. We all talk about her but we focus on different aspects of her persona. As long as we talk about her...

Sarah Palin has a strong voice. Regardless of this voice being screechy, it IS heard, far and wide. She doesn't hold public office, so her influence is on a par with Limbaugh's, Beck's, Coulter's and other assorted characters. She's the most colourful and most interesting of the lot. So we look at her, read and hear her words, from tweets to speeches. And we talk and we talk and we talk about her.

I won't take the pledge, but on the other hand, I won't dedicate space to her every tweet or analyse each word issued from her mouth or her keypad.

Concentrating on Sarah Palin's actual record and bringing it to the fore in the context of more recent developments seems more productive to me.