This is a funny photo, you work out what's going on there...Rocky in Texas tells me Runt the cat was taking a nap while his namesake Rocky the raccoon posed for the camera. Pets manage to sleep in the most amazing positions!
Friday, 4 February 2011
Open thread - Friday
This is a funny photo, you work out what's going on there...Rocky in Texas tells me Runt the cat was taking a nap while his namesake Rocky the raccoon posed for the camera. Pets manage to sleep in the most amazing positions!
Sarah Palin and her toxic record as governor of Alaska
Sarah Palin has a child with special needs and there are others in her immediate/extended family as well. Although there are no environmental causes for Down syndrome, one should expect that other birth defects, whatever their causes, would touch her heart. She pretends to champion causes related to special needs, but never goes beyond a few platitudes. When she meets a child with special needs, the best she can do is to go "Aaawww..."Alaska has the highest incidence of birth defects in the whole country and a responsible governor would look at the statistics and try to find solutions for the problem. That's common sense.
Let's have look at some of her policies and what impact they had, how they helped alleviate such a serious problem affecting the people in her beautiful state of Alaska. Sarah Palin's record speaks for itself.
- In February 2008 Sarah Palin's administration opposed legislation that would give parents 48 hours notice before schools were to be sprayed with pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Currently, parents get 24 hours, which the bill's proponents say is not sufficient for parents who want to arrange to keep kids out of school for a few days after the chemicals are applied. Palin's administration argued that the bill was too restrictive and would force schools to notify parents before cleaning toilets with disinfectant, which, supporters say, is not true. In the same month, members of Palin's administration testified against language in legislation that would have banned polybrominated diphenyl ethers - a flame retardant that, studies show, harms the developing brain.
- In the summer of 2007, Palin allowed oil companies to move forward with a toxic-dumping plan in Alaska's Cook Inlet, the only coastal fishery in the nation where toxic dumping is permitted. Permits could not be issued without Alaska's certification that the discharges met the state's water-quality standards. Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inletkeeper, an organization founded to protect the area's watershed, said at the time: "Palin's Department of Environmental Conservation issued that certification based on the long-discounted notion that 'dilution is the solution to pollution', turning the federal Clean Water Act on its head and actually increasing toxic pollution."
- Palin then took on the Clean Water Initiative, also known as Proposition 4, which appeared on the Alaska ballot on August 26. The measure would have limited the runoff of toxic metals (known to cause developmental and birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) from all mining operations, It was aimed at stopping the proposed Pebble Mine, a huge mining proposal that was controversial for its potential impact on Bristol Bay, the world's largest commercial wild salmon fishery (for which Palin's eldest daughter was named). The project had been in the works for years, and, when she ran for governor in 2006, Palin told the Alaska Journal of Commerce that, if the mine was green-lighted, "there will be remediation from now to eternity." Once in office, though, environmental concerns took a backseat. In a TV interview six days before the vote, Palin said, "Let me take my governor's hat off for just a minute, and tell you personally, Prop 4 - I vote no on that." Alaska's mining industry turned Palin's face and words into an advertising blitz and came from behind to defeat it. The irony is that the Palins have a commercial salmon fishing interest in Bristol Bay. How could the Governor support the interests of an organisation whose actions would hurt her own business? What could have made her support their interests against her own so passionately?
- The Governor was pushed by environmental activists and Alaska Natives to pressure the military in its cleanup of one of the most contaminated sites in Alaska. Northeast Cape Air Force base on remote St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea closed its operations in the 1970s and left thousands of barrels of toxic waste, containing solvents, fuels, heavy metals, pesticides, and PCBs, a group of toxic organic chemicals that have persisted in the environment. For the past few years, the Army Corps of Engineers has been slowly cleaning up parts of the site and claims it will leave it safe. (One federally funded study still in progress by the state's premier watchdog on chemical pollutants, Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), tested the local water and got a reading that was more than one thousand times the level that the EPA considers safe. According to Pamela Miller, ACAT's executive director, Palin should have used her powers as governor to forge a better cleanup plan. "Her administration has done nothing to work with the military to avoid possible contamination." Scientists have also opposed the Army's plan, saying it will leave the area dangerous.
- Governor Palin is very enthusiastic about drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) and in June 2008 submitted a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), copied to the President, Vice President, Secretary of the Interior and the Alaska Congressional delegation. If the drillig in ANWR is to be done as responsibly as in the North Slope (birth defects 4 times higher than national average) the impact among the Alaska Natives would contribute to the overall increase in birth defects in Alaska.
Sarah Palin closed her letter with an impassioned statement:
"I don't think it's overly dramatic to say that this nation's future and the quality of life for every American are dependent on the decisions you make or don't make in the next few months."
Quality of life? In Sarah Palin's world, it must mean something connected to $. People's health and that of their children is obviously secondary in importance.
In October last year, Sarah Palin posted a Facebook note about where she (still) stands on the indiscriminate exploitation of America's natural resouces.
It looks like she wishes to extend her disregard for the people of Alaska to the rest of the country and squeeze everything out of the American soil regardless of the consequences to the people, the environment and the other creatures that share it. In the case of this note, the focus is on independence from foreign sources and the tone is as divisive as ever: Them and us.
Although the Left chooses to mock the mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” and they ignorantly argue against the facts pertaining to the need for America to responsibly develop her domestic supply of natural resources, surely they can’t argue the national security implications of relying on foreign countries to extract supplies that America desperately needs for industry, jobs, and security. Some of the countries we’re now reliant upon and will soon be beholden to can easily use energy and mineral supplies as a weapon against us.
The solution? Simply, please don’t elect politicians who cast votes that lock up our plentiful supplies. Please consider the case of China bending us over a barrel as it develops rare earth minerals while we ban mining. Please consider Venezuela and Russia and Saudi Arabia and Brazil (as we subsidize their off-shore drilling) and all other energy-producing countries as the Left locks up ANWR, NPR-A, and other American lands that are teeming with our own needed energy supplies.
“Drill, baby, drill and mine, baby, mine.” Yep, the mantra may be mocked by the Democrats, but serious consequences ensue when we let the Left make us rely on foreign countries to feed us energy. The joke is on us if they win.
Some things never change...
(This post was based in great part on an article by Sheila Kaplan and Marilyn Berlin Snell called Northern Exposure, published in October 2008 in The New Republic)
Original post on Palingates.
Good post on Mudflats about Wasilla's Toxic Cloud. (h/t to lillibird)
More on Sarah Palin and special needs.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
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...
***
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.
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.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
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.
***
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.
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 ReefOur thoughts are with all of you facing extreme weather, wherever you are. Please stay warm and stay safe. And keep us posted.
***
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.
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