HACKERS
________
Ok Alaska Joe. I'm back :-) [It was nice to know you missed me!]
My absence had nothing to do with politicians suddenly starting to behave. It was a personal issue. Just about the time of my last post I was rather viciously attacked by a hacker. He had pulled my email out of the ether (or more likely out of his own membership list ... he has several sites on the 'Net and I was, no: I AM, a member. I'll have to drop by one of these days. But by luck of the draw as far as I know, he pulled my email address, hacked the machine and stole the most recent couple months of email. That was critical professional correspondence (that was mixed in with the jokes and the anecdotes people used to send me before I stopped emailing them back). Then a message popped up on my computer telling me I should go here. (Only that time it was a live link to where I'm fairly sure was one of his sites and I think I know which one. He had to grab something there apparently because when we left it was like an antelope on speed. We shot and boomeranged around the 'Net so fast it would ... well, in fact it did, make my head spin! And then we ended back up on his site anyway (I don't think he realized that I realized that I knew where we were even with the dizzying trip to disorient me). We went from the site to what "felt" like an empty field with a very minimal Paypal station at one end and the company that the Hacker used to sell me "verbal books"! Just try to convince someone you didn't receive the product when the Paypal receipt ways "oral ebooks" or whatever! :-D He said he'd sell it to me for $70 and I could go home.
It was worth vastly more than that in many ways, so I said ok. But then instead of getting the product (I didn't really figure this guy was going to read me a book :-) ... I got another bill for $70. We continued this game, he raised it to bigger chunks than $70. When we got to $1,350 I quit. I couldn't possibly afford that ... but there was irreplaceable professional communications in there that I simply HAD to protect. But through a process of scribbling in margins I connected with the "night watchman" who was handling the process for the hacker ... as soon as he realized he asked me if this was one of those ["insert name of hacker here if he ever touches this blog"] deals. I said yes and he made an unremembered comment in disgust. They seemed like an ok outfit if one good person can be extrapolated that far, and he assured me they'd retain all the materials, etc. The next day I found little cracks in Paypal's armor ... it used to be a lot harder to get them to step into the middle of any such disagreement. But I finally got through and they opened an investigation and I got back my money and my emails! And I'd like to think I helped make the Paypal system a little easier to be willing to investigate in a case like that.
Unfortunately. The hacker was furious. And he attacked with major firepower. He is an excellent programmer and if I understand correctly, a "big name" in the hacker world as well. Plus in the little entreprenurial corner of the 'Net he is quite well known ... right on the periphery of the big time players. A guru wannabee. Claims to be an Internet millionaire. And he had some very effective "inventions" that truly may be game changers. Right when I.D. theft and the less enticing parts of Internet shopping are starting to overtake that initial enthusiasm is not when we need a reputation of being full of crooks and hackers. It is the frontier ... that little section of the 'Net ... and I'm a believer in humanity's need for a frontier. Scammers and spammers and Soapy Smith flim-flammers I can handle fine. But this man is a flat out crook. He claims to be a sociopath and accepts "sadistic sociopath" without any suggestion otherwise.
The kind of guy who would build a fire on the back of a turtle and get a huge rush out of watching the turtle bake in his own shell.
He is still here. A year and a half later and he was here virtually any time that I was. And I live on them. He killed off several ... I think we decided 5, but some of them required multiple trips to the shop. I have three hard drives that we had to pull out along the way in case the F.B.I. would like to take them into the clean room and see what all the hacker deleted and destroyed.
He has (despite every possible thing that anyone can think of to do to mine to prevent remote access ... he has it working. My desktop is his desktop. I just sat back last night and watched him move the cursor around and open and close files (and I think delete another batch but I'm not yet certain). Then I found out that he had a group of hackers wandering through all my computers where all of the family's dirty laundry is stored. Then I figured out that they were using my machine(s) for some sort of file sharing ... probably music. Probably the feds will finally show up ... and they'll arrest me for having an illegal music sharing station! :-) But I'm guessing 20 people had access to the depths of my soul (I keep it hidden in my hard drive). And I couldn't service clients with him there. Plus destroyed my time and billing programs. We had and office LAN which he destroyed and replaced with their own which they had the gall to call "Jailbirds R Us". There have been lots of much worse ramifications ... he's gotten his revenge for me messing up his (well -oiled process, I wasn't a unique case! I just have enough mouth to do something about it). Of course that turned out poorly as I lost not 2 months of emails, but 5 YEARS of "can't lose" emails. When he first showed up I tried to back up the system quickly before I had any idea he was "always on" (they have alarms of some sort that alerts them when a victim logs on ... or so I have hypothesized ... and I think I got agreement on that from him). So he wiped out my backup too. Then he destroyed access to the entire company data base (small company, but cranks lots of critical paper) and has probably averaged four of us over that time (not counting staffs). No only were the archive files critical, but all of our current "live" files were destroyed as well (actually I think they are still "there" somewhere. The hacker just destroyed any way to access them.)
So I dropped my blog, I dropped other stuff I was doing on the 'Net. I'm going to have to mend fences with all those friends I used to have but figured they'd never be friends again if the hacker got them ... I was highly contagious!
He ran my out of business. 22 years of a successful professional business and he destroyed it. He cost me nearly TWO (2) YEARS of income. Long story with lots of side paths, but essentially, he wouldn't let me get any work done and would make everything I did do take forever. I can work 4 hours on writing a report ... that he can destroy in 4 seconds. And he did that a lot. I did a lot of my work in the libraries. But he made everything take so long I couldn't charge for it ... I was just hoping that when I finally did get a project finished and to a client that I hadn't ruined a wonderful 20 year relationship because my stuff didn't get to him until three weeks after he absolutely had to have it. It was tough. But I have a small packet that proves much of the stuff I say, and I have lots more (screen shots, etc.) whenever they want it. I had to close it down. I couldn't afford to run it (and it was harder work than ever before because of the hacker).
I've been in touch with the "local" F.B.I. (~120 miles away) and the national folks (the hacker and I are on opposite sides of the country ... local law enforcement won't, probably can't, do anything.) But I hadn't seen much sign of him for awhile (although stuff was done that I was just sure I didn't do!) until last night when he decided to put on a show. My but I hope the federal men were watching! :-)
I do think it is safe now. Or I wouldn't be back here. Besides, I'd be Blogger would be about as good a co-plaintiff as one could have if he really did infect them.
So ... that's why I haven't been on for a year and a half or so. But now, I'm unemployed and broke ... so I can go back to blogging!
PRODIGALS AND SONS AND THINGS
_______________________________
Which brings me to the "other" part of this post. Here we've got two brothers; a good brother who stayed at home to help his mother and father run the modest little farm and never got a chance to "go out and see the world".
But the BAD brother ... the one who took his half of the inheritance and squandered it while traveling and adventuring. He got to see the world! He had the opportunity to do a lot of things that kids that age seem to need to do to get it out of their system. Things that it will be too late to do when one is older. The older brother was ticked off and I was always on his side. Every bit of "fairness" in me screams that the wrong kid got the feast and the calf.
But I got to thinking about it one day. I remember that was Jesus himself who spun that parable. And he was trying pretty hard to convince people that "fair" didn't mean "an eye for an eye". He was trying to bring humanity an entirely new paradigm. In the driest description I can think of ... Jesus was attempting to replace justice with love. It took me a lot of years before I understood why Jesus would sound like an idiot who rewarded bad behavior. It was a dangerous thing to say considering that he was someone who has been looked up to more and used as an example than any other person before or since.
People followed his actions, he set the example that countless people have tried to follow; to "be like Jesus" and to make all decisions the way Jesus would make them. But he probably knew it wasn't really dangerous ... because people wouldn't understand and those few that did wouldn't do anything about it. And those very few that understood and tried to do something about it, would fail miserably.
Upon contemplation, I can see how devoted Christians would have a hard time imagining Jesus being furious with the return of someone very important to him, but that he had expected never to see again. So there must be some other message he is trying to convey.
As I kept getting older (it keeps happening too! :-) I had my own kids and thought about how I would react if my son, the younger of my two kids ...
[All who guessed without even being asked .... you are correct ... the prodigal son that Jesus made famous was the younger son!]
... took his "college savings" out of the bank and disappeared and years had passed and I had no idea whether he was even alive or dead ... and then, as I was knocking on old age's door I see him walking down the road towards home ...
I get it. I understand what Jesus was trying to do. Justice. Equality. Even fairness. Those we think of as the goals. The things to strive toward. The things to do to be a "good person' and even a "good Christian".
And they are wrong.
At least if they purport or wish to "follow Jesus". Nor are they inherently wrong. They might coincidentally be right. But stopped clocks are a couple times a day also. He was much more radical than trying to bring about a fair, just world.
Justice, equality, fairness ... that is what he was trying to get us to understand was not the goal. All those preachers who stand up and talk about how we have to strive for equality, and fairness ... and ultimately this will create "justice" ... which is the "god" of this "missed the boat" Christianity. Plato took Aristotle's hierarchy of good and evil and all the schools in the neighborhood where the Christians were hiding in those days were Platonic schools ... and we ended up with Plato's philosophical world view of simply moving "the Good" to the top of the pyramid and we suddenly have a hierarchical model of good and evil. The Socratic and pre-Platonic Greeks fought this "binding of god into a hierachy (because in Plato's system the hierarchy is what is really God). It was a giant philosophical debate and it set the path of Western history. But the "God is Everywhere" philosophy lost to one where God is a structure that "the Good" is the highest point on the structure. We went from a philosophy that said that a chair that you can sit in is far more perfect than one that exists only in some heaven of ideas. Plato (and picked up by the Christians) thought people were originally defective ... Original Sin. The early Greeks that that was nuts. A new-born infant is absolutely without sin! (Just a good thing they can't throw rocks :-) But Plato won and the Christian kids were taught Platonic philosophy and Christianity caught a couple of great historical breaks and became the dominant Western religion and that is why we are a Platonically based society today still guided primarily by Mosaic law.
Today's Christians pushing democracy and fairness and equality and, ultimately, Justice ... are teaching Mosaic law. The law of symmetry. Of the need for the karmic balance of Yin and Yang. Justice. An eye for an eye.
Jesus came to bring a sword. He was so radical he made the '60s protesters look like Sunday School teachers. He wanted to turn society upside down and shake it like it was a money changers' table in a temple.
We can't dispense justice. Our court systems have proven that even when they really try. Only a perfect, "sinless", person can stone a prostitute ... which was another example of Jesus saying "You will never know all the details and won't even come close to knowing enough of them to know which decision is just ... whatever the decision. If we had only "sinless" people ... we wouldn't have the problem. But we don't and we won't so we do.
"Only your father in heaven can judge people." Come on folks, get this through your heads! I would guess Jesus was often very frustrated :-)
Fairness. Such a positive goal. And it might be. It might be that if you took everything that happened to all the players in a situation starting at least with their birth and understood everything that had happened to each of them since ... then in a dispute between them one might possibly come close on getting "fair" right. Of course the punishment has to exactly match the net wrong that the badder guy did ...
I see why Jesus said that really ... if it needed to be done, only a god could do it.
No. I think what the Barefoot Prophet was trying to tell us was that we have to think beyond the concepts of fairness and justice. They may be important ... or at least nice ... but they may just be totally irrelevant. I'm not advanced enough to understand all he was trying to tell us by any means. In the Stygian darkness with my white tipped cane the best I can do was to think I see that he came to throw out the law of Moses. The Law of Moses was an earth changing event of its own and in its own time. Essentially, the Law of Moses replaced the Law of Might Makes Right. It was a giant evolutionary step from the Law of Power. A step that had guided us for Millenia and had served its purpose wonderfully .... for the incremental step it needed to be.
But my white tipped cane says that Jesus was just trying to get it through our "symmetry rules all" heads that Love trumps Justice. And if he isn't coming back until we are able to understand that ... he's not coming back for awhile.
It trumps fairness too. After thinking a lot about it recently (I have an 18 year old youngest son :-) ... I know!
And this is what I know: my son had done so many bad things and wasted so much of my money and left his brother to do the work of two ... and that I'm getting older and my days are even more precious ...
I know that when I see my son walking down the road to the house after not having even heard of him for years and believing that I would die without ever seeing him again ...
I will run out to greet him joyfully, yelling at anyone handy to kill the fatted calf as I go.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
21.12.08
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 4
December 17, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 4
-AKA-
"We Don't Care. We Don't Have To Care. We're Exxon!"
During nearly 20 years of waiting (sometimes somewhat desperately) with several "we're going to be cutting checks in the next few weeks" over-optimisms along the way, the fishermen and other plaintiffs in the oil spill litigation never lost hope. I spoke to a great number of them during this time. Many "refused to think about it" because they didn't want to get their hopes up that they would soon be seeing money. Many thought the appeals process would result in a somewhat smaller award. But even the most hard-bitten and cynical of these independent, largely "have no use for government" weather-worn men and women of the world's most dangerous profession [commercial fishing in Alaska held that distinction for many years although modern safety mandates may now have dropped us below logging] still believed. We all believed that, although the wheels may grind slowly they would grind fairly and we would receive the bulk of our money. Particularly for those who died, and even those who went broke and bankrupt or faced other horrendous problems because of the delay in the interim, the phrase "justice delayed is justice denied" was often used.
But I don't believe in the entire 20 years speaking with hundreds of fishermen, claimants and lawyers, did I ever hear anyone suggest that they thought the jury award would ultimately be thrown out. Battered, bruised, a bit leaner ... yeah, we knew the jury verdict/award was in for a rough trip through the appellate process just from Exxon's arrogant pronouncements after the trial when the essentially flatly announced that it simply wasn't going to happen and they'd do whatever it takes to make sure of that. But for a group of people who you would think would be natural cynics and who would have the least faith in "the system" of any group outside of armed fortresses in Montana, the fishermen were remarkably confident that the system would, eventually, bring them justice (in the form of a substantial check!)
In June of 2008, in the case captioned Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Supreme Court Case Number 07-219, the United States Supreme Court utterly destroyed that faith. They also utterly destroyed the entire concept of punitive damages as they had been understood for hundreds of years; and which were thus protections granted to the citizenry by the common law which protections were specifically enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. Although the award was only a pittance to Exxon [equal to ~three weeks of profit in 2006], it was a fortune to the largely ... "economically challenged" ... plaintiff class. The Court destroyed the fortunes of many in order to hand a pittance to a giant corporation. To do so they had to ignore the Constitution, the concepts of common law and the entire concept of punitive damages as it had always been known.
The money meant nothing in itself to a behemoth the size of Exxon, but the law that the case created succeeded beyond the wildest hopes of corporate boardrooms and insurance companies to behead the "punitive damage monster" which was one of the last protections against the malevolent acts of the corpocracy left to the people.
It is conservative chic now to be against punitive damages awards because the insurance companies have spend untold amounts of money to convince people (especially people in legislatures, government executive branches and those who sit on court benches, but the citizenry as well) that punitive damages caused the horrendous increases in insurance premiums. There is not a scintilla of truth to that and many studies have proven that there is no causal connection (other than by convincing people of it, the companies can get away with raising rates and have something to blame it on), or that punitive damage awards had (or have) any statistically substantive effect on either the percentage or actual amounts of money paid as damages. Even insurance companies don't really care about punitive damages. In fact, I would bet a bundle that they like having them in the states where they remain. Because the most profound connection between insurance companies and punitive damages is not in relation to how much insurance companies pay out in jury awards ... but rather as the "fall guy" for how large a premium they can get away with charging for their policies.
Yes ... I believe in the market. But insurance companies are so big and so collusive, and so tied into government, that they have, to a large extent, removed themselves from the actions of the market. That, again, is such a large topic there isn't room to deal with it adequately here. But conservatives ... Constitutional "strict constructionists" ... should be the last people in the world to want the government to intervene and yank yet one more set of protections that "the people" have and that were guaranteed by the Constitution. Those insurance company patsies are simply being used ... and unwittingly, used against their own core philosophies without being aware of it.
As noted earlier in this series, the jury awarded $5 billion dollars in punitive damages against Exxon to be paid [by mind-numbingly complex formulations] to the members of the plaintiff class ... in 1994. Exxon, true to its promise (hmm ... that is almost an oxy-moronic sentence, but it is accurate), appealed the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The trial court had ordered interest on the award at 6.9% until it was paid, so the fishermen and their lawyers weren't too bothered by Exxon's appeal to the 9th Circuit. Of course, that was because they expected to win it.
But that was just the beginning of the whittling and the incredible delays. Well, the delays didn't begin, they "continued". It had already taken five years after the spill to get a verdict in 1994. It took another seven (!) years (although no one seems to understand why) for the 9th Circuit to rule on it; throwing the verdict out as "excessive" in 2001 in the 9th Circuit Appellate decision 490 F.3d 1066.
The 9th Circuit sent it back ("remanded it") to trial court judge Holland for "reevaluation". Holland did a masterful job defending the initial verdict, but presumably to avoid directly contradicting the higher court and hoping that he would be able to end it once and for all, in December of 2002 he reinstated the punitives at four billion. Again ... we were expecting that it would get whittled at a bit. No one was greatly surprise nor greatly distressed. Indeed, we were proud of Judge Holland for sticking to his guns and not knocking it down much more substantially. The checks would soon be in the mail ... not.
Exxon marched it back to the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit sent it back to Holland saying, in effect "try again". Holland, to whom the fishermen should build a monument (if they had any money to build with which they don't), was close enough to retirement that he simply refused to be bullied. He knew that it was a fair verdict and that $4 billion was, if anything given Exxon's size, too small of an award! Thus he flatly refused to kow-tow to the judicial overlords and after drafting another masterful decision demonstrating the appropriateness of the existing award, in January of 2004 he reinstated it at $4 billion (plus the $2.25 billion in compensatories plus interest). When it comes time to build statues in Alaska he deserves one. Unfortunately, because his magnificent work was trashed by the appellate courts he won't get one. But he did exactly what the law and judges are supposed to do and he had the nerve to not back down to the power of the Appellate Justices when they "strongly suggested" that he change his mind (so that he would take much of the heat for a judgment that the Justices will, hopefully, be ashamed of for the rest of their lives). He refused to compromise his principles, beliefs or The Law, which the good judges of his generation truly believed to be an honorable thing. He believed in the concept of stare decisis upon which our entire legal foundation rests. He is the sort of judge that should have been promoted to the appellate courts.
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 4
-AKA-
"We Don't Care. We Don't Have To Care. We're Exxon!"
During nearly 20 years of waiting (sometimes somewhat desperately) with several "we're going to be cutting checks in the next few weeks" over-optimisms along the way, the fishermen and other plaintiffs in the oil spill litigation never lost hope. I spoke to a great number of them during this time. Many "refused to think about it" because they didn't want to get their hopes up that they would soon be seeing money. Many thought the appeals process would result in a somewhat smaller award. But even the most hard-bitten and cynical of these independent, largely "have no use for government" weather-worn men and women of the world's most dangerous profession [commercial fishing in Alaska held that distinction for many years although modern safety mandates may now have dropped us below logging] still believed. We all believed that, although the wheels may grind slowly they would grind fairly and we would receive the bulk of our money. Particularly for those who died, and even those who went broke and bankrupt or faced other horrendous problems because of the delay in the interim, the phrase "justice delayed is justice denied" was often used.
But I don't believe in the entire 20 years speaking with hundreds of fishermen, claimants and lawyers, did I ever hear anyone suggest that they thought the jury award would ultimately be thrown out. Battered, bruised, a bit leaner ... yeah, we knew the jury verdict/award was in for a rough trip through the appellate process just from Exxon's arrogant pronouncements after the trial when the essentially flatly announced that it simply wasn't going to happen and they'd do whatever it takes to make sure of that. But for a group of people who you would think would be natural cynics and who would have the least faith in "the system" of any group outside of armed fortresses in Montana, the fishermen were remarkably confident that the system would, eventually, bring them justice (in the form of a substantial check!)
In June of 2008, in the case captioned Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Supreme Court Case Number 07-219, the United States Supreme Court utterly destroyed that faith. They also utterly destroyed the entire concept of punitive damages as they had been understood for hundreds of years; and which were thus protections granted to the citizenry by the common law which protections were specifically enshrined in the U. S. Constitution. Although the award was only a pittance to Exxon [equal to ~three weeks of profit in 2006], it was a fortune to the largely ... "economically challenged" ... plaintiff class. The Court destroyed the fortunes of many in order to hand a pittance to a giant corporation. To do so they had to ignore the Constitution, the concepts of common law and the entire concept of punitive damages as it had always been known.
The money meant nothing in itself to a behemoth the size of Exxon, but the law that the case created succeeded beyond the wildest hopes of corporate boardrooms and insurance companies to behead the "punitive damage monster" which was one of the last protections against the malevolent acts of the corpocracy left to the people.
It is conservative chic now to be against punitive damages awards because the insurance companies have spend untold amounts of money to convince people (especially people in legislatures, government executive branches and those who sit on court benches, but the citizenry as well) that punitive damages caused the horrendous increases in insurance premiums. There is not a scintilla of truth to that and many studies have proven that there is no causal connection (other than by convincing people of it, the companies can get away with raising rates and have something to blame it on), or that punitive damage awards had (or have) any statistically substantive effect on either the percentage or actual amounts of money paid as damages. Even insurance companies don't really care about punitive damages. In fact, I would bet a bundle that they like having them in the states where they remain. Because the most profound connection between insurance companies and punitive damages is not in relation to how much insurance companies pay out in jury awards ... but rather as the "fall guy" for how large a premium they can get away with charging for their policies.
Yes ... I believe in the market. But insurance companies are so big and so collusive, and so tied into government, that they have, to a large extent, removed themselves from the actions of the market. That, again, is such a large topic there isn't room to deal with it adequately here. But conservatives ... Constitutional "strict constructionists" ... should be the last people in the world to want the government to intervene and yank yet one more set of protections that "the people" have and that were guaranteed by the Constitution. Those insurance company patsies are simply being used ... and unwittingly, used against their own core philosophies without being aware of it.
As noted earlier in this series, the jury awarded $5 billion dollars in punitive damages against Exxon to be paid [by mind-numbingly complex formulations] to the members of the plaintiff class ... in 1994. Exxon, true to its promise (hmm ... that is almost an oxy-moronic sentence, but it is accurate), appealed the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The trial court had ordered interest on the award at 6.9% until it was paid, so the fishermen and their lawyers weren't too bothered by Exxon's appeal to the 9th Circuit. Of course, that was because they expected to win it.
But that was just the beginning of the whittling and the incredible delays. Well, the delays didn't begin, they "continued". It had already taken five years after the spill to get a verdict in 1994. It took another seven (!) years (although no one seems to understand why) for the 9th Circuit to rule on it; throwing the verdict out as "excessive" in 2001 in the 9th Circuit Appellate decision 490 F.3d 1066.
The 9th Circuit sent it back ("remanded it") to trial court judge Holland for "reevaluation". Holland did a masterful job defending the initial verdict, but presumably to avoid directly contradicting the higher court and hoping that he would be able to end it once and for all, in December of 2002 he reinstated the punitives at four billion. Again ... we were expecting that it would get whittled at a bit. No one was greatly surprise nor greatly distressed. Indeed, we were proud of Judge Holland for sticking to his guns and not knocking it down much more substantially. The checks would soon be in the mail ... not.
Exxon marched it back to the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit sent it back to Holland saying, in effect "try again". Holland, to whom the fishermen should build a monument (if they had any money to build with which they don't), was close enough to retirement that he simply refused to be bullied. He knew that it was a fair verdict and that $4 billion was, if anything given Exxon's size, too small of an award! Thus he flatly refused to kow-tow to the judicial overlords and after drafting another masterful decision demonstrating the appropriateness of the existing award, in January of 2004 he reinstated it at $4 billion (plus the $2.25 billion in compensatories plus interest). When it comes time to build statues in Alaska he deserves one. Unfortunately, because his magnificent work was trashed by the appellate courts he won't get one. But he did exactly what the law and judges are supposed to do and he had the nerve to not back down to the power of the Appellate Justices when they "strongly suggested" that he change his mind (so that he would take much of the heat for a judgment that the Justices will, hopefully, be ashamed of for the rest of their lives). He refused to compromise his principles, beliefs or The Law, which the good judges of his generation truly believed to be an honorable thing. He believed in the concept of stare decisis upon which our entire legal foundation rests. He is the sort of judge that should have been promoted to the appellate courts.
He wasn't.
Why it took so long it seems impossible, in retrospect, to understand. But Exxon marched it back to the 9th Circuit and in January of 2006 claimed to the court that the award should be cut to $25 million! The plaintiff counsel and legal experts across the country were aghast, but reassuring. Virtually no one believed that it would get hammered further.
By this point, the IRS had special offices set up in Anchorage to make sure they got their cut of the substantial payments that even the IRS and other branches of the federal government believed would soon be forthcoming. In fact ... those special IRS offices had been set up for years. I don't know when they finally disbanded them. The law firm of Keller-Rohrback that had been appointed to handle the disbursing of the funds had their humongous data base system set up. Percentages for individual claimants had been argued about, fought about, hammered out and finally finalized. The arguments now were that Exxon should not be allowed to continually pointlessly delay the day of reckoning. So many of the original plaintiffs had died that it had become an abuse of process to continue to allow the delays.
But delay was the name of the game. Certainly Exxon in the oily blackness of its heart seemed to believe so. But, unbelievably, the 9th Circuit, after yet another set of mind-numbing procedural morasses, in December of 2006 essentially told the very Honorable Judge Holland (and the jury who devoted months of their lives to the case, the State of Alaska itself, and, most of all, those fishermen and others who had lost their livelihoods, their cultures and their ways of life) ... in the most polite terms descriptively plausible ... to "stuff it". On its own, the 9th Circuit simply bypassed Judge Holland and slashed the punitive damage award from $4 billion to $2.5 billion.
It was a mindlessly vicious thing to do and amounted to no less than outright theft.
Even though it was simple politically motivated theft that the "strict constructionists" of the Constitution have to make illogical exceptions for ... at least it was over. At least the checks would be in the mail soon. Keller-Rohrback did a test run of the plant sending the tiny compensatory damage checks to those who still "had some coming". With a sort of communal resigned sigh, the plaintiff class, litigants and attorneys both, accepted that half a loaf was better than nothing and that for the sake of closure, we needed to just accept it and get on with our lives. Exxon had already proven that justice delayed is justice denied (especially for the substantial percentage of claimants who had died over the intervening 17 years) and ... that Exxon had enough muscle that it could flex it and cause this delay and by doing so thereby making their point and proving it.
And then, in a move that shocked even the battle hardened veterans of this war; the attorneys who had fought and battled this fight for most of their careers and whose (substantial) law firms would barely break even if that after all they had gone through (and the public has a low opinion of lawyers? Well, now that I mention it I'm not very fond of the Exxon 3-piece suit goons, but the plaintiff lawyers went above and beyond) ... Exxon appealed the award to the U.S. Supreme Court. The reaction was mostly that everyone was infuriated. Plaintiffs' lead attorney, the awesome Brian O'Neill was literally "shocked". We all knew beyond any doubt that the United States of America's Supreme Court ... was not going to hear a drunk driving case.
It was just yet another delay tactic. But ... we reminded ourselves that we were at least getting 6.9% interest which at that time wasn't bad at all, and resigned to wait a few more months until the Supremes turned down the case. [Unlike many appeals, there is no appeal of right to the U.S. Supreme Court. They have absolute discretion on what cases to hear.]
Then there was a sound, a rustle in the wind, and oven doors opened wide and flames of the underworld leaped out. The Grinch stole Christmas once again. The Supremes actually decided to hear the case! It was absurd. It was beyond absurd. And every legal professor and scholar of note agreed. There was obviously no way that they were going to reduce the award further. Ahh. Perhaps this was a backhanded way of scolding the 9th Circuit for cheating the poor, the fisherfolk, the Native cultures, those who lived below the waterline [when the Titanic sank, the people in the expensive berths above the waterline almost all survived; those in the cheap berths below the waterline largely perished]. The 9th Circuit had wrongly ignored the jury, the judge and the law and had tossed those who lived below the waterline into the oiled ocean at the behest of one of the richest, most powerful corporations. Maybe we had it wrong. Maybe the Supremes were going to slap down the Grinch and we'd have Christmas after all.
We could wait another year. We'd waited this long.
16.12.08
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Trouble Waters -- Part 2
December 13, 2008
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 2
-AKA-
"The Wreck of the Exxon Valdez"
By: Captain Heavyfoot
[With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot :-)]
The legend lives on from the fishers on down,
Of the Big Sound 'twas made in Prince William.
The ocean, it's said, was their butter and bread,
But oil tar on the sandwich just killed 'em.
Tanks topped with black crude, and with vodka home-brewed,
The famed Exxon-Valdez was quite loaded.
The Captain was too, yet silent his crew,
When they poured both the Captain and cargo aboard her.
Captain Hazelwood had been drinking at two separate bars or more prior to their scheduled departure. There
was sworn testimony that he had consumed at least five double-vodkas (enough to knock out anyone who wasn't an alcoholic). He didn't get even a breathalzyer test until 11 hours after the accident, but working backwards from the booze in his blood at that time they calculated that at the time of the accident he was three times the legal limit for driving a car.
Exxon: Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters -- Part 2
-AKA-
"The Wreck of the Exxon Valdez"
By: Captain Heavyfoot
[With apologies to Gordon Lightfoot :-)]
The legend lives on from the fishers on down,
Of the Big Sound 'twas made in Prince William.
The ocean, it's said, was their butter and bread,
But oil tar on the sandwich just killed 'em.
Tanks topped with black crude, and with vodka home-brewed,
The famed Exxon-Valdez was quite loaded.
The Captain was too, yet silent his crew,
When they poured both the Captain and cargo aboard her.
Captain Hazelwood had been drinking at two separate bars or more prior to their scheduled departure. There
was sworn testimony that he had consumed at least five double-vodkas (enough to knock out anyone who wasn't an alcoholic). He didn't get even a breathalzyer test until 11 hours after the accident, but working backwards from the booze in his blood at that time they calculated that at the time of the accident he was three times the legal limit for driving a car.Indeed, he wasn't licensed to drive a car ... his license had been suspended for (yet another) DUI. He had completed a rehab program three or four years before the accident and had wracked up three or four DUIs in that period of time! Not only were his superiors aware that he had badly relapsed, but they had actually been drinking with him not long before the accident!
In any event, shortly after the Exxon Valdez pulled away from the dock at 9:12 p.m. and having successfully passed through the Valdez Narrows, the master pilot who was specially hired for such tasks, left the ship. It was a beautiful evening on the water. The seas were calm, visibility was good and the ship had all the latest and most sophisticated of navigation equipment. The official story was that there were icebergs in the normal shipping lanes, so Captain Hazelwood instructed the man at the wheel to take the ship slightly outside the shipping lanes and around the ice. Experts agreed however that such story simply didn't hold together -- they were too far off course with too many ways, both through equipment and visual observation, to not be able to tell.
In fact, it was apparent that they weren't just skirting an iceberg or two, but indeed, whether to avoid icebergs or to make up lost time, or just to shorten the voyage, they almost certainly attempted to follow the old steamship passage and "shoot the gap" between Bligh Reef and Reef Island. This is an incredibly dangerous maneuver for a ship the size of an oil tanker. Authorities at the time likened it to flying under the Golden Gate Bridge. Yes, it can be done. Yes, it has been done before. But it is dangerous and absolutely not recommended nor approved. (There were rumors that for years tankers had snuck through there on occasion but no one had ever actually caught them at it. It was universally agreed, however, that such would be a stupid and dangerous maneuver.) Even so, at that point, Hazelwood then left the bridge in the control of a third mate and was down in his cabin "doing paperwork" through this trickiest part of the passage.
Neither Exxon nor Hazelwood ever admitted that was what they were attempting. The normal shipping lanes out there are extremely wide, deep and forgiving. Anyone could drive a tanker through that part of the journey. But they were over a mile and a half outside the shipping lanes and just barely missed the shortcut gap. Either they were horrendously screwed up (to be a mile and a half off course) which makes no sense, or that is exactly what they were trying.
The poor crewman left at the wheel didn't know what to do. Indeed Third Mate Gregory Cousins was not even certified to operate a ship in PWS and, indeed, it was flatly illegal for him to be at the wheel. (Of course it was also illegal for Hazelwood to be drunk!) It was widely reported at the time although such reports dropped out of sight quickly, that Hazelwood had put the ship on autopilot and instructed Cousins to contact him when they reached a certain point. Despite the fact that this was known as a treacherous area for large vessels; and that they were operating outside the normal shipping lanes, there were no guide boats or tugs and purportedly no one but a rudimentary computer was directing the massive ship. No one who wasn't there knows for sure what actually happened that night. There were also reports that a drunk Hazelwood had made his way back to the bridge and ordered a "hard right" when he should have ordered a "hard left". That isn't the official story either, but the micro-computer in the auto pilot was at least sober and probably would have been the preferred option to the drunk captain. Even so, "computer" is too fancy of a concept for it. The computer you are using to read this article is hundreds of times more intelligent.
If true, one of the largest a 211,500 ton, 988 foot long, fully loaded oil tanker was being controlled by a machine with the approximate I.Q. of a fancy toaster.
And it went crunch.
It shuddered to a halt, engines still running full bore driving it further into the "sandbar" as Exxon likes to call the rocks of the well-charted Bligh Reef that ripped the thin single hull like a sardine can. In the version of the story where he hadn't already made it to the bridge yelling "hard right", Hazelwood stumbled to the bridge, uttered a few choice words, and then tried "rocking" the huge vessel off the rocks by jamming it full throttle forward, full throttle reverse, as you might try to drive you car out of a mudhole. Unlike your car and the mudhole, however, these manuevers acted to rip the holes in the hull much wider and allow much more oil to escape than would have otherwise. Finally, after failing to dislodge it and after the crew inspected things, he slurred into the radio that they had "fetched up" on a reef and were "evidently leaking" some of their cargo.
Truer understatements were seldom more understated.
The "little bit" of "cargo" that leaked was nearly 11 million gallons of tarry black Alaskan crude oil. It fouled 1300 miles of mostly pristine Alaska shoreline and covered 11,000 square feet of ocean.
Although there is a minor error or two, this is an excellent dynamic one-page pictoral "overview" of PWS and the spill.
Part 3 of This Series May be Viewed Here:
6.12.08
Headliner
December 5, 2008
Headliner
And so she goes. Just when I am convinced that I'm going to stop talking about Sarah Palin for awhile (because there are other very important things happening in the world and my writing time is limited) ... she goes and does something that makes it impossible to ignore her.
I'm not the only one having this problem. The national media, who would probably muc
h prefer that she hole up in an igloo someplace, find that they can't avoid talking about her either. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that she keeps doing newsworthy things that are simply not things that people in the news business can ignore and, secondly, she simply has an uncanny grip on our imagination. This appears to be true even among the pundits who claim they can't stand her.
We start to write about Obama's economic policy is shaping up [2 + 2 = what?!?] and we realize that it is critically important, will have tremendous impact on the country's present and future, affects all of us dramatically ... and is highly boring; both to us and to our readers.
Then along comes Sarah Palin. On her way to meet with the President-elect, she takes a brief side-trip at the behest of a desperate Senator about to lose his seat and a Party desperate to not let the Democrats get a 60 vote majority. She then, spending less than a day on it, personally causes the election of the Senator and saves the Republican party. Having answered their call when they asked her to lend her "star power" and succeeding beyond all reasonable or rational expectations, she then she meets the new President to-be and a bunch of admiring Governors, dusts off her apron and scoots back to continue "fixin' up" a state that is, aside from her, in total political melt-down shambles. And, of course, to fix up another pot of moose stew for her hubby and kids.
And we realize that we have "just one more" Palin column in us demanding to get out. And our fingers start talking about her.
The thing is ... both (reasons) are true. She has that "I can't stay away fromness" that is so rare, and when that sort of charisma is contained in a beautiful woman we're all helpless: male, female, black, white, liberal, conservative, Palin-politics haters and Palin-politics lovers. It makes no difference. It is the Princess Di effect. Back in the day ... even stuffy people who wouldn't stoop to admitting knowing who Princess Di was couldn't help but to surreptitiously read the "entertainment magazines" at the checkout stand if they had her picture on it.
But unlike Princess Di or Paris Hilton or Britney Spears who were famous mostly for being famous, Sarah Palin is also legitimately important and is famous for doing valuable newsworthy things. It is a remarkable combination.
She isn't some "famous for being famous" celebrity out looking for a "cause" so she can actually do something important. Palin got famous by doing things that were important.
Nor is she important because of who she married. Princess Di would never have raised a headline if she hadn't "married well" :-) Frankly, although she has neither the beauty nor the charisma of the "crowd" I'm discussing, to a lot larger extent than supporters would ever want to admit, the same is probably true of Hillary Clinton.
Nor is Palin important because she is a knock-out. That just happens to come with the package. But she would be just as legitimately important if she ... well ... if she wasn't.
But Palin has become such a phenomenon, she tops the charts at search engines and YouTube and anywhere people go, that it has even the mainstream media types scratching their heads and continuing to write, in addition to "newsworthy stuff" she does, about her popularity itself. That "phenomenon" has become a newsworthy event in it own right which is something I cannot recall ever happening to a vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket!
Quickly now ... who was Bob Dole's running mate? That isn't what's happening to Sarah. In 20 years the question about the 2008 election will be: "Now who was the presidential candidate that Palin was running with? It's right on the tip of my tongue ..."!
This is particularly mind-boggling because of the image that the punditocracy attempted to paint of her during what they all seemed to believe was her "15 minutes of fame". Even following the election the media claimed that Sarah had lost votes for McCain!
Um. Uh ... media people? Knock, knock. Excuse me, but if she is so toxic then why did Saxby Chambliss beg her to come save him and why did the Republican National Party beg her to save Chambliss to save them from a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate?
And more to the point ... why did she succeed so dramatically?
You don't suppose that it is at all possible that it was the pressosphere who ripped Palin so badly before people had a chance to know otherwise that cost McCain those votes do you?
"I can't overstate the impact she had down here." So says the Senator who was about to be unseated in the run-off election. This election was crucial to the Republican party because it appeared likely that if Martin beat Chambliss ... the Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority. Similarly, and for the exact same reason, the race was just as important to the Democrats. So all the big guns were unholstered. John McCain went down and campaigned for Chambliss ... but no one noticed. Mike Huckabee went down and stumped for him; as did Governor Romney and Rudy Giulani and essentially everyone who was anyone in the Republican party (and who, btw, are all in contention for being the "party leaders" and starting to jockey for possible 2012 presidential runs; which btw, polls now show Republicans care most that Palin runs in the next presidential election! ) ... but nobody noticed. "I went to see Mitt Romney a week ago and I think there were only about 100 people there." said one somewhat awed audience member interviewed after a huge "many thousands of people" Palin rally for Chambliss.
Al Gore went down and campaigned for Jim Martin. So did Bill Clinton. President-elect Obama taped phone messages and a radio ad and turned over his awesome vote-gathering machinery ("probably 100 or more of the Obama people came down"). Even the rapper Ludacris came down to help Martin. But nobody noticed.
Then, on the last day of the campaign, Palin swung by. She only did four short rallies in one day. And the entire world noticed.
Suddenly, Georgia was on everyone's mind. "When she walks in a room, folks just explode," Chambliss gushed after whomping Martin. "And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party."
And he kept gushing. He was grateful to all who helped ... but he made it crystal clear that it was Palin's appearance that "really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up". She has (another) serious fan in the Senate now. And the Republican National Committee isn't likely to ever think of her as a light-weight again.
She has done a better job of changing her "media-created" image (which is a remarkably difficult thing to do ... just ask Dan Quayle how to spell potato) in the few weeks since she has been out from under the thumb of the McCain staff than I can remember ever happening.
You have to hope that McCain had intelligent enough people working for him that they are now realizing what an incredibly dumb thing they did by keeping her under wraps. They bought into the ditz image also and were embarrassed that their boss had done something so foolish, so they tried to hide her as though they were ashamed to have McCain associated with her. If they had turned her loose ... well, we'll never know ... but I've a hunch that if they had ... it may well have been the vice-president elect who was drawing those huge crowds for Chambliss last week.
Headliner
And so she goes. Just when I am convinced that I'm going to stop talking about Sarah Palin for awhile (because there are other very important things happening in the world and my writing time is limited) ... she goes and does something that makes it impossible to ignore her.
I'm not the only one having this problem. The national media, who would probably muc
h prefer that she hole up in an igloo someplace, find that they can't avoid talking about her either. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that she keeps doing newsworthy things that are simply not things that people in the news business can ignore and, secondly, she simply has an uncanny grip on our imagination. This appears to be true even among the pundits who claim they can't stand her.We start to write about Obama's economic policy is shaping up [2 + 2 = what?!?] and we realize that it is critically important, will have tremendous impact on the country's present and future, affects all of us dramatically ... and is highly boring; both to us and to our readers.
Then along comes Sarah Palin. On her way to meet with the President-elect, she takes a brief side-trip at the behest of a desperate Senator about to lose his seat and a Party desperate to not let the Democrats get a 60 vote majority. She then, spending less than a day on it, personally causes the election of the Senator and saves the Republican party. Having answered their call when they asked her to lend her "star power" and succeeding beyond all reasonable or rational expectations, she then she meets the new President to-be and a bunch of admiring Governors, dusts off her apron and scoots back to continue "fixin' up" a state that is, aside from her, in total political melt-down shambles. And, of course, to fix up another pot of moose stew for her hubby and kids.
And we realize that we have "just one more" Palin column in us demanding to get out. And our fingers start talking about her.
The thing is ... both (reasons) are true. She has that "I can't stay away fromness" that is so rare, and when that sort of charisma is contained in a beautiful woman we're all helpless: male, female, black, white, liberal, conservative, Palin-politics haters and Palin-politics lovers. It makes no difference. It is the Princess Di effect. Back in the day ... even stuffy people who wouldn't stoop to admitting knowing who Princess Di was couldn't help but to surreptitiously read the "entertainment magazines" at the checkout stand if they had her picture on it.
But unlike Princess Di or Paris Hilton or Britney Spears who were famous mostly for being famous, Sarah Palin is also legitimately important and is famous for doing valuable newsworthy things. It is a remarkable combination.
She isn't some "famous for being famous" celebrity out looking for a "cause" so she can actually do something important. Palin got famous by doing things that were important.
Nor is she important because of who she married. Princess Di would never have raised a headline if she hadn't "married well" :-) Frankly, although she has neither the beauty nor the charisma of the "crowd" I'm discussing, to a lot larger extent than supporters would ever want to admit, the same is probably true of Hillary Clinton.
Nor is Palin important because she is a knock-out. That just happens to come with the package. But she would be just as legitimately important if she ... well ... if she wasn't.
But Palin has become such a phenomenon, she tops the charts at search engines and YouTube and anywhere people go, that it has even the mainstream media types scratching their heads and continuing to write, in addition to "newsworthy stuff" she does, about her popularity itself. That "phenomenon" has become a newsworthy event in it own right which is something I cannot recall ever happening to a vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket!
Quickly now ... who was Bob Dole's running mate? That isn't what's happening to Sarah. In 20 years the question about the 2008 election will be: "Now who was the presidential candidate that Palin was running with? It's right on the tip of my tongue ..."!
This is particularly mind-boggling because of the image that the punditocracy attempted to paint of her during what they all seemed to believe was her "15 minutes of fame". Even following the election the media claimed that Sarah had lost votes for McCain!
Um. Uh ... media people? Knock, knock. Excuse me, but if she is so toxic then why did Saxby Chambliss beg her to come save him and why did the Republican National Party beg her to save Chambliss to save them from a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate?
And more to the point ... why did she succeed so dramatically?
You don't suppose that it is at all possible that it was the pressosphere who ripped Palin so badly before people had a chance to know otherwise that cost McCain those votes do you?
"I can't overstate the impact she had down here." So says the Senator who was about to be unseated in the run-off election. This election was crucial to the Republican party because it appeared likely that if Martin beat Chambliss ... the Democrats would have a filibuster-proof majority. Similarly, and for the exact same reason, the race was just as important to the Democrats. So all the big guns were unholstered. John McCain went down and campaigned for Chambliss ... but no one noticed. Mike Huckabee went down and stumped for him; as did Governor Romney and Rudy Giulani and essentially everyone who was anyone in the Republican party (and who, btw, are all in contention for being the "party leaders" and starting to jockey for possible 2012 presidential runs; which btw, polls now show Republicans care most that Palin runs in the next presidential election! ) ... but nobody noticed. "I went to see Mitt Romney a week ago and I think there were only about 100 people there." said one somewhat awed audience member interviewed after a huge "many thousands of people" Palin rally for Chambliss.
Al Gore went down and campaigned for Jim Martin. So did Bill Clinton. President-elect Obama taped phone messages and a radio ad and turned over his awesome vote-gathering machinery ("probably 100 or more of the Obama people came down"). Even the rapper Ludacris came down to help Martin. But nobody noticed.
Then, on the last day of the campaign, Palin swung by. She only did four short rallies in one day. And the entire world noticed.
Suddenly, Georgia was on everyone's mind. "When she walks in a room, folks just explode," Chambliss gushed after whomping Martin. "And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party."
And he kept gushing. He was grateful to all who helped ... but he made it crystal clear that it was Palin's appearance that "really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up". She has (another) serious fan in the Senate now. And the Republican National Committee isn't likely to ever think of her as a light-weight again.
She has done a better job of changing her "media-created" image (which is a remarkably difficult thing to do ... just ask Dan Quayle how to spell potato) in the few weeks since she has been out from under the thumb of the McCain staff than I can remember ever happening.
You have to hope that McCain had intelligent enough people working for him that they are now realizing what an incredibly dumb thing they did by keeping her under wraps. They bought into the ditz image also and were embarrassed that their boss had done something so foolish, so they tried to hide her as though they were ashamed to have McCain associated with her. If they had turned her loose ... well, we'll never know ... but I've a hunch that if they had ... it may well have been the vice-president elect who was drawing those huge crowds for Chambliss last week.
27.11.08
Rock Star Embarrassment?
November 25, 2008
Rock Star Embarrassment?
Thank you Kelly for sharing that sentiment :-) That is a reference to the note she added to the "Time to Take Campaign Posters Down" article in which she opines that "Sarah Palin is an idiot and an embarrassment to the state of Alaska." Actually, I mean that. I appreciate all opinions here. It would be nice to flesh it out a bit; for instance it might make a lot of difference to some folks to know whether Kelly is an Alaskan or just someone "out there" feeling sorry for us :-) But it certainly represents a fairly widespread opinion and one that begs for a response. So, Kelly, I hope you don't mind, but I'll use your comment as representative of that "mindset". I've been wandering blogs and online news outlets. Clearly there are a lot of folks saying essentially the same thing.
The mainstream online media outlets and the "linked-in sold-out" blogs talk about how Palin's approval ratings in Alaska have "plummeted" giving the implication that now that Alaskans have learned more about her they see her more clearly. This is the equivalent, I believe, of Kelly's comment about how Palin is an embarrassment.
So, I have researched the issue at some length to determine its validity. We are somewhat hamstrung in Alaska because we only have one statewide newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News. ADN is part of the McClatchy chain which means (given the number of times I've known a lot about something that McClatchy reports on, I can safely say) that the paper is inherently untrustworthy and at times it seems that it must be intentionally lying because the only other possibility would be stupidity at a level where they couldn't possibly compose understandable sentences. But, as long as one understands that and can work around it, it is still possible to find the truth in the nooks and crannies of small local papers with an online presence, independent bloggers, going to the cited sources of the ADN articles and finding out what was really said or done, and lots of other ways including just talking to people. So it is with some confidence that I can report that the idea that the people in Alaska are embarrassed by our Governor and that her popularity has "plummeted" due to the enlightenment of the citizenry such that they truly understand her better is total and utter balderdash.
It is true that Palin's approval rating in Alaska did drop. It hovered around 89% to 93% in 2007 (an insanely unsustainable number potentially unmatched by any Governor anywhere ever!) As late as mid-September, 2008, (after the Couric interviews!) it was still the highest of any Governor in the nation at around 85%. By late September, it was down to 68%. This is the "plummet" that folks keep mentioning. It is true that knocked her off top rank. She was, at that point, only the 4th most popular Governor in the U.S. (not quite what I'd call an embarrassment). In fact ... virtually any politician would sell their soul for ratings that high. (Palin is one of those rare politicians whose soul really isn't for sale. The Big Oil boys found that out to their chagrin.) But it does keep the evangelical right (of which I am not a member) happy, and gives her that "God is on my side" power that I personally find distasteful but has a substantive demonstrably positive effect.
But back to her "plummeted rating". I seldom do this, but I'm going to give some significant space here to the folks over at FemiSex.com. They are pro-female but definitely not generically Republican or right-wing. Indeed, most were Hillary supporters (which should give them at least a little more credibility with the Kelly's of the world than I have :-). I won't quote it all here, although it is tempting to do so. If you'd like to, it just takes a click on this link! The article is discussing a posting by a "Palin-hater" about her plummeted rating:
"It is ... wonderful as an exemplar of how the press inflicts fatal blows to female candidates. … Proof Positive that the Media inflicts violence upon women candidates by a sustained pile-on of besmirchment ...
Up until the media told us all over.. and over.. and over.. and over.. again what a dolt, sinner, adulterous, contriving, ambitious, book-burning, vicious Bitch Palin is ... Palin had an 80 % approval rating in Alaska by her constitutes.
LET ME REPEAT THIS: UNTIL THE MEDIA SAVAGED PALIN, SMEARING HER DAILY, SHE HAD A SOLID 80% APPROVAL RATING ...
Then came a poll—a poll taken a mere three weeks after the Lefty Press gang-smeared Palin in a manner befitting their conduct towards Hillary Clinton.
Guess WHAT?????????? Palin’s approval rating fell 12 points. Now does any intelligent person think the manner in which she governed Alaska changed in three weeks? For crying out loud, the woman has been campaigning the entire time!! There is zero chance Palin committed anything policy-wise to make Alaska’s citizens turn against her by 12 percentage points.
And there is ZERO chance that her past efforts and successes and failures changed. (There is a 100% chance the media perpetuated lies about Palin, such as the continued fabrication that the woman tortured rape victims, and afterward put on witch-clothing and burnt books toasty at the public library, while having adulterous sex with an unknown entity, faked a pregnancy, and toasted male testicles on the remnants of her book fire.)
When a woman is in the mix, the press spins things into such ludicrous negativity, invents stories, and ABOVE all fails to outline the many positives ... Hats off MSM, u’ve done it again. First with Clinton, now with Palin. NO woman running for Top Doggie or 2nd Doggie is safe. We hear u loud and clear ...
-Now just try to tell me that Media did not Kill off Hillary. Tell me about how Joe Biden lied about being shot at in Afghanistan. Wait, you haven’t heard about that if you're in middle American and listen to the six o’clock news.
-Now tell me about Hillary’s sniper fire lies. Sure, that u can quote verbatim. Round the clock negative coverage kills female candidates. If I had a nickel for the # of women who’ve said to me: “I really liked Hillary, until I didn’t.” When they didn't occurred during the media hate frenzy towards Clinton.
There is almost no way anyone could hold up against such sustained smearing..."
I honestly don't know that the media is that anti-female. It certainly is possible. But it is quite clear that the press intentionally attempted to destroy her, whether it was because of her gender or, my theory: that the Obamamedia was scared to death when she showed up because her incredible charisma had crowds reacting like she was the world's greatest rock star and they thought that if they didn't destroy her she might be able to drag McCain across the finish line.
If they had treated Obama the same way they'd treated Palin ... McCain would have won in a landslide. I have never before witnessed such vicious lock-step attempts at utter character assassination.
But a funny thing happened on the way to her destruction. People paid [the ever so self-important punditocracy] less attention than they believed they should. Oh, it was enough to elect Obama. But Palin's star is continuing to rise like crazy. I also assume that she will be back up in the 80s statewide in her approval ratings soon if she is not already. (Even when she was "down" at 68% she still kept a 93% favorable rating with Alaska Republicans!) And her star is not just Alaskan any longer.
CNN reports: "Oprah wants her, and so do Letterman and Leno. Fresh from her political defeat, Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate that would be astonishing for most Hollywood stars, let alone a first-term governor. Sarah Palin continues to attract huge media interest despite her failed bid to become vice president.
[Governor Palin] crunched state budget numbers this week ... Meanwhile, her staff fielded television requests seeking the 44-year-old for late-night banter and Sunday morning Washington policy. Agents, including those from the William Morris Agency, have come knocking. There's even been an offer to host a TV show.
'Tomorrow, Gov. Palin could do an interview with any news media on the planet," said her spokesman, Bill McAllister. "Tomorrow, she could probably sign any one of a dozen book deals. She could start talking to people about a documentary or a movie on her life. That's the level we are at here.'
'Barbara Walters called me. George Stephanopoulos called me,' McAllister said. 'I've had multiple conversations with producers for Oprah, Letterman, Leno and 'The Daily Show.' Palin ...[has]... returned to Alaska with an expanded, if unofficial, title: international celebrity."
And! The lady has coattails! The Republicans are still scraping and scrounging to try to keep the Democrats from getting that 60 seat filibuster blocking majority they want so badly.
As McClatchy reports: There are still two undecided positions in run-off campaigns and those two will determine whether they get their 60 chairs or not. One of those elections is in Georgia. So, in an incredibly close and critical situation in which their degree of national power for at least the next two (potentially incredibly important) years hangs in precarious balance ... what do the Republicans do? They call Sarah!
It is a tight, tight election. So they reached about as far distance wise as one can go in this country to bring in who they call "the closer". Sarah Palin will be in Georgia on Monday campaigning (at least four big rallies are planned so far) for Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss.
So ... sorry, Kelly, but the idea that we are so embarrassed that we have a Governor who is so incredibly popular nationwide with the people (even if clearly not the lockstep media) that they beg her (and pay her way) to come clear to Georgia to win this thing for them just doesn't pass the smell test.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution entitled their article about it: "Ohmigoodness ... the goddess descends."
She is featured at the top of Chambliss's web site to help attract people to the rallies which are expected to be so packed you need to RSVP reservations!!! Chambliss spokeswoman Michelle Grasso said "She has a lot of support, a lot of fans down here. A lot of people are very excited that she's coming ... I think it's absolutely the way you want to end a runoff."
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile is campaigning for the other side [the big guns are out on both sides for this one]. Donna says "Saxby Chambliss is calling out the cavalry because he needs to motivate his base". So now even the top Democrats figure Sarah is the cavalry!
She's not skipping out on Alaska business ... she is going to be in the area anyway. She'll be meeting with Obama and other invited governors in Philadelphia in a big bipartisan attempt to figure out how to deal with the ailing economy.
And of course, she just returned a couple weeks ago from the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami. Alaska governors often attend these functions, but it was a little different this time. Even McClatchy says: "She dominated media attention at the conference and did an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'Poolside paparazzi' photos were even taken of her and circulated on the internet."
I have to agree with one of my commenters that I'm not 100% sure I'm thrilled to have a rock star governor. But are Alaskan's embarrassed by her? I don't think so.
Rock Star Embarrassment?
Thank you Kelly for sharing that sentiment :-) That is a reference to the note she added to the "Time to Take Campaign Posters Down" article in which she opines that "Sarah Palin is an idiot and an embarrassment to the state of Alaska." Actually, I mean that. I appreciate all opinions here. It would be nice to flesh it out a bit; for instance it might make a lot of difference to some folks to know whether Kelly is an Alaskan or just someone "out there" feeling sorry for us :-) But it certainly represents a fairly widespread opinion and one that begs for a response. So, Kelly, I hope you don't mind, but I'll use your comment as representative of that "mindset". I've been wandering blogs and online news outlets. Clearly there are a lot of folks saying essentially the same thing.
The mainstream online media outlets and the "linked-in sold-out" blogs talk about how Palin's approval ratings in Alaska have "plummeted" giving the implication that now that Alaskans have learned more about her they see her more clearly. This is the equivalent, I believe, of Kelly's comment about how Palin is an embarrassment.
So, I have researched the issue at some length to determine its validity. We are somewhat hamstrung in Alaska because we only have one statewide newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News. ADN is part of the McClatchy chain which means (given the number of times I've known a lot about something that McClatchy reports on, I can safely say) that the paper is inherently untrustworthy and at times it seems that it must be intentionally lying because the only other possibility would be stupidity at a level where they couldn't possibly compose understandable sentences. But, as long as one understands that and can work around it, it is still possible to find the truth in the nooks and crannies of small local papers with an online presence, independent bloggers, going to the cited sources of the ADN articles and finding out what was really said or done, and lots of other ways including just talking to people. So it is with some confidence that I can report that the idea that the people in Alaska are embarrassed by our Governor and that her popularity has "plummeted" due to the enlightenment of the citizenry such that they truly understand her better is total and utter balderdash.
It is true that Palin's approval rating in Alaska did drop. It hovered around 89% to 93% in 2007 (an insanely unsustainable number potentially unmatched by any Governor anywhere ever!) As late as mid-September, 2008, (after the Couric interviews!) it was still the highest of any Governor in the nation at around 85%. By late September, it was down to 68%. This is the "plummet" that folks keep mentioning. It is true that knocked her off top rank. She was, at that point, only the 4th most popular Governor in the U.S. (not quite what I'd call an embarrassment). In fact ... virtually any politician would sell their soul for ratings that high. (Palin is one of those rare politicians whose soul really isn't for sale. The Big Oil boys found that out to their chagrin.) But it does keep the evangelical right (of which I am not a member) happy, and gives her that "God is on my side" power that I personally find distasteful but has a substantive demonstrably positive effect.
But back to her "plummeted rating". I seldom do this, but I'm going to give some significant space here to the folks over at FemiSex.com. They are pro-female but definitely not generically Republican or right-wing. Indeed, most were Hillary supporters (which should give them at least a little more credibility with the Kelly's of the world than I have :-). I won't quote it all here, although it is tempting to do so. If you'd like to, it just takes a click on this link! The article is discussing a posting by a "Palin-hater" about her plummeted rating:
"It is ... wonderful as an exemplar of how the press inflicts fatal blows to female candidates. … Proof Positive that the Media inflicts violence upon women candidates by a sustained pile-on of besmirchment ...
Up until the media told us all over.. and over.. and over.. and over.. again what a dolt, sinner, adulterous, contriving, ambitious, book-burning, vicious Bitch Palin is ... Palin had an 80 % approval rating in Alaska by her constitutes.
LET ME REPEAT THIS: UNTIL THE MEDIA SAVAGED PALIN, SMEARING HER DAILY, SHE HAD A SOLID 80% APPROVAL RATING ...
Then came a poll—a poll taken a mere three weeks after the Lefty Press gang-smeared Palin in a manner befitting their conduct towards Hillary Clinton.
Guess WHAT?????????? Palin’s approval rating fell 12 points. Now does any intelligent person think the manner in which she governed Alaska changed in three weeks? For crying out loud, the woman has been campaigning the entire time!! There is zero chance Palin committed anything policy-wise to make Alaska’s citizens turn against her by 12 percentage points.
And there is ZERO chance that her past efforts and successes and failures changed. (There is a 100% chance the media perpetuated lies about Palin, such as the continued fabrication that the woman tortured rape victims, and afterward put on witch-clothing and burnt books toasty at the public library, while having adulterous sex with an unknown entity, faked a pregnancy, and toasted male testicles on the remnants of her book fire.)
When a woman is in the mix, the press spins things into such ludicrous negativity, invents stories, and ABOVE all fails to outline the many positives ... Hats off MSM, u’ve done it again. First with Clinton, now with Palin. NO woman running for Top Doggie or 2nd Doggie is safe. We hear u loud and clear ...
-Now just try to tell me that Media did not Kill off Hillary. Tell me about how Joe Biden lied about being shot at in Afghanistan. Wait, you haven’t heard about that if you're in middle American and listen to the six o’clock news.
-Now tell me about Hillary’s sniper fire lies. Sure, that u can quote verbatim. Round the clock negative coverage kills female candidates. If I had a nickel for the # of women who’ve said to me: “I really liked Hillary, until I didn’t.” When they didn't occurred during the media hate frenzy towards Clinton.
There is almost no way anyone could hold up against such sustained smearing..."
I honestly don't know that the media is that anti-female. It certainly is possible. But it is quite clear that the press intentionally attempted to destroy her, whether it was because of her gender or, my theory: that the Obamamedia was scared to death when she showed up because her incredible charisma had crowds reacting like she was the world's greatest rock star and they thought that if they didn't destroy her she might be able to drag McCain across the finish line.
If they had treated Obama the same way they'd treated Palin ... McCain would have won in a landslide. I have never before witnessed such vicious lock-step attempts at utter character assassination.
But a funny thing happened on the way to her destruction. People paid [the ever so self-important punditocracy] less attention than they believed they should. Oh, it was enough to elect Obama. But Palin's star is continuing to rise like crazy. I also assume that she will be back up in the 80s statewide in her approval ratings soon if she is not already. (Even when she was "down" at 68% she still kept a 93% favorable rating with Alaska Republicans!) And her star is not just Alaskan any longer.
CNN reports: "Oprah wants her, and so do Letterman and Leno. Fresh from her political defeat, Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate that would be astonishing for most Hollywood stars, let alone a first-term governor. Sarah Palin continues to attract huge media interest despite her failed bid to become vice president.
[Governor Palin] crunched state budget numbers this week ... Meanwhile, her staff fielded television requests seeking the 44-year-old for late-night banter and Sunday morning Washington policy. Agents, including those from the William Morris Agency, have come knocking. There's even been an offer to host a TV show.
'Tomorrow, Gov. Palin could do an interview with any news media on the planet," said her spokesman, Bill McAllister. "Tomorrow, she could probably sign any one of a dozen book deals. She could start talking to people about a documentary or a movie on her life. That's the level we are at here.'
'Barbara Walters called me. George Stephanopoulos called me,' McAllister said. 'I've had multiple conversations with producers for Oprah, Letterman, Leno and 'The Daily Show.' Palin ...[has]... returned to Alaska with an expanded, if unofficial, title: international celebrity."
And! The lady has coattails! The Republicans are still scraping and scrounging to try to keep the Democrats from getting that 60 seat filibuster blocking majority they want so badly.
As McClatchy reports: There are still two undecided positions in run-off campaigns and those two will determine whether they get their 60 chairs or not. One of those elections is in Georgia. So, in an incredibly close and critical situation in which their degree of national power for at least the next two (potentially incredibly important) years hangs in precarious balance ... what do the Republicans do? They call Sarah!
It is a tight, tight election. So they reached about as far distance wise as one can go in this country to bring in who they call "the closer". Sarah Palin will be in Georgia on Monday campaigning (at least four big rallies are planned so far) for Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss.
So ... sorry, Kelly, but the idea that we are so embarrassed that we have a Governor who is so incredibly popular nationwide with the people (even if clearly not the lockstep media) that they beg her (and pay her way) to come clear to Georgia to win this thing for them just doesn't pass the smell test.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution entitled their article about it: "Ohmigoodness ... the goddess descends."
She is featured at the top of Chambliss's web site to help attract people to the rallies which are expected to be so packed you need to RSVP reservations!!! Chambliss spokeswoman Michelle Grasso said "She has a lot of support, a lot of fans down here. A lot of people are very excited that she's coming ... I think it's absolutely the way you want to end a runoff."
Democratic strategist Donna Brazile is campaigning for the other side [the big guns are out on both sides for this one]. Donna says "Saxby Chambliss is calling out the cavalry because he needs to motivate his base". So now even the top Democrats figure Sarah is the cavalry!
She's not skipping out on Alaska business ... she is going to be in the area anyway. She'll be meeting with Obama and other invited governors in Philadelphia in a big bipartisan attempt to figure out how to deal with the ailing economy.
And of course, she just returned a couple weeks ago from the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami. Alaska governors often attend these functions, but it was a little different this time. Even McClatchy says: "She dominated media attention at the conference and did an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'Poolside paparazzi' photos were even taken of her and circulated on the internet."
I have to agree with one of my commenters that I'm not 100% sure I'm thrilled to have a rock star governor. But are Alaskan's embarrassed by her? I don't think so.
23.11.08
Turkeys
November 21, 2008
Turkeys
I thought I had done enough about Sarah Palin for awhile. There are other important things to discuss! How the world, especially the Islamic world, is reacting to Obama's election. Another glance at the ridda (apostasy) issue. What Obama's proposed appointments tell about how he will actually govern. What his choice for Secretary of State will mean ...
Instead I'm doing yet another column on our famous/infamous Governor and the media. In fact, I'm afraid this isn't going to end the "theme" either. She is still top-level international news.
It is uncanny. Biden has been around and involved in critical national and international matters for over 36 years. Palin probably made the front page of a newspaper not published in Alaska for the first time less than four months ago. If you Google "Biden" you get 25,000,000 hits. Quite respectable! That's a lot of people talking about you! Google "Palin", however, and you get 95,000,000 hits! Let that number sink in. 95 MILLION hits! The latest estimate of the population of the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 305,726,193. Of course this is comparing apples and oranges ... but there are nearly 1/3 as many "Google available and located" documents mentioning Palin as there are people in this country. For some reason that seems mind-boggling to me.
Nor is it because "Palin" is a more common name. Put the name in quotes and run "Sarah Palin" and you get 48,500,000 hits. "Joe Biden" only gets you 12,000,000. Even "Hillary Clinton" only gets 28,700,000 and she's "been around" in the public consciousness a bit longer than Sarah Palin has also.
Stories about her remain at the top of the national interest meter. Articles about her are cited at the top of nearly every "most popular story" list put out by the major news agencies.
Oh, the media still has a nasty streak that they can't seem to break when they get the opportunity to make fun of her. Like, for instance, the topic of this column: the nonsensical big "top news story" about Palin pardoning a turkey; a minor Thanksgiving ritual done by essentially all governors and presidents. Then she gave a short interview, apparently without realizing what else was in the camera viewfinder. During the video filming of the interview, workers in the background continued with the job at hand at a turkey farm shortly before Thanksgiving [duh]: butchering turkeys.
That is not a huge hook to build a story on ... and yet, it is currently (and has been for several days!) the number one story accessed through Huffington Post (and presumably near the top in interest of current news stories period!) At Huffington the story and video has 673,582 views and 5,416 comments. This blows all the "competition" out of the water. Not only the "real" and "serious" news stories ... but it even makes the silly "Obamas Expected to Have Sex In White House" story seem to be boring [91,912 views, 222 comments]! (The Obama article is actually hilarious ... especially the comments from people who don't understand that it is satire! But it is only 1/7th as popular as a boring interview of Palin at a turkey farm!)
I am beginning to understand that people (and cameras and media types) are addicted to all things Palin. But the video of a turkey pardon? Arianna [Huffington] even mentions it in her little front page editorial squib telling people to make sure not to miss it! And the comments are (largely) insanely obnoxious. Many of them call for Palin to please just go away and shut up. Ya know, if they wouldn't keep a' clicking on any news story about her and adding comments ... presumably she would! There were 49 other state Governors and a sitting U.S. President that (probably) all did the same traditional "turkey pardon". Yet not one, other than Sarah's, made the YouTube best-seller list. If people don't want to hear Sarah Palin then they should [get your crayons out so you can take notes] "stop listening"! Clearly, the turkeys weren't all behind Sarah.
"Help! Save me from myself! Stop showing news stories about Palin because I can't keep myself from watching them!" Even atrociously stupid ones like this.
Headline news: the turkey you eat for Thanksgiving was killed before you cooked it. I know this is a shock! [Well, unless it is a PETA tofu turkey :-) Are there such things? Actually, I'm sure there are given the rampant
idiocy that a rich free society engenders. Don't they have any sympathy for the poor tofus they keep killing? Heartless I tell you. We should start a "SAVE THE TOFU" campaign! We could run some video clips of masked ninja types sneaking up on baby tofus and smashing them with clubs until they die a slow and painful death!]
I just checked. It isn't just a bad joke (the tofu turkeys, not the baby tofu killers - that is a bad joke :-). But they really do make tofu "turkey". [Sigh.] It's called Tofurkey and PETA even has a website full of "oh so yummy" Thanksgiving recipes! Saints preserve us!
Doesn't anyone know that tofu is curdled, coagulated soy beans??? It is a perfectly reasonable thing to eat ... if you are starving and lost in the desert and there is nothing potentially edible for hundreds of miles ... and you've already eaten your belt. Under any other conditions it is pathetic. But I digress :-)
I think it is all ... Reagan's (?) fault. I can't remember if he was Governor of California when they decided to close down all the "establishments for the sanity deprived" [this is California we're talking about after all :-)] and send the crazy people out into the streets. This caused such things as sidewalk congestion on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and PETA.
Granted, Palin isn't as "ewwee" squeamish as this patriarchal society likes its women to be. [Grow up America!] Sorry, I, and probably most Alaskans, have difficulties with such elitist machismo - on the frontier a woman has value, she isn't just considered to be decoration.] Sarah kills and butchers moose and other animals. She commercially fishes and tromps around in boats full of dead and dying salmon.
[By strange coincidence one of the big positives for me about Hillary, (personally, not politically) was that she wasn't the squeamish type either. She worked a "slime line" in Alaska when she was younger ... w
hich consists of butchering salmon, some of which aren't quite dead, as they come past you at the salmon cannery on a conveyor belt.] Hillary noted that, armed with a rain coat, hip boots and a knife, the slime line job "was the best preparation ever for working in Washington"! But that's only because she has never field dressed a moose! :-)
So, sure, maybe some more "girlie" governor would have been grossed out. I suppose Sarah could take pointers and learn. Given that she learned to tear down, clean and reassemble a rifle in only a few minutes I'm sure she could manage this. But if you've butchered a moose, the idea that seeing a turkey "prepared" for the Thanksgiving table is objectionable is just silly. As is the reaction by all those who are grossed out by it (but can't keep themselves from watching it while ranting about it!)
Turkeys
I thought I had done enough about Sarah Palin for awhile. There are other important things to discuss! How the world, especially the Islamic world, is reacting to Obama's election. Another glance at the ridda (apostasy) issue. What Obama's proposed appointments tell about how he will actually govern. What his choice for Secretary of State will mean ...
Instead I'm doing yet another column on our famous/infamous Governor and the media. In fact, I'm afraid this isn't going to end the "theme" either. She is still top-level international news.
It is uncanny. Biden has been around and involved in critical national and international matters for over 36 years. Palin probably made the front page of a newspaper not published in Alaska for the first time less than four months ago. If you Google "Biden" you get 25,000,000 hits. Quite respectable! That's a lot of people talking about you! Google "Palin", however, and you get 95,000,000 hits! Let that number sink in. 95 MILLION hits! The latest estimate of the population of the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 305,726,193. Of course this is comparing apples and oranges ... but there are nearly 1/3 as many "Google available and located" documents mentioning Palin as there are people in this country. For some reason that seems mind-boggling to me.
Nor is it because "Palin" is a more common name. Put the name in quotes and run "Sarah Palin" and you get 48,500,000 hits. "Joe Biden" only gets you 12,000,000. Even "Hillary Clinton" only gets 28,700,000 and she's "been around" in the public consciousness a bit longer than Sarah Palin has also.
Stories about her remain at the top of the national interest meter. Articles about her are cited at the top of nearly every "most popular story" list put out by the major news agencies.
Oh, the media still has a nasty streak that they can't seem to break when they get the opportunity to make fun of her. Like, for instance, the topic of this column: the nonsensical big "top news story" about Palin pardoning a turkey; a minor Thanksgiving ritual done by essentially all governors and presidents. Then she gave a short interview, apparently without realizing what else was in the camera viewfinder. During the video filming of the interview, workers in the background continued with the job at hand at a turkey farm shortly before Thanksgiving [duh]: butchering turkeys.
That is not a huge hook to build a story on ... and yet, it is currently (and has been for several days!) the number one story accessed through Huffington Post (and presumably near the top in interest of current news stories period!) At Huffington the story and video has 673,582 views and 5,416 comments. This blows all the "competition" out of the water. Not only the "real" and "serious" news stories ... but it even makes the silly "Obamas Expected to Have Sex In White House" story seem to be boring [91,912 views, 222 comments]! (The Obama article is actually hilarious ... especially the comments from people who don't understand that it is satire! But it is only 1/7th as popular as a boring interview of Palin at a turkey farm!)
I am beginning to understand that people (and cameras and media types) are addicted to all things Palin. But the video of a turkey pardon? Arianna [Huffington] even mentions it in her little front page editorial squib telling people to make sure not to miss it! And the comments are (largely) insanely obnoxious. Many of them call for Palin to please just go away and shut up. Ya know, if they wouldn't keep a' clicking on any news story about her and adding comments ... presumably she would! There were 49 other state Governors and a sitting U.S. President that (probably) all did the same traditional "turkey pardon". Yet not one, other than Sarah's, made the YouTube best-seller list. If people don't want to hear Sarah Palin then they should [get your crayons out so you can take notes] "stop listening"! Clearly, the turkeys weren't all behind Sarah.
"Help! Save me from myself! Stop showing news stories about Palin because I can't keep myself from watching them!" Even atrociously stupid ones like this.
Headline news: the turkey you eat for Thanksgiving was killed before you cooked it. I know this is a shock! [Well, unless it is a PETA tofu turkey :-) Are there such things? Actually, I'm sure there are given the rampantidiocy that a rich free society engenders. Don't they have any sympathy for the poor tofus they keep killing? Heartless I tell you. We should start a "SAVE THE TOFU" campaign! We could run some video clips of masked ninja types sneaking up on baby tofus and smashing them with clubs until they die a slow and painful death!]
I just checked. It isn't just a bad joke (the tofu turkeys, not the baby tofu killers - that is a bad joke :-). But they really do make tofu "turkey". [Sigh.] It's called Tofurkey and PETA even has a website full of "oh so yummy" Thanksgiving recipes! Saints preserve us!
Doesn't anyone know that tofu is curdled, coagulated soy beans??? It is a perfectly reasonable thing to eat ... if you are starving and lost in the desert and there is nothing potentially edible for hundreds of miles ... and you've already eaten your belt. Under any other conditions it is pathetic. But I digress :-)
I think it is all ... Reagan's (?) fault. I can't remember if he was Governor of California when they decided to close down all the "establishments for the sanity deprived" [this is California we're talking about after all :-)] and send the crazy people out into the streets. This caused such things as sidewalk congestion on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and PETA.
Granted, Palin isn't as "ewwee" squeamish as this patriarchal society likes its women to be. [Grow up America!] Sorry, I, and probably most Alaskans, have difficulties with such elitist machismo - on the frontier a woman has value, she isn't just considered to be decoration.] Sarah kills and butchers moose and other animals. She commercially fishes and tromps around in boats full of dead and dying salmon.
[By strange coincidence one of the big positives for me about Hillary, (personally, not politically) was that she wasn't the squeamish type either. She worked a "slime line" in Alaska when she was younger ... w
hich consists of butchering salmon, some of which aren't quite dead, as they come past you at the salmon cannery on a conveyor belt.] Hillary noted that, armed with a rain coat, hip boots and a knife, the slime line job "was the best preparation ever for working in Washington"! But that's only because she has never field dressed a moose! :-) So, sure, maybe some more "girlie" governor would have been grossed out. I suppose Sarah could take pointers and learn. Given that she learned to tear down, clean and reassemble a rifle in only a few minutes I'm sure she could manage this. But if you've butchered a moose, the idea that seeing a turkey "prepared" for the Thanksgiving table is objectionable is just silly. As is the reaction by all those who are grossed out by it (but can't keep themselves from watching it while ranting about it!)
I realize that there are turkeys involved here all right. I just can't decide who all they are.
But ~675,000 views just through Huffington of a turkey pardon? I'd say we probably could find at least a half a million of them in that viewer group.
All that attention. And it was probably the least important thing Sarah did that day! Pu-leese people! Get a life!
18.11.08
A "Con"stitutional Question
November 16, 2008
A "Con" stitutional Question
Ok. We've had our election. The national media gave Obama his Rolls Royce ride to the white house. The people" (represented by a much larger percentage of street people bussed to the polls in the weeks before and during election day than had ever been seen in the past :-) have made him the "President-elect". (Republicans have little ability to counter this new form of electioneering except to work to stop all the early voting and make absentee voting much more difficult. It wouldn't stop the election day busing, but it would put an end to the huge numbers that get dragged to the polls in the weeks preceding an election. This is the Republicans only real solution since there are probably very few street people who would vote Republican unless for a specific quid pro quo and Republicans tend to get squeamish about outright vote buying.)
Being president-elect, however, is not a long term position. It is supposed to come to an end, according to the Constitution, on January 20 of the year following the election. But we have over two months left before the scheduled occasion.
So what happens if Obama is disqualified from holding the office before that date arrives? And, even more interestingly, what if the courts were to so determine after he is sworn in as President? I doubt that it will happen but this election has been so strange that nothing would surprise me. I think most people believe it is too late. All those lawsuits challenging his standing to be the U.S. President are generally thought to have gone "poof" with his election. But they didn't.
Interestingly the lawsuits have not been dismissed as frivolous either, which is the common response to the wing-nut lawsuits that pop up virtually unnoticed at other elections. In fact, despite the best attempts by the media to ignore them, the lawsuits have a pesky way of showing up and are not proving susceptible to being swept under the rug. I don't know if it is true or not since it is just an unverified comment, but at least someone apparently counted and says there are 17 cases in the Federal courts on this issue, two of which are currently before the Supreme Court. I assume there are "a bunch" in state courts as well seeking to stop certifications or whatever in the individual states.
Nor are these all nut-case lawsuits. Everyone has heard of the Phillip Berg lawsuit. It has been fairly well scoffed off the table by the mainstream media suggesting just that ... that it is just another nut-case action. Part of the problem with that argument is that Phillip Berg isn't your typical nut-case. Indeed he is the former Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania.
Although that is probably the most famous of the cases, perhaps the most fascinating and compelling case is the case brought in California by, among others, Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes. Dr. Keyes (a PhD from Harvard is not one to be brushed off easily. He also overcomes the big problem that Phillip Berg has with his case is that the court is questioning his "standing" to bring the action. I think the court is hopelessly wrong on that. Any citizen of the United States has standing to bring a lawsuit alleging that a presidential candidate (or president-elect) does not qualify for the office.
However that is ultimately decided, Dr. Keyes does not face that problem. Perhaps fortuitously, he was on the ballot in California as a candidate for President running as the nominee of the American Independent Party. It would be difficult to imagine who would have standing if a citizen of the country who was competing with Obama for the election as President, does not.
You would think that Obama would stop trying to win all these law suits on procedural grounds and just wipe them out on the merits ... if indeed he is right on the merits. All he has to do is wipe out the "vault birth certificate" (the real one ... the kind you probably have to show to get a driver's license! Not that phony certificate of live birth that the experts are split on but that appears there is a good chance it is a forgery).
I have a hunch that Obama may not even have known where he was born until questions came up about it! It isn't like he remembers it. And things were such a whirlwind he probably didn't even take it all seriously when it started. But the wheels of justice grind slowly ... but they do grind away. But even though it isn't the kind of thing one is likely to remember, ignorance absolutely is no excuse.
I can see it, though. His Mom (who was a bit of a wild card anyway) wanted him to have U.S. citizenship as a "born in the U.S.A. type, not as a "naturalized by moving here so young" type, so claimed he was born in Hawaii and told him that. His Grandmother said he was born in Kenya. She certainly had nothing to gain by saying that. Only the vaulted certificate knows for sure. And by now, probably Obama. Or he would have produced it. He was recently in Hawaii for his Grandmother's funeral [no, I'm not enough of a wing-nut to go there :-)]. But I bet he checked the certificate while there. And instead of producing it as he has been court ordered to do and which would make all the lawsuits go "poof" ... he fights them on procedural grounds and keeps the birth certificate in the vault.
A "Con" stitutional Question
Ok. We've had our election. The national media gave Obama his Rolls Royce ride to the white house. The people" (represented by a much larger percentage of street people bussed to the polls in the weeks before and during election day than had ever been seen in the past :-) have made him the "President-elect". (Republicans have little ability to counter this new form of electioneering except to work to stop all the early voting and make absentee voting much more difficult. It wouldn't stop the election day busing, but it would put an end to the huge numbers that get dragged to the polls in the weeks preceding an election. This is the Republicans only real solution since there are probably very few street people who would vote Republican unless for a specific quid pro quo and Republicans tend to get squeamish about outright vote buying.)Being president-elect, however, is not a long term position. It is supposed to come to an end, according to the Constitution, on January 20 of the year following the election. But we have over two months left before the scheduled occasion.
So what happens if Obama is disqualified from holding the office before that date arrives? And, even more interestingly, what if the courts were to so determine after he is sworn in as President? I doubt that it will happen but this election has been so strange that nothing would surprise me. I think most people believe it is too late. All those lawsuits challenging his standing to be the U.S. President are generally thought to have gone "poof" with his election. But they didn't.
Interestingly the lawsuits have not been dismissed as frivolous either, which is the common response to the wing-nut lawsuits that pop up virtually unnoticed at other elections. In fact, despite the best attempts by the media to ignore them, the lawsuits have a pesky way of showing up and are not proving susceptible to being swept under the rug. I don't know if it is true or not since it is just an unverified comment, but at least someone apparently counted and says there are 17 cases in the Federal courts on this issue, two of which are currently before the Supreme Court. I assume there are "a bunch" in state courts as well seeking to stop certifications or whatever in the individual states.
Nor are these all nut-case lawsuits. Everyone has heard of the Phillip Berg lawsuit. It has been fairly well scoffed off the table by the mainstream media suggesting just that ... that it is just another nut-case action. Part of the problem with that argument is that Phillip Berg isn't your typical nut-case. Indeed he is the former Deputy Attorney General for Pennsylvania.
Although that is probably the most famous of the cases, perhaps the most fascinating and compelling case is the case brought in California by, among others, Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes. Dr. Keyes (a PhD from Harvard is not one to be brushed off easily. He also overcomes the big problem that Phillip Berg has with his case is that the court is questioning his "standing" to bring the action. I think the court is hopelessly wrong on that. Any citizen of the United States has standing to bring a lawsuit alleging that a presidential candidate (or president-elect) does not qualify for the office.
However that is ultimately decided, Dr. Keyes does not face that problem. Perhaps fortuitously, he was on the ballot in California as a candidate for President running as the nominee of the American Independent Party. It would be difficult to imagine who would have standing if a citizen of the country who was competing with Obama for the election as President, does not.
You would think that Obama would stop trying to win all these law suits on procedural grounds and just wipe them out on the merits ... if indeed he is right on the merits. All he has to do is wipe out the "vault birth certificate" (the real one ... the kind you probably have to show to get a driver's license! Not that phony certificate of live birth that the experts are split on but that appears there is a good chance it is a forgery).
I have a hunch that Obama may not even have known where he was born until questions came up about it! It isn't like he remembers it. And things were such a whirlwind he probably didn't even take it all seriously when it started. But the wheels of justice grind slowly ... but they do grind away. But even though it isn't the kind of thing one is likely to remember, ignorance absolutely is no excuse.
I can see it, though. His Mom (who was a bit of a wild card anyway) wanted him to have U.S. citizenship as a "born in the U.S.A. type, not as a "naturalized by moving here so young" type, so claimed he was born in Hawaii and told him that. His Grandmother said he was born in Kenya. She certainly had nothing to gain by saying that. Only the vaulted certificate knows for sure. And by now, probably Obama. Or he would have produced it. He was recently in Hawaii for his Grandmother's funeral [no, I'm not enough of a wing-nut to go there :-)]. But I bet he checked the certificate while there. And instead of producing it as he has been court ordered to do and which would make all the lawsuits go "poof" ... he fights them on procedural grounds and keeps the birth certificate in the vault.
But the "no standing" argument presumably won't work against Dr. Keyes. Nor will the 
screams of racism by his proxies. The fact that Dr. Keyes is a nationally syndicated columnist and a black man who stands about 6' 7" adds a bit to the drama. He has also held substantive governmental positions, particularly in the Reagan administration. And he was on the ballot for President in California.
The interesting question really is whether the issue gets decided before or after January 20. He can't very well pardon himself if he is not the real president (which he wouldn't be if he was not constitutionally qualified to hold the office). He would be, in the words of the Keyes' suit ... a usurper to the office. I don't know what the punishments are. Is it treason? Would the U.S. be after him just as all the Islamic world will be because he is an apostate?
He is forming an army to answer solely to him ... do you suppose he'll put up resistance if the courts order him to get the *%&#$)% out of the President's chair? :-)
But here's the thing. I don't know if Keyes or Berg has thought through. Clearly, if he is found to be ineligible before being sworn in, he gets booted. The Constitution is clear on that. But what if it doesn't happen until after he is seated? Would Pelosi become VP?! :-) Nah. Even the Forefathers would have thought far enough ahead to save us from that! Presumably it would be the same result.
However ... I'm still not certain that Keyes and Berg and the others have thought this through sufficiently! Obama could take his platform and run comfortably in the Socialist party of most countries of Europe. But behind the rhetoric he has shown some surprisingly conservative thoughts. And there is nothing like "real life" to make one more conservative!
He is an unknown. Usually that is bad. Except this time we know who his replacement would be: Joe "no longer Biden his time". And we do know his record. I'm not so sure but what I'd rather take my chances with the unknown!
17.11.08
Fates Having Fun
November 13, 2008
The Fates are Having too much Fun!
Barack Hussein Obama. President-elect of the United States of America; a country that is fighting two wars each of which was primarily designed to "take out" an individual. In Afghanistan it was Osama, whose name is a tiny typo away from being the same as that of the president-elect. In Iraq, it was Hussein.
Is there a Barack running an Islamic country anywhere? If so, I'd be real nervous were I him :-)
Could the Fates have played a stranger trick? Not only is the name tie-in to our two wars beyond coincidental comprehension ... but in both wars we are fighting (radical) Muslims ... and the Islamic and Christian nations and religions have not been so close to falling back into the Crusades mentality since ... the Crusades?
It has, in any event, been a long time. Most Americans never thought of Islam in a negative fashion before Osama sent the planes into the buildings. Most Americans never thought of Islam at all. Or if they did, it was along the lines of "Isn't that the religion that the Cat Stevens dude adopted?" [It is. On Muharram, in 1398 by the Islamic calendar. Indeed his name now is Yusuf Islam. What most folks don't know is that he never was "Cat Stevens"; that was just a stage name. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou.]
In any event, we are at war for all practical purposes, in two different countries and in a third sort of generic "War on Terror", with the radical arm of Islam. And we elect, for the first time in the history of the nation, a presidential candidate who has an extensive Muslim background.
Indeed, his Muslim background is another of those "hazy" areas surrounding the man. He acknowledges being born to a Muslim father and that his stepfather was also Muslim. It appears likely that he was enrolled as a Muslim at a child in the Muslim school he attended in Indonesia. I wrote one column on apostasy and will soon do a follow-up to that now that he is president-elect. But in any event, his "Muslim background" is the greatest of any U.S. President to date ... and likely greater than any serious presidential candidate in the past. And we elect someone with that background ... now?
This is beyond mind-boggling. The Fates have got to be rolling in the aisles ... of wherever it is the Fates hang out.
And yet this man not only stridently proclaims that he is Christian ... but he stained his reputation badly by being a member of such a radical Christian church (and it would have been much worse had not the press been giving him, in Bill Clinton's words, that Rolls Royce ride to the White House as noted in my last post). If the press had tackled Obama the way it did Palin ... you'd know every sermon that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ever preached that could be taken negatively in any way.
But my point here is not to complain about the disparate press treatment. I've spent plenty of time in this blog doing that.
My point is that he joined the radical arm of his religion. He isn't just someone who grew up in a church and continued on in the religion he was raised in. He actively sought a place for his spiritual side and specifically selected this Church, which was more to him than just a "show up at Sunday, visit with the congregants, hear a bland sermon on doing good and believing, and maybe attend the annual potluck". This Church filled a deep hunger and he took it much more seriously spiritually than socially. "Obama was searching for an identity and a community, and he found both at Trinity. And he found a spiritual guide in Wright."
And Wright was radical! [He still is, but he has now retired.] Obama's continued association with (and pronounced affections for) him long after he reasonably should have rejected Wright and all that he stood for (assuming it was even defensible to have joined the Church in the first place) was faulted by even the most liberal of columnists. This man who Obama claimed was his "spiritual advisor" vehemently preached (to, ultimately, a huge audience) about how 9/11 was America's fault and how the U.S. was intentionally spreading the Aids virus. This man who married Obama and his wife said in one famous speech "God Damn America" at least three times. Yet Obama says it was this man's words that were the inspiration for his book "The Audacity of Hope"!
My point here is not to regurgitate that oft-repeated point that Obama's various "associations" have shown a remarkable lack of judgment. While that is clearly a true statement, my point was really to show that Obama, more than any prior president, is a member of the "radical fringe" of Christianity ... while we are fighting wars against the "radical fringe" of Islam.
It strains credulity that all these are coincidences. And yet, this is all acknowledged mainstream information. Those tending closer to the wing-nut position will tell you many more things too strange to be coincidence (including many apparently strange numerical synchronicities). I'll refrain from giving those print space here at the moment. But it all does make one wonder.
Is there something going on that none of us truly understand?
I am not a mystical nor religious person. But even I am tempted to research what the Bible says about the Anti-Christ! :-)
No. I very much doubt that Barack is the Anti-Christ. And I presume that the Fates are just having fun at our expense. But the more one ponders the impossibilities surrounding this election (imagine if, before you had heard of Barack Hussein Obama that such a person could be elected president at this time in our history). If you look at it in that context ... you will have to concede that the chances of it ever happening would be too silly to even consider.
It makes me more curious than anything. Is this truly God playing a joke on us? Could it be that these coincidences are just coincidences? Perhaps someday I'll manage to satisfy my curiosity about this most curious of elections. But somehow, I doubt it.
The Fates are Having too much Fun!
Barack Hussein Obama. President-elect of the United States of America; a country that is fighting two wars each of which was primarily designed to "take out" an individual. In Afghanistan it was Osama, whose name is a tiny typo away from being the same as that of the president-elect. In Iraq, it was Hussein.
Is there a Barack running an Islamic country anywhere? If so, I'd be real nervous were I him :-)
Could the Fates have played a stranger trick? Not only is the name tie-in to our two wars beyond coincidental comprehension ... but in both wars we are fighting (radical) Muslims ... and the Islamic and Christian nations and religions have not been so close to falling back into the Crusades mentality since ... the Crusades?
It has, in any event, been a long time. Most Americans never thought of Islam in a negative fashion before Osama sent the planes into the buildings. Most Americans never thought of Islam at all. Or if they did, it was along the lines of "Isn't that the religion that the Cat Stevens dude adopted?" [It is. On Muharram, in 1398 by the Islamic calendar. Indeed his name now is Yusuf Islam. What most folks don't know is that he never was "Cat Stevens"; that was just a stage name. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou.]
In any event, we are at war for all practical purposes, in two different countries and in a third sort of generic "War on Terror", with the radical arm of Islam. And we elect, for the first time in the history of the nation, a presidential candidate who has an extensive Muslim background.
Indeed, his Muslim background is another of those "hazy" areas surrounding the man. He acknowledges being born to a Muslim father and that his stepfather was also Muslim. It appears likely that he was enrolled as a Muslim at a child in the Muslim school he attended in Indonesia. I wrote one column on apostasy and will soon do a follow-up to that now that he is president-elect. But in any event, his "Muslim background" is the greatest of any U.S. President to date ... and likely greater than any serious presidential candidate in the past. And we elect someone with that background ... now?
This is beyond mind-boggling. The Fates have got to be rolling in the aisles ... of wherever it is the Fates hang out.
And yet this man not only stridently proclaims that he is Christian ... but he stained his reputation badly by being a member of such a radical Christian church (and it would have been much worse had not the press been giving him, in Bill Clinton's words, that Rolls Royce ride to the White House as noted in my last post). If the press had tackled Obama the way it did Palin ... you'd know every sermon that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ever preached that could be taken negatively in any way.
But my point here is not to complain about the disparate press treatment. I've spent plenty of time in this blog doing that.
My point is that he joined the radical arm of his religion. He isn't just someone who grew up in a church and continued on in the religion he was raised in. He actively sought a place for his spiritual side and specifically selected this Church, which was more to him than just a "show up at Sunday, visit with the congregants, hear a bland sermon on doing good and believing, and maybe attend the annual potluck". This Church filled a deep hunger and he took it much more seriously spiritually than socially. "Obama was searching for an identity and a community, and he found both at Trinity. And he found a spiritual guide in Wright."
And Wright was radical! [He still is, but he has now retired.] Obama's continued association with (and pronounced affections for) him long after he reasonably should have rejected Wright and all that he stood for (assuming it was even defensible to have joined the Church in the first place) was faulted by even the most liberal of columnists. This man who Obama claimed was his "spiritual advisor" vehemently preached (to, ultimately, a huge audience) about how 9/11 was America's fault and how the U.S. was intentionally spreading the Aids virus. This man who married Obama and his wife said in one famous speech "God Damn America" at least three times. Yet Obama says it was this man's words that were the inspiration for his book "The Audacity of Hope"!
My point here is not to regurgitate that oft-repeated point that Obama's various "associations" have shown a remarkable lack of judgment. While that is clearly a true statement, my point was really to show that Obama, more than any prior president, is a member of the "radical fringe" of Christianity ... while we are fighting wars against the "radical fringe" of Islam.
It strains credulity that all these are coincidences. And yet, this is all acknowledged mainstream information. Those tending closer to the wing-nut position will tell you many more things too strange to be coincidence (including many apparently strange numerical synchronicities). I'll refrain from giving those print space here at the moment. But it all does make one wonder.
Is there something going on that none of us truly understand?
I am not a mystical nor religious person. But even I am tempted to research what the Bible says about the Anti-Christ! :-)
No. I very much doubt that Barack is the Anti-Christ. And I presume that the Fates are just having fun at our expense. But the more one ponders the impossibilities surrounding this election (imagine if, before you had heard of Barack Hussein Obama that such a person could be elected president at this time in our history). If you look at it in that context ... you will have to concede that the chances of it ever happening would be too silly to even consider.
It makes me more curious than anything. Is this truly God playing a joke on us? Could it be that these coincidences are just coincidences? Perhaps someday I'll manage to satisfy my curiosity about this most curious of elections. But somehow, I doubt it.
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