Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
I woke up this morning at 6 AM to the decidedly non-dulcet sounds of 3 or 4 M80s being exploded seemingly directly outside my window. Oy. On top of that, I feel like Thomas Jefferson, i.e., slightly hungover from too much wine the night before.
Luckily, as I sat on my porch, reading the Sunday papers and saturating my blood stream with coffee, a kind soul prepared a new-to-me treat, Lox and Eggs. Yummy, I’m nearly human again.
It would be unsporting not to speculate what caused Sarah Barracuda Palin to become a quitter.
[People, maybe journalists, looking for stuff, Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, 2007]
The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett wrote about a very questionable construction project back in October of 2008:
THE $12.5 MILLION sports complex and hockey rink that is the lasting monument to Palin’s two terms as Wasilla mayor is also a monument to the kind of insider politics that dismays Americans of both parties. Six months before Palin stepped down as mayor in October 2002, the city awarded nearly a half-million-dollar contract to design the biggest project in Wasilla history to Kumin Associates. Blase Burkhart was the Kumin architect on the job—the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a “mentor” of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committeewoman). Asked if the contract was a favor, Roy Burkhart, who contributed to her campaign in the same time frame that his son got the contract, said: “I really don’t know.” Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Two competitors protested the process that led to Nugent’s contract. Burkhart and Nugent had done at least one project together before the complex—and have done several since.
A list of subcontractors on the job, obtained by the Voice, includes many with Palin ties. One was Spenard Builders Supply, the state’s leading supplier of wood, floor, roof, and other “pre-engineered components.” In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin’s snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. Spenard actually filed a notice “of its right to assert a lien” on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard’s name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens—it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.
Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as “buddies.” As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the “buddies” were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that’s also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city.
[Click to continue reading New York News – The Book of Sarah (Palin) – page 5]
Perhaps some very damning evidence has recently emerged to bolster the ethics imbroglio Mr. Barrett describes? Whatever will we do without Ms. Palin to ridicule? Her understudy / loonie-in-waiting Michele Bachmann is nowhere near ready to assume the mantle, yet, until she either gets carted away to an interment camp, or gets selected by Mitt Romney in 2012. Maybe Palin’s scandal is even worse than this one, I suspect we’ll know pretty soon.
Gail Collins laughs, as so many of us are this weekend, at Sarah Barracuda Palin and her quitter’s mentality.1
Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too.
“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time … to BUILD UP.”
Basically, the point was that Palin is quitting as governor because she’s not a quitter. Or a deceased salmon.
Sarah Barracuda made her big announcement Friday afternoon on the lawn of her home to an audience that appeared to include only Todd, the kids and the next-door neighbors. Smiling manically, she looked like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention. She babbled about her parents’ refrigerator magnet, which apparently had a lot of wise advice. And she recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo, whose dedication and determination inspired her to … resign.
“Life is about choices!” declared the nation’s most anti-choice politician.
[Click to read more of Gail Collins – Sarah’s Straight Talk – NYTimes.com]
[House and Car, Ketchikan, Alaska]
So far my favorite Palin resignation piece is the Daily Kos diarist who turned portions of Palin’s speech into free verse:
and im not gonna put alaskans through that
i promised efficiency
and effectiveness
thats not how im wired
im not wired to operate
under the same old politics as usual
i promised that four years ago
and i meant it
it thats not what is best for alaska at this time
im determined to take the right path for alaska
even though it is unconventional
and its not so comfortable
with this announcement
that im not seeking reelection
ive determined its best to
transfer the authority of governor
to lieutenant governor parnell
and i am willing to do this
so that this administration
with its positive agenda
and its accomplishments
and its successful road to
an incredible future for alaska
so that it can continue without interruption
and with great administrative and legislative success
There’s more if you’re interested. It almost makes Palin’s babbling readable, actually. Continue reading “Straight Talk From Sarah”
Footnotes:Michael Jackson may have sold a lot of records, but he was still able to commit on of the most heinous of all crimes, pedophilia, repeatedly (allegedly, but come on, even he knew he was doing wrong), and escape from jail because of his wealth and fame.
Bob Herbert has a theory:
In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind. Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom. We shipped jobs overseas by the millions without ever thinking seriously about how to replace them. We let New Orleans drown.
Jackson was the perfect star for the era, the embodiment of fantasy gone wild. He tried to carve himself up into another person, but, of course, there was the same Michael Jackson underneath — talented but psychologically disabled to the point where he was a danger to himself and others.
Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape. Behind the Jackson facade was the horror of child abuse. Court records and reams of well-documented media accounts contain a stream of serious allegations of child sex abuse and other inappropriate behavior with very young boys. Jackson, a multimillionaire megastar, was excused as an eccentric. Small children were delivered into his company, to spend the night in his bed, often by their parents.One case of alleged pedophilia against Jackson, the details of which would make your hair stand on end, was settled for a reported $25 million. He beat another case in court.
The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.
As with so many other things, we don’t want to know.
[Click to read more of Bob Herbert – Behind the Facade – NYTimes.com]
I don’t want to know because his crimes sickens me, so I opt to ignore all hagiography of Jackson.
“Bach Edition: Complete Works (155 CD Box Set)” (Brilliant Classics)
One wonders if 155 CDs is really enough Bach. That’s like $0.50 a disc. Reading the reviews on Amazon, the quality seems hit and miss, but then I don’t know enough Johann Sebastian Bach to reliably judge. What the hell. I’ll let you know…
Some additional reading July 3rd from 14:02 to 18:15:
Word should be spread about this and anyone who used the Goldman 360 portral for trading should seriously investigate this situation, as it is entirely possible you’ve been ripped off …
More to the point, the fact that Goldman is getting enough public pressure that it feels it has to respond to these queries shows that the company is reeling. And the fact that their public statements have been so hilariously transparent and clumsy shows that they’re rattled and don’t know how to handle this kind of heat, which they’re not used to getting
A few interesting links collected July 2nd through July 3rd:
Woman: “Who the FUCK are you? And why are you eating our pizza?”
Kosuke: Well our friend came in and told us there was free pizza at the bar. We are. So. Sorry. It was a misunderstanding.
Woman: (with unbridled entitlement) This is a company party our CEO is here and you STOLE our pizza. Are you from out of town? Because let me tell you, NOTHING is free in New York City. Nothing is free… well maybe except for the condoms in Times Square.
Paul and Kosuke continue apologizing. They offer to pay for the two slices.
Woman: (didactically snobbish) We don’t want your money. No. Enjoy the pizza, but you can’t steal other people’s things. You can’t take what’s not yours
Kosuke: What company do you guys work for?
Woman: We work for Limewire.
<Long pause> Kosuke’s eyes go wide. Anger festers in his pupils.
Kosuke: Oh ok. Well I work at a record label so fuck you. You’ve stolen from us enough. (Bites pizza. Begins to walk away.)
“Caipirinhas are the Brazilian national drink. That said, we won’t conject on the overall condition of the Brazilian populace at large. No worries- They’re refreshing and the weather’s warmin’ up –
Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be ready to samba in your neighbor’s flower beds in no time… “
“Left: A brief aside, in case you forgot who built this damn city!
Right: Remnants of Ogden’s bridge supports are still visible south of Division Street.”
The funniest part is, you could legitimately argue that Goldman Sachs has killed more people than Saddam.
I’ve only had caipirinhas twice, but I loved them (though, my head didn’t love me the next day). Unfortunately, I have yet to make a trek to Brazil, though it is on my short list.
“A pair of them will make you leap like [a] Playtex Girdle-gal,” wrote Charles H. Baker Jr. in his eccentric 1951 work, “The South American Gentleman’s Companion.”
His racy description captures the effect of cachaca (ka-SHA-sa), the Brazilian national drink with a sweet, fiery flavor that can pack a macho punch. Though often compared to a young white rum (both spring from sugar cane, though rum is made from molasses, a byproduct of refining cane into sugar, and cachaca is distilled from fermented cane), this spirit has a more devilish reputation all its own.
Indeed, though exported brands are roughly 80 proof, more potent bottles are the norm in Brazil. The spirit is popping up more and more here, with a movement toward higher-quality, more refined versions.
“The cheap stuff was all that was available for a long time in the United States,” says Joshua Pearson, beverage director of Sepia restaurant. “We’re definitely seeing more artisan products. … It becomes a nice spirit you can drink without adding tons of fruit juice or sugar.”
The most famous cachaca cocktail is the caipirinha (kai-pee-REEN-ya), a refreshing combo of cachaca, sugar and lime juice served on the rocks. Aged gold cachaca is often served neat.
[Click to read more Cachaca, Brazil’s national drink, is fire in a glass — Bill Daley, chicagotribune.com]
Wonder where to get the best cachaca in Chicago? Sams, perhaps?
www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_am…
Rolling Stone is so schizophrenic. The July 9, 2009 issue has the Jonas Brothers on the cover, and a great article about Goldman Sachs by Matt Taibbi inside. I wonder what the overlap is?
Forgive the lame Venn diagram, this is the first I’ve ever made
Yes, its true, I don’t really want to work today…
Coal plant looming over Indiana Dunes.
From my vast, unknowable photo archives
Republished at WBEZ
www.chicagopublicradio.org/Daily_Photo.aspx?photoID=961
Some additional reading July 2nd from 13:49 to 19:05:
All this high-powered attention has produced some new ways of thinking about and cooking burgers. Interviews with 30 chefs provided dozens of lessons for the home cook that aren’t terribly difficult and don’t cost much money. And it all yielded the ideal burger.
"Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country
Whoa, talk about good timing for Dan Froomkin. Who would want to be employed by such a corrupt and venal organization as the Washington Post?
The Washington Post died today. It was five months short of its 132nd birthday.
News of the demise of the once-great news gathering organization came in a story by Mike Allen at Politico.com, which reported that Post publisher Katharine Weymouth has decided to solicit payoffs of between $25,000 and $250,000 from Washington lobbyists, in return for one or more private dinners in her home, where lucky lobbyists will receive a chance for “your organization’s CEO” to interact with “Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post” and “key Obama administration and congressional leaders …”
The decision by the Post’s publisher to sell access to government officials was the latest–and by far, the most horrific–in a series of disastrous decisions in the last two weeks which, taken together, have destroyed what was once one of the proudest finest brands in American journalism.
As news of the Politico story raced across the Internet this morning, former and present news executives inside and outside The Washington Post Company reacted with stunned horror. As Allen put it in his Politico story, “The offer which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.”
The Washington Post has been running on NeoCon fumes for quite a while, but this is perhaps a final blow. Hopefully, anyway.
My reading list
There’s a web-based reading group for this allegedly challenging book, but I haven’t started reading David Foster Wallace’s tome yet, still have about 100 pages left of American Pharaoh
closeup of Artist’s Snack Cafe sign, on South Michigan Avenue. The cafe is a throwback to another era, no doubt.
republished:
latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/07/entertainment…
Coal plant looming over Indiana Dunes
From my vast, unknowable photo archives
the original photo (from my first digital camera, an Olympus C3040Z) was a little generic, so added a blue tone for atmosphere.
