In the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting...

I am posting this collection from the blogosphere from Mike Stanfill through P.Z. Meyers (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/). Resonate with you? BTW: Alaska's gun laws are as lax as AZ's. Any 21 year-old moron with a self perceived beef and a history of mental instability can get a Glock 19 just like this mass murderer.

If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web with crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he be sitting right now? Just asking. - Michael Moore

A physician cannot treat an illness s/he willfully refuses to diagnose. Violent political rhetoric is not fault of "both sides." - Tom Tomorrow

Inspiring that our media pundits are so quick to reach for "everyone's to blame" when no conservative events have been terrorized by gunmen. - Jeffrey Feldman

Weird: rightwingers say movies, video games affect behavior -- but real world violent rhetoric from leaders & radio talkers have NO impact! - Tom Tomorrow

Jared Lougnner: drug arrests, too crazy for Army or for college or anything else, but getting a legal gun? No problem. - Tom Tomorrow

I find it abhorrent that Sarah Palin would stoke the coals of extremism with dangerous messaging, then delete it when something bad happens. - Jason Pollock

Sure, Sarah Palin didn't pull the trigger. But then, neither did Charles Manson. - auntbeast

Christina Taylor Green was Born on September 11, 2001, and killed today by terrorist fuckheads in Arizona. Irony much? - geeksofdoom

Sarah Palin rummages online frantically erasing her rabble-rousing Tweets like a Stalinist trimming non-persons out of photos. - Roger Ebert

I'll say this, if your first instinct after hearing about a tragedy is to scrub yr websites, you have a problem as a political movement. - digby56

CNN's Dana Bash says "this could be a wake-up call." THIS ... ? The whole Tea Party, carrying guns to rallies WASN'T?? - hololio2

Teaparty asses have been asking for this to happen, and how they're pissed off that we're calling them out on it. - TLW3

STOP SAYING"BOTH PARTIES"!! The Left has not been advocating Violence. @CNN assholes. - YatPundit

[Concludes P.Z.]: Do not sit there cowering, trying to make excuses for teabaggers and violent morons. This is supposed to be the part where you stand up, look at the shouters on the other side, and tell them, "This is wrong, and this is the harm you bring to our country." Instead, I see a rush to postures of submission.

Alaska's governator...

Sean Parnell is getting all uppity over management of federal lands and waters. Here's what I wrote the Anchorage Daily News, which will probably not be published, if recent history is any indication:

So our governor ("Parnell warns of too much federal control," ADN Jan. 8) is getting all Rick Perry (Texas' guv) on the feds. Parnell's (empty, of course) threat: "We want our state back and we will take it back." Is this a small-man's-syndrome thing? Has Parnell been taking lessons from Kim Il Sung? Is his tossing of the "states' rights" card an early reelection gambit? Finally, does Parnell not know that federal lands in this state are held in trust for all Americans, and that neither he, nor I nor any Alaskan has any more say in how those lands (and waters) are managed than a little old lady living in Ohio? Like it or no, that's the way it is, guv. You should concentrate on doing a good job of managing what we already have.
Bill Siedler,
Wasilla

Maybe I'm just getting more mouthy because we plan to leave the "Greatland" soon, but teaching (and learning) Alaska History has shown me that without the federal largess that has flowed in Alaska since 1900, we'd be like Al Capp's "Lower Slobbovia" and still a province of Guggenheim, JP Morgan and the salmon syndicate.

It's "semi-official"...

Looks as though we'll be "restructuring" (some call it retiring) from our respective school district careers at the end of this school year. Gonna move on down to Eugene, Oregon to be closer to family, and escape another Alaskan winter. The last few years, I've noticed that each succeeding winter seems a little colder, a little darker, and a little longer than the one before (global warming models say I'm wrong about the "colder," but it sure feels like it!).

Not only are the winters warmer - if wetter - in Oregon, but the political climate suits wife and I better than "The Land of Sarah." I tire of tilting uber-conservative windmills, and windbags here...but that's a story for later. Suffice it to say that I will miss this place, and nearly every one of it's inhabitants - bipeds included.

But hush! The gestation period of a logistical triumph the likes of which we have never seen (moving) has begun!

In response to my last post...

A friend of mine emailed me some alternative meanings for the acronym, TSA ("Therapeutic Sensual Assistants" is a fave), and it made me wonder: Since my wife and I are flying out of the Greatland for the Holidays, does this mean I can expect from TSA a "Christmas Goose?"

Not since...

University of Florida student Andrew Meyer uttered those famous words,
"Don't taze me bro!" inspiring rock groups The Clash and Devo to include the quote in their lyrics, and becoming part of the common currency of modern speech, has any one phrase perhaps so quickly entered the urban lexicon.

Until now. We have to thank software engineer, would-be airline passenger and privacy-of-private-parts freedom-fighter John Tyner for informing, on video, the TSA guy who was about to give him the full body-probe pat down:

"If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."

Tyner's words may now eclipse the 3 year-old taze-phrase. Surely, given the state of today's rock lyrics, there's room for this.
~b

Democrats...

Need some balls, its sure. President Obama too, I'm afraid. If you want your Congressman to spine-up and deny tax cuts to the rich that, if not allowed to sunset, will cost us $700 Billion, call (202)224 - 3121 and ask for your representative or senator. I called Senator Mark Begich and left a message about the Bush tax cuts, and the U.S. Senate's idiotic filibuster rule. I would rather let the whole thing sunset and see my tax burden go up a couple of hundred than give more $$ to the very wealthy, particularly in view of the fact that we now have the greatest disparity of wealth in this country since the 1920s.
______________________
Speaking of the former president, "W" has been on tour plugging his book "Decision Points." In one interview he both bragged about giving the order to water-board torture prisoners, a war crime, and actually blame Saddam Hussein for the Iraq War, because Saddam fooled Bush into thinking he had WMDs, when in fact he had none. 4000+ American lives, 100,000+ Iraqi lives, probably $2 Trillion in lost American treasure, all because George Bush was duped into invading the wrong country? Do you miss him yet?
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For all those Tea Party types who carry the signs quoting T. Jefferson about the "Tree of liberty" needing to be watered by the "blood of tyrants:" Jill Lepore (Bill's book of the month recommendation "The Whites of Their Eyes") writes that "aside from Jefferson,whose enthusiasm for revolution did not survive Robespierre [and the Terror] most everyone else [other Founders] came down in favor of order." The Teahadists still have it all wrong.

Alan Seeger...

Was an American poet who was born in 1888 and died on a WWI battlefield on July 4, 1916. Seeger was a Harvard educated elite, who became a bohemian who, as a bohemian might, joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914 in order to fight the "Hun." His brother Charles was the father of American folk singer Pete Seeger.

I always recite this, perhaps Seeger's most famous poem, to my U.S. History students, on or around Veteran's Day, formerly Armistice Day, commemorating the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. It was one of John Kennedy's favorites:

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air -
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It maybe he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath -
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill
When Spring comes round again this year
and the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged words am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.