Why Did Ron Paul Announce His 2012 Presidential Campaign Exploratory Committee on FOX?

Short answer - I don't know.

The reality from 2008 is that every news outlet, including FOX fucked him over - along with Mike Gravel and other major figures who should have been kept at the discussion table until the races came down to two obvious contenders.

Anyway, here it is:

Saradise Lost - Book 5 - Chapter 48: Thoughts on Vogel's Politico Article

Kenneth P. Vogel has written an article about recent attention paid to Sarah Palin, published last night for Politico.com, that reminds me of the Kuskokwim River - long, shallow, cold and murky. In it, Vogel mischaracterizes the overall impetus behind many who question the authenticity or viability of Sarah Palin:

This self-styled anti-Palin movement — whose members span the globe and are mostly but not exclusively liberals — has been behind some embarrassing revelations about the former Alaska governor, her family and allies. But some of their leading theories have been thoroughly discredited and earned them widespread criticism. (See: 'Mama Grizzly' Sarah Palin back on the prowl)

Yet that only seems to have hardened a commitment to accomplishing what they profess to be their ultimate goal: the absolute and complete exposure of Palin as a fraud unworthy of a role in American civic life. And now, with Palin edging back into the political spotlight in the face of flagging poll numbers, they believe that they are closer than ever to achieving it. (See: Poll: The incredible shrinking Sarah Palin)

Vogel concentrates on aspects of attention toward Palin by writers, journalists and bloggers that tend to be salacious, or controversial in ways one sees most often in coverage of celebrities. Beyond the gossipy bullshit that Palin relishes because it keeps people from looking more closely at how she has dealt with substantive issues, Vogel seems out of his league. Here's his intro to author Geoffrey Dunn:

St. Martin’s Press has scheduled a May 10 release of “The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power,” by Santa Cruz, Calif.-based author and documentarian Geoffrey Dunn, who has joked that he might need three or four volumes to adequately cover the subject matter suggested in the title.

He told POLITICO he decided to write the book after hearing stories from Alaskans about Palin’s “childhood through her governorship that were troubling to me.” He said his goal is to frame Palin’s career in the contexts of both an Alaska political scene “plagued by a culture of corruption” and also in “the larger tradition of American political populism and demagoguery.”

Rather than ask Dunn what the top five, ten, twenty, fifty or 200 lies Palin has told or promoted might be, Vogel moves on to what promises to be a a strange read:

A couple of weeks later, a Simon & Schuster imprint is set to offer a tell-all memoir by Frank Bailey, a disgruntled former top aide to Palin, using her personal emails to paint an ugly portrait of her as a vindictive and vain dilettante obsessed with her public image, who allegedly broke election laws and targeted a state trooper by leaking damaging information. (See: Former Sarah Palin aide's tell-all coming to bookstores near you)

As the even more gossipy Sheila Toomey, in one of her few quips to have gotten me to chuckle in the past decade or so wrote Sunday:

Based on the manuscript famously leaked by a rival author a few months ago, this is not a great work of art. It's a sad tale about the betrayal of an uncomplicated guy who never does understand what happened to him. However, it remains Ear's favorite from the tree-killing epidemic prompted by Sarah.

After his mini-book reviews, Vogel moves on to bringing up recent articles on TriG, the Obama birthers, Palin's family on TV and Andrew Sullivan. Vogel does a decent job in his interviews with Jesse Griffin from The Immoral Minority and Sherry Whitstine (Syrin).

From there to the end, Vogel's article, short version, is: Trig, gossip, Trig, more gossip, Trig, more gossip, Trig.

This morning, commenting at The Immoral Minority's article on Vogel's piece, I wrote:

[T]he article was pathetic overall: It didn't get into any of the hundreds of lies Dunn has catalogued so well, and didn't delve deeper than a mm or so into why so many of us feel she is so unfit to govern her own home, let alone be in charge of the launch codes to a thermonuclear apocalypse. Stayed entirely clear of her wacky religious beliefs and those excruciatingly painful months as governor between mid-November 2008 and July 2009, when, combined with her own terrible decision making, we drove her over the edge, and as my 92 yo mom put it in 2009, "Chased her out of Alaska so that she can destroy the Republican Party for the next 20 years."

The Alaska Dispatch's linking article to Vogel's called his piece a "profile"

Politico has posted a long profile of several main "gadflies, bloggers, and authors" who have been conducting a campaign to discredit former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a political figure. Politico's paraphrase of their self-declared goal: "the absolute and complete exposure of Palin as a fraud unworthy of a role in American civic life."

I commented:

What is stated here is inaccurate. "A long profile of several of the main 'gadflies, bloggers and authors'" the article certainly is not. If it comes remotely close to profiling anyone, that would be Jesse Griffin, who is treated fairly, but not comprehensively enough for his coverage to be a "profile."

"[H]ave been conducting a campaign to discredit former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a political figure" may be technically accurate in a narrow sense, but misses the important point that most of what these people do in regard to Palin is look more deeply at her serious inadequacies than do other on-line journalists, commentators or bloggers.

That Politico.com mentioned Geoffrey Dunn's statement that it might take volumes to reveal all the lies of Palin, but then neglects to deal with any of them, was telling. So was the article's total incuriosity about how some bloggers covering Palin have raised important questions about how her unfitness may be related to her religious beliefs, which are not mainstream.

Rather, Kenneth Vogel's article was seemingly targeted to get hits for the salaciousness of some of the questions hovering around Palin and her past.

The media - and this article is an excellent example - when they turn their attention toward the work of the alternative press, bloggers, authors and so on, prefer to bring up Trig and Bristol and claims of unfaithfulness, or whatever. Often. Seldom do they discuss the work by many of these same people and others that looks into her batshit crazy views on religion and the universe.

Frank Schaeffer wrote an article today for Huffington Post that has a title which has as much to do with writers like Vogel, as it does with American politicians themselves - The "Biblical" Root of American Stupidity. Part of Schaeffer's conclusion is this:

Respect for religious stupidity is -- by extension -- why the media gives Trump, Bachmann et al platforms from which they can spread falsehoods. Trump isn't remotely religious but the sort of people ready to believe in someone like him (or the Tea Party) have been fed a steady diet of mythology that has literally altered the way their brains work. If a scientist, an expert or the "liberal media" says something is true then ipso facto the opposite -- no matter how harebrained must be true! Actually believing that the Palins, Becks, Trumps of this world are serious people is just the political version of giving creationists a "serious" place on textbook committees.

Speaking of books. Here's a screen shot of some of the books that were in the Wasilla Public Library when she left, that weren't there when she became mayor.
Oh - Vogel's average comments for his previous ten articles at Politico.com - 87. This one - 905 and counting.

Saradise Lost - Book 5 - Chapter 47: Wild Ride - The Full Version

The Palin-centric European blog, Palingates, has posted a long essay that addresses aspects of Palin's improbable "wild ride" (a term created, I believe, by Shannyn Moore) scenario. They've addressed this issue before, and this essay is a sort of compilation with additional information and updates.


Additionally, Regina at Palingates, has created a video, titled Sarah Palin - Wild Ride - Full Version:

David Rovics' Latest - No Fracking Way

Here are the lyrics:

No Fracking Way

There was a knock one morning, a man was standing at my door
He said, hello, I'm from Halliburton, have you heard of us before?
We'd like to lease your backyard to drill for natural gas
It's called hydraulic fracturing and it is the very pass
For a clean energy future above the Marcellus stone
Plus we'll give you lots of money and a new mobile phone
I said you are a corporate crook, I don't believe the things you tell
And you can drive right of my property and then go straight to hell

No fracking way! (2x)
I don't trust corporate salesmen, whatever they may say
No fracking way! (3x)

My neighbor was out of work and things were looking grim
So when the fracking guy came knocking he had better luck with him
The company said don't worry, everything will be just fine
So just sign your name right here, sir, on this dotted line
Pretty soon the water was tasting pretty dire
One day I lit a match and the water caught on fire
I thought about a lawsuit, then stumbled upon the fact
That fracking is exempted from the Clean Water Act

...Is that how democracy works here in the USA

As if the situation weren't sufficiently unattractive
We tested the water and found it was radioactive
Now my property is worthless and there's a tumor in my brain
Half of my neighbors are sick, the rest are just in pain
Maybe I should take the money, move off to live somewhere
But all the places I look at, they're fracking there
Our choices now are simple, lose that which we hold dear
Or communicate the message in a way that's unstoppably clear

...Tell these frackers to frack off, both tomorrow and today

The Fairbanks Anti-Government Protest Today

Ex-Alaska legislator and former BFF of Veco President Bill Allen, is the guy behind the puppet strings in a rally being held this afternoon in Fairbanks:

FAIRBANKS — A heavy-hitting lineup is expected to step to the podium Wednesday to speak at a “Fed up with the Fed” rally on Wednesday at the Pioneer Park Civic Center.

Speakers will include Congressman Don Young, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Corey Rossi, director of Wildlife Conservation for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The rally, which runs from 4-8 p.m., is being sponsored by the wildlife conservation group Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. Young, Murkowski and Rossi will be speaking between 6-7 p.m.

There will also be a dozen “issue booths” manned by a group or agency fighting a specific issue of federal management, such as wildlife management, oil and gas permitting, access issues, mining restrictions, EPA issues and the Endangered Species Act.

Local SFW members Ralph Seekins and Craig Compeau will be emceeing the event.

The rally also is serving as a fundraiser for Jim Wilde, the 71-year-old Central man who was arrested and handcuffed by the National Park Service in September for failing to stop for a boat safety check on the Yukon River. Wilde contested the charges in a trial in Fairbanks earlier this month and a federal judge is currently deliberating the case.

For a suggested donation of $10 or $20, participants can guess how much money the National Park Service spent on the Wilde case. The five guesses closest to the amount, which has yet to be revealed, will win prizes. The top prize is a free picnic lunch and scenic tour at “Gestapo Point,” the spot where Wilde was arrested and handcuffed by gun- and Taser-wielding rangers. Other prizes include a Taser (second); a pair of handcuffs (third); a box of shotgun shells (fourth) and a replica Gestapo badge (fifth).

At the Fairbanks News-Miner, after the rally's references to the Gestapo were criticized in the comments, some have been coming to Seekins' defense for using the term:

What a bunch of misinformation. The Feds joined the Allies in World War II and stabbed Hitler in the back while he was at war with communist Russia during Operation Barbarossa. Read your history Don Young.

Here's the rally poster:
And here's a breakdown of some of the contributions Seekins received from Bill Allen while the former was in the legislature:


Top image - Ester Republic

The Paradox of April in Alaska - Part II

Almost all the snow is gone from our neighborhood. The lake is still mostly covered in ice, but - except in the early morning - nobody wants to walk on the rapidly deteriorating structure. Our front yard still has a large, silt and micro debris-laden drift, just inside the riparian berm we created when we landscaped the place in 1996. The drift is still almost four feet deep in a couple of places. It will be gone soon, if the sun comes back out much.

Inside the greenhouse hundreds of plants are growing. Since Wednesday, it has been mostly cloudy and chilly, so growth has slowed, especially among the smallest seedlings. But the plants that have grown some foliage are able to grasp enough energy from the ambient sun to still grow fairly rapidly, as with these zucchini.

Our experiment of starting beets in seedling planters to transplant in the outside garden in late May worked so well last year, that may be the only way we plant them in 2011. Some of last year's transplants became huge - over a pound apiece. But those we planted in the ground suffered from the chilly temperatures of late June through mid-August, and were very small.
Some of these tomatoes - Stupice and Black from Tula, are growing from seeds saved from 2010.
This morning I began clearing Judy's very large rock garden of winter debris and dead foliage from 2010. First I picked up the sticks and large objects. Then I clipped off stems of iris, columbine and other long-stemmed flowering plants. Then I sucked up leaves and debris with the leaf blower. Then I switched it to blower and cleared the area off.

Before:

About four hours later - after:


With the old stuff gone, signs of new life were rampant.
Up in the vegetable garden, we've already used new chives in a couple of fresh meals.

A perennial onion set emerges from under the cleared debris.

Last year's broccoli remains, about to join the compost universe.

An Easter Treat - The Definitive Alaska Rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus

Georg Frideric Handel's The Messiah is meant for both Christmas and Easter, yet the Hallelujah Chorus is much more often rendered sat Christmas. Handel regarded this chorus as Scene 7 of the second part of the oratorio, subtitled "Passion." Its text, taken from three passages in Revelations, centers on the words "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." Those words are about the Resurrection myth, not the birth myth.

Here are the kids from Quinhagak School, in their version of this masterpiece of the late Baroque:

The Humanity of Andrew Sullivan

British blogger Andrew Sullivan was one of the first conservative commentators to go "Whoa!" about Sarah Palin. He has also linked to Alaska bloggers' stories on Palin several times over the past three years, especially to the work of Jesse Griffin and Jeanne Devon. He even linked to Progressive Alaska once, if I remember correctly.

Sullivan was lumped in with the TriG Truthers in some of the shotgun blasts from all over the place this past week regarding the articles emanating from Prof. Scharlott's look into how the media handled questions about TriG's origins. Sullivan has been remarkably calm through all this, but his Saturday column, Trig Wars, shows his genuine humanity. I'll risk posting it in its entirety, as his views on this and mine are quite close:

I'm going to respond to Justin Elliott's alleged "definitive debunking" of the questions surrounding Sarah Palin's maternity of Trig in due course. It deserves more than an instant reaction - and adds two new sources to the dozens that have now emerged to shed partial light on the story. In the end, there are two stories here: the actual story and the meta-media-story. I'm interested in both equally. And the visceral contempt and dimissal for me personally is sadly a part of the latter.

One aspect of the meta-media-story is media intimidation - from within and without. MSM reporters tackling anything to do with the Palin pregnancy have to overcome what they know will be the spin from the Palinite right: that they are just liberal maniacs bent on destroying this real and talented hope for conservatism, precisely because she is such a hope for conservatism. This dynamic is one MSM reporters have internalized, making what would be routine questions and investigations of a public figure in, say, reality TV or national politics into exceptional and career-risking gambles.

Imagine a huge media backlash and internal restraint about, say, Lindsey Lohan's drug use or Britney Spears' romantic and pharmaceutical forays. No, I can't imagine it. But when politics and tabloid truth combine - think of the John Edwards story - the MSM can suddenly find itself mute. Part of this is genuine: the desire not to pour salt onto the wounds of Elizabeth Edwards or to make the life of a new-born kid with Down Syndrome any more challenging than it might already be. Part of it is simply discomfort. Wouldn't it be less fraught to cover the budget negotiations? Part of it is about status: all of this is beneath me, and hurts my reputation as a Serious Journalist, respected by my peers.

But then there's this. What Wonkette published about a completely innocent little boy was, as I said as soon as I absorbed it, despicable. Whatever may be the truth behind all the Palin pregnancy stories, even if the zaniest theory is true, Sarah Palin is taking care of a child with Down Syndrome who deserves respect and privacy even if his own mother refuses to give them to him. To mock him, the most defenseless figure in this whole saga, is just foul. I've made my position on this question very very clear from the beginning. The only person who truly deserves protection from this media mayhem is Trig himself. I'll go further and repeat what I have written from the very start. I deeply admire and respect Palin for doing what she has done in giving this child a home and a life. It is more of a sacrifice than I will ever know. And more of a joy than I will ever know. We can be journalists but we can also be humane toward children and see the good that someone has done as well as the bad.

But the blowback has not just been rhetorical. It has been to bring the entire site to its knees. The buycott of Wonkette's advertizers has led to almost all of them fleeing immediately:

Starting with Papa John’s Pizza, the companies began to run. It grew from there. As of Friday afternoon, the list was 30-some strong, and includes brands like Huggies, Vanguard Group, Nordstrom, Bob Evans, and StarKist Charlie—the tuna mascot. [See the list of Wonkette’s remaining advertisers.]

I feel as queasy about this flexing of Palinite muscle as I do about the original, disgusting, asinine story. In some ways, I see a legitimate come-uppance for a tacky site that published a simply inexcusable piece of mean-spirited dreck using a child who cannot defend himself, treating him as if he were subhuman, which he most definitely isn't. But I also recoil from mob action like this, for the impact it has on fearless free speech and the chilling effect it will have on an already cowed and defensive MSM when covering the truly tough stuff about Palin.

Sullivan will be a guest on Sunday's Chris Matthews Show on MSNBC, obstensibly to talk about recent events in the UK. I suspect this will come up, though.

Feeling the Hate on Easter Eve - Israeli Program Crucifies a Mock Jesus

Back in 2007, an Israeli TV program ran the segment posted below. The program, Toffee VeHa-Gorilla, features a scantily clad young woman, a monkey, a big red couch with yellow pillows, a huge pink washing machine, and other props.

There isn't much on the web about the program in English, perhaps deservedly so. Over the past two days, though, this video, in which the girl crucifies her monkey for contemplating "assimilating" himself into Christianity, is getting noticed.

The video was posted onto Youtube in September, 2010, but from the comments at its place there, it appears to have only started getting a lot of hits this past week. Now it is being posted at several sites, including some in Israel.

My prediction is that now that this disturbing segment appears to be going viral, it will be pulled down.

Prepare to be disturbed:

Japan Nuclear Watch, April 23: Can You Rebuild a Cooling System Inside a No-Go Zone?

--- by Scarecrow

The good news is that over the last two weeks or so at the Fukushima Daiiche Nuclear plant, there have been no futher spectacular explosions, no new massive breaches of containment or as far as we know, massive releases of radiation, though there continue to be dangerous levels inside the reactors, in nearby water and in surrounding areas.

The bad news is the Japanese authorities have been unable to make substantial progress against the massive quantities of contaminated water still leaking from the damaged units. In the last three days, for example, they attempted to pump contaminated water out of the flooded trench outside Unit 2′s turbine building, but managed to lower the water level by only a few centimeters. In previous weeks, they would pump some out one day, but then find the water rising back the next with varying degrees of radiation, because water injected into the reactors leaked and found its way out and downhill.

Also discouraging, as they slowly and haltingly begin to take a closer look inside the reactor buildings — see TEPCO photos here — they’re discovering such massive structural damage that each day’s plans and assumptions get scrapped. They’re now on ad hoc plan #xqb and tomorrow it may be #yrz.

As lobster reported a week ago, the utility owner, TEPCO, released what it called a “roadmap” and some news media called a “blueprint” but which was neither. To me, it seems a package of optimistic goals laying out in logical sequence the problems that must be overcome, with some vague timeframes — three months, six to nine months — designed to reassure the Japanese people and themselves that there is hope things will get better over time.

I thought the most important revelation then was TEPCO’s acknowledgement that their best case recovery plan, which assumed the normal cooling systems could be restarted soon after external electrical power and controls were restored, has been abandoned. This was not suprising; it always seemed likely that critical pumps, valves, seals, meters and controls that operate those cooling system would have been at least partially damaged by the 9.0 quake that greatly exceeded design capacity.

The only question was: how much damage had these systems sustained? And indeed, in the weeks after external power was restored to the control rooms at each unit, TEPCO admitted that various pumps and valves were too damaged to repair and would need to be replaced. It sounded like they just needed to order a few parts. That was then.

The “roadmap” documents let us know that TEPCO now realizes that if it wants something better than its current ad hoc water injections, it must completely rebuild the cooling systems, or even create an entirely new cooling system. The new system would replace the current ad hoc approach of just dumping water from above (Unit 4′s spent fuel pool) or injecting it from the outside (Units 1-3 reactors) through external hoses and pumps.

The current system is not a closed loop, and it leaks badly; they inject water one day, and it boils off or leaks out the next, requiring continuous reinjections with more and more water. And that’s just to stabilize the assumed level of fuel exposure and melting that’s already occurred in the Units 1-3 reactor vessels and Unit 4′s spent pool. The new system would presumably be a closed loop, just like the original system, so that if water boiled to steam, the steam would be captured, condensed back to water, cooled and returned to the reactor vessel for more cooling, while keeping the core covered.

That immediately raised the question, which I’ve not seen even discussed, is how do you build such a system? It would be one thing to take a never used reactor vessel outside a contaiment structure and refit it with new injection/release pipes and seals and attach those to valves, pumps, pipes, controls, etc. But how do you do that to the still hot reactor vessels inside the contaimment structure at Units 1-3 that have full radioactive cores and that have to be continuously cooled with the existing ad hoc water injection? If there’s even a conceptual design for that, I haven’t seen it mentioned.

Let’s take the problem one step further. Let’s assume that eventually they can do better than the tiny robots that have only managed to crawl a few meters into the reactor building to take photos and measure radiation. They’ll need much larger robots and heavy equipment to clear away the explosion debri and allow radioative cleanup crews to make it possible to work inside for more than a few minutes. What next?

In the April 2 post where I summarized the AREVA presentation on the accident sequence, we explained a sequence in which the space between the outer containment structure and the reactor vessel inside that containment could gradually fill with radioactive steam and hydrogen. Some of that steam could condense and leave water inside the containment structure. As we explained elsewhere, water is also probably leaking into the containment structure from, for example, damaged seals for the piping that carries water/steam to/from the reactor vessel, making it difficult to keep the core covered, because the leak points are below the top of the fuel rods.

About the same time, the New York Times had a report describing other concerns by US experts. One of those concerns, buried at the end of the story, was that the ad hoc measures to pump outside water into the system would gradually fill up the containment structure, which was not designed to hold lots of water. Water is heavy. The weight/force of that water on the structure, coupled with continuing afterquakes, might eventually cause the containment structure to fail.

Now it seems that warning is being taken seriously. According to this report, TEPCO is now worried about how much water the containment structure at Unit 1 can safely hold if there is another significant afterquake. And if that’s a problem at Unit 1, it could become a problem at Units 2 and 3.

Is excessive water injection also a concern at Unit 4? Apparently so. This NHK World report says TEPCO is now worried that the pace of water dumping into Unit 4′s spent fuel storage pool — and remember, that exposed pool has a full core load of non-spent fuel — could make the storage pool walls and steel lining vulnerable to a serious afterquake. It’s a concern similar to that at Unit 1, except the pool is totally outside any containment structure. If the integrity of that pool, which may already be leaking, is suspect, their “roadmap” boils down to hoping Mother Nature gives them a break.

Sources:

NHK World
Kyodo News
Hi-res photos
IAEA Updates
Union of Concerned Scientists