For those of you who are not Alaskans, you will probably see in the news that a volcano "near" Anchorage erupted.  By near, they mean 106 miles Southwest, on the other side of Cook Inlet from most of the habitation.  Knik is about 50 miles away.  The volcano poses secondary risk to people in Anchorage with respitory problems, and may make morning commute hell.  As for fire and brimstone, we are safe. 


EDIT, Anchorage folks, roumor has it that we may get loght ash fall around 2:00 AM this morning.  

( Text of Obama's inaugural speech )

I have received several requests for my thoughts (as an Alaskan?) on the election.

First and foremost, my children will grow up with both Asian and White grandparents. They will also grow up with no living memory of a time when you had to be White to be President of the United States. This means more to me than I can put to words. President Elect Obama won with a message of hope, and of our being able to overcome obstacles. After 8 years of being told that there was really nothing I could do but trust the government to keep me safe, I have hope that we may be entering a time when the assumption is that we can help ourselves, and we can be a part of a better tomorrow.

Now, Alaska. I don’t know how many times I have been asked how we could elect a ____ (felon, crazy right wing lunatic, insert you own) for ____. The simple answer now is, we didn’t. The more complex answer is also, we didn’t.

Governor Palin ran for office on a bipartisan housecleaning ticket. She ran against the most unpopular governor in Alaskan history in the primary, and against an established member of the Democratic establishment. Alaska had had enough of the establishment, and we voted for change, which we got. Her socially conservative views are largely irrelevant as Governor, and her willing to work with Democrats to help clean up corruption in the state, and get a better deal from Big Oil won the day for her. She was very accessible to the media (which I can attest to, having intervened her when I worked for a left wing radio station in Anchorage), very articulate, and was as far from being a partisan hack as can be imagined, possibly because she was involved in a war with the Republican establishment for the soul of the Alaskan Republican Party.

Many Alaskans were quite stunned by Palin 2.0, and we are really curious as to who Palin will be when she comes back to govern, having alienated most of her friends in the Democratic party, and put many of her former enemies in the Republican party in a aqward position.

Senator Stevens, many of us believe, was taken down by a Republican witch hunt in DC, after he started to become a national embarrassment to the party. The case against him was ineptly handled, only matched by the incredible ineptitude of his bizarre defense. His title of pork-barrel king was won by bringing a lot of money to Alaska, in the form of rural electrification and sanitation, timber jobs, and once the timber was gone, money to re-tool the economy for other jobs. He is the institutional memory in the Senate with regards to fishing, which is the most important industry in Alaska, by number of people employed.

Even the “bridges to nowhere” have a different light in Alaska, where both Ketchikan and Anchorage are hemmed in by national land. The bridges would have opened new land for development, much as the railroads to nowhere did in the 1800’s, or the highways to nowhere did in the 1900’s. I am not fond of the bridges, but it is worth noting that I can not afford a house in my hometown because of land values. If there were a reasonable way of opening more land up, so I could afford to live in Sitka, I may have a different view.

Stevens campaign, quite literally, was “I was there for you, be here for me one last time.” Many people who were on the fence, figured that if he wanted to take this battle to the Senate, hell, you dance with the one who brought you. Given what he has done for us, it’s a pretty compelling argument.

By Peter Slevin

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- Sen. Barack Obama delivered an impassioned defense of the Constitution and the rights of terrorism suspects tonight, striking back at one of the biggest applause lines in Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech to the GOP convention.

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Obama had a few problems with that.

"First of all, you don't even get to read them their rights until you catch 'em," Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. "They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later."

If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government's sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed.

"My position has always been clear: If you've got a terrorist, take him out," Obama said. "Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take 'em out."

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it "the foundation of Anglo-American law," he said the principle "says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'"

The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, "because we don't always have the right person."

"We don't always catch the right person," he said. "We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president."

Obama turned back to Palin's comment, although he said he was not sure whether Palin or Rudy Giuliani said it.

"The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting," Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. "Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years."

He finished with a dismissive comment about his opponents.

"These people."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/08/obama_to_palin_dont_mock_the_c.html

Over the firewall, through the router, nothing but net.

Some folks get a runners high. Endorphins that keep you going long past when your body would normally run out of steam. A feeling that becomes self-sustaining, as long as you keep it up, but ends as soon as you stop. That happens to me when dancing some times. Square dancing or contra dancing mostly, one a square is set, there is no reason to stop until the music does, and then the stop is only a grudging acknowledgment that perhaps you should drink some water before you set the next square, quickly so you don't run out of endorphins.

That also happens to me on a good night when performing. Tonight was a very, very good night. Rogues & Wenches have had a lot of good nights recently. The last three performances have kicked ass, and tonight, there is no reason for modesty. We rocked the joint. Our last song was an hour and a half ago, and I am still working through the endorphins in hopes that I will be able to sleep tonight.

I don't want to. Tonight is what cast parties are made for.


The most alluring thing about festivals, the thing that makes them a marathon for the body and a tonic for the soul is how often they have a glimpse of what we had tonight, and how often that leads to long nights in someone's trailer or living-room passing around a bottle, telling stories, and sharing music. It's a lifestyle that is fun, invigorating, and intoxicating regardless of the substances consumed, and would be a perfect lifestyle if not for the morning after.

Waking up in a strange place, not recognizing the surroundings, and having to concentrate to remember what state you are in is an incredibly lonely feeling. Meeting people, building a relationship with them such that it feels you have known them for years, and then leaving them for years at a time until the next time you are booked in the same town is a great way to learn new stories, but not a stable way to combat mild depression that comes with a sense of dis-attachment; a lack of Home. Anyone who truly talks about the "Romance of the Road" has most likely not spent any time in the back of a Greyhound fending of the advances of a drunk woman while wondering if you would ever see the friends you have just made again. The great thing is that that is no longer my life.

My group has just had a kick ass performance. I have all the endorphins flowing, and while it is true that I am not spending the evening hearing tales from people who have not heard any of my stories, it is also true that I will sleep in my own bed tonight, in my wife's arms.

Those of you who on this list who have known me the longest know that my longest standing drams have involved folk music, and being a folk musician. I am now part of a group of musicians who is published, who has a CD out (if you have not gotten yours, iTunes it, or check out my user profile), and who is becoming a darling of the (not traditional) local folk scene. I get to be a part of this, and I get to do it from home.

I am a very lucky man.

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great- Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

( The Petition )

IN every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Corporations are legally people. Let’s take this one step further, and create a corporate jail. Kill off 27 people by deciding the cost benefit analysis favor not repairing a known fuel line problem in your cars (ala the Ford Pinto)? That’s 27 cases of negligent homicide. 3 years times 27 cases, for the next 81 years, all of the assets of the cooperation are held in trust by a “prison.” Profits from the cooperation are not distributed to shareholders, as the corporate “person” is in prison. It would only take one high profile case before shareholders demanded better accountability from their board of directors.

Destroy a herring fishery for 18 years? Yeah, that will cost you more than 10 days profit.

Current Mood: enraged

I am trying to create a form for Alaska Theatre of Youth, which I have successfully done in the past. I am having a problem where in the .php second page shows up on all browsers as blank. As in, when I look at the page in view source, there is nothing there.

I have looked at the page via FTP, and I certainly have something, which makes me think that there is something in the php code that is effectively nullifying EVERYTHING on the page. Does anyone know what could do this?