Teabag Nation. Listen Up.

Informed folks are never gonna get it. The baggers, the honest to god blue collar baggers that have no notion of what it truly takes to run a country are always going to side with the person who displays the characteristics that play so prominently in their own lives.

In the life of a certain segment of Americans, education plays a small role, church going and tithing play a large role. Wanting to be represented in Washington by someone that seems to have the same lifestyle as they do plays a HUGE role. These people are sick and tired of having people smarter and more accomplished than they are representing their interests in the political arena.

Palin is merely pandering to a segment that fits her mentality and the persona she has created.

There is a growing cultural divide in this country. The disenfranchised right don't see a single thing wrong with writing the answers on your hand. They want to be represented by people "just like them" but fail to realize that "people just like them" are not qualified to head up one of the most powerful nations in the world.

This small portion of America that wishes to have a person in charge that is like them and writes their grocery list on the palm of their hand is a segment of our population that better step up their game or learn to speak Chinese, because it will make it so much easier to work in the Chinese factories when we truly lose America, forever.

The politically active far right dream of empowering America through their protests and signage and vocalizations, however, they are not making our country stronger. Their main agenda seems to be making fun of and holding down a President that wants nothing more than to strengthen their position in this country and make this Nation strong again rather than sell out to China and India. (Ya know, those countries that have college graduates working in factories and phone rooms because they can't get a better job with their Master's degrees from America.)

Baggers, educate your children and have them create a bigger, stronger America, or focus or having them learn Chinese. Those are your choices. If you choose option B, learning Chinese, hopefully your kids will have medical insurance over there in China in the factories that they will be working in.

9/11/2001 in Anchorage Alaska

While driving to work we heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and there were ongoing news reports via NPR regarding what had taken place in NYC. Our take on it was "wow, they are really big buildings and probably nothing will come of this; freak accident and hopefully everything will be okay (except for those that were initially impacted by the rogue plane)

I dropped my partner off at his workplace in downtown Anchorage and then headed to my office in South Anchorage. As I was driving I was listening to NPR, as we had been our our way to work. News became more grim as I was listening and it became rather intense.

As I was driving to my office I noticed military jets flying low around downtown/west Anchorage and then local radio hosts broke into the NPR feed to let us know that a Korean Air plane was possibly hijacked and that downtown Anchorage was being evacuated.

I turned my car around and called my partner and picked him up at his office downtown. We proceeded home to Wasilla listening to NPR while on the road and we spent the rest of the day on the internet or watching horrific accounts of not one Trade Center impact but two and two buildings falling and then we learned of flight 93 grounding in Pennsylvania.

It was a surreal day. The thing that brought it all home for me was when I was picking my partner up downtown in Anchorage and military jets were literally screaming through the air around the inlet and the downtown buildings. I kept thinking to myself "who would target downtown Anchorage, of all places, for a terrorist attack", but after hearing what had happened elsewhere, I also began to think "why not"?

Luckily the KAL hijack was a mere miscommunication between tower and pilot, but the surreal feeling of that day is still something that I can recreate in my head whenever 9/11 is mentioned.

It was a strange day in Anchorage and every September 11 I remember the feelings of fear and disbelief that ran though my head on that day.

We Don't need no Education

I just realized this was a title of a post I'd done many months ago...I guess that post also had to do with a certain political party not recognizing the value of education. Now here is another post, about a certain political party not recognizing the value of education.

Well, here it is in a nutshell. To those people that are so afraid of our President giving their children advice on why it might be a great idea to remain in school and excel educationally as far as their intelligence will allow, well, keep your kids home. I don't care because even if you deprive your children of a chance to become inspired and perhaps excel beyond your educational level, that's a family issue, within your family.

Me, I'm happy, because so many parents will allow their children to become inspired by our President's speech and they will go on to make advances in medicine, technology, and a whole lot of other fields that will benefit me.

To the parents that keep their children home and ignorant of the importance of education. That's okay too, because the US military-industrial-war-machine always welcomes C students and dropouts as "fresh meat" in their latest war, heck they even recruit them heavily at the local Army/Navy/Marine office here in my town. Wal-Mart also needs your underachieving children; it welcomes them with open arms and pays them $7.15 per hour with NO BENEFITS. Same with any fast food joint.

Here's my heartfelt "thank you" to the parents that keep their kids from hearing Obama's inspirational speech tomorrow.

I'm very happy to know that there will always be dupes to fight unjust wars for me, sell me cheap crap at Wal-Mart and hand me my favorite "guilty" fast food snack through the drive thru window of my local burger joint. These servants will always be here for me because their parents denied the importance of education.

Actually, really, thank you, thank you and thank you again to the parents that are fearful of Obama's pro-education message, because I don't know what life would be like without having your little underachievers in MY life.

Please, keep your kids home, perhaps watching Faux News with you...yes, please do, because if you let these kids get educated, well, it may very well create a disturbance in MY way of life and that is just too horrible to comprehend.

On Ted Kennedy and The Kennedy Legacy

I realized today watching the eulogy for Ted Kennedy presented by President Barack Obama, that we wouldn't have an Obama, a chance for change, a new face in politics and an opportunity to overturn the status quo in this great country, if not for Ted Kennedy.

He was born a child of privilege and certainly faced his demons in his life as did many in his family. Yet, something in this wealthy and entitled family made them think as much of those that have little as those that have much.

That is the legacy he left us. He truly believed in country and had hope that all of us might actually be able to live our lives as Americans based on an idea of equality, regardless of his genetic gift of being born into wealth and fame.

He surpassed the gifts of wealth and genetic "fame" by always thinking of those that were not born into such circumstances.

If only all people could be so kind and so considerate, we might all become "one nation united" for a central cause.

Now is certainly the time to reflect upon the gifts that this man bestowed upon our country; the gift of ignoring race, of ignoring the American "caste" system and treating all human beings in this country and in this world as human beings worthy of being listened to and human beings whose causes are worth fighting for. The world that Ted Kennedy envisioned is one where we all might one day be, to use a sailing euphemism, all be sailing on an "even keel".

There aren't too many people born into a life of privilege that use their voice and power to try to make the world better for the "little guy" that didn't have their advantages. I must applaud Ted and the Kennedys for sticking up for those that were not born under that same golden cloud. I also must applaud them for overcoming much grief yet still continuing their agenda of "liberty for all".

I can't say enough yet I hope I've made my point. This family has had more extraordinary members than any other in our last 6 decades. They could have decided to just be rich and hedonistic and live their lives for themselves, yet many in the Kennedy family have decided to use their voice, their wealth and their power to help those that were not born into such a situation and it makes my heart happy that there are people that are willing to do this.

I can't honestly say that I would be so altruistic had I been born with wealth and power, but I have to admire those that will go the distance for the disenfranchised. Someone in the Kennedy family at some point planted a seed that grew and that seed gave us many, many great politicians and community activists within the Kennedy family. This family gave us people who actually cared about other people and the environment and used the wealth that could have afforded them endless days lounging about in the world's greatest vacation destinations. Instead of hanging out in Ibiza or other destinations of the rich, they spent most of their time fighting for the little guy, and using their loud and powerful voices and influence to help those that weren't born under such great circumstances and this is wonderful.

We can all learn a lesson from how the Kennedy's lived their lives. Detractors will also find unsavory episodes within the lives of the Kennedy's. I still can't help but believe that all of the good that they've done WAY outweighs the personal demons that they have faced down.

So much screwin' up in such a short time!

The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. Humans, Homo sapiens, for only 2 million years. Organized somewhat "modern" humans for only 10,000-20,000 years, depending on what criteria are used for defining what "modern" means.

In those 10,000-20,000 years we've created cultures and cities and multitudes of gods and religions. We've also fought each other and undermined each other in at attempt to push one agenda over another. We've fought wars over the gods and religions and political agendas that we've created.

We've created countries and within those countries we've created cliques. Some examples of these cliques are religions and political parties. We humans that share so many similarities love to fracture ourselves into cliques or groups. These groups are then destined to war against each other. It's one of our tragic flaws as a species. We first united as a species tribally and we continue to operate tribally, the tribes continue to battle each other but our weapons have "advanced" from spears and rocks to rhetoric and words.

As we've evolved our brains have grown larger. I am hard pressed to find any significant proof that our larger brains have served us in any beneficial manner. All too often we've used these big brains to to fracture our human society rather than create a cohesive environment that would make us all stronger as a species.

A species. Humankind. A miracle of nature that will perhaps never enjoy the 160 million year reign on Earth that even the small minded dinosaurs enjoyed if we don't work together for a common cause.

The dinosaurs didn't have religion or politics yet they ruled this Earth for 160 million years basically operating on instinct and a brain stem. The big ones ate the little ones. We can do better than this.

Yet us humans, this happy accident of evolution, we will most likely not have such a long and prosperous future because we've created a scenario in which our life is just too complicated.

It's in our nature though, human nature, to make things too complicated. We are too superstitious and too war mongering. We are too distrustful of each other.

Until we can "fix" some of the basic flaws in the human makeup we are destined to fail. We'll fail at politics, we'll fail at maintaining a healthy planet whose conditions allow us to flourish, we'll fail at preserving our species in a healthy manner because we as humans are programmed to disagree based on concepts that we ourselves have created. Concepts of inequality and the idea that one religion, skin color, nationality or political affiliation is better than another.

Any human on the face of this Earth shares more than 99% of our DNA makeup with any other human. We are a happy accident of nature that, because of no catastrophic climate or asteroid/comet events in recent history, have been given a window of opportunity to survive here on good old planet Earth.

There are few guarantees in the future, except for the fact that our sun will turn into a red giant and engulf the Earth in another 5 billion years. The other guarantees are that something big from space will hit us again at some point and mother Earth herself will cycle through ice ages and climate changing volcanic episodes. The continents will once again join together and pull apart.

If we don't start becoming a cohesive unit regardless of religion or politics or race, then we won't be around to witness the next global challenge that mother Earth or even our solar system will send our way.

This is not just true for the USA but for the world as a whole.

I want to put the healthcare debate and this great fractioning of America into perspective and this is the best way that I know to illustrate how absolutely ridiculous our behavior is.

We are one species, Homo sapiens, united by DNA, yet fractured by our ideas, courtesy of our big brains. If we can't agree to take care of each other in this time of relative calm here on Earth, how will we ever make it though a global catastrophe?

Please don't judge all Alaskans Based on the behavior of one.

Please don't judge all Alaskans by the standards recently set forth by a certain ex-Gov lady.

Please don't paint all Alaskans with the same conservative paint brush.

We are a diverse community of human beings; a small community of humans occupying a very vast stretch of global real estate.

Alaskans deal with problems that run the gamut from urban decay and homelessness to rural subsistence cultures still attempting to live from the land and enjoy modern conveniences as well.

There are Sierra Club members that live next door to avid hunters and snowmachiners. There are people living in upscale neighborhoods that share their woods with homeless camps. There are Libertarians living down the street from Republicans and Democrats and Alaskan Independence Party members.

We 600,000+ Alaskans all share this 600,000+ square mile patch of land and for the most part we agree to disagree but all take pride in the fact that we are "Alaskans".

One would be hard pressed to find a city of 600,000 people that has the same diversity as our Alaskan population.

Alaskans are Yupik, Inuit, Inupiat, Inupiaq, Aleutiiq, Aleut, Ahtna, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Gwich'in, Athabascan, Eyak, White, Black, Latino, Phillipino, Pacific Islander, and more European cultures than one could imagine.

I apologize if I left anyone out of the list above, or messed up the spelling of your cultural identity, but what I'm trying to say is all of us here have one thing in common and that is we are Alaskans, and there is a certain amount of pride associated with that.

This is a melting pot of humanity and we all have something to offer.

And that's it folks, I will not address the crazy lady by name any longer because she has done more damage to the reputation of this fair state than, well, than anyone else ever in it's history.

I just wanted to make sure that people know that we are a vast and varied state full of a myriad of different cultures and races and we all seem to make it work because we take pride in being Alaskan and helping each other.

It doesn't always work and we have the same problems as any other state but we don't deserve to be judged based on the actions and words of one person who was given a national platform on which to share her views and spew hatred.

We're not all like that, in fact the majority aren't, so please don't judge us based on the Palin yardstick. Also, don't be afraid to travel here. It's beautiful and we are friendly and we love to share our state with visitors.

We are NOT all crazy.

Palin has broken herself AND flip flopped AGAIN!

Palin has broken her image and turned herself into a joke; a political joke.

The higher calling that she resigned her Governorship for, well, has turned into a lower calling; she is now spending her days pandering to the lowest common denominator of the GOP. The portion of the GOP that do not have the power or the numbers to ever "progress" her political career. Regardless of her family issues: Todd sleeping on the couch, another wild teenage girl to control and the constant Trig maternity speculation, Palin is doing herself in politically with every word that comes from either her mouth or her keyboard.

I think we can all rest assured that she is done politically. Now we can all sit back and just look forward to the latest "pearls of wisdom" that drop from her Facebook. (what, no Tweets, Sarah, oh why, oh why?) I no longer worry about Sarah Palin being a political force in our country, however I do worry about her "base" and how passionate and well-armed they are. She will incite bloodshed at some point with her ill-informed rants.

I wrote this last night and did not post it. Now today it comes out the Palin has issued another Facebook statement, so obviously not written by her. We know it was not written by her because it actually states text from the Healthcare bill, which means that she actually would have to have read it, and really, how many hours does she have in a day to actually read anything other than blog entries that she must show to her lawyer, and tabloids that question the solidity of her marriage?

So now, she has someone on the payroll doin' the readin' and the fact findin' and the writin' on the Facebook, but oh, there is something that her readin', fact findin, and writin' team was not told before this latest Facebook entry regarding healthcare....wait, wait, wait...

Yep, Sarah Palin was FOR the same thing that she is now against. She basically had a Death Panel Day here in Alaska. That is, she declared a "Healthcare Decisions Day" in Alaska back in April 2008. A day dedicated to encouraging people to make known their wishes for end of life care before they were unable to speak for themselves.

Go see it here, at The Immoral Minority, courtesy of Think Progress.

Yep, she's a flip flopper again. Just like the bridge to, wait, where was that bridge to again, oh yea, nowhere, the bridge to nowhere....Sarah Palin is her own bridge to nowhere, she just doesn't realize it yet.

In her heart of hearts I hope she knows that the God she says guides her in all of her decisions would not agree with some of her recent behavior. I cannot believe that she would be found worthy of the kingdom of Heaven when her life was presented to her God for judgement regarding her place in the afterlife.

When Heaven's "Death Panel" reviews the actions of Palin, I can only feel that it will be "thumbs down", rather than "thumbs up".

Too much talking the talk Palin and not nearly enough walking the walk.

Good to be done and rid of you. I just really thought it would take much longer than 17 days after your resignation from your elected position of Governor of Alaska for you to become a complete political joke and now, well, nothing more than tabloid fodder, oh and a BIG FLIP FLOPPER, AGAIN!