Everyone is my friend until they prove otherwise.
I know it’s supposed to be “Denali” now, but I grew up calling it Mt. McKinley, and I’m not going to change that. This was taken from a moving train, so it’s not the best photo of the park you will ever see. I would love to get back up there someday and take a series of photos with varying settings and meld them to get the perfect photo, but that’s not going to be soon.
Here’s a bunch of photos I took on the trip compressed in photoshop, then again by uploading to Youtube. If you see one you like pause it quick because each lasts a second or so. Also if you have the bandwidth click on the Youtube icon to blow this out of frame and watch from the Youtube site where you can click the HD button and see much more detail.
While flying up to Alaska we saw quite a few signs of past glaciation in the Rockies, everything from hanging cirques, to tarns, to moraines in the plains leading to the mountains. It wasn’t until we got further north that we saw actual glaciers however. This series of photos were snapped while my aisle mate went to the restroom and I was able to get to the window. Just judging from the flight plan and the poor resolution pics of the areas in Google Earth, I believe most of these were snapped South of the Kluane icefield, with some of the mountains on the Canada side of the border, and some South on the Alaska side. I’m sure someone on the right side of the plane got to see Mt. Logan, but I did not.
Here’s hoping you enjoy the gallery below, the last two were taken through the fisheye lens in the exit door of the plane so there is some color shift and distortion in them:
Since it’s Saturday it’s time for some Political Humor with the following two videos:
Then there was the humorous send up of what Weasel-Eyed Joe might say in the debate, I got tied up at work and missed this one:
On the left they are trying to paint Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as a warmongering end-of-days rabid Christian dominionist, and one of their sallies is to say that she tried to ban books. I happen to know who and where the Christian dominionists and rabid Christian Identity movement people are since we’ve been actively fighting them over their attempts to get creationism into public schools. (See here.) I can tell you that Governor Sarah Palin is not one of them.
If you look at the records of asks to ban books (and the Wasilla Public library records them all,) there aren’t any from Sarah. Here’s the table of requests, and the actions the library took from their records:
If this is the best the left can come up with, they better get ready to weep November 3rd.
Resources: PDF file Link in Wasilla
The claptrap going around the left right now is that Sarah Palin doesn’t interview, which is completely wrong if you look at the archives of the Anchorage Daily News. Here’s a previous interview she did with PBS.
Perhaps if the media were to drop the pitchforks, focus on the candidate, and come with some serious policy questions instead of smear tabloid grade crap she would interview with them as well.
The left in their desperation to tumble the amazing popularity of Governor Sarah Palin is having a blogfest, email spamfest, and googlegasm over a letter from Wasilla Alaska. The letter was written by a Democrat from Wasilla, who is a disgruntled supporter of former Wasilla Mayor Stein, defeated in election by Sarah Palin. It’s an anomaly as Sarah won the election after that in Wasilla by an even clearer margin of 3 to 1. It’s full of disgruntled allegations and pseudo attacks, and is driving the notion around the net that Sarah Palin wanted to ban books. Like all moonbat letters, this one carries their inevitable line “I’m scared”.
This resulted from Questions Sarah raised with a librarian, and now there are several lies out there feeding off the non-event. Two key facts:
The Librarian was not fired, but was asked for a standing letter of resignation along with several other city officials. It’s normal for Mayors to do this, since they don’t know how cooperative employees of the former opposition mayor are going to be. The librarian quit two years later of her own volition and moved to Fairbanks.
The list of books Sarah supposedly wants to ban is thoroughly bogus, it’s a standard list that has circulated the net for years of books that other people have attempted to ban, and it includes books that were published after the trumped up overblown “incident” supposedly took place.
The list of rumors, innuendo, and outright lies attacking Governor Palin is astounding, imagine the outrage and umbrage the media would be taking if this dirty tricks campaign were against Nancy Pelosi. For the full list please stop by Explorations.
Please also note that US magazine is owned by Rolling Stone, who has sent thousands to the Barack Obama Campaign.
UPDATE: Robert Bidinotto is running through the smorgasboard of smears against Sarah Palin and countering them as the left goes deranged in the run up to her speech tonight.
Sarah Palin is very eloquent and convincing in this argument against the Obama/Biden energy plan, please watch the entire interview — she covers a host of salient points.
Sarah Palin is very eloquent and convincing in this argument against the Obama/Biden energy plan, please watch the entire interview — she covers a host of salient points. I also got pinged in email a while back regarding the tagging of energy posts with “Hunger”. Just to bring all readers up to speed, energy prices and hunger are immutably wed. When energy prices go up, food prices will as well. Growing, transporting, and storing food is energy intensive. You can read those articles here.
Although it appears that I’ve been slacking lately it’s really a case of over-immersion in work. Apologies to long time readers for all the quick posts of videos, which is really sort of cheating. Blogs are driven mostly by orignal content and perspective, which hasn’t been provided the past two weeks. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but first some quick thoughts on recent events.
Politics:
Obama’s speech was ho hum and forgettable, people have already stopped talking about it. I expect a bit more bounce out of the convention than the average Republican pundit has predicted, but it’s going to melt quickly as the Republican convention takes off and with the news of Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s choice as running mate.
The choice is being billed as brilliant, and as an Alaskan, I can’t help but be proud of John McCain’s selection. Like most Alaskans Sarah loves the state itself even with its flaws. This is evidenced by the names she has given some of her children; town and place names from Alaska. (Paxson, Bristol, Willow.) Of course they aren’t all named after Alaskan places, but Piper Indy Grace Palin is named for one of the main means of travel and communication in Alaska.
People are going to be surprised by the competency of Sarah Palin. LIke many Alaskans she has struggled with a harsh environment, vast distances, a cyclical boom-bust ecomony, and a business. That makes most Alaskans realists, and no-nonsense people who like to get things done expeditiously. The other thing that Alaskans have in their favor is an outcome of the long winters, the dark, and the cold — they have a lot of time to read, and are generally better informed than the average US citizen on most issues. The press will be trying to catch her out from the get-go, but they are going to have some rough sledding trying to do that.
To sum up on this subject, McCain’s choice was very smart for several reasons: it diversifies the ticket while almost instantly healing some rifts in the party (something the general press is overlooking at the moment,) it has potential to pull some Hillary voters, but most of all it displays McCain’s ability to make a principled decision once again. Sarah is not from a populous state that the Republicans need to pull in the win column, this is a strong blow from McCain against business as usual “realpolitik”. [ For pics of the ground breaking announcement and the McCain and Palin families as well as the great crowd response please see McCain Blogette.com ]
Ongoing things:
In the coming weeks I plan to pick the investigative articles on WE back up, as well as delineate the benefits of high energy environmentalism better than I have. I will also bring you up to date on happenings in Pakistan and the subcontinent, as well as follow the campaigns. If you are real lucky, I will put up a few more pictures of Kasey too.
