Friday, August 29, 2008

Dreams of Alaska

Quoting from Insomnia:

There are two kinds of people in Alaska: those who were born here and those who come here to escape something. -- Rachel Clement (played by the same chick who played Abby on ER (is it still on?))

I've never been to Alaska, but that's kind of what I always thought. And "escape something" doesn't necessarily have to mean escaping the law, which is what I think the character Rachel meant in the movie.

Escape can mean a lot of things, obviously. Like escape pollution, crime, and the sometimes skull crushing restrictions that are placed on our so-called freedoms down here in the Lower 48. (If by chance they have restrictive gun laws in Alaska, please don't tell me; I prefer to go on thinking of folks there walking around with a shotgun slung over their arm, not that I would do that.) And, yeah, I'm sure they have more than their fair share of pollution and crime. But, neither can be as bad as we've got it down here, right?

Anyway, all my notions of Alaska aside -- whether correct or not -- I was intrigued to hear that John McCain had picked Alaska's governor, Sarah Pallin, as his running mate. My first thought was, who knew Alaska even had a female governor?

My second thought was, is this some clever stunt by McCain to win over the votes of that certain faction of Hillary Clinton supporters who can't accept the fact that Hillary wouldn't have a place on Barack Obama's ticket? Or people who refuse to vote for an all male ticket? Well, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who came up with those questions.

So, I decided to see what I could find out about her. And, I took the easy way out by reading her wiki page (duh). Linked from there were two news articles, which I also read: (1) Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski ousted in a humiliating defeat to Sarah Palin; and (2) Alaska's 'Frustrated' Governor Palin On Our 'Nonsensical' Energy Policy.

Quick summary of what I learned: She is a Republican governor who replaced another Republican governor, whom some might say was corrupt (or maybe he just didn't play by somebody's rules). She is conservative. And, she is seemingly desperate (perhaps too desperate) to sell out Alaska's oil and gas resources. She's possibly anti-labor, too. Or maybe just an amateur. How did I figure that out so fast? In her zeal to put forth her energy desires (see Frustrated Governor article), she never once mentioned jobs or employment. Bing! Usually, they at least pretend to care about jobs.

I'll leave it to the experts to provide the critical political analysis of Sarah Palin. But, for now, suffice it to say, she is no Hillary Clinton. If anything, her energy policy reeks of Dick Cheney. I hope the woman who John McCain is trying to sway by putting Palin on his ticket sees through it.

Posted by: Marie at 11:15 PM | Comments (1)

Thursday, August 28, 2008

A distant beer

beer_pitcher.jpg

Should be easy for Springfieldians to tell where this is.

Posted by: Marie at 8:39 PM | Comments (9)

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Hope is not a just slogan

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I'm feeling hopeful. And not just for myself, but for our entire country. Hope is an investment.

Posted by: Marie at 9:20 PM | Comments (0)

Monday, August 25, 2008

Looking up

blue_sky.jpg

What else?

Posted by: Marie at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Obama-Biden in Springfield event

Some random photos from Saturday's speech:

Jerome Prophet got some photos beforehand. We're waiting for more photos from during and after.

Will Reynolds got some great photos, too. Even more.

The State Journal-Register made a cool time lapse video of the crowd coming and going for the Barack Obama and Joe Biden event on the square yesterday:

Memo to the City of Springfield: Whoa on the downtown trees. Trim them. It shouldn't look like a forest.

Posted by: Marie at 7:46 PM | Comments (1)