There were two new comments on the post about Miller's admiration of East Germany's ability to protect its borders from its own citizens in my email box today. Blogspot sends me emails of the comments as well as posting them. This is especially helpful for comments on older posts that I wouldn't see otherwise. While I can have the comments held until I review them, I don't need to do that. (There was a month or two in the past where I did to monitor an interesting but sometimes abusive commenter.) Blogspot's new spam filter does block some comments on its own that it suspects are spam which the blogger can then either delete or post.
Spammers try many different techniques. The most common has been to say nice, but generic things about the blog, like "Gee, I really like your blog, it is very interesting." The name and/or somewhere in the comment will be a link to their advertising site.
If they are good, they will even mention something from your post, "Your flowers are beautiful and I really like your blog."
But today there was a new twist, which got past the spam filters, even though the linked names of the commenters were Nail Fungus Cure and Impotence Pills. When I saw the email the names instantly aroused my suspicions, but the comments were very relevant to the post. And also familiar. Familiar because they simply copied previous comments on that post.
It's clear that humans are being hired to go to sites, figure out the captca codes and add some comment that is relevant.
But, according to Technologyreview, they are also sending solved captchas to be used automated spammers.
But the inventors of CAPTCHAS probably didn't anticipate this: Hundreds, possibly thousands of laborers working for less than $50 a month to solve an endless stream of CAPTCHAS delivered to them by automated middlemen who sell the results to spammers in real time, so that their spam bots can use those solutions to post to forums and blogs as well as set up fraudulent email accounts, says a paper about to be delivered at the USENIX Security Symposium.
"Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."
This isn't a completely trivial post. Spam costs time, money, and bandwidth. But it's a a relatively easy post while I try to write something substantive on a talk at UAA Friday, a Senate race on the Hillside, and Ballot Measure 1 - the Constitutional amendment to enlarge the Alaska legislature.
My eyelids are drooping. I've just erased what I was writing because it was . . . sooo boring.
(double click the photo to enlarge it)
We went to the old Fly-by-Night Club tonight, now reborn as Taproot, where Shannyn Moore has moved her weekly KYES talk show. Taping was tonight and it should air Saturday on KYES, Channel 5, and on Shannyn's blog soon. (The link is to the show two weeks ago with Tom Begich and Scott McAdams. But you should be able to find tonight's show there too in a few days.)
See, it's still boring. The show wasn't. Tony Hopfinger, Joe Miller's first notch on his handcuffs, was on, and then there was a panel of journalists - Tom Brennen of the old Anchorage Times and now the The Anchorage Daily Planet on line; Craig Medred of the Alaska Dispatch now, and formerly an outdoor writer for the ADN; and attorney and former legislator Eric Croft.
I found the evening depressing. Gallows humor was the standard as people discussed the man who handcuffed a reporter trying to ask him serious questions that he seriously doesn't want to answer. Miller's in a dead heat in the polls with the US Senator he beat in the primaries, while Scott McAdams, the Democrat seems to be trailing badly. Democrats used to win Alaska elections by having the right split the vote. Murkowski seems to be trying to fight that history by selling the story that McAdams can't win, and if he did, he's not qualified, and that to save Alaska from Miller, they have to vote Murkowski. Or not vote at all.
l-r Moore, Brennan, Medred, Croft
Then Medred proudly announces that he never votes because he thinks it's a conflict of interest for journalists to vote. This is the guy who covered bears and backpacking most of the time he wrote for the Anchorage Daily News. For crying out loud, this is the United States where everyone has the right and duty to vote. Even judges.
To be fair to Craig, there are people who take his position as seen in these essays on whether journalists should vote at Politico. But I come down with Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review. Even if you don't vote, your objectivity is a myth. Even the emotion free Data would be partisan because he'd rationally tally up the pluses and minuses of each candidate and figure out who would be best. Not voting is like academics using 'we' instead of 'I' to make their articles sound less subjective. It doesn't really change anything except their myth of objectivity. Better to simply tell readers your bias, write balanced articles, and let the readers judge for themselves.
I look at everything that comes out as potentially tainted. It seems like every webpage I opened today had an ad for Lisa Murkowski. The narrative that a vote for McAdams is a vote for Miller may or may not be true, but it is also the political message the Murkowski camp is using to get Democrats to vote for her.
I wouldn't take anything for granted. While corporate Native Alaska has ponied up nearly $1 million to support Murkowski, village Native Alaska may not be as ready to buy into this. And some Alaskan Native youth see McAdams as their candidate and are speaking out about it. With people hanging up on robocalls and with cell phones not being called by most pollsters, it seems to me people should vote for the person who best matches their values rather than playing voter roulette in an attempt to outsmart themselves. And if Joe Miller wins? He's one person out of 100 in the Senate. The world won't end. (But it will probably be meaner and harsher.)
But I did meet an interesting couple from Homer who sailed the world for 15 years before picking Kachemak Bay as their home.
Nihad Awad, according to a flier handed out at the talk at Alaska Pacific University (APU) last Friday night, is "the national executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest non-profit Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States." The rest, from my notes, is an abbreviated version of what I heard him say. [Translation: my rough notes should not be taken as authoritative word on Islam, but the spur for you to find out more. Like at the website of the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage which broke ground for their masjid last week.]
He began briefly talking about growing up in a refugee camp in Aman, Jordan and learning about the US by watching television - one of two sets in the camp. Hollywood doesn't send out a good image of the United States he said. Nevertheless, it was a place that he wanted to see for himself one day, but never dreamed he would be able to.
Schooling in the camp wasn't very good. It was in a tent and he didn't learn much. But something must have worked because he got a chance to go to college in Italy, where he learned Italian and got a degree in engineering. And eventually he made it to the United States. He is now proud to be a United States citizen. The talk then turned to his understanding of Islam.
Muslims, he said, believe in the same God as do Christians and Jews. He was surprised when he learned that in the west they talk about Allah as though this were a different Muslim god. Allah is simply the Arabic word for god. He cited a survey that found that 10% of Americans believed that Muslims believe in a moon god.
You're not a Muslim, he said, if you don't believe in Jesus and the miracles of Jesus, in Moses, and in Abraham. A difference is in the nature of Jesus. For Muslims, I think he said, Jesus is a prophet, not God.
Mohammad did not write the Koran, he said. He couldn't have because he was illiterate. It was revealed to him over 23 years by the angel Gabriel. He pointed out that millions of people today have memorized the whole Koran in Arabic. (This reminded me how remarkable the human brain is and how we are all capable of far more than we realize. Before radio and television many Americans also memorized the bible. Now we can't even memorize our passwords.)
He said there are five pillars of Islam:
Declare there is only one god. (Sounds like the first of the ten commandments)
Daily prayer, five times a day - He said that talking to God five times a day was a great source of peace.
Giving charity - to the poor, orphans, the stranded, etc. "You're not a good Muslim if you go to bed full, but your neighbor is hungry."
Fasting - the sick, travelers, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempted.
Pilgrimage - The Hajj
[These match the five pillars of Sunni Muslims according to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia says Shia's five pillars are different.]
He also talked about Reason and Human Rights.
Reason
God asked us to use our heads
Education - obligation for men and women
Independence of Women - equal responsibility to build and protect the family, women keep their own names
Human Rights
Dignity is important
In charge of the environment - shouldn't waste the earth
Sanctity of human life - "Killing of one innocent life is equal to killing all mankind." Conversely, "Saving one innocent life is equal to saving all mankind."
Not your image of Islam? That was the point of the talk. Just as Awad got his first (false) image of the US through television, he said Americans get their view of Islam through the news media. It's like outsiders basing their opinion of Christianity on people like Hitler and Timothy McVeigh.
Here's the end of his talk:
One of the questioners was about the book I'm reading for this month's book club meeting - No god but God. Reza Islan argues that the battles we see in Islam today are not about the West and Islam, but rather they are a modern reformation among Islams, a struggle for who will define Islam. Will it look to the past or will it adjust to the modern world. He suggests that Islam in the US can and should play a major role in this debate. Did Awad agree, asked the questioner.
He did. He believes that real Islam is very consistent with American ideas of equality and justice and thus US Muslims have a critical role to play in the world of Islam.
[Again, this is my take on what happened - leaving a lot out. If something doesn't look right, contact Nihad Awad to get clarification. And then leave a comment to correct my errors.]
Let me add another note. I was reminded of a conference I attended in India several years ago. In one panel on Islamic justice in Pakistani villages, the panelists all said that Islam in the villages was still mixed with local tribal traditions that were not based on Islam. It is often these non-Islamic tribal customs that result in the abuses of women and others that lead to outraged Western headlines pointing at how primitive Islam is.
This ad in today's newspaper caught my eye. What exactly does it mean to be a Democrat?
Does it mean you're registered as a Democrat?
That you give to Democratic candidates?
Or that you vote for Democratic candidates?
To me it means all three, and I'd think the same for Republicans.
There was a time when no one would dispute that Bill Sheffield was a Democrat. But as governor he went through impeachment proceedings and sometime after that he became less loyal to Democrats and regularly and publicly supported Republicans with fundraisers and funds.
I don't know if he kept his Democratic registration or, obviously, how he voted. However, since 2000 his campaign contributions, while not completely snubbing Democrats, heavily favored Republicans. And Murkowski is a name his checkbook knows well.
This is no sudden conversion.
To me this ad implies that he's breaking with his life long tradition to now support a Republican in this election. That is clearly NOT the case as his federal campaign contributions show. (The state numbers are much harder to get from APOC. What I saw wasn't as lopsided, but it was clear that there was missing data.)
My quick count reveals the dollar amount of his federal contributions runs 5 to 1 for Republicans. Not exactly what my vision of a "Democrat my entire life" would do. It would have been called treason had a Republican funded Democrats 5 to 1.
At Sunday's 'town hall' meeting at Central Middle School, Sen. Fred Dyson introduced Joe Miller to the audience. As part of the introduction, Dyson said he knew the Joe Miller was a great guy because he was married to Hugh "Bud" Fate's daughter. Dr. Fate [a Fairbanks dentist who served on the University of Alaska Board of Regents for years as well as in the legislature], he continued, wouldn't let any of his daughters marry someone who wasn't first rate.
Hugh Fate son-in-law Dan Sullivan
Well, my brain started whirring at that point. I'd been in the confirmation hearings last February in Juneau for state Attorney General Dan Sullivan [no, not the Anchorage Mayor of the same name] and it seemed to me that Bud and Mary Jane Fate were there and introduced as Sullivan's father-in-law. If Joe Miller was married to the Fate's daughter, then he and AG Sullivan would be brothers-in-law. Interesting.
Well, I got caught up in writing about Miller's comments on East Germany, and put this on the back burner. But today as I was getting ready to post this I wanted to see if I could find something that showed that Kathleen Tompkins-Miller was Fate's daughter.
Family:
Wife - Mary Jane
Children - Janine, Jennifer, Julie, Al H. Woods
Twelve Grandchildren
No Kathleen. But, of course, Miller would have corrected the record at the time if it weren't true. Wouldn't he?
Now I started scratching my head. I called Rep. Bob Lynn who had been at the Sunday event. I'd gotten to know him while I was in Juneau and had talked to him Sunday. He recalled Sen. Dyson making that introduction, so I hadn't been wrong about that. He said he thought there was a connection to the Fates but wasn't really sure. I mentioned the Dan Sullivan connection - Rep. Lynn had been in the confirmation hearings - and he thought, well, maybe that was it. He wasn't sure.
I called the Miller headquarters on Northern Lights, but I was told no one there had been to the Sunday event and they didn't know. They recommended I call Fred Dyson.
I left a message on Dyson's answering machine and followed up with an email. [Update Oct. 20, 9:30am: Dyson's office called this morning and when I said I'd gotten the answer, the woman said 'good' and hung up before I could ask anything more.][Update later Wednesday: Email from Fred Dyson said he confused Sullivan and Miller and thought Miller hadn't corrected him so as not to embarrass him.]
I called another legislator who didn't know, but suggested I call Dr. Fate in Fairbanks.
Joe Miller
When I explained to Dr. Fate why I was calling he laughed and said that Sen. Dyson was confused. No, he was not related to Joe Miller in any way. In fact he'd asked Dyson whether Miller had refuted him. (Fate had gotten calls about this immediately after the meeting.) He asked me if I'd been there and if I'd heard any refutation. I told him I hadn't heard any correction.
Dr. Hugh "Bud" Fate
Dr. Fate said he was well known in the state, particularly in Fairbanks, and he was a little miffed that Miller hadn't corrected the record about Miller's relationship with Fate. He made it clear that there was no connection between himself and Joe Miller.
I asked if he was supporting Miller. He said he'd just made up his mind that he is voting for Lisa Murkowski.
So, I'm wondering if Fred Dyson is changing his assessment since Joe Miller hasn't, in fact, been vetted by Dr. Fate. Miller just let the folks at Central Middle School think he was Fate's son-in-law without correcting the record. Or maybe he hadn't been listening to Dyson.
There may be a good explanation for this - like for the East German comments and for having a posse to handcuff aggressive reporters. But it also might explain why Miller doesn't want people looking at his Fairbanks personnel files.
Basically the story, based on review of Miller's campaign disclosure information, says that he's valued his Fairbanks office, which he owns, at $50,000 to $100,000. He also pays himself rent for the same amount according to the disclosure forms (posted at the link.) But, Fairbanks assesses the value of the office at only about $25,000.
He also lists his income as an attorney at about $59,000. So, after paying rent of $50,000, his earned income would only be $9,000. So, by paying himself rent higher than the value of buying the property outright, the post suggests that he's moving his income from earned income subject to payroll tax to unearned income, not subject to that tax.
We'll see how this turns out. But it shows the power of blogs. Lots of people give each other ideas and can check on lots of things AND they have a place to put their thoughts where others can see them and follow up. Not like the old days when if it didn't get into the daily newspaper or tv news, there weren't any outlets to get the news out.
Most of what I post here has a relatively small audience, maybe 300 hits a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. But the post with audio of Alaska US Senate candidate Joe Miller's using East Germany as a model of how a border can be secured has gotten a lot more attention. Today, so far, there have been 2,500 hits from links all over the place. Not much compared to some of my fellow Alaskan bloggers, but a lot for this modest platform.
This one at Der Spiegel is my favorite. After all, they know more about the East and West German border than most of the others.
Tea-Party-Bewegung
US-Republikaner nimmt Berliner Mauer als Vorbild
Joe Miller before Sunday talk at Central Middle School
Joe Miller: "Wenn Ostdeutschland das konnte, dann können wir das auch."
Mit der Berliner Mauer gegen Flüchtlinge aus Mexiko: Joe Miller, erzkonservativer Senatskandidat der Tea-Party-Bewegung in Alaska, hat die Grenzbefestigung der ehemaligen DDR gelobt.
Washington - Sarah Palin behauptete einst, sie könne von Alaska aus Russland sehen. Wie sehr der eiserne Vorhang in dem US-Bundesstaat noch eine Rolle spielt, hat jetzt der Senatskandidat der US-Republikaner gezeigt. Joe Miller, ebenso wie Palin der Tea-Party-Bewegung zugehörig, lobte die Berliner Mauer als Vorbild für die Abwehr illegaler Einwanderer in den USA. Die DDR habe ihre Grenze wirksam gegen Übertritte gesichert, sagte Miller auf einer Wahlkampfkundgebung in Alaska, von der am Dienstag ein Audiomitschnitt im Internet veröffentlicht wurden.
With Tony Hopfinger free on bail and my audio/visual of the Joe Miller's East German border comments posted AND the sun showing through the window, we thought we should get out of town a bit. We heard through family connections of a great spot - a place we'd never been or even knew about, so we headed south down the Seward Highway toward Portage. We'd checked on the tunnel schedule (to Whittier on the half hour and back on the hour, with a 15 minute window in each direction.)
We headed down the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm.
Then the cutoff to Portage Glacier.
Getting near the tunnel to Whittier and there's still plenty of blue sky.
Portage Pass Trailhead
As you come out of the tunnel toward 'downtown' Whittier, there's a road to your right at the end of the airport runway (on your left). That goes to the trailhead.
We encountered some berry colored bear scat right away.
It's a 750 foot climb. Not a lot compared to a lot of the hikes in Southcentral. But it pretty much just keeps going up. I figure that's like climbing 75 stories. But the view of Prince William Sound got better and better, even on this now, mostly cloudy day.
Now we're almost at the viewpoint.
There were three guys and two dogs there ahead of us.
Here's the view from the viewpoint. And the photo is pretty lame. Between the clouds, the white of the glacier, and shooting into the sun, it was hard to get decent lighting. The view was spectacular. And what you see is not what you see from the visitors' center. This part of the glacier is still down in the water.
I went to the Joe Miller town hall this afternoon at Central Middle School. It was an interesting session, about 175 people, and I was impressed with how courteous, for the most part, the audience was with several questions from people who were clearly not Miller supporters.
Most of what he said, he's said before. I'll try to post more on this later. But the comment that caught my attention most was one he made was in response to a question on illegal immigration.
Miller replied: "The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . . East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could."
Back in 1887, Woodrow Wilson published what many claim to be the seminal article on the field of public administration. He argued in it that we should borrow the civil service systems of Europe. But he knew there was a strong anti-Europe sentiment, so he made several references to being able to borrow good ideas from countries without also taking their negative features.
"We borrowed rice, but we do not eat it with chopsticks."
And, "If we see a murderous fellow sharpening a knife cleverly, I can borrow his way of sharpening the knife without borrowing his probable intention to commit murder with it . . ."
I'm not sure Wilson is one of Joe Miller's heroes. And despite Wilson's reassurances, I would hope Miller could come up with a better role model than East Germany. Their guards' orders were shoot to kill.
[Note: I've cut out some after the question because it was about getting out to vote, not answering the question.]
And I have to admit that when I told my neighbor, who has a McAdams sign up, his response was to build a fence too. For the record, Wikipedia reports the East German border fence at 1,381 kilometres (858 miles) long and it ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia. That doesn't include the Berlin wall since Berlin is well inside East Germany.
The US border with Mexico, again according to Wikipedia is 3,169 km (1,969 miles).
A fence along the border might slow things down a bit, but it won't stop illegal immigration. We need to help Mexico build its economy so coming to the US isn't necessary for a decent life. As it it, people risk their lives to get to the US and that won't stop with a border fence. And it's not like we don't have a role in Mexico's problems. Their horrendous drug wars result from our appetite for illegal drugs.
Besides, I'm not sure that the costs of staffing a 2,000 mile border tightly enough to keep out illegal aliens wouldn't come to more than the costs the US bears now - which we don't really know - for schooling and health of illegal aliens. But maybe we could hire cheap labor from Mexico to make it affordable. Besides, Miller also makes reducing the deficit his main priority. Building and staffing such a border isn't going to help there.
It's a long way from the Statue of Liberty as the symbol of the United States to an East German style barbed wire fence with mined no-man's land, guard towers, machine guns, and German shepherds. I know what that looked like. When I was a student in Göttingen, Germany, the border was just a few miles east of where I lived and we rode out there now and then. It wasn't pretty. But it certainly cut down the flow of people escaping to the West.
Think about people trying to argue that the earth is round 500 years ago. "But if the earth were round, people on the bottom would fall off." Actually, that makes a lot more sense than the SUV/Ice age argument. But for someone who is already skeptical about 'intellectuals' this probably proves that global warming isn't human caused.
Today, Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck brought on a representative from the group to tout Cornwall’s new DVD, “Resisting the Green Dragon,” which claims the climate change movement is a “false religion,” and a nefarious conspiracy to empower eugenicists and create a “global government.” The DVD, which Cornwall is distributing to evangelical churches around the country, seems to be designed perfectly for Beck’s world view, and unsurprisingly, the Cornwall guest and Beck exchanged bizarre conspiracy theories.
Fortunately, ThinkProgress has been doing its homework and is able to link Cornwall with a Global Warming Denial website, CFACT.
CFACT is a gimmicky right-wing organization that does everything it can to try to discredit the science underpinning climate change. For instance, staffers from the group traveled to the Copenhagen conference on climate change to stage silly press conferences with Rush Limbaugh’s former producer and stunts aimed at mocking Greenpeace.
But who is the “driving force” behind CFACT? According to disclosures, CFACT is funded by at least $542,000 from ExxonMobil, $60,500 from Chevron, and $1,280,000 from Scaife family foundations, which are rooted in wealth from Gulf Oil and steel interests.
Think Progress then links CFACT to the Cornwall Alliance that produced the video introduced on the Glenn Beck Show.
CFACT and the Cornwall Alliance, according to disclosures filed with the Washington State Secretary of State’s office, share a common fundraising firm, ClearWord Communications Group. ClearWord has helped raise millions of dollars not only for CFACT and Cornwall, but also for infamous polluter front groups like FreedomWorks, the Institute for Energy Research, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Last year, Cornwall produced a video with former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) attacking clean energy legislation as part of a campaign by the ExxonMobil-funded “American Energy Freedom Center.”
Winning for many is more important than the truth. Figuring out sincerity, especially for the marginally educated, isn't easy. One clue is the level of transparency. How easy is it to find out who is behind all this? Even the Alaska legislature - both Republicans as well as Democrats saw the need to require disclosure for 'Independent Expenditures' after the Supreme Court's Citizens United case. When the funding sources are hidden, even lied about, then our crap detectors should light up.
ThinkProgress relates that they got denials about linkages between these organizations.
In a call to the Cornwall Alliance’s media office, spokesman Quena Gonzalez said Cornwall has no relationship to CFACT and said CFACT President Rothbard has no official capacity with his group. Gonzalez said that in “several years of working” at Cornwall, he had never heard any questions about working with CFACT, and instructed ThinkProgress to contact Calvin Beisner, the national representative for Cornwall. Beisner is a board member of CFACT.
Rothbard had a central role in sparking the founding of Cornwall and is currently a partner with Chris Rogers, the man who runs Cornwall and CDR Communications. Nevertheless, under his capacity as CFACT President, Rothbard’s anti-Greenpeace publicity stunts are reported regularly on the Cornwall blog as breaking news, without any acknowledgement of Rothbard’s relationship with Cornwall.
Gonzalez also said he had never heard of CDR Communications. But according to his own LinkedIn profile, Gonzalez works for CDR Communications as the “Director for Religion and the Environment” at the firm. ThinkProgress contacted Chris Rogers on Monday, who contradicted Gonzalez and said his firm CDR Communications provides “support” for Cornwall but did not clarify.
It appears that Cornwall attempts to carefully hide its backers. Not only did Gonzalez refuse to provide much information, but Cornwall’s website is registered with a special service to hide the identity of the person or group who purchased the domain address.
This sort of work by ThinkProgress gives me hope about the power of blogs, but also concern that this power is likely to attract attempts to make access to the Internet for bloggers and readers more difficult in the future. I'm sure there are those who are busily plotting ways to restrict this ability of anyone to publish to the world.
By the way, Alaskans will be pleased to know that we too aren't without connections to this world. Last year at least one of our state legislators, Carl Gatto, Republican from the Valley, and running unopposed for reelection, received $2,249.68from the Heartland Institute to attend their 2009 climate change conference in his hometown New York City.
The mission of The Heartland Institute is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.
They strongly oppose government efforts to combat global warming. And their website embraces the Tea Party Movement. I can't find any direct links between CFACT Sourcewatch cites Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets claiming Heartland received $675,500 from Exxon between 1998 and 2006.
But today there was a new twist, which got past the spam filters, even though the linked names of the commenters were Nail Fungus Cure and Impotence Pills. When I saw the email the names instantly aroused my suspicions, but the comments were very relevant to the post. And also familiar. Familiar because they simply copied previous comments on that post. 
