Too Much Media Is Addicted To Trump Tweets

Trump's tweets are just irresistible to way too many political reporters.  They just can't stay away, they just can't resist commenting.

There is a certain obligation to challenge his falsehoods and to give context to what he writes.  He is the president after all.  But I had a student once in a 6th grade class who really had no friends.  He wanted attention.  He didn't know how to get good attention;  bad attention was better than being ignored.  So he hit people, and worse.  I had a year to show him that he could get good attention.  It worked.

I challenge all political writers to ignore Trump's tweets for a week.  At least don't write about them, at all.  Turn off Twitter and only check your phone if it's a call from someone on a real, serious story.

Spend more time listening to the birds tweeting.    Make your own music.  Play with your kids.  The world won't collapse if you goof off a bit for a week.  Even if all of you do.  Enjoy visitors to your home, like I did with this hairy woodpecker the other day.  Look at how exquisite he is.  Even if he was tapping on my house.

Let your mind think about how the world works.  Like why don't woodpeckers get brain damage?  One of my favorite old posts.

British Virgin Islands After Irma

There's not much to add:

On Rosh Hashanah It is Written, On Yom Kippur It Is Sealed

According to Jewish tradition, the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are supposed to consider all the transgressions they have committed, large and small, and atone for them and hope for forgiveness.  From God for transgressions against God, and from people for transgressions against people.  So we have these ten days or so, to atone and hope that our names are get onto the more positive lists before the lists are sealed.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many will pass and how many will be created?
Who will live and who will die?
Who in their time, and who not their time?
Who by fire and who by water?
Who by sword and who by beast?
Who by hunger and who by thirst?
Who by earthquake and who by drowning?
Who by strangling and who by stoning?
Who will rest and who will wander?
Who will be safe and who will be torn?
Who will be calm and who will be tormented?
Who will become poor and who will get rich?
Who will be made humble and who will be raised up?
But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (return and prayer and righteous acts)
deflect the evil of the decree. [from Tablet]

Whether one believes this literally or figuratively, I think it is good to spend time, at least annually, to think back on your morality.

Services begin tonight, the eve of Yom Kippur, and we begin fasting from sunset to sunset.  Wishing everyone a happy new year, 5778.

When Will Corporations Get The Right To Vote?

I was talking to a friend who's active in the Move to Amend group.  They're working on getting support from the Anchorage Assembly and others to support a Constitutional Amendment already in Congress that would define the word 'people' in the Constitution as referring to individual humans, NOT corporations.  Here's the whole amendment:

House Joint Resolution 48 introduced January 30, 2017
Click here for most up to date list of co-sponsors

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

The key arguments I've heard against this motion is that there are some situations where corporations should have rights that the constitution protects - like free speech.  The response I hear from supporters of the amendments that individual states that set up the laws for corporations can legislate those rights (like lobbying Congress, etc.).

The genesis of the amendment was the Supreme Court case Citizens United which upturned campaign finance laws and allowed corporations and others to contribute huge sums of money.

But you're better off checking their arguments on their website.   There are other attempts to counter act Citizens United.  

Is Corporate Voting Next?

So as I was thinking about this, I thought well, perhaps the corporations, since they are now considered persons, will be asking for the right to vote.  They already have lots of shell corporations for this and that.  Just think how many they could create if there were a tight election.  Would the corporation have to be 18 years old or older?  

Vietnam, Alabama, Puerto Rico, NFL And Rape - We're With Alice In Wonderland

Just some running thoughts.

Ken Burns' Vietnam series is sponsored by David Koch and Bank of America among others.

Watching planes and helicopters fly into makeshift landing zones in the Vietnam series made me scratch my head when NPR reported that planes couldn't land in Puerto Rico because there was no electricity or navigation.  People have forgotten that navigation is nice, but not necessary in emergency situations.

But then Puerto Rico's 3+ million American citizens can't vote for president and their congress member doesn't have a real vote.  And you thought voter suppression was bad in Texas.  Maybe they should establish residency in Alabama, so they can vote  for Doug Jones for US Senate against the new Republican Senatorial Candidate Roy Moore.  You know, the guy who's been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court because of his insistence on putting up a Ten Commandments sculpture in the Supreme Court.  Go to the link, this guy got support from Bannon and Palin for a reason.  He's way out there.

Blacks make up 25% of the Alabama population.  But restrictions on voting are a serious obstacle.  If you've been convicted of a crime, and blacks are much more likely to be in Alabama than whites, it's hard to recover your vote.  A Mother Jones article says a new law loosens that, but convicted felons are still barred forever.  The article says about 15% of black voters are affected by these laws.  So with an influx of Puerto Rican voters, maybe Doug Jones could win.  The election's in December so there isn't much time for Puerto Ricans to get their residency.

Then there's football.  People kneel when they pray to God, but if they kneel when the national anthem is played that's bad.  Because they are equating the flag and anthem with God?  That doesn't seem to be the logic.  But, in his Jabberwocky way, Trump is trying to change the debate from killing of blacks to honoring the flag.  Distinguishing between symbols of a false reality of America's justice for all and the harsh reality of rampant white supremacy is hard for most Americans.

Just as the Vietnam series is showing us how killing innocent civilians was  seen as ok to get better body counts,  to show we were winning when we weren't, Americans still believe that killing innocent black American citizens is ok, because - well I guess, you can't tell the good ones from the bad, like with the Vietnamese.

Betsy Devos is showing us the real values, by changing Title IX so that innocent men don't get besmirched by wrongful accusations of rape or sexual harassment.  Yes, that's not good, but it's not as bad as being raped. ["Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes."] and it's very difficult to get justice.  But we protecting men from being falsely accused of such crimes is more important.  As I say, Alice in Wonderland, we're there.  Just like it's better to be outraged that black men don't stand up for the anthem, than be outraged over innocent blacks being killed by police.

Terms I Didn't Know

The Glomar Response - from a tweet -

"Leopold's trying to up the bar now that everyone is getting Glomars."

In response to an image of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was completely redacted.

The story at Unredacted about the history of the Glomar Response is fascinating.  CIA told a FOIA requester that it could

 “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of  “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles”

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Revanche

"It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Trump’s genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the other."  From Ta-Nejosi Coats, "The First White President" in The Atlantic.

From Merriam Webster:

"Definition of revanche
:revenge; especially: a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status"

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Eldritch

Also from the Ta-Nehisi Coats article:

"To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies." 

From Wikipedia:

"Eldritch is an English word used to describe something as otherworldly, weird, ghostly, or uncanny.
Eldritch may refer to:
Andrew Eldritch (born 1959), singer, songwriter
Eldritch (band), an Italian heavy metal band
Eldritch Wizardry, a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game supplement
Eldritch (video game), a video game for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based on the Cthulhu Mythos
Eldritch Moon, an expansion from the Magic the Gathering card game
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a 1965 science fiction novel by US writer Philip K. Dick" 

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Topoi (plural of typos)

From a review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam  in the Mekong Review:

"The even-handedness, the flag-draped history, bittersweet narrative, redemptive homecomings and the urge toward “healing” rather than truth are cinematic topoi that we have come to expect from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through their films about the Civil War, Prohibition, baseball, jazz and other themes in United States history."

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of topos
plural topoi play  \-ˌpȯi\
:a traditional or conventional literary or rhetorical theme or topic 

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I heard today that Twitter is going from 140 characters to 280.  That doesn't sound like a good idea.  As one tweeter responded:  140 characters was my best editor ever.   These terms have been building up as a draft post.  I think four are enough for most people, so I'll quit here.

Cautious Optimism on Upcoming Supreme Court Gerrymandering Case - Gill vs. Whitford

I've mentioned this case before. This post goes through the legal logic for proving gerrymandering.  It's about efficiency and 'wasted votes.'

The case is scheduled before the US Supreme Court October 3.  If the Wisconsin voters who brought this case to the Supreme Court prevail, it would go a long way to curb the egregious gerrymandering that went on in Wisconsin.  Here's an excerpt from a LA Times piece on this case.

"Several crucial factors have aligned to make judicial action both relatively easy and absolutely necessary.
To start, the Wisconsin voters who brought the case aren’t asking the court to rule on everything that’s problematic about the ways our districts are created and our legislatures operate. They simply want the court to determine if Wisconsin’s General Assembly map — a textbook example of extreme gerrymandering — is beyond the constitutional pale. (Of course, a ruling against Wisconsin would have ramifications for extreme gerrymanders elsewhere in the country.)"

Click the link to see the whole article.

The article does mention some bi-partisan support for the bill.  I'd add that given how extreme gerrymandering has made life difficult for traditional/moderate Republicans to win primaries, it may well be that such Republicans are supporting the Wisconsin voters against the state in this case.


A Crime Without Consequences for the Perpetrators?

 However, this doesn't address the issue of when there is election fraud - via gerrymandering, voter suppression, or other means used to help one party win an unfair number of seats - there really is no remedy for the harm they do.  The courts have found Texas and North Carolina to have illegally manipulated their districts after the 2010 census.  But what's the downside for those who committed these acts?  I haven't heard of anyone going to prison and all the legislation passed by the legislatures that were packed with (in these cases) Republicans, still stands.

So there are plenty of incentives to cheat and none that I can see to not cheat.  Perhaps prison sentences and nullification of legislation passed by illegally created legislatures might help, though nullification would probably prove chaotic.  But this is a topic we need to begin discussing.

Of course, whenever I write something like "I haven't heard of (anyone going to prison) . . ." I realize I need to look and see if there are examples.  This Huffington Post article talks about Let America Vote, an organization fighting voter suppression.  Their form of punishment, based on the article, would appear to be by voting them out of office, not prison.  I realize that prison for legislators doing their jobs as legislators is a double edged sword, but when they are plotting to restrict voters from voting, that seems to be a very serious violation of American democracy.

You can check out Let America Vote here.

Getting Into the Woods And Marsh - Swans Fueling Up At Potter Marsh And Eagles

It wasn't raining any more and I needed to get out.  So we headed to McHugh Creek and did a short uphill hike.  I hadn't been there since last summer's fire.  There are signs of the fire, but a lot of stuff is growing back vigorously.

I think this might be an oyster mushroom, but I'm not sure.  My mushroom book* says

"On many deciduous trees, especially willow and aspen."

View from the trail, looking out at Turnagain arm, with Kenai Peninsula on the other side of the inlet.
Luckily, as you can see, we got a fair amount of blue sky and sunshine.

Then back to Potter Marsh where we'd seen lots of swans as we drove by on the way.

They spent most of their time with their heads under water and it took a while to get a picture with both their heads above water at the same time.

I'm pretty confident these are trumpeter swans.

I counted 15 that I could see all at once and be reasonably sure I wasn't double counting.  Seven in the picture above.

Then to the boardwalk, where I got this fall view of the marsh.

Walking on the boardwalk, I notice a dozen or so ducks suddenly take flight, and then this bald eagle flew right by me.   If you click on the image below, you can also see one of the ducks in the air.  It's on the left side, just under the blurred leaf.  The eagle's left wing points at it.

And here's another eagle - or maybe the same one - off in the distance zooming down.  It's the Y shaped thing just about in the middle of the picture.  Again, click on the picture to enlarge and focus.

*The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms

Been Raining, Creek's Rising, But Nothing Serious

Took advantage of a long break in the rain as well as in my lethargy to get on the bike and move my legs.  The rain's made an obvious difference on Campbell Creek.

Last time I looked, that picnic table was on gravel.  (This is near Campbell Creek park.)

I went on.



There was a bit a blue sky reflected in a puddle on the bike trail.















And when I got near the State Troopers Headquarters, I saw the only white stuff near the mountain tops was cloud.   It's September 23, and no termination dust so far.

Then up the new bike trail along Campbell Airstrip Road.  You can see a greener version of this spot about a month ago here.

I figured the bridge at the Campbell Airstrip trailhead would be a good place to turn around.  That gives me about 9 miles round trip.

Here is today's picture on top of one 11 days ago.  I wanted to compare the water levels.  If you click on the image, it will enlarge and sharpen and if you look carefully you can see differences in the water level.  But nothing like the picnic table.





Here's looking to the west from the bridge.  On this one the water level is more apparent.  The gravel bank is now an island, and there's white water along the left bank.  Again, clicking on it will enlarge it.









On the way home, I stopped on the viewing platform that just reopened a couple of weeks ago.  There's a little stream of water coming in from the east.  There's a much bigger one coming from the west (the creek flows basically east to west but has various loops.)


I'm not quite sure what I thought the many other times I've been at this spot.  Maybe it was the bright yellow/orange of the birch tree, but I focused on this little water way coming in from the left (east).  I wondered how Campbell Creek had gotten so small.


Then I looked right (west) to see the much larger flow of water.  I think I'd always thought this was a loop in the creek, but both bodies of water were flowing toward the platform and the little one essentially joined the bigger one.  Were these two different creeks?


Humility is a good trait.  All these years and I never even thought about this.






So when I got home I checked the maps.












The red is the reduced sized platform (see this post) with the boardwalk from the bike trail.  You can see clearly from the map the one from the east is the North Fork of Campbell Creek and the one from the west is the South Fork.  Unless you go out onto the platform, you never see the North Fork join the South Fork.






Below is a map of the Campbell Airstrip road a few miles east of the top map.  We still have both the north and south branches of the creek.  The bridge I took the pictures (above) from is the red rectangle going over the south fork.  The bike trail ends at the turnout for the Campbell Airstrip trailhead.  The new bike trail ends just before the bridge over the north fork of the creek.  I took that bridge picture for the post about the new bike trail.  The pics are there just to help anyone who's trying to connect the pictures and the location.

Click on image to enlarge

By-Lines Alaska Dispatch Readers Won't See Anymore At The ADN [UPDATED AGAIN]

[UPDATE 9/24/17:  Charles Wohlforth has filled in a lot more information in his column this morning at the ADN - personal comments on colleagues he's worked with.]

The Alaska Dispatch News had a story Thursday (Sept 21, 2017) about layoffs at their newspaper.  We all know that the paper has been going through bankruptcy and is struggling to survive and that the new owners are trying to keep it going.  So, we were expecting some cuts and that hard decisions would have to be made - as the article says.

Two things struck me about the article:

1.  The new owners wouldn't say how many people were let go

A "significant" number of employees have been laid off at Alaska Dispatch News as part of a restructuring under the company's new owners.
Every department in the company — the newsroom, advertising, circulation, production and finance — was affected. The job reductions began last week and continued through Wednesday. Layoffs in the newsroom included editors, reporters and others.
"It's a significant change in the size of the newspaper," said Ryan Binkley, one of the new owners of ADN. He would not say how many people in total were let go.

The Binkley family, who bought the ADN, are more experienced in business than running newspapers so I understand going with their business instincts to keep things close to the vest.  But newspapers report on other businesses all the time and when there are layoffs, they push for a number or at least a percentage of people being laid off.  It's a matter of public interest to know how something like this is going to affect the local economy.  Newspapers should be models of transparency.  After all, other companies can now point to the ADN example when they decline to give ADN reporters this sort of information.

And how much is a reporter going to push her new boss to get more information, especially when the boss has just laid off a 'significant number' of her colleagues.  She doesn't want to get to the point where he says, "I told you 'no' now back off or I'll add you to the list."

Binkleys:  Bite the bullet and be good newspaper owners and set the example for other companies that your paper will be covering.  The information is going to come out eventually anyway - especially if you are a media organization.



2.  They didn't tell us which reporters', photographers' and others' by-lines we won't see any more were.

Publishing the names of people laid off may be a sensitive issue.  Shouldn't the employees involved have the right to let people know on their own terms?  Generally, I'd agree.  But in this case, we're talking about people whose names appear on by-lines every day in the newspaper (and, of course, online.)

Should readers just start guessing when names stop appearing?  "Oh, maybe this guy got laid off."

So, when I got a chance to talk to someone who worked at the ADN yesterday, I asked.  The person gave me a list of names, including some involved in less visible positions, like copy editors.  I didn't post yesterday because I wanted to get confirmation from another source.  I did that today.  For all but two of the names.  I got through to one, who confirmed, but not the other.  But he had on his Twitter account that he was a "former reporter."  I was told that Lisa Demer has posted on her Facebook account (not her public one so I couldn't confirm it) that a total of 17 were let go. [UPDATED 9/22/17 5pm - Lisa let me see her post.  In part (she goes on to pay tribute to all the people who were laid off) she wrote:

"One-third of the newsroom was cut — 17 newsroom positions gone — and the rest of ADN experienced something similar."

So here's a list of some of the people I know about, whose work appeared regularly in the ADN, some very prominently and frequently, others not so much.  I'm leaving out copy editors and advertising people who aren't directly responsible for telling us what is happening in our state. I must acknowledge though, that while their names aren't common knowledge, copy editors certainly influence how we see and read the stories.

Below is a list of people who work(ed) for the ADN.  You might have noticed these lists aren't showing up in current editions of the ADN in print or online.  I was able to find an old one online.  (It says 2012 and updated 2016, scroll down past the gibberish.) Then I went through ADN online bylines to get as many current folks as I could.  If you click on someone's by-line you get all their articles and a brief description of the reporter.  That's where I got my descriptions.  I put the folks laid off on top and bolded their names.

I'm also putting up the whole list (that I could gather, I may have missed some people) so you have a sense of the large impact of the layoffs.  These are the people whose names appear on articles or photos or illustrations only.

Those Laid Off:  

*Rich Mauer - Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and more recently a news editor [Updated: Sorry, I lost this name as I was reformatting the original list.]

*Columnist Dermot Cole, who lives in Fairbanks, has been a reporter, editor and author. For 40 years, he has written extensively about Alaska politics and history. 

*Yereth Rosen has been a journalist in Alaska since 1987. For most of that time, she was the sole Alaska-based reporter for Reuters. She has been reporting on energy issues, the environment, politics and all things Alaska  from oil spills to sled-dog races. She enjoys running, skiing and other outdoors pursuits. She lives in Anchorage with her family. 

*Erik Hill has been with ADN since December of 1984. Before that, he worked at The Kansas City Star following stops in Jacksonville, Florida, and Charleston, West Virginia. Originally from Oregon, Hill earned degrees at Stanford University and Ohio University. Memorable assignments have included the Exxon Valdez oil spill and several Iditarods. 

*Pamela Dunlap-Shohl - [couldn't find her description, but she does most of the charts that graphically help tell the stories hidden in numbers.]  

[UPDATE Sept 25, 2017 - I'm told now that Bob Hallinan was NOT laid off so I'm moving him down to the other list]  *Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state. 

*Jerzy Shedlock is a reporter. A graduate of the University of Alaska Anchorage, he worked at the Peninsula Clarion before coming to Alaska Dispatch News. [I couldn't get a second confirmation on this one, but his twitter account says "former reporter."] 

*Rugile Kaladyte is a visual journalist for Alaska Dispatch News. 

*Doyle Woody grew up in East Anchorage and is in his fourth decade at the ADN. He's been covering hockey since the Ice Age 

*Jeannette Lee Falsey joined Alaska Dispatch News as a business reporter in 2015. She has worked as a staff writer for The Associated Press and as a researcher for the federal government's Alaska gasline office in Anchorage and Washington, D.C..

Some of these folks were getting ready to retire.  I know that one volunteered to be laid off.  But most were not ready and I wish them a gentle landing and hope that the jolt ignites lots of new opportunities and ways of telling the stories they tell.


People Who Apparently Are Still On the ADN Staff 

Alex DeMarban is a longtime Alaska journalist who covers the oil and gas industries and general assignments for Alaska Dispatch News 

Michelle Theriault Boots is a reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. 

Marc Lester is a multimedia journalist for Alaska Dispatch News. 

Charles Wohlforth's column appears three times weekly. A lifelong Anchorage resident, he is the author of more than 10 books, and hosts radio shows on Alaska Public Media. More at wohlforth.com. 

Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. 

Erica Martinson is Alaska Dispatch News' Washington, DC reporter, and she covers the legislation, regulation and litigation that impact the Last Frontier. Erica came to ADN after years as a reporter covering energy at POLITICO. Before that, she covered environmental policy at a DC trade publication.    

[UPDATE Sept 25 - told today that Bob was not laid off so moving him down to this list.  Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state. ]

Annie Zak covers business and general assignments for Alaska Dispatch News. She previously wrote for the Puget Sound Business Journal and the Orange County Register. 

Tegan Hanlon covers education and general assignments. She also covered the 2016 and 2017 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Reach her at 907-257-4589 or Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state.thanlon@alaskadispatch.com. 

Devin Kelly covers Anchorage city government and general assignments. 

Beth Bragg is Alaska Dispatch News sports editor. 

Zaz Hollander is based in Wasilla and covers the Mat-Su region for the ADN. 

Lisa Demer is based in Bethel and covers rural Alaska stories. She has been a reporter more than three decades. Reach her at 907-543-3555. 

Nathaniel Herz covers politics and general assignments. 

Kelsey Lindsey is a 2017 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is covering Arctic-related issues as part of an Alaska Dispatch News-Columbia fellowship. 

Laurel Andrews was born in Bethel and grew up in Fairbanks. She covers cannabis and general assignments. Reach her at laurel@alaskadispatch.com or 907-257-4382. 

Stephan Wiebe writes about all things Alaska sports.