How Social Media Allow Fringe Candidate To Get An Audience - Andrew Yang In San Francisco

I don't even know who Andrew Yang is.  I'll look him up in a second.  But below is a video of him giving a talk on the street with a Twitter transcript/commentary.  (Double click on the Tweet to see the whole thread.)

By popular demand, #YangGang #Yang2020 event in SF https://t.co/0r41OkGF3N

— 🤖 Sonya Mann 🎀 (@sonyaellenmann) March 16, 2019

Here's a long interview with Yang which he begins by talking about universal basic income and cites Alaska as an example of it working. I hope our current fight over the PFD doesn't "prove" to people that this idea won't work. Though it sure shows us that some people only think immediate, short term, and 'that's my money, not the state's." But that's another discussion.







What I like about all these young Democratic presidential candidates is that they are bringing to the table important ideas that the older, politically conservative (and by that I don't mean ideologically, but rather people not willing to take risks, people who only back ideas after they look at the polls) have kept off the agenda.

[As I listen to the rest of this two hour video, he talks about the places Trump won are the places that jobs got replaced by robots.  Then he said he went to Washington and started talking to politicians about this and they said, "We can't talk about that."  about 49 minutes in.]

Elizabeth Warren's pushing breaking up the tech industry.  Kamala Harris is talking about reparations for African-Americans in the sense of help dealing with generational trauma.  Beto O'Rourke champions immigrants as necessary to the prosperity and vibrance of the US  ("El Paso has been the safest city in America, not despite immigrants, but because of immigrants.").  Jay Inslee is focused on Climate Change.   You get the point.   Let's get these issues out there so the American people start seriously talking about other options.

And let's hope the candidates continue to care more about making this a much better country and world, than they care about who is ultimately in the White House.  Let's hope they stay positive and see themselves as a team, and may the best candidate be their leader from the White House.

One last note:  This is not an endorsement of Yang or any other candidate.  I like the ideas they are all raising.  As we get to know them better, we'll find out more about their strengths and weaknesses.  But I'm pushing them to all work together as a team.

US House Votes 420 - 0 For Transparency. Sen. Graham Blocks Bill In Senate

From Intelligencer:

"Democrats passed a House resolution 420 to zero in support of releasing the [Mueller Report] to the public, serving as a gesture to pressure William Barr into showing as much of the report as possible. In the afternoon, Graham promptly shut down the symbolic gesture, blocking Chuck Schumer’s request to pass the House resolution. Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went a step further, requesting that AG William Barr should appoint a second special counsel to investigate “misconduct” in the Department of Justice over the handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the government surveillance of Trump campaign staffer Carter Page."

Look for Hillary Clinton's emails to be part of the 2020 Republican platform.


Here's an assignment for the writing class today:   Bring to life the backstory to Graham's action.

Emails Bloggers Get

Here's a bit of behind the scenes blog stuff.

"Hi Steve,
I came across your site while looking for resources for our next blog and I knew I had to reach out immediately, kudos on a fantastic blog. My name is Vincent, and I'm reaching out on behalf a leading construction industry supplier who operates in the same marketplace as Travis Perkins.
This month, we're looking to secure sponsorship placements with five prominent blogs and your site jumped straight to the top of our list. Would you also be willing to accept link placements on pre-existing content on your site?
Please let me know if this is something you're interested in discussing further.
Kind regards,
Vincent"

I get stuff like this now and again.  Despite the personal touches and "five prominent blogs" I know these go out to hundreds or thousands of blogs.  This one at least takes the step of finding out and using my name.

The fact that I don't have  ads - perhaps that is attractive to someone that just wants links.  Notice there is no offer of payment, but they do offer to put links to my site.

Rest assured, readers, my only interest in stuff like this is as a reporter.  I'm always curious about who does this, what they expect to get, whether they get what they expect, and the mechanics of how they identify blogs to contact.

Should I get an offer for something that I think would be of interest to my readers, I would make it very clear to the readers why it was posted, where it came from, and what, if anything, I was offered in exchange.

Here's another one from this week:

"Good Morning,
I have been sober for 2 years and I am passionate about sharing my story, as a mom in recovery, through writing and reaching out to other websites looking to do the same. I have become super passionate about spreading awareness on addiction by collaborating with new organizations/blog publications, sharing my experience, strength, and hope. I also have an archive of informative/interactive guides and resources that would educate and interest your audience.
I would love the opportunity to contribute to your site with a personal story or any topic relating to addiction/recovery. If possible I'd like to post your link on my site as well. Feel free to message me with any questions, I look forward to hearing from you!
Have a great day!
Tricia Moceo"

You'll note that this is a completely generic email.  She hasn't even taken the time to get my name.  Nevertheless, I did google her and found a few posts.

One phrase struck me:  "I’d indulge in books."  Wow, I never thought of reading as indulging.  I guess there are some genres where reading could be seen as indulging.  I emailed her on Dec. 14 to ask her to explain what she meant.  And she did.  Quickly.

"Thanks for taking the time to read over some of my work. I didn't particularly intend to convey a negative connotation with that statement. The context was more of an example of the progression and how my addictive nature was present long before I ever picked up a drink or drug. For as long as I can remember, oblivion was my solution. To escape reality, I would read book after book. I got lost in the plot, completely disassociating from the world I was living in. Furthermore, the same desired effect that I got from reading and escaping... I also got from drugs and alcohol."

And yet another - this one has sent me three messages now:

12/18/2018 11:18PM 

Hi Steve,
I reached out last week but haven't heard back so I wanted to try one last time. Is there an opportunity to sponsor a post on your site?
Please see my initial email below.
Best wishes,
Vincent 

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 8:20 AM, Vincent Greene <xxxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Steve,
I reached out last week but haven't heard back. I wanted to see if there was an opportunity to sponsor a post on your site.
Please see my initial email below.
Best wishes,
Vincent 

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 8:22 AM, Vincent Greene <xxxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
I came across your site while looking for resources for our next blog and I knew I had to reach out immediately, kudos on a fantastic blog. My name is Vincent, and I'm reaching out on behalf a leading construction industry supplier who operates in the same marketplace as Travis Perkins.
This month, we're looking to secure sponsorship placements with five prominent blogs and your site jumped straight to the top of our list. Would you also be willing to accept link placements on pre-existing content on your site?
Please let me know if this is something you're interested in discussing further.
Kind regards,
Vincent

Don't want emails from us anymore? Reply to this email with the word "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.

And then there are helpful emails, like this one:

Hello,
I was reading your page and found a broken link referring to the 'Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt' Supreme Court's decision.
Your Page: http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2016/06/
Dead link title: 'click here'
Dead link: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/15-274_p8k0.pdf
image.png
It looks like the document no longer exists, and after browsing for a while, I was able to find the same document in PDF format here:
Working link: http://templatelab.com/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt/
Maybe you could update the link on your page to help other users.
Have a great day,
Anna

I quickly made the updates.  

While Death Penalty Executions Have Gone Down, Police Still Meting Out Death Penalty On The Streets

California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in California.

However, the death penalty is being meted out by police officers around the country.  And while convicted murderers and rapists are spared the death penalty, often innocent citizens are not.

2019
Killed By Police* lists 197 people who have been killed by police in the US this year (and we're only in the middle of March.)

Death Penalty Info lists 3 people killed so far this year as a result of death penalty executions.

2018
The Root tells us 2165 people were killed by police in 2018.
Mapping Police Violence puts the number at 2166 people killed by police in 2018.  They also have a lot of related information and graphics - including comparisons between cities, crime rates, and other factors which show huge differences.
The Washington Post lists only 998 people killed by police in 2018.   (Including 7 in Alaska.)  These are only people shot and killed by police.  The others include all deaths caused by police.

Death Penalty Info lists 25 people dying by state sanctioned death penalty executions in 2018.  (Of that number, 11 are identified as Black or Latino.  13 (more than half) were in Texas.)

	Killed By Police	Killed By Execution
2018	2166	25
2019	197	3

When police shoot and kill 'suspects' - the victim gets no  presumption of innocence, no trial, no jury. No appeal.  And police shooters almost never get prosecuted, let alone convicted.


OK.  Let's acknowledge that police have a difficult job.  They meet most of their 'customers' at some of the worst times in their lives.  They're asked to intervene in crimes being committed, often, by people with guns and other weapons.  They have to make fast decisions.   Most of us don't want to do these jobs.

Chart from PEW Research

Does It Have To Be This Way?

But when we look at the numbers, only a relatively small percent (less than 1/3) of police officers ever report firing their gun while on duty!  From the  Pew Research article (and reflected in the chart):

"To start, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more likely than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and non-veterans to have ever fired their service weapon while on duty. Each relationship is significant after controlling for other factors that could be associated with firing a service weapon." 

The article points out that there is no cause and effect relationship proven between these characteristics.

My main point for using the data is to show that the vast majority of police NEVER even fire their guns in the line of duty.

In a 2000 Associated Press article we get this quote:

"Well over 95 percent never shoot their weapons here," said New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

But we don't know if that's because they aren't ever in situations where they apprehend armed suspects or because they handle those situations differently from officers who do shoot.  (Well maybe someone does, but this study didn't make any such claims.)

But the data do suggest that shooting suspects is NOT necessary in most cases.

Are there ways to reduce the number of police caused deaths?

I would also suggest that officers who do kill suspects are also victims of systems that make that option more likely.  They see innumerable shootings on television, in movies, and in video games they participate in the shootings.  They are nearly all given guns, which makes shooting (rather than other options, like talking, like waiting, like non-lethal weapons) an easy option.  (We tend to use the tools we have to solve most problems.**)  They don't necessarily get adequate training for dealing with the mentally ill.  Internalized racism (again, television and movies play a big part here) will make many if not most officers more likely to assume the worst for suspects of color.  (And officers of color are also the victims of internalized racism so when they are the shooters it's not proof that racism wasn't involved.)

Use of Force Project offers specific systemic actions that reduce deaths by police.  (In this list the wording is reversed - what departments DON"T do that they should.  There's a lot of info on this site, including a long list of police departments (including Anchorage) and which of these these standards they meet.)

1. "Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
2. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
3. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor 
4. Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians"

I think it's important as fewer Americans die because of death penalty executions, to remember that in essence, police who kill suspects are, de facto, applying the death penalty.


Notes:

*Killed By Police lists a cumulative number for 2019 (197), but they don't for 2018.  Each page is a month, and so I looked for other sources rather than try to count each specific death they list.  The sources I used for 2018 did not have (at least I couldn't find) 2019 data.

**I learned about The Law of The Instrument long ago in a research methodology book  It goes something like this:  If you give a a child a hammer, it will find that most things need to be pounded.

After A Week Home, We Finally Visit Alaska

Yes, Anchorage is in Alaska, but I wanted to get out of town a bit, so we drove down to McHugh Creek.  Here here is why I love living here.

It started out a sunny day today, but by late afternoon, it was mostly cloudy.

We Pay More Attention To Stories We Connect With - The Ethiopian Max 8 Plane Crash

The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane taking off from Addis Ababa for Nairobi first caught my attention because long ago, I flew from Addis to Nairobi on an Ethiopian Airlines plane.  It was part of flight from New Delhi that eventually got me to Kampala, Uganda.  (I was taking the long way home from Peace Corps Thailand to visit a friend who was teaching in Uganda.)

And my son-in-law just got back from a trip to Nairobi - though not through Addis.

And I've been thinking about how that long ago adventure caused my brain and body to linger on this story.  Human minds steer  us in so many strange ways.

But later I started wondering about whether Alaska Airlines flies 737 MAX planes.

Alaska Airlines website has a page listing all their aircraft.  They say they have 162 Boeing 737 aircraft, but the pictures they have up of 737s are of 737-900ER, 737-900, 737-800, and 737-700 models only.  No 737 MAX planes.


However, according to Airways Magazine in a Feb 19, 2019 article:

As revealed by RoutesOnline, Alaska Airlines has outlined the start of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 network operations, scheduled to begin in July 2019. . .
The carrier converted 15 of its 737 MAX 8s it had on order to the larger MAX 9 variant back in May 2018, bringing the total commitment to 32.
Deliveries are to commence this year through to 2023, according to Boeing and Alaska Airlines.

So if I've got this right, they have some 737 MAX models scheduled to come on line in July this year.  And they changed all their 737 MAX 8 orders to MAX 9s.

So, what's the difference between MAX 8 and MAX 9?

This discussion from Motley Fool - Feb 2018 really focuses on the business aspects - the bigger ones are selling better:

The 737 MAX 7 attracted little interest from airlines, as its relatively small size means unit costs are higher. Boeing eventually changed the MAX 7's specifications to add 12 more seats, while increasing its commonalities with the 737 MAX 8 to reduce development costs.
Demand for the 737 MAX 9 was a little better, but still underwhelming. Boeing doesn't provide an official breakdown of its 737 MAX orders by variant, but one third-party analysis pegged the number of MAX 9 orders at approximately 410 as of a year ago. For comparison, Airbus currently has 1,920 orders for its competing (but somewhat larger) A321neo.
Stuck in the middle
At last year's Paris Air Show, Boeing launched the 737 MAX 10, a model that can fit 12 more seats than the MAX 9. The MAX 10 has roughly the same capacity as Airbus' A321neo, and will likely have similar unit costs.
Not surprisingly, airlines and aircraft leasing companies responded much more positively to the 737 MAX 10 than to the MAX 9. Boeing garnered 361 orders and commitments for the 737 MAX 10 in the span of a week during the air show.

Boeing has specs for all four varieties here. 

But we're still early on here.  We don't know for certain whether the crash in Addis Ababa was due to the same reason as the earlier crash in Indonesia.

From The Points Guy on a post today about flying on a 737Max :

"These two incidents have many passengers and crew asking whether the 737 MAX is safe to fly. A Miami-based flight attendant who wished to remain anonymous told TPG that she “no longer feels safe on the 737 MAX” and that she no longer “trusts” the aircraft. The Chinese and Indonesian governments have ordered their airlines to ground 737 MAXs, and Ethiopian Airlines, Royal Air Maroc and Cayman Airways have also suspended 737 MAX operations.
It’s important to note that the 737 MAX represents a small subset of the overall 737 family. Since the first Boeing 737 was delivered to Lufthansa in 1967, Boeing has delivered more than 10,000 737 aircraft and has approximately 5,000 more orders on the books. Of these, only 350 (or 3.5% of all deliveries) are of the 737 MAX variant. Still, if you’re trying to avoid traveling on a 737 MAX until an investigation into the Ethiopian crash is complete, here’s how you can identify on which 737 variant you’re flying."

Image from The Points Guy

 You should go to the site because he has lots of pictures, but two key things you can see on the Max planes are:

1. The engine casing is visibly serrated
2. The wing tips split (though Alaska Airlines shows 737-800s and 900s with split wing tips too.)

He also shows how to figure out what kind of plane you'll fly on when you're booking a flight.  

Here's a bit more from The Points Guy post about the 737 Max planes, that gets into why some suspect - from the fact that both the Indonesia and Ethiopia flights crashed right after take-off - this is related to the 737 MAX:  

While we don’t yet know the cause of the Ethiopian crash, and the Lion Air one is still being investigated as well, there’s an important distinction from a safety perspective. Only the MAX models have the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), software that automatically pitches down the nose of the plane to prevent a stall, which likely played a part in the Lion Air accident. [emphasis added]

Again, from today's Gizmodo article:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not ordered anyone to stop using the Boeing 737 Max-8, but customers are understandably concerned. Some people are even taking to social media to tell Southwest and American that they’ll be cancelling their flights because they want to avoid that particular aircraft.

From what I can tell Southwest and American are the two airlines that are currently flying the 737-MAX-8.

But if all the MAX models use MCAS software, it would seem (but then nothing is what it seems) that it wouldn't matter if it was a 737 MAX -8, -9, of -10.

Note:  This is not an area I know much about.  I'm relying on what others have written, so look at this as notes to use as a starting point.  Verify anything that is important.  

 

Misleading Headlines - Some Examples, Some Newspaper History

Appeals court tosses murder conviction in 2010 Anchorage mall shooting.

Before you read any further, stop and articulate what that headline means.

That headline had me thinking that a person convicted of murder was about to be set free.  Or would have to have another trial.  Last November an Anchorage judge was voted out of office because of a debate over a no-jail time sentence for someone convicted of sexual assault.  So maybe that was my context.  Not again??!!

Actually, if you read far enough (10th paragraph of an 11 paragraph story) into the article, you'll find this:

"The court wrote in its opinion that prosecutors can either decide to retry Gray on the original second degree murder charge or have the Superior Court enter an alternative connection [conviction] for manslaughter, which is the crime Gray would have been convicted on if the jury had decided in his favor on the 'heat of passion' defense."

So, he's still been convicted of manslaughter.  He's not walking.  Was this headline just written too quickly?  Was it intentionally written this way to get people to read about yet another outrage from the courts? (I guess I should make it clear I'm being ironic in my use of 'outrage'.)


Here's another one:



Manafort sentenced to nearly four years in prison

Again, I want you to pause and reflect on what this means.  (I'm sort of testing - maybe I'm all wrong here.)   OK, now go below the image for my thoughts.

Here my beef is with the word 'nearly'.  It means 'almost, but not quite.'  I regularly see headlines that talk about 'almost ten years' or 'more than ten years' or 'for the first time in two years.'  All these phrases imply that something is a lot, or not very much, or a big deal.  When in actuality, who cares if this is the warmest temperature in two years, or the biggest stock market drop in three months?  Twenty years might be meaningful, but I usually fail to understand why things are worded this way, except to make it sound more important than it is.

Manafort's sentence was seen by most legal experts to be surprisingly short.  Yet 'nearly four years' to someone who doesn't know anything about the Manafort case makes it sound like he got a long sentence.  It was, my goodness, nearly four years!  Yes, "nearly four years" is factually correct (it was 47 months), but so is 'less than four years."  But the one  implies the sentence is a long one and the other that it's not that long.  The Anchorage Daily News, it would appear, simply copied the headline on a story it got from the Washington Post, and if you google 'nearly four years' today, you'll get a bunch of papers that copied the same headline.

Why not just say 47 months?  It uses almost half* the characters, which is always good in a headline.  Are they worried that people don't know that 48 months equals four years?  (Probably not a bad assumption, I'm afraid.)
*Yes, here my point was to emphasize that it's significantly less to write 47 months.

Listen to broadcasters - including NPR - and watch headlines and think about how the media use words around numbers to make them seem too high or too low.  Some of this is accurate and useful, some, I'm sure, is just mindless - they aren't paying attention to the innuendo.  Some of it is probably intentional to make something sound better or worse than it is, or to generate clicks.

Sensational and/or misleading headlines have been used to sell papers in the US from the beginning.  Or so I thought.  But a piece on early newspapers says they didn't have headlines.   Lurid headlines came later.   This comes from an article that offers some historical context at Gizmo:  A History of Clickbait:  The First Hundred Years.

Yellow journalism came of age during the period when William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal was competing for circulation numbers with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Things got so heated in their war for eyeballs that both papers would take any opportunity to turn the boring daily news into sensational, Earth-shattering events. That's one way that the sinking of the U.S. vessel Maine [1898] in a Cuban harbor went from an accidental explosion to a possible attack by Spain.

From the Colonial Williamsburg site (same one that said there were no headlines in the early papers):

As the century [1700] began, the fledgling colonial press tested its wings. A bolder journalism opened on the eve of the Revolution. And, as the century closed with the birth of the United States, a rancorously partisan and rambunctious press emerged. 

The eras can be traced in the history of the family of Benjamin Franklin—the preeminent journalist of his time. But it best begins with another Boston newspaperman, postmaster John Campbell. In 1704, Campbell served up The Boston News-Letter, the nation's second paper. It was a publication the powers-that-be could stomach. The News-Letter lasted seventy-two years, succeeding in an increasingly competitive industry, supported by the growth of communication and of commerce. 

Campbell's fellow postmasters often became newspaper publishers, too; they had ready access to information to put on their pages. Through their offices came letters, government documents, and newspapers from Europe. Gazettes were also started by printers, who had paper, ink, and presses at hand. Franklin was a postmaster and a printer.  [emphasis added]

The article goes on to say that much of what they printed was extracted from other sources - like newspapers from Europe.  Not unlike much of social media and even mainstream media today.  And while one motivation may have been to do good, money was a key goal.

"Julie K. Williams, a history instructor at Alabama's Samford University, said publishers had such altruistic motives as improving communication and educating the public, but profit was their primary purpose. Maurine Beasley, a University of Maryland journalism professor, puts it plainly. The purpose of newspapers was 'to make money.'" 

Getting a daily paper out everyday is no easy task.  Making sure everything is spelled right and headlines reflect what's in each story is a constant challenge.  But typos that don't change the meaning are one thing.  Headlines that are misleading are another altogether.  Lots of readers don't read beyond the headline.  So headline writers need to be particularly careful.

Thank You Dermot Cole For Keeping The Heat Of Facts On The Gov

Dermot Cole was one of the writers let go by the Alaska Dispatch News when the Binkley's took over the paper.

Well he's blogging like crazy now - fact checking everything the governor and his minions say.

Today there's a list of quotes from Dunleavy on the campaign.  It's in answer to Paul Jenkins' attempt to convince people we should have expected this because Dunleavy is doing what he said he'd do.

People who ousted Dunleavy from Kotzebue and people who carefully watched the hearings Dunleavy chaired on Erin's Law expected the worst.  But not based on what he said, but what he did.

And Cole points out all the things Dunleavy said either explicitly or implicitly about not cutting the ferry system, the university, schools, etc.

It's worth a read.  Find Dermot Cole's Blog Here.    Here's the beginning:

"Paul Jenkins, who has been pontificating about Alaska for nearly as long as I have, wrote a column in the Anchorage Daily News saying that the giant budget cuts proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy are in keeping with the Dunleavy campaign promises.
That’s what people who didn’t pay attention to Dunleavy’s promises are now claiming."

Once Again, Lisa Murkowski Shows Fellow Republicans What Principled Courage Looks Like - This Time On Climate Change

No one with an open mind who learns the basics of climate change, can have any doubt it's real, it's human caused, and it's going to mess with our planet big time.  The sooner we take serious action to slow it down, the fewer the climate caused disruptions in the future.  Action to slow down climate change will have more long-term impact on humanity than any other issue.

You have to have a reason to oppose action to slow climate change - a big financial interest in burning carbons, or pressure from important friends who have such an interest.  Friends who have banned the words 'climate change' from Republican lips, and won't be your friend if they somehow slip out of them.  Some of these people are so committed to their party that they stay willfully ignorant.  Others know there is a conflict between their party position and reality and it probably eats them inside when they think about their inaction.  (So the more they hear about this from their constituents, the sooner they will take action.  So contact your Republican Senators.)

And now we have two US Senators from CO2 producing states - a Democrat, Joe Manchin, from the coal country of West Virginia and the other from my oil rich home state of Alaska, Republican Lisa - writing an opinion piece in the Washington Post - Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin: It’s time to act on climate change — responsibly.  A short excerpt:

The two of us have more in common than might meet the eye. We come from different parties, but we are both avid outdoorsmen and represent states that take great pride in the resources we provide to the nation and to friends and allies around the world. Alaska and West Virginia know that resource development and environmental stewardship must move in tandem, which is why we are committed to putting forward bipartisan solutions to help address climate change.
There is no question that climate change is real or that human activities are driving much of it. We are seeing the impacts in our home states. Scientists tell us that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Rising temperatures and diminishing sea ice on Alaska’s shores are affecting our fisheries and forcing some remote communities to seek partial or total relocation. In summer 2016, West Virginia experienced unprecedented flooding that killed 23 residents and inflicted tremendous damage across the state.

This is big.  In the cases of both Senators, CO2 production is important, and politicians cross the producers at their own risk.  Manchin just won reelection, so he has six years for his constituents to forget this, or for them to come to appreciate his leadership on the issue in their state.  Murkowski has four more years to her next election.

And Murkowski and Manchin are the Chair and Ranking Member* of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee respectively.

The fact that this is big highlights a lot of what's wrong about politics in the US - big anonymous money supporting or attacking politicians because of their stance on a particular issue.  [Note:  Alaska Common Ground and others are hosting a talk by Jeff Clements, author of Corporations Are Not People, March 21 at 49th Street Brewing at 6pm with a live feed.]

If you think about political parties as religious denominations, it's easier to understand the difficulty for someone like Lisa Murkowski.  She's grown up Republican.  Much of her family and many of her close friends are Republicans.  And it's a tightly controlled church - particularly for elected Republican officials.  They want you to toe the party line.  Every step over that line is seen as a betrayal of your religion and all your family and friends who believe.  And during this administration, there's an added pressure - a vindictive president who punishes people who disagree with him.

On the other hand, Lisa Murkowski, while seen by Democrats as making the right decisions on some key policies, is, after all, a Republican who takes the wrong stand from their perspective, on a lot of issues - like drilling in ANWR.  She and Manchin can argue they are the people in the middle who better reflect what Americans want.  Except that the middle has moved so far to the right on many issues that the middle is far to the right of someone like Richard Nixon.  (And conservatives will, correctly, look at some social issues - like LGBTQ rights - as examples of leftward movement.)

But Murkowski was abandoned by the Republican party in 2010 when Joe Miller beat her in the primary.  She ran as a write-in candidate and, with the help of Alaska Native organizations and many Democrats, was reelected in the regular election.  After ditching her, the Republicans took her back in the fold, though only very reluctantly for many.

So it's important for Alaskans to let her know we've got her back.  (Do we?  We'll see what kind of primary opposition Murkowski gets and whom the Democrats will nominate, I guess.)  At the very least, people should send her a note, an email, or call her office  ((907) 271-3735) and thank her for taking this stand on climate change.  And ask two friends to do the same.

And West Virginians you can email Joe Manchin and thank him.

And the rest of you can let them know you appreciate their taking a principled stand on climate change.  And if you have another Republican Senator, let them know they should take the Climate Change Plunge as well.



*Ranking Member is the most senior member of the committee of the minority party.

Call From 424 277 2647 - The Dead? Time Travel Message? Momo?

We've been watching The Umbrella Academy on Netflix.  It's entertaining in a bizarre way involving time travel, special powers, and a weird rich family.  It also features time traveling assassins whose job it is to keep people from messing with the space-time continuum.  We had just watched a scene where many (all?) of the people killed by these two assassins were in the room with a current torture victim (and the two assassins, who can't see or hear the ghosts) telling the torture victim - in many different languages - how they had been tortured and killed.

Not long after that scene our phone rang.  It was late and we don't answer the land line anyway if we don't know who it is.  They don't usually leave a message but this time there were two.  As I was listening to the first message, a a third call came in.

My immediate reaction while listening to the messages was - it's from one of the assassins' victims.  Or maybe someone from a different time is leaving a message for a time traveler.  Here, you can listen yourself:




I looked up the number - 424 - 277 2647 - but didn't find much about it online.

Screen Shot from Who Called Me?

It's hard to read, but the first comment is:  "this is momo number"

I looked that up.  It's probably even creepier than my theory.  You can look up momo here.

It's probably a fairly mundane message in some language I can't identify or understand.  Maybe she's just saying numbers.  If anyone knows the language, please leave a comment explaining what is being said.