Saturday, September 26, 2020

And now, from under that desk in the basement office

 

Why is this man smirking?

After a little more than a month into his term as a US senator, I noticed  Alaska's Dan Sullivan 
rarely if ever showed up in public or in the news. I began calling him the missing Alaska senator and then reduced it to claiming he spent his time hiding under his desk in the basement of the Senate Office Building. The more I used the term, the more I noticed how little he showed up in public or in news of any Senate functions or about issues.

I recall one photograph of him with a display of supposed facts showing what's wrong with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare if you are one of those who, like the missing senator, still clings to that as your only reason for opposition.). He said and pointed out nothing that hadn't been said over the previous two years. Thanks for that. Dan. now back to the basement under your desk.

A couple of times I sent emails to his office with concerns and both times what I got was him mansplaining the issue to me and telling me how I should think about it. A senator works for the people. I really don't want to hear what he has to say, I want him to listen to me and at least act like he listens to a citizen's concern. What I don't want is condescending mansplaining like I am sone ignorant child. I heard the same complaint from others and quit that effort. On top of that, when a group of Alaska women showed up at this office to voice their opposition to the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court, rather than listen he had them arrested. There went a few votes but at least we know someone found that basement office. 

VIDEO  Arrests of Alaskan Indigenous activists now taking place outside Dan Sullivan’s office. We came here to ask him to #CancelKavanaugh. This is how he’s responded. #BelieveSurvivors   From Women's March on facebook

All along the way when we did hear from him, he expressed his agreement and vote following the #fakepresident in lockstep. He often twisted the facts to make us think whatever that vote was about it helped Alaskans and he had somehow influenced that. He has seldom expressed any original thought on any controversial national issue let alone done anything but  follow his

Fools and suckers, right?

leader. He has had little to say about controversies like 200,000 Americans dead from Coronavirus Covid 19, Black lives matter, climate change, broad medical care, even the Russian bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan despite his position as a major in the US Marine reserves. And, speaking of his military background, let's not forget "fools and suckers." Hard to take a stand from under your desk in the basement when you have no backbone.

Lately in the middle of a contested campaign for re-election he finally got pushed into having to take a stand on something controversial. Confirming my theory, one of the chief officers involved in developing the Pebble mine in the headwaters of Alaska's richest salmon habitat was caught on a video explaining how the company had decided to handle Dan Sullivan — saying something along the lines of he's quiet, leave him alone to stand alone in the corner and stay quiet. (Explanation: "corner" = "under his desk in the basement") That brought him out into the open to claim loudly and firmly he opposes the Pebble mine. We shall see; that project has a long way to go and the #fakepresident favors it.

So far he has shown little proof he will stand by anything he says. Take this that he said more than eight months before the 2016 election. "The President has the constitutional authority to nominate and the U.S. Senate has the authority to advise and consent. The decision to withhold advancement of Mr. Garland’s nomination isn’t about the individual, it’s about the principle. Alaskans, like all Americans, are in the midst of an important national election. The next Supreme Court justice could fundamentally change the direction of the Court for years to come. Alaskans deserve to have a voice in that direction through their vote, and we will ensure that they have one.

Then a little more than a month before the 2020 election, Sullivan confirmed he supports a vote on the #fakepresident's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thanks Dan, you were doing better under the desk. And. to repeat you have quite a bit of time to change your public statements about Pebble. One can hope you won't be in the Senate by then and we won't have to worry about it.

To summarize, this is a man who looks down on his constituents with condescension, ducks every controversy he can, cares little about Alaska and Alaska constituents except during election campaigns, fails to follow through on his previous actions, won't even support his comrades in arms, follows a criminal president completely, lies about his opponents in elections, but he doesn't rock the boat. Oh yeah, he did release a pablum bowl of concern objecting to the cuts in the postal system. Native vote, Dan? What about the 62 thousand-some people in Alaska dependent on Social Security and/or Medicare. Haven't heard a peep from you on the #fakepresident's threat to kill it off altogether. Quiet as an Afghanistan bounty.  One thing we can probably be sure of is that he receives his check every payday despite he and his party do little for the people of this country. Want to know how much he makes? His base pay is $!74.000, $14,500 per month plus expense accounts, housing allowances and some others. Want to know how much a worker who lost his job during the virus pandemic is paid? Zero.

Here's another take from Percy Notar of The Anchorage Press

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”