Now the Republicans are stuck with the name "Obamacare"

A few years ago, shortly before the last presidential election, I used the word "Obamacare" in a headline. The big boss editor changed it and chastised me because he thought it carried a negative connotation.

I disagreed because the way I had seen it being used at the time it appeared to be turning around to a positive. I supposed I wanted that to continue and in the back of my mind I thought the more it was used, the more it would grow in acceptance. There wasn't much sense in arguing the point: I wasn't going to win it.

Some time later as the program itself was going through its birthing pains and its advantages becoming exposed, I wrote on here how I thought Republicans had made a big mistake calling it Obamacare because as it became more and more accepted, they would have to live with it as a constant reminder how the president they hated so much would come to mind anytime anyone mentioned the Affordable Care Act, sort of a living, enduring memorial.

Today the term showed up in headlines a couple of times and I got a good laugh thinking how every time some Repug sees it the politician must cringe. My expectation had come true.

The congressional GOP used the word like a profanity and wasted millions of dollars trying to vote it out more than 50 times. But the hatred continues and some folks will cut off their own tails rather than admit it's a success. Take Aetna Insurance for instance. Aetna benefited tremendously from Obamacare bringing in something like $7 billion overall since the program began. Still the company plans to pull out of it blaming the president for not knuckling under to their demands to change.

That's a simplification of a complex financial accounting. healthinsurance,org has a complete explanation here.

The bottom line is the health insurance industry cares more about the bottom line than it does about actually serving people and if they can blame a hated president for their problems, more the better. Single-payer health insurance isn't too far down the road.

Meanwhile every time the name Obamacare pops up they have to cringe at the living memorial to something and someone they say they hate so much. But they still aren't letting go.

The other day a campaign flyer came from our US senator who's running for re-election. Lisa Murkowski is generally considered one of the more moderate Republicans, but to my mind she is just quieter about the more outrageous things she supports in the Senate. The flyer listed bullet points of what she thought were her positive accomplishments in office. Right there in big type she is pointing out how she is proud of voting against Obamacare. Some accomplishment, 50 votes and millions wasted but what's the end result?

The very name she and her fellow obstructionsts hate shows up on her own campaign literature, a blazing memorial to a progressive step in America from a well-liked president and nothing she can do about it. You go, Lisa. Far away, please. And the rest of us will suffer through better health care with a name that turned from a negative to a positive. It's always pleasant to be right once in a while.

Affordable health care by any other name is still Obamacare

Preventing facebook clutter one meme at a time

My friend Tom has only 10 of these left.
PM him on facbook to get one.

Best comment today so far, Rachel Maddow: Vice President Biden went to the three tiny Baltic countries today to assure them of US support. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined US forces in the Middle East after 9/11 under Article V of the NATO agreement. Recently though, presidential candidate Donald Trump has said the US under him might not honor that agreement and leave those countries on their own if Russia should attack them. Biden's mission when he met with leaders of the three countries was to tell them Trump didn't know what he was talking about and assure them the US would honor the agreement and come to aid the countries if needed. The whole trip was to address a mess created by Trump. Maddow's comment? "Cleanup on aisle five!"

The Washington Post reported:

Trump has made frequent use of his properties in his presidential bid. In July, the campaign doled out $773,000 to reimburse various Trump-owned companies for expenses. The bulk of that went to TAG Air, the company that owns Trump’s private planes.

In all, nearly $7.7 million has been paid out to Trump companies or Trump family members to cover campaign expenditures, filings show.

From Vanity Fair magazine comes a report Trump actually brought up the idea with NBC of  continuing his show "The Apprentice" from the Oval Office in the White House after he is elected.






It's about the high cost of epi pens


Several reports say Trump paid for office rent in one of his buildings out of his own pocket early in the campaign. Now that he is using donated money he quadrupled the rent. The guy is gouging his own campaign for his personal profit.

From a solar eclipse to a cosmic fail, saving the world from facebook clutter

Neil deGrasse Tyson ‏@neiltyson  25m25 minutes ago

Moon’s shadow landfalls Oregon, crosses USA at 1800mph, exits SCarolina. Behold ‘Muuurica’s Eclipse.

Nothing like getting ahead of the game. Set your calendars now.

Governor of Louisiana praises President Obama’s flood response, warns Donald Trump

Sunflowers are about 7 feet tall now and there are blossoms on all of them, but so far only this one is fully open.

Best tweet of the day so far (from the Anchorage Police Department): "Three men charged with kidnapping. Serge Azede II and William Burgess are still outstanding." Even after a kidnapping, still better than others.

Best headline of the day so far: 

When Mongolian Wrestling Coaches Get Angry, They Get Naked

More people tired of Trump shenanigans

This woman has her own Olympic sport and she sure does stick the landing.

If I had posted today this is what my friends would have seen

This was the NewYork City Parks Department's official response after taking down one of those
Trump statues:

‘NYC PARKS STANDS FIRMLY AGAINST ANY UNPERMITTED ERECTION IN CITY PARKS, NO MATTER HOW SMALL.’

Best headline of the day so far

Wife of top Texas anti-gay crusader divorces him to be with lesbian partner

Best news today and another round of the president's Rope A Dope campaign. Too bad the loyal opposition took that long vacation.  
President ends federal use of private, for-profit prisons



Can any of these announcers mention a previous year without saying "back in." You'd think the official citation would be Back In 1972.

The Second Amendment is pretty safe, but are we?

There's a meme floating around facebook these days that explains how President Obama or President Clinton cannot eliminate the Second Amendment to the Constitution and confiscate everyone's guns.

The process to amend or change the Constitution takes years and first involves approvals by two thirds in Congress or two thirds of state legislatures calling for a constitutional convention. Once proposed it takes a favorable vote from three-fourths of state legislatures. For example, the 19th Amendment which allowed women to vote was proposed in 1878 but was not ratified until 1920, 42 years later. The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923, finally got the two-thirds majority in Congress in 1972 is still floating around out there looking for approvals from three-fourths of state legislatures.

It's about time somebody put it out there how difficult it would be for a president to tamper with, let alone remove, the Second Amendment.

The meme showed up again this morning explaining the process.

But conspiracy theorists will not give up.  This was posted as a comment on the meme:

David Engelsman But you fail to see the point it's not the guns they take it's the ammunition that becomes impossible to get for instance since the shooting in newtown conn it's all but impossible to find or buy .22 cal ammo No bullet no gun that's a fact

Yes, the Newton shootings had an effect on the availability of .22 ammunition which has been in short supply in recent years. But it's not what this guy thinks. When it became difficult to find .22 shells I did a little research into why no one had that particular caliber for sale.

And here's the answer. Manufacturers curtailed .22 production in order to meet increased demand for a similar caliber, the .223  or 5.56. Guess what gun uses that size bullet. Yup, the AR-15 assault rifle, the weapon favored by your average neighborhood terrorist. Go to any store selling that sort of thing and you will find empty shelving where the .22 shells should be, but the area allocated to .223 will be overflowing despite the increased demand and it is relatively cheap, costing only a little more than .22 shells.

So yes, the shootings have had an effect on the availability of ammo. They've increased the supply of the ammunition our ingrown terrorists like the best.

Still President Obama most certainly must have ordered the cut in .22 production. It could have had nothing to do with manufacturers cutting one to produce more of the other and in the process increase profits based on fear the president would take assault rifles and ammo away from potential mass shooters.

Interestingly there is another meme floating around that shows the inside of a large empty warehouse with the wording, "All the guns Obama has seized during his eight years in office."

Into the belly of the beast

There goes another pleasant evening in paradise

OK so this song is a stretch, but somehow though it is probably a love song, it speaks to getting along in society as well. It may hold a lesson. It's also the first one downloaded in anticipation of a playlist.

Photo shows results of a pipeline spill of tar sands oil in
Mayflower, Arkansas, in 2013. 

Well, there is a pleasant evening gone all to hell. I really need to learn to not take things so seriously. I felt pretty good going into the evening, so good I poured a glass of wine which I seldom do any more and downloaded a song I have always wanted to have. Then I did a last look through the pages I follow on facebook and other sites before starting a romantic comedy on TV, all the time thinking I might come up with a playlist later based from the song I downloaded. I should have forgotten about the review.

Today is the day President Obama put the kabosh on the Keystone pipeline, an environmental disaster waiting to happen. It was a victory in so many ways and probably added to the good mood as I approached the evening.

 Then came the  roll through the facebook feed. In there two of Alaska's three representatives in Congress came out calling the president every name they could get away with on facebook and making the end of Keystone sound like it was the apocalypse. It started me on the downhill slide grasping for that well-being I had felt moments earlier.

Here is the statement by the missing senator. (I call him that because he ran more against President Obama than he did against his opponent, promising to stand up to the president at every step of the way. Once elected that was pretty much the last we heard from him – hence the missing senator.)

Senator Dan Sullivan

"President Obama put the interests of radical environmentalists above hard-working, middle-class Americans. The irony is, the same ridiculous arguments he made today against Keystone — will only create a handful of jobs; does nothing for our energy security; threatens our environment — are the ones environmentalists made against the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the lifeblood of our state for nearly 40 years. TAPS is a source of pride and prosperity for all Alaskans — liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican alike. It’s a shame the President can’t see beyond his ideology to the boundless potential of our great nation." 

This being the second one of those I read (the first was Rep. Don Young's comments almost word for word) I could no longer let it go. So I responded on facebook with this:

"There's a big difference between TAPS and Keystone. All of the TAPS oil was destined for the U.S. market. All the Keystone oil was to go overseas; the pipeline only linked the oil fields in Canada with the port at Houston. TAPS employs a whole lot more than the 35 permanent jobs expected from Keystone. The tar sands oil is the dirtiest oil imaginable and the company already has a terrible record of spills. How oil drilled for in a foreign country and sent to market in other foreign countries hurts the Alaska economy takes more explaining than any of us want to hear. Listen to Dick Derevan below, we are tired of being demonized by ignorance."

First of all I am damned tired of being called a radical environmentalist. Aren't we past that by now? That is so 1970s. But then that's where the missing senator's awareness seems to have stalled. Radical environmentalists have been the go-to boogymen for everything that goes wrong in Alaska for so long it has its own acronym. REVs are to blame for everything here.

There are more ideas I would love to add to that comment on his facebook page but Alaska's Republican senators and our only representative have a history of not listening to people who disagree with them, but do often try to convince us otherwise. As a matter of fact Rep. Don Young, the other one who criticized the president today, at one time said he only represented those people who voted for him.

One point that I wanted to hammer home was from the missing senator's last statement about ideology hurting the "boundless potential of our great nation."  I mean, how do 35 jobs and providing an avenue for dirty oil to be transported from Canada to foreign nations hurt the "boundless potential of our great nation?"

And as far as raising the specter of hurting middle class Americans, oh please, anonymous one, you are a yes-man in a party that has done everything it can to destroy the middle class in this country, so you better just shut up about that one.

I guess "standing up  to Obama" really means being critical after the fact. See earlier posts about rope-a-dope

Well, these revelations and rants got me past that one but foolishly I went on down the facebook and Twitter pages until I came across the revelations about a pro football player beating up his girlfriend.

Briefly summarizing: Greg Hardy, who at the time was playing for the Carolina Panthers, was accused and convicted of beating up his girlfriend. That conviction was eventually thrown out on appeal. He was punished by the NFL by being suspended for 10 games which eventually was reduced to four. Released by the Panthers and out of football for a year, he was picked up by the Dallas Cowboys this year and has had a starring role there this season. Then, today the police investigation materials including photographs of his girlfriend's bruises were released.

Where I first picked up on it was when Cowboys owner Jerry Jones defended Hardy and called him a leader and a "Dallas Cowboy" as if that lifted him above common societal obligations. This isn't the first time the NFL or a team has defended a guy who beat up a woman in his life, nor is it likely to be the last, but it is THIS time. There is a joke on the FXX comedy The League where a guy in a fantasy league refuses to draft players with criminal records. He loses badly. In almost every other occupation a convicted criminal is ostracized. In the NFL he is defended and continues to be paid millions for playing a game. How many of these have to happen before something serious is done about it?

Maybe what we need is for President Obama to take a look at it and maybe throw another rope-a-dope at the opponents before he's done. Give the missing senator and his cohorts in the Tea Baggers something more to whine about.

Maybe with all that, the pleasant evening could come back, maybe with one of the last lines of the song. For what it's worth I really don't want to wait for these lingering issues to be over:

 So open up your morning light,

And say a little prayer for right

You know that if we are to stay alive

Then see the love in every eye

An explantion of rope-a-dope

Random thoughts from the wood lot

Progress, but there are some hella big chunks to split yet. That orange handle is on the 16-, now-18 pound maul.

It's been a while since a coherent line of thought found its way into this aging brain. That said, maybe it's time for one of those rambling, unrelated thoughts collections.

Whoever first called a weakling a pansy doesn't know pansies; 

they have to be the toughest flowers in the garden. These  

were planted in last year's garden if not earlier than that.

To begin with on my birthday last week a truck delivered a cord of birch firewood; well, it will be firewood once I get it split and it dries for a while. I always look forward to time at the chopping block and take some measure of pride that at my advancing age I can still do this. I have to admit though that every year that maul seems to get a little heavier and I always blamed that on aging but this year I came across a much better excuse. What I recall from when I bought it almost 30 years ago was it weighed 16 pounds. Now, I can swing a 16-pound maul like a 20-year-old, but the other day I was passing the kitchen scale and put the maul on it.  You know what? It weighs 18 pounds. That sure explains why it was much harder to swing this year than in the past. (Sarcastic emoji)

So I have been spending some time at the block every day for a while. Today I tried the Apple watch and its exercise monitoring function. I passed my daily quota for exercise and in the process burned almost 300 calories, and still have several more days to go.

While I was outside chopping wood, my friend Joe May posted this tidbit on facebook:

"While on a road trip between Fairbanks and Whitehorse on a moonlit winter night in the long ago John Balzar, author of "Yukon Alone", was riding with me...two of us on some mission for the Quest. John was a writer for the LA Times and was both covering the race and gathering material for a book. The road that night was a riot of rabbits reveling in the moonlight, as they sometimes do. Somewhere around Haines Junction I commented that there were more road-killed rabbits on the Canadian side of the border than on the Alaska side. A pause and John dropped a pregnant, "why?", into the darkness of the truck cab. I don't remember exactly what I told him but the explanation was the highlight of a shameless career of “putting on” journalists from south of “fifty”. Over the next forty miles of potholes, frost-heaves, and flattened rabbits I convinced him that it was fact, that there was evidence proving that Canadian rabbits were slower than Alaskan rabbits...and he believed it. There's no moral to this story. It's just a cautionary tale.. .probably something to do with the veracity of salty old dog drivers. Tim Jones and Slim Randles would understand."

Nuthatch

My own comment on it was: Once in a while I would tell people on the boat we seldom saw whales when it was raining because they didn't like getting wet.

Now for something serious. There is an offensive word in this, one that certainly is not politically correct. However it is a direct quote from a book and the whole point might be lost if it were omitted. So here goes.

Every time I see some of the vitriolic hatred aimed at President Obama this anecdote comes to mind.  Of course most of those insults aimed at the president often are proceeded by "I'm not a racist, but …" And we all know they are. Anyway, the anecdote occurs in the first chapter of Joseph Heller's "Catch 22." In it Yossarian and his buddy Dunbar have taken refuge in the hospital attempting to avoid going on any more missions that have been added to how many they have to fly before they can go home. The man in white was encased in plaster casts so fully no one could see any part of him. A tube came out of his mouth and another out of his groin, one for giving him fluids and one for taking them away. The tubes led to jars and when the evacuation one was full the nurses simply switched the jars. Another patient called the Texan would talk to the soldier in white but without ever hearing a response. Then one day attendants came and took him away.

The group discussed his demise until Dunbar said the word "murderer." After which Dunbar and Yossarian gang up on the Texan calling him alternately a killer and a murderer until finally Dunbar shouts: "You killed him because he was a nigger."

Now, no one could have known that, but that was the blatant accusation and to my mind that is what all these critics of President Obama are at least thinking if not saying in their attacks on the man or maybe we should be shouting that back at them. So, that's off my mind now that it's written.

JJ Watt prepares to split. Here's the video.

Jennifer Lawrence
 in "Winter's Bone."

So back to the woodpile. A year or so ago I wrote a post about how I was impressed at the authenticity with which Jennifer Lawrence chopped wood in the movie "Winter's Bone." It was the little motion of going up on the tiptoes before bringing the axe full force down onto the wood. Well, now
there are three of us. There's a TV commercial going around where Houston Texans' defensive end JJ Watt, who has some legitimate woods cred, is chopping wood in a forest. And, how does a 288-pound defensive end in the National Football League swing his axe? He goes up on his toes just before he brings it down the same way a 73-year-old skinny Alaskan and a beautiful young Hollywood star do it. Awesome sauce! But wait. Has it come to this? Do JJ Watt and I BOTH swing an axe like a girl?

Follow the line of sight to the upper left corner and that's about
as close as we got.

Birds have used up a 40-pound bag of sunflower seeds already and it hasn't even snowed yet. They get so frantic sometimes they will land on me while I am filling the feeders. Of course when we tried to take a picture of that the other day, no one would approach, hence that obscure one here.

Still trying to avoid the politics of the day, but it's difficult. There was one bright spot and that resulted in the picture to the right. If it needs an explanation, you need to do some catching up.

The days are growing shorter and darker (wait, can growing be used to describe diminishing?). Anyway it's still two months until the solstice – not my favorite time of year at all. That's another benefit of the woodpile, makes me go outside in what daylight there is and that helps keep the spirits up somewhat.

PDF Catch 22

Katniss and the chopping block

President Obama is visiting Arctic Alaska, so shut up already

Posted on Twitter by Kate Zuray

President Obama spends a happy moment on the beach at Dillingham.

Read this, then pause and reflect on it for a moment.

For the first time in history, a sitting United States president is visiting Arctic Alaska.

Now, to top that off, he is here at least in part to examine first hand and also to highlight the effects of climate change in Alaska which is the front line where changes due to global warming are most obvious.

Yesterday he visited a glacier.

Then he was criticized by a supposedly intelligent Alaska writer who said melting glaciers aren't necessarily indicative of changes in global climate. That may or may not be. However it is not the only indication and in part is why President Obama is visiting the Arctic. Incidentally that writer who has been a controversial outdoors reporter over the years, with this visit sounds like he is auditioning for Fox News, as he nit picks anything he can find to criticize about the president's trip.

Here are just a few climate changes recalled off hand without looking anything up:

Thinning and retreating levels of polar ice to perhaps unrecoverable levels.

Melting of permafrost which has the added result of releasing methane into the air to add to the greenhouse gases that lead to warming.

Shoreline erosion along the western and northern coasts of Alaska caused in part by a lack of ice which in the past dampened the intensity of waves attacking the shore.

Northern advance of species never before seen in Alaska including one of those huge sunfish picked up in the Gulf of Alaska this summer.

Northward advance of the tree line.

Record or near record temperatures across most of Alaska over the past several years.

Invasive plant species spreading farther and farther north, both aquatic and on land.

These few are just the surface I can recall reading about. A serious look into the science being done these days would probably yield a hundred more.

But this it not about warming it is about a president making a historic trip, the purpose of which at least partly is to highlight the dangers.

Today somebody complained on Twitter about how much all the presidential airplanes and other vehicles contributed to pollution during the trip. Well if a US president making a trip to the Arctic highlights the problem worldwide and more people become aware of it and more people realize the seriousness of the issue and then more people act on it, and it brings about serious engagement, the tradeoff is well worth it.

The same poster earlier had spoken with envy that a coworker had been joined by the president during her morning workout.

It has been typical of Barack Obama's presidency that no matter what he does, he receives massive criticism, even vitriolic. It's a wonder he can show up for work every day smiling and moving forward, a testament to the man. It's been a kick looking at other pictures of his trip. We have a US senator whose name escapes me, elected on the promise to "stand up to Obama" and end Obamacare, who, once elected, disappeared from sight. He's been observed in a couple of pictures near the president grinning like a kid who just received the exact birthday present he wanted.

The point is, at least for Alaskans, lay off. No matter what your issue, he is an intelligent man, he can tell his feet are getting wet while he stands on the outskirts of Shishmaref. (I know he's not supposed to go there – it's an analogy silly). He will hear from folks who live where Shell is drilling.  He will hear about the lack of ice and the stronger storms and the plight of walrus and polar bears who can't find haulouts except on land where they are more vulnerable.

Think of it, this single man like none other, has the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he is taking the time to come to Alaska to see first hand what the shouting is all about and he is also intelligent enough to process what he sees and hears and one hopes lead the way toward finding an acceptable solution. And like it or not, the world is watching. Nothing he does this publicly goes unnoticed. And, the world also watches how we as a people treat our own president. It's not pretty.

In the meantime, nothing said here is going to stop the sniping. That's one failure of the Internet, it has given the critics, haters and snipers (yes, even me) a broader audience.  It's kind of interesting there doesn't seem to be a lot of criticism coming from his usual political opponents.  It is perhaps the continuation of his rope-a-dope method where he takes an action, then ducks and dodges and while the opposition is all fired up yelling about that, he swings again. And BTW today while he was in Alaska, he got the deciding vote in Congress to save his deal with Iran. They are going to be reeling off the ropes for weeks.

This time the day before he arrived the administration announced the official name of North America's tallest mountain would be changed from McKinley to Denali, the traditionally accepted Native name for it, and one a majority of Alaskans have favored since Statehood. While all the Republicans started yelling about it, (after they had checked Google and found out McKinley was a Republican) the president moves on to an Arctic conference and a tour of Alaska to see it all for himself still carrying the weight of the world, smiling with couple of women fishing for salmon in Dillingham dancing with some kids in the Dillingham school and letting the criticism roll off his back, something he apparently does so well.

Perhaps we should all take a lesson from the gracious way the president has been greeted by Alaskans in Dillingham and Kotzebue. And too, from the comment a friend of mine made on another post, "I've never seen pictures of the president smiling so much."

Mitigation actions taken in conjunction with the president's trip

Dancing in Dillingham

Pay it forward: Alaska on the front line

A very satisfying week in American democracy

Rope-a-Dope: When's the last time you watched the news and walked away smiling?

Shismaref,  one storm from washing away

Meanwhile life outside goes on all around you

Some days it's difficult to organize a cohesive thought. We are bombarded with so much information it becomes difficult to sort out what is important and what isn’t or at least what deserves our focus. These flew across the field of vision today:

This photo also crossed that horizon: It's the real
Christopher Robin and Winnie-the Pooh circa
1926. For its influence see the link below.

A sandhill crane taking off from Creamer's field in Fairbanks.…

Chris Christie and Ted Cruz take critical potshots at Jimmy Carter who is facing terminal cancer …

My friend Tom Hale is recuperating from a serious stroke and giving his dear wife,  Mandy, fits but with a twinkle in his eyes and a wry smile on his lips …

That nutso white supremacist who tried to buy a North Dakota town and turn it into a bastion of racism and pseudo military resistance wants to name the town Trump …

A Navajo Code breaker walked two miles in a parade, helped along through the last half mile by two current Navajo Marines …

Some of my female friends swoon over actor Sam Elliot on his 71st birthday…

Indy car driver Justin Wilson dies after being hit by debris from a crash at a race track Sunday …

My friend Phil Munger who is driving off a divorce along the coast of the Lower States has started writing music again …

Danica Patrick is enjoying a vacation on a beach somewhere and showing off her yoga positions – that's hot…

German cruise lines pulled out of the Faroe Islands to protest the slaughter of pilot whales there …

A group from a satanic temple turned out to counter someone's protest of a Planned Parenthood establishment …

Facebook says I may know someone named Evan Christian …

Dan Buckwalter of Wasilla, Alaska is missing since Aug. 4 …

A soldier who helped with communications during the first Iditarod asked for help finding information and photos about that race and several people responded …

The National Women’s History Museum highlighted Sarah Winnemucca a Paiute author and the first Native American woman known to obtain a copyright to publish a book in English …

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker announced a big point in his foreign policy: he wants to cancel the Chinese president's visit to the United States because of a dip in China's stock market …

Still no one seems to remember the name or has heard from the other senator from Alaska, though there was some mention that he was upset not to be included in festivities surrounding President Obama's visit to Alaska, the president he vilified and promised to stand up to during his election campaign …

Several people liked my post in Ocean People about a federal lawsuit against SeaWorld in San Diego …

Josh Duggar's brother in law wants "that pig out of our family"…

Several crews of Alaska firefighters are battling the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, particularly Idaho and the Alaska Division of Forestry has sent 450 miles of hose to help in the effort …

A beautiful high school girl named Lilliana who is an intelligent and informed critic of SeaWorld and whale captives in general was blocked on Twitter by a humpback whale group she has never interacted with. Getting a name for herself …

Discovered another sign of seasons changing tonight – when you go out to water the garden at the regular time and the motion-activated lights come on …

A wolf hunt began around the perimeter of Denali National Park, targeting wolves that often move back and forth in and out of the park …

Kim Kardashian gets fat injections in her ass …

A huge storm is developing in the Bering Sea and warnings are up for heavy surf along western and southern shorelines. Those are the shorelines that are eroding badly …

Two giant panda cubs born at the National Zoo …

Mississippi is rated  the most religious state in the Union and also 48th in intelligence, just sayin' …

And then there’s this quote from Winston Churchill: asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort (World War II for you children), he asked, "then what are we fighting for?"…

There's a new store opening in Palmer called "The Frayed Knot." Looks like a crafts store heavy on the knitting …

Three Americans and a couple of others subdued a terrorist shooting up a train in Belgium. Today Fox Noise blamed the attacker on President Obama…

And, just for perspective, the first train robbery in the U.S. happened on this day in 1866 and while he isn't blamed outright for it, Obama did nothing to stop the robbery either …

Yahoo News listed the goofiest laws in every state. In Alaska it's illegal to give a moose beer. Who knew? …

There have been spectacular northern lights shows around here the past few nights and maybe it would be better to bundle up and go outside to stare at them than watch this screen any longer.

Winnie-the-Pooh and the East Pole

A very satisfying week in American democracy

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a day when you could move away from the news with a smile on your face. This was a whole week of that despite the sadness of the funerals for nine people gunned down in that church in Charleston, South Carolina.

At the beginning of the week it at least appeared that symbol of slavery, the Confederate flag was coming down from the capitals of the South. While it's about time, I thought the effort was a nice bait and switch on the part of the NRA to shuttle the outrage away from gun control and toward taking down a flag. Did anyone else notice the NRA officials pretty quiet about the flag issue, probably happy the issue shifted that way. Nonetheless, probably all right to see that symbol discarded. Did you know that design was never used during the Civil War? It became popular during the civil rights era, used by the Ku Klux Klan. So much for Confederate pride.

Then came Thursday and the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act. It's legal and constitutional. And those six million people who use state exchanges won't lose their health insurance. Big win for President Obama and his administration and the millions of people who previously could not afford an acceptable level of health insurance.

But the Supremes weren't finished yet. Friday came the decision making same-sex marriage the law of the land. The best thing I saw written about that came out of Hillary Clinton's campaign, saying after years of state-by-state, court-by-court progress it turned out the answer was there in the Constitution all the time. From now on it will be just simply "marriage."

Those two decisions tend to renew a person's faith in the American system. How much do you remember from your high school history class? I don't know why, but this one thing (among others) stuck with me all these years. I remember an American history teacher telling us the authors of the Constitution had made appointments to the Supreme Court a lifetime proposition. That was to assure, because it would be the last job they held, the justices might be immune to pressures and political influences and give them the opportunity to think and judge objectively. For the most part over the years it has worked except maybe for the pressure and conflict of interest Clarence Thomas seems to enjoy from his public relations wife.

I had to laugh at the clueless Republicans after those decisions. Mike Huckabee says he doesn't accept the decision. I think that means he cannot honestly take the oath of office if he were elected president as that oath pledges upholding the Constitution. Ted Cruze called for a way to recall or vote justices off the court. That's exactly why the framers made the appointments lifetime so some ding-dong politician cannot influence the justices. It goes on. There's a minister who said he would set himself on fire if gay marriage was allowed. So far he has remained cool.  Several others have threatened to move to Canada. Good luck with that; same sex marriage has been legal north of the border for ten years.

Over all it has been one hell of a week for the overall health of our democracy and our citizenry. The capper came Friday when the President of the United States delivered the eulogy for a minister slain in that church in Charleston. At the end of his speech, a man in the office that anoints him leader of the free world, unhesitatingly launched in the traditional funereal song "Amazing Grace" and was soon joined by the huge audience who stood as one and sang with the president. It was a moving moment and one that may stand along with his speech for a long time in the history of the country.

Overall it had to be a satisfying week for those who cheer as American democracy advances toward the lofty ideals it was founded upon and one to renew the faith in the process of that democracy to persevere.



President Barack Obama leads the congregation in "Amazing Grace."

President Obama's complete eulogy

Hail to the chief

Photo from Politicususa

During the 2014 election I thought the Democrats made a huge mistake running away from President Obama and acting as if what the Republicans were saying about the president was true and damaging. Even at that time it was becoming very obvious that despite the ignorant racist obstructions put up against him Obama was having himself a very successful presidency. I thought those chickenshit Democrats should have embraced Obama and his policies, gotten the word out and jammed his successes down those smug Republican throats. If you could have watched the Senate campaign in Alaska you would have thought both candidates were in the same party.

The deficit was down, stock market way up, unemployment was way down and the GNP was rising. People found affordable health insurance and jobs were opening up. Those are just a few of the positives accomplished by the present administration. Take a look at how many others there have been by following the link at the bottom of this post. Hundreds.  All that and we still have our guns and we haven't been geo-tagged.

I thought it during the campaign, I felt the election confirmed the mistake when Americans voted against their own interests because they believed lies that no one was refuting when they should have and they hated having an African American in the White House. So many people pussyfoot around that issue but I won't. Racism is at the base of the most vitriolic hatred aimed at the president. That was all too obvious the day he joined Twitter as POTUS. The absolutely vile comments directed at him shortly after he signed on even made me cringe and I might be the original sailor with the salty language. It is racism pure and simple, hatred for a man because of the color of his skin.

Now we are more than a year past those elections and the Republicans have yet to accomplish anything in Congress despite their majorities. As a matter of fact they are so busy calling each other names while it seems half of them are running for president and so busy trying to criticize Obama for all the new things he is accomplishing that they have rendered themselves all but irrelevant. Still the criticism goes on, still the hatred and racism and denigration.

Well I for one am sick of it. I think it's time those of us who can see what a great job he is doing despite the obstructions have to stand up, be counted and answer back. Point out the advances and accomplishments, cheer for the victories, and most of all recognize that the United States is in incredibly better shape than it was the day he took office.

In the past couple of days I have shared two items on Facebook in that regard. One showing that for the seventh year in a row President Obama came out as the most admired man in the world in an annual Gallup Poll. Seven years in a row. Pay attention people.

The other one lists more than 100 accomplishments of his administration. There's a link to that list at the bottom of this post. Read down it if you have time. Many of them have hardly been noticed yet they have gone a long way to make life in America more bearable.

I have received some negative comments on those posts including from my own family. One of them even raised the spectre of my dead father who was so conservative he was one step short of a monarchy and saw communists behind every bush and doorway.  He even advocated putting the president in a uniform so he would command more respect overseas. If he were alive today he would have been one of the middle class victims of trickle-down economics and probably would have lost the pension that sustained him through the last years of his life. Still one of my relatives thinks he would be rolling over in his grave at the thought that a black man was succeeding in the White House. Rest in peace Dad.

I have let those criticisms ride for a couple of days, but I am gong to dump them from the posts and in their place put this little message up:  "If you've come to check on your ignorant racist response to this post, it's not here.  I will not abide one-sentence rebuttals to five years of good work. If you want to disagree go down that list of accomplishments and refute each one, with proof of what you say and then I might listen. The First Amendment guarantees free speech for sure, but it does not guarantee you a place to make your speech, nor does it protect you from consequences. If you want to keep that sort of crap going, get your own page and put your ignorance out there for everyone to see. I am not going to give you the opportunity here."

Meanwhile I am going to continue to post the positive messages of Obama's presidency whenever I can and I hope others will too. It's about time we stopped accepting the lies and started letting the truth out into the sunshine.

Here's the link to the list of President Obama's accomplishments

Sea World takes a page from Big Oil's book and other random thoughts

March heat.

A Twitter posting from April 9:

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ Apr 9

Please read this information on how our killer whale habitats are some of the largest in the world: ‪http://bit.ly/1GiI0I3 

Tim Jones ‪@tjonesak‬

Apr 9

‪@SeaWorld‪ Just how many of your habitats are the size of the Pacific Ocean?‬

Here's another exchange from April 19:

SeaWorld

Verified account

‏‪@SeaWorld

What's the most outgoing animal at SeaWorld? Click here to find out! ‪http://bit.ly/1GxAycc 

Tim Jones ‏‪@tjonesak
@SeaWorld‪ The PR department?‬

And what page is that? It's the one that says don't spend a lot of money fixing the problem, put the money into a strong public relations campaign and bombard the public with self-assuring lies about what you are doing or not doing.  Just about every 10 tweets on my feed these days are some positive message from Sea World about how great they are. Now commercials are showing up on television touting the great good the whale guardians are doing, even claiming whales in their care live just as long in captivity as they do in the wild. I say show me a 70-100 year old whale. I really don't care how much good they say they are doing, saving a manatee calf does not excuse keeping killer whales in tiny pools for decades.

Meanwhile on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico a number of demonstrators were arrested at BP headquarters in the area. So far nobody from BP has been arrested.

Sign at every Walmart checkout stand Monday April 13 read something like this: "Walmart starting wage now $10.23 per hour." Only12 more dollars per hour to reach the adjusted minimum wage from 1972.

At the recent NRA convention, Wayne LaPierre says President Obama has confiscated all the guns in the United States, and that Hillary Clinton will confiscate any that are still out there. I wonder if he can name one person who is not under arrest who had a single firearm confiscated.

March 2015 was the warmest March on record world wide since statistics started in 1880. And the past 12 months have been the warmest on record. Major storms also.

Carly Fiorina. Oh please, it's starting to hurt.

Meanwhile the clown car that's driving around collecting Republican candidates for president keeps rolling along.

And in Washington, President Obama continues his rope-a-dope action, landing a punch and then leaning back on the ropes while those Republicans swing wildly trying to knock him down. This time it was shaking hands with Raul Castro in the gradual process of normalizing relations with Cuba after 50 years of no contact.

The Alaska Legislature is nearing adjournment and has yet to put out a law governing regulation of legalized marijuana. Meanwhile police continue to target users making sure despite the legality, pot will still be illegal in the police mentality. As if it were New Year's Eve, extra patrols are being activated this weekend to catch people driving under the influence because they see the date 4/20 as a big holiday for celebration by stoners. The number has come to symbolize pot in social media; it's based on a time school let out in one California town and kids went out to smoke. There are other interpretations. Their announcement even shows people in stores stoking up on munchies. I wouldn't expect fireworks.  Celebrate 4/20 with the Anchorage police

Note the puffed cheek.

On an optimistic note, I think a couple of the Pine grosbeaks who hung out at the feeders last winter have stuck around to nest and raise a family somewhere nearby. Just about every afternoon a male and a female show up in the yard and poke through the leavings from the winter that I haven't cleaned up yet. I read that they have cheek pouches where they carry food to give to the young ones in the nest.

And that's the day. Seven p.m., there's a storm blustering outside and I haven't even had pants on yet today.