Moving On

As I’ve perused the blogosphere this weekend reading countless articles (and comments) regarding The Big Quit, I’ve noticed a bit of snarkiness from some on the right. They seem “concerned” about what we poor Alaskan bloggers are going to do now that Sarah has been dethroned. They are angry, you see, and they know right where to aim their ire because Sarah has told them where- the bloggers. More specifically, the Alaskan bloggers.

Well, let me put your mind to rest. Don’t lose any sleep worrying that this blogger is sad to see Sarah go.

When I started this blog last summer, I decided to title it “Mamadance” because of the literal and metaphorical dancing that mothers do for their children every day. This was going to be a blog about motherhood and the joys and trials that go along with that title. At the time, my daughter had just turned one. I spent the summer sharing photos and stories about my life that only I (and a very few close friends) cared about. It was a very peaceful summer.

On August 28th, Mamadance was, in the words of AKM, hijacked by Sarah Palin. I didn’t know at the time that my little obscure mommy blog would almost instantly become a political blog, blogrolled by those in the echelon of Alaskan political blogging royalty. I found Mudflats shortly after the announcement, and joined the Forum as soon as it opened. Soon after that, I was asked to become a moderator, and eventually an Administrator. Suffice it to say, I am a different person than I was a year ago. I think a lot of us can say that now.

My husband has accused me of being obsessed with Sarah Palin. I have to admit, I have spent a lot of time reading, thinking and talking about her. I can see why he would say that I’m obsessed. She is larger than life and has sucked a lot of us into her drama. Personally, I have written a lot about Sarah because I am an Alaskan. An Alaskan woman. With a brain, a voice and a keyboard. I have felt that it is my responsibility to share what I know about her so that more people’s eyes can be open to her madness. I have come across too many Alaskans who like her or who just don’t know that much about her. I’d like to say that I’ve educated them a bit.

So now what? What happens now that Sarah is (will be) gone from Alaskan politics? Am I sad that I will have to work harder to find stories to write about? Will I be disappointed that my page view numbers will most likely plummet back into obscurity? No and hell no. I would love to start writing about my daughter again, posting pictures and enjoying life sans Palin. Now that she can do no more harm to Alaska, I can get on with my life. I’ll be able to write about the things that mean more to me as a mother, a wife, an Alaskan and a friend.

You can choose to keep reading, or you can choose to stop. You can take me off your blogroll if it doesn’t fit you anymore. I won’t be hurt, I won’t cry.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop watching what’s going on and posting about things I think are important. You can, however, expect me to start posting about things other than our Ex. It’s time. I’m ready to move on.

Ah…Sweet Relief

Have you ever been under such stress that you didn’t realize how bad it was until it was over? The air clears, you can breathe deeply again and your shoulders slide down from their previous position somewhere around your ears.

That’s how I feel today. The nightmare is over, no matter what. The past ten months have been like no other. I can honestly say I’m a different person than I was then. Even if Sarah Palin is in the news every day from here until the end of time (like that would be any different than it is now, right?), it’s all going to be okay. I know she won’t be president, and now I know she won’t do any more damage to my beautiful state of Alaska.

I can move on to other things. I won’t have to cover Sarah Palin stories any more because I won’t feel like I have a responsibility to protect Alaska from her nonsense.

I can honestly say without hesitation that I. Don’t. Care. I don’t care why she resigned. I’m just glad she did. And for that, I will be forever grateful to whoever it was that convinced her it was a good idea. Thanks, Todd.

Ahhh, now to open up a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade and get my 4th of July on.

Happy Alaskan Independence Day, everyone!

Sarah Palin Resigns!

Www.ktuu.com is reporting that Sarah Palin is resigning her position as Governor in a few weeks and will let Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell take over. More to come!

From cnn.com:

“She thinks she has accomplished goals she has set forward,” one of the sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. “She sees what a positive influence she has had on people’s lives from traveling the country in the last year.”

And from HuffPo:

Speaking on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell reported that, according to “people very close to Sarah Palin,” she has “told her supporters that she is out of politics, period. She is fed up with politics. She doesn’t like her life. She feels that she needs to raise her family. She’s sick of the commute from Wasilla to the capital. And she really does not want to run for higher office, that this is not a case where she is stepping down in order to clear the way for a presidential run. In fact, she has told some of her biggest backers in the national Republican Party that they are free to choose other candidates for 2012, which of course opens new avenues for Mitt Romney, for Tim Pawlenty, for other potential candidates who are definitely in the running.”

God, I hope so.

Here’s a quote from one of my favorite articles so far:

“Gov. Palin’s official announcement that she is resigning as chief executive of the great state of Alaska had all the depth and gravitas of a 13-year-old’s review of the Jonas Brothers’ album on Facebook. She even quoted her parents’ refrigerator magnet. (Note to self: if one of my kids becomes governor, throw away the refrigerator magnet that says: “Murray’s Oyster Bar: We Shuck Em, You Suck Em!”) She put her son’s name in quotations marks. Why? Who knows. She writes, “I promised efficiencies and effectiveness!?” Was she exclaiming or questioning? I get it: both!”

Motivate This, Ms. Davis UPDATED

According to Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, hunger is a motivator. She is against subsidizing summer lunch programs for low-income children in her state, even though 1 out of every 5 kids in Missouri goes hungry.

As I’m sure that Representative Davis’ SEVEN children are at the top of their classes, I’m wondering if she used this type of “motivation” to help them in their studies.

I work with low-income children and I can tell you, hunger is NOT a motivator. Hunger is a basic need that all children (and adults) must satisfy before any learning can take place. I wonder exactly what kind of motivation Ms. Davis is referring to. Perhaps it’s the motivation to fall asleep in class or perhaps throw chairs across the room. These are the only things I’ve seen hunger motivate children to do.

Representative Davis needs to get her act together here. Perhaps she should visit some low-income children over the summer and tell them that they won’t be fed this summer because they need to “get motivated.” Yeah, that ought to do the trick. I bet they’ll even thank her.

UPDATE: After reading the original text of her comments linked above, I have given her responses some thought. Here’s the passage in its entirety:

Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals?

Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.

I’ve come to the conclusion that she is advocating here for one of two things:

1. Lowering the legal age of an adult to 16. By her reasoning, anyone who is old enough to work is old enough to be an adult. They no longer qualify as a child and therefore shouldn’t receive government “handouts” designed for children. If we play out this scenario, 16-year-olds would be legally allowed to smoke and are old enough to join the military. I wonder if she would also want to lower the legal drinking age to 18?

2. Denying children food because they are legally allowed to work. In this scenario, Ms. Davis’ logic is that even though they are still considered children, they are on their own. Their 15-year-old brother may qualify for lunch, but because they turned 16, they shouldn’t be given food. I suppose it never crossed her mind that the unemployment rate in this country is at a 26-year-high and that 16-year-olds probably aren’t at the head of the line of unemployed adults. Nor do they have training or experience that those adults have. Just sayin’.

I’d like to know which of these she is supporting. I bet her constituents would like to know, too.

Research Poll

I’m doing some informal polling here at Mamadance, so if you have a moment, please weigh in.

If you voted “Other” above, please leave a comment to tell me who it would be, if you have someone in mind. Oh, and Obama doesn’t count. Think (R).

Thank you for participating in my poll!

Holding a “Fish In” in Marshall

When I read the article entitled, “Troopers Investigate Reports of Illegal Subsistence Fishing” over at the Alaska Dispatch website, I was incredulous. Apparently, fishermen in Marshall have protested state-imposed fishing limits by catching fish outside of the two 18-hour periods per week. These limits were set by the state to protect the king salmon population, which was predicted to be low this year.

I understand the theory behind wildlife management, I do. But in these villages where a block of cheese costs over ten dollars and fresh produce is cause for celebration, fishing and hunting is survival. I lived in one of these villages for five years and I participated in several fishing and hunting excursions. I visited homes, I ate at potlucks. I’ve skinned a seal. I’ve seen how much the people who live there rely on the land. When the government tells Alaska Natives that they can’t go fishing or hunting so they can feed their family, well, just imagine the frustration and anger they must feel. So when Gary Folger, director of the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, said “If, in fact, a protest fishery occurred, I am very disappointed,” it sounds more like an adult admonishing a child for getting peanut butter on the couch than a state official referring to people who need help feeding their families. And that’s exactly what this group of people are- in need of help.

So now the District Attorney’s office has a problem. The law states that these fishermen may face fines up to $5,000, up to one year in jail and/or their equipment seized. If they are fined, the State will have a hard time collecting that money. If the fishermen had $5,000, I doubt they would be fishing when they shouldn’t be. Putting them in jail will put their families at risk, as they will be absent and not able to collect food, water and firewood for the winter. If their equipment is seized, again they will not be able to care for their families. Remember, these fishermen are most likely collecting food not only for themselves and their wives and children, but also for their elderly parents. This is common practice in the village. All of the options available to the DA’s office are undesirable, for both the fishermen and the State.

Instead of prosecuting the fishermen, the Troopers should talk with them, find out their needs, and come up with a solution together. I doubt highly that the fishermen broke the law simply to protest the limits. I’m guessing that there is a deeper resentment here that needs to be dealt with. The fishermen and the State need to work together to solve the problem so that it doesn’t happen year after year. Let’s hope the State will be sensitive to the needs of its people instead of simply prosecuting them for their actions.

Sarah’s Party of One

VF nailed it this time. Vanity Fair author Todd Purdum has published a scathing article about Sarah Palin that I’d like to share with you. (Warning: the article is six pages long.)

Here are some of my favorite parts:

“One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser.”

“Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, ‘I don’t give a damn what she does.’”

“During the presidential campaign, Palin’s deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy provided her with a powerful political reason not to submit to interviews.”

“When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth.”

“Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression?”

“One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’”

“In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.”

“It was in this environment that her ambition first found an outlet in public office, and where she first tasted the 151-proof Everclear that is power.”

“Palin has always been a party of one.”

“Palin was entitled to make the dismissals, and she variously justified them on the grounds of budget difficulties or the need for a team that she could be sure would support her efforts. But the Frontiersman accused Palin of confusing her election with a “coronation.””

“More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.”

“When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it ‘Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.’”

“What do I take away from this?” he (Bitney) asks. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it’s frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we’re always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don’t know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we’re always going through with her.

What a Character

Click here for an interesting article online over at ADN entitled, “Candidate Palin has Character Problem.”

An excerpt:

As Palin’s first Juneau press conference as governor was breaking up, she called my wife and me aside. With apparent sincerity she asked us why we had had so much trouble getting public records from previous governors: “Why wouldn’t they want you to have the full story about what they were doing?” It struck me at the time as both naive and refreshing.

Two weeks later I discovered a memorandum from a senior state attorney revealing that a top Palin aide had instructed him to keep documents secret from our newsletter even if the legal basis for doing so was weak or problematic. A few weeks after that, Meghan Stapleton, Palin’s then-press secretary, told me they were keeping the documents secret because they public might misunderstand them.

Since then Palin has become the most secretive governor in Alaska’s history. This month she refused to release even her official schedule or reveal when she is leaving the state. Questions from reporters are often simply ignored, or she answers a different question than the one asked. All the while she continues to mouth the claim that her administration is “open and transparent.”

When it comes to letting the public know what her government is doing, Sarah Palin is either a cynical hypocrite or delusional. Either way, it reveals something important about her character.

Well said.

Nope. Can’t do it.

So I’ve been in the midst of a media blackout since Friday due to our moving to a new house. No cable, no internet, no nothing. Today, I finally get back online and this is what I come back to? Really?

It’s just too easy.

Just for Fun

Here are some of my favorite links, just for fun:

Awkward Family Photos
“Spreading the Awkwardness”

Saturday Night Special: Bon Family Blowout

This is Why You’re Fat

“Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks”

Junkyard Dog
Two diced hot dogs covered with peppers, onions, cheese, and topped with two pieces of bacon.

Totally Looks Like
“Funny Look-Alikes: Celebs, Famous People, Objects and Animals Matched With Their Long Lost Twins.”

What are your favorite “just for fun” sites? Please share them in the comments.