patrick neid on June 20, 2008 at 2:57 PM

I see… afraid of off the wall winter sports like snowshoe baseball and the Dogs of the North Weight Pull!

But just a little info. Sarah hunts and fishes as well as net fish. I don’t think many of the liberal women will like her… unless they are sporty and understand killing an animal for food. Caribou sausage comes to mind and making my hungry!

You guys chew your skins before sewing them, we all know this! LOL!

I don’t know if DC is ready for the husband of the VP to be a 3x time winner of the world’s longest snowmobile race at 2000 miles. What’s next a truck pull winner? You see where this leads. :)

Anyway I want her for VP.

dominigan on June 20, 2008 at 2:16 PM

I read your story. Thanks! It’s good for us to tell stories as you did, as the stories ground us in the facts we know. Of course, sometimes we can be wrong in telling our stories. We humans have a tendency to tell stories in the ways that best suit our interest, and too often our own immediate interest without taking a long run view–not that you were guilty of either. I just think it’s always important to keep in mind our limits in self-narrative.

You didn’t use the word “suffering” in your story. So I don’t think I can fairly be accused of attacking you in noting that by any possible historical standard or even by current global standards, it’s hard to see the suffering in your story.

I am aware that of the current ploy by some of the right to argue that the current price is causing tremendous suffering among the American people. I don’t think identity politics is ulimately the problem with politics. The problem is delusional appeals to suffering. Identity politics is mostly about fantasized suffering like the suffering from a $4 a gallon gas.

thuja on June 20, 2008 at 11:36 AM

thuja, let me provide you with some perspective. I’m from the middle class. I make a decent wage, about the highest I can make without going into management. I work in IT at an insurance company, looking at emerging technologies. My wife (w/o college degree) stays home and homeschools our kids, so we only have my one income.

In the last two years…

Food for my family of 6 has almost doubled. (3 of 4 kids are teenagers)

My oldest daughter has a steer project for 4-H. With her first steer project (2 yrs ago), feed (mostly corn) was $70 for 500lbs of feed. Yesterday, my wife bought feed for $152 for 500lbs. It has more than doubled in 2 years!

I drive to work 34 miles a day, round trip. My wife/daughter have to drive out to the barn to take care of her steer twice a day (round trip of 16 miles… mostly in town). We’re talking close to 70 miles a day.

If you include some other associated items, I figure we’ve seen our expenses increase about $600 a month over the last two years, without any real corresponding increase in pay.

I am extremely successful in my field, and yet our family is struggling financially right now.

The problem is that these stupid, greedy congressmen care more about their politics than about the people they’re supposed to represent.

This all makes one think that an unwritten part of our energy policy (if we even have one) is to let supplies elsewhere dwindle to the point that we’re the only country left with any reserves.

Yeah for years I’d assumed that was the rationale behind US energy policy and that in was quite smart but in the last few years I now think it is too clever by half. The Arabs are trying to conquer large chunks of the earth and this policy is paying them to do it.

patrick neid on June 20, 2008 at 2:00 PM

LOL! You mean Back Woods Eskimo or like a Tundra Wooky? Give me my ULU, I got Fish to filet. BTW, Ulu’s work very well on Fish.

Seriously, do people really think Alaskans are that stupid? Or just is it the fact we don’t give a crap about what others say?

The Energy Non-Crisis – Lindsey Williams

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/851orcjq.asp

My fear is the Washington elite might think her and her husband are too “country”, bumpkins for short.

Either way McCain needs to get up to ANWR and get an education from her.

patrick neid on June 20, 2008 at 12:39 PM

But my question.. What about Jindal?

upinak,

Take no offence that I’m always trying to steal your governor.

patrick neid on June 20, 2008 at 12:39 PM

Go for it! I think it is high time that someone step up behind the President (like Cheney as much as everyone hates him) and make sure they get the real deal. VP’s are also known to help with an alternative idea way back when. I don’t see why that is such a problem. The more advisors the better. And if she does get in the VP slot…. I wouldn’t be surprized if she was asked to run as President.

Take no offence that I’m always trying to steal your governor.

thuja on June 20, 2008 at 12:16 PM

Ummm and I care why? I live in Alaska not Minnesota! Good Lord.

If someone is screwing over your State that bad, and it is the people who elected that individual into office. Then let them cheer! Most of the people who work on the slope are conservative’s and understand what it takes, no matter what State they come from to work up there.

You might want to take a trip out of your city. I think the walls are starting to close in on you. You might learn something as well.

Why don’t you deal with Bumble-Bloom and your higher taxes and leave ANWR to the people who have been there.

upinak on June 20, 2008 at 12:06 PM

If we are going for the cheap ad hominem, my brother was up at Prudhoe Bay eating in a oil company cafeteria the day Senator Paul Wellstone died. The people in the cafeteria cheered the news.

thuja on June 20, 2008 at 11:57 AM

Must be nice to be so well informed about other States and the world, in a Concrete Building and never have to drive anywhere.

Why don’t you deal with Bumble-Bloom and your higher taxes and leave ANWR to the people who have been there.

Identity politics is mostly about fantasized suffering like the suffering from a $4 a gallon gas.

IIRC, you are the commenter who lives in Manhattan and does not own a car. In which case I suppose that you are not exactly suffering. But you’re right, it is identity politics, in a “screw the poor people” sort of way.

flenser on June 20, 2008 at 11:41 AM

You are so right. I’m going to listen to every whine of a poor person from now on–no matter how misinformed. Let me go contribute to some Democrat who wants single-payer socialized medicine. Perhaps, after that I’ll go find some bum on a street corner who needs some change to buy “food”.

You can always find some poor person suffering somewhere for any reason you can imagine. And we should admit the truth here. The Democrats are much imaginative in finding the “suffering” poor and using the poor as political symbols than we are. I suggest we stop playing the game. To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t listen to poor people when they tell us about their suffering, but the cheap manufacturing of theoretical poor people for some political end does not improve our politics nor does it help the poor.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aZBYblEmb.v0&refer=columnist_baum

The author of the above quote with the link to the larger story has forgot more in her toe clippings than most of us will ever come to learn. Read and re read the article. It will explain everything you need to know about the current state of the futures market. Having spent eleven years trading crude oil and other commodities at EFHutton I know a little of what I speak. Read her. Put her in your favorites.

I think McCain’s recent pronouncements about Outer Continental Shelf drilling is a start if we also take steps to reduce oil consumption.

Do you have any practical proposals for how we might reduce oil consumption? By practical, I don’t mean Soviet style forced relocation of people into densely populated urban areas where they will all take trains and buses.

Identity politics is mostly about fantasized suffering like the suffering from a $4 a gallon gas.

IIRC, you are the commenter who lives in Manhattan and does not own a car. In which case I suppose that you are not exactly suffering. But you’re right, it is identity politics, in a “screw the poor people” sort of way.

But lets say you disagree. OK. My response, again assuming the fundamental demand issues are accurate, sooner or later, as we search and develop deposits, ANWR will be pumped. If not now, perhaps $6 a gallon at the pump. It is getting pumped not to lower the price per se but perhaps more importantly, to keep trillions of dollars at home instead of shipping them overseas. It is this fact that is continually lost on the folks who hyperventilate about not being able to “drill our way out of this problem”. At $20-$40 a barrel the money was less of an issue.

That said McCain needs to get his ass on a plane to Alaska, where with the Gov Mrs. Palin, they can go do a photo op on the coastal plane of ANWR, a meet and greet with the locals who favor drilling and more importantly start educating Americans about what a godforsaken place it really is. Part of the process will be showing folks that the pics they have been spoon fed these last 25 years have not been of the coastal plane but instead the incredible interior, well over 100 miles inland. An area that will never be touched, EVER. Leadership is about education. He needs to do a town hall on the North Shore.

Maybe as a bonus he could pick Palin as VP!

I am aware that of the current ploy by some of the right to argue that the current price is causing tremendous suffering among the American people. I don’t think identity politics is ulimately the problem with politics. The problem is delusional appeals to suffering. Identity politics is mostly about fantasized suffering like the suffering from a $4 a gallon gas.

But there is a real problem we need to address: how do we balance the environment against our funding of the terrorists? Some countries that are profiting big from the price of oil are sponsors of terrorism: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela. I don’t claim to have the answer, but I think McCain’s recent pronouncements about Outer Continental Shelf drilling is a start if we also take steps to reduce oil consumption.