Comments by dobieman
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Posted on July 3 at 11:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Polarmark...judging from the number of Alaskans who for decades have had to endure Young's buffoonery, arrogance, and idiocy and who have commented here often how glad they are to see he is finally getting his due (and I include myself in this group of victims) I would say it is time you opened your eyes to what a detriment Young is to Alaska. He makes us all look like loudmouthed fools just because he is one himself. It's time we get someone in that office who can do the work without sending $10 million to Florida for a project that has nothing to do with Alaska but everything to do with paying back a campaign contributor.
On Alaska Rep. Young taps campaign fund to pay aide's lawyers
Posted on July 2 at 8:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
And he has made it clear when it comes to honesty towards his constituents and the enticements of Big Oil money, that there is only the latter to consider.
He may have done some great things in the past but he has failed us miserably with his pandering to VECO and the Big Oil interests over the integrity he should have been exhibiting. In doing so he has brought nothing but shame down on our state, no matter how powerful he is.
Posted on June 30 at 8:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Can someone please explain to me how using up our fuel resources first which then leaves the Middle East with the bulk of them presents an advantage to us? I keep hearing this bit about how terrible it is that we can't hurry up and get to our reserves, use them up. Gees, people! Think about it a minute. If you are on a deserted island with a liter of water for you and a liter of water for the other survivor does it make sense to drink yours up first? Heck, no! You drink theirs first so in the end you are the one left with all the marbles.
But that aside, this idea of how we can shelve protection for endangered species until it fits some other agenda to look at it flies in the face of time and nature. Just because we decide it is inconvenient to protect a species dwindling in numbers because of our actions doesn't mean they suddenly stop dying off. That continues regardless. The only thing that protects those species, if anything can, is immediate action, not some "Oh, we'll get around to it someday" type of thinking that allows us to meanwhile go about business as usual. It's that attitude that has gotten us (and many species) into the fix we are in and all I see in comments such as the previous is a continuation of the same ruinous thinking.
It may be inconvenient to us to actually get off our fattening rear ends and do something constructive but what is convenient for us may well be extinction for another species.
After all, it's not the polar bears' fault or the walruses' fault they face the dire situations we now see threatening them. But it's sure our fault if we could have done something to prevent their demise and instead did the "Well, I'm all for saving threatened wildlife but...." number as they fade away into memory.
On Groups sue feds to force endangered listing decision on belugas
Posted on June 29 at 7:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Oh, a correction, Daisy....there are not "millions of miles of territory" in Alaska where bears are safe. With the exception of a few parks, they are hunted by gunners in airplanes; by hunters on foot, in boats, on ATV's. Some even want to trap them. They are baited and then shot in one of sleaziest means of taking wildlife known to exist.
Truth be told...twice....bears were here long before humans, and there is nowhere bears are safe in Alaska for even in the parks where they should be safe there are poachers.
If we insist in plunking down our houses in prime bear territory, running foot and bike races through their known haunts, leaving the most delectable garbage parked outside our homes then we belie the sobriquet so often and mistakenly applied to we humans as the most intelligent species. Heck, even the youngest fledgling bird knows to heft its bottom over the edge of the nest to defecate whereas we humans continue to pollute the very air we breathe and the water we must have to survive.
Posted on June 29 at 7:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
You think you're at the top of the food chain, eh, polarmark? Tell me...with what gun would you shoot the AIDS virus if you got infected? Which government agency would you insist traps and kills the Ebola virus eating its way through your system. Or perhaps a rampant E. coli infection. You know, O Food Chain King, you can't exist without that little bacterium, E. coli, but it can exist quite nicely without you. In a way, you exist to keep it fed, nurtured, cultured, growing, not the other way around. So next time you are all full of how grandiose it is to be a human being and "at the top of the food chain" just give a thought to how easy it is for something smaller than a minute to take you down to your inevitable decomposing state.....and not even miss your absence.
Posted on June 29 at 6:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)
More often than not the reaction to any wild animal exhibiting anything but petting zoo behavior is grounds for people here to start calling for killing it. Move into the animals' territories and when they behave in a perfectly predictable way there will always be someone ready to blast it to pieces under the aegis of defense. Doesn't matter if it is protecting cubs or food or whatever. More and more in these comment groups I see the "shoot first and ask questions later" sort of thinking we have seen exhibited by two of our more predictable (in this regard) commentors.
I guess, having had a few close moose encounters myself, I should just shoot every moose I see because of their potential for injury. Why wait until they actually harm someone? Shoot them on sight, every one!
Gads! We move into their land, take over or destroy their food sources, blast away at them every chance we get and then turn around and tell folks from elsewhere to leave us alone because we know how to manage our wildlife. Anymore, it seems the only way we know how to manage them is into an early and often undeserved grave.
Given this bear was apparently known to be in the area and has cubs the smart thing would have been to postpone the event or move it to an area where no bears had been reported, especially with cubs. But, no...it did what any mother bear would do and now we have people calling for it to be killed for being a bear.
Heck...there are some Alaskans just don't deserve Alaska. Unfortunately, they are the ones that yell the loudest to shoot anything with four legs bigger than a vole.
I feel sorry for the girl. That was probably a pretty terrifying experience. But then so is being attacked by a moose intent on trampling you into the ground. Or someone's large dog running loose that figures you would be fun to go after because you are running away.
Or, most dangerous of all given it is responsible for more human injuries and deaths than any other species....other human beings.
Posted on June 27 at 12:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
That said, it will be nice to see bison in the Interior in large numbers once again. Having collected many Late Pleistocene fossils of their ancestors over my years up here I often wondered what it would be like to see those huge herds covering the steppes. Granted, we don't have the environment to reproduce that scenario anymore (nor the bison) but an approximation would be a nice vista.
The article mentions the bison went extinct within possibly the past 100 years in the Interior. Any reason known for that loss?
On Alaska closer to reintroducing once-extinct wood bison to Interior
Posted on June 27 at 12:51 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Uh...given the capture of bin Laden was ostensibly one of the primary reasons Bush forced us into a war over in Iraq and given that Bush is hardly a Liberal it takes an immense lack of logic to construe this as a Liberal concept. It's pure Bush, pure Conservative, and pure B.S....but then what has Bush done that hasn't been thus? There's a reason he has practically the lowest approval rating of any president in the history of the country, even amongst his own Republican'ts. As I've said before, George W. Bush is bin Laden's single most effective weapon against the U.S.
Posted on June 27 at 12:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"The trailers were equipped with mist sprayers to keep the bison cool, and each trailer had temperature and humidity censors that could be monitored by computer by someone in a support vehicle following the convoy."
Really? And what did these "censors" keep the bison from saying or doing? *Grin* Makes you wonder if they might not have been more efficient had they instead installed "sensors".
On Alaska closer to reintroducing once-extinct wood bison to Interior
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Posted on July 3 at 6:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Looks like Unca Ted feels a need to deliver on his commitments to VECO after all that work they did on his house. Getting ANWR sold to the highest bidder would accomplish that.
On Opening ANWR a centerpiece of Stevens' energy strategy