“For example, at Daily Kos, “devilstower” writes: “…people have died because of mountaintop removal. Miners have died…We accept that flipping on the light switch comes at the price of blood. However, mountaintop removal mining has killed far more than miners. Dozens of people in surrounding communities have died when walls of black sludge plunged down on their homes. Whole families have died, Mr. President, whole towns… so that other Americans can buy their electricity some fraction of a cent more cheaply.”
To which Ward responds:
“OK … what are we talking about here? Buffalo Creek? Aberfan? Both were long before mountaintop removal really started. Maybe Jeremy Davidson, the three-year-old boy killed by a runaway rock from a strip-mine site five years ago in southwestern Virginia? That wasn’t a whole family, and it wasn’t a slurry impoundment. There are absolutely adverse health costs — and deaths — associated with coal mining. But I don’t understand that need the environmental community and its bloggers have to exaggerate. It seems to me that the science about coal’s damage sounds bad enough, without inflating it.”
Ward also disagrees with Jeff Biggers take on mountaintop removal miners. Biggers says:
Mountaintop Removal Operators Are NOT Coal Miners, But Mostly Heavy Equipment Operators (Bulldozer and Truck Drivers) Who Could Easily Be Used on Infrastructure Projects, Waterworks, Highway Projects, Genuine Reclamation and Reforestation Projects, and a Lot of Green Jobs Initiatives and Manufacturing Plants (Building Wind Turbines, Solar Panels). In fact, every mountaintop removal operator job has taken away 2-3 jobs from underground coal miners.
Spoken like a true elite who wouldn’t know a piece of coal if it hit him in the goddamn head. But hey, with certain people that’s probably a bonus. But Ward adds:
“First of all, I know guys who work on mountaintop removal mines. And it is skilled work. And they do mine coal. I don’t understand the need the environmental community has to ridicule them by saying they’re not coal miners. Where does that get anybody?
Second, I don’t know that anyone can really prove that every mountaintop removal operator job has taken away 2-3 jobs from underground miners. The industry is too complex to boil it down to that comparison — not all coal that is mined via large, multiple-seam strip mines would be mined by underground methods. Are surface mines very efficient? Yes. In some cases more efficient that underground mining? Of course. But it’s a bit of a jump from there to what Jeff writes.
Finally, sure, guys who run heavy equipment on a strip mine could also run heavy equipment cleaning up abandoned mines or doing a variety of other projects. In fact, strip-mining got its start when highway contractors were looking for easy ways to make some extra money with their equipment and workforce.
But this idea that a transition for communities in Appalachia that rely on mountaintop removal to “green energy” is going to be easy is wrong and not helpful to the debate.”
My own thoughts on coal mining in West Virgina have changed over the past few years. And a lot of this green job / clean coal bullshit is just that. West Virginia needs to have a real discussion about the future of mining, and that’s NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN if both sides are so goddamn polarized. Going around making wildly exaggerated claims serves no one, except maybe the asshat making them.
So the first album I remember “owning” was a 45 of Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys. I know.
So no, Thriller was not the first album I owned. After that I remember Urban Chipmunk and Eye of the Tiger. But those were records. I’m sure I wasn’t the only 3-year-old who couldn’t figure the whole record player thing out. The first music that I really thought of as my own came via my Fisher Price Cassette Recorder. And the very first cassette I owned was Thriller.
Is there a law that says local school boards always have to have at least one self-aggrandizing crypto-fascist shithead as a member, or what? And why is it that when there is some ridiculous controversy in a school system, it’s almost always the doing of a local board member? (Or occasionally a principal like Clinton Giles, who as you know is a fucking asshole. If you don’t believe me, google his name. But not at school.)
And for the love of god, can someone please explain to me why we even need 55 separately elected groups of pandering yahoos to tell education professionals how to do their jobs?
People have this assumption that local control by regular ‘ol citizens is always a good thing. Well, back when I was a high schooler, our county board was made up of a bunch of ignoramuses with names like (I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP) “Hillbilly,” “Spike” and “Snake.” For a long time there was not a single board member with a college education, and they BRAGGED about it. I’m also sure they were proud that their county had the lowest college going rate in West Virginia, because after all, we don’t want kids to be gettin’ above their raisin’. Fuckers. I hope they’re all dead.
Now it’s not like I agree with every decision Justice O’Connor ever made, but she’s probably the single greatest voice on the issue of judicial reform, and is by all accounts sincerely devoted to the cause. The fact that George W. Bush won the 2000 election doesn’t change that. For fuck’s sake.
But I’d be willing to bet that the the only real effect of O’Connor serving as the “Honorary Chairwoman” of Joe Manchin’s “Independent Commission on Judicial Reform” is that maybe the catered lunches will be nicer. She’s not magic.
From the standpoint of political strategy, bringing in a marquee outsider to sit on your committee is a pretty sly way to bring cache and credibility: people swoon, they get lots of positive exposure via the press — and then the committee goes about doing whatever it was they were going to do all along. See the immediate past WVU presidential search for a fine example of this technique in action.
And that’s why I think that what’s actually worth discussing here is that this is Joe Manchin’s Commission, chaired by his former General Counsel. And as it is with almost everything, I highly doubt that Joe Manchin has the best interest of West Virginia at heart.
Everyone needs to read Clevenger’s superb piece from the Gazette’s Sustained Outrage blog, for not one, but 2 reasons. First, for his spot-on analysis of a very important point that has clearly gone over the heads of most people:
“What’s getting lost in a lot of the post-opinion spin is that West Virginia does have rules that govern when judges (and justices) should recuse themselves. As Justice Kennedy noted in his opinion for the majority:
“The West Virginia Code of Judicial Conduct also requires a judge to “disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” … Under Canon 3E(1), “‘[t]he question of disqualification focuses on whether an objective assessment of the judge’s conduct produces a reasonable question about impartiality, not on the judge’s subjective perception of the ability to act fairly.’”
The Supreme Court wasn’t creating some mysterious new standard so much as upholding a pre-existing one.”
Now is that so hard to understand?
Second…well, just read the entire post. Then take a look at this article from yesterday’s Daily Mail for a look at how the sausage gets made. The only thing I really had a problem with is that I find it hard to believe that Kent Carper and Nick Casey were the only lawyers on the “other side” who were available for comment. Also note the quote from Doug McKinney, who took a break from losing elections to reveal that the well-established concept of judges recusing themselves based on the perception of bias is — a totally new thing to him!
The question decided yesterday had to do with whether or not Benjamin could be forced to recuse himself. But with the predictible exception of a few cross-eyed local Chamber of Commerce fucks, pretty much EVERYONE thought Benjamin should have stepped down. Even Scalia hinted at it. Of course he should have recused himself. And that’s a major point that I think is getting lost. This case got a lot of national press around the time of oral arguments, and in every single instance Brent Benjamin was portrayed as an oafish joke who was either too dumb or corrupt to just set this one out. This reflected pretty poorly on the entire state of West Virginia. And as always, most West Virginians were entirely oblivious to it.
Was Benjamin actually biased? How the the hell should I know. But he absolutely appeared to be biased, and appearances were enough to warrant his recusal. What amazes me is how much Benjamin thought this was all about him. He thought that if he believed in his heart of hearts that he wasn’t actually biased, then how could anyone think he appeared to be biased? But that is not all that our law requires. As Dahlia Lithwick said, “No judge in the world believes herself to be biased. But no judge in the world wants a Justice Brent Benjamin sitting anywhere near her case, either.”
Gary Abernathy is going back to Ohio, presumably so he can lose elections there. Kabler notes that Abernathy “also maintained one of the few political blogs that I’ve seen that didn’t resort to name-calling and mud slinging of those who espoused opposing points of view.”
You know, the thing that never ceases to amaze me is the media’s absolute fixation on the trash talking and profanity that happens on blogs. As if that never happens anywhere else. But really. Both the business and profession of journalism are facing extinction-level problems, and what really bothers Kabler is that someone over at Fifth Column is calling someone else motherfucker. Well here’s some real trash talk: while Kabler was busy writing pieces about how our incompetent legislature deserved a giant pay raise, the potty mouths here at Fifth Column got the president of a major university fired. Think on it.
Drag Me to Hell is the best pulpy horror movie I’ve seen in years. If you’re into that sort of thing, you should see it. But if you do, may you never have the misfortune of sitting in front of a row of dickhead teenage girls from Logan.
It wasn’t the yammering on about how one of them should text the boys with skinny beards who went to see Night at Museum instead (”Hannah, you shud tay-ext hilm!”). And it wasn’t the brain dead commentary track they were providing (”Thay-et’s stoopid.” “I dawn’t geeet it.” In a movie called “DRAG ME TO HELL,” mind you. You know what else they didn’t get? The irony of seeing a movie called “DRAG ME TO HELL,” then driving back to Logan). What put me over the edge was that one of these little shits had already seen the movie, and kept telling the others (and by extension, everyone else in shouting distance who could interpret her accent) what was about to happen.
Now for fuck’s sake. Not to be the fuddy-dud adult, but Christ on stick. This is a movie theater, not an extension of your mam-maw’s double-wide, and no, you are not the shit because Daddy let you drive all the way to the big city of South Charleston on a school night. So shut the fuck up and get your feet of the back of my seat, you dumb fucking cracker-ass jizz jar you. Arrrggghhh!!!”
And you’d think I would have said that. But all I could really manage was “couldja just — shhh — not talk so much?” To which one of them replied “NO! Why don’t yew just move down thay-er!?!” And then, I turned around and just glared at her with the burning hatred of 1000 white-hot suns. And that worked. They shut up.
“Roeder, the suspect in Tiller’s murder, had apparently twice tried to vandalize another clinic in the last two weeks — and in a way that suggested it might be setting the stage for a more serious break in. An employee at the clinic managed to get Roeder’s license plate number and reported it to federal authorities, only to be told that nothing could be done before a grand jury had been impaneled.
It seems difficult to imagine that similar suspicious behavior, let alone actual vandalism, would have generated such a passive response if the clinic had been a synagogue or a federal building and the suspect had an Arab name.“
(Emphasis mine.)
And for the “but abortion is icky!” crowd that will no doubt show up in the comments, at least read this before you yammer on about the simple black-and-white world you live in.
So we got the president of a major University fired. Score one for us. But alas, Fifth Columnists, it’s been 4 years now, and we’re still losing the War on Mimes.
