Salt City Sinner

The legendary Bill Allred of Radio From Hell and his banana:

The national coverage of the GOP primary so far has focused on Michele Bachmann (largely already seen as the front-runner*) and Sarah Palin (because she's a snowbilly grifter and the queen of smug, sullen media-baiting). Local coverage: exclusively John Huntsman and Mitt Romney, with church-owned media (the D-news, Trib, KSL, etc.) leaning slightly in favor of Romney. Editor's Note: NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER IN SIX MONTHS. Who on Earth thought Obama stood a chance at first? *: if you have followed the horse race so far and noted that Michele Bachmann is being taken Very Seriously by some Very Serious People, then you are probably in my position: bloodshot eyes, voice hoarse from screaming, a thousand-yard-stare and trembling hands. If this has not been your reaction, please read Matt Taibbi's excellent write-up of Bachmann, available here (because Jann Wenner has been replaced by a cyborg replicant that understands the internet). Money quote: Close your eyes, take a deep br...

Mitt Romney is scheduled to make an appearance at legendary local burger pit Hire's Big H. Romney should be there around 3 PM. The predictable traffic apocalypse is going to be especially bad since Hire's sits on 4th South at 7th East, both of which are major rush hour pipelines. Try to avoid the area if you can - if you can't, hell, go grab a burger and see if you can get away with tousling Mitt's impressively immobile hairdo.

Hat tip to the Daily Dish Climate Progress has the following headline: ' Green Jobs Are Real : German and American Solar Industry Both Employ More People Than U.S. Steel Production' People want to know: Are green jobs real? The answer is resoundingly “yes.” With roughly 93,500 direct and indirect jobs, the American solar industry now employs about 9,200 more workers than the U.S. steel production sector, according to 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics. The American steel industry has historically been a symbol of the country’s industrial might and economic prosperity. But today, the solar industry has the potential to overtake that image as we build a new, clean-energy economy. Well, hot damn! Here's that green and sunny boom in chart form (again, hat tip to Andrew Sullivan ): All in all, solar is looking better and better, not just from a green point of view, but in terms of providing a potential booming sector for skilled labor (solar installation is a step up from roofing -...

Mr. Sunshine sounds off on the first GOP Primary debate: The clear winner was Michele Bachmann, who kept her insanity bottled up very effectively, only lied once or twice, and made the rest of the group look like vacillating stooges. More on her in Rolling Stone next week. I can't wait! (Seriously, Bachmann and Glenn Beck are two minor obsessions of mine. Imagine how excited I get when she appears on old Glenndolf's show) I didn't watch the debate in its entirety, but I watched enough to know it was boring and horrible and chock-full of pandering. On the other hand, Ron Paul is doing his level best to make some headway with independents: [It was] hilarious watching Ron Paul sound off at length about the ins and outs of monetary policy while at least four or five of the other candidates stared nervously off in other directions, having absolutely no idea what the hell he was talking about. You can disagree with Paul about monetary policy - hell, I think he's nutty as a s...

The first person in this video (the female wearing black) is my sister, who is also co-director of Peaceful Uprising . She says a few words about mountaintop removal: Conversations with Blair Mountain Marchers from Grace Wang on Vimeo .

Jeffery Goldberg says : This is psychologically fascinating: The mind of Fox Business host Eric Bolling, when confronted with images of President Obama meeting with Gabon's president, Ali Bongo, instantly recalls other black people who have met with President Obama, and comes to the conclusion that Obama feels deep love for black "hoodlums." Not only that, Bolling goes on to refer to the Obama White House as the "hizzouse." This crap is shocking enough when it spills out of a Glenn Beck or other right-wing frothing head. They have to talk professionally for hours a day, and something like their real feelings about a black man in the White House are bound to slip through. This, though, was scripted and "mainstream" news on Fox Business, making it (perhaps) the most blatantly racist anti-Obama media coverage I've seen so far. Stay tuned, though, because like I always say, there's no bottom floor in Hell.

This local ad is utterly inexplicable to me. Local ads in general are the worst of the worst, and often odd enough that IFC is launching a reality show about weird local ad makers. Why does this ad strike me as so interesting? Part of it is repeat exposure. I'm up very early every day, and this commercial airs during local newscasts in the morning. It's texture - bold, dumb, vaguely "hip-hop" - conflicts with the ideological texture of morning newscasts so jarringly that it always grabs my attention (mission accomplished, I guess). Check it out: No matter how you slice it, it's DAMN ODD. And even odder when it interrupts the usual home remodel showcases and household product commercials and the tepid, half-jokey newscaster's drone.

On occasion I think of Alaska as more Canadian than American - a place in the frozen hinterlands where a socialist plan to redistribute oil money has been relatively successful, and where political clowns occasionally crop up to give us all a laugh (Palin, Stevens, etc.). Then they go and do something like this (via the Tribune ): Several Alaskans from the salmon-dependent Bristol Bay region toured Utah’s Bingham Canyon Mine on Monday for a look at the kind of tourist attraction they hope never to see back home. They came with a village association, Nunamta Aulukestai, which represents Alaska Native corporations that oppose development of the massive Pebble mineral prospect on a remote and largely roadless mountain area southwest of Anchorage. The headwaters there feed spawning grounds that support commercial and sport fisheries valued at up to half a billion dollars a year... [Tribal representative Karen] Williams fears Pebble, with an estimated 81 billion pounds of copper and signifi...

My sister wrote a piece at Peaceful Uprising 's site about why she's currently marching on Blair Mountain: Human beings have come to a point in the history of our overpopulated, information-saturated planet where we are simultaneously incredibly, immediately connected and achingly apart. We watch breaking news in real time as it occurs across the seas; we create and nourish intimate, if mechanical, relationships with total strangers from foreign climes; we hear eyewitness accounts of personal, unthinkable tragedy—and we can turn it off and walk away. There is only so much global devastation to which an ordinary person can authentically relate; after that, it becomes lip service and empty rhetoric... During my brief, blessed time in Appalachia, I witnessed a fact that I already suspected: Appalachia is special. The march I’m attending—the March on Blair Mountain—commemorates one of the most remarkable moments in American Labor history, and in the history of American social ju...

From Army.mil : Maj. Tim Franklin from the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command, who also serves as science and technology adviser to U.S. Army Africa, is the lead in coordinating an experiment using flexible solar cells that could eventually save millions in Army fuel costs. In fact, the project was recently nominated for recognition in the Annual Secretary of the Army Energy and Water Management Awards because of the more than $230,000 savings by using the solar shade. The concept is simple -- flexible solar cells affixed to a sun shelter then connected to a system of storage batteries. “Solar shade produces two kilowatts of power -- that may not seem like a lot, but in a remote area it’s perfect because you don’t have to worry about transporting fuel or replacing parts,” Franklin said. “You could place this on a remote mountain site to provide power for a radio retransmission site [since] it requires very little maintenance,” Franklin said. Meanwhile : After almost...

This is a crushing and completely unacceptable reversal of policy that is going to hurt Utah's wilderness more than Salazar or any of these clowns can imagine. From NPR : The Obama administration is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo to his agency that officials will not designate any public lands as "wild lands." Instead Salazar said the agency will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Associated Press. Salazar's decision reverses an order issued in December to make millions of acres of public land eligible for wilderness protection. A budget deal approved by Congress prevented the Interior Department from spending money to implement the wilderness policy. Several Western states filed suit to block the plan. No...

The Tribune reports this morning that "sources" claim Rep. Jason Chaffetz is gearing up to take down Senator Orrin Hatch in the GOP Primary next year. Leaving aside Hatch's amusing histrionics* ("Waaaah! He promised not to run against me!"), I suppose it's not too early to start thinking about what it will mean for Utah if both of our Senators are Tea Party neophytes, more defined by their hardcore adherence to a strict ideological purity test than by political experience or work within the UT GOP machine. Well, that last actually sounds appealing, doesn't it? Couldn't the case be made that a little fresh blood, uncorrupted by the mutual back-scratching and deal-making that defines Utah politics? After all, one of Lee's early votes was to say "no" to the PATRIOT Act extension that both Democrats and Republicans fell into lockstep support of. I like that. I like that so damn much, it almost makes me forget that Lee's civil libertari...