REFLECTIONS

The Reflections Daily is out http://paper.li/TownHallweblog – featuring @benboychuk @KatMcKinley @DeanSMS

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In this issue 1. Murkowski 2. AK Primary
3. Ammo 4. Cameron 5. Avastin

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

1. Murkowski. Joe Miller, an attorney from Faribanks won the Republican primary against incumbent Lisa Murkowski Tuesday. As of this writing (and I am three days late this week), with 15,000 absentee votes counted, Miller holds around a 1,650 vote lead with 9,000 questioned ballots outstanding. Murkowski would have to take 68% of those outstanding ballots just to pull even with Miller. Lisa conceded the election Tuesday evening here in Anchorage. Miller ran the perfect campaign, painting Lisa Murkowski as too liberal for Alaska and too unwilling to successfully join combat against the democrats, Obama or Fedzilla and defeat them in congress. I wrote about the quandary for Alaskan conservatives in late July. You can find it here: http://thealaskastandard.com/content/lisa-or-joe There were a lot of wild stories flitting around in the conservative blogosphere about the recount and the close election. One from Red State had Murkowski’s campaign using a Republican Party of Alaska phone bank during the later days of the campaign. This is blatantly false, as no such phone bank exists. Another was that boxes and boxes of ballots were being “discovered.” This is also false, as Alaska is not King County, WA or Minnesota. Soros’ Secretary of State Project does not work up here, as elections are controlled by the LtGov, who runs for election with the Governor and is an elected position from the same party as the Governor. Our current LtGov is USAF Reserve LtGen Craig Campbell, who does not put up with much foolishness. Lisa Murkowski was proudly moderate to liberal. She was trained by Ted Stevens and in some ways became him in the Senate. Unfortunately, this is no longer the type of representation we here in Alaska need. Lisa supporters had little reason to turn out. Polling had her strongly ahead until the final few days of the campaign, when the Murkowski fired off an incredibly nasty, vicious ad against Miller – who promptly returned fire. Miller’s win also vindicates Sarah Palin, who endorsed him against Lisa. We had a ballot proposition that required parental notification or judicial permission in order to send a minor to the aborto-doc. This initiative overturned an Alaska Supreme Court ruling from a couple years ago that found the right of privacy of an under aged girl to get an abortion trumped parental rights. In the public schools, even to get an aspirin, parents must be notified and sign their permission. However, Planned Parenthood and a supportive school counselor can haul a 13-year old to the abortion clinic for surgery without any parental involvement at all. All the pro-lifers turned out to vote for the proposition. And this hurt Lisa Murkowski, who has long been pro-choice. She never supported the ballot proposition, much to her election chances. She could have supported the ballot initiative by going after the judiciary, as it is the job of the elected representatives of the people to decide these sorts of things, not five black-robed bozos. Democrats nominated a candidate from southeast Alaska, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, who was intended to be the designated mort against Murkowski. Now that the Republicans have nominated a new guy, Joe Miller, who ran as a strong constitutionalist, the local rumor mill has the democrats dumping their nominee and running former AK Governor (Phony) Tony Knowles or his LtGov Fran Ulmer in an attempt to steal yet another seat in the US Senate. The next few weeks are going to be very, very interesting. Expect the democrats to do everything possible to paint Miller as too extreme to serve all Alaskans. They are already spending a lot of time trash-talking the Tea Party.

2. AK Primary. Alaska held its primary elections last Tuesday. I discussed the senatorial campaign above. We also selected a candidate for governor, House of Representatives, and the legislature. We passed a ballot initiative that requires parental notification for any minor who wants an abortion, slapping the state Supreme Court in the face; and turned down a ballot initiative limiting people who take public money from using that public money to lobby for more public money. While the initiative was a good idea, it was flawed and dissolved during the campaign. The Republican governor nomination went to incumbent Sean Parnell, who almost won a majority of all votes cast. His closest opponent, Bill Walker, who was backed by the unions, is now being pushed hard by the unions to run as a third party candidate, which will nicely split the conservative vote and install democrat Ethan Berkowitz as our next governor. Walker has promised to make his decision by the end of the week. Total turnout on the Republican side was nearly double that among democrats. This was for all races, not just the hotly contested Lisa – Joe Miller race. If our side can maintain this sort of passion throughout November, we may do well. The race for US Senate and governor will be close, hotly contested campaigns. Berkowitz already fired his first couple of blasts against Parnell.

3. Ammo. The greens have been going after firearms for years. The latest round was a petition by the National Resources Defense Council to the EPA to ban all lead from ammunition for firearms. The logical trail was that lead is bad, so therefore it must be completely removed from the environment before it harms the wildlife. Interestingly enough, it is not the actual presence of lead that harms the wildlife; it is the manner and velocity which it is forcibly introduced into the body of the wildlife. The EPA considered the petition for months, even to the point of taking comments from the general public – which was the point in time when the story broke. Interestingly enough, congress anticipated such shenanigans from the greens when they passed the Toxic Substances Control Act. That legislation specifically exempted firearms and ammunition from consideration. Late last week, the EPA announced that they had rejected part of the NRDC petition and all was well with the world (at least for a little while). The EPA left the second part of the petition open for public comment until Sept. 15. That part of the petition is an attempt to ban lead in fishing sinkers – things which don’t harm the fish either.

4. Cameron. Director James Cameron has been carrying the water for the manmade global warming due to manmade emissions of carbon dioxide for several years. He has been loud of mouth and belligerent to the skeptics, even threatening them with bodily harm. He was supposed to debate Marc Morano of Climate Depot (and former Imhofe staffer) on global warming. As the time for the debate approached, Cameron made a series of substantial changes to the debate form, venue, format, etc. all intended (apparently) to get Morano to cancel. He didn’t, and Cameron bailed out at the last minute claiming that Morano was not important enough to debate. Morano and Climate Depot have been having fun with this for a week. You can read about it here: http://www.climatedepot.com/

5. Avastin. Here come the Death Panels. It appears that the Obama Administration has managed to corrupt the FDA to the point where it is approving or withholding approval of life-saving drugs based on cost alone. The first attempt is an anti-cancer drug called Avastin. This drug has been used for years to treat colon cancer. It works pretty well, but is very expensive. It has also been approved for use against breast cancer, and has been very successful extending the life of cancer patients. It is also very expensive at several tens of thousands of dollars per person treated. The solution by the Obama administration’s FDA? Withdraw approval to use it to treat breast cancer. The British National Health Service is one step farther down this path, withdrawing Avastin from treatment for colon cancers, condemning over 6,500 people in Great Britain to a much earlier and more painful death. And it is all about money; not the efficacy of medical treatment. Palin was right, ObamaCare IS Death Panels.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the previous Town Hall Conservative group.

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Oh for Pete’s sake!  Obama is not a Muslim.  He’s not a Christian.  He’s a statist.  Obama’s god is Government, and he shall have no God before it.

I know a lot lefties who are devouted Christians.  They are quite sure Jesus is a Democrat and when said to feed and shelter the poor he meant Government should feed and shelter the poor.   Liberal Christians think Jesus wants their neighbors to pay for their health care so they can afford trips to Paris.  I am not sure where in the New Testament you find that particular commandment.   But I know a lot of people who are quite convinced that Jesus was an early version of Marx, and when Jesus says “charity” what he actually meant was robbing Peter to pay Paul. 

The lure of big government promises rewards in the here and now, not some Heavenly future.  It is that lure that moves the Christian Left.   The god of statism is generous with real gold here and now.

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Even conservatives repeat the ridiculous idea that Obama ran a perfect and moderate campaign.  Fred Barnes here http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-four-disasters says “His campaign was nearly error-free”  This is a joke right Alan Funt will come out now and say I am on candid camera, right?

Error Free?  57 states, bitter clingers, promising to double electricity rates, calling grandma a racist to save Rev. Wright then throwing the Rev. under the bus a few months later, the Greek temple, the Berlin speech?  Error Free?  And that is just off the top of my head, if I started doing a little research I could be at this all day.

The truth is everything about Obama was obvious right there from the beginning.  We could see the arrogance in his turning back the tides speech, the condescension was there aimed at bitter clingers, the radical statism in his convention speech which was a laundry list of bigger and better government programs.  Everything we have grown to hate about Obama was as plain as day when we loved him, well you loved him, me never.

For some perverse reason the American electorate chose to see clothes when it was obvious the Emperor was stark naked.  I will never understand it.  But I will never let the electorate off the hook.  We the people saw the radicalism, the class warfare, the race card, the arrogance, and we voted it into the highest office in the land.  I don’t know why, but we did.

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