the TOWN HALL weblog

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

In this issue:

1. Begich
2. Ice
3. Ayres
4. Infanticide
5. Schumer

1. Begich. One of the things that Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) has been relying on in his bid to be elected to the US Senate is the federal indictment of incumbent Senator Ted Stevens (R, AK) on seven counts of failing to disclose all required financial information. Interestingly enough, Candidate Begich has the same sort of problem with his financial disclosure statements, as there are substantial differences between what he has told the state he has in his candidate disclosure forms and what he told the US Senate in their financial disclosure forms. Hugh Pierre, connected with the Republican Party of Alaska filed a complaint on July 31 detailing a series of significant omissions by Begich. They include (but are not limited to) the following: Failed to report Public Employee Retirement System income for both himself and his wife to the state; failed to disclose bank account and dividends to the state; failed to report savings bonds and income for his wife to the state; failed to report his wife’s position in the National Bank of Greece to the state; failed to report a variety of stock and bond holdings – including the natural gas pipeline contractor TransCanada – to the state; failed to report his ownership and income from a “Hot Springs, Limited Resort” in Carson City, Nevada to the state. Ever heard of the Bunny Ranch north of Las Vegas? The business conducted in Carson City is rumored to be the same. If you total the dollar amounts not reported by Mayor Begich, they start approaching the quarter million dollars that Ted Stevens has been indicted for failing to report, leading locals to question why Mr. Begich has not been similarly scrutinized or indicted by the feds. This is probably not the outcome that neither Mr. Begich nor the DSCC wanted. The Begich campaign responded as expected, first by calling the complaint filer a party hack (so what, especially if what he has filed with the State of Alaska is accurate?) and then noting that the failure to disclose was all done at the state level, so it is a state issue rather than a federal one. Note that I am not writing this in defense of Ted Stevens, as he will go through the prosecution and trial and the jury will have its say at the end. And I am not doing the Clintonoid “So’s your old man” routine. However, if you are running as the paragon of virtue; running as the cleanest of the clean; running on reform, goodness, sweetness, motherhood, and apple pie, you bloody well ought to be squeaky clean yourself. Mayor Begich is playing fast and loose with his financial disclosure and getting a free pass by local, state and national media simply because he is a clean-cut, young, smiling democrat. He will likely get a similar pass from the federal prosecutors investigating corruption in Alaskan politics, simply because he belongs to the right party. The difference between democrats and Republicans continues: If a Republican has legal problems, you will always know, and will be able to remove him or her from office immediately. With a democrat, you will never know, and they will always get a free pass from a friendly media. I expect the double standard, as it helps us jettison the bad guys on our side of the political fence. It does make it more difficult to clean up the other side of the political divide, but what else is new?

2. Ice. A pair of stories on Arctic sea ice this week. The first comes from the Strata Sphere Thursday which noted that 2008 had the largest arctic sea ice extent in the last four years. The data was released by the feds on August 15. The second was the very next day on Friday, an AP story in the local fishwrapper, the Anchorage Daily News about federal wildlife monitors in the Chukchi Sea spotting nine polar bears swimming in the ocean. The story went on to attempt to justify listing of the bears as endangered because all arctic ice is predicted to be gone in 50 years. I think they drew the wrong conclusions, for if the wildlife monitors managed to spot this many bears in a short period of time, perhaps it is because their numbers are increasing rather than decreasing. If the solar astronomers are correct and we are entering a period of decreased solar activity, the problem in the arctic will be with too little open water for the bears to hint seals in rather than too much open water.

3. Ayres. You can always tell a man by the friends he keeps. And Barack Obama is no different. One of his good friends over the last couple decades in Chicago is a convicted terrorist, a Weather Underground radical who participated in bombing the Pentagon in the 1970s, William Ayres. Today, Ayres is a tenured Prof at the University of Illinois and completely unrepentant about trying to blow up the Pentagon. He is also a long time political collaborator with Barack Obama. The extent of that collaboration is unknown at this time because the University library has decided to stonewall freedom of information requests for documents of their collaboration on the Board overseeing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a vehicle for funneling private donations to schools. Normally this sort of murky setup serves to enrich the university leftists and other insiders involved with funneling money here, there and yonder. Perhaps this is why Friends of Barack and William Ayers don’t want the information to see the light of day. Hot Air, Weds.

4. Infanticide. Barack Obama has also managed to bring the issue of abortion back into the forefront of the presidential campaign with yet another pair of missteps. The first took place a week ago at a pseudo debate at the Saddleback Church in Colorado. Obama was asked when he thought that life began. He responded that the answer was well above his pay grade and he could not make that decision. The second comes with his support for infanticide in Illinois and his lies about that support. There is an abortion procedure used in Illinois which induces labor on the mother. About 10-20% of the babies are born alive and then put aside and allowed to die. Lifetimes for these poor, unwanted innocents range from minutes to hours. This has been going on for years and years in hospitals throughout Illinois. While Obama was in the Illinois State Senate, the scandal burst, and legislation was pushed to require normal medical assistance to be rendered to these children born alive. Obama fought that legislation with every inch of his being, successfully killing it in 2003. He has since lied about both the intent of the legislation and his efforts to kill it. Those lies have been exposed and Obama now has to defend himself. Democrats appear to be on the verge of nominating their most life-hostile candidate in history. Hot Air, Mon.

5. Schumer. Former employees of IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank driven out of business after a leaked letter of concern by Chuckie Schumer (D, NY) hit the streets, filed a complaint with the State of California Attorney General over the leak. The Attorney General, former California Governor Jerry Brown will look into the complaint and possibly mount an investigation against Schumer. Schumer’s letter of concern was sent to the FDIC and Office of Thrift Supervision based on his role as a member of the Senate banking Committee, and as with most things Schumer, was intended to get face time for him on the drive-by media. Unfortunately this letter triggered a run on the bank, which had a substantial home mortgage portfolio in the subprime market. The run on the bank triggered a federal bailout on those that were defaulting on their loans. The run on the bank also hosed those mortgage holders who were paying their loans on time. We will hope that Schumer gets his just deserves. I am not holding my breath, however. LGF, Thurs.

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 Town Hall Conservative group.