REFLECTIONS

Interesting Items 9/06 –

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

In this issue: 1. Bitter Enders
2. Joe Miller 3. Hillside Democrat 4. Salazar
5. Fishing 6. Bill Allen

1. Bitter Enders. We are two weeks away from the electoral earthquake in the Republican primary that turned out Lisa Murkowski in favor of Joe Miller and chose incumbent Alaskan governor Sean Parnell as the Republican gubernatorial nominee for election in November. Despite Murkowski’s promise (captured on tape) to support the party nominee before the election, she and her campaign operatives have continued her campaign against Joe Miller at a low level over the last couple of weeks. Local media is rife with rumor that her campaign operatives are exploring contacts with the Libertarian Party, Alaska Independence Party or even considering a write-in campaign. One of her campaign operatives wrote an article in the local fishwrapper Tuesday morning blasting Joe Miller and saying that his numbers just don’t add up. None of this would be happening without Lisa’s approval, as she runs a pretty tight ship. It does demonstrate quite clearly what happens when someone spends too much time in the corrupting environment of Washington DC. From my perspective, Lisa has two choices. She can choose gracefully step aside and strongly support her opponent and get Joe Miller elected to the US Senate from Alaska. Or she can continue her dalliance with running for reelection as a third party candidate and sufficiently split the vote to put yet another democrat into the US Senate. Should she do the latter, and this appears to be the road she is traveling, she will be despised statewide and never get elected to anything again. I published an article about Bitter Enders Lisa Murkowski and Bill Walker in Red County. You can find it here: http://www.redcounty.com

2. Joe Miller. The two democrat house organs – the local fishwrapper and Channel 2 have treated us to an unending series of articles about Joe Miller – all intended to trash him as a candidate. At this point, it appears that the assault on Miller will be some combination of calling him a lightweight, someone who is trashing big government while getting his employment via the government, as an extremist, as anti-native, that his numbers don’t add up – and that’s just the last week. The local fishwrapper continues to run op-eds written by Lisa bitter enders trashing Miller. For his part, Miller has made the rounds of national talk shows and has done very well on all the issues. He is going to hear from Alaskans who believe that the job of our elected representatives is to steal the hard-earned tax dollars from other Americans and funnel it up here to Alaska. Yet over 80% of all federal money spent up here is military money, and the military presence isn’t going to go away any time soon, as Alaska continues to be a strategic location to forward deploy our forces. Miller’s view is that if we can get the feds out of our hair, we as a state can do quite well for ourselves by developing our own resources. And he is spot-on correct in this view. The anti-native charge comes out of his view that we are all equal under the law. What a concept: No special rights for any Alaskan. He has not yet started with ObamaCare, which he devastated Lisa Murkowski with. He has not yet started with the EPA; regulation of carbon dioxide; renewable energy; federal involvement in light bulbs, toilets or bedbugs. When he goes after the greens and intrusive federal meddling in this state, he will do very, very well. At this point it appears that Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams will be the democrat nominee for the election. Expect democrats to dump millions of dollars into the state in an attempt to steal another senate seat. I believe it will be wasted money.

3. Hillside Democrat. We have a 3-way campaign underway for an open state senate seat here in Anchorage. The Republican nominee is a staunch conservative named Cathy Giesel, who managed to get nearly 50% of all votes cast in a very tough Republican primary. Her second opponent is a typical democrat candidate who is portraying herself as conservative, independent, and responsible. She has been selected by the state democrat apparatus as their best vehicle to steal this state senate seat. Her expertise is energy and she says all the right things. Yet, she is yet another Obama-oid who has been bought and paid for with union money. I wrote an article about her in The Alaska Standard over the weekend. You can find it here: http://thealaskastandard.com

The third candidate is one Phil Dziubinsky, who claims to be an independent. He started running a series of very expensive, very well produced ads the day after the primary results were announced two weeks ago. He is a retired BP employee whose expertise is energy. Interestingly enough the democrat is also running on a foundation of expertise in energy. While I can’t prove it yet, it sure does appear that these two are running a coordinated campaign intended to split the conservative vote and elect the democrat. When the campaign finance disclosures are announced in early October, we will know a lot more about Mr. Phil and who has been funding his campaign. More on that next month.

4. Salazar. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in the state last week, ostensibly to take testimony over his illegal and unwarranted shutdown of all offshore oil and natural gas exploration here in Alaska. He bobbed and weaved, nodding his head while saying that there will be no offshore oil or natural gas exploration until there is no danger of a leak. By that logic, there will never, ever be any offshore drilling or production, for there is always a danger. Salazar has been a disaster for this nation. The sooner that federal lands and responsibility for those lands can be returned to the many states, the better we will all be.

5. Fishing. Last week I wrote about a decision by the EPA not to consider a ban on lead in ammunition. The National Bird Conservancy submitted a petition to ban the manufacture of lead used in ammunition and lead weights for fishing. Provisions of the TSCA did not allow the EPA to consider such a ban for ammunition. But they can and will consider such a ban for fishing weights, which will make the cost of fishing increase by at least an order of magnitude. Cabella’s which is one of the larger sporting goods retailers in the nation claims that a ban on lead for fishing weights will increase the cost of those weights by a factor of 15 as they have to move to other metals. And it is not the lead weight that hurts the fish when fishing. It is this point thing called a “hook.”

6. Bill Allen. Former head of Veco Bill Allen is serving his time in Club Fed. He was the point man for federal investigation into corruption in the legislature several years ago. He was also instrumental in the illegal prosecution and prosecutorial misconduct that turned former US Senator Ted Stevens out of office in 2008. Allen had always said that he would say and do anything to protect his family. Last month, the feds announced they would not be bringing any charges against him for having sex with underage girls. This charge appears to be the vehicle that the feds had to leverage his cooperation to set up the legislators and Stevens. The State of Alaska announced last week that they were looking into the allegations. A few weeks ago, one of the girls involved was given a three page spread in the local fishwrapper. Had this story been written during the Stevens trial, he would have never been convicted, as his accuser would have had his reputation destroyed. But since Stevens was turned out of office, convicted, and has now passed away, the democrat sycophants at the Anchorage Daily News felt comfortable running the story they have been sitting on top of for years. Nice job, guys.

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.