Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, October 2007

1. Bear Hunt. Craig Medred in last weekend’s ADN Outdoors section went after the anti-hunting greens at KTUU here in Anchorage and reporting in the ADN itself. The setup was video of a brown bear hunt near Katmai. The hunter was disabled and unable to move well, so the guide set up the hunt so there was little to do except take aim and shoot. There was a camera team on location filming bears and hunters, probably in an effort to gather some film that could be shown on local TV as a vehicle to inflame public passions and limit a bit further hunting here in Alaska. The tape was shown on KTUU, which has a reputation for being the voice of the greens, unions, and leftists here in the state. It was portrayed in the worst possible light. Nobody bothered to report that the hunter being guided was disabled. Like most killing, this wasn’t p articularly pretty to watch, and public reaction against the hunter and the guide was pretty strong. Medred then went on to point out that the area used for the hunt sits on a belt of land just north of the McNeil River State Wildlife Sanctuary and 3.7 million acre Katmai National Park, both of which are closed to hunting. It sits just south of the 2.2 million acre Lake Clark National Park, also closed to hunting. This little area still open was p art of the negotiations in 1980 to retain an activity that has been going on in these lands for 10,000 years – bear hunting. Apparently that agreement with the greens is no longer viable, and hunting there must be shut down also. This episode demonstrates yet again that you can never, ever deal with the greens, for they, like most bullies, will always be back for another bite of the apple. It demonstrates quite nicely the anti-hunting biases of KTUU, as they showed the film and portrayed it in the worst possible light, all in an attempt to so inflame public passions that they will shut down big game hunting here in Alaska. Congratulations to Craig Medred for bringing out some actual facts and doing some actual reporting on the event.

2. PKK. As we see growing tensions between the communist inspired Kurdish separatist group PKK in northern Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds, and the Turks, some Republican congressmen are st arting to wonder exactly what Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Damascus was really all about. Dr. Jack Wheeler wrote a piece last week that reported that Pelosi staffers met with PKK representatives while she was in Syria. After the meeting, PKK activities in southern Turkey stepped up several notches. There is growing speculation that Pelosi was not just committing buffoonery in her Damascus visit, but actively undermining our war effort in Iraq by using the PKK to help trigger a shooting war between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq. The Kurds know this is coming, as they essentially tossed the PKK under the bus last week, warning them that they were no longer going to be protected from the Turks simply because they are Kurdish.

3. Spitzer. NY Governor Elliot Spitzer, in an effort to get as many illegals voting in 2008 as humanly possible is pushing to give valid NY drivers’ licenses to illegals. Reaction to this plan has been fiery. Internal democrat campaign strategists are st arting to yell that the effort is going to destroy democrat candidates up and down the entire slate statewide, with a “mass exodus” of mainly suburban voters away from the democrats. They are even st arting to worry that this will hurt Hillary in NY. Should Republicans in NY figure out how to do this right, adopting some sort of proposal for dealing with illegals in NY, and I would adopt much of what Fred Thompson laid out last week as a model, they stand poised to do some serious damage to the democrats in NY next year. NY Post, Mon.

4. Coal. Things always get interesting when you elect democrats – even in a nominally conservative state like Kansas. One of Governor Kathleen Sibelius’ minions turned down permits to build a pair of coal-fired electrical generation plants in western Kansas last week citing the dangerous emissions of carbon dioxide and their contributions to global warming as the excuse. You remember Sibelius, who distinguished herself last May after a tornado had destroyed Greenville, KS by complaining that the deployment of KS National Guard units to Iraq was hampering the cleanup efforts. She was immediately taken to task by the state’s congressional delegation and National Guard officials after those statements and backed down. She has not been heard of regarding this event. She managed to appoint the Secretary of the Kansas Dep artment of Health and Environment who overrode staff recommendations for approval of the permits and denied them. These plants are needed in western Kansas, and will provide energy to fast growing p arts of both Kansas and eastern Colorado. Investors Business Daily wrote an editorial excoriating the decision and the environmental hysteria behind it. Noel Shepherd in NewsBusters also wrote an extensive piece on the decision. The decision has really stirred up passions in Kansas, and has fueled a furious backlash within the state legislature (Republican majority) and county governments where the plants are to be located that support the plant construction (mostly democrat) fighting the decision. The greens, in a time where we are dealing with $90 oil (mostly due to green obstruction of new oil production and new refinery construction) have managed to move us away from reactors, which are among the cleanest energy generation techniques out there over the last 30 years. Electrical companies have naturally turned to coal to fill that need, and new technology has cleaned up coal plant emissions to the point where they are very environmentally friendly. This decision is the first permit denied nationwide under the excuse of carbon dioxide and manmade global warming. It will not be the last. We will see what the citizens of Kansas do to a government that no longer represents them well. We will see how they react to green hysteria over global warming.

5. Jackpot. There are a few dangers when conducting business in foreign countries – even those wholly enclosed within the borders of this nation. Case in point was a man who won a $1.6 million slots jackpot in a New Mexico casino. The casino held that the machine had malfunctioned, was limited to $2,500 for its maximum payout, and refused to pay. They were pretty nasty about it. The customer ended up with $385 and some meal tickets to the casino. Interesting note here is that the laws governing casinos fall outside the normal civil courts system, and are governed instead by tribal councils and tribal courts – meaning that the customer had no recourse. Had this been a casino on something other than a reservation, the customer would have had recourse in civil court. Yet another example of the dangers associated with not supporting the notion of equal rights under the law. ABC News, Thurs.

6. Jindal. The citizens of Louisiana finally spoke out and placed the blame for Katrina on their elected officials by electing Bobby Jindal (R) as governor Tuesday night. The race was a typical Louisiana event, marred by incessant race baiting from democrats, union thugs and purveyors of entrenched corruption statewide. Jindal got 54% of the vote in a multi-candidate race, and will not have to p articipate in a runoff under Louisiana’s system. Patrick Ruffini, reporting in Hugh Hewitt Weds noted that the effects of Katrina were felt up and down the ticket, with entrenched democrats at all levels of state and local governments enduring remarkably tough races, many losing them outright. Jindal will also carry with him a new legislature. He has promised to st art draining the swamp of political corruption that has run rampant in Louisiana for decades (centuries?). At a national level, Jindal who is of Indian ancestry becomes the first non-white elected as Louisiana governor since reconstruction. He is a committed conservative, a Roman Catholic, and has been excoriated by democrats during the campaign for being a person of no color. He is also 36, and may be a figure on the national scene before too many years. US Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA) is up for election next year. She got her boost in her two previous elections from questionable voter turnout – massive turnout – in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Those people are no longer there, and the political machine that turned them out for statewide and national democrats is in shambles. She also blamed most of Katrina related damage on President Bush and FEMA, while all the locals are blaming stunning incompetence at the state and local level. Landrieu may be in big, big trouble next year.

1. Property Rights. Big Green rippled off over $112,000 in opposition to a property rights initiative in the MatSu Valley and defeated the initiative 70% - 30% with about 12,000 total votes spent. The green opposition outspent the proponents by 10:1. Outside money spent defeating the ballot initiative accounted for 77% of the money spent to defeat the ballot proposition. The greens have managed to capture control of the MatSu borough assembly several years ago and have busily been writing laws, rules, and regulations that strip property rights from local residents. They have raised taxes. They have fined people for doing things with their land. They are aggressively pushing a sm art growth set of planning rules for all property in the MatSu. They have picked a fight with the electric utility over new generation using coal. Turnout for this one was about 23%, which is pretty decent for local elections up here. The other thing that happened was that the teachers union made a strong push to elect a friendly school board that could preside over contract negotiations that st arted last week. This election had the confluence of strong green money and strong union money, and the conservatives in the MatSu, who didn’t bother to run strong, professional campaigns, got their backsides handed to them. Things in the Valley are going to be pretty nasty and very expensive for a while.

2. SCHIP. The House of Representatives upheld President Bush’s veto of the SCHIP expansion last week, forcing the democrat majority into negotiations with Republicans in both houses of congress for an alternative. Remarkable in this episode was the inability of the left to trot out little children with horrible injuries, terrible medical situations, he artrending stories of medical problems, blame it all on Bush and the Republicans, and not get anywhere with it. I am amazed, for the coverage of this fight from the drive-by media was entirely on the side of the democrats, and yet the general public didn’t buy what they were selling. Two weeks ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) blasting the Alaska congressional delegation for voting in support of the SCHIP expansion. That letter was rejected for “factual errors” such as comparing it to creeping Hillary Care, universal health care, forcing people off of private health care insurance, and lack of means testing. Of course this is the same paper that has published innumerable “Bush lied, people died” letters since 2001, all with little connection to facts, reality or anything else other than leftist invective. Bush may be a lame duck, but he is not so very lame – especially with a congress sitting at 11% approval in recent polling.

3. Chinatown. The Hillary campaign has returned to that old time Clinton religion for their fundraising, Chinese money. The latest event was a fundraiser in one of NYC’s poorest Chinese neighborhoods that brought in over $380,000, mostly in single checks ranging from $1,000 – 2,300. Most of the donors were waiters, dishwashers, busboys and chefs. Most of them were recent immigrants into the US. Either Hillary has managed to tap into the strong neighborhood associations that have told the new Americans to donate the money or else, or she has figured out once again how to launder ChiCom money through the Chinese community. The LA Times investigated the story last week, trying to contact 150 of the listed donors at the fundraiser. They were unable to find many of them, and the few that they did find did not know what the reporters were talking about. Whether these political donors were being strong-armed into political donations to the Hillary campaign or they are being quietly reimbursed after writing the checks, it is still wrong, and it ought to matter to somebody, somewhere. Remember this story when you take a look at all the money the democrats are currently raising during this election cycle. How much of it is in actual support of them or what they believe in, and how much of it is simply protection money? The democrat p arty, the Hillary campaign, and the congressional democrats have become thugs and goons, running a nationwide protection racket. PowerLine, Sat.

4. Armenians. House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi (D, SF), the democrat leadership in the House lost another one last week when a bill that condemned Turkey for the slaughter of Armenians nearly a century ago failed to get enough votes to pass and was withdrawn. This resolution was yet another attempt by the leftists in congress to undermine our war effort, this time by insulting and trying to peel away our allies in Turkey. The facts of the matter are not in dispute, as the Ottoman Empire, on its last legs, did indeed kill millions of Armenians around the turn of the 20 th Century. But the Turkish Republic is not the Ottoman Empire any more, having been established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1922 as a secular state. In recent years, the Islamists have slowly been infesting Turkey, having won recent elections in parliament and for the government. Even through an increasingly Islamist parliament, the Turkish government has been as supportive of American efforts in Iraq as possible. This effort by congressional democrats to condemn Turkey for the Armenian genocide was an effort to do as much damage to that working relationship as humanly possible. The Turks did not take this effort very well, as the Turkish parliament passed a resolution approving Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq to hunt down and destroy Kurdistan Workers P arty (PKK) guerillas that have been raising hell in southern and western Turkey for decades. We are fortunate that cooler heads have prevailed among the House leadership. But we must not forget that the Squeaker (terminology borrowed from Daffydd at Big Lizards) and her allies on the left in congress will everything possible – including triggering a shooting war between the Turks and Iraqis – to undermine, subvert, and destroy the successful war effort. Try not to forget this next year when you vote.

5. Rush Letter. Senate democrats took out after Limbaugh a couple weeks ago in a fraudulent orchestrated of hyperventilating outrage over his use of the term “phony soldiers” to describe anti-war military people who have made up stories about what they did overseas. Media Matters, a Soros-funded, and Hillary affiliated front group, orchestrated the story that the senate leadership used as a vehicle to try to destroy Limbaugh’s reputation. The event led to a letter from Harry Reid (D, NV) to the Chairman of Clear Channel Communications, Limbaugh’s business p artner demanding he be fired, disciplined, or other corrective action. It was signed by 40 democrats, including all their presidential candidates in the senate. The Chairman of Clear Channel gave the letter to Limbaugh, who came up with the idea of selling the original on E-Bay, with the proceeds going to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which funds scholarships for the children of those that have fallen in the line of duty. The auction covered a week, ending Friday, with the winning bid of $2,100,100. Limbaugh matched the winning bid and challenged senate democrats individually to do the same. Friday, Harry Reid (D, NV) took to the floor of the senate and tried to take credit for the entire affair, inserting himself and the senate majority into the fundraising effort. Of course, none of these simpering twits, these jackals, these miserable vomitous masses pontificating about one thing or the other on the floor of the senate had the honor, integrity or good grace to ante up a red cent out of their own pockets in support of the families of the fallen. Limbaugh did a good thing here. He made the senate majority look like the idiots and fools that they have become. He has also infuriated them by rubbing their noses in it for over a week. They will return fire, I am sure. I would expect some sort of an investigation to begin into Limbaugh, Clear Channel, or someone or something close to him, for this is how these people play the game. Congratulations, Rush, you have done a Good Thing, and shown the democrats for what they are.

1. SSAN. A Ninth Circus judge named Charles Breyer, younger brother of SCOTUS Justice Stephen Breyer, issued an injunction last week that prohibited the Dep artment of Homeland Security from sending out over 140,000 letters to businesses nationwide warning owners who had employees with names that did not match the reported Social Security Numbers (SSAN) that they may have illegals working for them. Breyer, sitting on the federal Bench in San Francisco, determined that these letters would constitute an undue hardship on the business owners, creating irreparable harm. The lawsuit was brought by the usual suspects in the immigration debate – the ACLU, the unions, and the US Chamber of Commerce. The letters had identified around 8.7 million questionable names / numbers combinations and was the initial step to positively identifying these people as illegals and removing them from the country. Essentially, Breyer is saying that you cannot identify illegals that have lied about their names or SSANs so that you can remove them from the country. The entire process gives the businesses 90 days from receipt of the letters to resolve the questionable names / SSANs or face fines, deportations and other federal sanctions. Regardless of what you may think about congress’s foolishness regarding immigration, the chief unseen player in this entire fight has been the federal courts, which have granted illegals welfare rights, put them into the public schools, and now is blocking the Executive Branch from enforcing the very laws that congress has passed on the subject. So far, nobody has gone after the courts on this. It is long past time to do so. And you evangelicals out there that think splitting off and going third p arty over abortion and marriage next year is going to be a Good Thing for Christians, had better consider what sorts of people Hillary is going to st art infesting the judiciary with, and reconsider your third p arty push. Finally, a warning from Laura Ingraham Friday to the Big Business, Chamber of Commerce types out there. Business ought to remember that conservatives typically support business and the marketplace. When businesses st art working strongly against the interests of the general public, they open themselves up to a time when conservatives will stand aside while the leftists savage businesses via taxes, regulations and lawsuits, as businesses, represented by the Chamber of Commerce types no longer share conservative values. CQ, Weds.

2. Leak. We had an outburst among the conservative bloggers last week regarding the early leak of Bin Laden’s last video to the public a month or two ago. A couple non-government web sites that track Al Qaida reported that Al Qaida shut down all their web sites in a matter of minutes and blamed it on the early leak of the tape to the media. Apparently Al Qaida found that their intranet communications network was not secure anymore and shut it down. That shutdown was observed in near real time by people on our side who blamed it on the leak of the tape. I would like to pose a different explanation to this event. Given that the professional intelligence community – and I include the NSA, DoD and all the non-CIA agencies in this list, as the CIA is irreparably broken and cannot be trusted – knows that there have been leaks damaging to the administration and the war effort over the last six years, don’t you think they have figured out how to play those leaks, the leakers, the anti-Bush and anti-war internal opposition? You would figure that they have pretty well mapped out the opposition and figured out how to use it to their advantage. If we tell Al Qaida that we have penetrated their network by releasing an Al Qaida tape two or three days before it was to be released, what do you suppose Al Qaida will do? Why, they will shut down their network, go dark all at once – while we are looking, watching, taking notes, and analyzing what was done and how it was done. What if this was a cyberwar feint designed to test the remaining Al Qaida network? Do not put it past the cyberwar people to set up Al Qaida just at the point in this war when they are becoming predictable. Remember Boyd’s OODA Loop. Our blogging brethren ought to be a bit more analytical sometimes.

3. Berger. For anyone interested, the Hillary campaign has just hired disgraced felon (stealing and destroying classified from the National Archives is a felony regardless of the plea bargain with the Department of Justice) as one of her national Security advisors. Hillary said that he was simply an old friend. Mistakes were made. And it is all probably part of a vast right wing conspiracy against her. Sleep well tonight as the Clintons, their cronies, and their lackeys in the drive-by media value a felon who stole and destroyed classified out of the National Archives to cover Bill Clinton’s sorry backside over the security interests of the United States of America. CQ, Mon.

4. SCHIP. The democrat campaign to override Bush’s veto of the SCHIP Bill is wandering down predictable lines as they trot out children who received medical care under the program and cry about losing their coverage. Message to democrats, the media and anyone else that wants to listen: The vetoed legislation was an EXPANSION of the program rather than an extension. Last week, the democrats trotted out a pair of kids including a 12-year old who were terribly injured in an accident to make their argument for them. The kiddos read the democrat script with all the requisite pathos and railed against the elimination of their health care. Turns out that they were covered under the existing program, got good care, and are still alive and in physical and occupational therapy as a result of care received under the existing program. It also turns out that their parents, in Maryland, a very blue state, made lifestyle choices that included relying on the state for their medical insurance rather than buying it themselves. Right wing bloggers ferreted out this fraudulent setup over the weekend and st arted beating up on the family and the kids rather than the democrats for pulling off this stunt. They in turn were then beat up for going after the victims, in this case, the 12 year old and his sister that the democrats had trotted out to do their dirty work for them. Should we cave in to this sort of extortion, there will be no end to it, for literally everything will be done for The Children during every single year Hillary and / or a democrat congress sits in the future majority.

5. Babbitt. When former Clinton Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt st arts briefing congress, property owners normally need to st art hiding their wallets and arming themselves. Last week, Babbitt testified before a friendly democrat House committee, decrying the woeful underfunding of the federal wildlife refuge system since 1997. The law was passed by a Republican majority in congress as a way to provide alternate funding for operating the refuge system, which includes 96 million acres, 48 refuges, and is currently underfunded by $2.5 billion. Don Young (R, AK) wrote the legislation in 1997 in a way that would encourage the Dep artment of the Interior and refuge managers to open the refuges to alternate ways to make money for operations, maintenance, manpower, infrastructure, etc. These ways include mining, logging, oil and gas exploration – none of which is high on the list of Good Things to do in wildlife refuges according to the greens in federal employ. The greens currently infesting the management of the refuges have not been sufficiently entrepreneurial and have not brought in sufficient business, and now suffer a funding shortfall. Perhaps it is time for congress to st art returning the lands to the many states rather than chasing off business and meeting green demands for ‘mo money’ if the management cannot raise sufficient funds for reasonable operation of the refuges. It ought to be ‘use it or lose it’ time for the refuge system. ADN, Thurs.

6. Shell. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) filed a response to the Ninth Circus injunction against Shell Oil’s exploration plans in the Beaufort Sea last week. It appears that they are preparing to fight this out in court and to win. The MMS called the greenie, NIMBY and native charges against Shell and the MMS groundless, unwarranted, and “… in some cases, filed after the official deadline had passed.” The hearing is scheduled for Dec 4. No word yet out of the Palin administration here in Alaska about what they plan to do to the North Slope Borough and native leaders who have obstructed the new exploration program. The Palin administration has been missing in action on this issue, which is a real disappointment. ADN, Thurs.

7. Young. Don Young’s (R, AK) path to reelection got a bit rocker last week when two more people filed to run against him in the primary election to be held next August. One was a screaming leftist, former state legislator, Ethan Berkowitz (D) who ran for LtGov last year under a ticket with Tony Knowles (D). Berkowitz is pretty smart and pretty smooth, but he is absolutely incapable of doing anything other than the standard leftist fare of pro-unions, pandering to the greens, raising taxes, and stealing from people who have earned what they have. Berkowitz joins a crowded field on the democrat side that includes Dianne Benson, who ran against Young in 2006 and got 40% of the vote; and Jake Metcalf, shyster for the local IBEW and head of the Anchorage School Board. The second candidate is Gabriele LeDoux, a former democrat who switched parties and ran for the legislature and was elected as a Republican from Kodiak in 2006. Everyone is apparently going to run against Young on a reform platform – intending to clean up politics here in Alaska. Nobody yet has said what they will do to keep the greens from continuing to lock up resources in this state from development. Nobody has said what they will do to control the growth of restrictive and intrusive government regulations here in Alaska. Nobody has said what they will do to eliminate federal control of fish and game on federal lands using a rural preference for subsistence as the excuse for their unconstitutional actions. Nobody has said what they will do to keep taxes low. Nobody has said what they will do to move power and money out of Washington DC and back into the state of Alaska. Nobody has said what they intend to do about the damned federal courts and environmentalist lawyers. If this is all they have, Young, even in his weakened condition, has an opening to turn them into a laughingstock. We will see if he is up to it after over 30 years in the House of Representatives. Sooner or later, you get tired of fighting the Borg. Whether or not Young runs and wins this time around, he does not have many more elections left in him, I expect. ADN, Thurs.

1. Battlespace Prep Part I
2. Battlespace Prep Part II
3. Arctic Ice
4. Al Qaida

1. Battlespace Prep I. We are just over 12 months out of what promises to be a very nasty, ugly national election – one that has 2-3 SCOTUS nominations in play – and the Battlespace preparation for that election is underway. The first example comes out of the Religious Right, which has evangelical leaders st arting to come out of the woodwork in strong opposition to Rudy Giuliani. This opposition goes so far as to threaten to wander off and vote third p arty next November should he be the nominee of the Republican P arty. Evangelicals such as Dr. James Dobson have even come out in opposition to Fred Thompson, mostly because he does not support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. For the record, Thompson is right on this and Dobson is wrong, for how many constitutional amendments can we muster to overturn SCOTUS brain f arts? Better to fix the damned courts than fix the constitution every single time they do something stupid. Throw into this mix, Bill Clinton’s promise that the next Clinton administration would not ignore the evangelicals, and you suddenly have them in play for the upcoming election. Hillary and Obama have been reaching out to evangelicals outside the normal democrat politicking from the pulpits of black Baptist churches. Conservative, libertarian and moderate bloggers have blasted these statements, correctly noting that if the evangelicals fail to turn out or that the democrats somehow entice them to split their votes between the Republican, democrat and third p arty candidates, we lose and Hillary gets elected. The Strata Sphere, Captain’s Qu arters and Powerline have been p articularly hard hitting in their commentary. Perhaps there is something else going on. Perhaps the evangelicals – tired of being taken for granted by Republicans in congress – are st arting to do what they can to push the campaign, frame their issues, and prepare the Battlespace for the primary season. Their p articipation is a Very Good Thing for Our Side, as it means that they are engaged, energized and active. What they decide to do upon the selection of a nominee is another thing, however. Unlike some of my favorite bloggers, I do not believe that the evangelicals see Hillary for anything other than what she is and will vote against her when the chips are down. With 2-3 SCOTUS nominees in the balance, and every single recent federal action that harms the family coming out of the federal courts, I do not expect their opposition to Giuliani, Romney or Thompson to continue for long after the nomination seems a certainty. There is also the possibility that this entire dustup has been carefully orchestrated by the Hillary acolytes in the drive-by media and her non-profit front organizations as a way to either split the conservative vote or get the evangelicals to sit out the fight for the next year, believing that all is lost. Message to my cohorts in the new Media on this one: Keep your powder dry. Things are not as they may seem.

2. Battlespace Prep II. P art II of Battlespace preparation comes out of the Hillary campaign, David Brock’s Media Matters, George Soros and the democrat leadership in congress. This one uses a lie from Media Matters, yet another Hillary sponsored non-profit, that accused Rush Limbaugh of calling any soldier who opposes the war in Iraq a phony soldier as he did in a commentary a week ago, as a vehicle to attempt to destroy Limbaugh’s credibility among the public in general and among his listeners in p articular. Media Matters took the transcript of the statements, selectively edited it down into a couple precisely incorrect sound bites that could be used for their ends, and st arted tossing out a series of press releases in an attempt to discredit Limbaugh – essentially to shut him up for the duration of the upcoming campaign season – via actions of their congressional hack buddies in congress. A few days later, in a nicely orchestrated fit of righteous indignation on the floor of the Senate, Harry Reid (D, NV) and his democrat buds in the senate majority accused Limbaugh of disparaging the troops and demanded his immediate apology. 40 of these bozos signed a letter to the Chairman of Clear Channel Communications demanding that Limbaugh be forced to apologize or be removed from the air. In the world of modern politics, you don’t want to st art making things up about someone that does his homework as well as Limbaugh does. He was on the air immediately fighting the allegations; posting the actual audio of his conversations on the air and in the updates that described phone soldiers on the free side of his web site for all to see and hear. He even found a Hillary clip that claimed credit for forming Media Matters – which puts their 501C(3) status at risk, for it is illegal for a non-profit to coordinate with a campaign as Media Matters is publicly doing with the Hillary campaign. Media Matters and organizations like it function best when left to operate in the dark, quietly doing their dirty work under their respective rocks, feeding their creative writing samples to their willing supporters in the drive-by media. Media Matters has been outed as at best a Hillary shill, a front organization that is making things up as they go. And the democrat majority in congress, after years of listening without comment to some of the most vile commentary on the active duty troops who are successfully fighting and winning this war from their members – commentary by people such as John Kerry (D, MA), Harry Reid (D, NV), Dick Durbin (D, IL), Jack Murtha (D, PA) without lifting a finger in protest, now have the gall, the temerity to go after Limbaugh when he points out that the democrats are lifting up military people who are not what they claim to be or have not done what they claim to have done? To borrow a phrase from half a century ago: Senator, have you no shame?

3. Arctic Ice. AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere, when it is not railing against the hard right, is really a pretty decent source of information about things scientific. He reported last Weds about the latest NYT and other drive-by media hysterical claims that the melting of the arctic ice cap was the greatest in a century or more, all caused by mankind, global warming and George Bush (I just threw in Bush because the implication is that everything bad that happens is Bush’s fault). Strata nicely points out that if this had happened before – without Bush in office, without the industrial base we have today worldwide, and without the current carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, then there is no possible way that is can be the fault of mankind, Bush, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or anyone else. And if the carbon dioxide levels today are higher than they were a century ago when it happened last, then carbon dioxide levels cannot possibly be the cause either. The best they can say is that this hasn’t happened since 1979, when portions of the Northwest Passage opened up a bit. So what? It’s always a darned shame when scientific observations, data collection, and analysis get in the way of your favorite religious event – in this case Global Warming.

4. Al Qaida. The Surge got a couple Big Dogs over the last couple of weeks in Iraq. The biggest may be the financier, the guy that managed to insert over $100,000,000 into the insurgency over the last couple of years. Insurgents aren’t going to do a whole bunch without resources, and the Iranians aren’t giving their toys away for free. We have captured the guy who carried out the bombing of the Golden Mosque, the event that successfully triggered the Sunni – Shiite civil war a year ago. Both guys came along with a long list of people they deal with regularly, new recruits, bomb making facilities, and other intelligence sources. All these Bad Guys are also being rolled up as we speak.. Al Qaida is also on the run in Pakistan, now reduced to hiding out among the tribes in Northwest Pakistan and whining for more people to join them before it is too late. Pakistan’s military push into the region appears to be bearing fruit, as the new recruits are moving into a sealed off area where they can be identified, rounded up, herded like dogs, and killed. If this is the successful beginnings of the New Caliphate in the Middle East, I don’t want to see its destruction. Final bit of Good News out the Strata Sphere last week: Coalition forces and Iraqi military killed the Emir of Iraq and Syrian border areas, and facilitated the support and transfer of men and materiel between Syria and Iraq. When he was killed, the friendlies captured lists of safe houses, transfer points, supply bases, etc., all of which are busily being rolled up. It’s going to be hard to fight a war with the Infidel if nobody comes to play any more on Al Qaida’s side. Bummer, Dude.

1. Hansen. Investors Business Daily did some investigative reporting into chief global warming scaremonger James Hansen and uncovered a monetary connection between him and George Soros. Soros-financed Open Society Institute gave Hansen, who is still a NASA employee, $720,000 in the form of a public campaign to push his view of the dangers of global warming. Open Society spent $74 million in 2006 “to shape public opinion” is funded primarily by Soros, and appears to be one of the non-profits that the leftists and democrats have relied upon in recent years to prepare the information battlefield for their campaigns. Given their success in 2006, it appears that they are in the process of figuring out how to do this successfully. Theresa Heinz Kerry’s Heinz Foundation gave Hansen a $250,000 grant shortly before he endorsed her husband for President in 2004. Hansen also was a paid consultant for algore’s Inconvenient Truth fantasy on the dangers of global warming. Hansen has violated NASA rules on speaking to the media. He has taken outside money to further his own manufactured data and results. He has given over 1,400 interviews inflaming fears of global warming while simultaneously accusing the Bush administration of trying to censor him. He finally released some of the source code for his computer models and early analysis of it finds it to be an absolute mess, as data is included and excluded based upon the results generated rather than treating all data points alike in the computation algorithms. In the political world, one ought to always follow the money, and in this case, the connection between Soros, Hansen and Kerry is too obvious to ignore. We are far past the point of science in this discussion, as the science does not back up the claims of impending doom. We are well into the world of politics, invective, and fraud. There is another danger here with Soros’ involvement in the global warming scare. The danger is that of a well orchestrated political campaign masquerading as a scientific discovery, and we don’t find out where the money is coming from until years after the campaign has run its course and legislation has been passed into law. The goal of that campaign is congressional action to change the laws – usually to take away our rights to do something. The last time we saw something like this was the Pew Foundation’s involvement in laying the groundwork for McCain – Feingold. Soros’ Open Society Institute was also involved in this travesty. One ought to always follow the money, and when Soros is anywhere close to the action, you might want to grab your wallet and a firearm, for they are coming for both. Daily Tech, 9/26.

2. Pebble. The battle to shut down all hard rock mining here in Alaska continues. This week’s action was hearings on a proposed law that will not allow hard rock mines such as Pebble to use local water. This p articular piece of legislation will prohibit Pebble from taking any water from any stream that discharges into the Bristol Bay drainage and discharging any water into the drainage regardless of how clean that water might eventually be. Legislative hearings were held in three villages in the region. Local opinion out there is sharply split between people who think new jobs in the region is a very good thing, and the NIMBYs who already have theirs and aren’t interested in anyone else getting theirs. Scare stories are also running wild, claiming the mine will instantly wipe out all salmon and trout from several thousands of square miles of watershed. This is a laughable claim, for if the Katmai Novarupta eruption, which puked out three cubic miles of magma over the course of a few days didn’t destroy all fishing in that p art of the state in 1912, a large copper mine operating under modern mining and remediation rules over the course of a couple generations will not destroy all fishing either. At this point, we do not expect the legislation to pass. Unfortunately, it or something like it will be back again and again and again. This episode illustrates nicely our current problem here in Alaska. The greens, emboldened by retaking congress, and the prospect of Hillary in the WH in January 2009 have pulled out all the stops to shut down development – or anything under its own power – in this state. The vehicle of choice is lawsuits filed in the Ninth Circus. They have had a pretty good summer, shutting down Shell Oil’s exploration in the Beaufort Sea, attacking Pebble, shutting down a proposed coal mine in Chickaloon. They have pulled water discharge permits for a mine in Southeast, and another in western Alaska. This is the future for this state unless the politicians stand up and do something about it. So far, our new Governor, Sarah Palin has not been front and center publicly in opposition to their efforts. We hope she will get off the dime and do something before it is too late. ADN, Weds.

3. SCHIP. The democrat majority in congress along with a raft of useful idiots who were elected as Republicans passed out a gross expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) last week. The majority in the Senate was veto-proof. It just barely fell below that number in the House. Expect President Bush to veto the legislation today and trigger the first budget fight of the fall season. To recap, SCHIP was passed by the Republican majority in congress in 1997 as a way to cover poor children. Cynics such as myself viewed that vote as a way to st art down the road to Hillary Care – universal health care. This time, they are going to go about it in steps, some small, some not so small, until they force everyone off of private health insurance plans and onto public plans and programs. SCHIP triples the scope of the program, triples the number of people covered by expanding the number of young adults covered to their mid-20s – hardly children. SCHIP pays federal money into the states that is passed along when people are signed up to the program. The match is typically 3:1, three federal dollars for every state dollar. Up here, the program is called Denali Kid Care – a nice innocuous little name. But bad things happen when the feds and the states get involved in health insurance. Here in Alaska, Denali Kid Care pays for pregnancies and medical care of the new youngster for several years following birth – but only if the mother is unmarried. What has been happening is predictable, as young couples shack up, have a couple of kids, raise them for a few years, and then get married when the kids are no longer eligible for the pregnancy benefits. These same young adults are refusing employer sponsored health insurance programs. Our entire delegation voted for this travesty, proudly so. All three of them have been under withering attack by the leftists, their media lackeys and self-designated reformers. At this point, it appears that Stevens and Young are in reasonably good shape for the election next year, though there are some strong views to the contrary. But when they st art voting like democrats, st art spending like democrats, st art mouthing all the smarmy little “for The Children” platitudes, they make the same mistake that congressional Republicans did in 2006. For why ought anyone vote for a pretend liberal in a Republican when they can vote for a democrat and get the real thing, full strength? If this keeps up, we are in big, big trouble.

4. Ozone Hole. Ronald Bailey in Reason on 9/27 reported some interesting new research on the ozone hole. Bottom line here is that the chemical reaction that uses CFCs to destroy ozone in the upper atmosphere is an order of magnitude less common and less effective than thought when CFCs were banned over 20 years ago. At this point, atmospheric scientists no longer have a clue about what causes the ozone hole to form during the winter over the Antarctic. Bailey and the scientists still hold firm to the notion that atmospheric CFCs and halons are responsible for the depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere. They still are unable to explain why the ozone hole has always been observed, even before CFCs and halons were in widespread use.

"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.

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