Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, Nov 2006

1. Imams. Six loud-mouthed Imams were kicked off a US Airways jet in Minneapolis after behaving in a suspicious and threatening manner. The six were praying loudly and conspicuously in the waiting area, raising cries of Allah Ahkbar, coincidentally precisely the same things the passengers on the four hijacked jets on 9-11 heard right before impact. They asked for seat belt extenders, things that are normaly used for overweight passengers. The extenders weren’t used, but placed on the cabin floor under their seats. Two of them sat down in first class seats which they weren’t assigned. They arrayed themselves around the cabin and got up and visited with one another before boarding was complete. Not surprisingly, passengers and the crew didn’t appreciate the behavior and demanded they be removed from the jet. Upon removal, they were questioned by security. US Air refused to sell them tickets for their return flight. They immediately went into victim mode, whining, sniveling, and charging both the airline and their fellow passengers with racism, racial profiling, and ethnic cleansing. As the week went on, they made the rounds of the cable shows and network talk shows with their complaints. Of course, the Hamas-connected CAIR group st arted legal proceedings against US Air. Two of the Imams were connected with a Tucson mosque that also hosted two young Muslim men that conducted a 9-11 dry run in an US West jet five years ago. The same mosque also hosted one of the 9-11 pilots and Osama’s personal secretary. Clearly, there is something nasty afoot in Tucson, something that will have to be dealt with at some point. It appears that the entire event was staged, perhaps as a vehicle for the democrat’s first Muslim congress-critter, Keith Ellison (D, MN) to introduce anti-discrimination, anti-profiling legislation in the newly democrat congress.

2. Same Sex. The Alaska legislature met in special session last week to deal with the activist judiciary here in the state. At issue was an opinion by the Alaska Supreme Court directing the legislature to write new law that would implement their opinion that the state constitution did not prohibit the payment of employment benefits to same sex couples. Although the citizens of Alaska passed a constitutional amendment eight years ago defining marriage in Alaska as the union of a single man and a single woman, the simple language wasn’t good enough for the activists on the court, ruling last year via some highly tortured logic (or lack thereof) that we couldn’t discriminate against same sex couples (but certainly could discriminate against opposite sex couples and multi-p artner arrangements). The Murkowski administration had the new rules written and ready for implementation. The legislature put a stop to it via a pair of resolutions. The first requested additional time from the courts to sort out the directive. The second made it a misdemeanor for the state to pass and / or enforce such legislation. Then they adjourned. We will see what the courts and the incoming Palin administration do with this next. Hopefully, they will tell the courts to pound sand. The legislature has also pointed out that the courts do not have the authority to order it to do anything at all, for the courts do not appropriate money, authorize or control spending. This one will be fun to watch, as the courts have grossly overstepped the bounds of their authority. The legislature also asked for an advisory vote on the subject to be placed on the ballot in April, coincidentally the same day as local elections are held here in Anchorage. I wonder if Assembly candidates are going to have a new issue on which to run?

3. Draft. Incoming Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel (D, NY) reprised the pre-election Kerry “joke” young Americans joining the military because they were too poor and uneducated to get good jobs. His solution? Reinstate the draft, so the children of the rich and powerful could also benefit from military service. He couched the language in terms of national service, saying it should be universal. What he is really trying to do is reinstitute the draft as an anti-war tool. If you believe, as I do, that the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War was essentially an anti-draft movement, Rangel’s effort via reinstating the draft makes perfect sense for a man not interested in engaging and destroying the enemy. Rangel is a military veteran who served in Korea during the Korean War. Like his democrat cronies Jack Murtha (D, PA) and John Kerry (D, MA), he has forgotten why we fought then, is not interested in why we fight today, and doesn’t really care that the Islamists came over here to kill us and will do it again. House leadership announced a couple days later that the draft was not on the legislative agenda for 2007. We will see. In any case, Rangel gave Republicans a gift last week, for all Republicans have to say for the next couple years is to vote democrat and bring back the draft.

4. Litvinenko. Fascinating investigation is underway in Great Britain this week following the radiation poisoning and death of a former KGB Colonel and former Russian Premier. The radioactive agent appears to be Polonium-210 dust, which is a strong alpha emitter. Once you get it in your system, likely via inhaling dust or ingesting in food or drink, the alpha particles released as it decays damage organs, blood, and anything else that is in the way when they are emitted. Litvinenko lasted about a week after he was exposed. The investigators found 3-4 British Airways jets that were contaminated, over 30,000 people exposed, and several locations and businesses that were contaminated. Speculation on who did this and why is running rampant. There are those that believe Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was also head of the old KGB did the deed, as Litvinenko was a loud and committed Putin critic. There are those that believe that Litvinenko did it to himself or accidentally and is blaming Putin as a way to undermine an old enemy. There are those that believe that Litvinenko was dealing in weapons smuggling, a particularly troubling thing, as Polonium-210 is used in the triggers for nuclear weapons, and accidentally exposed himself. Finally, there is speculation about a black-market hit squad running around Europe. At week’s end, the Polonium had been traced back to a factory in Russia. As of this writing, the investigation is underway and speculation is running wild.

5. Wolf Kill. Three green organizations here in Alaska filed lawsuit against the Alaska Board of Game in an attempt to halt the predator control programs statewide. We have a serious problem up here with inordinate numbers of moose and caribou killed by wolves and bears. There are game management units where the survival rate for new calves is less than 15% due to too many predators. As a result, the state has decided to decrease the number of wolves and bear via a number of hunting and trapping measures. Greens, who worship large predators, want nature to take its course, allow the wolves and bear to wipe out all the moose and caribou, and then turn on one another. The Board of Game is doing it correctly as far as we can tell, as the big game animal numbers have been slowly increasing over the last few years. If they can ever stay out of court long enough to actually manage the wildlife, we will be in really good shape.

6. Nome Mine. Finally, yet another tiresome lawsuit has been filed against a proposed open pit gold mine near Nome. The mine is jointly owned by two local native corporations and will be operated by Alaska Gold / Nova Gold. The excuse used by the complainants is that the company failed to file sufficient Environmental Impact Statement paperwork (apparently they wanted three dump truck loads of paper rather than the two loads delivered to the state and the feds). Good luck to the mining company and their business partners on this one.

1. Correction. I was in error last week when I noted that Governor-elect Sarah Palin did not have the support of any unions here in Alaska. One of my correspondents pointed out that the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 302 came out in support of Palin late September. Thank you for the correction.

2. Friedman. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman passed away Thursday at age 94. He may have been the most influential – and correct – economist of the twentieth century. His basic goal in life was to bring freedom - liberty to as many as possible. He laid the intellectual foundation for free market, small government economics. He popularized free market economics in the late 1970s via a ten-p art series on PBS. There was also a book of the same name that was at the time, the first real lesson in basic economics for many of us non-economists on the right. At the time, Keynesian, big government spending and control had progressed under Jimmy C arter to the point where we had double digit inflation and near double digit unemployment – all with no hope of improvement. Ronald Reagan adopted much of what Friedman was proposing, or at least tried to, and put together the greatest economic expansion of the Twentieth century. Friedman was active and creative throughout his entire life. We were blessed as a country to have had him in our midst. He will be missed.

3. Rumsfeld. There was some residual anger with the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as SECDEF the day after the election. Most of that anger among Republicans was displacement, I believe, blaming someone or something else for their failure of vision and nerve in congress over the last two years. Some observed that had Bush dumped Rumsfeld two weeks or months earlier, they could have at least saved the senate majority. I disagree. I don’t think Bush fired Rumsfeld. I think Rumsfeld is a superb student of history, took a look at the election returns, and decided that he didn’t want to spend the next two solid years sitting in front of various democrat – dominated congressional committees getting second-guessed on his every action over the course of the last six years and tendered his resignation. By the time they convene the hearings, he will be two months gone from office. In my book, he was one of the finest SECDEFs we have had in our history as a nation. Not only did he successfully prosecute a war against Islamists worldwide, he got to do it without any support from either the State Dep artment or the national Intelligence community, both of which were in near rebellion against President Bush’s long term and short term goals and techniques. His successor, Robert Gates is a two-year placeholder that will do what he is told to do I expect.

4. Analysis. According to Newt Gingrich, we now have 54 conservatives in congress who are not Republicans. This represents both a problem and an opportunity, should the newly elected leadership know what to do with those conservatives. After a couple weeks, it appears that Republicans may be out of power for a while, which may or may not be a good thing. Newly elected Speaker Pelosi had a couple missteps: The first with her attempt to install John Murtha (D, PA) as House Minority Leader and the second with her attempt to depose Jane Harmon (D, CA) as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee with Alcee Hastings (D, FL). Her democrat colleagues rejected Murtha in favor of Stenny Hoyer (D, MD) for Majority Leader. Hoyer is a formidable opponent and should not be taken lightly. He is quite capable of setting up House Republicans for a long time in the minority. It appears that the democrats will take their time with internal reform within the House, split it into a bunch of little pieces, and pass them out one by one, giving the newly elected conservatives face time leading the pieces through the process. Heard Frank Luntz on Laura Ingraham last week. He told about pre-election focus groups held among conservatives. The single issue that put everyone on the ceiling immediately – incredibly angry and yelling – was immigration, and the failure of both congress and the administration to take it seriously. Conservatives need to properly address competing needs: controlling the borders; not rewarding those that have broken the law; dealing with the illegals decently; and doing it without being too nasty or vindictive about it. By this issue alone, up to 20% of self-described conservatives that turned out to vote voted for democrats or libertarians. And Republicans also lost a significant portion of the Hispanic vote they had just two years earlier. This explains why Bush selected Mel m artinez as Republican P arty Chairman after the election. Democrats don’t want to solve this problem, and will instead try to hang it around the necks of Republican candidates for decades. It is up to conservatives and Republicans not to let that happen.

5. Legislature. Republicans in the Alaska Senate held a 11-9 majority after the elections. Each house of the legislature forms a governing caucus in meetings before the session begins in January. Last weekend, in an act of astounding treachery, four Republican state senators joined with eight democrats to form a governing coalition. The leader, a formerly well-behaved, strong conservative from the MatSu Valley, Lyda Green apparently wanted to be president of the state senate. She didn’t have the votes to do so among republicans, so she sold her soul to the democrats and got her presidency. She carried with her John Cowdry (R, Anchorage) who will chair the Rules Committee, Gary Stevens (R, Kodiak) who will be Majority Leader, and Charlie Huggins (R, MatSu). Democrats are positively giddy about their free pass to power. House Republicans are mightily cranky, for the pressure will be on them to not get rolled by both the democrats in the house but the democrat – led majority caucus in the senate. Politics up here get pretty loud, and it is a contact sport. I look forward to a few recall petitions st arting to make the rounds for April’s elections. Charlie Huggins, in p articular is on video tape during a debate before the election promising not to caucus with democrats. At this time, he is only taking positive calls from constituents. This legislative session will be quite interesting, for the democrats sitting as chairmen in the senate will kill every single bit of decent legislation coming out of the house for the session. Measures going after the courts for outrageous decisions will die, as will anything that will put limits on the political reach of unions here in Alaska. This one will be a lot of fun to watch, especially the last month of session. Finally, these caucuses are ephemeral, and can dissolve and reform as soon as some group has 10 votes. Lyda Green told the assembled senate Republicans that she could not undo her coalition, because “… that page has turned.” Pages are interesting things, for they can be removed, shredded, and used to line cat boxes. So can the careers of self-serving, pompous politicians who put personal ambition over honorable conservative service to the people who fought long and hard to put them and their majority into office.

6. Ninilchik. By a 5-1 vote last week, the Federal Subsistence Board found that the members Ninilchik tribe had a customary and traditional right to fish on the upper Kenai River and its tributaries. The excuse for setting up this race-based special preference was that tribal members took fish from the lower Kenai River which were on their way to the upper Kenai to spawn. We now look at the disgusting prospect of a race-based preference to the taking of fish and game on one of the finest sport-fishing rivers on the continent. Those demanding preferential access to the fish will shortly be putting the nets across the Kenai, the Russian River, Cooper Creek, and other waters of the upper Kenai. I cannot think of any better way to sow hate and discontent among Alaskans than to set up race-based fisheries. I fully expect there to be dynamite used on the nets and fishwheels when they are set up. I fully expect there to be gunfire. When the events go to court, I don’t expect any convictions. And it is all so unfortunate and tragic, for all you have to do is treat people equally and practice the notion of equal rights under the law. Anchorage Daily News, Sat.

1. Alaska. Alaska voters elected their first female governor Tuesday night, Sarah Palin (R), of Wasilla. She got just under 100,000 votes and just under 49% of the ballots cast. She beat former governor Tony Knowles (D), who got 41% of the total vote. A third p arty candidate, Andrew Halcro, a Republican running as an independent got just under 20,000 votes, drawn equally from democrat and Republican voters. In the legislature, Republicans lost a Senate seat, going down to an 11-9 majority. They lost three seats in the House, dropping to a 24-16 majority in the House. Overall, this new legislature appears to be a bit less conservative than the previous one. In order to keep future losses to a minimum, elected Republican legislators ought not to spend like drunken sailors like they did last session, for as we have seen at the national level, democrats a re a lot better than Republicans in acting like democrats. Governor-elect Palin has a unique opportunity over the next several years, and properly played, she could become an incredibly powerful political figure in Alaska – something we haven’t seen a lot in recent years out of our governors. She was elected primarily by Republican voters – conservatives, evangelicals, hunters, fishermen and property-rights types. She lost about 10,000 liberal Republican voters that went for Halcro, who ran to the left of Knowles on several issues but presented himself as a fiscal conservative. She was opposed by both Anchorage newspapers, all the unions, the greens, the local broadcast media, the Chamber of Commerce types, and all the corporations that cravenly st arted donating to Knowles midway through the campaign. She literally owes nothing to all the usual political players here in the state. As such, she has the opportunity to forge a long-term, conservative majority here in Alaska, provided she chooses her battles well and is not seduced by the need to get adoring coverage from media here in the state. She has seen how not to do the job as governor – at least on a public relations basis – from the Knowles administrations that refused to have anything to do with the legislature for eight solid years, and the Murkowski administration that spent hand over fist, refused to fire all holdover Knowles appointees (who systematically undermined him for four solid years), and was singularly unable to get his message out to the public. Good luck, Governor Palin.

2. You’re Fired! American voters nationwide tossed Republican majorities in both houses of congress Tuesday night in what turns out to be a relatively normal sixth-year election. They lost around 30 seats in the House and six in the Senate. Turnout was down a bit from 2004. The democrat strategy of running conservative candidates worked well, electing many of them. Thomas Sowell a couple weeks ago wrote that this was the greatest bit of vote fraud ever perpetrated, with democrats running and electing conservatives in order to install radical leftists as chairmen and leadership in both houses. Overall the new congress is nominally more conservative. Democrats can no longer carp about everything (they will anyway) incessantly. Now that they hold working majorities in moth houses of congress, they will have to get off the dime and actually do something. It remains to be seen whether or not they have the discipline to behave themselves until they get a democrat into the WH in 2008. I expect them to do the “bread and circuses” routine – with the circuses being a series of loud, nasty investigations and hearings into the conduct of the Bush administration over the last six years, while quietly attempting to pass all manner of onerous legislation. We will see if the remaining Republicans are up to the task of opposition. Overall, this was a conservative election. It was also a housecleaning – and probably a well deserved one. Here are some details:

3. Analysis. Congressional Republicans essentially squandered their conservative mandate given in 1994. It only took 12 years to become so seduced by the dark side of the force, the embrace of the Beltway, the love of money and power that they turned into insiders. The general public rightfully tossed them out on their ears. New Gingrich was on Sean Hannity midweek and went though some post-election analysis. He was apoplectic, as congressional Republicans had essentially given away the store to the democrats. He cited a 60% majority of voters polled post-election that think the size, power and scope of the federal government is too large and that the democrats would be better as controlling its growth. Similar numbers exist when voters were asked questions about who is better prepared to manage the economy, which p arty will cut taxes, and which p arty will be better for business. Gingrich believes we have given up the possibility of creating a center-right governing majority and have instead opened the door to a center-left, European-style governing majority. I hope he is wrong. The other thing that didn’t work for our side is the war between the drive-by media and the new media. Democrat electoral success was enabled in no small measure by propaganda out of the drive-by media, which reported everything Republicans did and buried everything democrats have been doing. Too many people in this nation do not pay any attention to the political wars, and get most of their information from the drive-by media the last week or two before an election. They see what is popular and are neither interested nor inclined to do the necessary digging for the truth. Additionally, the new media – myself included – got too caught up in cheerleading for the Republicans – normally the most conservative candidates out there – to blast away at our Side when they were screwing up by the numbers. An article in The American Thinker late last week made the case that the drive-by media has successfully marginalized the new media by painting us as simply a house organ for the Republicans. There was a rollicking good argument about that in Powerline over the weekend. If we have collectively done anything poorly, I believe it was giving the Bush administration and congress too much of a pass when they went leftist so as not to undermine conduct of the war. In that way, we kind of adopted the Beltway get along to get along routine that the voters so forcibly rejected. We in the new media have a couple jobs to do in the next couple of years. First is to figure out what sort of conservative first principles we choose to support and then support them. Second is to get the word out about scandals involving democrats in office. I am convinced they scandal-monger because they are on average far dirtier than we are, so they believe everyone else is dirty. They chose this game over the course of the last decade. Let ‘em play it. All in all, this beating was well deserved. We will see if we can learn something from it and do something about it afterwards.

1. Haggard
2. Special Session
3. Air America
4. Campaign
5. Kerry
6. Disclosures

1. Haggard. The leader of a high-profile Colorado Evangelical church was accused of being a closeted homosexual by a male prostitute that claimed to have sexual relations with him for a long period of time. After some serious crawfishing, the minister confessed to paying for a massage and purchasing amphetamines from the prostitute. He eventually resigned from his church and issued a very strong mea culpa that was read at Sunday’s services. The male prostitute that outed this guy at the last minute claimed that he was honor-bound to go public with the charges the week before the election because of Haggard’s strong support for an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative in Colorado. Some observers have reported that Haggard has been increasingly leaning left in recent months, sidling up to environmentalists, and other trendy leftist causes. This sorry episode represents yet another case of the left destroying one of their deep undercover guys for a short tactical advantage, totally ignoring the long-term strategic advantage this guy and others like him could have given them over the years. The notion of an evangelical leader giving in to his inner demons is so old as to become almost a cliché. It was popularized by Genesis 15 years ago on their We Can’t Dance album in “Jesus He Knows Me.” The thing that the gay activists and leftists don’t understand is that we know that there are people in the evangelical movement that have lost their battles with their inner demons and given in. As long as they continue to do whatever they do in deep cover, nobody will know, and they will undermine the evangelicals thru their daily actions. But as soon as they are outed – normally by someone on the left or by some homosexual activist at a timely moment for a political campaign – they are removed and replaced by someone who has not yet lost the personal battle. Over the long term, the homosexual activists and leftists help us clean up our collective act and lose their leverage inside the evangelical movement.

2. Special Session. The Alaska House Majority Caucus held a meeting last weekend on the governor’s call to a special session in Juneau to respond to court orders implementing same sex benefits for state employees. They refused to convene. Several legislators believe that the courts have significantly overstepped the bounds of their authority, and can be ignored. Others believe that they do not have the authority to appropriate money for these benefits. This sets up a nice collision between our activist state courts and a very conservative legislature next session. This ought to be fun.

3. Air America. Ran across an interesting what-if story a couple weeks ago in the blogs. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I saw it for proper attribution. Think it was AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere, but can’t find it any more. The article discussed Air America’s financial failure and filing for bankruptcy. It asked the simple question: What if Air America was not a business? What if it was an uncontrolled campaign donation? Remember that McCain-Feingold put some significant limits on campaign spending and ads during the final 60 and 30 days of political campaigns. Those limitations did not apply to the media. Given that Air America’s broadcasts were essentially democrat talking points for the last four years, the writer believes that it was simply a way around the new limitations on campaign spending. If you look at their donors, they are all the same people and organizations that have supported democrat candidates over the last decade or so. The NRA also looked at McCain-Feingold and arrived at the same conclusion, as it briefly discussed purchasing its own radio station and broadcasting NRA Radio. The leftists went apoplectic for a bit and the NRA eventually dropped the proposal (likely because they wouldn’t make a lot of money doing it). Interesting notion, though.

4. Campaign. The Alaska gubernatorial campaign continued to move toward Election Day with both candidates essentially tied in several local and national polls. Knowles continues to get crankier and has gone relentlessly negative in his ads – usually a sign that you are behind in local elections up here. Palin has continued on as she has throughout the campaign, with a positive, upbeat message. Should she get elected, she will be in an interesting position. She will be elected without the support of any major media outlet here in the state. Most of the major contributors finally broke and swung toward Knowles. These included the unions, greens, oil companies and a large number of Chamber of Commerce types. Should she win without the support of any of these guys, she will have a relatively free hand for a while, for they will have lost both political power and credibility. Election night and its aftermath will be interesting indeed.

5. Kerry. John Kerry resurfaced last week with yet another smear against American troops in Iraq. The conservative media in the blogs and on talk radio went nuts. Democrats understandably ran for cover and cancelled campaign events for Kerry for the rest of the week. Once the criticism hit the fan, Kerry marched out in front of the microphones and made a very in-your-face statement promising to never apologize about this. He followed it with a number of other apologies, each more nuanced and weasel-worded. The other blogs and talk shows have raked him over the coals much better than I can. But the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the video of his speech in CA, was that he hasn’t had an original thought in 35 solid years. What he said about either working hard and being successful in school or ending up in Iraq is essentially the drafted military of the late 1960s. And the draft ended a long time ago. Perhaps he missed it while windsurfing somewhere.

6. Disclosures. The NYT ran yet another breathless hit piece on the administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq. This time around, they went after a web site that the intelligence community had dumped hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents from Saddam’s regime. There has been a marked reluctance of the intelligence community to translate the documents, so they have been slowly translated and contents posted by bloggers. Captain Ed of Captain’s Qu arters posted many translations over the last several months. Most of those demonstrate some connection between Saddam and terrorists. Many document his WMD programs. Well, the NYT managed to find a few documents claiming that Saddam was about a year away from producing a nuclear weapon. Funding for this was coming from the corrupted oil for food program. Sm artly arriving at the wrong conclusions, the NYT went after the Bush administration for making classified documents available. They did not retract earlier claims that Saddam did not have a WMD program, that Bush lied, or that people died. Perhaps if they actually read what they are carping about….. Naw.

"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 at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuv alleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http:/ /home.gci.net /~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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