Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, April 2008

1. Snowfall. Anchorage got another foot and a half of Global Warming Friday. The official snowfall was 15.5” at the Anchorage International Airport. Most of the town got between 18-22”. This was the heaviest single day snowfall in the month of April ever recorded. It was the third largest single day snowfall since records st arted being kept up here in 1917. When I was young, it snowed when it was cold. Now that I am old and cranky, it snows when it is supposed to be getting warmer out. If this Global Warming stuff continues, I may have to get a bigger snowblower.

2. Texas. The State of Texas conducted an armed raid on a religious compound in San Angelo, Texas on April 3. They conducted the raid at the behest of Children’s’ Protective Services based on telephonic allegations of child abuse. The LDS offshoot sect was polygamist in nature and prepared young women to marry older men. In all, over 460 children – including nursing babies – were removed from their mothers. Give the leaders of the religious sect credit for learning something from Waco, as they didn’t shoot back and in return, the state didn’t lock them up inside their homes and burn the homes down around them. The state held a preliminary hearing that put all the children – including nursing infants into foster care. As the days have gone by, it turns out the phone call was not made by a 16 year old young lady from the sect, but a 30+ Obama super delegate from Colorado Springs, thereby making the arrest warrant fraudulent. The entire thing is a mess and will get a lot worse as more and more lawyers get involved and the bureaucracy goes into CYA mode to defend their actions. The State of Texas is acting very poorly here, as they are treating all members of the sect as a whole rather than individuals who may or may not have done something illegal. As this mess continues, it appears that Texas CPS has been watching the sect for a number of years, looking for any excuse to intervene and remove the children. It does make you stop and consider how we came to the point where the State can exercise such sweeping powers in such an arbitrary, capricious and vicarious manner. What is indeed the best thing for the children involved? Is it better to leave them in a group where the girls will be married off and impregnated before they turn 18? Or will it be better to put them into foster care, where they will be in the public schools, have no parents on hand, and learn how to p articipate in the over-sexed, hook up culture of the public high schools where they will be unmarried and impregnated before they are 18? Whatever happens with this, I find it most troubling, especially the notion that the State of Texas can remove children from members of a church – or any other organization for that matter – without finding any individual crime. Should this stand, the State of Texas Child Protection Services has just set the precedent that membership in a group can be used as an excuse to remove your children at a time an place of their choosing, which is a very dangerous precedent indeed.

3. NC. The North Carolina Republican P arty ran an ad connecting the democrat candidate for governor to black liberation theologist Reverend Jeremiah Wright last week. The ad used Wright’s photo along with Senator Barack Obama’s endorsement of the democrat candidate for governor as a wedge against his candidacy. Apparently Wright’s angry, anti-American racial tirades don‘t play all that well with the voters of North Carolina. It was a devastating ad against the democrat. And like all successful conservative campaign efforts, it was instantly denounced as racist by both the democrats and the McCain campaign. The leftists have set up a regime under which should you say anything negative about a leftist candidate who may be black, you are instantly branded as a racist, for how could you say anything negative about a black liberal without having race as the foundation of that criticism? On the other hand, leftists are free to do whatever they want to do, say whatever they want to do about any conservative candidate of any race at any time. In military terms this is known as unilateral disarmament. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain demanded that the North Carolina Republican Party pull the ad on the grounds that it was racist in nature. The Chairman of the state party smiled sweetly and noted that this was an old criticism, and she was not going to be pulling the ad. McCain immediately came under withering criticism from conservatives skeptical of his candidacy and by weeks’ end, had changed his position on the ad. Interestingly enough, in the days before his criticism of the North Carolina Republicans, McCain was polling ahead of both democrat candidates in national polling. He immediately dropped even to slightly behind in the days afterwards. The other interesting outcome of this event is that money has been pouring into North Carolina Republicans in the form of donations after they refused to buckle in the face of leftist criticism. This means that the conservatives are still out there, waiting for a proper conservative response to the political wars. It also means that McCain still – and probably always will – have a tin ear when it comes to dealing with conservatives. It also means that the real game this election season is at the state and local level, where our job is to elect as many strong conservatives to office as humanly possible. The best revenge against John McCain and the democrats who got him nominated is to give him a conservative majority in both Houses of congress to deal with. If nothing else, it will be fun to watch.

4. Planned Parenthood. Captain Ed writing in Hot Air last week reported on the latest Planned Parenthood controversy and protest. Planned Parenthood was founded as a way to execute the goals of the Eugenics movement of the 1920s. The goal of its original founder, Margaret Sangar was to remove as many undesirables from the gene pool via abortion as possible, thus improving the gene pool. A student magazine earlier this year did a series of calls to various Planned Parenthood offices offering to donate money specially targeted for the abortions of black babies. Planned Parenthood allows targeted donations of this nature. Laura Ingraham played several of the phone calls on her show last week in the run-up to a protest against Planned Parenthood by pro-life conservatives of all colors. Given that Planned Parenthood is tax exempt, with reported revenues over a billion dollars last year, gets a substantial amount of its funding in the form of federal grants, and yet engages in the sort of ethnic cleansing envisioned by Margaret Sangar nearly 80 years ago, is it not time to start a public investigation into it? Yet with all of this, Planned Parenthood remains an icon of the left. This is very sad. It is also very predictable.

5. Famine. Congress and the administration can always muck thing up for the economy much faster than they can fix anything. And when they muck around with energy, they do the worst of all. 35 years ago, congress and the Nixon administration decided to fix the problem caused by OPEC shutting off oil imports to the US by capping prices at the pump. The result was predictable: instant shortages and lines at the pumps in late 1973. The price controls stayed in place until 1981 when they were removed by President Reagan. Those eight years were the worst performance by the American economy since the Great Depression which was, interestingly enough also deepened and lengthened by government action. Today’s economic problems with spiking gasoline process and spiking food prices can be directly linked to congress and the Bush administration mucking around with the energy marketplace – partly by over regulating it, and partly by mandating ethanol as a fuel. The ethanol mandate has led directly to a worldwide food shortage, with the worst problems in the developing world. The spike in oil prices can be directly tied to failure to build new refineries, bogus clean air requirements, and the failure to open any new domestic areas to drilling. This is an opportunity for conservative candidates for congress this year, as they can run against their newly elected democrat majority incumbents and point out that under their short term as a majority, they have managed to wreck both the price of gasoline and the price of food. This is a huge opportunity for conservatives. We will hope they take advantage of it this summer and fall.

1. Dirty Trick. Came across an interesting description of the technique behind the recording and release of Obama’s SF talk on bitter, gun toting, Bible-thumping Americans. The writer, probably from Red State drew a parallel with the dirty trick done by the Webb campaign against Senator George Allen (R, CA) in 2006, which they followed him around 24/7 with a video camera recording everything he did and said – essentially stalking him – until they got something that they could use. In Allen’s case, it was the name calling, which the Webb campaign and the Washington Post used as the campaign for months after the incident. With Obama, a blogger from the Huffington Post has been stalking him 24/7. Although he didn’t have video available, he did manage to get the audio, which the Clinton campaign has turned into a large caliber weapon to destroy both Obama and his campaign. The writer of the article believes that both events are essentially dirty tricks straight out of the James Carville / Clinton playbook, and are the harbingers for campaigns to come. The technique is pretty simple: Stalk your target. Record everything they do and say. Then sift through what is said until you find something that you can use to personally destroy your target – macaca in the case of Allen and bitter in the case of Obama. It is difficult for any candidate to stay sufficiently disciplined 24/7 and not commit a gaffe. Make no mistake. This Obama recording was specifically targeted; an intentional attack; and given that it appears to be successful, we will see a lot more of it in the future. I regret that I did not copy down the blog article when I ran across it, and am unable to find it again.

2. Obama. Meanwhile, Senator Barack Hussein Obama had yet another very bad week on the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary. Not only was his elitist condescension against middle America caught in audio, but when pressed, he st arted whining about it. This is not to say that Hillary is not also filed to the eyebrows with elitist condescension, as she is. Unlike Obama, she is sufficiently disciplined not to get caught (so far). Polling leading up to the primary was all over the map, with media pushing whatever set of bogus polling results that suited the needs and interests of their candidates the best. At this point, I believe that Senator Clinton is ahead in PA, but may not win the resounding victory that she so desperately needs. Finally, it appears that the media love affair with Obama has cracked a bit, as the last debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos was not the standard set of softball questions. Both candidates were actually asked tough questions and both nicely fouled off the answers. Obama came into the debate with the highest expectations and he ended up looking the worst. Afterwards, the hard left went after ABC news and the two moderators as Republican shills. Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos continues.

3. Mugabe. Not a lot of news to report from Zimbabwe’s stolen election last week. The South African President Mbeki, who has been a long time Mugabe apologist, was put on his heels by the newly elected Zimbabwean opposition. In a related story a boatload of ChiCom weapons bound for Zimbabwe and Mugabe’s forces was turned around by South African longshoremen who refused to unload it. It left port bound for Angola. Once again, the ChiComs choose to coddle dictators, deal in death, and misery. Appears they are not yet ready for prime time.

4. Tibet. Big Lizards took a close look into the use of ChiCom agent provocateurs in their public relations war in Tibet. The ChiCom media released a photo of a young woman in a wheelchair being accosted by pro-liberty protestors in Tibet. The photo was accompanied by all the usual breathless words about the evil and he artlessness of the pro-liberty protestors. Upon further review, the same lady, dressed in the same manner, was photographed earlier in the day working with pro-ChiCom forces in Tibet. It appears that the ChiComs are doing everything possible to turn public opinion in favor of their crackdown in Tibet. Dr. Jack Wheeler in an article last week got into a discussion of face and the problems the ChiComs are going to have with the Olympics. More importantly, he speculated on what was going to happen when the Olympics turned into a public relations disaster for them. The ChiComs have a problem, as they already have Tibet acting up. People worldwide are protesting the Olympic torch in large numbers. World leaders are st arting to talk about boycotting the opening ceremonies. This Olympics was supposed to be the ChiCom’s coming out p arty – where they joined the brotherhood of nations. It is all about face. When the whole thing blows up and they get publicly embarrassed and humiliated, the ChiCom government will turn their anger elsewhere. Wheeler expects that anger to be directed at the US, closely followed by an attempt to re-annex Taiwan. Rather than fight them directly on this, it is up to the US to turn the tables on the ChiCom government, pointing out to the world that the problems are all of their own making, and that their solution is to force them to clean up their act internally rather than changing the subject and going after a pair of externally manufactured targets.

5. Sadr. The Iraqi Army took off the gloves and went after Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad over the last couple of weeks. The Basra operations were the first major assault on Iranian-backed Shiite militias in a region of Iraq left by the British. The Brits didn’t do a real good job of clearing out the bad guys and the Iranians, working closely with the existing Shiite militias and tribal leaders took the opportunity to establish a beachhead inside Iraq. All of that ended st arting a couple weeks ago. The initial reports of action by the Iraqi Army was not encouraging, as around 1,300 active duty soldiers were removed from active duty for refusing to take up arms against their fellow Shiites. However, the remaining troops did a superb job and with the backing of the American military in the area, cleaned up Basra and reestablished government control in the area. The Iranians and their sympathizers did not take the loss very well. And western media reported this as a huge military los for the Iraqi government and their new military. Next up to bat was Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Militia in Sadr City, a slum in Baghdad itself. As usual, al Sadr ran away to Iran to hide, leading his military leaders to oppose the Iraqi Army. This engagement went very well, with the Mahdi Army being decimated as a fighting force in Baghdad. Secretary of State Rice ridiculed al Sadr as a coward over the weekend, with a line that seemed nicely delivered in an attempt to flush al Sadr out of Iran and into the hands of the Iraqi government. We are well on our way to establishing a strong, stable, democratic government in Iraq, one that will be able to hold its own in a very, very nasty neighborhood. Congratulations to all involved.

6. Democrat candidate for the US Senate Al Franken apparently has a problem with money and paying his taxes. Michelle Malkin wrote Friday that Franken finally admitted to failing to pay workers compensation payments to the state of NY for people who worked for him for nearly three years. Franken was fined $25,000 for the failure and ignored the fine for a couple of years. He just got around to paying it earlier this year. PowerLine reported Thursday that Franken was also in trouble with the state of California for failing to file corporate tax returns for the period from 2003 – 2007. Franken has a real chance to oust incumbent Norm Coleman (R, MN) from the US Senate. Should he do so, he will become yet another in long line of democrat candidates and incumbents that believe the law only applies to you and I and never to him. We will hope that the voters of MN do the right thing and not install this lying, cheating fraud in the US Senate – where they are already over-represented.

1. FAA. The political wars in DC broke out and touched hundreds of thousands of our neighbors last week, as democrat orchestrated show trials aimed at the FAA ran up against CYA out of the FAA bureaucrats being targeted. At issue were a series of maintenance inspections on the MD-80 intended to correct potential chafing on a wiring bundle. The FAA, Boeing and American Airlines had been working on solving the problem for the last four years and all seemed to be in process until congressional democrats, in concert with the NYT and other democrat friendly newspapers st arted trotting out whistleblowers, and lining up people to testify on lax inspections by current FAA management. The FAA responded by ordering immediate correction of the problem, leading to over 300 canceled flights and over 300,000 travel plans by their customers disrupted by weeks’ end. Note that not a single aircraft was at risk. Not a single emergency was declared. All that was found was minor problems with the spacing and direction of cable ties around the wiring bundle. This is completely artificial, and what we can expect from democrat congresses as they go after industry after industry after industry in their quest to lock up as much power in Washington DC as humanly possible. They will manufacture a crisis out of nothing – not unlike what they did with Alar or the spotted owl decades ago. The media will trot out whistleblowers to tell any number of hair-raising tales of danger to the public at large. And congressional democrats will be shocked, simply shocked at the level of malfeasance between the government agency being targeted, and the companies that are being regulated by that agency, and pass legislation turning the trial lawyers loose on them. Those that play ball will be allowed to survive. Those that won’t will be destroyed in the civil courts by the trial lawyers. The profits of this will go into the congressional campaigns of democrats to elect more of them. Quite the little protection racket. Yet this is what we get when we conservatives stay home and allow these people – and I use the term loosely – to get elected. Think long and hard before you sit the next election out. Elect democrats, and this is what you will see every single week. The episode we saw with the FAA and American Airlines last week was not an aberration. It was a start. Strata Sphere, Sat.

2. Conoco. Last Wednesday, Conoco Philips and British Petroleum announced they would be cooperating in the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline from the Alaskan North Slope. The two companies will construct the pipeline and will require no special deal from either the state or the feds. They will fill it with natural gas for transportation to and sale in the Lower 48. And they will operate the new pipeline. Contrast this proposal with that of Trans Canada, the only currently qualifying proposer in the state’s AGIA process, who has a several billion dollar problem with former p artners; needs a half a billon dollars from the state of Alaska as seed money; has no commitment from the producers to put any natural gas in the new pipeline; and wants the feds to sign up as a bridge shipper for natural gas, promising to financially cover the difference between what they need to fill their pipeline with and what the producers may or may not commit to send down it. Observers here in the state believe that Governor Palin may have played a very successful hand of poker with the producers, for their proposal covers every outstanding issue regarding a natural gas pipeline except one – that of fiscal certainty, tax policy from the state for the duration of the operation of the pipeline. After some years of frustration, this project has taken a giant step forward. We will hope that this is real and that they will be successful. ADN, Weds.

3. Mugabe. It appears that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe lost his reelection and is now in the process of attempting to steal the election. It has been over three weeks since a national election turned out the old legislature, which was a majority of Mugabe’s p arty. Early returns had Mugabe losing by at least a 60-40% split in the vote. Since then, his government has been arresting poll workers, manufacturing votes, and stuffing ballot boxes. There are some who believe that he is trying to negotiate an agreement that will allow him to step down without being arrested and jailed. As of today, it appears that he is going to use the military to hang on to political power to the bitter end – ensuring a violent end to his appalling government.

4. Fish War. Here in Southcentral Alaska, we engage in a yearly discussion between Cook Inlet commercial fishermen, who believe they are entitled to catch every single salmon in the Inlet and the sport / personal use fishermen, who are typically limited to three a day and three in possession. The commercial guys are few in number but large in political pull, and have managed to push the decision making process at the Alaska Dep artment of Fish and Game (ADF&G) to the point where their needs for more fish in the nets outweigh the needs of everyone else. As of this last legislative session, everyone else is st arting to push back a bit. ADF&G manages who gets what via a series of scheduled openings during salmon runs. When there is a commercial opening, the nets are in the water, and few if any salmon make it past the nets and into the local streams. If there are enough fish and the run is strong, there will be an emergency opening. If there are too few, there will be an emergency closure. There are lots of emergency openings and very few emergency closures – which leads people to believe that the decision making process is based on something other than biology. The largest run of salmon is into the Kenai River south of Anchorage. But due to its location, all salmon going f arther north into the Anchorage Bowl and into the MatSu Valley swim past the Kenai fleet also, so some unknown number of them are intercepted and caught, decimating the numbers of salmon in and around Anchorage and into the MatSu streams. Last February, the Fish Board passed a couple decisions that would make it easier for state fisheries managers located in the Kenai office (sharing office space with several commercial fishing groups), to approve emergency openings for the commercial fleet. This did not sit well with guides, sports and personal use fishermen in Anchorage and the MatSu, who went to the legislature to move that decision making authority out of the Kenai office where there is the appearance of undue commercial influence, and into the Anchorage office where everyone including Anchorage and MatSu biologists can p articipate in the decision. The laws of physics still apply to the political world. When one group over uses their political heft to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else, there will some – and hopefully a lot – of push back.

5. Colombia. House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi (D, SF), poked a finger in the eye of our most steadfast, most ardent supporter in South America last week when she refused to schedule action on a free trade treaty with Colombia. The action was intended as a sop to the labor unions who have become quite protectionist over the last decade. Now here’s the funny p art: There are few tariffs on Colombian goods coming into the US. But there are substantial tariffs on American goods going into Columbia. The agreement removed their limits on our stuff, making it easier for Pelosi’s union droids to manufacture and sell their stuff south of the border. Colombia is the strongest ally we have in South America. They are locked in a death struggle against the narco-terrorist organization FARC, and have recently captured three laptops containing highly interesting materials of interest to their neighbor Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. It is in our best interest to take very good care of our friends, as they will provide leverage into the eventual defeat of Chavez and everything he believes in. Pelosi may indeed end up taking action on this treaty, and with some public pressure may be forced into taking it up.

1. Senate. The current senate breakdown is 51-49 democrat / democrat leaning / Republican. Chuck Schumer, (D, NY) who is leading the campaign effort to elect more democrats into the senate this year claims to be on track to elect another 6 democrats, jacking up their numbers to 57. He has raised a boatload of money to do it. As of today, things at the senate level defending those seats looks pretty bleak. Conservatives are all but guaranteed to lose the Virginia Senate seat currently held by John Warner (R, VA) who announced his retirement. The best conservative pickup opportunity appears to be Mary Landrieu (D, LA) who won two very close, very hotly contested elections via suspected massive voter fraud in New Orleans, typically out of the now non-existent Ninth Ward. As a result of hurricane Katrina, that democrat vote manufacturing machine no longer exists. Other open seats are analyzed as follows. All of this is from John Miller at NRO, dated March 6:

2. Oil. The House Select Committee on Energy Independence dragged oil company executives in front of them last week and demanded to know why gasoline prices were so high. The executives told them one reason was that 85% of the offshore oil fields were closed to exploration. They should have told them that it was because the congressional majority opposed drilling in ANWR – taking a volume of oil equal to that which we import from Saudi Arabia off the table. They should have told them that the failure to support refinery modernization, expansion, and simplification has all contributed to increased gasoline prices. Finally, they should have pointed out that the reason gasoline prices are so high is because congress has jacked up federal taxes on gasoline. Cut the taxes, and the prices decrease. Move away from designer blends of gasoline for clean air purposes and the prices go down. St art drilling offshore and the prices go down. Drill in ANWR and the prices go down. This isn’t all that difficult. Every single decision made by the environmentalist-friendly idiots in congress has served to increase the per gallon price of gasoline. Renewables such as corn-based ethanol will increase costs also.

3. Polar Bear. Barbara Boxer (D, CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee, demanded that Dirk Kempthorne, Interior Secretary, appear before the committee and explain why the polar bear had not been instantly listed as an endangered species. Kempthorne did not appear, instead sending a letter that explained they were reviewing all information before making a decision. Listing the polar bear for something predicted to happen in 50 years would be the worst decision possible. Some p art of me hopes they do it, for that decision would quickly be shown to be one of the most idiotic, faith-based decision possible and further serve to completely undermine the Endangered Species Act, leading to its final destruction. The problem with that is that the greens and courts and a friendly democrat majority in congress could do an incredible amount of damage to the national economy while the politics moves forward. One only needs to look at the destruction of logging in the Pacific Northwest following the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl in the early 1990s – a listing that was fundamentally based on fraudulent numbers. It is always better to never give the feds or the greens any more power or control over our daily lives than they already have. The greens have overplayed their hands on the global warming hoax. Listing the polar bear as endangered is simply another facet of that hoax. If you believe, as I do that things are going to get pretty cold over the next few decades, the very weather seen on a daily basis will convince the general public that global warming was a fraud and a hoax. What they do about it is up to us.

4. Harassers. Latest and greatest out of the Kafka-esque world of pubic education is turning little boys into sexual harassers – complete with calling in the police, arrests, and public listing. Captain Ed in Hot Air Friday reported of an elementary school in Woodbridge, MD that called the police and arrested a six year old boy for hitting a little girl on the butt. He was labeled a sexual deviant, arrested, and inserted into the system as a pervert. According to Captain Ed:

The government schools have gone completely off the deep end in this nation. They are too expensive. They no longer educate. They instruct in sexual deviancy. And their use and abuse of zero tolerance rules turn thousands of youngsters who are doing nothing more than playing into criminals. This has to end and has to end soon.

5. Hugo. Socialist and Castro wannabee Hugo Chavez nationalized yet another segment of the Venezuelan economy last week. This one was cement, guaranteeing that everything constructed in Venezuela from now on will be more expensive and of lower quality than before. Note to Hugo and the democrats in congress that are doing everything possible to emulate him: the marketplace always works. State control never does. Hot Air, Sat.

"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/

If you would like to join II's mailing list, have comments or suggestions, please contact me at: agimarc@ak.net