Interesting Items 5/14 -

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

In this issue:

1. Paulians
2. Primaries
3. Squirrel!
4. Photoshop
5. Coal
6. Unemployment
7. Whaling

1. Paulians. Pretty quiet on the Paulian front up here in Alaska last week. The action appeared to be in Oklahoma over the weekend as Paulians blew up the state convention down there. One of them reportedly punched out a 70-year old woman at the meeting. They did not successfully manage to hijack all delegates in Oklahoma. By week’s end, Ron Paul himself announced that he would not be actively campaigning for delegates in the remaining 11 states. These include Texas and California, the two largest states in the number of available delegates. Paul said that he would concentrate his efforts at picking up the maximum number of delegates from states that have already held their primaries. It would appear that someone turned off the money spigot late last week. One of the untold stories of this campaign has been the training, organization and discipline of the Paulians as they rolled out their hijack strategy from state to state. They were very good at what they did - at least they were up here. In my experience, the only people who bring in large numbers of organized, disciplined, new, young people to political campaigns in recent memory have been democrats - whether SEIU or union funded and trained. I sure would like to find out what was behind their organization and funding. It smells like leftists, but sadly I cannot prove anything.

2. Primaries. Last Tuesday was a number of primaries with national significance. In Indiana, Tea Party conservatives helped send Richard Lugar (R, IN) who was first elected in 1976 back home to Indiana. Lugar spent the first half of his career as a pretty strong conservative. He spent the second half of it moderating and getting along with democrats in the senate, hardly the way to move liberty and conservative values forward. He did not take his defeat well, and has been more than a little surly and petulant following his 60% - 40% defeat. In North Carolina, voters passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The amendment was specifically aimed at activist judges on the state bench who would impose homosexual marriage on the state. This also passed with around a 20% majority. In response, Obama trotted himself out as strong personal support of homosexual marriage. More on that later. In West Virginia, a 53-year old convicted federal felon in jail in Texas received over 40% of the vote for president in the democrat primary. The War on Coal has managed to turn what used to be a strong union blue state into a state that will not vote for another democrat for national office for a generation. And West Virginia may not be the only state that has made that long term switch. There is even some talk about Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) jumping parties after the national election. The final piece of good news is that the recall primary in Wisconsin had incumbent governor Scott Walker gaining more votes than both democrats combined. The union backed democrat lost badly despite a significant crossover of Republican voters in support of her. She was viewed as the weakest candidate on the democrat side against Walker. It appears conservatives are fired up in Wisconsin and will turn out in huge numbers in June.

3. Squirrel! The North Carolina vote defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman pushed the Obama reelection campaign forward as he came out “personally” in support of same sex marriage. The announcement was orchestrated by first trotting out VP Biden over the weekend so that Obama had someone to hide behind when it blew up in his face. The media was orgasmic for the rest of the week. Conservatives were rightfully skeptical. One of the things Obama said offhandedly to Robin Roberts, who was handpicked due to her friendly reportage, was that he had made up his mind on this long ago and had planned on making the announcement before the democrat convention late summer. Obama was under increasing pressure by the homosexual community to come out in support of same sex marriage before the election. 20% of his big money donors are homosexual / lesbian, giving them significant leverage over policy in times when campaign fundraising is not going as well as they would like. The announcement was intended as yet another distraction from the absolute disaster that the economy has become, the lack of new jobs, the regulatory tidal wave, the crushing corruption, and the inaction of Harry Reid’s majority in the Senate. It is up to us as conservatives not to chase after the Squirrel! every time the Obama campaign waves the bloody shirt. This election is not about same sex marriage. It is about the disaster the ruling class has created of this economy and how to roll it back.

4. Photoshop. Yet another photoshop of Iranian missile tests by the Iranians. This one was particularly hilarious by the number of missiles being launched from every imaginable angle and the insertion of a photo of Jar-Jar Binks of Star Wars (in)fame into the bottom of the photo. Great job. Makes you wonder about the quality control of whomever is publishing media in Iran. Find the photo here: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/05/busted-irans-jarring-photo...

5. Coal. Yet another bit of propaganda out of the Obama administration as they push their goals of renewable energy. They posted a graphic on the campaign web site entitled all of the above. It was a circle intended to document energy production goals (choices?). The circle was equally divided with oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, biofuels, energy efficiency. What was conspicuous by its absence was coal, which is used to produce over 46% of electricity nationwide. The Obama campaign swapped out the graphic and included coal after a short period of public comment and derision. Note that over 57% of the energy generation depicted - solar, wind, biofuels and energy efficiency are either nonexistent (biofuels) or so inconstant (solar, wind) that they will never be used to generate significant amounts of power. And that 57% is among the very most expensive ways to generate usable energy. Finally, energy efficiency is NOT a form of energy generation. The war on coal and other carbon based fuels will turn every single state that produces significant amounts of coal, oil or natural gas strongly Republican over the next few years if it hasn’t done it all ready.

6. Unemployment. Limbaugh picked up on this last week via a caller who tipped him that unemployment offices were starting to warn the unemployed that benefits were going to end for a large number of people before the 99 month limit set by congress. What appears to be happening is that the Obama administration’s diddling of unemployment rate is coming back to haunt the unemployed. The higher the unemployment rate reported, the longer the benefits last. The lower the rate, the quicker they run out. Because the Obama administration is artificially tweaking the statistics to lower the current 11.4% unemployment rate (based on the number of people in the work force when he took office) to 8.1% last month (based on the millions they have run out of the work force via taxation and regulation on businesses who can no longer create jobs). As a result, we now have a rolling ending of unemployment benefits to Obama voters. Given the ability of this crowd to politicize everything under the sun, this is likely not a bug but a feature, as all unemployment compensation for the long term unemployed will run out in September to October, just in time to turn them out to vote to Obama and democrats so as to extend them. This is what they want: hundreds of millions of dependent people who will vote for them time after time after time in order to keep the goodies flowing.

7. Whaling. The former head of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission pled guilty last week to stealing hundreds of thousands from the organization last week. Her successor is scheduled to cop to a similar plea shortly. This investigation and guilty plea follows closely on the conviction and jailing of former Murkowski fisheries aide Arne Fuglvog who as a commercial fisherman took thousands of pounds of illegal fish in Southeast Alaska over a period of years. Fuglvog was in line for a seat on the National Marine Fisheries Service regulatory board, overseeing commercial fisheries in Alaska and was Murkowski’s trusted staffer on fisheries issues. These convictions demonstrate quite nicely the endemic corruption and regulatory capture of commercial fisheries here in Alaska. It is long past time to shut these little corrupt agencies down and transfer all responsibility for them back to the State of Alaska where at least we can find someone local to strangle when they commit theft of the resource.

More later -

- AG