Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Running
- Roseanne
- Tommy
- ANWR
- Cantwell
- Coup
- Running. The August primary got a lot more interesting Friday as registration closed for candidates for the August primaries. Most notably, former US Senator Mark Begich filed as governor on the democrat side. This sets up a most interesting summer as current governor Bill Walker who ran on a coalition ticket with democrat Gubernatorial nominee Byron Mallott was about to file as a democrat. Rather than sharing a primary with Begich who will pull everyone on the left including the greens, unions and Bush natives, Walker and Mallott look to run once again as an independent ticket. Should Begich win, there will be no changes in the Governor’s office and among his appointees as he has been running an administration completely populated and run by democrats. The fun part of this will be the summer campaign, as Walker and Begich will split the very people who put Walker in office and would unite to elect one or the other. If Walker remains in the race, the Republican candidate should have a pretty good chance at being elected as fratricide takes place among the usual suspects on the left. So Begich must spend the next couple months destroying Walker and painting himself as the actual democrat. Should be fascinating. On the Republican side, former LtGov Mead Treadwell who has been working at Alice Rogoff’s PT Capital filed for governor. Today, he has no noticeable campaign team or support among Republicans. His close connection with former Anchorage Dispatch News publisher and owner Alice Rogoff who was instrumental in putting Bill Walker in office isn’t going to help him either. We still have the problem of the state judiciary rewriting state election laws on the fly four years ago when Walker and Mallott (independent candidate and democrat gubernatorial candidate) put their independent ticket together after the drop-dead date for changing candidates following the August primary. The deal was brokered by the state AFL / CIO which will be among Begich’s strongest backers. https://www.adn.com/politics/2018/06/01/as-filing-deadline-nears-alaska-lieutenant-governor-candidate-debra-call-says-she-is-running-with-former-sen-mark-begich-in-democratic-primary/
- Roseanne. Roseanne Barr gave Disney / ABC the excuse to fire her and cancel her new hit show last week with a late-night Tweet describing the union that brought former acting President Valerie Jarrett (ValJar) into the world. Note to self: Stay away from Tweeting late at night while on Ambien. All the usual suspects were shocked, simply shocked at the insult, went through all the required public outrage protocol, quickly followed by the swift termination of her and her show. Following 48 hours of outrage (which extended the Two Minute Hate a bit longer than normal), Samantha Bee joined in the fun with an insult aimed at Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka (anyone else remember when going after family members of Presidents was verboten?). For her part, Bee did the fantabulous apology tour which was roundly accepted, and she still has a show, though a couple sponsors (she didn’t have many) pulled out. The manufacturers of Ambien joined in the fun by noting that racism was not a side effect of Ambien, which infuriated Matt Drudge who reminded the world that Ambien was one of the drugs used to alter behavior. By week’s end, the usual suspects were describing Roseanne’s tweet as racist, though it didn’t take long for them to get to that point. Jarrett was (and remains) O’Bama’s consigliere, his personal Rasputin, but without the charm, and is living in the O’Bama’s home coordinating the anti-Trump resistance. She participated in his war against this nation, participated in the pro-Iran policy, gleefully took part in his incessant race baiting. Any fire she takes, friendly or otherwise, has been richly earned and deserved. The other thought on this affair is how thin skinned everyone has become these days. It’s a tough world out there, and everyone plays dirty. Whining about bad taste, racism, or anything else is only a vehicle used to stop discussion, to shut up one side in favor of the other. This is why we see the disparate treatment, where one woman is relegated to sackcloth and ashes and the other one continues on doing what she is hired to do. And it is the public double standard that will end up destroying the political left, as most of us are getting sick and tired of it. It is yet another reason Trump got elected in the first place. https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Roseanne-Barr-Samantha-Bee-and-the-limits-of-humor-559084
- Tommy. Great Britain is following Germany, Scandinavia and most of western Europe right down the toilet in its defense of Muslim immigrants. The most recent example of this is the arrest, secret trial, jailing, and media gag order against reporting the court action against Tommy Robinson. Tommy Robinson is the pseudonym of Stephen Christopher Yaxley – Harris, founder of the English Defense League, conveniently described (smeared) as a “far right” activist by Goolag and the Wiki. He has led protests concerned with the import of massive numbers of Muslims into Great Britain. His most recent protests have been connecting with the Muslim grooming (rape) gangs that operated for years while local law enforcement looked the other way. He was out on a suspended sentence. A couple weeks ago, he was livestreaming outside a courthouse where trial proceedings against rape gang members who systematically raped non-Muslim children were being held when he was surrounded by seven police. They grabbed him. Hauled him in front of a judge without benefit of counsel, sentenced him to 13 months (the remainder of his original sentence), and sent him to Hull Prison. The court went on to impose a gag order on even reporting the arrest, trial and conviction. That gag order was lifted a week or so later following international media outcry. Quite the dichotomy here as the British citizen gets arrested, a cursory trial, conviction, jailed, and the media is told not to report anything all on the same day while Muslim rape gang members are afforded the full and fair trial proceedings in the British justice system. Intimidation was so bad that other citizens who had written about the arrest removed their social media posts out of fear of being next. The rape gang trials have become quite the festive event (/sarc) in Britain, with extended families of the accused standing outside the courthouse heckling and intimidating rape victims and their families. There are reports of children as young as five throwing rocks at the victim’s families. The Muslim families make the rounds of the victim’s homes and harass families. There is at least one report of a witness for the prosecution needing police protection to use a courthouse restroom. Such are the wages of political correctness, importing millions of people to the west who think the way to assimilate into society is to turn the west into the Orient, all aided and abetted by cowardly government officials. This is the road we have chosen to travel. The Brits are a bit farther down it than we are, but the Blue State democrats are pedaling furiously to catch up. It is our job to make sure they don’t get where they want to go. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12378/tommy-robinson-injustice
- ANWR. First of a series of ANWR hearings was held in Anchorage last week by the BLM. We were treated to an interesting difference in the testimony. On one hand, we had local natives show up courtesy plane tickets from the Usual Suspects from Big Green who opined about the sacred land, subsistence, caribou, and respect. On the other side were local natives that noted that oil had been very good for North Slope natives, increasing caribou, increasing wealth and in turn improving living conditions, jobs, and building infrastructure in the villages. There were the normal group of protesters outside protesting potential impact of oil and natural gas exploration and development (where is Rolling Coal when you need them?). For the most part, ANWR is supported here in Alaska, though for democrats, that support is thin at best. You would think they would get new arguments, as the anti-development arguments are identical to those made against the construction of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) nearly 50 years ago. http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/484021641.html
- Cantwell. US Senator Maria Cantwell (D, WA) is demanding the Army Corps of Engineers hold hearings on permitting for the Pebble mine in Washington State so her constituents, many of whom hold commercial fishing permits in Bristol Bay, might have a say in the process. No word yet on hearings here in Alaska for development projects in Washington State. Cantwell claims that fishermen, ship builders, suppliers, sportsmen and restaurants have all built their lives and businesses around the Bristol Bay fishery and deserve a voice. Note that this is a mine on state land in a state that she does not represent. We will see how US Senators Lisa Murkowski and Sullivan react to the idea that they are not sufficiently representing their state in the permitting and EIS process. The mildest local reaction is to tell Cantwell and her constituents to mind their own business. Much of that reaction was much blunter and less acceptable for public consumption. Cantwell lost on ANWR. She is about to lose on Pebble, but she is giving it her all to obstruct and delay the proceedings as long as humanly possible. https://www.adn.com/politics/2018/05/31/cantwell-presses-army-corps-to-add-pebble-hearings-in-washington-state/
- Italy. What appears to be a coup is underway in Italy following parliamentary elections a couple of weeks ago. After an initial series of articles claiming a coup were published, things got very quiet, so I don’t have a good feel what is going on today. At least I can tell you how we arrived at the current point. Parliamentary elections were held in March. The majority of seats were won by a populist movement followed by a right-wing movement. The ruling party lost. It took a couple months for the two parties on either end of the political spectrum to figure out how to form a government. They proposed a slate of ministers and presented it to the president for approval. The president agreed with everyone but the proposed Finance Minister who is a Euroskeptic, skeptical on the European Union and its financial policies. This was unacceptable to both the president and the EU mandarins who want to keep Italy under its thumb. The left-wing party is supportive of environmentalism, hard line anti-immigration and Euroskeptic policies. The right-wing party is more conventional similar to the National Front of France. The coalition’s choice for Finance Minister has called for a “plan B to get out of the euro if necessary.” He has been critical of German domination of the EU. The reaction to this election is not unlike Beltway reaction to the election of Donald Trump, where they have pulled out all stops in an attempt to overturn the results of the election by other means. Italy’s governments are notoriously unstable since the end of WWII, so these sorts of festivities are common. What is uncommon is the Italian president refusing to seat a coalition slate of candidates. The EU central bank is also expected to join the festivities by putting pressure on Italian currency, ability to borrow, and other forms of leverage to “encourage” Italy to appoint people friendlier to their point of view. None of this is missed by Italian voters, who are swinging against the incumbent president. Trump like these new political parties is not the cause. Rather, he (and they) are the solution. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/europe/silent-coup-italy/
More later –
– AG