Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc Monday February 11, 2013 Interesting Items 2/11 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. King Cove 2. Murkowski 3. Rove 4. Oak Harbor 5. Drones 6. Lame Duck? 1. King Cove. A quarter of the way down the Aleutians toward Russia sits the small village of King Cove, Alaska. It has a population of just over 900 Aleuts. The village is across the bay from the second longest airstrip in the state, the Cold Bay Airport. Part of the area around the bay comprises the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, yet another of the innumerable (insufferable?) chunks of federal lands grabbed in order to protect wildlife – in this case, nesting birds. Periodically, people at King Cove get sick and need to medevac out to the nearest hospital, usually to Anchorage. This requires larger aircraft that need a large piece of concrete to operate out of, in this case the Cold Bay Airport. There are only two ways to get people from King Cove to the airport. One would be via a proposed ten mile long gravel road around the bay, which a little more than a mile would be through the wildlife refuge hugging the coastline. The State of Alaska proposed the standard 4:1 land swap with the Department of the Interior for permission to build the road. Last week, Obama’s Loathsome Cowboy Ken Salazar decided to let them eat cake, turning down the land swap in order to save the birds. Interior’s solution? A 6-8 mile long hovercraft trip across Cold Bay. The thing about the Aleutians is that weather is always a factor, usually nasty or worse. Last summer, a group of Interior employees rode a hovercraft across the bay in less than ideal weather and a bunch of them came off the craft seasick. What a great way to transport people to a Medevac flight (/sarc). The decision has the Alaska congressional delegation up in arms, and will very likely be a topic of discussion for confirmation hearings for Obama’s nomination to replace Salazar. Of course, if the delegation were to start defunding Interior and Fish and Wildlife, transferring responsibility for public lands here in Alaska back to Alaska, this problem would go away. This one is not over yet and should be fun to watch. 2. Murkowski. Last year before the electoral disaster in November, it looked like Republicans had a small chance to retake the majority in the US Senate. Had that happened, Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) would have been the Chairman of the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee. As it turned out, she ended up as the ranking member. Her office had written up a proposed set of things to do and she released it early last week, entitled “Energy 20/20, a vision for America’s energy future.” Overall, it is a pretty good document, essentially proposing more drilling, more fracing, more production, fewer regulations, and more generation. This is a significant improvement from her position in 2007, which used the move to a carbon tax as a vehicle to send more federal money into Alaska. There is little mention of manmade global warming. Unfortunately, there are 16 of the 123 total pages spent on renewable energy, which has turned into a corrupt vehicle to launder federal energy grants through failing business models into the pockets of democrat political campaigns. She spends four pages on nuclear energy, making the case for significant regulatory reform. Perhaps the worst bunny trail this document travels are the eight pages spent on “consuming less” energy, which makes the case for electric vehicles among other boondoggles. Given where she stood five years ago, this is a vast improvement, especially the regulatory reform piece of it. It does acknowledge the new world of energy abundance here in the US, but does not discard entirely the unproductive outdated and irresponsible baggage of renewables, efficiency, and climate change. It takes a while for things to change in Washington, especially in congress. She and her office should be congratulated for the move to a significantly more sane energy policy. We will see how much of it makes it into actual legislation. You can find the document here: http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republican-news?ID=58c77992-0362-47c9-bd53-ab121f1c4414 3. Rove. Last week, Karl Rove declared war on the TEA Party. Rove heads up a pair of outside groups – American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies which spent over $127 million in support of Mitt Romney for President in 2012. Rove backed candidates lost 10 of 12 senate races and four of nine house races according to Michelle Malkin on Monday. Rove’s announcement was the use of his big money investors to fight TEA Party primary challenges to RINO incumbents in 2014. Rove clearly has the ear of his investors who apparently are not concerned with any successful return on their investment in the political process. Additionally, expect this effort to lay the groundwork for a Jeb Bush presidential run – all insider backed – in 2016. Malkin and Levin were all over this last week, with Levin being particularly pyrotechnic. Rove’s problem is that he and his political acumen are recent and regular election losers, as his last big win was Bush’s reelection in 2004. Since then, his backed candidates have lost a huge number of senate and house seats in 2006, more senate seats and the presidency in 2008, and more senate seats and the presidency again in 2012. The single election that conservatives did well during that time was 2010, which the TEA Party led the fight, and Rove’s people were dragged kicking and screaming into the fight and took credit for the successful outcome. Malkin’s piece can be found here. It is fun reading: http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/04/kneel-before-zod-gop-control-freak-karl-rove-launches-new-effort-to-snuff-out-tea-party/ 4. Oak Harbor. Oak Harbor is a small town on an island north of Seattle. As such, it is infested with democrat politicians that have Seattle’s leftist views on civil rights. The latest example comes when a city councilman went after a citizen testifying against restrictions on firearms carry in municipal parks. The citizen was carrying a concealed weapon while at the meeting and the councilman went after him during the testimony, demanding he remove and surrender his firearm because it wasn’t needed at the meeting. The citizen ended up talking about the Second Amendment. The Mayor also got into the act later in the meeting. The meeting took place on January 15 and has a video of the exchange up on You Tube. Local gun owners took exception to this abuse of authority by yet another elected democrat and showed up at last Tuesday’s meeting in force. There were over 160 in attendance and most were armed – some concealed and some not. Some carried rifles, scary rifles. The councilman who started the festivities couldn’t stand the pushback and got up and walked out. One citizen mocked his faux outrage telling him that he had a concealed ham sandwich and that he shouldn’t feel threatened by its presence. Is it me, or does it seem that people aren’t playing the democrats’ game anymore? No decision on the ordinance banning firearms in public parks was made. 5. Drones. Interesting movement from the left on Obama’s use of unmanned drones to kill people thought to be terrorists. Since he has taken office, Obama has increasingly used drones to kill people across the Middle East – from Pakistan to North Africa. The kill list is prepared by National Security Advisor and CIA nominee John Brennan. Obama picks who will die that particular day and kills the guy (along with whoever else is within the frag envelope). Last week he killed a 16-year-old American citizen who decided to go to Yemen and play terrorist. Rumor is that he gets off by watching the live video of the strikes. Now when Bush was doing this at a low level, the civil rights crowd was apoplectic. During the far more energetic program being conducted by Obama these days, the silence was until recently, deafening. Congress has started asking the same administration that has trotted out all sorts of rationale for inserting enemy combatants into the federal courts for their trials, why Americans playing terrorist overseas do not get the exact same rights. This is a good question, as the Rules of Engagement should apply across the board, especially from this crowd. Of course, Obama’s racist (In)Justice Attorney General Eric Holder is in complete agreement with the program and has written supportive opinions. And the questions are starting to be asked from places and people you would not expect them to come from for this president. It is always nice to apply Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to the Radical in Chief himself and his henchmen. 6. Lame Duck? This last one is probably wishful thinking, but does it seem to anyone else that Obama is having a bit more trouble in the beginning of his second term than one would expect, especially with congressional Republicans running for the hills? For example, his nominee for SECDEF, one Chuck Hagel testified last week and demonstrated that he was a complete idiot. His nomination is in some serious jeopardy with a pair of Republicans promising to filibuster it. His gun control demands have gone nowhere in congress, though senate democrats are making noises about passing universal background check legislation. He has been asked by senate democrats to stay out of the immigration workup. As usual, he has ignored the request. As reported above, the civil rights crowd is starting to make noises about the drone program which will not go well. Funniest of all is the impending sequestration – something that will actually cut spending by a miniscule amount – but a cut nonetheless. After months being beaten like dogs, the House majority is going to stand by and let the cuts go into effect, as they are completely unable to negotiate in good faith with either the senate majority or the WH. And at this point, the democrats and the WH are getting very, very worried – mostly because nobody outside of DoD will notice any impact with the automatic spending cuts. This is going to be most interesting to watch. More later - - AG "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: Our Home Page http://interestingitems.org/ Archives can be found at http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Anchorage Daily Planet http://www.anchoragedailyplanet.com/ MatSu Valley News http://matsuvalleynews.blogspot.com/ Subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/
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