Why we endorse the Preznit

This pretty much says it all. From babelogue:

We are facing unimaginable challenges and dwindling opportunities in the
next four years, and to confront those challenges, invent new
ones, and squander those opportunities requires a dangerous,
unscrupulous moron in the White House, a man of monumental ignorance and
insincerity who can lead America to previously unimagined depths of unremitting
despair. We believe George W. Bush to be an uncompromisingly daft
nimrod who remains uniquely qualified to guide this country into the broken
teeth of the most hair-raising fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and who
can steer America through the End Times even as he aggressively herds
the legions of infidels to their appointed place of eternal torment in
Sheol.

Thanks to PM for the tip

A plague of locusts!!!

It's been a busy, busy time for us here at the Institute, and blogging has been embarrassingly light. Still, I like to consider this a blog of substance, and so much of our local dialogue has been vapid rhetorical excess ...

which brings me to this ... Uncle Ted seems to have lost his sense of humor on this one (if he ever had one), but he really doesn't have any standing to complain. He has inserted himself forcefully into the Tony/Lisa race, in a manner marked by unfettered hyperbole and ferarmongering. He deserves to be made fun of and ridiculed (I thought the whole "bees will attack your privates!" bit was especially good), because his performance is beneath him, and is nothing short of embarrassing. More importantly, Stevens' and especially Young's efforts for Murkowski are at least close to the line, legally - when does all of this effort amount to an in-kind contribution? When does a Don Young campaign ad become a Murkowski campaign ad?

Knowles is getting triple-teamed, because these guys all know Murkowski can't win on her own merits. It may be effective for them, but it's unethical politics - a further sign of the creeping infection of DC partisanism into Alaska politics.

Not too strong ...

In a disturbing Atlantic Monthly article last month, Josh Green analyzed the thoroughly despicable career of Karl Rove, and concluded that this election was headed exactly where Rove wanted it - just close enough to steal.

Am I being too harsh with this? I don't believe so. The news reports we have been getting from swing states across the country indicate a massive, coordinated effort at voter intimidation, vote suppression, and electoral fraud that have been tied directly to the Republican National Committee and to local Republican officials.

Ohio voter intimidation efforts. South Dakota operatives under indictment - not just accused, but under indictment for voter fraud are transferred by BC04 to spread their love in Ohio. An RNC official is fingered in a Justice Department investigation for a number of felonies related to voter suppression activities in New Hampshire in 2002 - so BC04 puts him in charge of the whole New England region, and has the DOJ put the lid on the case. A "voter registration" group hired by the RNC is accused of shredding and trashing registration forms of Democrats only in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Nevada, and West Virginia.

And this is only the stuff we've heard about.

Just close enough to steal ...

Nerviosity

Democrats have historically been better at GOTV efforts than Republicans. Democratic pollsters note this as a reason to discount LV polls that show a seemingly disproportionate Bush lead.
That wasn't the case in the 2002 midterms, however. Karl Rove took the lesson from Gore's 2000 effort, and spent a lot of time and money on his "72 Hour Project," which many credit with the R's surprisingly sound victories.
This year, Rove's efforts make '02 look like chump change - the R's have spent unprecedented millions in organizing their ground game, including both their standard voter suppression/intimidation efforts and the D's standard phone banks and other GOTV efforts.
I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts about how this might effect the standard curve re: high voter turn out - as the D's are spending more too, will things be the same as in 2000?

Yegods, this makes me nervous

The Ground Game

I generally find thoughts that are preceded by the phrase "In ____, as in football ..." to be unpersuasive, but here's one that's true:

In politics, as in football, the key to success is a good ground game. The "ground game" here is the last-minute, grass roots, get-out-the-vote effort that has been a fundamental part of electoral politics since our country was founded: you can't win if you don't get your voters to the polls. George Washington inspired his voters with free food and sour mash whiskey. Al Gore's GOTV effort allowed him to come back from a 13 point deficit to win the 2000 popular vote. Karl Rove saw the success of Gore's project and started the RNC's "72-hour project," which assured a Republican sweep in the 2002 midterms.

You know Karl has his eyes on this again - that's why he's sponsored such a concerted effort (e.g. the RNC's contract with Sproul & Assoc., Jeb Bush's felon list shenanigans, etc.) to suppress Democratic turnout in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Oregon, etc.

At this point in the election cycle, there is nothing more important than the ground game. And the ground game is all about volunteer effort. Wherever you live, there is an important election, and there is a campaign or GOTV group that can and will use your help. Do it. Join a phone bank, volunteer to drive people, stand on the street corner and ask people to vote .... This is not just a big deal - at this point, it's the whole deal. Call your local Kerry campaign office, call your local congressional candidate's campaign office, call your state's senatorial candidate's campaign's office, call your alderman, call MoveOn, it doesn't matter which.

Do it.

It's not too much to say that the fate of the free world is literally riding on people like us, and whether we're willing to get out and do this one small thing.

The Daily Blah

I cannot have been alone this Sunday in thinking that the ADN has fallen from its already low perch as Southcentral Alaska's paper of record. From running the "Team Alaska" advertisement for Stevens/Murkowski/Young on Page 1 (cleverly disguised as a "news" story) to the usual arrogant, inane ravings of Craig Medred, there was just so little of worth in what used to be, by most measures, a decent local paper.

The cruellest blow, of course, was reading the vacuous "opinion" column by Beth Bragg. With Mike Doogan, love him or hate him (and I - as most - did both, often at the same time), you had a reporter - a real reporter - who had a good idea of what was going on and how things worked in both the city and the state. What's more, he wrote clearly and forcefully (if not elegantly), and had real opinions on issues of real public import. On the other hand, Ms. Bragg, his "replacement," can't seem to find anything more significant to write about TWO WEEKS BEFORE A MAJOR ELECTION than some asinine thoughts about how our kids will all grow up to be sissies because of purple pens and bowling alley gutter guards.

Egad, that stank ....

Civility?

The Senatorial debate yesterday hearkened back to a bygone era - pre-Limbaugh, pre-Fox News ... pre-Jimmy Carter, actually, when opponents took each other on vigorously, but in a civil and substantive manner. It was what I knew we would get from Tony, and what I hoped and expected from Li'l Lisa.

Tony hasn't really disappointed me - Lisa truly has. As more of her campaign strategy has been turned over to the shrill partisans of the Republican majority, the airwaves are filled with more crap.

As we watch her be nice in person (as I'm sure she truly is), let us not forget that the nattering nabobs of negativism in DC really own her vote.

Vic at home

Shocked, shocked I was to find that Rep. Vic Kohring may actually be residing in Portland, OR ... I had always assumed he was from Planet Moronius in the Galaxy Ideologia.

Of course Kohring doesn't really live in his district - he spends half the year in Juneau and the other half with his family in Oregon, and his "rental" of a room from his parents is a ludicrously transparent ruse, and always has been. The most disturbing about this is that he hasn't had the ethical wherewithal to simply admit this and move on.

Far more disturbing, of course, is that the voters of his district continue to send this mental marshmallow to Juneau. Kohring is the worst kind of idealogue ... he has no grasp of the reality of government - what it is for and what it really does. He just became enamored of these theories, and now blunders about Juneau trying to put them into place ... it's like something out of Candide, only the 3d grade comic book version. And he's doing real damage to the State's ability to actually provide public goods - monitoring the environment, law enforcement, education, infrastructure development all have suffered because Kohring imagines Alaska as a beautiful free market utopia.

And finally, the Dems get somebody with some gumption to challenge the guy.

About time!!

Just when you think you can't be shocked anymore...

According to this report from a TV news outfit in Nevada, a private voter registration company funded by the Republican National Committee has been destroying Democrat's registration forms:

Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

By George Knapp KLAS TV
Tuesday 12 October 2004
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.
The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.
It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.
Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE or click here to see if you are registered.
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

I mean ... holy crap!!! This is so shameless, so vile, so anti-American, so ... Bush/Roveian

Fishy Fishy

It's Tony's fault!!!

There's a good rallying cry for the Murkowskistas. Alaska Seafood International ... hmm, the Legislature pushes through a foolish business deal for a Republican connected developer a year before Tony even takes office ... and ...

ITS TONY'S FAULT!!!

Li'l Lisa clearly has some DC-based, Rove-trained help up here now, and we can expect more of the same shrill, content-free negativity in the weeks to come.

Welcome to Nastytown, Rovetopia, Tony. Three things: stay on message, stay positive, play offense. This only means they're getting desperate.

The 9/12 President

What I would truly like to see out of John Kerry is for him to take some time in this last debate and explain, in a gracious but firm manner, exactly why people shouldn't - can't - vote for George W. Bush. It's something that people understand, I think, but need to have expressed ...

Remember 9/12? Not 9/11, with its shock and sadness and anger, but the day after, when the dust began to clear and the shock began to subside and we began to wonder "what do we do now?" I looked to President Bush, as we all did, because he was who we had - not simply for direction, but for leadership.

It was an historic moment, the likes of which we hadn't seen in over 50 years ... the kind of moment when America could have shaken off the torpor that accompanies peace and prosperity and assumed once again the mantle of its greatness. We were ready to join together, to sacrifice together, to work together, to put aside our divisions and reach as one, to lead the world, toward a higher purpose. Out of the ashes of that tragedy came the opportunity not just to heal and unify ourselves, but to lead the world in a real effort to defeat a great evil. And I was ready to follow George W. Bush.

How did we get from there to here? At home, we are now more deeply divided than we ever were before. Abroad, our credibility has been destroyed by deceptions about WMDs, our ability to lead compromised by arrogance and bullying, and our moral standing squandered by apparatchiks intent on winning battles by undermining the very principles we're fighting for.

Think about that for a moment ... try to remember where you were on 9/12, and think about what could have been done with that. More than any President since Roosevelt, George Bush had the opportunity to lead us together into greatness. But he is simply too small a man to even understand such an opportunity, much less to grasp it. Instead, he told us to go shopping, and used that moment to grab control of the Senate, squelch political dissent, and push through more regressive tax cuts.

And now that moment is irretrievably lost ...

and that's is why George Bush does not deserve to be President.

Please say it, John.

Undecided??!!

I read Frank Gerjevic's column this weekend about being an undecided voter ... what about this man qualifies him to be a columnist? Mediocre writing, a bland world view, no opinions worthy of the name, and all the intellectual power of an avocado ... by gum, sign him up!!!

I suppose, at some point in the distant-seeming past, there were real reasons to be undecided in the presidential election. But this time it just means that you're not paying attention. And that's not something that should be celebrated in a newspaper column ... it's just lame. Gerjevic and the ADN should be ashamed.

Serendipity!

Wow, what luck for Lisa ... just weeks before the election, when things are looking bleak for the R's chances to keep the Senate, she gets an unexpected boost - the White House drops its "principled opposition" to incentives for the Alaska gas line, and it sails through the House in 20 minutes.

This kind of play says a lot more about the WH than it says about Li'l Lisa, but if she manages to pull this election out of the hat, she'll be so deeply in hock to the Republican leadership, she won't be able to cast an independent vote for years.

I don't think she's going to get the kind of mileage she was hoping for out of this one, though ...

Run out of reasons to support Lisa? Try Age Discrimination!!

This op-ed in the News-Gopher sez you should vote for Lisa cuz Tony's too old.

No, seriously, that's what it says - there's "no difference" between the two, and starting Lisa young will, 25 years down the road, yield untold benefits under the Senate seniority system that has allowed Ted to fatten us up with untold barrels of pork over the years. Plus, if those mean ol' Dems get control of the Senate, Ted won't be appropriations chair anymore.

Part of the "Team Alaska" argument, I guess. Two thoughts: (1) it seems odd for the Don and Ted squad to be trumpeting youth and vigor, and (2) this kind of sophistry is a bottom of the barrell argument. In other words, Sign 536 that Lisa is Getting Desperate.

The Gift

A while back I had a post about the AK Democrats longstanding inability to field a decent slate of candidates. It's not just that they had Theresa Obermeyer running for statewide office (although that was a terrible embarassment on a statewide scale, which reflected very poorly on the party - on the other hand, it verified the old saw that one would have to be nuts to run against Ted Stevens), it's that they field weak candidates in many races and can't even find candidates to challenge for a number of seats. This is the kind of organizational weakness that feeds on itself - it's a serious problem.

Just how serious may be shown by this election. Team Dorkowski has handed the AK Dems a gift they are not likely to see again soon - through a combination of their incompetence, their lack of ethics, and their tin political ear, Team Dorkowski has alienated a conservative electorate from the Republican Party. This is the Dems' best chance to pick up seats in years, and they likely will pick up some, but they won't take the legislature ... and they could if they were well-positoned to do so. ... them ol' grass roots need some fertilizer, it seems to me...

Ouch, that slap on the wrist really hurt!!

It's been a light week for posting, for which I apologize ... scheduling, blahblahblah ...

And it's been hard to think of something new to say about Team Dorkowski's week ... I mean, talk about shooting fish in a barrell ...

Gov. Dorkowski did make a shrewd move in appointing Bob Bundy to investigate the matter. As a former Dem. US attorney and prosecutor, he has a reputation as a straight shooter and the appearance of not being in bed with Team Dorkowski.

Indeed, this move is more shrewd than may be generally suspected. Bundy's mandate for investigation is limited, and he has no subpoena power. He'll simply be interviewing people who are not under oath and can only ask them a limited scope of questions. In the end, his report will be very narrow in scope and conclusions because of this. Bundy also undertook the Cynthia Cooper investigation a few years back, in which he cleared the former head of the DA's office of wrongdoing, despite the fact that she had twice been caught lying under oath, and that Judge Holland had remonstrated her for it in a published order. So he doesn't exactly conduct Ken Starr style inquisitions.

The most important thing, though, is that Alaska's public ethics laws are toothless. The likely result will be that the report will determine that there may have been a violation of the ethics laws, but since Renkes gave any possible earnings to charity, no harm, no foul.

I would hope to see a different outcome, but I can't imagine it will work out that way. Which is really unfortunate.

In a society that truly valued public ethics, Renkes' head would roll for such obviously improper behavior. I mean, really, folks - it just can't get any more clear than this. He was using his public office to actively promote the interests of a company that he had a personal financial stake in at the same time as he was actively trading stock in that company ... have we so lost our societal ethical compass that this sort of behavior can be acceptable?

MacKay

So, why is it that the MacKay Building simply cannot seem to die? The thing has blighted downtown for 30 years ... tear it down!!!

KFX

Well, Gov. D. was right about one thing in this article - Bob Bundy is a good choice for an attorney to investigate YesMan General Renkes' ties to Kfx, the money-losing coal technology firm. We'll see if Frank is right about Mr. Renkes.

The scope of the investigation is limited, of course, as is the scope of Bundy's authority (he can't subpoena anyone) - reflecting that there is a limit to what folks really want to find out.

That having been said, this particular problem is clear. Renkes has been a paid advisor to, and owns and actively trades stock in a company with an unproven technology - at the same time, he has been pushing for the State to make a deal with Taiwan that would call for a massive investment in this unproven technology. Is this a conflict of interest? Does the Pope wear a funny hat? I mean, really, what question could there possibly be about this?

I've discussed this before - the problem is that these folks are so closely wedded to the extractive industries that they really don't know where industry ends and the Republican Party begins (and they don't have any idea where government begins, but that's a different story). They don't understand the difference between lobbying and governing.

That somebody could miss so glaring an ethical problem can only suggest that they have no understanding of what an "ethical problem" actually is in the first place.

Renkes' defense, of course, is that this proposal is a win-win - if the State gets a deal with Taiwan, there will be more jobs and income, and both Alaska and Kfx will be better off.

That's a lobbyists argument, though. And it's only true if the technology works, if the State doesn't have to pour too much cash into this project, if the other costs aren't too high (tax breaks, environmental problems), and if any profits actually made won't just fly out of state.

And these judgments should be made by somebody without any financial stake in the project - a servant of the people, not a lobbyist for the coal industry