A rumor floated on Twitter late Sunday had Southeast Alaska social media users spun up. The person who posted it reported that the Malaspina, an Alaska State ferry, had been improperly put in cold storage, the pipes had bursts, and the boat was flooded. Not only that, he wrote, the artwork on the ship was “looted” because there was no watchman on duty.
In fact, a minor pipe froze and burst, which cause a minor amount of water in four staterooms, according to the Alaska Marine Highway. There was no lasting damage and the water was cleaned up promptly.
The ferry, moored in Ward Cove near Ketchikan, has not been looted. The art was removed by Department of Transportation for safe keeping and is being stored off the ship. Kitchen items were also not looted, as reported, but some were removed by staff for use on other vessels.
All of this happened a couple of weeks ago but idle ferry workers are pushing rumors out on social media platforms through “useful idiots who are taking the bait,” according to a source inside AMHS.
The Malaspina was scheduled for an overhaul this winter, after it was discovered that it needed extensive steel replacement, at the cost of more than $16 million, plus another $24 million to refurbish the vessel. The funds have not been available for all that is needed for the 56-year-old boat, which still has the original engines in it.
Right now the Malaspina is sitting in warm storage, hooked up to shore power, under the care of a private contractor, while awaiting decisions from lawmakers about whether the state can afford the $40 million needed to repair the vessel, one of the original ships in the fleet of the Alaska Marine Highway System.
Last week, the Alaska Marine Highway System issued a request for information to determine interest from marine charter companies about the services they can provide to communities along the Marine Highway System’s route. Specifically, AMHS is trying to establish interim passenger and freight service for the northern Panhandle, now that the ferries have been unexpectedly sidelined.
AMHS anticipates that the updated Spring/Summer service will include special runs to accommodate the Cordova fishery.
The Matanuska is anticipated to return to service on March 2. The Tazlina is scheduled to return to service on March 5. Schedules are available at http://dot.alaska.gov/amhs/.
MEDIA GOES AFTER DUNLEAVY TEAM, IGNORES AGENCY THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO GROW THE ECONOMY
The Anchorage Economic Development Corp. produces a luncheon twice a year, in which the organization presents an economic look-back and forecast for the region, a report produced under contract by the McDowell Group, with the AEDC logo slapped on it.
Beyond that, the AEDC is not much more than an announcer at events and pronouncer of things. Its president since 2007, Bill Popp, is much like Punxsutawney Phil, who comes out once or twice a year to say whether the recession will end early or late.
While the mainstream media and bloggers have focused on their narrative over a brand-new economic development team headed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, none has taken a critical look at the 33-year-old economic development agency that does lunch and puts out Facebook posts.
Last summer, Popp pronounced that Anchorage was in for a long recession due to massive state budget cuts. He railed against Dunleavy. The recession would last another three years, Popp said. He forecasted a net loss of 700 jobs in 2019 year in Anchorage and a thousand in 2020.
It was a reversal from his previous utterance, when months earlier he pronounced the economic recession effectively over in January of 2019. That was before he saw the governor’s budget, which made deep cuts in programs.
For Popp, the sky was falling. And the only way forward was to reverse the budget cuts.
This year, his January report shows Anchorage lost 300 jobs in 2019. And he forecasts 100 more jobs will be added in 2020.
A visit to the agency’s website shows that the group has fallen into disrepair from its own neglect. The website, which is the portal for people from outside the state who want to learn more about Anchorage economic opportunities, is rife with broken links and canned paragraphs that pump how well Anchorage has weathered the terrible national economy.
It wasn’t always like this. When founded in 1987 during the big recession in Alaska, it quickly helped bring cargo flights through Anchorage and helped clear the way for the Alyeska Resort. That was under the leadership of the late Scott Hawkins.
But it has been years since AEDC produced anything but glossy reports.
Has AEDC become a metaphor for the Anchorage economic scene — a nonprofit that skims funds from businesses and government to survive, and yet has no real deliverables other than contracting for reports and putting up Facebook posts to compliment others for their work?
Similar to the Downtown Community Development Authority, run by Andrew Halcro on behalf of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, AEDC appears to have set the bar low for itself, lacking targets and milestones that one would expect to see in a pro-business enterprise.
And yet, the AEDC budget shows that Popp earns $168,000 a year, that overall payroll is about $700,000, and that the agency’s budget comes from government grants, membership, and an “other” category, which is a kickback from utilities paid for by Anchorage rate-payers. The budget for AEDC is $1.68 million.
GOVERNOR’S TEAM HAS A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Pivot to the newly launched Alaska Development Team, a creation by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, reportable to Dunleavy, and headed up by a young businessman whom he trusts named Clark Penney.
The Democrats and their media have had a field day in recent weeks implying it’s improper for the governor to contract with a trusted ally. And yet, in eight short months, the Penney-coordinated team has been working on breaking down barriers to business and actually has some promising new industries in the works:
They’re working on expanding mariculture across coastal Alaska from Kodiak to Ketchikan through a combination of working with coastal communities and lifting regulatory barriers at DNR for things like oyster farms and kelp farms.
The team was at the center of a timber deal in the Mat-Su that opened up 11,000 acres of beetle-damaged timber for the next decade. The timber is on state land, and the team was able to bring in the State Forester and move that timber sale along before fire season gets here.
They’ve been working to develop rare earth minerals from Nome to Bokan Mountain in Southeast. Through their efforts and with help from Texas, they had mining added to eligible projects for the Fixing America Surface Transportation Act.
Alaskans can look to the Alaska Development Team for upcoming improvements at the Anchorage International Airport that will lead to more cargo. The cold storage cargo enterprise at the airport is finalizing its lease agreements, and may break ground this summer. It will bring 200-300 direct jobs year-round. The Alaska Development Team had an important role in convening those conversations.
Business development is a long game. It can’t perform magic overnight and a lot of business is done around a small table in the “small conference room” of a company.
But at least it looks like the State of Alaska has the right team in place to bring some big deals over the goal line — deals that appear to involve diverse businesses that are not oil and gas.
Consumers of mainstream media are reading a lot about how Clark Penney has an $8,000-per-month contract to be that business development leader for Dunleavy. The media and left-wing bloggers like to do the math — over four years that would be $384,000 plus expenses for Penney. That’s more than the average reporter makes, and it seems like a lot to some.
Democrat lawmakers have said they want to see that contract put out to the lowest bidder and that’s a narrative the mainstream media has been quick to report.
The ADT group’s website is not yet launched, but its members are out in the field and on the phone, trying to stir up the economy in Alaska. Time will tell if it’s a good value for Alaska, but at least the new group is accomplishing more than published reports and doing lunch.
Juneau’s Wearable Art exhibition has seen better days — at least more creative days, and more liberated days.
Just two years ago, more than 30 entrants typically took part in the pageant, which is a fundraiser for the operations of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.
Beth Bolanger’s “Dragon” took third place in 2018, but was pulled from the final line-up after a complaint was lodged.
But then came the “woke police.”
In 2018, one creative entry from Haines caught the ire of progressives, who said it was cultural appropriation. The garment and model were withdrawn from the competition and publicly humiliated. JAHC then set forth stringent rules to ensure that no one ever commits the sin of cultural appropriation again.
Creativity, meet political correctness.
The result of JAHC’s plunge into an era of artistic prohibition? Only 18 people even entered this, the 20th anniversary of the arts event. That’s a 40 percent drop in the usual number entries.
2018-2019 became the era of an ensuing Mao-like “criticism-self-criticism” exercise by the arts council, which now states its mission as not promoting the arts, but destroying racial inequality.
“The JAHC recognizes that our society is challenged to overcome a complex web of inequities – racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and ableism among them. All of these forms of discrimination are powerful drivers of unequal individual and group outcomes. However, it is our belief that ALAANA [African, Latino, Asian, and Native American] individuals whose identities intersect with those of other “minority” social statuses often experience compounded mistreatment that is amplified by the interaction of race. We support the work being undertaken to dismantle the array of social and economic injustices; however, The JAHC has determined that we must focus our efforts to heighten our effectiveness. We move forward from our assessment that racism is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and that meaningful progress on advancing racial equity will have significant positive impact on challenging other discrimination-based injustices. Therefore, our current priority is working against racism by working toward racial equity in arts philanthropy.”
So states part of the long political creed that prospective artists read before they take part in the wearable arts competition.
“The JAHC Board of Directors and Staff have enacted an equity and inclusion policy to guide JAHC programming, events and actions. During the development of this policy there have been many courageous conversations about racial inequity, cultural appropriation and unintentional exclusion and stereotyping. And, we are confident and hopeful these rewarding and courageous conversations will continue. Please review the equity and inclusion policy on the next page, and keep it in mind as you design and create your project.”
The theme for this year’s pageant was “Joie de Vivre,” joy of living. The artists, however, held back because in this era of political correctness, being subject to shame by your arts peers is a bit of a kill joy.
(Editor’s note: the wearable art shown at the top of this story is from the 2019 competition, the first-place winner “Wishes & Prayers in Turbulent Times” by Rhonda Jenkins Gardinier).
President Donald Trump was the grand marshal for the Daytona 500 in Florida on Sunday, and what a grand entrance he and First Lady Melania Trump made.
After Air Force One buzzed the racetrack as low as 800 feet before landing nearby, the Trumps then did a lap around the track with the presidential motorcade, before getting out of the 22,000-pound presidential car to the music of “God bless the U.S.A..”
Trump spoke to the crowd of over 100,500 before announcing to the racers: “Start your engines.”
He was the first U.S. president to open the Daytona 500 and the second president, after George W. Bush, to attend the race. Unlike his experience at the Washington, D.C. game of the World Series in October, where he was booed, he was greeted with loud cheers and chants of “U.S.A.” in Daytona.
I think those of us on the left need to take a long look in the mirror and have an honest conversation about what’s going on.
If you had told me three years ago that I would ever attend a Donald Trump rally, I would have laughed and assured you that was never going to happen.
Heck, if you had told me I would do it three months ago, I probably would have done the same thing. So, how did I find myself among 11,000-plus Trump supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire? Believe it or not, it all started with knitting.
You might not think of the knitting world as a particularly political community, but you’d be wrong. Many knitters are active in social justice communities and love to discuss the revolutionary role knitters have played in our culture. I started noticing this about a year ago, particularly on Instagram.
I knit as a way to relax and escape the drama of real life, not to further engage with it. But it was impossible to ignore after roving gangs of online social justice warriors started going after anyone in the knitting community who was not lockstep in their ideology. Knitting stars on Instagram werebullied and mobbedby hundreds of people for seemingly innocuous offenses. One man got mobbed so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the hospital on suicide watch. Many things were not right about the hatred, and witnessing the vitriol coming from those I had aligned myself with politically was a massive wake-up call.
Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens.
You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone who wasn’t a straight white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.
But when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small, niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate for anyone who wasn’t like them.
That turned out not to be the case. The more voices outside the left that I listened to, the more I realized that these were not bad people. They were not racists, nazis, or white supremacists. We had differences of opinions on social and economic issues, but a difference of opinion does not make your opponent inherently evil. And they could justify their opinions using arguments, rather than the shouting and ranting I saw coming from my side of the aisle.
I started to discover (or perhaps rediscover) the #WalkAway movement. I had heard about #WalkAway when MSNBC told me it was fake and a bunch of Russian bots. But then I started to meet real people who had been Democrats and made the decision to leave because they could not stand the way the left was behaving.
I watched town halls they held with different minority communities (all available in their entirety on YouTube), and I saw sane, rational discussion from people of all different races, backgrounds, orientations, and experiences. I joined the Facebook group for the community and saw stories popping up daily of people sharing why they are leaving the Democratic Party. This wasn’t fake. These people are not Russian bots. Moreover, it felt like a breath of fresh air. There was not universal agreement in this group — some were Trump supporters, some weren’t — but they talked and shared their perspective without shouting or rage or trying to cancel each other.
I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?
And the biggest question of all was this: Did I hate Trump so much that I wanted to see my country fail just to spite him and everyone who voted for him?
Karlyn Borysenko, MBA, PhD, is an organizational psychologist, consultant, and executive coach.
Some 195 evacuees from Wuhan, China, who on Jan. 29 transited through Anchorage International Airport’s North Terminal on their way home, have been released from their quarantine at March Air Force Base in Riverside County, Calif.
The group, released on Feb. 11, was under a 14-day federal quarantine for COVID-19, the flu virus that originated in Wuhan, to ensure they were not contagious. It was the first federal quarantine in nearly 60 years.
“All 195 evacuees have completed final health check” and “pose no health risk,” said Dr. Nancy Knight with the Centers for Disease Control.
The photo above was released by the Riverside County Department of Public Health, as some of the travelers threw their surgical masks into the air in celebration. None are expected to need follow-up testing, the CDC said.
While at the Air Force base, they were housed in the bachelors quarters, a series of apartments, and were able to take part in various activities, such as Zumba classes, while at the same time their temperatures were taken multiple times each day.
When the cargo plane carrying the passengers, mostly American diplomats and their families, landed in Anchorage, there were reported to be 201 passengers onboard. The number released by health officials from the March AFB quarantine is 195, with no explanation for the discrepancy.
To date, more than 69,289 people have contracted the COVID-19 virus, and 1,689 have died as a result. The virus has surpassed the fatalities from the 2003 outbreak of SARS.
Watching movie trailers for the “Call of the Wild” started me thinking about what I once thought Alaska was about, when in 1974, I packed up Wife 1.0, kid, and dog in a Toyota Land Cruiser and set out “North to the Future.”
“Call of the Wild” is being marketed as an “All-American” story. But it occurred in the Yukon Territory; the book’s author Jack London is about as far from a mainstream American as you get.
Don’t get me wrong; I like some of London’s writing: “To Build a Fire” is one of my favorite pieces of writing. But London was an atheist, a Socialist, an alcoholic, and at the end of his days a morphine addict who died of an overdose. That is not an “All-American” biography.
To go with the “Buck the dog protagonist” analogy, we the people of Alaska, have to struggle with Spitz, our lead dog.
“The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see…” is the Republican fratricide in the organization of the Alaska Legislature.
Much of Alaska’s history has been an existential struggle against a harsh environment. As Jack London’s protagonist in “To Build a Fire” struggled and failed to build a fire in the Yukon wilderness, we struggled to build a state and only became one because of the Soviet Union’s relentless anti-colonial pressure.
The United States worried about our viability as a state from the outset and considered us a welfare dependency liability. In reality, Congress only considered us for statehood because the Cook Inlet oil discoveries gave us some revenue other than from washing each other’s clothes.
Then came Prudhoe Bay.
Since oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay, we’ve become trust fund babies. Like Buck when he was Judge Miller’s dog, we have become soft, pampered pets. Only about a third of our population even bothers to engage in productive, wealth-producing work; the rest are either public employees or welfare recipients.
Welfare is so lucrative in Alaska that you’re foolish to work a job that pays much less than $40,000 a year and provides full benefits.
Like Buck, we’re going to have to learn to be wild again.
The leadership of the House are a bunch of union-owned hacks. I worked on the union side when I was young and dumb and learned that the ultimate goal is to get yourself into a position where a bunch of working stiffs have to work and pay union dues so you no longer have to work with the tools of the trade and you can make a salary many multiples of theirs for doing nothing measurable.
The Senate is run by a true trust fund baby and by Nurse Ratched. They are in thrall to their egos and to the healthcare racket, the education racket, and the public employee union racket.
They happily ignore the interests of everyday Alaskans so the administrators of so-called non-profit healthcare organizations can make a million bucks a year for sending invoices to the State, and so “education professionals” can run school districts producing the least-able students in the nation.
And they ignore the interests of regular Alaskans so union officials can make multi-hundred thousand dollar a year salaries to extort money from public employees so that the employees can get and keep jobs.
The governor and his administration are clueless. They don’t have anyone in their appointee ranks that has a clue how to run State government, and they have a disloyal and barely competent workforce beneath the appointee level.
Not only does the Administration not know what to do, it doesn’t have anybody it can ask. In my book I recommend that any Republican executive taking over from a Democrat fire everybody s/he has a legal right to fire and let the merit system employees run the government; they’ll keep it running.
I’m not so sure that is good advice anymore; from what I’ve seen if the merit system employees don’t have somebody telling them what to do, some portion will actively sabotage the Administration and the rest will just sit and idly stare.
Like Buck, in “Call of the Wild,” we’re going to have to find it in us to kill Spitz. We have to hear and obey the call of the wild.
Now that the Administration stupidly went for an expedited hearing on the Recall Dunleavy case, the Supreme Court is getting to pay Dunleavy back for the “abortion budget cut.” That’s the cut Dunleavy made to the administrative portion of the court’s budget, and shifted it over to pay for the state-funded, elective abortions that the Supreme Court demands the state cover.
Some of us learned long ago that you don’t cross swords with the people who can decide your fate. Gov. Dunleavy’s fate is to become a former governor this summer. His only hope was to have the recall on the General Election Ballot in November, as Alaskans will vote overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump and people who vote for Trump aren’t likely to vote to recall even an inept Republican governor.
The only people who will vote in a recall Special Election are super voters and interest-group voters, and the interest groups will work their lists hard. Of course, there really aren’t any Republican/conservative organized interest groups.
Dunleavy is toast. If the only hope they had was to delay the recall vote to the General Election, and Dunleavy and Attorney General Kevin Clarkson embraced the expedited hearing, then they deserve what’s going to happen to them.
Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer will be governor in November and he isn’t up until 2022, so he’ll get to oversee redistricting and try to keep the Democrats from redlining Republicans/conservatives into oblivion.
“Killing Spitz” requires that the working, tax-paying people of Alaska eliminate the rent-seekers and tax farmers in the Alaska Legislature. It has been suggested that elected officials become like NASCAR drivers and wear all their sponsors’ logos on their jackets. When you vote, remember you’re not voting for the candidate, but for his/her sponsors; choose wisely.
Alaska’s people do not have to live out the existential crisis of “Call of the Wild.” Our Yeehats are not among the People of the State, but rather among a largely self-anointed elite of rent-seekers and power mongers. We don’t have to have Buck’s existential battle with the Yeehats, we just need to send some legislators packing in the next Primary and General elections.
If you haven’t read Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” or haven’t read it in a long time, pick up the book and give it a read; it is a good allegory for our time and place. Watching the new movie won’t do, because that’s Hollywierd.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon.
The Dunleavy Administration is having to defend itself in court against a public employee union lawsuit resulting from the Administration’s enforcement of the Janus decision.
But union-back Democrats in the House of Representatives said “no way” in a House Finance subcommittee meeting last week. They stripped the funding.
COMPLICATED BUDGET MANEUVER
The Dept. of Law in January contracted with an Outside law firm to defend the state from a public union lawsuit against the state’s “opt-in” plan that would comply with the Supreme Court’s Janus decision.
Law planned to pay up to $600,000 for the subject-expert lawyers, as the case resulting from a lawsuit by the Alaska State Employees Association against the Dunleavy Administration, is expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last week, the House Finance subcommittee, headed by Rep. Andy Josephson, decided there will be no Outside legal counsel. The committee renamed the appropriation title for the “civil division” in its budget. As a maneuver to protect unions against the Janus decision by the Supreme Court, subcommittee Democrats now call the budget item the “Civil Division Except Contracts Relating to Interpretation of Janus v AFSCME Decision.”
A separate appropriation line is now called, “Legal Contracts Relating to Interpretation of Janus v AFSCME Decision,” and it has just $20,000 in the item, the smallest appropriation legally possible from the subcommittee.
During the hearing, Democrat committee members said they disagree with the Administration’s decision to pursue Janus litigation, and wanted to send a message they will not support spending the money to defend workers’ rights to affirmatively opt-in on union membership, rather than being automatically enrolled in a union, and having to buck union pressure if they want to opt out.
The Democrats on the committee have a conflict-of-interest problem. Two legislators on the House Finance subcommittee who made a point to strip the funding are themselves heavily funded by public labor union political action committees.
In the last election, Rep. Andy Josephson received $18,250 of his total $26,676.73 in campaign funds from Labor Union PACS, which represents about 68 percent of his total campaign funding.
AFSCME is the union that lost the case against Mark Janus, a public employee from Illinois who did not want his union dues to be used for political purposes and didn’t want to be compelled to pay union dues.
Rep. Matt Claman
Rep. Matt Claman received $15,600 of his total $110,053 in campaign funds from Labor Union PACS and union representatives, which represents about 15 percent of his total campaign funding.
On Feb. 12, Must Read Alaska asked readers of the MRAK newsletter (subscribe here) how they are doing with the Trump presidency after Donald Trump’s remarks at the 68th National Prayer Breakfast, which rubbed some Christians the wrong way.
Subscribers to the newsletter are largely conservative, but readers run the gamut from Libertarian to Democrat-Socialist.
Here are the answers that came into the MRAK mailbox through Friday, lightly edited. Feel free to offer your own thoughts in the comment section below:
As a pro-life Christian, what choice is there?
Trump is his own worst enemy. His supporters detest much of his behavior, but they support most of his policies and accomplishments. If it wasn’t for his personality problems, his poll numbers would be 20-30 points higher. Fortunately for Trump, the Democrats offer clowns for opposition. The Democrats are doing all the right things to re-elect Trump. Let’s cheer them on.
Having grown up in New Jersey I experienced many people from New York. Donald Trump is a New Yorker, and his comments do not offend or bother me in any way. People that are offensive should be offended.
I am glad he speaks his mind. It’s about time we had a president thatdoes it. I voted for him, will do so again, and have no regrets. The only mistake he has made is underestimating the depth of the D.C. swamp. Thanks. Read your site daily, make a sweatshirt without a hoodie and I will buy 5..
His message was amazing and fantastic!
Trump 2020!
Keep America Great!!!
I love our president and stand behind him 100%.
Regarding Donald Trump’s comments at the Prayer Breakfast. I see this as Donald Trump being Donald Trump, but for many I know, his persona rubs them the wrong way, even though his policies are appreciated.
I see that as a tendency of many to try to represent themselves as above the fray—all while secretly cheering him on.
He is the first president to dare to be real. Personally, I like that, but for those who like to walk around pretending to be righteous and good and pure people no matter what is in their heart, it is disturbing and they dare not be caught acknowledging that he is really saying what they themselves wish they could.
Our MAGA-POTUS Trump has no peer in recent history if honestly measured in terms of striving against all odds to actually deliver upon campaign promises that benefit the average American.
To find an equal, one would have to look back to our founding, or perhaps, the great war of Slave-Owning Democrats VS the United States of America. I think about Lincoln in the context of Trump sometimes, because the last time the Democrats were this pissed off at Republicans, was when we tried to end slavery.
All that, and our President keeps showing up, keeps fighting and winning every damned day….? So, yeah, you can say that I support him, my only question is: How does he do it?
You really want to know?
Not a fan here. I think we can/should do better.
God sent us a president who is imperfect and sometimes profane, but he is protecting my First Amendment right to religious freedom, he is protecting my Second Amendment right to own firearms, and he’s fighting for the rights of all Americans to live, including unborn Americans. Onboard? Heck yes. No-brainer.
Congressman Don Young recently sent around a question asking for input for Trump’s State of the Union address. I encouraged him to encourage Trump to publicly repent of his sins and lead the nation in repentance before the Lord our God. Our nation, from the family to the schools can’t run away from the Lord any faster with our sin. We are heading for the Lord dealing with us and, if we paid attention; He probably is!
Trump is not worthy of being president in in any sense of the word; my vote for him will be voting for the least of the evils in the candidate bucket of the stuff we had lots of in the barnyard of the dairy farm I grew up at.
He’s still getting the boost from the impeachment. He’ll drop off a little, but still blast the Dems enough to have long coattails. Speaker McCarthy it will be, and Senate majority will grow. Dems will have to shift right or die off. All this could change if the Donald really truly blows it – but I don’t think that will happen.
I parted with the Republican Party National and in State when both became more concerned about their own re-elections and making money for themselves. Trump is the only politician that I believe is still trying to do what is best for this Country and fighting to keep his promises to his voters. I support him because he is the only honest patriot in the political system.
One thing I think of is how the media treated Sarah Palin when she ran for VP. She had been outrageously popular as governor but she rose above the sight line (to borrow a line from Stephen King) and got national attention. Suddenly she was being mocked for participating in a beauty pageant, for taking longer than four years to finish college, for saying ‘you betcha’ basically for being us. Who Hillary Clinton later called “a basket of deplorables” and who CNN’s Don Lemon famously mocked recently. I cannot find it anymore but there was an opinion piece written when she ran called “The importance of Sarah Palin” containing reference to “the cold blank stares of those nice people we invite into our houses and even our bedrooms” Meaning news commentators. I just picture us staring at them in shocked realization that they don’t like us at all.
Back to Trump, our betters have been trying to get rid of him since before day 1. The impeachment was obviously a farce. I can see people voting for Trump because our betters don’t want him. Kind of a middle finger to the Deep State.
I should say I voted for Trump because I was voting against Hillary who I believe sat across the table from a certain power and sold her soul long ago. Almost literally I believe that.
I expected Trump to abandon every principle he espoused once elected. I have been pleasantly surprised.
I am reminded of people complaining about Ulysses Grant and Lincoln replying “Yes but he fights.”
He fights. I intend to support him this go-round. We shall see.
I feel like a woman without a country. I am a Republican “never-trumper.” Last time round I voted Libertarian. This time round I want him gone!
So do I vote for a moderate Democrat? I don’t want to, but the party leaders are leaving me no choice. I don’t want a Democratic Administration. I simply cannot vote for Trump, I cannot support him and I want desperately to have him gone! He lies like a rug, flat out, all the time. He treats people with such discourtesy. Yuk!
Most any other Republican president could have done the good things Trump has done …and without doing all the lying and atrocious stuff he does.
I am unhappy. I work out my frustration on the woodpile. Maybe Trump needs a woodpile.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to unload. It’s been building.
