Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia has won over Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker for Senate in the runoff election that ended Tuesday. This gives Democrats an outright majority in the Senate, ensuring that Sen. Chuck Schumer can maintain his position as majority leader. It means Republicans have lost one seat in the Senate, and Democrats no longer need Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie.
Warnock was leading Walker 50.4% to 49.6% when the race was called by the Associated Press, which determined not enough votes remained uncounted to change the outcome. This victory gives Warnock a full six-year term, after he won a two-year term when he beat Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler. Loffler had been appointed to the seat by Gov. Brian Kemp after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned in 2019 for health reasons.
The Warnock-Walker race was the most expensive in 2022 across the country, according to OpenSecrets.org, with spending by general election candidates and outside groups exceeding to $380.7 million as of Nov. 29. Warnock raised more money than any other federal candidate this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets data. He raised twice as much money as Walker raised.
An unusually large number of tankers changed ownership in recent months, according to international reports, leading to speculation that Russian oil is being smuggled by untracked aging oil tankers.
Oil analysts say Russia has joined Iran and Venezuela in using shadow oil tankers to ship large volumes of crude oil.
Russia has acquired about 100 of these old tankers in recent months leading up to Monday’s oil sanctions from the U.S. and European Union. Many of the “dark” oil tankers are old, and they turn off their GPS tracking systems while on the high seas so they can transfer oil onto tankers that have no links to Russia, thus laundering the source of the oil. This prevents the oil exports as being flagged by countries taking part in the sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
International vessel traffic can be seen at this vesselfinder.com website. Dark tankers will not necessarily show up on the vessel tracking system, which is satellite assisted.
Ahead of Monday’s European Union embargo on imports of Russian crude oil, which had been announced months in advance, hundreds of tankers that were aging out of service changed ownership to companies not part of the European Union or G7 countries.
Many of those old tankers, which have no insurance from Western companies such as Lloyds, have already shown up at Russian ports to load crude, according to the Houston Chronicle. It is an environmental disaster waiting to happen, OilPrice.com reports.
In March, news reports revealed that Russian oil tankers had averaged 12 “dark activities” per week since the country invaded Ukraine. That activity has now spiked again.
On Monday, European Union’s cap went into effect, limiting Russian oil to $60 a barrel, meaning companies in the EU, as well and United States, Canada, and Australia, are not buying from any entity that breaches the cap for oil originated in Russia.
“The cap on the price of Russian oil transported by sea is designed to affect the country’s exports worldwide, in addition to the EU-wide embargo on Russian crude oil, which comes into force on 5 December and which the UK is also adopting. Countries not party to the deal will only be able to access services such as insurance, shipping and brokerage if they trade Russian oil at or below the $60 cap. As the countries involved in the deal, such as the UK, are the world’s largest service providers, the belief is that most countries and businesses will be forced to comply,” The Guardian wrote last week.
The G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US – provide insurance services for 90% of the world’s cargo while Greece, an EU member state, is a major player in the shipping industry, the newspaper explained.
“The cap is aimed at maintaining the flow of oil to countries such as China, India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which have not banned Russian oil imports, while maintaining economic pressure on the Kremlin,” according to the Guardian.
“The monthly average of both so-called dark activities and ship-to-ship operations in the south Atlantic doubled in the September to November period compared with the previous three months, according to an analysis of movements by the maritime intelligence company Windward. There were around 35 incidents of ‘dark activity’ in September, nearly 50 in October and numbers dipped to just over 40 in November,” Guardian reported.
Windward tracked one tanker that went dark and was sailing under a Cameroon flag, then changed its registration and call sign to a Seychelles-based company, and then was spotted in Cape Verde. From there, it moved to the north mid-Atlantic, where it stayed for three days before heading to the coast of Namibia. It was sending out false signals about its location the entire time. After that, it moved to the coast of Angola and stayed put for six days, which is unusual behavior for a tanker at sea. Windward was able to detect a change in the draft of the vessel on Nov. 20, suggesting that the tanker took on oil at that point, from an unknown source.
A traffic jam of oil tankers is reported to have built up in Turkish waters near the Bosporus Strait as Turkey’s government demands proof of insurance cover before allowing ships to pass.
Read more about how Russia is evading the oil embargo at qz.com.
The biggest question out of the Nov. 8, 2022 election here in Alaska concerns the drop in voters this time around compared with 2018. As election seasons go, this one was massive and should have attracted more interest from voters than recent non-presidential years.
Look at what we had on the ballot. We had a very expensive race for US Senate, a Democrat in the US House for the first time in 50 years, a gubernatorial race, nearly 60 legislators up for election following redistricting, a constitutional convention, and as always, 20 or so judges up for retention.
Yet Alaskans didn’t turn out to vote this time around. Why?
Before delving into the why, a review of basic numbers is in order.
Compare the numbers and roughly 18,000 fewer Alaskans voted this year out of a pool 30,000 larger than 2018.
Who stayed home?
Republican turnout was down 3,200 voters, 2.2%, though they had the best turnout of all registered groups in November, at 55.2%.
Democrats were next, down 3,200, 4.1%. Their turnout was not bad, at 52.5% of their registered voters.
Non-Partisans were down 4,500 voters, 5.4%. Their turnout was 48.3%
Worst were the Undeclareds, down 6,900 voters, 2.6%, with a miserable 34% turnout.
Based on analysis of this year, it was missed opportunity, a big one. Had Republicans turned out in larger numbers, we could have elected Kelly Tshibaka, defeated Congresswoman Mary Peltola, picked up at least two seats in the state Senate (Sen. Mia Costello, who lost by 597; and Jim Matherly, who lost by 692), and at least three in the state House (David Nelson, who lost by 77; Forrest Wolfe, who lost by 150; and Jeremy Bynum, who lost by 343).
The low turnout protected Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Rep. Peltola, and gave us coalitions in the Senate (maybe also the House) rather than majorities.
While a 55% turnout for Republicans was the best this year, it is far smaller than other historic elections. For example, the 2020 presidential year Republican turnout was 73%. A 63% Republican turnout this year was quite possible and would have run the table, bringing another 10,000 Republicans to the ballot box.
A great question to Alaska Republican Party Chair Ann Brown and National Committeeman Craig Campbell would be why did they fail to prioritize turning out Republicans to vote this year? A follow-up would be: Did they even try?
Why else would Republicans stay home?
One problem is that those purportedly on “our side” have for years railed against absentee voting, by mail voting, and early voting as vectors all but ensuring corruption in elections at the state and local levels. And when conservative / Republican voters believe their voting or participation is no longer relevant, they stay home. When we stay home, we don’t win. And we shouldn’t.
One of the worst offenders pushing this narrative has been Dan Fagan on his morning KENI radio show. He incessantly complains about how Alaskan elections are rife with fraud.
When our side believes this stuff some of them stay home, the very definition of voting suppression. Nice work, Dan. Congratulations.
I do take exception with the charge of dirty elections in Alaska. We have three voting systems in Alaska. First is the absentee voting system. These ballots require some effort to obtain. Most importantly, they are closely tracked, and have been for 30 years. The other two are by-mail voting (Muni only) and election day voting.
The biggest problem that I can see for both by-mail and election day voting is that Alaskan Republicans have chosen not to strongly play in early voting. Nationally, this approach cost Republicans at least three Senate seats in Nov (Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Nevada). It probably cost us Assembly and School Board seats here in Anchorage, contributing to Democrat majorities in both bodies. On the other hand, Republicans used it to sweep elections in FL. Regardless of what any of us think about the new rules, we must play by them in order to win. And we will never change those new rules unless we win elections, which once again means simply showing up.
Observations on Nov 8
It is beyond ironic that the ranked-choice voting system specifically designed to reduce the importance of political parties in Alaska was an abject failure, as the political parties did the very best job of all groups turning their people out to vote.
The people in the middle, the undeclared and non-partisans, who make this system work, simply didn’t turn out, yet nobody, especially the Scott Kendalls of the world who pushed the election reform initiative two years ago, are publicly asking why. Perhaps because their preferred candidate won, and collateral damage down ballot due to the new system simply doesn’t matter to them.
Turnout for all identified groups was down in the first complete year of ranked-choice voting, meaning it worked just as poorly increasing participation as it did controlling dark money into elections in Alaska — it worked not at all, yet another reason to repeal it.
Conclusions
Words have meaning. When we have a significant part of the electorate on our side that is under the impression that elections in this state are corrupt, and some on our side are doing their level best to confirm that impression every single day, our voters won’t turn out. And we will never win an election unless our side turns out.
If and when we get actual election fraud, get on it like white on rice. Identify what happened, who did it, where it was done, and how it was done.
Finally, and most importantly, come up with a solution to make sure it doesn’t happen again. These days, I hear a lot of complaining and precious few solutions.
My solution? Go vote. Do it early. Do it often. Get your friends, neighbors and family to vote. But vote, even if we have to embrace early voting completely. Never, ever stay home.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump’s real estate and development business, Trump Organization, guilty of all 17 counts of tax fraud and related financial crimes the state Attorney General had brought against the company.
The verdicts were read just one day after the jury deliberated in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. The jury said that the Trump Organization had a business practice of paying people under the table, thus avoiding taxes, by giving them luxury incentives such as apartments, cars, and private school tuition for their children.
Trump Organization was founded in 1927 by Donald Trump’s grandmother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, and his father, Fred Trump. It was originally known as E. Trump & Sons. Today it is a group of close to 500 businesses of which Donald J. Trump is either the sole owner or principal of companies that have multiple investments in hotels, golf resorts, and other real estate across the world. The company’s website gives visitors a peek into the luxury world of the Trump Organization.
Attorney General Letitia James of New York wrote, “Today’s guilty verdict against the Trump Organization shows that we will hold individuals and organizations accountable when they violate our laws to line their pockets. I commend @ManhattanDA for this big victory, and I am proud of the role that my office played in securing it.” James filed the lawsuit against the company in September.
In exchange for his testimony, former chief financial officer for the organization Allen Weisselberg made a deal that means he will serve only about five months in jail. He did not implicate Donald Trump or Trump’s adult children in his testimony, although prosecutors made the argument that Trump knew what was going on in the tax fraud scheme.
Weisselberg said the whole scheme was his fault and was due to his own greed. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to taking in $1.7 million in benefits that he did not report to state and federal taxing authorities.
The company could be liable for a $1.6 million fine and will be sentenced in January.
The traditional open house at the Alaska Governor’s Mansion will take place from 2-6 pm on Dec. 13 in Juneau. On hand to greet visitors in the fully decorated house will be Gov. Mike and First Lady Rose Dunleavy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom.
The first open house was held by Territorial Governor Walter Eli Clark and his family on New Year’s Day of 1913. The annual tradition has been held every year since, except for two years during World War II and in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The event features cookies from local bakers, and often has musical performances from Juneau youth ensembles. The line to get into the mansion will often stretch down Calhoun Ave., which will be closed to automobile traffic throughout the event for safety.
Those lining the sidewalk to enter the historic house are often served cookies and hot cider by commissioners and deputy commissioners while they wait to pass through the mansion.
Democrat Denny Wells had five days after the 2022 election was certified to ask for a recount of the House District 15 race, and he met that deadline with the Division of Elections on Monday. With over 7,000 votes cast in that South Anchorage House race, and just a seven-vote difference, he’ll get his recount at 10 am on Thursday in Juneau.
Observing the recount on behalf of Wells will be the architect of Ballot Measure 2 (open primaries, ranked-choice generals) Scott Kendall, who is an election lawyer who generally represents Democrats and no-party candidates. He practices with Cashion, Gilmore and Lindemuth. Also observing for Wells will be Holly Wells, (no relation.) She practices law at Birch, Horton, Bittner and Cherot.
McKay will also have two legal observers at the recount in Juneau to audit the procedure, which should go quickly. Depending on the outcome, Kendall may sue on behalf of Wells for some procedural variation.
In 2018, the race of Republican Bart LeBon vs. Kathryn Dodge in Fairbanks (then District 1) went to a recount, and LeBon won by just one vote.
Must Read Alaska was on the scene for that recount and reported its unusual twist, which pertained to automatic voter registration via Permanent Fund dividend application:
“The vote that decided the matter came from a felon, whose vote was challenged by the Democrats who were observing the process today. They thought he didn’t have his voting rights restored. Then the ballot was also challenged by Republicans for the same reason.
“The felon was automatically registered when he filed for his Permanent Fund dividend.
“The Division of Elections looked into it and said the felon had had his voting rights restored. They decided to count the ballot.
The deadline for Americans to get a Real ID was first set for 2008, but has been repeatedly delayed.
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security moved the deadline again. It’s now May 7, 2025. The department said that the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed down the adoption of the higher-security ID requirements that travelers will need to have to enter some federal facilities, and to fly on large commercial planes.
Homeland Security said motor vehicle agencies need more time to work through the backlog of applications created when state agencies curtailed services as a precaution during the Covid pandemic.
“This extension will give states needed time to ensure their residents can obtain a Real ID-compliant license or identification card,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday. “DHS will also use this time to implement innovations to make the process more efficient and accessible. We will continue to ensure that the American public can travel safely.”
The Real ID Act passed Congress in 2005. It creates federal security standards for drivers licenses, state identifications, and other identification cards issued by the states and was a response to the increase of terrorist attacks on American facilities, including the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack by Al Qaeda terrorists who boarded commercial planes, hijacked them, and used them as missiles to destroy the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and crashed a jet into the Pentagon itself.
Real IDs have a star in the right-hand corner of a driver’s license or identification card. U.S. passports or green card qualify as Real IDs for those who don’t have a Real ID-compliant drivers license or state identification card. Alaska’s Real ID information page is located here. It has not been updated to reflect the new deadline, as of this writing.
As of May, 2022, some 137 million Real IDs had been issued across the states, about 49% of all IDs in circulation.
Perhaps he was just being Trumpian. Former President Donald Trump explained on Monday he doesn’t actually wish to “terminate” the U.S. Constitution.
But meanwhile, he got the dander up of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who took to Twitter to scold him about the Constitution.
To review for the court of public opinion: Over the weekend, Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media company he owns, that the magnitude of corruption that took place in the 2020 election calls for some kind of action.
He said, clumsily but correctly, that the Constitution had been violated by mainstream media and the Deep State, and that the elections were interfered with in 2020.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a constitutional process for overturning a certified election, as much as he would like to have that happen. And terminating the Constitution is, by its nature, unconstitutional.
Trump correctly accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. He also correctly pointed out that “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
But it’s the “termination” word that got the mainstream media worked into a froth since Saturday. Trump had given his critics a way to distract the public from the real story of corruption and collusion between the FBI, the mainstream media, and social media companies in support of the Biden candidacy for president.
Trump’s controversial post came after Elon Musk, the new majority owner of Twitter, released internal Twitter emails that showed Twitter and the Biden campaign colluded to suppress legitimate news stories about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop that show that Hunter Biden was using his role on the board of a Ukrainian power company to make introductions of Ukrainian business tycoons to his father, who was then Vice President. The cover-up occurred in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. Hunter Biden was paid $11 million to sit on the board of Burisma, although he had no prior experience.
Read the U.S. Senate Finance report on Hunter Biden-Ukraine corruption links to Joe Biden:
Trump has now clarified that there should be some remedy for what was, in his view, a rigged election, with crimes of interference committed that prevented free and fair elections. In essence, Trump is calling for justice.
“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. Trump said that “steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was quick to condemn Trump. On Sunday, Alaska’s senior senator wrote on Twitter, “Suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our Oath of Office, it’s an affront to our Republic.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan also blasted Trump, saying any suggestion that the Constitution can be discarded is “ridiculous.”
There were betrayals committed against the Constitution by officers of the law, colluding to suppress information about candidate Biden.
One of the betrayals to the Constitution was committed by a group of former intelligence officers — including five former CIA directors — who signed a letter falsely stating that the Hunter Biden laptop was most likely Russian disinformation. The former intelligence officers wrongly used their authorities to give the public bad information.
That letter, with its 50+ signatures, also gave Joe Biden and the Democratic Party a path to disparage the New York Post’s story.
During that same timeframe, FBI officials were meeting weekly with executives at Twitter, and Twitter blocked the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, treating it with the same sanctions it usually reserves for child pornography. Twitter in October of 2020 locked the New York Post’s Twitter accountto prevent the story from reaching voters.
“Now that multiple other news outlets have confirmed the legitimacy of the laptop, the letter-writers haven’t repented about themselves spreading clever disinformation meant to influence the election,” noted Rich Lowry in the New York Post.
“And, indeed, the letter-writers played a game. They didn’t actually say that the Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation, at the same time they created that impression. This has given them plausible — or more accurately, implausible — deniability.
“Cornered about the letter on Fox News, former CIA officer David Priess said the laptop story, just as the letter asserted, had ‘all the classic earmarks’ of Russian disinformation.” That didn’t mean it was disinformation, just that it had the earmarks of disinformation, Lowry wrote.
But during the time leading up to the election, top CIA veterans characterized their remarks much more sharply.
Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under CIA director John Brennan, told Politico, ‘“The real power here however is the number of former, working-level IC officers who want the American people to know that once again the Russians are interfering.”
Shapiro was the one of the main instigators of the letter, which is included here:
The media widely reported the suspicions of these intelligence officers as gospel before the election in 2020.
“If we are right,” the agents wrote, “this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
And so it went. While the mainstream media had discredited the original Hunter Biden laptop story before and after the election, and has continued to dismiss it as a nothing-burger story, with just one tweet last week, Trump managed to get the entire Leftist establishment, the media, and even Sen. Lisa Murkowski, to defend the Constitution.
THE MEDIA HAS CEASED TO EXIST, SO THE PUBLIC ASSUMES THAT WHAT THE MEDIA SUPPRESSES IS TRUE, AND WHAT IT COVERS IS FALSE
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | AMERICAN GREATNESS
The current “media”—loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook—are corrupt.
They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them. The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda.
The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true. The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities, while inflating themes deemed useful.
This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence. Lax standards reflect weaponized journalism schools and woke ideology that short prior basic requisites of writing and ethical protocols of quoting and sourcing. In sum, a corrupt media that is ignorant, arrogant, and ideological explains why few now trust what it delivers.
Suppression
Once a story is deemed antithetical to left-wing agendas, there arises a collective effort to smother it. Suppression is achieved both by neglect, and by demonizing others who report an inconvenient truth as racists, conspiracist “right-wingers,” and otherwise irredeemable.
The Hunter Biden laptop story is the locus classicus. Social media branded the authentic laptop as Russian disinformation. That was a lie. But the deception did not stop them from censoring and squashing those who reported the truth.
Instead of carefully examining the contents of the laptop or interrogating Biden-company players such as Tony Bobulinksi, the media hyped the ridiculous disinformation hoax as a mechanism for suppressing the damaging pre-election story altogether.
Joe Biden’s cognitive state was another suppression story. The media simply stifled the truth that 2020 candidate Biden was unable to conduct a normal campaign due to his frailty and non-compos-mentis status. Few fully reported his often cruel and racist outbursts of the “lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier” and “you ain’t black”/“terrorist” sort.
The #MeToo media predictably quashed the Tara Reade disclosure. In fact, journalists turned on her in the manner that they previously had insisted was sexist and defamatory “blame-the-victim” smearing.
Joe Biden has long suffered from a sick tic of creepily intruding into the private space of young women and preteen girls: blowing their hair, talking into their ears, squeezing their necks, hugging in full body embraces—all for far too long. In other words, Biden should have expected the Charlie Rose or the Donald Trump Access Hollywood media treatment. Instead, he was de facto exonerated by collective media silence. To this day, despite staffers’ efforts to corral his wandering hands and head, he occasionally reverts to form with his creepy fixations with younger women.
Ask the media today which administration surveilled journalists and they will likely cry “Trump!” Yet their own sensationalist reporting that the IRS was weaponized by Trump was proven a lie when the inspector general notedTrump never went after either James Comey or Andrew McCabe. And it was an untruth comparable to the smear that “nuclear secrets” and “nuclear codes” were hidden away at Mar-a-Lago or that Donald Trump sought to profit from the trove. Nor does anyone remember that Barack Obama went after the Associated Press reporters and Fox News Channel’s James Rosen. Nor do they care that Biden sought to birth an Orwellian Ministry of Truth censorship bureau.
