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Alaska named by Lonely Planet among top 30 destinations for 2023

Alaska made the list. The annual “Best in Travel Destinations” includes Alaska in the top 30 places to go in 2023. Alaska was in one of the five categories listed by the publication, which called Alaska an “epic” travel experience.

“Bears larger than bison, national parks the size of nations, and glaciers bigger than other US states. The word ‘epic’ barely does Alaska justice.”

In 2022, Alaska saw about one million visitors by cruise ship, but had the capacity for more. The ships were about three-quarters full, having started from zero due to two years of Covid cancellations. The last cruise ship of the season, Norwegian Encore, returned to Seattle on Oct. 23. The next cruise ship is April 22, 2023.

Getting back to pre-pandemic levels, the cruise industry has the capacity to go beyond the 2019 level and get to 1.6 million visitors, industry sources told Must Read Alaska. Demand is high, sources said, and the market is strong. While earlier there was a high degree of uncertainty with Canada’s border being closed and with unknown variants of the Covid virus, but those uncertainties don’t seem to exist for 2023.

It’s the 18th year for the Lonely Planet’s Top 30 list, which starts with nominations from the company’s extensive community of staff, writers, bloggers, publishing partners, and others. The nominations are whittled down by its panel of travel experts to just 30 destinations.  Each is chosen for its topicality, unique experiences, ‘wow’ factor and its ongoing commitment to sustainability, community and diversity.

“Pure, raw, unforgiving and humongous in scale, Alaska is a place that arouses basic instincts and ignites what Jack London termed the ‘call of the wild.’ Yet, unlike London and his gutsy, gold-rush companions, visitors today will have a far easier time penetrating the region’s vast, feral wilderness. Indeed, one of the beauties of the 49th state is its accessibility. Few other places in the US allow you to scale an unclimbed mountain, walk where – quite possibly – no human foot has trodden before, or sally forth into a national park that gets fewer annual visitors than the International Space Station,” Lonely Planet said.

“For savvy repeat visitors, the real joys of Alaska are the ones you least expect: ginormous vegetables, epic bus rides, half-forgotten Russian cemeteries, friendly, hassle-free airports, and dive bars where no one’s rethought their hairstyle since 1984. Welcome to a state with as many offbeat attractions as off-the-beaten-track locations. Imagine a land where locals still go subsistence hunting, campers plan gold-panning expeditions in the wilderness and wi-fi is just a rumor. Pitch in with a quirky medley of contrarians, rat-race escapees, wanderers, dreamers, back-to-the-landers and Alaska Natives and discover what makes America’s biggest state tick,” the publication wrote.

Photo credit: OceanRaftAlaska.com

Alaska Permanent Fund exposure to FTX crypto meltdown was minor, but not so much for Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, and other stars

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FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange scam that was run by Sam Bankman-Fried, sucked in thousands of investors into its sub-funds. The Alaska Permanent Fund was one of them, investing in Sequoia Capital’s Global Growth Fund III, which invested a sliver of funds into FTX. The APFC investment of $200 million, however, doesn’t represent the actual exposure to FTX, which has a value now of $0.

According to sources at the Alaska Permanent Fund, the fund has an indirect exposure of just about $4 million to FTX through APFC’s private equity program. The FTX exposure represents 0.03% of the fund’s $15 billion private equity portfolio, which is a portion of the fund’s $75 billion portfolio. APFC is not a direct investor in the cryptocurrency markets, but there may be minimal indirect exposure to the FTX meltdown through other private equity external managers that the fund invests with.

In related news, a new lawsuit has been filed in Florida against FTX’s former CEO Bankman-Fried. The lawsuit names numerous celebrities who lent their names to the enterprise that now appears to have been criminal in nature. The lawsuit names comedian Larry David, Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka, the married couple Gisele Bundchen and NFL quarterback Tom Brady, NFL star Trevor Lawrence, basketball players Shaquille O’Neal, Steph Curry, Udonis Haslem, and the Golden State Warriors, baseball players Shohei Ohtani, and David Ortiz, and celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary. The celebrities are included due to their promotion of FTX across the media.

Promotion from the FTX website.

“The Deceptive FTX Platform maintained by the FTX Entities was truly a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme where the FTX Entities shuffled customer funds between their opaque affiliated entities, using new investor funds obtained through investments in the YBAs and loans to pay interest to the old ones and to attempt to maintain the appearance of liquidity,” the lawsuit reads.

“Part of the scheme employed by the FTX Entities involved utilising some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment – like these Defendants – to raise funds and drive American consumers to invest in the [yield-bearing accounts], which were offered and sold largely from the FTX Entities’ domestic base of operations here in Miami, Florida, pouring billions of dollars into the Deceptive FTX Platform to keep the whole scheme afloat.”

It’s now believed that the cryptocurrency exchange created various pass-through funds to Democratic candidates and causes, and was also allegedly helping Ukraine finance its defense against Russia’s invasion.

Among the crypto tokens sold by the exchange was one called TRUMPLOSE, another indication of what kind of political operation FTX was engaged in at the expense of investors.

“Published by the Financial Times, the balance sheet triggered disbelief and amazement in financial circles, especially after Bloomberg’s Matt Levine highlighted its many bizarre attributes. These include assets in the form of illiquid shitcoins that FTX had conjured out of thin air, including $2.2 billion of “Serum” tokens and over $600 million of “Maps” tokens, as well as $7.3 million of a mysterious illiquid asset called TRUMPLOSE. And then there is a line for $8 billion of liabilities that is described on the spreadsheet as “Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account.” Huh? I can’t begin to describe how outlandish this is in terms of standard accounting, so I will leave it to the inimitable Levine,” writes Jeff John Roberts in Fortune Crypto.

“If you try to calculate the equity of a balance sheet with an entry for HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT, Microsoft Clippy will appear before you in the flesh, bloodshot and staggering, with a knife in his little paper-clip hand, saying, ‘Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?’ You cannot apply ordinary arithmetic to numbers in a cell labeled ‘HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT.’ The result of adding or subtracting those numbers with ordinary numbers is not a number; it is prison,” Levine said.

Roberts wrote that it’s not an exaggeration to say prison may be ahead for Bankman-Fried, “as I explained earlier, these sorts of accounting shenanigans combined with knowing deception translates into federal wire fraud, which can carry a term of 20 years.”

In addition to the criminal side, “there’s the question of how the company produced such a dog’s breakfast of a balance sheet in the first place. One reason is that U.S. regulators have long refused to produce any helpful guidance for crypto accounting, which has meant professional bean counters have failed to come up with a system for integrating crypto assets into financial statements,” Roberts wrote.

Restraining order requested against co-founder of Lincoln Project, who brought Sarah Palin to national scene in 2008 and attacked Sen. Dan Sullivan in 2020

The former wife of Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt has filed for a temporary restraining order against the famous political operative who has ties to Alaska elections, court records obtained by the Daily Caller show.

Schmidt denies the report and has demanded a retraction from the news group, which reports from the conservative side.

Schmidt is furious and has several times threatened on Twitter to sue the news group over the story. The Daily Caller, in response, stands by its story in this editorial.

“In our view, ‘litigation by Twitter’ is little more than public relations. Mr. Schmidt complained that we referred to The Lincoln Project as “his” organization. While he might like everyone to forget that he was in fact a cofounder, we again as a courtesy, corrected the story to clarify that he left the organization after it was embroiled in a scandal involving homosexual harassment,” the editorial says.

Angela Schmidt, Steve Schmidt’s ex-wife requested the temporary restraining order in mid-October in a Utah state court, according to a legal history of the Schmidts’ divorce. A hearing on her filing was held on Nov. 4, according to the records obtained by the Daily Caller. The partial divorce history is at this link.

In the years before and since the restraining order was requested, Schmidt has been a regular on social media accusing Republican candidates of inappropriate gestures or behaviors. He’s now facing accusations of being a perpetrator. Schmidt is a “never-Trumper” and a “never-Sarah Palin,” although during the 2008 presidential race, he took credit for bringing Palin to the ticket with presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain.

In 2020, one of the Lincoln Project top goals was flipping the Alaska Senate seat blue and propping up candidate Al Gross, a Democrat disguised as an unaligned candidate, to beat Sen. Dan Sullivan. The main attack on Sullivan was that he wasn’t Alaskan enough, unlike the “Bear Doctor” who has once killed a bear.

The Lincoln Project spent well over $1 million that year on ads romanticizing Gross, who ran with the Alaska Democratic Party’s endorsement.

In 2022, the Lincoln Project attacked Sarah Palin in her bid for Congress. But by then, Schmidt was out of the by-then scandal-ridden Lincoln Project and was attacking Palin on his own time.

In 2018, 10 years after running McCain’s campaign into the ground, Schmidt left the Republican Party, which he called corrupt and immoral: “29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.” He became a Democrat in 2020.

Schmidt resigned from the board of the Lincoln Project in 2021 after another co-founder, John Weaver, was accused of sexually harassing young men for years.

Now, he is threatening the Daily Caller with a lawsuit for reporting on the restraining order, which appears to be in the court record in Utah and would be considered newsworthy, based on the fame and past habits Schmidt has had of attacking others for their behavior.

The Lincoln Project is a Super PAC developed by Schmidt and other former Republican political operatives, who are dedicated to opposing Donald Trump and any Republican candidate who is vulnerable. It nearly collapsed in 2021, but has been back in action during the 2022 cycle.

Trump announces, the media pounces

The ink wasn’t dried on the midterm elections when former President Donald Trump announced his intention to run for president again in 2024, setting himself up as the first major announced candidate for a presidential election that will take place in two years.

Trump officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He highlighted accomplishments of his first term, talked about inflation, the problem at the border, and the soaring cost of gas prices.

“I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again,” Trump said.

“Our country needs a truly great leader, and we need a truly great leader now. We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ We need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, can bring back our military, take care of our vets. Our vets have been abandoned!” he said. “Your country is being destroyed before your eyes. America’s comeback starts right now.”

His announcement came as no surprise, as it had been scheduled for days. He also filed his candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission.

NPR reported it with a slant against the former president, signaling its intentions to report it from a certain angle: “Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024,” the news organization wrote, inaccurately.

NBC reported in its headline, “Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election inspired an insurrection, announces third White House bid. Trump has continued to falsely assert that he won the 2020 election but that he was denied office by rampant fraud.”

NBC continued, “Donald Trump, the only president impeached twice, launched a campaign to reclaim the Oval Office on Tuesday, two years after voters ousted him and a week after they rejected his hand-picked candidates in several pivotal Senate races.” NBC neglected to point out that four of Trump’s endorsed gubernatorial candidates won, out of nine he endorsed. Nine out of 17 of his endorsed House candidates won, and six out of 11 of his endorsed Senate candidates won.

The Washington Post reported, “Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he is running again. Donald Trump, 76, refused to admit defeat in the 2020 election, was impeached twice and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations. His entry shifts the dynamics of the GOP field while increasing the likelihood that President Biden runs for reelection.”

The New York Times wrote, “Trump Announces 2024 Run, Repeating Lies and Exaggerating Record. In a rambling speech, former President Donald J. Trump said he would seek another term, ignoring Republicans’ concerns that he was to blame for the party’s weak midterm showing.”

MSNBC wrote, “Trump’s secret 2024 weapon? He’s ready to burn it all down. Republicans say they’re done with Trump. But Trump is running for president again — and he definitely isn’t done with them.”

In the Los Angeles Times, editorial writers opined, “Don’t misunderstand what Donald Trump means when he says he’s running for president again, as he did Tuesday evening. He doesn’t mean that he will present his case to the American people in 2024 in the expectation that a majority of them will choose him, as they have never done before — not in 2016, when he lost the popular vote but won the electoral college, nor in 2020, when he lost both.

“He doesn’t mean that he puts his faith in American democracy, election integrity, the laws of presidential succession or any other institution that is coterminous with the nation itself. He doesn’t mean he plans to abide by any of those things.

“The ex-president has demonstrated unmistakably that he intends to take the office by hook or by crook, by denying the validity of any vote against him, by lying to his armed and angry rabble, by pressuring state election officials, state legislatures and federal courts to lie, cheat and otherwise betray the American people and their democracy.”

President Joe Biden agreed with the mainstream media and said Trump had the worst record of any president as his campaign account took to Twitter to bash his predecessor:

Update: Gov. Dunleavy holding at over 51% of the vote, remains top vote-getter in 2022 election

More ballots have been counted by the Division of Elections on Tuesday, including many from the Fairbanks region.

Some 3,789 ballots were counted in the latest release of data. More early and absentee results are expected later today from Region 2, Anchorage and possibly elsewhere around the state.

There are 245,013 votes counted so far in the Nov. 8 election.

These results were updated after 6 pm.

Senate race:

  • Kelly Tshibaka: 103,972, 43.34%. On election night she was at 44.84%
  • Lisa Murkowski: 103,407, 41.11%. On election night she was at 42.13%
  • Pat Chesbro: 24,013, 10.01%. On election night she was at 9.67%
  • Buzz Kelley: 6,880, 2.87%. On election night, he was at 2.88%

In the Senate race, it becomes increasingly clear that a majority of registered Democrats voted for Sen. Lisa Murkowski first. There are but 77,000 registered Democrats in the state, and with a current turnout in this election of 36.83%, only 20,864 Democrats voted for the Democrat candidate.

Congressional race:

  • Mary Peltola: 116,322, 47.40%. On election night she was at 48.13%
  • Sarah Palin: 63,025, 26.08%. On election night she was at 26.77%
  • Nick Begich: 57,437, 23.76%. On election night he was at 24.56%
  • Chris Bye: 4,114, 1.70%. On election night he was at 1.75%

It is possible that Peltola will reach the 50%+1 threshold to avoid the ranked-choice reshuffle of votes, and if every Begich voter marked Palin second, it is also possible for her to reach 50%+1.

It’s increasingly clear that in addition to Democrat votes, Peltola swept up the nonpartisan and undeclared votes, and may have even gotten some Republican voters to mark her first.

Governors race:

  • Dunleavy/Dahlstrom: 123,479, 51.04%. On election night, they were at 51.73%
  • Gara/Cook: 57,609, 23.81%. On election night they were at 23.34%
  • Walker/Drygas: 49,398, 20.42%. On election night they were at 20.18%
  • Pierce/Grunwald: 10,789, 4.46%. On election night they were at 4.54%

Gov. Dunleavy and Nancy Dahlstrom are reigning as the top vote-getters in this election, and at 123,479 has almost 6% more votes received than the next candidate, which was Congresswoman Mary Peltola, who received 116,322 votes (so far).

In 2018, Dunleavy won with 51.4% of the vote, and he is holding slightly below that number this time, and may avoid going through the ranked choice system.

In Senate Seat P, Sen. Scott Kawasaki has made it past the 50%+1 threshold and now has 50.87%. If it holds, he will not have to go through the ranked-choice process.

Kevin McCarthy nominated House Republican leader, but will GOP members unify behind him?

In a secret ballot among Republican U.S. House members, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Calif. has overwhelmingly won the Republican nomination for speaker, according to those who were in the room and spoke anonymously. But he was not without challenges from the right wing of the Republican Party and he has yet to secure the speaker’s job; that vote will be taken in January on the floor of the House.

McCarthy, a fourth-generation resident of Kern County and son of a firefighter, won 188-31 against a challenge from Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona. When the House gavels in in January, McCarthy will need almost all Republican votes to become speaker, and it’s unclear if the right wing Freedom Caucus members will cooperate, or hand the gavel back to Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Biggs, a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said on Monday that he would run against McCarthy, but admitted his chances of winning were “tough.” And even some Freedom Caucus members recognized the danger of splintering.

“If we don’t unify behind Kevin McCarthy, we’re opening up the door for the Democrats to be able to recruit some of our Republicans,” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told reporters.

Other House Republican roles that were voted on include Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who was elected without opposition to become House majority leader. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota beat two challengers to be the House majority whip.

With several races around the country still uncalled, Republicans are on the verge of taking 218 seats. Democrats have 205 seats, and about 12 are still not called, including Alaska’s House seat, which appears to be going to the Democrats and will likely be in the minority for the next two years.

In the Senate, Alaska will also be in the minority due to the 51 seats won by Democrats this cycle.

Republicans will have to count on no defections to the Democrat caucus and no splintering by the Freedom Caucus in order to keep the House.

Scott Myers files for Chugiak Eagle River seat on Assembly, Chris Constant files for his seat downtown

A realtor from Eagle River has filed a letter of intent with Alaska Public Offices Commission to run for the seat being vacated by Anchorage Assemblywoman Jamie Allard, who has won her election to the legislature by a landslide.

In 2015, Myers (pictured above) was named 30 Under 30 by REALTOR® Magazine and in 2016 he was featured on the cover of Top Agent Magazine. He’s the president of the South Fork Community Council, and the Board of Equalization, and the Zoning Examiner Board of Appeals. He is a former board member for the Eagle River Chamber of Commerce, and was president of the Anchorage Board of Realtors and Realtor of the year in 2018.

Allard’s is one of six seats that will be on the March-April ballot.

Also filing a letter of intent for the coming cycle is Assemblyman Chris Constant, who represents the downtown area of Anchorage. Constant is currently the vice chair of the Anchorage Assembly.

Dayton Ikaika Keliikipi Jr. has filed a letter of intent for the District 4 seat on the Assembly. It’s now represented by Felix Rivera, who has also filed for reelection after surviving a recall attempt in 2021. If elected, Keliikipi, who has lived in Anchorage since 2000 and is a military veteran, would be the first Native Hawaiian elected to the Anchorage Assembly.

Also on the ballot this coming March-April is the seat being vacated by Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar, who is going to the Alaska Senate after winning on Nov. 8. Pete Peterson’s seat representing East Anchorage is up as well, as he is term-limited.

Assemblywoman Austin Quinn-Davidson, who serves for west Anchorage, has said she will not run for reelection.

The Anchorage municipal elections begin March 14, with the filing period at the Clerk’s office opens Jan. 13, and closes Jan. 27. Anchorage has all-mail elections and ballots must be postmarked no later than Tuesday, April 4, 2023.

Canadian teacher will be allowed to continue wear oversized prosthetic breasts with big nipples to school

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A high school teacher in an Ontario, Canada suburb will be allowed to continue wearing large prosthetic breasts to Oakville Trafalgar High School, where the transgender male to female teaches shop class. The large plastic breasts have nipples that protrude through the man teacher’s thin shirts, and have brought the school district unwanted international attention.

The Halton District School Board conducted a review of a proposed dress code at the request of concerned citizens and has determined that implementing any dress code would bring legal problems to the district.

The teacher at Trafalgar High School walks to school in his fetish attire.

“While the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has acknowledged the ability of an employer to establish dress and grooming standards for the purposes of professional business, and health and safety reasons, the Tribunal has likewise acknowledged that an employer cannot establish standards which, in their application or administration, result in differential treatment on the basis of a protected ground,” Superintendent Sari Taha and Director of Education Curtis Ennis wrote. They said a dress code could be interpreted as discriminatory.

“The Board has requested that the Director of Education provide information on the potential implications which may arise from a decision to implement a staff dress code. It is clear from the above analysis that the implementation of a formal staff dress code or grooming standards would likely expose the board to considerable liability.”

“Similarly, it is important to recognize the impact that dress code policies can have on members of the transgender community,” the administrators wrote, indicating that there is some separate community for transgenders that others don’t have membership in. “Most notably, it is important for employers to make allowances to ensure that these employees are able to express themselves in accordance with their lived gender.”

The teacher’s choice of provocative clothing came to light only after students started posting pictures of the teacher on social media. Those photos went viral on Twitter.

NEA teachers union says on Twitter: ‘Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need…’

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The National Education Association wrote this weekend that teachers know better any anyone what students need.

“Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and to thrive,” read the message from the official Twitter account of the NEA.

There were over 5,000 comments responding to that tweet. Most of them were not playing along with the NEA.

Libs of TikTok, an account that makes fun of liberals, wrote, “Is this an ad for school choice?”

“Nope. Get your kids out of government schools ASAP,” wrote one account.

“‘Better than anyone’? That’s rich,” said another.

“Increasingly educators seem to know better than no one,” wrote yet another. 

“Then why haven’t they been thriving in the last 25 years? Because we’re always at the bottom of the barrel world wide yet we spend millions and millions of $. I think parents need to start following the $$$,” a parent commented.

Some teachers defended the comment and said teachers really do know best.

“Professional educators have done the studying. We’ve done the research, and continue to do so, and as a result we have the subject-matter expertise. Thank you for your support. It *is* a rich skill set, and far too few respect how valuable it is,” wrote one math teacher, who has his pronouns in his Twitter bio.

But others told the NEA it was way out of its lane.

They included former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who chimed in: “You misspelled parents.”

Others dropped some expletives on the teachers union. There were lots of F-bombs by the end of the weekend.

“So gross. You’re with my kid for one year. I’m with him from the day he is born until the day I die. Stop trying to do my job. Start doing yours,” a parent responded, echoing the sentiments of evidently thousands.

NEA-Alaska has 12,000 members in 213 of Alaska’s 229 communities, and is one of the most powerful political forces in the Alaska, where students are performing at the bottom of the pack nationwide.