The AFL-CIO has brought in the big guns to attack U.S. Navy and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Stanley Wright, who is running for Alaska House for East Anchorage.
In the latest missile by the big union bosses, they make Wright into the architect of Anchorage’s homeless plan. This is, evidently, because Wright has been an employee of the municipality of Anchorage since May, working as a grants manager for the city’s Health Department.
“Stanley led Anchorage’s homeless response. Our neighborhood saw how that worked out,” the flyer says. It’s not only a lie, but does not even have a “whiff of truthiness” to it.
By “our neighborhood,” the AFL-CIO doesn’t mean where its elites live in Eagle River.
In fact, Wright’s career history starts with the military. During his time in the Navy, he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Wright joined the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and worked for Gov. Mike Dunleavy as a community outreach manager. As a candidate for state House District 22, he left state employment and now deals with HUD grants for the municipality — his first foray into the housing and urban development field. Meanwhile, he’s a neighborhood ally in East Anchorage, always helping people around him.
Stanley Wright, servant leader and community volunteer, serves up dinner for the Hope Center’s soup kitchen in Anchorage.
The union cover group attacking him is called Putting Alaskans First. It’s the usual suspect, the AFL-CIO, and it’s led by Joelle Hall, who is the president of the AFL-CIO in Alaska and who does not live in District 22, but rather Peters Creek.
Wright is running against Democrat Ted Eischeid, who was a teacher in Wisconsin and a planner in Palmer, Alaska, but has never served or worked in East Anchorage. Eischeid is, however, the tool of the AFL-CIO and is endorsed by the controversial Planned Parenthood.
In addition to bashing Stanley Wright, the group has poured tens of thousands of dollars into supporting union boss wife Kelly Merrick for Senate for the Eagle River area, and Democrat-friendly Cathy Giessel for Senate in South Anchorage, according to recent reports with the Alaska Public Offices Commission.
Big Union is supporting Cathy Giessel and Kelly Merrick for Alaska Senate.
In his major remarks to the Russian people on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took a new tactic. Unlike his speech of Sept. 21, when he spoke frequently about how Russia was fighting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, he has now made the argument that Ukraine is where Russia will destroy America and its colonialist ways.
The speech has marked differences from his angry approach 10 days earlier. To illustrate, Must Read Alaska put both speeches through a word picture analysis to help readers visualize the tenor and word choices of both of these major policy speeches, given just one week apart:
Word picture of Putin’s speech of Sept. 21, 2022Word picture of Putin’s speech of Sept. 29, 2022Comparison of Putin speeches given a week apart.
To be clear, the speeches were on different topics. The Sept. 21 speech was a rallying cry for Putin as he started a military conscription to bring young and old Russian men into military service, sending them to the front lines. Russians have taken heavy casualties in their war with Ukraine, and Putin was seeking to bolster support by casting Ukrainians and their president as Nazis.
His second speech, given during the annexation ceremony for portions of Ukraine he absorbed into Russia, builds on his earlier remarks, and spends many words placing judgment on the United States as a rallying cry for nations of the world to join Russia against America. Unlike his earlier speech that references “Nazi” 10 times, his second speech uses that word once, in reference to the “neo-Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.”
Shortly after his speech, however, Ukrainian forces retook the strategic city of Lyman on Saturday.
“Ukrainian Air Assault Forces are entering Lyman, Donetsk region,” Ukraine’s defense ministry reported on Twitter. The Ukrainians went on to say that Russians in the region would be redeployed to body bags or captivity.
Read the full transcript of the Putin speech below:
Dear citizens of Russia, citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, deputies of the State Duma, and senators of the Russian Federation!
As you know, referendums took place in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Their results have been summed up, the results are known. People made their choice, a clear choice.
Today we are signing agreements on the admission of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhia Region and the Kherson Region to Russia. I am sure that the Federal Assembly will support the constitutional laws on the adoption and formation in Russia of four new regions, four new subjects of the Russian Federation, because this is the will of millions of people.
[Applause]
And this, of course, is their right, their inalienable right, which is enshrined in the first article of the UN Charter, which directly speaks of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
I repeat: this is an inalienable right of people, it is based on historical unity, in the name of which the generations of our ancestors won, those who from the origins of Ancient Russia for centuries created and defended Russia. Here, in Novorossia, Rumyantsev, Suvorov and Ushakov fought, Catherine II and Potemkin founded new cities. Here our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stood to death during the Great Patriotic War.
We will always remember the heroes of the “Russian spring”, those who did not come to terms with the neo-Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died for the right to speak their native language, preserve their culture, traditions, faith, for the right to live. These are the warriors of Donbass, the martyrs of the “Odessa Khatyn”, the victims of inhuman terrorist attacks staged by the Kyiv regime. These are volunteers and militias, these are civilians, children, women, old people, Russians, Ukrainians, people of various nationalities. This is the real people’s leader of Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko, these are military commanders Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kochura and Alexei Mozgovoy, this is the prosecutor of the Luhansk Republic Sergey Gorenko. This is paratrooper Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov and all our soldiers and officers who died the death of the brave during a special military operation. They are heroes.
[Applause]
Heroes of Great Russia. And I ask you to honor their memory with a moment of silence.
[Moment of silence.]
Thank you.
Behind the choice of millions of residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions is our common destiny and a thousand-year history. This spiritual connection people passed on to their children and grandchildren. Despite all the trials, they carried through the years love for Russia. And no one can destroy this feeling in us. That is why both the older generations and the youth, those who were born after the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union, voted for our unity, for our common future.
In 1991, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, without asking the will of ordinary citizens, representatives of the then party elites decided to collapse the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland. This tore apart, dismembered our people’s community, turned into a national catastrophe. As once after the revolution the borders of the union republics were cut behind the scenes, so the last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the 1991 referendum, ruined our great country, simply confronted the peoples with a fact.
I admit that they did not even fully understand what they were doing and what consequences this would inevitably lead to in the end. But that doesn’t matter anymore. There is no Soviet Union, the past cannot be returned. Yes, and Russia today does not need it anymore, we are not striving for this. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, faith, traditions, language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single state for centuries. There is nothing stronger than the determination of these people to return to their true, historical Fatherland.
For a long eight years, people in the Donbass were subjected to genocide, shelling and blockade, and in Kherson and Zaporozhye they tried to criminally cultivate hatred for Russia, for everything Russian. Now, already during the referendums, the Kyiv regime threatened with violence, death to school teachers, women who worked in election commissions, intimidated millions of people who came to express their will with repressions. But the unbroken people of Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson had their say.
I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that everyone remembers this: people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye become our citizens forever.
We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire, all hostilities, the war that it unleashed back in 2014, and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, it has been said more than once. But we will not discuss the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson, it has been made, Russia will not betray it.
And today’s Kiev authorities should treat this free will of the people with respect, and nothing else. This is the only way to peace.
We will protect our land with all the forces and means at our disposal and will do everything to ensure the safe life of our people. This is the great liberation mission of our people.
We will definitely rebuild destroyed cities and towns, housing, schools, hospitals, theaters and museums, restore and develop industrial enterprises, factories, infrastructure, social security, pensions, healthcare and education systems.
Of course, we will work to improve the security level. Together we will make sure that citizens in the new regions feel the support of the entire people of Russia, the entire country, all the republics, all territories and regions of our vast Motherland.
Dear friends, colleagues!
Today I want to address the soldiers and officers who are participating in a special military operation, the soldiers of Donbass and Novorossia, those who, after the decree on partial mobilization, join the ranks of the Armed Forces, fulfilling their patriotic duty, who, at the call of their hearts, come to the military registration and enlistment offices. I would like to turn to their parents, wives, and children, to tell them what our people are fighting for, what enemy is opposing us, who is throwing the world into new wars and crises, deriving their bloody profit from this tragedy.
Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine – the native part of our united people – saw with their own eyes what the ruling circles of the so-called West are preparing for all mankind. Here they, in fact, just threw off their masks, showed their true insides.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West decided that the world, all of us, would forever have to put up with its dictates. Then, in 1991, the West expected that Russia would not recover from such shocks and would fall apart on its own. Yes, it almost happened – we remember the 90s, the terrible 90s, hungry, cold and hopeless. But Russia resisted, revived, strengthened, again took its rightful place in the world.
At the same time, the West has been looking all this time and continues to look for a new chance to hit us, weaken and destroy Russia, which they have always dreamed of, split our state, pit peoples against each other, doom them to poverty and extinction. They are simply haunted by the fact that there is such a great, huge country in the world with its territory, natural wealth, resources, with a people who do not know how and will never live according to someone else’s orders.
The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder the world at the expense of the power of the dollar and technological dictates, to collect real tribute from humanity, to extract the main source of unearned prosperity, the rent of the hegemon. The maintenance of this rent is their key, genuine and absolutely self-serving motive. That is why total desovereignization is in their interests. Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures, attempts to undermine international and integration processes beyond their control, new world currencies and centers of technological development. It is critical for them that all countries surrender their sovereignty to the United States.
The ruling elites of some states voluntarily agree to do this, voluntarily agree to become vassals; others are bribed, intimidated. And if it doesn’t work out, they destroy entire states, leaving behind humanitarian catastrophes, disasters, ruins, millions of ruined, mangled human destinies, terrorist enclaves, social disaster zones, protectorates, colonies and semi-colonies. They don’t care as long as they get their own benefit.
I want to emphasize once again: it is precisely in greed, in the intention to maintain its unlimited power, that there are the real reasons for the hybrid war that the “collective West” is waging against Russia. They do not wish us freedom, but they want to see us as a colony. They do not want equal cooperation, but robbery. They want to see us not as a free society, but as a crowd of soulless slaves.
For them, a direct threat is our thought and philosophy, and therefore they encroach on our philosophers. Our culture and art are a danger to them, so they are trying to ban them. Our development and prosperity is also a threat to them – competition is growing. They don’t need Russia at all, we need it.
I want to remind you that the claims to world domination in the past have been shattered more than once by the courage and steadfastness of our people. Russia will always be Russia. We will continue to defend both our values and our Motherland.
The West is counting on impunity, on getting away with everything. In fact, everything has gotten away with it so far. Agreements in the field of strategic security go to the wastebasket; agreements reached at the highest political level are declared false; firm promises not to expand NATO to the east, as soon as our former leaders bought into them, turned into a dirty deceit; treaties on anti-missile defense and intermediate- and shorter-range missiles have been unilaterally broken under far-fetched pretexts.
All we hear from all sides is that the West stands for order based on rules. Where did they come from? Who even saw these rules? Who agreed? Listen, this is just some kind of nonsense, sheer deception, double or already triple standards! It’s just designed for fools.
Russia is a great millennial power, a country-civilization, and will not live by such rigged, false rules.
It is the so-called West that has trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now, at its own discretion, decides who has the right to self-determination and who does not, who is not worthy of it. Why they decide so, who gave them such a right is not clear. To themselves.
That is why the choice of people in the Crimea, in Sevastopol, in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson causes wild anger in them. This West has no moral right to evaluate it, even to stutter about the freedom of democracy. No, and never was!
Western elites deny not only national sovereignty and international law. Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. They brazenly divide the world into their vassals, into the so-called civilized countries and into all the rest, who, according to the plan of today’s Western racists, should add to the list of barbarians and savages. False labels – “rogue country”, “authoritarian regime” – are already ready, they stigmatize entire peoples and states, and there is nothing new in this. There is nothing new in this: the Western elites are what they were, and have remained so – colonialist. They discriminate, divide peoples into the first and other grades.
We have never accepted and will never accept such political nationalism and racism. And what, if not racism, is Russophobia, which is now spreading all over the world? What, if not racism, is the peremptory conviction of the West that its civilization, neoliberal culture is an indisputable model for the whole world? “He who is not with us is against us.” It even sounds strange.
Even the repentance for their own historical crimes is being shifted by the Western elites to everyone else, demanding both the citizens of their countries and other peoples to confess for what they have nothing to do with at all, for example, for the period of colonial conquests.
It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, and then followed the global slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India, Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports for trade opium. What they did was put entire nations on drugs, purposefully exterminated entire ethnic groups for the sake of land and resources, staged a real hunt for people like animals. This is contrary to the very nature of man, truth, freedom and justice.
And we – we are proud that in the 20th century it was our country that led the anti-colonial movement, which opened up opportunities for many peoples of the world to develop in order to reduce poverty and inequality, to overcome hunger and disease.
I emphasize that one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the undisguised malice of these Western elites towards Russia is precisely that we did not allow ourselves to be robbed during the period of colonial conquests, we forced the Europeans to trade for mutual benefit. This was achieved by creating a strong centralized state in Russia, which developed and strengthened itself on the great moral values of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, on Russian culture and the Russian word open to all.
It is known that plans for interventions in Russia were repeatedly made, they tried to use the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century, and the period of upheavals after 1917 failed. The West nevertheless managed to seize the wealth of Russia at the end of the 20th century, when the state was destroyed. Then we were called both friends and partners, but in fact they treated us like a colony – trillions of dollars were siphoned out of the country under a variety of schemes. We all remember everything, we have not forgotten anything.
And these days, people in Donetsk and Luhansk, in Kherson and Zaporizhia have spoken out in favor of restoring our historical unity. Thank you!
Western countries have been repeating for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other peoples. Everything is exactly the opposite: instead of democracy – suppression and exploitation; instead of freedom – enslavement and violence. The entire unipolar world order is inherently anti-democratic and not free, it is deceitful and hypocritical through and through.
The United States is the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the way, they set a precedent.
Let me also remind you that the United States, together with the British, turned Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities into ruins without any military necessity during World War II. And this was done defiantly, without any, I repeat, military necessity. There was only one goal: just as in the case of the nuclear bombings in Japan, to intimidate both our country and the whole world.
The United States left a terrible mark on the memory of the peoples of Korea and Vietnam with barbaric “carpet” bombing, the use of napalm and chemical weapons.
Until now, they actually occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, and at the same time cynically call them equal allies. Listen, I wonder what kind of alliance is this? The whole world knows that the leaders of these countries are being watched, the first persons of these states are being installed listening devices not only in office, but also in residential premises. This is a real shame. A shame both for those who do this and for those who, like a slave, silently and meekly swallow this rudeness.
They call orders and rude, insulting shouts at the address of their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, the development of biological weapons, experiments on living people, including in Ukraine, noble medical research.
It is with their destructive policy, wars, and robbery that they provoked today’s colossal surge in migration flows. Millions of people suffer deprivation, abuse, die by the thousands, trying to get to the same Europe.
Now they are exporting bread from Ukraine. Where is he going under the pretext of “providing food security for the world’s poorest countries”? Where is it going? Everything goes to the same European countries. There, five percent only went to the poorest countries in the world. Again, another swindle and outright deception.
The American elite, in fact, uses the tragedy of these people to weaken their competitors, to destroy nation states. This also applies to Europe, this also applies to the identity of France, Italy, Spain and other countries with a long history.
Washington is demanding more and more sanctions against Russia, and most European politicians meekly agree with this. They clearly understand that the United States, pushing through the EU’s complete renunciation of Russian energy carriers and other resources, is practically leading to the de-industrialization of Europe, to completely taking over the European market – they understand everything, these elites are European, they understand everything, but prefer to serve the interests of others. This is no longer servility, but a direct betrayal of their peoples. But God bless them, that’s their business.
But sanctions are not enough for the Anglo-Saxons, they switched to sabotage – unbelievable, but true – having organized explosions on the international gas pipelines of the Nord Stream, which run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they actually began to destroy the pan-European energy infrastructure. It is clear to everyone who benefits from this. Who benefits, he did, of course.
The US dictate is based on brute force, on fist law. Sometimes beautifully wrapped, sometimes without any wrapper, but the essence is the same – fist law. Hence the deployment and maintenance of hundreds of military bases in all corners of the world, the expansion of NATO, attempts to put together new military alliances such as AUKUS and the like. Active work is also underway to create a military-political link between Washington-Seoul-Tokyo. All those states that possess or seek to possess genuine strategic sovereignty and are capable of challenging Western hegemony are automatically included in the category of enemies.
It is on these principles that the US and NATO military doctrines are built, requiring nothing less than total domination. The Western elites present their neo-colonial plans in the same hypocritical way, even with a pretense of peacefulness, they talk about some kind of containment, and such a crafty word wanders from one strategy to another, but, in fact, means only one thing: undermining any sovereign centers of development.
We have already heard about the containment of Russia, China, Iran. I believe that other countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, as well as current partners and allies of the United States, are next in line. We know that whatever they don’t like, they also impose sanctions against their allies – first against one bank, then against another; now against one company, now against another. This is the same practice, and will expand. They target everyone, including our closest neighbors – the CIS countries.
At the same time, the West has clearly and has long been wishful thinking. So, starting a sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia, they believed that they would once again be able to build the whole world on their command. But, as it turned out, such a rosy prospect excites far from everyone – perhaps complete political masochists and admirers of other non-traditional forms of international relations. Most states refuse to salute, and choose a reasonable path of cooperation with Russia.
The West clearly did not expect such disobedience from them. They just got used to acting according to a template, to take everything impudently, blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convince themselves that these methods will work forever, as if they were ossified and frozen in the past.
Such self-confidence is a direct product not only of the notorious concept of one’s own exclusivity – although this, of course, is simply surprising – but also of a real hunger for information in the West. They drowned the truth in an ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, using extremely aggressive propaganda, lying recklessly, like Goebbels. The more incredible the lie, the faster they will believe in it – that’s how they act, according to this principle.
But people cannot be fed with printed dollars and euros. It is impossible to feed with these pieces of paper, and it is impossible to heat a home with the virtual, inflated capitalization of Western social networks. All this is important, what I’m talking about, but what was just said is no less important: you can’t feed anyone with paper money – you need food, and you won’t warm anyone with these inflated capitalizations – you need energy.
Therefore, politicians in the same Europe have to convince their fellow citizens to eat less, wash less often, and dress warmer at home. And those who begin to ask fair questions “actually, why is that so?” – are immediately declared enemies, extremists and radicals. They switch arrows to Russia, they say: here, they say, who is the source of all your troubles. They lie again.
What do I want to highlight in particular? There is every reason to believe that the Western elites are not going to look for constructive ways out of the global food and energy crisis, which arose through their fault, precisely through their fault, as a result of their many years of policy long before our special military operation in Ukraine, in the Donbass. They do not intend to solve the problems of injustice and inequality. There is a fear that they are ready to use other recipes that are familiar to them.
And here it is worth recalling that the West emerged from the contradictions of the early 20th century through the First World War. The profits from World War II allowed the United States to finally overcome the consequences of the Great Depression and become the largest economy in the world, to impose on the planet the power of the dollar as a global reserve currency. And the overdue crisis of the 80s – and in the 80s of the last century the crisis also aggravated – the West largely overcame by appropriating the legacy and resources of the Soviet Union that was collapsing and collapsed in the end. It is a fact.
Now, in order to extricate themselves from yet another tangle of contradictions, they need to break Russia and other states that choose the sovereign path of development at all costs in order to plunder other people’s wealth even more and at this expense close and plug their own holes. If this does not happen, I do not rule out that they will try to completely bring the system to a collapse, on which everything can be blamed, or, God forbid, they will decide to use the well-known formula “the war will write everything off”.
Russia understands its responsibility to the world community and will do everything to bring such hotheads to their senses.
It is clear that the current neo-colonial model is ultimately doomed. But I repeat that her real owners will cling to her to the end. They simply have nothing to offer the world, except for the preservation of the same system of robberies and racketeering.
In fact, they spit on the natural right of billions of people, most of humanity, to freedom and justice, to determine their own future on their own. Now they have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family.
Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. I now want to return to what I said, I want to address all the citizens of the country – not only to those colleagues who are in the hall – to all the citizens of Russia: do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, number two, number three instead of mom and dad – have they gone made out there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different future, our own future
I repeat, the dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge for everyone. Such a complete denial of man, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom acquiring the features of a “reverse religion” [the opposite of what the religion is] – outright Satanism. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, denouncing the false prophets, says: By their fruits you shall know them. And these poisonous fruits are already obvious to people – not only in our country, in all countries, including many people in the West itself.
The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations, they are of a fundamental nature. New development centers are being formed, they represent the majority – the majority! – of the world community and are ready not only to declare their interests, but also to protect them, and see multipolarity as an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means to gain true freedom, a historical perspective, their right to independent, creative, original development, to a harmonious process.
All over the world, including in Europe and the United States, as I said, we have many like-minded people, and we feel, we see their support. A liberation, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already developing within the most diverse countries and societies. His subjectivity will only grow. It is this force that will determine the future geopolitical reality.
Dear friends!
Today we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, for diktat, despotism to remain forever in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exclusivity of anyone, on the suppression of other cultures and peoples, is inherently criminal, that we must turn this shameful page. The collapse of Western hegemony that has begun is irreversible. And I repeat again: it will not be the same as before.
The battlefield to which fate and history have called us is the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia. (Applause)
For a great historical Russia, for future generations, for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them from enslavement, from monstrous experiments that are aimed at crippling their minds and souls.
Today we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, our culture can be taken and erased from history. Today, we need the consolidation of the entire society, and such cohesion can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.
And I want to end my speech with the words of a true patriot Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin: “If I consider Russia my Motherland, then this means that I love in Russian, contemplate and think, sing and speak Russian; that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people. His spirit is my spirit; his fate is my fate; his suffering is my grief; its flowering is my joy.”
Behind these words is a great spiritual choice, which for more than a thousand years of Russian statehood was followed by many generations of our ancestors. Today we are making this choice, the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the residents of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions have made this choice. They made the choice to be with their people, to be with the Motherland, to live its destiny, to win together with it.
According to an old adage, if you stand in the middle of the road, sooner or later you’ll get run over. That’s exactly what happened when Sen. Lisa Murkowski decided to work with the radical environmentalists in the Biden administration. Murkowski helped write an “infrastructure” bill that was immediately hijacked by Biden administration extremists who are imposing smothering regulations that will likely leave Alaska without the new projects Murkowski promised.
If you call Murkowski out on this, she gets “combative,” according to the Anchorage Daily News, and it’s little wonder why. After 21 years in a Senate seat she was given by her father when he became governor, she doesn’t like to be questioned, much less criticized.
But we don’t elect monarchs, we elect public servants we expect to be effective. And the record clearly shows that on the infrastructure bill, as in many other important areas, Lisa Murkowski simply was ineffective.
Murkowski’s main error was expecting radical environmentalists to act reasonably by not blocking any new roads or bridges.
However, just a month after President Biden signed the infrastructure law, the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) published a memo ordering staff to push states to repair existing roads and bridges before considering building new ones. States are also being told that the use of infrastructure money to build bike lanes and walking paths would undergo a much easier environmental review process than roads and bridges.
The Wall Street Journal called the infrastructure package a “bait-and-switch” scheme because of the memo from FHA, the agency tasked with receiving construction proposals from states and localities. Indeed, the memo dictates that low priority will be given to projects that “add new general purpose travel lanes serving single occupancy vehicles.”
That’s as clear it can be: No new roads.
But the trouble doesn’t end there. The Biden administration’s radical environmentalists (all confirmed by Murkowski) are using the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to create new regulations to delay and block new construction projects. Sen. Dan Sullivan sounded the alarm about this on the Senate floor.
“What did they do? They made the NEPA rules much harder to actually build infrastructure, not just for oil and gas, but it targeted oil and gas. This is for all infrastructure–roads, bridges, ports, renewable projects, LNG projects, natural gas projects,” Sullivan said. “Why in the heck would we do that as a country? We just passed a big infrastructure bill with permitting reform in it, and somebody over at the White House said: ‘No, let’s make it harder.’”
Alaskans should remember all this when Murkowski visits the state to brag about the infrastructure bill she helped write. The radical environmentalists are controlling the flow of money and the things that Alaska needs will be at the bottom of the to-do list.
In fact, Murkowski has already admitted as much by co-sponsoring Sen. Sullivan’s legislation to repair the NEPA rules mess, which is a clear acknowledgement that the legislation she wrote was completely broken.
In announcing the legislative fix, Sullivan made it clear that, without it, projects in the infrastructure bill won’t be built.
“The bridges and roads, pipelines and tunnels, ports and runways that American taxpayers were promised will now suffer from an increasing regulatory quagmire,” Sullivan said.
It’s as simple as this: If the infrastructure bill Murkowski wrote were so great, she wouldn’t have co-sponsored another bill to rescue it.
But her entire re-election campaign hinges on her authorship of the infrastructure bill, so she conceals all of this from the voters. It’s yet another way she’s lying to Alaskans about her record.
Because of the bill’s $1.2 Trillion price tag, every Alaskan family is on the hook for over $2,000. Alaska is 18% of the nation’s landmass, but only 0.6% of the infrastructure funding is even “available” to Alaska, if we survive Biden’s regulatory barriers. That means we lost a proportional 17.4% of funds when language was drafted. Over 75% of the bill went towards climate change initiatives, not infrastructure, which has contributed to the crippling inflation plaguing the country.
It’s a boondoggle that’s nothing more than the Green New Deal in disguise. And Lisa Murkowski didn’t just vote for it, she wrote it.
Because the appropriations process changed a decade ago, there aren’t earmarks or dedicated funds allocated for Alaska, meaning we must compete for federal money. It doesn’t help to make funds “available” in the federal bureaucracy if Alaskans can’t find the money! When I’m in the Senate, I’ll make sure a grant writer is on staff to help Alaskans successfully access that funding.
Alaskans agree that it’s time for a change, because when Lisa Murkowski tries to be popular with Joe Biden and the D.C. insiders, , she puts Alaska right in the middle of the road. And Alaskans refuse to keep getting run over.
Kelly Tshibaka is a born-and-raised Alaskan, and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Alaska who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and the Alaska Republican Party.
While it’s not what the late Congressman Don Young would have advised, Congresswoman Mary Peltola says that for her, the Second Amendment is about food security. It’s about hunting.
That is the extent of the message. It’s not about safety. It’s not about protection. It’s about food.
The ad has Peltola doubling down on her pursuit of requiring gun safes for firearms owners, universal background checks for gun purchases, and even prohibiting some types of firearms.
That may be why Peltola has earned a “D” rating from the NRA.
In fact, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. The writers of the U.S. Constitution made firearm ownership the second right enumerated in the Bill of Rights, because it was second only to the freedom of expression, religion, and association.
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” the right reads. Some place an emphasis on “well regulated Militia,” while others emphasize “security of a free State,” and still others emphasize “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
In no instance, does the Constitution mention hunting, subsistence, or food security. And no conservative would make the argument that the Founders of the nation were thinking about hunting, rather than revolution.
Peltola’s views on gun regulation are also diametrically opposite of what the late congressman believed:
“All Second Amendment supporters will agree that firearms do not belong in the hands of violent criminals or the seriously mentally disturbed. However, instead of using tragedies to justify limiting access to firearms for all Americans, lawmakers should use them as motivation to reform the way we recognize and care for the mentally ill, in addition to protecting our citizens from radicalized terrorists,” Young said.
“Gun ownership is built into the fabric of our nation. Nearly a third of American adults own a firearm, and Alaska has the highest rate of gun ownership with 62% of adults saying they own a gun. All Alaska residents are eligible to subsistence hunt on state lands, and many Alaskans rely on gun ownership to feed their families and communities through the practice. Subsistence hunting occurs year round and is critical to rural Alaskans who rely on it for nutrition and stability. It is also central to the customs and traditions of many communities,” said Congressman Young.
“Federal law has regulated the sale and possession of firearms for decades. Several high-profile incidents of gun violence have prompted proposals to modify this framework, including by reinstituting the assault weapons ban; imposing universal background checks; and broadening restrictions on gun possession by foreign nationals, suspected terrorists, and others. Firearms restrictions, however, must comport with the requirements of the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller upheld as protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms. I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment, and will continue to fight in Congress to ensure that all Americans’ Constitutional rights are protected,” Young wrote.
A Colorado Springs man who was employed by the National Security Agency used an encrypted email account to transmit excerpts of three classified documents to someone he thought was working for an unnamed foreign government.
Jareh Sebastian Dalke, who was an Army veteran and known to speak both Spanish and Russian, sent documents he had accessed during his employment to an individual who turned out to be an FBI undercover agent. Dalke was trying to trade the information for cryptocurrency.
“To prove he had access to sensitive information, Dalke transmitted excerpts of three classified documents to the undercover FBI agent,” said a news release from the Department of Justice. “Each excerpt contained classification markings. One excerpt was classified at the Secret level, and two excerpts were classified at the Top Secret level. In return for this information, the FBI undercover agent provided the requested cryptocurrency to an address Dalke provided.”
Dalke told the undercover agent that he had taken highly sensitive information relating to foreign targeting of U.S. systems and information on U.S. cyber operations, among other topics.
“At that time, Dalke reported that he had approximately $32,809.52 in student loan debt and $50,987.34 in other non-secured debt, primarily credit card debt,” the FBI agent’s affidavit says. “At the time of the bankruptcy filing, Dalke also reported that he had approximately $8,373.12 in total assets.”
“Dalke represented to the undercover FBI agent that he was still employed by the U.S. government but said he was on a temporary assignment at a field location. Dalke requested compensation via a specific type of cryptocurrency in exchange for the information he possessed and stated that he was in financial need,” the Department of Justice said.
Dalke faces charges of the Espionage Act, which could carry a death penalty or life in prison.
The buses started leaving the Centennial Campground Saturday morning and about 60 summer campers arrived at the Sullivan Arena, where cots and totes awaited them. The summer of having fewer homeless encampments littering the city of Anchorage has ended, and Mayor Dave Bronson has reopened the Sullivan for those who want to come in from the cold. Temperatures in Anchorage are reaching the low 40s this weekend.
The municipality hoped to resettle dozens of the homeless campers today in what appears to be a smooth operation.
Mayor Bronson has been trying to complete his homelessness mitigation plan, and keep unsafe encampments from redeveloping around the greenbelts and streets of Anchorage. But the Anchorage Assembly has refused to allow the mayor to complete the hub of his plan, the navigation center, which is a one-stop shop for homeless people to access shelter, services, and a path forward for their wellbeing.
The campers, who have been spending the summer free of charge at the Centennial Campground, are those who have not found shelter on their own over summer and who will accept coming in from living outdoors. Not all of the campers will come in, as some prefer to live outdoors.
Anchorage Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar warned on his Twitter account that the mayor was about to declare a civil emergency, but it was fake news. No civil emergency was declared. Dunbar lost in his attempt to become Anchorage mayor in the 2021 election and has been nursing his political grudge ever since.
Earlier in the week, the mayor declined to open the Golden Lion Hotel for homeless shelter. The Ethan Berkowitz Administration purchased that hotel with proceeds from the sale of Municipal Light & Power, but an ordinance on the books prohibits its use. The Assembly, however, seeks to violate its own ordinance and wants the mayor to put homeless into the building, which is not occupied and needs renovation work to be habitable. Neighbors and local preschool operators object to the use of the hotel for vagrants.
A poll conducted this week by Alaska Survey Research shows that Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is in a strong position going into the Nov. 8 general election. Early voting begins on Oct. 24.
Some 49% of Alaskans surveyed last week rate Dunleavy positively; 46.5% rate him negatively. The rest said they were neutral, and only one of the 1,403 survey participants said he/she didn’t know who Dunleavy is.
The positive rating for Democrat Les Gara is 31%, and his negative rating is nearly 25%. But his biggest problem is that 23% of likely Alaska voters don’t know who he is.
Bill Walker, the former governor who left the Republican Party and became a leftist undeclared candidate many years ago, has an approval rating of 38.4% and a disapproval rating of 43%. Just 5.6% of those answering the survey didn’t know who Walker is.
Charlie Pierce, a Republican from Sterling, has a high “who” factor, with 44% not knowing who he is.
According to the survey results, Dunleavy would win the first round of ranked-choice voting with 43.6% of the vote, not enough to win outright. Democrat Les Gara gets 28.3% and Bill Walker has just 21.2%,
For the second round, Charlie Pierce would have been eliminated and the Dunleavy/Dahlstrom ticket would be the beneficiary of most of those voters, ending up with 48.2%, while Gara would tick up to 29.1%, and Walker ticks up to 22.7.
For the third round, the Walker ticket would be eliminated, and most of those votes would go to Gara, but there would not be enough for Gara to overtake Dunleavy: Dunleavy and running mate Nancy Dahlstrom would win with 53.4%, to Gara’s 46.6%.
Walker has instructed his voters to vote for the Democrat ticket second, and at least in this survey, most of them are inclined to do so. Gara voters will likely return the favor and rank Walker second on their ballot. Both Walker and Gara support abortion on demand, and they’re both supported by dark money through the Alaska Center; both have been endorsed.
Who were the people who took the survey? About 1,400 people ages 18 and above who are likely Alaska voters. The mean age was 46 years old, while the average age of Alaskans is about 34.6. In 2020, 47.2% of these survey takers voted for Donald Trump for president, and 38% voted for Joe Biden. The actual number of Alaska voters who chose Trump in 2020 was 53%, with Biden getting 43% of the vote.
The most recent polling aggregate for approval/disapproval of Biden’s performance shows that 42.3% of Alaskans approve of him, and 54.6% disapprove of him, within the margin of error range reflecting the opinions of those who took the Alaska Survey Research Survey.
Evacuating hundreds of thousands of people from an impending disaster, as occurred in South Florida during Hurricane Ian this week, is hard enough with limited evacuation routes. There’s but one road out of Key West, and it takes hours to leave the Keys and get to the mainland. The challenge becomes daunting for those who own electric cars in places like Key West, Fort Myers, Port Charlotte, and Coral Gables, Florida.
The typical range for an electric car is just 200 miles. That would get a driver from Key West as far as Fort Lauderdale or from Fort Myers to Orlando. That is, if the driver isn’t stuck idling in traffic.
Florida, home to over 21.2 million people, doesn’t yet have enough charging stations to make it practical or for a majority of its people to evacuate in electric vehicles. The problem is compounded by power outages, such as the one that took power down for 2.6 million customers during the storm; days later, the power is still out for over one million Floridians.
“The 2020 Battery Electric Vehicle lineup features all-electric ranges between 123 and 402 miles, many older models have ranges under 100, which is not as practical for long distance highway travel,” a State of Florida report noted in 2020. “Despite the travel range increases, adequate infrastructure is still an issue, especially for those with EVs that have shorter travel ranges; a problem that seriously complicates planning for an evacuation.”
The problem is illustrated by the fact that there are only three public charging stations in Cape Coral, Fla., which was under evacuation orders for Hurricane Ian, and which is home to over 200,000 Floridians. Florida has fewer than 5,700 charging stations for its electric vehicles, which total over 200,000 this year, a number that increased 56% from July 2021.
“With the threat of a hurricane, EV drivers cannot spare much time to stop and charge their vehicles. Level 1 and 2 charging stations, which take hours to fully charge an EV’s battery, are not adequate for evacuation travel. Alternatively, DCFC stations can charge many batteries to 80 percent capacity in a half hour or less. EV charging lengths vary depending on the model and charger type, but even the quickest chargers take over three times the amount of time it takes to fuel a gasoline vehicle,” according to the 2020 report from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, linked below.
To be clear, even if someone is driving a gas-powered vehicle, he may have limited range if caught in a traffic jam, and if the power is out, drivers might not be able to find a gas station that has working pumps and electronic payment systems. But typically, a small SUV can go for about 480 miles on a tank of gas, more than double the range of an electric vehicle.
The short ranges that electric cars have in Alaska is even more of a challenge, because of long distances, remote areas, and the fact that cold weather affects battery life. There are few charging stations available across the state. Anchorage has 64 charging stations, including two DC fast chargers, while Juneau has 23 charging stations.
The distance from Kenai to Anchorage is 158 miles, which means drivers need to leave the peninsula fully charged, just in case they get stuck in a traffic snarl, as often happens along the Seward Highway.
But while cold weather is one challenge, even in hot weather the range for batteries can be taxed because of the need to turn up the air conditioning in a vehicle that is idling in congested traffic, such as occurs during mass evacuations. For Floridians on Friday, the main north-south corridor of I-75 was suddenly shut down in both directions because of rising water from the Myakka River, which runs under an interstate bridge. People were stuck in their vehicles for several hours.
Mayor Dave Bronson, on advice from city attorneys, says the Golden Lion Hotel is not a legal location for a homeless shelter, and even using it for so-called “transitional housing” would need a parking variance and permitting. All of that would take time.
The city’s Department of Law released a memorandum outlining multiple challenges to using the Golden Lion, which the Anchorage Assembly has asked to be used as a homeless shelter. On Friday, the Centennial Campground was closed as a homeless encampment for the winter. Over the summer, the city allowed homeless people to live there without having to pay a fee, and brought in sanitation, safety patrols, clean up crews, and maintenance to keep the place orderly and safe. With winter coming, homeless will be sent back out to fend for themselves, unless something changes. Plans from the mayor’s office and plans from the Assembly have been in conflict for many months and are at what seems to be an impasse.
The Anchorage Assembly’s proposed use of the Golden Lion for housing, is not allowable per the Emergency Cold Weather Shelter Plan (Municipal Code 16.120)
The Golden Lion does not meet municipal zoning and building laws for the use proposed by the Anchorage Assembly.
The use proposed for the Golden Lion by the Anchorage Assembly puts the Municipality of Anchorage at risk of discrimination and violation of state and federal housing laws.
“I look forward to having further discussions with the Anchorage Assembly,” said Mayor Dave Bronson.
The Department of Law memorandum can be found at this link.
