The Mudflats

DUNNNNGGGG….

Yes, I know.  I’m being juvenile.  But that joke always pops in my mind when I think of Congressman Don Young, and his delightful spooneristic nickname.  Yon Dung.   Now you know.

What makes me think of such an unpleasant person on this beautiful summer evening, while I sip fresh lemonade and contemplate how good life is? 

He’s thrown his hat back in the ring, that’s what.  Yup, he’s going for #20….his 20th term in office.  Looming indictments, $1 million plus in legal fees, having to step down from all his plum committee chairs?  Nope, doesn’t phase him a bit.  And why, oh why do Alaskans keep re-electing the most bombastic, egocentric, blowhard numbskull on the face of the Earth?  Cuz he’s our bombastic, egocentric, blowhard numbskull.

“Maybe this will put to rest some of those people that are ambitious and want to run for this seat, understanding I’m there and the people will decide whether I stay or not,” he said.

Put the people to rest?  Is he expecting his opponents to drop dead on the spot?

At least two Republicans are considering challenging Young in the party primary. State Rep. John Coghill and former Rep. Andrew Halcro, who ran for governor as an independent in 2006, both spoke with Young about their interest in the seat.

“I was trying to be straight with him, said that if I felt he was in danger of not being able to win that seat I would consider running,” said Coghill, of North Pole.

“If he felt he was in danger of not being able to win the seat?”  You’re waiting for him to step down?  Fat chance, pal.   NEXT!

Halcro said he’s considering options that include running for Congress, making another bid for governor or just supporting the best Republican candidates who run. Halcro said he’s set a personal deadline of mid-September to decide.

“I had a great conversation with Congressman Young last month and told him I was considering a run for his seat and he responded he thought I should run for governor instead,” he said.

I’ll just bet he did.

And there are no Democratic challengers yet.

Despite the fact that I’m losing count of how many times I’ve voted against him, and the thought of getting someone else in that seat is irresistably appealing, there is a bonus to the ol’ curmudgeon running for the 20th time.  Material.

And he is 76, so how many more terms can we reasonably expect to see this bolo tie wearin’, machine gun fundraisin’, finger in the chest pokin’, self-proclaimed “bitin’ mink” as our one and only member of the House of Representatives?  10?  12? 

(thwack)

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(thwack)

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(thwack)

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That was the sound of my head hitting the keyboard over…and over….

For those of you keeping up with the ‘fish story’ coming out of Emmonak, check out Kyle Hopkins’ Village blog.   Here is my ‘reduced’ version of how I imagine the scene in the governor’s spokeswoman’s office.  But do read the whole thing HERE.

Read as a monologue, with Kyle Hopkins providing the voice on the phone.

********************************************

(Sitting alone in office, the spokeswoman claps her hands together, rubbing them vigorously)

The news is good!  It’s so good they won’t dare report it!  Haha!  That CNN reporter will have egg on his face now.  : )

(spins around on swiveling office chair)

(phone rings)

Hellooo…

(phone noise like Charlie Brown’s teacher)

What?  What do you mean why do we think it’s good news?  Because it’s good, that’s why.

(Wah wah wahhh waaaaaahhhh wahhh wah)

What do you mean it isn’t good.  Nick Tucker said it was good.  Who did you ask?

(waah wah waaah waaaahhhh)

You asked Nick Tucker?

(waah waah wah)

And he said it was bad?

(Waaaaahhhhh)

And he wants us to ….what?

(Wahh wah waahhh)

He wants us to take it back?  But, that’s what John Moller said he said.

(wahh wah waaahhhh wah wahhhh)

Well, he’s out fishing, so he can’t be reached.

(wah wah wahhhh wah waaahh)

OK…..

(hangs up phone)

Crap.

***************************************************

UPDATE:

“The good news – At the Federal Subsistence meeting in Emmonak last week, Nick Tucker reported that 50 percent of the residents have met subsistence needs and other 50 percent are confident they will meet their needs.” 

So said Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow via email to ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins.

This morning, Dennis Zaki, was in Emmonak, and talked to Tucker himself.  Video will be available shortly, but here are excerpts from his interview.

Nicholas Tucker, Emmonak resident and fisherman:

When I’m talking with people I’m straight forward.  OK, I expect to say my piece, just the way things are, and I want that in return…just the way they are.  No buttering up, nothing added.  Just the truth.  Now, I did not say that.  I want a public apology and I want that taken back.  That statement was made by an Alakanuk fisherman at our meeting, and that represented Alakanuk. 

When we go up and down the village here, you don’t see the smoke houses all filled up.  That statement I believe, is understated.

I think we’ve never had this experience.  Two years in a row…no commercial fishing, and … this winter that we went through, for many of our villages…and now we’ve had this major flood that destroyed and demolished some properties, destroyed homes, damaged some homes,  and now no chinook subsistence fishing, and that piles up…and it hurts.  And I don’t know what we’re going to do for this coming winter.

I have been besieged with emails, Facebook messages, and blog comments asking for my impressions of the Vanity Fair piece that appeared today entitled “It Came from Wasilla.”

Basically, the article was a whole lot of what we already knew, skillfully brought together, and topped off with some more interesting McCain staffer revelations from the campaign trail.  I would have loved to hear more about Palin’s religious intrigue, a topic that has been discussed, but has never gotten the traction in the national media as some of her other dimensions. We may be hearing more of this, now that we know her new communications director is a Christian book author. Perhaps that explains the sudden religious lingo that has “become manifest” in the messages from the governor’s Twitter account.

Also not covered are her environmental policies, her potential ties to Pebble mine, and her abysmal track record of dealing with rural and Native issues. But an author only has so many words in which to tell his story, and Sarah Palin needs a whole book.   No, not the one she’s writing with her Christian book author ghostwriter, the other kind.   And no, the Christian book author ghostwriter for her upcoming book project is not the same Christian book author as the communications director Christian book author. It’s a different one.

But, back to the article.  Palin supporters will be screeching about the fact that dismissed ethics complaints weren’t mentioned, among other things. But while Palin and her supporters, in addition to her detractors, tend to focus on the micro-news of the day, Todd S. Purdum is able to take a step back and analyze the big picture from outside the Palin bubble. It wa a refreshing perspective of the forest, from a place that often gets caught up examining the bark.

There were several moments in the article when I found myself chuckling, or realized that my eyebrows were physically as high as they could possibly go.  Here are a few:

Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”

I’d heard that before, but I haven’t gotten tired of it yet.

There is virtually nothing about Palin’s performance in the fall campaign that should have come as a surprise to John McCain. Had he really attempted to learn something about her before the fateful day of August 29, 2008, when he announced that she was his choice for running mate, he would easily have discerned all the traits that he belatedly came to know.

THANK you.

So, of all the puzzling things that Sarah Palin told the American public last fall, perhaps the most puzzling was this: “Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”

Believe me, it is not.

That was the biggest chuckle line for me.  Not only because Palin has never really been “outside” enough to know what America is really like, and second because….believe me, it is not.

There’s a lot of good behind-the-scenes stuff from McCain insiders about the debate prep, and how one of them called her “Little Shop of Horrors.”  It was unclear if it’s the same one who called her a “whack job.”

But the part that really surprised me, and the thing that Alaska bloggers and others routinely discuss that hasn’t been discussed much out in the open is Meghan Stapleton, the spokesperson for SarahPAC.

But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser.

I like to think of Stapleton, (who has earned the monikers “Stapletongue,” “Staplegun,” and “Meg the Mouth”) as a guest at a picnic who sees an insect on the food table, and without hesitating, lets off a Banshee scream and pounds the thing into oblivion with an overhead swing of a sledgehammer.  Guests may or may not realize later, as they all pitch in to clean up the mess,  that it was a butterfly. 

So, if you haven’t done so already, pull up a seat, select your beverage and dig in to six pages of an interesting read. 

I wonder if Todd S. Purdum realizes how much email he’s going to get. 

I’ll be waiting for chapter two.

The last post got everyone pretty steamed. I know I was. Reading through the comments, I noticed that Martha UYS suggested that the governor needed to be hit with a fish. I immediately thought of this.

What you need to do is imagine that the guy on the right (who, ironically enough, I believe is Michael Palin) is the governor. John Cleese, on the left, represents the residents of the villages in Western Alaska.

Enjoy.

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