My Twitter Feed

March 29, 2024

Headlines:

No Time for Tuckerman -

Thursday, August 3, 2023

The Quitter Returns! -

Monday, March 21, 2022

Putting the goober in gubernatorial -

Friday, January 28, 2022

Chuitna Coal – Dollars and Sense

It’s time for a little Mudflats Theatre. But this time, you get to participate in the drama! It’s kind of like an improvisation. Let’s pretend we’re doing a business deal. We sit down in a conference room overlooking majestic Cook Inlet, which borders the city of Anchorage. You arrive, we shake hands, and close the door. You’re on one side of the table, and I’m on the other. We lock eyes for a moment, and then mine dart down to a yellow legal pad in front of me, upon which numbers have been scrawled. I look back up at you…

Governor Sean Parnell: Lord of the Flaming Pants

Former director of government relations in Alaska for ConocoPhillips, Sean Parnell made an announcement on Tuesday. Some of you may know him by his other job working for the lobbying firm that represented ExxonMobil against Alaskans in the matter of a little oil spill that happened in Prince William Sound. Some of you may also know him as Captain Zero, or Caribou Ken, or SeanocoParnellips. However you know him, he also currently wears the mantle of Governor of the State of Alaska. But it’s been difficult for Sean to turn against his old bosses. He’s a loyal foot soldier, and…

Pray for Me While I Kick Some Ass – From the Cutting Room Floor of Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin

By Ken Morris and Jeanne Devon As outlined in our last piece Obsessive Perfection and Anger Mismanagement, Sarah Palin’s temperament, emotional instability, and what others suggested were psychological disorders that bordered on, or actually crossed into pathology, necessarily leads to the inescapable conclusion that she would, as Frank Bailey stated in Blind Allegiance, be a “disaster of Biblical proportions” if ever elected to high public office. According to individuals who knew her for decades, the compulsion to be perceived as perfect in both physical and intellectual terms drove Sarah Palin to “botox addiction,” bulimia, and abuse of diet pills even…

A Lawsuit in Gov. Sean Parnell’s Future? Stonewalling Angers Anti-Coal Groups.

~The mouth of the Chuit River, between Tyonek and Beluga, Alaska Remember, way back last year when I rode a bus in a snowstorm to go hear testimony in Kenai? It was all about whether to designate the land around the Chuit River “unsuitable” for coal mining. The way it stands now, PacRim Coal plans to (for the first time ever) actually dig up eleven miles of productive salmon stream for a giant open pit coal mine.  “Don’t worry,” they say. “We’ll just put it back the way it was when we’re done.” Well, it doesn’t take a biologist to…

Captain Zero Greets CPAC in Alaska

‘Tis the season! No, not the moose rut. No, not the last run of silvers. ‘Tis the season that conservatives emerge from the sea and make their landfall on the arctic shores of Alaska. We’ve talked before about the “Tea Party at Sea” ship on The Mudflats. And now, there seems to have been yet another starboard leaning vessel that has docked in Juneau. Rather than heading for the misty hills of that fair city screaming when the invaders arrived, Governor Sean “Captain Zero” Parnell did the political equivalent of throwing flowers and candy. Yes, he greeted CPAC as liberators….

Supreme Court Allows “No Pebble Mine” Initiative on Ballot

The Alaska Supreme Court yesterday delivered some much needed good news. Yesterday in a 3-1 ruling, the court upheld a previous court’s ruling that the residents of the Lake and Peninsula Borough, should be allowed to vote on a ballot initiative in October. The initiative would restrict permitting of any large extraction project that could potentially harm salmon runs. Pebble Partnership sued to keep the measure from making it on to the ballot, arguing that the law would be unenforceable, and is inappropriate for a ballot measure. They even named the clerk who certified the measure in the lawsuit. Governor…

Parnell and Pebble Try to Silence Alaskans

I will argue with people about voting. More vehemently if they don’t vote than if they vote for someone different than me. No, candidates aren’t all the same, and it’s a form of freeloading if you don’t vote. If democracy were a religion, voting would be the sacrament. Alaskans have an amazing record of being forward-thinking on who could vote. In 1912, a Tlingit, Charlie Jones, voted in Wrangell. He was assisted by Tillie Paul Tamarre, and they were both arrested. A federal court granted Alaska Natives the right to vote in territorial elections and the charges were dropped. It…

State of Alaska Supports Pebble Partnership’s Attempt to Silence Alaskans

~The original Captain Zero Before I go off on some rant about how my forefathers fought the British to birth a country that could VOTE, and how siding with the British to take away the right of Americans to vote should be called treason, I’ll take a deep breath and explain a few things. Since one has been filed on your behalf, Alaska, you may want to know what an amicus brief is. Commonly known as a “friend of the court” brief. An amicus brief provides individuals or organizations (such as government agencies or disability organizations) without a direct stake…

Parnell Smacks Down Treadwell… Battered Lt. Governor Syndrome?

It’s time for another episode of “Elephant on Elephant Violence.” Grab the popcorn Alaska progressives. In our daily slog through the muck of the state’s politics, and to take a much needed mental hiatus from frustration, let’s take our joy where we can. We hear all the time about the cycle of violence – abused children become abusers; freshman who are the victims of hazing become the senior bullies… So perhaps this syndrome extends as well to the position of Alaska Lieutenant Governor. Remember when Sarah Palin was gnashing her teeth over having to run on the ticket with Sean…

To Pray or Not to Pray…

In a political homage to Texas Governor Rick Perry, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has joined with him today, Saturday, August 6, in a day of prayer for the nation. He won’t be taking Governor Perry up on his invitation to go pray with him in Houston, but he did issue a proclamation here at home stating that Alaskans should “seek God’s face” and pray because we are at war, facing economic hardship and natural disaster. He also asks us to pray for the strength and wisdom of leaders – presumably like those who give hat tips in proclamations blurring the…