Archive for the ‘Numbskullery’
Saving Sixth Grade Music in the Anchorage School District
by Linda Kellen Biegel 2010 Hanshew Middle School Band Not many people in political circles know that I credit music with saving my life. I started playing the piano when I was six-years-old. I often kicked and screamed about practicing, but my mother was determined and I continued through my entire school career. In sixth [...]
Getting a Handel on Twitter
The only thing more humiliating than a public figure’s gargantuan screwup-by-retweet (see above) is an alert citizen grabbing a screen shot of it before the perp’s hapless attempt to scrub it. When not embarrassing herself on Twitter, Karen Handel, the now famous, Palin-endorsed former gubernatorial candidate and reactionary from Georgia, has been busy making liars [...]
The War on Alaska’s Public Schools — The Basic Outline
by Linda Kellen Biegel Last school year, I wrote a post about the proposed cuts in the Anchorage School District budget and how they would affect a family of a middle school student. It was then I became aware of the outrageous fees Mayor Dan Sullivan was charging the school district–for example: 100% of the [...]
A Fool’s Errand – Brought to You by Rep. Kyle Johansen
By Carl Johnson While preparing to head off alone into the bowels of the Death Star to disable the tractor beam holding theMillenium Falcon captive, Obi Wan Kenobi rhetorically asked of Han Solo, “Who is more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?” I think of such questions sometimes when my legislators act foolishly. [...]
APOC Ruling Assigns Large Penalty to Bob Griffin for Multiple Campaign Violations
by Linda Kellen Biegel Last week, I listened-in on an Alaska Public Offices Commission hearing regarding an old friend of ours here at Mudflats, Mr. Bob Griffin. You remember Bob: – In April 2011, he ran on his status as a veteran and a pilot in order to win a seat the Anchorage School Board [...]
Santorum Denies Saying “Black People.” Insists He Said “Blah People.”
The other day, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum was quoted singling out black people for entitlement reform by saying to an Iowa audience, “I dont want to make black people’s lives better by giving them someone else’s money.” His point was about putting people to work, rather than welfare, but the racial characterization of the problem [...]
Back to the Sidewalk — Assemblyman Traini will introduce Repeal on Tuesday
(photo courtesy of Alaska Commons)By Linda Kellen Biegel A few days ago, Jeanne recounted the tale of Anchorage City Attorney, Dennis Wheeler and his role in the Mayor’s no-lying down/no-sitting sidewalk Ordinance. If you remember, Municipal Attorney Wheeler lied used “a poor choice of words” when he claimed the ordinance had been “run by” the Alaska [...]
Clueless Racist Casey Reynolds of KFQD Speaks to Environmentalists
There are some times when you tune in to right wing radio in this town, and the jaw-dropping willful ignorance is so overwhelming, so stupefying, so abhorrent, that no commentary is necessary. There are times when all you have to do is print a little bit of transcript, and let them out themselves for who [...]
Blinky on the Warpath – Cain Goes Ballistic on Perry Campaign
It’s been a busy week for Herman “Blinky” Cain. All that dodging and deflecting, all the blinking and stuttering, doing interviews and trying to keep stories straight… grueling work, that. And now he’s added a new activity to his already busy calendar – blaming. No, he’s not blaming the women he sexually harassed (although he [...]
Governor Sean Parnell Supports Destruction of Thriving Salmon Habitat for Coal
Mudflats readers will remember coverage over the last year of the issue of the “Unsuitable Lands Petition” that Cook Inletkeeper and the Chuitna Citizens Coalition submitted to the state. Basically, what this petition did was to put forth the idea that certain areas are just plain unsuitable for coal strip mining – specifically the areas [...]
Sarah Palin and the Long, Shiny Road to Irrelevance
Sarah Palin is not running for the presidency. I’d been waiting to hear that since the day after the 2008 presidential election, which is ostensibly when she began running for the presidency. From the moment she “went rogue” on the campaign trail, calling out then-candidate Obama for “pallin’ around with terrorists,” and contemplating an unauthorized [...]
Don Young Wants to Annihilate the Last 20 Years of Federal Regulation.
Don Young… what can you say? He’s Alaska’s one and only congressman, and he’s been Alaska’s one and only congressman since 1973. That’s 38 regular years, which feels like 95 in Don Young years. He defies explanation. He’s sort of a combination of the old curmudgeon in the neighborhood that sits on the porch telling [...]
Almost a Year Later, APOC Will Render a Verdict on Rep. Bill Thomas
By Linda Kellen Biegel Mudflatters, think wayyyyyy, wayyyyyy back to October of 2010 and you might remember Representative William Thomas, Jr., a Republican legislator from the beautiful little town of Haines, Alaska. Representative Thomas is not someone who generally comes to my attention way over here in Anchorage. However, in September of 2010 while [...]
The Only Reason to Stop Pebble is to Keep Fish, Says Pebble Supporter.
Ah, Paul Jenkins. You may remember him as one of our “odd bedfellows” during the reign of Sarah Palin. Normally, wildly off the mark, Mr. Jenkins was actually spot on about Sarah, and surgically shredded her in the Anchorage Daily News on a regular basis. He did this not because he had suddenly seen the [...]
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 [...]
