Miscellaneous

In the last week the new social media site, Parler, has gone from 1 million users to 1.5 million.  I’ve just joined, and it’s easy.  Twitter has become just another propaganda tool of the Fake News.  Parler is worth checking out.

One of my favorite stories is about the kid from Alaska, who gets admitted to Harvard.  He’s walking across the yard, sees a professor and asks, “Can you tell me where the library’s at?”

The professor says, “Young man, at Harvard we don’t end our sentences with prepositions.”

So the kid responds, “O.K., can you tell me where the library’s at, asshole?”

15% of Alaska’s legislators are from rural, mostly Alaska Native districts, and are known as the Bush Caucus.  They’re mostly Alaska Natives and Democrats, but party label is meaningless to them, and many whites have played prominent roles.  They look out for their own interests, regardless of which party is in power.  Because of their flexibility, discipline and personal selflessness, Bush legislators have been in charge of the Alaska legislature since I arrived there in 1983, and long before that.  They are ruthless, relentless, and well organized.

For the last 20 years their leader in the Senate has been Lyman Hoffman of Bethel.  Hoffman was the protege of former State Senator George Hohman, who in 1981 was convicted of attempting to bribe Rep. Russ Meekins, and expelled from the senate.  Hohman returned to Bethel and continued to dominate its politics as acting city manager.  His $10,000 fine upon conviction was never paid.

In 1986 he put Lyman Hoffman into the House from Bethel, and in 1990 into the Senate.  Since 2000 Hoffman has led the Senate Bush Caucus, which has controlled the organization of the senate.  They have three votes between them.  They need eight more for a majority, and they will do whatever it takes to get them.  Given their druthers, they’d rather organize with Democrats, but Republicans will do just fine if needed.

The nominal leader of the Senate today is Kathy Giessel, but she owes her position to Lyman Hoffman.  She can’t go ahead against his wishes.  Hoffman controls the entire senate majority.

For the eight years I was in Juneau, the leader of all Bush legislators was Rep. Al Adams of Kotzebue.  I was always in the minority, but I always got along with Al.  Everybody liked Al, and respected him.  He was a very smart and genuinely nice man.

Al never drank during the session, but in 1986 at the adjournment party up on the fifth floor he got pretty wasted.  When I saw some reporters had gotten into the room I grabbed Al and took him down the fire stairs outside, and found someone to take him home.

Quite a few years later, on New Year’s Eve, Babbie and I had some drinks and appetizers with Al and his wife , when we ran into each other at the Alyeska Resort.  Al liked to tell about being on some trade delegation to China.  Everybody kept thinking he was a Chinese translator.  I think Al was close to full blood Inupiat, and he did look a bit oriental.  He really thought that was funny.

I served in the House with Lyman for four years, but never got to know him.  I don’t think he liked me, for some reason.  He never really had anything to say to me at all.  On a personal level, I got along pretty well with almost all the men and women I served with.  But not Lyman.

 

When Alaska Governor Jay Hammond created a state senate seat for me in 1982, he did one hell of a job.  It was the most Republican district in the state, with no incumbent.  This was the district that elected C. R. Lewis, a national director of the John Birch Society, to the state senate  I wasn’t much of a candidate, but I should win comfortably.

Actually, I was a terrible candidate.  I’ve never been social, more of a loner.  In Alaska Babbie and I were totally occupied with our three boys, and had no social life to speak of.  I’d been involved in a Governor’s race, and a U. S. Senate race, but I never went to meetings, of any kind.  I’d only been in the state eight years, I owned part of a bar, and had an undistinguished career as a lawyer.

My looks didn’t help.  I was a pretty big guy, and I looked like a bouncer. When I went door to door these housewives didn’t know what to make of me.  It’s like they really didn’t believe me when I said I was running for the senate.

But my buddy Bill McConkey did a TV spot of myself, Babbie, and the three boys seated at our feet.  What I said made absolutely no impression.  But my family made me look good.

I won 52-48, and began an eight year career as a state legislator.  Parts of it, I enjoyed.

I’ve been writing articles for the American Thinker for five years, and I’m a big fan of their website.  While the quality and value of the articles they post vary wildly, they do have some very talented and perceptive people who post regularly.

Jeffrey Folks is the finest writer now contributing to AT, and his “How President Trump Just Won Reelection”  is one of his best efforts.  He draws the parallel between Bush and Katrina on the one hand, and Trump and George Floyd on the other.

In both cases, the President had nothing to apologize for.  But despite being innocent of fault, the Pansy President abased himself to the mob.  Conservatives, saw, were horrified, and realized this man was weak, without courage.    His remaining time in office was without any accomplishment.  The left hated him, and the right had been abandoned by him.

Trump, on the other hand, has stood his ground, and for that he has earned the full confidence and support of the silent majority of this country.

Folks doesn’t say this, but I will.  I’m expecting a landslide.  I expect it to be similar to 1968,  when the right got 57%, and the left 43%.  The right’s 57% was split between Nixon and segregationist George Wallace, while V. P. Hubert Humphrey got all the left’s 43%.  It’s remembered as a close race, but it wasn’t, philosophically.

Then, as now, there was a silent majority.  But unlike then, now that majority has only one candidate to vote for.

Trump will win, win big, and bring in Republican majorities in both Houses.  You’d think that would mean he’d have governing congressional majorities he could rely on.  But Republican or Democrat, Congress is a swamp of corruption, bought and paid for by special interests.  Until that swamp is drained, no President, not even Donald Trump, can get the reforms this country needs.