No men are better at being repressed, closeted homosexuals than prominent Republicans and their, ahem, supporters. In the wake of Sarah Palin's pronouncement earlier in the week, on Sean Hannity's radio program, that Vanity Fair author Michael Joseph Gross, is "impotent, limp and gutless," a number of Republican males may have subliminally reacted to her challenge, showing their manliness in declarations of love for other guys. Here's CNN conservative commentator, Erick Erickson, professing his undying love for Teabagger, Joe Miller:

I so totally have a man-crush on this dude. He calls the Democrats ’socialists’, says Barack Obama is ‘bad for America’, and wants to privatize social security.



OK, Erick.

White supremacist and Teabagger lover John Stacy McCain has a man crush on Todd. His web site is sporting a picture of the guy on one of Todd's rods, the one embellished with "Mystik" stickers, not the one Todd prefers, the hotter rod, with "Woodys" stickers.

And who is this guy, hanging out with and bragging about his "relationship" with the First Dud? Here's Max Blumenthal on McCain, back in 2009:

So who is [John Stacy] McCain?

A former staffer for the conservative Washington Times, McCain has managed to become a player on the far right fringe, stirring controversy almost everywhere he goes. McCain was recruited to the Times in 1997 from a small paper in rural Georgia by former Times managing editor Fran Coombs. Under the watch of Coombs and editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden, both Southern conservatives with connections to white nationalist groups, McCain turned the Times’ “Culture Briefs” section into a bulletin board for the racist right, promoting articles from racist publications like the Occidental Quarterly and the Virginia-based neo-Nazi leader Bill White, who has described McCain as a friend. McCain was himself a member of the neo-Confederate group, the League of the South, which favors a “second secession” from the United States and has been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In his spare time, McCain busied himself by ranting about interracial marriage on an online message board. "[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion,” McCain wrote. “The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM [caps in original], no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us."

According to former Washington Times reporter George Archibald, during a discussion in the newsroom about civil rights in August 2002, McCain rose from his desk to defend slavery as “good for the blacks and good for property owners.” “He is just a complete animalistic racist,” Archibald told me. Marlene Johnson, the Times’ former arts section editor and an African-American, told me McCain was “an avowed segregationist.”

When I began reporting on McCain’s racial exploits for an article for The Nation, which was published on September 20, 2006, I began receiving unsolicited late night phone calls from McCain. In one such call, McCain refused to respond to the allegations leveled by his colleagues. Instead, he insisted I come to the Raven Grill, a dive bar in Washington DC’s Mount Pleasant section, to meet him and someone named “Carlos.” I simply repeated my request for a response to the charges. McCain again refused. Finally, the bizarre phone calls stopped.

That's the guy hanging out with Todd and Sarah in Wasilla this week.

Don't you love the CNN headline playing while Erickson is hoping he can French kiss Joe the Teabagger ASAP?

TEA PARTY BEATS THE ESTABLISHMENT

A note: I'm not beating on these guys over whether or not they're gay. It is a pity, though, that so many of the prominent GOP figures who have either come out on their own, or were busted, have done everything possible to make the lives of anyone in the LBGTQ community as miserable as possible.

Staff

My first question for a panelist or Scott McAdams to ask might be this:

Judge Miller, when you tweeted "What's the difference between selling out your party's values and the oldest profession?" were you referring to Sen. Murkowski or to the Alaska Libertarian Party?

What would be your first question?

Update: Title of post changed after publication of story revealing that 162 city executives would get a three percent pay raise.

These are the type of stories that can drive otherwise perfectly sane Republicans straight into the arms of the Democratic Party, such as what happened in November 2008 when by a world-class fluke, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. To help resolve a prospective $18 million municipal budget gap, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan is calling on the public sector unions to make a fresh round of concessions in wages and/or benefits, otherwise the alternative will be to hike property taxes. But he's also calling for pay raises for 162 city executives, a decision that the Anchorage Daily News now claims will cost the city $456,260 in 2011. Media stories by the Anchorage Daily News and KTVA Channel 11. An updated ADN story reports that 162 executives will be affected.

It should be noted that current Senator Mark Begich, when he was mayor, set this entire chain of events in motion by giving the unions sweetheart deals.

Mayor Sullivan made his proposal in preparation for the municipal budget to be submitted to the Assembly on October 1st. Sullivan is proposing that the unions agree to either reduce their work weeks from 40 hours to 37.5 hours for less pay to give up performance incentive pay, or even forgo contractually-embedded pay raises. And there is legitimate wiggle room for the unions. As Dan Fagan points out in The Alaska Standard, city workers are clearly overpaid and overbenefited when compared to many private sector workers. For example, APD officer Thomas Gaulke has earned $265,190.87 in salary and benefits (much of it undoubtedly in overtime pay). IBEW union member Robert Reese, who works for the city-owned Municipal Light & Power, is paid $210,639.38 in total compensation. Fagan claims that while the average Anchorage private sector worker earns $48,087 a year, the average full-time city employee costs taxpayers $118,065 every year.

Yeah, I'd say there's a HELL OF A LOT of wiggle room for the unions to make concessions.

But then Dan Sullivan knocks the wind out of his own sails by proposing that city executives get a three-percent pay increase. Wait a minute...we're getting ready to ask labor to make concessions, but then offer pay raises to management? What gives here? To be fair, here's the full explanation published by mayoral spokeswoman Sarah Erkmann:

Upon my coming into office, executives took immediate five percent, across-the-board salary reductions. Since that time, they have worked diligently to find efficiencies and savings within their respective departments. Many have done so successfully. It is only fair to allow them to recoup a portion of their initial salary losses with this modest three-percent increase. This is possible only because of the savings that executives have found within their existing 2010 budgets; no new funds are available, and costs will be absorbed within their existing budgets. In examining department expenditures to date, all budgets are being managed so that this increase will be covered. I believe in performance-based recognition, and that is exactly what these increases represent. It is worth pointing out that these same executives remain at a deficit from where they started since taking their initial salary cuts, while many other municipal employees have received much larger increases during that same time period, mostly due to contractual obligations.

O.K., there's some logic there. The executives took a five-percent cut, performed better than expected, so now Sullivan wants to give them back part of that cut. But you don't propose pay raises for executives at the same time as you ask labor to take cuts. You share the sacrifice.

Anchorage Assembly Chairman Dick Traini, who occupies the same part of the political spectrum as Lisa Murkowski, is scratching his head over the deal. "I just find it odd timing when we are telling unions, that have binding labor contracts with the city, this summer their employees may be laid off [and] that we are going to [give] pay increase[s] to the executive staff doesn't make a lot of sense," said Traini. Even the conservative Anchorage Daily Planet now questions this move, saying "If the city is at least $18 million in the hole, and the administration is about to ask workers to reduce their hours to make ends meet, why is anybody in city government - union or executive - getting a raise?"

Traini's right -- it doesn't make sense. But it's a continuation of the "celebrity economy" we've run for over 20 years. The application of prosperity theology to the economy has destroyed the once-careful balance that existed between Wall Street and Main Street, which afforded prosperity to the maximum number of Americans. Fifty years ago, an American with limited formal education and without reams of identity documentation could walk into a plant, get an AFFORDABLE job, and proudly call himself a worker, not only paying his own way, but accruing savings as well. Those days are gone, buddy, thanks to outsourcing and international labor arbitrage. That economy has become grossly distorted in favor of Wall Street, which demands we subsidize success, and which has encouraged illegal aliens to flood our country, driving down the value and compensation of jobs. We saw CEOs get million-dollar performance bonuses for laying off thousands of workers in one fell swoop. Republicans promoted this activity, and what did the Democrats offer in response? Affirmative action programs and the creation of protected classes out of every American who wasn't a White male. Democrats for the most part promoted polarization and division.

These are NOT conservative values, people. Plutocracy is NOT a conservative value. Lisa Murkowski didn't understand this, voted for TARP, and it cost her. Dan Sullivan needs to reconsider his proposal for executive raises, and to abandon it. Let the sacrifice be shared.

These are the type of stories that can drive otherwise perfectly sane Republicans straight into the arms of the Democratic Party, such as what happened in November 2008 when by a world-class fluke, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. To help resolve a prospective $18 million municipal budget gap, Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan is calling on the public sector unions to make a fresh round of concessions in wages and/or benefits, otherwise the alternative will be to hike property taxes. But he's also calling for pay raises for city executives. Media stories by the Anchorage Daily News and KTVA Channel 11.

It should be noted that current Senator Mark Begich, when he was mayor, set this entire chain of events in motion by giving the unions sweetheart deals.

Mayor Sullivan made his proposal in preparation for the municipal budget to be submitted to the Assembly on October 1st. Sullivan is proposing that the unions agree to either reduce their work weeks from 40 hours to 37.5 hours for less pay to give up performance incentive pay, or even forgo contractually-embedded pay raises. And there is legitimate wiggle room for the unions. As Dan Fagan points out in The Alaska Standard, city workers are clearly overpaid and overbenefited when compared to many private sector workers. For example, APD officer Thomas Gaulke has earned $265,190.87 in salary and benefits (much of it undoubtedly in overtime pay). IBEW union member Robert Reese, who works for the city-owned Municipal Light & Power, is paid $210,639.38 in total compensation. Fagan claims that while the average Anchorage private sector worker earns $48,087 a year, the average full-time city employee costs taxpayers $118,065 every year.

Yeah, I'd say there's a HELL OF A LOT of wiggle room for the unions to make concessions.

But then Dan Sullivan knocks the wind out of his own sails by proposing that city executives get a three-percent pay increase. Wait a minute...we're getting ready to ask labor to make concessions, but then offer pay raises to management? What gives here? To be fair, here's the full explanation published by mayoral spokeswoman Sarah Erkmann:

Upon my coming into office, executives took immediate five percent, across-the-board salary reductions. Since that time, they have worked diligently to find efficiencies and savings within their respective departments. Many have done so successfully. It is only fair to allow them to recoup a portion of their initial salary losses with this modest three-percent increase. This is possible only because of the savings that executives have found within their existing 2010 budgets; no new funds are available, and costs will be absorbed within their existing budgets. In examining department expenditures to date, all budgets are being managed so that this increase will be covered. I believe in performance-based recognition, and that is exactly what these increases represent. It is worth pointing out that these same executives remain at a deficit from where they started since taking their initial salary cuts, while many other municipal employees have received much larger increases during that same time period, mostly due to contractual obligations.

O.K., there's some logic there. The executives took a five-percent cut, performed better than expected, so now Sullivan wants to give them back part of that cut. But you don't propose pay raises for executives at the same time as you ask labor to take cuts. You share the sacrifice.

Anchorage Assembly Chairman Dick Traini, who occupies the same part of the political spectrum as Lisa Murkowski, is scratching his head over the deal. "I just find it odd timing when we are telling unions, that have binding labor contracts with the city, this summer their employees may be laid off [and] that we are going to [give] pay increase[s] to the executive staff doesn't make a lot of sense," said Traini.

Traini's right -- it doesn't make sense. But it's a continuation of the "celebrity economy" we've run for over 20 years. The application of prosperity theology to the economy has destroyed the once-careful balance that existed between Wall Street and Main Street, which afforded prosperity to the maximum number of Americans. Fifty years ago, an American with limited formal education and without reams of identity documentation could walk into a plant, get an AFFORDABLE job, and proudly call himself a worker, not only paying his own way, but accruing savings as well. Those days are gone, buddy, thanks to outsourcing and international labor arbitrage. That economy has become grossly distorted in favor of Wall Street, which demands we subsidize success, and which has encouraged illegal aliens to flood our country, driving down the value and compensation of jobs. We saw CEOs get million-dollar performance bonuses for laying off thousands of workers in one fell swoop. Republicans promoted this activity, and what did the Democrats offer in response? Affirmative action programs and the creation of protected classes out of every American who wasn't a White male. Democrats for the most part promoted polarization and division.

These are NOT conservative values, people. Plutocracy is NOT a conservative value. Lisa Murkowski didn't understand this, voted for TARP, and it cost her. Dan Sullivan needs to reconsider his proposal for executive raises, and to abandon it. Let the sacrifice be shared.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's defeat in last week's Republican primary ends a 30-year-reign of Murkowskis in Alaska politics and political experts say it will weaken Alaska's political clout in Washington, D.C.

A judge in Sitka has dismissed subsistence fishing violation charges against Alaska state Sen. Albert Kookesh and three others.

September 2, 2010: Dittman research has just released their latest poll surveying Alaskans willingness to vote for Lisa Murkowski in the November General Election, if she chooses to run.

He’s back to kick off another year of breakfast forums…

join the Alliance on Sept. 9 for

Staff

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dan Fagan

By Dan Fagan 
Publisher 
The Alaska Standard 

We are now beginning to learn just how devastating former Mayor Mark Begich’s sweetheart union contracts will affect city services and taxpayers in the coming years. Remember the city attorney found Begich broke the city charter when he deceived the Anchorage Assembly and the public about city finances so he could push through union contracts before leaving office.

Two of the contracts still had a year left on them but Begich knew union bosses would not be able to sit on both sides of the negotiating table once Dan Sullivan took office. Now Mayor Sullivan is facing a $25 million deficit unless he dramatically raises taxes on homeowners.

It gets worse. Even if the mayor raises property taxes 3 percent, an amount that would hurt most families in this stagnant economy with few private sector pay raises, the city’s deficit for this year would still be $18 million.

Remember Mr. Sullivan was already forced to cut $20 million in spending his first year in office.

The problem for Mayor Sullivan is the majority of the city’s budget is locked in because of the Begich union contracts. And what sweetheart deals they are.

You won’t read in the Anchorage Daily News just how high city salaries have become. The city now pays patrol officer Thomas Gaulke $265,190.87 in salary and benefits. IBEW union member Robert Reese working for the city owned MLP is paid $210,639.38 in total compensation. And you won’t find on the opinion section or the news section of the Daily News that the fire fighters union is on the let’s soak Anchorage homeowners act too. Taxpayers kick in $194,727.38 to employee fire engine engineer Joseph Hall. 

You say surely these city union employees must be the exception. It is true they are on the high end but you would be hard pressed to find too many city employees making low end salaries. In fact the average full time city employee costs taxpayers $118,065 every year.

How does that compare to the private sector? According to the Alaska Department of Labor in 2009, the average Anchorage worker in the private sector earns $48,087 a year. Of course unlike the government sector, these private sector employees face the possibility of being fired if they don’t perform. And unlike the government sector, private sector employees don’t automatically get big raises every year just for showing up for work. They have to earn pay raises and if times are tough they may still not get a pay increase.

Yes it is a good gig if you can get it. Working for government and having the unions buy politicians like Mark Begich and Elvi Grey Jackson and then have those politicians soak the taxpayers to pay for raises the city can’t afford.

But one union boss doesn’t seem to think so. Former firefighter union boss Tom Wescott who negotiated the recent contract with Begich, or should I say with himself, called my show this week to downplay the impact of the recent firefighter contract.

Wescott claimed Anchorage is the lowest taxed city in the nation. Does he really not realize the burden Anchorage families face with some of the highest property taxes in the nation? Oh by the way, union boss Wescott cost those under burdened Anchorage taxpayers $153,780.92 last year in salary and benefits.

There is more to the devastation caused by the Begich union contracts than just salary and benefits. The work rules these contracts employee greatly stifle productivity and some of the non-compete clauses drive up considerably the cost of doing city business.

We will never fully know the overall cost now U.S. Senator Mark Begich caused to the city by allowing union bosses to sit on both sides of the negotiating table. Fortunately for Begich, he’s off to D.C. to spend other people’s money on a federal level. And he left Mayor Dan Sullivan to clean up his mess in Anchorage. Who will clean up Obama and Begich’s mess left behind in Washington D. C.?  

You picked ‘em… the best of Anchorage

Alaska State representative David Guttenberg (D- 8th District) beat teabagger Joe Miller in 2004. Here's a bit of his advice to Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, who is tightening the race against Miller:

I beat this fool when he ran against me in 2004. Miller speaks drivel.

He clearly cares nothing about the lives of Alaskans just about this constitutional double talk. If I was a Tea Party supporter, I would worry about this guy being my champion. I believe he is a career wanna-be big high mucky muck, who wants to be in charge of your life.

That precious advice is from Guttenberg's facebook page, quoted at the Alaska blog, The Mudflats, with Guttenberg's permission.

Miller, who spent about $600,000.00 of Koch Industries-linked funds in his barely successful run against incumbent GOP U.S. senator Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary, is poised to take in more money from powerful, behind-the-scene out-of-state interests who could give a rat's ass about the average Alaskan or about anything other than ripping us off up here. Some of us are closely scrutinizing the Alaska media for evidence of shilling for Joe the Teabagger. As if all the free publicity Miller is getting from FOX News and Newscorp isn't enough already, eh?

Meanwhile, progressive moderate Scott McAdams has been spending a lot of time reaching out to individual Alaskans, and raising a lot of money from middle class and blue-collar donors, at his campaign site, campaign HQ and on the web, at Act Blue.

Wednesday, McAdams probably set a record for the most money raised in small amounts on the web in a single day for an Alaskan running for statewide office. Yesterday morning, Scott's Act Blue page had taken in about $55,000 since it was created in late June. Right now, less than 24 hours later, it is at $97,865, with 1,010 supporters. Over $40,000.00 in less than a day!

The announcement yesterday by the Rasmussen polling group that they had changed this race from "Solid Republican to Leans Republican" may have been the impetus for some of this surge. Just as important, though, is the growing perception that Miller, to re-quote David Guttenberg, "is a career wanna-be big high mucky muck, who wants to be in charge of your life."

Folks, the Scott McAdams campaign is where we turn back the shadily-funded Tea Bag Express. McAdams is aiming very accurately at the very large majority of Alaska voters who are not affiliated with a political party, and to whom sanity still means something. In the same poll referenced above, Rasmussen notes that, even with few Alaskans yet knowing much about Scott, they are favoring him over the Joe the Teabagger by 22%. If that remains and the non-affiliated are motivated to vote on November 2nd, McAdams is the next U.S. senator from Alaska, and is the biggest upset of the 2010 election.

Think about that.

You picked ‘em… the best of Anchorage

Guest op-ed by Christopher Constant I watched a woman die today in Earl & Muriel King Park. She is the second woman to die in this South Addition Community Council park in 12 months. It’s the first time I ever witnessed with my own eyes the heroic men and women of Anchorage Emergency Medical Services (EMS) struggle to revive a person and ultimately declare her dead. They drew the white sheet over her head with devastating finality. When I arrived at the park I bumped into Tana Stone and her dog Freestyle. They are the most frequent users of that park that I know.

Sidney Hill, the 52-year-old man known around Palmer as “Impeach Obama Guy,” was not the only person in Magistrate Craig Condie’s courtroom last Friday with a stubborn insistence that when it comes to free speech, society must yield to the speaker.

As I write this, the Division of Elections is still finishing its absentee and questioned ballot count in the Joe Miller/Lisa Murkowski Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate. But Tuesday night, Lisa Murkowski conceded defeat.

Joe Miller hasn't got long to bask in the success of his takedown of incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski. A Rasmussen poll just released on September 1st, 2010 shows that Democratic challenger Scott McAdams is well within striking distance. This follows closely in the wake of a Public Policy Polling poll which showed Miller leading McAdams by only 8 percentage points.

Rasmussen's survey of 500 Likely Voters in Alaska was conducted on August 31st, 2010, just hours after Murkowski conceded.

-- Joe Miller: 50 percent
-- Scott McAdams: 44 percent
-- Some other candidate: 4 percent
-- Undecided: 2 percent

This is only a 6-point lead despite the fact that Joe Miller has received far more media exposure than Scott McAdams. It explains why Rasmussen has moved the Alaska U.S. Senate race from Solid Republican to Leans Republican in their Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Rankings. Other findings of concern:

-- Joe Miller is viewed Very Unfavorably by 33 percent, while Scott McAdams is viewed Very Unfavorably by only 18 percent. On the other hand, more people view Miller Very Favorably than McAdams. These results might well reflect that fact that Miller's greater publicity means more people have formed hardened opinions about him one way or another.

-- McAdams has stronger support among Democrats than Miller does among Republicans. Although 90 percent of Democrats back McAdams, only 79 percent of Republicans support Miller. In addition, McAdams holds a 22-point lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party.

Scott McAdams is not letting any grass grow under his feet, either. On September 1st, he made his cherry appearance on a national pundit show, subjecting himself to an inquisition by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (the video is accessible HERE). Some of McAdams' liberal supporters weighed in on Mudflats; while one person said McAdams delivered very credible responses about his experience and his platform, another said McAdams seemed canned and flat, just repeating his talking points, and had difficulty adjusting to the six-second delay. Some panned his attire. But some are even hinting at getting Lisa Murkowski to endorse McAdams. This must be prevented. The Anchorage Daily News also published a good article about McAdams HERE; Alaska Dispatch has a better article HERE.

Joe Miller has clearly established his base in Greater Fairbanks and the Mat-Su, as shown on these maps. He probably will make no progress in Bush Alaska, and can expect only marginal progress in Southeast Alaska. This means he must concentrate on Anchorage -- particularly South Anchorage, which is the more conservative part of town. If Joe Miller can keep his base and deliver South Anchorage, he'll win on November 2nd.

Today the esteemed pollster, Rassmussen, upgraded the Scott McAdams - Joe Miller U.S. Senate race from solid Republican to leans Republican.

Soon afterward, the McAdams internet fundraising niche began climbing even faster than it had been, with McAdams being one of the very top donation recipients at Act Blue throughout Wednesday, sometimes taking in almost $2,000.00 per hour from around the nation.

The most favorable prospect for the McAdams campaign is evidence of the intense polarization Miller engenders, and the preference for McAdams by non-aligned voters:

Ninety percent (90%) of Democrats back McAdams while 79% of Republicans throw their vote behind Miller.

McAdams holds a 22-point lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party.
With last weekend's PPP poll, showing the majority of Alaskans not liking Miller, the more people get to know the affable, positive McAdams, the more they will like him. It likely that he's raised far more on the internet Wednesday than his campaign has managed to spend since its inception.

Here's Scott on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show today:


I doubt the guy showing up near the end of this clip donated to Joe:


Here's Scott's very active Act Blue page.

He's raised $1,900.00 since I began writing this column.

Update - Thursday 7:15 a.m: Since this same time yesterday, Scott McAdams has raised over $40,000.00 on the web at his Act Blue page alone. He has raised almost $100,000.00 there ($96,625.00), with 997 supporters. This level of web-based fundraising in one day for a candidate running for statewide office in Alaska may be unprecedented.

YOU can put Scott over $100,000!

hat tip for Scott on MSNBC - Suzanne @fdl

Today the esteemed pollster, Rassmussen, upgraded the Scott McAdams - Joe Miller U.S. Senate race from solid Republican to leans Republican.

Soon afterward, the McAdams internet fundraising niche began climbing even faster than it had been, with McAdams being one of the very top donation recipients at Act Blue throughout Wednesday, sometimes taking in almost $2,000.00 per hour from around the nation.

The most favorable prospect for the McAdams campaign is evidence of the intense polarization Miller engenders, and the preference for McAdams by non-aligned voters:

Ninety percent (90%) of Democrats back McAdams while 79% of Republicans throw their vote behind Miller.

McAdams holds a 22-point lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party.
With last weekend's PPP poll, showing the majority of Alaskans not liking Miller, the more people get to know the affable, positive McAdams, the more they will like him. It likely that he's raised far more on the internet Wednesday than his campaign has managed to spend since its inception.

Here's Scott on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show today:


I doubt the guy showing up near the end of this clip donated to Joe:


Here's Scott's very active Act Blue page.

He's raised $1,900.00 since I began writing this column.


hat tip for Scott on MSNBC - Suzanne @fdl