Sarah Palin's endorsement may have been instrumental in propelling Joe Miller to victory over Lisa Murkowski, but it doesn't mean that Alaska Republicans necessarily want to see her become President. In fact, Public Policy Polling's (PPP) August 27-28 poll of 805 Alaska Republican primary voters indicates that Palin takes a back seat to Mitt Romney in her own state.

Read the full six-page output along with crosstabs HERE. This is a subset of the same poll which showed Joe Miller leading Scott McAdams by 8 points. Here are the basic numbers:

-- Mitt Romney: 20 percent
-- Sarah Palin: 17 percent
-- Mike Huckabee: 17 percent
-- Newt Gingrich: 16 percent
-- Ron Paul: 10 percent
-- Undecided: 11 percent
-- Someone Else: 9 percent

The crosstabs reveal an interesting dichotomy. Although 51 percent of respondents have a Favorable opinion of Sarah Palin vs. only 40 percent Unfavorable, only 24 percent think she should run for President in 2012, while a whopping 62 percent say No. This implies that even many Palin partisans question her qualifications for the Presidency. This theme is echoed in PPP's analysis of the numbers.

However, Conservatives4Palin is criticizing the poll because they think PPP exaggerated Lisa Murkowski's strength several months ago. They don't buy the fact that Miller could have indeed come back from 40 points down in July to defeat Murkowski, so they believe the pollsters in general were under-representing Miller's strength. Of course, the alternative could be that Murkowski did have the support, but that it proved to be exceptionally shallow, in which case any credible alternative could have taken the support away from Murkowski. And that's what I think happened.

What I do know is that PPP's call of Miller being 8 points up on Scott McAdams is similar to Rasmussen's call of Miller being 6 points up on McAdams, and Rasmussen is a reputable pollster.

Ten days ago, Scott McAdams had a volunteer treasurer and a few thousand dollars to help him pursue the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator in Alaska.

WASHINGTON -- Is the tea party the new Republican Party?

SOLDOTNA -- A spokesman says Alaska gubernatorial candidate Bill Walker will soon decide whether he continues his candidacy, maybe as early as next week.

Staff

By Union Free America 

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the winner of Union Free America’s 5th Annual “Most Decertified Union Award.”  This honor is awarded to the labor union that lost the most decertification elections during the preceding 12 months.

The judging was based on an analysis of the reports of election results on the National Labor Relations Board’s web site for the period August 2009 through July 2010.  During that time the NLRB conducted 251 decertification elections.  Employees seeking to rid themselves of a union won 157 or 63 percent of them.

The Teamsters union won the “Most Decertified Union Award” by being decertified 48 times during that period.  The Teamsters were involved in a total of 64 decertification elections of which they lost 75 percent.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) came in a distant second by being decertified in 9 out of 15 elections, or 60 percent.

The International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) won honorable mention by being decertified 8 times. This may seem paltry compared to the Teamsters, but IUOE deserves recognition for being decertified in 8 out of 8 elections.

The Teamsters outstanding performance was not enough to helped the Change to Win federation edge out the larger AFL-CIO in the competition. AFL-CIO unions participated in 99 decertification elections and lost 69 of them while the Change to Win unions participated in a total of 101 decertification elections, but lost only 60 of them.

Colorful certificates commemorating these achievements have been sent to the Teamsters, Food and Commercial Workers and Operating Engineers unions.

Labor unions seem less and less willing to participate in elections where they don't have as good a chance to win.  Between August 2000 and July 2001, the earliest comparable period for which data is available online, the NLRB conducted 2,726 certification elections and unions won 1,445 or 53 percent of them. Between August 2009 and July 2010 the NLRB conducted only 1,502 certification elections and unions won 975 or 65 percent.

Petitioning the NLRB for an election only takes signatures of 30 percent of the workers in a unit. The decline in the number of certification elections is generally attributable to the unions inability to convince workers to vote for union representation in a secret ballot election.

Labor union officials are pressing for legislation to deny employees the right to a secret ballot vote on union representation. This bill is ironically named the "Employee Free Choice Act." The undemocratic scheme the unions would use to replace elections is called a "card check" in which a union is certified by a bare majority of workers signing authorization cards.

There is strong evidence that signed cards are not a valid indication of employee support for unions. The AFL-CIO's own research finds that 28 percent of employees who sign cards vote against a union when given a secret ballot. Other academic research has found that unions must get cards signed by 65 percent of workers in order to have a 50-50 chance to win a secret ballot election.

David Denholm, the founder of Union Free America, observes that, "The so-called 'free choice act' is a completely one sided proposal. It has no provision for allowing employees to rid themselves of unwanted unions through a card-check."

Union Free America was founded in 2002 to provide advice and encouragement to workers fighting to stay, or become, Union Free. The “Most Decertified Union Award” was established in 2006 in response to the growing number of requests from workers for information about how they could rid themselves of unwanted union representation.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday night conceded the Republican primary election to Joe Miller, the tea party backed challenger who maintained his Election Day lead after thousands of additional absentee and other ballots were counted through the day.

From the same GOP-funded polling group that showed this last weekend that Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams can beat Teabagger-corporate shill Joe Miller in the U.S. Senate race, comes this startling poll, released this morning:

If Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012 she can't count on a whole lot of support back home. 62% of Alaska Republicans are opposed to her making a White House bid and she gets only 17% in a hypothetical 2012 primary in the state tying for her second with Mike Huckabee behind Mitt Romney.

It's not that Alaska Republicans don't like Palin- a majority of them still do. But there's a significant disconnect between GOP voters in the state liking Palin and thinking she should run for President, a divide we've seen with Republicans nationally and one that presents the biggest threat to a possible Palin candidacy. Even among voters with a favorable opinion of Palin in the state just 39% think she should launch a 2012 bid.

Romney gets 20% to 17% for Palin and Huckabee, 16% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul. Among Republicans with a favorable opinion of Palin she pulls only 30% and not surprisingly she gets just 3% with ones who don't like her.

She came in 3rd in the poll, tied with huckster Mike Huckabee. She may be so mad when she sees this poll that Todd has to go buy another refrigerator. Again. Also:


One friend of the Palins’ remembers an argument between Sarah and Todd: “They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other. By the time they got done, the stainless-steel fridge looked like it had got shot up with a shotgun. Todd said, ‘I don’t know why I even waste my time trying to get nice things for you if you’re just going to ruin them.’ ” This friend adds, “As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe.

I cringe also, whenever I see this person.

image - DZ

From the same GOP-funded polling group that showed this last weekend that Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams can beat Teabagger-corporate shill Joe Miller in the U.S. Senate race, comes this startling poll, released this morning:

If Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012 she can't count on a whole lot of support back home. 62% of Alaska Republicans are opposed to her making a White House bid and she gets only 17% in a hypothetical 2012 primary in the state tying for her second with Mike Huckabee behind Mitt Romney.

It's not that Alaska Republicans don't like Palin- a majority of them still do. But there's a significant disconnect between GOP voters in the state liking Palin and thinking she should run for President, a divide we've seen with Republicans nationally and one that presents the biggest threat to a possible Palin candidacy. Even among voters with a favorable opinion of Palin in the state just 39% think she should launch a 2012 bid.

Romney gets 20% to 17% for Palin and Huckabee, 16% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul. Among Republicans with a favorable opinion of Palin she pulls only 30% and not surprisingly she gets just 3% with ones who don't like her.

She came in 3rd in the poll, tied with huckster Mike Huckabee. She may be so mad when she sees this poll that Todd has to go buy another refrigerator. Again. Also:


One friend of the Palins’ remembers an argument between Sarah and Todd: “They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other. By the time they got done, the stainless-steel fridge looked like it had got shot up with a shotgun. Todd said, ‘I don’t know why I even waste my time trying to get nice things for you if you’re just going to ruin them.’ ” This friend adds, “As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe.

I cringe also, whenever I see this person.

image - DZ

Linda Kellen Biegel writes this morning at The Mudflats on the invasion of the Pod FOX people, as they seek to make the Joe Miller U.S. Senate campaign the most visible in the country:

What I saw Tuesday at the absentee ballot counting at the Anchorage Regional Office of the Division of Elections was aonly a precursor to what we can expect from the Miller Campaign…and only a mild version compared what they’ll do to actual Democrats! When I got there, Fox News had already flown in and set up shop outside.

Monday, Jesse Griffin at The Immoral Minority showed how Joe the Teabagger has been able to use Sarah Palin's Wasilla FOX News studio for the issuance of some of his accusations that Sen. Lisa Murkowski's campaign was tampering with the count of late ballots:Here's Jesse:

No matter WHERE Palin is broadcasting from, THAT is what you always see behind her.

And now that is the same thing you see behind Joe the Teabagger.

And not only that but Miller also has the exact same Sarah Palin paranoia about the GOP and mistrust of the media. He even went so far as to have Sarah Palin's pet attack attorney write a letter asking for the State Troopers to be posted outside of election headquarters in case somebody tries to steal back the election that he finagled away from Murkowski. Paranoid much?

Wow! Same backdrop, same attorney, same paranoia, hmmm. Has anybody actually SEEN Sarah Palin and Joe Miller at the same time? I mean if Palin deepened her voice, didn't shave for a couple of days, and bought a more realistic looking wig they could almost be the same person.

Ah, FOX News and the Koch Brothers bringing you a poster child campaign on how the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United vs the Federal Election Commission has screwed the citizens. But, but - wait! How dare anyone accuse FOX and its on-air personalities of deception!

I apologize. I must have gone overboard. It makes me want to cry, thinking of how far over the line such an accusation is:


images - Linda Kellen Biegel and Immoral Minority

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's stunning defeat in the Alaska primary ends a 30-year family legacy of holding that seat, an era that spanned a majority of Alaska's statehood.

The numbers started to go Sen. Murkowski's way this morning. Alaska election officials were counting absentee and questioned ballots from last week's GOP primary for her U.S. Senate seat. Trailing Tea Bag Express favorite, Joe Miller by less than 2,000 votes, she didn't close the gap enough by late afternoon today to make the numbers add up. Late in the afternoon Murkowski conceded.

Though polls were released over the weekend showing Murkowski might handily win a three-way contest as a Libertarian Party candidate, Sunday that party's governing board in Alaska voted 5-0 to not offer her a rent-a-party slot (something that has been done in Alaska before, resulting in the election of Wally Hickel in 1990).

Sen. Lisa Murkowski replaced her father, Frank, in the U.S. Senate by being appointed to a vacancy by the governor. Frank Murkowski had had to leave his senate seat to become that governor, creating the vacancy necessitating the appointment.

One of the candidates interviewed for the vacancy had been newly out-of-work Wasilla mayor, Sarah Palin. Since Frank's appointment of his daughter to the seat over the less qualified Palin, the latter has been chafing for revenge. The first episode was her defeat of Frank in the 2006 gubernatorial primary. Gov. Murkowski had been terribly inept. Today was the final episode.

I predicted the strong possibility of Joe Miller's victory over Murkowski in this primary back in July. So I wasn't "stunned," as were many.

Actually, I had hoped for it. Joe Miller is not Alaska. He wouldn't have beaten Lisa Murkowski without a huge infusion of campaign cash from the Koch Brothers and a ballot proposition designed to bring out fundamentalists and evangelicals to the polls.

The Alaska and national Democratic Party apparatchiks have yet to digest what a gift Miller presents them. As Howie Klein, one of the most savvy progressive analysts of politics in the country observed Sunday:

McAdams isn't a conservative corporate shill and isn't interested in enriching himself at the public's expense. The DSCC doesn't know how to deal with that kind of candidate.

Grassroots Alaskans do.

Our most dependable correspondent in Alaska, Phil Munger, has been raving to me about McAdams for months. And this week I finally spoke with Scott on the phone. He seemed committed to a kind of economic populism that results in winning campaigns in the West. In other words, Scott McAdams is more interested in solving real problems real American families face than in staking out ideological positions.

If the Alaska and national Democratic party organization can energize McAdams' campaign, he will beat this teabagger who looks and thinks a lot more like the unibomber than he resembles any of our constitutional founding fathers he is do fond of ripping off.

Scott McAdams will be this coming Saturday's Blue America guest at Crooks & Liars. 11:00 a.m. Pacific time Saturday.Howie will host Scott for two hours of questions. Who knows, maybe even Teabagger Joe Miller will show up to ask a question or two. Whatever, check Scott out then.

Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski has thrown in the towel and conceded the primary election to Joe Miller after today's first round of absentee vote counts showed little hope that Murkowski could overhaul Miller via absentee ballots the way Mark Begich defeated Ted Stevens in 2008. Speaking to reporters at her campaign headquarters in Anchorage, Murkowski said "We know that we have outstanding votes to count in the primary, but based on where we are right now I don't see a scenario where the primary will turn out in my favor. And that is a reality that is before me at this time". She did not endorse Miller. Also reported by KTUU Channel 2 and Alaska Dispatch. CNN news video embedded below:



Joe Miller issued a statement thanking Murkowski for a hard-fought contest and expressing appreciation to his network of supporters, as well as those high-profile personalities who endorsed him. He asked all Alaskans to unite behind him and his message:

Now is the time for all Alaskans to come together and reach out with our core message of taking power from the federal government and bringing it back home to the people. If we continue to allow the federal government to live beyond its means, we will all soon have to live below ours.

I look forward to the challenge of the general election ahead. I intend to continue to travel to every corner of Alaska talking to folks about the answers needed to get our nation back on track and keep the American dream alive for ourselves and our children.

ADN's Alaska Politics blog provided blow-by-blow documentation of the August 31st absentee vote count. The first batch of votes counted were from Anchorage, reducing Miller's lead from 1,668 votes to 1,325. But the next batch from Mat-Su increased Miller's lead back to 1,469 votes. Another batch of South Anchorage absentees narrowed Miller's lead back to 1,294 votes, but by shortly after 5:00 P.M. Alaska time, after absentees from Kenai, Southeast Alaska, and Fairbanks had been counted, Joe Miller's lead had lengthened to 1,469 votes. Murkowski had hoped to make much more progress in Southeast Alaska, but her support of a controversial Sealaska bill may have undermined her campaign there.

So with 15,700 of the estimated 25,510 overall absentee votes counted, and having reduced Miller's lead by only 199 additional votes, Senator Murkowski decided it was over, and chose to put an end to the uncertainty, swallow her pride and misgivings, and do the right thing.

Anchorage Assembly member Bill Starr indicated Tuesday night that he is still interested in pressing for an investigation into how finances were handled during the final months of former Mayor Mark Begich's administration.

I. Joe Miller and his supporters are starting to go nuts. Echoing Josef Stalin's quote (which may or may not be an urban myth), Josef Stalin-Miller seems to be saying, "It's not who votes who counts, it's who counts the votes!"

I agree. But his supporters are all but accusing the Murkowski camp of using telepathic messages and astral projection to change the outcome of Alaska's closely contested GOP primary race for the 2010 U.S. Senate seat slot in the final. Their nuttiness is showing even more than their magic underwear.

Frankly, should Miller win in November, we'll be closer to a Stalinist reality than the purported quote above might indicate:

In the late 1930s, during the height of the Stalinist purges of theCommunist Party and Red Army, Stalin gave a speech to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. It was a long, incredibly polemical speech, as was and is the habit of Communist leaders. After Stalin completed the speech, the hall, with about 1,400 members present, erupted in enormous applause. It kept growing louder for minutes. It went on for at least a half an hour before members started looking around and craning their necks to see if anyone had already stopped. None had. All kept clapping for a while longer. Finally one member stopped. Soon everyone began putting their tired, reddened hands down.

The next day, nobody could find the first member who had stopped applauding. They never did.

That is closer to what a Joe Miller kind of government would be than what we now have.

I have an image that Joe is waiting for the call from Sarah Palin in which she asks, "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"

II. Of course these machines - the Diebold Accuvote system - can be manipulated. It's quite funny that it is finally wingnut Teabaggers who are bringing the long-known flaws in the machines, how they are used and how the votes are collated and tabulated at higher levels to the fore in the Alaska press:

The Division of Elections investigated and found the most alarming allegation in the Van Flein complaint was unfounded. Van Flein alleged Roman used the state computer at the Division of Elections office in Wasilla and that for 20 minutes "this Murkowski observer was in the state's voter records viewing private information and, we are told, accessed the state's election management system."

Van Flein wrote in the complaint that the state's Diebold voting software "contains vulnerabilities that may allow someone to install malicious software to discount votes." Van Flein suggested that there may need to be a hand count of ballots or an IT computer audit in order to verify that Roman didn't do anything like that.

Elections officials said Roman did request access to the computer with the state's voter registration system but was not allowed. Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai said he would have not been able to compromise the system anyway. "There is no GEMS server in the Wasilla office, so there's no way the state ballot tabulation system was compromised," Fenumiai said.

Van Flein said Monday night that the complaint was verified by Miller election observers on the scene. "We have a statement from an eye witness establishing that the Murkowski observer in fact was using the Division of Elections desk top computer for up to 10 minutes," he said.

Alaska Division of Elections Director Fenumiai disputed that, saying the observer did not use any state computer.

Elections officials said Roman did break the rules by texting from inside the ballot room. He also tried to bring a large bag into the room, against instructions, which Miller campaign lawyer Van Flein described as a potential way to make ballots "disappear."

It's obvious to me that all the GOP ballot votes need to be seized. They need to be gone over by a panel of experts, inch by inch. Micron by micron, under a spectrograph (there may be fake ballots in there, you know). Bev Harris should be called up here to head a commission appointed by Gov. Sean Parnell to investigate it.

Thomas van Flein, on instructions from Sarah Palin and Glen Beck can talk about it hourly on FOX. They should investigate, deliberate, lie, threaten and sue at least through the third week of October.

All Miller's supporters in this should be allowed to carry semi-automatic weapons with two extra clips into all the deliberations.

III. Meanwhile, rational people can do this.

Staff

By Dave Bronson 
Alaska Standard Contributor 

Many Christian leaders and laymen today contend that Christians simply should not be involved in government or the political process.  Some argue it beneath them to sully the name of Christ and his Kingdom with the business of governing ourselves.  Others,  that the Bible somehow prohibits true Christians from doing so...  a biblical "wall of separation" of sorts.  Still others will argue, "What's the use in trying to improve our government when, 'The End is Near' ." 

In short, these three positions encompass the body of debate for simply doing nothing to improve the single most influential; God ordained institution in our society... government.

While many of these same individuals will work tirelessly to feed the hungry, they will make no attempt to understand that in the world today all systemic hunger and starvation is caused directly by governmental interruption of the food supply. From Africa to India to the West my hearts breaks for those who need not have suffered had Christians been passionately involved in their governments.  It would seem these Christians find a rather confused satisfaction in feeding the hungry while simultaneously clinging to the biblically errant position of self-sequestration from efforts that would prevent that very same misery in the first place.

I challenge you, find hunger in the world and you will find as its cause political and moral corruption.   In the Sudan, a Muslim central government is using starvation as a tool of genocide against the black Christian minority as it endeavors to secure control of rich oil fields.

On the Indian sub-continent millions of people are malnourished or starving because a government believes that one is born to a caste and therefore subject to the negligence and abuse of those of a higher caste.

In the rich farm lands of Zimbabwe starvation is rampant because a brutal tyrant and his government took farm land from skilled and productive land owners and gave it to political allies... who are now themselves starving as they live on the very soil which so recently fed their entire nation.

And in America itself generation upon generation of families live on the edge of poverty and hunger because well intentioned but wrongheaded politicians thought it better that government be responsible for the food that is placed before our children than the father of those children.  So after fifty years and billions of our national treasure spent on fighting hunger we have more hungry children... and fewer fathers for them.

You, as spiritual leaders, win souls for the Cause of Christ but then you fail to lead them thereafter.   It is right to feed the hungry, to nurture the destitute, and to defend the innocent.  But it is not enough... because Scripture says it is not enough.  Proverbs 31 says, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.  Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." 

I challenge you then to consider three questions.  "Speak up...?"   How and where is one to do this if not within the structure of government?  " Judge fairly?"  How can one judge fairly if one is not a judge, and how can one possibly be a judge if not established as such by government?  And how can one "defend the rights of the poor and needy"  if not in some court of law?  Remember, the Scripture never compels us to meaningless errands.  It never compels us to "Speak up" in a wind storm where no one could ever hear our words.  It never compels us to "judge fairly" where the verdict would be heard and known only by the judge.  And it would never compel us to "defend the rights of the poor and needy" if there were no possible hope of justice for them at the conclusion of that defense because no government exists to declare that justice has been served.

If one is alone on a tiny island there is no need for government.  But the moment another wades ashore the need for some form of government presents itself.  The "Me" becomes "We"... and "We" need to figure out how we will relate to one another. 

In our families we have government. In our churches we have government.  And in our society we certainly have government -- and a lot of it.  Does it stand to reason that God would compel us to be intricately involved with the first two, which he does, but not the third?  Why then do so many religious leaders in our society voluntarily separate themselves from the governance of our society?  This wasn't always the case.

American history is replete with clergy speaking out forcefully, clearly and legally on issues and candidates. In 1884, Rev. George H. Ball of Buffalo, New York delivered a scathing sermon against the presidential candidacy of Grover Cleveland on the grounds the candidate fathered an illegitimate child. 

In 1926 a Lutheran minister denounced from the pulpit the presidential candidate Alfred Smith, Governor of New York, on religious grounds. 

And on March 25th, 1850 Unitarian minister Theodore Parker of Boston delivered a sermon against Massachusetts Sen. Daniel Webster for his part in passing the Fugitive Slave Law --- an act he said unleashed the “human bloodhounds" to track down hapless Negroes.  He preached, "I know of no deed in American history, done by a son of New England, to which I can compare this, but the act of Benedict Arnold."

How then did we get to the point where our spiritual leaders would speak against the evil that is abortion but willfully and deliberately not speak against the the politicians who promote that evil?

How did we get to the point where our spiritual leaders would preach from the pulpit the virtue of thrift but not speak against the profligate politicians who so encumber our children with debt as to make that thrift meaningless?

Is it lack of conviction, character, or courage?  Or maybe just a lack of understanding.

It seems to me that for over fifty years in this country too many of our spiritual leaders have been content to fill their pews with those who would fill their offering plates while ignoring the quality of the charter of those we choose to govern us. If the character of our leaders doesn’t matter to those who by vocation and calling are compelled to define what is “good” character then we as a nation are indeed doomed to live and die with the consequences of “bad” character.  But then heed this warning;

The seeds of tyranny are sown in the soil of complacency.

A complacent people should expect to be ruled as they are, and without complaint… satisfied with those who no longer govern them, but rule them.

As spiritual leaders you can no longer be content to fight the culture war on the climate controlled side of your church doors while the battle for our national soul is being lost on the other.  Engage now or bear the cost of complacency because those who now have you believing you cannot contend for the Gospel in the halls of government or the public square will one day soon keep you from doing the same from your pulpits.

 

Alaska's preeminent environmentalist, Riki Ott, will be on Shannyn Moore's KUDO - AM talk radio program this morning, from the beginning of the program, just after 11:00 a.m. Alaska time. Ott will be discussing the apparent continuing use of Corexit and other dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.

Progressive Alaska has covered the use of dispersants there more than any other Alaska blog. Ott was already the world's leading opponent of dispersant use, and expert on their dangers before the ongoing spill (or spills), and her knowledge about them has grown immensely, as BP and the U.S. government have sought to hide both the amount of application being administered, how and where it is being done, and - most importantly - the widening toxic effects of the criminal use of these products.

The Mudflats has reprinted a long, annotated article/letter by Riki Ott, written on August 27th to Sam Coleman, head of the U.S. Evironmental Protection Agency, Region Six.

Here's a link to the article at The Mudflats. It is powerful, persuasive. It will be ignored. Here is how Dr. Ott's letter to Coleman begins:

Dear Mr. Coleman,

During the August 25 Dockside Chat in Jean Lafitte, LA, it came to our attention that the federal agencies were unaware — or lacking proof — of the continued spraying of dispersants from Louisiana to Florida. Further, the federal agencies were woefully ignorant of the presence of subsurface oil-dispersant plumes and sunken oil on ocean and estuary water bottoms. We offer evidence to support our statements, including a recently declassified subsurface assessment plan from the Incident Command Post.

But first, you mentioned that such activities (continued spraying of dispersants and sinking oil) — if proven — would be “illegal.” As you stated, sinking agents are not allowed in oil spill response under the National Contingency Plan Subpart J §300.910 (e): “Sinking agents shall not be authorized for application to oil discharges.”

Please be careful, Riki!


image - Riki and Shannyn in less troubling times - PA

Joe Miller's campaign alleged possible vote tampering and asked for Alaska State Troopers to be dispatched to elections offices going into today's first count of absentee and questioned ballots in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Monday she was "astounded" at what she called Miller's false allegations of attempts on her side to steal the election.

FAIRBANKS -- North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson says mismanagement claims by backers of a recall effort are unfounded.

A primary race between three candidates seeking the Republican nomination for Alaska Legislature House District 12 has come down to eight votes in the latest tally.

Democratic challenger Andy Schroeder is pulling his name from contention in the Alaska Legislature House District 36 race, less than a week after winning his Democratic primary election unopposed.