The Real Nazis
This Veterans Day, I am reprinting a piece I wrote for The Huffington Post back in 2009. Thank you to all the men and women who have answered their country’s call to service in whatever capacity they were asked. ****************** On my 21st birthday, I woke up in the morning and drove to Dairy Queen. I got soft serve vanilla ice cream with strawberry topping and I ate it for breakfast. Why? When I was a child I asked once if I could have ice cream for breakfast, and my mother said, “You can have ice cream for breakfast when you’re…
Negotiating With Healthcare Terrorists
We’re just a few days from launch for critical portions of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Republicans in Washington, D.C., are so freaked out they’ve taken the economy hostage and threatened to shoot it. Conservatives with “support the troops” on their car bumpers have no problem cutting off paychecks to soldiers in a doomed bid to “protect” Americans from affordable health care. I’ll bet the list of things they want before they’ll agree to pay the nation’s debts was made by cutting words out of magazines and pasting them on a piece of paper. In case I’m being too subtle, this…
Walker/Wielechowski – Right for Alaska
We like Sen. Hollis French, and respect him. He’s been an outstanding legislator. We think he’d make a good governor, and have donated to and voted for him in the past. Our issue with the senator’s contemplation of another gubernatorial run is not the candidate, but the fact that the candidate cannot and will not be elected governor. The problem is math. Sen. French retained his own state senate seat in his newly drawn district by the skin of his teeth. The statewide political terrain is far less friendly to him than West Anchorage. The far right made French the…
Mudflats Chats: Paul Begala on Pebble & Democrats
I sat down with Presidential adviser Paul Begala, and asked him his thoughts about the proposed Pebble Mine project, Senator Mark Begich, blue lawmakers in red states, and what it really means to be a Democrat. One of the lead advisers to President Clinton, Begala and James Carville shaped a moderate campaign agenda that focused on balancing the budget and creating 22 million new jobs. I’d been told that Begala is an avid hunter and fisherman, and has been fishing near Bristol Bay. So, I knew where I wanted our conversation to begin – with an issue that is of…
Parnell’s Petty Party
The concept of letting someone else do all the work and then stealing the glory is reprehensible in general, but to the men and women who serve in the military, that violation of basic honor and integrity cuts close to the bone. So does using the men and women who serve our country as a partisan political backdrop, just because it looks good in a photo op. If you were on Facebook this week, you might have seen the following picture posted on Sen. Kevin Meyer’s page featuring Sean Parnell signing several bills affecting the military. But one in particular…
WWII Vet Tours USS Anchorage
[Editor’s Note: Through the magic of Facebook, I learned that my friend Peggy Wilcox’s dad was a World War II vet, and was going to go on a tour of the USS Anchorage before it headed out to sea. My dad was a WWII veteran as well, and I found myself imagining what it would have been like to tour the ship with him. I asked Peggy if she’d be kind enough to write a little something about her dad, and the day.] By Peggy Wilcox My dad is pretty cool. We hang out. He tells me to buy gold, I ignore…
Alaska Eyes 2014
The legislative session in Juneau has ended, and our elected officials have flown away from the carnage they either created, or endured. The stalwart among us, the political junkies who don’t need to take time off to lick wounds, yell at clouds, or throw chairs, will begin to think of… 2014. The courts have ruled that the redistricted map used for 2012 is not Constitutional. We literally go back to the drawing board to rework legislative boundaries. And the insanity will begin all over again. But wait, that’s not all! U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES We’ve also got our one…
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Informant Tells All, Pt 2
Bill Fulton, one of two undercover FBI informants in the recent Alaska Militia Trial I covered, continued his in-depth interview with me. After recounting the circumstances of his association with US Senate candidate Joe Miller, and the controversial arrest of a local reporter by his security company at a Miller campaign event (while working undercover), we were ready to begin talking about the Cox investigation and the trial. This portion of the interview discusses how Fulton began his company Drop Zone, his association with the FBI, and the beginning of the investigation of Cox, and other members of the militia….
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Militia Informant Tells All
Bill Fulton, undercover FBI informant in the “Alaska Militia Trial,” gave a lengthy interview to The Mudflats about his role in the case, and his controversial life in Anchorage before it was revealed. In this article, he shares his candid opinion about local Anchorage media, national progressive media, Joe Miller, and what they got wrong. Yours truly didn’t even escape entirely unscathed. Bill Fulton came to Alaska, the biggest small town in the world, and became instantly “known.” He owned a shop in Anchorage that was utterly unforgettable. A military supply store, which doubled as offices for a security company,…
Begich Arms for 2014
Senator Mark Begich (D) doesn’t toe the line every time Harry Reid whistles. And he’s certainly been a thorn in the side of Yellow Dog Dems, and caused much hair pulling and kicking of trash cans for progressive Alaskans, particularly in the area of resource development. All that said, the Democrats in the Senate are a family, and even the wayward kid gets some TLC. Harry Reid knows, as do we all, that 2014 is going to be an interesting race for the Senate in Alaska. It will be Mark Begich (D) vs. any one of a long string of Republicans…