The Chosen Obama Narrative
Gosh, I Love The Liberal Media
China's Gold Medals Found To Have High Lead Content
The Party of Unity For One America
How Obama Changed Change
Women At Center Stage
Obama Is He Ready to be President
And If Obama Loses?
Martha's Big Adventure - Happy Labor Day
This Historic Candidacy
Crying Wolf On The Economy While Ignoring Real Perils
Kvetching and Convening
Major Media Decide -- Vote Obama
Obama Still Stumbling In Polls
The Senator
Convention(al) Reflections
Farewell To An American Hero
Economy of Words
Farewell, Nato
Findings
Hillary Can't Fix What Her Party Broke
Let's Get Cracking On America's Infrastructure
Mccains Vs. Biden: Not All 'Foreign Policy Experience' Is Created Equal
The Obama Moment
Kennedy's 'Right' Is Wrong
Rolling With The Punches
State of Denial
Obama Camp Claims Its 'Ground Game' Will Beat Bush's of '04
The Perfect Stranger
For Voters, It's A Matter of Trust
Michelle Obama: Family-Values Feminist -- Or Phony?
Game Show Politics
Biden Selection May Help Mccain Make Obama The Issue
Barack
The Quadrennial Whine Is Wrong
The Better Hillary Does, The Worse For Obama
'RomneyCare' Should Keep Mitt Off McCain Ticket
Be Not Cool
Report From A Forgotten War (4th in a Series)
Avoiding A Lieberman Disaster
Quality of Leadership Counts
Art Or Pornography? A Fine Line Indeed
On Shooting Taggers: Why Conservatives And Liberals Differ
New Day, New World, New Democratic Party
Grateful For A Do-Nothing Congress
A Gathering of Clowns Acrobats and Con Men
Win Or Lose, Obama Pioneers Interactive Convention
Obama Nomination Reframes Racial Issues
Democrats Talkin' Like The GOP
McCain Can Win Only As A War President
Young Feminists Shed Label
The Real "Big Tent" Party
Bill Clinton Mending Fences
Michelle Bernard Looks for the Right McCain -- Interview
Losing Faith Voters
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
We've Come A Long Way, Baby
The Devils In His Details
The Clintons' Exit



Mccain's Last Frontier
Jonah Goldberg 8/8/2008
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SKAGWAY, Alaska -- What's the matter with Alaska?

That's the question John McCain should be asking.

Next week marks the 102nd anniversary of newspaperman William Allen White's famous editorial "What's the Matter with Kansas," in which he flayed Kansans for their populist foolishness. Tongue firmly in cheek, he editorialized, "Whoop it up for the ragged trousers; put the lazy, greasy fizzle who can't pay his debts on the altar, and bow down and worship him. Let the state ideal be high. What we need is not the respect of our fellow men, but the chance to get something for nothing."

The spirit of something for nothing suffuses the 49th state. The U.S. government bought it for next to nothing -- a mere two cents an acre. And ever since the territory became a state, Alaska's politicians have been trying to up the price through the back door.

Ted Stevens, the recently indicted senior senator from the Last Frontier, has been shipping anything not nailed down in Washington back home for years. Citizens Against Government Waste calculates that between 1995 and 2008, Stevens alone brought home some $3.4 billion in pork barrel projects.

Stevens has a worthwhile protégé in Don Young, famed champion of the Bridge
to Nowhere. Talk to Alaskans and they'll explain that the difference between Ted Stevens and Don Young is that Young is a dimwitted, corrupt, belligerent, bullying, vindictive taxpayer goody-grabber; Stevens isn't dimwitted.

For the record, I have been to Alaska more than a half-dozen times in the last decade (currently I'm on Hillsdale College's Alaska Cruise), including to the northern coast, where I donated several quarts of my blood to the mosquito population while writing about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. My wife, a onetime staffer to former Alaska senator and governor Frank Murkowski, is from Fairbanks, and we visit her family pretty regularly.

One of the most striking things about Alaska is its cognitive dissonance. On one hand, Alaskans are understandably proud of their rugged individualism. But, politically speaking, their proud libertarianism is as authentic as a Bavarian beer hall at Florida's Epcot Center.

Alaskans say the pork pipeline is necessary because this wild state is wildly underdeveloped. Alaska desperately needs to catch up with states where paved roads are taken for granted. And so they're grateful to Stevens, who kept the state afloat with earmarks and kept military bases here.

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Ted Stevens COLOR
By Bob Englehart - The Hartford Courant * Posted 07/31/2008
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Ted Stevens COLOR
© Copyright 2008  Bob Englehart - All Rights Reserved.

Posted By: Frank Langben  on Sunday, August 10, 2008

Goldberg is simply here repeating McCain's lie about the "Bridge to Nowhere," which McCain has called a "bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it."

Neither McCain, nor Goldberg, who claims to have been to Alaska, won't tell us that the island at the end of the proposed bridge contains Ketchikan's International Airport, which is now served by a ferry.  In the last twelve months, 425,548 passengers took the ferry serving that airport.  In that period, the airport served 219,433 air passengers.  There are only two cities in McCain's Arizona with an airport that busy.



Maybe the bridge wouldn't be cost-effective, but Goldberg and McCain are simply lying about the purpose of the bridge.  The bridge would be a replacement for 425,000 ferry passengers, instead of -- as McCain claims -- a bridge serving 50 people.

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