I just can't keep up with the soap opera of politics any longer. It's exhausting. Women who are porn stars or Playboy bunnies are being slut-shamed on Twitter and they aren't taking it. Pro tip to shamers: these women are photographed wearing nothing and they all had first-grade teachers. They don't care what you think. The president's son is about to be on the single circuit again because he didn't realize he was supposed to be off it. There are way more tawdry details that none of us should have to know. It's all a badly cast reality show.
Though it is supposed to be spring, hell has frozen over. I've finally found something I agree with Sen. Dan Sullivan on. Who knew? I've been looking all this time and it's not like I wasn't watching — it just has taken a bit to find something I could get on board with. Congress passed, and the president has signed, a spending bill that none of them read. (I'm old enough to remember when that was considered a bad thing.) Lisa Murkowski voted for the bill even though her pet project of shredding the Tongass forest wasn't included. Sullivan put out a statement after the middle of the night vote, "Over 2,200 pages of legislative text, hundreds if not thousands of pages of accompanying documents — all with huge implications for our economy and our citizens — deserves far more than 28 hours to read and review."
That was refreshing, though the alternative would have been a government shutdown. Those aren't as fun as you would think. Don Young voted for it which tells me absolutely nothing about the bill. Maybe it's good, maybe it isn't, maybe there are personal favors tucked in it for his friends in Florida. Hard telling, not knowing.
So my five minutes of thinking Dan Sullivan may have had a good thought was quickly dashed. A local Alaska businessman gushed on social media about getting to meet Michael Flynn at a Dan Sullivan fundraiser held in California. He posted a smiling picture and called Flynn an "American Hero." The former national security advisor may be a hero to some, but he has also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with the Mueller investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
All the while, Juneau grinds on with state budgets, priority fights and how to pay for it all. I try not to get too excited about it all until the first special session is called. As long as the Senate is stuffed with oily ideologues who can't see their way past their political party to do what's right for Alaska, nothing is going to change. I mean it. It's the same fight year after year, and they can't solve the problem they worked so hard to create. Simple things are too hard for the majority. This week a Sense of the Senate was introduced to urge the Permanent Fund to stop investing in Russian companies who have found themselves on the sanctions list of America. Fourteen senators, all Republicans, voted against it. Why? Why would they want Alaska investing with crooked Russian companies?
It's a pretty easy answer. It was introduced by two Democrats. I miss the days when our leadership worked together to divest from companies who were aiding in the Rwandan genocide. We did that.
I think political bodies are like airplanes. You need a right wing and a left wing to keep things steady and balanced. Right now, in Washington and Juneau we have two right wings and we wonder why we feel like we're going to crash all the time. Americans are literally taking to the streets demanding change like we haven't seen in several generations.
Buckle up, my dears, there's more stormy weather in the forecast. (That was not intended as a 60 Minutes reference.)