Category: Alaska

Our Sudden Alaska Road Trip

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Passing by Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER)

PALMER, Alaska
The walls at my son’s house here are adorned with hunting trophies — deer, caribou, turkey, duck, etc. His military exploits are just his day job. What he really cares about is hunting and fishing, and he’s obviously quite successful at that. Our flight left at 6 a.m. Friday, which meant we had to be up at 2 a.m., in order to make it to the airport by 4 a.m., just to allow for contingencies. We then flew to Chicago, where our connecting flight was delayed by a mechanical issue. The flight that was supposed to leave from Concourse E was scratched, and we were instead sent to Concourse C which you know, if you’ve ever been to O’Hare Airport, meant a long hike. That was more of a cardiovascular workout than I’ve had in a while. We finally arrived in Anchorage about 5 p.m. local time, which is 9 p.m. ET. Even though I was able to nod off for a while on the plane, that doesn’t really count as “sleep,” does it?

49th State Brewing Company

Years ago, I’d hear people talk about “jet lag” and didn’t comprehend it, but I was definitely feeling it by the time we landed in Anchorage. While waiting for our son to come pick us up, my wife and I had a quick bite at the 49th State Brewing Company location at Ted Stevens International Airport. Enjoyed a tall glass of their Eight-Star Lager and a margherita flatbread, which was nice. After my son (accompanied by granddaughter Eliza) picked us up, he explained he had to make a couple of stops on the way home, including one at the Bass Pro Shops in Anchorage.

Because I’d never visited a Bass Pro Shops location before, this was an eye-opening experience. Have you guys ever been to one of these? It’s not just a store, it’s like a sporting goods museum — something you’d take a school bus full of fifth-graders to see. There’s all kinds of stuffed animals (including a seven-foot-tall Kodiak bear) and more outdoor gear than you could ever imagine. It occurs to me that Bass Pro Shops might be the most American thing ever, combining the frontier spirit with the glories of capitalism in a way that makes you start humming Brooks & Dunn:

Only in America,
Where we dream in red, white, and blue.

When we visited Army son three years ago, he and his family were still in base housing at Joint Base Elmendoff-Richardson, which all the locals call JBER (an acronym pronounced “Jay Bear”). Since then, my son’s bought a house near Palmer — not inside the Palmer city limits, but with a Palmer address — and it’s very nice, with a high vaulted ceiling in the living room and big bay window in front. Didn’t spend much time looking around, however, because the jet lag was catching up fast, and I crashed out, waking up at about 1:30 a.m. local time, which is 5:30 ET.

So that’s the story of how we got here, and I’m sure I’ll have more for show-and-tell later this week, but for now, it’s back to the regular news, and the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are still:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

After Alaska Summit Meeting, Putin Confirms Ukraine War Was Biden’s Fault

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We all knew this, of course, and Trump has been saying it for three years, but now we have it directly from Vladimir Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the war between Russia and Ukraine would never have begun if President Donald Trump were president in 2022 instead of then-President Joe Biden.
Putin’s comments came during his joint press conference with Trump in Alaska following their three-hour-long closed-door meeting with top advisers about the war in Ukraine.
“I’d like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities,” Putin, speaking in Russian, said according to a translator. “And I said it quite directly back then that it’s a big mistake.”
“Today, when President Trump saying [sic] that if he was the president back then, there will [sic] be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that,” he said, per the precise audio translation.
Trump has long said that the war would not have happened if he were president at the time. In fact, during a CNN town hall event in May 2023, Trump said as much and that Putin would agree with his statement.
“If I were president, this would have never happened, and even the Democrats admit that. Putin knew it would have never happened, and his pipeline would have never happened,” Trump said. “A lot of things would have never happened.”
“All those dead people, both Russian and Ukrainian… they wouldn’t be dead today, and all those cities that are blown up and disintegrated right to the ground, that wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Putin contrasted his virtually non-existent relationship with the Biden administration with his “business-like and trustworthy” relationship with Trump and expressed optimism about a potential end to the conflict.
“I think that overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact, and have every reason to believe that moving down this path, we can come and the sooner the better to the end of the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.

Of course we can be sure that this will be construed by many Democrats — e.g., Adam Schiff — that Trump is Putin’s stooge, but such an interpretation is reading the situation bass-ackwards.

Let me explain something very basic about statesmanship: Plot a 4-point axis with the terms “friendly/unfriendly” and “strong/weak.” Now, if a foreign country is friendly and weak, you don’t need to worry about them as a potential adversary, but they’re also not going to be any help in a crisis. A country that is friendly and strong is a valuable ally. Now, a foreign country may be unfriendly — indeed, overtly hostile — but if they’re weak, who cares? Their hostility is impotent. Greatly to be feared, however, is the country that is both unfriendly and strong.

So, try to see this situation from Putin’s perspective. With Joe Biden as president, America was simultaneously weak and overtly hostile to Russia, and Biden’s “strategy” (if we can deem it as such) was to rely upon our so-called “European allies.” For years I’ve been saying that it’s ridiculous to refer to France, Germany, etc., as “allies,” because from a military point of view, they are utterly worthless. If push came to shove, how many combat-ready divisions could Our European Allies™ actually deploy, even in their own defense, much less at some troubled hotspot elsewhere in the world? So the idea of the Biden administration is that we would rely on Our European Allies™ to deter Russia while, at the same time, we would continually insult Russia and engage in various covert hostilities against the Putin regime. We saw the result.

In August 2021, the Biden administration enacted its disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Were these unrelated incidents? Of course not. Just ask yourself: How long does it take to plan, organize and mobilize for a major military action? About six months, I’d say. The minute Putin saw the Biden bungle in Afghanistan, that’s when he ordered his army to prepare for the Ukraine invasion. When it became apparent, in December 2021/January 2022, the Russia was building up its forces near Ukraine, what was the Biden administration’s response? Talk, talk, talk.

Putin spotted Biden for the gutless wonder he was –the typical bully-braggart, always threatening others, but afraid of a real fight — and Ukraine suffered as a consequence. Liberals with the Ukraine flag logo in their social media profiles can hate Trump all they want, but it won’t change the fact that Russia never would have invaded if it hadn’t been for Biden’s bumbling and weakness. Democrats will never admit this, but when did anyone ever expect Democrats to tell the truth?



 

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The Amchitka Strategic Bureaucracy Reserve

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— by Wombat-socho

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a bureaucrat to Alaska!” – Captain Wallace Binghamton, USNR

It is widely known that you can get a lot accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit. I therefore offer this proposal to the Trump campaign free of charge.*

One of the problems with uprooting the Deep State and the associated federal bureaucracy is that many of the people we want to drive into the wilderness are protected by being in the Civil Service, which makes them practically impossible to fire. A possible solution to this (short of electing a conservative – note I didn’t say Republican – Congress that will repeal the Civil Service Act of 1978) is to make serving in the bureaucracy as unpleasant as possible. There have been some proposals to disperse Federal agencies among the several states so as to put them “closer to the people they serve” and incidentally weaken the Washington DC area both economically and politically. Those proposals don’t go far enough. I propose that since we clearly have an excess of enemies of the state drawing paychecks from the Treasury, we should put them in places where no reasonable person would want to live and work, while making their lives as difficult as possible once they’re there. Such as, for example, the Aleutian island of Amchitka, most noted for being the site of a 1971 nuclear test that environmental wackos promised us would destroy Anchorage, Juneau, and Vancouver with an enormous man-made tsunami. (Spoiler: It didn’t.) A cursory review of the island will reveal that it has several features that make it ideal for our purposes: the weather is usually foul, it is distant from any other human habitations, there is no infrastructure on the island of any kind, and it is prone to earthquakes. in addition, Amchitka is still being monitored for the release of radioactive materials from the 1971 test, which ought to put the fear of SCIENCE!! into our victimsstockpiled bureaucrats. The rest of the Rat Islands would also be suitable for our purposes; Shemya, on the other hand, while possessing many of the traits that make Amchitka suitable for the SBR, actually has people living on it as well as a vital national defense installation, and we don’t want our stockpiled bureaucrats bothering any of those people.

How do we determine who gets shipped off to the SBR? During each of the government shutdowns caused by budgetary brinksmanship, lists are made of who the essential and nonessential employees are in each agency. The nonessential employees will be given a week to decide whether they want to quit, retire, or move to the Strategic Bureaucracy Reserve to continue their work. If they choose the SBR, they will be shipped to Amchitka with a tent, a sleeping bag, and fifty pounds of personal effects. They will not be allowed to take their families with them. Once relocated to the SBR, they will find office space in General Purpose Large tents erected by the Army, and conduct all their business in writing; the government will not provide any kind of computers or telephones to the SBR, much less any internet connections. Food, sanitation, and medical support will be provided by National Guard and Army Reserve units doing their 15-day annual training stint supplemented by prisoners from various military stockades and Americorps “volunteers” working off their student loans. A weekly mail boat will suffice to provide postal support and transportation off the island for bureaucrats who decide they’ve had enough of this treatment.

It’s possible that the number of bureaucrats sent to the SBR may exceed the space available on the Rat Islands. In this case, we may have to use less attractive (sic) options such as Johnston Atoll, which while it lacks the generally foul weather and earthquakes of the Rat Islands, does have a history of chemical weapons deactivation and nuclear weapons contamination, not to mention the occasional powerful hurricane, and is suitably distant from any human habitation.

It’s my fond hope that the creation of the SBR will result in the rapid drawdown of the Civil Service, and a consequent re-evaluation by Congress as to whether we need some of the etiolated agencies weakened by the creation of the SBR. It’s my small contribution toward Making America Great Again. 

*Although I wouldn’t mind an appointment as a warrant officer with the four-year assignment of telling people they’re moving to Amchitka in a week. 

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The Beauty of Alaska

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
Kings Mountain reaches an altitude of 5,800 feet above sea level, towering nearly 3,000 feet above the Matanuska River valley below, and there’s really no way that a photo can convey the impression of standing there in person looking up at that massive peak in three-dimensional space. Breathtaking is all I can say, and while the Alaska Chamber of Commerce isn’t paying me to say this — c’mon, hit the freaking tip jar — I’d certainly recommend that every American should pay a visit.

About three hours from now, our plane leaves for the return flight home, and we’ve had a wonderful time during our visit. Just driving along the highways here is a splendid adventure, surrounded by vast forests of fir, birch and cottonwood, with gigantic mountains on every horizon, their peaks often shrouded in clouds, making them look like scenery from a Lord of the Rings movie: “Here be orcs!”

‘Who you calling an ‘orc,’ mister?’

Our granddaughter Juniper is about two months old and, as you can see, is about twice the size of a 12-ounce cup of coffee. That photo was taken Saturday at the Alaska Zoo, where we spent about five hours, including a break at the zoo coffee shop where we enjoyed some entertainment.

Walk don’t run to see the SpeNerds

The SpeNerds (their name a play on words for the Spenard neighborhood of Anchorage) bill themselves as “Alaska’s Premier Instrumental Surf Trio,” and let no man dispute their claim to that honor. Among the various tunes they performed was Dick Dale’s classic “Misirlou” (which gained renewed popularity in the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction). At one point during their performance, they played the theme song from Goldfinger, and talking to them after the gig, while they were packing up their gear, I suggested that should have been segued into “Secret Agent Man” by Johnny Rivers, to which guitarist Fred Brosius replied that they’d played that one before I arrived. My son plays guitar, and I was telling him how the surf rock sound came about at a period when the electric guitar was still something of a novelty, and guitarists were experimenting with effects like reverb and tremolo, and this sonic experimentation must be appreciated in its historic context. Cultural education is an ongoing obligation of parenthood. Meanwhile . . .

The sergeant gives Juniper airborne training

We spent the Fourth of July at the Glacier View Car Launch, and I apologize that I don’t have any videos of my own to share, but they’re easy to find online. And, of course, I bought the T-shirt, because what’s the point of visiting Alaska if you don’t bring home some souvenirs?

The sergeant and his family
With Mrs. McCain at the Car Launch

Well, we weren’t just tourists, here for sightseeing. We wouldn’t have visited Alaska if not for the fact that our son and his family are here, and this was our first chance to see our newest grandchild. They’ll be coming to visit us at Christmas, but for now I must pack up the laptop and head to the airport, leaving just enough time for me to once more remind readers of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

 

An Alaska Fourth of July Tradition

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
“What do you mean, no fireworks?”

It was then explained to me that, because it never gets fully dark in Alaska during the Midnight Sun season, a fireworks display is impractical. What do Alaskans do for the Fourth of July?

They go to Glacier View — about 100 miles northeast of Anchorage, up the Matanuska River valley — for the annual Car Launch.

 

Old vehicles are rolled down a hill and off a cliff for the entertainment of a crowd of thousands. They’ve been doing this since 2005, and it’s become like race day at Talladega, an all-day redneck festival — Alabama in Alaska, essentially. Looks like fun. We’re going.



 

 

Just a Bear Walking Down the Street

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska
After an exciting day when we visited Thunder Bird Falls and had dinner in Palmer, I went immediately to bed, about 7 p.m. local time Saturday. Around midnight, my wife woke me up to show me the video she had captured of a bear walking around outside our son’s house. I tried to get back to sleep, but about 1:30 a.m., gave up and came downstairs, intending to write up our Saturday activities. So I went outside to smoke a cigarette, and when I glanced up from my phone — there it was!



 

 

The Moose Is Loose

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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
“There’s one!” Bob said, as we drove through the base on our way from the airport. I squinted, but didn’t see the moose until we were within about 30 yards. It was a young cow, not even full-grown yet, but certainly it stood more than six feet tall. A full-grown moose can be eight feet tall, and they’re all around here, so that while sighting a moose may be exciting for a tourist, the locals don’t think much about it.

Speaking of locals, did you know Anchorage has a homelessness problem? On our drive in from the airport, we came through downtown Anchorage and my son gestured to his left, telling me the homeless encampment was about 400 yards that way, and I was like, “What?” Alaska is still very much a frontier state, with a population of less than 750,000 in a vast territory. People are still coming here to homestead, staking out claims in the remote wilderness, so it’s difficult for me to see how the usual excuse — “lack of affordable housing” — can be applied to homelessness in Anchorage. This ain’t San Francisco, OK?

From local media:

The Anchorage Assembly spent a large part of their June 6 meeting discussing the issue of homelessness in Anchorage.
Mayor Dave Bronson talked about the benefits of a proposed navigation center to help those who are homeless in his Mayor’s report, calling it a place that can “transform lives.”
The mayor also called the current situation where many homeless individuals are camping in the municipality’s parks and green spaces “untenable, and not quite even humane.”
“But if we spend another summer expending our time, our resources, and the public’s willingness to hear us out, I’m afraid we will never reach a modicum of solution,” said Bronson.
“I do not want people to freeze to death this winter. The nav center can prevent that.”
Hellen Fleming, one of the owners of Showdown Alaska, appeared before the assembly to testify about abatement at Cuddy Park.
Showdown Alaska is in charge of the Sundown Solstice Festival, which took place in Cuddy Park June 16 -18. The festival was a source of political controversy, as it was cited as a reason for abating – or kicking out – homeless individuals camping at the park for safety reasons.
Fleming said that Showdown Alaska wanted to protect the safety of the patrons of the concert and homeless people.
“For the sake of public safety, we were told that abatement was the right choice,” said Fleming, “My only question to the city now is, why? Why was the Sullivan closed with no plan? Why weren’t sanctioned camps created from the start? Why was there no communication to campers about this festival from the very start in the area?”
Fleming urged the Assembly to create sanctioned camps before abatement at Cuddy Park ended.
After Fleming’s testimony, the Assembly passed a resolution brought forward by Felix Rivera, who represents District 4, supporting the creation of “allowed” homeless camps in Anchorage. Mayor Dave Bronson opposed the use of the word “sanctioned camps,” citing possible liability issues with the municipality.
The passed resolution is more limited in scope compared to recommendations originally made by the Sanctioned Camps Community Task Force.
The task force originally recommended that five sites be established as homeless camps. These sites were: Centennial Park Campground, 1805 Academy Drive, land adjacent to the Clitheroe Center, the midtown National Archives site, and vacant land between Viking Drive, Reeve Boulevard, and Commercial Drive. Three sites were recommended to house up to 75 people, while the remaining two were recommended to house up to 40. The recommendation also provided names of other possible camp locations.

There’s a word for this situation, and that word is crazy.

You’re talking about homelessness in a state where the effective cost of land is zero. I mean, I don’t know how much a half-acre lot costs in the immediate vicinity of Anchorage, but if you’re willing to go further out into the boonies, land is dirt-cheap compared to what you’d pay almost anywhere in the Lower 48. Of course, this doesn’t address the major expense of living in Alaska, namely heat. The first snowfall in Anchorage is usually in October, and it lasts into April. Basically, you’ve got maybe five months of tolerable weather — May through September — amid the otherwise eternal winter. Not a good place for sidewalk sleeping.

As the mayor says, the proposal to create “allowed” homeless camps is not humane. Whatever their problems may be — drug addiction, mental illness, etc. — these people need to get someplace warm, with an actual roof over their heads, before winter arrives, and tolerating homeless encampments in Anchorage during summer is self-evidently foolish.

Did I mention that Joe Biden won Anchorage in 2020? Not by a Chicago-sized margin, but still . . . Maybe you don’t expect liberal foolishness in a GOP stronghold like Alaska, but this nonsense about creating “allowed” homeless camps shows how liberalism can be a problem anywhere. Given the harsh realities of life near the Arctic, I’d suggest a zero-tolerance policy toward homelessness. You simply can’t allow people to be sleeping outdoors in a place where the weather is so brutal most of the year. Better they should be occupying a jail cell than to let them freeze to death on the sidewalks. Or get eaten by a bear.

Did I mention there are bears all over Alaska? They’re not as numerous as moose, I don’t think, but there’s still a lot of them. If the bears ever decide to visit Anchorage’s homeless camps . . .

Well, that would be one way to solve the problem, I guess.



 

 

North! To Alaska!

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This afternoon, my wife and I will be flying the friendly skies, first to Dallas for a three-hour layover before heading to Anchorage. I’d told y’all about this trip earlier, when I thought we’d be leaving last week, but I was mistaken about the anticipated travel date.

Our Army son is stationed there with the newly formed 11th Airborne Division, developing America’s arctic warfare capacity. More importantly — at least for me — is that his wife recently gave birth to our newest granddaughter, little Juniper. So we’ll be spending a couple of weeks with little Juniper (and her big sister Eliza, of course).

While looking forward to seeing the kids, I’m dreading the long flights, and then there’s the matter of the time shift. We arrive in Anchorage at 11 p.m. local time, which is 3 a.m. Eastern, and I’m sure I’ll be disoriented by this experience: Working in the wee hours (locally) to get my dayjob work done by morning times on the East Coast, and did I mention it’s “Midnight Sun” season in Alaska? Oh, and there’s also the weather: High temperature tomorrow in Anchorage will be 59°F, with rain, but later in the week, it will get up to a sunny 62°F. Joy, joy . . .

John Wayne would never complain about the weather, of course. So I’ll endure my arctic excursion with stoic resolve, and perhaps I won’t even notice the conditions while I’m out stalking moose and bears with a Bowie knife . . . No, wait, that’s not on the agenda. Grandpa’s too old to be doing the Wilderness Survival thing. However, I did text my son to ask him to find me some kind of tavern or restaurant where I could blog with that “authentic Alaska” vibe — exposed wooden beams, moose head mounted on the wall, etc. He replied, “Every brew pub here, basically.”

We’re talking tax-deductible business expenses, see? Snap a few photos with my phone, post it under an Anchorage dateline, and it’s travel journalism. Save the receipts for the IRS, and no questions asked.

My wife just asked me, “Are you ready?”

“Honey, we don’t leave for another three hours.”

One of the secrets to a successful marriage is balance — I’m carefree and spontaneous; my wife is responsible and conscientious. So when it comes to a trip like this, I leave all the worrying to her. Why should both of us be stressed out? As they say in Alaska, “Hakuna matata.”

OK, that’s not authentic Alaskan culture, but the IRS isn’t going to notice the difference when I show them the receipts for all those meals and, uh, beverages at brew pubs in Anchorage — legitimate business expenses!

“Besides which, your honor” — here I’m imagining my testimony in a federal trial — “my son was serving his country in Alaska, and maintaining the morale of our troops is crucial to America’s combat readiness. So it was in our national interest that Bob and I had the grilled trout dinner and a few beverages. Don’t you love America?”

Just doing my patriotic duty, you see. So as I get ready to roll, I remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!