Sept 5, 2019: Warm And Sunny; Recall Dunleavy Delivers 49K signatures; 329,574,686 People Did NOT Die In USA Today

Today began with a vain attempt to see the Northern Lights that @AuroraNotify was reporting on Twitter.  It was cloudy in Anchorage.  But they were cool clouds.

It was so nice that after completing my errands, I headed for the Campbell Creek trail heading south.  I wish, when people ask me how I can live in Alaska, that I could get them on this or any of the other greenbelt trails in Anchorage.  Right through the middle of urban neighborhoods these bike trails are like going through a magic door into the woods.  Here's a bit of beginning fall foliage as I cross a bridge just past Minnesota.

On the way back I stopped to watch some ducks at Taku Lake.

Meanwhile, the Recall Dunleavy campaign had delivered 49,006 signatures to the Division of Elections.  They needed 28,000 or so to qualify for verification of 28,000 valid signatures and then review by the Lt. Governor's office (Lt. Gov is in charge of elections), to be sure it meets the grounds for a recall petition.  Given the various lawyers who scrutinized the language - including the person who has written the Department of Law posted opinions on what you need to qualify for a recall petition (and who was fired by Dunleavy in the first day or two he was in office), I'm confident it meets the letter of the law.  Not all that confident the Lt. Governor's office will see it that way, but if it doesn't, I still trust the Alaska Supreme Court to rule based on the law.

Once the recall petition is approved a new petition will need some 70,000 plus signatures to get it on the ballot.  A record warm and dry summer made it pretty easy to get signatures the first time round.  Doing the same will take a little more grit when (someone suggested 'if') the weather gets more bracing.  But 49,000 signatures in just over a month was way more and way faster than has ever been done in Alaska.  All those folks need to sign again for the next petition and then another 30,000 or 40,000 (to insure enough valid signatures) and it's ready for the ballot.

Unlike Wisconsin and Kansas where the Koch brothers (someone suggested Koch brothers is like a brand that doesn't need to be adjusted to reflect David's passing) have installed their puppets to destroy those state governments, most of Alaska's Republican legislators did NOT go along with the attempted cuts.  And those attempted, and the less drastic, but still nasty cuts affected so many people that everyone has a reason to get rid of Dunleavy.  There will be an expensive Outside Koch funded campaign to keep the governor.  The Republican Governor's Association made this totally perfunctory and bullshit (sorry, I can't sugar coat this) statement:

"WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Republican Governors Association released the following statement from Executive Director Dave Rexrode in response to the recall effort launched against Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy:
'Since taking office, Governor Dunleavy has served as the People’s Governor, fighting for a better future for all Alaskans and taking on the special interests. Under his leadership unemployment is at its lowest level in years and he continues to work to attract jobs and economic development to the state. The RGA stands behind Governor Dunleavy against this recall effort by partisan special interests seeking to halt Alaska’s tremendous progress.'”

This is all generalities which can't be backed up by facts.  Expect more of this and others' propaganda to get much better focused on pushing Alaskan buttons once it's clear the recall will be on the ballot.  Here's a look at some of their media buys.  $58 million to Target Enterprises.  And we know that Alaskans for Prosperity, Koch's Alaska chapter of the Americans for Prosperity, will pander hard.

But Alaska is small enough and  enough people have seen behind the curtain of the Wizard of Wasilla, that I think the recall will prevail.  This is a bi-partisan effort.  Hey Trump, you want another Alaskan governor from Wasilla to replace Pence?  He should be available by late Spring 2020.

Sorry Alaskans, you know all this already.  It's for people Outside.

I didn't realize I was going to write so much, so I'd planned one more item about today.

329,574,686 People Did NOT Die In USA Today  

Of course I can't know precisely.  I used the Current US Population which monitors the US population second by second, and The United States Death Clock which does the same with deaths and says 7,453 people, on average die each day.  So those are averages.  But it's good enough to come up with a reasonably close number to remind everyone that most people in the US did NOT die today.  Despite the headlines we see and hear everyday in the media, a tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of the US population dies in a day.

Yes, let's try to lower the number of unnecessary deaths like:

• gun deaths per year (36,383)
• homeless deaths (921 last year in LA County alone)
• unintentional injury deaths (169,963)

But let's also remember that death is part of life.  Don't let the media's focus on the unusual distort your sense of how safe or unsafe you are.  I believe that every story about death in the news should include the number of people who did NOT die, to help people keep things in perspective.

And to close this off - when you bike, you see things drivers miss, like this poster.

I didn't even know there were 905 channels (maybe not all have programming) in Anchorage.  The best I could find on this was not quite a year ago in the ADN.