What Kind of Alaskan Would Sue Us Over Our Spelling? - PA Miller Poll Results - Updated

What kind of Alaskan would sue us over our spelling?

The same kind of Alaskan who would double check with his co-workers on whether they would be gone from the office, then come in early and hack those co-workers' computers, change their passwords, then lamely try to cover his tracks by destroying evidence of his felonies.

The same kind of Alaskan who would then lie about what he had done to his colleagues. Not once. Not twice. Not three times, like St. Peter. The kind of Alaskan who would brazenly lie about his crimes four times.

The same kind of Alaskan who would cause a three-car wreck and blame it on the other guys, and - when charged for his negligence - blame the police for giving him a ticket.

The same kind of Alaskan who would tell the Alaska press to fuck off! - and then have a lone courageous reporter who wouldn't fuck off illegally arrested by hacks operating without a license.

The same kind of Alaskan who would force a twelve-year-old girl, beat black-and-blue, tied up, gagged and raped by her dad or step-dad, to bear the resulting fetus to term against her will.

What kind of attorney would such a disgusting person hire to sue us over our spelling? There may be quite a few sleazy attorneys in Alaska, but one would have to look hard to find one this obnoxious. Fortunately for Joe Miller, Sarah Palin (of misspelling fame) already had hired such an odious lawyer. She is now sharing him:

He's the guy who threatened to sue Shannyn Moore for speculating about why Palin was aborting her duties as governor of Alaska early in that term's third trimester.

The guy who threatened to sue Jesse Griffin for, for, for - uh, we're still not sure why Van Fleece was after Jesse.

The same guy who is now going to fleece those stupid enough to donate to Joe the Teabagger's "legal defense fund" for what will no doubt add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The same guy who is now going to try to draw out the 2010 Alaska Senate contest into 2011.

And what do Progressive Alaska readers think of the long-term political chances of the pathetic guy willing to hire such a grody, repugnant mouthpiece?

Our poll question, "Is Joe Miller finished in Alaska politics?" has been answered:

Yes ---- 256 ----- 85%
No ---- 27 ----- 9%
Not sure 16 ----- 5%

When I moved to Cordova Alaska from Juneau in 1973, I notated in my journal that about a dozen signs on shops around town had misspelled words. My favorite misspelling was "hydraulics." It was correctly spelled in one sign. But three others had various other spellings. My favorite, down by the boat harbor, read "HYDROLICS."

These shop owners might not have been accurate spellers, but they were real Alaskans, unlike Joe Miller and Thomas van Flein.

Update: In an article titled "Miller: We Can Assume All Poor Spellers Support Me," Van Fleece's argument over the misspellings attempts to say that the misspellings were intentional, and were protests against Lisa Murkowski:

the new policy makes no provision for the many voters who cast protest votes. Prior to the election, people commented on radio stations and in the comment sections in blogs and newspaper stories that they would deliberately incorrectly write-in a variation of "Murkowski" as a protest. They did so knowing that Murkowski was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a "spelling bee" campaign, replete with wrist bands, pencils and tattoos, all to educate the voters on proper spelling. Why was this done? Because even Murkowski had read the law and knew that it required proper spelling -- "No exceptions." So protest voters were trying to send a message to the candidate. The state has failed to create any guideline or standard that would account for the intent of the voter who intentionally cast a protest vote. To the contrary, the state is indicating that it will now count a protest vote, deliberately cast with a misspelling as a vote for Murkowski. This effectively nullifies the protest and falsely inflates the vote for the write-in candidate. In short, the state has become a super-voter and will override voter intent and recast the votes for the candidate the state chooses. This is at core a fraudulent abuse of the electoral process and severely undermines our democratic process. It makes a mockery of the voting process -- allowing voters to believe they cast a protest vote, but then overriding that vote by state fiat.

Whoa! Now that is some world-class sleaze.

Let me see if I can get this right: Implicit in Van Fleece's argument is the premise that there is a segment of Alaska voters, Miller supporters, who are too stupid to just vote for Joe Miller in what everyone knew was going to be a close election, and that this segment was instead intentionally misspelling Murkowski's name, rather than making their votes count.

There's going to be a very special place in the annals of Alaska law for Thomas van Flein.