Wednesday, November 10, 2010

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.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's going to come down to what the law says. If the law says a write-in candidate's name must be spelled correctly, then Miller wins this one. Anyone know what the federal law says about write-ins? If Miller were the write-in, wouldn't Murkowski be doing the same thing?

Anonymous said...

I think the above comment deserves a Van Fleece Award.

alewis14151 said...

Is Joe on the way to Kansas with his spouse and kids?

Anonymous said...

I hope the judge requires that Van Fleece support his claim and produce evidence of these supposed comments on blogs and newspaper stories.

Anonymous said...

So, if I understand this correctly, Miller's argument can be boiled down to this:

A bunch of my supporters, acting like nitwits and disrespecting the right to vote -- a right won in blood by the American revolutionaries -- should be rewarded for their childishness.

Anonymous said...

Priceless.

How could you make this up?

The law is the law- unless Van Fleece, Hacker Joe and the rest of the Quitter crew think they know better.

The cartoon of Joe Miller that is up at Alaska WTF under the heading Joe Miller has a rat up his ass again is hilarious. Warning NSFW. Depicts typical "conservative values" kinkiness.

nancydrew said...

There is a part of me that truly stands in awe when confronted with minds that can even imagine, much less perform, such mental acrobatics.

Really, how do these people sleep at night? What do they teach their children? The "paranoid style" seems to be embodied here in a uniquely twisted way. With all of the national attention Alaska has gotten recently, seems like it would be a great time to change political course and banish these goons to the past. May the post-Palin era begin. As soon as possible.

The Yellow Porcupine said...

Dear Joe: Since Teabaggers are notoriously poor spellers, there's no doubt that all poor spellers support you. I wrote in Jo Milrr on my ballot!

Anonymous said...

I would have written in: Lisa-Joe Millerkowski but I'm
a lousy spiller so just filled in Scott's oval.

Anonymous said...

What kind of Alaskan? The Sarah Palin kind of course. I hope everyone up there remembers that Sarah was stumping for ole Joe right up to the election. In fact, if I were Joe, I'd be pretty pissed of at Sarah for not voicing her support in no uncertain terms.

Joe...oh, Joe...it's ok to be angry at Sarah. Tell us what you know.

Anonymous said...

Re bad spelling -- on p. 13 of his complaint filed in federal court, Miller asks for an injunction forbidding the Director of Elections from counting "any write-in ballots in which the name of the candidate is spelt [sic] incorrectly." (In the next paragraph "spelled" is used.) (The ADN website has .pdf's of the complaint and motion for preliminary injunction.)

Agree that Van Flein’s “protest vote” intentional misspelling BS is over the top -- or under the bottom. Did you mean to spell "annals" with one "n" or two?

Anonymous said...

Mr. Anti-Federal government, suing in Federal court, about spelling errors, in a state election.

Is Joe Miller going to have a guest appearance on Sarah's Alaska TV Show - maybe with the episode title of:

No Candidate Left Behind.

Only Quitters.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Van Fleece-my-clients has personality changes - not in a good way - as a result of his head injury in the shooting many years ago.

I know of two people, and know one of them personally, who had significant personality changes following head trauma. Their intellect & cognitive skills were not changed at all, but their personalities, wow! Big changes.

Do you think that maybe TVonF turned into a cold-stone bastard after his injury? He seems to be completely missing the ethical synapse connections.

Just a theory.

Anonymous said...

Lawyers all over must be proud of these two. Representing your client aggressively is one thing- this is a stretch. Actually it seems almost like bullshit-but what could I know?

Comment over at Immoral Minority about the Miller 'tactic' to claim misspellings are a protest vote for him.

I hope any votes such as "Fuck Joe Miller" are counted and reported.

And if the internets are the Miller campaign's resource for determining voter intent- then the intent of any votes for "Buttboy" or "Buttboy Joe" will be clearly not for Lisa. Or Scott.

SRSLY

Just google "buttboy joe" to see what turns up.

Results for "buttboy Van Flein" are a little more ambiguous.

If Joe was on Wheel of Fortune and
the phrase was "GET A -LUE" he'd try to buy a vowel.

10:32 AM

Anonymous said...

So the Miller campaign can ascertain voter intent with these "purposely misspelled so-called "protest votes" but it is unlawful for the Div. of Elections to ascertain voter intent? What planet do these people live on?

Anonymous said...

What planet do theses people live on?

Palinoia

Christopher Constant said...

Phil, here is Alaska's history with literacy tests. Miller's tactics on this one are the barest form of Whitism. http://www.alaskool.org/native_ed/articles/literacy_act/LiteracyTxt.html

bill black said...

That's why I always write out my checks to Ray to Harbor Hydro