Obama campaign takes page out of Jim Whitaker play book, asserting Romney a felon

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The battle between President Obama and Mitt Romney reached new levels of rancor Thursday, with each campaign accusing the other of lying over Romney’s tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital.

The charges flew at a rapid pace, and by the end of the day the Romney campaign was demanding an apology after a senior Obama campaign official said the Republican presidential candidate may have committed a felony.

Obama official Stephanie Cutter made the claim following a Boston Globe article that said documents show Romney was in charge at Bain for three years longer than he had claimed. Cutter said Romney was either misrepresenting his position at Bain to the Securities and Exchange Commission, “which is a felony,” or misrepresenting to the American people.

Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades issued a blistering statement in response.

“President Obama’s campaign hit a new low today when one of its senior advisers made a reckless and unsubstantiated charge to reporters about Mitt Romney that was so over the top that it calls into question the integrity of their entire campaign,” Rhoades said. “President Obama ought to apologize for the out-of-control behavior of his staff, which demeans the office he holds. Campaigns are supposed to be hard fought, but statements like those made by Stephanie Cutter belittle the process and the candidate on whose behalf she works.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Also, read HERE how the Boston Globe is refusing to make corrections to articles falsely reporting Romney’s employment history.  Sound familiar?

Photo credit: Alan Cleaver

Wednesday’s Alaska landslide possibly the biggest in North American recorded history

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Even by Alaska standards, the rock slide in Glacier Bay National Park was a huge event.

It was a monumental geophysical event that was almost overlooked until a pilot happened to fly over where the cliff collapsed and snapped some photographs nearly a month later.

When the cliff collapsed in the national park in southeast Alaska on June 11, it sent rock and ice coursing down a valley and over a lovely white glacier in what perhaps was the largest landslide recorded in North America.

The rumbling was enough so that it showed up as a 3.4-magnitude earthquake in Alaska. The seismic event also was recorded in Canada. The massive landslide occurred in a remote valley beneath the 11,750-foot Lituya Mountain in the Fairweather Range about six miles from the border with British Columbia.

“I don’t know of any that are bigger,” Marten Geertsema, a research geomorphologist for the provincial Forest Service in British Columbia, said Thursday, when comparing the landslide to others in North America.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: NOAA Photo Library of area where 1958 landslide created the largest recorded wave in history.

Murkowski supporter makes history: first legislative candidate to be kicked off ballot for claiming to be “homeless”

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Barbara Bachmeier, a candidate for the legislature, was kicked off the ballot by Alaska’s Division of Elections, for being homeless.  More specifically, she did not meet the residency requirements for state house District 13 because, as recently as ten months ago, she had been “living in a camper shell on the back of her truck,” according to Newser.

Some suspect that Bachmeier was not homeless at all, but that she was actually living in another residence outside of the district.  They believe that the story about her living out of her truck was fabricated in an unsuccessful attempt to meet the district’s residency requirements.

The decision to give her the boot from the ballot after she had already been certified may be unprecedented in Alaska state history.   The Division of Elections reported yesterday that such decertification has not happened during the current director’s four year tenure, maybe longer.

Ms. Bachmeier, a former service member who claims a stress-related disability, was a prominent Murkowski supporter who harassed Joe Miller personally as well as some of his supporters in 2010.  In one particularly infamous event following the general election debate in October, Bachmeier followed Mr. Miller’s party out of the parking lot and tail-gated Miller’s vehicle at high speeds.

Photo credit: BarbaraBachmeier.com

Finnish researchers prove the Northern Lights really do make sounds (+ video)

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The northern lights of Earth are more than just dazzling light shows — they also generate their own strange applause too, a new study reveals.

The results vindicate folktales and reports by wilderness travelers, which have long described sounds associated with the northern lights (which are also known as the aurora borealis).

“In the past, researchers thought that the aurora borealis was too far away for people to hear the sounds it made,” Unto Laine, from Aalto University in Finland, said in a statement released today.

“This is true,” Laine added. “However, our research proves that the source of the sounds that are associated with the aurora borealis we see is likely caused by the same energetic particles from the sun that create the northern lights far away in the sky. These particles or the geomagnetic disturbance produced by them seem to create sound much closer to the ground.”

Laine and his colleagues determined the location of the clapping noise by comparing sounds captured by three microphones set up at a site with high auroral activity. Simultaneous measurements made by the Finnish Meteorological Institute showed a typical pattern of northern lights episodes at the time, researchers said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: GuideGunnar

BP suspends massive Liberty Project in Alaska

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BP has indefinitely suspended a $1.5 billion offshore oil project in Alaska due to cost overruns and technical setbacks, a company spokeswoman said on Monday.

An 18-month company review concluded that the Liberty project, a field with about 100 million barrels of recoverable oil, should not go forward as planned, said Dawn Patience with BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.

“We are not going to pursue Liberty in its present form,” said Patience. “The project, as it’s designed right now, doesn’t meet BP’s standards.”

Under plans submitted five years ago to regulators, Liberty would have been the first oil field located entirely in Federal waters offshore Alaska. Back then, BP expected production to begin in 2011.

A BP review found that Liberty — slated to produce 40,000 barrels a day — would have cost “a lot more” than the $1.5 billion BP had planned to spend there and would have taken several additional years to begin production, Patience said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  mikebaird

Alaska Tea Party Goes after Leftist Senate Coalition

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As the big field of Republican challengers jostles to get noticed against incumbent state senators, a common target has been emerging for many of them: the bipartisan coalition that has governed the Alaska Senate.

“It’s partially why I’m running,” said Mike Dunleavy, a tea-party backed Republican from Wasilla challenging Sen. Linda Menard, a first-term Republican and a member of the coalition. “I don’t believe the coalition represents the constituents. I think it represents itself.”

“Senate District K deserves to have a senator who stands firm on their principles by refusing to join a coalition that gives the Democrats control,” Jeff Landfield said in May when he announced he was taking on veteran Anchorage Sen. Lesil McGuire in the Republican primary. She’s also a member of the coalition.

And at a recent candidate forum sponsored by the Anchorage Tea Party, two other Republican senate candidates, Liz Vazquez and Bob Roses, signified in a panel question that they wouldn’t join a bipartisan coalition “similar to the one structured in the Senate.” Both are running in districts represented by incumbent Democrats who are part of the coalition — Hollis French and Bill Wielechowski.

To help defeat the “bipartisan” leftist coalition, please visit the Conservative Patriots Group and donate to their efforts.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: neolibertariandotcom

Russian bombers making practice runs on AK’s Ft. Greely, Vandenberg AFB over last two weeks

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Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers entered the U.S. air defense zone near the Pacific coast on Wednesday and were met by U.S. interceptor jets, defense officials told the Free Beacon.

It was the second time Moscow dispatched nuclear-capable bombers into the 200-mile zone surrounding U.S. territory in the past two weeks.

An earlier intrusion by two Tu-95 Bear H bombers took place near Alaska as part of arctic war games that a Russian military spokesman said included simulated attacks on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities.

A defense official said the Pacific coast intrusion came close to the U.S. coast but did not enter the 12-mile area that the U.S. military considers sovereign airspace.

The bomber flights near the Pacific and earlier flights near Alaska appear to be signs Moscow is practicing the targeting of its long-range air-launched cruise missiles on two strategic missile defense sites, one at Fort Greely, Alaska and a second site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Saad Faruque

So much for global warming: ice delays Shell’s Alaska drilling plans

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Heavier than expected ice in Arctic waters off Alaska will likely delay until August Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s (RDSa.L) long-anticipated exploration drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, a company spokesman said on Friday.

Shell, which wants to search for oil in what are considered remote but promising frontiers, had planned to start the wells this month, said Curtis Smith, a company spokesman in Anchorage.

Sea ice is “the number one reason we won’t be drilling in July,” Smith told Reuters. “At this point, we’re looking at the first week of August.”

While sea ice cover is sparse in most of the Arctic, ice off Alaska is thicker than in recent years, and that ice is melting fast, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Shell plans to drill two wells this year in the Beaufort at a prospect about 20 miles offshore, and three in the Chukchi about 70 miles offshore. Drilling must take place during the brief ice-free season, since federal approvals for the plans require that Shell cease all operations for the year by October 31.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  Derek Keats

Alaskan DOT signs hacked to read “Impeach Obama”

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Several electronic road construction signs around Anchorage were hacked late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Signs that normally display closure and detour information, like the one on Minnesota Drive near 100th Avenue, were changed to read “Impeach Obama.” That particular sign wasn’t fixed until sometime between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Thursday.

It happened because DOT says it doesn’t lock the boxes on the signs that hold the message control pad.

Construction managers say sign-hacking has never happened before, so they never thought to lock the boxes.

DOT says that changed this morning, and now all of them will be locked.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Tamara Douglas

Alaska Oil Output Drops Significantly as North Slope Production Declines

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Alaska crude-oil production dropped 11 percent in June from a year earlier, the largest drop in almost a year, after Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., operator of the cross-state pipeline system, conducted maintenance and as output from wells declined.

Production averaged 516,871 barrels a day last month, down from 581,297 a year earlier, the biggest decline since output fell 15 percent from July 2010 to July 2011, the state Department of Revenue said on its website. The pipeline delivered 570,770 barrels a day in May.

Production peaked for the month at 592,381 barrels on June 12 and fell to a low of 380,893 on June 2, when crews scheduled valve testing.

“Any fluctuations in throughput are due to planned maintenance,” Michelle Egan, a spokeswoman at Alyeska, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Output on the 800-mile (1,287-kilometer) Trans-Alaska crude system has declined annually since 2002 as falling yield from existing wells hasn’t been replaced, according to the state tax division. Crude-oil output from Prudhoe Bay averaged 305,132 barrels per day in June, down from 324,919 in May, the state said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman