Elise Sereni Patkotak

Here’s the lines in Senator Kevin Meyer’s Sunday opinion piece that actually made me spit up a bit. “After hearing a ‘budget first’ mantra all year, the governor chose to include issues on the special session ranging from insurance to foster care guidelines. These issues are important but are they urgent compared to addressing the $4.1 billion deficit and impending flurry of pink slips?” He goes on to moan and whine about how it’s all the fault of the governor and the Democrats despite the fact that his party controls both Alaska Houses.

So let’s take a look at some reality here. If in fact Mr. Meyer has been hearing a budget first mantra all year, why don’t we have a budget? Lest there be any doubt, all of us here in the hinterlands heard that mantra. We simply couldn’t figure out how supposedly intelligent legislators managed to work for four months and still come up looking surprised that they accomplished absolutely nothing.

The sun is shinning, the trees are blooming, the flowers are blossoming, so it must be baby bird season.

Baby birds are not terribly cute except in a “so ugly they’re cute” fashion. The first thing you think when you see a featherless baby bird is dinosaur. Because this is exactly what a naked little baby bird looks like.  Birds are descendants of the dinosaurs that once roamed this earth.

So this is what it’s come to. Statesmanship, patriotism, the welfare of our country, not giving the button to nuclear weapons to a reality star… all this goes by the wayside because party unity and hating the Clintons is more important. I have been disappointed in our congressional delegation many times in the past but this time is the worse. They are all uniting behind Donald Trump because they believe defeating Hillary Clinton is more important than electing someone with even a modicum of credentials for the job of United States President.

This is like a patient asking for someone who just got a nurse’s assistant diploma from DeVry University to do their open-heart surgery because they don’t like the highly credentialed surgeon available for the procedure.