Lost in the white hot glow of Obama’s election night victory was news that United States Senator Ted Stevens (R, Alaska) was locked in an exceedingly tight contest with his Democratic challenger, Mark Begich, the Mayor of Anchorage. Even now, more than one week after the election, no winner has been named in what is shaping up as a crucial race that will help determine control of the Senate.

Stevens, an icon in his state who has held federal office since 1968, was convicted on federal ethics charges the week before the election, having failed to disclose a number of lavish gifts bestowed upon him by friends, lobbyists and contractors. This development prompted the majority of political pundits to write him off and other politicians to call for his resignation.

On the weekend before the election, Stevens returned to Alaska and addressed his followers in an airplane hanger. Ever the pugilist, the Senator defended his record and defiantly proclaimed his innocence (”our founding fathers knew that mistakes could be made and innocent men could be wrongly convicted…this is one of those times”) which provided some red meat for his Luddite supporters. As the New York Times reported, Stevens spent more than half of his 8-minute speech besmirching the prosecutors in his case.

Many of Steven’s partisans felt quite strongly that their man was the target of a highly orchestrated smear campaign waged by Dems from the “outside,” as the rest of the world is colloquially referred to in Alaska. Some of them expressed themselves, rather crudely I might add, with the tees pictured below, which apparently, were officially commissioned by the Alaskan Republican party (according to an informative blog post on DemocraticUnderground.com).

As at least one chronicler has noted in his blog, there’s a certain irony in this state-federal schism:

“It is a bit strange to me that a state that has benefited so much from out of proportion Federal outlays — Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950) — would hate the Feds so much.”

The good news: even if Stevens is reelected by a razor-thin margin, he’s facing certain expulsion from the Senate by his peers.

B’lam! Leave a comment or hit me back: travis@founditemclothing.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 12:43 pm by Macho Slut and is filed under Blinded By The Light, ConTEEversy, Current Events, Douchebaggery, Guilty Pleasures, New T-Shirts, Problems (Everybody Has At Least One), T-Shirt Trends, T-Shirts in the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.