Occupy Anchorage is real. I was depressed after attending the last one I went to. I left this one singing from Nabucco.

Longtime journalist and award-winning author Joe McGinniss’ newest book, The Rogue, is the latest – but by no means last – book about Sarah Palin. Palin is not only the most famous Alaskan in history, she has uniquely combined political activity, celebrity, motherhood, grandmotherhood, a spousal relationship, borderline religious beliefs, professional victimhood, the American gossip universe, pop culture, legal obfuscation, new media and social networking. Increasingly known for being thin-skinned and somewhat lacking in spatial awareness, Palin, more than any American politician in a generation or so, almost begged McGinniss – or any investigative author – to move next door.

The Copper River is under increasing pressure from every direction, but the number of fish caught annually there over the past 40 years has stayed remarkably close to the same from decade to decade. The first year I caught a salmon at the Copper River, was as a commercial gillnetter, in 1974. The most recent ones were on Thursday, as a personal use dipnetter.

President Obama announced in his weekly address a plan to open part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil drilling. Through an executive order, the President would also extend leases in the Gulf of Mexico for oil concerns that were subject to the moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil disaster, as well as speeding up evaluation of resources in the Atlantic, extending other leases in Alaska and building incentives for oil and gas companies to use land they own on existing leases on land and sea.

It was inevitable that oil-producing states would get representation like this. And yet every state is a gas-consumer state. Every state is a taxpayer state. Every state has constituents who give their money to the government so a sliver of it can be handed over to the same billionaires who charge $4 a gallon for gasoline. And these billionaires are the same people who think being denied that corporate welfare is actually un-American.

Dunn divides the book into a prologue and four parts. The prologue describes the continuity of her falsehoods and their uses, from her beginnings to the present. The four parts, in turn, concentrate on her ascension in Alaska, from Wasilla to Juneau; the 2008 national campaign as John McCain’s running mate in a presidential contest; her return to Alaska until the July 2009 resignation; and her national presence over the past 20 months, as a unique sort of new wave political grifter who combines televangelism, celebrity cult social media presence and radical right-wing hate subtexts in unique ways.

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Miller’s bid yesterday to challenge the Senate election, where Murkowski won as a write-in candidate. Miller has until Monday to decide whether to take his case to federal district court, and Judge Ralph Beistline, who is holding up certification of the election until Miller exhausts his options.

A brief look at what’s happening in the news on Thanksgiving morning, 2010.

After having spent five months in the Gulf, I decided to read Bob Cavnar’s book of the story behind the Deepwater well blowout starting with chapter 7 on the “BP-government merger.” This was one of the most troubling twists in events that I had witnessed in the Gulf. I figured if he could shed some light on this, then maybe he would have frank insights on how we got into this mess – beyond the human error – and how we might avoid another.

The last week of the Senate race in Alaska has been pretty chaotic. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is reportedly going up with last-minute ads, sensing an opportunity. It’s going to be a wild finish.