“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

The only thing that surprises me about this is nothing.

And the bigger issue — 

Were I a profiler working for the FBI, or a sociologist looking to identify a particular mindset, and someone asked me to locate a suspect who fit the following description:

White, Insular, Republican, Christian, Conservative, Xenophobic, Superficial, Secretive, Militaristic, Anti-Social, Cheneyite.Twinkle.In.John.McCain's.Fading.Eyesight & Right-Wing Representative of the GOP “Face of **cough** Change” —

 — then, basically, I'd tell them to belly up to the lunch counter, open their ears and be on the look-out for a glossy and shallow GOP elected official from the Newt Gingrich school of buzzwords and dissembling who might be:

eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

Bingo!

I really do not expect any better from Governor Palin, and I am expecting much worse between now, and Post-November 2008, when the wingnut welfare checks start pouring into her trusty “job.well.done.Republican.hit.(wo)man.fringe.fascist” post-election payoff bank account.” I do not expect any better from a incompetent small town mayor sailing on creationism and corruption, and certainly neither does John McCain. Neither did the Republican delegates in Minneapolis. That's the point.

This is the face of conservative Republicanism. Behind that face, millions of unevolved descendents from Jim Crow, George Wallace and Ronald Reagan, what the press euphamistically refers to as “the base,” are riding McCain's neanderthal express, vying for the first seat on the bus to nowhere screaming “that's the ticket!”

There comes a time in each administration when they have lost the right to point to the last one and say, “It's all their fault.” I think that point has long since arrived for Douglas, don't you?

Douglas was first elected Governor in 2002, just shy of six years ago, and he's now running his third reelection campaign. His official bio touts the idea that he has been serving the people of Vermont for more than thirty years.

You would think that sometime during those thirty years he might have learned that bridges have to be maintained, that they don't just go on forever without periodic infusions of capital, but apparently not.

What's this leading up to? Oh nothing. Just the fact that once again a major bridge has had to be closed down before it falls into the river.

MONTPELIER – Another key bridge in the state has been closed because of safety issues.

Richmond's Bridge Street Bridge, which connects the town to nearby Interstate 89, had already been reduced to a single lane several years ago due to the conditions. This latest development had state and local officials scrambling for a solution.

What's the opposite of a ribbon-cutting?

(The following is the last piece I wrote for the UK Guardian’s online coverage of the Democratic Convention, but it got to them apparently just too late to get posted. Rather than see it languish in oblivion, I thought I’d post it here, even though its not so timely…)

It’s safe to say that most of us who are reasonably civic minded get a thrill out of the first time we vote in a major national election. To the new voter, it is a new experience that blends one’s voice with those of millions of other voters’ to collectively make one of the most important decisions that can be made, while also tying us to a tradition of Democracy that spreads out over centuries. It’s at once empowering and humbling.

But come middle age, many of us may have problems remembering the particulars of that first election in which we cast a ballot.

That likely won’t be the case for Vermonter Taylor Bates who, in his first year of voting eligibility is not only being introduced to the Democratic process through the ballot box, but by being a floor delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Bates, 18, only just graduated from High School in Vermont and found himself in the midst of an experience very nearly unique to one of his age.

Bates, who campaigned tirelessly and effectively to be elected a delegate, was encouraged to make the unlikely effort (which put him up against party regulars and officeholders) by his high school debate coach. “I attended meetings across the state, sent out a mailer, bought an ad in the program, and baked about 600 brownies for the other state delegates.”

After the historic nomination acceptance speech by Presidential candidate Barack Obama, an apparently exhausted Bates was clearly inspired. He was pleased that Obama had “addressed nearly every challenge to the Obama candidacy: attacks on his patriotism, his experience, his celebrity status, and most of all his ‘vague’ speeches. I was thrilled by the enormous amount of time devoted to policies and contrasts with McCain.”

Bates is also a star of Vermont delegation for reasons beyond his age. He alone in the delegation responded to a national challenge for delegations to attain carbon offset credits for collective carbon neutrality.

“I bought the carbon credits for all 27 of our delegates myself, which cost me about $200, for which our state received special recognition.”

If there is any doubt as to whether this will be his only foray into the political world, Bates added “I love politics the way most people love sports. For me, this is the Olympics, the World Series, the Super Bowl, only instead of being just a spectator I can make a difference in what happens on the field. In politics, the team with the best supporters wins, something I can appreciate as a Red Sox fan.”  

No operation smooth ride for 6,000 people that need this bridge for their daily transportation .As with the last bridge closure commuters ,commercial vehicles and more importantly emergency equipment will need to take detours around the deteriorating bridge .The bridge’s priority for repair has been advanced from 99 to 17 after being declared unsafe.The situation seems to demand that we do more rather than continue with do less as a policy .

State transportation officials shut down Richmond’s main bridge over the Winooski River Thursday evening after discovering that steel under the structure had deteriorated to the point it was no longer safe for vehicles.

…Filkorn said the bridge is used by about 6,000 people each day coming in and out of Richmond. Its closing will add at least a dozen more miles to commutes, he said, and threaten to leave the downtown businesses looking like ghost towns.

And perhaps even worse, the shut-down bridge creates major headaches for local emergency officials. The local fire department has stashed one of its trucks on the other side of the river just in case, Filkorn said.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps…

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance:

After the Harold Ford campaign two years ago, and, for that matter, forty years of Republican tactics, we knew that the racist attacks on Obama were on the way. Arguably we've seen them already in the commercials juxtaposing Obama with young white women like Paris Hilton.

Still, you have to figure that they weren't planning on being this blatant about it. This comment by a Deep South Republican inadvertently reveals what they really think about the idea of having a black president:

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.
 
Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.
 
“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

You know what word usually comes next.

Another of Bush’s departments may be finding a way out of enforcing  consumer and worker protection laws. Perhaps this has potential Vermont implications. The whistleblower protection law part of Sarbanes -Oxley Act may have a hole worn in its enforcement by the Department of Labor .The Labor Dept. is claiming that employees of corporate subsidiaries aren’t covered under the law .

Sharon Worthy, a Labor Department spokeswoman, said the agency “believes that there is no legal basis for the argument that subsidiaries of covered corporations are automatically covered” under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower provision.

With another view is Senator Leahy who was involved in the writing of the law quoted saying that the law was written to be broadly interpreted “It prohibits publicly-traded companies or “any other officer, employee, contractor, subcontractor, or agent of such company” from retaliating against employees who provide information or assist in investigations related to alleged fraud.”

The government has ruled in favor of whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002, according to department records. Another 841 cases have been dismissed. Many of the dismissals were made on the grounds that employees worked for a corporate subsidiary, says Richard Moberly, a University of Nebraska law professor.

This may be a stretch and a needless worry.More likely just another added ,maybe unforeseen benefit of forming Enexus.Enexus will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Entergy maybe immune from the whistleblower regulation as the Bush labor department sees it .Who knows how this could play out in the event of a whistleblower coming forward with some grievance .However given the Bush Labor Dept’s enforcement it might make it unlikely if not impossible for someone to take that risk without protection under law .If ever an industry required complete whistleblower protection it is nuclear power as practiced at Vermont Yankee.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

Congratulations from your dir7yf(_)ckin64ippi3 friends.

Giorraionn beirt bothar

ps. (below)

Because of timing and logistics, we weren’t able to have an online debate between the candidates for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor (as we did with candidates Dunne and Tracy two years ago). I have, however, sent a ten question email to candidates Tom Costello and Nate Freeman, and will post their responses Sunday morning. If both candidates do not return the questionnaire, we will post the response of the one that does. There hasn’t been much (any?) opportunity to compare and contrast the two candidates side-by-side in the press, so this should be a good opportunity for Democratic primary voters to see how these two pretenders to the Dubie throne stack up. (Just heard over the radio that VPR will be talking about these candidates on VT Edition today. Here’s a link.)

Between now and primary eve, we will run a Lite Gov preference poll on the top right.

Iraq War veteran and Bellows Falls native Liam Madden is in this morning’s Brattleboro Reformer. Madden travelled to both party’s conventions with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) to demand a full and immediate withdrawal of American troops in Iraq.

In the Twin Cities, Madden said the GOP was not receptive (surprise, surprise). In Denver, it was a different story. Robert Plain writes the following.

“We marched right through the front gates of the Democratic National Convention,” he said proudly.

They told the guards they had a letter they wanted to deliver to Sen. Obama … the Obama campaign agreed to meet with leaders of IVAW behind the police line.

“It was the first victory of the anti-war movement in seven years,” Madden said. “They didn’t just send some Secret Service officer, they sent a senior official. it was the first time a protest ended in something other than everyone just going home.”

Madden and a group of veterans delivered the letter to Phil Carter, Obama’s senior veteran’s affairs liaison. During the meeting, Carter agreed to meet with IVAW at a later date. Madden is hoping he may get some face time with the nominee himself, as well.

Despite the good news, that still didn’t stop Madden from criticizing both parties.

On Barack Obama.

“Obama has presented himself as the anti-war candidate and he is not,” Madden said. “He said he wants to remove all the combat troops, but there are tens of thousands of non-combat troops in Iraq, too. He hasn’t committed to removing them. He’s just repackaged the war and re-selling it to the American people. It’s still the same war based on the same lies. It’s still the same violation of the Constitution.”

John McCain.

“McCain is obviously not supporting the troops,” he said. “As far as their voting record on veteran issues goes, Obama is clearly doing a better job.”

To read the full article click here.

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding the conventions, I think it’s imporant that we give Madden, IVAW, and other anti-war groups appropriate face time. They are too often ignored for all the great work they do and it’s important we support their efforts. Especially Madden, a Bellows Falls native.  

Per today’s Rutland Herald:

Neglected maintenance on the brakes on a Vermont Yankee refueling floor crane failed in May as it was holding a cask full of spent nuclear fuel because Entergy Nuclear failed to correct ongoing problems with the crane, a recently released inspection report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated.

The crane has accumulated seven problems in more than three years, a result of “Entergy’s failure to take timely and appropriate corrective action,” the special inspection report stated.

But not to worry.  I’m sure they’re doing everything else just perfect.