As soon as they all become official (which is still an ‘if’ with Shumlin, not an ‘if’ with Markowitz), I’m hoping to send a questionairre to all the Dems vying for the state’s top spot. Everybody gets the same questions with the answers to be posted side by side here with a front page link on the sidebar throughout the election season.
I’m sure I’ll have a couple of my own, but I’d like to lean on the community for many of those questions. What do you think? What should they be asked?
The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
(Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election, NY Times, 07/04/09)
There is something happening in Iran, and I’m still trying on those shoes. This Iranian story has staying power.
Yes. It’s true.
You won’t have Sarah Palin to kick around any longer.
You know what this means?
No Palin/Jindal 2012.
That’s right, comedians: no one’s going to do your work for you.
What’s on your mind today?
Until about two weeks ago, I was out walking and birding every morning. It has been so soggy lately that I’ve been seriously missing my walks and I’m not certain, but I think I may have forgotten what the word “crisp” means.
But still, I’ve managed to have a little luck here and there. After the fold, I’ll be presenting photos from the last few weeks of a few different birds and insects, but I’ll start with this Butterfly from last week:
No idea what it is, but I love the look of it.
UPDATE: I’ve since learned it’s a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell. Cool!
A few quick notes:
Baby Barn Swallows
Baltimore Oriole
Blue Jay Feather
Eastern Kingbird
Mystery Butterfly
Mystery Dragonfly
Northern Flicker
Northern Rough-Winged Swallow
Red-tailed hawk in flight
Scarlet Tanager
Veery
Yellow Warbler
Once again, I hope you enjoy this collection of birds, birding and insects, and feel free to use this as an open birds & birding thread.
Odum did a fine job below in regards to the so-called "tea party" "movement" and explaining how it's going to try to basically inflate its numbers this Independence Day weekend, cornering the market on "patriotism". Considering how much of it's based on deception, that's not surprising.
Something else not surprising? Despite the repeated insistence of many of its organizers that it's a "non-partisan" event, it's not surprising that the Anti-Defamation League just released a must-read report, non-partisanly entitled White Supremacists and Anti-Semites Plan to Recruit at July 4 Tea Parties.
The Tea Party phenomenon, which began with anti-tax rallies staged across the country on April 15, 2009, will continue as activists in almost every state are planning similar events on July 4. Notably, white supremacists are again planning to participate. As they have done with other political and social issues, for example, promoting the Ron Paul campaign and using the immigration debate, white supremacists and anti-Semites are planning to exploit Tea Parties to disseminate their hateful views and recruit a larger following.
According to the report, there's been an uptick of activity on the Neo-Nazi site, Stormfront, with lots of comments similar to this:
"A big crowd of irate White folks protesting the government seems like the perfect time and place for us WN's to promote our cause, at least to my way of thinking."
"I think they'd be ideal for spreading WN literature and gaining recruits in large numbers, more quickly."
Yes, I know, one can't judge a site solely by its comments, but we are talking one of the biggest hate-sites on the web, here. That's not all though, as apparently, a group called "Whites Forward" has formed another group, Tea Party Americans Coalition (TPAC), with the expressed function of spreading their message at these rallies. I guess they know a good opportunity when they see one, eh?
Now, of course, in no way am I trying to paint all of the teabaggers with some broad Anti-Semitic brush. Even though they're egged on by some of the most deluded, immoral characters we know of such as Glenn Beck, by no means does one going out and protesting tax breaks for the middle class and expressing feigned outrage at Obama over things that were just fine under Bush equivocate somehow with being a jack-booted skinhead. Even I can see that, through my hopelessly partisan worldview.
But I don't see too many of those Stormfront guys at any of our rallies, do you?
Moving from Burlington to Montpelier (and on a non-election year to boot) may have predictably dropped turnout from the 80-90 range down to around 30-40, but a fun time was still had by all.
Some pics follow on the flip, courtesy of others with still cameras…
Here’s me with some guy who showed up to scam the free food. I think he was trying to sell me a car.
As has been broadly publicized, the teabag crowd is planning for an encore performance:
Are you fed up with a Congress and a president who:
- …want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
- punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
- admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
- run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
- want government controlled health care?
- want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
- refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
- appoint a defender of child pornography to the Number 2 position in the Justice Department?
- want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
- want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home heating fuels?…
…If so, help organize and/or participate in a Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party in your community on July 4.
No doubt local organizers will again attempt to suggest that their local events are in no way tied to or influenced by the national movement, with its clearly articulated conservative agenda and its plain genesis in the GOP media infrastructure. All those other demonstrations in other states, as well as the Fox News reports are simply coincidences. The fact that these demonstrations are petrie dishes for nasty displays of bigotry is either ignored or not their problem. The blatant hypocrisy displayed by the fact that none of these people got off their duff during the excesses of the Bush era? Well… they just don’t talk about that.
This is not to say there aren’t plenty of people involved who think they are doing the right thing, but there’s a point at which willful blindness does entail a degree of moral culpability. In this case the blindness comes with being used as meat puppets for a mega-corporatist agenda to reduce regulations and tax burdens on the biggest, richest exploiters in the nation – the very ones who bear ultimate responsibility for the financial cliff working people are in the process of being driven off.
Listening to the self-promotional ads for the local “demonstrations,” though, one could be forgiven for concluding that organizers may be more interested in promoting themselves as celebrities than engaging with an economic reality that doesn’t fit into the neat little prepackaged box they’ve so happily allowed themselves to be handed.
If I sound upset about this I am, and for a particular reason. In scheduling these demonstrations around July 4th festivities, organizers are nakedly attempting to co-opt crowds that are not their own, in order to give the photographic and propogandistic appearence of a broader base of support. Since the turnout disappointed during their original displays, they are now seeking to indentify where the crowd is and moving their signs there, rather than try and draw crowds on their own merits.
What does this mean at a personal level? We on the left have, for our entire lives, put up with being called treasonous and unpatriotic for views that, from my perspective, are the essence of patriotism. 4th of July celebrations, however, provide a break from that. I can stand in a crowd, cheeringthe fireworks along with everyone else around me. The guy next to me might be the worst kind of bigoted, scary, fascist hate-monger – but in that shared moment, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
But along come the corporate organizers of the national teabaggery, who see our nation’s birthday as every bit as exploitable as the willing, reactionary stooges they find so ready to promote their self-serving agenda on the ground. This 4th of July, rather than being content with coming together for that one fleeting time a year, teabaggers everywhere will crash celebrations of unity in order to pointlessly divide us to the best of their ability.
And they will all pat themselves on the back relentlessly for doing so.
Vermont’s tax commissioner, Tom Pelham, is moving over to the job of deputy secretary of administration (Pelham will change roles, Times Argus, 07/02/09).
Okay, nothing strange there.
Pelham is apparently on the same page as Douglas in that tax increases can and should be pushed through, but don’t call these tax increases tax increases … either refer to them as “fees” or simply do it under cover of darkness.
In Pelham’s case it was the cover of darkness. A few years ago Pelham, as tax commissioner, decided to impose a massive (and I do mean massive … thousands of dollars a year in many if not most cases) tax increase on Vermont’s developmental home providers when he unilaterally re-interpreted state law on what was and was not taxable income.
The issue centered around room and board payments, and these payments to the home providers had always been considered and treated as being non-taxable income. Pelham didn’t like that, and not only did he do a 180 degree re-interpretation, but he also wanted it applied retro-actively.
(I actually argued in favor of the change but vehemently against the retro-active nature of the application.)
It took Vermont’s legislature to put into statute what they always meant (and how the law had always been interpreted until the Douglas/Pelham tax hike proposal). In the end, despite Pelham, the taxable nature of the room and board payments returned to where the legislature had originally intended them to be.
But that’s not the whole of today’s morning headache.
Buried in the above mentioned news article is this jem:
McIntire has also applied for an early retirement incentive made available to state workers in legislation this year. McIntire would be eligible for a retirement incentive if she won the lottery, through which 300 early retirement spots are chosen. Nearly 1,000 state workers could potentially qualify.
That’s right folks, the early retirement incentive put into this year’s budget with the intention of helping to clear out some of those jobs Douglas wanted to see done away with is being sought by somebody who is leaving a position that isn’t being done away with!
Ouch! Bringing a dead of night tax increaser closer to Douglas’ bosom, and seeing one of his well paid higher ups who’s position isn’t going away looking for an incentive meant to help cut the number of state employees … that’s a real headache.
Governor Douglas may have found himself a little green piece .Greenopia a glossy green website that looks to be based in California has rated Governor Douglas in the top ten greenest governors .The announcement already found it’s way onto the Vermont State website “It’s an honor to receive this recognition,” said Governor Douglas.
from Greenopia …
As of this writing, Governor Douglas has not taken any Political Courage Test, but the Vermont Government page has a list of all of the Governor’s initiatives and interested parties can read more about these programs.
Greenopia does have a useful comment section .
http://www.greenopia.com/USA/G…
http://www.vermont.gov/portal/…
Here’s the scoop from vtbuzz. Remsen doesn’t indicate whether or not GMD bloggers made it up.
