Despite threats of rain, wind, cold, and even a Category 5 hurricane, the second annual Hamburger Summit went off at Burlington's North Beach yesterday. The usual suspects: bloggers and local pols, spent the afternoon on Vermont's West Coast enjoying the cool breezes off the beach, talking about politics, and occasionally dipping their kids in the lake.

Enjoy the pics:

The Burlington Free Press carries a story today about the defeat of the veto override and the angry reaction of Democrats to the Franklin County Dems, and particularly Ron Allard, for supporting Douglas'veto of the energy affordability and campaign finance bills.

This time, there could be ramifications back home. Franklin County Democrats said Wednesday's vote was the last straw and they'll push to find a candidate to run against Allard next year.

“There's great concern with Ron's positions,” said Lloyd Touchette of Enosburg Falls, chairman of the Franklin County Democratic Committee. “There's going to be a concerted effort to find someone to run against him.”

 The story quotes GMD front-pager Euan Bear:

“The idea that he couldn't throw one the other way certainly seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back,” said Euan Bear of Bakersfield, vice chairwoman of the county committee.

It also had a particularly bizarre quote from Allard, who apparently thinks that Douglas' phony affordability agenda is a real argument against conservation:  

On the energy bill, he said the efficiency program included in the measure won't help the people who need it the most and he opposes the $25 million tax on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant that would pay for it. “My biggest argument with a lot of bills that come out is we can't afford to live in this state anymore,” he said.

Apparently it hasn't occurred to Allard that providing funds for insulation and other energy conservation measures does help people save money.

You have to wonder how much his buddy Douglas can help him in the Democratic primary in 2008, don't you? 

I discovered this morning that the Bush presidency is a success.
Boy, was I surprised.

Bill Kristol explains it all in an article at The Washington Post that gets my recommendation for the Fatuous Nonsense of the Week Award.

He opens by admitting that such an assertion may expose him to some “harmless ridicule” and proceeds to offer two pages of proof as to why such ridicule might be justified.

“Let’s step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let’s look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil — not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy — also something that wasn’t inevitable.”

Sure Bill let’s examine the Bush presidency by not looking too closely at the “unlovely trees” by which I assume that you refer to the death and destruction that follows everything this administration has touched or even glanced at in the last seven years. Every time I hear that bromide about “no second attack on US soil,” I’m reminded of the old elementary school joke about keeping the elephants away, and the punchline, “you don’t see any elephants around here, do you?

It may be that there have been no attacks on US soil because we have thoughtfully accommodated the terrorists of the world by presenting them with such an attractive target as our presence in Iraq. They don’t need to come here to hurt us, we have been expending blood and treasure in copious amounts for something like 52 months in their home ballpark. We’re the ones with the long supply lines, they need only a bus ticket or cab fare from Damascus, Waziristan or Riyadh.

We’re losing over a hundred of our troops every month and probably eight to ten  times that many wounded, while bringing about the deaths, maiming or ruin of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and inviting the continued and well deserved scorn of most of the civilized world, as we merrily mass produce Islamic terrorists by the battalion in Iraq. All told, I think it would be cheaper to fight them here.

But cost is not an issue is it Bill? As one of the principal architects of this criminal madness, I’m sure that you find great comfort in the fact that the lion’s share of the trillions of dollars of public funds being expended in pursuit of empire will end up in select private hands, which is the primary goal of those you represent, more money, more power in the hands of the bloated few and the rest of us standing in line for a minimum wage that you hope to eliminate.

“What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.”

If after nearly six years “reasonably well” means that Kabul is generally safe for the activities of journalists, arms merchants and drug smugglers, I suppose that’s true, but what about the other 95% of Afghanistan?

Just across the border in the wilds of Waziristan, Osama and his henchman are thriving, living in relative safety, knowing that American forces have other priorities, are bogged down in Iraq and long ago stopped caring about them. They’ve been operating there with impunity ever since our military was directed to allow them to escape from the caves of Tora Bora.

You guys (That’s you Billy, you and Daddy Irving, along with Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, PNAC, American Enterprise, the whole stinking, chicken hawk cesspot),you guys, didn’t want bin Laden then, and you don’t want him now, he’s your rainmaker, you can’t afford to lose him, he’s the driving force behind the enormous profits in your ongoing rape of the public treasury. You need Osama, if he went belly up tomorrow you would have to replace him quickly, the continued existence of the bogeyman of “Islamofascism is the centerpiece of your ballgame.

“But wait, wait, wait: What about Iraq? It’s Iraq, stupid — you (and 65 percent of your fellow Americans) say — that makes Bush an unsuccessful president. Not necessarily. First of all, we would have to compare the situation in Iraq now, with all its difficulties and all the administration’s mistakes, with what it would be if we hadn’t gone in. Saddam Hussein would be alive and in power and, I dare say, victorious, with the United States (and the United Nations) by now having backed off sanctions and the no-fly zone. He might well have restarted his nuclear program, and his connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would be intact or revived and even strengthened.

The lies contained in the quotation above have been repeated over and over by every hack, crony and crook in this corrupt administration, by every spineless lickspittle Bush backer in the Congress and by every slimy seditious war profiteer, in every sector of American business, from energy to finance and by a sizable number of the loyalist clergy from the pulpits of the tin hat theocratic right. They were lies in 2001, and they remain lies today. Repetition will not change the facts and those who do the repeating are transparent liars. Please Bill include your name in that column.

“Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president. And that brings us to Bush’s final test.”

Pity the poor next President as he tries to present other countries in the region (or in sub Saharan Africa; that’s the next stop on the old Empire express isn’t it?) with an opportunity to share in the beneficence we bestowed on their Mesopotamian neighbors. See how they run!

If we sustain the surge for a year and continue to train Iraqi troops effectively, we can probably begin to draw down in mid- to late 2008. The fact is that military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected, and political progress is beginning to follow. Iran is a problem, and we will have to do more to curb Tehran’s meddling — but we can. So if we keep our nerve here at home, we have a good shot at achieving a real, though messy, victory in Iraq.”

When and how, Billy, did you become a strategic thinker, a military analyst, it wasn’t in Vietnam where, I’m sure, like so many other young men of your generation, you were offered an opportunity to serve, it wasn’t in any area of military service was it, no, like Cheney and Wolfowitz you had other priorities.
Oh yeah, they once called you Dan Quayle’s brain, didn’t they? I think I’d try to get that off the resume.

Let me remind you that by mid to late 2008 we will have thrown away the lives of an additional thousand or more young American troops and sent another 8000 or so to enjoy the tender mercies of an underfunded veteran’s health care system. How many more innocent Iraqis will be killed if we listen to you. Oh, that’s right, no one’s counting Iraqi casualties are they? Why start now?

You are so smugly certain with your pronouncements. To the uninitiated, your words, accompanied by the self satisfied grin, have a veneer of respectability and authority, but, to many of us who have been on the receiving end of what you call “American foreign policy” they are just more self serving, chicken hawk, patrician prattle.

Here’s one of your pronouncements of a few years back, at the beginning of the Iraq war, for which you beat your little drum so loudly, and so frequently, you said this:

“There’s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.”

Oh? Really?

I hope that there is a special place in Hell for the Goebbels, the McNamaras, the strategic thinkers and systems analysts, all the accountants of carnage and human misery and I hope that you have the opportunity to join them.

But before that lovely and eternal event I would like to see you in uniform, and fallen, after many grueling months of terror and sadness, of heat and sleeplessness and extreme exertion, of living in filth, fallen, grievously wounded, frightened and alone, lying in a pool of your own blood and gore, your life ebbing before your eyes. I would like to see the look in your eyes as you realize that you are about to be the last American to die in Iraq.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

Why Bush Will Be A Winner

From today’s Rutland Herald, Cash-strapped towns embrace wind projects:

Clinton and Ellenburg [both in neighboring New York] are cash-strapped communities dependent on dairy farming and jobs in towns miles away. Wind turbines mean subsidy money in the town coffers, and opportunities.

“It’s going to help the school out. It’s helping everybody out with their taxes,” said Trombley. “It’s helped a lot of people as far as work.”
[…]
Several towns in western Rutland County may soon have to make the same choices that Trombley and her neighbors faced. Noble is eyeing the ridgeline around Grandpa’s Knob as a site for another wind farm, and already has begun preliminary tests and talks with landowners in Castleton, Hubbardton and West Rutland. The company has set up an office in the Chittenden Building in Rutland.

Trombley acknowledged the wind turbines generated some debate; and there was a steep learning curve among some residents. But Noble worked with the communities, and even individual landowners, to allay concerns. It did not persuade everyone.

For Trombley, it comes down to one thing: making farming a little more practical.

“Put aside everything else, if you have the land and it makes your life easier,” she said. “My husband’s worked hard all his life, and I look forward to the day he can slow down a little. I’d love to be able to cut back a little bit and take it easy.”

Whenever I visit the Western part of the state, I see huge tracts of open farmland which would be perfect locations for wind turbines.  Arrangements where Farmers agree to allocate small portions of their fields for a power system in exchange for a subsidy to cover the lost land plus a percentage of the profits are, as far as I’m concerned, win-win: clean fuel product with no negative effect on the environment.

As far as ridgeline turbines go: I totally get that people are afraid of losing the aesthetics of mountain ranges.  This is a big deal and if we start producing wind turbines on Vermont’s mountain tops, someone’s going to feel like they lost something precious.  I don’t blame them. 

I also, however, think there’s real damage to not adapting to new sources of power.  Wind and solar are existing technologies which work and don’t produce damage to the atmosphere.  They’re more efficient than biofuels and have the potential to draw back long-term damage to the environment produced by greenhouse gases.

The RNC has actively joined in with the unreasonable, unprecedented, and unconscionable assertion of “executive privilege” that seems to apply, not just to anyone President Bush may have ever been in a room with, but any email that an executive branch employee may have sent through the RNC servers in an (obvious) attempt to circumvent the law. From Salon:

 As part of the ongoing investigation into the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, the committee has been since April seeking e-mails, sent by White House officials using RNC e-mail accounts, which might relate to the investigation. The committee's subpoena calls for the RNC to turn over “complete and unredacted versions of any and all documents consisting of any e-mail communication or related meta-data stored on Republican National Committee servers… that the Republican National Committee is withholding.”

There's no official word from the RNC on whether or not it will comply with the subpoena and deliver the rest of the material covered under it — indeed, the majority of the material covered — by Tuesday. But their statements thus far seem to indicate that they will not.

Although boards are generally indemnified from the illegal actions of staff, that doesn't get them off the hook morally. Given that we have two elected members of the RNC in Vermont – George Schiavone and Sara Gear Boyd – one wonders if it isn't time for some member of the fourth estate to ask them whether they support the illegal rejection of a subpoena in their name. I'd certainly like to know.

( – promoted by Vermonter)

Michelle Gardner-Quinn, the young woman who was murdered after being abducted on Main St. in Burlington last October, was an environmental studies student. Two days before she was murdered, she submitted an essay, entitled “This I Believe,” on her dedication to the environmental movement.

Well, some very famous women (as well as Michelle’s mother) just got together to read excerpts from her essay.

It’s a very moving tribute.

Michelle’s full essay can be found here.

Per The Rutland Herald:

A day after the Legislature failed to override his vetoes, Gov. Jim Douglas on Thursday labeled legislative Democrats “big losers,” faulting them for what he said was a lack of civility.

“I think the big losers yesterday are the Democrats. I’m sure they understand that. They decided to bring the Legislature back and suffered two defeats,” Douglas said.

I think it’s time we start to really seriously look at why this guy keeps getting reelected and how to keep this sort of nonsense in the public eye.

These are the 11 Ds who supported the veto of 520

Franklin-2      St. Albans Town George  Allard
Chittenden-7-1  Colchester      Jim Condon
Bennington-2-1  Bennington      Timothy Corcoran
Chittenden-6-1  Essex           Debbie Evans
Franklin-3      St. Albans City James Fitzgerald
Franklin-4      Enosburg                Avis Gervais
Franklin-2      Fairfield               Richard Howrigan
Chittenden-6-2  Essex           Tim Jerman
Franklin-3      St. Albans City Kathleen Keenan
Franklin-6      Richford                Albert Perry
Orleans-Cal-1   Glover          John Rodgers

Most of you know me as a result of one specific action I took shortly before the 2006 election.  Namely I accidentally uncovered a set of policy statements and press releases from Martha Rainville which were stolen from other politicians and then sent evidence of those stolen statements pretty much everywhere I could find.  Since I’m a frontpager now, I’m posting this to give a little more context to who I am and what my interests are.  So… 

I’m an avid bird photographer and musician.  I also design web sites professionally and teach a variety of subjects at the undergraduate college level.  As a hobby, I design a variety of puzzles (word, math, logic, etc.) and, for personal reasons, I refuse to post solutions to the puzzles.  I figure, if you want the solution, you can take the time to solve the problem.

I’ve lived in Vermont since 2000 and have been an off-and-on activist my whole adult life.  My activism started in the 1980’s with protests against US covert support of the Contras in Nicaragua and has continued on a wide range of issues– HIV/AIDS, animal cruelty, LGBT issues, environment as well as a host of others.

I should probably clarify my positions:

LGBT issues: I’m for full equality under the law, which means either equal marriage rights, or (my preferred solution) leave marriage to religious institutions and treat it as a contract issue with respect to civil marriage; full employment equality under the law,

Environment: I’m strong proponent of natural resources and leaving large tracts without human interference or with only very low-impact use, such as the Nature Conservancy sites around the world.  I’m also a fan of buildings which work with the environment rather than treating it as an enemy to be tamed.  I heard a piece on NPR a few months ago about temporary housing which was designed to be torn down and turned into gardens when it was finished.  I.e., the walls were made of biodegradable material and inside the casing was topsoil with seeds– after a year of living in the housing, you tear down the walls and put it on the ground and, viola! — instant garden.

HIV/AIDS and animal cruelty: I’m against them both.

I’ve never identified with a formal political party and I’m not a great fan of either Democrats or Republicans, but for me it’s more a matter of being able to enthusiastically support about 30% of what Democrats do and 1% of what Republicans do. There are some great Democrats out there who are often hindered by the more mediocre elements of the party.  I’m a fan of the phrase “more better Democrats.”  I.e., it’s not about getting Democrats elected.  It’s about getting more good democrats elected.

I’m a big fan of people being smart.  I don’t mean intelligent which has a lot more to do with genetics and upbringing, but I mean being willing to think things through and look past the simple and obvious choices.  There are all sorts of excuses for not being good at thinking past obvious solutions.  There are no excuses for not even bothering to try.

This, of course, gets me in trouble.  I have no respect for stupid and there’s plenty of stupid from people both left and right and I’m not particularly hesitant to identify something as stupid, even if it makes my own side look bad.

I am a strong believer in civil dialogue, even (maybe even especially) when someone’s being very nasty to me.  Civil dialogue doesn’t mean I don’t stand up for myself or allow myself to be bullied.  It means I don’t engage in name-calling and if I say something that’s going to be taken as an insult I be very specific and factual in terms of what, exactly, I am trying to say and why I think it’s relevant.

Okay, I think I’ve said enough about me.  I’m going to end with a little video I stuck on youtube awhile ago– just an improvisation of some guitar stuff that I did for fun.

(WOW! Check this site out!

-Note from odum: This is so cool, I launched one for all Vermont over lunch. I’ll populate it tonight or for tomorrow’s lunch… – promoted by odum)

Have you seen the 2008 Race Tracker wiki? While we’re hot about the vetoes on two vital issues, can you help flush out the  VT-Gov 2008 page?

Here is some info on the site:

2008 Race Tracker
Welcome to the 2008 Race Tracker wiki. The goal of this site is to track information on U.S. elections taking place in 2008. For now, the focus is on Senate, House and gubernatorial races. We’re aiming to input data on possible candidates for every such election in the nation. Please feel free to dive right in and add what you know. We strongly encourage you to use the built-in templates.

If you’ve heard about a candidate possibly running for office, please either include a link to a reputable news source or clearly note that what you’ve added is merely a rumor, an educated guess, a recruitment idea, or just “conventional wisdom.” (Rumors are okay! As long as they aren’t completely without basis in reality.)

These are the main pages:

Gubernatorial Races

House Races
Senate Races

Sub-pages dealing with each race branch off from each of those. For House races, each state gets a sub-page, with individual races branching off at that point. For some examples, check out NH-Gov, MT-Sen, the Arizona House main page and the AZ-08 page.

Sponsored by the Swing State Project and DailyKos.