With 59% of precincts reporting, C-SPAN is now calling the Nevada caucuses for Hillary Clinton.
Did Edwards skip Nevada? He's really nowhere.
(UPDATE: But who really won? Obama got more delegates! Nevada is weird. American elections are weird. I'm going to bed. -odum, 10:45 PM)
I’ve heard that Jack McMullen is a pleasant fellow personally, but I’ve always wondered about his, well, intellectual prowess, shall we say. Coming to prominence as he did swooping in from Massachusetts to run against Senator Leahy, without even bothering to fully move to Vermont wasn’t perhaps the most well-considered decision. After a humiliating loss in his own primary to protest candidate Fred Tuttle, he strangely decided to run again against Leahy – and was soundly (and predictably) pummeled.
Today he’s back with an op-ed in the Free Press that is a little, er, embarrassing. His gripe? The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG). Specifically? He is upset that they have views on issues. And that they advocate for them in the legislature. And then they keep advocating for them. And those views aren’t generally considered Republican ones.
He considers this “corruption.” Hoo-boy.
Now, VPIRG and its Democratic allies are back again. Why is VPIRG so determined to try to pass a campaign finance law of the type just declared unconstitutional?
Uhhh… for the same reasons they’ve supported previous campaign finance efforts, perhaps? Because they think they are the right thing to do? And because they are supported by members who agree?
Gimme a freaking break!
Does he mete the same criticism out to GOP anti-abortion activists who try, time and time again, to make progress on their issue, despite numerous failures at the Supreme Court level? In fact, given their change of fate with the Roberts court, Pro-Lifers are the poster children for sticktuitiveness on constitutional matters in public policy.
in recent years VPIRG has been, in reality, little more than a lobbying enterprise for special interests which, in large measure, fund it — primarily corporate wind power and alternative energy interests.
“Special interests,” of course, being the meaningless catch-phrase for any lobbying efforts that one does not agree with. I don’t even bother with the term myself, anymore, as it’s become utterly meaningless.
The campaign finance bill in question was sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Ed Flanagan, who is also a member VPIRG’s board of directors. In addition, Scudder Parker, who ran for governor as a Democrat last time around and has served as the Democratic Party chairman, is now a hired lobbyist for VPIRG. Senate leader Peter Shumlin has been referred to only half-jokingly as the senator from VPIRG. And the current Democratic chairman, Ian Carleton, has also worked with VPIRG. If the Legislature is looking for corruption or the appearance of corruption to fix, it should start by looking at VPIRG and its relationship to the Vermont Democratic Party.
McMullen’s definition of corruption: someone effectively promoting interests that don’t line up with his, and working with others who agree.
Or perhaps its just corruption if you work with Democrats.
In any event, I’m sure former VPIRG honchos such as Anthony Pollina and Peter Sterling will be intrigued to learn that VPIRG is just an organizational stooge of the Democratic Party.
Part of the story behind Huckabee is the idea he keeps pushing that he's a conservative, but he isn't the mean kind of conservative you may be used to.
Still, if he's the nice, amiable type he wants you to think he is, what's he doing cozying up to the neo-Confederates down in secessionville?
You probably know who David Goodman, Amy Goodman's brother, is. You might not know that he lives in Waterbury, and is married to State Representative Sue Minter.
Anyway, David Goodman spoke at Vermont's finest public library last week in their “Why I Love . . .” series, and his topic was “Why I Love Dick Cheney”.
I admit that I'm somewhat baffled, too. You can read an interview in which he mentions, among other things, Dick Cheney and his underling, George Bush.
You can also check out a DVD of the lecture at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. That's what I think I'll do.
( – promoted by JulieWaters)
Dan Froomkin offers the latest storyline regarding 500 days of missing emails in the White House between 2003 and 2005 Spokesman Tony Fratto does an amzaing job of news bending in response to the question of the missing emails:
Q: “So where are they?”
Fratto: “Where are what? . . . We have no reason to believe that there's any data missing at all — and we've certainly found no evidence of any data missing.”
Q: “So that would mean that if you were asked, you would be in a position to comply with a request to produce those documents?”
Fratto: “Yes, which documents?”
Full text on this subject below the fold.
Q Tony, on the subject, could you address the missing White House emails and the law suit? It is a subject of reports this morning. Are there in fact the emails missing? What's the likelihood of their recovery versus the —
MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this, and you saw the court filing on this, and our declaration in response to the judge's questions — I think to the best of what all the analysis we've been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there's no evidence of that. There's no — we tried to reconstruct some of the work that went into a chart that was entered into court records and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart. And from everything that we can tell, our analysis of our backup systems, we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing.
Q So where are they?
MR. FRATTO: Where are what?
Q Where are part of —
MR. FRATTO: Which email? Look, no one will tell you categorically about any system — any system, whether it's your system at Bloomberg or our system here at the White House, past and present, categorically that data cannot be missing. All of our review of it and all of the our understanding of the way that the backup system works, it's a backup system that captures existing data, it captures things that are stored and archived. We have no reason to believe that there's any data missing at all — and we've certainly found no evidence of any data missing.
Q So that would mean that if you were asked, you would be in a position to comply with a request to produce those documents?
MR. FRATTO: Yes, which documents? I mean, if someone has a specific request for documents and they would like us to search for particular emails, of course we could search for emails — and we have. And we have been responsive to requests in the past.
Q And they have been produced? They do exist?
MR. FRATTO: We have produced emails upon request, either for our own internal review or sometimes in response to investigations that have taken place on the Hill. I mean, we have been able to go back and find email. The question is, have we been able to find a large mass of missing email? No, we have not located somewhere in the system the absence of something. We have not been able to note the absence of anything in our databases.*
Q You're saying they're there, you just haven't located them yet?
MR. FRATTO: No, I'm saying we have no evidence that shows that anything at all is missing. And you're saying, well, have you found the missing emails — and we say we have no evidence that anything is missing.
Q So you're saying that would include emails that were erased from the Republican National Committee system that was used by some White House officials?
MR. FRATTO: I can't speak to the RNC's system of archiving and storing email. All I can tell you is that the email on the White House computers, we have no reason to believe that any email or other data are missing.
Olivier.
Q Yes, I want to follow up on that, I've taken a real sky view of this particular story, but — so it was wrong to say a few months ago that there were possibly millions of emails missing?
MR. FRATTO: I think those charges came from outside the White House. I think that's the charge of one of the —
Q One of your colleagues addressed those from the podium and suggested that that was accurate — again, I'm taking —
MR. FRATTO: I'm not sure what was said on that. I can tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any email at all are missing.
Meet the Front Pagers:
Jack McCullough Co-founder Jack McCullough is a lawyer who lives in Montpelier, Vermont. He is involved in mental health advocacy and local and state politics. He is also the current Chair of the Washington County Democratic Committee and the Montpelier Democratic Committee.
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Julie Waters was an environmentalist, a gay rights activist and a general supporter of the rights of everyone to live well. She was also an avid bird photographer and musician who did other work (primarily consulting and teaching) to fund her hobbies. Our Julie left this world for whatever lies beyond it on April 8, 2012. Her presence here will always be greatly missed.
Examples of Julie's photography and music can be found at her web site: juliewaters.com |
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Sue Prent Sue Prent was born in Chicago in 1950. Together with her Canadian-born sculptor husband Mark, she has lived in Montreal, Berlin Germany and finally settled in St. Albans in 1987. Together, they own and operate a fine art molding and casting business there, make a little art and mostly manage to tread water. Sue is a confirmed believer in social responsibility and environmental stewardship. She is proud to be a member of the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth.
JD Ryan, formerly known as, "That guy with the crazy hair at the DNC " is one of those not-a-Democrat front pagers Odum warned you about. Has a penchant for bad Italian Western movies, outdated music, going into abandoned mental asylums, activism, and general rabble-rousing, all of which he torments people with on a regular basis over at Five Before Chaos. Also prone to funky bass playing and atheistic rantings. Do not take with other medications, strong side effects may occur. Not as crazy as Ed Garcia (see above), nor is his resume as remotely interesting as any of the other GMD FP'ers.
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Front Pager Emeriti:
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Da Rules (largely lifted and re-worked from Daily Kos, 'cause who wants to re-invent the wheel?):
Green Mountain Daily was started by progressive activists in the Democratic Party, and maintains that focus. It is our intention to promote both left-minded policies and candidates. It is believed that no institution can be healthy without a capacity for rollicking self-criticism, and part of the purpose of this site is to provide such health to the Democratic Party for its own good. We're all sure it will thank us for this some day.
On the other hand, the criticism of Republicans is not done for the health of their institution, but rather to try and do our small part to protect the state and the world from utter destruction at their hands. Perhaps they'll thanks us some day too, but we won't wait up.
The current crop of front pagers includes some who do not consider themselves Democratic Party activists, and the site remains open to all, but don't expect a parade if you've come to evangelize about the evils of all those who call themselves Democrats. You're liable to get back as good as you give, no matter how much you might chose to whine about it. In other words, if you can't take it, don't shovel it. Please remember this is not a newspaper, public park, government service or political party. That means there are rules. If you dont like them, you are encouraged to start your own blog. There are lots of free ones.
So, here's how it works:
How can I post here? First, you need to create an account. You can post a comment immediately after logging in with the password you receive from your registration email, but you have to wait a day before posting a diary.
The User Menu When you log in, you'll notice a user menu on the top of the right-hand column. There are links for creating your own diary, as well as going to your own user page, where you can create a profile for yourself that can be as detailed or as skimpy as you like. Explore the links and you'll find that most of the options are reasonably intuitive to someone accustomed to using computers and interacting on the web. For technical tips, see "Technical tips" below (well.. as soon as I write those up – they're not quite available yet)…
The front page The first thing that you see when loading the site is the front page. Most of the stories on the front page are written by designated front page posters, but we frequently "promote" good user diaries to the front page, especially when we're all feeling to lazy to write anything. On the right hand side, you'll see the "recent diaries" column, which is where user diaries appear. If you are logged in and you click on a link opening up a user diary, you'll have the option of recommending it via a button on the right hand side. Recommended diaries get highlighted a bit higher on the page and do not scroll off as new diaries are written, giving them special emphasis for a few days. Most of the action takes place inside of diaries where the user comments appear.
Comment ratings: Comments can be individually rated logged in users on a 1-4 scale, with 1 being "unproductive" and 4 being "excellent", with the rest covering the range in between. If a user receives a small handfull of "excellent" ratings, they become a "trusted user" and have the abilit to rate comments with a zero, or "troll rating." This is a rating reserved for comments which are not designed to add to the discussion, but serve to disrupt or derail it, usually (but not exclusively) by calling other posters names, posting defamatory material, etc. If a comment receives a handful of troll ratings, it becomes "hidden," causing it – along with any responses – to be visible only to trusted users. Troll ratings are not to be handed out because of disagreement with a posters ideas, for retribution for other ratings or conflicts, because of personal dislike of a poster, or because somebody was simply being crude in a jovial way, with no intention of offending.
How to get kicked off the site Troll rating vindictively is considered ratings abuse, and can be grounds for banning from the site. Receiving excessive troll ratings on multiple comments indicates a desire to disrupt conversation, and can also be grounds for banning. Posting defamatory material can also lead to a user being banned. If a banned user creates a new user ID and attempts to return, they could also be subject to banning (although if you're actually trying to participate in discussions,we'll probably look the other way on that one)
Caoimhin Laochdha lives in central Vermont, is a life-long civil liberties activist and offsets his carbon footprint by growing his own energy and riding his bicycle without a helmet. Every election cycle, since Gerald Ford's social promotion to the Oval Office, Caoimhin has volunteered for at least one Democratic presidential campaign that ultimately finished in second (or lower) place. He operates a really small farm that raises 
Kagro X (David Waldman) Sorta co-founder (From dKos:) A participant in online communities since the early 80s and a former Capitol Hill aide and Hotline staff writer, David now works in marketing so that he will not be eligible to answer telephone surveys. He has developed a particular interest in lending to the discussion the procedural knowledge he gained from C-SPAN immersion therapy during his days on the Hill, and as a result holds the world record for Longest Online Series on Parliamentary Maneuvers that Didn't Happen, namely, the Senate's "nuclear option." David is married to a moderate Democrat who once helped launch FOX News, and worked for the parent company of Eagle/Regnery Publishing, though in fairness, she was young and needed the money. The children are being raised as Democrats, so there is no need to call the authorities.
