The Reformer today ran a story on an internal member survey conducted by EntergyNuclear’s lobbyist, which they call VT Energy Partnership. The story missed the best parts of the survey:

EntegyNuclear’s own club members prefer water power over nuclear by 28%! They prefer wind power over nuclear by 25%! And they prefer biomass energy generation by 14%!

Even among their own group’s membership, 20% oppose running the Vernon reactor for twenty more years!

Online polls such as this one are notoriously unreliable because they are not random. Only members of EntergyNuclear’s group were surveyed. The poll was stacked in favor of EntergyNuclear from the start, but even so, nuclear loses to other energy sources.

In failing to get comment from the majority of Vermonters, who want a safe, reliable and nuclear-free energy future, the Reformer printed EntergyNuclear’s bought-and-paid for interpretation of their survey results, without noting the real story: Even nuclear boosters like nuclear least.

Nuclear power has had its day. It’s too bad we’re stuck with a crumbling old reactor and a million years of nuclear waste in Vernon, for forty years of electricity.

 

While the (in my opinion) unreliably anonymous (and verifiably out-of-state, corporate) politickervt (which may or may not be any more accurate a source of information than the original PoliticsVT, we shall see…) is trying to paint Anthony Pollina as some sort of John McCain in the temper department, claiming that he’s been hanging up the phone on Democratic leaders who aren’t sufficiently responsive to his candidacy, what draws my attention and is a bit more… er, dependably verifiable… is his website. One thing we can be certain of is the fact that Pollina has – finally – begun reaching out to more of the Democrats he claims to need and want supporting him (although some key, and obvious, Democratic leaders have still not been approached, by him or his proxies). Could we be finally starting to see signs of this new-Pollina, who knows he can’t demonize and vilify a whole swath of voters whose support he needs? His early rhetoric suggests that he no longer expects some mythical wave of heretofore unengaged voters to carry him to victory over the political rubble of the Democrats, but rather understands he needs their votes, and must therefore build bridges rather than burn them, all in the interests of overcoming the common enemy. Well, I sure hope so, but I couldn’t help but notice that, on his new improved (and very nice, I might add) campaign web page, there are no attacks, disparaging comments or otherwise comparative assaults on Jim Douglas or the Republicans.

That’s not to say somebody isn’t attacked, its just not Jim Douglas. Who is the only visible subject of scorn on the new-improved, bridge-building candidate Pollina’s website?

Democrats.

But you probably guessed that already. Ahhh, here we go again.

UPDATE: Still no change on the website. Given that many on Pollina’s team have now read this diary and the reactions, they could easily have pulled the diary by now if it wasn’t their intention to get in a cheap shot.

…and, as readers have pointed out, the Reformer story that the excerpt links to is… er… parsed, shall we say. Interestingly (or maybe not so much), the “more” link on Pollina’s site takes you to another page on the same site with the “complete” article – except that it’s not complete. It only includes the piece that puts down the Democratic Party, and in fact removes pieces from the beginning, middle and end, making for a very different read – with a very different point. Curious as to what they decided to exclude? Here’s an example of the very next paragraph, that immediately follows the line shown (“It is frankly amazing to us that the Vermont Democratic Party continues to flop around, totally unable to come up with a credible candidate to challenge Gov. James Douglas in November.”)It’s still available in Google’s cache:

But perhaps this is starting to change. Former ambassador Peter Galbraith of Townshend paid a visit to the Statehouse on Tuesday to speak to the House Democratic Caucus, and he was warmly received. Galbraith has expressed interest in running for governor, but so far he has taken his time in making a decision.

A Galbraith candidacy is an interesting possibility. His bona fides as a liberal are unquestioned. When your father is John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the towering economic and political figures of the 20th century, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

His ties to Vermont go back to his youth and the summers and vacations he spent on his family’s farm in Newfane. He’s not a native, but then again, neither is Douglas.

ANd of course, there is no suggestion of where it is in any way edited on Pollina’s site – no elispses or anything – just the word “excerpt” near the top. They’ve essentially re-crafted it as their own and presented it as a complete piece. Tacky, tacky, tacky.