Tony the Tiger?  No silly, Vermont Tiger!  For the last several weeks, I’ve been having a lot of fun sparing with the boys over at VT Tiger.  Too much fun I guess, since they appear to have unofficially banned me from commenting on their site anymore for some reason.  I’ve been amazed, in general, at how thinly-skinned most of them are over there at “the Tiger” (as they refer to it).

I’m still waiting for multiple comments that I’ve left on their site to appear in the following threads:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Yea, that’s eight different posts, and I’m not holding my breath.

Mostly what I’ve had some fun with over there at “the Tiger” was watching them defend the indefensible by trying to go on and on about how “non-partisan” they are over there:

See:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Mr. Art Woolf is a personal favorite of mine over at “the Tiger”.  I like his folksy style, and he seems to be the smartest of the routine bloggers over there.  He was at least smart enough not to wander into the minefield that I tried to plant in his way above when I expressed my glee at seeing that he was implying (what we both know wasn’t really true) that he was a supporter of the Clintons and the DLC in the 1990s.  

Another fine example of the type of “non-partisanship” (that’s been discussed here before I think) that “the Tiger” loves to engage in can be found here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where they say

the Democratic Party — and the environmental movement in general — have been taken over by more radical activists who seem to be inspired by the anti-technology Luddite movement of the early 19th century.

 

What a lot of people fail to understand about the environmental movement is that it’s really not about saving the planet.  The planet will be just fine.  It’s we that need saving…as we are slowly making our planet unlivable…for us.  I also don’t know of that many people that think that our planet is still governed by the Malthusian Cycle in a post-Industrial Revolution world.  A frequent Tiger commenter also laid another turd when he responded to this post by saying

the Constitution only guarantees the right to the ‘pursuit’ of happiness. It does not guarantee actual happiness.

Ummmm, I think he might have been confusing the Declaration of Independence with the U.S. Constitution.  One is the document that formed our government, and the other one didn’t.  

The comparisons that they sometimes draw over there at “the Tiger” are also quite humorous.  I loved when they tried to link obesity & energy efficiency together in this post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

and then they conveniently left out the part where the real reason that “fat people” might be cheaper to treat in the long run is that they tend to DIE sooner than other people…nice.

Or here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where they compare immigrant English lessons to health care reform.  I wonder if they actually feel that the public has no interest at all in having all incoming immigrants learn English?

Wild hyperbole is another theme that frequently comes up over at “the Tiger”, like here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where the political situation in VT is compared to fighting the Nazis in WWII.  Then, of course, they try and remember how “great” things were after Ronald Reagan saved us all.  I wonder though how we would be if we continued the move towards alternative energy sources that Jimmy Carter tried to start when he was in office.  Reagan even went so far as to take down the solar panels that the Carter administration had placed on or near the White House.  IMO, Mr. Jon Harrison has earned the nickname “Mr. Hyperbole” by many of his comments on “the Tiger”.  He’s one of the few routine posters over there that I have any respect for though.

In this post about health care policy:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

“the Tiger” asks,

Would it not be possible to design a system where the employees got the money and then went out and shopped for their own insurance?

To which I say, how about if we had a system where the employees got the money that their employers were spending on their health care coverage, then they only had to pay a fraction of that money to the govt. to pay for a single-payer health care system?  Sounds cheaper to me.

This Tiger post was actually inspired by a comment that I had made in an earlier post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to respond to this post on “the Tiger”.  I merely wanted to say that I do think it’s disturbing to boil down the entire VT Supreme Court system to “a few activist lawyers and judges”…see:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

Let’s hope that “Mr. Hyperbole” doesn’t ever end up in front of the VT Supreme Court, since he’ll likely find it a lot less forgiving and liberal…especially if he calls them a bunch of activist judges.  He also misstates the reason why the Brigham decision was made in the first place I think.  The Legislature had failed to act to make VT’s educational system fair.  I also don’t believe the court ever mandated a specific way to raise taxes for VT’s education system, which makes the “taxes imposed by the judiciary — taxation without representation” comment ridiculous IMO.  I also don’t think that the Legislature has failed to re-appoint any of the VT Supreme Court judges recently.  Perhaps “Mr. Hyperbole” would like to see judges directly elected by the people in VT?  

The other funny thing about “the Tiger” is that they apparently restrict comments that actually AGREE with the postings that they put on their website. For instance, in response to this post:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

I tried to say that I completely agreed with ending govt. milk price supports, but also that speaking out against them in VT would be like speaking out against ethanol subsidies in Iowa I bet.  I also completely agreed with the statement:

Housing for the young families that Vermont desperately needs can be built on the land that goes out of production.

So much for bi-partisanship…

In this post on “the Tiger”:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

I tried to post to agree with quite a lot of what was stated there in a rather ham-handed way.  I would have loved to have pointed out that the direct radiation from the Sun (mostly visible light) is a shorter wavelength than the longer wavelength of radiation that comes off of a body that’s been heated.  So, plant greenhouses can be designed to have glass panels that only allow the shorter, incoming radiation from the Sun to penetrate and that trap the longer, outgoing radiation from the stuff that’s been heated inside the greenhouse.  The Environment Greenhouse Effect is the reason that our planet doesn’t heat up to some ridiculously high temperature during the day and then cool down to some ridiculously low temperature at night.  In other words, we have an atmosphere that allows most of the incoming radiation from the Sun during the day to heat the ground (which, in turn heats the air above the ground) and then doesn’t allow all of the outgoing radiation from the Earth’s system to escape into space at night.  It is also true that the air above the Earth’s surface is mostly heated from below by convection and, to a much lesser extent, by radiation from the ground, while very little of the atmosphere is heated by direct conduction with the ground’s surface.  Sure, the fact that a greenhouse is completely enclosed allows for the heated air to remain in place longer than if there were holes in the greenhouse’s walls.  I also think that Mr. Wizard would have been proud of Mr. Decker’s little experiment, but I’m not sure what the real meaning behind this post on VT Tiger was.  He goes on to ask,

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as expected by its atmosphere?

Yes, since it is a portion of the global heat budget of our planet.  I like talking about basic meteorology and physics too.   🙂

Mr. Decker gets more to point with his next post here:

http://www.vermonttiger.com/co…

where he tries to poke fun at the “consensus” over global warming.  I’m not a fan at all of global warming, but the Russian claim that’s mentioned here was already debunked, I think, over on Charity’s website…see:

http://shesright.org/2008/02/0…

The other desperate Canadian plea for research money is just that…an attempt to scare people with supposedly “new” information that needs to be studied more.  It’s a shame that both sides of the global warming issue feel the need to scare people in order to gain money for their side.  I’m a big believer that the first thing that goes right out the window when an issue of science becomes politicized is the truth, unfortunately.  The 11-year Sun cycle has been well-know for many decades now BTW.  

So, the point of this too-long post is to try and encourage some of you to venture on over to our friends on the Right (you know…the VT chapter of “the free market will solve all our problems and the GOP has most of the best ideas” crowd) and voice your opinions.  Don’t tell them that I sent you though!  

I’m a firm believer that when two opposing sides engage in a vigorous and emotional debate on issues that BOTH sides come out the other side stronger.  It’s a shame that the guys over at “the Tiger” apparently don’t believe in that.

P.S. – This is my first, real, public blog posting…so please excuse any obvious posting errors on my part.

Last night, Donna Edwards not only defeated incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland’s congressional primaries, but she completely routed him.

Per Kos:

As I wrote time and time again, we don’t have the money to buy off our politicians, and the bad Democrats know we’re not about to start voting for Republicans. So the only way we can hold our caucus accountable is to send notice that we will primary them. And sure, they may survive such primaries. But sometimes they won’t.

[…]

Our caucus is once again on notice. If they continue to serve corporate interests rather than their constituents, if they insist on remaining aloof to the nation’s popular sentiment, they’ll get booted in a Democratic primary like Joe Lieberman in 2006 and Al Wynn in 2008.

Donna Edwards lost to Wynn by a slim margin in 2006.  Wynn’s corrupt party machine was too powerful and, in a non-presidential year, there wasn’t as much of an investment in the race.  That was then.  This is now.  Wynn had been in the house for more than a decade and now he’s out.  Pelosi had supported him.  

His career as a politician ended because Democrats who opposed him rose up and challenged him and came out victorious.  It ended because voters in Maryland decided that Edwards was the better Democrat and because with Obama firing up new, younger, voters, they came out in droves, supporting not just Obama, but Edwards as well.

This is a huge victory.

So I only have this to ask: how many of our own state reps and senators have failed to live up to their expectations and how many of us are willing to challenge those who have?

(Amen. – promoted by odum)

I went to school in Richmond, VA – capital of the confederacy.  A city whose main boulevard is adorned with monuments to Lee, Stuart and Jackson (more recently Arthur Ashe was added, but that was a bitter fight).  Many of my fellow students did not refer to the Civil War – it was the War of Northern Aggression.  The Stars and Bars hung in many dorm rooms. 

I have a deep love of the south – its people, food and culture, but I also have no illusions about its dark history.  Get outside of NoVA, Tidewater and Richmond and Virginia is a deeply southern state.  

Last night, 59% of white Virginian males voted for a black candidate for president.  A majority of rural voters did as well.  More Virginians voted for Obama than voted for the entire republican slate.

Are we living in the era of post-racial politics.  Certainly not and I doubt we ever will.  However, last night's results illustrate how much things change.

…I’m sort of glad I am, because it gives me advance notice of things like this:

“Sadly,” I can’t make the rally.