(Because it’s so much fun to live this close to a ticking time bomb. – promoted by JulieWaters)

At some point they really better give up on this excuse that these leaks are not uncommon.The point and the problem is exactly that are common

 

September 17, 2008 Vermont Yankee is at 55 percent power this morning for repair of a packing leak in an expansion joint in a pipe that carries river water in the east cooling tower, Entergy officials said today.

It appears that the leak of about 60 gpm is related to the packing in an expansion joint and not related to structural issues as had been the cause of previous river water leaks in the cooling tower.

While packing leaks are not uncommon, plant management took the conservative action to reduce power and remove the cooling tower from service to allow an inspection of adjacent pipe joint packing, officials said.

The west tower remains in service and plant operators expect the repairs and power reduction to be of short duration.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

The Sarah Palin stuff is annoying but this one should grant an exception.

Raw Story is reporting that Republican veep nominee Sarah Palin credits her electoral success on a preacher who claims he can successfully hunt down witches. Raw Story’s John Byrne writes the following.

“In 1988, Pastor Muthee and his wife traveled to Kenya after being “called by God.” Setting up shop in the basement of a grocery store, they claim to have brought 200 people “to God” and away from the town’s “spiritual oppression.”

The source of the oppression? Witchcraft, Muthee says. When researching the community, they found that a woman named “Mama Jane” ran a divination clinic that drew a large following in the town.

“We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place,” Pastor Muthee said.

Muthee made his experiences into a video called Transformations, which documents his “spiritual warfare” against demons and occult practices. Spiritual warfare is more common in Latin America and Africa, where the concept of day-to-day demons has a stronger hold. The video’s trailer is available here.

Here’s the video of Palin crediting the pastor.

So much more. Read the rest of the story here.

From Green Mountain Daily

At 7:30 this evening the Fed delivered an emergency plan to rescue AIG because, simply put, they have to.  Without stepping in, the global market could crumble in either days, weeks or just a couple of months

Conservatives wail and moan as if the heavens are falling when the topic of single payer health insurance comes up.

“Socialized Medicine!” they cry out.  Doom, despair!  It's the end of capitalism as we know it!

Well, look at what's getting “socialized” now. 

Here's the Fed's emergency plan:

the Fed will make a two-year loan to A.I.G. of up to $85 billion and, in return, will receive warrants that can be converted into common stock giving the government nearly 80 percent ownership of the insurer.

The US Government will own 80% of the largest insurance company in the world.  

Financial “conservatives” will be quick to argue that the Fed's 80% takeover of AIG is necessary — which is absolutely correct.  But that doesn't make it any less than 80% government owned.  In fact, it's about 8 steps out of 10 in the direction of what we can call “Socialized Insurance.”

Ok, so I'm having a little fun with this.  As of tomorrow the US won't actually “own” AIG; it will own warrants which can be converted to common stock.  But still, that's a pretty tight leash.  

But in the face of financial disaster, you gotta keep your humor, right?

So here's what I'm thinking:  as long as we're socializing finance by purchasing the world's largest insurance company…

…maybe we can put “US/AIG” to work by directing it to offer single payer health care.

Now there's a thought….

Sorry it’s taken me so long to post this, because I really do think this is a big deal.

The Vermont State Democratic Committee met Saturday mainly to adopt its platform. One of the other items on the agenda, though, was to choose our electors for the presidential election. These are the people who, if Barack Obama wins in Vermont in November, will actually cast Vermont’s three votes for Obama.

And guess what: longtime GMD front pager and current poster Euan Bear (NanuqFC) was chosen as one of our electors. Euan’s also the chair of the Franklin County Democrats and a tireless worker. For many years the way the electors were chosen was that the inner circle would nominate a slate of candidates and that slate would be voted up or down, essentially ratifying the choice of the insiders. As a grassroots leader, Euan worked on the Rules Committee to make sure that this year, for the first time, there would be an open vote.

The fact that she got the nod from her fellow State Committee members is a testament to the high regard in which her hard work and dedication are held.

Congratulations, Euan!

(crossposted on Five Before Chaos.)

I just have to chime in on this “McCain invented the Blackberry” nonsense that’s making its way around the liberal blogosphere. Now, yeah, I get it, it’s funny because it’s the same contextual bullshit as that “Al Gore invented the internet” nonsense back in 2000. And I guess on one level I can appreciate the fact that the Dems are finally figuring out that stupidity works better than just about anything else when reaching the American voter.

Sure, point out how McCain hasn’t been at the forefront of supporting groundbreaking technologies and hasn’t authored any law on expanding wireless technologies. I’m all for embracing their tactics, as I’ve said before, with one exception: don’t make stuff up. Am I remiss here?

Finally. A poll!!! Man, I feel so much better now. And waddayaknow… all those people telling me I was mistaken for referring to Anthony Pollina as “Mr. 8%” were right after all. Just not in the way they meant.

Let’s look at the basics as reported by WCAX. (We’ll work on getting the crosstabs and mining a little deeper ASAP)

With the election less than two months away, a Channel 3 News Poll shows Republican Jim Douglas has 48 percent of the vote, Democrat Gaye Symington at 33 percent and Independent Anthony Pollina with 7 percent. 12 percent are undecided.

No surprises, unfortunately. For a while on this blog and off, we’ve been saying the first poll would likely be around 50-35-10-5. I just wish I’d been wrong about that.

All three candidates are a bit lower than I would’ve expected, and the undecideds are higher, which is the big story here. the WCAX report doesn’t give details, but their usual go-to polling firm is Maryland’s Research 2000. Last time, they used a sample size of 400, which was an extremely low sample size. Usually, 600 is considered minimum – with only 400, you’re looking at a whopping 5% margin of error. Short of having the data to look at (when I get it I’ll post something new), let’s just work through the WCAX report…

(UVM Political Scientist Garrison) Nelson says Pollina’s single digit number could be moving up; the poll was done before several endorsements, including one by the teachers’ union this week.

It’d be nice to think so, but we’re looking at four consecutive cycles of gubernatorial races where the recipient of union endorsements – in both two and three person races – seemed to receive no bump from such endorsements. If they had, we’d probably be looking at a different Governor by now. As such, I’d say looking for a bump is wishful thinking.

The incumbent has a 48 percent favorable rating, 43 percent unfavorable.

This is significant, and by all rights should be scary for Douglas. It continues a trend we saw vividly laid out in last year’s poll, and suggests that trend is accelerating. AT that earlier poll, Douglas’s re-elect numbers were in the low 40’s, but his positives were still in the 60’s. That right there represented a significant drop off from previous years, but now we see that the positives are giving way to inevitability and moving to match his re-elect numbers, rather than the other way around. Bad, bad news for Jim Douglas’s political future, at least in the long term.

Unfortunately, that erosion isn’t translating to approval for his opponents. Instead, its translating to the undecided column. SO where will those undecideds break? For that, we look to the favorable/unfavorables of his opponents:

Gaye Symington has a 37 percent favorable rating, 15 percent unfavorable, and 48 percent have no opinion.

Anthony Pollina has 41 percent favorability, with 33 percent unfavorable, and 26 percent had no opinion.

Symington and Pollina both have comparable approval numbers. Pollina’s are higher, but (presumably) within the margin of error. But his unfavorables are double Symington’s, and his “no opinion” is 22% lower. This tells us a couple things: one, that Symington’s name recognition is still lagging Pollina’s, and two that voters are more inclined to dislike him than Symington by a significant amount. Remember – if that discrepancy were only due to Pollina’s advantage in name recognition, you’d expect the favorables to show a similar spread, but their favorables are equal even given the recognition gap.

And this is the best news for Symington. It means that people likely aren’t feeling as negatively toward the legislature (and by extension Symington) as both the Douglas and Pollina camps keep insisting. It also means that if she can boost her name recognition, more of those undecideds will break her way than Pollina’s.

And Douglas needs to worry about something else – namely, breaking that 50% limit and keeping this out of the legislature, where long-frustrated Dems might well hand the election to their Speaker. All things being equal, one would expect many – probably most – of those undecideds to break Douglas’s way. But looking at this poll combined with the previous one suggests downward momentum for Douglas, which makes those undecideds a very shaky bet for him.

More as I get data…