• More Secretary of State candidates? There’s hubbub that Dem Senator Bobby Starr and Republican Representative Peg Flory may be eyeing the Secretary of State spot, with Deb Markowitz all-but-officially leaving to run for Governor. Funny, but it seems like big news if the Vermont Republicans can come up with anybody to run for any statewide office. If true, the two would join former Chittenden Sen. Jim Condos who is also considering an SoS run.
• Sen. Susan Bartlett moving closer to a run for Governor? That’s what more folks are saying. Could the Lamoille County Senate seat be up for grabs (in a real way) for the first time in years?
• The always interesting Jon Margolis lays the definitive smackdown on Thomas Naylor and the Second Vermont Republic as only he can. It’s withering, and will probably become the go-to web reference piece on the topic in the future.

( – promoted by odum)

(This is a re-posting of something I put up on Integral Psychosis last Valentine’s Day; it’s proven to be pretty popular and I’ve gotten a bunch of emails about it, so I figure I’ll share.  Hope you enjoy)

In all likelihood, a national poll would identify Osama Bin Laden as the most wanted criminal alive today.  A similar global poll just might even identify President George W. Bush as the holder of such a title.  Even still, if asked to identify the most devious criminal mind known to man, the more “reality-challenged” among us may give Lex Luthor the distinction.  But here in Vermont’s Capitol City, evil knows a different name: the Valentine’s Day Bandit.  While many prefer to think of this monster as a miraculous, wonderful gift of kindness and caring benevolence bestowed upon the people of Montpelier by an anonymous angel, I think it’s high time to shine some daylight onto the truly nefarious and shadowy reality of the person who asks to be known as the “Valentine’s Day Phantom”.

For those who don’t know, since the early 1990’s a person (or group of people) has mysteriously rushed through Vermont’s Capitol City in the pre-dawn hours of February 14th, taping 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of white paper with a singular, large red heart onto buildings, shop windows, street signs, homes, and the like.  The result is that, come Valentine’s Day morning, hundreds, if not thousands of these paper images over-take the visual landscape of Montpelier in what is surely as near to a miraculous sight as many of us will ever experience.

But it’s come time we stop reveling in this mystery, and get about to the truth of the matter: the self-described Valentine’s Day Phantom is without argument a social deviant.  While in and of themselves, the facts may be small and capable of being ignored, taken together, the picture we can paint of the Bandit/Phantom is not that of an earthly angel, but instead of no less than the Greatest Criminal Mind of Our Times:

Environment destruction.  In this Age of Global Warming, we can little afford the excess of carbon released into our atmosphere by the lengthy and inefficient industrial process of paper production and distribution.  Is the further destruction of our planet really an exceptable “blowback” from an annual act of “random kindness”?  Further, though out of vogue for about 15 years, once upon a time us environmentalists rallied around cries of “saving the rainforest” (yeah, remember the rainforests? they’re still being destroyed, and at a faster rate, with no help from the Phantom’s wayward usage of paper products).  In addition, it would be presumptuous of us to assume that each and every one of these pieces of paper make their way to be properly recycled, which although is a process that is far from carbon neutrality in it’s own right, nonetheless keeps mass out of our landfills and avoids even further de-forestation.  And lets not even get into the environmental costs of the ink used to print the Phantom’s little “gifts”: from production to the moment it is discarded, that is not a pleasant cycle.

Plagiarism.  Surely one of the most despicable of crimes: intellectual crime.  The Montpelier Phantom has struck our community since the early 1990’s.  However, since at least 1976 a “Valentine’s Day Phantom” has committed the identical terror throughout the city of Portland, ME.  Come on, Phantom, couldn’t you have at least become the “St Patrick’s Day Phantom” or the “Easter Phantom” (hell, I don’t care if you’re the “Memorial Day Phantom”!); originality is what makes for true magic-your copy-cat ways make you a criminal fit for the original Batman TV serious, not our modern, sophisticated world.

The image that we commonly refer to as a “heart” (the image of choice for this particular sociopath) is, frankly, un-American.  We all know (now, thanks to the efforts of Pat Robertson, Fox News, and many others) that our nation is a Christian nation; “under God”, and with good, Christian values.  Well let me let you in on something here folks: that heart image is widely believed to derived from either Pagan or Hindu imagery, and in both instances likely not in away associated with monogamy, prudence, or chastity.  The leading theory of the origins of what we refer to as a heart- hape: the ancient Greeks (well-known for their Dionysian orgies and intoxication) arrived at the shape out of their worship of the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite.  According to Dr Pranzarone of Roanoke College in Virginia, she “was beautiful all over, but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful.  Her shapely, rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks.  This was probably the only religious building in the world that was dedicated to buttock worship.”  As well, long before any European records of this symbol, the heart-shape (or  shapes quite similar) have often been found within Hindu art associated with the practice of Tantric sex.  Whichever of these are the true origin of the image, it is certainly something you’d want to put your parental controls on for if there were a television special about it.

As with all truly terroristic crimes, it is not just the crime itself that we must fear: there is ample evidence that the Valentine’s Day Phantom is a gathering menace who seeks not contentment, but in fact will inevitably expand upon his/her hellbent agenda.  Put more straightforward, the Phantom represents the growing possibility of future attacks on our American way.  For instance, in 2007, the Phantom not only took the bold step of demonstrating his/her ability to operate regardless of the most extreme weather conditions (a fact that anonymous sources in the intelligence community confirmed to me were beyond what was previously believed to be the Phantom’s technological limitations), but as well, the Phantom clearly violated the PATRIOT ACT’s definition of a terrorist, when he/she sought to influence the government by covering the Statehouse with the largest of these heart’s.

Just imagine- is it really possible to send a message of strength, dominance, and Manifest Destiny across the globe when our governmental centers are decorated like this?  Can we really persevere in our friendly neighborhood feuds with New York and Quebec, or our not so friendly one with New Hampshire, with an image like this likely to fall into their hands at any moment?

Even more troubling, in 2008 the Phantom (or members of his/her decentralized cell) for the first time expanded their reign of terror beyond the City limits of Montpelier, into Calais, East Montpelier, and according to a source I spoke with early that morning, throughout the inside of a home in Plainfield!  As Kissinger warned us: one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch, and since we failed to put an end to this menace at it’s onset, we now find ourselves faced with the expansion, the spread, of this maniacal worldview which has infested our mid-winter slumber and threatens to destroy all that we stand for.

The leak that started Jan .7 is still leaking.  It is a 4″ steam pipe coming out of the reactor core.But the spinners spin the situation as naturally being under control and the NRC’s Sheehan as always makes it sound almost routine. Nothing to see here.Worth noting that in the last dog and pony publicity tour Yankee had through the plant as part of it’s image fluff-up no reporters were allowed . Jay Thayer Entergy VP said recently “We’re trying to bring a lot of the nuclear material down to a reading level where it will be understood by lay people and the general public,” Well most if not all lay people will understand leaky valve and unable to repair.

After two attempts, maintenance personnel at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have been unable to plug a leak in a pipe coming out of the reactor core. The leak was discovered on Jan. 7 in a valve gasket in a pipe in the plant’s reactor water clean up system. The leak rate of less than one-tenth of a gallon a minute is well within the plant’s technical specifications, he said, and is in the form of a steam plume. The leaky valve is in a four-inch pipe.

Ultra Light flexible non-restrictive ,regulating courtesy of the NRC

One option would be to power down the plant and install a replacement valve. Or it can continue to operate until the next scheduled or unscheduled outage and replace the valve then. Flexible ,regulating “The plant can continue to operate with the leakage for the time being,” said NRC’s Sheehan. “The leakage is being collected and then cleaned up.”

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_11704641

(Bumpbed back up to the top. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Yes, three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.

• Total number of GMD diaries (as of the writing of this diary – includes all user diaries and draft diaries that might never have made it): 4020
• Total number of GMD diaries by Jack McCullough alone (as of the writing of this diary): 101
• Total number of GMD pageviews (give or take…no site meter for the first month): approximately 1,332,000
• Most unique visitors to GMD in one day?: Approximately 32,000 (to view this diary)
• Highest user ID number (as of the writing of this diary): 1044
• Very first “real” GMD diary? VT Anti-Choice Forces Hitting Town Meetings (Wed Feb 15, 2006 at 01:13:45 AM EST)
• Number of diaries that used the word “impeachment”: 309

And now, for the trivia contest! The first folks to get right answers into the diary comments win the prize listed below. At least until I post the answers, then the game is over. And I'll do that whenever I get around to it. Let's say late Monday (and no, front pagers are NOT eligible. Buy yer own GMD schwag).

Hard trivia question: What was the first prominent national blog to put a link to GMD on its blogroll? PRIZE: A GMD bumper sticker!!! (Answer: MyDD.com)

Really hard trivia question: What local political figure stepped up to speak for Vermont Democrats by saying the following about GMD – “some of the local Dems are starting to get turned off on this site and the hate that is begining to spew here” ? PRIZE: A GMD mug!!! (Answer: Former VT GOP Director and current head of the housing section of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, Tayt Brooks!)

Super-amazingly hard GMD trivia question: When the blog first started, there were four people who agreed to be front pagers – myself, kestrel9000 (then blogging under the username Ed Garcia), Jack McCullough, and 1 other person who never posted a diary, and informed me a couple weeks in that she just couldn't make the commitment after all. Who was this person? (Note: There's no way in hell anybody could know this… I don't know if Jack would even remember, so just go for the wild guesses – you might get lucky). PRIZE: A GMD sweatshirt!!! (Answer: Former Windham County Democratic Committee Chair, Lynn Bedell!)

UPDATED (& hijacked by) Caoimhin:  Birthday Announcement & Update, after the flip . . .

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY John Odum

Happy Birthday, John, and know you have at least a couple of these babies coming your way.

Now, Enjoy Your Birthday!!!  Encore . . .

— from all the DFHs