update The order’s currently stayed, so we’re not there yet
So, it’s official: Vermont is no longer cooler than California.
Full text of decision here.
I never thought, for a minute in my life, I would be thanking Ted Olsen for anything.
Another link (hat tip Daily Kos): New York News
Also, in fairly hilarious news, apparently the Prop 8 supporters wanted this ruling stayed so as not to put gay couples through extra pain.
This segment is Bernie introducing Kate Kanelstein from the Vermont Worker’s Center, along with her comments on poverty and health care:
This is the last of the videos with poor video quality. On the plus side, it turns out that my microphone works extremely well, which is good because doing audio in a crowded room can be very tricky and it was my first time trying it with this camera.
Lisa Clarke from SEVCA (Southeastern VT Community Action) speaks about how much additional stress is being put on services today:
We’re hearing this everywhere in the state: agencies which used to have downtime for providing assistance don’t have that. The need out there is beyond the capacity of many organizations to meet and technology only serves us to a certain extent.
I’ll be skipping a couple clips because the item I really want to get to for tomorrow is probably my favorite moment from the whole meeting and it’s how I think it’s best to end the series for the week. After tomorrow, I’ll resume with other clips starting next week.
First, I’m going to start with an apology. The video quality in the first few videos is poor, primarily because I switched to a lens I’d never used for video before and didn’t realize it was out of focus. So the first 3-4 clips I’ll be presenting have great audio quality but the video is nothing good at all. This is especially a shame because not only was Bernie’s introduction excellent, Peter Shumlin’s short speech was outstanding.
Both are available after the fold.
After the 3rd or 4th video (in future pieces), you’ll be getting much higher quality videos, most of which will be in high definition. Uploading the HD videos is a very slow process so it may take some time to get everything up, which is one reason I’m splitting this up into stages.
This first segment is specifically about health care, but other issues are touched upon as well.
Last night we attended a Bernie Sanders town meeting in Putney. I took a lot of video. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be uploading those videos, one clip at a time, posting videos with brief commentary.
For today, I’ll just mention one thing: Dunne and Shumlin had supporters at this event working the crowd. Not one other candidate did. I honestly have real trouble understanding why anyone running for Governor wouldn’t make sure that someone’s there for any Bernie Sanders town meeting. That’s a major missed opportunity.
It was a great event. Some of the speakers were pretty incredible, and Bernie was awesome as always.
Lots more once I get the videos uploaded.
This is going to be a bit of a departure from my usual birding piece. Instead of focusing on a trip, a specific bird or a location, I’m going to do a virtual art show.
You see, I’ll be the featured artist of the month at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor’s Center next month. It’s my first solo art exhibit and I’m a bit excited. The show runs throughout the month of August, but you guys can get a sneak preview here. There’s also a virtual gallery available my web site which has more of the prints than I’m presenting here. So… below, join me for an exhibit featuring some of my favorite photography from the past few years.
I don’t always stop to take photos of geese, but this time, they were being fairly entertaining with one another, engaging in some spring mating rituals, when I noticed this one flying in. From the series of photos I got as it landed, this was my favorite by far
The blue-winged warbler is a lot of work to photograph, but also a lot of fun. This one had been around the day before, and I got some shots, but this time it just popped up in a tree almost directly overhead.
Butterflies can be a fun challenge, but sometimes the results are quite striking
This White-Sided Dolphin was part of a large group that followed our boat for some time while we were out on a whale watch.
Some of the best photos I get come from just being in the yard. I always keep my camera outside of me when I’m doing yardwork. This time, I spotted this toad jumping away from the mower. I grabbed my camera and took a few shots and fell in love with this one
Sometimes I get photos that I don’t realize I’ve had. I was taking photos of the butterfly on the flower, and hadn’t actually noticed the 2nd one coming up from behind until I looked at the photos later.
This fox sometimes pops up in our neighborhood, but the first time I saw it was the only time I managed to get photographs of it.
One of the advantages of a very fast camera is that you can sometimes get an image of a bird between two stationary moments. In this case, I just happened to capture this Northern Cardinal as it was jumping from one branch to another.
When hummingbirds first fledge, they are fairly voracious. I was able to get this photo simply by stalking the bee balm plants from my porch and waiting for the birds to come around. On a good day, they’d show up every 10-15 minutes, giving me lots of opportunity to get the best birds I can
It can be very difficult to get photos of butterflies in flight, but this Monarch alighting from some flowery reeds made for a really nice shot.
This Mother Moose and Calf were feeding on the side of the road, so I made a point of taking a few photos
On a short walk, I spotted this Newt walking across the path. I loved the way the light captured its “jewels” as it walked by.
I love the pose of this damselfly.
These robins were nested on a porch; I took the photos through the window in the door so as not to disturb them.
This Syrphid Fly was one of my forays into macro photography. The bug itself is considerably smaller than your traditional house fly.
Hope you enjoyed this preview. The exhibit itself will feature a lot more photos as well as some of the many note cards I’ve designed.
(An update: this video has been removed from youTube. So far, no one has come to take credit for it, so this leads me to believe that my initial assessment of it was entirely accurate. Will the anonymous user who posted it acknowledge what was done here?
This was posted to youTube under the moniker PoliticsVT, who had two videos. They have both been removed. – promoted by JulieWaters)
In the past week, a video’s been referenced in the comment threads here that suggests that Brian Dubie wants to tax small stores and that it’s okay to tax them as much as we want:
A few problems I see with this:
It’s extremely easy for me to imagine that this was someone saying that this is what us liberals think, that it’s okay to tax mom and pop stores as much as we like. Without a broader context, I don’t see how we can make a judgment about this specific quote, but it’s presented as some sort of attack on Dubie himself.
Look, we’ve just seen a really nasty example of what can happen when clips are edited for partisan political purposes. I’ve no problem with attack ads, but they need to be properly sourced, documented and valid. I don’t see an indication that this one is, and given that I asked for clarification from the person who posted the links and never received a response, I’m inclined to think that this is bogus.
I’m sure Dubie would make a horrible governor. He’s shown more interest in platitudes than policy. But we need to go after him for what he’s actually involved in or avoided.
And yes, I’m going after something produced by someone who clearly shares my goals, because I don’t think my goals are truly served by this sort of approach.
It’s good for neither politics nor policy to muddy the waters of our debates with this sort of innuendo.
 |  |
The Summit yesterday was very nice– not sure how many people we had, but most of GMD’s front page crowd was there, including Odum, JD, Jack, myself, Sue, Maggie, Caomhin and BP. Mr. Baruth was there to host everything. I brought my banjo and played a bit, and had a lot of nice conversations with people, some of whom I’d met before and some of whom I hadn’t. Steve Benen was there, and was polite enough to let me rant on about things for about two minutes as if he knew what I was talking about before I asked him if he had any idea who I was, which was very cute and kind of funny.
Among the candidates for the Governor’s race, Racine, Shumlin and Bartlett showed. Dunne had told me the day before he wouldn’t be able to make it since he was at Solar Fest after doing a charity run in the morning, and Markowitz just didn’t show (Publisher’s note: Apparently, the Markowitz Communications Director was there, but I had no idea either. Er… next time, make sure some of the folks on the masthead know yer there if yer hoping to get acknowledged, eh?).
Steve Howard, Doug Hoffer, Jim Condos were there. Dunne had two of his staffers attend and they were a lot of fun to chat with.
Mostly, though, I wanted to make this a post summit open thread. Other GMD folks should feel free to edit this to include their own comments and/or photos. I know there’s a group shot of GMD out there somewhere, and if anyone wants to move the two candidate photos above beneath the fold and put the candidate photos up instead, that would be totally cool.
Jason Gibbs, one-time PR flack who got promoted to head up the Dept of Forest Parks and Recreation is running for secretary of state.
Gibbs prior experience came from Boston’s Big Dig, which sort of explains a lot about why Gibbs prefers activities that use private contractors and outsourcing than government employees.
Gibbs seems to think that one of the best things he did in his last job was to promote more deforestation through timber sales in order to reduce the budget of the forest service.
Should we expect a similar approach to the Secretary of State’s office? Perhaps we could sell excess ballots to the highest bidder in order to help fund elections?
A few days ago, I posted the following in a comment thread:
I like Dunne, but I wish he’d run for Lt. Gov instead. I think he’s got some good ideas, but his responses at the forum I live blogged made me feel like he might not be quite ready for the top slot. There was a lot of commentary about how he’s a great candidate because of things his parents did, which I think of as very weak answers.
When I say I “like” Dunne, I mean I like him a lot. I’ve had conversations with the man and I think he’s a really great guy.
He dropped me a note and asked if I’d be willing to talk for a few. We connected this afternoon and a good conversation. Fair note: I did not tell him I would be blogging about this (nor at the time did I expect to be) but we also never addressed the conversation as “off the record” in any sense and I do not expect that he will be offended or upset by anything I have to say in this post.
So we had a really good conversation, one in which I pointed out a few things that I thought of as fairly serious problems about his messaging. One was the issue I mentioned above, referencing his parents. I don’t think that’s necessarily settled, but I can see where he was coming from on it.
The other thing I brought up was that Matt made multiple references to his experience as administrator of AmeriCorps Vista during the forum I live blogged. I can see why he’d want to bring up administrative experience but I didn’t get the sense that he understood much about child care or early childhood education. He said during our conversation that he did a lot to support early childhood education through AC Vista, and I asked him if he could articulate any specific examples of that.
Now– to be clear: I am a teacher. Asking people to articulate examples is a huge part of what I do. It’s kind of a crucial element. I am never convinced that someone understands a concept until I hear specifics.
So that’s why I asked.
I got an answer I didn’t expect.
Matt rattled off a series of examples of ways in which his organization supported early childhood education. He cited specific research about the various ways we can support parents and children in need. He spoke with an intense amount of detail about these issues and genuinely knows exactly what he’s talking about.
I’m not saying I was wrong above. In that forum, at that time, he did not articulate this depth of understanding, but that forum was just a few weeks ago. This is not the sort of information and understanding that you glean by drilling yourself on it over a few short weeks. I found myself extremely impressed with the conversation we had. I did, of course, have to mention that I never got the sense that he understood early childhood education to the extent that he clearly does during that forum and I wish he had been more articulate about it at the time. Even with a three-minute timer, if he’d just rattled off a few of those statistics during the forum, he would have swayed a lot of people in attendance, so I consider that to have been a missed opportunity.
But, that said, I’m writing this to give Matt props for listening to what I had to say and being willing to have a fairly uncomfortable conversation with someone who had kind of slammed him in a public forum. I’m still undecided, but now instead of being undecided between Shumlin and Racine, I’m undecided between Shumlin, Dunne and Racine. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t really be thanking Matt for this, but really, I know I should.
So… to Matt, more like what I heard from you today. You’ve got a more complicated mind than I gave you credit for. To Peter and Doug, you may have your work cut out for you at the other early childhood forums. If Matt brings his A game to those forums, you might be in some trouble.
To Deb, please just show up.
