First, a brief note of explanation: to override a veto, there must be 2/3rds of those voting and present to override.  This means means that if all 150 members of the house show, there is a necessary supermajority of 100 people who have to vote to override the veto of same-sex marriage by Governor Douglas in order for his veto to be successfully rejected (this applies to the house.  I’m not talking about the Senate because it’s pretty much a lock).

The vote last week was 95 – 52.  Among those voting yes, there were 5 Republicans.  Among those voting no, there were 11 Democrats.  

If we had only those 147 members voting for the override, we’d need 98 votes to make the 2/3rds.

But we know a few things.  First, two of the Democrats who voted against the legislation have pledged to vote in support of the override.  That means our numbers are more like 97-50.  We also, however, know that one Republican opposed to the bill will be there for the override, which means 97-51.  

We can’t rely on those five Republicans to support a vote to override their own governor, and we don’t know what those other nine Democrats will do.  

But what if the override vote didn’t involve the full house, but was fourteen votes short?  I.e., if any Republican who supported the bill but didn’t want to go against the governor didn’t vote?  And those Democrat who supported opposed [bad fingers!] the bill but didn’t want to get in the way of the leadership didn’t vote?  That’s 136 members voting in the override vote, which means that all we need to win is 91 votes.  If Audette and Evans both vote as promised (against the veto) and we let the five Republicans off the hook provided they don’t vote to support Douglas, if you take away those five Republican votes, you’ve still got 92, which means we win.

I’m okay with winning that way.  I’d rather win with a few Republican votes.  But I’m okay with winning without them.  We can do this as long as they stay out of the way.  

But seriously: if Democrats show up and vote to sustain Douglas’ veto here?  I’ll be beyond livid.  If they want to sit it out?  Fine.  Whatever works for them.  But they need to stay the hell out of the way.

I have been to Iowa exactly once in my life.  

Over two decades ago, I heard a story that got me on a bus and on my way there.  

This was the story: the previous year, there had been a gay pride parade in Dubuque.  Thirty people participated.  They were met with an angry mob of 300 citizens who drove them from the streets, and no one did a damned thing to stop it from happening.

The group that organized this parade organized another one for the following year.   They got word out all across the midwest.  They went to the police and told them that if they didn’t get police protection for the parade, they’d sue the town to get it.

The town complied.  And we came from all over the midwest.  I went with a group of two friends from school, and we joined up with a group from Madison and took a bus out there for the day.

It was the first, and best, pride parade I’ve ever been to.

The mechanics of it weren’t anything extraordinary.  There were five hundred of us strong, and when we chanted, we all, every one of us, chanted the same chant in one voice.  The chant’s weren’t inventive.   “What do we want?  Gay rights!  When do we want them?  Now!”  There were people watching.  Three people tried to oppose us, calling us various names, thinking they could intimidate us.  Every time we all just turned and faced them and yelled “shame” over and over again until they gave up.

There is one thing I’ll remember in particular: during the parade I looked around and spotted a 2nd floor window, with a dance class watching.  There were a bunch of 8-10 year olds looking out the window, smiling and waving at us, and pointing to their instructor, who was just beaming.  I wondered if he was one of the ones who’d gotten driven from the street the year before.  

Much of the day was a blur.  We stayed through the day; there was a concert that evening (Chris Williamson, if I recall correctly) so everyone hung out.

There was a strange sense of euphoria there; we were all hanging out in the town square after the parade, just celebrating, etc.  I didn’t realize it at the moment, but we’d been a bit ghettoized at that moment– no one left that square for a few hours.  It was our safe zone.  No one would dare challenge us there, but when a friend of mine and I wanted change for a vending machine, we didn’t realize we’d left that safe zone until we ended up going into a bar to get change and suddenly realized we were no longer safe on any level.  So we got our change, and left, with a bunch of faces of patrons just staring at us.

The evening was a bit different.  Most of the locals were in hiding for the day.  Pretty much everywhere we went in the area was not only a queer-friendly zone, most of it was queer-only, save for the people who had to work that evening.  We went out to dinner and ended up with about fifteen of us, many of whom had come in separately, all sitting around the same table, sharing stories about our lives.  None of the stories seem new now: the fundamentalist closet case who finally realized why she hated everybody; the guy who was kicked out of his house as a teen because his parents thought he was gay even before he knew himself.  

But at that time, they were something amazing and new.  They were water in a desert, a fresh new wind, something so different from the rest of my life that it was astonishing: people talking about this sort of thing, not in a hidden room, not in a basement, not in whispers, but out loud, in a restaurant and then walking down the street.  It was profound and transformed my sense of what we could do as people.  

But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that, more than two decades later, things would change so much.  

I sit here, reading the reports on the decision from the Iowa Supreme Court to uphold same-sex marriage, and just think… wow.  

Iowa?

Wow.

The vote tally for marriage equality was 95-42. If the override vote has 147 people voting, we need 98 votes to override Douglas’ veto of marriage equality.

Two Democrats who voted against it are on the record saying they’d vote to override the veto.

We need, between now and the override vote, to change just one mind in the legislature.

I’m pretty sure at this point, we’re going to win this thing.

From a comment in a previous thread by Waterbury Rep. Tom Stevens.  These are the people who have been robocalling us:

The executive director is Bryan Brown, formerly with the Family Institute of Connecticut.  Fundamental Catholic ties.

The Chair of the Board is Robert George, professor at Princeton and fundamental Catholic.  Many conservative ties.  To quote Andrew Sullivan, “his passionate opposition to the civil equality and freedom of gay people is the core principle of his politics.”  Ties to American Enterprise Institute, involved in opposition to Prop. 8.

Kevin Corkery is a board member.  May have donated to Mitt Romney and Pat Roberts in last presidential cycle.

Chuck Stetson is a NY investment banker and board member.  He founded Bible Literacy Project, which compiled a textbook based on Bible to be used in schools: “there are references to the Bible in Shakespeare, so if they don’t know the references, they won’t learn Shakespeare.”  Grandfather made his money with Coca Cola, railroads and JPMorgan and was very friendly with Prescott Bush.  Stetson the younger went to Yale at the same time as W and Kerry.

Ken VonKohorn is a board member and chair of the board of Family Institute of CT, which is conservative religious, not just Catholic.  He’s a money manager in Westport, CT and has written for AEI.  Robert George is on this board as well.

Luis Tellez is a board member and head of the Witherspoon Institute (winst.org), which publishes thepublicdiscourse.com, fundamental and conservative writing on religion and politics. Also hosts http://princetonprinciples.org/, a discussion of “Marriage and the Public Good.”

Matt Holland is a board member and and a professor of PoliSci at Brigham Young University

Thanks, Tom, for posting this.  It’s very helpful.

Anyone else up for pushing for a ban on all robocalls without an opt-in (i.e., if you ask a company to call you, such as to arrange an appointment to install cable tv at your house, they may robocall you) in the state of VT?

Per today’s Rutland Herald, in a great piece by Lewis Porter:

…The job of Jon Kart, a fish and wildlife scientist in charge of helping coordinate protection of non-game animals before they become endangered, is on the list of potential layoffs.

“None of my funding comes from the General Fund,” said Kart… not only will the federal money that is used to pay his salary and benefits be at risk, but the federal money and other funds that go to support his habitat restoration and other work – more than half of which is spent on private contractors and other needs in Vermont – could be lost, Kart said.

Every dollar of Fish and Wildlife spending on his program – mostly from hunting, fishing and trapping licenses – raises $7 in other funds, totaling millions over the years, Kart said.

Laying him off would actually cost the state money, given that his unemployment and other benefits would have to be paid, Kart told legislators.

But yes, let’s pretend that this is about a budget gap and not about trying to eliminate environmental regulations and doing damage to the unions.

We really need a new governor.

Governor George Aiken, pictured above, is known for having coined the term “Northeast Kingdom” but a lesser known fact is that he stole that term from Green Mountain Daily

Green Mountain Daily, one of Vermont’s most venerable institutions, has decided that it is no longer financially viable to maintain a print operation and will therefore, as of April 1, 2009, move to an online-only presence.  

Green Mountain Daily started out as a small operation and continued in that vein for its first 4 decades or so, focusing on local news stories and bovine interest material.  Seeing as how cattle outnumbered humans in the state, we thought that was the best way to get a serious market share.  We realized quickly, however, that as much as we liked writing for our bovine sisters, their interest was limited to grass forecasts and conspiracy theories about the slaughterhouses sanctuary houses.

We then switched first to fisher interest stories, but when the fishers were wiped out, we went for porcupine interest stories, briefly to beaver interest, back to fisher interest when people brought back the fishers to deal with the porcupine problem, and eventually, settled on human interest.  Everyone on staff remembers fondly the headlines on December 7th, 1941, “Local Firefighter Saves Kitten.”

But when, several weeks later, we learned that America was at War, we sprung into action and the nature of the paper changed.  With war came a new responsibility to respect our nation and promote its interests.  Thus, with the nation gripped by war, Green Mountain Daily, decades ahead of its time, instituted its own “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy and thus a new era was born.

When it came time to testify before HUAC, not only did we do our duty to name names, we went above and beyond the call of duty, naming each other, Pete Seeger, Ronald Reagan and the entire starting lineup of the Chicago Bears.

With the fifties came the rise of communism and a new enemy to fight, and Green Mountain Daily was there.  Yes, not only did Green Mountain Daily show up when subpoenaed, several of us camped out on the steps for days before, just to get the opportunity to name names before anyone else could rat us out first show us up in our patriotic duty.

With the sixties came radical change and Green Mountain Daily’s prestige and power grew over the years, becoming one of the most profitable papers in the state.   Once Jamaica, Victory and Granby joined the electric grid, we were able to finally reach the entire state through our high-tech ahead of the time phone tree system, in which we would each call seventeen people, who would call seventeen other people, and eventually find someone who had Prince Albert in a can.

Vermont’s first Democratic governor in more than a decade was elected, prompting us to change with the the times.  Green Mountain Daily paid for and constructed our own “We’re with Hoff!” bulletin board which stayed on the I-91 corridor until its decimation at the hands of a horde of angry beavers.   (A little known fact: the 1968 law against bulletin boards in Vermont was not as much a beautification plan as it was an attempt to curtail the burgeoning beaver population which was growing faster than the Vermont economy is today).

Green Mountain Daily has never before abandoned its print edition, save for a 3-day period when a cooling tower leak caused us to shut down our printing service for several days.  We learned from this mistake and eventually moved towards a non-nuclear printing press system.   We once again would like to apologize to the families of the deceased.

With the 1970’s came further change.  Public radio was introduced to the airwaves and Green Mountain Daily was there, with our hour-long variety and news show, which lasted until its tragic demise caused by a combination of poor ratings and an on-air barrage of obscenity from popular host J.D. Ryan (note: Ryan never fully recovered from the incident, and is still known to shout obscenities at passing politicians he encounters on the Burlington waterfront).

With the 1970’s also came Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (or, as we prefer to call them, the Great Chunky Monkey Satan), bell-bottomed pants (or, as we prefer to call them, the Great Denim Satan) and the movie Dog Day Afternoon, which would have cast Caoimhin Laochdha in a starring role, had not that hack Pacino slept with one of the producers.

The 1980’s made for a return to simpler times, with simpler ideas, simpler rhetoric and the one-hit wonder Simple Minds.  It also made for Green Mountain Daily’s brief but ill-fated attempt at a weekly television show, which might have survived if not for an on-air rant in favor of marijuana legalization on the part of popular host John Odum.  We’re not sure, but we think the five minutes of obscene gestures probably hurt us a little bit as well.

The nineties were a great time for Green Mountain Daily.  Intrepid followers that we were, we took our leadership from the White House, and declared the office free from all (remaining) sexual mores and restraints.  Unfortunately, however, we made the mistake of firing our legal team when they objected to this policy and the lawsuits that followed took their toll.

Green Mountain Daily members were always glad to throw on some body armor, grab a few billy clubs, and help out the local police in beating up protesters.

With the next century came a new president and a new governor and once again, where others merely led, Green Mountain Daily led in following.  We took to the streets among the protestors and successfully broke up several attempts at freedom of speech insurrection against the government.

It is a matter of extreme frustration to GMD member Euan Bear that this has been interpreted as protest.  In context, it is clear that she is just trying to negotiate a trade agreement with a heterosexual couple, which was ultimately rejected (they considered it a “distraction”).

---

Other highlights of Green Mountain Daily’s History:



1928: Calvin Coolidge becomes president.  Keeps bragging about it until Ed Garcia punches him in the face.  We barely hear a word from him again.

1950: Marlboro music festival established.  GMD reports that “this newfangled music will last na’ry a week.”



1953 – S.S. Ticonderoga makes last steamboat trip on Lake Champlain before being bombed by GMD in an ill-fated attempt to start a war with Plattsburgh.



1974 – Senator Patrick Leahy elected.  GMD lead editoral: “Do the Irish have too much power?”



1995 – GMD pens editorial lamenting our lack of access to cheap plastic crap and low-paid workers.



1996 – Vermont loses status as only state in union without a Wal-Mart. GMD takes credit.

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As this decade comes to a close, financial problems have plagued the organization.  Whether as a result of poor circulation, lack of consumer interest, or the multilevel Ponzi scheme orchestrated by GMD treasurer Julie Waters which left the organization crippled and bankrupt, we can no longer afford to maintain our physical presence.   We bid fond farewell to our remaining readers (you’ve been great.  Both of you) and would like to thank our advertiser for its continuing support.  We were glad to be a proud member of the Green Mountain Urinal Cakes family and wish you continued success.

Just a note to the associated press:

According to state records, employees at a business next door to Parkway Cleaners saw a worker from the dry cleaning business dump chemicals out a rear window directly onto the ground several times before it closed in the 1980s. The latest results from test wells on the Parkway Cleaners site show the PCE level in the groundwater is at 14,000 parts per billion, 2,800 percent above the state’s accepted level of 5 parts per billion.

14,000 is not 2,800% above 5.  It 2,800 times five, but it’s not 2,800% above it.  It is, in fact, 280,000% [279,900%: see comments –julie] above it.  Either way, this is pretty serious, but still…

So: note to reporters and editors: math is not irrelevant, and it would be nice if you could do some that extends beyond fifth grade.

From the Rutland Herald:

Douglas said several of the bills lawmakers have outlined as their top priorities are unnecessary distractions… Among those bills are a gay marriage measure…

As proof of the Governor’s accuracy here, I present to you a series of politicians who have been asked about same-sex marriage.  Clearly this has caused them problems, as they’ve all been distracted from their own marriages.

John Mccain

                               

Newt Gingrich

                               

David Vitter

                               

Rudy Giuliani

                               

Larry Craig

                               

Won’t you please help these men focus better on their own marriages by once and for all ending this clearly harmful and distracting debate on same sex marriage?  

Same sex marriage: don’t do it for us, heterosexuals.  

Do it for the sake of your own marriages!

When I took a full-time job a few months ago, I knew my birding habits would have to change; no more just skipping out in the middle of the day to do birding.  No more making my own schedule, etc.  

All of this is still true, more or less, but I managed to make a few modifications.  

First, I leave half an hour early and stop off at prime birding spots on the way too and from work.

Second, I take walks at lunch with my camera.

Third, I take walks during my morning and afternoon breaks, with my camera.

Finally, when I have to go from one building to another, I take my camera.

The results seem to have been good:

   

What you’ll find below is a set of photos of various birds I’ve managed to capture during the last week, most of which were captured either during my commute, or from near my office.  Some were taken today, when I drove around a lot looking for more birds.  

A note: there are a lot of images below the fold, but they’re all smaller versions of the photos on my web site.  Clicking on them gets you to the larger version, but also tells you what kind of bird it is.

As usual, I’m presenting this as a bird quiz.   I also have intentionally made this quiz a little trickier, duplicating a few birds under different bird #s.  

All these photos were taken in Southern Vermont or New Hampshire, near the Connecticut River.

Enjoy!

Bird #1: These guys have been hanging out all winter.  I keep being surprised to find them:

                               

Bird #2: These birds are in full mating regalia.  They’re fun to watch this time of year:

                               


                               


                               


                               

Bird #3: These birds are the previous bird, plus two others in the foreground:

                               

Bird #4: These guys are a lot of fun to watch in the spring:

                               


                               

                               


                               


                               


                               


                               


                               


                               

Bird #5: This is actually more than one type of bird (we’ll call the big one “A” and the small ones “B”):

                               

Bird #6: This bird is common yardbird for me:

                               

Bird #7: This bird is also a common yardbird for me:

                               

Bird #8: I just love the look of this hawk.  

                               


                               

Bird #9: This is the first one of these I’ve seen this year:

                               

Bird #10: There are two different birds here (bigger one: “A” / Smaller one: “B”).  Can you tell which is which?:

                               


                               

                               


                               


                               

Bird #11: These guys have suddenly come back in force in the last few weeks  

                               

Bird #12: Same for these ones.

                               

Bird #13: These guys make the funniest noises when you disturb them:  

                               

Bird #14: I spotted these guys on my way to work, and pulled over to take photos:

                               


                               


                               

Bird #15: This one is a little unfair, as it’s an unusual case:  

                               


                               

Bird #16: This one was not amused to see me photographing it

                               


                               

Bird #17: Sometimes you should let sleeping ducks lie  

                               

Bird #18: First of these I’ve seen this year:  

                               

Bird #19: I only tend to see this bird in the Spring:

                               

Bird #20: This is the first one of these I’ve seen this year:

                               

Bird #21: These birds sometimes show up in my yard, but I tend to get much better looks at them in other locations:

                               


                               


                               


                               


                           

Bird #22: This is the first one of these I’ve seen this year:

                               

Bird #23: This is actually two of the birds we’ve seen already in this post, but it does a good job of illustrating their different sizes (we’ll call the big one “A” and the small ones “B”):

                               

Bird #24: And finally, a raptor in flight ID quiz.

                               

As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birds, bird photography, or birding thread.

From a letter I just got from Vermont Democrats:

Governor Douglas said he will veto the Marriage Equality Bill passed by the Senate and about to be debated and voted on in the House. Douglas is wrong on this issue.

He says the debate is a distraction. Forcing a vote to over-ride the veto will distract our legislators from other important work.

He says separate-but-equal is acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable 50 years ago in the South and it’s not acceptable in Vermont now.

Amen.

The e-mail also includes several action steps from the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force:

1. Come to the Statehouse tomorrow, Friday, at 8:45 a.m. We need to thank the Legislators for their leadership and to urge Gov. Douglas to change his mind. The Governor has a Legislative Open Door from 9am-9:30am. We’ll give you more instructions at the Statehouse.
2. Call and email Gov. Douglas to express your outrage and urge him to change his mind. It’s not too late. Ph:802 828-3333 (toll-free in VT only: 800 649-6825) Email Gov. Douglas now.
3. Contact your own Representative. If your Rep co-sponsored the House bill– thank him or her for his support, and urge your Rep to hold firm in moving S.115. Click here for a list of Representatives.
4. Volunteer for Vermont Freedom to Marry: we need help with phone banks, local events, and many other things. Contact Robyn atfield_director@vtfreetomarry.org
5. Make a donation. This is going to be a longer and costlier slog than we’d hoped. Please, donate generously. Together, we CAN get this done!
6. Rally with us! We’re planning a series of events around the state this weekend– most on Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned for details!