(my emphasis)

Employers of all sizes, in all sectors, have made clear what they need to restart the engine of our prosperity: lower taxes; universal broadband and wireless; reliable, affordable energy; a well-trained workforce; and an education system that is top-notch without being top-dollar.

(Gov Douglas’ 2010 State of the state address, incorrect year in document title noted)

Read that paragraph several times over. That’s right, according to Douglas it is businesses of all sizes that want that miraculous something huge for nothing.

Douglas is a lying ass plain and simple.

Further, the estate tax was increased last year to collect a greater portion of assets from deceased Vermonters. This change is particularly unfair to farmers whose assets are not easily mobile. It is a punitive tax that discourages farmers and small business owners from passing along their life’s work to sons and daughters. And, in the long run, it will have a tangible, detrimental effect on our revenues, as individuals change their residency to another state. I ask legislators to join me in rolling back this tax increase.

(ibid)

Yup, we’re discouraging hard working Vermonters from dying … after all … we’re all aware of all those family farms that are worth tens of millions of dollars.

Oh, and don’t forget the favorite whipping boy … education (again):

Our school governance structures are a vestige of the 19th century and, like our unsustainable personnel costs, must be reformed. We have 290 separate school districts – one for every 312 students – 63 different supervisory bodies and a State Board of Education. That’s a total of 354 different education governing bodies for a state with only 251 towns. We spend, by some estimates, nearly triple the national average for school administration. There is no doubt that we have room to make our system of education more efficient and affordable.

(ibid)

(Hey Douglas, those supervisory union boards are made up of representatives from the local boards … so stop your bullshit numbers fantasy … okay?)

I mean … our school boards really drain our state and town coffers. For example last year Williamstown voted to give each school board member $600 to help defray expenses. The chair of the board got $750 … HOLY ECONOMIC DIARRHEA BATMAN, WE GOT OUT OF CONTROL SCHOOL BOARD COSTS!

Oh, and those administrators that are required not because local communities love to hire them, but because of such as Douglas much approved of no child left untested law? Think the need for them will go away simply because we lose local control and accountability over our for now local school systems? Do I hear anything about reducing the federal and state information reporting mandates that make those administrators a requirement?

Didn’t think so.

Remember when the cheney/bush administration was prepping us to attack Afghanistan? (Didn’t take much, did it?) Remember who we were going after? (Clue: it wasn’t the Afghan people.) Remember how our blood enemies were Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar?

Think about Iraq and who we were told we were going after … Saddam Hussein. And every time the US government wants to go after Iran, it’s Ahmadinejad or the Revolutionary Guard. Our now ongoing pissing contest with Venezuela … it’s about Chavez.

Wars are sold on personifications of “the other side”. The war loving industries realize none of us are going to throw on body armor, jump into tanks or drop bombs from airplanes just to kill John and Jane Doe from another nation.

A big bad boogey man has to be created … a personal enemy that can be so reviled no evil is too bad to befall them. Then, and only then, will the great United States rise to the level of killing John and Jane Doe and their kids.

CNN, in reporting on the recent suicide bombing against a CIA military post in Afghanistan, brought this whole concept down to it’s most (in)human level:

A U.S. intelligence official on Thursday vowed that the United States would avenge the attack.

“This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations,” the intelligence official vowed.

(Source: 2 killed in Afghanistan bombing were security contractors, CNN, 12/32/09)

This is how wars are really fought. Not by the grandstanders such as cheney or obama, but by those who’ve been convinced there’s a personal side to this … something that can bring out such anger that mass destruction and misery and death can be justified as the appropriate means to an end … retribution.

In the CIA’s case we’re supposed to accept that people who die ostensibly protecting the civilians around them  are now going to be subject to more war from the US and allies because those who were ostensibly there to protect the civilians were harmed or killed in the process. Think about our domestic police. If you or I were gunned down, do you think we’d get the same response that a gunned down police officer would receive? Hell, our lives are literally at risk simply because police perceive a possible threat from us! Sounds like driving too close to a US military convoy in Iraq, doesn’t it? It’s no accident we have a war on drugs and crime and such.

Violence perpetrated by governments on their own behalf has always been of the type that wants no response. When a United States or Iranian police officer beats you with a baton just because you were engaging in non-violent demonstration, don’t respond … that’s assaulting a law enforcement individual.

And with acknowledged war as opposed to domestic government enforcement (although the lines are blurring by the day) the level of violence increases in both the response and speed of response.

But first we need to have those reviled enemies. Don’t have a properly reviled figurehead? Hell, bin Laden hasn’t been pursued simply because he really isn’t needed … all the war lovers need is those billions or anti-western, Islamic radicals who are out to destroy Christianity.

Forget the idea that if 2 billion Muslims really wanted to do us in, they’d be doing a much better job of it … we’ve got the frame for personification of “the other side”, and “the other side” is evil enough to justify any means to the end of … ?????????.

And you know what? To the Afghani or Iraqi people who never attacked the United States this is personal … up close personal in a way very few of us in the United States have been exposed to. Every child murdered by a war machine, every family slaughtered by a 500lb bomb, every parent gunned down because of how they drove when near the invaders is personal. We make it so with our fictional personifications.

Here we are now how many years later? Still fighting the wars that were started to get Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

At least it’s working out for the war lovers.

In today’s Barre/Montpelier Times Argus we find Vermont ranks lowest in religion survey. This story (barely) discusses a recent Pew Research Center offering that describes just how religious various states are and the state of religious belief in general for the US. (Pew Research’s better explanation is through this link.)

The short story is Vermont and New Hampshire share in leading the nation with lowest percentage of population who say “religion is very important in their lives.”

Actually the Times Argus says we’re at the bottom of the list and Pew Research does indeed list it the way the Argus reports … but I think they’ve it backwards … personal thing for me only, and it could reflect differences in definition of religion and spirituality. BUT MY BIGGER POINT …

Okay, we’re a state full of godless heathens or so Pew Research claims. I can offer more proof …

GO TO THIS LINK … Vermont Department of Ed’s transformation document!

Or they could just be trying to fit into the whole military/industrial complex thing, but nonetheless a pentagon is a pentagon … right?

Okay, let my tongue leave my cheek … nice Wikipedia article on pentagrams.

According to Vermont education commissioner Vilaseca (on the Mark Johnson Show, 12/22/09) the answer to local control is to simply redefine “local” to encompass a larger area … so local ain’t local anymore!

When one is dedicated to centralizing command and control over our (for now) local school systems, redefinition of “local” seems quite logical I suppose.

or is it they simply don’t really disagree?

It’s official … Obama, Reid and the rest of the DC Dems are busy throwing in the towel on any honest definition of health care reform (or even change for that matter).

There will be no public plans, no expanded Medicare … nothing but a HUGE tax increase on everybody intentionally designed to funnel hudreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of the already glutted private insurance industry.

And yes … Sanders and Leahy are just as guilty. After all they’ve stood by their men retreaters-in-chief Reid and Obama.

If Sanders wants my vote he’ll stop caucusing with the surrender monkey DC Dems. If Leahy wants to have me consider him, he’ll walk away from the surrender monkey DC Dems.

So the question is:

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1. Transcripts reveal that O’Keefe and Giles said they needed ACORN’s help to protect Giles from a violent pimp-but they carefully edited this out of their videos1. O’Keefe and Giles used clever editing and voiceovers to hide a key fact that the transcripts show to be true in each case: In each office, the duo claimed that 20-year old Hannah was being threatened by a violent abusive pimp. They pleaded for ACORN to help protect the prostitute (and in some cases underage girls as well) from the pimp by helping her get a place to live. O’Keefe and Giles edited this out of the video given the news media and the public, but neglected to remove it from the transcripts.

Remember, for example, the tape of the NY ACORN worker advising the prostitute to hide money in a tin can, presumably to evade taxes? The transcript shows it was so the pimp “can’t get it from you if he wants to come and rip up the place.” And the prostitute told the loan counselor that her pimp had ” all these 13, 14,15 year old girls from El Salvador and that’s what-I need to protect them like I know what its like and I have to protect them and like give them somewhere to live.” 2

(What the Transcripts Show About the Doctored ACORN Video Tapes, ACORN)

And the links to transcripts are all provided in the above document. In New York, for instance, ACORN workers were doing nothing worse than trying to help a self proclaimed prostitute get away from a violent pimp!

Thanks weasel Welch.

In Obama’s Nobel prize acceptance speech he does a great job of illustrating the political leadership’s role in continuing war for fun and profit. Non-defensive war is not only morally defensible, but what the hell … we can’t do anything about it anyway.

(my emphasis)

The concept of a “just war” emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

(Obama Nobel Peace Prize Speech: FULL TEXT as presented on The Huffington Post)

“They won’t let me have their oil,” screamed the now blue faced president as he managed to holler while holding his breath, “As a last resort I’m going to do a just war!”

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

(ibid)

So if not in our lifetime, when? In the next lifetime, President Obama, folks’ll be told by the likes of you that “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.”

You, Mr. Obama, are a part of the problem … definitely NOT the solution.

( – promoted by odum)

Barre’s mayor lauzon is showing his true self once again. At the last city council meeting, the prick decided he could throw somebody else’ phone into a corner because the phone had the temerity to buzz during a meeting ((Fl)iPhone?, Barre/Montpelier Times Argus, 12/10/09).

To make matters worse, the prick had to prove he’s a bully too! Not only did he demonstrate absolute disregard for another’s personal property, but the prick did it to an employee of the city who is directly answerable to the mayor.

The DC Democratic surrender monkeys have once again employed their favorite tactic: simply agree with the radical right wing Republicans and move on.

Any semblance of an honest public option … gone.

Woman’s right to control her own body … on life support.

Massive transfer of government tax dollars to private pockets … just one more time.

So here’s the quiz …

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According to [Chuck Heath, guv quitter Palin’s father], the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’ ”

(North Star

Populism, politics, and the power of Sarah Palin, Sam Tanenhaus writing for the New Yorker, 12/07/09)