Note: I am not a part of this project anymore.

Prominent mention in Leahy letter to Obama:

For instance, a $100 million fiber-to-the-home project in Vermont that could create hundreds of construction jobs, more than 100 immediate operations center jobs, and thousands of new business opportunities for Vermonters could start connecting customers this summer through the use of a $50 million USDA Rural Development broadband loan guarantee – an authorized program that has yet to be implemented.

(source: Leahy’s website)

That is definitely ECFiberNet

I know folks mean well, but …

Stop giving stores a christmas present in the form

of gift cards! If you can afford a $50 gift card, you can afford $50 in cash.

A gift card locks in a shopping trip for a given store, but cash allows the recipient to purchase what they want where and when they want.

The cash would be a present to the person you want to give to.

Five days ago I posted the following in this thread discussing the hopes for seeing progressive politicians in Obama’s cabinet:

Bet the Senate Republicans …

aren’t afraid to exercise their constitutional responsibility and right to advise and consent (unlike some party named the Democratic Party).

Don’t hold your breath waiting for real progressives to get a fair hearing.

To which someone responded with a rating of “Meh”.

Okay then … how’s about this?

“We’re not going to get to the finish line,” Reid said after the [auto makers/workers financial assistance] plan collapsed. “That’s just the way it is. There too much difference between the two sides.”

(Bipartisan rescue plan dies in Senate, UPI, 12/11/08)

The Senate Democrats in DC have proved themselves afraid of doing a filibuster, and the Senate Democrats in DC have proved themselves afraid of doing anything about a Republican filibuster.

If the Repubs can kill a $15 billion plan for Detroit shortly after helping pass a $700 WALL STREET BAILOUT … what makes anyone think a real progressive (not some in name only like war hawk Clinton) will ever make it into Obama’s cabinet?

Yeah …. another

              dangling

                   ques

                        ti

                          o

                          n

Was listening to Obama’s announcement of Daschle for Secretary and head honcho on health/medical, and Daschle mentioned that 50% of home foreclosures were due to medical expenses.

I thought “wow” and looked around for confirmation of that figure.

Wasn’t hard to find a lot like this discussing this recent study.

So we know

    about the

       home mortgage

            crisis but

                    maybe

                    we should

                         just

                         leave

                            this

                              to

                             dang

                              le

Sleaze time … mostly because lying idiots shouldn’t be allowed to speak for movements:

“I asked him some pretty direct questions,” [Joe the Dumber non-Plumber) continued. “Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive – they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.”

Asked why he didn’t leave McCain’s campaign if he was “appalled” by the candidate, Wurzelbacher said, “honestly, because the thought of Barack Obama as president scares me even more.”

(Joe the Plumber: McCain ‘appalled me’, Politico, 12/09/08)

My main question is why the whackos of the right wrong … err whatever … have taken a liking to bald pretenders and wannabes?

Go ahead … look at Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher aka Joe the P …

(credit: Politico.com)

Now take a look at this guy:



(credit: Google images)

Yeah … that’s James Dale Guckert! Aka Jeff Gannon (once called himself a loose cannon no less) … former male escort, phony reporter and just one more right wrong wing nut case liar who didn’t like his real name.

I can understand why the radical wrong of the United States doesn’t catch on … they’re corrupt, but dumb.

Joe the P, the loose cannon guy and their apparently listening public. Dumb, dumber and dumbest.

“We serve the sitting president and will continue to do so until President-elect Obama takes office,” said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

(Confessions throw Gitmo 9/11 trials into confusion, Times Argus, 12/09/08)

Uh … Commander? Care to re-read your oath of office? You serve the Constitution of the United States of America and swear to obey the lawful orders of your superiors.

The bill puts a government overseer named by Bush – a kind of “car czar” – in charge of setting guidelines for an industrywide overhaul, with the power to revoke the loans if the carmakers weren’t taking sufficient steps to reinvent themselves.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the restructuring would require tough concessions from management, labor, creditors and others.

“We call this the barbershop. Everybody’s getting a haircut here,” Pelosi said.

(Congress sends White House $15B aid proposal, Times Argus, 12/09/08)

Nice … Wall Street gets the money (without strings) and the automakers get a freakin’ haircut! Where the hell were all these grandiose demands a couple months ago Pelosi and Reid and Obama????

( – promoted by odum)

So who’s more dangerous to society? A man armed with an uncooked cream pie, or a drunk with a loaded gun pointed at someone’s head?

That’s not a rhetorical question: according to Judge Brian Grearson it’s the pie man.

(my emphasis)

If Thomas Coffey hadn’t served his country with distinction during a military career that has spanned nearly two decades, the Waterbury man would almost certainly be serving time in jail today.

But he’s not, because Judge Brian Grearson concluded during a Tuesday morning sentencing hearing that if Coffey hadn’t served his country, he may never have done anything to deserve jail time in the first place.

Coffey, 40, is a decorated war veteran who was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after returning from his latest tour in Iraq two years ago. His charges stem from an incident where he walked into a crowded barroom in Montpelier last New Year’s Eve with a loaded semi-automatic pistol tucked in the waistband of his pants.

Before the night was over an intoxicated Coffey would draw the .45-caliber pistol and place its barrel behind the left ear of another Charlie-O’s patron with whom he had exchanged threatening glances.

(Judge: Vet was scarred by war, Times Argus, 12/03/08)

The pseudo-Santa who slopped Gov. James Douglas in the face with a faux pie during this year’s Independence Day parade in Montpelier copped a plea in Barre on Wednesday.

Judge Brian Grearson sentenced Matthew Manning, 23, to spend five days on a supervised work crew as part of his sentence after considerable debate about the impact of his actions.

. . .

Grearson, who described the incident as both “serious” and “reckless,” agreed. He suggested Manning’s actions had “a ripple effect” in Vermont – a small state where the highest elected official is extremely accessible and has historically felt comfortable participating in parades with minimal security.

(Gubernatorial pie thrower gets five days on work crew, Times Argus, 11/27/08)

***Sigh*** and I had started to think there was some intelligence and common sense regarding weapons since Vermont’s Supreme Court recently ruled that a hunting “accident” was still a crime of negligence.

(“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”-Edward R. Murrow – promoted by kestrel9000)

I didn’t vote for Obama. In the end I chose Nader as my “none of the above” because McKinney didn’t make it onto Vermont’s ballot.

Why didn’t I vote for Obama? I grew disillusioned with his drift into neo-con foreign policy land and his willingness to go along with the same tried and failing economic plans that have been tried and failed more often than not in the last 30 or 40 years.

I was still considering Obama when I placed my #2 pencil close to the ballot. In particular I appreciated Obama’s comments that we as individuals are responsible for what goes on around us … it’s not just some government’s job to make things work right.

What kept my attention the most was Obama’s ability to articulate a big view. He was able to to talk about life in philosophical terms … the vision thing if you will.

But this is where I became uneasy too.

While Obama talked about a world built from the bottom up, his policy choices have been more in tune with the top down: a mandatory medical insurance plan instead of a national health care plan; big brother spying permissions as in the telecoms vote; expanding the military even beyond its already bloated size; more federal mandates on our schools; expanding “faith” based funding.

Nothing about Obama bothers me as much as his foreign policy: it wasn’t Georgia, it was all Russia’s fault; Israeli pandering; expanding our war machine; not wanting to really pull out of Iraq; expanding the Afghanistan war not only in that country but into Pakistan too.

I don’t like his cabinet and close staff picks for the most part: for someone who talked about change there sure is a hell of a lot of the same ol’ same ol’ Clinton administration heading back to the White House. Apparently Obama has also picked up the concept of borrow and spend without regard to what’s going to happen to future generations because of our financial missteps … to me it speaks poorly of his choice in economic advisers.

Don’t expect some grassroots driven presidency. I’ve never seen any indication that Obama doesn’t run that which he heads. Trying to hold his feet to some mythical post-election fire when he’s cloistered himself in Chicago isn’t going to cut it.

BUT …

I’ll know by mid-summer where Obama is heading with his administration. Until then I plan on keeping my undies unbunched and working at those things I believe I can be helpful in.

If nothing else … he’s a legitimate electee.

Just yesterday Vermont State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding got statewide press for suggesting a gas tax increase in order to keep our crumbling physical state infrastructure going under.

It received a lot of attention in many areas.

And now the inevitable push back from Governor Douglas is occurring with the added sugar of Douglas coming out against marriage for committed couples of the same gender.

Well, get out your hammers, Jeb the Carpenter, because you’ve laid the frame for some great gubernatorial planks (and I’d suggest this isn’t about Plancks): roads and bridges and strong families.

The frame: Douglas is opposed to improving the lives of Vermonters.

Plank 1: Of course Douglas is unconcerned about fixing our roads and bridges, but I (Jeb Spaulding) am happy to join Vermonters in doing the heavy lifting required to make sure we don’t have collapsing bridges and moon craters in our highways.

Plank 2: Of course Douglas is opposed to strong families, but I (Jeb Spaulding) will work with Vermonters to make sure the backbone of our nation’s society, the family, is supported with vigor and palpable action.

And when Douglas and his tax funded PR machine of highly paid spokespeople whine about all Douglas has done and the even more he would have done … why … all Spaulding has to do is say “Yes, Governor, buy you haven’t.”

Last April, top George W. Bush administration officials, desperate to exploit any possible crack in the close relationship between the Nouri al-Maliki government and Iran, launched a new round of charges that Iran had stepped up covert arms assistance to Shi’a militias.

Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates suggested that there was “some sense of an increased level of [Iranian] supply of weapons and support to these groups.” And Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung was told by military officials that the “plentiful, high quality weaponry” the militia was then using in Basra was “recently manufactured in Iran”.

. . .

The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of one percent of the total weapons found in Shi’a militia caches during that period.

(U.S. Task Force Found Few Iranian Arms in Iraq, IPS, 11/15/08)

Wait … there’s more! (Pssst, Mr. Obama … are you payin’ attention?)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source — most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

(Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricated, RawStory, 11/10/08)

A strategy of threats and “provocations” against Iran by the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama is likely to be counter-productive, according to a new report released here Friday by a group of 20 former top U.S. diplomats and regional experts.

(Obama Advised to Forgo More Threats to Iran, IPS, 11/17/08)

Keep this in mind as Obama continues to fall into the neocon view of the world.