Too bad they don’t post the Sunday Rutland Herald/Times Argus on line, but they don’t. Wally Roberts has a really great piece in the Perspective section titled A long time coming.

In his oped Roberts talks of his first and second hand experience with the not long ago past, civil rights and what he called “state-sanctioned terrorists defending white supremacy.” It’s an excellent read if you get the chance, and what I follow with below is merely an addendum to all the efforts put forth by Wally and his co-horts.

At some point in the future history will view the Obama election more as a transition than an event unto itself. It will be talked and taught about as merely one step in a journey of human rights and recognition that started millenia ago. Future generations will not see this event as the defining moment we do today much like we now view World War II as a fuzzy part of our past despite our grandparents having lived and fought it.

This isn’t because history will be forgetful or leave important details of the human condition out. It is simply because the further in time one is removed from an event the more distant is the view.

In quantum physics there is an ultimate smallest to everything: space and time and matter and energy and everything else can only be taken down to a special size called the Planck unit. The Planck length, for example, is 1.6 x 10 to the minus 34ths inches … that’s a 16 preceeded by a decimal point and 34 zeros. There is no distance that is smaller than that number. Time itself has a Planck length: time can reach a span no shorter than the ever so brief period it takes light to cross the Plank length.

We just can’t feel the passage of these minute time lengths because we’re too big … to far away … to detect them. What we see instead is an apparent smooth flow from second to second; from one minute, hour, day, year and more  to the next … from the past to the present into the future in a seamless movement of time.

But today, right now, we can see the line in our political history we’ve just crossed. We have elected the first non-caucasion President in our nation’s history, and that is a cause for celebration. I along with many others believed that entrenched racism was still too strong for this event, but a newer generation proved us baby boomers wrong. We just finished yet one more small step for man and giant step for mankind … and we got to witness it first hand!

Somewhere in the not too distant future, probably about two generations down the road, folks will see the Obama election as something that was obvious and long overdue. The closeness and personal experiences will have faded away to grandparents and the dead. But that’s not because history won’t care, it’ll only be due to the passage of temporal distance.

That doesn’t mean we can’t relish the historical nature of the moment. This is a Planck moment … but it’s our Planck moment.

Talk to me about fusion politics and how important it is for self identified Progressives and Democrats to join together, even to the point of figuring out some method of runoff when the two parties run for the same seat … and then explain to me the voters who chose McCain as their presidential choice and Pollina for Governor.

That’s right. As I was helping to count votes on the evening of this just past November 4th two different things leaped out at me: a lot of people were picking Obama for President and and Douglas for Governor; and a sizable minority voted McCain at the top of the national ticket and Pollina for the top of the state one.

(A third thing that stood out, but isn’t relevant here, is folks for the most part voted incumbent.)

Caveat: I only counted 120 votes out of 1,577 so I don’t claim to anything more than a small window within a small window.

My point being: there’re reasons people freely associate with certain political parties, and there’re reasons folks freely don’t associate with certain political parties.

I believe the Progressive Party does themselves and those who’ve supported them a great disservice by trying to paper over these differences … the Progressive Party, and the voters at large, can only lose by trying to be better Democrats than the Democrats. I believe that should the Progessive Party pursue a Progressive/Democratic fusion agenda, they should just close up shop and become Democrats.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has said he is stepping down from chairing the Democratic National Committee (and off to what … Health and Human Services?). According to any and all reports I’ve read and history, President-elect Obama will be in charge of appointing his replacement.

I have never liked this arrangement, but this is an opportunity for Obama to have a real shot at a genuine George Washington moment.

I’ll resist the urge (Stalin) to throw names around (Pol Pot) as the worst of examples (Hitler) that can happen when (Mao Tse Tung) political parties are run (Mussolini) by the same people charged with running (Bush) a nation.

Well, okay .. I won’t resist. But here’s the way I see it: political parties should be about the general electorate. They are really the only vehicle for you and I to democratically select the politicians that will perform their republican duties.

Having political parties and government mix is giving Washington DC and Montpelier way too much control over our choices.

Yes … Montpelier too.

This is one of the reasons I’m opposed to tax dollar/state funded primaries and even public campaign financing: it injects the incumbent government way too far into the process we use to maybe make drastic changes to that very same incumbent government.

If Obama really thinks highly of people power he will tell Democrats it is up to them, not him, to select their party leadership.

George Washington could have continued as our nation’s first president for longer had he chosen. Hell, according to the histories I’ve read Washington could have become king with ease!

But he chose not to. Washington was more interested in newly created democratic ideals, and for him relinquishing power in a peaceful transition was more important.

Obama can do much the same … tell the world he’s here to run the United States .. not the Democratic Party. That would be a shining moment.

We now have an incoming President who is capable of complex thought and curiosity. There is no question in my mind that Obama is far more intellectually capable than W, the person most knotheads apparently would like to have a beer with.

But along with a high degree of intelligence comes expectations: such as chewing gum and walking at the same time (remember … this is the description the Obama campaign gave to McCain’s frenetic “drop everything and run to DC” response to the Wall Street collapse).

In my opinion a domestic priority that ranks above unions, minimum wage, environmental issuse … hell … anything else … is our democratic process.

The single most important component of democratic actions is the vote: one can call any system a democracy, but unless that democracy includes active protection of the individual’s right to vote and to have that vote counted as the individual intended … well, that “democracy” is in name only.

While our voting process has always had issues, the level of voter suppression, vote denial and vote miscounting has gone well beyond any semblance to reasonableness in the last eight years. Secretaries of State run late stage voter roll purges that catch the legitimate voter more often than not. Grassroots organizations performing valuable voter registration activities are harassed and literally persecuted rather than thanked. Huge numbers of voters are challenged at the polls by partisan trouble makers and forced into casting provisional ballots that are almost never counted. Voting machines flip votes. Vote counting machines cannot recreate the same count with the same ballots.

And it will simply repeat in two years if proactive solutions are not implemented immediately.

When he is inaugurated in January, Obama will owe that day to voter turnout and empowerment more than any other single factor (here’s just a sample of what I mean). The domestic question I will initially be looking to see answered: does Obama dive into a topic that has dirtied both major political parties? Or does he look for the sexy and easy to sell.

Obama is smart enough to do the political gum chew while walking routine. But will that translate into protecting our democratic principles?

(Oh, and can we please get rid of those photos that have us eternally looking up at people in leadership positions? They’re silly, pretentious … and I don’t put anybody like that on any sort of pedestal.)

http://change.gov/

Yeah … go ahead and click on it.

More specifically, what metrics will you use to judge Obama’s term in the Oval Office a success or other?

In today’s Times Agus an article titled Entergy: Yankee dismantling in 2067 provides some interesting points:

1) Even if Entergy Yankee were to shut down in four years, dismantling won’t commence until 2067.

2) Entergy Yankee does not intend to make another contribution to the dismantling trust fund until 2026.

3) Actually Entergy Yankee doesn’t intend to make that contribution at all … the buck will be passed off to Spinco … err … “Enexus” Yankee (yeah – the proposal by Entergy to spin off its older reactors into a super highly leveraged/built on borrowed money corporate entity owned by, but not the responsibility of, Entergy.)

4) And that radiation stuff we’re told is so safe … well it ain’t really safe. “The long delay also allows some of the radioactivity to decay, lessening the danger to workers.”

Thanks Douglas, for helping Vermonters Entergy!

it’s simple really: vote for him/her (I honestly flipped a coin to see which pro-noun would come first).

In the meantime here’s an update from Pollster.com:

The big thing is … get out there and be active. On or before November 4th, being active definitely includes voting.

It’s illustrated extremely well in the thread on this blog The latest WCAX poll: Symington and Pollina tied (and Douglas’s strategy revealed?).

Go ahead read it: the thread devolves into blaming Pollina and shouts to close down dissent and discussion … all because Pollina is obviously doing just as well, and maybe better, than Symington in the latest polling.

That is fear you read in that thread … the same thing the Republican Party has thrived on for decades, kept the Democratic Party compliant to the Repubs for decades, and helped do such as pass the misnomered PATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act … oh … things like this:

“I asked him if he had a badge and he pulled out a white and blue laminate card with his name on it,” Griego. “It wasn’t even a badge, but it said ‘Al Romero, private investigator.’ He came in and he started asking me about my grandmother and I was trying to tell him that she didn’t live here. He’s like ‘OK, so let me just write some stuff down.'”

Griego said that Romero asked her questions about her grandmother’s voter registration card; her grandmother lives in a trailer down the street, but receives her mail at the house, she said.

“It freaked me out when he got upset, when I did tell him that, regardless of what happens, my grandmother is voting and it’s OK for her to vote.”

“He tried to tell me to tell her to be careful when she’s voting. He was trying to tell me stuff to scare her from voting.”

Bojorquez also said her mother felt wary about the visit.

“My mom is confused because she doesn’t understand why she’s being put through this because she voted. She doesn’t trust anybody anymore,” Bojorquez said, requesting that her mother’s name not be published again.

(GOP lawyer refuses to deny private eye visits, New Mexico Independent, 10/23/08)

(Thankfully ACORN is not full of fear and apparently is responding … see this Huffington Post story.)

AND FOLKS HERE WANT TO GIVE IN TO THAT????

The last time I checked my vote belonged to me. Not Pollina, Symington, Douglas, any of you or anybody else. Oh … by the way … about your vote? That’s yours!

Please do as you wish with it. I may disagree with your decision to vote for Symington or Douglas or someone else, but I respect your right to do so. I may disagree with your reasoning, and I certainly have no problem engaging in discussion or argument about your reasoning, but I will not try to shut you up.

And I will not become fearful because of your decisions to act in a manner you see most fit.

(PS. Did you ever consider this is exactly the reaction someone like Douglas would hope to see from the ranks of the Democratic Party faithful?)