Category Archives: National

Go Home, Hillary.

National, Uncategorized, , , , ,

Correction: A couple of days after the New York Times quoted Hillary as saying Gabbard was “being groomed by theRussians”, they were forced to issue a correction. What she had, in fact, said was that Gabbard was being groomed by the “Republicans” to run as a third party candidate. A “horse of a different color”, I would say, if red wasn’t favored both by Republicans and Russians.

…and take Bill with you.

Hillary Clinton has succeeded in distracting everyone from Donald Trump’s very, VERY bad week; so much so, that one could as legitimately ask if she is a Russian asset, as she suggested someone in the 2020 Democratic lineup might be.

What a waste of time.

Tulsi Gabbard assumes that she was talking about her, and perhaps she was.  Nevertheless, Hillary has only succeeded in breathing new life into Gabbard’s feeble campaign, so that she might rise from 1% to a higher single digit.

I actually heard voices on the Saturday morning talk shows opining that Hillary “must know” what she’s talking about since she’s had do much personal experience with Russian interference!  Pu-lease!

This is the kind of conspiracy theory rumor mill that wound-up Crazy Donald and the Donaldettes in the first place.  She of all people should know better!

What possible value did Hillary imagine her little sideshow would bring to the already fraught but critical process of selecting a viable general election candidate?

She’s slipping into her Bill’s habit of wrong-footing it into the limelight just in time to provide new talking points for her opposition.

With “friends” like these, who needs enemies.

By the way, who’s to say she WAS referring to Tulsi Gabbard?  Knowing Hillary’s center-right hawkish leanings, she could have just as well been referring to the current second lead, after her fav Joe Biden. ‘Talk about wrong-footed!  Joe’s been hemorrhaging money and credibility, and just can’t seem to make it right.

Enter: Hillary, being “helpful.”

If she has any sense remaining after the Republicans have bounced her around like a football for the past two decades, she should apologize for musing out loud, blame cold-meds or some other reality-altering substance; then return to her novel for the duration. She has well and truly worn-out her welcome.

Trump keeps us in his crazy ‘Village’

National, ,

I had a couple conversations recently with random people who volunteered in passing that they were feeling kind of smothered and oppressed by the way Trump dominates the news . Whether it is the recent thing about wanting to purchase Greenland from Denmark or retweeting a claim that he is seen by some as the King of Israel or almost any one of the endless lies he spews forth — he is, after two years, omnipresent. And like some digital media version of the white balloon Rover from the 1960’s TV show The Prisoner Trump’s behavior keeps us in his own crazy news village-potentially disheartened and distracted from other issues.

Rover is a fictional entity from the 1967 British television program The Prisoner, and was an integral part of the way ‘prisoners’ were kept within the Village. It was depicted as a floating white balloon that could coerce, and, if necessary, disable inhabitants of the Village […] in one incident, it even killed a person, but it is not clear whether the ability to kill was a normal feature of Rover or if this incident was a malfunction. Several aspects of the Rover device were not explained, presumably left to the imagination of the viewer.

Photo-shop coping: a great escape from the Trump Era

National,

Sure it is juvenile and a bit foolish, like drawing a mustache on a billboard face, but … I just couldn’t write a GMD diary about Senator Lindsey Graham violating his own Senate committee rules to railroad a bill (one that will help escalate the latest horrors ICE is perpetrating on immigrant families seeking asylum) to a vote. The bill will extend the time immigrant children can be held from a court-ordered 20 days to 100 days.  I even made an attempt to break my block by scribbling about a couple other issues, such as Trump’s barrage of racist twitter-rants. I even failed to engage over GOP Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s rage at “Moscow Mitch”, his new nickname … just couldn’t do that either.

So I did what I could do — used photo-shop and a Leningrad Cowboy to mock Donald’s comb-over and scowl. And studies have found that humor was an effective coping mechanism with all levels of stress.  In fact one study on former prisoners of war found they used humor as: “[…] a way of fighting back and taking control. By defining humor as an element of communication and by thinking of resilience as a communication phenomenon, the links between humor and resilience become more apparent.

At least for a half hour or so I felt better. Now how can I dig an escape tunnel out of the Trump era into the future?

Trump parade leaves tracks

National, Uncategorized

Here’s another instance of the damage that simply gets lost in the floodtide of wreckage swirling along behind Trump and his GOP enablers.

After Independence Day last week Democrats in the House and Senate announced they will be examining President Trump’s “Salute to America” Fourth of July military parade (with tanks) and fireworks display held at the Lincoln Memorial.

The latest estimate is that it cost taxpayers at least $9.15 million. And despite the cost, Donald’s “Salute” was widely panned here and openly mocked by Russian state run media.

U.S.House and Senate investigations move slowly, take time and likely hardly be noticed. But the City of Washington DC is feeling immediate financial damage. The Washington Post reports Trump’s vanity project cost the city $1.7 million in combined police expenses. And [it] has bankrupted a special fund used to protect the nation’s capital from terrorist threats and provide security at events such as rallies and state funerals.

In a letter to the president Tuesday, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) warned that the fund has been depleted and is estimated to be running a $6 million deficit when the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30. The mayor also noted that the account was never reimbursed for $7.3 million in expenses from Trump’s 2017 inauguration.

Sure it is week-old news but now a familiar pattern; someone else is always left to clean-up what Trump & Company leave in the road after the parade.

Red state/blue state vegetable poll

National, Uncategorized

I have been keeping away from early polling of the two dozen Democratic presidential primary candidates. If the truth be told I really can’t wait for the Democratic primaries to be done and the general election battle with Trump to begin.

But for now take close look (just to stay in practice) at the annual Green Giant poll of American’s favorite vegetables.

More than 5,000 consumers, from age 13 to 73, took the frozen/canned vegetables company’s survey, and broccoli placed first in 39 states. The results were released in connection with National Eat Your Vegetables Day, June 17, according to a news release.

Some interesting findings from the survey, which was open-ended, letting consumers choose any vegetable:

  • What’s up, Idaho?: Potatoes ranked first only in Arkansas, a loss of four states from last year;
  • Et tu, Iowa?: Of the 7 states choosing corn, Iowa wasn’t included. (Yes, sweet corn and field corn are vastly different, but still …);
  • No juicers? Despite the juicing craze that’s boosted celery prices to new heights, the fad didn’t elevate the stalk to the top in any state;
  • No CUKES!: Cucumbers did not carry a single state, unlike in 2018, when New Mexico and Louisiana residents chose them above other vegetables; and
  • The “orange” candidate: Nevada and North Dakota opted for carrots;
  • Welcome to the club: Asparagus led Alaska polling, and cauliflower was the favorite in Montana, the first times for both vegetables.

The survey, conducted through Suzy, a company that offers an online consumer insights platform, took place April 26-May 10, according to the release.

Time will tell but it may prove significant come November that celery couldn’t translate its popular fad into votes. Eh, I mean sales at grocery stores

Bernie’s own book of the month club

Business, National, ,

Bernie Sanders has become a millionaire, and he did it by selling his new book! In blunt fashion Sanders explained his get rich strategy: “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” NYTimes.com

During the 2015 primary campaign the pre-millionaire Bernie employed a book buying/selling strategy that never would have gotten him rich but might be worth a glance now as the crowded Democratic primary race heats up.

According to FEC filings, the Sanders campaign bought thousands of dollars of his books. Sanders spent almost $445,000 of his donors’ campaign funds with Verso Books, the publisher of Outsider in the White House, which was a quick re-working of his earlier Bernie book: Outsider in the House. I mentioned the purchase in a diary: Campaign dollars to donuts back then without really taking aim at it; I don’t recall it making any waves in that long campaign.

FECtwo

Buying your own books with your campaign-donor dollars sure looks a little shady, but it isn’t unheard of or apparently illegal. But since the Citizens United decision super-PAC dark money is running rampant in campaigns — and with the six-member Federal Election Commission often deadlocked, enforcement is spotty.

In recent years candidates for national office have been regularly buying their own books (aka 300-page hardcover party favors) with campaign money. For instance in 2015 the csmonitor.com reported that Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign paid $122,252.00 to the publisher of  his book A Time for Truth. Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney all used campaign or PAC funds to buy their own books.

The FEC found a variety of likely violations made by Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign over a book-promotion deal and campaign funding. After three years of wrangling, a deadlocked vote between Democratic and Republican Commission members halted any possibility that the FEC would be investigating the former Speaker of the House.

Now, I’m fine with Bernie Sanders in the millionaire club, despite what some see as hypocrisy. But he really shouldn’t be in that particular book club.

WCAX/Gray TV’s Greta Van Susteren: “I am now the local media.”

local/regional, National, , , , ,

WCAX’s catch phrase was once “Vermont’s Own News station” but no more. In May 2017 the station became part of Gray Television, a large  corporation based in Atlanta, GA, with 144 local TV stations covering 10.4% of U.S. households. Layoffs hit the WCAX newsroom about a year later.

Although not considered to be as openly right-wing as Sinclair Broadcasting — which stipulates all outlets must carry conservative political content — Gray TV may be “Foxifying” WCAX  a bit.

This fall, just in time for the 2020 presidential race, Gray-owned stations will begin airing Full Court Press, a Sunday public-affairs program featuring FoxNews veteran Greta Van Susteren. On theHill.com Gray TV Chairman and CEO Hilton Hatchet Howell, Jr., characterized Full Court Press this way: “Our goal is to provide critical information without bias to allow viewers to form their own opinions and reach their own decisions by exploring all sides of a complex issue.”

For those not familiar with her, Van Susteren spent 14years as a prime-time FoxNews host — replaced by Tucker Carlson in 2016.Then in 2017 she was on MSNBC but was dropped after six months.plutotweet

At Fox, Van Susteren once wondered if the government was wasting our tax dollars at NASA because of the long delay getting satellite images from Pluto back to Earth.

More recently Media Matters reported something more problematic : With one terrible tweet, Greta Van Susteren helped fuel a conspiracy theory that made its way to the president, who repeated it within hours

On Twitter, former Fox News and MSNBC host Greta Van Susteren tweeted that the “FBI obviously tipped off CNN,” adding that “even if you don’t like Stone, it is curious why Mueller’s office tipped off CNN.”

Nearly three hours later, Van Susteren conceded that she might be wrong about CNN acting on a tip. Even so, the original tweet, which had accumulated thousands of retweets, remained up and continued to be shared. The new tweet, correcting her mistake, had just 95 retweets at the time of this writing. [The Mueller investigation later vigorously denied the claim in a court filing]

The 2016 presidential primary and general election brought in upwards of $100 million on political ads in broadcast and cable television in New England markets. And now Full Court Press here in Vermont with a little bit of FoxNews is going to get a share this fall for Gray Television. vanSuswcax2

Van Susteren told The LA Times: […] she expects Gray’s geographical reach to help in booking presidential candidates to appear on the program.

“Politics begins in local markets,” Van Susteren said. “I am now the local media. I’m going to reach their voters.”

Gives a whole new spin to the late columnist Peter Freyne’s moniker for WCAX: he always called it WGOP; only now, of course he might call it WFOX, or WGRAY.

Howard Dean, Canadian cannabis corporation, and Anheuser-Busch

Business, National, , ,

VtDigger.com reported this past weekend that the former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean has formally joined the board of directors of Tilray, a large (Nasdaq traded) Canadian-based international cannabis company that manufactures and markets cannabis flower and extract products. There was no mention of how much compensation corporate board members receive.

Dean actually “went to pot” months ago, in December 2018, when he, along with former RNC Chairman Michael Steele became advisors to Tilray.

As recently as 2003, when running for president, Dean was opposed to legalizing pot; according to VtDigger.com he said: […] decriminalizing drugs would send “a very bad message to young people.” The country already had issues with alcohol and tobacco, “and adding a third drug is not a good idea.” Fast-forward to 2019: Faced with “the combination of deciding medical marijuana might really have some efficacy, backed up by studies that I thought were reasonable, which I didn’t think were reasonable 10 years earlier, backed up by my daughter’s public-defender experience, I flipped.”

As a physician Dean was impressed with the pharmaceutical operation Tilray is running and he was impressed by research that shows CBD is useful as a treatment for seizures associated with two severe forms of epilepsy.tilrayfortune1

But Tilray is big business and part of a fast growing hyper-competitive industry. Therefore they are looking at a wide ranging menu of possible uses for their cannabis products for shareholder profit. It wasn’t mentioned in VtDigger that early this year, not long after the two former national party chairs signed on  that Tilray  announced that it had partnered with Anheuser-Busch in a $100-million venture to study (and possibly market) not only a non-alcoholic CBD beverage but also one containing THC … the psychoactive ingredient.

I wonder if you will need Doctor Dean’s prescription for that drink.

The amazing DNC voter data machine: Who gets the profit?

Business, local/regional, National, ,

Some news just washes by like untreated sludge in the stormwater overflow, but here’s some national news with a local angle that fetched up on the shore last week.

Reports are that Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez has organized a new data-exchange operation. Perez is matching the successful GOP voter-data operation on display in the last presidential vote that is believed to have boosted their turnout. The plan is for the Democrats to do as the Republicans did and form a for-profit entity; Perez’s new organization will be gathering all available Democratic data now scattered throughout state party organizations and some non-profits.

The complex operation is coming together  after months of serious internal wrangling. Politico.com reported last December that state party officials were looking to know who exactly would stand to benefit financially from the new for profit data base entity.

Now Howard Dean, with stints as a Vermont governor, a presidential candidate, and as DNC Chairman has agreed to  oversee the new DNC voter-info project. AP reports: The arrangement would allow the national party, state parties, and independent political action groups on the left to share voter data in real time during campaigns. That means, for example, that a field worker for a congressional campaign in Iowa and another for an independent political action committee knocking on doors in Florida could update a master voter file essentially as they work. When a presidential campaign spends big money on consumer data to update voter profiles, the new information would go into the central file as well. And all participating organizations would have access to the latest information.

The new exchange will operate as an independent for-profit enterprise led initially by Democratic strategist Jen O’Malley Dillon, once a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. [emphasis added]DNCdata

The deal worked out with the DNC chair to calm the waters among the state party officials divvies up the control over the data-exchange between former Hillary people and people seen as progressives — Howard Dean and Ken Martin (leader of the Democratic state party chairs association, a MN liberal inspired by the late Senator Paul Wellstone).

As APNews reports: Martin and Perez would chair a party committee that would license the party’s voter files to O’Malley Dillon’s group, which would establish its own agreements with PACs and other groups. Dean would chair the governing board of the new outfit, and once assembled, that board will hire staff to run the operation.

Some competition and general wrangling for resources between the national organization and state party organizations are nothing new. But a for-profit business model — copied from the GOP — stocked full of licensed DNC voter data available for a price seems designed to invite grifters up to the campaign table for a big-money feast. And as always there is the ever-present potential for hackers gaining access to all that data — all those eggs in one basket could prove an irresistible target.

By splitting up oversight Perez, Dean, and all the professional movers and shakers in the presidential election industrial complex seem to have decided for now to navigate this one with some care. Except there are still questions: 1) who keeps the profits; and 2) why should state and local volunteers provide free labor to stock a data base for sale to favored, deep-pocketed entities/campaigns, when the “profits” are not going to the parties? I’d hate to see the Democrats following the Republican-capitalist model: privatize the profits and socialize the cost and the consequences.

I hope Perez, Dean, et al., at least manage to keep the peace. After all there’s not much riding on this next election but the whole ball of wax. But let’s not lose sight of our principles in the process.

Using hot highway de-icer: radioactive AquaSalina®

Business, local/regional, National, , ,

In Ohio a Cleveland Plain Dealer report on state legislation surrounding a 2017 public health report details radiation hazards from a salt-brine road de-icer mix used there. And the risk is more than a little alarming. keepback

Salt-brine is defined by the American Public Works Association as a solution of salt (typically sodium chloride, calcium chloride or magnesium chloride) and water.

It seems AquaSalina, the commercial brine mixture spread all over Ohio, has: […] elevated levels of radioactivity in excess of state limits on the discharge of radioactive materials. The average radioactivity in AquaSalina also exceeded the drinking water limits for Radium 226 and Radium 228 by a factor of 300. Human consumption of any amount of AquaSalina is highly discouraged, the report said. [find Ohio Department of Natural Resources pdf here]

Ohio’s Duck Creek Energy, Inc., maker of the trademarked product, says the de-cier brine and dust control agent  “AquaSalina® is a natural saltwater solution produced from ancient seas dating back to the Silurian age almost 425 million years ago.”

That is likely true — as far as it goes — but the “ancient sea water” is also toxic oil-field brine dredged up from conventional (not shale fracking) oil and gas wells. At the wells the waste water is stored in tanks and residual oil and gas is removed after it floats to the surface. The toxic waste water — err, I mean “ancient sea water” — is trucked to Duck Creek facilities where volatile organics and trace minerals — but not naturally occurring radium — are filtered out. What remains is rebranded (apparently with a straight face) as AquaSalina “natural saltwater” road brine and dust control agent.

Problem is: “Heavy metals and radiologicals accumulate in the soil and become problematic for drinking water,” said Trish Demeter, the Ohio Environmental Council vice president of Policy, Energy. “They don’t just go away. The more you use deicers [and dust control agents] the more these toxins build up over a long period of time.” Not sure if Ohioans should feel complacent, even though the report does say they believe radiation exposure from wintertime use of AquaSalina was “unlikely” to exceed human dosage limits. In the previous winter Ohio road crews used one million gallons of AquaSalina, a fraction of the 10 million total gallons of de-icer mixes used. But then again, it is the only proven radioactive mix splashed on the roads.

 The State of Vermont started experimenting with salt-brine highway deicers (the non-radioactive variety as far as we know) about ten years ago. The VTrans FAQ webpage says that the state currently uses them to “jump start” the melting process and to minimize the amount of salt that bounces into the ditches. The salt we typically use is sodium chloride, the same as on your dinner table at home. Then again, VTrans has not yet (that we know of) released the exact chemical make-up of its brine formula.

Road salt, brine de-icing brews, and mixtures are widely seen as culprits that not only pollute streams but prematurely rust car bodies, corrode brake lines, and erode concrete highway structures. In 2017 a Vermont bill that would have banned the use of sodium chloride, calcium chloride and or magnesium chloride brine mixes was introduced but not passed.

Alternatives to salt-based brines are being tested. Carbohydrate sugars in juices left over from commercial industrial processing beets, cheese, potatoes and pickle brine are effective at lower temperatures. Beet wastewater reportedly smells like stale coffee and may change oxygen levels in waterways. Dumping tons and tons of anything on the highways is bound to be problematic for water runoff and throw habitats out of whack.

While it may be difficult to find out exactly what homemade blend or commercial salt-brine product VTrans may be using, an increase in rusty trucks and cars, eroding bridges, and polluted streams seem to suggest there’s evidence of increased harm to balance a supposed increase in vehicular safety on otherwise slick roads. The assumption appears to be that spraying salt-brine  can’t be as bad as sluicing ancient radioactive sea water all over the roadways … or can it ?