Save the Vermont Pigs!

So in light of the upcoming campaign season and the popularity of the "Save the Vermont Pigs" campaign. I've decided the time was right to reboot this blog idea I had come up with. You can expect some interesting political dialog as we wind through the maze of issues leading up to the general election. Stay tuned and don't forget to "like" us on Facebook and sign the petition we'll be delivering to Governor Shumlin. When things die down on that front we will begin posting content and open discussions about anything and everything politics!
http://www.facebook.com/SaveTheVermontPigs

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-the-vermont-pigs.html

Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice, Fool Me Eight Times?

Jon Stewart lambastes the American political system regarding our dependence on foreign oil. He shows us eight administrations that have promised to reduce or completely remove our dependence. Yet somehow. they've all failed to deliver. As usual, Stewart is hilarious, but the whole piece gives you a real clear picture of the influence of big oil on American politics. He points out all the "distractions" that have kept us from achieving the goal of energy independence.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Dan Sheridan - Big Money - Aspen, CO

Anyone who has lived in a resort town can relate to this song. Dan Sheridan got fired from his gig at the Aspen Ski Co. lodge when an executive heard him perform the song after a fan had requested he play it. What a wanker!

http://thevileplutocrat.com/bile/articles/big_money_gets_folk_singer_fired/

Vermont Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant

"MONTPELIER, Vt. — In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant after 2012, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems.

Unless the chamber reverses itself, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives has decided to close a reactor.

The vote came just more than a week after President Obama declared a new era of rebirth for the nation’s nuclear industry, announcing federal loan guarantees of $8.3 billion to assure the construction of a twin-reactor plant near Augusta, Ga."

Vermont Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant - NYTimes.com

Just because it may be time to shut Vermont Yankee down, it doesn't mean doom for the nuclear industry. It's simply time to build new cleaner, more efficient and safer new facilities that pass the tougher environmental standards. For starters, stop building these huge ticking time bombs close to heavily populated areas. Who came up with these ideas? Hmmmm.....Long Island seems like a good place to build a huge reactor.


There have been a lot of technical advances in green energy, but you can't count out ideas like smaller scale operations. There are plans for home reactors that run on trace amounts of commercial grade plutonium and phone booth size reactors that are self-contained. The latter can be used to power small rural communities that now rely on diesel generators for electricity. We shouldn't let politics pollute the "green revolution". We all benefit from it.

Wall Street Playing the Victim

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.
The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.

Here we go again. The folks on Wall Street are determined to prove to all of us that they just don't get it. If they think they're getting a tongue lashing from the President then I would suggest they stay off Main Street. There they might just encounter a lynch mob.

Kelly King is a board member of the Financial Services , which lobbies for the biggest banks. He says, “I understand the public outcry. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

I can assure you that it's not the President's rhetoric that's inciting the animosity. It's people's declining net worth that is riling them up. Wall Street seems to live in this bubble where they get to thinking that all the money they play with every day is theirs. Somehow they feel that they are entitled to use it as they see fit. Now, when we want them regulated to protect ourselves from their greed they have the gall to cry foul.

I'm sure all those bankers would be quick to tell you that nobody was complaining when they were taking in record profits for their share holders. Once again, Wall Street just doesn't understand that all Americans are not shareholders in their companies. Lower income America had no stake in the shell game the banks were playing, other than they were unwittingly duped into bogus mortgages, yet they're the ones who are being punished the most by the bailout. Like they can afford it.


“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association. “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good." How does Mr. Nides think the rest of America feels? One might want to argue that Wall Street has been suffering from the recession as well, but in the same breath they want to pay out huge bonuses.


Where does Wall Street get off acting like they've been injured when they've been bailed out? For years people have begrudgingly been customers of financial institutions. They've tolerated draconian lending practices, outrageous fees and sleazy, underhanded, small print riddled bullshit for as long as time can remember. Why, because they have no real choice in the matter. Don't we pay enough just on that front? Then they have the nerve to come back and ask us to bail them out. I can't imagine how you could begin to defend giving huge bonuses to the same people who screwed us in the first place. It doesn't take a PHD or a Series 7 license to figure out that this is an outrage. It's not at all hard to understand why there is such anger on Main Street. The President is merely echoing public sentiment. So, if you follow the Wall Street logic their greed is not to blame. They are simply poor victims like the rest of us. That's like saying Jeffery Dahmer didn't do anything wrong. He was merely hungry. I still think we should have let them fail. 

Sarah Palin Addresses Tea Party Convention

"This is about the people ... and it's a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter," she said, a reference to Obama's use of teleprompters which conservative critics frequently chide him for.

Referring to mounting debt and government programs, Palin said: "What they are doing ... They're sticking our kids with the bill. And that's immoral. That's generational theft.".....
You can catch the full Reuters article here.

I'm still having a hard time getting my head around this Sarah Palin thing. If I was a Conservative/Republican I would be embarrassed to have her as "the face of the party". I just caught the second half of her speech last night and then the soundbytes from Fox and CNN. She can wisecrack about Obama's teleprompter all she wants. At least he doesn't sound like the female Yogi Berra of politics. Just like she did when campaigning, she leaves you wondering "what the hell did she just say?". Yet the sheeple applaud on demand. 


I was dumbfounded that she had the gall to accuse Obama of "generational theft". Talk about hypocrisy. As my memory serves me, Clinton left Bush with a balanced budget. Bush immediately gave all his rich buddies tax breaks, repealed decades old financial regulations and started two wars. While I don't support the way Bush/Cheney went about it; I do support the wars and believe that once we were there we are committed to finishing the task in a proper and honorable way that doesn't harm our future security. That said, the rest of the "generational debt" that has been passed along began to accrue on the Bush/Cheney watch. TARP never should have happened. The same people that tell us, "Oh well, that's capitalism" when a person or small business fails were asking for a bailout. What happened to "Oh well, that's capitalism" when it was their turn? Bush bailed them out with our money. While it's true that Obama has expanded the boondoggle on his watch, he certainly wasn't the one responsible. If I was Sarah Palin, I'd be looking in the mirror and figuring out which rich white guy is standing behind her waiting to give her a push off the precipice they've placed her on.


It's obvious that Republican/Conservatives are in defensive mode and are using Sarah Palin as a front to deflect attention from the fact that they are the ones who have led us into this recession on the backs of the average taxpayer. It will be interesting as we roll up on Congressional elections how it all plays out. My thinking says that after the Congressional elections a more traditional Republican candidate will emerge. I'll give credit to RNC Chairman Steele for his skill in executing this diversion. It will be interesting to see how Palin's downfall will play out. What will her "Howard Dean yell" be?

Of course all this brilliant planning may be for naught. I suspect, from talking to them, that the Tea Party people are educated people who are fairly conservative in some ways, but more centrist in others. They are, generally speaking, disenfranchised by the conservatives on the far right and the wacky liberals on the left. They would prefer a candidate that isn't beholden to either extreme. This is partly why I'm having trouble getting my head around the Sarah Palin thing. These aren't stupid, gullible people. Which is what I think will eventually derail the RNC's strategy. They're playing with fire. Apparently they aren't getting that this group has a lot of unhappy Obama supporters and Hillaryites. The larger and stronger this voting block gets, the harder it will be to get a candidate elected without appeasing this new base. While it's been a slow and agonizing process, the cycle of politics is starting to shift back to the middle where it should be. If ever a third party were to emerge in American politics, now is the time the ground would be most fertile. Who would this new party run as a candidate that would have enough experience and popularity to lead a populist revolution? While I'm not sure I have an answer to this question, I'm thoroughly convinced it's not Sarah Palin.

Shelby Holds Up Nominations for Earmarks

Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold. Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to "all executive nominations on the Senate calendar. According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: "Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.

The tanker thing is a boondoggle. They got out bid by a European company fair and square. Then they cried like babies to get the thing rebid so they could win. They used the patriotism card, which apparently trumps the Capitalist card in this case, to con Congress and the Pentagon to reopen the bid. Talk about lobbyists!

I can't disagree with Shelby on the IED facility. That makes sense, earmarks or not.

I think Shelby's actions are, while not unexpected, deplorable and indicative of the problems in our government concerning the relationship between powerful lobbyists and Congress. At times there can be valid reasons to hold up a nomination, but this isn't one of them. To flat out blackmail the White House by pledging to hold up all White House nominations is outrageous. We need leadership in so many areas and Shelby is holding progress hostage until he gets his own pork barrel projects funded. Are the people of Alabama really going to re-elect this guy. Sure he's trying to bring home the bacon. The problem is, he's doing it at the expense of the rest of the country.

Before anyone gets all wound up, I was equally disgusted by Senator Nelson (D-KS) only agreeing to sign the Senate healthcare bill after he got a multi-million dollar concession for Kansas. It's obvious, if your vantage point is from the middle, that both parties just don't get it. We've all had to endure hardship through this recession, yet both parties expect to do business as usual. It's like the bankers who don't get why people are pissed off about the huge bonuses. They claim to be giving these huge bonuses in the name of employee retention in order to stay competitive. Why would you want to retain the people who led us down the path to financial ruin? Never mind asking why they deserve bonuses when people are drowning in debt from all their greedy lending practices.

We need to seriously reform the government and the people who run it; and reel in the greed in the private sector. Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place? I'm all for capitalism, but in moderation.

Here's the original story at TalkingPointsMemo.com

Here's the follow up post with more info