Here’s a quick rundown of some of the TMD action around the Vermont blogosphere…

• Vermont View is doing a great job, featuring several posts today about political hapenings around the state, including piece on the Brattleboro indictment vote, electioneering Montpelier style, and the apparent Obama blowout here in Vermont.
• Broadsides features an essay about how the power of Town Meetings in Vermont has been curtailed over the years yielding a process that has few teeth when it comes to statewide politics.
• Green Mountain Daily is featuring some thoughtful thoughs and speculations about today’s results.
• iBrattleboro’s got Brattleboro Town Meeting pictures!
• Front Porch Forum may be the busiest online forum in the state when it comes to Vermonters discussing issues and candidates with each other. According to FPF founder and moderator Michael Wood Lewis, 150 different people have posted messages to the forum recently about the Moran Plant question in Burlington alone! Too bad those posts aren’t permalinked anywhere. That would be a valuable resource and a fascinating archive of this election cycle.
• Walter Jeffries has a post at Sugar Mountain Farm about the absurdity of voter ID systems in West Topsham, Vermont.

Most of the links under the Vermont Politics list in the right side bar have current posts about this Town Meeting Day and/or Vermont presidential primary. Take a tour through these blogs and let them know you stopped by!

Town Meetings, Vermont, presidential race, southern Vermont | 2 Comments »

Broadsides‘ Michael Colby has a post up today that’s critical of the leading Democratic presidential candidates.  According to Colby, Obama’s appeal is all about his rhetoric, but when it comes to issues, he’s just another craven politician.  Colby writes…

There is apparently no end to the suspension of logic. But I guess we already know that since the dominant theme of the apparent winner of the Dem Oz-fest is the “man of hope,” Obama. At least he’s being honest. He’s not talking about accomplishments. Revolution. Systematic overhaul. Peace. Or any such measure of true change. Nope, just hope. And the crowds go wild, tap, tap tapping away….

All this hope comes from a most distinguished place of privilege too. If you’ve got a couple of years to do little but hope you certainly aren’t amongst those who are dodging bullets and IEDs in Baghdad. Or amongst those who are drowning in the financial atrocities of the subprime fiasco. Or amongst those who are so marginalized by the workforce that they no longer even qualify to be counted in unemployment numbers. And just try to send a hopeful note to your insurance corporation seeking an extension on the policy you can no longer afford. Good luck with that.

Sorry, but hope works better on a bumpersticker.

Read Colby’s entire post here.

Obama, VT bloggers, presidential race | 58 Comments »

In order to Vote in Tuesday’s Vermont Presidential primary, you must register with your local town clerk by 5:00 pm today!

And remember, there will be a live web chat with representatives from all of the major presidential candidates tonight starting at 7:30 pm at Vermont Public Television’s website.  All are free to participate.

Vermont, presidential race | 5 Comments »

Crossposted at Candleblog…

It’s spelled V-e-r-m-o-n-t.  It’s the 14th state — the first one after the original 13 colonies.  It’s right next to New Hampshire and it’s similarly shaped.  But people don’t seem to know we exist.  The other night as Emily and I were watching some election-related news coverage, we heard a pundit refer to the March 4th primaries in “Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and the other states.”

In tonight’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton said, “I want to help the people of this country get the chances they deserve to have. And I will do whatever I can here in Ohio, in Texas, Rhode Island, in the states to come making that case.”

What are we, chopped liver?  We have 15 delegates!  There are only four contests for the Democrats on March 4th.  Nobody seems to have any trouble remembering the other three.

It reminds me of the theme from Gilligan’s Island.  At the end of the opening credits as the lyrics listed the characters on the island, the song we all remember would go, “With Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann….”  But remember when the show was still black and white?  It had a slightly different version of the song.  Originally, the song was sung, “…the movie star, and the rest!”  The rest?  The professor and Mary Ann were “the rest?”

That’s us up here in Vermont.  Texas and Ohio are the Skipper and Gilligan.  Vermont is the state that’s not worth taking up theme song time with.  But remember, Vermont is also the state that can charge radio batteries using coconut shells and sea water AND is the state most people want to marry.  So there.

Vermont, presidential race | No Comments »

Reading Vermont View, I see that The Huffington Post has generated a nifty little GoogleMaps hack called FundRace that shows you exactly who in your neck of the woods donated money to a presidential campaign.  Looking at Burlington, I can see that Seventh Generation CEO Jeffery Hollender gave $2,300 to Chris Dodd’s campaign, for example.  I also see that Madeline Kunin gave $400 to the Clinton campaign (not too surprising considering Kunin is co-chair of Clinton’s Vermont campaign).  Pepsi mogul Skip Farrell gave $250 to Rudy Guiliani.  The list goes on.  Just click a red or blue dot on the map to see who’s giving campaign contributions to who.

Vermont, presidential race | No Comments »

UVM professor, novelist, VPR commentator and blogger Philip Baruth has been invited to address a group of young Obama supporters at Nectar’s tonight in downtown Burlington.  According to Baruth…

 A small army of UVM students, led by student organizer Dana Jokela, have thrown together an impressive event for Monday night, aimed squarely at turning out the youth vote for Obama. They’ve asked me to speak somewhere between a band called The Sepia Tones, and another by the name of Chainlink Gunlove. Which sounds fairly intense. Stop by, talk strategy, or just groove on the gunlove, whatever that turns out to be.

The event is billed as “Barack Obama Jam for Change” and it begins tonight at 9pm at Nectar’s.

Obama, presidential race | No Comments »

Vermont Public Television will host a live web chat with representatives from all three major presidential candidates this coming Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm. The one-hour chat is free and anyone is welcome to participate. According to VPT, blogger Neil Jensen of Vermonters for Obama; former governor Madeleine Kunin, co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s Vermont Campaign; and Robert Chernin, a McCain supporter, have agreed to participate.

The web chat is part of VPT’s Vermont Primary Tracker, which the public television channel describes as “a website for keeping up to date with the state’s presidential primary.” According to VPT…

Vermont Primary Tracker offers a variety of content, including candidate information and position papers. Discussion areas include issues of special concern to Vermont voters, such as retirement security and health
care, as well as broader topics like the Iraq war, global warming and education.

Go to VPT’s website to login to the web chat.

Clinton, McCain, Obama, Vermont, presidential race | 9 Comments »