Freyne Land

“Politics Has Gotten Ugly in America”

That’s the opening line in GOP congressional aspirant Martha Rainville’s first-in-her-life political TV commercial. (Obviously she's been watching the recent rather "ugly" TV spots being aired by Republican Senate candidate Rich Tarrant, eh?)

“The two Parties are barely civil to each other,” says Marvelous Martha looking straight into the camera. “I’m running a different kind of campaign that respects my opponent, respects you.”

Rainville then lets everyone know she’s signed her own proposed “Clean Campaign Pledge.” There’s a shot of her arm signing it. In fact, that shot takes up 11 seconds of the 30-second commercial!

You and I who have nothing better to do than follow this stuff know that her opponent, i.e. Democrat Peter Welch, did not sign her campaign pledge. In fact, Welchie scoffed at it as the set-up, political publicity stunt it was.

What it appeared to be at the time was a ridiculous pitch for a $1 million campaign-spending cap by the candidate with the smallest campaign treasury. Everybody knows that with control of the U.S. House on-the-line big-time on November 7, and Vermont’s one-and-only seat being an open seat, the national parties and pacs will be spending millions on Vermont airtime.

Camp Rainville brass knew going in that Welch wouldn’t sign her campaign spending pledge. So what? What the heck do you expect her to talk about?  The great job the Bush administration and the GOP Congress have been doing the last six years?

No matter.

That’s because Martha’s pledge-pitch wasn’t about “clean campaigns” at all.  It was really about playing to the peanut gallery. About Gen. Rainville’s “image.” That’s what counts here, folks, er, voters!

And let’s not forget, Rainville’s is an image Vermonters have known and admired for a decade. It’s the image of a brave, intelligent,  competent, and dare we say, attractive,  commander-in-chief. The first woman adjutant general of a state National Guard in American history!

Not bad when you’re up against an image that, some say, resembles that of a bald, squeaky-voiced Statehouse retread, remembered across Vermont for his lawsuit-hungry law-firm’s ambulance-chaser TV commercials that ran repeatedly before the Six O’Clock News a few years back.

This inaugural Rainville TV spot confirms that the Clean Campaign Pledge Pitch was indeed part of the larger Camp Rainville battle plan. At least she has a plan, right?

“No negative ads or mail that tear down my opponent,” said Martha, “and no guilt by association...Vermont’s a small state but we can set a new standard for the rest of America.”

P.S. Caught John Dillon’s Rainville story on VPR.  JD covered the presser at her Williston HQ where the new TV spot was “unveiled,” as they say. She also took questions - it is America, ya know. Her least favorite question is:  “If elected, Martha, who will you vote for in January for House Speaker?”

"I don't know. Would I abstain? Would it matter? I think we spend a lot of time on who are you going to vote for as speaker and it really just detracts attention from what we ought we ought to be talking about. I think it's in some sense a ploy by some who don't want to talk about the issues, or who want to keep Vermonters stirred up about a personality rather than real concerns on Vermonters minds."

Obviously, Peter Welch has a different take.

"It matters enormously to the future of Vermont and to future of our country. It's the most important vote that Vermont's next member of Congress will cast. It's absolutely the most critical vote and it matters."

It’s one issue where it appears Welch has got her by the....ah...."baseballs."

Fact: If elected, Republican Rainville will vote for the Republican candidate for Speaker. Why the hell do you think the national GOP has her on its top-ten list? So she can vote for a Democratic House Speaker?

Got to give Martha a round of applause, though, for the great spin move she did suggesting there might be a “moderate” Republican in line come January.

"With this mid-term election, what I'm hoping is that that moderate voice will be stronger in Congress. And a lot of representatives have come to the realization that we need to change direction. And there are some, particularly in the Northeast, some Republicans that are very strong minded about that."

Nice try, Moderate Martha.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Scidder, er, Scudder Parker, actually broke a news story today!

We’re not talking about his Statehouse Steps comments on “investing in our youngest children.” If you want info on that stuff, check the mainstream press.

What perked up our ears, was Mr. Parker’s off-the-cuff reply to the last question of the 20-minute presser: How’s the campaign going, Scudder?

“It’s going great!” replied the ex-minister, ex-senator and current energy-efficiency expert. “I was over in Caledonia County yesterday and I noticed that  Mr. Douglas is now the only statewide candidate I’m aware of who doesn’t support utility-scale wind.”

What?

“Mr. Dubie,” said Parker, “made a comment that he supports big wind at that meeting.”

GOP Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie can’t say that!  It’ll leave his running mate on the GOP ticket, Gov. Jim Douglas, looking both lonesome and out-of-touch.

Yours truly asked the Guv at his 10:30 a.m. presser if he’d heard anything about the Doobster going over to the other side on what he loves to dub the “industrialization of Vermont’s ridge lines.”

Gov. Douglas said he hadn’t heard anything about a position-switch on wind energy from his talented running mate on the GOP ticket.

Hmmm.

When we got home, we called the Lite-Gov’s office.  Dubie’s “chief-of-staff,” in fact, only staff - Martha Hanson answered.

Martha told us Brian was serving his Air Force Reserve duties today and not available for comment. She then proceeded to tell us that her boss, a commercial pilot at American Airlines, has indeed recently distanced himself from King James on the topic of wind power.

“What he said at Lyndon State,” said Hanson, “is that he is a wind guy.” Our Lite-Gov knows that “not everyone in Vermont wants it, not everyone wants to look out the window at it,” she said. And Dubie also “doesn’t believe in forcing it on communities,” she added.

“But he does recognize wind is more and more a viable source of energy,” said Hanson.  Dubie told the folks at Lyndon State that, as a pilot, when he looks down at commercial wind farms with big rotors turning, he finds they look "beautiful."

“The lieutenant governor is a supporter of commercial wind development in Vermont,” said Hanson. No "ifs," "ands," or "buts."

Somebody needs to tell Gov. Douglas real, real fast, eh?

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DUBIE WIND UPDATE:

1. VPIRG Director Paul Burns issued a statement late this afternoon praising Lt. Gov. Dubie for his Tuesday Lyndon State College statement supporting wind energy:

"Lt. Governor Brian Dubie declared himself to be ‘an unabashed supporter of wind’ at a conference organized by the Vermont Council on Rural Development Tuesday.  That declaration puts him in step with most Vermont residents and VPIRG congratulates the lieutenant governor for his willingness to separate himself from Gov. Douglas on this issue.

"Lt. Gov. Dubie obviously recognizes what Gov. Douglas does not; wind power must be part of our energy mix in Vermont. Wind power is the most abundant renewable energy resource we have in this state and it could be providing twenty percent of our electricity within ten years.

"The lieutenant governor is proving that support for clean energy is not a partisan issue.  Wind power is a winner whether your chief interest is jobs, the environment or human health."

2. Martha Hanson just emailed us, saying she caught our radio report on WDEV’s “Evening News Service” with Rich Haskell.

She says Brian "did not switch" his position on commercial wind energy development and sent along one of his Lieutenant Governor’s Log’s from April 2006 titled “Harnessing Wild Energy in Our National Forest” as proof.

In it the Doobster writes in part: 

"It's a reasonable question: When does our desire for wilderness work against our desire to preserve an economic future for young Vermonters and their young families?

"From an economic standpoint, Vermont's conserved lands should be managed as a resource, a working forest. That means that the assets of the forest -- be it lumber for new houses, wood chips for heat, wind to turn turbines and generate electricity, maple syrup, recreational trails, wildlife habitat, wilderness and more -- should all be optimized. "

Ol’ Brian sure didn’t make a big deal about it, did he? Kinda camouflaged his wind support in a much bigger context. Perfectly understandable given his running-mate’s devout opposition.

But now Dubie’s completely out-of-the-closet on wind. And that's got to make King James lonesome.

Guess Brian wants a bigger job someday than lieutenant governor, eh?

No dummy is he.

Here's what Vermont's incumbent Republican governor will be doing this lovely Wednesday morning right after the Democratic gubernatorial challenger hold his Statehouse-Steps presser:

Governor to Outline Details of Property Tax Cap Proposal

Proposal Reduces Property Taxes by Millions of Dollars

WHAT:      Property Tax Cap Press Conference


Montpelier, Vt.—Governor Jim Douglas will outline the details and projected savings of his proposal to cap property taxes.

He is also expected to call on the next Legislature to enact additional changes they had previously refused, including a means test to protect Vermonters who own a home and land that has appreciated significantly over the years but are of modest financial means.  The Governor will also urge the legislators to end abuses of the system and close loopholes that allow the owners of million dollar homes to collect 5-figure government assistance checks.

Governor Douglas has proposed capping education property tax growth at around the rate of inflation each year.  “A real property tax cap would reduce taxes by millions of dollars each year and allow room for school budgets to grow responsibly to meet the needs of a community,” he said.

Governor Douglas also noted that making Vermont more affordable requires reducing the tax burden on working Vermonters, which according to the U.S Census Bureau is the highest in the nation.  “Property tax increases are making it more and more challenging for parents to provide for their children and for longtime residents to stay in their homes.  We simply cannot afford tax increases at double the rate of inflation, at a time when student enrollment is declining,” he added.

The Governor’s property tax cap proposal exempts special education and capital costs.

___________________________________________________________________________

As we report in today's "Inside Track" in the weekly edition of Seven Days, Vermont's Republican Team at the top is a little more worried about November 8 than we had realized.

Our GOP source was expressing the concern Ol' Scudder would continue his unorthodox "stealth" campaign - avoid harping on what our source described as the usual property-tax-raising lefty issues - and then sneak across the November finish line first by cashing in on the BIG WAVE that everybody knows is coming. The Big Anti-Bush, Antiwar, Anti-Republican WAVE that, here in Vermont, will be led by Independent Shoo-in Bernie Sanders in the Senate race.

The fear in GOP Land is the WAVE is so damn big on November 8 that Bernie, with his phenomenal get-out-the-vote power, and Democrat Peter Welch (and his dog) in the U.S. House race, drag Ol' Scudder along to victory, too. Maybe even one of them eager Dems running for Lite-Gov, too?

And we predict the size of the Bernie WAVE grew this week as the most desperate, richest man we know - Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rich Tarrant - started running his Bernie is a Child Molester ads on Vermont television.

A desperate man is Richard Tarrant.

At least Tarrant, our favorite Florida oceanfront mansion owner,  should have used a concerned Vermont mom in his child-molester TV spot, instead of some grizzled, gray and mean-looking old-timer who, some have remarked, comes across like a you-know-what, i.e. the kind of old-timer you don't want to let the grandkids play with alone, if you know what I mean.

So it's a Montpeculiar Day ahead, a "Double-Banger Plus."

Scudder the Democratic Challenger, followed by King James the Republican, followed by fresh-roasted African beans from Capitol Grounds.

We'll let you now this afternoon how it went.

Look at what just arrived from the HQ of the Democratic candidate for governor -ah, whatshisname?

Scudder Parker to Make Statement on Early Childhood Care and Education

Montpelier, VT- Democratic gubernatorial candidate Scudder Parker will present his vision to build a future for Vermont in which the care and education of our youngest Vermonters is a high priority, at a press conference on Wednesday, August 23 starting at 9:30 AM on the Statehouse steps in Montpelier.

Hey, who was just noticing that here it is late August, and Mr. Parker has had zippo in the way of press conferences on the Statehouse lawn whacking the incumbent?

Gov. Douglas' has his regular weekly press conference scheduled for 10:30 on the nearby Fifth Floor.

What a coincidence!

Let the games begin!

The big local Burlington story on the WCAX-TV News this morning?

The Church Street Marketplace entrance to the Burlington Square Mall is being painted!

I’m not making this up.

They’re painting the mall’s brick facade “Colonial Yellow.”

Surveys showed, said Marketplace spokeswoman Casey Baker, that tourists walking by on the pedestrian-only four-block brick Marketplace, had no idea there was a huge double-decker mall behind those doors. She said it all kind of blended in with the brick street.

Jeezum Crow! It only took 26 years for anyone to realize it. You see - human progress has not disappeared.

Two things:

1. GOP U.S. House hopefuls Martha Rainville and State Sen. Mark Shepard debate live at 9 a.m. on Ch. 17 in Burlington. Simulcast on WDEV Radio  550/96.1. And live online here. Mark Johnson moderating.

2. Check Louis Porter’s Vermont global warming article in the Times Argus. Ever wonder why there’s so much Canadian maple syrup?

Today is Freyne Land’s seventh day. Thank you, thank you, thank you for stopping by, for posting a comment, for telling your pals.

We’ll always keep a light on for ya’!

Now, excuse me while I go write up that other stuff that gets printed on newsprint (how old-fashioned!) and doesn't hit the streets until Wednesday morning, assuming the world lasts that long.

Imagine 10 years out:  do you really see newspapers - made of paper - in the picture?

______________

A cloudy, damp and dark day in Vermont’s Queen City it is, too.

And very, very quiet!

But then there is the Big World out there, a world we all got an earful of yesterday. Some objected. Others loved it.

In fact, about 7 o’clock Saturday evening, long after the crowds had cleared out, I was biking around Perkins Pier. Not a soul in sight, except for a distinguished older gentleman I recognized - a retired UVM prof. I figured he had been checking on his boat.

I mentioned to him how I’d gotten an earful from a few citizens about the earlier Vermont Air Guard's air-show-spectacular over the smallest largest city of any state in America.

He looked at me like I was nuts! Spread his hands about a foot-and-a-half apart and wiggled and waved them through the air while making a big air-rushing sound with his mouth. All the while, he’s saying something about “Did you see those afterburners spitting flame out the back? Oh, my God. That was fantastic!”

Yes, indeed, thought I, remembering personal experience of the fighter-jet's inspirational feeling. The rush of the power! The Va-r-o-o-o-o-m-m-m!!!

At the time, I was a high-school freshman (1962-63) and dreamed of going to Annapolis. I wanted to fly off aircraft-carrier decks. Nuclear submarine duty was my close second choice.

I wasn’t a journalist at the time, so I don’t have notes, but I remember the “understanding”  in my house that killed those career plans early.

My Irish-Catholic parents (which makes me Irish-Catholic too, eh?) were immigrants to New York suburbia from the Bronx in 1948. Blacks, called “Negroes” in the pre-Black Power days of the 1960s, and Puerto Ricans were the new arrivals in the Big Apple in Post World War II America. The whites, like my future Ps, were fleeing for the suburbs.

There’s a faint footprint way back there in my early 1960s memory of the moment mom and dad communicated that “understanding” to me. It was a “you-can’t always-get-what-you-want” moment, i.e. a Freyne appointment to the United States Naval Academy required Freyne political connections. And since dear old mom and dad were registered Democrats in what was then solidly Republican-controlled WASP Westchester County, fuggehedaboudit, kiddo! Lower your sights to Iona College in New Rochelle, run by the Irish Christian Brothers (where dad taught night school parttime and could get a 50 percent tuition cut).

Yuck. This little birdie was not staying in the nest.

Plan B?

How about a seminary outside Chicago? Can you say "vocation to the priesthood?"

It was August of 1966, exactly 40 years ago, and a time when things really started changing. And I mean really. And there’s no place I’d rather have been than the great city of Chicago.  And no better place to be to handle all the cultural and political incoming that went with the experience we now remember as “The Sixties.”

Unlike most seminaries of the day, the faculty at Maryknoll, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, urged its future missionaries to get involved in the “real world” of the streets of Chicago from tutoring in the Cabrini Green project (way before it became famous), to starting up a draft-counseling center and organizing protests on everything from open-housing, to helping Cesar Chavez’s grape boycott, to going door-to-door in Republican (at the time) Dupage County for an antiwar Democratic congressional hopeful, a college professor who didn’t have a chance.   

Yes, indeed. 1000 miles from mom and dad and the seminary's connections got us into the thick of things quickly. There were the civil rights marches with Dr. King in the summer of 1966, the April 1968 riots on the West Side, the August 1968 Democratic Convention, later officially dubbed a “Police Riot,”  catching Phil Ochs, Dave Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman in action, the 1969 “police murder” of Fred Hampton.  The nights driving that cab and the characters who slid in and spilled out. Mike Royko's column five times a week in the Chicago Daily News. And then there was Saul Alinsky. Never met anyone who opened my eyes wider or faster, than Saul.

Whew! A little Memory Lane swing for this Sixties teenager. Been having a Sixities flashback kind of feeling for the last two weeks.

Life is full of surprises.

By 1969, the Maryknoll seminarian had become an atheist. A sociology of religion class knocked a couple of us off our sacred intellectual/theological pedestals. Looking at our world from the outside - without the rose-colored glasses of faith and Almighty God and Jesus, Mary and Joseph and sin and hell/heaven/purgatory - was something none of us had experienced before.

But that’s a whole other story for another day....

All the same, God bless Maryknoll!

A very valuable three years it was.

P.S. Remember our retired UVM prof friend who loved the jets roaring over the Waterfront? Through a little subsequent googling we learned Professor X served four-years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force way, way back when.

Even put in a little Air-Guard duty in the Midwest.

Now it all makes sense!

A Saturday Afternoon Musing:

Who would have thought back in 1981 that electing a screaming socialist the mayor of Burlington, Vermont would lead to a crackdown on noise?

But it did.

The administration of Independent Mayor Bernie Sanders (1981-1989)  will be remembered for many things - for those who lived here at the time, the new noise ordinance will be one of them. The Sanderistas' crackdown on noise (out-of-control college partying, mostly), was one of the hallmarks of what the U.S. Conference of Mayors said in 1988 was America’s “most livable city."

So it was no surprise that more than a few people were taken aback by the "noise" from the Thunderbirds and other military aircraft that have been practicing and performing along the Burlington Waterfront over the last few days. A lot of people we ran into downtown told us they had no idea it was happening.

About 1:30 p.m. at the crowded Farmers Market in City Hall Park, we met one farmer who appeared pleased to see a reporter he could talk to.

State Rep. David Zuckerman is a Burlington Progressive who farms in the Intervale. He's a five-term lawmaker under the Golden Dome, but he only just turned 35 last Wednesday. Last winter he had an "exploratory committee" looking at a possible statewide bid for theU.S. House seat Bernie Sanders is finally vacating to move up to Senate. He eventually decided not to run and clear the track for Democrat Peter Welch, the guy with the dog. Zuckerman’s also the current chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. (A lot of delectable-looking musk melons were left over today.)

What’s been the public's reaction in Farmers Market Land to the aerial spectacular?

“There’s been a few people coming though who were excited and going down there to watch it,” said Dave the Prog. “Most folks who live in town have been dismayed at the noise. My own baby was crying a couple hours yesterday because of the noise and the vibrations from these planes.”

So, what’s the personal reaction of the farmer/politician?

“My reaction is that in a time of war like we have today, it’s appalling! To people in the war zones around the world, these sounds could mean instant death,” said Zuckerman, “and for us to take pleasure in looking at them is unfortunate. We really need to think about what these things mean.”

“Technologically, they’re fascinating," said Farmer Dave, as two more roared overhead. “But in a time in the world we’re in today, it is inappropriate to get excited watching war machines.”

But are you not proud of the Vermont Air Guard? It’s their 60th Anniversary!

“I support the individual work of the troops,” replied Rep. Zuckerman. "They do incredible things in our community. It’s just very unfortunate they have to be overseas right now.”

Ol’ Davey was in the zone.

“Unfortunately," he continued, "our Air and Army Guard have been misused by our federal government, and because of that, they now symbolize what’s going on overseas. To use these planes to get people involved in what is a misuse of our troops,” said the farmer/politician, “that I think is inappropriate.”

Agree with him or not, it’s always a pleasure to hear a politician take a clear stand, isn’t it?

The Vermont Air Guard Air Show may well have performed a service to the community the Vermont Air Guard was not anticipating. It's made a whole lot of folks, including this writer, stop and ponder the roaring jet noise. Inescapable. It's drowning out the TV set (PGA Golf Tournament from Medinah - Illinois, not Saudi Arabia). Just imagine what hearing this every day and every night would be like?

Especially if they were armed and from another country? And blowing up the Lake Champlain Ferry boats and the Water Treatment Plant and the Burlington Square Mall and the parts of town their intelligence forces had been told are hiding nationalist rebels?

Thank God it's our boys flying them, eh?

P.S. Burlington, Vermont is officially  an antiwar city.

Yours truly counted 157 folks attending Friday evening's Democracy for America fundraiser at Burlington's Union Station. Where once-upon-a-time people actually waited for trains, the politically aware gather for wine, cheese and repartee. The main attraction was the Connecticut Yankee in King George’s Court - U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont.

Mr. Lamont’s the guy who upset incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in the August 8 Democratic Primary. The big issue?

King George and his War in Iraq.

Vermont-wise, Leahy, Jeffords and Sanders opposed the Bush war from the get-go, and at a moment when courage appeared in very short supply in Congress, they all voted against giving Bush the green light, making Vermont the only state whose entire congressional delegation did the right thing.

In Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s running-mate in 2000, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the King, even got a kiss on the cheek for his loyalty.

Some folks of Connecticut said enough is enough.

Ned Lamont is 52. Raised in Syosset, New York, on Long Island’s North Shore. Has degrees from Harvard and Yale and owns Lamont Digital Systems in Greenwich.

Lamont’s upset victory was fueled by online support from national activist organizations like MoveOn.org and DFA, which was born as Dean for America and is currently headed by Ho-Ho’s little brother Jimmy (who by the way did an outstanding job on Meet the Press two weeks ago going head-to-head with Lieberman-defender Lanny Davis).

Lieberman, as everyone knows, is now running as an independent. In fact, he’s leading Lamont 53-41 in a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday. You've got to see Joe's post-primary online statement. Who says Hollywood gets the best actors?

No need for panic. Joe was leading Ned 51-27 in a July 20 poll.

Lamont had the sparkle Friday night at Burlington’s Union Station. Told his story. How Lieberman’s lockstep support for Bush on the War in Iraq sickened him. And how Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, a Marine captain who picked up two Purple Hearts in the Vietnam War, inspired him when he courageously switched from hawk to dove last November.

When he went to see key Connecticut pols about finding somebody to challenge Big Joe from the left, Lamont said he was told, “Ah, we don't like primaries. He's a three-term incumbent. They got all these millions of dollars. It can't be done. If you feel so strongly about it, you do it!”

“So I said, ‘Maybe I will.’”

The rest is history. He decided to get in the race. And then one day he decided to go to a local DFA meeting at a diner in Norwalk. 

Turns out 125 Deaniacs showed and the response helped make Ned Lamont a household word and established Vermont-based  Democracy for America as a key new player in the brave new world of American politics. Said Lamont last night:

We had tens of thousands of Democrats register in the last couple months right before the primary. They’d had 18 years to register for Joe Lieberman.

I think they were registering because they wanted a change. We gave them something to believe in. It's hope and it's positive and I mean to do that.

Hope sure is a nice thing. It’s absence has been everywhere as recent polling has shown. Never in my lifetime have so few felt the country is heading in the right direction, just 26 percent in an Aug. 10-11 Newsweek poll. 

Why should they?

It isn’t!

One other Lamont line caught our ear at Union Station last night as he described his transformation from inexperienced political unknown to Democratic Party U.S. Senate nominee:

And there were these things called blogs. I didn't really know that much about blogs, but I do now.

Hey, Ned, don’t we all?

Ready for the Big "Wings Over Vermont" Air Show on Saturday?

If Thursday’s little fly-bys were any indication, things are going to get real loud along the Burlington Waterfront. It’s the 60th anniversary of the Vermont Air Guard!

Impressive sight - all the gleaming, streaming, roaring jet fighter aircraft that are so utterly useless in a war fought against suicidal soldiers with explosives under the car hood or strapped to the chest.

Last military air show I saw like this was back in Chicago in the mid 1970s. Chicago, in case you didn’t know, has a bit of a lakefront, too (about 26 miles of lakefront!). Their air show happening this weekend, too:

Those Chicago Lakefront air-shows occurred in the years following our disastrous war in Vietnam. It was a war that showed the willingness of the White House to lie to the American people about the very basic reasons for going to war in the first place. (Geez, that rings a bell! Where have we seen a repeat of that lately?)

The U.S. military wasn’t real popular in the 1970s in large part because it had been betrayed by elected presidents of both parties. Sending troops to fight and die in Vietnam did nothing to protect our country. But what Uncle Sam couldn’t do against the Vietnamese in the jungles of Southeast Asia he was prepared and equipped to do in the skies over America and Europe to protect us all from the great communist threat called the Soviet Union!

Unlike the Viet Cong who neither had nor needed one, the Ruskies had a massive air force of their own and intercontinental ballistic missiles, too. Growing up 20 miles from Times Square, this blogger recalls plenty of air-raid drilling in the grade schools of the 1950s and 1960s.

Ah, the good old days, eh? Remember the draft?

Well, it turned out the Ruskies had another trick up their sleeves - ice hockey. They played a game that was faster and more exciting that the Canadian-style North American game. Ice hockey as we knew it, was never the same again after that 1972 "Summit Series."

Funny how, when you play sports against people who share the love of the same game you do, even hard fought, nose-to-nose physical sports like ice hockey, you start doubting if blowing up their country, i.e. butchering their civilians by the millions with nuclear weapons, is really a sane foreign policy and approach to life?

The Berlin Wall, the great symbol of that “Cold War” which was built in 1961, came down in 1989.

The Soviet Union no longer exists. Today, the National Hockey League is packed with Russian hockey players.

Things have changed.

The Viet Cong had no air power, but the folks in the black pajamas defeated the mightiest military on Earth and won the war anyway.

The Iraqis don’t have air power, either.  Hmmm.

The Chinese do, but they also make most of the clothes and consumer goods we buy. Killing their customers is simply not in their interest.

Which makes Saturday’s planned four-hour display along Vermont’s Lake Champlain shoreline of the U.S. military’staxpayer-funded “strength” alittle out-of-synch with the present times, doesn't it?

Heard Roger Hill the weatherman say on WDEV this morning that there could be a cloud ceiling at around 5000 feet over Burlington on Saturday. He wondered if that would be high enough for the air show to proceed?

Don’t know, but we do know a big, big crowd is expected, somewhere in the 30,000 range. Every politician in Vermont running for statewide office will be there!

And for a few hours Saturday, if the clouds stay away, Vermonters’ ears will have something in common sound-wise with those of their sisters and brothers in Fallujha.

Small world, eh?

Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie attracted over 100 supporters to the Lincoln Inn in Essex Junction at 9:30 Thursday morning to officially launch his reelection campaign. Doobie-Doo lost in 2000,  his first statewide shot, but won the next two. With Democrats Matt Dunne and John Tracy engaged in a temperature-rising Lite-Guv primary, and Progressive Marvin Malek M.D. in, too, Dubie's certainly favored to win a third term in the November three-way.

Brian, our favorite commercial airline pilot, was his usual folksy, pleasant self. Had some good lines:

“I have chose collaboration over confrontation. I’ve chosen to build relationships and not headlines. I promise to continue the work that I’ve started.”

But given what was on our schedule for 10:30 a.m. in Hinesburg, we couldn't help but notice what Dubie did not mention and it was a conspicuous absence. When he addressed the energy issue he promised he will "work for a sustainable energy future for Vermont. Our energyfuture is changing before our eyes."

Lt. Gov. Dubie mentioned increased cow-power (i.e. methane production from cow shit) the need for "greater efficiency and conservation," and the need to maintain a good relationship "with our friends in Quebec who may provide energy options forVermonters into the 21st century. Choices for our energy future arecritical as we move forward," said the Doobster!

But it's what he didn't say that stuck out. Lt. Gov. Dubie did not mention wind energy. Not once. Not even an allusion.

Do you suppose the fact that Vermont's most outspoken opponent of commercial wind energy  had just introduced him, sang his praises, and was standing over his right shoulder had anything to do with it?

The Dubie announcement was over in a half-hour and we made NRG Systems in Hinesburg for the 10:30 VPIRG announcement.

VPIRG released a 26-page report, a plan, actually, to get Vermont from its current use of 15 percent renewable electricity up to 50 percent or more in 10 years. It's called "A Decade of Change."

Skeptics take note!

"There’s a tremendous amount of optimism in terms of the solutions that areout there," said VPIRG's clean-energy guru James Moore. "It’s not pie-in-the-sky technology that doesn’t exist. Wehave the solutions to meeting our electricity needs through localrenewable resources - over half of our needs within a decade. That isvery achievable."

Sounds good. But what about Gov. Douglas' uncompromising opposition to commercial wind power in Vermont? VPIRG's report says in 10 years we could get 20 percent of our juice from it. We currently get just 1 percent. Why?

Because Gov. Douglas says he want to protect our pristine ridge lines, our unique rural landscape. It's the postcard look that makes Vermont "Vermont!"  And it attracts a few tourists, eh? Don't want to mess with that market, eh?

But NRG Systems CEO Jan Blittersdorf said because Vermonters don't actually see the sources of their electricity, they don't "realize the danger." The Wind CEO pointed out that 50 percent of our region's electricity currently comes from burning coal.

"It’s dirty and it’s harmful to our forests," said Blittersdorf. Gov. Douglas "may want to protect those ridge lines, but those ridge lines may be changed dramatically by the effects of global warming in not too long of a time."

Plus, she noted, with wind farm development surging (and a two-year wait for new commercial windmills at the moment), folks are suddenly learning wind farms bring in more than clean power - they bring in tourists!

“There are wind farms all over the place that are creating visitor centers," said Blittersdorf. "Other parts of the country and world are not finding their land is destroyed by this. In fact, people are coming to see them and enjoying what they see and finding them inspiring The fact that they don’t pollute our air and water and land is what Gov. Douglas is missing."

P.S. Coincidentally, we heard just a few days ago from GOP sources about a GOP state rep and wind-energy opponent who just returned from a  vacation trip through wind-farm rich Pennsylvania.

Guess what?

She had no idea that what the Guv loves to call "industrial" wind farms were so..."beautiful"....and "gentle"....and "pastoral."

Shhhh!