Vermont Election Exclusive: Uncut Dubie campaign spot

Through an unusual and secretive set of circumstances we have obtained a sneak preview of some raw footage of what is believed to be the next Republican Governor’s Associations’(RGA) funded commercial in support of Vermont Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie.

Political insiders shown the ad speculate it will soon be released in co-ordination with his long awaited Ten Point Plan for Vermont .

In the un-edited spot a very fit looking Lt.Gov.stands beside an easel, points helpfully at his Ten Point Plan and expounds on his vision for Vermont’s future. The comprehensive list notes the importance of relaxation, grooming and positive attitude.

No doubt some of the less polished moments will be edited out of the final piece. However this uncut version offers a unique glimpse into the campaigns strategy for swaying voters with the current Lt.Gov.Dubie’s unadorned suggestions.

L.A.'s Heat Ray Test

What:

Using a joystick and computer monitor, deputies will operate the apparatus, which emits an invisible beam with the range of about 80 to 100 feet. The millimeter wave travels at light speed and penetrates the skin up to 1/64 of an inch and warms up the nervous system's heat receptors. Whoever gets hit by the heat wave instinctively moves out of the beam, which makes the pain go away.

Where:The L.A.County Sheriff’s Department will test a civilian version of Raytheon’s military heat ray in one of its county jails. Called the Assault Intervention Device (AID) the 71/2 foot tall device emits a targeted beam which causes individuals to experience “an unbearable burning sensation that forces individuals to recoil”.
The six month test conducted with the US Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice and Penn State University will examine the impact of the ray gun on patterns of violence.

The Active Denial System (ADS) a military version of the L.A. heat ray was deployed to the war Afghanistan and was at the disposal of commanders on the ground but they decided against its use and the weapon was withdrawn in April of this year.


Why:

This suppression tool appeals to law enforcement agencies because when inmates fight in a dormitory, dining room or exercise yard, jail officials often have to wait for backup before they can intervene. The technology would allow them to act sooner, potentially reducing injuries and curbing violence

The impetus for testing AID is reminiscent of the original reasoning for the TASER.Which was seen as an easy to use non- marring weapon, no mess crowd control weapon. Amnesty International has documented over 334 deaths that occurred after the use of Tasers between 2001 and 2008

What could possibly go wrong?

The ACLU blog

reports that in 2008 miscalabrations of the device during military testing injured five, one with lasting burns.
While the device was being tested by the Air Force, however, a miscalibration of its power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.
A 2008 report by noted physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Joergan Altmann explained that the ADS device's microwave beam heats the skin without lasting harm only if the beam is switched off immediately once a temperature of 122 F. is reached — and then only if the beam is not retriggered

Dubie dines with men who stare at dictators

Redistricting looms in 2012 and the Republicans are going full tilt to elect as many governors as possible.
Newscorp's Rupert Murdoch just gave one of the biggest single contributions ever to the Republican Governor’s Association.

Thursday the RGA released its first TV ad supporting Vermont Lt. Governor candidate Brian Dubie narrated by none other than our current Governor Jim Douglas (do you suppose words come out of Dubie’s mouth?). This strategy of outside advertising dollar support may be what lead to Brian Dubie’s dinner date with some heavy hitters two weeks ago. Or maybe it was purely a social event. Regardless candidate Dubie is running with fast crowd these days.

Brian Dubie was one of 15-20 dinner guests with at Topridge a 207 acre Adirondack “camp”. The historic camp features buildings inspired by Russian architecture complete onion domes. The host at Topridge was Harlan Crow a wealthy, actually very wealthy and by Vermont standard very conservative Dallas Texas business man.

Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the only Republican running to replace Gov. James Douglas, was a guest at a dinner for a very select group of visitors to upstate New York about two weeks ago.
Among the 15 or 20 people at the dinner were former President George Bush and former first lady Laura Bush, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow. Times-Argus

The Dallas real estate magnate Crow is also a trustee of the George Herbert Walker Bush Presidential Library and of the American Enterprise Institute and a founding member of Grover Norquist’s Club for Growth. He also is reported to have provided funding for the Swiftboat Veteran’s for Truth.

In addition to funding conservative politics Dubie’s dinner host Harlan Crow has another interesting pastime,collecting statues of dictators and fallen despots.

Nearly 20 statues of leaders and heroes of authoritarian regimes occupy the rolling private garden of Harlan R. Crow, a Dallas real estate investor. Heavyweights like Stalin, Mao and Lenin stand among lesser-knowns like Klement Gottwald, the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia.

GOP Wonk and/or Wank

Digby as always offers up a sensible, simple and concise rule for anyone trying to get a grip on the GOP and the U.S. political elite wankery.

In fact, here's a good rule of thumb:

anyone who is in the GOP leadership is, by definition, a corporate owned wanker, sometimes pretending to be either a revolutionary firebrand or a deep thinker, but a wanker nonetheless.

It's not impossible that one could also be a "serious wonk" and a wanker (the Democrats have quite a few) but the it's highly unlikely considering the amount of whoring and wanking that's required for the job in the GOP.

The Republicans have an intellectual arm but it's not in the congress. It's in the myriad corporate sponsored think tanks that have been set up over the years to advance the interests of the wealthy and keep the rubes entertained with culture wars and real wars. If you're looking for conservative wonkery, there's where you find it.

Beware Lonesome Roads

Beware Lonesome Roads*

The Federal Highway Administration has found that 57% of highway related deaths occur on roads considered rural, yet only 21% of Americans live in rural areas. Those statistics would seem to advise traveling rural roads with an added bit of caution but it seems the opposite may be true for many drivers according to recent studies.

"Logic would dictate that drivers would be most cautious and alert on the most dangerous roads, but Americans seem to be lulled into a false sense of security on our tranquil rural highways," said Munnich. "It's a less chaotic experience, so it apparently feels like a safer experience. This is a myth we have to bust."

link here

Put the food, beer and cell phone down and pay attention to your driving.
Never mind the scenery, eyes on the road.

This feeling of relaxation and safety seems to lead to a bit more risk taking on the more dangerous rural highways. For instance, Americans are more likely to feel safe eating, use a cell phone and drinking and driving on rural highways than they are on urban freeways. This is particularly true of rural residents. For instance, among rural residents, 44 percent said they feel safe using a cell phone on a rural highway versus 14 percent who feel safe suing a cell phone on an urban freeway.

* No relationship implied or otherwise suggested to the fictional Lonesome Rhodes played masterfully by pre-TV by Andy Griffith in the Movie; A Face in the Crowd Also Starring Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau and directed by Elia Kazan

We don’t need no stinking infrastructure!

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel. Krugman NYTimes

Attention all shoppers
It's Cancellation Day
Yes the Big Adios
Is just a few hours away

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

You'll need the tools for survival
And the medicine for the blues
Sweet treats and surprises
For the little buckaroos

Everything Must go Steely Dan

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases. NYTimes Krugman

Dubie’s PAC men

Green Mountain Prosperity a recent political action committee formed as an offshoot of Haley Barbour’s Republican Governor’s Association is funneling big money to Vermont gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie.
It is reported Green Mount Prosperity raised nearly $160, 00 of $100.00 or more with some of the money having been originally donated to the RGA.

Some who made checks out to the RGA have complained that they never intended to give money to GMP for a Vermont election race. How checks initially made out to the national RGA and funneled to the new PAC Green Mountain Prosperity should be listed remains unresolved according to reports.

Nowhere on its July 15 campaign finance filing with the secretary of state’s office does the PAC note that it is an offshoot of the RGA or that its purpose is to help Dubie. The office does have on a file a spreadsheet showing a registration of a "bank designation" in February of "Green Mountain Prosperity PAC (fka[sic] Republican Governors Association - Vermont PAC)."
Dubie’s campaign denied any knowledge of Green Mountain Prosperity PAC, but welcomed the help.

Here in Vermont in 2004 the RGA was the subject of a superior court injunction forcing it to halt running campaign ads after their funding was thought to have violated the law by failing to register as a PAC and properly report its advertising expenditures.
Its worth noting that Dennise Casey Vermont Governor Jim Douglas’s longtime campaign staffer and Deputy Chief of Staff who left in 2009 now works at the RGA. In the past Virginia gubernatorial race, which may be a model for the Dubie campaign the RGA funded a last minute attack ad campaign against Bob McDonnell’s opponent.

Unemployed Organize

Last week after an eight month battle and with the unemployment rate hovering at 10% an extension of unemployment benefits barely squeaked through congress. It was quickly signed into law by President Obama.

Often little sympathy is extended to the unemployed who through no fault of their own suffer long and short-term job loss due to the recession.
Try multiple times an hour ,think of it as a radio contest, just hit the redial button said Vermont State’s former labor commissioner in late 2008 with little sympathy as she offered unemployed workers advise on how to deal long delays on her departments overwhelmed phone lines.

Unemployment remains high here in Vermont and even higher Nationwide. Now building on recent efforts to get this bill through congress some national online networks of unemployed workers and labor groups hope to marshal a get out the vote effort this November. These organizations are working to register the unemployed to vote and plan to offer traditional get out the vote assistance.

Essentially, the unemployed form an enormous political constituency — more than 30 million Americans have been out of a job at some point during the recession — but they have tended to be disenfranchised. Labor groups and grassroots movements hoping to change that — pressing the unemployed to do everything from calling Senate offices to showing up at Republican town halls to voting.Washington Independent here and here

Traditionally unemployed have low voting turnout rates,however the head of layofflist.org (started in 2008) said he

“…rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall.”

But labor groups like Working America, local political groups and the unemployed netroots are working to register the unemployed to vote and to offer rides, childcare and eldercare for jobless workers to get them voting. Of course, these sort of get-out-the-vote efforts are commonplace. They are also very effective.

One spokesman for the labor group Working America said:

We work against wrong-headed priorities favoring the rich and corporate special interests over America's well-being