Whew! As the emails have been pouring in, chagrined readers demanding new postings, and the political culture in Washington switching from a focus on Iraq to a focus on, what else, Britney Spears' hair, we at WW have been trying to put out fires all over. Fortunately for us, there has not been too much news coming out of ole' Welchie's office in the week we have been gone. What a coincidence!
Actually, there have been a mere three (3) working days that the House has been in session since we last posted, and not too much to report on Welch's actual voting record during that period. Hey, if you only worked three days a week you probably wouldn't get too much done either, right? As you will see on this site, the biggest vote that came out of Pelosi's nest was the "disagreement" that the House registered against President Bush's troop surge plan.
"Disagreement?" Whoa, that sounds pretty serious. We're sure that Welchie's cheerleaders will be psyched about that one. Weird: that guy seems to give mad props to Danziger non-stop, but he didn't publish Danziger's damning cartoon on Welch, the one all but endorsing another run by Martha Rainville in 08,' that everyone else took notice of. Wonder why? Is this the advent of truly "selective journalism?" We'll see.
So, what has Welch been up to? Well, he still has the thoroughly debunked carbon trading thing up on his site in an attempt to truly get as much out of it as possible. Never mind that he personally contributed to over $60,000.00 of full-on carbon polluting himself. This guy bites on it here. When will it end? Our prediction: never. It also seems as though his proposal that all offices "be allowed" to purchase carbon offsetting, so they won't have to pay for it themselves, has gotten absolutely zero attention outside the cooing of Vermont's mainstream wonks. It has no cosponsors. And it's about half a page long. See it here.
Now that's making a difference.
Also, in this article, Welch's people come out with big news that they will be making milk pricing "a top concern" in his tenure. Of course, we at WW, as with all politicians and people of Vermont, are down with helping out the milk-producers, but this is getting to be a bit much even for us. A "top priority" you say? If we made a strand of Welch's top priorities thus far it would reach from Bennington to Swanton and back.
To recap, his "top concerns" to date are: elbowing through crowds to get Bush's autograph, the war in Iraq, lowering student loan rates by $4 a month, "opposing the Bush agenda," doing personal favors for Bush by calling up Bush's buddies from college, paying a few bucks to "trade" carbon, and now milk. That's a lot of "top priorities" to focus on, no? Oh yeah, notice his big plan for advancing the concerns of Vermont's milk farmers is a bi-weekly conference call. That's tech, baby! Also, see any bills or votes coming in on any of the above? Sorry, by "bills or votes" we mean actual, voted on legislation. See anything, for example, on the big lefty issue of impeachment?
Chirp.
One interesting email came in, however, in our little down-time from posting. An alert reader pointed us in the direction of some more salient facts about one of the biggest corporations in Welchie's stock portfolio, British Petroleum, or as he sneakily labeled it in his filing, "BP." So, we picked up our dog-eared copy of the Blue Pages (WW highly recommends it) to see what all the fuss is about. It turns out that, in addition to British Petroleum's contributions to massive environmental damage, they have also engaged in some pretty serious OSHA violations. To about the tune of $21.3 million in fines regarding an explosion at one of their Texas refineries that killed 15 workers and injured about 170. That, according to the Blue Pages, if the biggest OSHA fine ever. How much money did Welchie make off of his ownership of this stock?
Again: chirp.
All of this should have some serious lefty voters, and candidates, licking their chops over the 08' race. Heck, the foolishness of the carbon-red-herring thing even has the righty and lefty blog-o-wonks agreeing, as seen here. But we haven't heard too much about P candidates in 08' from the blog-o-wonks or the real wonks in the last few weeks. Dr. Dean must be making his rounds in an attempt to circle the wagons around Welchie's rapidly deteriorating brand-value. This hasn't stopped some speculation about who may run as an R, however. Who do we think will run? We'll be revealing our thoughts on the matter any day.
As always, we'll keep it interesting.
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2 comments:
Hmm, let's see. Welch Watching's 'top concerns' seem to be conveying a heightened sense of importance ('emails been flooding in? Puh-leeeze'), giving significance to stories of little relevance, and bashing everything Welch does, regardless of whether or not it will benefit Vt'ers. Must really still hurt that St. Martha lost, eh? Well, at the rate you're going (and the party of Neanderthals that, without a doubt you are part and parcel of) your site's gonna be around a long time.
And once again, I'm not saying Welch should be above criticism... he's hardly liberal enough to satisfy me. But your incessant pandering to the three or four people out there who might actually give a fuck about what you say doesn't hide the fact that ANYTHING Welch does is going to be better than something some Republican shithead would be doing if they had the seat.
Keep reaching for that rainbow, Chris. Maybe you'll get something that will stick. Shit sticks, too, but falls off the wall rather quickly, dontcha think?
Between McLaughry and you, it's pretty obvious why the VT blog right is nothing but a mere shitspeck in the VT blogosphere.
Ah, my old friend JD Ryan. JD, I miss you and Odum, I really do.
But that doesn't change the fact this isn't my site.
Occasionally I will pass along something I think would be interesting to Welch Watch, but when i asked them to identify themselves, no dice.
Who is Snarky Boy. Who is Welch Watch. The two burning questions that even I want to know.
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