Poking around teh intertubes when I should be in bed, and I came across one of my favorite bloggers from waaay back in the early days of eschaton, in a comment thread over at GMD. I think I had totally forgotten that Ntodd Pritsky was running for public office in Franklin County. Good for him, he's got a sound outlook on life and is a devoted dad -- isn't that more than you can say about 99 percent of the current crop of politicans? I hope his amazing grassroots run as an independent is hugely successful.

So, poking a little further, I checked out the competition Ntodd is up against, and I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I found the current Representative, Lynn Dickinson (nope, sorry Lynn, no linkie for you) - she's apparently trying hard to be the Sarah Palin of Vermont, and her platform seems to consist largely of supply-side platitudes, contradictory nonsense and a loud, almost primal cry of desperation: Give Me Wal-Mart Or Give Me Death. Seriously, how the hell can one of your four key issues be "Bringing Wal-Mart to St. Albans"? That's like running on a platform of "More Blue M&Ms in the 2 Pound Bags" or "Why Should The Gulf Have All The Fun: Let's get BP up here to spill some oil in Lake Champlain."

Actually, Lynn's pretty little head is evidently completely free of any cognitive dissonance when she lists the four pillars of her political platform:

• Bringing jobs and prosperity to our area
• Bringing Wal-Mart to St. Albans
• Supporting small businesses, farms and families
• Keeping our communities healthy and strong

I mean, bringing Wal-Mart to St. Albans will a) remove jobs from the area and lower the level of prosperity (unless you count Wal-Mart's profits as "prosperity" -- but that money ends up in Arkansas, not Vermont), b) kill off small business, farms and further marginalize families in the area, and c) will sicken and weaken an otherwise vibrant community by killing off small businesses, reducing the town center to a shell of itself, and leaving the town at the mercy of the ruthless marketing managers in Bentonville.

Somehow Lynn's platitudes and simplistic non-approach to effectively dealing with the issues affecting the voters in Franklin County must have worked, since she's currently one of the two incumbents. I hope that changes in November -- she really, really needs to get out more and come to realize that there's more to life than a Wal-Mart up the street..