Missy and Biff flew to South Puffin for vacation this week.

It’s a good time to be here. Unlike Michigan’s Upper Peninsula we don’t have six inches of snow on the ground. Even North Puffin is still in the throes of yack with temps in the 30s, a day full of cold rain, and ice floes on the rivers.

Missy works for the state but lives to fish and ride motorcycles. She been a little concerned of late because Vermont Governor Jim Douglas wants to cut about 10% of the nearly 8,000 state employees to help with the state budget shortfall. She wears a lot of makeup and loves her bling. I think she might believe the gold and sparkles attract fish. And, as Dolly Parton says, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

“I’m not worried about my job any more,” she said.

Cool, I said. Why not?

“All the State Houses can talk about is gay marriage,” she said, “and the fact Jim promised to veto it tonight.”

The Vermont State Senate rejected using a statewide referendum for a gay marriage bill because they did not want the divisive debate; they passed the “Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Promote Equality in Civil Marriage” on a 26-4 vote instead. The House gave the measure final approval on a 94-52 roll call vote. They are just six votes shy of the 100 needed to override the veto.

I never liked civil unions because they take us back to the days of segregated schools and segregated washrooms and segregated water fountains. “Separate but equal” is both deceitful and untrue. There is nothing “equal” in the comparison of a civil union with a civil marriage.

Legislatures across the land are too busy with side issues like steroid use and gay marriage to spend much time on the single deciding issue of 2009: my wife on three-fifths time and my WalMart stock dropping.

2009 is not going to be “the year that Vermont fixed the state economy (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t be “the year that Vermont passed universal health care (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t even be “the year that the United States Congress returned the Dow to 14,000 (or didn’t).”

Nope. This is going to be “the year that Vermont made gay marriage the law of the land.”

Thank goodness for that. The Vermont legislature has already shown it has no clue about running a mom-and-pop grocery let alone running a state. In that, they take after their brethren, the Barney Rubble brigade inside the Beltway.

I like Jim Douglas. I’ve known him for years and I understand he would really like to get the legislature to concentrate on the problems at hand.

Jim is wrong about the focus, though.

He should indeed veto S.115 but he needs to find something else to distract the legislature pretty quickly; the legislators won’t stay busy for more than another week overriding the veto. I recommend a year-long investigation into Mickey D’s involvement in professional football. Have you seen the size of those guys? They didn’t get that big at the salad bar.

It wouldn’t hurt to convince Congress to underwrite a nationwide study of mushroom management, too. We’re already in the dark.