Close Encounters Of The Gubernatorial Kind

For the first time in years, I made a date this (Wednesday) morning to have breakfast away from home while I got my tires balanced (which is not a euphemism for anything, thank you). The Wayside on the Barre-Montpelier Road is a comfy fit; besides, with the average age of the diners usually found there, I can feel pretty damned young!

So after just firing off a letter to the governor's office in Montpelier to complain about his latest veto of anything President Bush wouldn't like, I no sooner step into the Wayside and try to take a seat in one part of the restaurant while my breakfast companion says no, let's sit on the other side. Then he proceeded to choose a seat right behind the counter where Vermont Governor Jim Douglas (R-Bush) was reading the paper and having a meal.

As softly - and sweetly, of course - as I could, I whispered to John, "Uh... are you fucking kidding me? I finally get out to eat and you seat me next to this bloodless Bushie?"

John - having known me only about 20 years so why he'd think I was being "funny" escapes me - thought I was kidding. Then Douglas turned in our direction to talk with someone, John heard the voice, took one look at my face and the way my body was ready to spring, and asked if he needed to move out of the way for his own personal safety. Something about the NEW expression on my face led John (correctly, I might add) to conclude I was serious; that I did not expect to be able to linger another moment without giving Douglas a piece of my mind (something his idol, George Bush, can't exactly offer).

Next, John made the mistake of asking me what I'd call him out for and then sat, bowled over, as I ticked off a list of at least 25 vetoes and other bogus moves he's pulled just in his last term. And I ticked them off loudly enough that the governor - whose entourage was discreetly set aside from him so it appeared the gov was dining alone at the counter - could hear. I mean, I was shaking not only with outrage but perceived self-righteousness; it was my realization of the latter that made me put some brakes on myself.

But there was a bigger reason I behaved (this time!). Douglas - for all my dislike of him - made a point to stop and talk with anyone who was willing to meet his eye contact (except mine.. ahem). When some bratty little kid kept tossing creamers and jelly packages off the table, Douglas kept scooping them up off the floor (later, the mother would brag about how the governor had to keep cleaning up her kid's mess) while he carried on the usual banter. For whatever else he is, and much of it I don't like, much less condone, Douglas was behaving like a Vermonter. And he was being accessible to the people who elected him. Bush has never done this anywhere and, considering Douglas was so faithful to the president, Bush has NEVER visited the state of Vermont as president though many states he has visited hundreds of times (we're ok with keeping the tainted shit out of the state, tyvm). So I have to hand it to Douglas that he, at a time when his popularity maybe isn't so hot, isn't hiding behind his importance.

Now, when Howard Dean (now DNC chairman but then Vermont governor) was gov, I ran into him several times in Montpelier. Even spoke a few times in that brusque New England/Dean way. The state house is right there with every other damned state office building so it's hard not to see your lawmakers and rulers. Loved this about Dean, love this about Vermont.

Where else in America can you get such close access to these people? And if I'd started to blow at Douglas, a lot of things could have happened (after all, I don't know of any governor who doesn't travel with a senior cop, usually in plainclothes, ready to take care of nasty business); the worst of them could be that a man like Douglas would - like Bush - choose to hide away except to attend venues where they handpick everyone in attendance.

Douglas certainly won't have my vote in November when he runs for re-election again. But he gained a smidgen of my respect today while I'm pleased I looked at the bigger picture rather than reacted angrily and rashly and perhaps caused Douglas to stop facing his constituents over a cup of Wayside coffee.

Former Reddites And Indies Leap Onto Democratic Party

As I noted at All Things Democrat, I think there are a host of reasons so many former Republicans and thirdies/Indies have joined new voters flooding into the blue party, among them:

* excitement with the Dem candidates
* Bush - GOP scandals backlash
* that up to 80% of Americans feel the Bushies killed the economy and feel the country in all respects is headed 110 MPH in the wrong direction
* a desire to belong to the only party where they can even dream someone will listen to them
* absolute terror (and not of rogue bombers)
* fear for their children in Bush’s economy and Bush’s wars, given how John McCain praises his efforts

Alas, it will be up to the Dem Party leadership, itself not a single camp, to keep them through November and beyond. Feet to the fire, people; feet to the fire.

Kudos to UVM: Offering Total Education To Low-Income Vermonters

Hurray for UVM, which happens to be an excellent set of schools.

It's not that UVM isn't feeling the financial stress. But it makes sense for them to want more Vermonters to stay within a state that loses so many of its young adults to other markets (a living wage up here can be damned hard to find).

On Funerals And Other Oddities

Sorry for the paucity of posts. I've apparently reached the point in my life where I spend more time attending or helping organize or sending memorial notes or remembrances FOR funerals than for weddings. Which, when you stop to think of some of the horrific bridemaid dresses I've been subjected to over the years, not to mention the number of times I've gone to the wedding of the same person like three (bleepity bleep bleep effing motherbleeper) times .... well.... Let's just say life is some frackin' cabaret and we're not all in the good seats for the right act, if you get my drift.

The latest which, though the funeral I could not attend, bothered me is the younger sister of a regular reader here (and a nearly lifelong friend close enough to be family if I actually liked family) who died way too young leaving two young children. Having lost my parents young, that kind of loss always bothers me. That Lori died way too young and, like too many, trying to do her best considering she was dealt a mucky hand just makes it more sad.

But life goes on until it doesn't any longer, and there's much to do to try to change the world beyond the immediate moment. So....

I'll be posting again starting today.

Just Like I Learned in Journalism School: Dog Bites Man Equals No Story BUT When Woman Bites Pit Bull, There's a Story!

And it's here: the story of the little woman who bit a pit bull defending her dog.

They also used to tell us, besides that if it bleeds, it ledes, that we should never estimate the great interest in the people - especially, if always seemed, American people - to like to get themselves on the news. Sometimes, in anyway possible.

Iraq War Blogswarm: Three Trillion Lies And Still Going Strong

Today, as we mark that dark mid-March day in 2003 when President Bush, complete with a raised fist pumping air like he was about to go into the final playoffs to give "'em one more for the Gipper..." gesture and dispatched the first soldiers off to war, the cold, harsh light of day makes it a heluva lot easier to see all the lies.

After all, it was not just one single lie that Bush used to get us into Iraq but a multitude of them, including:

weapons of mass destruction everywhere>

doctored intelligence reports that led to the outing of CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, because Bushies did not like that Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, would not pretend Niger "yellow cake" uranium story was true

Saddam was about to launch a campaign to make kittens and puppies in perfect little American suburbia all sick

the war would take a few days to a few weeks, completely pay for itself, and there is "absolutely no way" to lose it

the entire world sees the war as right which is why we had to pay them and bully them into joining the "coalition of the willing"

actions in Iraq certainly won't distract us from catching Osama bin Laden, regroup al Qaeda, or exhaust our resources for the global war on terror

Need I list more?

Swarm Swarm Swarm! How To 'Do It"

You can be as low tech - talk to others about Iraq face to face vs. cyber - or high tech as you care to be. The point is to get people talking critically - not as in bad but with attention to details - about the war and the completely horrific administration of it from minute one.

The March 19th blogswarming people list all the ways you can jump in.

A Blogswarm To End All Swarms? Dream On!

However, the March 19th blogswarm commencing now is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, this war has never been a lightweight when it comes to brutality, sheer horror, the depths of human depravity, the ridiculously small amount of lying it took for Bush to get America to buy into a war that was not, nor was it ever, making torture sound like the most patriotic thing an American can do, anything to do with September 11th or al Qaeda, etc.

The race in November is, at its core, part of a much more fundamental competition against those who turn fascism into proud patriotism and bankrupted our nation at the same time securing record profit for banks who brought about the foreclosure crisis and energy companies demanding tax payers build them free refineries while we say thanks! for those $4/gallon at the umps.

We need a leader who can take us OUT of Iraq ASAP and not in the 100 years or so Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently proudly proclaimed it may take.

War With Iran Closer?

General William Fallon, who until this week was the most recent head of CentCom and the atrocity that is Iraq, has been referred to many times as perhaps the only person standing in the way of Bush-Cheney's nightmare folly of war with Iran.

Now Fallon has been effectively forced out.

I dunno. Scott Ritter predicted an April 2008 all-out war, us vs. Iran. Fallon's departure makes me damned scared this IS it. (Bush has pushed out countless people who dared suggest his plans were bad.)

Anyone else concerned?

The Spitzer Resignation: Our Loss As Well As His

OK, color me fucking amazed (and not in a good way): you can lie entire nations INTO a war, and then lie about the results of that war every damned day, and yet if anyone speaks out against the lies, the naysayers are the "evil doers". Screw a prostitute using your own money and bye.

Clearly, it was WRONG of Spitzer to do what he did when he was, quite recently, New York State's chief prosecutor who could make decisions on others engaging in some of the same acts. But I still can't begin to equate prostitute-hiring with the needless deaths of more than a million innocents in Iraq (and I think that number is notoriously, obscenely low for what we know happened) as well as a MINIMUM of 4,000 soldiers.

What was sickening was the complete holy sanctity of the right yesterday, proclaiming there has never been a bigger scandal (oh really? Watergate? Iran-Contra? every fucking thing the Bush-Cheney team has DONE?) and, oh yeah, btw, "we want Spitzer out because he prosecuted so many CEOs and finance people." Read: Republicans LOVE to protect the worst offenders and God help anyone who tries to play by the rules. And then to use laws on the books from 1918 and federal task forces to bring Spitzer down, when we've got the anthrax killer still going about his business just makes me ill.

And not a single Dem seemed to lift a lip to say anything to the contrary.

Howard Fineman Falls Over Himself Gushing About John McCain

Yes, this man - well, genetically male anyway - actually earns income as a chief correspondent for Newsweek AND as an MSNBC political consultant. I mean, the lady lobbyist McCain "helped" back in 2000 probably never wrote something so flowery and aquiver as Fineman wrote here about McCain.

Excuse me, please. I need a very long, very hot shower. And mouthwash.

It's Getting Nasty Out There... And I'm Not Talking About Weather

(No, if I talked about weather, I'd use plenty of four-, six-, and even voluminously polysyllabic words as I curse. Vermont has actually had a 36-hour respite from our daily 12 inch dumps of snow and frozen rain BUT...)

What I'm talking about is the talk between some Democrats. And no, I'm not talking solely about Hillary Clinton and her entourage vs. Barack Obama and his Oprah machine. Every day in my travels, mostly online but also off, I see people beating up the other candidate in ways that would give the anti-Clinton elves like Ann Coulter jealousy that they didn't think of the nastiness first.

OK, true, neither Barack nor Hillary is Perfect, by whatever definition we choose to assign to that term. And as much as I have long lists of pros and cons for each of the two, I'm still feeling rather deadlocked, Vermont primary over aside.

But they're like soooooooo freaking much better than what the Republicans want to give us - John McCain, one of those rare men who is actually much more difficult to deal with when he thinks he's winning than he is petulant and tyrannical when he's not winning (see the leadup to how he quit the 2000 presidential race and his frequent meltdowns, usually in the media's face).

Some call McCain a war hero. I once did. But the first time he said it was worth it to stay in Iraq when he knew we have lost SO many soldiers and far more innocent Iraqi civilians meant he was no longer a hero, but another ambitious dickhead with a God complex who never minds leading lambs to slaughter "for a good enough cause" (read: his own).

And when I remember who I don't want to see in the White House next January, Hillary and Barack sure look pretty damned good by comparison. Maybe we can evolve them toward protection by getting them into office and then getting them to do the will of the people (for a change).

My "Sob" Story Of The Week: "Save My Dog First!"

I really am a terrible sap for saving animals (and still have a scar from a car that clipped me as I moved a box turtle out of a country road to prove it). I hope Lucy a long, good life with this very good man and his wife. God bless them all. Should all dogs (and other living creatures) be half so lucky!

Life jackets are made for people, not dogs. So, when Randy Earl's small boat capsized while he was fishing with his dog Lacy, a black spaniel mix, he stayed in the water with his life jacket while making sure Lacy was OK.

"When the boat flipped over, I put the dog on top of the boat," Earl told The Dominion Post of Morgantown.

NY Republicans and Stone Casting

Funny... those family value Republicans - even New York ones - always have SUCH a short tolerance for anything even vaguely hinky anyone else does when we've got folks like GOP "morality czar" (and no bigger hypocrit has ever graced the title) and addicted gambler and dominatrix-driven "boy toy" Bill Bennett and House Rep David "When Clinton did it, it's bad. If I do it with prostitutes, it's good family values!" Vitters are racing to grab the biggest stones to hurl at NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's house of glass by demanding the latest pol-with-a-prostitute-proclivity resign or be impeached within 48 hours.

I dunno. Of the main claims, I don't see where Spitzer differs from Republicans - hey, remember was it once GOP-big-deal Dan Burton's OTHER wife? And Burton's stayed on for years in the House - who have tippled in the paid trade. What I find most egregious (the adultery thing really IS between Spitzer and his wife) is being the attorney general and prosecuting others while knowingly breaking the law. BUT the prostitute thing sure is less on my anger-meter than when Tom DeLay has still yet to spend an instant in jail with all the evil he pulled for years. At least Spitzer figured he could only screw women he was married to or whom he could pay rather than screwing ALL of us up the tender chute with billions in corruption and ever-more-screwed democracy through his dirty tricks.

DeLay wasn't forced out by the people - although many did get damned mad and have stayed mad at him - and not by his colleagues (though staying every day he did was damned outrageous). And turned right around and reinserted himself back in politics while daring anyone to remind him he was indicted. His wife, too, no?

Considering the good Spitzer has done (took on prosecution of cases that HURT us over "the powers that be"), and the fact that prostitution, tawdry as it is, just doesn't rise to the occasion of lying us into war as Bush did, for example. And we didn't kick the boy king Bush out.

Elliot Spitzer, Governor of New York: Ouch

First off, let me say that I think there are acts of what would legally be called prostitution that I feel are indeed victimless. People - not just women - have been known to use their sexual organs or psyches for profit just as there are people who are willing to pay for that play. It may not be my cup of tea but where no one is being forced, or "pimped out", I don't think it's terribly much of my business. Sadly, however, much prostitution is not simply a female (or male) entrepreneur doing her or his own thing for cash. And the phrase "prostitution ring" can apply to a rather vast range of possible offenses.

Now, with all that said, I'm disappointed to see that Elliott Spitzer, a fine attorney general for the state it sure seemed and now newly-crowned governor replacing that sleaze, George Pataki (so much for HIS presidential ambitions), solicited the use of prostitutes. As a private person, Spitzer could do, I suppose, what he liked - it's between him and his wife; but if any of this occurred WHILE he was state AG, and oath-bound to uphold ALL the laws of the state, it's not good.

I hope he does not feel compelled to resign as governor, however. Some very questionable women have been called upon to service MANY - most? - FAR more morality-challenged American presidents who should not be leading the country with one message and behaving so differently and the only reason these men remained in office was with a wink and nod from the press who knew about the women and did not report upon it. The only difference between those men and Spitzer is that Spitzer admitted.

But Spitzer was certainly right about one thing he said today; he needs to rebuild trust. He made this sound like it mostly applied to his wife and family, but I suspect many voters (pro Spitzer and con) are going to want their outrage addressed as well.

While I don't expect the media to be nice to him, this is the same mess who squirmed uncomfortably and then fingerwagged at The New York Times for its piece on John McCain's little lobbyist Lola (a story that disappeared much fast than I suspect Spitzer's will because - well, y'know - Democrats are all amoral, don'tchaknow?

Iraq War Blogswarm

For those just coming out of their frigid, miserable ice caves, some right-minded though left-spirited are gathering to make March 19th, the anniversary of our 2003 invasion in Iraq, a day of discussion and activism to end the war.

I'll be participating. You can, too. Go here.

(Some "in-and-out", "cakewalk", "doubt we'll be there a month and most of the time, they'll be kissing us and tossing flowers at our feet!" of a war it's been, too. And the one million dead number is, I believe, just a percentage of how many have died JUST among the Iraqi civilians.)

Tinkering...

Er... uh.... yeah. I finally get time to get back to post and a) template went bonkers and b) I accidentally poured about 500 gallons of coffee into my keyboard (she types as she has to keep stopping to pull up a key that stays depressed).

Let me try to crush this keyboard into submission and be back.

"Torture, Torture Everywhere But Don't You Make A Peep"

[Ed. note: You can find a much longer post on this torture case documentary, and on the torture brouhaha itself, at All Things Democrat, here and here including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia insisting that, despite the Constitution's 8th Amendment, we shouldn't prohibit torture - (the fat bastard, why does he HATE America and our Constitution so much?).]

The longer the far right and the Bush Administration keep insisting that torture is a "good thing" (I suspect they'd like to torture Martha Stewart, too, since I believe she votes Democrat) while they condemn anyone, anywhere, at any time for questioning its legality, morality, the future repercussions of as well as the accuracy of the information obtained from those we extraordinarily rendition, the more important it becomes for each and every one of us, as American citizens and taxpayers to learn all they can.

Unfortunately, one very good tool to understand the dynamics of torturing detainees, even very innocent ones grabbed up by mistake everyday, is an independent documentary entitled, "Taxi To The Dark Side", has been pulled from the broadcast schedule of The Discovery Channel which bought the rights to show it. "Too controversial" is the only reason given.

To suggest that Americans should not see what is being done by their own government, especially given how loudly and aggressively we have prosecuted other war criminals (and yes, I consider Bush-Cheney two of the largest of all time) for using torture, is almost as obscene as the act of waterboarding and other forms of torture itself.

Despite All The BushshitBullshit, Women in Iraq Still Suffer

Ashley Wright details some of the terrible stuff happening in Iraq that particularly target women. Mind you, before our invasion in March 2003, Iraq was perhaps the most "progressive" of the Islamic cultures toward women. But we put a stop to that! Just like Bush claimed we attacked Afghanistan to "help the women and let girls go to school" while women are at more risk there than ever before, and many (most?) girls have again disappeared from schools under threat of death.

How the bloody hell did we make Iraq even worse than it was under a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein? Sadly, the answer falls under the category of our own brutal dictators, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

When Cops Treat Tasers Like A Flyswatter

Well, here's a tale to extend the "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" discussion where Brattleboro, Vermont police felt justified in using tasers on two peaceful demonstrators. I just don't get how using electric shock which, contrary to the Nut Lobby, HAS been implicated in LOTS of deaths and injuries, was a) necessary here b) useful here and c) not immediately seen, before use, as being excessive to the point of being criminal (not to mention heinous).

I'll concede that, unfortunately, stun guns may have some place in security, both personal and professional. But its use has become totally indiscriminate which ultimately will put the people who choose to overuse it perhaps in more danger of being shot before they can shock someone.