Say Hello to...

Vermont Secession, the blog, which is already off to a rousing start!

Vermont Votes On Its Own Iraq War Resolution

From Democracy Now today (update: the resolution passed in both the state house and senate):

In Vermont state legislators are voting on its own Iraq war resolution. Vermont could become the first state in the nation to pass a legislative resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. 139 People Died in Iraq on Monday In news from Iraq, at least 139 people were reported killed across the country on Monday. Earlier today 16 people died in a suicide bomb attack in central Baghdad. The blast occurred outside a food warehouse used to distribute subsidized food rations.

We, Who Are About to Fry, Pollute You

Right after midnight, I'm going to bite the proverbial bullet, click the button, and transform this blog, along with Cut to the Chase, to the new Blogger platform.

I'd love to lie convincingly enough to myself - and you - to think everything will be fine post-conversion but I've worked with software too long to believe this is even remotely possible. ::cough::

So, cross your fingers. S'ok?

A Note From A Cousin of Casey Casavant, Iraq Vet and Blackwater Operative

Since I had my say - in which I hoped to reflect some admiration for the dead former Iraq soldier, Casey Casavant, and my feeling that he was not just "another" Blackwater "soldier of fortune" op, but perhaps failing badly in doing so - I feel it's only right to post, where it will be seen, a comment that arrived from Tamera Pariseau, who identifies herself as the E Montpelier VT native's cousin:

Casey wasn't "forced" to do anything. Casey was doing something he believed in, whether we agree with it or not, and for that I am extremely proud of him.

Casey's family is and always has been very proud of him and his service to his country. Please don't tarnish that by making assumptions about things you know nothing about.

I've never been a believer in this war, but I'm damn proud of my cousin.

You should be proud of your cousin.

As I wrote, I am no fan of Blackwater or of the Bush agenda in Iraq; that is quite separate, however, from those called upon to serve in the U.S. military. Your cousin did a most difficult job that was asked of him, not once but in three separate tours for the U.S. military.

My comment about "forced" through three tours was taken straight from the media, which has (often and quite reprehensibly) misreported; I should have made that clear.

My sincere sympathies to you and your family. I've lost loved ones in war as well as lost those I knew because they came back forever, irrecoverably changed by what they experienced. It's most terrible, even in the best supported wars.

I am encouraged, however, by the number of Google and other searches I see on Casey's name. Too often, I'm afraid, the dead in Iraq - civilian and military - go anonymous for all but their family and friends.

Montpelier's Thom Hartmann Takes Helm From Al Franken At Air America

Looks like the great - and quite nearly, the late - experiment in anything other than hard right radio, Air America, has been saved. And as Air America's "flagship" personality, Al Franken, steps down to explore a run for U.S. Senate for Minnesota (kick Norm Coleman's ass, Al), Montpelier, VT's own Thom Hartmann will step in to replace Al in the prime time slot.

You can read the entire story, including how it was former NYC consumer advocate Mark Green's brother, Stephen, who is buying Air America to save it from dissolution, on the Huffington Post.

Thom is already on the radio, including on Air America, and the author of several books, including "Screwed, The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class" (a must-read, IMHO).

Give 'em hell, Thom!

One of the Blackwater Employees Killed in Blackhawk Helicopter Crash in Iraq a Neighbor

[Ed. note: Cross posted at our national sister blog, Cut to the Chase.]

From the Times Argus (E Montpelier is my neck of the proverbial frozen woods):

A Vermonter who graduated from U-32 High School was one of the five Blackwater security employees that died Tuesday morning when their helicopter went down in Baghdad.

Casey Casavant, 36, played soccer, hockey and lacrosse and was a cowboy at heart, according to his sister, Kristen.

"He was just fun-loving, smart-alecky; one of the funniest people you'd ever meet," she said in a telephone interview from Montana, where her family moved when Casey was 6 years old.

The second-to-last child of four, Casavant moved back to East Montpelier with his brother to live with his father when he was in the seventh grade, Kristen said.

Casavant graduated from U-32 in 1989 and went on to Norwich University for approximately a year before joining the Air National Guard, then the Air Force, and the Army, eventually becoming an Army Ranger.

"That was his true passion," Kristen said. "He just believed in what he was doing; he believed in protecting his family and country."l

Now, I am NOT pleased with Blackwater; not its leaders, administration, or its sweetheart deal as privitized military black ops/security for the Pentagon. They're doing some terrible things in Iraq.

But this fellow was forced through three tours of duty in Iraq in the Army and only then decided to go to private contractor status under Blackwater (I'm told it's easier to quit the military if you agree to join up with one of the "Christian" mercenary praetorian guard types like Blackwater).

Thus, I view Casavant differently than I would the usual Soldier of Fortune wannabe who joins up for the big money to go play black ops in Iraq.

Testing 1-2-48

Why All The Applause And Cheers For the President at The SoTU Address?

Why?

Give me one good reason. Telling us he will balance the budget, when you know full well this will come through more cuts to basic services (public education, health care, services for our returning troops) yet with bigger tax cuts to the wealthiest citizens, is more smoke and mirrors.

When do we stop this deception? Stop even allowing this man (and again, with him, I use the term quite loosely) to pretend he has answers when his answer to everything is:

1. more war
2. more tax cuts to the wealthy
3. privitize everything

Blogger...

I'm sure there is a good ::cough:: reason why Blogger has not seen fit to post a single (damned) message in more than an hour. After all, there is always an excuse, although they rarely bother to give one anymore.

What Is The State Of The Union?

I noticed that CNN and other outlets were suggesting people fire up their camcorders and record their own State of the Union (SoTU) address. I'll spare you the video and audio - my hair is having a bad year so far - but here's my take on the state of America:

America is disheartened, disillusioned, depressed, and despairing.

Under Mr. Bush's "watch" (and, except for all the spying he does on our mail (snail and electronic), our phone calls, our blogs and other Web sites, et al), we've watched our country driven to bankruptcy on existential-only threats while billionaire contractors made huge new profits in Iraq and Afghanistan and here at home with homeland (in)security no-bid contracts only to show no real performance.

The president, while waging war on the working and middle class (sadly, much of the working class no longer can afford to deceive itself into believing they are middle class anymore), has talked non-stop about bigger and bigger tax cuts for billionaires and wildly-wealthy-already corporations like energy companies that have already secured the biggest taxpayer-to-corporation welfare checks in history.

But Americans have some responsibility for our "state" as well. We have not usually participated in our so-called representative democracy with many of us not even bothering to show up to vote; of those who do, many don't bother to call or write their reps to voice their approval or disapproval over what they do.

We need to take our country back and become far more vocal as well as knowledgeable about what is going on. If we don't want America to be an empire, then WE must step up to the plate and make our government realize we need to focus Washington's attention on education and health care and domestic policy and STOP the madness with trying to reshape the rest of the world in the image of corrupt Capitol Hill.

We have seen our elected representatives all too often fall down on the job. So ultimate responsibility must fall to us. If we can't trust them to do their jobs, then we must not fail to do ours as citizens, as voters, and as global citizens as well.

Will Vice President Dick Cheney Be Forced To Resign Now?

[Ed. note: Cross-posted to our national blog, Cut to the Chase.]

From some of the word out of the opening day of testimony at the Scooter Libby/PlameGate/CIA Spy Leak trial comes some of the first serious questioning of whether Cheney's (bad?) actions will result in his resignation.

From Crooks & Liars (and see my previous posts on this topic here and here today):

Considering that Patrick Fitzgerald has clearly outlined a trail that leads right to the office of the Vice President, the obvious question hangs in the air: If this whole CIA leak case was authored by Cheney, does he need to resign?

Digby: Holy Moly

Norah O'Donnell is asking Andy Card and Leon Panetta if the president is going to have to ask Dick Cheney to resign as a result of what's being alleged at the Libby Trial. (They both punted.)

If that's the beltway chatter, look for the Republican noise machine to go into high gear.

Beware of Mary Matalin's upcoming appearances, I'm just sayin'…

The timing of this really couldn't be worse. On the day of Bush's State of the Union speech, you have a former senior official pointing fingers at your closest advisor, a Republican prosecutor pointing fingers at your Vice President, and polls that show that two-thirds of Americans have given up not only on his plan for Iraq but on his presidency.

Ironically, in the same breath, Republican pollster Frank Lutz told Democrats they had to play nice now that they are in the majority in Washington (Luntz sang a much different tune when Republicans were in power!):

GOP pollster Frank Luntz has been advising conservative Republicans for years on how to exploit language to smear Dems and win elections. It was Luntz, for example, who teamed up with Newt Gingrich to shape the Contract with America in 1994.

And now, Luntz has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to offer the left some advice: don’t act like his Republican clients.

I am not in the habit of offering partisan linguistic advice to Democrats. But in the genuine spirit of bipartisanship - seriously - I thought this is the perfect time to convey a simple point to the still-euphoric faces of Democrat activists: Don’t twist the knife. […]

Democracy is at its best when its practioners use language to unite and explain rather than divide and attack…. We need an intelligent debate, not a sound-bite contest.

Given Luntz's record, this just doesn't make any sense.

I think playing nice and decent should be the norm, regardless of who is in power. But all we got was nastiness and a war of sound bites, with Republicans telling Dems they might as well go home and twiddle their thumbs because they were in charge for years.

Goodbye, Alps! Hello, Global Warming!

The Global Warming/climate change bad news - just like the egregious effects we keep having upon it - just keep coming: scientists now estimate the glaciers of the Alps will be gone, as in melted, by 2050, or a few years after the world may lose most of its fish used in human diet.

Sorry, Austria: the president just really needs to ride almost alone in that gas hog of a limousine even just to get a cheeseburger!

Vermont Iraq War Veterans Decry President's Surge Plans for Iraq

In case you missed it, here's the Times-Argus' coverage of Saturday's protests against President Bush's Iraq escalation plans which included a few Iraq War veterans who say this is a very, very bad idea.

Sunday's New York Times Profiles Bernie Sanders, Vermont's "Socialist" Senator

If you missed The Times' profile of Vermont's only Independent (nee Socialist) senator, catch it here. I offer you but a snip:

When Bernie Sanders visits a high-school class, as he does regularly, students don’t hear a speech, a focus-grouped polemic, a campaign pitch or, heaven forbid, practiced one-liners. Nor, in all likelihood, do they hear Sanders tell stories about his family, childhood or some hardship he has endured. He makes no great effort to “connect” emotionally in the manner that politicians strive for these days, and he probably doesn’t “feel your pain” either, or at least make a point of saying so. It’s not that Sanders is against connecting, or feeling your pain, but the process seems needlessly passive and unproductive, and he prefers a more dynamic level of engagement.

“I urge you all to argue with your teachers, argue with your parents,” Sanders told a group of about 60 students at South Burlington High School — generally liberal, affluent and collegebound — one afternoon in mid-December.

[...]Next topic: “How many of you think it was a good idea to give the president the authority to go to war in Iraq?”

No hands.

“C’mon, anyone?”

He paused, paced, hungry for dissent, a morsel before lunch. Sanders says he thinks Iraq was a terrible idea, too, but he seemed to crave a jolt to the anesthetizing hum of consensus in the room.

“Iraq is a huge and very complicated issue,” Sanders said, finally. (“Huge” is Sanders favorite word, which he pronounces “yooge,” befitting a thick Brooklyn accent unsmoothed-over by 38 years in Vermont.) He mentioned that Vermont has had more casualties in Iraq per capita than any other state in the union, including one from South Burlington High School.

“O.K., last call for an Iraq supporter,” he said. Going once, going twice.

Vermont to O'Reilly: Go [Bleep] Yourself

Provided by Five Before Chaos (thank you!), and a perfect followup to the previous post on Bill O'Reilly's latest nut-case crusade against the state of Vermont (like we would want O'Reilly's brand of "justice").

Bill O'Reilly's New Campaign Against Vermont

I posted this at Cut to the Chase last night, but it definitely belongs here, too:

I dunno: I would be far more worried about Vermont if we drew Fox's Bill O'Reilly's praise rather than his off-the-wall condemnation. And remember: last time he led a boycott against Vermont, our tourism dollars INcreased. And if you're wondering about Bill's "championing" for exploited children, read my earlier post where he makes one teen sound like the kid "liked" being kidnapped and held.

From the (Barre/Montpelier) Times-Argus:

Another year, another national condemnation of Vermont by right-wing cable talk show host Bill O'Reilly.This time, the Fox News commentator is calling a Bennington County judge and prosecutor "villains" for their parts in sentencing a sex offender last week.

Unlike the furor that was unleashed almost exactly a year ago when now-retired Chittenden Superior Court Judge Edward Cashman initially sentenced a sex offender to a minimum of two months in jail for repeatedly assaulting a child, the state's top elected officials are defending the Bennington County plea deal.

"Public safety and protecting our communities from sexual offenders has been and will continue to be a top priority for this administration," said Jason Gibbs, Gov. James Douglas' press secretary. "But the governor will not comment on the woefully uninformed opinion of one talking head."

O'Reilly – who featured the Cashman decision last year on several shows in which he called for a national boycott of Vermont – again took aim at justice in the Green Mountain State. On his Monday "O'Reilly Factor" – the top-rated "news" show on cable television – he said that the Bennington County case was "another atrocity in Vermont. Is there any excuse for this? How could this happen in America?"

The prosecutor in the case, Deputy Bennington County State's Attorney Andrew Costello, stood behind his decision to offer a plea deal that allows Andrew C. James to avoid jail time after admitting to sexually assaulting a 4-year-old boy. His office said Tuesday that given the constraints in the case – there were no other witnesses and no physical evidence linking James to the crime – obtaining a conviction that puts James under a lifetime of supervision was "the best we could do."

He rebuffed O'Reilly's criticism – and that of former Rutland County state Sen. Wendy Wilton, who, as during the Cashman controversy, appeared on the talk show Monday night – as ill-informed.

"I think what he did here was jump to conclusions about the case and its resolution without really knowing anything about it at all," Costello said. "For Bill O'Reilly, this wasn't about the facts, it was jumping to conclusions. It's what he does.""Look, I think initially, when you just look at what this man was charged with and look at the resolution of the case, I understand how this can seem outrageous," he continued. "But when you know the facts, and once that's explained to people, they understand. To take this kind of criticism from someone who doesn't even know what he's criticizing is disheartening."

Say Hello to

Rip and Read.

Military Recruitment: Let's Make Their Day, Give Them More Than They Ever Dreamed

I posted this yesterday at Cut to the Chase, but it's almost more appropriate for here.

Was just listening to the tail end of Jim Hogue's "House on Pooh Corner" program on WGDR [the Friday, January 19th show] (streaming here; community radio for Central Vermont broadcast out of the Eliot Pratt Center of Goddard College in beautiful downtown Plainfield - if you spit, you'll miss it).

While I didn't hear who had put forth the idea, whether Hogue (who often dresses up at Ethan Allen for the Second Vermont Republic - our secession from the States' movement) himself or someone else, I sorta like it.

To whit:Military recruiters are scrambling to try to get every warm body they can get to serve in Bush's "surge". So let's give them more than they ever dreamed.Although Hogue's piece recommended every man 58 or over show up at recruiting offices to volunteer their services - and keep the recruiters from talking to the hungry 18-year-olds also waiting - I say, let's not be sexist here.

Any women care to join me at the local recruiting office (which I think is in not-quite-so-beautiful-downtown Barre - the only place around here with actual chain stores)? The more the merrier. I'll even drive!

The older, the more infirm, the better! If you're 75 or older, the coffee's on me!

Don't speak English? No problemo in Bush's surge!And yes, I am quite serious. I'm available next Thursday. What about you? Can't make it then? That's fine. I think maybe I'll be making this a regular excursion! Join me when you can.

Oh, and we don't have to limit our offer to the Army. I'm thinking the Navy, the Marines, and maybe the Air Force. Let's give 'em all a shot!

Damn. What should I wear? It's too cold for my purple silk and the heels. I've never enlisted before, unless you count the Young Republicans (and I wouldn't, if I were you).

Bill O'Reilly, About To Speak Before Group Supporting Missing and Exploited Children, Suggested Found Missouri Teen Was Having Too Much Fun

[Ed. note: Cross-posted on our national blog, Cut to the Chase.]

This story disgusted me even more than all the other disgusting, pathetic things Fox News boast host, Bill O'Reilly, spews. As usual, he's denied he said this, pretending that the videotape recording was (of course) expertly manipulated by everyone who hates him (like France). Posted on Mirror on America (also read the Media Matters' coverage of it here):

Conservative Spokesman Bill O’Reilly Attacks Missouri Kidnapping victim Shawn Hornbeck. Just when you think this scumbag could not go any lower, he outdoes himself.

Bill O’Reilly stated on his program that Shawn’s “experience in captivity was fun"….and that "he liked it”. According to O’Reilly, Shawn Hornbeck enjoyed being victimized by his captor…. A man who will go down in history as one of the worst child predators of all time.

O'Reilly was asserting that since Hornbeck did not try to get away.... he must have liked it.

I have seen a lot of outrageous things from Bill O’Reilly, but this just goes over the top. This goes way beyond anything that I have seen from this guy before.

Fox News should get rid of this creep or, at the very least, they should make him apologize. However, Fox News is unlikely to take this step because O’Reilly generates high ratings for the company…. and Fox has no moral character whatsoever. By keeping O’Reilly on the network after this, Fox will show a lot of people what they are all about (those who didn’t already know).

This guy is the face of the Republican Party.

[...] It’s clear that he does not know what the hell he is talking about. His profound ignorance is clear in his statements.

[...] I could not let this go without challenging it, and neither should anyone else.

Watch The Video of Bill O'Reilly Making His Sick Comments

Check These Out

Some interesting bits posted by Brattlerouser at Green Mountain Daily in his weekend link dump:

NEW BALLOT QUESTION CALL FOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS INTO 9-11 ATTACKS: Looks like the city of Burlington will get a chance to vote on a non-bindling resolution calling for new investigations into the attacks on Sepetember 11th, 2001. The Burlington Free Press has the story.

NEAT NEW SITE: For those of you interested in Entergy Vermont Yankee or other issues related to nuclear power in Vermont and elswhere check out Green Nuclear Butterfly. The sister site to Entergy Watch, Green Nuclear Butterfly is an excellent site for news and "quirky" views, anti-nuke sources & organizations, pro-nuclear sources & organizations, Chernobyl, and green suppliers. The guy who runs it is Royce Penstinger and he's not afraid to take on Greenpeace or their views on nuclear power. He invites you to join in the struggle.

A MOST UNLIKELY SUPPORTER FOR IMPEACHMENT: Ever heard of Bruce Fein? Fein served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration, where he helped formulate conservative arguments on key legal issues that are still current today. He had stints as a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He also writes a regular column for The Washington Times newspaper, one of the country's leading conservative dailies. But his bona fides don't end there. He has trashed the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and is on record saying:

"President George W. Bush should pack the United States Supreme Court with philosophical clones of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and defeated nominee Robert H. Bork," Washington Lawyer, February 2005

He voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and he applauded the nomination of John Roberts as Bush's "finest hour." He EVEN drafted the arguments for the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton in 1999.

So why the hell would he support investigations into impeachment for Geroge W. Bush? Find out more in this interesting article from The Progressive magazine. A most excellent interview in my book!