Per today’s Burlington Free Press:

MONTPELIER – State Auditor Tom Salmon… confirmed Tuesday that he is considering running for the U.S. Senate next year against independent incumbent Bernie Sanders.

[…]

He said he would announce his decision by March 5, the birthday of the U.S. Navy Seabees, with whom Salmon served in the Reserves in Iraq. He chose that date, he said, because the Seabees are predicated on a can-do attitude.

[…]

“He’s out of balance,” Salmon said. “We need someone who can operate from the center.”

So…

I think I just have to say how much I love this idea.  Not only will it make the Senate race far more interesting than I expected (in that it will be interesting in any sense of the word whatsoever), it will give us a shot at getting someone into the auditor’s office who (1) has some sense of what the job actually entails and who (2) does not think it’s appropriate to use the position of Auditor to evade a DUI.  (Please, Mr. Salmon.  It’s not like you’re Governor.  At least people know what a Governor does.  “Auditor” won’t get you out of a ticket any more than “High Bailiff” will)

So, please, please, please, Tom.  Run.  Run like you’ve never ran before.  Go for that brass ring and ring that bell!  

Go for it.

Please?

(I tried to figure out how to embed the player directly on GMD, but didn’t have any luck, but this is well worth keeping an eye on. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Big week at the State House. This morning Senators Patrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Peter Welch are going to join with our new Governor Peter Shumin to discuss health care reform. Specifically, they will discuss how to get the necessary federal waivers in order to move Vermont to a single payer health care system. Then tomorrow, Harvard School of Public Health Economics Professor William Hsiao will unveil the three models our legislature commissioned.

Sorry for the short diary but I want to get this up quickly as ORCA public access TV is live streaming this morning’s conference and plans on livestreaming tomorrow’s report by Dr. Hsiao.

LIVESTREAM HERE!

Palin Used Highly Inflammatory Rhetoric — in Defiance of McCain’s Directive to Tone it Down — That Stirred Blatantly Racist Passions Against Obama During ’08 Campaign and Has Continued to Employ Incendiary Language in the Two Years Since; Now Former Alaska Governor Deeply Offends Jews by Employing Anti-Semitic Phrase in Defiantly Partisan Speech on Tucson Tragedy

PALIN PLAGUED WITH ‘POLITICAL TOURETTE’S SYNDROME’ — Former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been no stranger to controversy in the nearly two-and-a-half years since Arizona Senator John McCain chose her to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. She has consistently made highly inflammatory remarks, both in her speeches and in her Internet postings, ever since. Now in a video speech in response to the Arizona shootings that killed six people and wounded 14 others, Palin used an anti-Semitic phrase in attacking the media and liberals who blame her for contributing to the poisoned political climate which may — or may not — have been a factor in the shootings. (Photo: Getty Images)

(Posted 5:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, January 18, 2011)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Almost from the day in August 2008 when Senator John McCain — having secured the Republican presidential nomination — plucked then-Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska out of relative obscurity and into the glare of the national spotlight as his vice-presidential running mate, Palin has found herself embroiled in one controversy after another.

Now, Palin has generated a new furor, this time over a videotaped speech in reaction to the January 8 shootings in McCain’s home state of Arizona that left six people dead — including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl — and 14 others wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat who represents Tucson.

And this time, Palin may have bitten off more than she can chew — and permanently foreclosed any hopes she may have had of winning the presidency in 2012.

A DEFIANT PALIN BLASTS HER CRITICS IN VIDEOTAPED MESSAGE

In a videotaped message posted on her Facebook page, Palin branded attempts by pundits and liberal activists to pin the blame on conservatives in general and herself in particular for the shootings during Giffords’ “Congress On Your Corner” meet-and-greet event outside a Safeway supermarket in Tucson a “blood libel.”

She defiantly accused her critics of attacking her in an effort to damage her politically. “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them,” she said. “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

But if Palin’s intent was to humble her critics, she failed badly. On the contrary, she’s now in serious hot water over her use of the term “blood libel,” a violently anti-Semitic term that for centuries has been used to falsely accuse Jews of committing unspeakable crimes — particularly the death of Jesus — and to justify atrocities against them.

What made Palin’s use of the term particularly galling is the fact that Congresswoman Giffords — whose recovery from being shot in the head was hailed as a “miracle” by doctors at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson and whose condition was upgraded from “critical” to “serious” on Sunday — is Arizona’s first-ever Jewish member of Congress.

PALIN’S USE OF ‘BLOOD LIBEL’ OUTRAGES JEWISH LEADERS

“Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a ‘blood libel’ against her and others,” David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said in a statement.

“This is, of course, a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today,” Harris said.

Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice, a New York-based Jewish civil-rights organization, also ripped Palin, calling her use of “blood libel” in her videotaped message “totally out-of-line.”

Greer noted that Palin is a commentator at Fox News Channel. She posted her statement just days after Fox News president Roger Ailes said he issued a directive to the conservative-leaning cable network’s commentators to tone down their rhetoric in the wake of the shootings.

“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that,” Ailes said in an interview with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons on Simmons’ Web site, GlobalGrind.com.

(No similar directive was issued by NBC News chief Steven Capus to MSNBC’s commentators, but the liberal-leaning cable network’s top-rated pundit, Keith Olbermann, did call for a truce, blaming himself as well as his rivals on Fox for infusing public debate with violent imagery. “We need to put the guns down,” said Olbermann. “Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away permanently.”)

PALIN A RHETORICAL FLAME-THROWER SINCE ’08 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

The firestorm over Palin’s use of “blood libel” in her video message — a defiant defense of her brand of confrontational politics — is only the latest in a series of insensitive and outright inflammatory remarks that the former Alaska governor has made in the more than two years since she entered the national spotlight. In the process, Palin caused deep problems for the McCain campaign and has roiled the Republican Party as no one else has since Pat Buchanan’s infamous “culture war” speech at the 1992 GOP National Convention in Houston.

Indeed, a widening rift opened up between McCain and Palin as the campaign wore on and polls showed McCain badly trailing Obama, according to The Times of London, with McCain “alarmed about the fury unleashed by Palin . . . against Senator Obama. Cries of ‘terrorist!’ and ‘kill him1’ have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies,” the newspaper said.

That Palin was relishing the traditional role of the vice-presidential nominee to be the campaign’s “attack dog” to a degree seldom seen in the annals of American presidential politics was cause for increasing alarm among McCain campaign staffers and the nominee himself, with the London daily quoting Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime chief of staff, as saying that his boss would rather suffer an “honorable defeat” than conduct the kind of take-no-prisoners, scorched-earth campaign that Palin and other conservative hard-liners in the GOP wanted him to conduct.

PALIN STIRRED UP UGLY DISPLAYS OF RACIST VENOM AGAINST OBAMA AMONG HER SUPPORTERS

When McCain imposed a strict ban on his campaign raising the issue of Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Palin was furious.

Palin and several top campaign officials — as well as hard-line GOP conservatives  — insisted that an all-out attack on Obama’s relationship with Wright was the only option McCain has left to cast doubts in voters’ minds about his opponent. But McCain was adamant that to bring up Wright would almost certainly be seen as a last-minute desperation move and trigger accusations of McCain playing the “race card” against the then-senator from Illinois.

McCain was forced to confront open bigotry against Obama face-to-face at a campaign stop in Minnesota — and was determined to tamp it down, even grabbing the microphone away from and rebuking a women who called Obama “an Arab,” implying that he was not a native-born U.S. citizen and was a Muslim.

But that didn’t stop Palin from stirring up racially-tinged animosity toward Obama during her solo campaign appearances. In a now-notorious campaign stop in Ohio — captured on video by a reporter for the English-language international channel of Al Jazeera — several Palin supporters, all of them white, let fly with vicious anti-Obama comments laced with racist and Islamophobic venom — the latter in spite of the fact that Obama is a Christian.

Palin did nothing to stem the open displays of bigotry among her supporters. To the contrary, she did the exact opposite: She stoked the crowd into a frenzy of contempt against Obama by saying, “We know who the bad guys are,” referring to terrorists. At Palin’s mention of “bad guys,” the crowd shouted, “Obama!”

Palin continued: “Those who sympathize and support those terrorists who would seek to destroy all that it is that we value — those are the bad guys, OK?” Her implication was clear: Obama was, in her mind, a “bad guy.” A terrorist sympathizer. An enemy of America. A traitor.

PALIN: I MIGHT RAISE ISSUE OF OBAMA’S CITIZENSHIP IN 2012

Fast-forward to December 2009. In an appearance on conservative radio talk-show host Rusty Humphries’ program, Palin effectively joined the ranks of the birther conspiracy theorists when she declared that she “doesn’t have a problem” with those who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, still stubbornly insist that the president is not a native-born American, but a native of his father’s homeland of Kenya.

This belief — still being doggedly pursued by the birthers despite their utter failure to come up with any evidence to back up their claims — has long since been dismissed by the Kenyan government as “madness” and “a red herring.” Even many mainstream conservatives branded the birthers “loony.”

(Palin distanced herself from the birthers within hours after The ‘Skeeter Bites Report published a blistering editorial accusing Palin of joining forces with a movement engaged in a hate campaign against the president aimed at the forced removal of Obama from office.)  

CAMPAIGN 2010: PALIN’S NOW-INFAMOUS ‘TARGETS’ MAP

Fast-forward to last March. In the immediate aftermath of the passage of the health-care reform law, several lawmakers became the targets of vandalism and threats, including Giffords, whose Tucson district office was vandalized.

To his credit, then-House Minority Leader (now Speaker) John Bohener (R-Ohio) condemned the violence and threats: “I know many Americans are angry over this health-care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” he said. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change. Call your congressman, go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, make your voice heard — but let’s do it the right way.”

But what did Palin do? On March 23, amid the violence and vandalism, Palin posted on her Facebook page her now-infamous gun-sight target map, with Giffords’ seat among the 20 held by Democrats targeted. Even more incendiary was this Twitter posting by Palin:

“Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” Pls see my Facebook page.”

With a track record like this, is it any wonder why Palin has become such a lightning rod? And yet, not only does she still refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for contributing to our poisoned political discourse, she has the gall to attack those who take her to task for it.

It’s the political equivalent of the old definition of Tourette’s Syndrome, which for many years was thought to be associated with compulsive utterances of obscenities and/or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.

BACKLASH OVER ‘BLOOD LIBEL’ REMARK MAY DOOM PALIN’S 2012 BID FOR WHITE HOUSE

But with her “blood libel” remark, Palin may have gone too far. With the term’s explosive anti-Semitic connotations, the former Alaska governor’s political future — already dealt a blow by the resounding defeat of Joe Miller by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in her home state — may have been fatally damaged.

For Murkowski, her write-in victory over Miller — who denied her the GOP nomination in the primary — was sweet revenge: In 2006, Palin had ousted her father, Frank Murkowski, from the governor’s mansion. The two have been locked in a bitter political feud ever since (Although Miller, whom Palin strongly supported, said he would not contest the election results, he still has refused to concede defeat).

Already, an anti-Palin campaign Web site called Impalin’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President 2012 has been launched. And the “blood libel” firestorm is likely to intensify a stop-Palin movement within the GOP.

In any case, this latest episode has shown quite clearly that Sarah Palin is precisely what this column said of her in an October 20, 2008 editorial: That the former Alaska governor is a dangerous, fearmongering demagogue totally unfit to hold the most powerful job in the world.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

In the course of my reading on this MLK morning, I happened upon something that caught my attention. On Talking Points Memo,  at the top of the front page was a Google banner ad for three unrelated entities, one of which is “Rockets Red Glare,” a site that boldly proclaims that it is selling “Republican Bumper Stickers.”  This is an odd enough placement for Republican advertising, so I clicked over to look at the inventory.  As you can read from the link, it’s pretty unattractive stuff, but doesn’t go much beyond borderline incendiary.  There are, however, several offerings invoking prayer for Obama with a biblical reference that bears closer examination.  All of these “prayerful” novelties refer to Psalm 108:8, which reads as follows:

“May his days be few; may another take his office.”

Harmless enough, one might suppose; until you read what follows that slyly truncated text.  As The Christian Science Monitor observed back in 2009,  the cited passage takes on a sinister significance when the thought is completed:

If the Republican Party would argue its complete lack of culpability for the atmosphere of menace that wafts in from the trigger-happy fringe, perhaps they would be wise to have their name removed from this “humorous” novelty company’s advertising.

My father often reminds me, writes auditor Tom Salmon:

"It's not what you say, it's what they hear," so I'm hoping you hear what I say in the spirit intended.

So begins Tom Salmon’s rambling Burlington Free Press My Turn op-ed feature Blame no one and engage everyone.The opening quote used here like some type of editorial Miranda warning puts the reader on notice that any possible misreading is the fault of the reader not the author.  

Auditor Salmon keeps demanding to be listened to. People may still be listening, but what is he saying?

A few years ago as states' revenues fell dramatically nationwide, he proposed that Vermont allow in casino gambling to cover budget shortfalls, ignoring that gambling revenues were in drastic decline. More recently, as the desire for government transparency has grown, he proposed boundries be placed on public information requests.  

Salmon’s recent My Turn winds like a car out of control swerving down several paths,veering at, then away from, topics as they might come into focus, and ultimately running up on the sidewalk.  

Blame no one. He notes post-election opinion columns popping up titled ‘Where do we go from here?’ then proceeds to blame Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post for misreading the political situation surrounding the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report. Marcus says both sides must listen to what they don’t want to hear. Salmon asks: What if there are more than two sides? Reform, Salmon declares, will require new players. He hints that he may be one of these players because, as Vermont Auditor of Accounts:

I warn of dangers, and the loss of "listening" is a real danger.

Will his next party be a tea?      

Then spinning his tires and laying a little more blame on the pavement, he says

Ms. Marcus fell prey to the same inclination many big brains do; they speak of the problem as if it lay under a glass case .

Salmon then steps on the gas and speeds away to other issues.

Clutching a favorite quote: "People do not lack strength, they lack will." Salmon now steers our attention to single payer health care, claiming he didn’t hear much about the fact that 70 percent of our health care costs are attributable to preventable causes. (Was he not listening?)

While vaguely alluding to preventable causes of illnesses (lack of will?) he fails to engage us with any positive proposals  but finds fault with those who find it easier to blame: teachers, schools, MacDonalds and soda for childhood obesity for missing the mark.  

He sums up by looking over his shoulder back to the campaign and shouting,   “I could dazzle you with financial facts that are all big and bad”.

Engage everyone. At last braking to a shuddering conclusion of sorts he posses several unanswered policy questions in rapid fire, demands more involvement and skids headfirst into a dire warning:

We need participation, and the time of good intentions and “hoping for volunteers” is over. It’s time to get in the game, or watch our country, as we’ve known it, vanish.

Has the airbag mercifully have gone off ?  

I’m spring boarding this from this excellent piece, about racism and white privilege, regarding an ongoing conflict between him and his partner regarding which deli to go to:

But finally I just confronted him. “What’s up? Why don’t you ever want to shop at Deli A? It’s nicer. It’s cleaner. I like it better.”

He told me, “The owner of Deli A watches me like a hawk. He follows me around. He thinks because I’m black I’m going to shoplift.”

In my teens, I was dark.  I was in the sun all the time, and I lived in mostly white parts of the Midwest.   Though I’m not a wasp by any stretch (I’m Italian and Jewish) when I was younger, I was taken for a wide variety of ethnic groups, most often from the Mideast.

But since I had a basically whiteish ethnic identity, it took me some time to realize that not everyone got eyed nervously by store security.  I was also kind of a stereotype breaker even for people who thought I was non-white: I would add up the prices of everything I was purchasing in my head and have exact change ready before the cashier told me the price, so any store where they knew me realized I was probably a risk to myself, but not anyone else.  But new stores?  New places?  I was tailed routinely.

I learned Clark’s lesson in reverse– my experience being white(ish) led me to think that white and black people alike were mistrusted by authority and looked on suspiciously.  But it also led me to think that once someone got to know me, they’d realize I wasn’t a threat, and that that would ring true for everyone.

Of course, that’s not the case– something I learned as an adult.  

In high school, I was moved from an urban, primarily black, town to one that was almost entirely white.  I went from fitting in with the people around me to being one of the darkest skinned people for more than a hundred miles.  There were only two people at my high school who were darker than me.  They were sisters, and their father was black.  Knowing the younger of these sisters was what started to show me the difference.

For them, they understood a lot of things I did not about race, because they’d learned it fairly early on that the treatment of them based on their race was a permanent thing.  Even if they wanted to, neither could ever have passed for white.  I had the choice to change my appearance fairly easily.  I could never pass for thin, and that came with its own problems, but if I wanted to pass for white, I could do so fairly easily.  In my case, as I noted before, whatever prejudice I felt about my race to that point wasn’t something I recognized as being about race as much as it was just about things that happened to everyone, but seeing what all three of us experienced in an almost entirely white environment?  

I was told, on multiple occasions by classmates, to “go back to Mexico.”  The younger of the two sisters had doors slammed in her face by people.  She didn’t like to talk about this much– I know that worse happened, but she never told me what it was.  She did, after all, perceive me as one of the white kids.  She wasn’t wrong about that.  I was one of the white kids, even if I didn’t quite get what that meant.  

I had friends at the school– we all did.  But no one really stuck up for those that were perceived as ethnic minorities.  It was uncharted territory for them.  A bunch of white kids (myself included) don’t generally learn about what it means to be black and what sort of lasting damage their prejudice can do.  They weren’t bad people.  They were just out of their depths.

This is something I let kids off the hook for.  I’m not as inclined to do so with the adults that perpetuate the problem and turn a blind eye to it.

At this point I should probably explain something: I am an extremely perceptive person.  I can look at interactions, look at situations and circumstances, and see things that no one else seems to get.  I am wicked smart, often too smart for my own good, because I get stuck in following ideas and thoughts to the point where I get excited bout learning something new without always thinking that I might be blurting something out that someone else doesn’t want to hear.  This is, on occasion, socially awkward and has led to serious problems between me and friends.  I don’t have a religion, but I do believe in authenticity and honesty.  I think we’re kind of lost without them.  

I mention this because I can be extremely obtuse as well, and when I am emotionally involved, my ability to be objective and perceptive can go out the window.  This means that when I am, for example, attracted to someone, I find it more difficult to assess whether or not they are lying to me.  I can do it, but I have to kind of push myself to do in a way that feels very uncomfortable.

So at that point, in the thick of this sea of prejudice, while also trying to find my way through a new school and deal with all the crazy stuff that happens in high school, I found it very complicated to understand everything that was going on at the time.  A lot of what I’m perceiving about it now is from introspection and afterthought, not stuff I could see fully when it was going on.

But even some things I get pretty quickly, even being in the thick of it.  

The older of the two sisters had an injury of some sort to her foot which caused her to be late to school a couple times.  She got called into the guidance office about it along with their mother.  Her guidance officer told her mother “I know she has problems with her feet because white and black feet are different and when you mix them there can be trouble, but…”

I knew that racism existed before I heard that story.  I’d read history.  I’d even seen some fairly nasty examples of it, but that was the first time it clicked with me that it was, in contemporary times, still part of our ongoing story, and direct and personal.  I think it was the first time that it clicked with me that it was so incredibly stupid, but that’s a whole other story.  

I’ve written a bit already, but this is all intended as prelude to give you a little background into my perspective here.  As I’ve written before, I developed (unconsciously) some of my own racist attitudes during this time as well.  It was easy to do– if people perceived me as non-white but treated me like a white person once they got to know me, why couldn’t other ethnic groups do the same.  In some ways, it’s easy seeing the world in such simple ways because it prevents you from being forced to acknowledge that you’re full of crap.  There’s also an emotional investment for many people in seeing the world as better, more just and more fair than it is.  If I think of the world as generally “fair,” I find it harder to admit that racism exists.  Even it if does exist, I find it harder to admit that it can’t be overcome, which falls into a very easily racist trap that translates to “other ethnic groups overcome racism and find success so why can’t blacks?”  Not once in that logic is the possibility that white people hate blacks more than they do other ethnic groups recognized, nor is the possibility that there’s a big difference between ethnic groups who come here by choice and those who are brought here involuntarily.

I’m not suggesting that we need to bring slavery into every discussion involving African Americans.  I’m just suggesting that we sometimes seem to have a pathology about even acknowledging the possibility that not only did we royally screw a whole lot of people, that in our effort to avoid responsibility for that, we’re still screwing them.

In the broader sense, I think the whole tea party, big picture, Obama hating crapfest we’ve been subjected to over the past two years was something we probably should have seen coming.  I think the blindness we had to it was similar to the blindness I had about race when I was younger.  It’s not just that– it’s that, as white people, I think a lot of us hoped that the election of Obama would somehow help us move past racism.  We weren’t stupid– we knew racism would continue to exist, but at least I had hoped that it would be moved to the back burner, something that was treated as more of an a fading foolishness that would be gone in 30 years.  

Of course, that was unrealistic, but I don’t think I got how unrealistic it was.  But I think non-white people did.  Every friend of mine who was part of an ethnic minority saw trouble coming with the tea party long before I did.  They saw the race baiting not as an extinction burst (i.e., the sort of frantic ramping up of a virus before it finally dies) but the continuation of something they’d seen their whole lives.  

And, once again, when I can step back and be objective, it’s kind of obvious and I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.  

I don’t think many politicians are necessarily racist.  They might be, but I don’t know.  I don’t even care that much.  What I do know is that some of them are smart enough to know that their constituents are racist (though most would never admit it).  So when, for example, the word “Macaca” is used, it’s one of those things that dehumanizes non-whites in ways that are usually subtle enough to access white racism while slipping beneath the radar.  Similarly, the anti-Harold Ford “I met Harold at the playboy party” ad, plays off of white fears of blacks.  

And even with all that, I didn’t see that there was so much outright hatred and hostility towards blacks that would become so visceral and vivid on a national scale.

I feel pretty damned stupid for that.

It’s a serious question (if admittedly hyperbolic…).

Small minorities in both legislative bodies. No “Rs” aside the names of our federal delegation. Yes, there are two GOP-ers with statewide offices, but one of them is notoriously flaky, and gearing up to commit political suicide with a doomed run against the popular incumbent Senator Bernie Sanders. He’ll likely be replaced by a Democrat in the Auditor’s office because the Republicans have almost no political bench after the years of attrition and decay of their legislative caucuses.

That leaves popular new Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott, who is a strong political force to be sure, but part of the reason for his broad appeal is the perception that he’s a moderate, even liberal Republican.

And who is arguably the most powerful Republican in the state today? That would be close ally to Governor Shumlin and Senate President Pro Tem Campbell, Kingdom Senator Vince Illuzzi. What kind of a partisan Republican is Illuzzi? Well, let’s see, he endorsed Democrat Peter Welch for Congress and is close to many of the Vermont unions…

The Vermont Republican Party is in as bad shape as any major political party I’ve seen. There’re no two ways about it.  

If this were 2013 instead of 2011, it’d be easier to talk about rebuilding, but coming off a mid-term national GOP wave that completely missed Vermont leaves us looking towards the inevitable pendulum back during a presidential year, which always brings out more Ds to the polls.

For Republicans, they have a real branding challenge. Defining themselves is going to be next to impossible. In fact, they’ll be left to define themselves as alternatives when Shumlin screws up – which is going to be tricky because he’s probably not going to screw up – at least not in any way that they’ll be able to use. Early signs are that he’s going to feel freer to piss off the left than the right and the center, figuring he can keep liberals onboard with a full-on push to single-payer healthcare. That won’t help the Republicans.

The bottom line for the GOP, then, is that if Shumlin proves to be the kind of ideological eclecticist he’s looking to be, defining him reactively and using that definition as an elections platform is going to be a miserable failure.

A lot can happen, obviously. Being so firmly in the drivers seat will cause Democrats to begin fracturing – that’s human and political nature, and it could change the playing field. Perhaps more dangerous is if Shumlin decides to be the same kind of party leader that Jim Douglas was. It was through Douglas’s single-minded interest in his own re-election that the Vermont Republican Party whithered under his watch, as it gave little support to legislative Republicans and candidates.

Shumlin could easily fall into that trap, and the Vermont Democratic Party could atrophy if it becomes exclusively tasked to his re-election. If so, that too could change the playing field. For my money, though, I’m betting Shumlin is too smart to give into that impulse.

It's been just a week, and we've gone from an outcry against the violent rhetoric of the extreme right to an equally rapid backlash, with “responsible” opinion cautioning against blaming the right-wingers for talk about crosshairs, reloading, and being armed and dangerous.

Now that backlash appears to be infecting our news coverage.

Today the Associated Press ran a story about a former Congressional candidate facing criminal charges for threats against Indiana judges.

 Here's how the AP describes the defendant:

 What party, you might ask, was this woman a member of? Well you might as, but in the AP coverage you will never find out, because her party affiliation appears nowhere in the story.

If you're interested, she's a Republican.

 But apparently, we're not allowed to say, or even know, the party affiliation of someone who engages in violent rhetoric.

That would be irresponsible.

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

Each year on Dr. King’s birthday, I find myself reflecting on his message of equality and giving back. This year, as Americans grapple with the tragic events of January 8 in Arizona, including the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, my perspective on the holiday has taken a different focus.

I was born the year after the assassinations of MLK and Bobby Kennedy. My parents described the time as incredibly frightening.  There was a sudden sense that anyone who stood up for what was right was at risk of being killed.  My father, a passionate civil rights activist who had been sentenced to two years in prison for civil disobedience, suddenly felt that no one engaged in the politics of change was safe.

I know both Rep. Giffords and her chief of staff personally and I find myself deeply shaken by the Congresswoman’s attempted assassination.

I remember talking to Gabby about the vandalism of her district office last Spring.  She certainly found it disturbing and was very concerned about the rhetoric mostly used by the right to fan the flames of those who believed that somehow Congress’ actions, particularly on healthcare, were leading to an Armageddon for our country or an end to our way of life.  She had no hesitation to head back to her district to run a race based on her record and her passion for the community she loved explicitly for all of its diversity of views.

As we continue to process the shooting, how should we react?  

My anger at talk show hosts and political leaders who have used violent and sometimes explicit “shooting” metaphors towards those who simply disagreed on an issue was overwhelming that first day.  Before learning the background of the killer, I had to restrain myself before posting equally extreme statements about who bore responsibility for his actions that afternoon.  The language I was tempted to use would have been no better than that utilized by others, further escalating the divisive debate.

But in the words of Dr. King, “Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”

Those in leadership at this difficult time must not ignore the Arizona tragedy or be intimidated into believing all we need to do is give a secret service detail to every member of Congress. We must step forward together to build from this tragedy to become a better people, return our discourse to one of wide-ranging ideas, not ugly attacks. We need to recognize that we want the best for the next generation and not participate in the divisive destruction of those who disagree.  

The approach to MLK day over the past 15 years provides a powerful way to strengthen our collective soul.  In 1994, the family of Dr. Martin Luther King asked us to make it “a day on and not a day off” and to spend the holiday engaging in service to others.  When I was the head of AmeriCorps*VISTA, I was inspired by the response across the country to 9/11, when people were inspired to strengthen our homeland through giving back to others.  On Monday, we have the same opportunity to create a powerful “soul force” to respond to this tragedy and stand up against the language of violence by making a difference in our local communities.  I hope you will join us in that cause.

Service opportunities can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/…

and here: http://mlkday.gov/

In 1956, when I lived on Chicago’s North Shore (and the only place whiter was Vermont), my mother took my sister and me downtown to see the Christmas tree at Marshall Fields Department Store.  On our inevitable visit to the public bathroom, I encountered the very first person of color I had ever seen.  She was about my mother’s age and similarly dressed, but the unexpectedly deep hue of her skin had me fascinated.  My mother, who was a little more sophisticated than I, hastily distracted my attention and sent me into a cubicle to attend to business. I remember the stranger smiling briefly at me and then my mother.  She seemed unperturbed by my rude display of curiosity.  The anger and incivility that was to erupt throughout much of the country, just a couple of years later, was still in the unimagined future.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I actually had schoolmates of ethnic diversity.  We were swept up into folk music, Viet Nam, the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King. I assumed, from all I knew in the shelter of my teen years, that life moved on a continuous trajectory of improvement.  Peace would be restored, equal regard for all men and women would become the norm, and justice and enlightenment would soon prevail everywhere.  I, of course, would achieve some unspecified personal triumph, dazzling all doubters, particularly my long-suffering parents.

Here we are, more than forty years later, and I can’t help but wonder what’s been accomplished since.  True: the North Shore of Richard J. Daley’s buttoned-up Chicago has been transformed into a rainbow of diversity, pulsing with color and music from a thousand other worlds.  Some of that color has even crept into the alabaster halls of the new “super-rich.” But, for the most part, the mission of peace, hope and charity that we inherited from the troubled 60’s was rather too quickly abandoned in easier times;  and now we find ourselves mired in  violence, injustice and poverty on a scale never anticipated forty years ago.  Income inequity in America has reached epic proportions and African Americans still predominate on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.

Statistics predict that the white majority soon will be surpassed in number by the tide of diversity; but rather than embracing this refreshment of the gene pool,  the ignorant choose to hunker down in hostile bands of special interests, hurling insults, lies and paranoia over their crumbling walls of resistance while the real power, the money,  is further consolidated in the hands of less than 1% of the population, most of whom still are white and male. Once again, we face an uncertain future in which the poor and middle class do not seem likely to get an even break and violence is our biggest export.

Were he alive today, even Dr. King might find the prospects discouraging.