So PoliticsVT – the blog I never quite understood, but read (and often linked to) religiously – has gone the way of all things, more or less on schedule. I’ll certainly miss the regular stop on my daily surfing, the lively back-and-forths in their comments, and their entertaining inability to spell the singular “woman.”

I’ll always wonder what was going on there. Not the anonymity thing, so much as the continuum between the “Golden Age PolVT” with “Moe Robinson” and the “Silver Age PolVT” with the whole political undead schtick. But that’s okay, as I was just grateful for bloggers that made more typos than I do.

PolVT was the “Raw Story” of Vermont politics, going up with every rumor they heard, sometimes being spot on (and other times… hmmmmm, not so much). They were often the online punching bag (which I know got to ’em sometimes), but even the punchers kept coming back for their daily fix. As nature abhors a vaccuum, no doubt someone will try to fill their niche – but I suspect whoever does won’t be nearly as entertaining. Bye folks!

In an earlier scenario before the Novemeber election, I suggested that Cheney might resign in 2007 and allow Bush to appoint a new VP, perhaps Bill Frist, who would then become the Republican heir-apparent in 2008.  Impeachment was not a factor in that discussion.

Since I posted that, Nancy Pelosi has become Speaker and third in line for the Presidency. This changes the scenario and influences the impeachment discussion dramatically.

Before, if Bush had been removed from office, it would have resulted in Cheney becoming President, or in his absence a Republican Speaker of the House.
But with Pelosi in office, the potential scenario where Bush could be impeached effectively freezes Cheney into place for the duration of Bush’s term. On the other hand, if the Democrats want to REALLY do a number, you remove Cheney first, then impeach Bush – result: President Pelosi!
Which brings us to a Republican strategy built around Plamegate: by dragging out the Plame legal case, you forestall action by Congress to impeach Cheney, since an ongoing judicial investigation is under way. And by securing Cheney, you secure Bush.
So…a rapid conclusion to the judicial proceedings around Plame is not in the interests of the Republicans and the White House, but if the Democrats could start investigations in the House that could lead to pressure on Cheney to resign or be impeached, that would create fantastic congressional Democratic leverage.  And actually succeeding would put a Democratic woman in the White House!

So – watch the Plame case closely and especially the way the role of Cheney in that process!

The hemming and hawing over Bush’s anticipated plans for an escalation in Iraq by the end of the month is in play, with high-ranking Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan suggesting he may sign on. The mind simply boggles.

On the Republican side, there is a lot of responsible-sounding, non-committal chest thumping that will inevitably end with everyone dutifully falling into line with Bush (with the possible exception of Oregon Senator Gordon Smith).

So who are we counting on, here?

Newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hedged a bit, was was pretty specific in her recent threat against it:

In an interview in her new office at the capitol, Pelosi told reporters, including KCBS’ Doug Sovern, that a troop surge translates to an escalation of the war in Iraq. She said sending more forces is the exact opposite of what most Americans want and the White House can’t expect the new Congress to approve money for the action.

“They have to know that the election of a Democratic Congress has made a difference in the oversight of in war in Iraq.”

Pelosi said she is not willing to cut off money for the whole war, but will demand justification for any new funding.

That’ll be hard to step away from. Many other House Dems (such as Murtha and Blumenauer) are with her on this.

Her counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, has sounded less solid in the last several days – but most recently gave reason for optimism:

In a blunt challenge to President Bush, the leader of the Senate’s new Democratic majority said Monday he will “look at everything” within his power to wind down the war in Iraq, short of cutting off funding for troops already deployed.

“I think we’ve got to tell the president what he’s doing as wrong. We’ve got to start bringing our folks home,” said Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada

Of course the big news is Senator Kennedy’s proposed of legislation to prevent this very thing:

Declaring that “American values and America’s role in the world are all at stake,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on Tuesday said he will lead an effort to block funding for a troop surge in Iraq “unless and until Congress approves” President Bush’s plan for such a deployment.

In a speech at the National Press Club, Kennedy, D-Mass., the No. 2 Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., would introduce legislation later in the day aimed at forcing Bush to gain congressional consent for his new Iraq strategy, which the president plans to unveil in a televised address to the nation Wednesday night.

That’s Kennedy and Markey.

Then there’s the local team:

Today at 9:00 AM, Middlebury College professor and internationally renowned author and activist Bill McKibben will address a joint House/Senate Committee at the Vermont Statehouse to discuss the urgency of addressing Climate Change. Although he’s not going in with any prepared statement, he did offer the following to pass along regarding the website he and six recent Middlebury grads launched a few days ago – stepitup07.org – to coordinate a national day of action on climate change on April 14th. According to the website, there are already 94 local events planned in 30 states, but obviously much more help is needed. The following is from the email he sent out announcing the site:

Dear Friend-
I’m writing to ask your help. I know you’ve already made changes in your own life to deal with climate change; I’m guessing that, like me, you feel a little helpless about the scale of the problem. Some of us who are eager to do something more are organizing a day of demonstrations for April 14. We’re calling ourselves Stepitup2007.org, and we need you to be a vital part-to organize a rally in your neck of the woods. If everyone pitches in, we’ll have by far the largest action yet in this nation about global warming-large enough that Washington will notice and start to act.

It’s going to be an unusual day. People will be rallying in many of America’s most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting ice sheets on Mt. Hood and in Glacier National Park, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West and Hawaii. But we need hundreds of rallies outside churches, and in city parks, and in rural fields. It’s not a huge task-assemble as many folks as possible, hoist a banner, take a picture. We’ll link pictures of the protests together electronically via the web-before the day is out, we’ll have a cascade of images to show both local and national media that Americans don’t consider this a secondary issue. That instead they want serious action now.

We’re not an organization-we’re, in essence, a few people sending out invitations to a party. A potluck. This is going to be a homemade day of action. So go to our website at stepitup2007.org, and say `here’s where I live-I want to help organize.’ We’ll coordinate the responses, introducing you to others from your area, and give you everything you need to be a leader, from banners to press releases. You don’t have to have ever done anything like this-you’re not organizing a March on Washington, just a gathering of scores or hundreds in your town or neighborhood. We need creativity, good humor, commitment. If you are active in a campus group or a church or a local environmental group or a garden society or a bike club-or if you just saw Al Gore’s move and want to do something-then we need you now.

And by now, we mean now. The best science tells us we have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy and lead the world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA’s Jim Hansen, we will face a “totally different planet.” We’re calling for 80 percent carbon cuts by 2050, which would be a good first step to warding off that future. But the exact numbers are less important than the underlying message to Washington: get serious. The recent elections have given us an opening, and polling shows most Americans know there’s a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality.
Please join us.

Bill McKibben

Although it’s hardly news to visitors of this site, it still can’t be said enough; it is impossible to work too hard, or move too quickly on this issue. Stop by the website and spread the word.

(editor’s note: I am still waiting for my good friend Odum to link to my blog as he promised last week. He must be busy!)

Here we go. Tomorrow night President Bush will announce that he is putting more American troops into Iraq. Along with the troop increase, Bush is expected to unveil new diplomatic and economic efforts in the Middle East.

Chattering Classes start your engines.

I hate the Iraq War. My vocal opposition to the war before the conflict started cost me a good job with the Central Intelligence Agency. The debt load that this country is taking on to fight this war will cost my children even more.

I’m one of the lucky ones. In America, we generally all tend to be. For all intents and purposes, this war has cost us little.

And when I say “us” I’m referring to the people who spend their weekends wandering through the mall, closely monitoring Paris Hilton’s latest relationships and complaining, loudly, when gasoline prices at the pump jump 50 cents as their SUVs only get 15 miles to the gallon. Us Americans.

Life is good for us, which is why we went along with this war in the first place without asking too many questions. That, and we were (or is the word I’m looking for “are”?) stupid and lazy.

It’s true – 5% of the world’s population lackadaisically consuming 25% of the world’s resources on a daily basis doesn’t make you smart and active.

Which is why the Republican majority went along with Bush’s insane plans to invade Iraq. Which is also why the Democratic minority went along with it, and the mainstream media to (I’m looking right at you Judith Miller, you coy little fox, playing up your freedom of the press jail time in the vain hope that we would forget that you allowed yourself to be spoon-fed news about Iraq by Cheney’s office. Naughty.).

Anyway, I got my tax cuts, didn’t you? Let’s all have another doughnut.

Now I’m not saying that this war has been cheap, good heavens no! Just because this war didn’t cost us much doesn’t mean that it didn’t cost someone else quite a lot.

Several hundred billion dollars spent, several thousand American troops killed, thirty thousand American troops injured and a quarter-million of Iraqis killed is not “cheap”.

The true cost of the conflict increases exponentially when you consider that starting this war in the first place was never in our national security interests. In fact, it was on this very point that the CIA and I parted ways (I exacerbated the break by snottily depositing Brent Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed saying the exact same thing on my case worker’s desk).

Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, no connection to non-state actor terrorist organizations, no weapons of mass destruction and, believe it or not, was actually a stabilizing force in the Middle East in terms of keeping pumps to the world’s largest oil patch on and flowing.

And keeping those pumps on is in fat America’s national security interest.

Iraq was not our problem until we made it our problem.

And then our insane invasion made Iraq our problem.

So here we are.

We have three options about what we as a country are going to do to move forward in Iraq (even after Senator Biden holds hearings we are still only going to have these same three options).

Option one is to stay the course and continue to do what we have been doing in Iraq.

Option two is to re-deploy all of our troops immediately. It will take about 6 months and must be facilitated by the Congress cutting off funding for the war, which they can do.

Option three is to put in more troops. A lot more troops. This is the McCain option. It is the only option.

Senator McCain’s recent editorial on sending more troops to Iraq:

  “There is no guarantee of success in Iraq. We have made many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed. But from everything I have recently witnessed, I believe that success is still possible.

  Even greater than the costs incurred thus far and in the future are the catastrophic consequences that would ensue from our failure in Iraq. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed. Our national security, and that of our friends and allies, compels us to make our best effort to prevail, and to do it immediately.”

Senator McCain’s full editorial may be found here:

McCain is right. The man is a patriot who is an expert on national security.

And, no one said maintaining an empire was easy. Or pretty. Still want another fast food hamburger fat to chow down in your SUV fat boy?

America asked for this carnage and now we have it. There is nothing left to do but cry. And kill.

( – promoted by odum)

I read something encouraging in today’s Times Argus.  The Vermont Legislature is proposing a tax on new homes built over 4,000 square feet. Be ready for the free-market whine brigade to start complaining:  Under the Senate version of the proposed law, those who put up new houses larger than 4,000 square feet would be charged unless their buildings were energy efficient.

A similar bill likely to be introduced soon in the House is even tougher. Fees assessed under that proposal on such large houses will go directly to a fund promoting renewable energy production in the state.

Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, said he will introduce his House bill, which would impose a $1,000 per-square-foot surcharge on the construction of houses over 4,000 square feet.

“It’s meant to make people think about what they are doing,” said Klein, who added that to some extent all Vermonters underwrite the cost of energy and other impacts of large new homes. “When they build these homes, everybody in Vermont has to pay for it,” he said.

Of course, the builders associations are opposed:

“It’s just ridiculous. It’s just awful,” Joe Sinagra of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Northern Vermont said of Klein’s proposal. “We have a housing crisis and you are adding an additional cost on housing.”

Of course, Sinagra fails to mention that the very real housing crisis in Vermont has to do with affordable housing, not second homeowners who can afford to build a second home over 4,000 square feet. As I look deep within my heart to try and find some compassion for them, it’s just not there. Sorry.

I support this strongly, especially on philosophical grounds; namely, there’s a huge contingency of Americans who seem oblivious to the idea of taking and using much more than necessary,  regardless of the impact it has on society and the planet. Maybe this will, as Klein said, ‘make people think about what they’re doing.’ Or not.

Crossposted at five before chaos and Daily Kos.

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Why do these things go together?  It’s the stupidity, stupid.  All the talk about a clash of civilizations misses a crucial point.  As the old song says, it takes two to tango.  Frankly, Islam is not a civilization, it is a late civilization.  It probably died because of the writings of al-Ghazali, a thousand years ago.  al-Ghazali slammed the door on new ideas and any sort of cross fertilization. 
In any event, Islam is fairly primitive in many ways.  Whatever the merits of the theological disputes in Christianity (even admitting most of them are really about power), the major split in Islam (Sunnis and Shiites) revolves around a dispute about dynastic succession about thirteen hundred years ago.  While it is true that Christianity has much to be guilty about in terms of forced conversions; it initially gained traction by the force of its ideas until it became the established religion of the Roman Empire.  Judaism has always been in house, as it were.  Islam from the get-go was militaristic and imperialistic. 

A civilization boasts its on-going traditions of art, music, literature.  Japan, China, India boast large and vast cultural treasures.  Name one Islamic movie?  Name one Islamic opera?  Name the Islamic Shakespeare.  They don’t exist.

Living in a dead culture only produces resentment and hatred as all creative pathways are foreclosed. 

George Bush is doing his best to kill our civilization.  He really is not different from Osama Bin Laden except he’s chalked up a larger body count.

So the question is: how far has Bush gotten in his murder of our culture?

Watching the reality show about casting the leads in a forthcoming Broadway revival of Grease, I am sorry to say that the patient is in critical condition.  Here’s why.

The contestants sang songs from Grease.  In the real world of a living culture, one never auditions with songs from the show you’re auditioning for?  Why?  A nano brain cell will tell you that the director of the new production will have his or her own concept and will not want to hear someone else’s (the original?) take on the role.  Those who sang other songs missed the point as well: sing a song that demonstrates your range as being appropriate for the role you’re auditioning for.  Why anyone would sing a song from Guys and Dolls in an audition for Grease makes no sense.  More importantly, the general level of denial of reality is so high as to make me believe that the mass of Americans have gone mad.  Sandy is supposed to be an attractive high school student.  Why would an obese thirty-something even consider auditioning?  Why would someone think that telling the panel that he’s auditioning for his late brother is a plus?  Why would the program hire a Bush (they really did!) who, on the first, episode even broke the rules of the bizarre contest — family tradition I guess.

I know this sounds trivial in light of the paragraphs above, but this really is how a culture dies.  Grease isn’t even that great a show.  I wonder what its shelf-life will be.  It is competent enough, but it was a nostalgia show for adults remembering their high school days.  High school is so different now that the new nostalgia will be very different..

But there’s some good news on the cultural front: Spring Awakening and Grey Gardens.  The first is a high school musical about what it’s really like being an adolescent  and the most exciting musical about  adolescence I’ve seen since the original production of West Side Story.  In the second, Christine Ebersole gives a performance as incredible as the storied Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie.  Wow!!!  People will be talking about this for the next century, if we have a next century.

I’m not kidding. Please believe me when I say I WISH this wasn’t true, but it seems to be. From the AP by way of Kos and newsfortheleft:

South Carolina Democrats expect to hold the first debate of the 2008 presidential cycle on April 26 at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg County, the largest concentration of black voters in this early voting state.

The hour and a half debate at the historically black college will be televised live nationally by MSNBC, state party Chairman Joe Erwin said Monday outside the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. auditorium.

I don’t know about the rest of you, I just need a little more time between election cycles. This is gonna make me insane. I’ve been trying to ignore the Obamapalooza all around me, but I suppose it’s now completely topical.

And the Presidential drives everything else. Expect an electoral trickle-down that’ll bring the local Vermont cycle into higher gear much sooner as well (at least among political junkies – not so much the general public). Ten-to-one, this is going to necessitate that potential statewide candidates in Vermont make serious moves before the end of the 2007 session.

Gaye Symington will be available to answer questions on Vermont Public Radio’s call-in program “Switchboard” on Tuesday, January 9. For sure, the R&R’s  (some of whom now have time for that having been defeated at the polls) — that’s Revolt and Repeal if you haven’t been paying attention to that particular flash in the pan — will be calling in to make sure she and the Democrats who now hold substantial majorities in both houses of the legislature look bad.

And, of course, they’ll continue to take credit for Do-nothing Douglas’s sound-bite appropriation of issues that were proposed by Democrats long before he ever belatedly latched onto the tailgate (like broadband access, global warming, alternative energy technology as a major area of potential job growth, just to name the latest ones).

7 p.m. via radio broadcast or online from their website: vpr.net.

NanuqFC, with a boost from L.W.

Addison County Democratic Senators Claire Ayer and Harold Giard were right out of the legislative gate with a slew of new bills stuck to the wall. Although several of them merit some discussion, this one in particular made me feel all warm and giddy inside. From S.16: An Act Relating to Noncompliance with the No Child Left Behind Act:

(a)  The state board of education is directed not to implement amendments to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 made in the reauthorization of the act under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.  The board shall continue to implement the Vermont state assessment system as envisioned in No. 60 of the Acts of 1997, but shall not require more statewide testing than that authorized under Act 60.  Further, the board shall not implement the adequate yearly progress system nor require schools and school districts to meet the highly qualified teacher provisions of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act.

(b)  Schools, school districts, supervisory unions, school administrators, teachers, other school personnel, the state board of education, and the state department of education shall comply with Vermont state law in which any provision of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 conflicts with state law.

The bill also specifically repeals language currently in the law that makes specific reference to adherence to NCLB.

Let’s be clear, NCLB has made a bad situation much worse. It is a turkey that mandates a cookie-cutter approach to children, teachers, school districts that is antithetical to local control, and lays the groundwork for even more direct, heavy-handed government intervention when schools fail under this deliberately underfunded (read sabotaged) regime.

Teachers don’t like it. Parents don’t like it. Liberals don’t like it. Conservatives don’t like it. In 2005, Utah Republican Governor John Huntsman was the first Governor to sign a law allowing his state’s schools to ignore NCLB provisions that conflict with state law. From commondreams.org:

During the debate, several lawmakers protested the growth of federal influence on Utah’s schools, asserting that while Washington paid 8 cents of every education dollar in the state, the law had given it virtually total control.

NCLB also generated lawsuits from districts in Vermont, Michigan and Texas, plus National Education Association chapters in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah – which famously prompted Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige to publicly call the NEA a “terrorist organization.”

Sure it comes with badly needed federal money, but not enough to matter in any meaningful way, when compared to the damage it does.

And I don’t care that Ted Kennedy co-sponsored it. Nor do his excuses and scapegoating get him off the hook for adding his name to this fiasco foisted upon American families. Big shout out to Ayer and Giard for taking the bull by the horns on this one.