This is big news! Ned Lamont is coming to Vermont this week. He’s joining the other Democratic headliners, Pat Leahy, Bernie Sanders, Peter Welch, and Scudder Parker at a fundraiser for DFA Friday night in Burlington.
Here’s the ticket information. Tickets are fifty bucks (hey, it’s a fundraiser) and the event is at Union Station at Main Street Landing.
Let’s get out and celebrate a big win for the good guys!
You may remember the story of Rachel Corrie. She was the young peace activist who was killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes.
They wrote a play about her life, based on her writings, and it was very successful over in London, so successful that they were going to bring it over here and present it at the New York Theater Festival. The problem was that the theater was afraid of the reaction they would get, so they pulled the plug on the production.
Now, what you couldn’t see in New York you can see here in Vermont. The Unadilla Theatre in Marshfield is presenting a play based on Corrie’s writings for two weeks, starting tonight.
(They couldn’t get the rights to put the same play on, but they thought it was important to present her ideas.
Here’s the contact information:
Reservations and Information: 802-456-8968 or at : unadilla@pshift.com
501 Blachly Road
Marshfield Vermont 05658.
You can read more about it in this week’s Seven Days.
Go see it.
Like many of us I was truly undecided between Matt Dunne and John Tracy in the September Democratic primary election for Lt. Governor — until John set himself apart speaking about his experience in the dying days of Vietnam, and about his son being shipped to Iraq in yet another misguided adventure. He spoke with passion and understanding about the futility of it all and his frustration.
John supports an investigation into impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. He verified Vermont’s part-time legislature does not have the time, the staff, the money or the expertise to verify the charges needed to pass the Jefferson (impeachment by a state legislature) resolution. We need a Democratic majority in both Congress and the Senate if justice will prevail.
Democrats spend their time and energy to keep our state in the vanguard of people-issues, and work with our Congressional delegation to say no to pre-emptive wars, to (again) stop the privatization of Social Security, to (finally) put the 9/11 Commission recommendations into law, and to have a long-term renewable energy plan. John is a leader who follows through, as he did especially passing civil unions and now health care. He will preserve, protect, and defend the people of Vermont.
Our troops are still unprotected, living under a cloud of future diabetes, cancer and future birth defects from the effects of depleted uranium contamination. John is talking to American Legion members to support testing returning veterans. This is necessary preventive medicine, even if Vermont has to pay for it. Republicans are silent, keeping this dirty little secret from the voters.
Vermont is a leader in the beginning of universal, affordable health care. John kept it in the headlines, through compromise and consensus throughout two legislative sessions. He never stopped challenging our ribbon-cutting Governor to give the people what they wanted.
We have an embarrassment of riches in this Democratic primary; both candidates are outstanding, and miles above the current Republican Lt. Governor, who is unwilling to challenge Bush policies that are hurting veterans and their families. John lost valuable campaign time because he continued working until the health care bill was signed, so does not have the same name recognition as his competitor. He put the interests of the people first, and his re-election/election chances a distant second. We can show our thanks by voting for him in the September Democratic primary.
This is a word that gets tossed around all too much these days, especially in a world that seems determined to make the word superfluous.
Still, there is no other word for this piece from today’s Slate magazine.
I won’t give away the whole story, but the headline reads: Why is George Bush reading Camus?
If you are to believe this claim (and it comes in a long line of incredible claims about W’s vacation reading), our President is quite the student of philosophy, fond of discussing the origins of existentialism with Press Secretary Tony Snow.
So let’s just put this up to a vote:
Loading ...Many scurrilous charges have been leveled by the nutjob wing of America displeased over the casting-out of Joe Lieberman. We have heard the Vice-President associate Ned Lamont with AlQaeda, we’ve heard Republicans call this a victory for the terrorists……
and they talk their shit, and we snicker. Bwahahahaha. The fear and smear dog is ceasing to hunt.
But what if I told you there are right-wing, even REPUBLICAN nut jobs who are PLEASED- beside themselves with joy, in fact – that Joe has been shown the door by the Democrats?
Make no mistake, they’re out there.
You are about to enter the land of the scumbag. Get that antibacterial soap ready, and make sure your water heater is ready for that hot shower. You’re gonna need it.
It’s gonna get ugly below the fold.
(crossposted from Daily Kos)
Meet Hal Turner.
Self-professed Republican, racist nutjob, and shortwave radio host, not to mention the proprietor of a wonderfully hateful little website.
If you can stomach it, before we get into Joe here, I want to give you a little perspective.
(I’ve waited for an excuse to bring this asswipe to the attention of the blogosphere for a long time now, and I can’t BELIEVE it took me FIVE DAYS to think of checking his game after the CT-Sen primary. I’m slipping. Forgive me.)
Here’s a sampling of front-paged hatefests you’ll find there:
WASHINGTON DC POLICE ARREST FIVE IN ROBBERY, RAPE SPREE!
TERRORIZED TOURISTS ON THE NATIONAL MALL!!
WHen you read this MSNBC story, take note of how they carefully avoid telling you that ALL FIVE ARE BLACK!
CALIFORNIA COPS SEEK PERPS IN ARMED ROBBERY SPREE!
STRING OF GAS STATION HOLD-UP BY. . . . BLACK GANG!!!
Whether they’re in California, New York or darkest Africa, negroes just can’t help being negroes. Tell me again how “we’re all equal?”
ILLEGAL ALIEN S##C ARRESTED IN NINE CAR-JACKINGS. . . .
. . . .FIRING SHOTS AT TWO OTHER VEHICLES; ARMED ROBBERY OF A DEPARTMENT STORE AND HAVING A SHOOT-OUT WITH POLICE!!
Tell me again how “They’re just coming here to work hard and better their lives?”
Those of you who still think illegal aliens should be given “a path to citizenship” really need to get your head out of your ass. They BROEK OUR LAW to come here. Do you really think they’ll bother obeying any of our othe laws? Stop being stupid. Speak out: “Build a wall; Deport them all!”
FAGS BASHED IN ESTONIA PARADE
PARADE OF 500 QUEERS TOTALLY DISRUPTED BY 50 STRAIGHT, WHITE MEN!!
Jew-run media “shocked” at “intolerance.” Of course, the jew media is not shocked by grown men jack-hammering each other in the ass. . . . but then again, perversion and degeneracy is the hallmark of the filthy jew!!
Had enough?
No?
Well…okay………
GANG VIOLENCE PUTS SUMMER “CHILL” ON LOS ANGELES
20 RECENT SHOOTINGS DURING SINGLE WEEKEND!
Study shows almost all of the 500 murders in Los Angeles from 1994-2000 were black-on-black or Hispanic-on-Hispanic!
Tell me again how “we’re all equal?” You don;t see whites doing this kind of violence on the same scale as blacks and hispanics. When will some of you wake up to the fact that non-whites are GENETICALLY different from whites to such an extent as to make them living among us a bad thing?
Some of you are so afraid of being called a racist, you are actually willing to ignore 500 murders for the sake of political correctness. Get your head out of your ass and start speaking out even if you ARE called “racist!”
If we Whites don’t do something now, we will lose America to these non-white savages!
Hoo-boy.
Yep, they’re out there.
Here’s the Hal Turner take on the CT-Senate primary, with some comments from his haloscans………
Wait.
One thing first.
I want to show you the death threat I got trolling his boards a few months ago. We’ll get to Joe, I promise………
It all started with an objection to the racist attacks on immigrants that are grist for the Hal Turner mill:
Why dont you GUYS FUCK YOURSELVES!
THESE PEOPLE ARE WORKERS JUST LIKE YOU AN ME! YOUR HATE IS NOT GOING TO DO ANY GOOD TO YOU… EVERYTHING YOU HAVE YOU OWE TO IMMIGRANTS SO SHUT YOUR NASTY MOUTHS UP! YOU NASTY WHITE SUPREMACIST… WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET OVER THE COLOR THING??? IT’S NOT ABOUT COLOR, IT’S ABOUT IGNORANCE AND FEAR!!! YOU MAKE ME PUKE!!!
Al Rejas | 04.29.06 – 1:08 am | #
To which I responded creatively.
I think y’all pissed this guy off.
My website offers a solution to dealing with the anger of such people.
Bob Dobalina | Homepage | 04.29.06 – 7:03 pm | #
Shitskinner wrote:
Bob Dobalina, We know where you’re at now. And we’re going to take you out. You really fucked up posting here. We have you’re IP address. We have you’re home address. We know all about you. You really did fuck up, you’ll see!……..
Gee, pinky, if you know all that, then you also know I hold an FFL with a Class III SOT.
Think about it.
Bob Dobalina | Homepage | 04.30.06 – 2:39 pm | #
I occasionally correspond with Daryle Jenkins, the head guy of an antifa group called One People’s Project. He likes Hal about as much as I do:
Hey long time no hear! I will keep you posted, but we are about to play with Turner again. And I see they LOVED your homepage link!
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.
ANY-way. On to Joementum. Hal and his sicko cultists are happy he lost too – but their reasons are a little different than ours.
Published Wednesday, August 9, 2006 11:52 AM EDT
JEWS LOSE BIG:
THREE-TERM U.S. SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN OUSTED IN CONNECTICUT PRIMARY ELECTION
THE WHINING HAS ALREADY BEGUN OVER HIS LOSS FOR SUPPORTING THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ
Jew news stories and opinion columnists are already screaming how unfair and wrong it is to oust Lieberman. One Democrat columnist (jew) in the New York Post even wrote “So now that the wackadoo wing of the party has a bloody scalp, what are they going to do with it? Wave it at Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon and Afghanistan and Indonesia and Great Britain and Spain and Israel and New York and declare peace?”
Hal Turner answers, “no, they’re waving the bloody scalp at JEWS and declaring peace! And that WILL work because all these wars have been driven by neo-con jews who are more interested in protecting Israel than they are doing what’s right for the United States.”
He links to this article in the NY Daily News. Then…… there’s the comments.
Hold on to your gorge.
BUT: when you hear the right wing asswipes make veiled charges of antiSemitism against Democrats who voted out Joe Lieberman, they should know this about Hal fucking Turner:
(oh, and speaking of Fox News……)
Turner’s case is particularly instructive, because he not only is unusually — even eagerly and proudly — vile, he also has history of activity within the Republican Party. On top of that, he reportedly has (or had) a friendship with one of the conservative media’s leading figures: Limbaugh Jr. himself, Sean Hannity.
What it illustrates is how the dynamic of the transmission belt works: the extremist side of the equation provides the mainstream right-wing agitators with a fresh supply of outrage and talking points, and the mainstream connections give the far right a legitimacy, a connection with the larger political discourse, they would not otherwise have.
During the 1990s, Turner made a habit of calling into Hannity’s WABC radio program as “Hal from North Bergen,” one of the show’s regular callers. “Hal” liked to say increasingly outrageous things: in August 1998, according to the One People’s Project profile [Google cache],
he remarked on Hannity’s show that “if it weren’t for the white man, blacks would still be swinging from the trees in Africa.” Hannity not only failed to rebuke “Hal” for the remark, he continued plugging into Turner whenever he called.
Turner in fact had a history of quasi-racist activism, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which profiled Turner last year:
As early as 1994, he was defending racism, holding a rally for New York radio talk show host Bob Grant, who had been fired from his show for making racist comments about blacks. In the late 199s, Turner often called in to local radio shows as “Hal from North Bergen,” telling their hosts things like, “The problem with police brutality is that cops don’t use it enough.”
All this culminated in 2000, when Turner stepped forward to run for the Republican nomination for Congress in his home district in New Jersey. He appeared on Hannity’s Fox News program and received his old friend’s endorsement. Turner himself has claimed that during this time, he and Hannity were “good friends.” Hannity himself has since remained mum on the subject — because as noxious as Turner may have been before 2000, afterward, his true stripes became unmistakable.
Turner lost that race, and it became something of a turning point for his ideological career. Where before his bigotry had been of the “edgy” variety, he soon openly embraced the ideology of various hate groups and white supremacists, as the SPLC explained:
In 2000, Turner sought the local Republican nomination for Congress, and was enraged when GOP leaders instead supported Theresa de Leon, a dark-skinned Hispanic who was the chief financial officer for New York’s Legal Aid Society and the mother of 10 children. It was at this moment that Turner had a reported “epiphany,” deciding the system was rigged against white men and abandoning all ties to the mainstream.
Not long after, he started up “The Hal Turner Show,” renting time on shortwave radio maverick Allan Weiner’s WBCQ, located in Monticello, Maine.
Building up a substantial audience and paying for the five-nights-a-week, two-hour show with advertising and donations, he became a favorite of many on the radical right, including several in the neo-Nazi National Alliance*. After neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator* leader Matt Hale was arrested in late 2002 for allegedly soliciting the murder of a federal judge, Turner openly supported Hale.
Hal Turner. AntiSemite. Racist nutjob. Nose problem. Republican.
And perhaps only unusual among Republicans in that he is out front about what he is.
Oh, I almost forgot: a little love note I got from Hal after I tried spraying some of the above information all over his haloscans:
Subject: Nice try
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 17:29:45 -0500
From: Hal Turner <Host@HalTurnerShow.com>
To: kestrel9000@gmail.com
None of your lies are getting published. Nice try, though.
They’re published now, Hal. And I don’t think they’re lies.
Have a nice day.
With the not-so-secret news that Anthony Pollina and his rag-tag band of not-so-accomplished cohorts are about to jump into the milk business, don’t think you’re hearing things when you hear cheering from your Democratic friends. The cheering is real. And it’s accompanied by the relief that the Pollina show has found a political and economic dead-end to occupy his time for a few years.
Democrats, still smoldering over Pollina’s election night hug to Brian Dubie in 2002, have been wanting Pollina to find a hobby outside of politics for years now. Things looked good when he got into the radio business a few years ago at WDEV, but anyone who’s listened to his show for any amount of time knows that it simply can’t last.
First, Anthony’s got no radio presence. He’s apparently become so confused over the years after running for political office under every political banner except Republican that he can’t get his thoughts straight before coming out of his mouth. The result is a bizarre hodge-podge of left/liberal platitudes, served with more than a heaping helping of apologies. In other words, not exactly the ingredients necessary for successful radio talk shows.
Compare, for example, Pollina’s meanderings and his constant apologies for his “opinions” with that of his rightwing cohort at WDEV, Paul Beaudry. Both pay handsomely for the their hour of time, but Beaudry doesn’t mind spewing opinions without apology and pushing an agenda. Pollina, on the other hand, seems to have his own internal opinion editor that stops him from saying ANYTHING that matters. Or, if he does, he apologizes before anyone has a chance to rally behind him. It’s just tedious.
There’s no fight left in Pollina. And that’s clearly understandable given how many times he’s lost. But instead of standing up for some principles, Pollina thinks that if he just keeps blurring his real feeling he’ll fool enough people into supporting him in the future. What he doesn’t understand, however, is that this is about as transparent as transparent can be.
But now, after having failed at electoral office, failed at issues like campaign finance reform and genetically modified foods, and on the precipice of failure in political talk radio, Pollina’s now going into business: the milk business.
Given his business experience – zero – we can all easily predict where this is going. But, hey, it’ll certainly keep him out of the electoral arena for a while. And, if his everything-he-touches-fails streak continues, it might even keep him out of politics for good.
Pollina’s got quite the uphill battle with his new milk effort. We all know from the headlines that the dairy industry is struggling big time right now. The dairy monopolizers in Vermont – Cabot, Booth, etc. – are screaming to the high heavens about how hard it is to turn a profit on dairy in this region. And the reasons are obvious: Vermont’s terrain and climate simply will not allow our traditionally smaller dairies to compete with the mega-dairies in the Midwest and West.
There’s only one segment of the dairy industry that’s making a run at the big fellas of milk and that’s the organic producers. But Pollina and his new milk venture have already announced that they will NOT be organic at first, instead trying to lend a hand to the “traditional” dairies in the Northeast Kingdom. Yeah sure, and I’ll bet there were well-intentioned people who were willing to lend a hand to the dinosaurs at one point, too.
But the business math simply does not add up with Pollina’s plan to turn a profit in the milk business. If Cabot and Booth can’t do it by paying less to the farmers, how can the inexperienced Pollina do it by paying more to the farmers AND having the enormous capital overhead of a start-up? Sounds like someone needs an intervention.
Interestingly enough, it was the State of Vermont that gave the best reaction to Pollina’s nefarious adventures into milkdom. A couple of years ago, as he and his merry band of hangeroners approached the State for $500,000 in taxpayer capital to launch this very same project, the legislature responded with the obvious: Your business plan sucks.
But now Pollina’s apparently got the private capital he needs to purchase a milk processing plant in the Northeast Kingdom – most likely a site in Hardwick – to launch his latest failure. And the Democrats can only cheer because St. Anthony will be too busy toiling in the milk plant to hand yet another statewide office to the Republicans.
P.S. I wonder if Brian Dubie is a donor to Pollina’s milk dreams?
P.S.S. Snarky Boy still thinks Pollina is really Gene Simmons of KISS.
Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning. He told Bush
that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq. To everyone’s
amazement, all of the color ran from Bush’s face, and then he collapsed onto
his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost whimpering.
Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, “Rummy, just exactly how many is a brazillion?”
It’s Haik Bedrosian vs. National Review Online’s James Robbins over global warming. The email exchange is a must read (assuming it stays posted this time….Haik’s posts at BurlingtonPol are kind of like the Flying Dutchman…you might catch a glimpse from time to time, but then they disappear into the mist…)
Baruth wants to make some cartoons. Somebody go help him out.
Surprise! You probably didn’t know it, but if you find agreement with opinions at this blog, you’re a member of the Taliban, support al Qaeda, are anti-American, a terrorist appeaser who has lost your soul…you know the drill, I’m sure, but it’s been quite a couple days even by frothing rabid rightwing freako standards.
Peter Freyne responded to the email I sent out announcing the launch of GMD so many months ago with an email reply saying simply “guess everybody’s doing it!” Well, now they are, as Freyne himself finally jumps in this coming week. Anybody who doesn’t think that Peter-as-blogger won’t dramatically change the face of the fledgling Vermont political blogosphere is fooling themselves. This will definitely kick it up a notch, and Freyne’s will immediately become the top-dog political blog in the state, hands down (assuming he posts regularly). The only question is whether he will really blog as a blogger by reading and responding to other blogs, linking, etc (its a “Web” after all), or whether he will go the route more frequently travelled by Traditional-Media-pros-turned-“bloggers” (the exception being Cathy Resmer) and blow off the blogosphere on the web, as they routinely do in print and on television. We’ll see.
Stewart Ledbetter at Channel 5 wants to cover the online Lite Guv debate here at GMD! Cool! He’s not blowing off the blogs, obviously. Big hat tip, SL.
Usual suspect PoliticsVT poster “demguy” (outed here as a Republican hack) has this to say in the comments o’er yonder:
I don’t know why you would go to VDB or GMD for your political news. You think PoliticsVT is biased? Go over to those two blogs and read their commentary.
Suffice to say my wife and I had a good, long laugh at the idea of me, Jack, Ed etc as a full-blown news source. God, I hope nobody thinks they can get all their political news from any blog… I mean, don’t forget the Daily Show…
…and finally, I’m on vacation for the next week, dammit. My first vacation in, like, 3 years, or something god-awful like that. Now, I’ll be setting up a few posts to “time release” over the next week, but tracking the current events is gonna be up to folks like Jack, Ed, Vermonter, Brattlerouser and mataliandy. I’m sure they’ll do their part to proudly keep GMD good and biased… that’s why we’re here, after all.
I’ve got the kind of job that requires talk radio. I’m a house painter, you see, and there’s nothing more boring than seeing your brush go back and forth 20,000 times a day and listening to that same voice in your head over and over. No thanks. I’ll take talk radio over that voice any day, and everyday I do.
WDEV’s my favorite station by far – at least in the morning. And Mark Johnson’s got the best show going – by far. Sure, he can get a bit bland more frequently than I’d like but he knows how to interview better than anyone else in the state. Johnson’s at his best, however, when he’s had a little too much of that Vermont Coffee Company coffee he flacks for. His hyper-silliness is strangely endearing in a very nerdy kind of way. You can imagine his offspring rolling their eyes and giving that youthful “Daaaaaaad,” when he gets rolling into his giddy zone.
You can always count on Johnson having a more than listenable show. He usually does his homework – with the exception of the other day when he had a man named “Robin” on the show and he introduced him as being a woman. Oops. But he rolled with the blunder and came out and admitted the obvious: “I obviously haven’t read your book.” Or the book jacket, I might have added.
The worst thing Johnson’s got going for him are his obnoxious regular callers. Good grief, where do these folks find the time – or gall – to call every single day? Worse, they say the same damn thing every time they call. Don’t they know that we know what they’re going to say before they say it? Hell, all I need to hear Mark say is “we’ve got Dick from St. Albans on the line” and I can hear Dick’s rant about the big, horrible government in my head. And the same goes for “Bill in Waterbury” and his angry rants about the Constitution. Or “John in Barre,” who has to begin every call with a bit of history about himself (where he worked, where he studied, how long he’s been retired). Ugh.
As these all-to-frequent-callers attest to, Johnson’s one-call-a-day policy is way too lax. He needs to figure out a way to shut the door on these same old, same old, same old callers, one after the other, day in and day out. Not only do they bring the show to a grinding halt, I think they prevent new callers from calling just because they don’t want to be lumped in with the caller drones. “Ew,” I can hear someone saying to themselves as they dial up WDEV, “am I going to sound like THEM?”
For the most part, however, Johnson just puts up with them. I guess that’s what makes Johnson such a nice guy. Until, of course, the nutcake named Brian Pearl calls him. But even Pearl gets through and gets his time to spread his hyper-right-wing paranoia. If anyone ever gets Johnson’s ire, it’s Pearl. Notice, for example, the little game the two of them have with the introductions they give themselves. Most everyone else is simply referred to by his or her first names, but Brian Pearl is introduced as “Brian Pearl.” To which, Pearl responds without fail: “Hello, Mark Johnson.” Oh boy, feel the tension.
Pearl doesn’t have the guts to bitch about Mark to Mark, though. He knows Johnson will cut him off at his knees. Instead, Pearl waits to bitch about Mark until True North Radio begins after Mark signs off at 11. On True North, Pearl gets to fall into the rightwing arms of host Paul Beaudry, a man who is trying like hell to be Rush Limbaugh but he’s missing one key ingredient: a brain.
Last week, Pearl called Beaudry to report that he was convinced a “terrorist cell” was formed in Central Vermont and they were calling Johnson’s show to foment the notion that Israel might be overreacting in its response to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers. And Beaudry latched onto it like Rush would latch onto a prescription medication, later declaring that these “terrorists sympathizers” wouldn’t be allowed on his show. Way to go, Paul! Score one for homeland security!
Other than the fact that Johnson’s listenable and Beaudry’s not, there’s another big difference between the two: Johnson’s paid to do his show and Beaudry pays for his hour of airtime. Trust me, WDEV’s Ken Squire is no dummy. If someone like Beaudry’s going to slobber on Squire’s microphone, he’s going to pay handsomely for it. I’ve heard that Beaudry and his rightwing supporters are paying close to $200 an hour for the chance to spew their hate on a daily basis on WDEV – the same Anthony Pollina pays for his “Equal Time” show.
And there’s a reason Johnson gets paid for his work. He’s damn good. And he helps me get through the morning. I just wish I wasn’t on a ladder so I could give him a call once in a while. What’s your excuse?
