( – promoted by odum)

I’m waiting for a call back from Bernie’s office to see what his stance on H.R 551 might be. The bill would change the “No Child Left Behind Act” to allow students and their families to protect the release of their information to military recruiters by, in effect, requiring them to opt-into the database rather than opt-out of it.

Read all about it here: http://www.democracy…

A downloadable version of this petition can be found at www.StudentPeaceAction.org. I encourage all of you to print it out, but instead of just circulating it among parents, teachers and fellow adult activists, give it to a teenager. Put this petition in the hands of the people this legislation effects. Let them make their voices heard. This petition has no requirements of age or voting status and it is an excellent way to educate and empower students about how they are impacted by the decisions of the people we elected.

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I realize this is short, but I wanted to get this up.
Take a look at this ballot

and flow below the fold.

This also doesn’t say much, but Kos just posted this at the Big Orange. Could this be an attempt to steal thunder from one name I seem to recognize as a Green?
This piece from Boston.Com sheds a little light…….

Wow.

The presentation at the Bennington Free Library seemed, at first blush, to be about things like Vermont’s tax burden, education costs, business environment and the cost of health care.

But what it was really about was a chart.

The chart brought by [Sen. Wendy] Wilton [R-Rutland] and [Sen. Kevin] Mullin [R-Rutland] – in so many words – said Republicans are good because they vote to keep Vermont affordable, and that Democrats are bad because they want Vermonters to lose their shirts.

This concocted event was the biggest bunch of election year bootsquash to roll through Bennington since the last horse trailer pulled through town on its way to the Vermont Summer Festival in East Dorset.

The real issue is this: Instead of spinning a misleading list of legislative votes, the state GOP should be working with Democrats to make Vermont a truly affordable place to live.

Sadly, as the “Affordable Vermont Tour” clearly demonstrates, the only thing the GOP is interested in is an agenda of re-election in November.

‘Nuff Said. Check out the whole thing. It only gets better – especially in the account of the Bennington County Democratic Legislators showing up at this farce and calling it for what it is – a crass, cynical attempt by the GOP and the VT Chamber of Commerce to smear Democrats and weasel in their agenda through misrepresentation of legislators’ records.

The national GOP playbook is obviously in broad circulation in Vermont these days.

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Scudder Parker’s Statement to the Brattleboro Peace Rally – July 30, 2006:

My political consciousness was shaped in large part by my opposition to the Vietnam War.  I opposed the deepening involvement of our nation in that war when I was a student at Williams College, and when I studied at Union Theological Seminary.  As a new pastor in the communities of East St. Johnsbury and Lower Waterford, Vermont, I spoke and organized against the war.  I learned that it is possible to oppose a war while caring deeply for the soldiers and their families who are most directly affected by our nation’s conduct in war.

It is due to this experience of ministering to families who have experienced sacrifice and loss at the hands of war, that I feel a special empathy and compassion for Cindy Sheehan. I recognize her pain, and her anger. I also applaud her actions. By exercising her civil rights – and I would argue that is her duty as an American to exercise those rights – she has become a leader and an example for us all. I understand that she can’t be with us today as intended, because she is traveling to the Middle-east to speak for much-needed peace in that region.

I have been opposed to the war in Iraq since George Bush first began building the propaganda toward the war. I used my first press conference as a candidate to speak out against the war and the Bush administration’s attempts to silence critics. Throughout my opposition to this war, however, I have continued to reiterate my commitment to supporting our military personnel and their families.

Little question remains that the Bush administration deceived us into going to war.  They systematically manipulated the American people and Congress.  George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their subordinates continue to repeat the falsehoods and distortions that led us into a conflict that has cost thousands of lives, immense suffering, billions of dollars, and a steady decline of America’s moral standing in the world.

I believe this administration has done severe damage to our nation’s standing as a beacon of justice for other peoples.  It is not just the rush to war and the continued deception; it is also the claim to be a presidency above the law and above the constitution. George Bush continues to show himself as a world leader with a profound disregard for international law.

The founders of this nation and this state trusted the people with freedom and created a government to protect that freedom.  We are free because we have a voice, and we have a voice because we are free.  In this spirit, we can step forward when our own leaders falter. This is true patriotism.

Vermonters have an innate sense of what is right.  It’s why we aren’t afraid to stand up and speak. Though we are a small state, we can have a loud voice.  Over the past several months, Vermonters have raised their voices in a movement supporting an impeachment resolution – and the nation took notice.  I am excited and inspired by the grassroots energy that rose to stand up for what is right – and as governor I want to harness that energy.

There is no question in my mind that impeachment proceedings against this president are warranted, and might be the best way to restore our democracy.  I will, as Governor, continue to speak out against this war, against torture, and against the disregard shown for our civil liberties shown by the Bush administration.  I will work with Vermonters to get their voices heard.

It has never been more clear why it’s just as important who we elect as governor as who we elect as president.  Jim Douglas has failed repeatedly to stand up for Vermonters in the face of George Bush and the radical Republican agenda in Washington.  He’s said YES to the Iraq war.  He’s said YES to No Child Left Behind.  He’s said YES to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that are eviscerating essential social service and job programs for those who need our help the most.  Jim Douglas has failed to do all he can do for our farmers during the current crisis.

I have faith in Vermonters’ sense of what is right. When I am elected Governor of Vermont, I will listen to the voice of Vermonters. I will listen to Vermonters and I will lead.

I will lead on investing in clean, reliable and secure energy for our state.  I will lead on making sure every Vermonter has healthcare.  I will lead in bringing accessible and effective education and childcare to Vermont.  I will stand up for working people and the middle class.  I will stand up for our dairy farmers – crisis or no crisis.

As Governor, I will continue to speak out against this war, against torture, and against the disregard shown for our civil liberties shown by the Bush administration.  If Vermonters speak clearly for Impeachment proceedings against George Bush, I will take action and I will make sure their voices are heard and their position is represented.

I will close by invoking the words of John F. Kennedy: “For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

These are times that call for our state and our nation to embrace the voice and leadership of its people, not to turn a deaf ear. Vermont – I am listening. I will continue to listen, and I will not falter on leadership. Elect me governor and I will provide leadership of which you can be proud.

Submitted by vtpeace

(I don’t know if I personally agree with everything in here (at least 90% I do…maybe 100%…thinkin’ about it…), but it’s too good and thoughtful a diary not to promote – all points are very well taken. – promoted by odum)

Now that our hangovers have partially cleared from the Ned Lamont victory parties, I think it’s time to consider what the Joe Lieberman loss means for the hundreds of other elections in November, especially the biggies right here in Vermont. Sure, getting Lamont to finish off Lieberman once again in November is a laudable goal, but it won’t mean squat if Lamont is just ONE more voice in a Congress filled with Lieberman-like politicians.

Nationally, of course, euphoria is in the air among the antiwar and netroots movements – deservedly so, too. It’s been a while since we got to celebrate anything. And it sure would be nice to be celebrating again on November 8th to the news that Lamont will be joined by dozens of newly elected officials who will stand up to Bush, work to immediately stop the war, and really work toward a broad progressive agenda.

In Vermont, it looks like it will be a mixed bag in November. Bernie Sanders is seemingly getting a cakewalk of a race thanks to Rich Tarrant’s blatant ineptitude and rather creepy sense of entitlement. But the other big races are distressing.

Take, for example, the race to fill Sanders’ seat in the House of Representatives. I cannot understand how Peter Welch is running neck and neck with Martha Rainville, especially when viewed through the Lamont lens of current affairs. Vermont is clearly one of the most antiwar states in the nation. And yet a National Guard general – the woman who so proudly sent hundreds of our neighbors to the war – is doing extremely well in her inaugural race for elected office. What gives?

In Connecticut, Lieberman got bounced by his own party because he VOTED in favor of the war. But here in Vermont, the person most responsible for CARRYING OUT the Bush war agenda by training and sending troops, Martha Rainville, is doing quite well in the polls at this point in her race.

The same could be said for the Vermont races for governor and lieutenant governor. Republicans Jim Douglas and Brian Dubie have been staunch supporters of the Bush war on Iraq, and yet they are both in what appear to be easy races for re-election. Again, if we break out our Lamont lenses, we have to scratch our heads and ask “what gives?”

For me, the answer is quite simple: Vermont Democrats are not making the war THE ISSUE. And, worse, those of us in the netroots and grassroots movements are letting them get away with it. We’re cheering Lamont from our desktops in Burlington, Montpelier and Brattleboro but apparently not learning much from it.

The beauty of the Lamont campaign was the clarity of his message. He didn’t like Bush’s war and he wasn’t afraid to not only say so but also promise to do something about it. Moreover, Lamont made people think Lieberman and Bush were one in the same. And he stayed on that message until his victory party on Tuesday night.

This is exactly what Welch must begin doing to Rainville, Scudder Parker must do to Douglas, and Tracy/Dunne must do to Dubie. But when this strategy is mentioned to political insiders they nervously point to Douglas’ last campaign against Peter Clavelle.

“Clavelle tried that,” one Democratic strategist told me recently. “And look where it got him.”

But that was also two years ago and a lot has happened in those two years, most notably the Lamont phenomena. Bush’s approval ratings have also plummeted in those two years – especially in Vermont – and the anxiety and opposition to the war have risen dramatically. Moreover, Bush was on the ballot two years ago, giving the Rove-led Republican machine plenty of money, time and exposure to spread their nonsense, manipulate the news, and otherwise defend and promote themselves. In other words, I’d argue that it’s a hell of a lot easier to run against Bush when Bush isn’t running.

Clavelle also ran a terrible campaign. He was slow to respond to important developments; he ran as if he was owed the job; he had considerable baggage from his shifting party allegiances; and his message was anything but clear and consistent.

And, let’s not forget, Parker isn’t Clavelle – yet. I believe Parker has a much better chance of connecting with people because I think he actually likes people. I’ve spoken to many people who have almost reluctantly attended one of his living room events around the state and they all seem to come away with the same feeling: They like him.

Now it’s time for a message. And his message has got to be the war. It’s easy to connect Douglas to Bush’s war. He’s been supporting it and defending it all along. Douglas, in fact, couldn’t even get himself to criticize the Bush administration’s handling of Abu Ghraib. I mean, come on, connecting the Republican Douglas to Bush and his war would be a hell of a lot easier than what Lamont just pulled off with Lieberman.

The same should hold true in Welch’s race against Rainville. Given Rainville’s direct link to the war it should be even easier. But – as the polls currently prove – Welch isn’t exactly setting Vermont voters’ hearts on fire. Welch clearly doesn’t have the same charm or people skills as Parker, but he’s got a dream opponent in the new Lamont political landscape.

I’m not holding my breath that Parker, Welch or Dunne/Tracy will heed any of this advice. But I don’t think any of us should let them off the hook as easily as we have been. As the Lamont campaign proved, the power of the netroots, the blogosphere or whatever else you want to call it is here and it’s real.

Sure, let’s celebrate the Lamont victory. But let’s also work to bring it all home, right here in Vermont where we all live (and vote).

It’s 2003, and the Democratic Party has 10 candidates in the running for the Presidential nomination. The earliest polls heavily favored Connecticut Senator and former Vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, considered a darling of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and the Senator who would prove to be a bigger, more uncritical supporter of the Iraq War than many Republicans – going so far as to repeatedly cast war critics in his own party as unpatriotic whiners. But the polls were turning fast, and to the amazement of all, the unknown (and also centrist) candidate, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean vaulted into the lead, as well as onto the cover of every major newsmagazine in the country. Dean was propelled by a combination of disaffected liberals, moderates who had become angry about the war and the Democratic Party’s wholesale impotence and indifference on the matter, and new voters who felt for the first time that the election mattered to them. This outsider wave to large extent took control of the campaign itself.

So threatened were the insiders by the developing political tsunami, that Dean’s opponents had to work together and engage in beltway dirty tricks in order to blunt his momentum, and Dean’s media naivete and rapidly imploding professional campaign only made their job easier. Through it all, none spoke for the old guard more clearly and more forcefully than Senator Lieberman himself:

Presidential contender Joe Lieberman warned Tuesday that rival Howard Dean, the hottest candidate in the field, could be “a ticket to nowhere” for Democrats in 2004 by advocating discredited Democratic policies on taxes and national security.

“A candidate who was opposed to the war against Saddam, who has called for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts, which would result in an increase in taxes on the middle class … could lead the Democrat party into the political wilderness for a long time to come,”

The Traditional Media initially tried to pass off the Dean phenom as a fluke – a bunch of crazies temporarily riled up. A simple glitch in their collective narrative of American politics. After Dean did not bolt the Party as many predicted, and his supporters dutifully fell in line behind John Kerry’s miserable run, some pundits even started referring to the Dean movement in a positive light, given that it was now safely consigned (as they thought) into history and therefore rendered harmless and irrelevant to their own, beltway-tethered world.

But fast forward to 2006. Howard Dean is the DNC Chair and – to the chagrin of many – is pushing his 50-state strategy forward relentlessly. And it’s Joe Lieberman who has been rejected by a record turnout of his own state Party and is bolting from the Democratic Party altogether. The right-wing Talking Heads are apoplectic, and the centrist types who pass as the “liberal media” (such as Cokie Roberts) are in a complete tailspin, mired in predictions of Democratic apocalypse, all because their own party has rejected the notion that insiders like them have a special right to dictate to the rank-and-file how they should vote and what’s in their best interests.

At day’s end, the traditional Media’s attempts to marginalize the Lamont phenomenon worked decidedly against them. The relentless narrative was that the Lamont campaign was simply fueled by crazy bloggers – which was obviously untrue (try to imagine, for a moment, rank and file Dems sitting around a Connecticut bar talking about DailyKos). As others have observed, focusing on the blogosphere at all shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the new media. Sure, the lefty political blogs are abig part of it, but there is also Burlington’s Democracy for America and True Majority, the mighty MoveOn.org, the media watchdog groups such as Crooks and Liars and Media Matters, journalism sites such as Raw Story – all leaderless, decentralized, and finally, after a couple years – truly grassroots (and I do not use that term lightly).

Still, the blogger narrative was everywhere (except in places like the New York Times, which had – and still today has, in their post-mortem editorial – the wherewithal to see reality), and since perception does have a tendency to become reality in politcs, the liberal blogosphere may have just had their clout bumped up quite a few notches as an unintended result.

In any event, the wave that began with a little, two-room office in Montpelier with Governor Dean, Kate O’Connor (who has now gone to “the dark side”), three interns (Abby Trebilcock and..er…I’ve forgotten yer names guys! – post in and remind me if you’re reading!), Carolyn Dwyer doing some fundraising, and myself running in and out to buy and set-up their first 4 computers (I still have the Governor’s Visa card number in my wallet as a memento) has officially hit the beach. How far it goes remains to be seen.

It may be a forgone conclusion, but I think it’s worth doing what we can to dissuade Lieberman from his plan to run as an independent. I don’t think any of us in Vermont can expect him to listen to us, but there is one Vermont Democrat who may be able to get Lieberman’s ear.

Last night i sent Senator Leahy an e-mail asking him to urge Lieberman not to run as an Independent. If you want to do the same thing you can use this form to send Senator Leahy a message.

I assume a lot of the readers of this site are pretty heavily into politics, so I’ll throw this question out to all of you:

Does anyone remember any off-year primary election, especially one featuring an incumbent, or any primary election at all that drew 48% of the eligible voters?

I sure don’t! Holy Joe certainly wasn’t expecting it. Remember? One of his big stated reasons for considering a run as an Independent was that it wouldn’t be fair to the people of Connecticut if he were kicked out based on a majority vote of 8-10% of the population, he has always been the senator of all Connecticuters (??), blah blah blah.

Tonight the Courant is calling it a record turnout, and I’d be hard put to gainsay that, but maybe you know better.

So why is this big? First off, because a loss of an incumbent in a primary is always big. Second, because it shows the salience of the war for the base of the Democratic Party.

But most of all because the issues in this race were big enough to mobilize a ton of voters across the state, and they voted for change.

So shouldn’t this teach our fellow Democrats that they need to man the fuck up and oppose?

That’s what I’d like to take from this.

WCAX is reporting that Lieberman has conceded, although he is still promising to run as an Independent.

The Courant also has this.

Any ideas on how to talk him out of it?