Yep, it’s apparently true. Check out this column from Maureen Dowd that appeared in today’s New York Times.

Camus Comes to Crawford
By Marueen Dowd

Strangely enough, we find two famous men reading Albert Camus’s “The Stranger” this summer.

One is Jean Girard, the villainous gay French race car driver hilariously played by Sacha Baron Cohen (a k a Ali G and Borat) — the sinuous rival to Will Ferrell’s stocky Ricky Bobby in “Talladega Nights.”

Girard, a jazz-loving, white-silk-scarf-wearing, America-disdaining Formula Un driver sponsored by Perrier, is so smooth he can sip macchiato from a china cup, smoke Gitanes and read “L’Etranger” behind the wheel and still lead the Nascar pack.

Frenchie contemptuously informs “cowboy” Bobby that America merely gave the world George Bush, Cheerios and the ThighMaster while France invented democracy, existentialism and the ménage à trois.

The other guy kindling to Camus is none other than the aforementioned George Bush, who read “The Stranger” in English on his Crawford vacation and, Tony Snow told me, “liked it.” Name-dropping existentialists is good for picking up girls, as Woody Allen’s schlemiels found, or getting through the clove-cigarette fog of Humanities 101. But it does seem odd that W., who once mocked NBC’s David Gregory as “intercontinental” for posing a question in French to the French president in France, would choose Camus over Grisham…

…If there was ever a confirmation of Camus’s sense of the absurdity of life, it’s that the president is reading him.

[We needed that.]

Philip Baruth provides some explanation (along with his usual nod to mysterious dark forces at play) for the odd disappearance of PoliticsVT from the Vermont blogosphere today…

He quotes an email he received from one of the Dead Governors…

We have a very, very serious problem right now here at the Capitol Bureau. While Isaac was on vacation yesterday in Michigan, his laptop computer was stolen. The problem is very very serious because not only does the computer have all his banking, real estate and computer information but it is also where all (or most) of the information regarding our blog was stored.

Man, that hurts. And it hurts us all.

Please don’t stay dead for long, ye Governors.

UPDATE: Baruth’s reporting that the Dead Guvz are back up in a slightly new location.

Don’t forget to update your bookmarks and blogrolls (or to check the date on your dinner rolls, too, while you’re at it.)

Sometimes I can’t resist reading the opinion pieces in the Burlington Free Press. My wife is much more disciplined than I am: she knows they’ll just piss her off. I should know it too, but I read them anyway.

So the other day I caught this gem on syndication from the Washington Post.

It’s more about the defeat of Joe Lieberman in Conecticut, and they’re following along with the Republican Party line. I swear, you would think the memo went out not just to the party apparatchiks but also to their mouthpieces in the media.

So the line is this: Defeating Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary was Stalinism. Yes, you got that right: Like Stalin, the operatives who ousted Lieberman are determined to remove dissidents from The Party.

So believe it or not, voting for the candidate of your choice is the same as carrying out show trials and mass executions. Didn’t know you had it in you, did you?

As the story progresses we see a couple of different, and mutually inconsistent lines, unfold.

First is the Lamont=Stalin line. Voting against the incumbent is a purge, and shows how the wild-eyed radicals have taken over the Party.

Second is the idea that this development is great for the Republicans, exactly what they were looking for. I don’t know about you, but the squeals like a stuck pig that I hear coming from the Republicans don’t sound like cheers.

Third, although I guess they’ve downplayed this line since the election, is the idea that Lieberman is really a real liberal, more liberal than Lamont, and he’s the guy to support if you want the real Democrat.

Who are these guys to be telling us what to do in our party?

I thought the purpose of elections was to vote for the candidate you agree with, and against the candidate you disagree with. Next time around maybe we should ask permission before we go into the voting booth.

Here’s what I’m sick of hearing: “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the person.”

We hear it a lot in Vermont, and I think that people usually mean it when they say it. The problem is, it’s a stupid thing to say. If you don’t know what political party a candidate is a member of you don’t know enough to vote for him or her. You don’t know how they will vote on some of the most crucial votes: majority leader, Speaker of the House, control of the body. You don’t know where they will look for guidance, where they will get their aides or draw from for their political appointments. You don’t know the overall agenda they will be pursuing and who will help them get there. No office holder can know everything, so they will inevitably defer to the party on a myriad of decisions.

You may think you’re voting for the person, but you’re voting for the party.

It’s important, and we’re seeing it a lot this year.

First we have Connecticut. Joe Lieberman was a lifelong Democrat, and he’s trying to pretend that he still is. It was the Democratic Party that helped him get elected to Connecticut Attorney General, and U.S. Senate, and that put him on the ticket as our candidate for Vice President. It was Democrats across his state and across the country that gave money for his campaigns, raised money for his campaigns, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and put him where he is today. Yet somehow he thinks he’s bigger than the party. He thinks the party owes him, but he has it backwards. He owes the party for all the years the party supported him. He ran for reelection in the primary, nothing wrong with that, but running in the primary means you’re offering yourself as the party’s choice. They vote for you, you’re the candidate of the party, the party will work for you and hopefully try to get you elected; they vote against you and someone else is the candidate. The voters made their choice, but that’s what they’re supposed to do. He owes it to the party to accept the decision of the voters and get out of the race. He hasn’t done it yet, but I still think there’s a chance he may.

As I said, he owes the party, but he hasn’t repaid the party’s support. He supports Bush’s war, like some other Democrats. Unlike most other Democrats, though, he refuses to even look at the possibility he might have been wrong. He’s also taken Bush’s position in trying to dismantle Social Security, which is pretty much a bedrock principle for Democrats. He has also taken every chance to attack the party, and to repeat the Cheney line that anyone who questions the President is a traitor.

We have a little different situation here in Vermont. The Progressive Party grew out of the Progressive Coalition, the original Sanderistas who elected Bernie mayor back in the 1980’s (even before I moved to Vermont!), but Bernie has been very consistent in running as an Independent, not a Progressive.

He hasn’t claimed to be bigger than the party, but he definitely stakes out a position outside of any party. In years past he attacked the Democratic Party, but I haven’t heard as much of that since he got to Congress. Maybe the fact that he caucuses with the Democrats is part of it. Or maybe he sees that he really does fit in the Democratic Party of John Conyers, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, and Paul Wellstone.

I remember when Bernie ran for Congress. I’m not talking about the first time, when he and Paul Poirier split the center-left vote, but the second time, when he won. I remember clearly having lunch with a group of colleagues and commenting that he was creating a problem for the Democratic Party, because if he got elected to Congress as an independent it would be impossible for the Democrats to ever run a candidate for that seat, and that’s exactly what happened. In a state that has become increasingly Democratic, he was an obstacle to one of the top slots in the lineup. Still, it was in the interest of the party to support him, or to not oppose him, because the positions Bernie takes are Democratic Party positions. When his ideas advance, Democratic ideas advance. It’s a benefit, but it’s come at a cost.

I’ve been a justice of the peace for years. One of the things we do is count ballots every election day. It’s mostly done by machine, but we have to hand count the write-ins. Every year we’ve had to count a lot of write-ins for Bernie in Montpelier, because people always write his name in on the Democratic ballot. I’m sure it’s enough to get him on the ballot on the Democratic line, but every year he declines to run as a Democrat.

This year it’s different. This year he filed a written consent with the Secretary of State, agreeing to have his name on the Democratic primary ballot. He’s going to win, no doubt about it. He’s also been campaigning with the D’s, supporting our candidates, and the party has been supporting him. We decided early on not to run a candidate against him because we know that a three-way race is the only way the Republicans can take the seat.

But he’s on the Democratic ballot, not because of write-ins but by his own choice, he’s going to win the primary, and he should do the same thing Lieberman should do: he owes it to the people who have supported him for decades to accept the decision of the voters and accept the nomination of the party.

Stay on the Democratic ticket, Bernie.

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.