Highly recommended current fun stuff in the nation's smallest capitol below the fold.
1. Juno at the Savoy Theatre
2. Myra Flynn at Black Door. This pic, as noted by WDH3, is from the really incredible Langdon St. Cafe where there's live music every night of the week! Myra fans please note she will be in Waitsfield Jan 5.
3. Mad Dub at Positive Pie.
4. A short walk to see our Capitol Building illuminated at night.
For years I actively and publicly supported then Representative Bernie Sanders. Not because I agreed with everything he said and did, but because I agreed with enough and above all he offered a new type of politics.
And the Bernie of those days taught me a bit too. When I was hosting a local talk show in Barre during the second half of the ’90s, Sanders was a regular guest. We had many discussions about “free” trade and the up and down sides thereof.
I listened, watched and came around to Sander’s thinking on that topic because he was right.
What I liked best of all about Sanders was his obdurate political independence. Here was someone who had broken the glass Dem/Rep barrier, and Sanders regular drum beat that our political problems lay with an unflinching support of the two towering twin parties of American politics found a rapt statewide audience including me.
I listened, watched and came around to Sander’s thinking on that topic because he was right. (Oh yeah … I started my Vermont politics as an active Democrat including a stint as the Williamstown Democratic committee chair.)
And then Sanders ran for senate. And Sanders threw away any legitimate claim to an “I” after his name despite his fraudulent use of it to this day.
After all Sanders wanted the support of the Democratic Party establishment. He actively discouraged other than Democratic or Republican entrants into the field of federal Representative wannabes.
And he didn’t need to pander to the Democratic powers that be. Sanders was a 60% plus vote getter under any circumstance, and everybody knew this. Nonetheless Sanders threw his lot in with the Democratic big whigs of DC.
That walking away from the politics of people in favor of machine politics convinced me Sanders’ lacked long term credibility. He built his fame on one song, and he changed his tune at the first opportune moment.
And then there is such as his op-ed in today’s Rutland Herald/Times Argus Sunday paper (sorry, no electronic version available).
The title is “Ending Iraq War tops Bernies’ wish list for 2008”.The op-ed is pretty standard Sanders, and it does talk to a lot of necessities: education, poverty, health care, jobs and such.
But Sanders ends the piece with a prime example of why I find him less than genuine nowadays:
As Vermont’s senator, it is my view that Congress must become more forceful in its opposition to President Bush’s disastrous policies and more aggressive in fighting for the middle class and an end to the war. If Republicans in the Senate want to defend the president’s policies by filibustering every major piece of legislation, as they have over the last year, then the Democratic leadership should keep the Senate open 7 days a week 24 hours a day. Our country is in trouble and the people want a change in direction. We must not fail them.
So, Senator Sanders, did you write this while on your Christmas vacation and safely ensconced in Vermont? Or are you right this moment in Washington D.C. doing what you tell us is so urgently needed?
Problem is we have a bunch of rhetorical heroes that practice practical milquetoast in our elected Democratic (including Sanders) politicians.
We will only get more of that if we extend fusion politics beyond that currently practiced by the Dems and Repubs to the Progressive Party.
If I could ever see evidence that “fusion” in politics worked to empower individuals and local communities instead of centralized control freaks I would happily change my mind.
But Sanders showed me the true flavor of fusion politics, and I don’t like it one bit.
That is why I no longer support B. Sanders.
In this morning's Post, Galbraith has a good piece on Pakistan. I think he pretty much nails it on the head, though I don't think things are quite as bad as they seem.
I was in Pakistan in mid-November (Balochistan and Karachi) during the state of emergency. Bhutto had returned the week before my trip and the first attempt to kill her in Karachi resulted in 150 dead.
When I was in Karachi shortly thereafter, I was struck at how normal things seemed. In talking with my local counterparts, many of them expressed a high degree of indifference. For all his failings, Musharraf has done some good things economically and in education. At least among the professional types (hardly a representative sample) I was dealing with that seemed to give them pause about taking to the streets.
I guess my point is that things may not be quite as dire as they seem. Or more cynically, things can get a lot worse.
PS: For anyone interested in seeing a pretty remote part of Pakistan (Balochistan), here is a youtube video my colleague took from our trip.
You know about the wall between church and state? Also known as the Chinese wall? I'm not talking about constitutional law or geography here, I'm talking about journalism. The time was that there was an impenetrable wall between the advertising and editorial sides of the newspaper or TV station. It's always been a bit more porous in TV, but the ideal remains.
I was watching the local news on WCAX tonight, and it appears there's a little problem there. They were doing a story about some football game that was going to be on tonight, and an argument about whether the NFL was going to let the regular viewers watch it, or just the people who are paying for the NFL Network, which is owned by the NFL.
Earlier this week it was announced that after pressure from a variety of people, including Senator Leahy, the NFL relented and agreed to allow the game to be broadcast on network TV. Naturally, since it's a big game, CAX was going to cover the story.
But, here's what they said:
Notice something? “right here on Channel 3.”
In fact, the game was showing on both CBS and NBC, so you could have watched the game either on WCAX or their competitor, WPTZ.
So what, you say? This is supposedly a news program, and when you're watching a news program you expect that you'll get the whole news, not just the part of the news that will be financially advantageous to the station for you to know.
Maybe it's not the biggest story in the world, but this does seem like a failure of journalistic ethics.