Go here for a full-size slide show.

Max Blumenthal attends the recent College Republican convention to see just how committed these youngsters are in their strong support of the War.

The responses won’t surprise you…

An email sent yesterday by the Vermont Democratic Party. Let your virtual vote be your virtual voice…

Over the past couple of months the Vermont Democratic Party has undergone some significant changes.  We've added new staff, moved into more effective office space and started sustaining grassroots programs that will help us win in 2008!

 

We are investing more time and energy into working on issues that we believe Vermont can and should be taking the lead on.  These important issues affect us all, like the environment, the economy and health care.

But, we're also gearing up for one of the most important presidential elections this country has ever seen, and we're excited about the great group of Democrats who have stepped up to the plate and are vying for our Party's nomination.  Each and every one of our candidates has presented a compelling vision for how to restore America to its path of progress at home and its respected leadership role abroad.

In anticipation of the campaigns heating up in Vermont, we're launching our official online straw poll of our candidates.  The results will give our candidates a measure of support in the state, and we'll report the results to the DNC and the media.

So, please go to our website and vote  in this important democratic exercise or http://www.vtdemocrats.org/page/s/strawpoll 

 

And, while you're there,  please sign up to volunteer with the VDP and help us continue  to advocate for positive change in the face of Jim Douglas' failure of leadership.

Thank you for your  participation,

Jill Krowinski,
Executive Director, Vermont Democratic Party

P.S. We're working to recruit, support and elect candidates here in Vermont with bold visions for our state, but we can't make that happen without your support, so sign up for our People Powered Pledge today!

( – promoted by Vermonter)

Michelle Gardner-Quinn, the young woman who was murdered after being abducted on Main St. in Burlington last October, was an environmental studies student. Two days before she was murdered, she submitted an essay, entitled “This I Believe,” on her dedication to the environmental movement.

Well, some very famous women (as well as Michelle’s mother) just got together to read excerpts from her essay.

It’s a very moving tribute.

Michelle’s full essay can be found here.

In case you haven't seen this, just wanted to make sure you all know about improvements to the Vermont Democratic Party's website.

Here's the VDP's announcement…

The VDP website: bigger and better

The Vermont Democratic Party is on the move.  With new staff and a new office, we've decided it's time for a new look for  the website.  We've just unveiled the redesigned home page, which features a Daily Democratic Digest and an easy-to-use  action center.  Now you don't have to wait for for the Wednesday Weekly Digest to get your fix of Democratic commentary.  We'll update the site every working day.  But don't worry, we'll continue emailing the Weekly Digest with the best of the  website posts and some new material.

But we haven't stopped there: we've also just unveiled “VT Political  News,” a daily news service.  Each day, the Party will update the site with daily news clips taken from news outlets all  around the state.  “Our grassroots are constantly telling us they want to be better connected and more informed,” explained  Democratic Party Chair Ian Carleton.  “This is one way we're hoping to facilitate that.”

“I think the daily clips is a really useful service, so I'm excited we're now making it a public service,” said Democratic  Party Vice Chair Judy Bevans.  “I truly believe that being an informed citizen is critical to our democracy and I hope this  service will help make information more easily accessible.”

We hope to keep the website growing and evolving along with our Party. We welcome any suggestions or feedback that can help us provide a better website for your use.

Maybe some of you have seen this already, but Media Matters and the Campaign for America's Future lay it all out…

Here's the Executive Summary of their joint report…

Conventional wisdom says that the American public is fundamentally conservative – hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, wanting a foreign policy based on the projection of military power, and traditional in its social values.

But as this report demonstrates, that picture is fundamentally false. Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they're growing more progressive all the time.

This report gathers together years of public opinion data from unimpeachably nonpartisan sources to show that on issue after issue, the majority of Americans hold progressive positions. And this is true not only of specific policy proposals, but of the fundamental perspectives and approaches that Americans bring to bear on issues.

Nor is the progressive majority merely a product of the current political moment. On a broad array of issues, particularly social issues, American opinion has grown more and more progressive over the past few decades. In contrast, it is difficult to find an issue on which the public has grown steadily more conservative over the last 10, 20, or 30 years.

The issues covered in this report include the following:

• The role of government – Americans support an  active government that tackles problems, provides services, and aids those  in need.
• The economy – Americans support increasing  the minimum wage and strong unions, and believe the wealthy and  corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes.
• Social issues – Americans support legal  abortion and embryonic stem cell research; opinions on equal rights for  women and gay Americans have grown dramatically more progressive in recent  years.
• Security – Americans support a  progressive approach to national security, emphasizing strong alliances  and diplomacy over the indiscriminate use of military force. On domestic  security issues, progressive approaches to crime and gun control enjoy  wide support.
• The environment – By enormous margins, Americans  favor strong environmental protections, a core progressive belief.
• Energy – Americans support energy  conservation and the development of alternative fuels.
• Health care – Americans clearly favor universal coverage and are  more than comfortable with government solutions to the health care  problem.

In short, a look across the scope of American public opinion reveals a public that holds progressive positions and supports progressive solutions on economic issues, on social issues, on security issues – indeed, on nearly all the key issues confronting the country. For years, the conventional wisdom has maintained just the opposite, but the facts are impossible to ignore.

 For the full PDF, go here. But, there's more detail below the fold…

• The role of government — 69 percent of Americans believe the  government “should care for those who can't care for  themselves;” twice as many people (43 percent vs. 20 percent) want “government to  provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending”  as wanted government to provide fewer services “in order to reduce  spending.”
• The economy — 77 percent of Americans think Congress  should increase the minimum wage; 66 percent believe “upper-income  people” pay too little in taxes; 53 percent feel the Bush tax cuts have failed  because they have increased the deficit and caused cuts in government programs.
• Social issues — 61 percent of Americans support embryonic  stem cell research; 62 percent  want to protect Roe v. Wade;  only 3 percent of  Americans rank gay marriage as the “most important” social  issue.
• Security — 43 percent of Americans  say we are spending too much on our military; 60 percent feel the federal government  should do more about restricting the kinds of guns that people can  purchase.

» Read the Report and Spread the Word!

• The environment — 75 percent of Americans  would be wiling to pay more for electricity if it were generated by  renewable sources to help reduce global warming; 79 percent want higher emissions standards for automobiles.
• Energy — 52 percent of Americans believe “the  best way for the U.S.  to reduce its reliance on foreign oil” is to “have the  government invest in alternative energy sources;” 68 percent of the public  thinks U.S.  energy policy is better solved by conservation than production.
• Immigration — 57 percent of Americans feel “most  recent immigrants to the U.S.  contribute to this country” rather than “cause  problems.” 67 percent  of Americans feel that “on the whole” immigration is a  “good thing for this country today.”
• Health care – 69 percent of Americans think it is the  responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have  access to health coverage; 76  percent find access to health care more important than  maintaining the Bush tax cuts; three in five would be willing to have  their own taxes increased to achieve universal coverage.

I just saw this mentioned over at Candleblog. But, apparently (former?) Seven Days writer Peter Kurth, whose Crank Call column has always been one of my favorites, spent two months in a British prison after an incident of air rage.

Here’s an excerpt…

My sins, in brief: When the cabin crew refused to radio JFK to see if I’d left my laptop at the gate and also declined to move me to another seat, “an altercation ensued” — not physical, but verbal, with the flight attendants becoming snootier by the minute and me becoming, well, let’s say, more American. I behaved badly in-flight, yelling at the crew, “I am an American citizen! You are our lapdog ally!” and other remarks of a vulgar and unhelpful nature. Very vulgar, I’m afraid: At one point I called that tired stewardess the worst thing you can call a woman — you all know what it is — but by then I was in full-blown air rage, something the airlines used to understand but, on the evidence, no longer do.

Finally, I went back to the galley and sat on what is called the “bustle,” which is where they keep those rubber slides should a plane go down in water and where, over many years of these flights, I’ve seen lots of people sitting and children playing without anyone making a fuss about it. But times have changed, and now parking your ass on the bustle constitutes “endangering an aircraft,” which is a very high crime under Britain’s new anti-terrorism laws, and can get you sent to prison for a minimum of two years. I was warned about this (so they tell me), but I still refused to move; and when we finally landed at Heathrow the next morning I was escorted off the plane by two of London’s finest — not the sort of “bobby” I remember from many years in London, but fully outfitted SWAT-team types, bristling with munitions and in no mood for smart alecks. They dragged me past customs straight to police headquarters at Uxbridge, an indescribably dreary, prefabricated suburb and corporate-operations center west of London, where “incidents” originating at Heathrow are all referred for jurisdiction.

It wasn’t until I got to the police station that I began to realize, slowly, the nature of the trouble I was in.

And it goes way downhill from there.

All I can say is, hey, better you than me, buddy.

No, I mean, wow, that sucks.

Greg Palast will be in Montpelier tonight. I urge you to go see him, if you can. Among many interesting things, Palast compellingly ties the prosecutor purge scandal to the RNC’s effort to purge Democrats from the voter rolls.

Go here to listen to the excellent interview by Mitch Wertlieb this morning on VPR.

And here’s the text from VPR’s site complete with event details…

A recent Bill Moyers journal on PBS looked back at the events leading up to the war in Iraq and asked why so many journalists weren’t skeptical enough about Bush Administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

BBC correspondent Greg Palast was not one of those journalists. Palast appeared with Phil Donahue and expressed serious doubts about WMD assertions before Donahue’s show was cancelled by MSNBC.

Palast did some investigative reporting in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and was charged with anti-terror violations for his efforts.

And tonight in Montpelier, Palast will talk with more of the investigative journalism from the updated paperback version of his best selling book Armed Madhouse. In that book Palast says vote rigging determined the last two presidential elections, but that news didn’t get much play in American media.

He spoke with VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb about his book.

Palast will be speaking at 7:00 pm at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier.

The Vermont Democratic Party has launched a new excellent service called Speak Out which will allow Vermonters an easy way to send letters to the editor.

You just go here to start, click on “Participate” and you’ll see a box where you can enter your zip code to find the publications that are currently listed in the system.

I’ll let VDP Chair, Ian Carleton, do the talking on their first letter-writing campaign.

Speak out on the governor’s veto

We’ve  been confused for a couple weeks now about Governor Douglas’s — how  should we put this? — illogical and needlessly political veto of the  budget adjustment bill. We’re pretty sure you’ve read about the  governor’s reasoning: the budget adjustment bill doesn’t contain funding for scholarships, despite the fact that the governor himself  did not put funding for scholarships in his own proposal. This week,  we’re asking you to speak out on the issue.

The  good news for Vermonters is the legislature just passed the Next  Generation bill, which provides $4.4 million in scholarship funds,  along with workforce training funding for employers and workers eager  to fill high quality jobs. So, to review the governor’s logic: a budget  bill he didn’t propose scholarship dollars for was worthy of a veto  because it didn’t include scholarship dollars. All the while, a  separate bill did propose scholarship funding — the same amount the  governor requested — but the governor still decided to veto the budget  bill.

We’re not the only ones scratching our heads: the Rutland Herald, among other observers, noted that "It’s a lot of theatrics for a bill that enjoys wide support. But it  seems as if theatrics were part of the plan from the start."

Given  the governor’s hands-off approach to leading the state, we shouldn’t be  surprised that Douglas continues to choose theatrical politics over  substance. But we still can’t help thinking that Vermont deserves  better than a governor whose only interest seems to be playing the  tough kid in the sandbox.

So, write a letter to the editor and Speak Out!