Category Archives: Uncategorized

Off the top of Trump’s head

National, Uncategorized, ,

I’ve been offline and not able to read or listen to any extended news the past couple days. While catching up this afternoon I realized how numb I had become to the fast, furious, and crazy pace of the 2016 presidential campaign news. It is like returning to a street corner to find Trump, the wild-eyed man, from days before still perched on his little soapbox, ranting crazily and demanding more than his share of attention.trumphead

Donald Trump urged Russian agents to “find” his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s emails and release them, an unprecedented move by a candidate for president encouraging such a foreign breach.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 33,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said at the presser.

And that remark prompted Senator Harry Reid to suggest Trump not be given the usual security briefing. But if he must be briefed Reid advises: I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous,” Reid said in a Wednesday interview with The Huffington Post. “Fake it, pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information.” [added emphasis]

Trump’s comment is alarmingly weird enough, but it is even more so after my stepping out of the news cycle even for short time. This is clearly not a normal election.

Vermont Democrats: Do NOT Go There

Uncategorized

I know, I know… it’s a headline that could mean anything. But I’m not talking about policy, I’m talking politics. This is a message to #teamMatt and #teamSue, and it’s aimed at all my fellow political animals who live in (or drift in and out of) that weird interstate-corridor-defined bubble where politics morphs into metapolitics.

The message: we’re all friends here. So chill out. Right now.

Look, we all live in a political pressure cooker these days. I could recount the reasons, but why? We all know them. But the underlying reasons for all the sound and fury which is now a mere election away from signifying way more than nothing are twofold.

One; we’ve allowed the political to become indistinguishable from the personal (a trait that used to define the political fringe).

Two; Civility and personal honor have fallen out of style.

Our recent trials are not from bigotry and rage. Angry bigots have always been there and always will be. What’s changed is that we’re now in an environment that allows bigotry to come out of the shadows and have its way with society. And then that Tasmanian Devil style of politicking infects everyone, even the non-bigots. Before long we’re all thrashing around into each other, raising bruises, breaking bones and drawing blood (at least rhetorically… hopefully not more than that).

Although not immune from it in Vermont (just look at some of the crazier Hillary-bashing under way on Facebook), our statewide races have been largely a refuge of sanity. One I, for one, have been proud of.

But cracks are showing. The kind of cracks that are, potentially, the tip of an iceberg. Cracks in the primary contest for Governor.

Folks – don’t. Just. Don’t.

I understand the passions of an election campaign all too well. I also, of all people in this state, understand that there are times when you need to throw elbows. I’ve thrown a LOT of elbows in my time.

But this is not the time. Sue Minter and Matt Dunne (Peter Galbraith’s campaign seems to exist in a slightly different dimension, for good or ill – or both) are both well known in the metapolitics bubble. Share friends. Hell, I’m sure they know each other. And while passion is good (and yes, that passion will inevitable turn to frustration of the why-won’t-the-other-candidate-get-out-of-the-way-for-MY-candidate type… comes with the territory), vitriol is NOT good. Personal attacks are NOT good. And in the waning weeks before the primary, I’ve seen that kind of vitriol that has infected (even defined) national politics creep into message boards and Facebook posts.

For those of you who feel compelled to give into those petty impulses we all feel, know that it won’t be the candidate you oppose pissing into our collective pool – it will be you. And it will (unfairly, but inevitably) reflect back on your candidate. Then comes the cycle of attack/counterattack… and well, we all know the rest.

Remember; the political is not personal. Remember; there is a time for honor and civility every bit as much as there is a time for elbow-throwing and rage. It takes a brain, and a modicum of self-control, to see the difference between those different times and to comport ourselves accordingly.

Let’s show the rest of the country that Vermont is a community that hasn’t forgotten that.

Peter Welch gets it.

Uncategorized,

Apparently, House Democrats actually booed Bernie Sanders today when he didn’t commit to a speedy endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which comes as no surprise to his steadfast supporters.

The notable exception to this establishment fit of pique was Vermont’s own Congressman Peter Welch, a bold Bernie endorser, who today  restated Sanders’ own message, that this is not just about winning a single election:

A lot of members are anxious about when is he going to explicitly support Hillary,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). “And what he’s saying is that’s an ongoing process. But if we want to win, we’ve got to take the long view that we need a platform that is going to genuinely create excitement for our nominee…What he said very clearly is we’ve got to beat Trump, and the way he believes we’re going to do it is by having a commitment to an agenda that excites people, including the younger people. And he’s working on that.”

Exactly.

Party stalwarts who seek to extinguish the Bernie phenomena, do so at their own risk. The vast crowds that turned out to hear Bernie on the campaign trail are building on a movement that first brought its aspirations to support Barack Obama; then, frustrated by glacial progress, evolved into Occupy Wall Street.

If their demands are callously exploited and swept aside once again for short-term political considerations, the Democratic party will have squandered an entire generation of support.

What better time to move forward with commonsense progressive agenda items that reflect the values of our increasingly diverse youth population, than when the Republican nominee is the most unpopular, even repellant candidate in recent history?

It’s now, or, quite possibly, never.

Somebody, please neuter Bill Clinton

National, Uncategorized, , ,

As a baby, was Bill Clinton dropped on his head?

No one has contributed more to Hillary Clinton’s credibility problems than ol’ Blue Eyes, himself. Unbelievably, with  his impromptu drop-in to the Attorney General’s plane, he’s done it again…big time!

It’s almost as if he does it on purpose.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was Bill’s bright idea to have a private email server!

I’ve never quite seen what some people like about this corn-fed romeo, but nobody thinks more highly of Bill than he obviously does of himself.

If I’d have been Hillary, I’d have left him facedown in the dirt many years ago.

She was obviously so much smarter than he, even as he occupied the Oval Office. Perhaps it was the subliminal knowledge of her fundamental superiority that egged him on to act out passive-aggressively in riskier ways.

Many would argue that his choices of where and with whom to misbehave on the most famous occasions were expressing a subconscious desire to get caught.

Should the worst come to pass and ‘Il Dumbi‘ beats Hillary in the General, everyone will undoubtedly blame Bernie.

They will be wrong to do so for several reasons, not least of which is the contribution to Hillary’s problems that Bill Clinton has made, not just every time he opened his mouth in this election cycle, but over the years of his administration and beyond.  He seems to have done his level-best to handicap any future ambitions of his long-suffering wife by acting on a mixture of impulse and arrogance that is not entirely unreminiscent of You-Know-Who.

Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and a popular idiom

International, Uncategorized, , ,

The newspaper editor decided to devote more space to photographs of the disaster than to text, since a picture is worth a thousand words.

trumpboris

In the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote to leave the EU, Donald Trump promoted his Golf course in Scotland; he seemed stunningly unaware the Scots had voted against it and were furious with the result. “They took their country back …” he happily tweeted and later said it would be good for his businesses.

And Boris Johnson … well how about Boris Johnson? Well,that’s Johnson stuck,hanging on a zipline in 2012 when he was Mayor of London. He was celebrating Great Britain’s Olympic victories. The Guardian described the event:

But after a promising start gliding along happily waving his flags, he lost momentum and came to a halt, dangling over a crowd of people, for a long and somewhat awkward moment.

Trump’s blather sounds a little like the way Boris’ Brexit victory may be remembered: a long awkward moment until he falls.

McAllister Day 1: The Victim on Trial

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Today I attended the first day of the long-awaited trial of Franklin County senatorial candidate, Norm McAllister (R) for alleged assaults committed against a then-teenage victim.  

The morning began inauspiciously with a replaced juror, and news that the victim might not appear if the proceedings would be videotaped. She was understandably reluctant to describe the graphic nature of the assaults before the camera’s eye.

For some reason, the attorney for the Free Press advocated most strongly for not sparing the victim from the cameras. In the end, cameras were excluded for the duration of her testimony and she was called to the stand.

The doors opened and a little girl who looked like she might be a high school freshman stepped into the courtroom, accompanied by a victims’ rights advocate. Her taffy colored hair was gathered into a traditional ponytail and she was dressed neatly in jeans and a shirt. She later said that at the time of the alleged assaults she weighed just 85-lbs., and stood four-foot-eleven inches.

Thanks to a deal negotiated by the defense, she cannot be referred to during the trial as “the victim,” since Norm McAllister is disputing whether any crime has been committed. (Try that argument if you are a young black male!) Fortunately, we at GMD are not so constrained, and she will remain “The Victim” in these pages because she did not want the press to identify her, and seemed anguished to learn that her name had already, earlier, been leaked to the media.

After today’s proceedings, I think I better understand why it is so difficult to get sexual assault victims to challenge their tormenters in a court of law. It would be a hideous and demeaning experience even for the most confident and articulate adult.

For an economically disadvantaged and unsophisticated girl, with barely a high school education, her encounter with the “justice” system following sexual trauma is likely to be about enough to finish her off.

At this point, The Victim has been deposed several times over the course of many months, with varying degrees of readinesss, and by people with conflicting agendas. Unsurprisingly for me, her memory is faulty and full of contradictions from one account to the next.

A well educated and mature adult, untroubled by the trauma of sexual assault may find it difficult to understand how her story could be so inconsistent; but consider what that twenty-one year old girl has to contend with. Complicating the recall process was her instinct to hide her ‘shame’ from everyone, but most especially from her boyfriend.

Apart from the direct trauma of the assault, there are societal taboos in play that trigger unjustified feelings of shame and guilt from which the mind may weave a tissue of altered narratives that only serve to complicate recovery of the real memories.

The longer the incidents of trauma persist and the later the attempt at recall, the more likely it is that those memories will be riddled with flaws and fluctuations. All kinds of odd dysfunction occur in individuals suffering abuse. Think of Stockholm Syndrome and the tendency of pedophiles to have been abused themselves as children.

There is likely some underlying pathology to The Victims jumbled memories, as well as the contribution made by her youth at the beginning of the alleged abusive relationship (sixteen or seventeen), and the role of ignorant societal judgements on the violated.

But to dismiss the overarching complaint as a mere fabrication, as I suspect they may be fixing to do in the McAllister case, would be the worst kind of injustice.

Her obvious revulsion at having to discuss the crimes in public could not be concealed. She might have kept the secret of her violation indefinitely if police, investigating other allegations of McAllister’s sexual exploitation, hadn’t come knocking at her door.

Now I am sure she regrets having let them in.

Donald Trump says he’s a friend of “LB and LBGT…bigly”

Uncategorized,

As much as Donald Trump may insist that he is “smart,” the English language sometimes seems to elude him entirely.

Characteristically capitalizing on tragedy in a New Hampshire press appearance, following the horrific  mass shooting at an Orlando gay club, Trump doubled down on the self-congratulation that had been his instinctual first reaction; then ruptured his syntax trying to claim that he is a “friend” to the LGBT community. So unfamiliar are the best interests of that minority to Mr.Trump that he couldn’t even master the identifying acronym and melted down to complete incoherence at the end of the ‘money’ sentence:’

I could hardly believe my ears so I located the video replay online to capture the moment. There’s a long wait until Trump begins his speech, but at 41:10 into the recording my patience was rewarded. After attempting to posit the question of who is the better friend of the LGBT community, he or Hillary Clinton, but failing twice to nail the acronym, this is what he actually said:

“…I will tell you who the better friend is, and someday that will be proven out, BIGLY: Donald Trump.”

I kid you not. He actually invented the word, “bigly.” I don’t even know how to spell it!

Not that very much of the speech was better articulated than were those words, since Trump has the vocabulary of a slow middle schooler, and roughly the same sense of self; but the complete abandonment of the English language at that moment was astonishing. He didn’t hesitate for a minute but just went right on with his schtick, like a carnival barker on speed.

No wonder that yesterday, when it occured, I couldn’t find any reference to the blunder in the blogosphere, which usually seizes upon such word-salad from a public figure like a dog on a dropped hamburger. There’s just too much to keep up with when Trump is on the podium telling outlandish whoppers and calling people names. They’ve just given up on him, and he knows that. In fact, that is what he counts on.

If he talks really fast and doesn’t allow anyone to get a word in edgewise, he can simply ignore inconvenient questions and challenges to his veracity and steamroll on. He creates a wall of whines and snarls that simply exhausts the will to probe it. As a bonus, the angry ignorant go absolutely wild for such caveman antics.

That’s how he managed to crawl over sixteen bodies to grab the brass ring. If you look at any establishment Republican trying to field a question about Donald Trump, they look and act kind of like they are in a daze. They don’t really understand how they find themselves in this situation, even thought it’s their own damned fault.

His complete misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the takeaway from Orlando is mind-boggling. Not only did he run with the idea that the shooter was a recent immigrant from “Afghan,” (not even close); he all but accused the sitting President of being complicit in the crime and in league with terrorists.

Ignoring the obvious takeaway that this was a hate crime, no doubt  inspired by endless inflammatory rhetoric not entirely dissimilar to his own, he has even suggested that what happened in the nightclub could have been prevented if every one there was also packing heat.

Let’s see how that might go down. A darkened nightclub, multiple shots ring out and everybody in the place pulls out a gun and begins firing at whomever they think might have started it. Is there one nefarious shooter or two, or twelve? Nobody knows for sure and everyone is operating in panic mode.  What could possibly go further wrong ?

But suddenly he sees himself as the best friend of “the  gays.”  Hillary Clinton, he insists, wants to take away your Second Amendment rights; again, a total lie, but he’s said it so many times, and so many Republicans want to believe it, that it has become an urban myth.

Nobody gets particularly exercised about his lies anymore. They are an integral part of who he is and if you accept all the other baggage he carries, you have already entered an alternative universe.

His pattern of lying and conning are so familiar now that it is almost discounted from consideration, and everyone goes on with the discussion as if he hasn’t already completely disqualified himself from any elected office, let alone the highest office in the land.

Move over Sara Palin, there’s a new champion of incoherent double-talk in town.

County Courier called out for bias

Uncategorized, ,

Here in Franklin County, many people rely on the County Courier to provide weekly perspective on regional, and some national, news.

Lately, many readers have been disappointed to find more and more articles gleaned from national right wing sources creeping into the pages of the Courier, generally without vetting or balance, and  occasionally without complete disclosure of the source.

The latest salvo in this partisan information attack came in the form of a new policy by the Courier concerning “Letters to the Editor” in advance of the 2016 elections. Only letters from incumbent legislators  will be allowed unlimited inclusion in the paper.  Anyone else writing about the election, including opposition candidates, will be limited to a single letter of 100 words or less.  That leaves incumbents with plenty of opportunity to attack their opponents and the opponents almost none for setting the record straight.

Of course, since 10 out of the twelve incumbent legislators are Republican, it’s pretty clear which party this policy is designed to favor.

I hope our own readers will consider adding their voices to the protests against this biased policy.  Here at GMD, we are an unashamedly biased source of opinion, as befits a blog; but the Courier claims to be a newspaper and should limit its bias  to clearly identified editorial content.

Here is the Courier’s email contact:   countycourier@gmail.com

And here follows my own letter to the editor:

Years back, I would routinely pick-up a copy of the Courier because I appreciated the depth of its coverage of local news. Those days are long gone, and the Courier has evolved into an organ of right-wing propaganda, reproducing nationally generated material of questionable accuracy and decided bias without appropriate disclaimers.

That transition is now complete with the announcement of the Courier’s new policy on letters concerning the 2016 election campaign. While challenging candidates and their supporters are limited to one letter of 100 words for the duration of the campaign, incumbent candidates  are allowed virtually unlimited access to the forum.

Given that the Franklin County delegation is almost entirely Republican, as of now, the opposition voice is effectively repressed by your policy. This is a disservice to your readers and to County interests in general.

Consider, in contrast, the habits of the St. Albans Messenger, which prints virtually all letters that are minimally civil, no matter what the point of view. The Messenger is fulfilling its vital traditional role as a community forum, choosing only to limit letters in the last week of an election campaign, when the volume threatens to overwhelm other content. At that point, they simply give a cut-off date for new submissions related to the election. No preference is given to incumbents and their supporters.

Please recommit to your obligation toward the public good and restore the integrity of our County Courier.

 

Oh God…Not Rolling Thunder!

Uncategorized, , , ,

I have an issue with “Rolling Thunder;” not with the official annual event in DC, but with the Vermont version that rolls by close to our home every Memorial Day weekend, frightening dogs and small children with deafening decibels, and fouling the air with exhaust fumes.

I would probably have no issue with it if it weren’t for the aggressive noise level to which it isn’t politically correct even to voice an objection.

The low rumble of thousands of bikes rolling through town, the ‘thunder,’ I can accept; but not the painful punctuation provided by squealed wheels, excessive revving and mechanical caterwauling I cannot begin to identify!(??)

I hate that; and truth be told, I would guess most non-motorcyclists do as well. It seems like the whole point is to be as audibly aggressive as possible under the unassailable banner of ‘patriotism.’

And now for the curmudgeon phase of this discourse:

I remember Memorial Day in the 1950’s. Back then, we were still vividly remembering the fallen of WWII.  WWI, “The War to End All Wars,” hadn’t lived up to that promise; and Vietnam was still in the future.

Virtually the entire nation was unified in conviction that WWII, at least, was a just war; even a noble war.

With our recent veteran parents, the whole family would pile into a hulking old Plymouth for a slow drive to the cemetery where we were joined by our cousins, and everyone knelt in silent prayer by the family plot. Then we’d all drive back to Aunt Nellie’s for ham, potato salad and cold refreshments.

It was a quiet contemplative day in which we kids were mostly an audience of antsy listeners as our parents revisited the past. For all the private troubles each family might have, they shared the absolute certainty that our ‘America’ was, indeed, ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’

There was no call for honking horns and menacing motor antics when we remembered the fallen from WWII, so I wonder why  it’s such a ‘thing’ now?

WWII is probably the last war in which nearly all ‘Americans’ were united in their support.

After that, the conflicts and their competing interests got murkier and murkier. Korea, as we all learned from ‘Mash,’ was a ‘Police Action.’ Vietnam was a strategic quagmire.

The endless string of wars and terrorist insurgencies in the Middle East all began with the first Iraq War of George the Elder, a wrong-headed intervention in defense of someone’s oil interests (not mine) that allowed Islamist extremists to harness hostility to the West (and the U.S. in particular) into a vehicle for political recruitment.

You’ve got to wonder. Is the need for noise on Memorial Day a passive-aggressive outlet for American supremacists whose fighting force cannot claim a real victory in living memory?
I keep hearing claims that veterans are disrespected in America, but apart from Donald Trump’s unbelievable remark about John McCain, I don’t recall anyone saying a bad word about veterans since the sixties…and today, even Donald Trump is painting himself red-white-and-blue in support of ‘our troops.’

Il Dukey couldn’t resist the opportunity to use DC’s ‘Rolling Thunder’ event as the backdrop for his own empty saber-rattling photo op; he who equates his military prep-school experience to military service, and his personal struggle with venereal disease to the hell of war. But this is what happens when a singular gesture of protest becomes an annual ‘tradition.’ The political hacks move in and the result is pure travesty.

We have a strictly voluntary military today, as opposed to in the Viet Nam era. It self-selects from the overall population, primarily based on two factors, income and beliefs. Enlisted troops tend to overrepresent poorer populations who have less alternative options. Those who rise in the ranks tend to represent more conservative political and religious persuasions.

Military service in the volunteer age represents a largely likeminded community with more influence over the political establishment than at any time in the past. Despite Donald Trump bleating that Obama has destroyed our military, it is, in fact, exponentially larger and better equipped than all competing militaries in the twenty-first century.

It is almost impossible for Congress to touch the Penatgon’s budget. It just goes up every year even as the social safely net and all kinds of human services are under constant attack from Republicans.

The original “Rolling Thunder” ride to the Vietnam War Memorial was intended to bring attention to those who were Missing in Action from that conflict.

I rather doubt that that is still the overarching purpose. When the Obama administration negotiated for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, the President reiterated our national commitment to not leave a soldier behind; and he got no end of grief for the effort.

Volunteer or not, soldier or civilian; every wartime death deserves remembrance. Every human being who labors in the service of their community or country has earned recognition for their service.

Can we please tender that tribute in a less confrontational manner?

The Unshameable Norm McAllister

local/regional, Uncategorized, , ,

Accused child exploiter, accused rapist, accused sex trafficker, and suspended senator, Norm McAllister of Highgate today filed his petition for reelection.

Since Franklin County now has three Republicans competing to take on the Dems for the two available seats, members of that erstwhile ‘conservative’ party will be subjected to what will most likely be a pretty awkward  experience even as McAllister faces his dates in court on June 13 through 16th.

The other entries are sitting senator and St. Albans resident Dustin Degree, and Rep. Carolyn Branigan (Georgia).

I have every confidence that Branagan and Degree will prevail in that primary race because I have met precious few Republicans who have any use for McAllister at this point.

His was a violation of community standards that crossed all political boundaries.

Nevertheless, I am left in utter disbelief that there were enough Franklin County residents (one hundred) willing to sign his petition in order to get him on the ballot.

There is something to be said for assuming someone is innocent until proven guilty of a crime in a court of law, but that is an irrelevant technicality when it comes to assessing McAllister’s qualification to represent the people of Franklin County in the state senate. Plenty of guilty men have prevailed in a court of law.

The predatory acts to which he has confessed in conversation should be sufficient to convince any Franklin County voter that he cannot represent our best interests. and is therefor disqualified.

His successful petition to get on the ballot suggests that we, as a county, have a lot of work to do to shine a bright light on the underlying culture that has apparently enabled his prathological disrespect for women. That at least 100 Franklin County residents still think he is fit to be our senator makes his behavior not just a one-off anomaly, but part of a pattern of tolerance for abuse that must lie hidden in pockets of the community.

For that reason, I sincerely hope we will be afforded an opportunity to put questions directly to the candidates in a public forum.

I feel more than a little sympathy for Ms. Branagan who would presumably have to sit on a stage with McAllister for such a forum; and even for Dustin Degree, whom McAllister seems determined to compromise by association:

“We practically lived together through the campaign cycle,” McAllister said. “He knows more than what a lot of people do. He was with me.”

It’s an unholy local mess, on top of the unholy mess that Trump represents at the national level.
By November, a lot of Franklin County Republicans may have joined the millions across the nation demanding a different party option.