Freyne Land

While Pat & Pete were doing their Middle East recess junket-thing Tuesday, the third and last member of Vermont's robust congressional delegation held a presser in Burlap. One of the most energetic, upbeat senior citizens I know, too.

Sen. Bernie Sanders had Marian Wright Edleman - director of the Children's Defense Fund - "live" with him on a video uplink from his Capitol Hill office.

Next week, Ol' Bernardo will introduce his "All Healthy Children Act." Pretty radical stuff: health care coverage for all of America's kids.

Also in attendance, besides yours truly and reps from three local news shops (TV Chs. 3 & 5 and the Freeps), was Agnes Gruda (at right, with The Bernster), a distinguished writer from the Montreal daily La Presse.

Agnes is doing a feature, a profile on the socialist senator on the Quebec border. Interviewed Sanders one-on-one after the presser. She said she'll let us know when it's published (online), and we'll let you know.

En francais, of course

She interviewed me on the phone yesterday.

Hey, they may play ice hockey up there, but Montreal is a world away and Ol' Agnes knew very, very little about Bernie Sanders, America's champion of Canadian-style, single-payer health care for all!

Word via email from the Middle East this afternoon that the congressional delegation U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is leading completed its meetings in Jordan earlier today and is traveling on to Israel, the West Bank and Lebanon. Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont is also on the trip.

St. Patrick’s Press Secretary David Carle informs “Freyne Land” :

"They had illuminating and candid discussions with The King and separate meetings with several government ministers, including the foreign minister and the justice minister.  he sessions have been dominated by discussions about Palestinian refugee issues and fallout in the region from the war in Iraq and from the strengthened position the war has given to. Iran. The King emphasized the importance of resuming the peace process.”

Mr. Carle also told us they’d been briefed by UN and NGO officials “about the Palestinian and Iraqi refugee situations in the region.”

Also, there was considerable discussion in separate briefings, “about a looming crisis in the murders and exiles of most Iraqi academics.”

Leahy’s veteran spokesman said “an emotional high point was the delegation's visit to the largest Palestinian refugee settlement in Jordan, the Baqa settlement, managed by the UN.”

And Mr. Carle passed along this comment from the keyboard of St. Patrick:

"I look at what the children in the refugee camps face, day in and day out and often decade after decade, and I wonder what kind of generation is being created.  A photo of a young refugee looks over my desk to remind me of that.  If we don't come up with better answers, history will repeat itself."

Patrick & Peter are planning a conference-call presser from the Middle East with the Vermont press around noon tomorrow our time.

Check out Sue Allen's sweet piece on GOP Gov. Jim Douglas' plans for a fourth gubernatorial campaign in 2008 in today's Rutland Herald.

Douglas finds future in the past

"The terms are brief," Douglas said. He is serving his third two-year term, after being first elected governor in 2002.

"I sometimes am frustrated that change can't occur faster," he said. "I certainly have a lot more to do and expect to try to continue."

Topping his list of priories, as it has in recent years, is controlling the high cost of living in Vermont — a challenge the governor dubbed his "affordability agenda." For the 2008 session, for example, he said increasing affordable housing would be his key initiative.

Hey, let's not forget, Sweet Sue was a distinguished gubernatorial press secretary for that little doctor guy...whatshisname?

Anybody have any Democratic candidate suggestions?

And here's a couple of Burlington's "Finest" non-political performers out for a late afternoon serenade on the Church Street Marketplace yesterday. Gotta run to an Ol' Bernardo presser at 11:30 downtown.....

The most popular wife-cheating, skirt-chaser to occupy the Oval Office since John Fitzgerald Kennedy was in Vermont on Sunday to give the keynote address at the Middlebury College Graduation.

William Jefferson Clinton.

I was able to catch a chunk of the speech live online [right] on Sunday morning. That's GOP Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas [left] on Ch. 3's "You Can Quote Me."

Quite a doubleheader, eh?

Of course, Big Bill does have a Middlebury connection - sort of.  Middlebury College grad Ron Brown was President Clinton's Secretary of Commerce.

And before that, Sec. Brown had the job fellow New Yorker, former physician and once-upon-a-time Vermont Gov. Howard Dean now performs so well - chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Brown, a native of Harlem, as opposed to Ho-Ho's Upper East Side roots, was killed in a plane crash on an official mission in wartime Croatia in 1996.

Remarkably, President Clinton, unlike the current occupant of the White House - George "WMD" Bush - does have first-hand experience with impeachment, but I did not see it mentioned in the news coverage.

What was his alleged "high crime and misdemeanor?"

No bombshells here, folks. President Clinton the Ist lied under oath in a civil lawsuit about living out his sexual fantasies with Monica, the twentysomething White House aide. Of course, that happened before most of the Middlebury graduates seated before him on Sunday had even entered puberty. Besides, as long as his wife Hillary stayed with him...?

Press reports of the Clinton speech are, for the most part quite, similar as they should be. Bill was there to preach "community," urging the grads to recognize our similarities rather than our differences. He noted we human animals are genetically 99.9 percent the same!

But only Ch. 3's Andy Potter put Clinton's line connecting that "99.9 percent similarity" to right-wing radio talk show motormouth Rush Limbaugh [left] in his report. The Dinglebury grads of 2007 may not be aware, but Ol' Rush built his gazillion-dollar radio talk show empire off of what some would call Bill's "zipper problem."

Said President Clinton the First:

"I met Rush Limbaugh the other night in New York, and I was tempted after all the terrible things he said about me to tell him we were 99.9 percent the same." -- long laughter -- "I was afraid the poor man would run weeping from the restaurant, and so I let it go."

***UPDATED Monday 10:30 a.m.***

Inspired, no doubt, by my interesting 2007 engagement with cancer, I've heard myself saying frequently of late that life is all about how well you play the cards dealt you. Not many of us get four aces in their opening hand, and many of those that do end up blowing it all anyway.

And that thought was back in the center square of the Ol' Freyne Brain this morning when my Memorial Day plans ran into a roadblock. [Painting at right is Galisteo by sister Maureen in Santa Fe. Nice, eh?)

I was going to shoot down to Vergennes to catch the Memorial Day Parade there. It's an annual event on my political calendar because it usually draws an interesting crew of pols even in a non-election year. Gov. Scissorhands will march. 'Course this year, Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Peter Welch (his designated successor?) are on a Middle East congressional info-junket and won't be there. Still, I assume Sen. Bernie Sanders would show, doing his proverbial, independent,  one-man march and wave. And  Mr. Mainstream Vermont Radical is always good to take a few questions.

Plus, I'd heard representatives of VT Veterans for Peace were going to march - carrying a casket to represent the 3435 of their comrades who died for the Bush Administration's Big Bad Iraq Lie.

I always bring my bike to cover the Vergennes March. Mobility. Gets me around to take as much in as possible. But not this year. I took the wheels off the bike and toss it in my trunk. But still I need to get the back seat to fold down to make the necessary space.

Only one half would. Believe me, I tried.

Then I tried lowering the bike seat.

The latch, however, like half of the car back seat, simply would not budge!

The appropriate profanities followed, as well as one of those "light-in-the-brain" realizations that maybe there's a message here, Pedro?

Maybe you're not supposed to cover this year's Vergennes Parade. Maybe you'd fall and crack your skull (since you can't find your bike helmet), or maybe there'd be another similarly unfortunate circumstance?

In fact, before falling asleep last night, there was a seed of doubt that sprouted out of nowhere about today's Vergennes plans.

Interesting, eh?

That's what I thought.

These "tea leaves" seemed obvious. We'll go with the flow. Besides, I have a Vermont Business Magazine column due today. This will make making that deadline a lot easier.

Ah, life!

One day at a time.

Good cool weather for the runners in the 2007 Vermont City Marathon. Kicked off at 8 am. Got this shot around the corner just before the 10-mile marker on Pine Street. My watch read 8:55 am. These two guys led the field and No. 1 Matt Pelletier, last year's winner, won again in an unofficial time of 2 hrs. 19 mins.

Then I went across the street, grabbed a New York Times and a bottomless cup of Speeder & Earle's coffee and had my Burlington Marathon experience for the year.

Didn't see any politicians running, nor any runner sport a political statement like "Impeach" or "Out of Iraq."  But I did catch one chap, a few pounds overweight, who ran carrying an American flag and a tee-shirt that declared his "love" for "God."

I hope God appreciated it.

Anything in the paper today?

Downtown Burlington was jumping with out-of-towners this afternoon, many here for tomorrow’s Vermont City Marathon. But not everybody.

I was snapping a few shots at College & Church of The Burlington Free Press building just in case it suddenly gets sold, when this familiar face shouted out my name and hopped out of his outdoor cafe seat at Sweetwaters.

Al Salzman is a now-retired Franklin County art teacher, who’s also an artist in his own right and an actor, activist and much more. And like others I bumped into downtown and chatted with on the bricks of the Marketplace or in the coffee shop, the positively, immoral, shameful, dishonest and utterly stupid bloodbath called “The U.S. War in Iraq” was the 800 lb. gorilla in everyone’s consciousness. Said Al:

You know what I’m waiting for? And it’s going to happen. The insurgency, either the Sunni or the Shia , or al Qaeda, although the talk of al Qaeda connected with this is sheer bullshit, there’s a small number, I’m sure, but, I’m waiting for them to tunnel under the Green Zone and blow up the American Embassy.

But what about Congress voting to continue funding the war - no time lines, no pressure on King George?

It’s disgraceful. It’s absolutely disgraceful. It’s history repeating itself. Georges Santayana was right.

Said Spanish-born U.S. philosopher Santayana in The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We’re doomed to repeat it and we’re repeating it now.

I like Charlie Rangel. He says let’s have the draft [aka. Selective Service System], I mean, if we’re gonna do this. And if Bush says this is the war of the century, a clash of civilizations, where are the taxes? If it’s so critical and it’s so vital and so important. If this is the end all and be all? Why don’t we have a draft?

Because George “WMD” Bush & Dick Cheney, two successful Vietnam War draft-dodgers, could never have pulled off their treason if they had to rely on a draft to stock their body bags. The American people would have paid closer attention, family-by-family, draftee-by-draftee.

Instead, they got away with using the National Guard. Abusing the National Guard. Decimating the National Guard. And the nation’s governors went along with it like good soldiers. A blank check for “the worst president in U.S. history.”

Some of you may have caught Salzman’s recent letter-to-the-editor that ran in a couple of Vermont dailies - a letter sticking up for the troops, something the White House has failed utterly at doing. Here’s a taste:

It was reported in The New York Times that the military has been purposely downgrading the degree of disabilities among our wounded to a classification that makes many of them ineligible for full benefits - just to save money. A recent study by the Pentagon has concluded that the military does not have the resources to treat mental and emotional trauma suffered by returning Iraq veterans. Such an admission from the military not known for its honesty (think Pat Tillman) indicates a problem of horrendous proportions.

When we, as a society, send our young men and women into battle, there is an implicit moral contract that those of us who have remained behind in safety, with no sacrifice other than to go shopping, must demand that our wounded be looked after with all the resources at our command. That this has not been done violates that moral contract and invalidates any soldier's duty to serve.

To protest this criminal neglect of our wounded soldiers, I am asking Adjutant General Dubie, commander of the Vermont National Guard to refuse to deploy any Vermont Guardsmen into harm's way. Given the betrayal of our service people by our government, it is the only right thing General Dubie can do - even if it means a court martial and the end of his career. General Dubie should take note that in the World Court the explanation, "I was only doing my duty!" is not an excuse for moral irresponsibility.

Al Salzman
Fairfield, Vt.

Down at the end of the block we caught these two members of Burlington's "Finest," getting ready for a busy Saturday Night in the Queen City. Nice bike, eh? Nice cuffs, too.

Yours truly was the only member of the Fourth Estate to show up this noon at the Sheraton to catch our Governor as he was on hand to address a VSAC luncheon.

And it paid off in more ways than one. I got the scoop!

"Yesterday," said Gov. Jim Douglas, "I celebrated 32 years of wedded bliss."

"You did? To the same woman?" I asked.

"You bet."

"Congratulations!"

"And I’m signing up for another 32!' he told us in our exclusive in the hotel lobby.

I didn't know about Jimbo's wedding anniversary when I went to see him today, but I did have a "sex" question on my list.

This morning's Freeps reported GOP Jim had on Tuesday - three days ago - quietly signed into law S. 51, a landmark human rights bill. The new law prohibits discrimination in Vermont based on "gender identity."

I asked the Guv why the gubernatorial signing of such an historic piece of human rights legislation didn't make his public schedule?

DOUGLAS: I sign most bills without going on the schedule. It’s the exception that they are when there’s an invitation or a reason to have a ceremony, but the vast majority of bills are signed [in private].

Q. Are you proud you signed it?

DOUGLAS: Obviously, last year, I vetoed it on the recommendation of the Human Rights Commission which is charged with enforcing it. They didn’t feel it was enforceable. So over the last year I’ve met with members of the transgendered community, the Human Rights Commission has, and we’ve made changes that will make it work. Vermonters don’t want to discriminate, but there is a lot of controversy over that.

Q. You getting flack for it?

DOUGLAS:  There’s some people who have expressed their opposition, so I frankly didn’t feel the need for a signing event.

Q. Because it’s controversial? I can write that because it’s a touchy, controversial issue, the governor did not have a signing ceremony?

DOUGLAS: Yes, I guess. I’m not sure the advocates asked for one frankly. I don’t know. I think that’s true...I don’t recall that they did.

Interesting, eh?

Remember when Democrat Howard Dean signed the landmark Civil Unions Bill in the closet, too?

I may have missed the opening day due to my Wednesday chemotherapy on Hospital Hill, but I did feel fit enough to swing by the Sheraton Burlington Thursday afternoon and catch what was left. And surprisingly, a whole lot was!

Who do I bump into on the way in, but the one and only Wayne Roberts [right], who "retired" as boss of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce last year [replaced by Tom Torti].

Had a great chat with Wayne. All the good stuff, unfortunately,  was off-the-record, but as always, enlightening.

Thanks, Wayno!

A very healthy Vermont Business EXPO this year [despite scant coverage in our local Gannett daily] and though I was feeling a little hang-over from the chemo (nothing like the hangovers of old, however), I can attest to it's vitality. Kudos to the Vermont Chamber, the major sponsor/organizer.

Never, ever, have the free pens been better or more plentiful!

I've got a year's supply and a SOVERNET Communications cloth bag to keep them in. But would you believe IBM didn't have any free pens to give away? IBM?

The surprise - ready for this - first time exhibitor: Goddard College of Plainfield, Vermont.

The old hippie school, right? Not only was Admissions Counselor Lara Duston [left] giving away the best free ball-point pens of the entire EXPO, but hers was the only exhibitor booth we saw that also was giving out free refrigerator magnets - good ones, too!

I appreciate a good refrigerator magnet.

Look, I confess that in the last few months I occasionally tune into the Goddard College radio station online. Quite the eclectic mix - I've gotten so sick and tired of the same-old, same-old on the regular dial that I've stopped listening to radio except for the odd "Switchboard" on VPR or classical.

Also, I learned from Lara that Goddard has completely restructured. It's a "low-residency" campus. That means you spend the first week of the semester on campus, design your program and then go home and complete it. They're targeting an older student body. Folks with jobs, marriages, kids. And the new Goddard student body comes from all over the world!

Very interesting.

They're also about to start an undergraduate degree program in creative writing, said Duston. 

Very creative eh?

For those who at one time or another have felt the desire to “stick it in my ear,” I offer this shot of Nurse Colleen from Graniteville doing just that yesterday up at the Mary Fanny, aka Fletcher Allen Health Care.

Busy day in Cancerville. There are four four-chair sections, two nurses per section, and, I’m told, a room with three more chairs.

“Chairs” are where "it," i.e. $$$, is at. That’s where folks park their butts while getting the chemo fed into them intravenously. Time is money. My butt was in the chair for more than six hours getting five different drugs. The others were occupied as well. There are individual little cable TVs that come out of the wall, but not many viewers yesterday. Lot's of chit-chat. On my sixth tour, I'm quite the chemo veteran now.

Outpatient chemotherapy is a booming business. And baby-boomers are a booming market, make no mistake about that.

Ah, life! What’s it all about?

This morning I woke with that ol’ nausea feeling I haven’t felt since my John Power Irish Whiskey days. Actually, this one couldn’t hold a candle to the whiskey one.

No problemo.

It’s a beautiful morning, another fantastic avian symphony here in Five Sisters Land, and the Doc says we’ll take a CAT scan in two weeks and see if the drugs are continuing to shrink what’s left of my non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma tumor. Was fist-sized in January. Now teeny-weeny, about 3-4 cm.

Hey, things could be a whole lot worse. I could be in one of the military units on King George “WMD” Bush’s list for shipment to Iraq?

To fight for:

a. oil companies like Exxon-Mobil
b. oil company stockholders
c. defense contractors like Haliburton and GE
d. their stockholders
e. other

*************************************************

SPEAKING of IRAQ:

Vermont’s lone congressman certainly appears in synch with the majority of his constituents this week.  Democrat Rep. Peter Welch put the word out yesterday:

"I am deeply disappointed that there is no deadline for troop withdrawal in this bill and will therefore vote against it."

Washington, D.C. - Rep. Peter Welch issued the following statement announcing his opposition to the conference report for the Iraq war supplemental.  He will vote against the Iraq funding legislation when it reaches the floor later this week.

...Welch has measured each bill on the Iraq war based on whether it would hasten or delay an end to the war.   He has cited that, for his support, any legislation must impose strict accountability on President Bush and Iraqi leaders, revoke the President's blank check, and include a timetable to end the war:

"I am deeply disappointed that there is no deadline for troop withdrawal in this bill and will therefore vote against it.  Regrettably, the President continues to stubbornly dig in his heels and cling to a failed policy.  He has led this country into a catastrophic foreign policy failure and he continues to thumb his nose at retired generals, the will of the majority of Congress, and the majority of the American people.

"While I am profoundly disappointed, I remain determined to end this war.  This vote will not be the final say.  Regrettably, the President continues to isolate himself on this war.  The day of reckoning for this President is coming as more and more members of his own party find their voices and demand a change in course.  I have great hope that in the coming months a veto-proof majority emerges in Congress that can stand up to the President to end this terrible war."

***************************************************
Not Good Enough?

Welchie’s "no" vote on the latest Iraq War funding bill is too-little, too-late for a couple of the folks who’ve organized Vermont’s statewide “Impeach Bush & Cheney” Campaign.

"This bill, that has the support of Democratic Party leaders Pelosi and Reid, funds the war without any limits,” said Iraq War veteran Adrienne Kinne. "The Iraqis want this occupation to end. The American people want our soldiers home now. I fear Peter Welch's no vote is too little too late. Peter Welch has been going along with that failed Democratic Party leadership for too long, and this terrible bill is the result."

"We call on Peter Welch to speak out against the Democratic Party leadership that talks peace and makes war," said Kinne. "We call on Peter Welch, Patrick Leahy, and Bernie Sanders to initiate investigation of Bush and Cheney, not just underlings like Alberto Gonzalez."

"This bill, sponsored by the Democratic Party leadership, forces us to ask how Peter Welch and Pat Leahy can remain in a party that accepted Bush and Cheney's demands to fund the war without any meaningful conditions," said James Marc Leas. "A party that talks peace but makes war has lost credibility. Peter Welch and Patrick Leahy can do much more to end this war if they stop supporting a pro-war party. Just as Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party, Peter Welch and Patrick Leahy should leave the Democratic Party."

A radical suggestion?

Check this:

“YOU VOTE FOR IT, YOU OWN IT”

That’s what political pundit/author/columnist and former Bernie Sanders’ press secretary David Sirota writes:

“Bottom line - if the Democrats do not vote down the blank check Iraq War supplemental bill they are proposing, they will be complicit in the war, and should expect to feel the consequences.”

For the whole shebang, hit the Sirota link in our political blog roll - column right.

Just snapped this one of UVM’s Old Mill out the car window as I was coming home yesterday. The sun was setting. Over a century-and-a-half standing there and still looking as magnificent as ever, if not more so?

Just read Matt Sutkoski’s news story in the morning Freeps about the first public informational meeting on the latest schemes for constructing or not-constructing the Williston-Essex leg of the Chittenden County Circumferential Highway. Mention the CIRC and I think of moon-landings.

I don’t know if it’s funnier than it is sad? The road to nowhere! A feedlot for lawyers!

Shifting gears to local media....

Got a little item in “Inside Track” today about our local Fox affiliate starting up a local news operation. Hurray! Nude anchors!

Just kidding.

About the nude anchors.

Things change. And the world of news, from print to electronic to online, is a swiftly changing world. In fact, one friend was wondering if Gannett would ever sell The Burlington Free Press?

You’re dreaming?

Well, the idea was prompted by the published report Tuesday that Gannett is selling its local "award-winning" daily in Marion, Indiana. Gannett's owned it since 1971. No buyer has been named as yet, but the sale is expected to a done-deal in a month:

President and Publisher Juli Metzger said the paper's 75 employees will maintain their benefits pending the sale, and that operations will continue as normal in both the print and online product.

"This is a great newspaper and a great community," she said. "It's the people who make up the Chronicle-Tribune, not who owns it."

Juli Metzger? The assistant managing editor at The Burlington Free Press back in the early-mid 1990s?

Indeed. The same Juli Metzger who admitted on the witness stand in Chittenden County Superior Court that she had she had lied under oath to protect Gannett’s interests. It was in a lawsuit brought by a fired Freeps city hall reporter. Remember Paul Teetor?

After Metzger’s admission to lying under oath, Gannett proposed an out-of-court settlement Teetor accepted. Metzger was rewarded, apparently, with a transfer/promotion to an Ohio Gannett-chain paper and in 2000 won Gannett’s “Editor of the Year” prize! She moved to the Chronicle-Tribune in 2005.

Hey, everything's for sale, right?

Anyway, my story for today is that I am for the first time in memory going to miss the opening of the Vermont Business Expo at the Sheraton. The 23rd annual. One can always get a sense of the strength of the Vermont economy by the quality and quantity of the freebies. I'm a pen guy.

But it's Chemo Day #6 pour moi up at the Mary Fanny. Takes all day. So far so good. And I picked up Al Gore's latest at Borders yesterday for my chemo read while on the IV.

The Assault on Reason.

Where was this guy in 2000?