Category Archives: Uncategorized

I guess we don’t have to worry about Rick Perry becoming President

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In my previous recitation of Corry Bliss’ stunningly unsuccessful career as a campaign operative, I somehow missed a big one. Dingbat Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose 2012 Presidential campaign splattered on the rocks of his own ineptitude, has set up a political action committee, the catchily-monickered RickPAC, to “help fund candidates who agree with the governor’s priorities,” according to RickPAC spokesman Mark Miner. 

And guess who’s been hired on at RickPAC? 

The treasurer of RickPAC, Stefan Passantino, is the head of the political law section of the Washington law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. He is also a longtime legal adviser to Newt Gingrich. The assistant treasurer, Corry Bliss, has served in statewide political campaigns in Vermont and Georgia, and his aggressive, bare-knuckled political style has been compared to Karl Rove.

Corry Freakin’ Bliss. Again. 

Oh. My. God. 

How the hell does Corry “0-7” Bliss keep getting jobs? Doesn’t Rick Perry have enough political baggage left over from 2012 without hiring the Joe Btfsplk of Republican Politics? 

One good thing: with Corry Bliss on board, I believe America is safe from the potential catastrophe of a Rick Perry Presidency.

A familiar face is sent to the rescue in Kansas

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In case you haven’t been following the Pat Roberts saga… he’s a longtime Republican U.S. Senator from the deeply red state of Kansas, whose re-election bid is, amazingly, in serious trouble. This week, the Democratic challenger Chad Taylor withdrew from the race in favor of popular Independent Greg Orman. 

In response, Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach identified a legal technicality for keeping Taylor on the ballot in hopes that a three-way race will save Roberts’ bacon. 

But just in case that bit of legalistic chicanery isn’t enough, a well-known campaign consultant has been parachuted in by the national GOP to take the reins of Roberts’ troubled campaign. 

And the name of Pat Roberts’ would-be hero, according to Politico.com? 

Corry Bliss. corrybliss1edt

Corry freakin’ Bliss. 

Good God in Heaven. 

Bliss, for those with short memories, is widely credited with bringing the Jim Douglas era to a crashing halt by piloting Brian Dubie’s gubernatorial campaign straight into the ground. He’s a prime example of a Republican campaign consultant who loses every time but somehow continues to get new gigs. And I mean every time: Bliss’ record is a stunning 0 wins, 7 losses. 

A brief recap of Bliss’ appalling career: He graduated from law school in 2006, and managed the re-election bid of a Virginia congresswoman into defeat. In 2010 he came to Vermont and took control of the Dubie campaign. Refresh my memory; how did that turn out? 

“Corry Bliss took a candidate that was up 20 points and turned him into a loser by election day,” said Bradford Broyles, a Republican activist from Mendon, a town in the central part of the state, near Killington. “We’re still repairing the damage to the Republican party.”

Bliss ended his Vermont tenure by writing a court-ordered letter of apology to settle a libel suit. 

After that, Bliss returned to his native Virginia where he took a State Senate candidate with a nice-guy image, trashed said image with negative campaign tactics, and — you guessed it — lost the race. Sound familiar, Brian?

He then failed upward to pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon’s very expensive and unsuccessful 2012 bid to win a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut, earning fresh criticism for devious campaign tactics: 

Doorhangers call on voters to cast their ballots for President Obama as well as McMahon, promising the pair “will fight for us.” T-shirts mimicking the election gear worn by members of the Service Employees International Union are being donned by pro-McMahon forces at polling places, again tying McMahon to Obama. They read “I Support Obama & McMahon November 6th.” And “sample ballots” bearing McMahon’s campaign bug are being handed out at some urban polling places with just two names on them: McMahon and Obama.

 

Nowhere does any of this material say McMahon is a Republican or is herself voting for Mitt Romney.

Good times. In spite of Bliss’ Super Genius skulduggery, McMahon lost the race by 12 percentage points. 

But that didn’t stop Corry Bliss, no sirree. He hightailed it back to Virginia, where he signed onto the re-election bid of five-term incumbent lawmaker Joe May, who, yes indeedy, had a reputation as a good guy. May lost in the Republican primary, and Bliss’ “nasty, vicious, dark” tactics took the blame. 

This year, Bliss signed on to the Senatorial bid of former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel*. Whoops; she came in third in a five-way primary. 

*Handel, by the way, was fresh off a disastrous turn as a top executive at Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She was the one behind the decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood that nearly sank one of America’s most popular charities. 

And now, after compiling an 0-7 record as a campaign manager, Corry Bliss is Pat Roberts’ designated savior. 

All I can say is, good luck, Mr. Roberts.

Pope Sal Spreads the Gospel of His Omniscience

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Hey, remember Salvatore Matano, former Catholic Bishop of Burlington? He got promoted to the bishopric of Rochester, New York last year, and he’s already making waves in his new parish even as the effects of his Vermont tenure continue to reverberate. 

Matano is described thusly by the National Catholic Reporter: 

Matano is a classmate and friend of Cardinal Raymond Burke. Burke is well known for a certain rigid legalism during his tenure in St. Louis. In 2008, he was appointed prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest canonical body, and would eventually become a member of the Congregation for Bishops. In this capacity, Burke had a hand in appointing his former classmate to Rochester.

Funny thing: Burke thrived under the legalistic papacy of Benedict, but was quickly tossed from the Congregation by Benny’s successor, Pope Francis. 

Back to Our Pal Sal, whose Vermont tenure featured a stout defense against any and all claims in the clergy sex-abuse scandal. Foot-dragging, denial of responsibility, pleas of poverty… Sal used the entire playbook. 

Well, now VPR’s Steve Zind reports another choice tidbit from the Matano Era. While Sal was still here, the Vatican issued a survey to gather input from the faithful and “encouraged bishops to disseminate it as widely as possible, including at the parish level.”

Instead, according the Concerned Catholics of Vermont, Our Pal grabbed the survey and filled it out himself. And is refusing to disclose the nature of his responses. CCOVT says: 

Vermont Catholics have no notion what was reported to Rome about how we access the surveyed issues and, given no information about the consultation undertaken, we have no grounds for knowing whether the report was accurate.

The survey covered hot-button topics like birth control, divorce, and marriage equality, and was meant to gather the views of Catholics in advance of an “extraordinary synod of Bishops” next month. 

Well, thanks to Matano, the views of Vermont Catholics are shut out of the process. 

Meanwhile, in his new posting in Rochester, Matano is imposing regressive policies. The NCR:  

Bishop Salvatore Matano, the new bishop of Rochester, N.Y., is in the process of ending a 40-year custom of permitting lay ministers to preach at Mass. Most are women commissioned to preach by the former bishop, Matthew Clark. All have advanced degrees in theology and all have served for many years in various diocesan leadership positions.

“Well, they might be tremendously gifted and qualified,” I can hear Matano saying, “but… but… they’re WOMEN! They have LADYPARTS! God forbid we should sully our pulpits with vaginal juices!” 

Yeah, semen stains on the robes are fine, but we can’t let GIRLS in our clubhouse!

The National Catholic Reporter sees Matano’s elevation to Rochester as part of Benedict’s efforts to promote conservative doctrine. Let’s hope Francis is paying attention to Sal’s medieval policies, both in Vermont and in Rochester. 

The Artful Roger has a moment of artlessness

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 Oh dear. The Republicrat candidate for State Senate in Windham County, Roger Allbee, put his foot in it last week.

For those just joining us, The Artful Roger is a longtime Republican who served as Agriculture Secretary under Jim Douglas, but he’s now running in the Democratic primary because, well, a Republican can’t possibly win in Windham. Or because of principle, your choice.

Anyway, there he was on August 21 at the American Legion Post 5 in lovely Brattleboro, along with the three actual Democrats in the race: incumbent Jeanette White, plus Becca Balint and Joan Bowman. Fortunately for all of us, the local community access cable folks recorded the event and posted it online. So we can all witness Allbee’s closing statement, which included the following example of acute political tone-deafness:

Whoever is elected represents all the people, whether they’re Democrat, Republican, they’re colored, they have alternative preferences, we represent everyone in the county. Everyone. We represent every citizen.

If you want to hear it for yourself, it’s right at the 108-minute mark.

Wow. How many people did Allbee offend in that brief remark? Well, obviously, “colored” is a longtime no-no. There’s also “alternative preferences,” by which he apparently means LGBT. But as we all know, “preference” is the right-wing code word for “you’ve got a choice, and you chose EVIL.”

Plus there’s the Republican formulation of “Democratic.”

Ugh.

I haven’t had time to go back and listen to the whole forum, but based on this one statement, I have to say I really, really hope that the voters don’t choose this guy as a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.

Sorry, Rog. I mean “Democrat Party.”

Postscript. In addition to the above, one of my colleagues at Green Mountain Daily tells me that Allbee donated $500 to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign in 2004. In fairness, he was a Republican at the time; but Bush/Cheney isn’t exactly moderate Republicanism. And his alleged hero, Jim Jeffords, had already exited the GOP because it had no place for him.

I have to say, the Vermont media have done a horrific job on Allbee’s candidacy. They’ve let him self-identify as a Democrat without exploring his political history at all.

LeBron James and the pursuit of happiness

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It was only yesterday that I was taking Art Woolf, Vermont’s Loudest Economist, to task for belittling the financial impact of agriculture in Vermont. And, on top of that, closing his column with a cutting reference to farmers who “do it as much for their own enjoyment as for the monetary benefits it brings them.”

Of course. And as I said in response, almost everyone makes major life choices for non-financial reasons. They do things for family, for the mind, heart, and soul. Sure, money has its place; but if all of us made our decisions solely (or primarily) for the money, this world would be a sad, desperate place. That’s why our founders invoked “the pursuit of happiness” instead of “the pursuit of maximum profit.”

And now we have LeBron James ignoring all the pundits and the ass-kissers and the main-chancers, and going home to Cleveland.

Cleveland!

He could have gone back to South Beach, or taken his talents to Madison Square Garden, Chicago, or Los Angeles. He could have had his pick of major media markets, warm-weather destinations, and/or tax havens.

He chose Cleveland. The Mistake By The Lake. The place where the river caught fire. The place whose most famous celebrity, until now, was Drew Carey. (All due respect to Pere Ubu.) Inspiration for the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video. 

Why? The title of his as-told-to essay for Sports Illustrated says it all: “I’m coming home.” And went on to explain that life is bigger than sport:

I feel my calling here goes above basketball. I have a responsibility to lead, in more ways than one, and I take that very seriously. My presence can make a difference in Miami, but I think it can mean more where I’m from. I want kids in Northeast Ohio… to realize that there’s no better place to grow up. Maybe some of them will come home after college and start a family or open a business. That would make me smile. Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.

He made his decision because trying to win in Cleveland will be more rewarding than just plain winning anywhere else. Because he feels a deeper obligation to the place he grew up.

As a guy who comes from southeast Michigan, I can empathize. If I had the opportunity to do something special for Detroit, I’d pack up and move in a heartbeat.

Hardly anybody gets to make such a choice. I’m pretty sure I never will. But reading LeBron’s words made me happy inside. It affirmed my belief that, Art Woolf notwithstanding, there’s more to life than money.

Postscript. Yes, I know LeBron will be richly rewarded for playing in Cleveland. But he would have gotten just as much anywhere else — and he could have reaped far greater indirect rewards (sponsorships, endorsements, connections, post-sports opportunities) in a larger, more important city. But home was more important.

The Mystery Memoir emerges after two years of silence

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How about that. No sooner do I inquire about Jim Douglas’ autobiography, which was supposed to have been published in 2012, than the news comes out that the (cough) long-awaited tome will be published in September of this year. It must be true, ‘cuz Stewart Ledbetter sez so: 

The book, “The Vermont Way – A Republican Governor Leads America’s Most Liberal State” was completed 18 months ago, said publisher Chris Bray.

An extensive editing process followed, but Bray describes the book as “the best political memoir by a Vermont governor yet.”

Yeah, I suspect that “extensive editing process” was needed to hack through the thickets of Douglas’ turgid prose and overcome his natural reluctance to say anything of substance.

I am so looking forward to not reading this. And I’ll bet his long-awaited guidance on how a Republican can succeed in a liberal state will amount to “Be More Like Jim Douglas.”

My thanks also to publisher, and Democratic State Senator, Chris Bray for failing to respond to my inquiry about the book.

The greatest horndog to ever occupy the Oval Office

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And it wasn’t William Jefferson Clinton, no sirree. It was one of our most forgettable chief executives, Warren G. Harding.

(Why am I writing about Harding in a Vermont political blog, you may ask? Why, because — as no one has apparently noticed so far — the image at the top of this page is that of Our 29th President, begrudgingly recreating his youthful days as a newspaperman. And good golly, did he go to seed in his later years.) 

Later this month, the Library of Congress will make public roughly 1,000 pages of previously-sealed love letters between not-yet-President Harding and his mistress of 15 years, Carrie Fulton Phillips. And they contain some steamy, squicky stuff, to judge by a few excerpts already making the rounds. From December 24,1910:

“My Darling. There are no words, at my command, sufficient to say the full extent of my love for you — a mad, tender, devoted, ardent, eager, passion-wild, jealous … hungry … love … It flames like the fire and consumes … It racks in the tortures of aching hunger, and glows in bliss ineffable — bliss only you can give.”

Apparently Harding’s wife didn’t stir the same “ardent, eager, passion-wild, hungry love” in the breast and/or loins of our then-future chief executive.

It’s been known for some time that Harding was a serial adulterer who makes Bill Clinton look like a faithful Catholic priest by comparison. But these letters ought to destroy whatever shred of dignity there is left in Harding’s reputation. And it ought to shred the credibility of any Republican who grandstands about Clinton’s peccadilloes, or in any way implies that Clinton brought dishonor on the office of the President. That had already happened long ago, in spades, at the hands and/or loins of the Republican Harding.

As for the squick factor, how about this? In the letters, Harding refers to his penis as “Jerry.” In one letter he invites Carrie to an expedition to the summit of “Mount Jerry.” And in another:

“Jerry … came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it … He told me to say that you are the best and darlingest in the world, and if he could have but one wish, it would be to be held in your darling embrace and be thrilled by your pink lips that convey the surpassing rapture of human touch and the unspeakable joy of love’s surpassing embrace.”

Eeeeeeeeewwwwwwww.

The affair continued while Harding was Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and a U.S. Senator; he called it off when he became President, for fear of public disgrace and/or staining the White House furniture. He undoubtedly had other paramours while occupying our highest office, but his handlers didn’t want to take a chance on a long-term relationship becoming public. Especially one with, as the New York Times reports, close ties to pro-German factions during World War I. Indeed, the Times reports that Phillips “had social ties to Germans in the United States who were said to be spies.”

Harding begged Philliips to burn the letters, but she didn’t. Instead, she kept them in a box where they were discovered after her death. And sealed, until July 29. Get your popcorn, folks.

The Great July 3rd Bottled Water Brouhaha, a.k.a. Men Behaving Badly

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Okay, so there’s a tempest in a water bottle here in Montpelier. For years, the local Boy Scouts have sold water at the city’s Independence Day parade. The Scouts have also done a lot of cleanup work after the parade. But this year, no Scouts.

It began with the Scouts’ request for a vendor permit appearing on Council’s consent agenda, a list of noncontroversial items requiring no debate. Well, Councilor Thierry Guerlain asked that it be removed from the consent agenda; he raised concerns about the antigay policies of the Boy Scouts of America.

(The BSA allows openly gay Scouts, but still bans gays from supervisory or leadership capacities.)

Local Scout leadership responded by withdrawing its request, and its participation in the parade. And now, reports the Times Argus, the city is scrambling for volunteers to cover the duties usually handled by the Scouts. (Note: Both links are to the paywalled Times Argus. Sorry.) 

On Wednesday, when I guest hosted the Mark Johnson Show on WDEV, I spent a few minutes on this story. It seemed to me that Guerlain’s objection was ill-timed and wrongly placed. Sure, the Scouts’ policies are retrograde and offensive; but was this really the time and place for such a fight? I thought not, and I still do. The local Scouts’ participation in the parade benefits them and the community as a whole. And letting them sell bottled water is not in the same league as, say, buying Krugerrands during the apartheid era. As I said on the radio, you’ve gotta pick your battles. It’s one of the more annoying traits of Vermont liberals*: raising highfalutin’ issues of principle on the most petty of pretexts.

*After the show, I had a brief chat with “Sleepy Bill” Sayre, who was preparing to host Common Sense Radio. He acknowledged that he feels the same way about Vermont conservatives. It was kind of a nice moment.  

Since then, I’ve realized that while Guerlain and like-minded Councilors were being petty and small-minded, so were the local Scouts. They could have approached Council to hash out the issue. For that matter, they could have waited for Council’s next move: all Guerlain did was remove the item from the consent agenda. There was no Council action one way or another. The Scouts could also, I suppose, offered to volunteer at the parade without selling water — although to me, that’d be going above and beyond the call. Selling water and raising some money for local activities is a reasonable trade for their cleanup work.

Instead, the Scout leadership had a hissy fit, took its ball and went home. In short, the leaders acted in a way that, I’m sure, is contrary to the spirit of the Scouting movement.

So what we have here is a situation where adults “acted like children,” and the community suffers. And so do the kids, who miss an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons by serving their community. Instead, they get a lesson in pure pettiness and arrogance. From both sides.