Vermont Daily Briefing

February 6th, 2009

The Plundering of the Christmas Tree

by Philip Baruth

Announcer: For Swedes, Christmas lasts forever. In Commentator Philip Baruth’s house, Christmas ended officially only a few days ago. But it went out with a very unsettling bang. Here’s Philip.

Notes from the New Vermont
Commentary #226: Plundering the Christmas Tree

It’s February now, and you might think that the time for Christmas stories is long past. But you would be wrong. At least, if you live with a Swede you would be wrong.

Swedes start their Christmas partying long before the rest of the world, and they end it only when the fir tree has shed every last razor-sharp needle onto the living room carpet, and the ornaments are actually sliding down the naked branches to the floor.

Only then, in late January or even early February, are they finally willing to let it go.

The last Christmas event is called Julgransplundring, or in English, the Plundering of the Christmas Tree. As rituals go, it starts out normal enough: after packing away the ornaments and the strings of christmas lights, Swedes hang candy from the dry branches with little pieces of red thread.

Like many things Swedish, the tree looks undeniably cute and wholesome and Old-World when it’s finished.

And once the candy has been hung, the ritual remains cute and wholesome for another few moments. It becomes something like a holiday version of Pin The Tail on the Donkey, with one member of the family standing up to be solemnly blindfolded by the rest.

Then, as they spin that person slowly in a circle, they sing a song about how they’re spinning that person slowly in a circle — I won’t sing it here, but it involves a lot of repetition of the phrase, “Snur arunt,” which means, “Turn around.” And the effect of all this snurring arunt is that the blindfolded person is finally completely disoriented.

And that’s when all pretense of cuteness is at an end.

Because then the ritual demands that you put a big old pair of scissors in the blindfolded person’s hand — and not their good hand, but their bad hand. So for right-handed people, the scissors go in the left hand, and vice versa. And then that person — blind, dizzy, clumsy-handed — lurches across the living room wielding an immense pair of shears.

The oddest thing of all is that no one born in Sweden finds anything problematic in this equation.

Again, you’d think that the only way this could get any more dangerous is if you set the tree itself on fire. But again, you’d be wrong. Because kids love candy, and because kids love to see what’s going on in any situation, all the kids in the room begin quickly closing in to see exactly where the lurching scissor-wielding person will make contact with the denuded Christmas tree.

And of course, if you’re the one with the shears, you’re trying to maximize your chances of making contact with threads or candy, so rather than small trial probes in the dark with the points of the scissors, Swedes tend to favor big, sweeping horizontal slashing moves instead.

To an American watching, it’s like Nightmare on Elm Street — except no one’s screaming, and everyone’s singing and acting like this is a perfectly splendid way to spend an evening in deep winter.

And if you finally just can’t take it anymore, and you leap off the couch and scream for the kids to duck out of the way of the scissors — well, everyone looks at you like the excitable American.

I’ve been married now for ten years, and even if many of the Swedish holidays are strange and unsettling, at least I know what I’m in for. But not completely. No, every few years my in-laws pull out some new ritual, with some new Swedish name and some new deadly weapon: some way of marking the coming Spring, perhaps, with a dish of crushed walnuts and, I don’t know, a staple gun.

I never know what’s involved exactly, but I know that I must smile. No matter how disquieting or potentially deadly the holiday, I must smile, and hope that Love will see us all through.

[This piece aired first on Vermont Public Radio. Audio of the commentary is available here.]

September 26th, 2008

Maverick Sarah Palin Reforms Existing National Borders: Russia and Canada Now “In the State That I Am The Executive Of”

by Philip Baruth

Don’t want to belabor this, especially as we agreed to rise above politics and suspend irony until the bailout goes through, or at least until dinner time, but it’s really too good to pass up. Katie Couric bores in on Sarah Palin’s much-mocked claim to foreign policy experience via proximity with Russia, which she’s never visited:

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our– our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia–

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We– we do– it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is– from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.

They’re in the state that I am the executive of. Highly reassuring, you’ve gotta think, for those who thought Johnny Mac went off half-cocked with this pick.

September 24th, 2008

Canadians Love Us For Our Obama

by Philip Baruth

More Canadian lunacy. It’s not enough they’ve taken their dollar to parity with ours. Now they want Obama too. Apparently the Democrat’s poll numbers are higher than any living Canadian candidate. Quel Homme! the t-shirts say. Well, VDB has one word for the Great White North: Never. Never in hell, Paul Martin!

(And yes, we realize that Paul Martin is no longer Prime Minister of Canada. We weren’t cursing that Paul Martin. We were cursing this Paul Martin. Just so we have our Paul Martins straight.)

September 12th, 2008

In Which Quebec Likes VT A Lot

by Philip Baruth

Okay, apparently the rule is that if you post once about wacky events North of the Border, you’ll do so ever after. But damned if madness isn’t breaking out in Canada: a Bloc Québécois MP is running around his “riding” telling voters that not only will the world keep spinning if Quebec votes for secession, it’ll gain a substantial chunk of Vermont. No, we’re not shitting you. Does VDB look like a pooping puffin?

This MP, alluding to unnamed sources, claims that a “fairly strong movement” in the Green Mountain State favors joining an independent Quebec. Possibly to ensure access to the Tim Horton’s franchise, but he’s not crystal clear on that point.

In any event, here is the freaky French video in which our desire to part ways with ourselves is confidently asserted. We watched it, and it made us feel like John Kerry. Bon soir.

September 9th, 2008

Conservative Pooping Puffins: Now That’s What We Here at VDB Call “Animated”

by Philip Baruth

Just when you think that Karl Rove and his American Conservatives are the lowest of the low, those wacky right-wing Canadians kick it down a notch. You’ll find the story in the Times under the, uh, headline: “Pooping Puffin Paralyzes Canada Conservative Event.” We shit you not.

Apparently the Conservative Party’s website featured an animated puffin defecating on Liberal leader Stephane Dion. No joke: on the screen, the puffin dive-bombs the opposition party leader. This so shamed Conservative leader Stephen Harper that he botched his roll-out of a diesel tax-cut.

Worth noting that here, in the US of A, the Puffin would not only drop the dung, but then fly to the pinstriped sleeve of a fierce yet paternal John McCain, above the single military star and the tag, “Country First.”

But there’s no denying it: Canada has its own electoral mess to deal with now, given that a special election has been called.

We refer you, as always, to Vermont’s most knowledgeable Canadian blogger, Paul Martin, for all the dirty details. His site, “As Canadian As Possible Under the Circumstances,” is always a must-read for those of us within easy puffin-range of Quebec.

June 21st, 2008

BREAKING: Daysie Awards Open For One More Week, And VDB Needs You To Stop Playing Online Texas Hold-Em And Vote

by Philip Baruth

As we’ve said before, political blogging is an accursed vocation. Your family questions your devotion, your boss gives you the fish eye, and your friends snicker behind your back. And for what? So that you can talk politics, electronically, with an unseen audience, an amorphous group of people whose own friends and family are looking at them more than a little suspiciously. It’s craziness.

daysies

There’s no money in it, not a dollar. And when your candidates are down, you’re down, sometimes so far down it feels as though you’re losing a race. And when your candidates lose, it can hurt so bad that your dog dies of a broken heart.

But we do it anyway. And we like to think it makes some sort of difference, somewhere, in the lives of someone. Anyone, really.

But there’s only one way to know for certain: the Seven Days Readers Choice Awards, aka the Daysies.

For the last two years, you’ve helped propel VDB to two straight Daysies, and in the bleak hours, when Rick Santorum looked as though he might find a way to keep his Senate seat, or when Ned Lamont lost to the double-dealing Joe Lieberman, those two Daysies kept us sane.

We try not to ask a lot of readers here, except two things: that they email, because blogging is inherently solitary, and that they vote for us in the Daysies once a year, to show that blogging really isn’t so solitary after all. If you visit the site at all regularly, it’s not a bad trade.

You’ll find this year’s here. Polls close in one week. And as always there are three rules Seven Days insists upon:

1) You can only vote once, although every member of a family can vote, so long as they each have their own email address;

2) You must fill out 33 of the 100 questions online for your ballot to be counted;

3) In the case of Best Blog, you must use the blog’s address rather than its name, so vermontdailybriefing.com counts, but the Vermont Daily Briefing does not. Who knows why, but that’s the state of play.

One final request. The section on media offers you two blogging choices, Best Blog (Political) and Best Blog (Non-Political). If you haven’t got a ready choice for the Non-Political option, we strongly recommend Bill Simmon’s Candleblog (which would be candleboy.com/candleblog/ in Daysie language).

bill and neil
Bill Simmon, left, and Neil Jensen, right, at the 2007 Hamburger Summit. Simmon would later grapple violently with Jensen over who had first claimed the sole remaining bratwurst. Advantage: Simmon.

One of the first in the state, and still one of the absolute best, Candleblog covers everything of crucial interest except politics: TV, movies, technology, social networking, and something that Bill calls “the nerd life,” but which looks suspiciously like goldbricking and drinking coffee to us.

Again, thank you from the bottom of VDB’s scarred political heart for reading throughout the year, and for emailing us, and turning digital communication into something more fundamentally human.

If you actually click through to the survey and cast a ballot, thank you three times over.

April 23rd, 2008

In Which VDB Confronts the Olympic Torch

by Philip Baruth

Announcer: Commentator Philip Baruth’s Vermont, whatever else might be said about it, is a very strange place. Today he imagines confronting the Olympic torch, and all of the political contradictions now implicit within it.

Notes from the New Vermont
Commentary #214:
My Vermont Contains Multitudes (And a Torch)

Funny the things you remember. For instance, one night last week I was walking down Church Street, and I remember wishing I hadn’t ordered that second dozen chicken wings, or that I’d opted for the quote-unquote “medium-hot” wings instead of the quote-unquote “Georgia Asphalt” wings.

Because even though it was a beautiful false-spring night, all I could think about was finding the nearest car-wash, and hosing myself down completely.

There’s a certain sense of shame that accompanies a serious buffalo wing binge, and I was really feeling it — not just on my hands, but in my soul. I was nursing a big 72-ounce cup of ice water but it seemed only to be making the swelling in my lips worse.

Then I noticed a commotion on the block ahead of me, but whether it was screaming or cheering was hard to make out. Coming up Church Street, at a good solid dogtrot, was a guy in neon shorts carrying what looked like the Olympic Torch, surrounded by a hulking Chinese security team in light blue track suits.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. Protestors have been ambushing the torch on its way to China, to protest China’s record on human rights, and in France they were able to actually extinguish it, twice. So when the torch reached San Francisco, organizers tried something different: they switched the torch’s route at the last possible moment.

Now the bait-and-switch had obviously been taken to the next level: instead of being flown to India, as reported, the torch was here, in Vermont, on Church Street, headed straight for me.

And suddenly I knew what I had to do. Just as the torch passed me, I would reach between the bodyguards and douse the flame with my Big Gulp. Because in my Vermont it’s not okay to work innocent people for pennies an hour, or to attack them with tanks, or to try and create your own Dalai Lami, in order to confuse believers.

But just as the bodyguards dog-trotted into range, I remembered something else, a piece by VPR commentator John Morton that ran years ago, called “The Torch.”

In it, Morton talked about seeing the torch run in Canada to the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, and being allowed himself to pass it hand to hand in a little mountain village called Canmore. The thing I remember most about the piece was Morton’s deep pride in that flame, the pride of a man who’d been an Olympic athlete, a trainer and a team leader. He saw it as a way to unite the world, and everyone in it, no matter who, no matter what.

And I realized then that I also sided with Morton: in my Vermont, people don’t snuff out the Olympic flame, no matter who, no matter what.

But that meant my Vermont was a mass of political contradictions. Which is fine: like Walt Whitman, it’s large, it can contain multitudes.

But what to do about the torch?

I’m not going to lie; I did the only thing I could. As the massive Chinese security team jogged by, I shook every one of their hands real good, covering them with some strange red American substance that burned with the heat of a thousand suns.

[This commentary ran first on Vermont Public Radio. Audio of the piece is available here.]

October 10th, 2007

In Which Bernie Saves the World (Now With Audio, Including Bad Sanders Imitation!)

by Philip Baruth

Announcer: Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff came to Burlington recently, to tout a new form of identification known as the “enhanced driver’s license.” Commentator Philip Baruth was curious to find out just how “enhanced” his license could get.

chertoff

Notes from the New Vermont
Commentary #205: Enhanced Is As Enhanced Does

You’ve probably heard that starting next summer, Americans will need passports to get in and out of Canada. Even if you just slide over the border for a quick smoked meat sandwich — papers, please.

And honestly, the prospect has left New Englanders heavily bummed. Because let’s face it: we have some issues with authority up here.

So when Michael Chertoff flew in to Burlington last week to offer a compromise, I was all ears.

And the pitch sounded good: instead of a passport, Chertoff said, Vermonters will be able to apply for something called an “enhanced driver’s license” — a license containing a radio-frequency computer chip.

Of course the ACLU has challenged these RFID chips because they allow the wearer to be easily tracked. But Chertoff pointed out that I could save about 40$ bucks using an enhanced license instead of renewing my passport.

Bingo — I was sold.

Now, the enhanced Vermont licenses are part of a very small pilot program. And it turns out that even a small pilot program needs its own micro-pilot program, or at least that’s what Chertoff told me when he called to offer me my very own enhanced license, way before anyone else on the list.

In fact, the only other people getting one were Bernie Sanders and some Quaker anti-war activists, but Chertoff said the pilot-pilot program had to start somewhere.

So last Saturday, I get the enhanced license in the mail, and I’m not gonna lie to you: it was an emotional moment. I’m a guy who’s always wanted his driver’s license to be all it could be, and here it was, shiny, smart, holographic. I drove down North Avenue feeling like the bee’s knees.

And then my back pocket started talking.

At first I couldn’t make out the words, just muffled sounds. But the weird thing was they were sounds with a thick Brooklyn accent.

And that’s when it hit me: somehow Bernie’s radio ID chip had crossed frequencies with mine, and I was picking up his voice with my wallet.

And obviously his wallet was picking up mine, because when I said, “Bernie?” there was a pause, and then I heard Bernie say, “Phil, is that you? Look, apparently they’ve sold us a bill of goods with these driver’s licenses.”

I was about to agree with him, but Bernie went on. “Phil, look out the windows of your car. Do you see any police cruisers?”

Sure enough, when I looked I did see what looked like unmarked police cars, way back in traffic.

“They’re all around me,” I told Bernie, trying to direct my voice toward my back pocket, which — if you’ve never tried to do it while driving — is really hard.

“This is a huge problem,” Bernie said, “huge. I’m also being followed. They’re all over me like white on milk. We only have one hope. And you have to trust me, Phil.”

So when Bernie told me to drive to the King Street Dock, walk onto the commuter ferry for New York, and flush my license down the ship’s toilet, that’s exactly what I did.

By the time I’d snuck back off the ship, the unmarked police cars had all been loaded on, and when the ferry sailed for New York, the men in black sailed with it.

I sat down on the dock, and a minute later, Bernie sat down too, and we watched the ferry angle out toward the Adirondacks.

“Now neither of us has even a normal driver’s license,” I pointed out.

But Bernie held up a finger. “True. But we do have our passports. And you know what that means.”

I shook my head, and Bernie said, “No matter what happens with Montreal, Phil, we’ll always have Paris.”

[This piece ran first on Vermont Public Radio. Audio of the commentary is available here.]

dems roll

June 15th, 2007

At Least We’re Not Uzbekistan: Considering The Merits of Being the Dominican Republic

by Philip Baruth

Yesterday, VDB-reader Tom sent an image that could have consumed an entire afternoon, if we’d let it. It’s a map of the United States of America, but with each state renamed for a country with a very similiar gross domestic product.

Texas is Canada. Enough said.

Vermont, in this particular case, becomes the Dominican Republic. Which feels simultaneously really good, and vaguely bad. On the one hand, the DR is gorgeous, and they gave us Julia Alvarez, now jealously guarded as a Vermont writer.

Here’s the detail of New England.

new england

On the other hand, the DR isn’t one of the world’s flourishing economies either. Which leads you to glance down the list of states to check Vermont’s relative position.

And yes, there it is, second from the bottom.

Rich only in comparison to Wyoming, so desperate a place that Dick Cheney — he of the two DWI’s and multiple draft deferments — seemed like an optimistic bet for Congress.

Of course, in this map Wyoming is Uzbekistan, which brings us back to feeling pretty darn smug about the whole Dominican Republic thing.

We may not have much, but we got our dignity.

April 2nd, 2007

The Shadow Administration Finds Its Shadow President: Senator Patrick Leahy

by Philip Baruth

When Jim Jeffords switched his party affiliation in 2001, wresting the US Senate briefly from Republican control, grateful Democrats started buying bumper stickers that read, “Don’t Mess with Texas.”

the Leahy Except the word “Texas” had been X-ed out and replaced with the word “Vermont.”

It was a cheeky bit of word play, and a reminder to Bush that even a pebble can stop a tank, if it gets wedged in there just right.

But if you step back for a moment and look at the last six years as a whole, something becomes pretty clear pretty fast: Vermont’s oppositional role to this Administration, and the forces behind it, is far larger and much more enduring than Jefford’s move alone.

Here are the highlights:

In April of 2000, the Vermont Legislature passes landmark civil unions legislation.

In May of 2001, Jeffords makes his move, and the Bush agenda grinds to a halt in the Senate.

Throughout 2002, Bernie Sanders buses seniors to Canada, dramatizing the difference in price for American prescription drugs and making national headlines. The White House, under intense political pressure, enacts a prescription drug benefit in 2003.

In 2003 and 2004, Howard Dean rides a wave of anti-war, anti-Bush sentiment to national prominence and the Chairmanship of the DNC. As Chairman, Dean implements the 50-State Strategy, helping Democrats ride a second anti-war, anti-corruption wave back to majority status in 2006.

And now, following the transfer of Congressional power, Senator Pat Leahy is currently using the Judiciary Committee to aggressively confront, and methodically turn back, the Administration’s assertions of unitary executive authority. Peter Welch, for his part, has already begun to make a name for himself grilling administration empty-suits.

What this looks like to me, when I pull together all of these seemingly unrelated strands, is a shadow administration, contemporaneous with that of George W. Bush but in strong and continuous opposition to it.

This shadow administration began as a homegrown phenomenon, but the logic and the courage of its local aspects has led to sustained national backing from a center-left coalition across the United States.

If you doubt that, consider civil unions. When Dean signed the Civil Union legislation in 2000, his critics predicted the fall of civilization. They predicted it would destroy Dean’s national political career.

Four years later, civil unions seemed quaint and old-fashioned compared to same-sex marriage, and both Dick Cheney and George Bush endorsed civil unions prior to the vote in 2006.

How does that happen in a five-year period?

It can only happen in response to a vision of America that strikes a majority of Americans as socially and morally just. It can only happen in response to a vision that is aggressive and unafraid to square off against deeply entrenched federal power.

It can only happen, to put it bluntly, in Vermont.

Senator Patrick Leahy: The Shadow President

If Vermont has functioned as the winter quarters of constitutional democracy during the Bush years — and if the state has in fact produced an unofficial administration running in parallel to the President’s — then we should logically expect it to have produced its own shadow Executive.

A Shadow President, to coin a phrase.

And anyone who doubts that Patrick Leahy has stepped naturally and seamlessly into that role has yet to see the video of Leahy responding last week to the White House testimony offer in the US Attorney stand-off.

As viral video bits go, it is absolutely devastating.

Leahy and the Judiciary Committee had requested the testimony of Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other White House aides, to clarify their role in the firing of US Attorneys judged insufficiently loyal — and perhaps overzealous in their prosecution of Republican officials.

The White House had agreed to let the aides testify — as long as it occurred privately, not under oath, and without a record of any kind.

And that apparently sounded fair to Arlen Specter, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“If we don’t like what we get, we can always issue a subpoena, and move with a subpoena if we don’t like what we get. Why not take what we can get?” Specter mused, when the Judiciary Committee met to consider issuing subpoenas.

It was a stunningly bankrupt statement for someone of Specter’s years in Congress, someone with his level of knowledge of Bush Administration tactics.

Why not give in now, Specter argued in essence, and we can always muster up the energy to fight back later? Why not trust the unitary executive one more time, although his Attorney General has come all the way up the Hill to lie to us more than once in the past, most recently about the very scandal under discussion?

Why issue subpoenas, in short, when doing so would court a Constitutional crisis, a crisis now rather than later?

Leahy’s response was an instant-classic.

His face was a thundercloud, and his voice was the voice of New England probity itself. “No, what we’re told we can get is nothing. Nothing, nothing. We’re told that we can have a closed-door meeting, with no transcript, not under oath, limited number of people, and the White House will determine what the agenda is. That, to me, is nothing.”

In short, Leahy argued, we will pursue subpoenas because doing so will not initiate a Constitutional crisis. Rather, they will help resolve a crisis that has been long underway, a crisis not of our own making.

bush gets a subpeona

And the time is now.

If you closed your eyes and listened very carefully, Leahy’s words sounded like a very short but very powerful inaugural address.

And he looked every inch a President.

[This piece ran first in the Vermont Guardian.]

The Plundering of the Christmas Tree

Maverick Sarah Palin Reforms Existing National Borders: Russia and Canada Now “In the State That I Am The Executive Of”

Canadians Love Us For Our Obama

In Which Quebec Likes VT A Lot

Conservative Pooping Puffins: Now That’s What We Here at VDB Call “Animated”

BREAKING: Daysie Awards Open For One More Week, And VDB Needs You To Stop Playing Online Texas Hold-Em And Vote

In Which VDB Confronts the Olympic Torch

In Which Bernie Saves the World (Now With Audio, Including Bad Sanders Imitation!)

At Least We’re Not Uzbekistan: Considering The Merits of Being the Dominican Republic

The Shadow Administration Finds Its Shadow President: Senator Patrick Leahy

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