"By(e,) By(e) Rob Williams"

I recall that a year and a half ago to this very day that Rob Williams peed all over himself when he discovered a typo on this blog. Spell checking seems to be one of those claims to intelligence that neo-Confederats make since they don't really have much else going for them. That's why I just about burnt the biscuits when I saw this at that haven for racists and anti-Semites, LewRockwell.com.

Longtime activist for the neo-Confederate, white supremacist hate group called the League of the South, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a contributor to the Holocaust denial publication, The Journal of Historical Review (here) yesterday publish his boot licking review of a neo-Confederate book repetitive piece of Constitutionally unsound nonsense that he contributed to while making the usual ludicrous claims of historical accuracy that you'd expect from a historical revisionist like DiLorenzo.

DiLorenzo is well known for his hatred of the 14th Amendment with its pesky guarantees of due process, equal protection for civil rights and citizenship rights. He depises unions and has argued that there are benefits to sweatshops, and justs lu-u-uvs the Confederate flag and white supremacist groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) that has been roiled by turmoil for years over some of their members not being sufficiently racist.

Very much like the Vermont wash ashores such as the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Thomas J. Naylor, our own Magnolia Vermonter; the loopy drag impersonator of Ethan Allen, Jim Hogue; the yet-to-be Senator Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner; Rob Williams; Connecticut native Dennis Steele and the rest of the Vermont historical revisionists, DiLorenzo inflates in his junk history the importance of the spiraling and increasingly irrelevant Nowheremen of SVR.

This is likely the post that got DiLorenzo's Lost Cause panties in a knot.

Now, normally I wouldn't pay much attention to what DiLorenzo has to say about Vermont. Other than being an advisor to Naylor's dying organization, SVR, DiLorenzo means zip here. But he's one of those guys who participates in that neo-Confedrate circle jerk of calling each other "scholars."

(Click on Screen Cap to Embiggen)

You know, you get to be a "scholar," you get to be a "Scholar," and you get to be a "SCHOLAR," unh, Unh, UNH... Problem is though that the neo-Confederate, LOS "scholar" that Rob Williams has gotten into bed with doesn't proof read his own crap so that the Perfesser inadvertently says "by(e) by(e)" to not-so-much a Vermonter and growingly longtime absent from the secesher scene, Rob Williams.

What a bunch of pathetic, self-diddling assholes.

Please pardon any typos.

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Another Cynical Act by Thomas H. Naylor at the Second Vermont Republic

One thing about secessionists is that you can always count on them to take the most disingenuous course in advancing The Lost Cause.

Today's post at the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor's website provides more evidence of the contempt he has for Vermonter's and their memories of his group of losers.

Today is March 27, 2012. I get a daily Google Alert on anything Naylor churns out. I'd visited his website yesterday so I know that the post, "Vermont Yankee and Vermont Independence: A Call for Action on March 22", wasn't there then or in the days leading up to, during or immediately after the demonstration at Vermont Yankee.

Naylor's post today is an unattributed reprint written by his embed in the Occupy Vermont movement, Matt Cropp. Naylor, Cropp and secesher senate candidates Robert Wagner and Peter Garritano have been lamprey-like in how they temporarily attach themselves to much more credible public policy advocates but Naylor's unattributed, undated post of a stale, nearly week old "call for action" written by one of his minions is a new low, even for him.

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Dennis Morrisseau Wants to Assemble a Hit List.

Care to guess what group his list would be exclusively comprised of?

One would expect that last week's revelation that the would be Vermont secessionist candidate for an Addison County senate seat, Robert Wagner, was involved in an outrageous public online discussion that had him saying that a 34 year old, drugged, African-American, mother of four who died during the commission of an armed robbery of a convenience store "Needed killin'," while at the same time he was ignoring a very similar robbery involving a white perpetrator, would be hard to top.

But then Vermonters would just need to remember that Dennis Morrisseau, who Wagner has called his "friend" and has been listed by Wagner as one of the five candidates running as a secesher candidate for a senate seat has a record of a series of hostile community actions over the years like, for instance, his plan to give one-way tickets to the homeless in Burlington to ship them all out of state; as well, he is an outspoken misogynist and proponent of "sappy glurges" that present a false view of the past. Denny's been running unsuccessfully as a Republican, Democrat, independent and Liberty Union candidate for a whole raft of offices since the early 70s. He's hatched one kooky plan after another that never, ever garners any public support except among fringers like Wagner, Rob Williams, Thomas Naylor and others in the "small community" of Vermont seceshers. He's even proposed throwing out the electoral process for legislative positions and replacing it with a system based on that used for a jury draw to draft representatives and senators that would be limited two terms only. Now there's an idea: everyone in a pool to prospectively serve as a representative or senator, regardless of suitability. Imagine that guy down the road who chases away the neighborhood cats and yells at kids who run across his lawn being drawn as the county senator because his name is on the voter checklist, not because he's, you know, qualified or something. Or, say, stable.

This time, however, Denny's elected to cross a line that would cause most of his fringer buddies to pause.

The "sort of" announced candidate for one of the Vermont senate seats in Rutland County (well, he's got a campaign website here although he hasn't posted anything there in more than six months), despite having the kind of very checkered past that would cause even the most committed secesher to think twice about running, has apparently now decided that being openly anti-Semitic will be a plus for his thusfar unrequited electoral desire.

For those of you who haven't heard of Denny, which will likely be most if not all of you, I'll give a brief outline, but if you already know this flake you may want to skip to the next paragraph about his most recent outrage.

Denny is a malcontent who first gained attention as a military officer who disobeyed orders and, as a result, underwent court martial proceedings which resulted in his resignation which he's been known to call his retirement. He still likes to refer to himself as second lieutenant Morrisseau as the url at his campaign website indicates (http://2ltmorrisseau.com). But then Denny's unhinged worldview also permits him to see nothing odd about his calling himself the "Very Foriegn Minister" of the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor's nonexistent Second Vermont Republic; he's a 9/11 Truther that like all such conspiracy addled clowns has no evidence whatsoever to support his, uh, thinking; in the 1980's, long before his ascension to his present exalted position as SVR's VFM, Denny came up with a nasty scheme that I mentioned above to give Vermont's homeless people one way tickets out of state - he even sought nonprofit status for his hateful enterprise which of course he didn't get.

Here's what Denny said during one of his raving misogynist episodes about a female Vermont journalist:

"We will seduce her."
[then, in that ALLCAPS style that he so often likes to affect]
"Because I savaged her in our first few exchanges."
"Now I am making nice. And she likes that better. So she is liking me better......"
"Before I punched her she did not know me or care a fig........"
"Now she sees I can laugh, I am playful....possibly intelligent...and I differ with her........"
"She begins to be intrigued."
"We have to be lovers to these sorts...... I know that is a little crass....but it's DO OR DIE time."
[and then after another of his mood swings]
"No reason for her to breathe OR DO WHAT SHE DOES.....unless she is a SPOOK."
"NOBOCY(sic) is that venal from stupidity."

Denny's been involved in that clown car 9/11 Truther crap for years, an essential part of which is that the World Trade Center towers and the adjacent Building 7 collapse didn't happen because of 19 terrorists but, rather, because the Mossad wired the buildings to explode in an elaborate Bush neocon/Israeli government plot to create a war climate in the US. Last month a collection of anti-Semitic nut jobs were commenting at a noted anti-Semitic website operated by Paul Craig Roberts who, not so surprisingly, is a favorite of the various Vermont secesher websites. Roberts columns also appear at the white supremacist, hate group website, VDare.com, a website devoted to pseudoscientific, racist material, as well as at American Free Press, an ultra-right-wing Holocaust denial publication, and has, like secesher leaders Thomas Naylor and Kirkpatrick Sale, been a featured guest on the white supremacist, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denying Internet hate radio program, The Political Cesspool here. Naturally, Roberts is a favored observer of the world scene who is heavily promoted at the neo-Nazi website maintained by David Duke. After Roberts went over to the very dark side he was dropped by the mainstream publications, like the Wall Street Journal, that he'd worked for up to 2006. Denny wrote to some of the other anti-Semites who were commenting at Roberts hate site here:

"It’s clear to all of us that have studied the 9/11 event now, for some 10 years, WHO DID THE THING.
And a lot is known too about how it was done. I don’t disagree with you on this, nor with Sabrowsky."

[Editor's Note: The Sabrowsky that Denny's referring to has been correctly described as, "Alan Sabrosky, a columnist for Veterans Today, an anti-Semitic website, is one of most widely cited sources for anti-Semitic 9/11 myths, according to the ADL. Sabrosky has declared his mission to “contain” Israel’s ambition by exposing Israel’s alleged role in 9/11 and maintains that Washington and New York are the centers of “Zionist power” here.]

And here's the money quote from Denny:

"I have suggested here and elsewhere that we should begin to post the perps’ names and physical addresses
on a permanent electronic board somewhere, so that nature can begin taking it’s course. [On the thoery(sic) that a few such take downs would have some chance of stopping what is coming if we do not act.]"

"I include “international financiers” and certain Likudniks and media moguls on my personal list."

"But I still think taking action BEFORE utter collapse and explosion is a smart thing to do if we can engineer a way……..just to avoid all the blood and destruction. To me, a nationwide assault on the entire sitting Congress en masse, and known to all, pitched to all as the only possible peaceful revolutiong(sic), does have a shot if presented right that might allow us to regain the power of we the people. Thus it could defeat what I agree is a massive and evil zionist design. And it would save decent people of all cultures……"
d m w pawlet, vt
By: dennis morrisseau . February 12, 2012 . 5:35 pm

Oy! "Avoid all the blood and destruction" by exterminating some Jews. That has a familiar ring to it. No, I'm not talking about the Hitler thing. Some of you may recall that 15 years ago a Christian mule fucker (not a typo) and Southern secessionist, Neal Horsley, created a similar list called the Nuremberg Files. Women's healthcare provider's names and addresses were listed online and when one would be killed, the name would get a line drawn throught it. Maybe that's a feature that Denny Morrisseau is also considering for his hit list of Jews.

Just in case you may have any remaining questions about how friggin' delusional Denny is capable of being, he also wrote this in that anti-Semitic playground at Roberts' hate site:

"...A few years ago I wrote Jt Chiefs chairman Peter Pace and asked him to arrest Bush & Cheney. And then wrote a follow-up. Neither letter was ever answered. Of course, they would have been opened by others and so he may never have seen them..."
dm w pawlet, vt
By: dennis morrisseau . February 12, 2012 . 7:53 pm

Why am I not surprised that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wouldn't respond to a court martialed whacko or that Gen. Pace's staff may have chosen not to forward Denny's suggestion that the general violate his military oath in order to follow through on Denny's plan for a military coup.

More to come.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

"Needed Killin' " Revisited

The reaction to my revealing last week that the announced Vermont secessionist senatorial candidate for one of the Addison County seats, Robert Wagner, has been pretty much as expected. A few emails expressing outrage or wonderment from readers, some of whom would just as soon not have their names connected to Wagner's tasteless Facebook chat, and no walkback whatsoever from the remarks made a week ago that giddily proclaimed that an African-American woman "Needed killing' " by either the originator, Robert Wagner, or his seeming admirerer, Ripton resident Robin Blair Lewis.

Oh, there were a few tentative FB page security adjustments but nothing that dealt with the substance of what was said, nor has Wagner explained why he'd made no such comment about a similar, somewhat contemporaneous robbery story where the perpetrator was white.

Vermont seceshers have been afflicted with an ongoing tone deafness when it comes to matters having to do with race, from their numerous associations with out of state, white supremacist organizations and campaign contributors, to insensitive remarks by a secesher leader that it really isn't any of his "damn business" that a close associate might be a leader of a racist group, to repeatedly racist, extreme policy positions pertaining to the Middle East, as well as an unremitting intellectual (or as they prefer to call it, "scholarly") inbreeding that's created a surprising lack of awareness as to how they are seen by Vermonters.

Wagner needs to be aware that the racist undercurrent to his comment, when contrasted to his lack of commentary about a similar situation where the criminal was white, isn't going away.

Vermonters don't care for racist ideologues, particularly the surreptitious kind, and his inconsistencies will likely dog him through to November 6.

Meanwhile, in another matter related to Wagner's conflicting positions, there's been no word yet about whether Wagner will be returning the $288.30 subsidy he received while flying out of the airport in Rutland, VT, which is exactly the kind of subsidy that he "is strongly opposed to" and has argued harms Vermonters that I revealed he'd hypocritically availed himself of (as in sticking his snout in the federal money trough) here. Wagner must publicly give back that subsidy money or he'll be exposed for the hypocritical fraud that many of us Vermonters know him to be.

Coming soon: Dennis Morrisseau wants to create a hit list.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Addison County's Announced Secessionist Senate Candidate Robert Wagner Says That This Vermonter "Needed Killin' "

By now I've become a bit insulated from how weird Ripton resident and profoundly ineffectual political gadfly Robert Wagner can be. Merely weird would be calling himself "Senator" when he's never been elected to any office; merely weird would be referring to members of Vermont's General Assembly as his "learned colleagues"; merely weird would be railing on and on about the evils of federal subsidies and then taking one for himself on the sly when he thought no one would notice; merely weird would be trying to slip a secession poison pill into an ordinance proposal that sought to bypass both the Planning Commission and the Town Meeting petition process.

Today I found that Robert Wagner had transitioned from merely weird to full on batshit crazy weird.

On one of his several Facebook pages I saw this creepy exchange between him and another Ripton resident, Robin Blair Lewis in a post that he strangely titled "Good News. A Vermonter exonerated for being a Vermonter." The post was about an event that can only be described as a tragedy that occurred at a Vergennes, VT convenience store. (NB: Robin Blair Lewis' FB page and links on Wagner's FB page have fluttered on and off - will update as necessary. 3/21)

That's right, Lewis' response to Wagner's saying that the woman "needed killin' " was,

"NEEDED KILLIN'. Lol, always good to hear other people feel the same way I do."

Lol?

The backstory to this sad affair was that a 34 year old African-American woman with a drug history attempted to rob a convenience store in Vergennes, VT. The store "clerk on duty wrestled a knife away from Sprauve and held her down on the floor. She was unresponsive when police arrived and died on the way to the hospital."

Consistent with state law,

"The medical examiner ruled Sprauve's death a homicide, saying pressure on her chest from Phillips holding her down in combination with acute cocaine intoxication caused her heart to stop."

"Addison County State's Attorney David Fenster says no criminal charges will be brought against Phillips."

Had the woman survived she would have probably faced a potential 15 year sentence for her crime. But, according to the self-declared secessionist candidate for the Addison County senate seat presently held by Claire Ayer (D-Addison) (thus revealing even more about his profound ignorance of Vermont's electoral process) Robert Wagner, Sprauve, a mother of four, "Needed killin'." Much as you'd expect, Wagner's giddy, blood lusting Facebook colleague and neighbor, Robin Blair Lewis, even offers tips for how to deal with those that "(Need) killin'."

Wagner's political mentor, the Magnolia Vermonter and Dixie singin' baas of the moribund Second Vermont Republic said to Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam last year,

"In a left-wing state like Vermont, politics are basically grounded in anger and fear."

In truth it's been Naylor and his "small community" of seceshers that have sought repeatedly to inject anger and fear in Vermont politics.

In 2010, the nutters that comprised the secessionist slate of conspiracy addled, power needy candidates chatted in what they thought was a private listserv about just such things. One, Gaelan Brown, suggested that lying legislators should be charged with a "capital offense" - yeah, that's right, legislators who, according to some secesher asshole have lied, "(need) killin' ." And these are the guys (Wagner & Brown) that Thomas H. Naylor innocently described as his "Internet cowboys."

Hmm, "killin' " drugged moms or lying legislators; is that a slippery slope that Vermonters expect their would be leaders to be advocating on behalf of? And don't forget that Wagner has accused all of Vermont's legislators of stealing from all Vermonters. Is the Vermont State House Sergeant at Arms staff keeping an eye on this guy when he's roaming the building with his backpack of grudges? Just askin'.

And when "Senator" Wagner says that some people "(need) killin'," are he and his allies just sayin' that there are some Vermonters that deserve to be killed? If so, I'd like to hear his list of offenses that he would apply his "needed killin' " standard to besides armed robbers with a drug addiction. Would that also apply to the white, armed with a gun, 20 year old robber who just got 90 days for the stick-up he successfully pulled off in Barre last December?

News sources for this post can be found here, here, here and here

Meanwhile, in another matter related to Wagner's conflicting positions, there's been no word yet about whether Wagner will be returning the $288.30 subsidy he received while flying out of the airport in Rutland, VT, which is exactly the kind of subsidy that he "is strongly opposed to" and has argued harms Vermonters that I revealed he'd hypocritically availed himself of (as in sticking his snout in the federal money trough) here. Wagner must publicly give back that subsidy money or he'll be exposed for the hypocritical fraud that many of us Vermonters know him to be.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

It Seems That Another League of the South Sycophant Is Miffed With This Blog

In a rather overwrought post that he titled "PC hit squad attacks The Ohio Republic" the blog's author, Harold Thomas, gets his panties in a knot over a change that I recently made in my Links column. I wrote here:

"On a more personally disappointing note, I've moving the Ohio Republic blog to the same column as Wagner's and Tuggle's, not so much because its author, Harold Thomas, espouses the sort of virulent hatred that oozes from sites like Wagner's, Tuggle's and, of course, Naylor's, but because of the open support he offers Tuggle's vile LOS website.

From that rather direct statement, that Harold is a supporter of much of what goes on in the LOS and thus enables the white supremacist League of the South blog called Rebellion, Thomas contorts reason to synthesize several untrue representations of my positions, opinions and "real agenda." Harold even goes so far as to fetch from the right-wing toolbox of baseless charges that are de rigueur for attacks by a paleoconservative (as he chooses to identify himself) that is the very essence of an allegation intended to eliminate all question as to who is right in a discussion while at the same time donning the mantle of supposed victimhood. Funny but I thought Harold was smart enough to know that use of the term is itself an attempt at to use political correctness and that is why most people with any sense have long ago stopped using it. Here's a definition of political correctness that would seem to leave me out. I've been accused of a lot but never as being a "whining pussy." I leave that to libertarians.

It's much like the old joke, "Libertarians don't want the government telling you what to do; that's what libertarians are there to do."

Cognitive dissonance is often a feature of Harold's posts on this, that and every other friggin' thing under the sun. The post in which he complains about his proper placement among enablers of white supremacism contains this gem:

"The League of the South really is a controversial organization, and does include some avowed white supremacists among its leadership. However, the League does not openly espouse racism in its policy statements..."

Earth to Harold: LOS and Rebellion regularly serve up the same repast of race-baiting gruel, including twisted rationales for race separation. What part of the "espous(al of) racism in its policy statements" don't you get?

Harold's sympathies are not so far removed from the "dog-whistle racism" of Mike Tuggle as he might have us believe. Two years ago today, when Harold mistakenly believed that the white supremacist blog Rebellion was shutting down, he wrote this love letter farewell to an old friend that included one of the premier racist touchstones of the 19th and 20th centuries, "Dixie":

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010.

Farewell to an old friend
"Longtime readers of The Ohio Republic know that one of my favorite sources of information was the blog Rebellion. I was notified last week that it had ceased publication. It was unquestionably a Southern blog, with its continuing guerrilla war against the Southern Poverty Law Center and its peculiar attitude toward Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We made a gentlemen's agreement to disagree over the latter issue. A unique feature in recent months was the "Southern music break."

"However, Rebellion contained interesting news and comment about federal follies and secessionism that was not readily available elsewhere – so they were the largest single recipient of virtual buckeyes* from The Ohio Republic. Rebellion was more than a weblog – it was a forum, with some of the most interesting and spirited discussion to appear anywhere in the blogosphere. For many Southrons and this writer, it will be sorely missed."

"Its blogger, Mike Tuggle ("Old Rebel") will remain active, concentrating on growing his organization and working on its quarterly newspaper, Free Magnolia."

"We'll send it off by striking up the band with a rendition of an old Ohio show tune by Daniel Emmett, originally known as In Dixie's Land."

Show tune? "Gentlemen's agreement?" Really???

For any of readers of this blog who may be unfamiliar with the "In Dixie's Land" history, it's straight out of our country's racist past. It was a New York "show tune" long before Ohioans claimed this racist crap as their own. The "show tune" writer that Harold refers to, Daniel Emmett, is the "founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition" who wrote extensively for and performed with Bryant's Minstrel's, a troupe that was a hit with both Northern and Southern racists in that troubled time before, during and after the Civil War, also known as the War to Preserve Slavery. Even Emmett, who was reknown for his black-face caricatures of African-Americans (or "slaves" as they were then known) complained that "If I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it."

Oh, and Harold, I never "advised" you of shit, no more than you, say, advised me of your new book (I hope you do better than Thomas H. Naylor's who usually ranks in the umpteenth million percentile). I just made the Links change along with a few others in a housekeeping post and you went batshit crazy over it.

I did notice in your Comments in that "whiny" post of yours that you're getting support from an anti-Semitic proponent of "homogeneous communities" (read: "segregated"), as well as one who has a particularly odious castration fantasy, Carol Moore. Figures. No doubt Carol considers you to be a sufficiently neutered libertarian that she now deigns to comment at you blog despite your having once said,

"I also agree with you about Carol Moore, and yes, I have learned to handle her with caution. She has rather heavily colored a couple of comments about me with her worldview, which I do not share."

[and]

"I think Carol Moore's sunspot theory is loony."

Harold engages in "gentlemen's agreements," attracts "loony" bigots to his blog, lauds racist tropes like minstrel shows and hides behind the shield of supposed "political correctness attacks" of others because he can't quite come to terms with his own internal bigotry.

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Rob Williams Continues to Maintain His Ties to League of the South White Supremacists

Since the Vermont Commons newsletter folded last fall we've heard little from its former publisher, Rob Williams. A couple of movie reviews or some such (I keep expecting to see his various recipes for the crow he's been munching on throughout this winter) but little more.

Williams is a part of the Associate Faculty at Champlain College in Burlington, VT. He has something to do with "Creative Media" at the college. That figures. He's been "creatively" making shit up for years. You know, like the Vermont secesher movement is doing better than being on life support since its inception.

It was in February of 2010 that Williams made his intellectual hajj to the center for restoration of the Confederacy, The Abbeville Institute, to become a contributor to the eventual output of a conference entitled, "State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order," a book about the alternative historical universe inhabited by Vermont secessionists and their neo-Confederate allies.

A little history at this point will be beneficial:

Yankee Secessionist Back in Cahoots with Neo-Confederates
Posted in Neo-Confederate by Rob Waters on October 1, 2009

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed an unsavory collaboration between the Second Vermont Republic (SVR), a quirky left-leaning band of New England secessionists, and the white supremacist League of the South, long categorized by the SPLC as a hate group. Their shared goal was to build a national secession movement.

The SPLC report, titled “North Meets South,” also documented links between SVR founder and leader Thomas H. Naylor and other extremist organizations. Naylor has appeared on the hate radio program “The Political Cesspool,” which is run by white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens board member James Edwards. He is also an associate scholar at the Atlanta-based Abbeville Institute, which is run by former League of the South leader Donald Livingston and is devoted to the ignored “achievements of white people in the South.”

Naylor initially denounced the SPLC story, calling it “a vicious attack spearheaded by the well-financed, hate-mongering, witch-hunting, left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.” He cited no factual errors. But a few weeks later, he had second thoughts. In a letter that appeared to signal an end to the alliance, he called on the League to distance itself from racism and hatred. In the July 4, 2008, letter, he wrote, “So long as the albatross of racism hangs around its neck, the LOS can never be a truly effective partner for SVR.” His own group, he said, “risks being tainted by the scourge of racism simply by associating with the LOS.” He provided a few helpful suggestions for the League: Renounce racism, recruit black members, bring in black speakers, and promote Southern racial unity. And one more thing: “the Confederate flag has got to go!”

The divorce didn’t last long, however. Naylor and a close ally, prominent New York leftist writer and editor Kirkpatrick Sale, are now scheduled to speak at a conference on secession being organized by the Abbeville Institute. They will share the stage at the Charleston, S.C., conference in February with neo-Confederate scholars such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Clyde Wilson and Livingston, the Abbeville Institute founder. All three have current or past links with the League of the South. (Go here for profiles of DiLorenzo, Livingston and Wilson.)

The title of the conference is “State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order.”

Reached by telephone at his home in Vermont, Naylor declined to discuss the state of his relations with the neo-Confederates. “This has nothing to do with race,” he said. “It’s the SPLC that’s the hate group. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

SOURCE

At the 2010 conference a plot was hatched to compile yet another group of essays by secesher "scholars" called Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century that forecasts yet more light at the end of the secesher tunnel and rehashes the various rationales for their thinking. You know, like "it's an 'emerging' movement that's poised to take off at any moment." You just wait and see. No, no, not this very minute but they're getting really, really close. Just you wait. And wait. And wait...

The reality that escapes the SVR deadenders like founder Thomas H. Naylor (an "associate scholar" at the "old times there are not forgotten" Abbeville Institute) and Williams, his former co-chairman at SVR , is that secession in Vermont is as dead as "the Lost Cause." In the book Williams' contribution elevates a bumper sticker he created (no, really!) to the status of a "scholarly essay" that is nothing more than a part of Williams' lame try a creating an Internet meme. His collaboration with the neo-Confederates on this project, "Chapter 7: Most Likely to Secede: U.S. Empire and the Emerging Vermont Independence Effort”, is just one more nail in the self-inflicted coffin of his movement's reputation. Their efforts to get secession articles on even one of Vermont's Town Meeting warnings over the past 5 years have been completely unsuccessful due to Vermonter's disdain for Williams and his fellow secesher's ties to white supremacists, racists, anti-Semites and homophobes. In not one Vermont town are voters buying into their nonsense. The handful of seceshers that ran as candidates in 2010 for various top of the statewide ticket offices squeaked into the low single digits, usually coming in last as the sesechers on the ballot (in Rutland County two seceshers came in last and next to last); the top of the ticket barely made three quarters of 1% of the vote (roughly the same amount that occurs as spoilt ballots in any election). Secesher Robert Wagner's sneaky attempt to introduce a secession ordinance at this past Monday's Town Meeting in Ripton, VT went down in flames.

And so we come to the book. Finally, one of the sham radicals at the Vermont Commons blog, Juliet Buck, a fairly recent addition to Williams kickline of dullards, conspiracy theorists, 9/11 Truthers, anti-Semites and white supremacists that have contributed to his publishing endeavors, wrote a blog post plug for the book, that was a complete cut and paste from the book publisher's website. The publisher, Pelican Publishing Company or Pelican Press, has been an institution of the neo-Confederate community since 1926:

"(A)lthough neo-Confederacy is reactionary and contains racist, sexist, elitist and antidemocratic positions, these are glossed over with a scholarly veneer of closely argued rationales, references to legislative precedents and philosophical treatises. "
[snip]
"(W)hen examining the proposals forwarded in neo-Confederate publications, it is evident that race is central to this ideology. The 1950s and 1960s are regularly invoked as the decades in which American society spiraled into terminal decline. Integration of schools is lamented, desegregation is derided as "social engineering" and policies like school busing and affirmative action are depicted as vindictive attempts to merge whites and African-Americans together to produce a single, ethnically homogenous and racially undefined identity. Leading neo-Confederate authors argue that racial animosities are now greater than ever in U.S. history and that the periods of slavery and Jim Crow segregation were eras of harmonious race relations."

"Advocates of neo-Confederacy articulate their arguments in numerous books, magazines and websites. One common practice is to reprint copies of pro-Confederate nineteenth century texts, such as those by Confederate Army Chaplain Robert Louis Dabney (1820-1898) and Mathematics Professor and Slavery Apologist Albert Bledsoe (1809-1877). Another is to produce new materials that advocate neo-Confederacy. Often written in a breathless style that makes the reader feel as if they are becoming privy to long-suppressed truths, the most prominent publisher of neo-Confederate texts is Pelican Books of Gretna, La. Its catalogue, which has important books outlining neo-Confederate sentiments, also contains several overwrought polemics including Michael Andrew Grissom's Southern by the Grace of God; James and Walter Kennedy's Was Jefferson Davis Right? and The South Was Right!; Walter Kennedy's Myths of American Slavery and Gordon Thornton's The Southern Nation: The New Rise of the Old South. Other significant neo-Confederate books include Frank Conner's The South Under Siege (1830-2000) which argues that Jews from northern states instigated and funded the African-American civil rights movement and used Martin Luther King, Jr., as a puppet in an effort to "destroy Christianity" and Southern Slavery As It Was by Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson, which selectively interprets slave narratives and rehashes pro-slavery arguments of the mid-nineteenth century to argue that the practice was benign, sanctioned by God and was used as a "pretext" by Unionists to prosecute a war fought over the "biblical meaning of constitutional government" in an effort to suppress Christianity."

SOURCE

For those of you who don't know or may have forgotten, the editor of the book of essays that Rob Williams contributed to is none other than a former early board member of the League of the South, Donald Livingston, who,

"Shortly after the formation of the League of the South in 1994, Livingston became the first director of the League of the South Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, which was organized to further the group's revisionist takes on American history."

SOURCE

and about whom Williams once famously said,

"Is (Livingston) a racist? I don't know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level."

SOURCE

Livingston was once famously quoted as having said,

"the North created segregation"

SOURCE

I wrote at length last fall about Williams and Livingston's essay compilation regarding their "historical alternative universe" here. Juliet Buck, Williams' book flogging toady, has gotten around to her own cheap promotion of that predictable collection of revisionist thought by reprinting in toto the publisher's promotion. She didn't mention much else about the other contributors who include a North Carolina delegate to the neo-Confederate Southern National Congress, Kirkpatrick Sale; "League of the South" bigwig, Pres. Abraham Lincoln basher and contributor to the anti-Semitic, Holocaust denial publication, The Journal of Historical Review, Thomas DiLorenzo; a minor figure in the neo-Confederate movement who was on the masthead as an advisor of the now defunct neo-Confederate Journal of Confederate History, Kent Masterson Brown; and perhaps even more absurdly, an essay from a wingnut who has claimed that Southern secessionists did not do so with the intent to preserve slavery and that therefore the Confederate flag is not a symbol of oppression and hatred but merely one that honors heritage and pride, one Marshall DeRosa.

One can only wonder what was going through Williams' head when he agreed to go all in with these nutters on a book edited by a founder of the "League of the South."

More on the neo-Confederates that Williams has thrown in with may be found at Ed Sebesta's excellent website here.

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Thomas H. Naylor: Still Crazy After All These Years!

Monday, March 5, was Town Meeting eve in Vermont. Many Vermonters, particularly those concerned with budgets, or issues like nuclear freezes, Citizens United, the impeachment of Cheney and Bush that frequently come up at meetings across the state, or simply the vagaries of local politics, are focused on informational meetings being held in some towns or the voting scheduled for the following day.

But not Thomas Naylor.

Naylor, who has offered to lead ignorant Vermonters away from what he calls an "empire" to, well, I'm not so sure that even he's clear on where he's headed on that any longer, seems to have a larger issue in his sights. His Second Vermont Republic secession idea is kaput. The few seceshers that remain around the state rarely, if ever now, mention his name. Here's one of the reasons why:

Instead of offering an essay on Town Meeting in some fashion, Naylor released a tirade of ani-Semitic bile. I don't mean of the sort that takes issue with policies of the present Israeli government. No, no, while heaping praise on Mahmoud (“In Iran, we dont have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon") Ahmadinejad, Naylor takes issue with the very existence of an Israeli state and proposes, via his website on March 5 and then the next day (Town Meeting Day) at Counterpunch here, citing his comrade in anti-Semitism, the North Carolina delegate to the neo-Confederate Southern National Congress and maybe former advisor to Naylor's SVR, Kirkpatrick Sale, that Israel was a "mistake" and that the "mistake" of Israel can be undone. Worse still, he cites as a source for his diatribe a man who describes himself as a "self-hating Jew," Gilad Atzmon, and who "defines himself as anti-Jewish." Atzmon has called the burning of synagogues a "rational act," has endorsed the ideology of the fictional and extremely anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion and questions the relevance, indeed the very truth of the Holocaust. Atzmon compares Jews to Nazis. Little wonder that neo-Nazi David Duke and anti-Semitic, white supremacist writers like Kevin B. MacDonald also love Atzmon. Atzmon, like Naylor, firmly believes that American foreign policy is under the direct control of Jews, not just Israelis.

But I suppose that we should be thankful that on Town Meeting eve Naylor didn't pen (with that famous green felt tipped pen of his) one of his repetitive attacks on virtually everything and everyone who isn't a secesher; like his past bashing of Vermont's voters, National Guard members, legislators, congressional delegation, churches, clergy, schools, public institutions and places of higher learning, as he has so many times. You might even be excused for thinking that such an attack by Naylor on Town Meeting eve would have made more sense, but you'd be forgetting:

"Thomas H. Naylor: Still Crazy After All These Years!"

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One of Vermont's US Senators, Bernie Sanders, is to Face a Challenge from a Secessionist Candidate in 2012

During the recent run up to Town Meeting Day this year, the mainstream media missed the announcement of a heretofore unknown champion of the ideals first expressed by Vermont's own Magnolia Vermonter, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor.

Dylan Patrick Ward, a novice politico and Bellows Falls resident, is bound to make an impact on the 2012 election as he introduces Vermont's newest political party, the Vermont Party for Secession and Mars Colonization. Ward's even included information about noteworthy and distinguished Vermont seceshers like Naylor and his embed in the Occupy movement, Vermont secessionist kingpin Matt Cropp, at his website here.

Of course, this is not the first sojourn by a Vermont secesher electoral aspirant into the final frontier. In September of 2010, while engaged in a secret dispatch to fellow Vermont seceshers on their highly classified Free Vermont listserv, Vermont secesher senate candidate for Washington County, Gaelan Brown, revealed:

"Personally I believe that it's likely that NASA has been collaborating with beings from other planets to mine the dark side of the moon in exchange for them giving us some of their technology."

"(I've seen unexplainable UFOs several times and I know a man who works for Carlisle who says there is heavy investment going on re infrastructure to mine the moon for titanium, H3 (nuclear fuel), and other minerals that are rare on earth.) I have also studied the chem.-trail and HARPP systems/history and there's a lot of sketchy activity in this category as well."

"But I'm not going to focus on these issues in my campaign."
SOURCE

I should let Vermont's newest political secesher speak for himself. Here is Ward's February 18 announcement:

Let's face it Vermonters.

We're better than the other 49.

We're healthier.

Friendlier.

More peaceful.

More in touch with nature.

Our food is the best

(O)ur beer is the best

Our crime is non existent

Our mountains and farms are pristine.

Our people are simple and gentle.

Our colleges are a good mix of quality and affordability (as far as colleges go) and we have a long history of being self sufficient. (see flood of 1927)

And who doesnt(sic) love Vermont?

Flatlanders flock to get a taste of an area that hasn't been completely ruined by technology and modernity

VPSMC sees this

We realize the supremacy of this great State and understand that now is the time, to go it alone.

The United States, once the greatest entrepreneurial empire the world has ever seen is spiralling uncontrollably into darkness.

Wars, Bailouts, a failing dollar, a stagnant economy and a cartoonish national debt are signing us all up for future slavery and suffering

VPSMC offers a five step plan to freeing Vermont from the shackles of the US federal government and Federal Reserve and positioning it as a world power with complete domination of the world economy and of space.

VPSMC is feilding(sic) a candidate in the 2012 senate election.

Dylan Patrick Ward, a senior at Bellows Falls Union High School will be challenging Sen. Sanders and whatever chicken shit moron the Republicans wheel out.

Mission
To expand Vermont, suceed(sic) from The UNion, conquer space, and rise from the rubble of the coming economic crises the one remaining world power.
SOURCE

Ah,"to be or not to be... perchance to dream; ay, therin lies the rub." You see, in young master Ward's zeal to bring change to Vermont, he's misunderstood election law, in that age of majority (or puberty, whichever comes first) is not a part of the criteria for eligibility to run for the US Senate. That exalted state of eligibility comes at the age of 30. Ward could not be sworn into said office until January 3 of 2025 and, should Ward somehow prevail, 12 years will be quite a long time for Vermont to do without its junior US Senator. By the time that Ward could be sworn in, Vermont's senior Senator, Patrick Leahy, would be fast closing in on Robert Byrd's record 51 year US Senate stay.

My standing practice has never been to suggest whether or not someone should vote for or not vote for some particular secesher who is running for an office. My only concern is for the true facts about their qualifications and, more particularly, those facts not being disclosed by the would be secesher candidates. Young master Ward appears at this time to be eminently "unqualified" for the office of United States Senator, however I don't think that should deter Ward's ambition to make a difference. Certainly he's demonstrated a capability for insight that escapes the usual cast of secesher losers and malcontents. He actually likes Vermont and Vermonters; he celebrates Vermont rather than disparaging its people and their supposed shortcomings in a barrage of negative attacks as so many of the presentday secesher pols choose to do.

Unlike his supposed secesher compatriots, I believe we can safely say that Bellows Falls high school senior, Dylan Patrick Ward, is seriously just a-funnin' us with his "advocacy." I don't think I've recently laughed so hard except for when I heard that Cris Ericson was running for something again - it may even be for the US Senate, too. Hopefully, should Ward ever be in the position to do so, he'll pack that first passage manifest to Mars with the Ericsons, Naylors, Cropps, Steeles, Wagners, Morrisseaus and the like, while he himself sticks around a bit longer to encourage us with his optimism and kind thoughts.

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Robert Wagner Plans to Play a Shell Game at This Coming Monday Night's Town Meeting in Ripton, VT

Wagner's written a ordinance for consideration at Ripton's Town Meeting this coming Monday evening and he says,

"I plan to bring it to my Town Meeting in (formerly bucolic [his words]) Ripton… just watch the sparks fly!"

SOURCE

Great! Wagner's no longer satisfied with bringing his angry attacks and negativity to the electoral process as he's done with his smears of his neighbor, Ripton's representative in the legislature, Rep. Willem Jewett (D-Ripton), and as well as every member of the Vermont legislature - senators and representatives - who he calls "corrupt" and "stealing from" Vermonters. He's going to mix it up in a big way at Ripton's Town Meeting.

There's a process, naturally, that's normally used by proponents of local legislation that's to be considered by the community. You get 5% of the town's voters to sign a petition to the selectboard to have the proposed ordinance placed on the Town Meeting warning. This is a good process for a number of reasons, not the least of which it gives the selectboard opportunity to have town counsel review the legality and constitutionality of the proposed ordinance, as well as having, if approved for the warning, the ordinance published for the benefit of the voters informed consideration. But if you've got a shaky ordinance with aspects that you'd rather people not take too close a look at, the route you do take has a great deal more in common with a shell game than an informative process. You can read Wagner's entire proposal here.

Here's the route that Wagner's chosen to take. Knowing that he'd successfully missed the cutoff for additions to the Ripton Town Meeting Warning, Wagner brought his proposed ordinance to the February 13 Ripton selectboard meeting. This from their minutes of that meeting:

"Robert Wagner attended to discuss an ordinance he proposes to ban smart meter installation in Ripton. His request to include a question about the ordinance came after the deadline for the Town Meeting Warning, and he was encouraged to raise the topic during Article 8: any other business. Smart meters replace existing electric meters and transmit a wireless signal to a utility company. Mr. Wagner opposes smart meter technology because of health and privacy concerns. The health concerns are due to constant, widely broadcast electromagnet- ic signals. The privacy concerns relate to the detailed information a utility company gathers, and the difficulty of keeping that information secure. He pointed out the ecological, energy saving argument in favor of the technology, and that for a monthly fee people may opt not to have one. The fee may make opting out not an option for those with low incomes. To help familiarize residents with smart meters and the plan for their installation in Ripton in 2012, Mr. Wagner will prepare handouts describing pros and cons of the technology for dis- tribution at town meeting. If considering adoption of an ordinance banning the meters, the selectboard will hear from those on both sides of the issue, and residents."

"There was discussion about town meeting procedures: specifically how to keep people from heading for refreshments during the closing Article: any other business; and the purpose of and procedure for the time given legislators, particularly for questions and answers. The town moderator will be informed of the concerns and suggestions offered."

"Mr. Wagner left the meeting at the end of discussion of these items."

Wagner spoke at length about Smart Meters, fees and unsubstantiated "health and privacy concerns." Given Wagner's long history of partisan misrepresentation, it is laughable to find that he's to "prepare handouts describing pros and cons of the technology." In particular because of the things that he apparently left out of his discussion with the selectboard, to wit, that Wagner's proposed law is patently unconstitutional. Wagner's ordinance proposes:

3. Statements of Law: Bill of Rights for Ripton Residents
(a number of Wagner's enumerated Bill of Rights for Ripton Residents openly conflict with state and federal law but I'm going to just cite here the most troubling one and come back to it later)
(e) The people are sovereign and shall have access to local government.

4.Statements of Law – Prohibitions:.
(c) Corporations cannot enforce state or federal preemptive law on the town of Ripton to override the ordinance.
(d) All local, state, federal permits that are in violation of this ordinance are nullified.

At this very moment there's a case at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit regarding a preemption issue that the state just lost. It remains to be seen if the federal judge's interpretation of the degree to which preemption is involved will be upheld but if he is, the state of Vermont may be on the hook for more than $4,600,000 in legal fees. Were Wagner's proposed ordinance to pass there'd be no doubt about the outcome for the preemption issue or the result for the Town should the matter find its way to state or federal court. Plain and simple, Ripton would lose the case. Worse still, his ordinance would even take away any real semblance of local control and would allow any resident to force the matter to court since Wagner's ordinance even has a workaround for any form of local or town government interference with his ordinance or, perhaps more accurately, his plans:

5.Enforcement:
(a) Describes the method of enforcement.
(b) The Town may enforce the ordinance.
(c) Any resident may enforce the ordinance.

Wagner's proposed ordinance is a nullification statute on a scale not seen since the early 19th century and the result then was that the proponents did not succeed. At another level, Wagner's proposal is a barely concealed secession ordinance under another name:

8. People’s Right to Self-Govern: The people’s right to local self-government is inalienable. Should state or federal governments attempt to overrule the ordinance, and challenge the people’s right to govern, the Town may secede.

Why would he attempt such a disingenuous workaround for his proposed ordinance rather than obtaining the needed signatures and providing adequate notice of such a potentially important change to Ripton's relationship with both the state and federal governments? Well, he has nearly no following in Ripton and wouldn't have been likely to gather the 5% of all of the registered voters signatures required to warn Town Meeting goers of his proposed radical legislation. As Riptonites will recall, Wagner only received 7% of the votes cast for Senator in the 2010 election. And even a few of those may have been from voters who, not knowing who Wagner was, thought, "Isn't he that nice old gentleman who plays Agent DiNozzo's father on NCIS? Maybe I should vote for him." Or perhaps Wagner's counting on his personal charisma washing over the room to force the matter forward on the floor. Or maybe (more likely) it's an irrational, delusional, ego driven thing since as recently as this past September and nearly a year after his meager last place showing in the Addison County race for a Vermont Senate seat Wagner, who has never served a day in any elective office, wrote here,

"My learned colleagues in the State House..."

It isn't probably going to happen but it'd be nice if Wagner would explain to Ripton voters why he, who has repeatedly criticized others like Sen. Mullin (R-Rutland) for having associations with out of state groups, went to an out of state group from Pennsylvania for sole assistance in writing an ordinance that is unconstitutional in Vermont rather than, say, bringing the matter up earlier with the town's elected officials. After all, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Wagner's nullification strategy is buttressed by his statement that, "(the) people are sovereign." He's counting on Riptonites not being aware of the sovereign citizen movement. More can be learned about Wagner's sovereign citizens movement here, here, here and here. The sovereign citizen claptrap isn't a new thing for Wagner's crowd at Vermont Commons and in the Second Vermont Republic "civic club'; I first wrote about their legal whirlpool more than a year ago here.

And just in case there are still any Riptonites who are still unaware, Robert Wagner is an ardent advocate for Vermont's secession from the U.S. He's already set up a provisional capitol for his nascent nation over the mountain in Hancock, VT.


Wagner's purported Smart Meter ordinance is merely a thinly veiled trick designed to drag his neighbors down into his conspiracy addled, sovereign citizen movement, secessionist rathole via a not so clever shell game.

Meanwhile, in another matter related to Wagner's conflicting positions, there's been no word yet about whether Wagner will be returning the $288.30 subsidy he received while flying out of the airport in Rutland, VT, which is exactly the kind of subsidy that he "is strongly opposed to" and has argued harms Vermonters that I revealed he'd hypocritically availed himself of (as in sticking his snout in the federal money trough) here.

Wagner must publicly give back that subsidy money or he'll be exposed for the hypocritical fraud that many of us Vermonters know him to be.

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