Just like every other citizen within the 5th Congressional District, I am looking forward to attending a Cathy McMorris Rodgers town hall meeting. She posted this on her Facebook page on Monday.
I'm glad he filled me in. There's no way I would've figured that out on my own.
17 comments:
My little cell has been comparing media messaging of Washington's DC delegation. (We are now twitterpated.) McMoRo's streams are substantively weak. If we still gave a shit about Democrats we could get a young articulate challenger within a few points, if we could get one without a superiority complex.
Best stream for geeks, including good Eastern Washington content, is Cantwell's. She's impregnable!
Not true. The Republicans are discussing the big issues of the day: ACA, NSA. Democrats are oblique, obfuscating, tiny issued.
Nate Silver be damned--ACA affordability is a party-busting issue. The question is who gets the blame? Democrats are setting up Republicans for "defunding strategies," which is an oblique obfuscation for "lower middle class people are choosing the IRS route because they lack money."
However, this is "Obamacare," and the real issues are the inadequate cost controls and subsidy schemes built in from the start by Democrats (with the obvious exception of Medicare opt-out states, not WA).
The other shoe still to drop is missed premium payments next year. Are Democrats going to go repo on these struggling folks? The optics may well remind of the foreclosure crisis.
The Democrats have become the party of cruel wealth. There is Hillary, sitting on a billion dollars of speech fees (corporate bribes), absolutely refusing to contribute even a dollar to pay insurance premiums for struggling folks. All her media talk is about which election to buy Chelsea, the Paris Hilton of Democratic politics. Hillary's kid needs a Goldman-Sachs husband and apartment, but your's? Have some cake, sister.
It's the same in WA--no money from the Gates, or our rich senators, or the gov, zero personal commitment to the issue they've defined as the essential moral issue of the day. At best, Krugmanesque Nobel lectures on macroeconomic conditions which somehow mean you owe him a living.
Krugman's mouth is open, his wallet is closed.
What neither party says is that wage structures simply prevent this mandate kind of regressive funding system for a massive social program.
On NSA, McMoRo craftily embraces civil liberties. She occupies the popular stance that Democrats (like you Hank) used to use as an anti-Republican tool. This issue isn't Dem vs Repub, but Democrats who have fallen silent look hypocritical and weak--the Pelosi syndrome.
We predict Republican control of Congress by 2016, and Republican president if H Clinton runs. ACA repeal will drive the election, though perhaps aspects can be salvaged.
I agree with the cell that microeconomics is a bitch, and that bitch is about to shove a Nobel medal slowly up Krugman's puckered self-righteousness.
Krugman and his Kronies invited a comparison to Bismarckian systems abroad, but fudged on both the macro (Germany is nonprofit with pharma drug controls) and the micro. You don't have to have a German wife (hello, NSA) to know our Bismarckian inlaws pay scheisse for premiums as a percentage of (high) household income.
Krugman also suggested an Obamacare similarity to single payer that should have resulted in forced imprisonment in a Russian transit zone.
BUT! I write separately to voice one opinion:
Wyden 2016.
I know: Ugly, Oregon, Hillary.
To which I reply: Ugly like Lincoln, Oregon, not-Hillary.
Oregon is San Francisco with a big side of Alabama, and a good national model. Portlandia is not a liabilty, and Wyden finds issues (hello NSA) that speak across mountains and plains. He has a national spotlight.
The NW locus could allow him to be a peacemaker on issues like immigration, a convo dominated by SW and East elites. Here, we love our Mexicans (mostly) and dislike pompous paramilitary border agents. Time for a change.
A wyden.org can defeat Hillary in Iowa just as Axelrod beat Penn. The caucuses are relatively impervious to blatant buy-a-vote strategies. Wyden can win Iowa with a rusty K-car and three boxes of doughnuts.
For Christ's sake, he's even the Jewish son of refugees from Nazi Germany. Hello New York.
Maybe he could grow a beard.
I'll grant that Wyden's resume is a dream, really: TARP, banksters, Medicare reform (with Ryan!), against Iraq War and on on. He standed with Rand. He's somewhat innoculated against liberal baiting.
He could win a general, particularly against Paul or Rubio. He's basically in the non-elite mainstream of opinion, except generally on ACA, but he's got a lot of contrarian bills on that one.
But, can he win a Southern primary against the Clinton$? Obama 2008 aside, those are "buy-a-vote."
Hillary has the New York vote nailed down.
Also, Wyden has to want to run.
And I doubt that sour babyface could even manage a bro chinstrap, let alone the full Lincoln.
Maybe a hipster lip tuft?
I'll never vote again, but I'd work for Wyden just for the giggles, smart chicks, and junk food.
Smart chicks love when bros call them smart chicks.
The PUMAs will be out for Hillary, and Biden didn't invest a million in plastic surgery not to run again. So, maybe that splits the boomer vote?
Somebody could take advantage of that.
Maybe the Democrats will end up with a Wyden-Biden ticket.
Alliteration is the last dying breath of our electoral system.
Warren-Wyden
Listening to the evasive President lie AGAIN about surveillance and FISC. Also reading the latest bombshell from the Guardian directly contradicting the President with his administration's own documents. Surreal.
Again folks, it's time to withdraw almost all political activity from the web and public places, MOST PARTICULARLY legal, Constitutionally-protected and even partisan activity for the major parties. Learn to form face-to-face cells and designate spokespeople, including insulated posters to the web. Decrease the number of people the NSA can see.
Oh great, now Obama is saying that the intelligence community is going to post a transparency website. That oughta help. At least it will give them more ip's to track, eh.
Oh hilarious. Obama is saying that we should oppose regimes that throw their citizens in jail--even as he talks to reporters he is trying to throw into jail. Is Rosen there?
Oh we need a "public" debate, even though Obama has done everything in his power to prevent public debate.
What a joke. Off to puke.
Come back! This is ridiculous!
The President says the programs have never been abused, but recording itself is a violation of Americans 4th amendment rights.
And, how bout the time the NSA was recording the phone sex and pillow talk between US soldiers in war zones and their wives--and laughing and sharing it?
"The people in the NSA have no other interest...than preventing a terrorist attack...we do not have an interest in anything other than that."
Bullshit:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive-inside-account-us-eavesdropping-americans/story?id=5987804
That's Bush era, revealed by WHISTLEBLOWERS.
Now Obama is imprisoning anyone who makes similar revelations.
The programs haven't been abused? What about the DEA using NSA surveillance in criminal investigation and perjuring themselves in court with "parallel construction?"
What about the FBI using this information?
What the hell? Why does the President continue to lie?
Interesting--he's downplaying the insecure website, and says we can CALL to a CALL CENTER. Where, presumably, the agent (in India, natch) will punch your super-personal info into the same insecure system.
He has not talked about the affordability of premiums in the AFFORDABLE Care Act.
Hey Mr. President, we have a PRETENSE of a better system:
MEDICARE FOR ALL. NOW.
And that's a fact.
He defended Summers, because he would defend anyone who is honest and works hard, even reporters.
Except Risen and Greenwald...
Why is this story a million times more believable than our incredibly watchable and suave President's speech...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-email-calls
Now he's defending increased militarization of the borders. Btw, Spokane is legally "within" the 100 mile border. Meaning, we have no constitutional rights here per Obama's post-Constitutional theory of authoritarianism.
The President's voice is increasingly breaking, his thoughts are starting to meander. I suspect he's getting negative feedback in his earpiece. Shades of Bush pressers.
That was very frightening.
The worst was the delusional stuff about how he was already reforming the NSA. Does he actually believe himself.
Impeach or 25th.
I kept thinking of Nixon speeches I watched as a kid, late Watergate. Also Reagan's "I can't remember" Irancontra.
Thanks to our node, btw, who enjoyed another intrusion.
I kept thinking of Nixon speeches I watched as a kid, late Watergate. Also Reagan's "I can't remember" Irancontra.
Thanks to our node, btw, who enjoyed another intrusion.
The media aren't even giving the President the customary 12 hour deference. It's just too laughable.
I liked this exchange:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Carol Lee. And Carol, congratulations on Hudson. Do you have pictures?
Q: I do. I'll --
PRESIDENT OBAMA: OK, I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to see them.
Q: I appreciate you making this slow news week. [Zing!] I wanted to ask you about your evolution on the surveillance issues.
That is so fine. Better than Rather's "No, are you?" to Nixon.
House Republicans will vote for impeachment either as part of the 2014 campaign or after the Republicans take the Senate and can run the trial.
Resignation ahead?
Also, how can there not be enormous turmoil in the judiciary over FBI and DEA prosecutions relying on NSA evidence.
The presser was like watch an old Jerry Seinfeld show, but with Keavau Reeves substituting for Jerry. It was really about less than nothing.
NSA transparency website is today's puffy shirt.
The DOJ white paper is maybe like a Kafka-Dickens mashup written by Joseph Heller.
http://publicintelligence.net/doj-bulk-telephony-collection/
We need to tediously deconstruct every line in the presser and this cynicical DOJ curio.
After reading the white paper, I think it is more important than ever for legal scholars and historians to step forward. We need a reasoned public discussion of Sondergericht-style court systems, (to hell with Godwin and his infernal rule). Walks like a duck, talks like a duck...it's a Nazi.
I suspect we assume anti-democratic authoritarian regimes start from Maoist total Cultural Revolutions, wiping away legal structures and traditions in one sweep. Note our hysteria over shariah.
But, not at all. The popularly elected Nazis 1) added laws 2) created additional courts 3) left certain illegal acts unpunished 4) relied on court opinions. They left much of Weimar law on the books.
We haven't had a Reichstag fire, not literally. But our own authoritarians have succesfully stonewalled congress to the point that oversight is useless.
In this context, McMoRo's NSA vote may be a sign that the authoritarians made a tactical error in not eliminating Congress while they diluted and perverted the courts.
Now that Snowden has forced the authoritarians' hand, we need a real discussion of what it means to live in a constitutional republic.
How exactly is the authoritarian political system espoused by Clapper, Alexander, Roberts, and Obama superior to democracy?
History suggests that authoritarian systems are unstable, culturally uncreative, paranoid, dishonest, and lead to increased concentration of power in personality cults.
Where are our scholars?
Where are our scholars?
Where was Heideggar.
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