"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Monday, October 29, 2012
Dr. Raul Ruiz Snags The Big Endorsement From Mary Bono Mack
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Until yesterday, Coachella Valley's biggest newspaper, the Desert Sun, had never once failed to endorse Mary Bono Mack during her 7 runs for Congress. That's streak is done! They still admire her but there's a far more qualified candidate running this year, Dr. Raul Ruiz, and they gave him the nod. But the content-- and seriousness-- of the editorial is even more notable than the end of Mary Bono Mack's winning streak with the Sun. They say she's grown too comfortable inside the Beltway bubble and is no longer the appropriate representative for California's vast 36th CD, stretching from Hemet and Beaumont through Palm Springs and Indio all the way to Blythe and the Nevada border. "Rep. Bono Mack talks like a Washington insider," they wrote. "She has adopted the rhetoric of partisan think tanks and the thought-police of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove. For two election cycles she has brandished fellow California House member Nancy Pelosi’s mugshot like a weapon, attacking challengers Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet and Palm Desert physician Raul Ruiz. While we don’t share many of Nancy Pelosi’s ideologies, she alone is not what’s wrong with government. It’s not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about us. Here in the desert, it’s about jobs, education, health care and a stable retirement."
Ruiz has an extraordinary biography. The son of poor farm workers, he went door to door and persuaded local businesspeople to invest in the Coachella Valley by investing in his education. He returned from UCLA and Harvard University-- magna cum laude and with three advanced degrees-- and has been working hard for his community ever since. He's an E.R. physician at the Valley's only non-profit hospital, serves as the Senior Associate Dean at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine and is the founder and director of the Coachella Valley Healthcare Initiative. He's beloved in the community for helping to open clinics giving free care and health education to under-served communities throughout the Valley. Bono Mack is living the life of a mindless plutocrat, married to a brainless Florida Congressman and the two of them are considered Congress' best-dressed couple. That's it.
In this volatile campaign, Rep. Bono Mack also found herself clarifying a statement she made in a 2006 email she sent to a radio announcer. After a show that covered various topics, including terrible living conditions at the Duroville trailer park, the congresswoman told the radio host he was “unbelievably great.” Rep. Bono Mack told the host it was “too funny” when he called the east valley-- Dr. Ruiz’s childhood home-- a “Third World Toilet.” Her campaign first apologized about the email, calling Bono Mack’s words “inappropriate,” but later took issue with the context of her private email, insisting she was talking about Duroville. Rep. Bono Mack’s unfortunate commentary about our neglected neighbors should be another asterisk to this campaign. We believe her actions today speak louder than her email then. ...A debate we co-sponsored with KMIR6 was a rare chance for the Coachella Valley to hear the congressional candidates’ unadulterated positions on Libya, Medicare, immigration, the Salton Sea and the economy. Instead, Rep. Bono Mack used her opening statement to attack Ruiz. The ensuing hour rarely ventured back to clarity. ...Rep. Bono Mack has ceded local leadership on issues such as gay marriage and the Salton Sea to the courts or California, forgetting that as Californians we trust that she will use her voice to echo ours when she speaks in Congress and at home. Dr. Ruiz has proven his willingness to organize from the ground. He is the founder of the Coachella Valley Healthcare Initiative and he created a mentorship program for local students interested in becoming doctors and returning to the Coachella Valley. During an editorial board interview, we asked the candidates about jobs and economic development and Dr. Ruiz offered the most eloquent and informed explanation about the Coachella Valley’s economy. Smart, and disciplined, green energy investment-- for solar, wind, geo-thermal-- is a plus for the desert, and Dr. Ruiz told us he’d protect and grow this sector. When it comes to taxes, we believe Dr. Ruiz offered the best compromise-- keep the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone earning below $1 million. We hope Republicans and Democrats can avoid the fiscal cliff by moving to the middle to find sensible budget solutions that a majority of us can agree with. That’s a promise we would demand be kept by Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Ruiz supports bringing the troops home from Afghanistan. Two years ago, Rep. Bono Mack said it was in our best interests to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan, but on the campaign trail she said we should “get the hell out” if Obama couldn’t provide a salient reason for remaining. Dr. Ruiz has been instrumental in securing funds and support for a medical school at the University of California, Riverside, and he is an advocate for expanding that program to campuses in Palm Desert, to pair with nursing programs and to foster growth in bio-technology. That makes great economic sense. By creating or expanding medical residency programs at Eisenhower Medical Center and Desert Regional Medical Center and investing in the health care sector, the Coachella Valley will also attract more general practitioners to the desert, especially in places where the tragically underserved share one doctor with 9,000 neighbors. This is the only place in the United States where the Flying Doctors land to practice temporary, tent-city medicine. Dr. Ruiz, who joined a mission of medical charity to Haiti, knows too well the need for more doctors in his hometown-- and he believes that path is clearing now that UCR has received preliminary approval for its program and financial support from Coachella Valley taxpayers through the Desert Healthcare District and Riverside County. On another question we posed to Rep. Bono Mack and Dr. Ruiz-- threats to world security-- Rep. Bono Mack mentioned Russia, an old rival that may someday again pose an immediate threat to U.S. interests or world stability. Dr. Ruiz quickly and succinctly pointed to Iran, a country whose leader has vowed to abolish Israel and whose thirst for nuclear ascendancy threatens us all. The Desert Sun respects and celebrates the contributions of Rep. Bono Mack. Fourteen years ago, we endorsed a political novice with a dream about changing the tenor of Washington politics. It’s time to challenge ourselves again, to celebrate a passionate new voice for the Coachella Valley. The future of the 36th District, we believe, would be better served by Dr. Ruiz.
Bono Mack has tried to bill herself as a "moderate" and a "mainstream conservative" but after a scare from the Tea Party a few years ago, she's veered sharply to the right. ProgressivePunch scores her a dismal 5.91 on crucial roll calls for her career-- and an even more dismal 4.62 for the current session. Her record is even worse than right-wing extremists here in California like Ed Royce (6.84), Dana Rohrabacher (9.30), John Campbell (10.56), Brian Bilbray (11.78) and Tom McClintock (13.31). All those scores are dreadful for ordinary working families but what it really measures is the unwillingness of Bono Mack to ever stray from the party line. Few Members of Congress have stuck so fast to every single permutation of the corporate and obstructionist agenda that Boehner and Cantor are pushing. It's long past time for Bono Mack to retire to her mansion in Florida. And Raul Ruiz looks like he's got the makings of an excellent and dedicated congressman.
Politico Wins The Weekend's Worst Hack Job Competition
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Sessions & Israel
I almost wrote Alex Isenstadt a note to ask him if the DCCC had written his column about potential upsets or if they just told him which candidates to include. It's embarrassing that he pasted "Here's Politico's look at five potential Democratic upsets to watch" onto a list that came directly from the DCCC. Is that reporting? Are these Politico guys aware that America is more than just a theoretical construct and they ought to get out and visit sometime and not just depend on what they're told by Steve Israel and Pete Sessions for congressional coverage? DC is a closed loop; you won't learn anything useful there other than what the party machines want you to see.
The 5 races the DCCC handed Isenstadt (with information Isenstadt didn't bother to look for or report):
• FL-02: Steve Southerland vs Al Lawson- Lawson is a very conservative former leader of the state Senate who beat the DCCC's chosen Blue Dog in the primary. He knows how to win in the quirky Panhandle district. Obama lost to McCain 45-54% but would have lost by less (47-52%) under the new boundaries, bad news for Southerland. He beat pathetic Blue Dog incumbent Allen Boyd in a year disillusioned Democrats stayed away from the polls in droves-- which is what led to the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse that swept Boyd away 54-41%. This year Democrats-- who outnumber registered Republicans 234,480 (51%) to 158-657 (34%)-- will be turning out big time and that will help Lawson. As of July 25, however, Southerland had raised $1,212,911 and Lawson had only taken in $187,376. If this is an upset, it's because Lawson is so woefully underfunded. Isenstadt mentions that the NRCC has reserved $150,000 in TV time for Southerland but doesn't mention if the DCCC is stepping up to the plate for Lawson, who like all these candidates the DCCC pushed on Isenstadt is on the Red To Blue list. Isenstadt's "analysis" of the financial disparity is a pure DCCC line: "Southerland has also struggled with fundraising, collecting just $1.2 million since he was elected-- a pittance for a sitting House member." No mention that he's a million dollars ahead of Lawson.
• FL-10: Daniel Webster vs Val Demings- This is one Beltway Dems have been touting all cycle and they would love to elect a hackish, mindless Bible thumper and corrupt New Dem like Demings who will never disobey an order from leadership. It's a new district that was carefully redrawn to favor Webster. Obama would have lost 47-52% under the new boundaries and there's virtually no chance Demings will beat him, even though he's one of the most unaccomplished and ineffectual freshmen in Congress. However, she's outraised him, outspent him and has more cash on hand. As of July 25- she had raised $1,129,614 (with $632,176 left) and he has raised $887,434 (with $577,088 left). Polls show Webster up by 5% and only Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, two of Washington's most clueless leaders, could really believe she can win. Wasserman Schultz is probably just hoping she turns out Democratic voters in Orlando for Obama, her only real function.
• CA-36: Mary Bono Mack vs Raul Ruiz- Ruiz is the best Democratic candidate of the lot but this is a tough district-- and redistricting made it tougher. Formerly the 45th, Obama beat McCain 52-47% in 2008 while Bono Mack beat a well-positioned, highly touted opponent Steve Pougnet 51-42%. Under the new boundaries Obama would have still beaten McCain but by 50-47%. In 2010 Bono Mack spent $2,486,844 and Pougnet spent $1,843,288. As of this year's June 30 reporting deadline, Bono Mack reported having spent $860,085 with another $848,211 on hand and Ruiz had spent $222,623 with $624,872 on hand.
• IN-08: Larry Bucshon vs Dave Crooks- A Steve Israel favorite, Crooks is a reactionary Blue Dog in the southwest of the state-- "the Bloody Eighth" which swings back and forth between conservative Democrats and more conservative Republicans. In 2008, Obama lost to McCain 47-51% and under the new boundaries would have lost 48-51%. In 2010 the seat was open and Bucshon slaughtered Blue Dog Trent Van Haaften 58-37%. Although Bucshon outraised Crooks, $844-566 to $742,605, Crooks reported more cash on hand on June 30-- $530,191 to Bucshon's $386,851.
• NY-11: Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm vs Mark Murphy- This is a weird race. Grimm, who is basically a mafioso, is about as corrupt as a congressman can be without being indicted, although that's probably coming. Only David Rivera (R-FL) and Buck McKeon (R-CA) are on a level of crookedness with Grimm. So the Democrats recruited the son of Abscam, Mark Murphy... you know, so voters wouldn't have a clear, simple shot. (Mark's pop is former Staten Island Congressman John Murphy who was defeated in 1980 after being indicted for bribery.) In 2008 Obama won the Staten Island-Brooklyn seat 55-44% but under the new boundaries would have lost it 48-51%, good news for Grimm. Also good news for Grimm is that Staten Island voters expect politicians to be corrupt and don't usually hold it against them. Grimm has raised $1,780,715 and still has a warchest of $1,297,809 (although, presumably a good part of that is going to attorneys to keep him from being indicted before election day). Murphy hasn't kept up and has only raised $372,701 and has a million dollars less than Grimm on hand.
If Isenstadt wanted to shed the hack thing with a revisit, he could talk about 5 real potential upsets, one not being followed by the DCCC (nor NRCC):
• CA-25: Buck McKeon vs Lee Rogers
• NY-23: Tom Reed vs Nate Shinagawa
• PA-16: Joe Pitts vs Aryanna Strader
• WV-01: David McKinley vs Sue Thorn
• MI-11 (the open Thaddeus McCotter seat): Syed Taj vs a reindeer rancher
And a thought to go to sleep on tonight... Obama's Better Than Romney
Mary Bono Thinks Gays Should Stop Stereotyping Republicans
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According to ProgressivePunch, Mary Bono Mack's homophobic voting record-- she scores a 14.29 out of 100-- on roll calls of crucial import to the LGBT community, is better than almost any Republican's. Her husband, Cornelius the fourth, for example, scores a 12.50. The vast majority of Republicans score a 0.00. That's right, 230 Republicans-- from rapid homophobes like Steve King, Allen West, Internet pornographer Ben Quayle, Michele Bachmann, Buck McKeon, Virginia Foxx to purported model "centrists" like Paul Ryan, Peter King, Charlie Dent, Walter Jones and Fred Upton to deranged, trembling closet cases like Aaron Schock (who still hasn't found the "right gal"), David Dreier, Patrick McHenry, Trent Franks, and Adrian Smith (+ gay hating Blue Dogs Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre, Larry Kissell and Mike Ross) have voted against every single important roll call that would establish equality for the LGBT community. All 53 congressmembers with 100% voting records are Democrats and even the best-scoring Republicans, Richard Hanna, Nan Hayworth and Justin Amash, have miserable 50.00 scores.
Maybe what Mary Bono, who represents one of the biggest LGBT communities in the country, needs to tell the vote scores to stop stereotyping Republicans. Tuesday there was a big GOP campaign kerfuffle when the Romney camp, pressured by homophobic bigots, was forced to fire his one openly gay staffer, Richard Grenell, who happens to be a constituent of Bono Mack's. Far right extremists are dancing on the grave of Grenell's career and basking in the knowledge of just how easy it is to push Romney around. Watch:
Listen to Bryan Fischer explaining how the fringe right has been able to make Romney dance to it's tune-- and then go back and think about what Bono Mack said about not stereotyping Republicans. Oddly, soon after Grenell announced he was resigning, Bono Mack tweeted that he would be returning to Palm Springs and working for her campaign. That tweet seems to be scrubbed this morning. No trace of it-- except from the people who retweeted it... like Mike Signorelle:
Why Don't Aaron Schock And Lindsey Graham Come Out Of The Closet And Have A Congressional Wedding With All The Frills?
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We're being a little overdramatic in the headline. I don't even know if the cowering Republican closet cases from Peoria, Illinois, and Seneca, South Carolina, have ever even met-- although they are both Baptists. Besides, Mark Kirk-- both a Senator from Illinois and another cowering Republican closet case-- may be a more logical match for either Aaron or Lindsey. Although it's an open secret in Washington that Lindsey Graham is gay, he absolutely denies it and does his best to keep the rubes back home in blissful ignorance... especially the Baptists. Everyone knew Mark Foley was gay too-- except Republican voters in central Florida. Aaron Schock has been denying he's gay since he was in college. But when he promised to burn his screamingly gay outfit last year-- a neon turquoise belt, checkered pink blouse and form-fitting white hustler jeans-- not many were persuaded. But more important, why should anyone care?
Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Adrian Smith (R-NE), Trent Franks (R-AZ), David Dreier (R-CA) and Aaron Schock (R-IL) are among the right-wing closet cases in the House, all of whom hew to a drastically homophobic party line. Most Republican closet cases do. (An interesting aside: a dreadfully right-wing Democratic congressional closet case, a lowlife Blue Dog who was defeated in November, voted with the GOP on almost everything except gay issues, on which he voted with his own party.) When elected Republican closet cases are eventually outed-- usually traumatically-- many are still in denial. Idaho Senator Larry Craig is a good example. But others have taken the opportunity to examine themselves are take stock of who they are.
When rabidly right-wing/homophobic Maryland Congressman Bob Bauman, founder of the Republican hate groups the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom, was caught with an underaged boy, his life completely collapsed. But he took stock of himself and came out the other side a better person, part of which was writing a powerful book-- one that should be required reading for every gay-bashing Republican, The Gentleman From Maryland: The Conscience Of A Gay Conservative. More recently California state Senator-- and hysterical homophobic maniac-- Roy Ashburn was pulled over by a police officer, drunk and accompanied by a young male prostitute he had picked up in a bar. He was forced to come to grips with who he is... fast.
In an interview with Patt Morrison for the L.A. Times, Ashburn was asked the question all outed political closet cases have to confront sooner or later: "A lot of people, gay or straight, are probably wondering why you voted even against issues like insurance coverage for same-sex partners." And his answer was forthright... and chilling-- and the reason why this stuff matters:
The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.
This month Out Magazine has a cover story on the "Out 100," and among the public figures are freshman Democrat David Cicciline (RI), Rachel Maddow, NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Nate Silver. There were no former homophobic GOP closet cases this year, like Mark Foley or Ken Mehlman. And the #1 slot was reserved for Ricky Martin, someone who has had a much greater impact on people's lives than most politicians anyway.
There is something beautiful in witnessing a major celebrity in the throes of profound and real transformation. A week before we met, Martin had made a surprise appearance at the annual Human Rights Campaign national dinner to pledge his support. "Something as simple as standing at that dinner and saying, 'I'm gay,' creates so many emotions I've never felt before," he admits. "I didn't do it earlier because of fear, and, bottom line, it was all in my head. I was seduced by fear and I was sabotaging most of my life-- my music, my relationships with my friends, with my family, with everybody. That's something I need to share because I know that a lot of people are going through what I went through, no matter what their age, and fear cannot control us."
Can you imagine someone like violent homophobic closet queen Trent Franks ever saying something like that? You think he's man enough to? Even someone who has been publicly outed a dozen times, like David Dreier, is too much of a coward to make a statement like that-- even to himself. It's great, though, that Ricky Martin didn't follow the sad and self-fulfilling, if not self-loathing, advice Richard Chamberlain spouted to the Big Screen's would-be leading men. Here's the exchange from The Advocate:
You were a wildly successful closeted actor during a period of time when coming out was unheard of, but the climate of acceptance has significantly changed in recent years. How do you feel about gay actors who still remain closeted as we near 2011?
It’s complicated. There’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. It’s regrettable, it’s stupid, it’s heartless, and it’s immoral, but there it is. For an actor to be working is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren’t, so it’s just silly for a working actor to say, “Oh, I don’t care if anybody knows I’m gay”-- especially if you’re a leading man. Personally, I wouldn’t advise a gay leading man–type actor to come out.
When can a leading man come out-- when he’s 69 and promoting a memoir?
I have no idea. Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it’s still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture. Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.
Yeah, politics and entertainment can be pretty homophobic work environments-- although it really is a chicken-and-egg kind of situation-- and sports is at least as bad. (It doesn't hurt coming out if you're in the hairdressing or interior-decorating fields.) Yesterday Ken sent me this coming out story by much-admired sports columnist and WEEI radio personality Steve Buckley in the Boston Herald. At 55, he's a full generation younger than Chamberlain. Still, Ken pointed out that he waited a full 7 years after his mother-- who urged him to come out publicly-- died.
My mother and I had already had the gay talk, during which she had told me that nothing had changed, that she loved me, asked if I was seeing anybody, and so on. What she didn’t like was the idea of me coming out publicly; she was of the opinion that it was really nobody’s business, and she worried that prejudice might disrupt my career.
But like an NFL referee, she had overturned the original call. “Do it,” she said. I thanked her. She smiled. And then I made the biggest mistake of my life: With a vacation lined up for the first week of December, I told her I’d get to it when I returned to Boston-- just before Christmas.
The vacation came and went. The day after I returned to Boston, I received a call from the Lifeline people telling me my mother was being rushed to Mount Auburn Hospital, where she had undergone radiation therapy during the summer. The family gathered at her side. The next morning, she suffered a heart attack. She died a few days later.
There was a funeral at Doherty’s, and then a very soulful, reflective Christmas. And then a Super Bowl, and then spring training. The story didn’t get done. Whenever I revisited the idea of coming out, I’d foolishly dwell on how it was to have been a big family event, my mother pulling everyone together. When that was lost, I guess I lost my way.
Now I’m not going to suggest that these past seven years have been filled with sadness and dread, for the reality is that I’m a pretty happy guy-- great family, great friends and a job I truly enjoy, even if, OK, I probably talk too much about the ’67 Red Sox, the Godfather movies (“I” and “II,” but never “III”) and postseason pitching rotations.
But I’ve put this off long enough. I haven’t been fair to my family, my friends or my co-workers. And I certainly haven’t been fair to myself: For too many years I’ve been on the sidelines of Boston’s gay community but not in the game-- figuratively and literally, as I feel I would have had a pretty good career in the (gay) Beantown Softball League.
Over the past couple of months I have discussed the coming-out process with my family and a few friends, and have had sit-downs with Herald editor-in-chief Joe Sciacca and sports editor Hank Hryniewicz, as well as with WEEI’s Glenn Ordway. They’ve been great, as have my friends and family.
But during this same period, I have read sobering stories about people who came undone, killing themselves after being outed. These tragic events helped guide me to the belief that if more people are able to be honest about who they are, ultimately fewer people will feel such devastating pressure.
It’s my hope that from now on I’ll be more involved. I’m not really sure what I mean by being “involved,” but this is a start: I’m gay.
Congratulations. Wouldn't it be great if one Republican Member of Congress would do the same thing... and do it before being caught drunk molesting children like these fearful, deranged closeted wingnuts tend to do after spending a lifetime twisted up in knots of self-loathing and self-imposed terror? Come on, Aaron, be a star and wear that neon turquoise belt proudly. We know you didn't really burn it!
UPDATE: Mary Bono Mack's A Closet Lesbian? Who Knew!
So some strange tit-licking photos are floating around the Internet that shows another woman, one of Bono Mack's Rancho Mirage campaign donors, playfully licking her breast. The donor/licker is Edra Blixseth, a disgraced former billionaire who is at the center of a criminal investigation probing whether she made fraudulent representations about her financial worth to a number of banks.
"Mary was partying hard," one source, who was at the event, told RadarOnline.com. "She was blitzed and clearly having a great time."
Repeated phone calls to Bono for comment were not returned.
Blixseth donated $1,500 to Bono's 2006 congressional campaign and even served as a finance committee member. She was also once a top Republican Party donor.
However, during that same period, the riches of Blixseth and ex-husband Tim, a wealthy timber tycoon, were starting to unravel.
The pair was sued by jilted investors of the couple's elite Yellowstone Club World, a millionaires-only private ski and golf resort in Montana, whose members included Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
...For Bono, the clean-cut politician who married Republican representative from Florida Connie Mack in 2007, the photo scandal is an embarrassing turn of events and reveals just how close she and Blixseth were.
In another photo, Bono is seen grinning as she holds Blixseth's hand who has her arms wrapped tightly around her.
The images shocked Bono's 2008 political opponent, Julie Bornstein, who did not leak the images to RadarOnline.com. But Bornstein said Bono's clearly outrageous behavior came as no surprise.
"Several women in the California Congressional delegation were embarrassed repeatedly by Mary Bono's behavior and conduct in the Capitol and encouraged me to run because of the embarrassment she brought to the legislature," she told RadarOnline.com after the photographs were described to her.
"I am not surprised that these pictures exist. She has often spoken about going out with her girlfriends and drinking... she has been known as a strenuous partier."
The Blixseth's have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to extreme right-wing politicians and Republican Party organizations and front groups. Some of Edra's biggest beneficiaries, aside from Bono-Mack, are Dan Lungren (R-CA), Dan Burton (R-IN), closet queen David Dreier (R-CA), and, of course, John McCain (R-AZ).
Good For The Gays? Not Mary Bono Mack, Not Anymore
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Palm Springs, California, once best known as Frank Sinatra's and other retirees' homes, is now one of America's most gay-friendly communities. So gay friendly, in fact, that they elected a proudly gay mayor, Steve Pougnet, who is legally married to his partner and is raising their two adopted children. And now Pougnet is running against the incumbent congresswoman, Mary Bono Mack. Bono Mack more or less inherited her seat when ex-Palm Springs mayor Sonny Bono died in a freak skiing accident. She was an airhead waitress at the time. She's an airhead congresswoman now, married to an airhead congressman, Connie Mack. Mack inherited an easy smile, a House seat, millions of dollars and a really dull mind. He and Mary live in his mansion in Ft Myers, Florida, although she ventures back to Palms Springs to make the locals think she lives there. She also tries-- or at least used to-- persuade her gay constituents that she stands up for their interests. But that was a long, long time ago, before she desperately threw her lot in with the teabaggers who threatened to end her tenure for being "too liberal."
On Friday the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) released their annual congressional scorecard for 2010. Bono Mack, once a favorite of the organization, wound up with a 39% (an F, no matter how you cut it). She may not be as bad as Virginia Foxx (R-NC) or Steve King (R-IA)-- or even her hubbie Connie (R-FL)-- but her votes in the last session were toxic for gay people and for their families. HRC scored Congress on 9 pieces of legislation:
She voted against every bill but three, the legislation for the early treatment of AIDS and two votes on Hate Crimes. The other six bills... as bad as anyone on this list of Congress' worst homophobes. Anything that smacks of equality for the LGBT community, from repealing DADT to anything remotely involving marriage and suddenly Bono Mack is... well a lot more Mack than Bono. Friday the more grassroots and less-DC Insider gay civil rights organization, Stonewall Democrats, endorsed Pougnet against Bono Mack.
Senate Armed Services Committee And The Full House of Representatives Votes To End "Don't Ask, Don' Tell"
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I want to congratulate Claudia Wright today, the progressive Democrat-- not to mention great, great granddaughter of Brigham Young-- running for the Utah congressional seat currently occupied by reactionary Blue Dog Jim Matheson. In the past Matheson has had the vile stench of homophobic bigotry around him. Last April he was one of 25 bigoted ConservaDems who joined their Republican allies in their attempt to kill the Hate Crimes bill. Yesterday, after an embarrassing thrashing from Utah Democrats at the party convention two weeks ago-- and at the hands of the openly gay Claudia Wright-- he stood up on the floor of the House of Representatives and made an impassioned, if implausible, speech in favor of overturning Don't Ask Don't Tell. Claudia's vigorous primary challenge forced his hand. Conversely, the vigorous primary challenge from the far right by teabagger Clayton Thidodeau saw Mary Bono Mack break with her usual pattern of supporting the large gay population of her Palm Springs-centric district. Bono Mack gave a big homophobic no vote in the hope that by throwing gays under the bus, it would save her worthless carcass in the June 8th Republican primary. This from a woman whose first assignment when taking her dead husband's seat in Congress was to be Lindsey Graham's "fag hag," play footsie with him under the Judiciary Committee table and help him come up with a lame-brained theory about how Bill Clinton should be impeached if Monica Lewinsky had had an orgasm. Last night she joined notorious homophobes like Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Trent Franks (an Arizona Republican closet case), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Wally Herger (R-CA), Dan Lungren (R-CA) and Steve King (all-purpose Iowa hatemonger) to vote against allowing gay men and women who are serving their country honorably in the military to stop forcing themselves to live in the kinds of dark closets that have been driving gay Republicans-- from Mark Foley, Patrick McHenry and Mitch McConnell to Larry Craig and George Rekers-- dangerously insane.
Like myself, Claudia has no intention of enlisting in the military. We're both pro-peace kinds of people who don't believe in wars of aggression. We do, however, believe that all Americans who seek to serve the country by being part of the military should have an equal opportunity to do so without being discriminated against because of narrow and bigoted prejudices. Just yesterday, in fact, Claudia announced her support of Alan Grayson's bill that would end the war and the deficit, HR 5353, The War Is Making You Poor Act.
This bill would reduce the $159.3 billion of “emergency supplemental” funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the fiscal year 2011 budget, and would instead return that money to American taxpayers, as well as allocating funds against the federal deficit. The War Is Making You Poor Act would not affect the $549 billion already budgeted to the Department of Defense to wage these wars.
Representative Alan Grayson, a Democrat who represents Florida’s Republican-leaning 8th district, introduced the bill by saying, “Next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income. Beyond that, it leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit. And that's what this bill does.”
The War Is Making You Poor Act eliminates the federal income tax on the first $35,000 of every American’s income, using the remaining $15 billion to reduce the federal deficit.
Claudia Wright has signed on to the petition to pass HR 5353, and calls on Congressman Jim Matheson to join the bipartisan cosponsors of the bill:
“Mr. Matheson announced yesterday that it is time for the rubber to meet the road, in terms of cutting government spending. I applaud that sentiment, and hope that Mr. Matheson shares my concern that we should not be giving a blank check to military contractors while working families are struggling.
“If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth continuing, I think we should be honest enough with the American people to put that spending in the Defense budget, not hide it as an “emergency supplemental” for a nine-year-old war. But I believe that most Americans share my belief that we can no longer continue to burden our children with debt for these endless wars.”
According to a Washington Postpoll from the beginning of this month, 52% of Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting.
With bitter opposition from the bigoted and homophobic Republican throwbacks led by John Boehner, Patrick Murphy's amendment to end the discriminatory and divisive policy passed 234-194, 26 homophobic Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with the Party of Hate (while 5 Republicans, Judy Biggert, Ahn Cao, Charles Djou, Ron Paul and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen voted with the Democrats to make history). Among the conservative Democrats voting no were homophobic Blue Dogs Bobbie Bright (AL), Chris Carney (PA), Travis Childers (MS), Lincoln Davis (TN), Joe Donnelly (IN), Jim Marshall (GA), Colin Peterson (MN), Mike Ross (AR), Heath Shuler (NC), Gene Taylor (MS) and the newest member of the House, who the DCCC spent over a million dollars to buy the seat for, Mark Critz of Pennsylvania.
Although all the Republican closet queens from Aaron Schock (IL), Patty McHenry (NC), Trent Franks (AZ) and Adrian Smith (NE) to Dana Rohrabacher (CA), David Dreier (CA) and Mark Kirk (IL) voted against gay people. As a gay Republican closet case Charlie Crist wanted to retain DADT. As a gay independent closet case Charlie is now supporting it. Leaving the Party of Hatred and Bigotry can be very liberating! But if they don't want to listen to Charlie-- who did, after all, abandon their crazed, shrinking party-- the GOP self-loathing closet cases should listen to California state Senator Roy Ashburn, who was caught with a young male prostitute, outed and has now changed his tune:
Amazing interview! Inevitable, though, and one that Aaron Schock should start memorizing for his moment on the big state. "My practice in my entire political career," said Ashburn, "when it came to gay issues was to prevent any kind of spotlight from being shined my way, because I was in hiding. So casting any kind of vote might, could in some way, lead to my secret being revealed. That was terrifying to me. It was paralyzing. So I cast some votes that have denied gay people of their basic, equal treatment under the law, and I'm not proud of it. I'm not going to do that again."
Tomorrow Blue America will be formally endorsing New Hampshire progressive Annie Kuster, a community activist who we talked to just before Patrick Murphy's amendment to abolish DADT was voted on.
I was proud to support the effort here in New Hampshire to make our state the 5th in the country to pass marriage equality," she told us. New Hampshire has a bipartisan tradition of believing in less government interference in people’s personal lives, and I think the rest of the country could learn something from us on this issue. As an adoption attorney I’ve been honored to help hundreds of loving couples start their own families, and I have seen firsthand the love and support that same-sex parents bring to their own families. At the federal level, it is time to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and thereby strengthen our military and re-assert our true American values, and I also support ending the discriminatory ‘Defense of Marriage’ Act.
West Point grad Justin Coussoule has served in the U.S. Army as Boehner, a coward and a draft dodger, has been pushing wars and odious corporate-oriented foreign policies. This morning Justin took exception to Boehner's push towards gratuitous divisiveness in opposing the end of DADT. Justin:
The policy prohibiting patriotic Americans from serving in uniform based solely on sexual orientation is shameful and discriminatory. I support the amendment to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell currently before Congress and urge swift passage as a part of the Defense Appropriations Bill. The men and women of our Armed Forces are one of our country’s greatest resources. At a time when the policies of the previous Administration have stretched our military between two foreign wars, the exclusion of patriotic young Americans from uniformed service based on sexual orientation is indefensible.
As a former Army officer and leader of soldiers, my sole concern was military fitness and readiness. The sexual orientation of a soldier, whether gay or straight, is irrelevant on the firing range, on a road march, or on the field of battle. The ability to navigate the treacherous routes lined with IEDs in Iraq or Afghanistan is not dependent on whether a soldier is gay or straight; it is dependent on the military training and discipline found in those who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces. By excluding those who would volunteer based solely on sexual orientation, we are preventing able and willing soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from guaranteeing our security, defending our country, and fighting and winning our nation’s wars.
My opponent says that “Rushing ahead with a political decision without understanding how it will impact the men and women of our Armed Forces ... is deeply irresponsible.” After 17 years of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and countless debates over the policy’s merits, how is passage of this amendment ‘rushing ahead’? Perhaps Mr. Boehner’s lack of understanding the impact on our troops is based on his own lack of personal experience in uniform. I served with men and women who I later learned were gay or lesbian; their sexual orientation had no bearing on their outstanding service to our nation, and in no way changes my view of them as honorable and selfless veterans.
Deployment of our Armed Forces without a clear path to victory before the first shot is ever fired is deeply irresponsible. Buying weapons systems and equipment that the leaders in uniform have unequivocally said are unnecessary, to the detriment of the needs for more boots on the ground, is deeply irresponsible. Mr. Boehner’s implication that repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell jeopardizes our national security is deeply irresponsible. He says that he hopes “Members of Congress who care about our national security ... will stand together to stop it.” I say, Members of Congress who care about our national security must act now, and vote to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It is a vote that will strengthen our military, expand the ranks of those willing to serve, and ultimately result in an Armed Forces more representative of the great nation that its members serve and defend so bravely everyday.
Two Weeks From Today We Get To See If California Voters Are Ready To Give Dishonest Incumbents The Ole Heave-Ho
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They could start their own lobbying firm next year
Primary candidates all over America must be looking at Rand Paul's ability to go up against the GOP Establishment machine and just decimate Kentucky Party boss Mitch McConnell's hand picked recruited protégé and, believe me, many are thinking something along the lines of "If that doofus can do it, I can do it." I know; I spent some time on the phone talking with them yesterday. And they can't. One guy I was on the phone with, who's challenging Jerry Lewis from the right, is Eric Stone. He ran against Lewis in 2008 too, one of three Republicans on the ballot. He's not a stupid guy and he knows how corrupt Lewis is and how vulnerable he should be. But I got the distinct impression that he's waiting for someone to deliver the nomination to him on a silver platter. There was nothing-- no strategy, no energy, no passion, no hope, no life... just some paranoia that if he pops his head up out of his hole he's liable to get it smacked. I don't know why he's running. He did manage to achieve one thing-- he wrote a candidate statement for the Board of Elections. I got the feeling he has a hope-- a faint one-- that people will read the statement in their Official Voter Information Guide and decide to vote for him instead of the guy the district has been electing since 1978. Here's the statement:
The power of knowledge and wisdom; the courage and conviction to move forward the solutions necessary to propel us far past the ills plaguing our system of government are my qualifications.
Combined with:
*The skills to bring the jobs home from over 30 years of both large and small business experience are key to our local economic recovery.
*Workable plans to restore the intended purpose/form of government set forth by our Founding Fathers back from the hands of multi billion dollar, needlessly controlling “special (power over you) interest” groups.
*Proven track record to champion new business enterprise directly challenging, when it became necessary, a self-dealing government body to successfully get the job done.
*Paramount in serving you is the unwavering “NEVER SELL OUT” INTEGRITY taught to me, by example from my father, a retired WWII United States Air Force, Colonel.
Officially (Federally) recognized, licensed, hands-on experience in local government and federal deficit financing including State and Federal bureaucracy experience (both good and challenging alike) with pinpoint careful budgeting skills adhering to spending limits are all key preparations to serve you with Honor.
On the lighter side but no less important the wisdom to “ask that your vote not prosper special interests” but rather ask how much better could the lives of the people you love be if government were exclusively responsible to benefit “We The People”, then absolutely – Definitely Vote for Eric R. Stone.
Although Eric is running against an incumbent in a year incumbents are supposed to be unpopular and against an incumbent who not only voted for the no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout-- twice, once on September 29, 2008 and then again on October 3, but also helped John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan strong-arm and bribe another 26 reluctant Republicans into voting for it-- like Charlie Dent-- who were needed to make it pass, Eric is failing to exploit any of Lewis' myriad vulnerabilities.
I had such high hopes for the teabaggers to at least be able to weed out some of the trashiest of the corrupt southern California Republicans, especially Lewis, Mary Bono-Mack and Ken Calvert. But with just two weeks to go, it looks like the only incumbent in these parts likely to fail to win renomination is a Democrat-- or at least a putative Democrat-- out-of-step Blue Dog Jane Harman, the one who bragged about being the best Republican in the Democratic Party. Like Lewis, Calvert and Bono-Mack, Harman is a conservative and a corporatist who voted for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout. Unlike Jerry Lewis' opponent, though, Harman's-- progressive firebrand Marcy Winograd-- has been all over her for it.
"Before bailing out Wall Street, Congress should have bailed out the American people who were victimized by predatory lenders selling bad loans. Any bail out should have been tied to a moratorium on foreclosures and a "First Right to Rent" rule, requiring banks to offer homeowners facing foreclosures a chance to rent their homes at market value.
"Had the government included in the bail-out low interest loans for such homeowners, we would not be facing massive foreclosures, blighted neighborhoods, lower property values, and county coffers starved for money for social services. Instead, Washington politicians turned their backs on struggling homeowners and turned over the keys to our treasury to the same institutions that engineered our economic decline. All of this came at lightening speed, at a dizzying pace, with little time for thought or reflection or for demands that the recipients of the bail-outs funnel money back into local economies, into low-interest loans for small businesses, the most vulnerable to collapse.
It was a lousy deal, one with no strings attached, that was sealed overnight. When dawn came and we looked around, Wall Street was still an unregulated casino. Had I been in Congress, not only would I have taken to the floor to argue for a foreclosure freeze but also for a return to regulation and limits on how big banks could become. No bank should hold more than 10% of our national deposits. Otherwise we're back to square one, with banks too big too fail calling the shots on Capitol Hill.
"Congressional representatives with significant stock holdings in banks involved in TARP should have recused themselves from the bail-out vote. According to the most recent financial statements, my opponent Jane Harman had anywhere from one to five million dollars invested in Goldman Sachs at the time that she voted for the bail-out. In essence, she was voting to bail out her own portfolio at taxpayers' expense."
It's not an argument a conservative can make with a straight face. All they can do, in effect, is say they would have let the American financial system collapse, a position extreme right anti-government members of Congress-- like Mike Pence, Darrell Issa, Virginia Foxx and Michele Bachmann-- were more than delighted to take.
Last week Ben Goad, writing for the Press-Enterprise took a look at the Inland Empire GOP primaries and didn't come up with much. Certainly Mary Bono Mack had aroused more antipathy from the teabaggers than any other Republican on the West Coast. And teabaggers have vague but palpable understandings that both Calvert and Lewis are egregiously corrupt and in and out of ethics and criminal difficulties. In Calvert's case, the Fox News Special on his corruption cases didn't do him any good. Watch it if you haven't seen it already:
Goad started with Mack, who, he points out "will square off against Clay Thibodeau in her bid for an eighth term in the 45th Congressional District, which includes Moreno Valley, Hemet Murrieta and Riverside County's desert communities."
Through March, Thibodeau had raised less than $20,000 for his campaign, while Bono Mack had collected more than $1 million.
Thibodeau, an author who lives in Hemet, said he is poised to pull off an upset with help from the conservative wing of Riverside County's Republican Party.
"People vote, money doesn't," Thibodeau said. "So we went after people, not money."
...To the west, Calvert, R-Corona, faces a challenge from Chris Riggs, a commercial real estate broker from Corona. Riggs said he has already amassed significant support throughout the 44th Congressional District, which includes Riverside, Corona, Norco, and a sizable part of Orange County. Riggs, whose war chest also is dwarfed by that of his opponent, pointed to primary upsets in Utah's contested U.S. Senate seat and a congressional seat in Maryland as evidence that voters are angry at the status quo.
"People are absolutely sick and tired of incumbents," Riggs said.
To overcome his fundraising disadvantage, Riggs is looking to social networking websites and a new law allowing congressional candidates to place candidate statements in sample ballots sent out to voters. In Riverside County alone, more than 813,000 ballots are being sent out to registered voters.
"It's a cheap, effective way to reach a lot of people," said Riggs. Calvert narrowly won a ninth term two years ago, when he edged out Democrat Bill Hedrick, who is running again this year. Calvert campaign consultant Scott Hart said the nine-term incumbent is fully engaged in the primary.
"We've got to get over this hurdle first," Hart said. "We're not taking anything for granted."
Eric Stone, a Republican challenging Lewis, R-Redlands, also is banking on the sample ballot law change to get his name out. A real estate project manager from Cedarpines Park, Stone said he would bring a renewed focus on the constituents in the 41st Congressional District, which includes Redlands, the Pass, parts of the High Desert and San Bernardino County's mountains.
"Special interest groups have hijacked our system of government at their benefit and our expense," he said.
Goad might have missed something in two of the races-- enough genuine dislike for Bono-Mack and Calvert to put the earnest and hardworking Thibodeau and Riggs over the top. Thibodeau comes off very arrogant and has already drawn attention to himself as a potential ethics problem-child. Riggs, on the other hand, comes across less as a teabagger and more as a straight ahead hard core conservative. He's working hard and taking his campaign very seriously-- and counting on God to help him-- really.
Riggs calls the biggest part of the district-- western Riverside County-- "the Bible Belt of California" (and that's probably why he lives there). Why is it a big deal that mega-churches dot the landscape as if in parody? For starters, on November 23, 1993 Calvert was caught by Corona Police receiving oral sex from a heroin addicted prostitute, which is the same year he divorced his wife. Couple this with the fact that the anti-Choice crowd which dominates GOP politics in the desert feels betrayed by his recent YES votes for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and that he didn't join 55 far right crackpots who sponsored some kind of the Sanctity of Life Act, that Riggs would have probably written. All this has placed Calvert in as an awkward a relationship with the Sunday morning church crowd as his votes fro Bush's Wall Street bailout has put him with the teabaggers.
To further complicate matters for an incumbent who is hardly known by his constituents for anything other than his moral and ethical shortcomings, he is involved in a high-profile illegal land deal where he and his partners purchased 4.3 acres of land from a Public Agency that is part of his own Congressional District without competition, and media outlets are now reporting he has been asked to give a deposition regarding this foray into out-and-out criminality prior to election day. And the reason Calvert's high-priced consultant told Goad they're taking the primary so seriously is because Riggs, a 31 year old Christian Conservative, with a picture-perfect family-- 4th kid on the way-- (the antithesis of the hard-drinking, whore-mongering, money-grubbing and philandering Calvert-- who is known in Washington as the one Republican to make David Vitter look like a choir boy), is challenging him from the right! And, he's hammering him for all he's worth.
On the surface, Riggs’ disadvantage has been his fundraising and he's running a race that looks more like what grassroots bottoms-up Democrats do than what you'd expect from the button down, strict hierarchy party. But Riggs is smart and limited resources has him relying on the passions of volunteers to make him competitive. He landed a strategist out of Sacramento to help on principle rather than retainer. He has attorneys and accountants handling the administrative spectrum pro-bono, and has assembled a team through his connections in those mega-churches to handle his website and social media efforts (Riggs is crushing an 18 year incumbent on Facebook fans, while the hapless Calvert makes an idiot of himself daily on Twitter, clearly not his medium). Riggs' campaign reached every absentee voter home that has a published phone number last week with an aggressive auto-call, and they have managed to accumulate tens of thousands of registered Republican email addresses and have been firing pointed-- even barbed-- emails over the last few weeks. Riggs managed to get on the Faith Family Freedom & California Taxpayer Protection slates, each of which hit 40,000 high propensity Republican voter households over the last 10 days, complete with a little education on Calvert’s record on supporting the Bush Wall Street bailout.
A recent Fox News poll showing that 71% of likely Republicans voters in America, if given no information other than whether someone is an incumbent or a challenger, said they would vote for the challenger. With only 32,740 votes cast in the 2008 Republican Primary in the 44th District, out of roughly 145,000 registered Republicans, it is not a stretch to assume that the crazed, racist, pissed off teabaggers and the dedicated church going types are the ones who will be showing up on June 8th. If this is the case, Calvert just might be looking for a job on K Street sooner than he expected. Maybe he and Jane Harman could open a bipartisan lobbying firm.
Harman is home free if she can somehow manage to derail Marcy Winograd's huge momentum. Calvert, on the other hand, would probably not been able to beat Bill Hedrick this year-- even if an earnest conservative hadn't left him half dead on the side of the road. Electing Marcy Winograd and Bill Hedrick are two ways to fix what ails America so please consider a donation here at our Blue America ActBlue page.
Does it matter? Once most of these people get to Washington and get sucked into that Inside-the-Beltway/Inside-the-Bubble world, they completely lose whatever connection they ever had to their districts anyway. Bono Mack, of course, keeps a home in Palm Springs and forces one of her kids to live in it-- nope, it isn't Chastity Chaz Bono-- but, obviously, she lives in D.C. And when she's not in D.C., she shares a home with ex-Congressman Connie Mack III's retarded (but just the way Rush uses it, not the way Rahm uses it) son, current Congressman Connie Mack IV, in lovely Ft Myers, Florida. Connie's district has the distinction of having the most foreclosures of any CD in the nation-- projected to rise to 116,979 in 3 years-- while the Inland Empire district the little wifey's still holding onto will "only" have 51,033 by then (one of the half dozen worst in California). Both of them voted against the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, though few districts' families anywhere in the nation needed that law to pass as badly as Mary's and Connie's.
Ensconced as they are in their palatial Beltway or Ft Myers digs, neither knows anything about what ordinary working families they supposedly "represent" need. I caught an innocuous post in Politico on Saturday about what DC power couples were doing for Valentine's Day. We found out that pathetic Illinois closet queen Aaron Schock spent the day recuperating from being publicly humiliated as a Ken Doll sputtering hypocrite by Rachel Maddow on MTP. GOP operative Grover Norquist is going to Disney on Ice with "my three lady valentines": his wife, Samah, and two daughters, Grace and Giselle. Though he asks: "Do they sell beer at such shows?" Not sure if that's in Orlando or Anaheim but Newt and his 8th or 9th wife were definitely in Florida, trading DC snow for Florida golf and sunshine. But the part that captured my imagination was about the Macks:
The favorite husband-and-wife congressional team, Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) and Connie Mack (R-Fla.), plan to have a "quiet Valentine's Day," according to Bono Mack's office, "spending time together at home with their family."
Hard-pressed residents of Riverside County, California may be wondering why "their" representative calls her home Ft Myers, Florida. Most people would rate Palm Springs at least as desirable a place to live. Why do they have to take a back seat to Ft Myers? They only get one representative in the House. It ought to be someone who calls the district home. And it isn't just Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet who's hoping to give Bono-Mack the opportunity to live in her adopted homes permanently. There isn't a member of Congress teabaggers out here are more eager to defeat than Wall Street shill Mary Bono Mack. In fact, they hate her so much that they're vowing revenge on poor doltish Connie as well!
When Mary lived in California, she hung out with way cooler people
Representatives Of Big Gay Districts in CA, TX And FL Won't Sign On As Sponsors Of The Respect For Marriage Act
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No respect for marriage from Mary Whittaker Bono Baxley & Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy IV
Early this morning, Ken did an excellent job of explaining the importance of the Respect For Marriage Act, the bigger picture. He also republished Earl Blumenauer's moving Huffington Post piece on why he's changed his position on DOMA, something everyone should read, a yes vote in 1996 that the veteran lawmaker now calls "the worst vote of my political career." Today Blumenauer is one of the 91 co-sponsors of the Respect For Marriage Act.
My congressmember, Diane Watson is on that list too, and so is Ken's (Charlie Rangel). I live in the 33rd CD in Los Angeles, in a district without any ostensibly gay neighborhoods-- no West Hollywood, no Silverlake, no Echo Park, no Venice. In fact, it's a solidly middle class district with lots and lots and lots of churches. The district is only about 20% white, with far more blacks and far more Hispanics than Caucasians and it includes Koreatown. Watson won with 88% last year, the first time she's had an opponent since 2002 (when she garnered a mere 83%). I can't imagine where the 12% who voted for McCain came from; maybe elderly people who couldn't get the peg in the right hole on the ballot. This year, though, Watson has a slick prosecutor running against her, Felton Newell. He doesn't sound like he's going to be the kind of committed, fighting progressive that she is. He's already attacked her for wanting to liberalize U.S. policy towards Cuba and he sounds more like a Republican than like a Democrat. We haven't heard his position on this yet; it's probably something he'll have whispered than in writing.
Here's the full list of the original 91 co-sponsors of the bill, all Democrats:
Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jared Polis (D-CO), John Conyers (D-MI), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Mike Quigley (D-IL), Steve Israel (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Diana Degette (D-CO), Pete Stark (D-CA), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Peter Welch (D-VT), Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Mike Capuano (D-MA), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), José Serrano (D-NY), John Olver (D-MA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Ed Markey (D-MA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Bob Andrews (D-NJ), Chaka Fattah (D-PA), George Miller (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Mike Honda (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Diane Watson (D-CA), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Robert Brady (D-PA), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Rush Holt (D-NJ), John Larson (D-CT), Edolphus Towns (D-NY), John Lewis (D-GA), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ed Pastor (D-AZ), Lois Capps (D-CA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Bill Delahunt (D-MA), James McGovern (D-MA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Joe Sestak (D-PA), Howard Berman (D-CA), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL), Steve Rothman (D-NJ), Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Susan Davis (D-CA), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Paul Tonko (D-NY), Nikki Tsongas (D-MA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Jane Harman (D-CA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), John Tierney (D-MA), Jim Himes (D-CT), Joe Courtney (D-CT), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Dan Maffei (D-NY), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Kathy Castor (D-FL), Betty McCollum (D-MN), and David Wu (D-OR).
Four Republicans with outsized gay populations in their districts-- 3 of whom try to play up to that community-- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL)-- are all refusing to sign on as co-sponsors. (The 4th is John Culberson a dedicated homophobe and represents the Montrose area of Houston.) Kirk, who's running for the U.S. Senate and is deathly afraid of teabaggers and extremists in his own party, has already shown what a complete coward he is by announcing that if he's elected to the Senate, he'll oppose the climate and energy bill he voted for in the House. Yeah, all anyone needs to do is scratch an eighth of an inch of hypocrisy off any mainstream Republican and you're left with... Joe Wilson or Virginia Foxx.
When I tweeted at 8AM that Ros-Lehtinen refuses to cosponsor the bill, she responded quickly but rather weakly: "Pleased to see folks on Hill pushing for 3 year Ryan White Act extention: HIV program that saves lives. Expires Sept 30. Needs to move fast." Bono-Mack, on the other hand, is just hiding under her bed.
Republican closet cases, of course, are getting nowhere near this. David Dreier (R-CA)-- whose closet door has been off its hinges for at least half a dozen years-- isn't only not a co-sponsor; he probably could be safely assumed to be a "no" vote. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) hope people will let them off the hook because their gay "flings" were in their wild youths. Patrick McHenry, who's conveniently announced an engagement (to a woman) has been wild much more recently. None of them are co-sponsors and none can be considered even "maybes." There's also a closeted Blue Dog who isn't a sponsor but since he hasn't ever voted against any gay civil rights legislation, I won't out him... until he does.
Why Is Mary Bono Mack Opposing A Health Care Reform Bill That Would Benefit People In Riverside County?
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La dolce vita with Connie and Mary
Even if you had never heard of Northern California wingnut Wally Herger before, you probably heard of him last week when he was validating right-wing extremism at a small, townshirt bund rally in his district. But, as crazy and dangerous as Herger may be, he isn't the only California Republican who has signed on to the mindless obstructionism the Republican Party is holding to in regard to health care reform. Mary Bono Mack, for example, has tried, from time to time, to distance herself from the borderline insane Republicans who dominate her party's caucus-- except that she married one of the worst, but let's leave that alone.
Bono Mack represents a southern California Inland Empire district whose residents stand to benefit gigantically if real health care reform passes. There are glitzy parts of the district around Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage, but many of the residents are barely getting by and, like 1 in 7 Californians, many are in debt because of medical expenses. "[M]ore than 2.2 million California adults-- almost one in seven working-age Californians-- say they have medical debt. And two-thirds of those said they incurred the debt despite having health insurance."
Statewide the median income is $47,493. Bono-Mack's district is considerably poorer. Despite the pockets of great wealth, the median income is only $40,468. Although it is Bono-Mack's spouse Connie who represents the worst hit district in the country based on foreclosures (116,979 projected over the next 4 years), the wife's district is one of the 4 most disastrous in California with 51,033 projected foreclosures. (Only Dan Lungren's, Tom McClintock's and Ken Calvert's districts are faring worse in California.) That said, it is simple to conclude that if 1 in 7 Californians are in financial distress over medical bills, it's worse in Riverside County. And yet, Bono is an adamant opponent of meaningful health care reform. She's taken $61,345 from the Insurance Industry and $421,588 from the Medical-Industrial Complex and she's sticking strictly to their corporate, anti-family playbook. And yet, an official report released last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee shows conclusively that few other districts in the country have as much to gain from passage of the health care legislation as CA-45-- especially small businesses, senior citizens, and the staggering 174,000 uninsured people in the district.
• Help for small businesses. Under the legislation, small businesses with 25 employees or less and average wages of less than $40,000 qualify for tax credits of up to 50% of the costs of providing health insurance. There are up to 12,300 small businesses in the district that could qualify for these credits.
• Help for seniors with drug costs in the Part D donut hole. Each year, 13,400 seniors in the district hit the donut hole and are forced to pay their full drug costs, despite having Part D drug coverage. The legislation would provide them with immediate relief, cutting brand name drug costs in the donut hole by 50%, and ultimately eliminate the donut hole.
• Health care and financial security. There were 2,400 health care-related bankruptcies in the district in 2008, caused primarily by the health care costs not covered by insurance. The bill provides health insurance for almost every American and caps annual out-of-pocket costs at $10,000 per year, ensuring that no citizen will have to face financial ruin because of high health care costs.
• Relieving the burden of uncompensated care for hospitals and health care providers. In 2008, health care providers in the district provided $174 million worth of uncompensated care, care that was provided to individuals who lacked insurance coverage and were unable to pay their bills. Under the legislation, these costs of uncompensated care would be virtually eliminated.
• Coverage of the uninsured. There are 174,000 uninsured individuals in the district, 20% of the district. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nationwide, 97% of all Americans will have insurance coverage when the bill takes effect. If this benchmark is reached in the district, 149,000 people who currently do not have health insurance will receive coverage.
• No deficit spending. The cost of health care reform under the legislation is fully paid for: half through making the Medicare and Medicaid program more efficient and half through a surtax on the income of the wealthiest individuals. This surtax would affect only 3,450 households in the district. The surtax would not affect 99.0% of taxpayers in the district.
174,000 uninsured people in CA-45... and last year Obama won the district 52-47%. Bono Mack's margin of victory was 44,000.
Why Are Republican Members Of Congress Lying About Health Care Reform? Let's Take Mary Bono-Mack, For Example
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Connie & Mary oppose health care for us but tax dollars pay for all the health care they need or want
As we mentioned, Thursday night saw the last of the House committees, Energy and Commerce, dealing with the health care reform issues come up with a proposal. Five conservative Democrats and every single Republican on the committee, earned some extra credit from the Medical-Industrial Complex lobbyists and Insurance company CEOs by voting no-- including a conservative California congresswoman who portrays herself as a moderate, Mary Bono-Mack. Bono-Mack joined corrupt, far right obstructionists Roy Blunt (MO), Nathan Deal (GA), John Shadegg (AZ), Marsha Blackburn (TN) and Phil Gingrey (GA), et al in confirming the "Party of No" image that has turned voters off to Republicans in record numbers.
Bono-Mack has taken in $414,088 from the Medical Sector plus another $58,700 from Big Insurance and is counting on their lobbyists to help pay the costs of a tough re-election campaign next year against popular Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet. Riverside County has been one of the most economically hard hit counties in California by Bush era GOP economic policies. Although it is her husband Connie Mack's district in Florida that has the worst foreclosure crisis in the U.S. (35,134 foreclosures so far-- with 116,979 projected over the next four years), CA-45, represented by Bono-Mack is 25th in the country and 4th worst in California with 15,328 foreclosures to date and another 51,033 projected over the next four years. Hers is a district where the rich are doing fine but where regular middle class families are feeling the squeeze.
When the Center For American Progress looked at the need for health care reform in California, the problems they encountered statewide are greatly amplified in the Inland Empire counties-- Riverside and San Bernardino. Their findings for California:
• 2190 residents of California are losing health insurance every day, and 14,000 Americans nationwide lose insurance daily.
• The average family premium in California costs $1,400 more because our system fails to cover everyone-- and $1,100 more nationally.
• Our broken health insurance system will cost the California economy as much as $36.7 billion this year in productivity losses due to the uninsured-- and up to $248 billion nationally.
• In California there has been a 13 percent increase in the uninsured rate since 2007.
• 7,700,000 are uninsured today in California.
• In California the combined market share of the top two insurers is 44 percent, limiting employers’ and families’ health insurance options as well as the care they receive.
• The average family premium will rise from $13,280 to $22,660 by 2019 in California without health care reform.
• In California, without health care reform, 995,200 will have lost coverage from January 2008 to December 2010.
• In California, 3,317,000 people would gain coverage as a result of the House health care reform bill by 2013, and 5,337,000 would gain coverage by 2019.
• A typical California family will pay $22,660 for health coverage in 2019 without health care reform.
Nonetheless Bono-Mack has decided to stick with her political party and with her big corporate donors and screw over her own constituents once again. Insurance companies, conservatives and her party have nothing substantive to say about health care reform so they're just making up lies and using typical right-wing fear and smear tactics to confuse voters.
Hey, did you know that on page 425 of Barack Obama's health care bill, it mandates that everyone on Social Security MUST get counseling every five years to learn about ways to commit suicide?
And did you know that health care will be denied based on age?
And did you know that you won't be able to pay for your own health care even if you can afford it, because that "wouldn't be fair" to those who can't?
Well, neither did I, but there may be a good reason for that: None of the above is true.
That, of course, isn't stopping the far right wing from circulating the above as gospel in its efforts to derail the passage of meaningful health care reform in this country, health care reform that Democrats have been trying to pass since Harry Truman was president more than 50 years ago, but that Republicans have been successfully stonewalling every year since then.
...Health insurance in this country is a for-profit business. You give your health insurance company money every week, and they're supposed to pay your medical bills when they come due. In order to make money, the health insurance companies need to take in more of your money than they put out to cover your bills.
So the health insurance companies focus on two things to increase profitability: First, they try to make you pay as much money as possible IN. Second, they try to pay as little as possible back OUT. As you can see, their first priority really isn't your good health.
Obama's health care reform is a direct threat to the profitability of health insurance companies. Obama's health care reform, he hopes, would include a public health option whereby the federal government would administer a health care program for people who didn't want, for whatever reason, to get their health care insurance from a private company.
This would be competition for the health insurance companies.
So, in order to compete, health insurance companies would have to tighten their belts, would have to figure out ways to provide better health care at lower cost to the people who buy their health insurance policies. This would Cost Them Money.
So, as you might imagine, health insurance companies and those who have a vested interest in their continued and immense profitability (such as lobbyists and anyone else, including politicians who receive contributions from said health insurance companies) are working very hard to derail meaningful health care reform. It might Cost Them Money.
And in defense of their profitability, you know what? They might even lie.
Republican leaders-- especially John Boehner (OH-$1,206,472 + $904,156), Mike Pence (IN-$453,644 + $160,700), Paul Ryan (WI-$685,714 + $492,651), Miss McConnell (KY- $2,769,168 + $936,057), Roy Blunt (MO-$1,660,898 + $556,682) and Eric Cantor (VA-$1,410,724 + $706,674)-- have been all over the media hysterically lying about the health care proposals and earning the massive bribes they've taken from the Medical-Industrial Complex and the Big Insurance comapnies. These characters are covering Hate Talk Radio like wet blankets, ginning up the fear, so that people who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Ingraham, Savage, etc are now paranoid that health care reform is tantamount to euthanasia.
The controversy stems from a proposal to pay physicians who counsel elderly or terminally ill patients about what medical interventions they would prefer near the end of life and how to prepare instructions such as living wills. Under the plan, Medicare would reimburse doctors for one session every five years to confer with a patient about his or her wishes and how to ensure those preferences are followed. The counseling sessions would be voluntary.
But on right-leaning radio programs, religious e-mail lists and Internet blogs, the proposal has been described as "guiding you in how to die," "an ORDER from the Government to end your life," promoting "death care" and, in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to "kill Granny."
Though the counseling provision is a tiny part of a behemoth bill, the skirmish over end-of-life care, like arguments about abortion coverage, has become a distraction and provided an opening for opponents of the president's broader health-care agenda. At a forum sponsored by the seniors group AARP that was intended to pitch comprehensive reform, Obama was asked about the "rumors." He used the question to promote living wills, noting that he and the first lady have them.
...Not since 2003, when Congress and President George W. Bush became involved in the case of Terri Schiavo, who lay in a vegetative state in a hospice in Florida, have lawmakers waded into the highly charged subject, said Howard Brody, director of an ethics institute at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
The attacks on talk radio began when Betsy McCaughey, who helped defeat President Bill Clinton's health-care overhaul 16 years ago, told former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) that mandatory counseling sessions with Medicare beneficiaries would "tell them how to end their life sooner" and would teach the elderly how to "decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short."
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) said they object to the idea because it "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."
Brody says the proposal to reimburse counseling sessions "is an excellent idea," because too few doctors or adult children know what an elderly person wants, even sometimes when the patient has signed a medical directive.
McCaughey's lies, which Republican members of Congress like Bono-Mack are using to defend their opposition, have been completely debunked and she has been exposed as a fraud working for Big Insurance. The Truth-O-Meter: "For our ruling on this one, there's really no gray area here. McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would "tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner" is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn't just wrong, she's spreading a ridiculous falsehood. That's a Pants on Fire."
That doesn't bother Mary Bono-Mack one bit because she's a Pants on Fire congresswoman, happy with the influx of campaign donations from Big Insurance. Last week a constituent from Palm Springs, Bonnie Reiss, had a letter to Bono-Mack published in the district's biggest newspaper, the Desert Sun:
Now Mary's concerned about costs for a decent Health Care plan. Where has she been when seniors couldn't negotiate drug prices, when rates have gone up on average Americans two digits a year? Isn't that a tax on us? After eight years of crashing this economy with a war built on lies, corruption at the highest level and watching our state be destroyed, now she's concerned.
Mary, you are so lucky half the people don't vote, and your followers watch Fox News (the more you watch the less you know) What exactly is your plan Mary? Call her office and ask them. Bonnie Reiss Palm Springs
Friday the same paper ran a devastating OpEd asking Bono-Mack what she plans to do about the health care crisis that is devastating so many families in her district.
Our desert is a prime example of the deterioration of the health care system. Our hospital emergency rooms are overcrowded and our hospital beds are in short supply. My internist, along with many other fine doctors in the desert, has become a “boutique” doctor, and although I presently pay for this out-of-pocket service, my health care premiums continue to rise, along with my prescription drugs and other costs.
I admire the 90 people that challenged Rep. Mary Bono Mack at Tuesday's town hall meeting in Cathedral City. Our political leaders must open their eyes to the situation this community and other communities across the nation face. I applaud those 90 people that braved the heat to visit Bono Mack's representative and encourage all citizens who care about America's future health too, before going to their doctor when they are feeling ill, instead, pay Bono Mack's office a visit. Ask Mary for some help paying for their doctor visit, the pharmacy prescription, the hospital bed, the visiting nurse, the medical equipment and on and on.
When Mary says she's “not in any way against health care reform just some of what is in the bill,” tell her, instead of acting like a politician of “no” to become a politician that is actively involved in “change.” It's so easy to say no and, frankly, so many of the citizens in my community seem to say no all the time. I am tired of those that are angry and hostile and who offer solutions that amount to nothing more than name-calling. Let's stop saying no and work together in finding solutions that work.
This morning the Associated Press did one of their fact checks and, although it was written by anti-Obama activist Charles Babington, it concluded that distortions are rife in the health care debate. Among other things, he deals with the lies about abortion that you're seeing in Insurance Industry-funded ads and hearing from Republican opponents of health care:
CLAIM: Health care revisions would lead to government-funded abortions.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says in a video, "Unless Congress states otherwise, under a government takeover of health care, taxpayers will be forced to fund abortions for the first time in over three decades."
THE FACTS: The proposed bills would not undo the Hyde Amendment, which bars paying for abortions through Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. But a health care overhaul could create a government-run insurance program, or insurance "exchanges," that would not involve Medicaid and whose abortion guidelines are not yet clear.
Obama recently told CBS that the nation should continue a tradition of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care."
The House Energy and Commerce Committee amended the House bill Thursday to state that health insurance plans have the option of covering abortion, but no public money can be used to fund abortions. The bill says health plans in a new purchasing exchange would not be required to cover abortion but that each region of the country should have at least one plan that does.
Congressional action this fall will determine whether such language is in the final bill.
CLAIM: Americans won't have to change doctors or insurance companies. "If you like your plan and you like your doctor, you won't have to do a thing," Obama said on June 23. "You keep your plan; you keep your doctor."
THE FACTS: The proposed legislation would not require people to drop their doctor or insurer. But some tax provisions, depending on how they are written, might make it cheaper for some employers to pay a fee to end their health coverage. Their workers presumably would move to a public insurance plan that might not include their current doctors.
CLAIM: The Democrats' plans will lead to rationing, or the government determining which medical procedures a patient can have.
"Expanding government health programs will hasten the day that government rations medical care to seniors," conservative writer Michael Cannon said in the Washington Times.
THE FACTS: Millions of Americans already face rationing, as insurance companies rule on procedures they will cover.
Denying coverage for certain procedures might increase under proposals to have a government-appointed agency identify medicines and procedures best suited for various conditions.
Obama says the goal is to identify the most effective and efficient medical practices, and to steer patients and providers to them. He recently told a forum: "We don't want to ration by dictating to somebody, 'OK, you know what? We don't think that this senior should get a hip replacement.' What we do want to be able to do is to provide information to that senior and to her doctor about, you know, this is the thing that is going to be most helpful to you in dealing with your condition."
Lying about medical reform for Big Business is hardly new for Betsy McCaughey. Here's a Countdown segment from last February, when she was using the same arguments to smear the Stimulus Package:
