Kristen K. Swanson (left of center) convenes her Saturday organizing meeting
Many have said this is “the year of the woman.”
Lovettsville’s Kristen K. Swanson, a local artist, has believed that this would be “the year of the woman” ever since Donald Trump was chosen by the electoral college but lost the popular vote in 2016.
After all, the day after the Inauguration, Women marched on Washington in larger numbers than attended the Inauguration. Continue reading
Mr. Donald Trump and Speaker Ryan
Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump promised in September 2015 on 60 Minutes that when he got rid of Obamacare, “I am going to take care of everybody. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”
Yet there’s Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s plan in the House of Representatives that won’t cover everyone – and Ryan is just fine with that – as are many members of the Republican caucus fine including Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock – no matter that Ryan is prepared to leave millions behind without health coverage who have been covered under Obamacare.
Asked how many would lose coverage, Speaker Ryan said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “I can’t answer that question.”
Incidentally, Mr. Trump is lobbying Congress to support Speaker Ryan’s plan, to calm the fears of Republican members with a conscience.
Vice President Pence said they need the support of every Republican Member to pass the measure in the House.
Some will die without the health care coverage guaranteed by Obamacare.
Others will find health care unaffordable and do without and suffer for it.
For example, Lovettsville’s Eden Reck, 10 years old, reportedly has had 40 hospitalizations in her life, because of life-threatening genetic conditions. Obamacare assures her family that she will continue to be treated. The lifetime cap eliminated by Obamacare means her three siblings will now be at risk for the $1 Million lifetime cap she might exhaust for her care alone. Continue reading
LuAnn Bennett for Congress
I hear a lot of people saying they wish this election season was over.
As a person who has spent a large part of my life concerned about matters political and legal, I understand the electoral weariness, especially this campaign season.
But how this election is done, how it’s finished, is going to be critically important to the nation and our communities, so, unless we prefer to regret the results at our leisure, we have to pay attention now.
One of my political heroes, Robert Kennedy, was fond of saying when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This is a tough election and we need to be tougher.
I’ve already decried the Republican presidential nominee as abusive, intolerant, especially abusive of women, and unfit for office.
We must, however, also consider who should represent us in Congress.
Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, the incumbent, is somewhat of a puzzle to me.
I’ve watched Barbara appear at many local events, especially in Western Loudoun, passing out balloons bearing her name, posting those oversized signs that should be banned, and succeeding at remaining as content free of any controversy as one possibly can, offering poll tested nostrums that offend as few voters as is politically possible.
Barbara is a prominent member of a do-nothing Congress directed by her Republican Caucus, led by Speaker Paul Ryan.
The Republican controlled Congress couldn’t move its lumbering “deliberative” self only days ago to grant emergency funds to Flint, Michigan where the health and safety of women and children remain at grave risk. Continue reading
When did the Republican presidential primary become a Bravo Reality TV series – “the Desperate Candidates?”
We have trash talk from a bombastic billionaire developer, Donald Trump, putting down the “Republican Establishment,” and those, who he convincingly says, are his “establishment” competitors.
In the latest round of churlish misconduct, Trump blasted one opponent based on his height (“little Marco”), countered by the charge that Trump was a crook (“con man”) according to Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, prompting Trump to come back on Senator Cruz (“lying Ted”), and Senator Rubio’s toe-curling grammar school innuendoes followed, knocking Trump’s face, hair and, the most controversial, Trump’s sexual prowess (“small hands”), causing Trump to offer a national on-air description of his private body parts (“no problem there”).
In Loudoun County, despite Senator Rubio’s “below the belt” rhetoric, he was enthusiastically invited to Patrick Henry College to rally his true believers at a school founded “to impact the world ‘for Christ and for Liberty.’”
At the rally, Senator Rubio promised to compromise the medical care anyone was receiving under the Affordable Care Act, to step up the war on terror, to keep Guantanamo open and to “find out everything they [the prisoners there] know,” without saying precisely how he’d make that happen within the law and “as a devout Christian.” Congresswoman Barbara Comstock touted Rubio as “the most conversant on all of the top issues of the day.”
The Republican presidential candidates, including those deeply mired in this dehumanizing dialogue, undeservedly affect a moral superiority as compared with Trump. Continue reading
Northern Virginia’s Congressperson, Barbara Comstock (R-VA), doesn’t care so much about breast cancer, or a woman’s constitutional right of privacy and choosing when and whether to have a child – not as much as Barbara cares to impose her religious belief on everyone else — that a “person” exists at the moment of conception.
Barbara was ready to close down the government based on this superstitious belief.
Barbara believes no woman should have an abortion any time after that elusive indeterminate moment when conception has occurred. That’s the only way you can understand her public statement that Roe v Wade should be reversed.
Barbara is free to practice her religious belief but not in disregard of the constitution and laws that she swore to uphold that permit abortion. But she looks for her openings to squeeze and restrict a woman’s right of choice even while Roe remains the law of the land.
In 2012, when Barbara was in the General Assembly, she voted for a bill to require women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion; she sought to discourage abortions. Continue reading
The Donald
We’re at high tide for Miss-ogyny in America and the poster child surfing this wave of sexist intolerance is “the Donald.”
Mr. Donald Trump is proud of the fact that he’s called women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and he admits that this abuse goes “well beyond” his slander slap fight with Rosie O’Donnell.
Confronted with his sexist locker room remarks about a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice by Fox Correspondent Megyn Kelly during last week’s presidential debate, the Donald said, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”
Yeah, what’s this “correctness” thing? Are you supposed to respect women? Who knew? As Governor Christy might say, “forgeddaboudid.”
The Donald said, “I don’t frankly have time for political correctness.”
Donald is, by his own words, all about “hav[ing] a good time.”
As for Ms. Kelly who asked the question, the Donald said, “And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be …”
“The Donald” then twitted the night away not being very nice to the correspondent including the remark– “I thought Megyn [Kelly] behaved very badly.”
The bullying woman-bashing Donald makes himself out to be the victim because Ms. Kelly “outed” what a pig the Donald truly is. Now that’s chutzpah.
But this is not just about “the Donald.” The dog whistle war waged by Republicans against women was never for the Donald. He puts it right out there, unabashedly, and, when he did last Thursday night, somewhere in America a guy sitting in a lounge chair, a tall beer at hand, dropped his half eaten bag of Doritos, and arm pumped a cheer, for the Donald for saying it “like it is” – that “this country doesn’t have time” to be politically correct, and certainly not about women. Continue reading
Frank Wolf, Andrew Nicholson, and Barbara Comstock.
Andrew Nicholson, Chair of the Clarke County GOP, recently wrote a letter to the Leesburg Today. Sue Liggett, Chair of the Clarke County Democratic Committee, noticed something. She responded:
Dear Editor: I recently read a curious letter to Leesburg Today from an Andrew Nicholson of Berryville, promoting Republican candidates for Congress. To the casual observer, the letter would appear to be written by an unaffiliated member of the public. It wasn’t.
AFP sponsored anti-medicaid expansion event with Delegate Tag Greason and Randy Minchew. The sign behind Greason reads “HANDS OFF MY HEALTH CARE”
We can’t ignore how money is spent in political campaigns because, plainly, those who contribute expect something in return.
If you give a $100 contribution hoping that will offset the cost of a candidate’s flyer or postage, there’s little expectation that this relatively unsubstantial sum will buy a candidate’s undying obeisance to your wishes should your candidate prevail in November.
But what if you are contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads that your dream media team creates, if you are glorifying “the candidate” and slander-blasting any opponent to kingdom come with half-truths and whopper lies, if you bundle the contributions of others to show the reach of your influence, if you provide endorsements from organizations that you control that appear independent of each other (but are not), and, if you do snazzy multi-color snail mail mailings, robo-calls, push polls, social media, print and electronic blast “press” releases tearing down the opponent, who may be financially unable to shout back with anything like equal force, while, all the time, continuing to deify your candidate?
The scale of influence enjoyed by this Daddy Warbucks’ species of no-holds-barred contributor tilts the scales of our electoral process from anything fair to grossly inappropriate because the candidate elected by such extraordinary largesse is beholden to the contributor who brought him or her to our dysfunctional political hoedown – the U.S. Congress.
This pay-to-play phenomenon appears to be the rule, as evidenced by the fact that candidates raise millions to get jobs that pay less than two hundred thousand dollars. Continue reading
Rep. Barbara Comstock has set her sights on the US Congress (photo by J. Flannery)
Virginia Delegate Barbara Comstock was a lobbyist for Carnival Cruise Corporation in 2005, and, while at the lobbying firm, Blank Rome, helped Carnival Cruise get a $236 million dollar payout from the U.S. Congress for ferrying evacuees during Hurricane Katrina.
The rub is that Carnival Cruise got a too large payout because Carnival only filled their boats half full while doubling their usual charges — more than twice what Carnival then charged for a regular cruise.
A chorus of chest-beating bi-partisan outrage followed
Delegate Comstock now wants the voters in the 10th Congressional District to promote her to the U.S. Congress. How to trust Ms. Comstock when it comes to resisting the hoggish corporate handouts that she successfully lobbied congress to give away? Continue reading
Retiring Congressman Frank Wolf is the patriarch of Loudoun’s Christianist right. The patronage system he developed will continue if we don’t stop it. The powerful, detail oriented politician who brought “The Colson Center for Christian Worldview” to Loudoun also brought us spy agency jobs, labyrinthian development, crazy supervisors and school board members, and gridlock. When he retires, he’s going to stick around, continuing his Chuck Colson influenced work, insuring that government directed ideological finance penetrates every aspect of our lives.
In this vacuum, the Washington Post reports that “Northern Virginia [GOP] lurches to the right,” but even the best exposure in the world won’t be enough to win this battle. Barbara Comstock, Wolf’s hand-selected successor, has the backing, power and money of the Republican establishment. For example, she is endorsed by Tim Phillips of Americans For Prosperity who specializes in phony grass tops organizations and dirty attack ads. Even so, the primary is not a wrap. Bob Marshall is running TEA Party attack ads that appeal to the rightmost fringes of the right, reminding voters that Comstock took direction from Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” and voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary.
Whoever wins the Republican primary, the congressional race will be exceedingly ugly and hateful. But with Marshall, we won’t need to work too hard to show what a crackpot he is. It happens every time he opens his mouth. He’s proud of it.
So we need your help to insure the “real” TEA Party candidate represents Virginia’s GOP 10th CD. Get out and vote for Bob Marshall. He’s no TINO, and he can be counted on to remind voters of this every step of the way.