General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDenny Heck Wow
Who knew the State of Washington appears to have the toughest Democrats in the country. I was impressed with their Governor, but this Congressman is badass too
iamateacher
(1,089 posts)I totally agree.
herding cats
(19,564 posts)The contrast between him and Gowdy was glaring, to say the least.
Cha
(297,222 posts)DesertRat
(27,995 posts)Cha
(297,222 posts)JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)is that we will be meeting new faces. This is a great opportunity for true leaders to rise above the fray.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)easttexaslefty
(1,554 posts)on facebook
Control-Z
(15,682 posts)Wow!
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Yes. Thank you!
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)I'm going into my cable company and start making a scene....besides bitching at their broadband claims which aren't legit.
Thanks for posting this awesome speech.
trof
(54,256 posts)He is GOOD.
malaise
(268,998 posts)Tess49
(1,579 posts)Lucinda
(31,170 posts)and have friends in Spokane, so WA Dem stories have been an interest for me for several months. They are doing some great things statewide and nationally...
cilla4progress
(24,731 posts)Red. Going to an Indivisible meeting tonight here. So proud!! And fortunate.
LisaM
(27,811 posts)He was Speaker for 6 years, and pretty effective. Unfortunately, he got unseated in 1994, with the whole Gingrich Contract on America thingie.
Why the voters of Eastern Washington let themselves be bamboozled by George Nethercutt into losing a Speaker of the House is beyond me. Tom Foley was a good Congressman, and popular - charismatic, too, I saw him in person at a fundraiser once.
Gingrich did a lot of harm.
cilla4progress
(24,731 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,656 posts)I live in the 9th district, with D Adam Smith.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)all these Dems! I did not KNOW just how many sharp, composed, quick-on-their-feet reps we have!! What a revelation today has been!
I watched him, paused the replay, went out back for a smoke and thought, what an astonishing group of people I have "met" today...and how refreshing is it to listen to ARTICULATE people who mean what they say and say what they mean with heart and dignity...just makes me burst with pride!
It feels as if these Democrats today have spread their wings over America in a fiercely protective display of strength and unity - how grateful I am today!!!
tavernier
(12,388 posts)sheshe2
(83,763 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]Meredith McIver approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)KT2000
(20,577 posts)We need him to repeat perspective in the media because that is what this is all about.
grantcart
(53,061 posts)WA state has also had some great Republican politicians (Dan Evans being the most notable)
Sam Reed was Secretary of State and insured that misplaced ballots were counted giving Democratic candidate Gregorie a 42 vote win. He ignored pressure from Rove and Bush and did the right thing. He was honoured as Outstanding Public Official of the year by a non partisan group.
Here is what he told the Seattle Times about the Republican Party when he retired:
Weve been hurt here in the state of Washington by idiots at the national level whove said stupid things . . . said Reed, who describes himself as pro-choice and pro-gay rights. We need the social conservatives to develop the political sophistication to understand how candidates who are running in this state who win tend to be more moderate than Republicans on social issues. And they need to accept that.
There are no more Sam Reeds in the Republican Party anymore.
pnwmom
(108,978 posts)despite his reputation as a "hawk" and support of Boeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Jackson
A Cold War liberal and anti-Communist Democrat, Jackson supported higher military spending and a hard line against the Soviet Union, while also supporting social welfare programs, civil rights, and labor unions.[1] His political beliefs were characterized by support of civil rights, human rights, and safeguarding the environment, but with an equally strong commitment to oppose totalitarianism in general, and communism in particular.
SNIP
Jackson boasted one of the strongest records on civil rights during the civil rights movement.[6][7] He supported the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In April 1968, responding to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Jackson gave a speech in which he talked about the legacy and injustice of inequality.[8]
In 1963, Jackson was made chairman of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, which became the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 1977, a position he held until 1981. In the 1970s, Jackson joined with fellow senators Ernest Hollings and Edward Kennedy in a press conference to oppose President Gerald Ford's request that Congress end Richard Nixon's price controls on domestic oil, which had helped to cause the gasoline lines during the 1973 Oil Crisis.[9]
Jackson authored the National Environmental Policy Act. This Act has been called one of the most influential environmental laws in history. It helped stimulate similar laws and the principle of publicly analyzed environmental impact in other states and in much of the world.[10] He was also a leader of the fight for statehood for Alaska and Hawaii. In 1974, Jackson sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment in the Senate (with Charles Vanik sponsoring it in the House) which denied normal trade relations to certain countries with non-market economies that restricted the freedom of emigration. The amendment was intended to help refugees, particularly minorities, specifically Jews, to emigrate from the Soviet Bloc. Jackson and his assistant, Richard Perle, also lobbied personally for some people who were affected by this lawamong them Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky. Jackson also led the opposition within the Democratic Party against the SALT II treaty, and was one of the leading proponents of increased foreign aid to Israel.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)Congressman Heck that I just watched him at the hearing and that he was EXTRAORDINARY!!
She said o'tay, I'll be sure to tell him!
I'm having entirely too much fun today!
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)lillypaddle
(9,580 posts)Need some more of him.
world wide wally
(21,743 posts)tallahasseedem
(6,716 posts)I would love to hear more from him!
Rep. Heck laid it out today. What he said should make every American proud. I was clapping. Yes i love heir governor also.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 20, 2017, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)
I have been getting phone calls saying,"Wow! Did you see Heck?"
calimary
(81,265 posts)GREAT stuff!
However, the Emerald State doesn't have a monopoly on 'em.
California has Adam Schiff, Ted Lieu, Maxine Waters, and Eric Swalwell and his wonderful web page! Check it out:
https://swalwell.house.gov/russia
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Jackie Sperrior,(Sp)?
calimary
(81,265 posts)Democrat from Northern CA. She was the late Congressman Leo Ryan's assistant, and accompanied him to Guyana when he was investigating Jim Jones and the so-called "People's Temple" scam. Things went WAY wrong that day. Gunfire erupted as Leo Ryan and his delegation were trying to take off from the little local airport. Ryan was shot and killed. Jackie Speier was shot and wounded. I think she had to have her hand almost completely reconstructed. She had the damnedest-looking cast on that arm for the longest time. I remember working with Bob Flick, an NBC producer not too long after that. He and his sound man, Steve Sung, were also shot and wounded. Their cameraman, Bob Brown, was shot and killed, as was their reporter, Don Harris. San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and defecting Temple member Patricia Parks were also killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Why I thought she looked familiar.
Thanks for that info. May I copy it?
calimary
(81,265 posts)I got to NBC after all that went down. But all those faces and names were already familiar me because, being in L.A., I'd grown up watching KNBC (the local NBC O&O) and the NBC Nightly News that followed.
I remember Steve Sung being interviewed and showing his own arm that had been wounded by gunfire. He described looking at it, that day, while trying to keep his head down, since the gunfire was still happening and he was certain he was going to be dead soon. And he saw what he described as this "piece of meat." ON his arm. Or what was left of the musculature on his arm. It had been shot, shredded, just hanging loose, and his only thought was to rip it off completely and be done with it. Much later, of course, he'd have those scars, and a big, visible chunk of the muscles of his forearm - missing.
That account never left me. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Still can't, lo these many years later. Jonestown was 1978.
And I remember the local anchor, Kelly Lange, who often filled in on the "Today" show and even sometimes on the "Nightly News". She was very popular out here on Channel 4, what with her friendly and congenial on-air personality. She was pretty much the same way off-camera. She had been dating Bob Brown, the cameraman who got killed covering Jonestown that day. For weeks afterwards, her on-air demeanor was noticeably subdued. She told the story of being called - I think it was by Carl Reiner's wife, who said "No more GLOOM!" And promptly invited her over for dinner - where they and several of their comedy friends literally pelted her with jokes and gags for several hours, and kept her laughing almost nonstop. She talked about that on the air and said it helped her snap out of it. She also decided to write a book about the man she loved and lost.
I don't know whatever happened to the book, but she went on to a continuing prominent career, and after that night with her private show with all those comedians, she visibly brightened up. It did change her mood.
It was mind-blowing - working with some of those people who'd been there and survived that. You gain a kind of reverence for them and what they bore witness to, and a deeper appreciation of how dangerous the journalist's job can truly be. I think back to Bob Flick, the producer of Don Harris's segment, for which Bob Brown and Steve Sung were the camera crew. Harris and Brown died. Flick and Sung were injured but survived. And you've gotta know that, as hard-bitten a pair of news veterans as they were - you KNEW it had affected them profoundly. It must have been like covering a war. Some of 'em I worked with HAD covered war, and lived to tell about it. You KNOW it affected them. How could it not?
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Some one posted the other day that Feinstein had the same look on her face when she came out from the Comey interview as she had when Harvey Milk was killed. Grassley was stumbling around like a person who had just been told about a death. Dianne had to speak. She said," She understood how the Chairman felt. That was very telling about what they heard from Comey.
I did not realize her office was close to his.
calimary
(81,265 posts)Watched it on TV. Then-mayor George Moscone was killed that night, too, along with Harvey Milk. I think she was the chair of the county supervisors or city council or something. She was the ranking member of whatever body it was. So she was, in effect, next in line for mayor. And she assumed the mayor's job because of what had happened.
I still remember that impromptu news conference - I think it was on the steps of City Hall, or in the hallway of City Hall. She was surrounded by this huge gaggle of reporters and camera crews, with other city officials clustered around and behind her. You could just barely see her face sticking out from the midst of that crowd. And she was so damn calm and composed. So in control. She provided a real tower of strength - for real, not just a cliche - during a stunningly tumultuous, maddening, horrifying time in San Francisco. The whole city was jolted as if from an earthquake - and man do they understand earthquakes up there.
I remember being so impressed by her demeanor. She was utterly unruffled. And in that kind of situation, somebody HAS TO be. You NEED that image or metaphor for a steady hand on the wheel. And she was IT. She really stepped up. She made her bones, politically, that night, for sure. I remember watching her and thinking she was surely going to move up to bigger things from that.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)I thought the story said Mayor, but had to Google. Her office was close or next to his.
dianne feinstein mayor san francisco
George II
(67,782 posts)mrs_p
(3,014 posts)WA dem here from a long line of PNW dems. I like to think we are kinda special.
3catwoman3
(23,987 posts)Heck gave heck, and then some. Well, done, sir.
anniebelle
(899 posts)We need leadership right now that will take us back to our Democratic ideals instead of this wishy-washy 'centrist' crap. All Franken is one of the best right now and I'm looking forward to seeing more of Gavin Newsome, Elizabeth Warren, Keith Ellison ~ leaders that are not afraid to call a lie a lie and not back down. Hillary lost me when she backed out on her 'deplorable' comment ~ that was mild compared to what they really are ~ despicable, knuckle-draggin', racists, bible humpers of the worst kind, and on and on.
MFM008
(19,808 posts)My congressmen. I'll have to write him again and thank him.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)Wanta bet he runs for Senate? What a patriotic speech WOW is right!
MFM008
(19,808 posts)The state of Washington picked up a district in 2010 due to population increase. He's been it since then.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)And Pete Buddiebeig, Mayor of South Bend,Indiana ,too. What a great pair to be in the Senate.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)MFM008
(19,808 posts)that for sure.
True Blue American
(17,984 posts)It is hard to absorb everything we are hearing. People are stressing,waiting iron the next bad news.
Dem_4_Life
(1,765 posts)I finally got a chance to finish watching the hearing last night and was SO IMPRESSED with him. We need more Denny Heck's.