Norm Dicks town hall, Port Townsend, and a little rant:

[cliffordu]

Like a good Democrat I got an invite to the Norm Dicks town hall the other day and I thought I'd go strike a blow for freedom........

So I loaded up my trusty panasonic point 'n shoot and put on my cup and headed out to the commons at Fort Worden State park to partake in the clown hall, I mean the town hall.....




And saw my first freeptastic protester who looked as mean as he could.

Then, I saw these three and decided I needed to engage them in a little friendly, energetic political discussion.




Two minutes into our conversation the man in the middle offered to kick my ass and told me to screw myself. I don;t know why, all I did was ask him for his Medicare card so we could burn them in protest of the socialism in Medicare.

And I asked him what FEMA camp he wanted to go to.

One guy made it into the town hall with this:



Which, if you cannot see it is a two foot metal screw....I told a cop about it and they went and talked to the guy and then let him wander around with it.......

The place was packed, here is a shot before the walls really filled up. SRO and 60 or so people outside.




Then Norm got up and gave his talk....



Here's the rant:

Norm Dicks was the worst prepared, underprepped speaker of any stripe I have ever seen. He ran through the slide show and his prepared notes like he had to go to the bathroom and couldn't leave the room until he finished his speech. Seriously, he read it as fast as he could. The slides were OK until we hit the ones with numbers - they were impossible to read. I had NO idea what he stood for in health care before he started and I STILL don't.

The Q&A was embarrassing.



The people who asked him questions had spent time preparing VERY SPECIFIC questions concerning paying for health care and the problem with pushing single payer.....

Norm kept pounding three things without answering most of them:

1. Contain costs by reducing the number of tests (translating to the government between your doctor and you by the woman next to me.)

Fixing Medicare by doing #1, and negotiating drug prices.

Reducing the deficit, some how but EVEN I NEVER CAUGHT WHAT HE WAS SAYING ABOUT THAT.

The public option seemed to be the fallback position, and Big Pharma and the In$urance people keep making a killing.

+++++


And even the Repubs that were there (40% of the crowd??) asked very specific and honest questions about government in general and paying for it altogether.

He was asked a specific question about a specific part of a bill, on page such and such, paragraph number whatever....concerning whether or not it was true that the feds, under this specific bill would REALLY have access to medical records, bank accounts and some other piece I missed.....


Norm looked at his notes for a second and then said, "I don't know anything about that....." and looked helplessly at the aide he had in the front row...

People all over the hall groaned........Someone in the back yelled..."YOU SPONSORED THAT BILL...."

And then Norm Dicks, MY REPRESENTATIVE in the House, said..."What's the answer supposed to be....", finally fouond it in his notes and said "Oh...The answer to that is NO!!!"

I got the fuck out of there right after that....

People, if we are losing the narrative over health care it's due to our elected officials, our democrats, who DON'T have command of anything more than what's on the slides and the notes they read.

That speech he gave should have been hellfire and brimstone from the heart, as though this country's very life depends on getting the health care costs under control, and the way to do that is with the public option.

I STILL don't know what he stands for. Other than the fact that he will vote for a bill that has a public option.

He claims that it has to pay for itself..........


The only other excitement was before the thingy started, when a very tall 65 year old wearing a "Vietnam, US NAVY" gimme hat crowded in front of a woman standing next to me. I suggested he move back, as she needed to see, too.....

He growled and asked me why I was so angry, I said I wasn't, shrugged and said "You could be a gentleman." (I believe he was trading on his gimme hat to intimidate people and crowd his way to the front).

He was old enough that I KNEW the gentleman line would have an effect.......Sure enough, 5 minutes later he turned around to me and said: "I gave my seat to a woman RIGHT OVER THERE, and that's why I came to stand over here....."

I sez that's cool and smiled my bestest, hungryest, most evil and intimidating grin I could....

And he backed off, aware that bullying has limits.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

:hi:

[cliffordu]

2. Yo!!!!

Howareya, my good friend??!!!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. K&R - great post!

Great job of reporting, but I am now even more depressed about our elected representatives.

He sponsored the bill. I gasped when I read that.

And, given the stupidity exhibited by some of the senior citizens there - and I'm almost one myself - I'm thinking that those "Death Panels" might not be a bad idea, after all.

Thanks for this, and you did REALLY well with that tall, rude guy. Kill them with kindness, it never fails.......................

[cliffordu]

5. Thanks...I wish

I could have recorded the whole thing - the gasps from the audience was amazing...Disheartening, too.....

All the questions asked were well thought out and NOT bait at all....some were angry, and only one or two of those who just wanted to add to the noise.

[DCKit]

4. Thanks for the report.

Unfortunately, it does seem Norm Dicks has forgotten it's the people back home who put him in DC, not the lobbyists he lunches with. The guy's just too damn comfortable. Time to shake him up a good bit, or replace his sorry ass with someone who's hungry - and a progressive Democrat, of course.

[cliffordu]

6. If I wasn't a retired criminal and a recovering

dope fiend, I'd run.

The good news would be the porno tapes are already in the public domain......

[instantkarma]

7. will you call or write to him tomorrow?

tell him what you think! One right-wing talking point is "they haven't even read the bill..." Performances like what you describe hurt the cause and play right into the hands of the insurance companies. Hell,tell him you got disgusted and walked out!

[cliffordu]

8. I have a feedback form I'll mail tomorrow. ......

And that's exactly what I'll tell him.....

[rhett o rick]

9. I heard that 500 were turned away in Bremerton. I watched online.

I agree Norm was unprepared to answer the talking points. But my biggest complaint is with the way questions were allowed. People were allowed to give rambling dissertations before any question. Questions should have been submitted and drawn from a hat. or questioners allowed 1 min to ask a question.

I was disappointed in the local Democratic Party for not showing up in force and filling more seats, and having prepared questions to take away from the teabaggers time.

Having said that, I want to give Norm a lot of credit for standing up there against the onslaught. Also, he stood fast to his support of SINGLE PAYER health care. He also stood up to the red herring of tort reform.

[cliffordu]

10. Yep - He mentioned single payer in PT, also -

and fired back about tort reform pretty well........I inadvertently overlooked that for my rant - He should get kudos for that.


It was a huge crowd for Port Townsend

[grantcart]

11. Thanks for the report

Glad to see that you weren't arrested or anything like that.

[cliffordu]

12. As soon as I get to the general population I'll give the real report.

[gopiscrap]

13. I ran against Dicks from the left in 1990

got more votes than anybody else in primary against him in 30 years..we did move him to the left a bit...but he's still a hard drinking gas bag!

[cliffordu]

15. His face was awfully red.....

I wondered if he was half in the bag.

[gopiscrap]

16. Everytime I've seen him he usually is

One of his favorite watering holes in Tacoma is on North 30th and McCarver!

[stevedeshazer]

14. It's disappointing to learn that Dicks couldn't find his ass with two hands and a flashlight.

That guy ought to know better.

It's times like these when I wonder WTF is up with these Democrats.

[lumpy]

17. Dicks is a closet conservative. Been following his voting

record for years. Votes with the Repubs a great deal of the time. He is in his very comfy position.

[Kitsune]

18. Every election cycle I hold out hope that we can finally get rid of Norm Dicks.

Then I am brought crashing back to reality. Bastard's been in Congress longer than I've been /alive/.

[Krakowiak]

19. I can't stand Dicks

thanks for the report.

[eridani]

20. Dicks supports single payer

Don't know if this one was the PT event or not--

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/tmccarthy0/2009/09/congressman-norm-dicks-announc.php?ref=fpd

At an overflowing town hall meeting, Congressman Norm Dicks, 6th district, Washington State, announced he supported a single payer system so that all American's will have the benefit of health care. I think the Congressman was saying he is in full support of Anthony Weiner's amendment to HB3200. He was very clear when he said, "I know most people here support a single payer plan", many folks clapped, and then he said, "I am in full support of a single payer plan"!

When we entered the foray we sign in, the crowd at this point was orderly. There were so many people who arrived early as we did. The meeting was supposed to begin at 7:30 PM, but there were so many people already there the meeting began early. I would say there were several hundred people, but I can't be sure of the exact numbers. Congressman Dicks I am sure has more accurate numbers. It was performance art in its highest form. There were police everywhere. You could see the police presence as we parked our car one block away from the Conference Center. Officers lined the back of the building. We grabbed seats at the back of the overflow room. I left my very reliable husband to hold my seat while I ventured into the room to do some filming. There was a certain air or just all around weirdness going on, so many people were marching up and down the aisles with handmade and professionally printed signs. Pro-Reform, Anti-Reform, Pro-single payer, Pro-Insurance companies, there were many pro-Congressman Dicks attendees. We were some, his office sent me a personal invitation, because no doubt about it the Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News nuts came with their best crazy. They came to disrupt and some of them did disrupt, however, the crowd fought back as well. I will be uploading video shortly to my YouTube account. I will come back and post exact links later, but you can look me up there too, search for terimccarthy at YouTube. There were definitely two distinct groups, although we were spread evenly around the room. We were lucky enough to sit next to an Emergency Room Physician, guess what folks, he was pro-single payer. He told us his nightmare stories of paperwork required by insurance companies, more than 30 man hours a week spent on filling out paperwork over and over again. It was quite informative. There were many on the other side, they were the classic "No Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Fascism", folks. And one absolute moron with his own sign saying Thomas Jefferson didn't believe in Socialism. Yes I know, you know, most people know, Lenin, younger than Jefferson, whatever, facts do not penetrate these folks, not ever. There were a fair number of people clearly on Medicare protesting "socialism". Yes that room was thick in ironies, and at times it felt as though madness had taken over. Poor Congressman Dicks, he had some crap to put up with.

It seemed the anti-socialist-Marxists-communist-etc folks held the floor when it came to asking questions and yelling at Congressman Dicks, but he did a phenomenal job and at times his manner was condescending towards them and fantastic! He clearly had command of the forum. There was one very crazy moment, another elderly person, called the President a socialist, Marxist, communist, fascist, anti-constitution, screaming on and on about taking the country back etc. She was the most insane in the room, she sounded like she was from a Slavic country. It was quite clear what these folks were really complaining about and it isn't health care. One person suggested the election was a coup, so there were clearly crazy people at this town hall meeting.

The questioners asked the same questions over and over again. There was the anti-abortion crowd. Why is it that everything is about abortion with these folks? Then there was the anti-immigrant crowd, with their singular question of immigrants getting access to free health care, and there were those that insisted emergency room care is free so the system is just fine...huh? You can't figure some of this stuff out though because these folks seem to be free of facts.

But the greatest part of this meeting was Norm Dicks, who is in full support of a single payer government run program to which the emergency room physician clapped and was in full support. More people there were for a single payer system than were not, more people in a Kitsap County Washington, were for a SINGLE PAYER GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH PLAN. The others were outnumbered. We have to stand up like we did during the election and ram this thing through.

Check for my videos this afternoon! Rendering takes time!!