She may not have won her election bid, but Kristi Allen-Gailushas was the winner of the most popular post(s) at Intelligent Discontent for the year 2010. The top five weren’t incredibly diverse, with two about KAG, two about Denny Rehberg, and one about the Montana Democratic Party topping the lists.
5. The Montana Democrats Offer a Lame Response to GOP Hate (July 17)
A disappointing response by the Montana Democratic Party to the Republican platform’s call to outlaw “homosexual acts” was the fifth most popular post this year and demonstrated the half-hearted way the party often responds to social issues, perhaps foreshadowing the disappointing votes offered by Senators Tester and Baucus on the DREAM Act. While Montana Democrats certainly need to be careful not to alienate voters, weakness on fundamental questions of human rights isn’t the place for half-hearted responses.
4-3. Dennis Rehberg Really Hates Firefighters and The Prince of the Rimrocks Keeps Talking (July 13 and July 30)
Two posts that demonstrate the utter disrespect Montana’s representative in Congress has for people who not only work for a living, but who risk their lives for others. Rehberg’s cynical decision to sue the City of Billing and its firefighters was compounded by the lie that he was fighting the fire with them–when his official schedule made it clear he left the property for a parade was compounded by his decision to turn around and vote against health benefits for first responders at the World Trade Center. Rehberg even doubled down this Christmas, voting against the benefits that the Senate unanimously approved. Unfortunately, the Montana media seemed not to notice or care.
2-1. Astonishingly, The Video of the Health Education Suit is Worse than the Initial Story (Aug 24) and Sex Ed is TYRANNY! (Aug 21)
It’s not surprising that the two top posts of 2010 dealt with Helena’s health curriculum debacle and its patriotic ringleaders, Tim Ravndal and Kristi Allen-Gailushas. These self-appointed guardians of morality for all and obesity for children hit the Tea Party Trifecta: half-baked notions about the Constitution, conspiracy theories and misinformation in a months-long spectacle that, in the end, had far less to do with the well-being of children than it did with gaining attention for themselves. Despite the divisive nature of the tactics employed by opponents of the health curriculum, ranging from virulent homophobia to frivolous, never-filed lawsuits, it’s hard to imagine they won’t be back for more in 2011.
President Obama and Senator Tester have taken a lot of heat recently for compromising, not holding the line, and ‘capitulating’. I think the last weeks have shown that they knew what they were doing, at least to some extent.
Look at the headlines – Obama signed the repeal of DADT, Congress passed bills to help 9/11 first responders and the Senate approved the New START treaty. As much as we all hate seeing tax cuts for the rich, the alternative was no tax cuts at all, no extension of unemployment benefits, and likely no further progress during the lame duck session.
And final point – is an electable but imperfect Jon Tester better than a less electable but progressive Democrat in a race against Denny Rehberg? Remember that these legislative accomplishments were possible because of moderate Republicans crossing the aisle to get common-sense bills passed. Rehberg has shown no such willingness, and if we were to put him in the Senate (the more obstructionist chamber) by failing to run the strongest candidate possible against him, we would be adding to the immovable wall of die-hard Republicans that oppose any action suggested by Democrats or occurring during a Democratic administration.
A huge tip of the hat to student journalist Jessie Mazur, who endured 90 minutes of Derek Skees to collect a series of quotes and “insights” from the mind of the man who best represents the Montana Tea Party and their friends in the Republican Party.
Please read the whole thing. The student did a great job putting this together, and my bullet points hardly captured the collected crazy. From the mind of Skees:
SKIENCE!
There is no such thing as peak oil,” he says, “If the Gulf oil spill proved anything, it’s that oil is not a fossil fuel — it’s a naturally reoccurring process.”
ECONOMIKS!
He has no problem with the pursuit of alternative energy as long as it can survive without tax subsidies.
Skees is also a firm believer in nuclear energy.
CLASS WARFARE!
“The tea party is the middle class railing against their death.” He explains that the lower class is supported by government spending, and the upper class can always find a way out of paying taxes, so it’s the middle class that gets abused.
KONSTITUTEWTIONAL SKOLARSHIP!
He believes gays invented the idea of “hate language,” therefore modifying the Constitution. He feels that “equal protection under the law” means there should be no such thing as hate crime. He sees hate crime as the government telling him what he can and cannot say. In other words, it is tyranny
Dennis Rehberg still really hates the first responders who risked their lives to save others during those frantic days after the fall of the Twin Towers. A few months ago, I highlighted a vote that Representative Rehberg made, denying additional health coverage to those first responders even though the bill would not have added one nickel to the federal deficit.
Well, once again Representative Rehberg has taken the principled stand that the profits of a small sector of foreign-owned businesses are more important that the health of heroes who sacrificed their health for the greater good. Rehberg voted against the bill, even though it passed unanimously in the Senate and only sixty members of the House voted ‘no.’
It’s even worse this time. Not only did the Senate reduce the benefits in the bill, but it actually will reduce the deficit and puts pressure on foreign nations to accept business from American firms, as the bill raises money from placing a small penalty on foreign firms whose home nations restrict US business:
The
new version adds a 2% fee on federal contracts for foreign companies
whose nations bar U.S. firms from their government contracts. That would
raise $4.5 billion.
The deal would also extend fees on work visas for companies that
outsource jobs and extend a travel tourism visa fee for the rest of the
money. Both of those fees passed the Senate easily last year. Some extra
cash also would go to cutting the federal deficit.
Rehberg has had no trouble helping to run up enormous debt in two wars and to provide endless tax cuts for businesses, but couldn’t find it in his heart to vote for a bill that Senator Coburn supported? Couldn’t vote for a bill that reduced the deficit while providing that health care?
Rehberg’s not principled; he’s an embarrassment.
When confronted about his decision to sue the City of Billings and its firefighters, Rehhberg told them that “it wasn’t about them.” That decision, and the decision to vote against first responders who risked their lives after a terrorist attack on the United States makes it perfectly clear that it’s not about them–or us–unless you happen to be a foreign multinational corporation or his “ranch.”
December 20 will always be one of those uncomfortable anniversaries for me: it’s
the anniversary of the day that my father passed away. No matter how many years have passed, I’ll always wish that I could talk to my Dad just one more time today, but even with his absence, every year is an opportunity to take stock of my life and think about whether or not I’ve become the kind of man he’d want me to be.
When my dad got sick, he left our home in Shelby to get treatment at the VA Hospital in Helena. He came back in November, just in time for the first bumps of chicken pox to appear on my arms. That week he was home, he was my caretaker, putting lotion on my skin, telling me stories, and tying an old pair of boxing gloves on my hands when I wouldn’t stop scratching. The whole time he was dying, consumed by a cancer that gave him unimaginable pain. His last night home we watched football together–just the guys–and he read to me as a I fell asleep. My last memory of him is waking to see him crying quietly in his chair, either from the pain, or from knowing that he wouldn’t be coming back.
The next morning he was gone, back to the hospital, and six weeks later, he was gone forever.
My dad wasn’t a perfect man. He drank too much, and sometimes his ego was more than a match for his ambition, but I always felt that my sister and I were the center of his life. His heart might have been bigger than his head on occasion, but even his mistakes were made out of love. He taught me how to fish, to read, to score a baseball game, and to defend what I believe; he taught me everything I’ve needed to survive. More than anything, he taught me about loving with your whole heart, fiercely. For my dad, it wasn’t worth it to love any other way.
Everything I’ve become and everything I will do is because of my father.
Thanks, Dad.
While I won’t torment anyone with my terrible fiction, because I finally finished the story of our last few days together, I thought I’d post just a bit of it below the fold. No critiques, please. I know I can’t write. 
Keep Reading
I’ve had a couple of days to process my feelings of frustration about Senator Tester’s disappointing vote on the DREAM Act, a sensible and fair piece of legislation that would not only have provided opportunity for a more realistic position on immigration and increased national security, but had the added benefit of being the moral choice. To demonize young people eager to serve in the military and attend college for the sake of a few votes is the kind of cynical realpolitk that Montana voters rejected in 2006.
The thing is, this vote was hardly a singular anomaly. Tester has offered a couple of puzzling votes and positions in the past year that hardly square with the candidate I enthusiastically supported in 2006. A few that stand out have been
- proposing an end to a meager $25 extra in unemployment benefits
- an inexplicable vote for a tax deal that benefits the wealthy while weakening Social Security’s viability
- not even voting to let the full Senate on the DREAM Act, but hiding behind the same procedural tricks that Democrats have been decrying for the past two years
While some are far too quick to dismiss the position that I and thousands of others have taken as that of “far-left liberals” fighting “the friends who disappoint,’ these votes strike at the core of why I supported Senator Tester so much: his commitment to working families and human rights.
What’s most frustrating to me is that these shifts to the right are largely quixotic. While Senator Baucus may have made a career pandering to the right wing in Montana, that game’s up. With approval ratings nearing Bushian lows, Baucus has finally alienated the right and left so much that I can’t imagine that he’ll run again. Do Senator Tester’s political advisors really believe that the Tea Party will be assuaged by these votes? That the Daines/Rehberg smear machine won’t distort his votes and positions no matter how he votes? If not, they certainly didn’t hear the Daines announcement and haven’t read any of the Rehberg press releases on the Tester forest bill.
Senator Tester got elected because he took principled, even progressive stands on issues and Montanans responded to a politician who was willing to say what he believed without focus testing each message. Montana may be a conservative state, but its voters will respond to candidates to stick to their principles. Just ask Governor Schweitzer and the members of the Legislature who kept their jobs by not trying to re-brand themselves as conservatives.
Nationally and locally, when Democrats run from what they and their party believes, they lose. Do I, for a minute, believe that Senator Tester really believes that the DREAM Act was a dangerous form of amnesty? Not for a minute–and he should be ashamed of himself for taking that position.
Does all of the preceding mean that I won’t be supporting Senator Tester in 2012? Given the likely alternative (Rehberg, almost without a doubt), I’ll certainly support the Senator. But will I support him with the same passion and energy? Right now, that’s awfully hard to see, and it hurts that it’s come to that. Maybe someday Democrats will figure out that alienating the very people who support them most in vain bids to gain the support of those who never will is a losing strategy, but right now, I can’t even dream that will ever be true.
