Posted on 09/11/2010 2:34:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The nonpartisan City Club Missoula became a seminar in conservative-bashing Friday at noon, with a pioneering female politician taking swings at another visiting the Garden City this weekend: Sarah Palin.
Pat Schroeder, the 11-term Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, got a rousting round of chuckles from a packed room at the Holiday Inn Parkside, taking credit for opening doors to women in the political realm but lamenting that "you can't control who goes through them."
"I'm leaving for Bozeman this afternoon because I don't think Missoula is big enough for both Sarah and I," said Schroeder, City Club Missoula's guest speaker and a friend and former colleague to nine-term Montana congressman Pat Williams.
Williams introduced Schroeder to the audience made up mainly of civic, business, arts and education leaders in Missoula. City Club Missoula, a nonprofit group, was formed as a roundtable to "inform and inspire citizens on issues vital to the Missoula area," according to its bylaws.
Williams described Schroeder as "outspoken" and "clever," a politician who was successful "because she was smart, she was aggressive and she believed she could do anything that any other citizen could do."
Schroeder served in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997, and was the first woman to sit on the House Armed Services Committee.
In her years, she wrote numerous laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, and was a force in shrinking defense spending during the post-Vietnam era. She also coined the phrase "the Teflon president" to describe Ronald Reagan.
Now a publisher, Schroeder has also been a lawyer and schoolteacher, and provided free legal counsel to Planned Parenthood.
On Friday, Schroeder addressed the present, calling the political climate "a horror show" and "a screaming match" whose main casualty is civility.
"You can't learn anything when people are yelling at each other," she said.
Business interests have all but taken over American politics, she said, and the national debate has become an echo chamber for cynics.
"The word ‘cynic' is a Greek word, and its root means ‘yapping dog,' " she said. "Greece was also a democracy and it fell. It fell because there were so many yapping dogs."
She also targeted "moneyed speech" as being an anathema to honest debate, decrying the recent Supreme Court decision that ruled the government cannot limit corporate spending for political broadcasts.
"So now you can just fire-hose money wherever you want, no holds barred," she said.
***
Schroeder took aim at military spending as well, using America's 12 aircraft carriers as examples of waste.
"When is the last time they were used?" she asked. "They're just steaming around showing the flag."
Conservatives who back big military budgets but want small government, she said, are guilty "of the biggest fraud in the world."
Schroeder opened the floor to audience questions, and fielded one from Missoula County Public Schools Superintendent Alex Apostle, who wanted to know her thoughts on "public schools and America's destiny."
Schroeder answered that public schools are being "destroyed" by ideas like education vouchers for private schools and the development of charter schools.
"The voucher group has taken over, and taken over a lot of the mindset," she said.
That led her to a bigger point about American culture, and what she calls the growth of the philosophy "get what you can while you can and then sit on your can."
"People all want to drive great, big, fancy Lexuses, and they want to live in gated communities, and they want to send their kids to private schools and buy a new set of golf clubs," she said.
Who is she? Didn’t she die 20 years ago? Or is she another burned out ex-hippie that pops up every once in a while to remind us how ridiculous the youths of the 60’s were. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of “The Lost Generation”, What would he have called the 60’s? “The Idiot Generation”?
Since when have libs been civil?
What You Said, Obi Wan.
Okay, so she idolizes Karl Marx.
And she cost us a bundle converting Navy ships to Coed crew.You have to put in dual quarters with plumbing for males and females and scrap some facilities to make space. Like buying a new ship.
First of all Pat, it would be Sarah and me, not “Sarah and I,”.. Second, I well remember when you made audacious comments to keep yourself in the news. Oh, you were so smooth. In one hearing in a US Civil Service and Postal Committee hearing, you protested loudly that the only reason your views were not taken seriously was because you were “the only member on this committee with a vagina.” Whereupon, the chairman of the committee, Congressman David Henderson(D-NC)replied, “If you used your vagina like you use your mouth the outcome might be different.” I remember that those remarks were stricken from the Congressional Record, but they were burned into my memory.
Why isn’t she in her Bunny suit? She used to tour the PO in Denver & someone always Yelled out “why is that b,tch here?”. Always there to help out a minority who should have been fired. I depise this woman along with Clinton & former Gov Romer for the way they treated the Cold War Warriers from Rocky Flats.
Yes, I remember many years ago donating to a GOP opponent of hers - a black fireman as I recall. Guess it didn't work out.
LOL!! Never heard that one! Have to file that one away in the ol' memory banks.
One of my all-time favorite political retort-zingers was during the Anita Hill Hearings (that was their official name, right?) During the full floor debate at the end of the whole sordid process, just prior to Clarence Thomas winning confirmation by a 4-vote margin, the Most Honorable Senior Senator from Massachusetts bloviated from the podium, heaping coals on the heads of those dastardly GOP Senators on the Judiciary Committee for not completely accepting every word from Hill's mouth as gospel truth, and instead having the audacity to cast aspersions on her lily-pure credibility by questioning her closely on discrepancies, and by bringing in counter-witnesses.
From the Senate podium, the Right Honorable Senator repeated the word "Shame!" several times, as in "Shame! Shame on you! For the shabby way you treated that poor woman!!"
Shortly after he finished, Orrin Hatch got up and retorted, "If anyone out there thinks that we [Republican Senators] treat women poorly, I've got a bridge in Massachusetts I'd like to sell them."
I only wish the cameras had been on Teddy's face the moment he heard that!
The dumbest twat to ever come out of Colorado.
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