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.
Another brain dead lib rises from the political grave! And what good are those aircraft carriers anyway - until all hell breaks loose and the first thing everyone wants to know is, “Where are the carriers?” If their so useless why is it that every nation with the slightest excuse for a coastline is striving to build/buy one or more? If Peppermint Patty paid any attention to anything besides her own press clippings she would have known that.
For starters, she should learn English grammar...the first person singular pronoun when it's the object of a preposition is "me."
The article doesn't say what criticisms she had of the politics in Missoula.
I guess some people just get dumber with age.
LOL. Is she trying to get Sarah to acknowledge her?
I wonder if Sarah even knows who the heck the old shrew is?
ROFL.
Who cares what this dried up old trout thinks?
Ditto.
I want the progressive agenda to be visible as archived video clips from MSNBC only, because it was made extinct in the wild.
Hey Patsy once again you prove your a bitch.
Maybe when she said "people", she meant the people in Congress. I am sure when she went to Harvard Law...it was free (rolling eyes).
PS - pretty gutsy of her to take on Sarah Palin in lefty Missoula. Call me when she takes on Sharia Law or Islamic terrorists.
-PJ
John Dingell maybe joining her very soon on the rubber chicken dinner speaker circuit...
Meet Dr. Rob Steele running against him...
Those privileges are reserved for the Nomenklatura. Us regular lumpenproletariat types should be satisfied with the scraps our masters like this rancid walking filth-filled colostomy bag decide is good enough for us.
God forgive me but I just about can't wait for the shooting to start....
I was always so ashamed when she appeared on national TV, because it always had her name and "Colorado" with it. No! That's my state! Don't tarnish its good name!
As I remember, she almost became chair of the House Armed Services Com when Les Aspin left in '93 to be Secy of Defense, but Ron Red Dellums had a hairswidth more seniority than her. Then in the next election when the GOP tide snatched away all the leadership roles that the Dems had seen as their right by birth for generations, she decided "This is no fun any more! I'm quitting!" and retired from Congress.
And does anyone remember her short-lived run for President in 87-88? When her campaign got no traction (I forget, did the wheels fall off, or just keep spinning in mud?), she gave a tearful press conf announcing her withdrawal. And right after, SNL lampooned her with a skit where she (played by an SNL actress) keeps bursting into tears every few minutes on some TV debate or something. Heh heh! She certainly deserved that!
I never served but revere those that do or have.
She took our Templar Knights which I believe our fighter jocks are, and added a ball and chain to their legs and took them off their mission by injecting politics into the mix. the military was one of a few arenas in our nation in that time frame where "political correctness" had not infected the host.
She changed all that. I ask, how would our efforts in Iraq been different without the cultural changes she help start the ball rolling on. Would we have fought it to win sooner with out being so sensitive?
Although she is off the public stage, she came into my political psyche while I was making the epistemological switch to conservatism. I remember how she could make my blood boil. She still is reviled in some circles :-)...
Hehehehehe ... Steinem’s and Apzug’s feminazi sisters in crime .. such an evil, whiney witch
(scroll down)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/17/cspan_five_videos/index.html
You are a wordsmith Lurker. Dang I am going to need to read your post more often.
While Patsy has definitely grown older, it seems that she has managed to miss out on the "wiser" part by a wide margin...
Guess that with some people the inner ugliness is so overwhelming that the stupidity can't find a way to escape...
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