Town Halls: Ron Wyden & Gordon Smith

Ron Wyden & Gordon SmithOur Senators, Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, are traversing the state doing joint town hall sessions. Today, they're in Medford and Redmond.

Tuesday, Jan. 11 at 10:00 AM in Medford, at Medford City Hall, 411 W. 8th St..
Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 2:00 PM in Redmond, at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds, Middle Sisters Main Hall, 3800 S.W. Airport Way.

If you're in the Medford or Redmond areas, drop by.

If not, tell us right here - what question would you post to Senators Smith & Wyden?

  • Brian (unverified)
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    For both senators:

    "Can you define 'torture'? And, having defined it, would you agree or disagree that the techniques widely reported having been used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would qualify as 'torture'?"

  • Eric Berg (unverified)
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    I would ask Smith to stop lying about Social Security. During a Sunday town hall meeting in Portland televised on KGW, our junior sentor said, "in 2018 it will begin to go into the red." According to the Congressional Budget Office and other non-partisan government offices, Social Security will be okay until 2042 or 2052. We don't need to rush into a gamble with our today because of a phony crisis created by the White House and echoed by Smith and others.

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    My question:

    Senator, does your total failure to show any support whatsoever for the defeat of Measure 36 mean that you've been lying to the GLBT community all along about your sentiments of inclusion and justice?

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    My question: Ron, why do you allow yourself to be used to make Gordon look like a moderate?

  • Ruth (unverified)
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    Re: Smith's Social Security lies at the KGW town hall. Wyden was weak thru much of the event (Jack Bog's question is spot-on), but he did do one clever thing.

    At one point he said "yes Gordon is absolutely right; Social Security will start to run short about 2042." He smoothly corrected the lie while appearing to agree. Not that big a deal, and I'd much prefer he just came right out and corrected him, but it was an interesting instance of how they are operating in this "bipartisan" cooperative mode. I fear it will be all give and no take for our side, however.

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    Why does Hannity & Colmes come to mind. Hannity, you're a pompous schmuck. Colmes, you're the biggest whimp.

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    Ruth & Eric

    It's not a lie. Social Security has been generating surpluses every year. That means revenues exceed expenses. In 2018, we will start to tap into those surpluses. That means expenses will exceed revenue (or we'll be in the red).

    In 2042, the surpluses will be exhausted and we will have to decrease benefits by 27%. That is unless we come up with another $3.7 trillion over the next 75 years. But thank Regressive Wyden for wanting to keep Bush's tax cuts permanent. Bush's war and tax cuts alone will cost us more than $3.7 trillion over the next 6 years.

    The lie is that Republicans need to fix Social Security. The truth is that they broke it.

  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    Questions for each and a question for both:

    Sen. Smith, can you compare for us the dollar value of the 'free' broadcast air-time that Liars Larson gave you in your re-election campaign and the dollar amount that Liars has been secretly paid, like Armstrong Williams, with taxpayer-provided resources?

    Sen. Wyden, inasmuch as your intelligence committee assignment includes oversight responsibility to our nation and to all Americans; and whereas photographic evidence proves the 9-11 myth is a frame job which created the TV fiction of Arab terrorists; and whereas you have made no critical statement regarding the buried investigation of the postal anthrax murders consequent from envelopes mailed to three Democrat U.S. Senators; and whereas former CIA agent Michael Ruppert's latest book, "Crossing the Rubicon" documents that V.P. Richard Cheney took knowing part and a lead role in the planning and operations of illicit Command, Control and Communications systems from the undisclosed location of a secret bunker manifest in the mass murders of 9/11; and whereas Cheney has stated the people who 'did' 9/11 are preparing to 'do it' again, without offering, or being asked by you on your oath of office, to show evidence he is not wrongly scaring Americans, again; and whereas you have kept deathly silent at the covered-up non-indictments of White House names who disclosed and destroyed an embedded CIA career agent, an offense of treason; then now, Ron, when can we expect you to publicly call for a congressionally empowered special-prosecutor level investigation into suspicions and accusations of treason against America by the central power-mad figures in the Executive administration, or resign your elected office in disgrace, by default?

    For both of you: How dare you step on Oregon soil without knowing the number of Oregon Guard men and women who have died and who have been life-maimed in Iraq pursuant to the lies you both told of false weapons and false threat and false war, public lies you have never publicly atoned?

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  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    So no answer to my first question, Senators Smith & Wyden simply vaporized out of the state press and then the state.

    If I could just ask a follow-up, given today's context of events: Kennedy, of Massachusetts, keyed the Democratic attack with charges that Rice, as Bush's national security adviser, provided Congress with "false reasons" for going to war. Had she not, he said in a speech, "it might have changed the course of history."

    Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., following up, accused the Bush administration of lying and said he was voting against Rice's confirmation as a way of trying to stop mistruths.

    And Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., charged she concealed the Central Intelligence Agency's skepticism that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Africa.

    preceding the confirmation vote for United States Secretary of State nominee Condoleezi Rice, Senator Wyden: Are you going to vote for a liar, as your colleague Sen. Dayton has revealed to you Rice is, and has revealed to you is dangerous to empower, pursuant to your oath to serve Oregonians, and Americans, your best?

    Senator Smith, that goes double for you, considering your religiously claimed ethics and morals: Are you going to vote for a liar whose lies deceived Congress into murderous war before, to now be Secretary of State? Although voting for liars who The Fright House sends up means you might continue being included in and still associated with the gang of war-crimes charged leaders of your type and party in the administration -- you'd still vote for a liar to get to hang with those guys?

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