Each year Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) puts together its annual “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” report a bipartisan list of the House and Senate’s 15 most ethically challenged members. But this year CREW is also producing a report on the most Crooked Candidates of 2010, and look who made the initial list: Dino Rossi!
Makes you proud to be a Washingtonian, doesn’t it?
Over at the TNT’s Political Buzz, Rossi spokesperson Mary Lane Strow angrily denounces CREW as “a big ol’ lefty front group” that gets funding from George Soros, and predominantly targets Republicans:
“It’s another one of those things where (Democrats) have some quote-unquote independent group put it out there that Dino’s sleazy,” Strow said. “Then the Murray campaign can reference it in a future ad.”
And Strow’s accusations of rank partisanship might be an effective comeback, if not for the fact that like most of the Rossi campaign’s assertions, it’s totally unsupported by the facts. Indeed, of CREW’s current list of “The 15 Most Corrupt Members of Congress,” eight of them — more than half — are Democrats, including liberal stalwarts like Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Charlie Rangel and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
Huh. That’s some lefty front group, Mary.
The fact is, and has been well documented here on HA, Rossi has spent his business and political career hanging out with some awfully shady company, from Mel Heide to Michael Mastro to the conniving, mean-spirited, campaign-finance-cheating BIAW. Perhaps it is all just “guilt by association,” as the TNT headline implies. But there are some awfully strong associations.
you dont realize that yiur constant criticism of rossi is having the opposite of your intented effect, do you?
Goldy, Goldy, GOLDY!
How can you spew this crap?
It’s guilt by association. There’s none of this going on:
1) Criminal investigation
2) State Auditor’s Office investigation
3) Findings from 1 or 2
Marummy was right about the foreclosure crap – some peeps lob that so that later on they can YouTube slick, sick headlines. Can’t you see thru this?
And Goldy, how many roses have you given Patty Murray? Just askin’?
@1 Thank you. The Rossifarian rapid-response team is here to make that so. Not this time, not this time, NOT THIS TIME. Marummy Time!
Goldy–
The Democrats listed are admitted crooks!
Tax evadin’ Charlie, sleazy Maxine and chip off the old block Junior.
CREW must be racist cuz all 3 you listed here are Black! Where is your outrage Goldy?
Actually, 5 out of the 15 listed are Black?
Are 1/3 of the Senators & Congressmen Black Goldy??
And 1 is DEAD! Are 1/15 dead??
“Dino’s sleazy,” Strow said.
[Deleted — Off topic]
Executive Director of CREW–
Melanie Sloan, Executive Director
She worked for far-left loons!
And Goldy wants credibility because she listed the most obvious Democrat crooks??
Ones so bad she couldn’t ignore??
Ones who are in SAFE Districts!
This is a real SHAM Goldy.
No sale.
Mr C
The ONLY reason you like Dino is because he is a Tlingit!
We REAL Americans know all about you.
By the way, How is that “To be or not to be” stuff treating you today!
# 2: Such a ringing endorsement you give of Rossi: he hasn’t been indicted (yet)?
Cynical on Obama:
I think we can boil responses to blog criticism down to an insert.
______ is a far left organization. ________ is funded by George Soros. ________ isn’t worth responding to because they are a far-left organization funded by George Soros.
If your crackerjack PR person uses the above, you’re either hiding something or you’ve hired the most cliche grasping, non-creative, unimaginative hack as your crack PR person. One option says something about your character. The other option says something about your excutive skills and judgement.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on it for years, but you put it all in place for me, dude! Everything spoken publicly by a Republican is all drawn up on old Mad Libs templates!
@3 You should’ve asked Zits for a date, Josef. Now it’s too late. She’s gone forever.
Of course Rossi’s a crook! He worked for a slimy real estate broker who went to prison for robbing widows and orphans. And when that guy got out of jail Rossi was waiting on his doorstep looking for a chance to work for him again!
http://www.discoverthenetworks.....grpid=7309
Just because they name 8 Democrats as most corrupt doesn’t mean they’re centrist, it just means they aren’t blind. And it lets feral mouthpieces like Goldy make bullshit claims of non-partisanship.
07/21/2010 at 7:36 pm
I just met the gent again. Stop with the sleaze.
@16
I met the gent too. And three days later he was plagiarizing the speech we both sat through. (see, Saits, Sinners, saveable…) Not an original thought in the man’s head apparently.
@15 “Goldy make bullshit claims of non-partisanship”
Goldy claimed to be nonpartisan? When? Where? I thought he was a progressive. I thought this was a liberal blog. Did I miss something?
Rhetorical question: Can our trolls possibly get any dumber?
What I love about the righties is how they want to trash Obama, while ignoring the fact that Bush is possibly the worst, most dishonest, most corrupt piece of slime our country has ever had infecting the White House.
Rossi should have been indicted. Period. His buddy McRepublican Scumface doesn’t have the balls to enforce the laws. The Bushies would have done the same thing to him they did to McKay.
Crooked politicians should be arrested. Regardless of party.
What I really love is the Republican that was the head of a Health Care Company that defrauded the government for billions is running for Governor of Florida.
He is overqualified!
One thing is for sure. History will look at the Republican Party about the same as we look at Benedict Arnold. Their time is almost up.
@18 you slimy fuck.
I was talking about Goldy’s bullshit claim that CREW was non-partisan. Reading matters. You must have gone to public school.
The money quote: “And Strow’s accusations of rank partisanship might be an effective comeback, if not for the fact that like most of the Rossi campaign’s assertions, it’s totally unsupported by the facts.” Wrong per the URL above.
Now go fuck yourself.
The word Republican makes so many people want to vomit, that Mr. “Prefers GOP” and the Tea Party Klansmen are too embarrassed to call themselves Republicans. They have to find new names because the word Republican makes real Americans want to hurl.
Good luck with that comeback. It’s not like every voter forgot what government was like when the party of Terry Schaivo, and imaginary WMD’s was in total control.
What I love the most is DeMint pushing for the repeal of the estate tax, with no way to make up the 1.3 trillion that would come from folks that won’t even miss it.
@19
I’m surprised, this is the most lucid thing you’ve ever posted:
“Crooked politicians should be arrested. Regardless of party.”
Chicago’s City Hall would be empty as would Detroit’s.
@18 Roger. If they had working brains they wouldn’t be trolls. It’s not like history happened and all that stuff. It must be hard viewing reality through a Rush Limbaugh, Fox Lies lens…. No wonder the Aurora Bridge is so damn popular.
If I thought Bush was a good president, I would check in somewhere. No, really. Check in.
@22 Delbert. If I really told you what I thought of Republicans I would probably be arrested.
I love this country, and I know who screwed it all up. It sure wasn’t that Black Guy….
Look up budget surplus 2000. Look up Bush. Look up Bush Tax Cuts. Look up no wmd’s. Look up leaving office with a 1.7 trillion dollar deficit for the next president.
Anyone saying anything nice about Republicans is an enemy of the state. Period. Republicans Are A Disease. A Disease Worse Than Cancer.
They are pure dishonest scum. To a man/woman. They only open their mouths to lie, or tell half truths. Ever.
Has anyone checked if Rossi was born in the US? His Mom was Tlingit and I believe they are a CANADIAN people.
Hmmm…personally, I’d take the fact that Soros is one of their donors as a hell of a great recommendation.
OMG!!!
It turns out that Cyn is really cyclist and Tour de France contender Andy Schleck!!!
http://view.picapp.com/picture.....;scomp=pis
Dino Rossi is now a Real Estate BROKER!
Our fine Democratic legislature and Democratic governor made changes to Chapter 18.85 RCW back in the 2008 legislative session. These changes took effect on July 1, 2010.
Under the old law (RCW 18.85.010) there were real estate salespersons and real estate brokers.
Under the new law (RCW 18.85.011) there are real estate brokers and real estate managing brokers. Salespersons became brokers, and brokers became managing brokers.
@27: Great find, Michael!
I expected a slimy dirtball, yesterday’s lunch encrusted untrimmed beard, and an immense beer gut, but still: great find!
Non-partisan my ass! CREW is a far left progressive organization just like HA and therefore warrants no credibility whatsoever.
Well, the Seattle Times has finally gotten around to writing a piece on Rossi’s Tea-Party opponant, Clint Diddier. Surprisingly, Jim Brunner’s piece seems quite balanced and well written, and it even made the headline story on the front page.
Must be a slow news day.
That said, the story did include a note that some conservatives were moving to Diddier because he “…stands for something…”, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Rossi.
But what struck me was the following statement, which strikes at the very heart of Eastern Washington Tea Party dogma:
“Apart from the USDA subsidies, Didier’s way of life wouldn’t be possible without the federal government’s creation of the Columbia Basin Project, the Depression-era irrigation system authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Irrigation canals fed by Grand Coulee Dam weave through Didier’s farm tracts, allowing him to grow green rows of alfalfa in an area that would otherwise be ruled by sagebrush, cheatgrass and rattlesnakes.
He acknowledges the federal government’s role, to a point. But he argues that since Columbia Basin farmers are assessed annual per-acre payments for the dam, they are actually subsidizing the cheap electricity the system sends to Western Washington.
Studies have shown the opposite is true. The irrigation network that benefits farmers like Didier has been mostly paid for by federal taxpayers and electricity ratepayers elsewhere. A 1995 paper co-authored by economists at Washington State University estimated that farmers were paying only 1.5 percent of the irrigation system’s cost.
Source: Seattle Times: “Clint Didier: ‘Rugged individualism’ and blunt, angry rhetoric”
Diddier is just continuing to support the false belief that somehow rural Eastern Washington is subsidizing the more liberal western half of the state, when the opposite is true. They like candidates that assure them that they are rugged individualists who shun government handouts, when they owe their lifestyles to government programs which support family farms. When confronted with the facts, they dismiss or ignore them, preferring instead to listen only to those who assure them that their pre-existing beliefs are valid.
Who will the Seattle Times support in the primary?
Past history suggests it will support Rossi. In making a decision between Rossi and Murray, the Blethen editorial board will really want Rossi to win. The Blethens and Rossi share a common philosophical basis: limited government unless it benefits you, and making money out of the political game.
But it will be a harder decision than this suggests, because it’s just so hard to make a credible argument that Rossi would be a better Senator than Murray.
Electing Rossi would be an act of political suicide on the part of Washington State, taking away a person who hase become very influential in Washinton and replacing them with someone who will have absolutely no influence as a freshman senator in the minority party. The only way the Times could justify endorsing Rossi is by falsly blaming Murray for Boeing opening a plant in Charleston, or just generally giving the unsupported argument that we need “new blood” in Washington.
The Times won’t endorse Diddier, and will claim that his views are “too extreme” and he’s “not electable”. Both are true enough, but the real reason. The real reason is that Didier might actually believe what he says about government allowing failing businesses to actually fail, which would mean no favorable legislation requiring Google to subsidize Fairview Fanny.
rhp6033 @ 32
The analyses that I have seen show the Republicans have some chance at winning up to 11 seats in the U.S. Senate in November. This would require the Republicans to be extremely lucky, and win every single seat that has any possibility.
The seats in Washington, California and Wisconsin are rated as the most difficult of the 11 possible turnovers for Republicans to capture.
So if the Republicans are strong enough to even defeat Patty Murray, then Dino Rossi would quite possibly end up being a freshman senator in a 51-49 or 52-48 Republican majority, instead of a freshman minority senator.
Bottom line — if the Murray-Rossi race is competitive in November, the outcome may very well make the difference in which party has the majority in the Senate for the next term.
Goldy says: “Perhaps it is all just “guilt by association…”
Hey Goldy- that never stopped all you lefty fucktards from smearing someone before. When you grow up will you be on the JournoList?
Even the pundits who think that the Rs might take the House are saying that a takeover of the Senate isn’t in the cards. I’ve been watching the IMTRADE odds on the “tossup” senate races and the Irish gamblers are all going blue.
I think the chance of a Murray defeat is slim to none but I’m beginning to think that Didier has a reasonable chance of making it through the primary. Outside of King County, Republicans are not moving to Rossi in the numbers they did for his gubenatorial races.
35
That would be such a wonderful cap to Dino’s political career, to lose to a wingnut hypocrite from the outer edge of reality.
35: The prospect of a Murray/Didier race would be rather fun.
Didier wants to do all the things which George W. Bush would have done if he could have gotten away with it: privatize social security, abolish the education and ecology departments, and basically deconstruct the “new deal”. That should pretty much exclude most of the votes from the Puget Sound region, and from from most folks 50 or above who are worried about their upcoming retirement.
He lives in a fantasy land where he chaffes at having to pay for his irrigation water, believing that it somehow comes free to him and his money is somehow subsidizing Seattle electricity rates, when the opposite is true. He and his family have received federal farm subsidies for most of his life, but he claims he did everything on his own, with no support from anybody else. Only when it became a campaign issue did he promise to return THIS YEAR’s subsidy.
The campaign ads against him are so easy, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
30. TCHHHT!
I am sure that in your fair and balanced world view, far-right organizations also “warrant no credibility.” Correct?
But to be fair, if CREW publishes a list of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress of whom 8 are Demcorats, do you not believe this about any of them? Or just the Republicans?
Because if the latter, than I’d say that you “warrant no credibility.” Just sayin’…
Any TV interviewer who forced Didier to answer a few questions could pretty much deconstruct his campaign. Does he believe in abortion in the case of rape or incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger? Does he believe in the minimum wage? How does he feel about workmen’s compensation/industrial security for workers injured on the job? How does he feel about continuing Bush’s tax cuts, even if it means a huge budget deficit for as far as the eye can see? Does he still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Does he believe that Al Quida was active in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion? Does he support the recently passed financial reform legislation?
35. Mary P
INTRADE, despite its self-promotion, is not really a “prediction market,” but it does capture current opinion pretty well. People RIGHT NOW don’t think that the GOP will capture the Senate. Keep an eye on it.
But I have said all along that the primary should be very interesting, and that Dino can’t take it for granted. Watching him tack hard right, knowing that (a) he won’t be able to play the “I don’t have anything to say about teh issues” and (b) he can’t take his words back, and knowing how badly that will hurt him in a heavily Democrtatic/moderate independent state in the fall, is well worth the price of admission for me.
34. John425
Really inside baseball, pal. If you’re working to build support for your side, I’d like to tell you that you lose independents every time you start with the esoteric little conspiracy theories.
I swear it’s as though you guys live in a insular little world with a long list of shared code words that you pass back and forth to each other like wingnut shorthand.
But you don’t, right?
Mary Lane Strow’s comments sure seem to be accusing Patty Murray of illegally coordinating with independent groups. Do you think she has any proof of this, or is she just slinging shit?
My note: Rhetorical question. Of course she has no proof and is just slinging shit. Keep your umbrella up; it’s going to be a long fall.
@42
Mary Lane Strow/Marummy “slinging shit”?
That’ll be the day.
She’s too sweet for that, mon.