Distort |disˈtôrt| give a misleading or false account or impression of.
Mike Honda, Peace Corp
I’ve seen the website,
Truth Squad 17, a site "committed to a campaign based on facts and ideas rather than insults and distortions." So, how can that be? According to what I’ve read, Democratic congressman Mike Honda is quite possibly not just the worst congressperson ever, he's an all-around terrible guy. This must have been a shock to his constituents who know him as a man who has devoted his life to community service. Starting with his work in the Peace Corp, to High School teacher, to state assembly, and eventually the U.S. Congress. Who knew that the man who has spent his life as a champion of civil rights, education, and progressive causes like the “People’s Budget”, was really just old, lazy and doesn’t give two hoots about the people of his district. The list of his
many accomplishments and committee memberships on Wikipedia, must be fake.
Oh, wait …I missed this at the bottom of the webpage, “Paid for by Ro for congress.”
Ro Khanna’s campaign, maybe to distract from questions of his policies and his ever-growing list of conservative supporters, has chosen to distort the reality of his opponent’s character and accomplishments. Their recent distortion campaign, centered on the hashtag #WheresMike, is an effort to show Rep. Honda as a person too uncaring to lift a finger to help his constituents, and unwilling to face Khanna in a debate. To drive home his point, a rally was planned in front of Honda’s San Jose office. It included the testimony of the three constituents they could find that after 40 years of public service by Honda, were willing to publicly state their grievances.
The tale of the young student, who on a visit to DC was unable to meet with Rep. Honda personally, although it was sad and unfortunate, can it erase a lifetime of dedication to and guidance of students for which Honda is well known?
Larry Sacks took to the podium to share his disappointment in Honda’s efforts to help him in a dispute with the Palo Alto VA’s treatment of his father. He quickly launches into a diatribe against the VA that is best described by one of Ro Khanna’s supporters on Facebook:
“I went to the rally yesterday and came home rather upset. Since I have several veterans in my family anything concerning the VA is a sensitive issue in our house. The speaker that was so very denigrating towards the VA needed to have had his speech reviewed by your team prior to the rally. Facts are important in any speech given. That said, there were too many unsubstantiated statements presented and too much emotional “testimony” for me. […]”
Mr. Sacks continued, explaining how Honda’s office advocated for him by sending official communications to the VA that by law would require a response from the VA, but it appears Mr. Sacks was not satisfied with the results.
Supporter of Santa Clara’s new library, Kathy Watanabe came to tell the story of Honda’s lack of involvement in the plight of a library that was under construction. When the money that the city intended to use for the construction was recalled by the state following the dissolution of California’s Redevelopment Agency, the state set a deadline for local agencies to spend their available funds, but the library missed the deadline. After receiving the support of their state senator and some city council members, the library was finally completed. Ms. Watanabe’s complaint of Honda’s apparent lack of “interest in local topics” was more due to her lack of understanding of the rules that must be followed by elected representatives than his lack of concern. Federal representatives are not to involve themselves in local or state issues unless it involves federal funds.
Ro’s rally of outrage (Aug. 27) was covered by senior political writer, Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle. You might assume she would have some questions for the Khanna campaign, like, why would you include the library story, when as a candidate for federal office you should understand Honda was unable to help?
She has been covering the Honda/Khanna race, including this hard-hitting article; “Rep. Mike Honda gets his House district wrong — listen to voicemail”
[…] although on his DC office voice mail, Honda invites his constituents from the “15th District” to get in touch.
Oops.
In the message, Honda himself greets callers, gives them the rundown and concludes: “If you are a constituent of the 15th District, please include your mailing address. Have a great day.”
As we’ve reported, the congressman won’t actually be able to vote for himself in the Nov. 4 election, because he doesn’t live in the 17th District. […]
How could Honda not even know in what district he holds office? And he doesn’t even live in his own district? Outrage! He must be a senile old carpetbagger ...or it could be due to the fact he is representing the same people he has for the last 12 years, which due to redistricting in 2012 was renamed the 17th district with altered borders. The only person that can legitimately be called a carpetbagger in search of a district, is Ro Khanna.
Maybe Ms. Marinucci missed the irrelevancy of the library issue, but surely she would question Khanna’s claim that Honda was attempting to “duck from the debate.” It had already been widely reported on Aug. 22nd that the Honda campaign had accepted an offer from Huffington Post and SJSU to a debate. The Khanna campaign took to twitter, first complaining that the mid-October date was after absentee ballots had been mailed. Ryan Grim of HuffPo replied the he would check with SJSU to see about an earlier date. When the earlier date of Oct. 6 was offered to the candidates, the Honda campaign, again, quickly accepted while the Khanna campaign found other reasons to “duck” accepting the offer. This time they stated their acceptance would be dependent on “media coverage” and complained they had not received a “formal” invitation. Maybe the real questions asked should be; why do you continue to claim Honda is avoiding a debate when he has already accepted, twice? Or, was your delay in accepting the terms of the debate just your campaign’s refusal to let go of a strategy, meant to sow outrage amongst you supporters, which would have made moot the point of your already planned rally at Honda’s office?
Even after the Aug. 27th rally, Ro’s campaign continued to imply, falsely, on Facebook and twitter that Honda was avoiding participation in a debate. Maybe the media chooses to ignore the unsavory tactics of the Khanna campaign, but that doesn’t mean citizens must sit idly by, we are free to politely reply and question the candidates on their Facebook and twitter. So, that is what I did, without profanity, and without attacking or insulting his supporters or staff that replied to my questions. Although at times I was frustrated by their attempts to divert the topic and refusal to answer my simple question, “why are you posting old articles, when it has been reported that a debate has been agreed upon, and Honda had already agreed to debate a week ago?” Never did I allow them to cause me to post a comment or tweet that I would later need to apologize for, I just relentlessly stayed on topic with supporting links where needed.
When Khanna’s deputy campaign manger, Andy Wong tweeted at 7pm on the 28th, another old article, along with an unfounded charge, I asked again, “Why don’t you tweet latest news?” Mr. Wong never replied. But communications director, Tyler Law did, just not to my question. Instead it seemed he wanted to argue if an earlier forum by the League of Women Voters should be considered a “debate” or a “forum,” even though Ro himself was quoted in Time magazine, “[J] Vanlandingham was really tough on me in the League of Women Voters debate.” So nothing but diversions and distortions from the campaign, until Mr. Law let slip one short sentence, “@GlenThePlumber both agreed to terms.” That was the answer I was looking for, regardless of their campaign’s tweets and Facebook posts, they were hiding the fact that the terms of the debate had already been agreed to by both sides which could lead a reasonable person to conclude that Ro’s campaign tried to hide this from his supporters in an effort to continue their attack on Honda, even though Honda had accepted the debate challenge 6 days before.
I would like to share with you my posts from their Facebook page, but in what can only be called, cowardly, they deleted my original comment that had stood with the other “Top Comments” on the post, along with all my replies. You can still see some of the replies to me here.
Also in replies from supporters and campaign staff, were barely veiled implications that I either worked for Daily Kos or the Honda campaign. Neither is true: my name is Glen, and my profession is plumbing. I’m just a plumber who is tired of the distortions and silly distractions coming from a campaign that can’t seem to find any of its opponent’s policies to attack and risk the support of his uber-rich and conservative supporters if he agrees with his opponent’s views.
Silicon Valley Kos: GOTV for Mike Honda Nov. 1-4
Mike Honda running for Congress
For Rep. Honda to defeat his "Fat Cat" opponent, he needs volunteers willing to canvass and phone bank. He has the needed voter support to win this hotly contested race, but he needs us to make sure they get to the polls.
TIMES:
Nov. 1-3: 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 6pm
Nov. 4: 8am, 11am, 2pm, and 5pm
Canvassing and Phone Banking opportunities every day until election day, Tuesday November 4th.
>>>RSVP for all events here<<<
Daily Kos members and readers:
If you would like to meet-up, send Glen The Plumber a KosMail or tweet.
RSVPs:
1. Glen The Plumber
2. remembrance
3. TheLittleOne
4. Eric (the plumber)
5. slowbutsure
6. Eileen
7. Brian82
8. Todd (the plumber)
9. Jan D.
10. Joe D.
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