I met Kirsten Gillibrand today in a restaurant!

[Polybius]

So today I was in a restaurant in Staten Island called Z-One around noon. I saw my local City Councilman eating, who I have met many times. As I walked past him, I said hello. He said hi back, and said "look who's with me, Kirsten Gillibrand." He then said to her how I'm "a huge political junkie." She extended her hand out, and we briefly chatted.

I was so excited because she was the highest ranking politician that I have ever met. Very nice person too!

[Hoyt]

1. I know she's persona non grata to many, but I like her. Glad you are known to good Dems.

[Bleacher Creature]

11. You're not alone. I like her as well.

But we're definitely in the minority here.

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. I would ask her...how proud is she to have helped to derail Al Franken to resign?

[redstateblues]

3. I love Al but he stepped on his own you know what

Stupidity in abundance.

[OAITW r.2.0]

4. We disagree....we killed a great field general against the Opposition

he did nothing and if you want to debate it, find another site.

[Blue_true]

12. Anthony Weiner was also a great field general, until

one woman spilled the beans about his penchant for sending dick selfies.

Franken apparently had a hands problem that even some women that were loyal democrats came forward to talk about. Yes, a rightwing freak started his fall by recounting an incident on a trip, but his downfall was of his own making. It came out that there were a number of other women that he had touched suggestively.

[Bluepinky]

15. Nowhere near the same.

Al Franken was brought down by the right wing sleaze machine. Maybe his hugs were a little sloppy, but I think it’s because he’s a genuinely warm person who really embraces a person when he hugs them. He’s not a pervert who tries to feel someone up, it’s not in his character. I believe he was one of our best and brightest Senators, and the Republicans were determined to get rid of him.

[Dorian Gray]

32. "sloppy"

[OnDoutside]

30. That's a fairly disgusting comment.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

45. Those other women who accused him of impropriety

Were highly questionable witnesses.
He upheld women’s rights as a truly Pro-Woman legislator.
I grew up watching him on Saturday Night Live and he was never a part of the sexism that was rampant in the old days.

I don’t excuse any false narratives about him.

[Blue_true]

5. We need people in office that have unassailable character.

We don't need people that have issues, regardless of how they fight on tv in hearings. Anthony Weiner was a darling to many here on DU, until it came out that he had a penchant for sending dick selfies to women. We need to dig for dirt that potential candidates on our side maybe trying to hide, and we need to get clean people nominated once we discover that our favorite has hidden issues.

I don't give a shit who doesn't like what I write, our officeholders need to be clean coming in, and STAY clean and not be coming on to staff or people with business before government, or taking bribes. If people can't meet those standards, they should not run for office on our behalf, IMO.

[Jewls2]

8. I agree. And I agree Franken brought it on himself and was the one to walk away.

I do not understand why out of all that called for his resignation, there is only one that holds all the contempt. A woman of course, seems to be solely responsible for Frankens demise.

[DFW]

13. Al brought nothing on himself. Republican sleazebags brought it on him and got lucky.

Democratic Senators went along thinking Al would survive and it would get Doug Jones elected. They were half right. Some have expressed regret for their hasty judgment, but none have apologized publicly, and for that, I have contempt for all of them, especially Schumer for acting like such a spineless opportunist. Gillibrand thought she would get some extra mileage on her way to the nomination, too. They both miscalculated badly. In the race for president, I support NO Democratic Senator who publicly called for Al's resignation. We already have someone in the White House who is easily manipulated. I have no desire to see a continuation of that.

[Dem4Life1102]

19. So you won't support Warren, Harris, Booker or Sanders?

[DFW]

35. Absolutely not.

Not in the primaries.

The nominee of the party becomes my nominee, no matter who it is, but in the primaries, whoever I end up casting my lot with (I assume I will at some point), it will be none of those you mentioned. No way, no how. If they are cool with falling for some Republican scam, seeing one of our best Senators leave because of it, and not publicly (I am aware that some have privately) apologizing for their mistake, they are not people of the character I want in my president.

[JonLP24]

23. Her call was consistent with her career

She has always been strong on sexual misconduct issues her whole career.

[DFW]

36. One has nothing to do with the other

That's like saying you're strong on American foreign policy, so Hillary should be jailed for Benghazi.

[Blue_true]

61. You are normally way better than that reply. It was weak.

Her historical position on inappropriate touching or verbal statements has everything to do with how she reacted to the Franken situation.

[Blue_true]

60. Exactly. She certainly has.

My guess is that as an attractive young female lawyer in a male dominated environment, she got approached inappropriately many times and that shaped her approach to that type of unacceptable behavior.

[True Blue American]

26. Thank you for that!

Al Franken was brought down by Republican sleaze bags and a woman who was promised a show on Sinclair.

Shame on those who say hateful things about a man married to his wife for 50 years.

Comedy is a raunchy business and Lee Ann joined right in.

[trueblue2007]

17. Awhat a crude untruthful thing to say about Senator Franken.

[Hekate]

21. You're wrong about Franken, & you forgot the sarcasm thingy regarding Gillibrand's sole culpability

I know you were being ironic when you said, "A woman, of course, seems to be solely responsible for Franken's demise." Or at least I sure hope so -- because a lot of other Democraric Senators had a hand in that fiasco.

Use this next time
Can be found on the second page of the Smilies tab.

[Hekate]

20. I don't go for absolute purity. BTW, Al Franken is nothing like Anthony Weiner...

... Weiner is some kind of sicko. He sent one of his boner selfies when his toddler crawled into bed with him. Sure he had his shorts on, but Christ on a Trailer Hitch he couldn't stop long enough to get his kid a drink of water and walk him back to his crib?

I mostly don't care what people do in their free time. With adults. Consenting adults.

I give up on purity. All that happens is the GOP, in its vast cynicism and hypocrisy, uses our standards against us, and we kick out good people while they point and laugh.

How come not one Republican Senator or Congresscritter has been censured and ordered to leave? Give me a good answer to that.

[JonLP24]

22. Unwanted touching is not consensual

I think that was the whole point and if you think this is "purity" you should have seen what equal opportunity briefs were like in the Army. You couldn't pull off behavior Al Franken did toward your co-workers.

Keeping your hands to yourself is a different concept than "purity".

[Hekate]

24. I think Al was railroaded. Case in point: the woman castmember who released that photo...

A. She is now affiliated with RW radio and said she was going to go after him
B. She was on a USO tour with Franken, and those are known for male-oriented sex-humor
C. There are plenty of photos and films of her full participation in the hijinks, including leg-humping some guy on stage
D. She may or may not have been actually asleep, but if that photo is not a sight-gag I don't know what is. Wearing some kind of heavy flak-jacket -- Al standing over her leering for the camera -- hands out in a parody pose ... If he actually grabbed/stroked/ or otherwise touched those heavily protected mammary glands, I'll eat that flak jacket for lunch

That was supposed to be Exhibit A. Without questioning any of the circumstances, he got mobbed by his colleagues. I'd feel a lot easier in my mind if they had convened a special committee to look in to the Life and Mind of Senator Al Franken, Former Comedian and Quite Effective Democrat. But no. They just chucked him out.

The Democrats did what the GOP wanted.

[JonLP24]

25. I know who Leeann Tweeden is and I have known who she is for years

She used to be a host on The Best Damn Sports Show with Tom Arnold (who vouches for her character). I didn't like her because she was pro Iraq war but she was just a model at the time. It is not hard for me to believe a male would sexually harass a model & not care what her politics are.

I was deployed in the Army so I know what USO tours are like. The only thing I can think of for the males was when the Buffalo Jills cheerleaders came to Camp Arif Jan.

The difference between Al Franken & the clips that people have dug up is one is probably wanted while the attention from Al Franken was probably unwanted.

There are 8 news stories that followed her claim but people choose to not believe any of it.

[Hekate]

28. Thank you for your input. But I would be easier in my mind if the Senate...

...had formed a committee to investigate it as a personnel matter, or whatever. What happened still strikes a lot of people as just not right. That's all.

[brush]

56. Most were anonymous, and one that wasn't said he touched her love handle...

when he put his arm around her for a photo. Please!

Another claimed he groped her and said: "It's my right as an entertainer."

Who believes this crap? We are smarter than that.

And Gillebrand should've been too but her ambition clouded her judgement. She was the first one to take the bait offered up by Roger Stone, Hannity and Tweeden with a gag photo taken on a USO tour. BTW, there are photos of her on the same tour goosing the ass of a guitarist on stage so she was the last person who should've accused someone of sexual groping. She knew the Franken photo was a set-up gag as did Stone and Hannity but they used it anyway to go after one of our most effective senators.

But she was naive, gullible and ambitious enough to seize onto it to get rid of a potential rival for a presidential run. I heard her being interviewed on progressive satellite radio as the groping story broke where she not only threw Franken under the bus, she also drop kicked one of her backers for Hillary's Senate seat under the same bus, Bill Clinton, for the consensual Lewinsky affair.

There was absolutely no need for to bring Clinton into it at all. Her presidential campaign I guess has been suspended with hardly a whimper.

Thank God.

[calimary]

31. I covered USO tour departures and remember how

ribald the humor was. Back when Bob Hope was doing them. Knew of many examples of on-the-road craziness. My son was in a touring band for almost ten years. The stories he came home with about the pranks that were played band-to-band were pretty wild. Same thing from news crews who were on the road during presidential campaigns.

And if memory serves, Tweeden schemed with none other than Roger Stone on this one. Al Franken was railroaded.

[Hekate]

57. Yep

[calimary]

71. Shit, Hekate, I even witnessed some of 'em.

Last show my kid’s band played with the headliner, Alien Ant Farm, when the tour ended in Bakersfield.

They were invited onto the headliners’ big lavishly-appointed tour bus for beers and congrats before the show. Which they were THRILLED about. Alien Ant Farm usually didn’t invite support bands to come on in and hang out.

Unbeknownst to my boys, a couple of AAF crew guys were inside the venue, smearing Vick’s VapoRub on the microphones, covering the drumheads with baby powder, and more. And once our band took to the stage as the opening act, the first time the drummer hit the drums, clouds of powder billowed up and almost completely covered him. My kid as lead singer faced heavy Vick’s fumes and a gooey mic and mic stand close-up, right in his face. Then the crew jumped up on stage WHILE our band was playing, and started wrapping the bass player in Saran Wrap, physically spinning him around as they wound his whole torso in it!

My boys were so thrilled by that - they felt they’d been officially inducted into a secret brotherhood of guitars ‘n’ drums. Absolutely over the moon, and walking on air. They were later told this wasn’t something that the headliners did with every opening band that came along on the road with them, “so they must really like you guys!” They were utterly THRILLED!

I drove up to Bakersfield for that show, to see it, thank the headliners personally, and give my boys some extra cheer (and cheers!) from an extra “fan” of theirs in the audience. So I saw this play out with my own eyes. It was pretty rowdy, gotta say!

Btw, my boys played on, unphased, and did their whole set like real pros. I could tell, though, they were STOKED as all-get-out! Absolutely THRILLED! They really made me proud!

[True Blue American]

27. Guess you missed

How Lee Ann groped and pushed her butt up against the Country star on stage.

[LakeArenal]

58. Nope. He asked for due process.

She wouldn’t wait. Then made a huge statement how victims need due process

If Al Franken is responsible for his own demise, then she is responsible for hers.

I think that Al could be elected or put in an administration. But Gilli is lucky to be re-elected in New York.

However, I don’t understand why Gilli was the only one to pay politically for her part in Franken’s railroading.

[Polybius]

7. I could never be that rude

The Councilman politely introduced me to her and she stuck out her hand to shake mine. I shook her hand and said "nice to meet you Senator."

[Jewls2]

9. Of course you could not. Who would do that and embarrass the man that introduced you.

That would be small and petty.

[DFW]

14. No one expects that

I meet prominent Republicans all the time. Due to my Dad's profession, I've been running into them all my life. I'm always cordial, no matter what I think of them, even Jim Buckley, Bob Barr and Newt Gingrich. No one is under any false illusions.

[Tarc]

43. Shame that question is never posed to the male politicians who agreed with her

I wonder why that is...

[SharonClark]

6. Glad you had that experience.

[Jewls2]

10. That is exciting. Yea you. Felt the same when I met Paul Newman, Wilcox and the short dude Dudley

Moore with Susan Anton? all in the same day. Lol. Some car racing event in Monterrey Ca.

[Fla Dem]

16. Nice change encounter.

[912gdm]

18. I talked on the phone with Julie Andrews

...

[True Blue American]

29. I have my picture

With Bob Mackie, Met Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Graces boy friend, Mel Torme and Jonathon Winters!

Good Lord, I guess that makes me a real big person!

[Judi Lynn]

33. So lucky.

Johnathan Winters! Amazing talent, totally unique. Wow.

[True Blue American]

34. Jonathon

Grew up in Dayton. His family owned Winters bank. Everyone knew them. I actually saw Mel crossing the street. He was young, looking around to see if anyone recognized him. I was the only one so he gave me a big smile.

We had breakfast with Bob Mackie at the Governors mansion when he came to present his new Fragrance. The rest were the same. It never impressed me. Thus my sarcasm.

Now Obama or Clinton might be a different story.

[DFW]

38. Obama and Clinton ARE different stories, believe me.

Some people just have an aura of stardom when they walk in the room. They are two such people.

[True Blue American]

40. When You Walk In The Room.:)

[DFW]

46. Even I remember the Searchers

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.......

[True Blue American]

47. It was the first one I could find!:)

In that galaxy I was a Henery the 8TH Fan.

[DFW]

51. I was around for that galaxy, too

My band played four gigs at the Ambassador Theater in Washington, D.C.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassador_Theater_(Washington,_D.C.)

How's THAT for dated?

[True Blue American]

53. Remember the Standells

Dirty Water? Larry Tamblyn was on a board with us for a few years. Went to write for Daily Kos.

He was a huge Hillary fan. Held fund raisers for her.

[DFW]

64. My group used to cover that

We were called the "Clockwork Orange" in 1967, after the book, which we all had read and liked. No one in the States had the slightest idea where we got such an "obscure" name, thinking we had thought it up as some kind of "psychedelic" band name, as was popular at the time. Three years later, the film came out, and everyone knew the name, but by then, we had scattered to the four winds. I had moved to Spain, and the lead guitarist had discovered LSD and moved to San Francisco, temporarily, anyway. The drummer went to school in New England, and the other guitarist had moved back to Canada (his dad was their ambassador to the USA at the time). Had we stuck together, we probably would have been hit with copyright issues anyway, even benefiting from the name recognition, and we were still teenagers at the time.

[True Blue American]

67. I enjoy those stories.

So many of you kids started in garage bands. Larry actually joined the Mormon Church to save his marriage. That did not work at all, but all of you went on to productive lives.

[DFW]

69. I definitely chose another path

After living in Franco's Spain, where religion was inseparable from the fascist dictatorship of Franco, I was disgusted with religion for good. Little did I know that my wife, raised in a devout Catholic family in the farm country of northwestern Germany, and whom I was only to meet five years later, was going through a similar revelation, when the priest in her home town was transferred out for having been caught molesting children.

When we finally did meet, we were both 22, had little experience with each other's country (North America to her might as well have been the far side of the moon--a place she never expected to visit). That was 1974. How perceptions change, right?

[panader0]

62. Hell with meeting Gillibrand--

I wanna meet DFW.

[DFW]

65. LOL!!

Be careful what you wish for, lest you end up getting it.

Although: Steve2470 seemed to survive the experience intact, and California Peggy has met me at her home in California, at my home in Germany, and on neutral ground (Paris, France), and came through all three encounters unscathed, despite a brief involuntary sequestration in France (long story).

To those in the know, it's my wife you really want to meet, but ever since she retired, her schedule is so crazy that you need to make an appointment months in advance (that'll teach me to marry a social worker).

[True Blue American]

68. Well, you have to admit

More talent there!

[DFW]

70. I wouldn't know

Maybe Gillibrand is a virtuoso on the ocarina and just never brags about it.

[Hekate]

72. So do I!

[redstateblues]

55. So true. I've been in the music biz for 30 years

I’ve seen people who aren’t famous yet that make you say “who is that?” when they walk into the room.

[DFW]

66. I know what you mean

About ten years ago, I was at a reception for Theo Bikel in NYC (Carnegie Hall, of all places), and I noticed a woman on the other side of the room, and I was sure I knew who she was, but couldn't quite place her. I noticed her staring at me off and on, too. Eventually, after getting to meet all the celebrities I wanted to (Tom Paxton, Peter Yarrow, all the old folkies), we were finally close enough so that I found my way to her, and said flat out, "I feel like I should recognize you from somewhere, but I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall your name." She said, "That's funny, since I was about to say exactly the same thing to you!"

Well, we exchanged names, and of course, we had never heard of each other. She, as it turned out, was quite a famous folk singer (her name was Susan Werner), and I had numerous people tall me afterward, you met HER? I retained my relative obscurity, and presume she drew a blank with whomever she asked (unless she asked Theo, who was a friend) about me--if indeed she ever did.

[Vinca]

37. I have an exciting political story, too. As a telephone operator in the 1960's

I disconnected Lady Bird Johnson.

[True Blue American]

41. LOL

[Generic Brad]

39. Al Franken was the highest ranking politician I ever met

He personally congratulated my wife when she got her citizenship. He accepted a personal invitation from my daughter and spoke at her high school. He helped build a home with Jimmy Carter through Habitat For Humanity that one of my former employees moved into.

The loss of Al Franken is incalculable. I'm glad you were excited to meet her, but I do not share your enthusiasm for her.

On edit: I have bumped into Norm Coleman in a grocery store. He slammed into my cart (where my daughter was sitting) with his cart and told me to get out of his way.

[True Blue American]

42. I think Al will

Be back out there. Not once have I ever disagreed with Sherrod Brown until then. I let im know.

Norm Coleman lost your vote, I assume?

[Generic Brad]

59. Norm never had my vote as a senator

He was one of the best Democratic mayors St Paul ever had. Then he switched parties and got a personality and ethics transplant. That was when he lost me.

[True Blue American]

63. Funny, Mike Turner

Was a great Dayton Mayor,too. Not a good Congressman. His first Wife was well respected here.hd her own agency, then moved to Kettering hospital.

[Raftergirl]

44. I've met Kirsten

several times. I’ve found her to be very down to earth.

And while I was disappointed in her regarding Al Franken, she still got my vote last November and I will vote for her next time if she chooses to run again.

I honestly can’t even tell you who her opponent was in 2018. There was basically no contest. I don’t recall even seeing one commercial.

I have met several well known people in politics and entertainment field. And I briefly dated Walter Cronkite’s son Chip in the early 80’s. Never met his dad though. I did ask him if he ever talked politics with his father and he said the subject was off limits in his house. He would never even say who he voted for.

[True Blue American]

49. I read on another board

The guys Gramps used to live next to the Nixon’s. Baby sat. Nixon insisted on being carried on his shoulders. The poster blamed Gramps for not dropping him on his head!

[MrsMatt]

48. I met Senator Al Franken

took a picture with him.

And, he didn't grab my ass!

[True Blue American]

50. Well, I bet that hurt your feelings!:)

[MrsMatt]

52. Actually no. n/t

But you already knew that.

[True Blue American]

54. Lol

I am a Franken fan. Was kidding you.