Interesting two days coming up
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I was contacted by a guy who held a Senate-confirmed post in the Trump Administration (as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA). A few years back he was diagnosed with Alpha-1. He wants to help the cause.
He’s a good guy, background as a fireman who rose through the ranks, first locally then state-wide, then went on to lead emergency management in several (red) states before getting tapped by Trump to be the Grand Poobah of first responders. He’s about my age, he first noticed symptoms after spending months “very deep into the California wild fires” (his words) as an out of state volunteer.
So for the next two days, he and I will be hitting up Republicans in congress, gathering more signatures. He’s got Senators and Congressmen from both sides of the isle on speed dial. But we’re focusing him on Republicans since those are more of a challenge for us and he’s got the bona fides.
Should be an interesting couple of days.
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As others have said, good luck also.
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Damn today went well. I have some stories he passed along that I’ll tell later.
We got two members to say yes during our meeting, which never happens. Normally they at least have their staff do due diligence. We’ll get more signatures from today in the next week.
One yes from today was the chairman of the armed services committee. We got a photo op with him, which I’ll share later.
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@Horace said in Interesting two days coming up:
@89th said in Interesting two days coming up:
Good stuff. I know it's a "Long" shot, but bipartisan support is always good.
Is Jon's issue partisan?
No I was using that as a forced way to use a pun Jon might recognize. Anyway, it did sound like their access to republicans was harder to navigate.
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Last night in a cab I passed by a tent encampment on a closed city street. It was GWU’s version of the encampment. By the time I realized what it was it was too late to get a picture.
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@jon-nyc said in Interesting two days coming up:
One yes from today was the chairman of the armed services committee. We got a photo op with him, which I’ll share later.
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The guy on the right in the top photo is the former FEMA director.
Great guy. Had a meteoric career. At 32 he became the head of Alabama’s FEMA equivalent and was a member of Governor Bob Riley’s cabinet. He was tapped for FEMA at 42.
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You know, I didn’t notice it while there and when I looked at the pic I thought it was W. But you’re right, it’s a portrait of him.
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Funniest moment - we found ourselves in an elevator with 6-7 other guys, all middle aged in suits. One of them quipped “a whole lot of billable hours in this elevator right now”.