Before (un)Sound Politics, before the gubernatorial election contest, before he moved to Seattle, our good friend Stefan cut his shark teeth on the Bay area blog NancyWatch, ferociously setting out to destroy the political career of his hated congresswoman, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
And where’s Nancy today? Speaker of the House.
Hey… congratulations Stefan.
Stefan abandoned his ponytail-in-inkwell-like obsession in May 2003 after moving to Seattle, but he quickly added new names to his enemies list, building (u)SP into a politician-killer that has since toppled the careers of Chris Gregoire, Ron Sims and many other liberal Democrats.
No, wait. They all won their elections. As did a near sweep of Democrats in local legislative and council races over the past couple years. Hmm, pretty much every ballot initiative and referendum has gone the other way too. Come to think of it, except for Dave Reichert’s close victory over come from nowhere Darcy Burner, and a couple of Republican favored candidates in supposedly nonpartisan Port Commission races (how’s that going for you?) Stefan’s pretty much been on the losing side of nearly every race over the past two election seasons.
(Not to mention the much vilified Dean Logan, who left King County for a higher paying job administering elections for Los Angeles, the largest jurisdiction in the nation.)
So here’s a tip to ambitious Democrats everywhere: get on Stefan’s shit list, for it certainly seems to be a surefire path towards higher office. Don’t believe me? Just ask Speaker Nancy Pelosi and future cabinet Secretary Ron Sims.
UPDATE:
As fellow HA blogger Will points out, I shamelessly stole this meme without attribution from a post of his right here on HA. Sorry Will. But considering how infrequently you’ve been posting, you can’t really blame me for forgetting that I have co-bloggers.
And before anybody corrects me, yes I know that the Pelosi attacks were originally posted to Shark Blog, and then collected at NancyWatch after the fact. I took a little poetic license. Same difference.
He also supported Reichert over whats her name.
the whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise-taxes-peHOsi confuses herself with an “artist”
ah well, we survived my-name-is-jimmah-cawtah and the pouting penis president, I’m pretty sure we’ll survive a mere 670 days of the whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise-taxes-peHOsi and harry-don’t-pull-the-plug-on-my-majority.
And where’s Stefan today? A failed pollworker who lasted less than 1 day on a $9-an-hour part-time job because he can’t assimilate training or accept supervision. Hmmmm.
Fireman, if Sheriff Burner was investigating the Green River killings, I wonder how many more girls would still be alive.
The great thing about being a Republican, is the fact that you can be wrong on every issue, and your friends are too stupid to know it.
Just think where we would be if Jefferson, and Washington were conservatives. We would still be singing God Save The Queen instead of the Star Spangled Banner.
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
George Washington
Now I know you cons want to live in caves and play pretend, and make believe, but the people that have to live in the real world have to understand things a little more deeply than a Rovian sound bite would allow.
Someday in his old age Stefan will reflect on his years of being ignored and seeing all of his causes and candidates defeated, and go into a deep funk over the futility of his wasted life.
Hey Stefan! Join a winning team! Become a Democrat.
#3 anti-liberal says:
the whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise- taxes-peHOsi confuses herself with an “artist”
ah well, we survived my-name-is-jimmah-cawtah and the pouting penis president, I’m pretty sure we’ll survive a mere 670 days of the whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise- taxes-peHOsi and harry-don’t-pull-the-plug-on-m y-majority.
————-
The problem you have Mr. Anti Reality, is the fact that when the investigations get going, the word Republican will make more REAL AMERICANS want to hurl their cookies. If you think Americans will vote for Republicans in ’08 you are sadly mistaken, and possibly bordering on insanity.
By the way, why don’t you pay for the Iraq war out of your paycheck. If yer name isn’t Gates, Dobson, or Buffet, you can rest assured the GOP cares nothing for you, or your children’s future.
Go get ’em girl. Besides the Republicans couldn’t figure out what to do anyway without the lobbyists writing their bills….. If any of you con fake Americans don’t agree with me, look into the Prescription Drug Benefit SCAM!!! Look at what the controller was told if he told congress what it was “really” going to cost.
Link to above quote: http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1274
#3 As far as raising taxes, how much debt would you feel comfortable passing onto your children. Say a million apiece with interest acruing every day?
Kinda funny how Bush is now complaining about earmarks, after they exploded under Republican Rule.
When Republicans aren’t being hypocrites, what do they do? Sleep?
What is really funny is Thom Hartmann askes ever caller that calls himself a “conservative” what it means to be a conservative. In 6 months not a one has said anything that was reality based.
The only good thing about being a conservative is you can ignore any facts you want, and live in your own fantasy world…… Up is down. War is Peace. Good is Bad. Lying Presidents are good for America. 5 trillion in new debt is just fine. Tax cuts for billionares is better than tax cuts for $8.00 an hour workers.
Being a con must suck.
whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise-taxes-peHOsi has her hands full
And you may have missed the memo, but the lefty moonbats are a tad upset that whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise-taxes-peHOsi won’t open hearings:
Moonbatta Non Grata… yeah, yeah, it’s your favorite hatred… get over it and check a zillion other sources for the same damned headline/info.
Remember Cindy Sheehan? Neither do we, but the surprise is who else doesn’t. Fox News reports she showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday:
Iraq war protesters broke up a press conference by House Democrats on Wednesday with chants to bring American troops home from Iraq. . . .
Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, led the group to Capitol Hill to warn Democrats that party activists expect them to end the war in Iraq and confront the White House on a change in Iraq strategy.
“We didn’t put you in power to work with the people that have been murdering hundreds of thousands of people since they have been in power,” Sheehan said. “We put you in power to be opposition to them finally and we’re the ones who put them in power.”
The Sheehanoids managed to cow Rep. Rahm Emanuel into shutting down his press conference. And from the Angry Left bloggers who once cheered her on: silence. Browsing the homepages of the Daily Kos, Atrios, Talking Points Memo and the Puffington Host, we can’t find a single mention of the erstwhile moonbat heartthrob.
It comes as a relief to realize that many of those who once treated Sheehan as a heroine did so merely out of partisanship, not hatred of country.
Tremendously funny post Goldy. That cross-dressing asshole Steffy certainly is a looooooser and a punk. Let’s hope the inbred moron does the same for all of the Seattle-area Dems! HE HE!
good grief goldy…this is all you’ve got?????
i see you have way too much time on your hairy little hands and not enough inspiration so i thought i would throw you a ‘bone’ and ask a question. so here goes………
goldy, my sweet, why have you spent so much time fixating on stefan when you could be warning your peeps about a very dangerous and uber conservative mega church RIGHT IN YOUR OWN ‘BACKYARD’???
mars hill church ring any bells for any of you fools????
I concur!
Congratulations to Stefan on the success of his absolutely masterful plan to destroy the enemy from within!
Day 1 of 670 in is the crapper and on the record.
If the Democrats actually do something other than continue the general status quo, I’ll be surprised. Maybe the Iraqi mis-adventure will be over during the next two years, maybe not. It’s up to the Democrats to end it, ’cause the Republicans will hang on to it forever. They’ll never admit it was an idea that didn’t work.
Anyway, I’m not optimistic about things.
Ghost @13,
Just having a little fun… a little friendly ribbing. Stefan can take it.
As for Mars Hill, I’ve written about Pastor Driscoll.
okay goldy….but you should REALLY look into this guy if you think he is just a wannabe mega church. these freaks even birth their children in the church [can you say c-r-e-e-p-y???] this church is dangerous and a cult. period. and it seems it is some sort of cover for…guess what?…scientology. ever heard of jon phelps?
Breaking News:
Gov. Schwarzenegger converts to the Democratic Party!
http://www.latimes.com/news/pr.....d-homepage
Well, not officially, at least not yet. But apparantly he is putting together a plan for the State of California to offer health insurance to every child in the state – including illegal immigrants!
“By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer
9:35 AM PST, January 4, 2007
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will propose that all Californian children, including those in the state illegally, be guaranteed medical insurance as part of the health-care overhaul he intends to unveil next week, according to officials familiar with the plan.
If enacted by the Legislature, his proposal would affect about 763,000 children who now lack insurance. Although the administration has not revealed details of how it would pay for such a program, officials estimate that extending insurance to all children could cost the state as much as $400 million a year….”
(Source cited above).
Gee, I wonder how Stephan (and MTR, and Anti-Liberal, and JCH, etc.) would have reacted if this news came from our own Gov. Gregoire? I imagine they would be calling her a pinko communist at the very minimum.
(Gee, the next two years are going to be SO MUCH FUN!)
as in jon and esther phelps and DC-3 entertainment, sonic temple [gag] and paste………….
it’s a cult and you are really missing a good one here…….
I don’t think I ever want to get on the wrong side of David. He knows how to skewer with panache. (Fitting, since that is sort of a “San Franciso values” kind of word).
Some time soon, Postman will need to start one of his political prediction contests: Which liberal Democrat will Stefan next elevate to higher office?
You only set yourself up for equal treatment when the Rs take back control (only a matter of time). Remember: treat others as you want to be treated. Stefan’s treatment of you will be expected and accepted (I presume) when the day comes…….
Trainwinder @ 21
So your suggestion to Dems is to continue to keep R’s out of the loop even after the 100 hours agenda is passed?
Ha ha ha ha!
6 I doubt it, Roger. He’ll probably use his last breath spouting incoherent, delusional gibberish such as we’re seing in this thread from AntiLogical.
Hey, I wonder if Gov. Terminator has decided that he can’t win the Presidency in 2008 as a Republican. He had to backtrack so fast on his original agenda that it made one’s head spin. Now he’s more popular once he abandoned the neo-con agenda. And last November’s trouncing of the Republicans at the polls
So perhaps he’s preparing to announce late next year, on Jay Leno’s show, that he’s converted to the Democratic Party?
Of course, there’s that little inconvenience about needing a Constitutional Amendment to consider….
Facts @5,
Fact is there never was a Sheriff Burner, and fact is the Green River killer was caught. Say what you want, but her public service record is nada (A high school program is a bunch of bs)
Congrads to the dems, though. I really enjoyed hearing Rep. Wasserman Schultz talk of how the dems are going to make it easier to increase taxes by doing away with the 2/3’s rule. Whats first to be taxed, Social Security or Medicare?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16469533/
Can’t you dems even give a simple straightforward answer?
Yeah, well, back when I was a Democrat I voted for Gary Hart (in the 1984 primary), Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis for President and Tom Bradley for Governor of California. Hmmm. With that kind of track record maybe I should start supporting Democrats again!
Oil is down again today…
Must be that vast right wing conspiracy trying to influence the electorate with lower gas prices near the election…..or could it really be supply and demand.
Will the Dem congress stop funding Iraq? exactly as they did with Vietnam?
Bet not….sorry anti-war wing…your team is going to “stay the course” by keeping things going in Iraq.
Turns out we now have proof of Iran meddling in Iraq.
Will congress have the stones to take care of the 21st century Hitler? we’ll see
Mike Webb SUCKS Poll:
Nancy Pelosi will:
1) Use her femininity to wow the good old boys in the Moonbat! Libtard Party.
2) Give us Hillary Care.
3) Bring shame to America.
4) Undo Tax Cuts.
5) Save the children from the evil Republicans.
6) Elevate John Murtha to a “new position”.
7) Will Cut-N-Run in Iraq. For reference if you go back and look at John Murtha, he was the same guy who told Clinton to leave Mogadishu. Now what did OBL claim his cuase centered around? OBL himself sighted the Cut-N-Run tactics in Somalia as example that Americans don’t have the stomach or will to tough it out and fight.
8) Encourage our enemies. – Remember Investors Business Daily? Didn’t Nancy Pelosi say if we talk nice to the terrorists they’ll Leave? I posted top terrorists words who said she’s delusional!
9) Fan the flames of homosexual marriage. – Isn’t she the San Franfreako treat?
10) Find William Jefferson a new freezer, one the FBI can’t penetrate
11) 1-4, 7-10.
12) None of the above. She’ll sit in the chair hitting the gavel for 670 days!
A site for sore eyes of John Murtha lovers: http://www.capmarine.com/personal/index.html
28 For once, it’s possible MWS may actually have one thing right: number 12, if she’s dumb enough to listen to the right-wing screech monkeys and the Vichy dems and “play to the center”.
@3 “ah well, we survived my-name-is-jimmah-cawtah and the pouting penis president, I’m pretty sure we’ll survive a mere 670 days of the whip-me-beat-me-make-me-raise- taxes-peHOsi and harry-don’t-pull-the-plug-on-m y-majority.”
Personally I think you’re looking at a minimum of 10 years.
@13
‘According to a July 4, 2006, interview in Christianity Today, [Pastor] Driscoll described the church he leads as ‘theologically conservative and culturally liberal’ … Driscoll is a strong advocate of … a view of gender that says that men and women are equal in value and personhood …” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Driscoll
Yeah, ghost, I can see why a neanderthal like you would think Driscoll and his church are “dangerous” … so … do you go to a church that admonishes its female members to be sex slaves for their husband-masters?
Fart’nArt: Just one thing? Look at #29. I reposted it because you Moonbat!s need a dose of reality from Good Marines, telling it as it is!
@17 Geez, ghost, these cults come and go. Ever heard of Donald Bartlett and Community Chapel? He’s probably dead by now. Was a local demagogue of the 70’s.
What does who does the winning in an election have to do with your view point ? Somehow that gives it creditability ? So liberals had no crediability since 1994 ? Of course not .
How many times did Lincoln loose ?
You think Gregoire would win in Florida ? Would Reichert w win in Mcdermots district . Of course not .. Goldy is just taking a cheap shot , how liberal of you .
I thought Rossi was a pretty good candidate , the fact he won twice does not mean he was the one who won the election .. Ummm , maybe it does . But in either case , Gregoire is the one setting the agenda , and we better have the folks who supported Rossi following what is going on .
@21 “Remember: treat others as you want to be treated.”
Good advice that’s universally ignored by every Republican in the country.
Let’s take Jonathan Gardner aka Federal Way Conservative for example. He says Bush should execute people who criticize him. Or Mark Griswold aka Full Contact Politics — he hopes terrorists down a U.S. airliner so Republicans will get more votes. (Griswold, after getting only 15% of the vote in his own candidacy for the legislature, must be real hungry).
Now WHY on God’s Green Earth should anyone be polite to these fucks? They want to kill us, for God’s sake. I think we should treat the Gardners and Griswolds of the world — and those who support them — like terrorists because that’s essentially what they are.
No, Thomas, I don’t think this is a Golden Rule deal. It’s a lock-and-load deal. I don’t want that, but that’s what Republicans have unilaterally turned U.S. politics into, and I’m not into appeasement. And it’s important to remember we’re not talking about just a few fringies; Gardner and Griswold now represent mainstream GOP thinking:
“ … [T]his is a civil war, that … has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars. While we are lucky in this country that our civil wars are fought at the ballot box, not on the battlefields, nonetheless it is a civil war.”
Who said this? None other than Newt Gingrich, future Speaker of the House and a GOP national leader. And Republicans have followed his lead and taken these words to heart by the millions. Hate-liberals is their daily mantra, and in the hands of Coulter and others, it is morphing into kill-liberals. In other countries run by people with views and passions similar to theirs, right-wingers have sent death squads into the streets to hunt down and kill perceived “leftists,” journalists, and other opponents — they’ve even murdered nuns. I don’t think these people are joking. I think they will do it here if they get the chance and believe they can get away with it.
Polite? No, Thomas, our politics have gone beyond any possibility of civility. The right-wing extremists in our midst are even more dangerous than Al Qaeda, and we need to treat them as the threat to our liberty and safety that they actually are.
I will support Ron Sims to become Secretary of anything if it means he will go far, far away for a long, long time.
roger@32…….roger if where you get all your facts from is wikipedia then you are in for a tough time of it. i, frankly, expected better of you. now i am wondering why…..
driscoll….liberal?? oh hardly. god…i can’t believe you are this much of a guppy.and once again….i am not a christian….my name refers to the dickens characters you ninny, so i guess that whole me going to a crazy church where the women are “sex slaves” would be really really out of the picture for me. sheesh.i know you live in rabbit hole but you could pull your head out of your ass once in awhile.
cults like this do not come and go. but i am interested in why you are so defensive [neanderthal???] and so busy making excuses for them. you wouldn’t happen to be a member now would you, rog?
they have over 1600 members already in ballard and their goal is to have 1000 mega churches worldwide within ten years. so far they already have 100. does this really sound like it’s going away to you?
and what about the connection to scientology? don’t tell me that you are a [mindless] fan of that too?
follow the money roger….jon phelps.
23 I think Anti-Liberal is Kevin Carns. He sounds like a BIAW-paid poster.
ROGER RABBIT POLL
Anti-Liberal is the latest incarnation of:
[ ] 1. Mr. Cynical
[ ] 2. ProudAss
[ ] 3. JCH
[ ] 4. Kevin Carns
[ ] 5. All of the above
Here’s one for the ages Furball. You claimed to be there.
“North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap admitted that the January 1968 Tet Offensive was a disastrous defeat for the Communists – not for the United States, as it was portrayed in the U.S. media – and that in its wake, Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering. More tellingly, Gen. Giap acknowledged that it was the U.S. domestic anti-war movement that kept the North going. In other words, the very people who claimed they only wanted an end to the killing were actually responsible for prolonging the war for several years and by tens of thousands of deaths.”
My my my!
25 “her public service record is nada”
If that’s a criterion, how many Republican representatives would that eliminate? A bunch. And what about Bush’s cabinet? Nearly all of them.
All the Constitution says is you have to be 35, a citizen, and reside in the district.
@26 Seriously, Stefan, after Bush maybe it IS time to become a Democrat again.
Get over yourselves, LOSERS! What Goldy has is a Majority in both Houses. . .and when the other un-elected president is out of office, he may well have a fullhouse. Say goodnight LOSERS!
What winning an election gives the Liberals is POWER. Power to set the agenda, power to direct the money, power to uncover the lies and the crimes. You’d better buckle up Bunky, Its gonna be a hell of a ride.
BTW, Stefan, I KNEW you wouldn’t be able to resist reading this thread … HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (jab) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (poke) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (needle) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (kick) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (scratch) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (bite) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR (spray) HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR …
@27 How do you “take care of” a guy who’s already dead?
I KNOW!!! Urinate on his grave!! That’ll get his hackles up!!! That’s worth investing a few thousand more American lives.
@35 A wingnut complaining about cheap shots is like Ted Bundy complaining about crime.
@37 We’ll take State, Interior, or Defense. Are you on board?
38 “my name refers to the dickens characters”
Like I needed you to tell me that? I wouldn’t get too worked up about these cults if I were you, ghost. The Phelps, Copelands, Fuitens, and Driscolls of the world only want your money. These guys are businessmen. They aren’t arming their flocks, and as long as their parishioners are sitting in “church” participating in three “services” a day, they aren’t out on the streets stealing from us. There’s worse things than cults. Scientology isn’t a problem until you walk through their door.
38 (continued) Unless you include the Republican Party in the definition of “cult” … that’s a different story.
It was a great day for America which translates to a TERRIBLE day for the right wing, bible – thumpin, asshole-licking republcians.
You all got what you deserved today. We TOOK the power from you. Now we will bitch slap you and there isn’t FUCK you can do about it. Get used to it bitches!
Did you do some research on Stefan Goldy?
How do you know all of this?
Are you sure its true?
@41 You’re full of shit. That’s a shopworn wingnut canard that has been comprehensively debunked — and makes no sense. (Is it really plausible the Vietnamese — after fighting the Japanese and French for decades — would have quit fighting the Americans but for protesters?)
Now let’s go to a web site called History News Network, whose introductory page states, “Mistakes about history are common enough that we devote an entire department to them: FACT & FICTION, which includes … articles debunking the myths peddled by politicians, the media and morons.”
Now let’s go to an article on the subject by a respected academician:
“Jonathan Winkler: Did General Giap Say the Vietnam War Was Won on the Streets of America?
“Jonathan Winkler, University of Maryland, College Park, writing on H-Diplo (Oct. 25, 2004):
“Curt Cardwell has raised the question of the origin of the claim, supposedly by General Giap, that the anti-war protesters contributed to the success of the North Vietnamese in the war.
“Ed Moise has already tackled this one [in a review of] Vo Nguyen Giap and Van Tien Dung, How We Won the War. Philadelphia: Recon Publications, 1976. 63 pp.
“This book has been the subject of several unfounded rumors on the Internet. The first one began in the late 1990s. Supposedly, General Giap had written in How We Won the War that in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive of 1968, the Communist leaders in Vietnam had been ready to abandon the war, but that a broadcast by Walter Cronkite, declaring the Tet Offensive a Communist victory, persuaded them to change their minds and fight on. This rumor was entirely false. Giap had not mentioned Cronkite, and had not said the Communists had ever considered giving up on the war.
“Several variants of this rumor appeared in 2004. In these, Giap is supposed to have credited either the American anti-war movement in general, or John Kerry’s organization (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) in particular, for persuading the Communist leaders to change their minds and not give up on the war. Giap is sometimes said to have made this statement in How We Won the War, sometimes in an unnamed 1985 memoir. All versions of the rumor are false. Neither in How We Won the War, nor in any other book (the 1985 memoir is entirely imaginary), has Giap mentioned Kerry or Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or said that the Communist leaders had ever considered giving up on the war. …”
http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/16/2004/10/
There you have it — FALSE RUMOR. Circulated by conservatives to fire up their base and discredit Kerry. The kind of bullshit that circulates on the internet via mass e-mailings that “friends” forward to you. It’s a good idea to ALWAYS run these mass-circ e-mails through a debunker website, because 99.9% are either outright fiction or have gotten changed so many times in the retelling that they bear no resemblance to the truth.
Let me repeat: Wingnut assertions that North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap credited the U.S. anti-war movement for his side’s victory in the Vietnam war are a LIE.
@41 (continued) MWS — since you’re neither a politician nor the media, I have no choice but to put you in the “moron” category.
Why do wingnuts like war and killing so much, and hate peace so much? Fucking sociopaths.
Roger the wingnuts like war just so long as they can send someone else to fight it for them.
Just ask Lush Flimbaugh, WHATADICK Cheney, Rompin Rudy, George Baby Bush, Handjob Hannity and the rest of the so-called moral majority.
re 40: ….Mr. Irrelevant….??????
The Collectors, David Baldacci
Summary:
“The assassination of the Speaker of the House sets the members of the Camel Club in a race to prevent a silent yet bloody coup in Washington” – provided by the publisher
Roger Rabbit @ 42
“All the Constitution says is you have to be 35, a citizen, and reside in the district.”
Actually, Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 2 says
“No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
http://www.archives.gov/nation.....cript.html
So you only have to be 25 years of age and a U.S. citizen to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. You certainly don’t have to reside in the district. You only have to be an inhabitant of the state.
In fact, you don’t even have to live in the state when you file for office, only when you are ELECTED. At least according to the “Tom DeLay” decision by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Tom DeLay couldn’t be removed from the ballot as a disqualified candidate from Texas, even though he had moved to Virginia, since there was always the possibility of moving back to Texas on or before election day.
What is the filing fee for Congress in Texas? Maybe for laughs and giggles, I will file in a normally uncontested district for Congress from Texas for the 2008 election. They would have to accept my filing papers, since it would always be possible to move to Texas by November 4, 2008.
@59 But which box? They’re ALL irrelevant.
61 My mistake. 35 is for president.
61 (continued) “hat is the filing fee for Congress in Texas? Maybe for laughs and giggles, I will file in a normally uncontested district for Congress from Texas for the 2008 election. They would have to accept my filing papers, since it would always be possible to move to Texas by November 4, 2008.”
Why not? You’ve run for everything else. Who knows, maybe you could even get elected — they don’t know you down there.
MWS AT 41 said: “Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering.”
I’ve read Giap’s biography, as well as that of a couple of others of leaders in North Vietnam during the war years. Giap never said Hanoi was on the verge of surrendering. Instead, he said that the Tet Offensive showed the North Vietnamese it was going to be a long struggle. But they knew that they could out-last the Americans. They could stay in S. Vietname for five, ten, twenty years or more. The Americans would never commit to an INDEFINATE commitment of U.S. troops to S.E. Asia.
Why does the right wing continue to try to re-write the history of the Vietnam war??????
An American officer told Giap that “You know, you never defeated us in combat”. Giap replied: “yes, that is true. But it is also irrelevant”.
The Tet offensive showed to the American people that our politicians and our military leaders didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing over there. Just before Tet in 1968, American military commanders had assured the press that the war was just about ended, that the communists were on their last ropes. To use more current phraseology, they were just a few “dead enders”.
The Tet Offensive, and its results, is very complicated. It caught the Americans completely by surprise. While Americans were distracted by the seige of Khe Sahn, the Viet Cong were infiltrating large numbers of fighters and weapons into the major cities. In the ensuing battle, evan the U.S. embassy in Saigon was breached, and Hue (a provincial capital and one of the largest cities in S. Vietnam) was completely captured by the Viet Cong. It took several weeks to take it back, and by then the city was destroyed, and all pro-American Vietnamese leaders had been executed.
The end result: Hue was destroyed, as well as portions of lots of other cities. American and ARVN forces took quite a few casualties. The Viet Cong took more casualties, as they made the mistake of not withdrawing after their initial success, giving the Americans a chance to pound them with artillary and airpower. The Viet Cong were no longer an effective large-scale fighting force, but remained as an insurgent threat. The N. Vietnamese took over more large-scale combat operations, and it took some time to rebuild and re-supply their forces for the next major offensive.
But the biggest effect wasn’t military, or even the effect upon the American public. It was on the average S. Vietnamese. The Tet Offensive taught them that they couldn’t be protected by the Americans. If they chose to ally themselves with the American, they and their family would suffer. The safest bet was to quietly cooperate, or at worst remain “neutral”. That was when the war was lost, for no matter how many troops or effort we put into the country, the South Vietnamese government just wasn’t worth fighting for, in the minds of a great majority of the S. Vietnamese population.
Most of my study of the Vietnam war shows that the most important decisions, and mistakes, were made very early on in the war. Among the bad decisions: backing a series of unpopular S. Vietnamese government leaders, organizing a S. Vietnamese “home guard” which actually formed the inital training and equiping of the Viet Cong by the mid-1960’s, re-organizing rural S. Vietnamese society by consolidating scattered hamlets into “home villages” which were ostensably easier to defend, but dislocated peasants from their ancient farmlands and put them under the control of currupt leaders of the “home villages”, who charged the peasants for building materials for their homes which were supplied free by the U.S. government. The entire S. Vietnamese government was corrupt, with each official charged with collecting massive amounts of payoffs and graft which were to be transferred upwards up the system.
By the time Nixon took over, the war was essentially unwinnable. He thought he could talk the Soviets and Chinese into forcing the N. Vietnamese to compromise, but he was naive. Eventually Nixon agreed to peace terms in Jan. 1973 which were nearly identical to those proposed by the N. Vietnamese in early 1969, shortly after Nixon took office. Kissenger recently admitted that they agreed to the deal knowing that the S. Vietnamese government would eventually collapse, but the calculated it would be after Nixon’s term of office was over. Their timing was off – it collapsed in the spring of 1975, not 1977, but they were correct in that Nixon was out of office when it occured.
The whole Vietnam war showed just how naive our leadership was, and how they were affected by tunnel vision. American leadership saw Vietnam as a great war between freedom and communism. The S. Vietnamese saw it as a civil war, between the Buddist peasants and the Catholic urban merchants and elite.
The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are just too scary. Our worst-case scenario for Iraq was always that you would have an Iraq controlled by Iran. At this point I doubt we will see any other result.
And trying to argue that Hanoi would have surrendered if only the peace movement had kept quiet is idiotic. It shows a complete lack of understanding of the complexities of the war, the same lack of understanding that caused us to make mistake after mistake in the prosecution of the war.
-So here’s a tip to ambitious Democrats everywhere: get on Stefan’s shit list, for it certainly seems to be a surefire path towards higher office.-
I’ll never forget the first time I came across Stefan – it was at Green Lake, where he was marching around with a complete nutcake kid who was running for state representative – Mark Griswold (aka ‘Green Lake Mark’ @ SP)
Stefan looked like a half-crazy homeless guy waving his sign around, and handing out these pathetic little flyers. But theShark was such an ideologue, he seriously appeared to believe Griswold could win. I saw the pair all over the place that summer, marching around on their mini Seattle GOP jihad.
Needless to say, Griswold got 15% of the vote.
He had the same success you had with the Re-Elected Congressman Riechert and McMorris. You are two of a kind!