Back in March of 2004, the Wall Street Journal profiled two rising “state-level stars“…
Barack Obama is a Third Culture Kid — born in Hawaii of a Kenyan father and white American mother, raised in Indonesia, educated in New York and Cambridge, Mass. Now he’s favored to win a Senate seat in Illinois.
Dino Rossi sells commercial real estate, work that blends seamlessly into the Chamber of Commerce brand of Republican politics. In a state with few Italians and Catholics, the son of a grade-school teacher and beautician doesn’t blend in altogether. Which is good for his hopes to become governor of Washington state.
Odds are you haven’t heard of Mr. Obama, a 42-year-old Democrat, or Mr. Rossi, a 44-year-old Republican, above the truculent din of the Kerry and Bush campaigns. But both genial politicians, breaking molds, are candidates that could make a mark on their states, and perhaps the nation.
Last night President Barack Obama delivered his first speech before a joint session of Congress. And Dino Rossi…? He’s busy preparing for a spring-roll eating contest.
Well I guess, in the WSJ’s defense, batting .500 ain’t too bad.
President Obama. Yeah.
Hey now Rossi won in 2004 before Gregoire stole the election.
That was snark
LOL. Why I love this blog.
Hey, Rossi’s 0 for 2; that’s pretty good by current GOP standards…
You forgot the part about Obama’s qualification being some kind of a Community Organizer!
Obama’s lack of experience has seriously drained his honeymoon popularity. He’s lucky the MSM is still in awe of him for some reason. But Obama is a quick study…learning that stepping on his dick HURTS! Good for him.
Brock Huard is gonna kick Rossi’s ass!
Cynical: 92% had a favorable opinion of Obama’s speech yesterday, even though the MSM, contrary to your ridiculous claim, has been spewing almost nothing but non-stop airings of republican talking points and Santelli rants.
Cynical lost touch with reality a long time ago.
One of the reasons the republican party is a dwindling minority laughingstock is the pandering the party officials do to the likes of cynical – the un-informed, kool aid drinking, doctrinaire republicans that have not even figured out we are in a Bush-induced (and free market induced and tax breaks for the rich-induced) economic freefall.
Only last summer, during the campaign, the idiot cynical was insisting the economy was sound – even though we were already in a recession (unbeknownst to the reality-challenged fool called cynical).
Didn’t Goldy also used to once be gainfully employed?
[Deleted — off topic, see HA Comment Policy]
I am guessing that Rossi is somewhat relieved that he didn’t win given the mess we’re in. Sure it is partly sour grape, but if he’d won there is no doubt that Dems would be heaping ALL blame on him for our ginormous state deficit. They are great at that kind of legerdemain, and the unwashed masses seem to eat it up.
As it is, Democrats cannot shift blame onto Republicans. The only moves left for them to try are distraction ploys, like the recently proposed porn tax, and the more recently proposed prostitution-free zones. That is all they’ve got. Yeah they can point a finger at Bush, but that one is getting staler by the day.
@2 Hey now, you’re full of shit. That was the most closely scrutinized election in Washington history, and Gregoire won under the watchful eyes of dozens of observers from both parties and hordes of national and local media.
@4 Better than Pope’s 0-for-16 (or whatever it is). Sorry, Richard. Maybe you’ll have a better chance after the newspapers aren’t around to bash you anymore.
@8 See #9.
@10 As per usual, Republicans got our country and state into a depression, and it will take Democrats (at both levels) to get us out. This has been going on since the 1870s, and we’re getting used to bailing you guys out after your unregulated-capitalism model suffers another of its recurring collapses.
woody @ 10
The entire world is facing a financial crisis. Do you understand that? The Democrats in our state government did not create our state’s current budget problem. Do you understand? We need adults to guide us through this crisis, adults who put the interests of the populace above partisan interests. Do you understand that? Do you understand that your political point of view is increasingly irrelevant, no matter how loud you shout?
@15 You’d just as well spend your time teaching a card trick to a dog.
proud leftist always brings lunacy to HA.
Yes, GWB held a gun to her head and told Queen Chrissy spend spend spend.
I love it that the lying cat-fucking, ass-eating, punk Dino Dumbass Rossi is relegated to complete fucking obscurity – where he belongs. He got his ass KICKED by CG as did most Publicans and last night’s talk by PRESIDENT OBAMA was great. It’s so nice that we now have a President who can actually speak using “big” words and not look and act stupid like that AWOL cunt GW Bush!
6:
I have a (somewhat) funny story that my daughter-in-law told me about Brock Huard. She went to PHS with him, and she told me about how her mom tried nudging her into dating Huard (because he was clearly going places, to which she told her mother that she wouldn’t have dated Brock if she was paid to because (in her exact words), “he’s an stuck-up prick!”
Although he didn’t accomplish dick after he left UW (but he did get an SB ring as a backup with the Patriots, IIRC), now he’s climbing the foodchain at ESPN as a color-commentator for college sports, so I have to ask: would he come home?
@4,
Yeah? Why, then, did it take two re-counts for Gregoire to win? Could it be that the goal was to get Gregoire to win regardless of what the actual votes totaled to?
The whole god damn thing looked corrupt as hell.
KCE:
“Hey, wait a minute, our girl didn’t get enough votes to beat Rossi!”
“Well, then, let’s re-count those suckers!”
“Still not enough?? – Count ’em again.”
“It’s OK now – we got enough to get our girl in.”
That election was rigged by the folks at King County Elections. Otherwise, there would have never been a re-count. I can’t believe you people can’t see that the whole thing was corrupt and evil as hell.
10 W
Yeah, after about thirty days everyone knows that there are no more lingering effects from eight years of policies.
Politically ignorant: Thanks so much for showing us what a foolish ignoramus you are.
If the election was rigged – then why did a republican lawsuit, in front of republican judge, in a republican county fail miserably and present NO credible evidence of fraud?
Why did a republican US attorney appointed by Bush find there was no evidence of fraud?
Can you back up your rantings with anything – or are you a typical partisan republican wingnut who has no facts but likes to shout out anything false that supports your “case”?
20 PI
Because state law mandates a recount if the outcome is within a defined margin of closeness, and state law FURTHER allows an additional recount to be paid for by the requesting candidate (but they have to pay only if they lose, I believe).
And contrary to your opinion, “the whole god damn thing” looked like it was carried out TO THE LETTER OF STATE LAW, which was further reinforced after the state GOP and Rossi spent $2 million arguing that is wasn’t in front of a Republican-appointed judge in Republican Chelan County…and lost. Not just lost:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06.....ernor.html
Funny how “NO EVIDENCE” is still evidence in conservative brains.
BTW, I Googled “decision 2004 judge Rossi Gregoire” and found the NYT piece in about two seconds. These guys are ignorant because they WANT to be.