Postman does the kind of hard-nosed reporting for which we’ve come to rely on the dailies, reprinting a letter from the Italian Club of Seattle, attacking the state Dems for posting an allegedly “racist” video.
Whether the State Democratic Party thought it clever to link Rossi to Italian-American criminals through the use of a popular mobster TV show is irrelevant; it is distasteful, and it is racist. Governor Gregoire, we believe we have your sympathy when we assert that using someone’s ethnic heritage as a negative should not be condoned in this campaign.
Huh. A few thoughts come to mind. First, not having cable, I had no idea that the soundtrack was the theme song to The Sopranos; I just thought it was a particularly catchy tune.
Second… oh, so now he’s Italian. Up until Republicans GOP Partiers started riling up anti-tribal sentiment with their manufactured controversy over the Spokane gaming compact, Rossi was traveling the state emphasizing his Tlingit heritage. How convenient.
And finally…
The letter, from club president Brian DiJulio, mentions that former Democratic Gov. Albert Rosellini is a member.
You mean the same Rossellini who is also a known “associate of the Colacurcios,” the local crime family who pleaded guilty in the Strippergate scandal, and who is now at the center of a five-year FBI investigation into organized crime and prostitution? Hey, way to disassociate Italian-Americans from that Mafia stereotype, Brian.
And you know, if Rossi is so offended by an alleged Sopranos reference, however tenuous, perhaps he should avoid referencing Tony Soprano by name when criticizing Gov. Gregoire’s tax policies:
[Rossi] criticized the state’s reliance on the gas tax and “sin” taxes from alcohol and cigarette sales.
“Sin taxes are so easy to raise,” he said. “But they are already so high they are one of the highest in the nation. If we raised them anymore, Tony Soprano would want to get some of that action.“
Oops.
DiJulio wants Gov. Gregoire to pull the video and fire state party chair Dwight Pelz… two things she has no authority to do. My suggestion is that if he really wants to get some of that action, he should have somebody put a horse’s head in the governor’s bed. I hear Frankie Sr. knows a guy….
What the F is wrong wi being Mafia? For that matter why only give the EYEtalinas credit for the mafia?
My grand uncle was a card-carrying soldier in the service of the mafia. He earned his creds protecting kosher meat but graduated to pimping, slavery and an occasional murder.
You don’t like the mafia? Damnitall I would take the black Chevey’s patrolling the North End of Boston over any dumbass irish guys in a blue and white!
Tony Soprano, bull … howsabout Dutch Shultz?
BTW … all you goyem out there, ya did notice that Abramoff was the central guy in the Repircan shit! Da dems got mixed up with the wrong mafiosi! Jack might still be alive if he had our protection. Guess why Bushoe won’t ever be indicted? When we protect a guy, we mean it!
Next time you Seattlites are upset about street crime here in Sweden, just think how cool it ould be to call the Mafia and ask my uncle Louie to fix it. He would tell you, “Done is done.”
Apples and oranges, Goldy.
The Dems put out an ethnic slur against Rossi. It implies that just because he is Italian, he is somehow mobbed-up.
Rossi’s comment, on the other hand, was a reference not to an Italian, but specifically to a pop culture criminal. Furthermore, Rossi’s comment didn’t call any person a criminal, but said that the aforementioned fictional criminal would want in on the deal.
Way to distract from the graft and corruption of Gregoire’s administration.
The KCRE would make any Mafioso proud.
Mark @2,
So when the Dems use the song “Woke Up This Morning” (which predates the Sopranos)… that’s an explicit ethnic slur, but when Rossi references Tony Soprano by name, that’s not Italian, but rather a reference to a pop culture criminal?
Come on Mark… you don’t really believe your own bullshit, do you?
In any case, Dini is a Tlingit! Last time I looke there were not any Tlinglits in Italia!
2: “Way to distract from the graft and corruption of Gregoire’s administration.”
Evidence, my friend, how about some evidence? What the hell happened to requiring that there be some basis for charges of the nature you make?
I think there must be something different between our brains. I know Chris Gregoire. She is a smart, honest, decent human being. She, like all of us, may have made mistakes in her life, but graft and corruption? Those sorts of charges require evidence, and you don’t have any. One thing I do know about Dino Rossi is that he is not a very intelligent human being. I will not, however, venture a guess as to his moral integrity. I do not slander people; that is the turf of Republicans.
Those sorts of charges require evidence, and you don’t have any
Glad you asked
She is a smart..
you mean how she lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit by not filing paperwork on time.
honest
You mean how she promised not to raise taxes in 2004 then proceeded in making some on the biggest tax increases in Washington state history
She, like all of us, may have made mistakes in her life,
Yeah, we all have. But most people who were involved in a racist institution in the past usually don’t run for public office. Of course that doesn’t stop dems, they are the only ones that elect racists to office.
Thanks for the question.
7 – more lies than one can shake a stick at but what else can one expect from a Republican cur?
Um…
I’d say that IT IS in bad taste to use the sound track from a TV show about organized crime in an ad about someone running for governor, unless the person has some connection to organized crime. Seeing that Rossi worked in the same office with a few folks that are now felons, you might be able to make that case. If you dug around in the BIAW ‘s dirt you, also, might be able to make that case against them. But, Gregoire’s folks aren’t trying to make either of those cases and they should quietly pull this add.
This is a sleaze thing, not an Italian thing. There’s no racism here.
9 Continued…
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being the most rich, powerful or influential lobbying group in Olympia and the ad doesn’t make the case that BIAW is in some way corrupt, but they sure as hell imply it by repeating those head lines and that “catchy little tune” they’re playing.
Sorry Goldy, but if you’re going to call someone a poultry fucker you better have pictures of him fucking a chicken. In Rossi and the BIAW’s case you wouldn’t have to dig real far to find dirt.
Please stop defending people that are lazy and do a half-ass job.
1 “You don’t like the mafia? Damnitall I would take the black Chevey’s patrolling the North End of Boston over any dumbass irish guys in a blue and white!”
Hmph. Gregoire’s maiden name was O’Grady.
Geez you guys…calm the fuck down!
The Dino-Sore is a…ahhhh….Grand Old Party Party-er….uhhhh…G.O.P.P.-er??????….uhhhhh…Re…publican?
OH, what the fuck…whatever he does, it’s still OK…’cause he’s one of …THEM…whatever/whoever THEY are.
Well Dino is a confirmed liar and the Mob is full of confirmed liars so using republican logic, it fits.
@13
He has a point there.
re 2: Mark the Welcher: Isn’t it racist to assume that only Italians can be organized criminals?
I’m offended! And I hope every Squarehead in Ballard feels the same way. Those English monks used to run cryin’ when they saw our longboats on the horizon.
DiJulio should just get a fucking grip.
@13 nailed it anyway.
@2: “It implies that just because he is Italian, he is somehow mobbed-up.”
Bullshit. The ad “implied” nothing. It merely stated Rossi is a lapdog of the BIAW.
Mob dramas are generally about people who get ahead by racketeering and exploiting the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of people. Yet once they’ve “made it” the mobsters crave respectability from the society at large.
Rossi was close for a very long time to a shady real estate operator who is now in jail.
Rossi owes his political career to BIAW another group of sleazy operators.
Rossi’s campaign is utterly sleazy. He’s greenwashing. He uses Rovian tactics. His roads plan is a total fantasy. He refuses to acknowledge Christine Gregoire is Governor. He’s a mean-spirited bastard. His campaign is one of the ugliest sales jobs I’ve ever seen.
I’m sorry, I think the Sopranos theme is not far off the mark at all.
Wow Goldy, that was really the most pathetic attempt at redirection I’ve ever seen.
The Democratic Party put out a clearly racist ad. And all you can do is try to evade that fact.
Pathetic.
I’m Italian and I don’t think this ad is racist in the least.
The sleaze implied by the theme matches the subject. The rhetoric and tactics employed by Rossi and his surrogates are the sleaziest I’ve seen in a Governor’s race in this State.
re 19: Are Italians a race? If so, what?
Well, this version is gone…
“OLYMPIA — The Washington state Democratic Party says it will change a video ad that pictures Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi accompanied by the theme song from “The Sopranos,” after a Seattle group said the ad was offensive to Italian-Americans…
…Gregoire’s campaign spokesman Aaron Toso noted that her office didn’t make or approve the video.
“We think the party has taken the appropriate action in changing the music for the video,” Toso wrote in an e-mail.”
As Roger says, quoted under fair use…
@ 19 – Hey Pudge, is it racism when only white people are involved?
Seriously, being Italian is like being German or French or English – it is an ethnicity, not a race.
The video could be ethnically insensitive, but not racist.
BTW, when did conservatives go so PC?
@23 ..
“racism” refers to the implication that an ethnicity is itself racial. There is nothing in genetics that makes dark skin “racial.” Modern gneticist prefer to use the ftual term “geographic origin.” And yes, there are geographic genetic differences between different parts of Europe too.
@ 24 You may be right (you seem to have a big brain) but I still didn’t think that the video I just watched was racist.
Also, having white guys like Luke Esser pull the race card is a bit odd, but maybe he has been historically suppressed…I dunno.
You fucking racist Democrat bastards. How dare you insult my people with this disgraceful ethnic slur!
Can anyone of you liberals please tell the ObamaMessiah to quit pissing off the Canadians? (Hope Change)
Here’s what Rick George, chief executive of Suncor Energy Inc., Canada’s largest single oil sands producer, said this week, reflecting rising frustration with the wave of American anti-oil sands policies:
“We are down to very limited amounts of spare capacity,” he said. “Mexico is in very steep decline. The North Sea is in decline. Venezuela is likely to slip from here. There are problems in Nigeria, Russia. The world will absorb this oil one way or the other. If the U. S. doesn’t take it, then we will develop other markets.”
Borrowing heavily from the rhetoric of the environmental movement, right down to using the pejorative “tar sands” to describe Canada’s reserves, mayors from the United States’ largest cities adopted a resolution at a meeting in Miami on Monday singling out Western Canada’s oil-sands sector as part of a crackdown on fuels that cause global warming.
Yesterday, Mr. Obama vowed to break America’s addiction to “dirty, dwindling and dangerously expensive” oil if elected U. S. president — and he said one of his first targets may well be imports from Canada’s oil sands. A senior advisor to Obama’s campaign said it’s an “open question” whether Alberta’s oil sands fit with Obama’s vision for shifting the U. S. dramatically away from carbon-intensive fuels.
Gallup National Poll
Obama 45%
McCain 45%
Waaa-ha-ha-haaaa-ha-ha-haaaaa!!!!
[Not that polls mean a damn thing at this point.]
27 – Tell him yourself Moron. How’s the home building bidness? Do people have to drive far from your products to work, shopping?
28:
From RCP:
Election 2008
Obama McCain Spread
RCP National Average
48.2 41.3 Obama +6.9
Favorable Ratings
+27.4 +18.2 Obama +9.2
Intrade Market Odds
63.9 32.0 –
Electoral College
Obama McCain Toss Ups
RCP Electoral Count
238 163 137
No Toss Up States
317 221 –
YLB @ 29
As I said in 28 — since you don’t read — Not that polls mean a damn thing at this point.
I can read RCP, too.
Just posted it since people like you and NAMBLA like posting irrelevant numbers and thinking they actually mean something.
@27 TWPO
Gosh .. are you typical??
I didn’t know white folks were s attached to species suicide.
@25 race?
So, I am Jew. The Nazis called us a race and killed us because we were what they called us. Same thing has happened to Gypsies, Indians, assorted types of Africans.
The perps in all these cases believed that their targets were somehow genetically related AND that this justified differential treatment,
So, ‘t seems to me that whenever one group or even on individual classifies another with the belief the classification is genetic, then we award the sobriquet .. “Racist.”
Of course, racism need not be negative. Cesar Chavez taught that the interbreeding of Spaniards with Indians had produced a new “el raza.” Folks were to take pride in their race.
Aamewya, I know my ancestry for five centuries or so and am proud of my lineage .. am I a racist for this?
Personally? I like the word “breed” better.
Call me a
poodledalmatian.Wasn’t it a fellow Italian, Lou Guzzo, that tried to make some connections linking Roselini to the mob in 1972 while he was in his second attempt at a 3rd term?
WA Dems have apologized and pulled the ad
Gregoire denies involvement.
400 Bad Request
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Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Yet another lame attempt by the lead Donkey @ HA to explain away obvious Democrat racism.
But, I see most of his marionettes seems to have no problem licking his fingers after he’s done feeding them his Bullshit.
Who was the idiot at the State party who put this together? Really stupid. The valid points about Rossi’s involvement with the BIAW wackjobs are totally undercut by this silly dustup that they could heve so easily avoided.
IMHO, it’s not “racist” but is discriminatory (and rude and juvenile) to trot out ethnic sterotypes and use them pejoratively.
Really, it makes me angry that the state Dem party has such idiots and lack of intelligent oversight. Pelz should fire not the fool who created the ad but the fool in a position of responsibility who greenlighted it after viewing. And if THAT was Pelz HE should resign.
34 TRM
Chris Gregoire is the head of state government. The state Democratic party is not an arm of state government, and as such, Chris Gregoire has no authority over them.
30 TRM
I like your style. Show up, crow about a poll that shows your guy in a less-bad position (still not ahead) than McCain’s double-digit trailing that is the current polling trend, and then you claim that you’re just making an ironic comment on the posts of others.
Lets you have your cake and eat it too. Of course your pose is total bullshit.
The racist KKK wing of the GOP is of course made up of people who have an IQ of 18 so it stands to reason they wouldn’t know the difference between race and ethnicity.
On another front – anyone notice how Monkeyface is going soft on the country that WANTS to kill us and COULD? N. Korea, unlike Iraq HAS WMD and can use them. Baby Bush the cowardly cunt is afraid of them. Like a bully, he picked on Iraq because he knew they couldn’t fight back. He’s afraid of N. Korea so today he started sucking their big dick.
27 twpr
Um, good idea. But even further, the US does not owe oil purchases to any country, and no oil producer is exactly going without customers these days. There’s exactly zero problem here.
Question: how is the term “tar sands” somehow pejorative? I think that word does not mean what you think it means.
NAMBLA @ 38
Gregoire is the highest-ranked state politician in the WA Democrat Party*. She knows what is going on and holds at least some sway over their actions.
* (Note that I didn’t say “employee” because that would mean that she’d have to actually answer to The People, her bosses, instead of only enriching her campaign donors.)
Barack Oabama’s lead is increasing over time in virtually all polls. But I’m only saying that in the most flippant sense. I mean, we all know it’s a fact that McCain is behind in the polls, it’s a fact that he’s a terrible candidate who is undisciplined, incoherent, ill-tempered and can’t read a teleprompter, and it’s a fact that they’re running a terrible campaign. It’s also a fact that in other meaningless polls the right track/wrong track ratio is at 14%/80%, unemployment is high, gas and oil prices continue to rise, housing prices continue to fall, fiancial institutions keep revealing ever more crushing liabilities, and the war in Iraq that McCain loves so much continues unabated with troop levels STILL not down to pre-
escalation“surge” levels.So we know that we can’t believe the polls, is all I’m saying. Even though every possible sign says that Barack Obama will win easily.
NAMBLA @ 39
You are an utter moron. I threw that poll up there simply to point out that they don’t mean a damn thing right now. In fact, for those that are slow on the uptake (like you), I even said the that at the bottom of the post.
By the way, the overall trend is NOT McCain trailing in double digits. RCP’s average is still around 6 points. Both the LAT/B and Newsweek polls also had questionable respondent profiles.
NAMBLA @ 43
I don’t have the link at hand, but there is also a poll that asks:
____ is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief.
Obama: 50%
McCain: 80%
As to your comments about McCain’s inability to read a TelePrompTer… Obama can’t speak without one. That is why Obama is afraid to face McCain in a town hall format.
re 32: It’s “la Raza”. I find it hard to believe you are a professor of anything.
Don’t get me started on racism, as I have had more than one Italian tell me, as I was growing up, that I had no right to call myself white because of the ‘one-drop’ rule.
Witless Welching Lucy @ 46
As usual, you totally mixed up conversations. The reference to “one drop” was that you were dropped on your head as a child — repeatedly.
This oil crisis is directly attributable to the head-bobbing nit-wit, Ronald Reagan.
re 47: Unless you are the Seattle Jew, I was not addressing you. Go back to # 32 and check who the author is.
It’s not you, Mark the Republickan Welcher.
I can read RCP, too
LOL. A touch defensive there Surreal.. Don’t worry, it’ll get way worse before it’s over.
Obama is afraid to face McCain in a town hall format.
Nope. Obama is smart. No free advertising to an election law breaking Republican candidate who is uncompetitive in fundraising.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/200902.php
In other news, Republicans are still telling tall tales about the commies stealing our oil.
http://tpmelectioncentral.talk.....tall_t.php
Just love these Republicans. They can’t help fear-mongering and making shit up.
YLB @ 50
Finally! Now I understand why you’ve got such a screwed up view of the world. You actually think that those links to a Lefty blog are “facts” and “news.”
51 – What about the content of those posts weren’t true Surreal Man? No need to answer that. I wouldn’t want to give you a headache with the cognitive dissonance.
It would be bad for your Republicanism.
YLB @ 52
Here’s something for you to ponder… At least I have the intellectual “balls” to check out links that you post, regardless of whether they’re videos or Left Wing, quasi-Socialist blather. I will not, however, go through and re-research articles written by partisans with an agenda. Nor would I expect you to.
You, on the other hand, not only won’t click on any link to an article (partisan or otherwise), but you won’t even click on a comedy piece that skewers BOTH Democrats and Republicans.
What are you afraid of? Are the alleged “facts” in your head so weak that they can’t handle you even reading something that would be contrary to your worldview? Are you acting on explicit instructions from the Dem “hive mind?” Are you Lefties like the aliens in Independence Day, where a single “virus” upload would disable you all??!!
53 – Re links from Republicans, been there, done that.
Maybe you checked out the post but you didn’t answer my question in 52. Instead you shot the messenger.
How Republican of you.
YLB @ 54
Like you would give a thoughtful reading to a Rush Limbaugh transcript?
Same type of crap, different sides of the aisle.
55 – Same. Hardly… Total lie. Why do you bash Rush? You practically have his Republican style down pat. You exhibit the same kind of mean-spiritedness every day here.
You still haven’t answered my question in 52 but that’s ok. I wouldn’t expect a Republican to acknowledge that McCain is scoffing at a law they despise (and McCain in part authored) or that Republicans deal in fear and untruth to advance their agenda.
YLB @ 56
Rush is an entertainer for those that go for that kind of entertainment. The same applies to partisan, hack, amen bloggers like Goldy and your TPM guy. Only difference is that Rush makes a ton of money spouting his crap and Goldy… well, we all know how Goldy’s radio career went. (I wonder if he sits at home nowadays, playing with a Mr. Microphone to hear his voice coming through the stereo.)
What mean-spiritedness??!!
I’m going to avoid your other point just like you avoided my points about Obama: If there was absolute clarity in the rules, we wouldn’t need FEC rulings. Once said ruling comes down on this issue, John McCain will be exonerated.
You just accused YLB of not being capable of giving a Rush Limbaugh screed a serious read, and not a few posts later you are saying that Rush is a mere entertainer.
That is YLB’s point — that you say whatever is expedient at any moment in time to advance your point — which always gets lost in your lies and counter-intuitive subterfuges.
Now you’ll probably insist that what you meanty to say was that Rush is a SERIOUS ENTERTAINER.
Witless, Brainless Lucy @ 58
I know that you, like Obama, have a tough time when you don’t have a script, so I’ll try to type reeeeaaallly slowly so that you understand.
I NEVER said that YLB should give Rush a serious read. YLB said I should give some partisan, amen-blogging hack’s article a serious read and I said that I would no more do that than (s)he would take a Rush commentary seriously. I was COMPARING the hack TPM blog to a Rush show. I was bashing BOTH for merely providing red meat for their closed audiences.
So, go back to the kiddie table and don’t come back until your reading comprehension improves.
I’m not sure who is more of an idiot — you, steven or
DaddyLoveNAMBLA.