She may have figured out its going to be harder to get national press on this than she thought, and absent a debate, which isn't likely to happen, she'll have to start dreaming up stunts. Set up a squatter's camp in the Panhandle. Alamo Square, maybe, it has a better backdrop with those four Victorians. Swim from Alcatraz. Occupy Alcatraz. It worked for those Indians. Use a laser to flash "Pelosi Lied" messages and anti-war heiroglyphs on the side of the TransAmerica Pyramid. Skateboard down Lombard Street. Chain herself to the cable car tracks. Liberate the bison in Golden Gate Park and herd them down Market Street. Bungee jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Heck, maybe a mass jump for peace off the Golden Gate Bridge. People do that and live, you know. Sometimes. Gotta have faith. Anyway, that would get some press. Just trying to be helpful. She's going to need to court the city's important gay vote. Howzabout, run out in the middle of Castro Street and holler, "Pelosi-loving GLBT are warmongering scum" That would get press, too.
Meanwhile, the announcements will have to do:
Citing her son as inspiration, a tearful Cindy Sheehan announced her candidacy Thursday for the U.S. House of Representatives . . .
"The country is ripe for a change," said Sheehan, who spoke at a podium with her son's photograph attached to it. "It's going to start right here and right now."
Opposition strategy noted. They'll pretend like she doesn't exist:
Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi, said the speaker has always opposed the war in Iraq and has focused on bringing troops home "safely and soon."
He would not comment on Sheehan's candidacy.
There are a couple of problems. Several million, actually.
Sheehan admitted she has no funds for a campaign, but planned to immediately get started raising money. Without giving further specifics, Sheehan said she wouldn't accept money from corporations and would run on a platform of universal health care. Sheehan said she also wants to make college affordable and improve ethics in the legislative and executive branches . . .
Daniel Ellsberg, the former high-level Pentagon analyst who in 1969 leaked the Pentagon Papers to Congress and the media, showed his support for Sheehan. Ellsberg was arrested twice with other protesters outside Bush's Texas ranch.
"At the moment, facing a well-funded, powerful incumbent without party support, the odds against Cindy appear insuperable," Ellsberg said. "But we plan to change that."
It's the San Francisco treat! I strongly endorse this race. I could actually break my cardinal rule and give money to a pol for this one, just to keep it going. Don't particularly care who’s left standing in the end, it's all about the spectacle. As a professional tabloid journalist, of course, I'm obliged to hold out for a Sheehan win, that being the one that would sell more newspapers. A Pelosi battered and reeling from 17 months in the ring with an unhinged but quite determined ditch-dweller would be an acceptable second. Have to say, though, while Sheehan has picked a race in a district where she could conceivably pull it off, I'm disappointed she didn't go where she could do the most damage, I mean bring the most attention to her cause . . . plenty of do-nothing hypocrites in the Democratic 2008 field, too, Cindy!
Posted by: Mike ||
08/11/2007 09:26 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
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#1
The domestic equivalent of the Iran-Iraq War...
#4
Citing her son as inspiration, a tearful Cindy Sheehan continues to violate the prinicples her son fought and died for announced her candidacy Thursday for the U.S. House of Representatives . . .
Mark Steyn reads Rantburg. Has to.... his last line of this commentary from The Corner.....Lightning won't strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to. Straight from Rantburg, I tell you!
Stu Bykofsky filed a column this week headlined "To Save America, We Need Another 9/11":
What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?
A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically... America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.
What would sew us back together?
Another 9/11 attack...
Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?
If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail...
Our pal Michelle Malkin responded:
He wants more Americans murdered on American soil to sew us back together?
We dont need healing. We need the half of the country that doesnt believe we are under threat from global jihad to wake up and smell the suicide bomb smoke.
And that's right. But there's another point to be made.
I get a ton of mail every week along Bykofsky lines: "Oh, this country won't get serious until there's another attack." Sorry, but don't look to a big smoking crater in Buffalo to save us.
For a start, the author overstates the immediate unity post-9/11. Even then, there was a big difference between the "righteous rage" crowd and those who wanted to wallow in bathetic weepy let's-hold-hands-and-drone-"Imagine" candlelight vigils and retreat into antiquated tropes about "root causes" like global poverty (notwithstanding the middle-class backgrounds of Mohammed Atta and co). The second time round, there won't even be a momentary veneer of unity. The angry left will be demanding by lunchtime "What did Bush know and when did he know it?" and citing eminent scientists such as Professor Rosie O'Donnell to demonstrate that it couldn't possibly have been anything but an inside job. The less angry left will demand not a punitive military response but a 12-month blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by Lee Hamilton to call witnesses and investigate where the Administration went wrong. Less motivated types will be convinced - like British public opinion after the Glasgow attack and the sailor kidnappings - that it's blowback for Iraq. And a big chunk of the rest may even plump for the Spanish option post-Madrid: Oh, dear, we seem to have caught your eye. What would it take for that not to happen again?
The split in this country is real. The so-called "singular purpose" of Fall 2001 was mostly illusory. Lightning won't strike twice, even if the Halliburton Tsunami-Hurricane Machine wants it to.
#2
"For a start, the author overstates the immediate unity post-9/11. The so-called "singular purpose" of Fall 2001 was mostly illusory."
I posted to this effect yesterday. Within a day of 9/11, a now ex-friend e-mailed me saying his biggest concern was backlash against Muslims living in the U.S.
Huh?
What happened after 9/11 was that a) most of Europe celebrated or thought to themselves that we brought it on ourselves somehow, and that b) about 40% of Americans agreed. The rest of us who weren't already awake, got woken up.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
08/11/2007 7:09 Comments ||
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#3
Within hours of the massacre I heard an hallucinatory range of evil nonsense. Even of those who were horrified there was not one who I could convince the attacks were by al Qaeda and not "the Palestinians", the latter reacting due to poverty, etc.
#4
The advantage of Rantburg is that I never throw anything (but spam and trolls) away. Along the top of the main page there are links for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years ago. A month from now I'll add the link for 6 years ago from the current date. Or you can click on the Archives link to see what was going on for any given day.
We have our cliches on Rantburg, our running jokes, occasional flamewars, and what have you. We don't have any myths. You can always look it up, and I don't mean in the Koran someplace.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2007 9:03 Comments ||
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#5
I don't know what we did to deserve you, Fred (probably nothing at all) - but I'm SO grateful for you and Rantburg.
Notwithstanding trolls and flamewars, Rantburg is an island of sanity in the slough of despond we call the Left™ and the Rest of the World™ (with some notable exceptions*).
*Australia comes immediately to mind.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/11/2007 9:32 Comments ||
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#6
What happened after 9/11 was that a) most of Europe celebrated or thought to themselves that we brought it on ourselves somehow
That, and the expectation that a humbled US would come on bended knee and offer apologies, then its assets and unbridled cooperation to that grand organisation at Turtle Bay. When that didn't happen ("thanks for your expression of concern, Francois. But we have work to do")we ended up with the vituperation and 'lack of cooperation' from France and the rest of the Euro ilk.
#7
Muslims are planning on nuking us. They were in Minnesota inspecting our Three Mile Island nuke plant just days after 9-11. It is coming. So why are Americans so complacent about Islam?
It is going take another huge attack before we deal with Islam like we did the Nazis and Japanese during WWII. Sad but true.
#1
Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge amounts of money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified as an insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they wont do anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them stop.
Problem is, that kind of collective punishment has other forms which should not be encouraged in the general region-think of the judgments in Pakistan where one person in the family commits a crime, and then a child from that family is given as a bride or concubine to the victims family to abuse as they wish. I agree that the families of insurgents are key to change, but we need to be a bit careful about holding one man responsible for the crimes of another man.
They raped her, all 60 guys. Then they cut her to pieces and threw her in the river. They left the six month baby boy to sleep in her blood. We found him on a big farm south of Baghdad. All that was left was his legs and his shoes. The dogs ate him. I dont want this for my family. These people are like animals who came from another planet.
Yes, they are. They see flesh as a commodity to be used or disposed of as they please.
#2
If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.
..
Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you dont believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?
Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.
TV is the most interesting thing to Iraqis. They learn everything from the TV. Right now they only have one hour of electricity every day.
Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here it is as text. Here is what matters most:
[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.
That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
