Althouse: "We wanted the Democrats to know they're back in power because of the grass roots."

January 3, 2007

"We wanted the Democrats to know they're back in power because of the grass roots."

Aaagghh! Now, everyone's sick of Cindy Sheehan.

40 comments:

amba said...: John Conyers hugging her? My heart sank.; 1/3/07, 6:24 PM
Bissage said...: "Now, everyone's sick of Cindy Sheehan."

What took them so long? Perhaps they should upgrade to a higher quality crystal ball.; 1/3/07, 6:33 PM
AmPowerBlog said...: Well, it doesn't take much to be sick of Sheehan -- she's the ultimate sickmeister of the antiwar left. It's amazing how she's profiting -- fifteen minutes of fame style -- off the death of her son, Casey, who served his country with 100 percent support of the nation's foreign policy goals, even reenlisting in the army knowing he'd be sent to Iraq.

Burkean Reflections; 1/3/07, 6:39 PM
hdhouse said...: so incidentally, ms. sheehan v. mr. bush on getting it right regarding Iraq.

we can safely say that ms. sheehan is partly right and that is a country mile ahead of mr. bush who can't get his head out of his ass long enough to get into positive numbers.

ms. sheehan is more a bush creation than one of her own. if he would have taken 10 minutes to meet her when she camped in texas then it would have been done and over but no..george doesn't like that kinda confrontation so sheehan lingers and she is just a constant thumb in the eye of mr. bush and his ilk.

she is right to prode congress and get in their face to do something about the evil that mr. bush has unleashed. i say keep it up...until there is sufficient drumbeat to send this rascal back to texas a year or so early.; 1/3/07, 7:43 PM
hdhouse said...: and donald douglas "profiting off her son's death"...

that is a sick comment. you should be ashamed. the only profiteering here is on the bloody hands of bush and his war croonies. place blame where it belongs please.; 1/3/07, 7:44 PM
Simon said...: hdhouse said...
"and donald douglas 'profiting off her son's death'... that is a sick comment. you should be ashamed."

He should perhaps regret an inartful choice of words that gave you an opening. I don't think that Sheehan is guilty of avarice, but certainly of opportunism: she has seized and exploited her son's memory to advance her cause, a cause that she was already active in before her son's death. She has attempted to leverage public sympathy for her bereavement into some kind of battering ram, as if that gave her what Maureen Dowd called "absolute moral authority." It is utterly cynical, on her part, and worse yet, disingenuous: she has essentially conscripted her unwilling son into the service of a cause he so clearly did not support.; 1/3/07, 8:08 PM
Anonymous said...: Ms. Sheehan is not finished dancing upon her son's grave, I see. How sad. Best to look the other way.; 1/3/07, 8:52 PM
hdhouse said...: well simon

to a partial extent i agree with you but "conscripting her son..yada yada"

well, why don't we ask him. oh that's right. we can't ask him. he is dead. and to that particular point i agree with ms. sheehan. for what purpose is the sheehan son dead? for what gain? at what cost?; 1/3/07, 8:54 PM
Anonymous said...: Ms. Sheehan is a dim bulb who has been used--now willingly used. Her 15 minutes are long gone. She must need the dough.

John Conyers is sharp, and one of the willing Sheehan users--an awful thing to be.

The Democrats have a nasty task ahead. They need to divorce the goofy moonbat left that they slept with pre elections 2004, 06. Picture Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore at the 2004 Convention.

I truly wish them luck. There's a whiff of seriousness and adult sensibility on the Democrat side of the aisle, a refreshing change.

Pelosi, Reid, et al; it's time to govern. Get busy.; 1/3/07, 9:30 PM
Hey said...: Sheehan and hdhouse are aiding and abetting a conspiracy to committ crimes against humanity (Salafism is such a conspiracy, as is Communism). They both deserve nothing but one last dance with the Spandau ballet.; 1/3/07, 10:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Especially since Bush -did- meet with Sheehan, some time before her ranch sit-in, and she had nothing but nice things to say about him then. But apparently, Bush has to meet with every leftist creation every time they want an audience.; 1/3/07, 10:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Especially since Bush DID meet with Sheehan, some time before she was radicalized, and she had only nice things to say about him back then. And yes, that was after her son died. Apparently, Bush must repeatedly meet with her every time she wishes, and do whatever she says. Must be so nice for the Left to inhabit a world where they don't have to win elections, they just have to find someone with their imprint of "moral authority".; 1/3/07, 10:22 PM
Simon said...: hdhouse said...
"well simon[,] to a partial extent i agree with you but 'conscripting her son..yada yada' well, why don't we ask him. oh that's right. we can't ask him. he is dead."

True, we can't ask him. But it seems to me that we can take the facts that he volunteered to join the military, volunteered to re-enlist and go back to Iraq, volunteered for the mission on which he was killed, and what's more, did all this knowing his mom's opinion on the war as fairly clear indicia of his views on the rightness of what we were doing in Iraq, n'est-çe pas?; 1/3/07, 10:41 PM
Anonymous said...: Yo, Old Dad!

You are more than slightly mistaken when you call John Conyers "sharp." If he's very, very, VERY lucky, he has 15 brain cells that still work.

Without the protection of the safest of all House seats, Conyers is dead in the water. He couldn't win an election as dog catcher in Detroit, but he keeps coming back to Washington like the Energizer Bummy because he keeps voting and voting and voting the proper way for the powers that be in Detroit.

If my butter knife were as sharp as Conyers, I'd have been eating dry toast for at least 25 years by now.; 1/3/07, 11:22 PM
Anonymous said...: Yo, Old Dad!

You are more than slightly mistaken when you call John Conyers "sharp." If he's very, very, VERY lucky, he has 15 brain cells that still work.

Without the protection of the safest of all House seats, Conyers is dead in the water. He couldn't win an election as dog catcher in Detroit, but he keeps coming back to Washington like the Energizer Bummy because he keeps voting and voting and voting the proper way for the powers that be in Detroit.

If my butter knife were as sharp as Conyers, I'd have been eating dry toast for at least 25 years by now.; 1/3/07, 11:22 PM
M. Simon said...: The Dems got in by electing a bunch of "Blue Dog Democrats" in other words DINOs.

Not anti-war types at all.

If the nutroots pursue this and get any traction at all they will split the Democrat Party.

All that changed in the '06 election was the leadership. The major policies will remain unchanged.; 1/3/07, 11:59 PM
hdhouse said...: do you REALLY think that ms. sheehan's son gave his life..volunteered to give his life...because of his overriding belief in the rightness of the war?

did he know bush lied? did he know the entire episode was a strawdog? does he believe rush limbaugh on armed forces radio?

i point to the recent GI polls of service personnel now serving in Iraq, their confidence or lack thereof in bush, they overriding belief that we should get out.

let's take a poll of the 3000 dead and the 20,000+ wounded and see how hopped up they are now on this conflict.

are we doing some good there...well some but half a trillion dollars later i would expect the lights to be on for more than 4 hours a day every other day. wouldn't you?; 1/4/07, 12:52 AM
AST said...: The Democrats rode this jackass into town, taking money from the MoveOn crowd, Barbra and Mr. Soros. Now they'll just have to listen to it bray. Meanwhile, will all those who wanted to teach Republicans a lesson, learn one themselves? And what of the Blue Dogs that Mr. Emmanuel recruited to run in conservative districts? How many of them will be content to listen to Cindy, et al.?

As for "for what purpose is the sheehan son dead? for what gain? at what cost?" For the purpose of ridding Iraq and world of a heinous dictator and warmonger and to give its people hope for a future. They are engaged in working out whether they can keep it.

At what cost? Who are you to question the value of his sacrifice or his devotion to our cause? And certainly who are we to throw it aside because his mother has gone mad with grief or vanity? The 3000+ and those who were murdered on 9/11 should not have died in vain. It is those who shun the fight and pretend that there is no threat who dishonor them.; 1/4/07, 3:25 AM
KCFleming said...: As soon as I see an article mentioning Sheehan, I know it's safe to skip entirely, as it will be entirely devoid of serious content.

The Democrats were attempting to attend to one of their claims to office, ethics. But Cindy, ever the petulant toddler, insists that Congress instead address her issue, and right damn now, or she'll yell and stomp her feet.

hdhouse, as usual, misses the larger point. Sheehan is an immature idealist, ignorant of the ways of the world. She wants to force her issue to be the only one discussed, yet ignores the fact that ending the war is more difficult than she allows. More to the point, she is impolitic by refusing to see that this was not the time or place for her showboating.

She risks losing the support of people who actually agree with her. What a maroon, forever the turd in a punchbowl.; 1/4/07, 6:43 AM
Anonymous said...: AST is correct. The Dems were perfectly happy to ride the tiger, and now they will have to live with the consequences of the tiger biting back.

They really should have been more careful about what they wished for...

Ok, I'm out of cliches.; 1/4/07, 7:14 AM
tjl said...: Rahm Emanuel, as he retreated to a caucus room to escape Sheehan, must have had a lot to think about. It was Emanuel, after all, who recruited the new Blue Dog candidates and helped shape their centrist message. But Emanuel couldn't savor the victory, thanks to Sheehan's childish antics.

Emanuel may have been wondering if the the new Democratic Congress might turn out like the Democratic convention of 1968, trying to do its business while dodging the brickbats of the radical antiwar left.; 1/4/07, 7:19 AM
AmPowerBlog said...: hdhouse: Worked like a charm! Just like any good antiwar Myrmidon, the simple utterance of the word "profit" had you salivating with glee. Pavlov would be proud!

Burkean Reflections; 1/4/07, 7:37 AM
Anonymous said...: In fact, in spite of the tragic absence of a shift key, hdhouse has done a service by asking the right questions.

For what gain? The end of dictatorships that took millions of lives. The violent death rate in Iraq today is a small fraction of what it was under the regime, possibly as little as one-tenth. And the lights are on a whole lot more than 4 hours a day; even Newsweek admits that the Iraqi economy is booming. Of course, hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan were saved almost immediately due to resumption of food aid and immunization programs.

At what cost? KIA, about one-twentieth of a Vietnam. Dollars, less than half of a defense budget which is itself less than half the share of GDP it was 20 years ago. Deployment size, one-quarter of a Vietnam. Overall size of military relative to American population, one-fifth what it was during Vietnam. This is all part of a well-documented 50-year trend toward less conflict and fewer casualties per conflict -- fewer by orders of magnitude.

If anyone had predicted these numbers for a war in the '60s, they'd have been called delusional. We've achieved them. With an all-volunteer force. 1968 it ain't.; 1/4/07, 7:39 AM
Simon said...: hdhouse said...
"did he know bush lied?"

Who cares? What difference would it make? The cause is either just or it isn't. I'm not trying to minimize the importance of the questions about why we went, but really, they're a separate issue. Even assuming that "Bush lied," dubitante, that wasn't the worst mistake the administration made during this conflict, and it isn't relevant to the rightness of the mission. It's useful propaganda for the Democrats, and historians are going to make fortunes writing about it, but it has no ongoing practical relevance to the conduct of the war.; 1/4/07, 7:44 AM
hdhouse said...: well someone obviously left the neo-con kennel gate open...

let's start with simon - poor simple simon.

"son or daughter...i want you to swim across that stretch of ocean with this package of blood over to the man in destress on the other side. off s/he trots. Unfortunately the swimmer was eaten by sharks half way across. The mother came to complain to which the order giver said - i didn't know about the sharks. the mother said "its an ocean stupid - it has sharks. Not only have I lost a son but that man who needs blood on the other side still needs blood". to which the man replied - "oh, no he doesn't. i just made that up. he's fine. i just wanted to get a volunteer in the water to see if there were sharks present". The woman shrieked "you caused my son's death for nothing"...to which Simon the onlooker said: "so what".; 1/4/07, 8:30 AM
hdhouse said...: and again Simon - "no practical relevance"...hmmmmmm please think about that instead of ready-fire-aim for a change.

if our goal was WMDs that would constitute formation of an invasion/occupation plan with that as a priority.

if our goal was regime change then that would probably be the same invasion plan but a far different occupation plan.

if our goal was nation building, ditto the above.

if our goal was demoncratization, ditto the twice above.

if we had no real long term goals, clearly formulated and expressed for what to do after the sure-fire military victory or, and this is true in this particular case, we have a president and staff who lied about their intentions and goals simply to foster support - and 4 years later we find there was no plan to carry out any of the half dozen or so "goals" ennuciated by the idiot in chief, then i think it is highly important that the issue of lying be examined.

don't you ever wonder why the greatest and most resourceful nation on earth is having the trouble it is having in iraq? doesn't that raise on level on your "i wonder" meter?

just curious because obviously you aren't. when you shrug off with a "what difference does it make", 3000 lives and 20000+ wounded and half a trillion dollars down the tubes i just wonder where your head is or, more important, where it has been.; 1/4/07, 8:38 AM
MadisonMan said...: At what cost? KIA, about one-twentieth of a Vietnam.

Just a note about something I heard (read?) recently. Medical advances in battlefield treatment mean that comparing kill rates in Iraq to those in earlier wars is very imprecise. Many of the casualties that survive today would have died in Vietnam. An equivalent death rate for Iraq compared to Vietnam required multiplying the actual deaths in Iraq by some factor -- 2? 6? (I don't recall the exact number)

It was a very interesting story on the huge advancements in medical treatment protocol on the battlefield. The downside is that there are many more severely wounded returning from Iraq who in earlier wars would have died, and the facilities for caring for them aren't adequate.; 1/4/07, 9:32 AM
KCFleming said...: hdhouse, intent on having the same argument every day, can't seem to grasp the salient point here: Sheehan makes her case far less attractive by embarrassing the very people who might agree with her, the folks now able to make things happen, precisely by demanding they address her itinerary immediately.

She comes off as a naive boor, a counterproductive attention-seeker, and perhaps even personality-disordered. The Iraq war was not the issue being addressed and there was no need to make it so at that very moment.

It's not about the Iraq war 24/7, nor is it about Sheehan. That's what hdhouse cannot seem to understand. More's the pity.; 1/4/07, 9:38 AM
Simon said...: HDhouse,
Let me reply to your 8:38 AM comment this way: the criticisms that you advance (which I take to be that the lack of a cohesive plan for post-war occupation) are legitimate criticisms. But what they are not is related to the "Bush lied" meme, which -- I had thought -- relates to what Bush told the American people, not his "real" reasons (I stress reasons, plural) for going to war, and it is the latter, not the former, on which your criticism rests. Even if the administration had privately had an absolutely clear goal and a concrete post-liberation plan, and everything had gone swimmingly for the last few days, that would not obviate the criticism that Bush lied to get us into war, and the door swings both ways. You're conflating two distinct issues.; 1/4/07, 9:40 AM
Simon said...: I'm sorry, a snafu in my previous comment: I meant to say something to the effect of "which I take to be that the lack of a cohesive plan for post-war occupation severely damaged our ability to stabalize Iraq and defeat the insurgency."; 1/4/07, 10:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Aaagghh! Now, everyone's sick of Cindy Sheehan.

I'm not.

She's an abandoned bride. The Democratic Party was just enough of a cad to use her, but it's not going through with the wedding. She has every right to call attention to her plight and hound Democrats until she gets proper satisfaction.

You go girl!; 1/4/07, 11:57 AM
TribalArtery said...: hd betrays the prism through which the far left views every event. First and foremost, hate Bush.

Furthermore, hdhouse overlooks the probability that Cindy's actions are directed more at raising her flag of notoriety than having substantive results. If results were her goal, a little sensible thought would have led her to a more measured approach to the new, Democrat house. (Ooops, how could one include "sensible" and "Cindy" in the same paragraph?)

Finally, I am drawn to a metaphor that justifies withdrawing firefighters from a wild fire because the fire never should have set in the first place. Think of the lives and money we could save by just letting the fires burn out. A few cindered homes de damned.; 1/4/07, 12:41 PM
SGT Ted said...: hdhouse ( 12:52 AM, January 04, 2007) said...
i point to the recent GI polls of service personnel now serving in Iraq..."

*tweeeet* *throws flag*

I call BS on this.

Citing non-existent polls in order to advance the arguement. 15 yard penalty, loss of the down.; 1/4/07, 1:04 PM
Snowed In said...: She lost all solicitude she was due with 3 years of publicity stunts

It's actually only been 1½ years...it just feels like three.; 1/4/07, 2:15 PM
hdhouse said...: geeze...can't you guys do your own work?

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34538&archive=true; 1/4/07, 4:20 PM
KCFleming said...: Re: "John Zogby, CEO of the polling company, said the poll was funded through Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, which received money for the project from an anonymous, anti-war activist, but neither the activist nor the school had input on the content of the poll."

Translation: The poll is worthless.; 1/4/07, 5:24 PM
Simon said...: Gerry,
My math's pretty awful at the best of times, but if those numbers are right, surely, according to Zogby, if over 50% of the troops surveyed consider over people advocating early departure unpatriotic or uninformed, and 70% of the troops surveyed want an early withdrawal, then at least 20% of the troops surveyed must consider themselves to be unpatriotic and uninformed. something ain't adding up here.; 1/4/07, 6:43 PM
Anonymous said...: I can't help hdhouse get a shift key (or a real name, unless those are initials), but I can help with some other things, like reiterating and reinforcing what I pointed out above.

Dictatorships that took millions of lives: start with Grim Vindication and follow the links; see also Risk Management, Terrorism, and Pollution; "nearly 200,000 per year." This does not include the death toll from misrule in Afghanistan.

Violent death rate in Iraq during 2006: 24,000, according to Iraq Body Count.

Iraqi economy booming: Blood and Money (Newsweek)

Afghanistan: "hundreds of thousands" of lives saved was a wild underestimate on my part; in the latest campaign alone "more than 4 million children under five will be vaccinated against measles and an estimated 4.2 million women of child bearing age are to receive tetanus vaccine."

KIA: too well-known to bother rubbing in, but I'll point out that the marginal death toll in the American military from 2001-2005 was only about 1,000 (that is, over the number that would have died during ordinary garrison duty).

Dollars: suppose it's been half a trillion in the past five years for Afghanistan and Iraq. That's 1% of US GDP. The defense budget 20 years ago was 6% of GDP (source) -- in peacetime.

Deployment size: also too well-known to bother rubbing in.

Size of military: half what it was fifteen years ago (source); my assertion that it's 1/5 its size during Vietnam (again relative to the US population) applies only to the Army.

Trend toward less conflict and fewer casualties per conflict: See Systemic Flaws In the Reported World View and A World in Crisis: Conflict Prevention and the International Crisis Group, which says "[i]n the case of serious conflicts (defined as those with 1000 or more battle deaths in a year) and mass killings there has been an 80 per cent decline since the early '90s, and an even more striking decrease in the number of battle deaths."

There are huge problems in both Afghanistan and Iraq -- defunded reconstruction, foolish pursuit of narcotics Prohibition, an astonishing absence of serious memetic-engineering efforts -- but that doesn't mean it's 1968. This decade has its own issues. We need to address them, not the problems of two generations ago.; 1/4/07, 7:42 PM
hdhouse said...: whew..thanks for that bit of information.

i guess things are going swimmingly in Iraq after all.

No cause for concern whatsoever.

Sounds like things are A Ok as they say.

Such a relief.

Frankly I think we could use a little of that Iraq prosperity and growth right here in the old USA don't cha think?

You know...I was afraid I was going to go to bed tonight all worried about Iraq and now that I read your post, why, by gollygosh I just feel eversomuch better.; 1/4/07, 11:51 PM
hdhouse said...: ahhhh Gerry...

on the oft chance that Zogby got it right...which he often does...frankly which he does repeatedly...

what is your explanation or rationalization or spin on that piece of shit?

perhaps you like the FAUX news polls better....77% of faux news viewers think that Iraq will be a destination tourism mecca(did i say that??) in two years....wadda you think...fair and balanced. lol

you twits; 1/5/07, 11:14 AM