10 Comments

1. Donnah  •  Nov 9, 2006 @5:10 pm
   

   I’m not in that harpy Jean Schmidt’s district, but I would almost register there just to vote against her. How she maintained a lead is beyond my comprehension.

   If the rest of the election hadn’t gone so well, I really would have been extra depressed about Mean Jean. The major Dem wins have softened the blow, however. The citizens of District 2 who voted against her have my utmost sympathy.

2. Lynne  •  Nov 9, 2006 @6:21 pm
   

   Well, naturally it had to be Georgia!

   Lynne from Georgia

3. Swami  •  Nov 9, 2006 @8:36 pm
   

   If Mean Jean wins she’ll be a fish out of water because she can only thrive in a highly toxic political environment. My perception of her is that she is a jock strap wearing bitch who is eager to toss away the lives of America’s young men and women so she can sink her claws into her own ambitions for power. She’s the grim reaper!

4. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hoehenheim den Sidste  •  Nov 9, 2006 @9:07 pm
   

   “Harpy” is exactly the word for Mean Jean.

   My money went into the Wulsin campaign from the very beginning and I have a hand-written note from Vic to prove it. She has quite the sense of humor, I must say.

   I pray that the mills of God will grind slowly yet exceedingly fine, deciding in the end that Representative Wulsin is the Choice of the People.

5. erinyes  •  Nov 9, 2006 @9:19 pm
   

   My advice to the Democrats is to keep kicking the beast until it falls, kill it, then drive a stake through it’s heart.The Neocon movement is far too dangerous and cannot be allowed to survive. By this I mean serious hearings followed by serious consequences.
   Big jail terms, extreme financial penalties.Never again should this be allowed to happen.Bush has just over 60 days with this band of killer clowns, sixty days is a long time in which to cover trails and creat mayhem.

6. Donna  •  Nov 9, 2006 @10:24 pm
   

   I still remember her run against Paul Hackett and the nail-biter results [he was ahead] when her big ‘pocket precinct’ locked themselves up for hours after all the other precincts had done their tallies…. ahem….. ’twas said the counting delay was because the ballots were affected by humidity [curious that this wasn't a problem in neighboring areas]…..and then, hmmm, the story goes, she squeaked ahead.
   Sure would be good poetic justice if she’d lose to Wulsin.

7. lafrance  •  Nov 9, 2006 @11:55 pm
   

   I’d kinda like to see how Mean Jean deals with all those democrats around her and her patriotic hair bows.
   I really would like to see Wusin win but, it still would be fun to see Mean Jean deal with democrats.

8. xpara  •  Nov 10, 2006 @12:22 pm
   

   Hallelujah!

   Will Nancy Pelosi have the culliones to bust some Republican chops long in need of busting? She’s publicly ruled out anything more useful than investigating the corrupt and cowardly “war president” and his toadies, but she is Italian, through and through, so if there is a chance to plant an impeachment dagger where it will do the world some good, look out.

   A fun thought about her good political genes: Nancy Pelosi is the daughter of old Tommy D’Alesandro, a long-time Baltimore mayor and Little Italy machine pol whom I had the pleasure of covering off and on when he was in retirement. He was called “old” Tommy to distinguish him from his oldest son (one of Nancy’s five brothers), an up-and-coming Kennedy-style politician who won the mayoralty and was prepping for governor when he had the decency to lose his taste for politics after the city erupted in a bitter race riot following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

   Young Tommy, Nancy’s older brother, was a bit of an intellectual and leaned towards classic urban liberalism, such as it was, in the late 1960s. His father, Old Tommy, despites his years in various political offices including Congress before becoming mayor, could struggle with the English language (he was said to have been quite eloquent in various Sicilian dialects), and could never have succeeded in this day of blow-dried politics. He would have fled the TV studio, if you could have ever gotten him into one in the first place, when they tried to put makeup on his whisker-blued chin. But he knew his roots in St. Leo’s Parish, and he knew his people, and, needless to say, was still a fierce New Dealer when others were compromising with those “decent” Eisenhower Republicans, long before Nixon, ever mindful of electoral advantage, copped to the Southern Strategy, giving the segs a new lease on political life as long as they kept their hoods in the closet. The only Republicans he deigned to recognize were the men from his machine whom he had ordered to change their registration from Democratic so they could legally be appointed as the minority member of such bastions of patronage as the Liquor Board.

   One of his finest moments, as newspaper lore from the Baltimore Sun has it, was when a female City Hall reporter seeking his views on one minor scandal or another, and being sent away twice with nothing, came back for the third time after being bucked up by her editor, and in desperation blurted, “Mr. Mayor, my desk demands that you comment.” The story goes that Tommy leaned back in his swivel chair, then forward to cock an ear at the desk top. He appeared to listen for a moment, nodded, sat back up and announced: “Tell your desk that my desk tells it to go fuck itself.”

   All in the way of saying I am delighted that the reality based party can now start chipping away at the malignant morons of the party of Greed, Oil, and Putrid Politics and maybe find enough impeachable offenses that even the new minority will have to allow are real. And let us pray that daughter Nancy inherited her old man’s brass along with his concern for the little guy. I’m betting she did.

   So let us toast a famous victory by dipping into another newspaper’s archives for Finley Peter Dunne’s famous exhortation:
   “Here’s to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable!” Would that there were enough ink-stained wretches with $2 haircuts and threadbare suits left that still believe in it. And here’s to term limits for pundits and political reporters.

9. erinyes  •  Nov 10, 2006 @6:03 pm
   

   Very interesting, xpara! ‘Sounds like you’ve been around the block a time or two.

10. xpara  •  Nov 10, 2006 @11:36 pm
    

    Around the block, under the block, beside the block, and very occasionally over the block. Thanks for the kind read, erinyes.