Comics I Don’t Understand

Okay, what I really want to know is…

Cidu Bill on Jul 16th 2010

How awful was the guy Texas voters thought was worse?

Filed in Bill Bickel, Sheila Jackson Lee, YouTube | 29 responses so far

29 Responses to “Okay, what I really want to know is…”

Cidu Bill Jul 16th 2010 at 09:39 pm 1

I mean seriously, this wasn’t a slip of the tongue (Obama never really thought there were 57 states) or somebody like Miss Arkansas or whoever getting caught unaware by a political question: this is a U.S. Congresswoman reading from a prepared speech.
Jeff S. Jul 16th 2010 at 10:20 pm 2

From the sound of it, at least there weren’t many people in there with her. She was just reading it into the record. If there were a full House, you would have heard laughter after each statement.

I’m just guessing her opponent must have wanted to free all the state prisoners and given each of them a new car.
MrKenneth Jul 16th 2010 at 10:39 pm 3

CIDU Bill, without checking, I would guess that this is what you get with gerrymandering. We are at a point (new census) where states could go back to drawing straight lines to define political districts, but that would make too much sense and offend all the proponents of political correctness. The number of safe districts on both sides of the aisle is just nuts.
Marshal Jul 16th 2010 at 11:00 pm 4

Wikipedia says she has been in office since 1995. She beat out Craig
Washington (another Democrat).
Steven Hunter Jul 16th 2010 at 11:55 pm 5

You know, even if you substitute “Korea” for “Vietnam”, the speech still doesn’t work.

1. You can’t just unilaterally declare one side the victor in a war unless you are surrendering.
2. We didn’t win in either Vietnam or Korea nor is it likely we will have anything like a “traditional” victory in Iraq or Afghanistan.
3. Korean War veterans were/are, as far as I know, treated fairly by the media and the public. And the public was, again as far as I remember, generally in favor of that war. Vietnam is of course another story.
4. It is my understanding that North and South Korea have little to no trade or interaction due to UN sanctions and the terms of the cease-fire. And of course the is no separate North Vietnam and South Vietnam (not as separate countries anyway).

She is either seriously confused or exceptionally dumb. I’m hoping for the former.
Marshal Jul 17th 2010 at 12:08 am 6

Wonder how this reflects on Yale and the University of Virginia Law School.
Seems she has a B.A. in Political Science from Yale and a
J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School.
.
Izzy Jul 17th 2010 at 12:11 am 7

Just skimming her Wikipedia page she has some other funny gaffes.
x Jul 17th 2010 at 12:20 am 8

It’s a speech asking people to support their soldiers. The number 58,000 refers to the American causalities in the Vietnam War. That she is unable to articulate clearly any other issue is unfortunate.
Allow me to ask you this question: Do you find the following more or less troubling than what you have chosen to post? A simple Yes or No will suffice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_C9vGEJXTU&feature=related

A poll was taken after Nixon’s resignation. It showed that only 15% of Americans ADMITTED voting for him. That’s more chilling to me.

P.S. She’s not Barbara Jordan. and yes, the days of Adlai Stevenson and Eric Sevareid are long gone.
Jeff S. Jul 17th 2010 at 12:31 am 9

Maybe she’s sampling a speech from the late 60s / early 70s.
Rid Jul 17th 2010 at 12:40 am 10

I wonder if Haiti is going to tip over.
Frank the curmudgeon Jul 17th 2010 at 01:23 am 11

And I feel embarrassed that Frank & Kerry are from my state.
Simoleon Jul 17th 2010 at 06:23 am 12

MrKenneth is right, gerrymandering is the culprit. She doesn’t know the difference between Mars and the Moon either. After we saw her speak once, my young son asked “Who is that stupid person?” Painful to admit that she was democratically elected.
DonBoy Jul 17th 2010 at 10:56 am 13

Yeah, she’s got the number of Vietnams off by 100%. (And she does mean Vietnam, because she talks about the 57 thousand dead.) However, to Steven Hunter’s point 1: she said “because we did not declare victory”. This is a not-well-explained reference to someone’s cynical suggestion, during the Vietnam War, that the US save face by “declaring victory” and pulling out the troops. But if you weren’t around for that, it sure sounds like nonsense.
dmv Jul 17th 2010 at 11:54 am 14

“The Vietnam War cost the United States 58000 lives and 350000 casualties.”
Her speech asks the citizenry to support its current soldiers. Nothing more nor less. The rest of her rhetoric runs off into the land of drivel.

Stupidity is in the eye of the beholder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_C9vGEJXTU
Winter Wallaby Jul 17th 2010 at 12:02 pm 15

She is either seriously confused or exceptionally dumb. I’m hoping for the former.

This doesn’t strike me as an either-or situation.
Chakolate Jul 17th 2010 at 04:08 pm 16

If she really had all the qualifications mentioned from Yale and UV, I wonder if she’s now in the not-so-early stages of dementia. It seems more sad than anything, to me.
Steffen Jul 17th 2010 at 04:25 pm 17

Steven Hunter #5, “3. Korean War veterans were/are, as far as I know, treated fairly by the media and the public. And the public was, again as far as I remember, generally in favor of that war. Vietnam is of course another story.”

This is not the case, at least not in Canada and I believe it’s the same in the US - the Korea War memorial we have was put up 50 years after the war paid for by private funds and the federal government sent (I don’t recall which) either nobody or a token low-grade bureaucrat to the dedication. Korean War veterans are not recognized as veterans, because “it wasn’t actually a war”.
mike Jul 17th 2010 at 06:30 pm 18

Wait a minute….

The Right Wing is off-the-scales bat-shit lately (Sharron Angle, Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul, Glenn Beck, John Boehner, etc.) and you take the bizarrely rare opportunity to condemn a speech by a black female Democrat whose sole purpose is to praise American soldiers for having performed their duty in a certifiably dirty and thankless job?

The light you’re shining, Bill, is not illuminating the disease you think it is.
MrKenneth Jul 17th 2010 at 08:31 pm 19

Just as youth of all races are allowed to graduate from high schools with substandard academic records, so too does this go on in institutions of higher learning. Yale and UVA don’t really care, they got the money they wanted…some of it from the Federal Gov’t I would guess.
David N Jul 17th 2010 at 09:52 pm 20

Ah, gerrymandering is a time honored tradition in the US - for both parties, believe it or not. People say they are against it, but they aren’t really - not when it helps their party or their candidate(s). Just like people say they are against federal government dollars - in someone else’s community or district. They love it in their own, and vote out officials who don’t bring it home.

But there’s a good reason for this, as MrKenneth points out - we’re all idiots. Even Elis. Every state has a Jackson Lee somewhere. So maybe he’s right.
Cidu Bill Jul 18th 2010 at 05:11 pm 21

Mike, what light exactly do you believe me to be shining?
JosePluma Jul 18th 2010 at 07:18 pm 22

“How awful was the guy Texas voters thought was worse?”

Pretty awful. He was a (gasp!) Republican.
billytheskink Jul 19th 2010 at 10:03 am 23

Sheila Jackson Lee has become an institution in her urban Houston district, though she is not too popular among Houstonians who live outside of it.
She’s considered, by most of the Houston media anyways, to be a very effective congresswoman in that she brings quite a bit of federal money into her district and I’m told she’s fairly influential among house Democrats.

This incident got didn’t get much play in the Houston media, bad as it is. If her district included parts of Houston a little further west, parts of the 7th and 9th congressional districts, she might actually face problems with reelection as that is the center of Houston’s large, vocal, and voting Vietnamese population.

A Vietnamese-American politician just recently took a serious blow to his reelection chances by coming out in support of a new Communist Vietnam consulate in Houston. He was labeled “soft on communism” by many Vietnamese protesters.
MrKenneth Jul 19th 2010 at 10:33 am 24

mike@18 - let’s see - Ds rightly excoriate Bush for spending into a deficit by not funding his wars and passing a drug bill. Today your children’s children will be trying to pay for spending and deficits that are magnitudes of what we had under Bush. Wall Street made a game out of the mortgage market fueled by our government (both parties) “encouraging” banks to make loans that might not make sense.

Many of us who live in the state represented by Ms Bachman are not real impressed by her radicalism but I would rather have her (and even Al Franken) than this product of political correctness preferences. Not enough adults in D.C. or many other places, either.
mike Jul 19th 2010 at 02:10 pm 25

MrKenneth 24: Spoken like a true no-nothing.

The rampant federal deficits this country is suffering are almost entirely the aftereffects of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies. You can see for yourself here:

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/deficits.jpg

The TARP was necessary to fight the full-fledged depression Mr. Bush left on our doorstep. If it wasn’t for Republican interference TARP could have been larger in scope and thus more effective. Republicans are, in essence, working hard to make this economy fail so they cans take back the reins of power and suck what little life is still left in this corpse.
mike Jul 19th 2010 at 02:17 pm 26

Bill 21 - Aw, c’mon Bill. Show a little non-partisan bias and play a few Sharron Angle videos. Heck, you can count on a verbal gaffe from that nitwit almost daily, and she’s running for a U.S. Senate seat!

BTW, Sheila Jackson Lee is so popular in her district that the Republicans haven’t even bothered running against her since 1994. I’m thus assuming the video was an abberation. Perhaps she was all tuckered out from walking the Appalachian Trail. ;^)
Cidu Bill Jul 19th 2010 at 02:50 pm 27

Mike, if you seriously believe I’m showing anti-Democrat bias, I suggest you search this site for Beck, Cheney and Dubya tags.

I never gave a thought to Lee’s party affiliation when I posted this video. All I was thinking was that this reminded me of some home video of a five-year-old trying to explain recent history.
Winter Wallaby Jul 19th 2010 at 03:16 pm 28

mike, that a video showing a Democrat acting like a dunce makes you accuse Bill of anti-Democrat bias strikes me as pretty silly. Apparently “Unbiased” = “never criticizing Democrats”???

BTW, Sheila Jackson Lee is so popular in her district that the Republicans haven’t even bothered running against her since 1994. I’m thus assuming the video was an abberation.

“Safe seat” = “not stupid” ???????
MrKenneth Jul 22nd 2010 at 04:19 am 29

mike - if you think media matters is a consistently worthy source of information, you need to broaden your horizons. Does it not tell you something that the latest legislation to (rightly) add controls to Wall Street’s shenanigans contains not one whit of fix for Fannie and Freddie? Read both the NYTimes and the WSJ and you will be better prepared for discussions political.

Play nice - and point out the real leaders, ‘cuz they are in short supply.