What is Cindy Sheehan thinking?

In fact, the entire post is based on the flawed logic of her demand. Impeach Bush or I will once he's out of office. That's her political demand.  And I don't know where she's getting this people are 3-1 in favor of her candidacy.  I think it's entirely made up.  I think it's tell that of the hundreds of people at her recent March to D.C. where she made this impeachment demand, not one constitutent from Pelosi's district was in attendance.

Cindy Sheehan DESERVED to be heard, and has again and again and again.  I'm sorry to be crass, but the injustice she has suffered is no greater than the families of the over 3,000 other American military war dead from Iraq.  In fact, you can argue that families like those of Pat Tillman have a greater claim because Casey Sheehan's death was never politicized by the Bush Administration.

As for deserving respect, respect is not an entitlement.  And she lost any claim of being entitled respect with blatantly false statements like:

" he Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th century, except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal income taxes, not one but two World Wars, Japanese concentration camps, and not one but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan -- all brought to us via the Democrats."

We did not start WWI.  In fact, we were one of the last countries to get involved in it.  Same thing with WWII unless Sheehan believes that FDR baited the Japanese into attacking us at Pearl Harbor.

And by "other bush debacle" does she mean Desert Storm?  Cause frankly, in comparison to our present sitution (hell, even before then), I think very few people would say that.  Oh, and Grenada and Panamal?  Both Republican Presidents.  I guess she was against President Clinton's efforts to restore the democratically elected leadership in Haiti and end the ethnic cleasing in Kosovo.

Calling the party she claimed to be a life-long member the party of slavery and war-mongering (even more so than Republicans) shows just how out of touch and misinformed Ms. Sheehan is.  She says the party I supports loves war and slavery.   Sorry, if I don't stand up and applaud, but someone should speak truth to her power.

Her statement does not really explain why the threat of her candidacy is coupled with the threat of impeachment.  As I said, even if she COULD carry out her threat, Bush is gone within days of her taking office.  She's running on impeachment.  That's how SHE framed this, and it's ridiculous.

How anyone could read her grossly false and ill-informed case and think that she is worthy of respect is beyond me.  Cindy Sheehan has allowed herself to become a pawn of the most extreme leftist activist wing in our nation and she's lost all touch with reality.  She lives in a world that thinks that the Democrats have the power in their narrow majorities to end the war today vetoes and filibusters be damned.  Nancy Pelosi, unfortunately, has to live in the world where the President can veto legislation, she doesn't have a veto-proof majority, the Senate is effectively evenly split down the middle with Senator Johnson incapacited and Joe Lieberman doing what Joe does.

Nancy Pelosi operates in world where democracy means you have to have the votes to overcome the opposition when they have the means to require a supermajority. Cindy Sheehan doesn't get that.  She also doesn't get that if you threaten the Speaker of the House, you better be prepared to damn well deliver because if you can't you've burnt a very important bridge.  Cindy Sheehan will NEVER be elected to Congress, and she knows it.  It's an empty threat over an issue that by the time she can carry it out will be moot.

So, again, what's the point other than burning whatever bridges she had with the Democratic leadership giving them the political benefit of creating some needed distance from her.

then why get in such a twist about her "threats"? 

And a far as History is concerned, I have to say, respectfully, that you need to read yours!  ~~~

And let's not forget our recent history: Without Democrats help, there would be NO Iraq War.  In fact, without Democrats help, there wouldn't have been in place a Supreme Court that literally handed the Presidency to Bushco.  I'll refer you again to Vincent Bugliosi's book "None Dare Call it Treason" ("Treason never prospers, what's the reason?  Why if prospers, none dare call it treason!")

And remember too that it was Al Gore that presided over the Senate when they would not allow any House members to present the greivance about the '00 election, recall Michael Moore's documentary that chronicled that sad display...

The fact is that we need to ENCOURAGE the Cindy Sheehans of our country, we need MORE agitation, we need MORE pressure on our "leadership", we need to support our fellow citizens who are working to make our Constitution WORK.~

So, democrats are so busy in Congress doing what again?? Staying up all night, trying to convince the People that the they actually would sleep on a cot?! yeah right! 

They have accomplished zilch in reality.  But we keep telling ourselves that somehow, if only we give them enough time, maybe, somehow they will do SOMETHING when for years, and years, and years, and years, the only thing that democrats did was bring us to this place we are at today. 

They have to accept responsibility for what they've done and not done, but with few exceptions, they haven't.

Bushco could not do what they have done without the complict help of democrats in Congress that who still tell us "wait!  we're just about to do something!  just a little more time! wait!"  Well, waiting time is over.

The democrats haven't done ENOUGH.  We are in worse shape than ever as a nation, yet still people want to "protect" some people from other people who are only trying to run against them in an election!

If Nancy Pelosi is defeated by Cindy Sheehan, who is she going to blame?  The winner?!  That is flawed reasoning.

One of these days, Jean, I'm going to write something you agree with if it kills me!

"And a far as History is concerned, I have to say, respectfully, that you need to read yours!  ~~~"

Nothing you write after that addresses anything I wrote.  This is pure strawperson argument.  I never said that Cindy Sheehan is wrong to suggest that Democrats were complacent in permitting this Iraq war from happening.  Never said it.  What I did say was that Cindy Sheehan is wrong to call us the "party of slavery" and that the Democratic Party was responsible for starting every war America had been in save this war and Desert Storm beginning with WWI. And again, her statement is ignorant and blatantly false.

Cindy Sheehan isn't working to make our Constitution work.  What's she's pissed about is that the Speaker of the House refuses to engage in an impeachment exercise because the Speaker realizes how overly partisan is going to look and how ineffective it's going to be when the Senate fails to remove either Bush or Cheney from office.  Count the votes, it fails.

Cindy Sheehan isn't running because Nancy Pelosi doesn't represent her constitutents, but because she doesn't represent Cindy, something Pelosi isn't constitutionally expected to do.  It's electoral extortion.

Democrats haven't been able to do enough because the votes aren't there to: 1) pass a cloture vote to end Republican filibustering in the U.S. Senate and, 2) override a certain Presidential veto.  The filibuster being the implicit creature of the Constitution; the Presidential veto being the explicit constitutional power of the Executive.  So what you and Cindy are apparently pissed is that the Democratic Congress haven't done enough because the U.S. Constitution allows for the Republicans to thwart them with stalling and vetoes.

And for that reason Nancy Pelosi should go after only seven months as Speaker?   Get realistic, Cindy.  With the slim majorities the Democrats have in both houses, the best the Democrats can realistically do is use their power in setting the Congressional agenda to keep the heat on the President and Congressional Republicans until the public pressure becomes great enough to force the Republicans to start peeling off and actually start voting with the Democratic majorities.

Cindy Sheehan will not win her carpetbagging run against Pelosi.  Write that down.

Cindy Sheehan has marginalized herself with this ridiculous political act of extortion.  She has marginalized herself with the Congress, the Democratic Party, and the progressive community as a whole.  She is engaging in self-destructive, divisive political tactics that are pulling us apart when we should be coming together. 

And she's doing it for no other reason other than Nancy Pelosi is keeping her word that she will not support an effort to impeach the President.  Something anyone who was paying attention would have known BEFORE the election.  Again, we dealt with this very issue in our discussion about D.K.'s bogus rationale as to why he suddenly broke his promise about not running for President within a month after the election.

Seven months, Jean.  And they've been able to pass legislation that could have ended the war, but the President vetoed it as is his power under the Constitution.  Do you think that if the Republicans controlled Congress the political heat in the Capitol would be this high?  Do you think the Republicans would have allowed these votes to have taken place?  Conducted the overdue oversight that has been neglected?  Any of this?

I'm sorry if you thought that the last six years could be undone in seven months, but the Constitution and the political makeup of Congress just isn't going to make it happen overnight.

was:

"If Nancy Pelosi is defeated by Cindy Sheehan, who is she going to blame?  The winner?!  That is flawed reasoning."

The loop de loop through la la land made me chuckle.

I wrote a whole big reply earlier but it got lost during posting. Basically it all boiled down to the fact that impeachment won't succeed and will only backfire on us.

It also doesn't take a psychiatrist to recognize that Sheehan has some serious issues in her life that she needs to deal with regardless of whether or not she keeps her campaign up. 

I wouldn't lump Cindy Sheehan with Rosa Parks, Thomas Jefferson, or even the women's suffrage movement. To even suggest it belittles them all.  Cindy Sheehan isn't running for any other state reason than because Nancy Pelosi won't go after impeachment to make herself President.

Cindy Sheehan is taking a scorched earth strategy and that's all this is.  How long did it take to get meaningful civil rights legislation passed?  How many unsuccessful attempts were there to pass women's suffrage before it finally passed?  How many amendments and resolutions were offered to try and end the Vietnam War that failed?  How long did it take before Congress could rein in what had become Nixon's war?

How long did it take those old rich white men in Philadelphia to actually create the new government they declared its independence from the crown?

Not one of those things happened on the first try and they all took more than seven freaking months!!

Get a grip, indeed.  Martin Luther King didn't run against President Kennedy because the Civil Rights Act was being filibustered in the Senate.  What Cindy Sheehan is doing is have a national temper tantrum because she wants to take credit for the Democratic majority (that she does not deserve) and blast them now for not doing her bidding.

If this was truly about ending the Iraq War, then she would run for President, not to become an Indepedent freshman member of Congress.  No, she said this is about nothing more than the fact that she can't stand that Nancy Pelosi told her, no. 

This is just too funny:

"So we don't have the votes. . ., " then "I call B**lS**t on this 'we don't have the votes' crap."

Say that again all after huh?

Look at the scoreboard (roll call votes).  There have been numberous votes in this Congress to show that majority of both houses support Democratic efforts to end the war.  Unfortunately, the roll call votes demonstrate that the margin in their passage is not wide enough to win a vote for cloture on future efforts or to overturn the President's veto such as occurred in the initial funding bill.

That's on the more politically popular idea of ending the Iraq War.  Art. I, Sec. 3, Clause 6 of the U.S. Constitution requires a two-third majority vote to remove an impeached official from office.  In other words, 67 Senators would have to vote in favor of removing the President and Vice-President for impeachment to be effective (assuming that Articles of Impeachment first passed the House).

Presently, the U.S. Senate has 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and Joe Lieberman.  I believe Sen. Johnson (D-SD) is still not well enough to vote.  Assuming Joe Lieberman is a wanker and that the rest of the Democratic Senators all voted in favor of removing Bush and Cheney, that still means that 18 Republican Senators would need to join them to actually impeach the President.

Please enlighten me, and tell me who these eighteen Republicans Senators, who won't even allow and up and down vote on withdrawing from Iraq, would be that would suddenly support removing the President.  Name them.

Keep in mind that although 21 Republican Senators are up for re-election next year, here's the list of States they represent: Wyoming, Colorado (who is a lam-duck retiree), Mississippi, Idaho, Nebraska (but Hagel may be retiring and is threatened by a more conservative primary opponent), Virginia (who may be retiring so doesn't have to face the voters), Ted Stevens of Alaska (who may have his own problems staying in office, but they can't be cured by throwing Bush under the bus), Tennessee, Georgia, Minnesota, Maine, Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, Wyoming, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Kansas, Alabama, Oregon, and New Hampshire.

So, almost entirely heavy red states.  At best, the Senators from Oregon and Maine may have domestic political pressure to support an effort to impeach the President.  But it hasn't been enough to truly get them committed to ending the war in Iraq.  Impeachment is a taller order.

So where are the 18 Republicans votes going to come from?  Because if they don't exist then impeachment achieves NOTHING.