Classy campaigning

Politics Taiwan Politics
21

[quote=“almas john”]Oh, interesting to see some dissent in the marsupial camp. Wombat turned on the koala - fur flying this way and that.

Chen’s comments about Ma’s old man really are below the belt.

God, when I think back to how happy I was on election night in 2000 (in fact I was so happy I drank a lot). Now, I would be happy to see Ma as the president.[/quote]

Ditto . . . Erh, I mean, fuck you! Choker!

You kow the CEO of the company I work for is a kiwi. Caught in the lift together the other day after the, erhm, big choke, I decided to have a laugh. I said. “John,” which is not his name, “you know that lever in a car that increases the idle, or is it the fuel mix when you are having trouble starting a car, what’s that called?”

He just stared hard and told me to “fuck off.” I couldn’t help myself, I said “is that with the choke on or off?”

There goes the bonus!

HG

22

[quote]Caught in the lift together the other day after the, erhm, big choke, I decided to have a laugh. I said. “John,” which is not his name, “you know that lever in a car that increases the idle, or is it the fuel mix when you are having trouble starting a car, what’s that called?”

He just stared hard and told me to “fuck off.” I couldn’t help myself, I said “is that with the choke on or off?”

There goes the bonus! [/quote]
:laughing: :notworthy: But humor aside, it was a traumatic event. I haven’t had sex since the game (due to a loss of libido and also fairly extensive shrinkage).

[quote]You know the CEO of the company I work for is a kiwi. [/quote] You poor bastard! Does he make you wear a sheepskin and crawl around the office on all fours?

Sorry for going off-topic.

23

Never a truer word spoken.

Oi, Fox, are you saying then that because there’s evidence Ma “might have been a spy for the KMT” and therefore a cunt, that it’s OK for the bumpkin to preempt him with the cuntish behaviour?

(For the record, I should point out that of course I hold both those sleazebags in pretty much equal contempt, but cuntish behaviour should be called. And the Greaseball’s was exactly that.

24

Ok, I’m really quite confused. Someone with no blue or green leanings please give us a straightforward summary? What really happened?

25

I just can’t come at him.

What has he ever done of any merit? He was Mayor of Taipei, but instead of improving the place he essentially sat on his hands for 8 years waiting his turn for a tilt at the presidency, never rocking the boat, never being innovative, never bringing any real development to Taipei. How many initiatives did he start in his time?

By comparison CSB shook up the place like a force 5 Taiphoon.

CSB’s agenda is unpalatable I can understand that. It is not something that will probably ultimately benefit a great many Taiwanese, who’d probably prefer to be riding high on the hog of Chinese economic expansion. However, it has dignity. It says we are a people who are sick of being pissed on from up high. It might never amount to anything, but it will amount to this Ma Ying-jeou being invested with political cache whenever he gets into power. However, that will be a level of cache that he never earned, never fought for, and never really understood, because when it was being paid for in blood, he was a rat.

So I might, like a lot of people, hope that when it falls into his lap he stewards it well, but I’m yet to see any hard evidence of that, just a specious past.

26

Damn Fox, I think you might have converted me.

27

Ma was most likely a spy for the KMT when he attended Harvard. It’s hard to believe he wasn’t. He’s got a lot to live down. That’s how innocent people got thrown out of building windows.
Ma is one of those guys whose had it all all their lives. It is celebrated in Taiwan but it counts for nothing. He’s about as gritty as a strawberry gelata.[/quote]
The spy business - all I hear are allegations. Where’s the substance? Vague allegations can be pretty hard to counter. I agree with the rest of what you said, though.

28

Ma started the “my father homeland is here” story, which he shouldn’t because, even at his urn, homeland means China for his dad… and that is where the story melts… He’s trying to do a Sarkozy thing in Taiwan, but the reality is too different… not like Greeks and Hungarians ruled France over the French, was it…

in the end, Ma’s homeland is China, if you connect the dots… it was his own hypocrite comment that started the snowball effect over this one. CSB just used the best know blah-blah legacy from Ma’s daddy to rebuke completely the “Taiwan is my homeland” BS that Ma is trying to indoctrinate over here…

29

[quote=“Fox”]I just can’t come at him.

What has he ever done of any merit? He was Mayor of Taipei, but instead of improving the place he essentially sat on his hands for 8 years waiting his turn for a tilt at the presidency, never rocking the boat, never being innovative, never bringing any real development to Taipei. How many initiatives did he start in his time?

By comparison CSB shook up the place like a force 5 Taiphoon.

CSB’s agenda is unpalatable I can understand that. It is not something that will probably ultimately benefit a great many Taiwanese, who’d probably prefer to be riding high on the hog of Chinese economic expansion. However, it has dignity. It says we are a people who are sick of being pissed on from up high. It might never amount to anything, but it will amount to this Ma Ying-jeou being invested with political cache whenever he gets into power. However, that will be a level of cache that he never earned, never fought for, and never really understood, because when it was being paid for in blood, he was a rat.

So I might, like a lot of people, hope that when it falls into his lap he stewards it well, but I’m yet to see any hard evidence of that, just a specious past.[/quote]

Until I read “By comparison CSB…” I thought you were talking about Chen. I still don’t know what city you’re talking about, as it’s not the Taipei I’ve been living throughout the jurisdiction of several mayors, which has improved a lot under Ma’s mayorship, more so than under Chen’s administration, the hallmark of which was basically to get rid of the hookers and try to take credit for Da-an Park.

But there’s not much point in arguing if you see this as an emotionally charged issue, so much so that you think dissing your opponent’s deceased father’s grave is justified. From your “we are a people…” reference, I see that you are actually Taiwanese and have a vested interest in the outcome of all of this, but I still don’t think that the decades-old injustices you perceive or suspect can justify such pettiness today.

30

If people actually sympathize with CSB allegation, I really feel sorry for the children of actual foreign fathers on Taiwan. Unless all foreign fathers are willing to sign a DPP agreement that their grave marker will bear the words “Taiwan” on them.

Because once again CSB is fanning the ethnic hatred in Taiwan of who are the actual authentic Taiwanese.

31

“we are a people” is a reference to the Taiwanese; that is obvious. I don’t pretend to be Taiwanese, though my wife, daughter and two sons are so I have a stake. I do live in Taiwan and I, at least, am not being petty.

These are not perceived injustices. You might think the Taiwan Garrison was a myth, or “white terror” some trifling matter or simply a legitimate state measure; I don’t know, but it doesn’t sit well with me.

I think it is obvious that Ma Ho-ling, who was one of Cash-My-Check’s chief political advisors, speech writer, and strategist, was probably steeped in the political injustices that marred the KMT’s time in power.

I’m not surprised that his epitaph calls for reunification. I’m not surprised if people who came to Taiwan to flee the Communists have always harbored desires to return. I desire to one day return to my own country even if it is in a box or as dust. It is a strong and natural human desire. Ma may not personally share that desire, but many within the party he heads certainly do. And, most importantly, if they have always held the view that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, then, to them, it is a just and legitimate position. I mean there is no point in pretending otherwise.

So where does that leave the native Taiwanese who have had to rise up through the cracks in this oppression. Should they be enamored of their oppressors? I think not, but in reality they’ve shown great restraint. They’ve worked their agenda to the top of the pile kicking against the pricks. Then in the end because they sit 100 Km away from a behemoth that wishes to consume them, they simply have to accept like many of us the reality that they won’t be dating the belle of the ball. But they dared to dream; to some that is repugnant.

Not to me.

These are simply my opinions.

32

Passing through the cracks of oppression gives people to right to look for political meaning on people’s grave stones.

But at the same token, don’t you fear that your children will never be “Taiwanese,” but yet just another foreign blight that has polluted the Taiwanese nation. Since by your own admission your tombstone might have something else other than “Taiwan” carved on it.

Once again what kind of oppression is the DPP introducing to Taiwan society now, since we must be so careful as to not reveal our heritage or political leaning for fear of being labelled “foreign” and threat to the Taiwanese…

I didn’t know the DPP had a monopoly of struggle, it is not like the KMT ever fought in a war to free Taiwan and introduce democracy on the island or anything…

33

I agree.

34

[quote=“Poagao”]After Ma Ying-jeou made a remark about how his father’s and grandfather’s final resting places are in Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian actually sent someone to go find a way into a private area and read the urn containing Ma’s father’s ashes, so that Chen could criticize the wording on the urn to attack Ma. :noway:

I thought the Kaohsiung KMT chapter’s “Ta ma de zhende ai Taiwan” was a little rough, but this is just downright tacky and tasteless.

Several more months of this BS to go…[/quote]

I agree it was a cheap shot. Chen took a similar one against Lien Chan in the 2004 presidential debate when he insinuated that Lien was a wife-beater.

However, I think you are jumping to conclusions when you suggest that Chen sent someone to Ma Ho-ling’s grave to check. The inscription on the senior Ma’s funerary urn was quoted on two consecutive days (Nov. 5 and 6, 2005) in the United Daily News. Anyone with a subscription to the UDN’s online database could easily check it.

35

I thought that came out in some interview with Lien’s wife around the time of the election?

HG

36

I agree.[/quote]

If it hadn’t been for the KMT, Taiwan would most likely have been part of communist China since the end of WWII. And Chiang Ching-kuo was the one who lifted martial law, and Lee Teng-hui also made several democratic reforms.

But as I’ve said before, coming in here and pointing out things like this is more or less useless as I can’t keep up with the blazing rhetoric that will justify anything and everything people want to believe, on both sides.

Carry on, then.

Oh, and HGC: a lot of things just happen to “come out” in “interviews” before elections.

37

I agree, but I thought she was interviewed for some profile and let the violent beasty cat out of the bag all by heerself, something like, “we had our rough patches, he used to beat me about the head, but I needed that.” Seriously, that was why it was all so tragically funny on that spoof show with that cross-dressing Lu Hsiulien, was it the Chairman’s half hour?

HG

38

Wrong. If it hadn’t been for the US who first turned over Taiwan to the KMT and then defended the KMT’s rump regime from Mao’s armies, Taiwan would have been part of the PRC since 1949.

And your narrative of Taiwan’s democratization makes the KMT the agent of that historical process. In another version of the same story, the democracy movement beginning with the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979 are the main actors who pushed the KMT into lifting military law, allowing political parties, repealing the Sedition Law, forcing direct presidential elections, and eventually implementing referendums. The notion that the KMT led by the benevolent Chiang Ching-kuo bestowed democracy as an act of grace on the passive Taiwanese people is absurd and insulting.

HCG: I don’t recall an interview.

I agree.[/quote]

If it hadn’t been for the KMT, Taiwan would most likely have been part of communist China since the end of WWII. And Chiang Ching-kuo was the one who lifted martial law, and Lee Teng-hui also made several democratic reforms.

But as I’ve said before, coming in here and pointing out things like this is more or less useless as I can’t keep up with the blazing rhetoric that will justify anything and everything people want to believe, on both sides.

Carry on, then.

Oh, and HGC: a lot of things just happen to “come out” in “interviews” before elections.[/quote]

39

Jesus Christ, one sentence is a “narrative”? All I said was that CCK lifted martial law. Which he did. And when I say that without the KMT Taiwan would have most likely ended up part of communist China you say basically (in an actual narrative) “WRONG…well, yes.”

40

Who else was the USA suppose to turn Taiwan over to? Japan.
Come on, reality is staring everyone in the face. Yet some still want to rewrite history.

Don’t tell me the DPP was the fifth column of the Japanese army in the mainland, working to spread democracy throughout Asia in WWII… :unamused:

Because that is exactly what happened. If CJG decided to continue with White Terror and enact another 228, what evidence do you have there would have been any significant opposition?

Just by being part of an opposition party doesn’t make those individual promoters of democracy. The ground work for that occurred decades in advance. Democracy did not spontaneous appear among followers of the Japanese Emporer.

All those events you list happened with the KMT as stewards of Taiwan, not the DPP. So once again credit to the KMT for allowing it to happen.