chuckers wrote:
> On Sep 1, 10:46 am, CL <flot...@yahoo.com> wrote:

8>< schnitt

>> Where is that district?  I saw Renho a lot in the vids of the victory
>> celebration, so I am guessing it's out along the Suginami / Setagaya
>> Divide?
> 
> Further south. Tokyo District 5 which covers all of Meguro-ku and 
> south eastern Setagaya-ku. Yukari-chan is supposedly from the area 
> originally so one can't fault her TOO much for picking it after
> getting the boot out if Gifu.

Proving Thomas Wolff to be right, once again ...

> Couple of Renho posters around but not nearly as numerous as the 
> Koumei Part posters.

Renho used to be The Next Hot Thing when she was the bikini model and
campaign girl for ... Kanebo (ka na?) and attended Aoyama Gakuin.  But
she sure made a lot more out of her year of doing that than any of the
other models ever did.  She is probably the single greatest reason why
Minshuto kicked ass so convincingly.  She was like the only DJP member
they had in that area for years and she managed to drag others into
office, sometimes only by the strength of her own personality.

>> I meant Yamashita or Yamada (given name forgotten) ... but he's GONE(!).
>>   The TV asshole factor has fallen by one, unless someone wants to hire
>> a komente-ta-.
> 
> Guess I don't know who you mean.

And, now that I've written it, I don't have any working links to a
photo.  It always works that way.  *sigh*  I'll look around some more ...

Guess you need to program your flat-screen TV to wake you up when
"Asazuba" comes on or develop a taste for "TV Tackle" and "Sunday
Project."  He's been on both of the latter and Hama-chan (the old
criminal from Chiba famous for his chair breaking) loved to demolish him.

>> Suzuki will be gone just as soon as the District Court refuses to
>> overturn his bribery conviction and then Debit can run for the empty
>> seat.  I always like Moneo-kun because he was the one that left Debit
>> cooling his heels in his outer office while he sneaked out the back way
>> and went to lunch at a local yakiniku joint.  Debit blogged it as being
>> "denied access to his elected representative" not realizing that he just
>> didn't bring a large enough box of manju to make a difference in the
>> display on his representative's personal radar screen.
> 
> After his bust and tearful apology, I really wanted Koizumi to refer 
> to it as "涙は男の最大の武器" like he did after Tanaka Makiko burst into tears
> for some reason I don't recall.

The difference was that Tanaka was genuinely pissed off.  Suzuki was
play acting, had pulled the same trick before, and everyone was waiting
for it.  As Suzuki was making his speech, one of the network
commentators was talking to someone else at the news desk and the
director, whether accidentally or deliberately (he later denied doing it
deliberately, claiming he'd set his coffee cup down on a switch
inadvertently), opened the commentator's mike.

So, you had Suzuki speaking in the foreground and a disembodied voice
saying stuff like, "watch this guy ... he's good but he's predictable
... he should start crying right about .... here .... watch his eyes ...
here it comes ..."

Pretty funny stuff.

Makiko was seriously dumped on by the brahmins of the Ministry she was
supposed to be leading.  Some of it was pretty silly stuff, done just to
be petty and mean.  Here's Japan's public face to the international
community being kicked all over by bureaucrats and the PM who appointed
her was doing nothing.  That's no way to say "Thank you" to one of the
chief people responsible for you getting into office in the first place
and Makiko broke down out of frustration.  Rather than help, Koizumi
stabbed her in the back.  A whole lot of people who had supported
Koizumi up to that point were suddenly put on notice that the guy was
completely ruthless.

>> As for Makiko, I like her.  She has more balls than nearly all of the
>> men in Kokkai.  And, she was very popular with the US State Department.
>>   The big problem was Todai assholes who decided to make her look bad
>> and a Prime Minister too spineless to back her up when the showdown
>> came.  I would be VERY INTERESTED to see what happens when Makiko +
>> Ozawa hit the Gaimusho.  Maybe some career ending going on?
>>
> 
> I think she is too loud mouthed (i.e. a perfect politician.)  What
> she was striving for may have been admirable but the way she was
> going about trying to get it just rubbed me the wrong way.  And her
> tacky joke after Obuchi cacked it was really distasteful.  Not that
> Obuchi was necessarily a great guy or anything but come on, that was
> tacky.

The Tanaka family were in the civil engineering and construction
business.  They're from the "When you're a hammer everything else looks
like a nail" school.  Her Obuchi comments were out of line ... but I
think they were sort of expected on the J-side.

-- 
CL