I’m a left-wing loony. I have to care.
Good for the House. Censuring Wilson is a meaningless waste of time and long gone are the days when elected officials could be expected to maintain a higher standard than anyone else.
On the other hand:
Come on, dude. His apology wasn’t prompt, it was prompted by House Republican leadership, and it was about as reserved as an apology gets (even ignoring his continuing references to Obama’s mythical lie since then).
If by “reading” you mean “attempting to deliberately misconstrue,” than sure.
If by “reading” you mean “attempting to understand what Scylla said” than no. It is not ok.
Heckling is wrong.
I got the “prompt and unreserved” from a soundbite of Obama saying he accepted the apology.
Are you saying Obama lied?
That’s not unreasonable at all. Nor is it unreasonable to the House of Representatives, where a motion of censure rather than one of disapproval could have been moved.
My OP reflected solely on a motion of disapproval. I would expect and support a majority Republican House to pass that motion under the same circumstances that the current majority Democratic House did. I would expect that a vast majority of both parties would support such a resolution.
Wilson’s actions were deserving, at the least, of disapproval.
[All that said - new subject]
I am getting absolutely, 100%, sick and tired of your (you, Scylla, the SDMB poster) acting as if your posts can only mean one thing. You choose to fltter-flatter about with your posts, you choose to make your posts as ambiguous as you possibly can, then you accuse your opponents of misinterpreting your posts or reading your mind, then when you are asked to help us interpret your posts, you act as if they should be crystal clear, even though we have, demonstrably, by your lights, misinterpreted them. So fuck off.
Wow. It doesn’t take much time and money at all to get you all worked up, now does it? Enormous?
Wow? Is there something wow-able here, other than people getting their panties all twisted up over an incredibly small, minor, insignificant incident?
I’m sorry - I thought we were talking about calling the President a liar from the House floor, which seems to be against the rules whether he is in the chamber or not. So while one got way more publicity than the other, as the rules go they seem to be just about the same offense.
And I decline to be lectured about civility when, when push came to shove, the other party blocked sanction against their member when he did the same thing. This is politics - and while I don’t like what Wilson did I won’t beat him with the Democrats’ whip.
One apologized for the offense against the House; one did not.
So this means we need to donate to the campaigns of Democrat challengers besides Wilson’s opponent?
It’s a wash if you ask me - one apologized to the House and not the President, the other apologized to the President and not the House.
That’s a valid point to me, being neither the President nor a member of the House of Representatives; is it a point to the House?
It probably is - but again said House is controlled by a majority party, which can choose to go easy or hard on a member for this. So there is no avoiding the political aspects of this.
Thing is, so am I. But meh. We have bigger things to worry about.
That sounds like conspiracy to disrupt government business.
So you think that interrupting a presidential address provided for in the constitution by seizing the floor when you are not recognized and the President is, is the equivalent of misusing the floor as Stark did when he had the floor and that Stark’s apology to the President and the House is equivalent for misuse of his privilege of the floor is the same as Wilson’s refusal to apologize at all to the House or the American people?
Stark did not interrupt the President’s privilege of addressing Congress from time to time as provided for in the Constitution. Wilson did. He showed contempt for the Constitutional occasion, for his peers and for the American people and for the Constitution. His apology “to the President” was more or less retracted by his “refusal to be muzzled” the next day, which was a defiant way of saying he was not wrong and his apology was insincere.
Frankly, his behavior was disgusting. What is even more disgusting is that Republicans in general like Mr. Moto are more or less applauding that behavior.
I don’t like what Wilson did, but the Dems should back off. The last thing they need is to make him a martyr.
:rolleyes:
(:D)
Did I say they were equivalent? Looking back over my posts it doesn’t seem that I did - and I did mention that Wilson’s offense was much more in the public eye. I did say they seem to have broken the same rule, but that isn’t the same thing at all.
Also, Stark did apologize to the House and President, but only after the censure resolution had failed. Before that he refused to apologize, saying “I respect neither the commander in chief who keeps them in harm’s way nor the chicken hawks in Congress who vote to deny children health care.” This ramping up of the offense in a parallel fashion to Joe Wilson did not stop Democrats from tabling the censure motion, at which time he did apologize.
Where do I applaud Wilson? I don’t think what he did was at all right, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a big deal.
I’m just sorry we’ve been denied the years of the spittle enhanced entertainment we’d surely have seen from the HannityCoulterMalkinBeck had this been a Democrat that interrupted a Republican president during a speech before a joint session of congress. I only wish I could make this come true, so I could lay down a pre-emptive $1,000 bet that the word “TREASON!” (with the exclamation point) would have been floated before the echo of the exclamation died out.
You and I are proof that opinions vary across the political spectrum, despite attempts to declare what “the Republicans” or “the Democrats” must think or do. You wouldn’t censure the guy and you’re liberal; I would have and I’m conservative. I’m firmly in the “respect for public office and civility in public discourse” camp. I thought Wilson owed an apology to the chamber and I would have been one of the seven Republicans who voted “yea.”