** Brutus, Shodan and Diogenes**:
I swear, sometimes I think it’s empty-headed, hand waving ideologues like you guys that cause 99% of the problems in this world. Did you ever think that maybe communication and compromise might be a better tactic than screaming your damn fool heads off over every issue? I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re Left or Right, every time you turn debates into a freakin dick-measuring contest you basically ensure that the ensuing discussion is going to generate lots of heat but no light (which is exactly what happened in that committee, ironically enough). MODERATION is the way to get things accomplished, not fanatical devotion so some dogmatic ideology.
If it can stand up for debate and discussion, it must be a weak position.
Geez, that should be can’t stand up…
Were you and Brutus dropped as babies? Seriously. No one could be this fucking dense unless some serious trauma happened to the general cranial region.
The Dems demanded the reading of the bill as a delaying tactic so they could actually go and read it for themselves and discuss among themselves the implications of the Republican changes before the vote occurred. The Republicans tried to have the vote before the Democrats could read the changes, so they requested the line by line reading as a delay.
It was the fault of the Republicans because they tried to railroad a changed bill through the Commitee without giving the Democrats a chance to look at the changes. Had they not tried this bullshit, then none of this would have happened. Similarly, had they kept it to dealing with Stark, instead of sending in the police to evict the Democrats in the library who weren’t causing a fucking commotion or doing anything wrong again, nothing would have happened.
The Republicans are at fault, although Stark should be severely reprimanded for his moronic behavior. But make no mistake, this entire thing occurred because of the pig headedness of Republican leadership.
Is there any way to see a video of this? Good comedy is hard to resist.
Here you can get what each side says happened. I saw the coverage of the aftermath. I don’t think the committee meeting was televised.
Hey, didn’t Bob Doran start some fights in the House? At the very least, I believe he had to be restrained a lot. He used to start foaming at the mouth and scream insults at people.
Fruitcakes already get such a bad rap. Is there any reason to diminish them further by associating them with Senators? This is even worse than when GHWB said he didn’t like broccoli.
If it helps any, Pete Stark (who represents southern Alameda County, around 100 miles from where I live) has a reputation dating back to at least the late 1980’s/early 1990’s of being one of the biggest jerkoffs (regardless of party) in the House.
That was not what was going on. The Democrats wanted the bill read, word for word, while they* left the committee room!*
They weren’t sitting there listening to the reading. They left the committee room and huddled in an adjacent library to discuss strategy. Stark stayed in the committee room, ostensibly to try to keep the GOP members from dispensing with a word-for-word reading of the bill.
The entire irony here is that this was not a bill they really disagreed on.
And no, this type of parliamentary maneuvering does not call for a “boot to the head,” nor even the juvenile name-calling that Stark engaged in.
Good old B-1 Bob. I don’t know if he ever started any physical fights. My only real lasting impression of him is from an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Now Fighting Jim Moran of Virginia has come close to fisticuffs on a number of occassions. He threatend to break someone’s nose, and he created some kind of weird scene where he dragged a little kid into a police station and accused him of whacking his car or something.
I don’t care if they were reading the bill themselves, or discussing strategy, or checking the document for comma errors. The fact remains that the Republican majority made changes to the document without any input from the Democrats whatsoever, and were then trying to force the bill through.
Regardless of how reasonable the changes were, they Republicans were jerks for not giving the Democrats adequate time to review them. They were bigger jerks for taunting the remaining Democrat, Stark. He was also a jerk, though, for pouring out his flamefest. But then the Republicans topped everything by calling the sergeant-at-arms to roust the other Democrats from the library.
This isn’t like the redistricting imbrogio in Texas. The Democrats there fled to Oklahoma in order to prevent a quorum in the Texas House, thereby preventing a vote on the redistricting plan, or anything else, for that matter. Here, the Democrats merely wanted enough time to review the legislation.
Late changes and insertions in bills are nothing new. Like as not, it’s done all the time, and both parties have done it while holding the majority on committees. I have rarely heard of a response like Stark’s, and I am seeing nothing that would justify it.
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Republican majority makes last minute changes to a pending committee measure. No foul, common practice.
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Democrats want to review the changes before voting. No foul. Though last minute changes/bills are standard and often given a by; it is the right of any member of the committee to actually review what they’re going to vote on. There was no clear intent to be obstructionist just by asking for review of the measure.
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Republicans refuse to give the Dems time to look over the list minute measure. Republican foul #1. While technically within the power of the majority to just plow through, this is inconsiderate.
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Democrats have procedural rules, too, that they can use to delay the vote. They call for a reading of the measure. This is technically OK to do. It’s inappropriate to use it simply for obstructionism, but they use it to put a halt to the railroading. ** No foul.**
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Democrats leave the room during the reading of the measure. Obviously, they can’t huddle and talk to each other and scan the measure while it’s being read aloud in the same room. They retire to the library to read and strategize (what they had asked for originally). They leave behind Stark to prevent the Republicans from stopping the reading of the measure and voting on it in their absence. ** No foul. That’s right. No foul. They’re not obstructing for the sake of obstructing or breaking any rules. They’re applying procedural rules to get what they had asked for and were denied.**
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Republicans, in the Dems absence try to move the measure. ** No foul **
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Stark tries to prevent it. ** No foul **
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Stark looses his cool and resorts to name calling. ** Foul on the part of Stark. No doubt **
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Committee chair tries to force the Dems out of the library by using the sargeant of arms of the Congress. ** Foul on him for trying to use force to stop a parliamentary trick which frustrates his parliamentary railroading of a bill. **
What a fucking load of bullshit.
The Democrats are behaving like spoiled five-year-olds, who want to take their ball and go home because they can’t get their way and “it’s not faaaaaairr…” Fucking crybaby whiners.
They were having the fucking bill read to them, because apparently they are either too stupid or too blinded by partisanship to actually do their job. Based on their behavior, this is not much of a stretch to assume.
And, pray tell why it is a foul for Republicans to do what you admit is perfectly within the rules in refusing to delay the start of the committee so that Democrats can delay, but perfectly OK for Democrats to leave during the reading of a bill - a reading which they themselves requested? If the silly assholes wanted to know what was in the bill, all they had to do was sit and listen while the thing was read to them. But no, they got up and left, leaving behind an obstructionist jerk who deals with opposition by hearing imaginary voices calling him names. And therefore issues insults and tries to pick fights.
And then the Dems have the gall to try to push thru a resolution to condemn not the senile old snot drooling out insults, not the obstructionist assholes trying to prevent the committee from doing its work, but the people trying to prevent them from behaving like a schoolyard bully who tries to pick a fight and gets his nose bloodied - and every partisan prat in the media ties himself into knots looking for a reason to blame it all on those nasty Republicans, who should be ashamed of themselves for not falling obediently into line behind the Democrats.
And we get the usual threadfull of far-left flatulence from the Democrats’ fellow travellers, for whom it is an article of faith that anyone who opposes anything the Democrats want is not fit to be treated like a human being, and who regard anyone further to the right than Barbara Boxer as beneath contempt.
Fuck this. I am out of this thread. Everytime I read it, my distaste for the hypocritical stupidity of the Left grows stronger.
Signed,
Shodan
No, you stupid fucking dipshit. They were having the bill read to them to buy time to go read it themselves, since the Republicans gave it to them at the last minute. Why is this so hard to understand?
Oh yeah, I forgot. Facts don’t matter to Republicans, they only repeat the standard party line no matter what the evidence is.
Back to the OP: When you call someone a “wimp”, then a “fruitcake”, is that an insult only a Democrat could get away with?
Most likely.
Good point.
I’d like to add that there is nothing I would materially disagree with in moriah’s previous assessment above. The GOP chairman did seem to jump the gun about calling capitol security, but nothing in the event justified Stark’s behavior.
Boo yah! I win.
** Shodan **
You are really out of control. Moriah made the single best post in this thread so far. The views expressed in that post mirror almost perfectly the views from both sides of the aisle on the Hill.
I have not noticed you to be such a rabidly unreasonable partisan whore before this, but you need to get a grip. I can understand assigning more blame to one party or the other, but you come off as a shrill partisan jackass.