Stark Weather
I was a little sheepish last year after I wrote in late September that Democratic acquiescence in the Military Commissions Act heralded functional one-party rule – this bold prediction preceding by about five weeks the famous results of the 2006 elections. Like all cowards, I left myself an out in the penultimate paragraph, but you’d be forgiven for sneering at the gambit.
But in the wake of the humiliation inflicted on Pete Stark today by his own leadership, I’m forced to ask, “So, who did win the elections last year anyway?” Frankly, that penultimate paragraph from September looks better all the time. And while Mom said you shouldn’t tear others down to build yourself up, events have falsified a countervailing pre-election argument of Hilzoy’s that I cited favorably in October:
For one thing, does anyone here actually believe that if President Bush asked Democratic leaders to move this bill through, they would agree? Or that this nightmare of a bill would have made it out of a Judiciary Committee chaired by Pat Leahy or John Conyers? Someone clearly has the ability to make Arlen Specter cave on command; having briefly seen Leahy on CSPAN this afternoon, I can say: he was truly beyond furious, and if he ever caved on something like this, I would be very surprised. I’m not really up on Ike Skelton, but do you think that if Carl Levin were chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee, this would have just sailed right through?
No. Having control of one house of Congress would have stopped this in its tracks.
See also Libby, who has more on the Stark sinking.
Here’s the thing to realize: Pete Stark is a powerful guy. I won’t argue that he’s one of the Secret Masters of the World or anything, but California’s most senior Congressman, ranking member on some powerful committees, has a lot more status and access than you or I do.
And his own party leadership joined their supposed minority opposition in rolling Pete Stark in his own shit. The message is clear. Whatever you want to call it – The War Party, the Beltway Consensus, the institutional structure of contemporary American politics, the Movement, whatever – will not brook consequential dissent. Individual congressmen aren’t that consequential, but they matter a lot more than anyone blogging.
“There are five thousand people in the world,” Mr. Van Arkady told Lauren Slaughter. The rest of the story is devoted to her discovery that she is not one of them. The last thing he tells her is, “You can still be killed.” Pete Stark probably isn’t one of the five thousand either. But he knows some of them. He’s too close to get away with loose talk. And he can still be killed, though it rarely comes to that, because it doesn’t have to.
Comment by jlw —
October 23, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
Well, the great thing about an extra-legal domestic spying program is that it can turn up all sorts of interesting things about your would-be opponents. And that’s very useful in a pinch.
Just saying.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 23, 2007 @ 10:17 pm
This is just ridiculous:
I mean, whoever got to him didn’t even let him get away with the standard “I apologize if anybody misinterpreted my remarks. I stand firmly behind our troops, blah blah, sorry for the misunderstanding, I regret, blah blah, this great nation, blah blah, I would never, blah blah.” No, he had to utterly debase himself to appease them.
We are so utterly fucked if they can do that.
So what’s in the file that they showed him? Dead girl? Live boy? Or is it just surveillance footage of his family, followed by statistics on brake failures in the model car that his kid drives? Or a document showing some problems on a tax return, followed by data on prison rape?
Whatever it was, they got him.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 23, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
The “president’s family” nod is a richly rococo touch, no? Because Jenna must have been disconsolate, not to mention Neil.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 23, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
Yeah, what’s up with the personal apology, and apology to his family? Normally they get away with “I apologize if our troops were offended” and then go on to praise the troops. But this guy had to grovel personally to the Emperor.
Damn, did they get to him.
Comment by max —
October 23, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
Frankly, that penultimate paragraph from September looks better all the time.
I was a little surprised they moved quite so many seats, but I wasn’t expecting the press to go so rapidly from in the tank for the R’s to in the tank for the D’s and then back out again. Usually they aren’t so… overt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the D’s go backwards this election for not supporting the war ENOUGH. The press like the war.
But just like I thought last November (and said, somewhere), there’s no big change in the wind. Just a steady worsening.
max
['Something ugly this way comes.']
Comment by teh —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:09 am
And to think that they had only just finished consoling Petraeus and wiping the tears from his eyes when this happened…
Also, William Safire in 2004 after the Cheney-Edwards debate:
Humiliating the opposition by forcing them to apologize for hurting their feelings with every controversial remark is hardly a new technique for them.
Comment by Bob Weber —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:15 am
The GOP is at least worthy of contempt. The Democrats are beneath contempt. The Emperor Tiberius said of the cringing and pusillanimous, but once proud, Roman Senate that they were fit only to be slaves. If the Dems were fit to be slaves, it would be a step upward.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:19 am
Video here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KzOP1up4Q9M
Comment by Ken MacLeod —
October 24, 2007 @ 5:25 am
[Stark] added that he hoped the apology would allow him to “become as insignificant as I should be†as the House moves forward on critical, divisive issues.
Stark then left the podium, wiping away tears as Democratic colleagues surrounded him with supportive handshakes.
This is like something out of … well, not real totalitarianism, but a satire of it, like Animal Farm. Or a real account of life in a cult. It’s a little disturbing. WTF is going on over there?
Comment by ajay —
October 24, 2007 @ 5:57 am
9 is spot on. Reminds me of this:
Next day Vyshinski resumed his cross-examination of Krestinski. At once the change was obvious…”Do you,” he asked, “still persist in your refusal to confirm your previous declarations?”
“No,” came back the answer. “I confirm everything.”
“What, then, was the meaning of the statement you made yesterday?”
“Yesterday, influenced by a feeling of false shame, and by the atmosphere of the court, and by my state of health, I could not bring myself to tell the truth and admit my guilt before the world. Mechanically, I declared myself innocent. I now beg the court to take note of the statement which I now make to the effect that I admit my guilt, completely and unreservedly, under all the charges brought against me, and that I accept full responsibility for my criminal and treacherous behaviour.”
The words were reeled off like a well-learnt lesson. The night had not been wasted.
– Eastern Approaches
Comment by B. Dewhirst —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:46 am
I’ve written to my Congressional Representative, The Honorable James P. McGovern, to urge Mr. McGovern to sever his connections with the DNC (along with the rest of the Progressive Caucus) as a consequence of this incident. I urge other constituents of Progressive Caucusmembers to write them in a similar fashion.
Comment by Nell —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:59 am
Yes, there’s more than a whiff of show trial about this, so much so that I thought maybe Pete Stark was going over the top in order to make that point.
But I’d have to watch the video to check that theory. No thanks; stomach not strong enough right now.
Comment by Jeff in Texas —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:05 am
From allowing the MCA to sail through while in the minority, to rolling on the Iraq supplemental, to allowing the FISA “fix” to come to the floor and pass, and then to approve (and no doubt soon pass) an even worse and more permanent FISA fix (now with 100% more retroactive immunity!), the Democrats keep taking themselves to lower and lower levels of utterly deprave complicity in the worst crimes of the recent Republican rule. This latest debasement, though it does not involve substantive law, is in some ways the most frightening yet. It is so very, very Stalinist in nature. What Stark originally said was intemperate, but as a critique it was dead on. It was certainly nothing the Democratic leadership should have had a problem with. For the Democrats to humiliate him so is simply incredible.
I also particularly liked the “and his family” part. Because of all the many familes who have suffered in the last 6+ years of Bush rule, surely the Bush family is most deserving of an apology. Those assholes have had it so hard.
And yes– if they can make a guy like Stark do something like this, they can do this and worse to any of us. And would, if it gained them anything.
Comment by Libby —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:15 am
It’s so depressing. For THIS we elected a Democratic majority? Feh.
Thanks for the link Jim.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:19 am
Was Stark blinking in code during his apology?
Comment by Felix —
October 24, 2007 @ 10:09 am
There go the last shreds of my respect for Nancy Pelosi.
Comment by Jeff in Texas —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:01 am
Pelosi is worse than worthless.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:08 am
OTOH, who knows what they have in Pelosi’s file? Or the files on her family?
“You know, madame speaker, your grandson attends school in a neighborhood where a kid disappeared just last year…”
Comment by Hesiod —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
I am increasingly convinced that the Democrats in Congress are merely playing out the string until they get a Democrat in the White House come January 2009.
I am not so sure I buy into the theory that they agree with what Bush is doing. I think they figure that there is nothing practically they can do to stop him for 16 months, except things they believe are the equivalent of political suicide (however debateable that may be).
Thus, it is better to rhetoricaly oppose him and not roc the boat on substance much (except on no-brainer political gambits like SCHIP) and hope the Democratic base and the increasingly democratioc-leaning independants don’t get so totally demoralized that they fail to show up on election day next year.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Hesiod-
It may very well be that they see no hope of changing anything until they have power. A few responses to that:
1) As a libertarian, I’m a bit jaded to that argument. I recall another party that assured us that they wanted to roll back the size and scope of the state, but first they would need power….
2) Let’s say they’re sincere. Maybe my argument 1 was a bit too cynical. Still, what does it say about their future actions if they perceive meaningful defense of civil liberties as political suicide? Do they think that at 12:01 pm on January 20, 2009 nobody will ever say anything mean about them if they protect civil liberties? Or will they stop caring that somebody said something mean about them?
If they rein in warrantless wiretaps or ban torture after 12:01 pm on Jan. 20, 2009, the bedwetters will scream, and somebody will tell the Dems that “If you want to win the midterms, this is political suicide.”
The only hope I have is that Congressional Republicans might change their tune on torture if it’s a Democrat holding the electrodes.
3) Related to the political suicide angle, I don’t think that they all agree with this stuff, but they might lack the moral compass to see it as completely unacceptable. They might figure “Well, I wouldn’t have instituted it, but there’s a case to be made, serious people are behind it, so should we rock the boat on this or merely do the incremental things that we can do with minimal risk here and there?”
In normal politics that attitude is the key to effectiveness. But when the United States of America is standing for torture, that attitude is completely unacceptable. And a party that holds that attitude on torture is not a party that I can take seriously as a protector of my civil liberties.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
Hesiod-
Let me turn this around a bit: What would they have to capitulate on for your to conclude that they are not worthy of support in 2008?
I’m not saying I want anybody to vote GOP in 2008. I just don’t see either team offering any good reason to vote for them, except that on certain issues they claim they would like to suck just a tiny bit less than the other team, but they can’t do that unless they have secure power.
Comment by IOZ —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
Jesus, Hesiod. Listen. He doesn’t love you, and no matter how many times he apologizes and tells you he loves you, he’s never going to stop hitting you and the kids.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
IOZ said it better.
Comment by sglover —
October 24, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with that. Pelosi was born and bred as a politician. That’s it. If Pelosi were threatened somehow, she’d find a way to triangulate and “find an acceptable bipartisan consensus”. Creatures like Pelosi aren’t worth threatening, because they’re so much easier to buy or co-opt.
Comment by jlw —
October 24, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
If I had to guess, I’d say the person holding the Pelosi file was Steny Hoyer, who has been in Maryland politics for a long time and likely has access to whatever dirt is available on the D’Alesandro family, which used to run Baltimore. That would put the flow of pressure from Bush/neo-cons/somebody -> Hoyer -> Pelosi -> Stark.
But really, at this point, whoever is pulling the strings can probably credibly threaten just about anyone. What has surprised me is that the operations haven’t become more overt. It’s well past the time that I thought we’d see two or three major war oponents “caught with kiddie pix on their hard drives.” Maybe the opposition has been too feeble to warrant fabricating the smear. Or maybe we’ve lucked out that we have been saddled with the most incompetent and unimaginative authoritarians in history.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
Maybe the opposition has been too feeble to warrant fabricating the smear.
Yep. On “Prison Break” the conspirators may have to send an army of thugs to frame Lincoln Burroughs and lock his brother in a Panamanian prison. But in real life they just have to screech “Don’t you care about fighting terror?” and then Dems fall all over themselves to comply.
If we ever get an effective opposition, and the time comes to send thugs after them, it may come out that the thugs have all grown fat and lazy. The call finally goes through to some guys who were supposed to be on standby, and it turns out that they’ve been sitting by the phone for a decade, eating doughnuts while waiting for their orders, and now they’re fat and out of shape and they haven’t actually cleaned their guns in some time.
Ah, now I see where movie henchmen come from…
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
“So what’s in the file that they showed him? Dead girl? Live boy? Or is it just surveillance footage of his family, followed by statistics on brake failures in the model car that his kid drives? Or a document showing some problems on a tax return, followed by data on prison rape?
Whatever it was, they got him.”
yeah, this is exactly what i was screaming about over on ObWi the other day–just sheer incomprehension at how he was pressured to this extent. i won’t bore you by repeating myself–you can see the comments over there.
but i still can’t believe that the dems connived in the destruction of one of their own. and i still can’t believe how much better the republicans are at this game than the democrats are.
and ken mcleod in #9 is completely right–this episode induces “not my country” feelings as deep as anything else in the last seven nightmarish years.
Comment by jim2 —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
Can we rule out Occam’s Razor? You know, that Stark watched the video and actually felt embarrassed enough to apologize?
Comment by sglover —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
Gotta say that all this speculation about Dems knuckling under to blackmail or extortion gives far, far too much credit to 1) right-wing ability and 2) Democratic integrity.
Comment by Sigivald —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
Yeah, blame “them” and their “files” and their “spying”.
Because we all know it can’t have been that people really didn’t like what Stark said and that Pelosi et. al bent to the polls and demanded that Stark start acting like a grown-up rather than a petulant teen-ager, in his speeches?
You see, outside of the Netroots and Angry Left, even people who think the war is a Bad Idea realise it’s not for the President’s personal amusement, and that pretending it is is stupid, and makes the speaker and his party, if they stand for it, look stupid.
Should there be a Democratic Party meltdown in the 2008 polls, the reason will be in your collective mirrors, not in Republican “files” or dirty tricks.
The parsimonious and obvious explanation is never as emotionally satisfying as the grand conspiracy, of course… but it’s much more often correct.
Comment by Alex —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
I’ve got an idea – maybe he was finally embarassed by what he said and realized he had to rectify it before making more of an ass of himself. If anyone really believes Bush enjoys kids getting blown up…well, I just feel very sorry for that person.
Comment by spool32 —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
No doubt… maybe he found his sense of decency on the floor of his office after making that speech, and decided to start carrying it around with him instead of using it to prop the door open.
You people are all crazy.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Welcome to Megan McArdle readers!
Comment by Dimithicon —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Guys, as a card carrying member of the GOP I have to tell you….we’re not that smart.
Seriously, I’m not trying to troll and I’m not going to pick any fights about large topics of disagreement. I won’t even touch Pete Stark or the orignial quote that started all this. I’m speaking only to the idea that someone is pulling all the strings behind all these events and is doing so with blackmail or some other nefarious tool.
I have to say that logic and reason just don’t support that conclusion. If the GOP had that type of ’speak this sentence and they will follow your every command’ power Bush’s approval rating wouldn’t be 24%. Not only that but the GOP wouldn’t be on the defensive and in line to lose the presidency in ‘08. For how ever pissed off you guys are at the GOP, his own base is almost as pissed off for their own set of reasons.
Bottom line: I have NO IDEA what Bush is thinking in some cases. And I have to say the same for Pete Stark. I have no idea what made him change his tune and apologize so emphatically on the floor of the house. I don’t know if it was the congressional approval rating that forced Pelosi’s hand and made her push him to apologize.
But I think it’s sad that it’s immediately assumed that someone, somewhere, is keeping him quiet through coersion.
The loss of good faith when arguing across ideological lines has been one of the worst developments of the last 25+ years. And both parties are to blame for it.
Just my two cents. I hope everyone here has a good day.
Comment by Rob —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
Where’s my tin-foil hat?
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
wow–three such honest truth-speakers, one after another. how fortunate we are to have their company!
i’ll tell you why i don’t buy your story, and why i don’t think occam’s razor cuts any ice in this case.
if what you were saying were true–if he just came to his senses and said “oops, my rhetoric got a little carried away there”, then he would have given a very different speech.
this was not the speech of someone who had just realized he spoke out of turn, and wanted to walk it back a bit.
this was the speech of someone who had been emotionally gang-raped, and was in fear for his life.
now you ’splain that to me–explain to me why a very powerful grown man started crying on the floor–and then i’ll put away all of my suspicions about blackmail and threats.
Comment by dpwiener —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
All these conspiracy and blackmail theories seem highly over-wrought. The most logical explanation is the most straighforward one: Stark went over the top, in the minds of much of the general public, when he asserted that Bush was having our soldiers’ heads blown off for his amusement. Most people (including myself) are simply not going to believe that Bush or any other President derives pleasure from the deaths of U.S. military personnel who are engaged in a war. And that’s irrespective of whether the public agrees or disagrees with the policies which resulted in that war.
So Republicans brought forth a censure motion, and many Democrats (especially those who were recently elected from comparatively conservative districts) were put in a bind. They could circle the wagons around Stark and suffer the political consequences in their districts, or they could throw Stark under the bus. Not wanting to do either (after all, they are politicians), they came up with a third option: Quietly let Stark know that he MUST apologize or else they’d vote for the censure motion.
For Stark, apologizing was the least bad alternative. Being formally censured would be worse, and would also inflict significant political damage on his Democratic colleagues regardless of which way they voted. This way the Democrats could vote down the censure (thereby pleasing one segment of their base), but Stark’s immediate apology after the vote provided political cover against charges that they were condoning his remarks.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
look–this is also not the first time that someone has crossed the bush machine and been reduced to blubbering apology.
cheney shot a poor bastard in the face–and they made the poor bastard apologize.
john dilulio groveled. john snow groveled. every single person who crosses them is forced to grovel.
yup. just occam’s razor here.
Comment by Dash —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
Wow this is some impressive conspiracy theorizing. The best kind too because it’s so damn sincere.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
The reason I think they leaned on him is that he didn’t give the typical speech of somebody who said something he now regrets and wants wants to wiggle out of it. Usually there’s some sort of “I regret if anybody thought….I have always stood for….some of my best friends….I remain committed….blah blah.” This one was much more personal, bowing before the Emperor and his family. And Stark really degraded himself at the end of it, something about him being insignificant.
It didn’t sound like a guy trying to pull his foot out of his mouth. It sounded like a guy at a show trial.
And as kid bitzer said, the guy that Cheney shot apologized. There’s an insistence on “Please, sir, may I have another?” when you cross this gang.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Why not? No one’s suggesting that he has a blackmail file on every member of the public and is coercing them all to respond correctly on approval polls.
I’m not quite buying into the blackmail explanation, but when you have a president who refuses to accept any meaningful limits or oversight on his surveillance powers, it’s not so loony to wonder what’s behind extraordinary cave-ins by his political opponents.
Comment by IOZ —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
Why shouldn’t the President enjoy watching kids get blown up? Haven’t you people read Suetonius? Education these days, I tell you.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
wait–since when is it “conspiracy-theorizing” to allege that politicians pressure each other?
if you catch me claiming that oswald didn’t shoot kennedy, or that the towers were brought down by pre-planted bombs, then you can sling around your ‘conspiracy theory’ shit.
what i’m talking about is political dirty-tricks *of the very sort we know they already play*.
so give it a rest with the tin-foil nonsense–nobody is talking about bending spoons with their minds. this is just about normal dirty politics.
god, if you losers really *are* visitors from megan’s site, no *wonder* the level of discourse there is so pathetically inane.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
I still remember this Dana Milbank column and the “Fish Called Wanda” comparison.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
hey, megan’s mindless minions–
read kc’s link from 44. here’s what dilulio said after earlier calling the bush regime a bunch of “mayberry machiavellians”:
“My criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and I am deeply remorseful.”
yeah, that wasn’t forced at all. he just suddenly found his sense of decency.
losers.
Comment by dpwiener —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
By the way, I have vastly more respect for someone who flat-out apologizes than for someone who issues a mealy-mouthed “I regret that some people who misinterpreted my remarks were offended” type of pseudo-apology.
This was obviously a very difficult and emotional thing for Stark to do. All politicians have large egos, and apologizing does not come easily. Stark was under pressure from his fellow Democrats, and he ended up breaking down and crying when he finished his statement. But the emotional toll would likely have been even worse for him had the House passed the censure motion. So as bad as it was for him, it still remained his least-bad alternative.
I also don’t read too much significance into his “become as insignificant as I should be” choice of words. Just as with his original statement, that’s sometimes what happens when you speak extemporaneously while in a highly emotional state.
Comment by Dimithicon —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
“…this was the speech of someone who had been emotionally gang-raped, and was in fear for his life. ”
It’s awfully nice that you managed to not only glean from his speach his state of mind, but also the fact that he must be fearing for his very life. You must teach members of the justice system this novel trick of yours someday.
Again, I can’t speak to what his reasons were. He might have even gotten away scot clean if he hadn’t mentioned the president getting his amusement from servicemen being killed. But given that the congressional approval rating is at 11%, I’m guessing Pelosi wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of seeing it driven down to single digits when his quote got replayed around the country.
Perhaps he got a few letters from the family’s of servicemen who actually believed in what their children were doing and didn’t appreciate his standing on their dead bodies to take a cheap shot at the Commander in Chief.
Perhaps he just saw that quote as it was written and realized what a fantastic weapon he had given to the GOP that they could use to bludgeon the entire democratic party. Maybe he thought the best way to diffuse the entire situation was to issue an over the top apology that took that weapon back out of his enemies hands.
I’m in no position to say and neither are you. But to immediately write off all possibilities of this nature is to relegate oneself to the fringes of rational thought and reason.
And none of your questions refute any of the points I made about the GOP being in dire straits the way it is. Bush can’t simultaneously be the dumbest president in history and a mind boggling genius who controls all members of the gov’t with his personal whims. These are mutually exclusive opinions and I wish you’d see them as such.
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
Gee, maybe the “they” who “got to” Stark were the outraged American people who inundated offices with calls expressing how they thought he went way over the line of responsibility with that kind of rhetoric. Pelosi and Emanuel just made him aware of the possible political consequences to the Democrat Party which is the most important thing to them in the world.
Comment by Rob —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
kid bitzer, et al.: The reason you are being criticized is because the discussion here is focused on how Rep. Stark arrived at his apology: Was he forced to do so via dirty tricks? Was he blackmailed? Did the aliens Kucinich witnessed tell him to do so in a dream? etc.
Shouldn’t the discussion rather be on what an awful a thing the Representative said in the first place?
Comment by jim2 —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:34 pm
For whatever it might be worth, in 1990:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3DE1E3DF937A3575BC0A966958260
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
“Shouldn’t the discussion rather be on what an awful a thing the Representative said in the first place?”
no. now that you mention it, it really shouldn’t.
because, to begin with, however awful stark’s statement was, it was far less awful than what bush has done to our country and to iraq by lying us into a needless war. awful words are just awful words. bush’s actions have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
and the other reason that i am not going to waste a goddamn *second* clutching my pearls about what an “awful” thing stark said, is because i am still waiting to hear anyone from the rightwing noise machine start a discussion about what “awful things” o’reilly and limbaugh and beck and coulter say day in and day out.
look, asshole–shouldn’t the discussion rather be about what an awful thing beck said the other day when he said that people in california were losing their houses to forest fire because they were america-haters?
you get back to me after the house brings a resolution condemning beck for saying that. and after the house brings a resolution condemning falwell for saying that america deserved 9/11 because of the gays. and when they bring resolutions blaming every other hate-filled republican for all of the “awful” things they say.
Comment by Wildmonk —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
Has it ever occurred to anyone else that maybe the Dems aren’t being rolled but are simply doing what they honestly know they have to do? Seriously – despite all of the partisan rhetoric and political posturing before the ‘06 elections, it seems that nearly everyone – Dem and Repub alike – who confronts the classified Sitreps summarizing the state of the war on terror end up supporting the need for aggressive action and the ability to monitor the phone lines.
I hear that the Dems are being rolled, that they are “afraid of the voters,” and now that people are being “intimidated.” It seems like the folks here (and in many other forums) will use almost any wild theory to explain away their fears rather than simply admitting that we really are faced with a significant Islamofascist threat.
Maybe the most straightforward explanation is the right one.
Comment by Rob —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere…
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
Kid Bitzer, try to understand that Beck is an admitted opinion disseminator (no masquerding journalist) on a show and a private citizen.
Stark made his out of line statement on the floor of the House as an acting Congressman.
Comment by IOZ —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
What’s an acting congressman? Is that like a female impersonator? Hey, Betty!
Comment by buzz —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
Wow. So what’s it like being crazy? Maybe it finally sunk into Stark that it is entirely possible to politically disagree with someone without them being the anti-Christ and that he stepped over that line. The idea that Bush sits in his office gleefully rubbing his hands together every time the US suffers a casualty is delusional and idiotic. You may disagree with Bush’s reasoning but stamping your foot up and down, screaming about him being evil doesn’t make it so. Just how do you people survive in the real world?
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
Ioz, oh you’re just so hilarious.
It means he was exercising the powers and duties of his office when he spoke like a deranged and angry drunk and should be held to a higher standard than a newsertainment host.
Comment by jlw —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
Jeez! Struck a chord, I see. There’s some famous line about protesting too much–need to Google it to be sure, though.
Comment by Rob —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
It’s been fun guys, especially you, kid bitzer. Take’r easy. By the way, I found my tin-foil hat!
It was behind the noise machine all along…
Comment by MarkJ —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
I know precisely why Pete Stark crumbled like overripe bleu cheese:
Dick Cheney cornered Stark in one of the congressional shower rooms and did a “Shawshank Redemption” on him:
Cheney: Hey, anybody come at you yet? Anybody get to you yet?
[Pete looks at him in puzzlement]
Cheney: Hey, we all need friends inside the Beltway. I could be a friend to you.
[Stark slinks away]
Cheney: Hey… Hard to get. I like that…
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
When somebody gives a speech that you’d expect at a Commie show trial, after crossing folks with an illegal wiretap operation, is it really so crazy to wonder if he was intimidated?
Comment by Tim —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
Obviously the people pointing out that we do not know what the various players are truly thinking of feeling are correct. Taken to the extreme this is so for evey “fact” out there. It isn’t a genuine argument against speculation. Everything said here and anywhere amounts to nothing, but opinion in the end. Including what I say now. I hope you can see where this is going and why it is tedious at best and downright pointlessly obstructionist to raise the canard of “so and so didn’t qualify their remark…” and on and on. So it is fair game to speculate on the hidden forces to what we see. Its how we grow and mature in our understanding of things.
So personally I would speculate that Mr. Stark was indeed pressured and seemed quite under duress. I would also speculate that his original comment was a more accuate reflection of his inner views. I would further posit that he likely regrets saying it in such a “for private conversation” manner. I will admit to being saddened and dejected by this outcome. I also feel like it is another confirmation of the de facto one party system we have. I was very pleased to hear Stark’s original remark not because I believe the president enjoys killing people literally. That interpretation of the comment, I feel, would require a very simplistic and disingenious logic. I was pleased because the statement was the truth, for me, that this is a criminal act of hideous proportions that we have committed, but we won’t face it.
As far as Bush’s pleasure he has demonstrated that he is at least indifferent to killing people on may occasions. Most famously perhaps his joking about doing so while govenor when he killed Tammy Faye. People do not like ruthless cause and effect as it makes it too hard to avoid our distasteful responsibilities, but by one lever tipping the other he did indeed kill her and found the whole affair obviously amusing. I do not know if he really enjoyed it, but his actions then and over and over again since certainly do not lead me to feel like he has much concern for other people’s lives.
I suppose the saddest thing is how we must remove all things distasteful even and perhaps especially honesty.
Comment by brucedene —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
56: As a self-identified humanist, I doubt Stark would see much point in calling anyone the antichrist. I like the way he speaks, actually — he’s extemporaneous, and somewhat divergent but not the way most politicians are. Sometimes the first turn of phrase that comes to you isn’t perfect. That’s hardly a reason to castigate the poor bastard. “You people” survive in the real world by understanding things like that, and cutting people a little slack.
Comment by dpwiener —
October 24, 2007 @ 4:47 pm
I find it exceedingly unlikely that he was intimidated by Republicans. From a Republican partisan point of view, why should they want to force or blackmail Stark into apologizing? Do you think either Bush or Congressional Republicans really care that much that Stark made an insulting statement, other than as a way that Republicans could turn it against him and make political hay out of it?
The pressure had to come from other Democrats. They were the ones who were being hurt politically, especially in marginal Congressional districts which will determine control of the House in 2008. So they leaned on Stark behind the scenes to apologize. In that sense he was probably intimidated, by the threat of formal censure and losing his committee positions.
But I doubt that Stark’s exact words were scripted. I think they were derived from the humiliation he was suffering, and the pressure he was under, and perhaps his dismay that at least some of his fellow Democrats had turned on him to save their own skin.
Comment by B Moe —
October 24, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
The same reason he accused the President of starting a war just for fun: he is batshit fucking crazy.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 24, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
The same reason he accused the President of starting a war just for fun
Well, he may not have started it for “fun,” but certainly for ego and profit.
Comment by jim2 —
October 24, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
B Moe may just understand Occam’s Razor.
Comment by Kathleen —
October 24, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
Beck is an admitted opinion disseminator
…
Stark … as an acting Congressman.
I must assume then you vociferously opposed the condemnation of MoveOn’s ad. but yet, for some strange reason, I think not.
Comment by Frank —
October 24, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
Wow Jim this is quite the organized group of trolls. I’ve never seen such a ham handed effort to control a dialog before. The frequent and senseless invocations of William of Occam’s razor were a particularly jarring detail. I think you struck a nerve. Keep up the good work.
Comment by jim2 —
October 24, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
Yes, even going on 700 years later, the good brother still discomforts conspiracy theorists.
Comment by borehole —
October 24, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
>>Gee, maybe the “they†who “got to†Stark were the outraged American people who inundated offices with calls expressing how they thought he went way over the line of responsibility with that kind of rhetoric.
Yeah, I bet that’s it, all the pressure from ordinary Americans, 75% of whom oppose harsh rhetoric and voted in record numbers in last year’s midterms in order to make Pete Stark stop being mean.
Pelosi and Reid are totally in the pocket of Big Ordinary American.
Trackback by meganmcardle.theatlantic.com —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
That was quick…
The anti-war libertarian flirtation with the Democratic party may be even shorter than I expected. Definitely…
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 24, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
I was, prior to reading it, going to suggest the same thing that dpwiener did in #37, as being perfectly sufficient explanation for Stark’s behavior.
I’d also tend to caution that when a whole bunch of people express enthusiasm for a notion in a linear discussion thread, and mostly only some trolls disagree, the temptation for confusing theory about an emotional issue, about which relatively little fact is available to the discussion participants, with known fact, tends to be strong.
That said, I couldn’t say that the more dire theories are surely wrong, of course. Maybe there are some junior Oliver North/Charles Colson clones running around the admin; it would not seem horrifically implausible, even if there’s no particular evidence. Though evidence would be helpful in taking the theory further than theory.
Comment by ran —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Well, Shrub is after all a very sick puppy; a war criminal, torturer and mass murderer who should be answering (along with his co-conspirators) in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Stark’s initial statement was actually pretty mild, though the “for his amusement” part wasn’t helpful. Obviously Dumbya’s indifference to the troops is far less controversial than than his amusement at their decapitation. But if you in the end you haven’t got the balls to stand by what you say, better just not say it.
Comment by sglover —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
What did Hitler get out of his famous bunker sessions, all those times when he’d hover over the maps with their little flags, and harangue his captive audience. I don’t think “amusement” quite applies, but pretty much everyone who knows the history agrees that the Fuhrer got some kind of gratification out of it.
So it is with Bush the Lesser and his Iraq adventure. Hell, the little shitstain is on record observing that the thing that makes a President “great” is waging a war. He was and is just too dim and coddled to realize that once you start a war, victory isn’t assured, not even for America.
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
Look, leftards. Pelosi threatened to put Stark’s nuts in Al Gore’s lockbox, permanently. That’s why he did this. It wasn’t some sinister right-wing operatives working at the behest of Bushitler and the Cheneymonster. She, and Reid, and Emanual gave him a nice sitdown after taking the bottle away from him for a few hours and managed to break through the fog and make him understand that his little tirade made the Party look bad to your average American who may hear what he said. They needed it to be over.
End of story.
Comment by Steve —
October 24, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
Kathleen(68), Moveon is a political action group and not a private individual. Do I really need to explain the difference? The condemnation should have included the NYT too. (For cutting their rates for the ad, essentially taking a position on it)
Comment by Sasha —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
Well I called Congressman Stark’s office before the apology and told them how I supported what he said and expressed the hope that he would not apologize. The lady I spoke to was friendly, confident and assured me he had no intention of apologizing. This was the day before. In no way did I get the impression that they were getting negative feedback. I didn’t sense relief that my comment was positive. There was no stress in her voice when she answered and I would bet dollars to donuts that she was as surprised as I was that he did apologize and did so in such a manner. File that in the “for what it’s worth” column.
Comment by teh —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:08 pm
If Bush does not want people leaping to the conclusion that he sends American soldiers to Iraq for his own amusement, then the best thing for him to do would be to put more time and effort into explaining the real reasons why he is sending soldiers to Iraq.
He used to say that it was to provide security for political reconciliation between the sectarian factions. And of course, there are some other reasons like WMDs that he hasn’t mentioned in awhile either. What does he think the mission in Iraq is about anymore? How does he feel about the ethnic cleansing taking place in Baghdad in other ethnically mixed areas in Iraq? I genuinely have no idea.
I’m sure a lot of the conservative commenters in this thread think it has something to do with crushing terrorism in Iraq or something like that, but does Bush himself genuinely believe that? How could I possibly know? Maybe he should do a better job communicating.
Comment by Dude Lovington —
October 24, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
I love how IOZ’s point that someone who aspires to become the closest thing to Alexander The Great our current “civilization” has to offer might actually be greedy for the power to use the might of the US military as his personal plaything MIGHT not be all that insane is being completely ignored by all these self-styled champions of reason who’ve descended to tell us how KA-RAZY Pete Stark is.
No, our President could never, ever derive joy from sending poor Meskins, negroes and the white trash he styles himself so lucratively after off to die for the glory of his legacy. No American President could ever just be a power-mad cocksucker who does things for the edification of his own ego. It’s not like Bush has documented Oedipal leanings or anything. Nawp, it’s Stark who’s the crazy one.
At least the Repubs and Dems in office right now are being paid handsomely to pretend our system isn’t a failure and a sham and a big god damn puppet show for the clapping retard that is the American people. What’s the rest of youse excuse?
USA! USA! USA!
Comment by Math_Mage —
October 25, 2007 @ 12:11 am
This is a hilarious thread. Between the conspiracy theorists and the people who thought that Stark shouldn’t apologize for slander, I am left breathless with laughter. What, because Stark apologized more fully than he should have, therefore he was terrorized into apologizing, and furthermore the terror was created by the Bush administration and had nothing to do with the Democrats being angry with him for alienating their voter base with obvious slander? And note, his apology wasn’t for the slander itself; it was for the people who were offended. What’s the standard followup for “I’m sorry that x group was offended”? Somehow the line “but that’s what I believe” comes to mind. I don’t consider that a wholehearted apology by any measure. And it’s not like it’s the first time he’s overstepped the bounds of reasonable debate, either.
As for the Bush = Hitler crowd – you wouldn’t be here, commenting, in possibly the most anti-Bush country in the developed world, if Bush bore any real semblance to Hitler. As for the “what makes a President great is fighting a war” comment, he’s off by one word. One of the defining characteristics of a MEMORABLE presidency is fighting a war. We remember Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, even Nixon. Also, source, please? Given the tendency of both left and right to oversimplify or misinterpret comments made by politicians, I’d like to check the primary source material myself. And my google searches aren’t turning anything up.
teh: I think that Bush aims to crush terrorism in Iraq, and to help Iraq out of the quagmire resulting from two decades of Saddam as well as the inevitable muddle that is guerrilla warfare. Why? Well, let’s see…quotations from Bush in 2003 that say just that, and a government analysis in 2005 of the situation in Iraq based on those same goals:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html
Yeah, I think I can say that our presence in Iraq “has something to do with crushing terrorism in Iraq or something like that.” And I think that I can say that Bush feels the same way. It’s because I read.
But then, because I take the trouble to actually read government documents, I must be buying into the government’s coverup of some huge conspiracy…right guys? It’s all about the oil (which only one American company has touched in five years, and that caused a huge outcry from the left), or turning the Middle East into a protectorate of the US, or some equally senseless theory. Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to Occam’s Razor, as derided as it is by the posters here.
Comment by teh —
October 25, 2007 @ 1:27 am
I’ll admit that my comment had a bit of intellectual laziness in it. What I should have said is that his statements about what the mission is don’t bear much relation to the reality of Iraq and I do not think someone with access to so much information as him can sincerely believe some of what he is saying.
Why should I think he is being serious about reconciliation when he ignores that Iraqi leaders tell their own people that it isn’t happening, and there is almost no tangible progress towards it? Why should I take his assertions about turning back Al-Qaeda seriously when he doesn’t even correctly identify who they are? (He asserts that they had essentially conquered Anbar 8 months ago. Sure, and those heavily armed Sunni militias that drove them out at almost at will recently had no control. But he claimed they were one.)
Comment by Steve —
October 25, 2007 @ 1:30 am
Math_Mage these lefties here are out of their fucking minds. We can laugh at them but it’s getting to the point where it’s dangerous. They are enemies every bit as mich as al qaida is at this point. The global Left is openly allying themselves with the Islamists against the West too. They are the enemy within.
There is a sickness of the mind on the loose and it’s highly virulent. BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) is like HIV whereas it leaves the body, in this case the mind, vulnerable to other pathologies. These lefties openly hate their own civilization and work to undermine it from within and embrace an enemy who would love to torture their children in front of them before they kill them last. Which is exactly the fate of all these foolish lefties if they succeed in their mission in undermining and weakening the West and America enough to allow the waiting barbarians in. They will be the first to die.
The lefties think they are just using the Islamos for the same concurrent, temporary purposes. But in the end the Islamos are stronger and will destroy their allies of convenience when the time comes.
Liberlaism really is a mental disorder. But I insist that phrase be modified to read “leftists”. Because there really are very few true liberals left. They are like pandas in zoos.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 25, 2007 @ 1:52 am
these lefties here are out of their fucking minds. We can laugh at them but it’s getting to the point where it’s dangerous. They are enemies every bit as mich as al qaida is at this point. The global Left is openly allying themselves with the Islamists against the West too. They are the enemy within.
So, what do you propose doing about us?
Oh, and you think I’m a lefty? Ask me about taxes, guns, minimum wage, zoning, etc. Then we’ll see if you still think I’m a lefty.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 25, 2007 @ 2:30 am
It is worth reinforcing that we know Stark’s interpretation to be true, or at least that we have good evidence in its favor. We know beyond any shadow of a doubt that informed commentary of any kind is almost always dismissed from Bush’s and Cheney’s deliberations, if it threatens to challenge their preferences. We know from multiple personal reports (and some public demonstrations) that Bush and Cheney take pleasure in humiliating others and forcing them into shows of submission. We know that Bush is very interested in spectacles – he likes to see and be seen in dramatic situations.
Given that they are not conducting the war and occupation with any concern for overall efficiency, best practices, or any other usual measure of competency, given that they like to hoard information and relish secrets, given that they don’t care about others’ interior lives, given that they are bullies, given Bush’s notoriously short attention span and concern for the visceral, Stark’s conclusion is at the most a very mild reach of deductive leap. There is strong circumstantial evidence in its favor, and none at all against it.
Comment by B Moe —
October 25, 2007 @ 6:51 am
Like getting them to crawl under the desk and suck their dicks? No, wait, that was the other guy.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 25, 2007 @ 7:29 am
As a guy, I like getting blow jobs from chicks. I’d appreciate it if you would not make that harder by talking as if the act were something onerous and disreputable. Gives the ladies mixed messages.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 25, 2007 @ 7:38 am
Come on, Thoreau. Surely by now you know that positions on those issues are irrelevant to the modern definitions of “left” and “liberal”. The only thing that matters (especially to anyone who uses the term “BDS”) is whether you properly worship Our Leader.
Comment by erblack2 —
October 25, 2007 @ 8:31 am
On a personal level, I have no bone to pick with most of the conservative commenters, whom I found to be decorous and topical, at least to the extent that they chose the topics (propriety of Starks remarks and delusional thinking). I can accept ideological differences, but not your party’s subversion of what I consider to be core human rights and traditional American values (i.e., torture, renditions, habeas c., preemptive war, warrantless spying, etc.) Those differences will continue to divide us, and they’re so endemic to our beliefs about the rights of man and the limits of government to infringe those rights, that they can never be open to compromise. Hence, our abhorrence of the Republican party and our disillusionment with the Democratic party, the original substance of Henley’s post (in conjunction with last September’s tirade, to which it is linked). That’s the topic you didn’t address.
Steve, #83: You’re a classic example of what’s meant by the term “bedwetter”. Thanks for demonstrating that by far the most bizarre conspiracy theories are the inventions of wingnut paranoics.
Thoreau: Offering your conservative bona fides?
Comment by borehole —
October 25, 2007 @ 8:33 am
>>They are enemies every bit as mich[sic] as al qaida is at this point[sick].
I’m a huge threat to you and yours, yet you don’t do anything but bitch about it. Standing idly by while I’m undermining the West–for SHAME, Steve.
Jesus Christ, Thoreau, a guy throws that at your feet and your response is that you’re not really that far to the left? I’ve got the collected works of P.J. O’Rourke in hardcover and even I know all this 5th-column shit is just that, shit.
Somebody says they hate faggots, you don’t show ‘em your stash of Hustlers.
Comment by erblack2 —
October 25, 2007 @ 8:38 am
Or should I say, a ‘qualified offering’ of your conservative bona fides?
Comment by Math_Mage —
October 25, 2007 @ 8:46 am
teh: Ok, so 8 months ago according to your data, Anbar was in big trouble. Now it’s almost secured, thanks to the Awakening. Petraeus is working with the REAL leaders atm, the local sheikhs, and all the brutality of the insurgency is persuading the civilian population there to extend a hand to the US (not that the brutality is a good thing). Even Al-Qaeda is admitting it’s losing. A parallel awakening is happening in the Shi’a population. Iraq is still a mess, and nobody’s placing bets on how it’ll react once AQ is gone, but success is perfectly possible there despite Bush’s mistakes and the shameful actions that have happened in Iraq like Abu Ghraib/Gitmo.
Steve: You just gave them ammunition.
Bruce: Most presidents (and most people that can handle the pressure) like being seen in dramatic settings. How is this evidence of anything?
On the Iraq front – shortsightedness is not the same thing as maliciousness. And given that Bush has repeatedly given reasons going to Iraq that have nothing to do with peoples’ heads getting blown off, and given that everyone connected to Iraq has proceeded to act as if those reasons were the truth based on the evidence of the time, I don’t think Stark’s allegation holds water.
Oh, and circumstantial evidence rarely wins the case.
Comment by Lord Dudington —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:26 am
Oh mercy, the measure of a memorable Presidency is blowing lots of brown people up, eh? For the sake of my own peace of mind, I must assume that you are only a clever parody of a frothing freeper and not a real live boy who holds such an asinine and childish ideal of what a memorable Presidency looks like, but alas, pinheads like you are all too real. I bet you jerk off to the opening speech of Patton, don’t you toolbag?
Please, I beg of you, you know doubt lard-laden land monster, please organize your brethren and try to round me and mine up into camps so we won’t threaten your beloved homeland with our lack of deferrence to Fearless Leader. It’s high time we got a 2k7 version of the Keystone Cops for our amusement, and the Border Patrol cretins just don’t give me that level of amusement, so please, do something about all us scary, dangerous liberals, Rambo.
Comment by Lord Dudington —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:30 am
PS, lol at all the “Islamos” talk. Y’all sure do like trying to come up with new and better racial slurs, doncha?
It’s a shame you guys are so humorless (at least intentionally) and incapable of thinking on a deeper level than that of an 8th grader (and that’s being charitable), if you had any imagination at all you’d make great comic book writers.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:31 am
While we’re wielding Occam’s razor, will any of our guest laborers put forward evidence to support the claim that most Americans were outraged by Stark’s original comments? Since the argument is that Stark and the Dems were simply reacting to a groundswell of public revulsion, there needs to be evidence of – a groundswell of public revulsion.
Comment by Littlepig —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Damn, I’m sure impressed at Math_Mage. He knows more about the war than Alan frickkin’ Greenspan, who in his poor delusion thinks the war is about oil. What the heck would he know?
Sure it’s about oil. It’s not about stealing it per se (Math_Mage’s underlying assumption – for somebody with Math in their handle, one would think the axioms of their argument would be more explicitly stated), it’s about setting up a Western (U.S. specifically) friendly country in the Arab Middle east, effectively a U.S. protectorate. If the Wolfowitz/Kristol/PNAC crowd were correct in their assumptions about ‘candy and flowers’, it would have been a tremendous success. Unfortunately their intelligence was lousy, and it turns out there is not an American businessman inside every Iraqi yearning to breathe free. Thus our current position.
And I take the overused invocation of Occam’s Razaor (more formally, the Principle of Parsimony) as being an indicator that that is a favorite of Ms. McArdle. Unfortunately William’s principle does not work so well on false assumptions. There was no huge public outcry over Pete Stark’s comments – I’m sure the vast majority of American people would have answered “Who’s Pete Stark?” to a question regarding the comments. So the public pressure angle is ridiculous. Perhaps a few constituents with dead children took their rage out on Mr. Stark, and that moved him (although Mr. Stark is demonstrably more concerned with the soldiers’ welfare than Mr. Bush, see abuse of stop-loss and combat term extension), but a grand upswell of condemnation did not exist. So there is nothing in that assumption subject to Occam’s Razor.
Another questionable assumption of the Occam’s Razor set is the “Stark will make Congressional approval even lower!” argument. Again, there is an unspoken assumption here, that the 11% is a result of not agreeing enough with Republicans (despite their electoral setbacks in 2006). As Glenn Greenwald has noted repeated in his Salon columns, polls that further delve into the why of the low approval ratings discover that it is the *inaction* of Democrats to push back against Republican fiat, not that they have pushed too much. Once again, the unstated assumption of the argument is false, so no Occam’s Razor action there, either.
As to what actually happened, I expect Pelosi, either out of sheer Democratic habit of being cowed by GOP tempests in teapots or just plain stupid in accepting some GOP quid pro quo ala the confirmation of Judge Southwick (”sure we’ll compromise with you”, Senator Boehner said with fingers crossed), put the hammer down on Stark. Democratic Congressional pressure was put on him. Stupid Democratic pressure, of the abused wife variety. Stark was probably upset because he discovered to his horror there is no opposition party to the Bush Administration, only Republican and Republican-Lite. But yes, he was beaten down, as his words show. He got carried away, but calls of “slander” and “reasonable public debate” in this thread are ridiculous. Republicans commit slander on a daily basis in both Houses (e.g. the S-CHIP poster by the ya-hoo GOP House member the other day), and “reasonable debate” always reminds me of the dulcet tones on John Yoo as he calmly explains how there really is no such legal entity as torture.
Nope, Pete Stark caved because his party betrayed him, and betrayal is upsetting. I would not be surprised to see the GOP come back Congressionally in 2008, and don’t see a Democratic President as a sure thing by any means. Democrats have too bad a case of Caspar Milquetoast Syndrome these days.
Comment by Jeff in Texas —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:45 am
Have I mentioned how fucking stupid McMegan and her readers are? No? Well, they are really fucking stupid.
No way a man who asks his chief of staff to go fetch everyone hamburgers could be a power-hungry dick-swinging bully? No way the man who gleefully mocks a condemned woman’s plea for mercy could be a sadistic bastard? No way that a war that at last count had about a dozen thoroughly discredited reasons for being waged might just be for the benefit of the President and his cronies and no other reason? “Amusement” may not be the most precise word, but it’s closer than “weapons of mass destruction” for damn sure.
Comment by borehole —
October 25, 2007 @ 9:59 am
Lord D: Be sure to wear something dark when they round us up. Potato chip grease NEVER comes out.
Comment by jim2 —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:00 am
At #28, I asserted no such thing.
#37 also made no such assertion, best I can tell.
Mine (#28) required only one element, Stark acting in his own best interests. Maybe he was embarrassed upon seeing the video himself later, rather than being caught up in the heat of the moment. Even if his was not an honest apology, he had apologized on the floor of Congress after a similar sort of mistake in 1990. In both cases, he exposed himself and his party needlessly to PR risk, for example, by giving ammo to political opponents next election.
#37 required only two elements. That is, some Dem power (say, Pelosi, the Speaker) saw the political risk (e.g., Republican censure motion that would injur Dems however they voted), and acted within the scope of a Party leader to eliminate it. Still no conspiracy needed.
Neither of the above require any pre-existing or even developing “groundswell of public revulsion”.
It’s even possible that the Repubs might have wanted to save it (or the censure vote records) for next election.
Comment by jim2 —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:03 am
I neglected to identify that my comment at #99 was in reply to #95.
Sorry about that.
Comment by borehole —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:04 am
>>shortsightedness is not the same thing as maliciousness.
When you do a shitty job planning a war that wasn’t called for in the first place, yeah, it kinda is.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:12 am
borehole-
I like shattering their illusions. But, yeah, I can see how it could come across as caving to him.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:16 am
I’m having fun over at Megan McArdle’s blog:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/that_was_quick.php#comment-737630
Comment by borehole —
October 25, 2007 @ 10:42 am
Thoreau, thanks for not pointing out how I did the exact same thing in the course of taking you to task.
Typical currently-identifying-with-liberals-out-of-sheer-disgust-with-conservatives hypocrisy on my part.
Comment by Lord Dudington —
October 25, 2007 @ 11:10 am
The best thing is, I’m not even a liberal, I’m over here because IOZ linked here, and IOZ isn’t really a liberal, is he? I wouldn’t say so, and I don’t self-identify as such either, mostly because I loathe the idea of politics as a spectator sport, and generally anyone who self-identifies as either conservative or liberal these days with any kind of enthusiasm is basically just an excruciatingly annoying homer for their particular team. Following politics in this country when you haven’t attached your superego to one team or another is a lot like watching the rape scene in Straw Dogs.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
October 25, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
“Amusement†may not be the most precise word, but it’s closer than “weapons of mass destruction†for damn sure.
“Minutes before President Bush’s solemn announcement that the US military were in action against Iraq he vigorously pumped his fist and declared: ‘I feel good.’”
Comment by M. Simon —
October 25, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
I don’t see any one here asking the question:
Who killed William Burroughs?
Why are people here afraid to touch the subject?
What have they got on you guys that keeps you silent?
Comment by Math_Mage —
October 25, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
Lord Dudington:
“Oh mercy, the measure of a memorable Presidency is blowing lots of brown people up, eh? For the sake of my own peace of mind, I must assume that you are only a clever parody of a frothing freeper and not a real live boy who holds such an asinine and childish ideal of what a memorable Presidency looks like, but alas, pinheads like you are all too real. I bet you jerk off to the opening speech of Patton, don’t you toolbag?”
Hey, I never said that I liked that presidents who fight wars get remembered more often than presidents who don’t. I didn’t even say that there was a causal relationship, only a correlation. Nor did I say that memorable was good – did everyone like Nixon? No. But he was remembered more than, say, Grover Cleveland. Does this make me a rabid war-supporter? No.
Oh, and in response to the random ad hominem – I’ve never seen Patton all the way through, and I’m too skinny for my own good. And unlike Steve, I don’t see the people here as enemies of America, so please DON’T try to pin that label on me.
Mr Henley:
“While we’re wielding Occam’s razor, will any of our guest laborers put forward evidence to support the claim that most Americans were outraged by Stark’s original comments? Since the argument is that Stark and the Dems were simply reacting to a groundswell of public revulsion, there needs to be evidence of – a groundswell of public revulsion.”
If the Dems waited for a groundswell of public revulsion, it’d be too late to do much about it. I don’t recall making any argument of that sort – and who said people have to be offended before you apologize? Everyone here is making a mountain out of a molehill with Stark’s apology, seriously. “I’m sorry” != conspiracy to silence the left.
Littlepig:
“Sure it’s about oil. It’s not about stealing it per se (Math_Mage’s underlying assumption – for somebody with Math in their handle, one would think the axioms of their argument would be more explicitly stated), it’s about setting up a Western (U.S. specifically) friendly country in the Arab Middle east, effectively a U.S. protectorate. If the Wolfowitz/Kristol/PNAC crowd were correct in their assumptions about ‘candy and flowers’, it would have been a tremendous success. Unfortunately their intelligence was lousy, and it turns out there is not an American businessman inside every Iraqi yearning to breathe free. Thus our current position.”
So democracy can’t be an end in itself – it’s gotta be for some selfish reason, right? Why can’t it be “establish a democracy capable of standing on its own in the Middle East, and BY THE WAY maybe they’ll sell us some oil”? Besides, if all we wanted was oil, why couldn’t we have just bought it from Saddam? We’ve got the cash to do it.
Comment by RatPoison —
October 31, 2007 @ 1:34 am
It is because the the dickless little shit Stark is the supreme cocksucker that represents pussy democrat cocksuckers from SFO..