Role models are fine things. And every kid needs heroes — people whose bravery, courage, compassion, and accomplishments set the standards toward which a child might strive.
Hell, American history is flush with such icons: Washington, Lincoln, Joe DiMaggio, Billy Jean King, both drummers from .38 special…
And now, courtesy of Wings of Justice and the staff at Buzzflash, I present you with the newest American hero: Pete Stark:
Perhaps Congressman Pete “Fortney” Stark was a bit overtaken with outrage at the endless White House lies as the GOP loyally backed Bush’s assault on the health of children in his veto of the SCHIP program. But who could blame him, after years of slanderous, slime-filled assaults on anyone who gets in their way?
As an analogue, think Bill O’Reilly, racist; Rush Limbaugh, racist, hater of the troops; Tony Snow, racist deserving of his cancer; Dick Cheney, too bad he wasn’t killed at the attack on Bagram!; Ann Coulter, tranny, xenophobe; Giuliani, crazy wife abuser; Fred Thompson, possibly gay — and if not, married to a hussy; Michelle Malkin, inauthentic minority who shoots pingpong balls from her cooter; John Roberts, a frothing epileptic whose judgment needs to be questioned, and whose young son might be gay; Jeff Gannon, faux reporter who speaks from his GAY PORN COCK OF LIES; Bill Bennett, racist and degenerate gambler; Joseph Lieberman, blackfaced; Michael Steel, blackfaced; Condi Rice, inauthentically black; Clarence Thomas, angry self hating black; Scott McClellan, possibly gay; Matt Sanchez, GAY PORN COCK OF LIES, 2; Samuel Alito, colonizer of teh uterus; and so on.
Now just change the ideological affiliation, and you get their point.
So Stark finally told it like it is on the House floor.
— here, please note that “told it like it is” can be loosely translated as, “made a ’slanderous, slime-filled assault’ on the President — essentially accusing him of sending off young men to die on a whim because, well, Grand Theft Auto just no longer gives him that rush” —
In the incomprehensible double standard of modern day politics, Republicans can lie with abandon in Congressional remarks, on the stump and in the media,
— please note that “lie with abandon,” used conventionally, is telling a known untruth without fear of consequences; whereas in this instance, it is used rather non-conventionally to mean “just keep on disagreeing with what the Progressives (and John Cole, Andrew Sullivan, etc.) insist must be the case,” a not unimportant distinction —
but Democrats are bullied into apologizing for telling the truth. So, Nancy Pelosi, increasingly a “leader” who prefers to be recognized as being “civilized” and “polite” rather than fighting for her party’s positions, rebuked Stark instead of expressing revulsion at the hundreds of billions of our dollars for Bush’s War and his high dudgeon over more money for medical care that our children need.
Again, translation: “Bush’s War” = “war fought while Bush was President, though he had the near unanimous backing of Congress.” And “more money for medical care that our children need” = “refused to see a program designed to help children extended to a middle class entitlement, one clearly intended as a stepping stone toward nationalizing health care, particularly when many of the current program’s beneficiaries are not taking advantage of the program as it exists.”
Oh, and the implication that Bush is cutting off such funds = an unwillingness to expand the program 5 fold.
For the children, ostensibly. But really so that their parents can buy commercial property, send their kids to private school, and have “the rich” pay for it.
Though, not the really, really rich. That’s what tax shelters are for, after all.
The Republicans, wallowing in the gutter of attack politics, stand by their own.
— See, for instance, Trent Lott, or Duke Cunninghum, or that dude with the wide stance; as opposed to, say, Sandy Berger or the Clintons or Harry Reid –
Pelosi put a knife in Pete Stark’s back for daring to utter words that get to the heart of the GOP duplicity.
As a reminder, those words were these:
You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.â€Â
Speaking Truth to Power? More like Crying out for Lithium and a massage with a happy ending.
Stark is no shrinking violet.
Indeed. More’s the pity, too — because a shrinking violet doesn’t have a tongue –
We interviewed him once shortly after he almost got into fisticuffs with a Republican half his age after a GOP committee — during the Hastert reign — wouldn’t allow Democrats to participate in the drafting of a bill.
Hmm. Paging Dr. Caric. Dr Ric Caric. Hypermasculinist bluster in examination room 2.
You may want to bring along Dave Niewert and Jim Henley, too — because the intervention could get physical, from the sound of things. And you know how aggressive and fearsome those hypermasculints can get when cornered.
Probably played an organized sport or some such. The troglodyte.
All one has to do is to look at the Bush video from 2004 when he continually mocks his own lies about trying to find WMDs to provide evidence that the Iraq War dead — ours and theirs — is not so sacred that Bush won’t use it for a few laughs.
Sure. He was mocking his own lies. Not mocking that he’s been constantly accused of lying by people who are so fevered in their hatreds that they can no longer recognize a lie from a disagreement; or a difference in policy opinion as anything other than an affront to TRUTH and RIGHTEOUSNESS by people so very evil that, the good Lord willing, they’ll be rooted out of the body politic like a festering malignancy.
Stark pierced through the fictional Bushevik propaganda narrative that runs a parallel with the suppressed grim reality of the “war on terror” and the neglect of our domestic needs.
Hmm. Let’s see: the Frost kids are covered under SCHIP as currently organized; and those towers did come down, right?
Or am I missing something here? Is not the economy strong and stable — despite an ongoing war and concerns over oil prices? Is not the jobless rate relatively low? How are students performing in school? How many new families are on the road to home ownership?
What, pray tell, are the “domestic needs” that the biggest spending GOP administration ever has not addressed?
— Oh, wait. Nevermind. Not adopting progressive policy initiatives — and having progressives block attempts to fix social security, for instance = “neglect of our domestic needs.”
Almost forgot how to translate into emotion what by nature should be dispassionately considered and rigorously debated on the merits.
My bad.
It was unwelcome to Nancy Pelosi for Stark to reveal the truth. It put a wrinkle in her haute couture of establishment politics of “good manners.”
Exactly. Because nobody is less of a partisan ideologue that Nancy Pelosi…
When will Pelosi and Reid start shouting to the highest heavens that it is Bush and Cheney who have betrayed our troops by putting them needlessly in harm’s way and then conducting a political war that has led to needless death and injury on a horrific scale — and managing it in as incompetent a manner as any conflict in our history?
You mean they haven’t yet done so?
I think were you to check the record, you’d see precisely the opposite.
It’s just that now, with the prospects of success picking up — and this, despite a campaign to ensure failure (featuring, among other things, Reid’s own declaration that the war is lost, that the “surge” failed in advance of its even have begun, and that, no matter what General Petraeus reported, the Democrats wouldn’t believe him, despite voting overwhelmingly for his confirmation) — Reid and Pelosi are savvy enough to backpedal a bit, at least until the next major set back.
If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives. They will be American tears.
Congressman Stark, you deserve the Wings of Justice Award for saying what we all would want to say on the floor of the House of Representatives: it is called the truth.
And by “truth,” we mean, “giving voice to what we believe, which by nature of how much we really wish it to be true makes it true.
Because if we can’t project our ego on the world, what have we left?
Hemp.
And, like, how exciting or world changing is that…? I mean, you can’t really blackface an apostate fiber, can you?
Well?
Comment by dicentra on 10/24 @ 11:10 am #
President Bush gets off by creating live snuff, film or no. That’s all it ever was, then  not for oil, not for his oil buddies, not for Halliburton, not to avenge his daddy, not to show up his daddy, not to play cowboy on the world stage, but to get off.
Right.
I’d ask for proof, but given what passes for proof these days, I’d be better off without it.
Seriously, I don’t know what else to say. These people are as crazy as the jihadis who think that they toppled the USSR.
Comment by Big Dan on 10/24 @ 11:12 am #
These people are past the point of believing their own press releases or performing it as lip service. They actually and truly believe that Bush started the Iraq war just for giggles.
Yes, child, I was there when the last of the Democrats went off their rails completely and fell in the fever swamp.
These folks are now giving the Palestinians a run for their money as the most comprehensively wrecked people on the planet.
Comment by Scott Free on 10/24 @ 11:18 am #
Ahh, that’s the stuff. Quality rant, Jeff. When the moonbats have resorted to defending drunken, incoherent screeds like that of Stark, you just have to wonder what they will do with their rage when Bush is no longer at the helm? Will there be enough prozac in the world to disarm all the liberal Cronenburg noggin-bombs?
Comment by mojo on 10/24 @ 11:22 am #
Wings? Sounds good. Sorta medium on the sauce, though.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 10/24 @ 11:25 am #
I, for one, am as vexed at Pelosi’s Fortney smack-down as this blinkered southpaw is. I’m counting on the Democrats self-detonating in 2008 with fulminating tirades just like Stark’s. If some meddling Speaker starts to enforce a modicum of sanity on her bannister-chewing caucus, that’ll bugger the whole deal.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 10/24 @ 11:31 am #
Speaking of heroes, there is SO a Scott Thomas!
Even if it’s a foregone conclusion (note: transcripts of his conversations with TNR editorial staff included!) that he’s a lying asshole.
Comment by BJTexs on 10/24 @ 11:37 am #
Wow, Jeff! I instinctively ducked and covered my head in anticipation of a big building implosion. I do so love your deconstructions!
Jeffersonian is right in that the grownups in the party (those not named Stark, Reid, Dean, Kucionich, Boxer, etc.) know that these sorts of lunatic ramblings will get them beat in ought-eight. They are going to have a candidate with a voting record in Congress, which hasn’t proven to be very successful recently.
Here’s to hoping that the grownups have to continue to spank the delinquents. Also, Stark is a gutless weasal who, if he really stood behind what he said (like when he was thanking the Kosiacs for supporting him) he should have told Nan to piss off and done a Gerry Studds and turned his back on the assemblage during the reading of the censure.
Comment by Zelda on 10/24 @ 11:38 am #
Pelosi couldn’t possibly have made him apologize he sounded completely insane. If there’s anything the democrats need, it’s more vitriol. They just aren’t making their feeeeelings known.
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 10/24 @ 11:53 am #
you can blackface hemp – its called ni**a-weed.
I show you my back
Comment by Rob B. on 10/24 @ 12:05 pm #
Let’s see, it’s almost November 2007. So it’s nearly a year from the 2006 election where the “People’s mandate” for change was clearly heard to get the soldiers out of the quagmire, oust Bush and stop the corruption and deadlock in the Congress. I guess that the truthers are beginning to realize they they went all “kingmaker” and are still 0-3 in the goals they had. It’s almost if, you kind feel bad to say it, they were used by the Dem’s to play typical politics.
Who could have guessed it?
Comment by McGehee on 10/24 @ 12:30 pm #
Wait — so now a guy named Fortney has replaced Cactus Jack Murtha, U.S. by dog Marine, as the Left’s hero?
How … characteristic.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 10/24 @ 12:34 pm #
What can men do against such wreckless stupidity? Compliments to either JRR Tolkien or Peter Jackson (The Director not the commenter). But, seriously, how do you effectively counter this stuff? As usual, Jeff, your post was spot on, but I’m betting it wouldn’t make a dent in the nut brigade. You can’t be rational with the irrational, and this bunch has left the reservation. Flown the coop. There are marbles in the attic. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. Or any other way to call it like it is…These people are fucking crazy.
Comment by T&T on 10/24 @ 12:44 pm #
Obstrep.,
Maybe there are irrational arguments that would work?
Them: “When will Pelosi and Reid start shouting to the highest heavens … ?”
Us: “Look, a giraffe!”
Them: “Oh, wow, I was wrong after all.”
T&T
Comment by Bill Maron on 10/24 @ 12:45 pm #
#12. Spot on!. You can’t change minds not grounded in reality. Opinion is more important than fact, the narrative more important than truth.
Comment by JD on 10/24 @ 12:47 pm #
I know it is off topic, but Drudge has the transcripts of Foer’s phone call with Beauchamp. Yet, TNR has yet to acknowledge their “mistake”. By this time, it is cemented in the Left that Beachamp was just telling “Inconvenient Truths”, like algore did to win a fucking Nobel Prize.
If I did not find it so reprehensible, I would suggest that the Right just start making shit up, throwing it against the wall, and seeing what sticks.
Comment by Sigivald on 10/24 @ 12:47 pm #
It’s gotten to the point where, when presented with “Bush lies and lied and lies and stuff and lies”, I demand specific examples.
None, oddly, ever seem to come forward.
Oh, there are examples of Bush being wrong about things, like Iraq having WMD stockpiles. There are assertions that he “lied” rather than being merely wrong because “the real secret intelligence said no WMDs at all no way”, but that claim can never be substantiated, sadly. (And don’t even get me started on the damned Niger story; nobody I’ve seen claim “16 words = lie” has ever heard of the Butler report, the part of the Robb-Silberman report detailing Wilson’s findings from Niger, or anything other than a headline claiming “forgeries! lies!”.)
I increasingly think people don’t even know what the words they use mean.
Comment by MarkD on 10/24 @ 12:47 pm #
You people made him cry. First the poor guy gets saddled with “Fortney” for a name. Then you make him loose his cool. Then you make him apologize. He feels so bad he’s crying. Have you no shame?
It’s all about him, right?
Comment by Sigivald on 10/24 @ 12:49 pm #
(Just to clarify, by “can never be substantiated” I mean “can evidently never be substantiated by the person making it, by any reference to actual sources”.
If the claim is objectively true, it should theoretically be substantiatable by some means. It appears that those making the claim lack any better evidence than their desire it be so, and the statements of others desiring it be so.)
Comment by psychologizer on 10/24 @ 12:55 pm #
There’s a fundamental rightness in perceiving politicians as to-whatever-degree-repressed mass-murdering psychos, because if they weren’t, they’d do something else. Politics — not war, specifically, but law/government/etc. itself — is always only finally about killing. There is, after all, only one law: Obey or be destroyed. You’re either for that or you’re not. If you’re not, you don’t sign up.
So the nuts are kind of right.
However, the only thing I like about Bush — as a guy; as a President, he’s a monster much like any other — is what looks from out here like a core disinterest in politics. It’s the source of a lot of Republican bitchiness about him — of the “Why doesn’t he defend his policies?!” and “Why won’t he just say it?!” sort — but it’s the only sign of humanity he shows. Except re: immigration, about which he gets the psychosis fired up and lets his hatred for the people who elect him flow, everything he does, including running for office, he seems to do out of a grudging sense of obligation — to what, I have no idea. (His lineage, I suppose. He is who he is.) Whatever it is, it’s way less fucked up than what motivates every other politician in Washington, and their cheering sections outside it.
I’ll never get the hatred for the guy from people who fundamentally differ with him about nothing. (I mean, I get it, but I don’t.) He’s probably the least crazed-mass-murderer-like politician America has ever seen, or will ever see — the only one I wouldn’t be personally horrified and terrified by if we met — and it takes an amazing leap of not-knowing to view him as the Hitlerian phantasm so many see.
So the nuts are still nuts. Even when they’re almost, once in a while, not.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/24 @ 1:06 pm #
Bush is a super-nice guy and also I am very proud that I voted for him twice. I think the people he pisses off are all just being silly. I hope the Republican nominee in 2008 ends up being the one that is most committed to continuing Bush’s policies except for some tweaks and stuff that will make me even happier with them. That would be neat.
Comment by klrtz1 on 10/24 @ 1:25 pm #
“Bushevik propaganda”
That’s ironic, right? Isn’t it? The Bolsheviks were the good guys. Propaganda, “everyone does it”, it’s like breathing to the left. So “Bushevik propaganda” has to be irony. How else could you explain comparing a conservative Republican to the original communist revolutionaries, breathing? That must be ironic, isn’t it? Damn it, I used to know what irony was! Didn’t I?
Comment by wishbone on 10/24 @ 1:28 pm #
“both drummers from .38 special…”
Stuff like this, my friends, is why I hit that tip jar.
You don’t get a Pete Stark and southern rock trivia point in the same post just anywhere.
Comment by Old Texas Turkey on 10/24 @ 1:31 pm #
Psychologizer …
I really get your hypothesis, and at the same time I don’t
Comment by Slartibartfast on 10/24 @ 2:17 pm #
Great post, Jeff.
You probably could have written Henley’s reaction for him, if you could tap into his reserve of outrage.
Comment by Gabriel Fry on 10/24 @ 2:53 pm #
I liked the .38 Special bit, the whole “hero” intro as well, but it seemed to lose focus towards the middle. It lacked a clearly defined arc, a good build, as though you had three or four tangents you wanted to follow, but you bound them all together artificially. Perhaps with some sort of hempen fiber. I hate to say it, but it was a good bit more spittle-flecked than usual, and without the sober wink that differentiates you from the thundering horde of outraged political bloggers.
Is the Rockies fever getting to you, man?
Comment by Major John on 10/24 @ 3:30 pm #
Gabriel, I believe that you may have missed the unified point of what Jeff was saying. I think, hemp aside, he tied the strands together properly.
Actually, I’d like to bottle some of the power of this kind of post, should I need it to knock out IEDs or something. Good stuff.
Comment by Jeff G. on 10/24 @ 3:43 pm #
Sorry, Gabriel. But the source material meandered. I just tagged along for the for the zig zagging.
Comment by E4Puke on 10/24 @ 3:50 pm #
Best analysis piece of read in years.
Comment by mishu on 10/24 @ 4:59 pm #
That petulant prick is 75 going on 18.
Comment by Kresh on 10/24 @ 6:07 pm #
A smart fisking those living in Bizarro-land is always fun to read. Funny thing is, they’ll never understand, and they’ll never learn. Sad, really.
I’m glad they’re so opposed to breeding. Makes me very happy.
Comment by SDN on 10/24 @ 6:34 pm #
John Cole, Ric Caric, Stark, Pelosi: The Democrat Party simply proves that once again blood will tell. These are the direct line children of the Copperheads. What can men do against such reckless hate? To quote a lady named Leslie Fish:
Up to the dusty attic,
Out with the trusty gun!
The lawbook and the lawyer
Only go so far.
Sooner or later,
Push gonna come to shove.
Don’t think that it won’t happen where you are.
No high ground, no high ground, no high ground any more.
“No High Ground”, Leslie Fish Live.
Comment by Blitz on 10/24 @ 7:26 pm #
Wings? Sounds good. Sorta medium on the sauce, though.
Mojo? I want the sauce as hot as a secproggs desire to unseat bushitlerburton.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 10/24 @ 7:40 pm #
Wasn’t there an incident where a radio announcer screwed up and introduced him as “Fartney Stork”?
Comment by Roman on 10/24 @ 8:44 pm #
This shit is tasty Goldstein. I actually did an LOL on the .38 special reference. I mean a real LOL not just a typed LOL. I need to come back to this post like a box of chocolates cuz I am thinking maybe I might be gay too. Fo’ rizzle, nizzle.
Comment by Roman on 10/24 @ 8:56 pm #
Incorrect spelling of the before uterus.
Comment by JD on 10/24 @ 9:17 pm #
FWIW – The clown that wrote the piece for buzzflash really ought to be embarassed. Alas, he prolly is proud. Sad.
Comment by Sean M. on 10/25 @ 2:13 am #
I shudder to think what might have happened had “Fortney” been completely overtaken with outrage. I’m guessing a twelve state PCP-fueled killing spree ending with a vein-popping, mouth-foaming Stark being taken down by twenty U.S. Marshals.
Comment by McGehee on 10/25 @ 10:17 am #
The flying spittle alone would have rendered New Orleans unrecoverable.
Comment by Andrew on 10/25 @ 10:26 am #
Just when you think you’ve delved to the bottom of stupid, you discover several more fathoms remain afore bedrock. Explain it to me. Explain to me how one becomes educated and does not learn the nauseating, infantilizing danger of justifying another fucking boondoggle in the name of “the children”. Yeshua Monkey-Shit Messiah, does this bastard really think that government forms and offices and memoranda and regulations and base-line budgeting and funding fights and the inevitable tax increase or debt restructuring is a good way to ensure the health of the young? That there’s no legitimate philosophical difference of opinion? Is he so enamoured of his own mentula that he thinks George Bush, a man he has seen on TV but never met, could only be motivated by his member?
Gah!
Comment by km on 10/25 @ 12:13 pm #
Michelle can shoot ping-pong balls from her cooter?
Comment by JD on 10/25 @ 12:21 pm #
km – That is one of the nicer things the Leftist bloggers have said about her.
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