Pelosi Rebukes Stark On His Bush Comments

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked a fellow San Francisco Bay-area liberal Friday for what she said were "inappropriate" comments about Iraq during a congressional debate.

During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Condemnations rolled in from Republican politicians, right-leaning bloggers had a field day, and a White House spokesman declined to "dignify those remarks" with a response.

Pelosi issued a statement Friday evening rapping Stark, who is in his 18th term representing the liberal East Bay. He's California's longest-serving House members.

"While members of Congress are passionate about their views, what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate and distracted from the seriousness of the subject at hand _ providing health care for America's children," Pelosi said.

Stark's comment came as the House failed Thursday to override President Bush's veto of legislation to expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.

"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark accused Republicans. "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."

After numerous Republicans called on him to apologize, Stark said it was they who should be apologizing, for failing to provide the votes to override Bush's veto.

Asked for a White House response Friday, spokesman Tony Fratto said: "I see absolutely no reason to dignify those remarks with a comment."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071019/congressman-s-outburst/ or

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_7227306?nclick_check=1

better choices would have been: benefit, pipe-dream, blasphemous illusions, aggrandizement, ill-founded gamble, re-assurance . . . .

BUT - Nancy appears to be completely tone deaf, so I don't know what she is doing criticizing Stark!

.. truth is truth.

he does not have to apologize for something his district agrees with him on. He was representing his constituants as he should.

Second, as you say he was correct.

Nancy needs to start standing by her people instead of folding all the time.

truth2power representative stark

You sound more and more like a Repuke butt-kisser.

Instead of rallying around the TRUTH, he gets it from one of his own. WTF is wrong here?

rebuking someone for telling the truth. Political correctness is fast becoming passe. Go Mr. Stark!

All the talk she talked before the election amounted to a total collapse of will when she took her place in the spotlight.
She is our voice and if she cannot relay the message we are shouting loud and clear about Bush's policies, then she should step aside and allow someone with the strength of charachter and backbone necessary to follow through with the will of 'we the people.'

You hear that Pelosi? COMPROMISE was not part of the deal. You've let down the people who desperately needed you to speak for them.
Move over, Step aside, going up against Bush takes a strong backbone that you oviously DO NOT HAVE.
This Nation has reached critical mass. We are f**kin bleeding, Ms Pelosi.
You Hear Us?

I have defended her in many exchanges, justifying her conduct from a "take the larger view" perspective, and trying to understand and appreciate what she's up against. That has proven somewhat difficult, since she is virtually invisible most of the time, pursuing the powerful challenges that must be part of the difficult job she does.

That time is pretty well past. The good will and better graces that illuminated her and her calling have repeatedly been spurned and thoroughly wasted. I am not at the point where I can attack her, myself, but I can certainly understand and identify with those who do.

All that promise has died, aborning.

try to figure out why someone with the position she has cannot make some connection to what the Nation is begging her to do about Bush.

Her admonishing Pete Stark for his complete honesty was a slap in the face of all who held some hope for her to use the power she has been given for a show of unity, for once.

Do NOT screw around with the lives of the many who had only YOU, Ms Pelosi, to count on.
Unite for us or get out of the way.
What are you trying to proove. And to whom?
Pelosi is not impressing anyone but Bush's fascist wet-dream.

My sentiments exactly. Ms. Pelosi's failure to organize even minimal checks on this out-of-control regime is frustrating, enraging, and ultimately tragic.....

and to write her memoirs. Like 98% of our Congesspeople she's nothing but a professional pol and she's damned good at THAT job. Tragically, that's exactly what we don't need representing us while Bush flushes the Constitution down the toilet.

and a horrible leader in almost every way, but it is over the top and wrong to assert that he is "amused" by death.

I agree with Pelosi. I've learned from right wing media that just because you may not like someone, that does not mean that they are guilty of any crime you can think to accuse them of.

We're supposed to be better then that, and I try to be.

Whether you think "amusement" was the best choice of words or not, do you think people who identify strongly with an idea of somesort are stimulated by demonstrations of commitment to that idea? especially other people's demonstrations of commitment? When something is in doubt, don't demonstrations of commitment to it bring about feelings of satisfaction?

Also: Why are movies like Saw successful? What do we call what people feel when a prize fighter, who has been beaten to a pulp, keeps pursuing his opponent and continues to be hit? All other factors being equal, would the "liberation of Iraq" be as meaningful to so many people if no one died in these events?

I'm just wondering . . . .

There will be no discussion of the Emperor's nakedness, nor his invisible clothes.

Sounds strangely similar to "impeachment...is 'off the table'."

'nuff said.

House Speaker Pelosi lashes out at antiwar protesters

By Patrick Martin

15 October 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Washington, normally maintains a public display of sympathy towards the mass opposition to the war in Iraq—an opposition which propelled the Democrats into control of the House and Senate in the congressional elections last November.

But in the course of a press interview October 9, reported the following morning in the Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post, Pelosi gave vent to the resentment and hostility that leading Democrats actually feel towards the antiwar protest movement.

<snip>

The real venom in Pelosi’s comments was reported by Washington Post Capitol Hill columnist Dana Milbank, one of those in attendance at the press interview. While Pelosi invariably maintains a publicly smiling posture, he wrote, “her spirits soured instantly when somebody asked about the anger of the Democratic ‘base’ over her failure to end the war in Iraq.”

“Look,” she said, “I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from trees, building all kinds of things—Buddhas? I don’t know what they were—couches, sofas, chairs, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk.”

Pelosi continued: “If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.”

Pelosi is married to a multimillionaire investor, and her comments were charged with social resentment as well as political hostility. The antiwar protesters are not only unwelcome because they expose her hypocritical pretense to opposing the Iraq bloodbath—they are dirty, ragged and disreputable, and irritate the neighbors.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/oct2007/pelo-o15.shtml

Cross posted from Editorials:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x314734

Stop bitching here on DU and call her Washington office on monday. Tell them that you are a democrat and voice your displeasure with the speaker. Tell them that you will be withholding contributions to the democrats until we see real change. Nancy is Bush lite! I'll be calling on monday!

And the more that MSM talks about Stark, the more of a distraction it is from SCHIP.

If she wasn't trying to get SCHIP passed I'd be condemning her for backing down.

Nancy Pelosi's war record? I thought it was about Stark's comments. The two things seem to be unrelated, unless we are all required to treat politicians like cartoon figures.

Second, do people here actually believe that Bush enjoys watching people die, and is actually "amused" by it? Are we supposed to think up the most diabolical accusations, then bash anyone who doesn't believe them? To me, that's Chicken Little rhetoric, and not very effective in convincing people to believe the bad things about Bush that are ACTUALLY TRUE.

Wow. Just wow.

However, this is the same bush who "enjoyed" sticking firecrackers in/under frogs and blowing them up.
This is the same bush who executed one hundred-fifty-two humans and made up a little ditty, singing a mocking little song, decrying one of his female victim's "please don't kill me" plea.
This is the same bush whom death has followed around, touching far too many defenseless people who might have endangered his rise to power.

This is the same bush who mocked the Palestinians and refused to caution Israel until they had exhausted their killing madness.
This is the same bush who has, indeed, laughed at the fate of a million Iraqis who have died as a result, directly and indirectly, of his and cheney's actions and intemperance. He has refused to take any responsibility in the matter nor accept any council or advice.

Maybe his laughter is a nervous tic, a response to stress, as was demonstrated during his recent world war three atomic bomb speech and Q&A.

There are so many examples of his pathology, from lack of concern that his moneyed entry into the air guard--another incident he refuses to acknowledge or explain--may well have resulted in the early death of someone who went into combat in his stead to his devious trickery to avoid even completing that responsibility.

I know the suggestion that bush actually enjoyed the deaths of other men and women who have been harnessed to further his mad dreams might be a little over the top, but not that far over.

I just think that stuff like this is too easily used by the right to distract people, and create yet another "villain". That's the thing that they do best, and I am thankful that America seems to understand that better nowadays. That strategy sure worked well for them for a long time.

to the uproarious laughter of the rightist crowd. I consider that amusement.

Bush's audience was the Washington press corps and the Beltway punditry, from Tim Russert to George Will. They were all laughing with Bush as he told of his search for WMD.

Of course, this was before the Iraqi insurgency stopped being a joke.

I am not a fan of Stark's comments. But this is getting ridiculous. If she had a problem with what he said, she could call him on the phone and tell him so. Publicly rebuking him is weak and pathetic. When will this shit stop?

Bush got us into a bogus war and thousands of our people have died. Let him apologize for that. We haven't fucked up, THEY HAVE! Let them start apologizing.

She's always carrying the Republican's water. Stark should should be the Speaker of the House. He's the only one "speaking" the feelings of his constituants.

got all those toxic, radioactive, wastes to depose(somewhere).

She is the biggest piece of horse shit dem leader we've had in generations. All she knows how to do is appease and enable. Trash the constitution and insult the people.

It is a shame she said that. I wish all of our representatives and congresspeople would show the same emotion and convictions. He should be applauded for standing up. Granted a small part may have been over the line, but the message was spot on. The Democrats need to stand up for what they believe in and show that same kind of conviction in their beliefs. Dont let the republican press push you around, dont let a clueless president push you around. Stand up and speak your mind. That is what they are paid to do. He stood up and said what most of his constituents are probably thinking. Nancy and the rest of the Democrats need to represent the PEOPLE. Not the President. Not faux noise. Stand up and show that you have a spine. Show that you ARE the majority and YOU WILL represent the voters. God Bless Stark.

Everyone has a role to play.

I hate this apology shit. (Not jumping on you.)

Wesley Clark lost in 2004 because he couldn't come up with the one right answer at the one right time.

"Michael Moore, who has endorsed you, called the President a deserter. Are you prepared to condemn those remarks?"

Good alternate universe Clark: "What, is this the soviet union? I'm running for President of the United States and in the United States we are not in the business of condemning speech. Michael Moore is an American citizen and has the right to say whatever he wants."

Somebody, some day is going to have to stop answering these calls to inquisition.

It's very "Korean War prisoner confession"