Reply #6: If I may... this part is awesome (sad, because we know how it all ended, but...) [View All]

[Totally Committed]

This hits the nail squarely on the head:

We worked like sled-dogs all last year to change this. WE stood up to George Bush. And we voted in more Dems – returning Congress to the Democratic Party. Surely the rubber-stamping and cowtowing and excusing-making would stop. There'd be at least enough people to stand up to Young George. Almost a year later, we don't have a lot to show for it. The Democrats have been outflanked at virtually every turn – by the MINORITY party. The GOP is running FAR better interference now than our guys ever did when there were fewer of them. Few, if any, of our guys even stood up to cry foul. And we're still watching our reps cave, time after time, whether it's funding health insurance for children of the working poor, or resisting pressure to further compromise our privacy rights, or stopping the war, and/or its funding. Even as the majority party, STILL no one stands up.

And then came Pete Stark, who told a very stark truth while speaking for the above-mentioned children's health insurance program in Congress recently. It was a harsh, cruel truth with none of the razor-sharp edges sanded down. And it was a key statement in understanding the deepest, darkest "why's" of our ruthlessly and in my opinion criminally aggressive foreign policy. That policy did, after all, come in with Bush/Cheney. We didn't do stuff like this during Clinton/Gore. It wasn't even this bad during Bush/Quayle. Many constitutional and legal scholar/experts say it's never been this bad – in American history.

>snip

And then, clearly angered and over-frustrated, he dared further. Stark slammed the blowing up of all those young Americans in Iraq, and the compromising of younger Americans' health when we need them to grow up so they, too, can ultimately be blown up in Iraq. And Stark growled that it was for "the president's amusement." He must have taken a great deal of heat for that, because on this Tuesday of California Brushfire Week, he allowed his resolve to be burnt up. That was a momentary flicker – not of flame over the crest of a distant hill, but of a steely Democratic backbone.


Sad, but, very, very true.


TC