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bobbyw24
09-16-2009, 08:31 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601074&sid=agUnJfnW_IBU

Concerns of Black House Members Helped Spur Rebuke of Wilson
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By James Rowley and Brian Faler

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A plea by California Representative Laura Richardson that House Democrats respond after Republican Joe Wilson shouted “you lie” at President Barack Obama last week helped spur her party’s leaders to action.

The “careful but passionate” words delivered at a House Democratic caucus the morning after Wilson’s outburst by a black lawmaker who rarely speaks at such meetings carried such an impact that “you couldn’t ignore that message and that input,” Representative John Larson, the Democratic caucus chairman recalled yesterday.

Larson, of Connecticut, made his comment after the House voted 240-179 to admonish Wilson for his interruption of Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress. The vote was largely along party lines, with 12 Democrats opposing the resolution while seven Republicans supported it. Five Democrats voted “present.”

After Obama’s Sept. 9 speech on his push for an overhaul of the U.S. health-care, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California tried to shift the focus the next day from the attention Wilson’s outburst was garnering. Noting that the South Carolina lawmaker had apologized, Pelosi told reporters Sept. 10 that “it’s time for us to talk about health care.’’

Not all of her fellow Democrats agreed with Pelosi’s assessment, including Richardson, 47. The second-term member who represents Long Beach said she spoke up at the weekly caucus meeting that same day because “leadership didn’t say something strong” about “what they were going to do” in response to Wilson’s outburst.

Not OK

It was “the elephant in the room that we had not dealt with,” and “I didn’t think it was OK to think it would go away,” she said yesterday in a telephone interview after the House vote.

During her behind-closed-doors speech to House colleagues, Richardson recalls saying that “this country has taken on a display of hate, a display of rage a display of unwillingness to even consider and be open to change.”

Richardson said she was concerned that Wilson’s outburst showed “we have crossed the line of it becoming dangerous if we as members are going to scream at one another.”

She didn’t ascribe any racial motivation to Wilson’s comment, though other black lawmakers who pushed for a rebuke of Wilson said they believed that Obama wouldn’t have been heckled during his speech if he were white.

“No other president in history has been called out in a joint session,” Diane Watson, a California Democrat, said yesterday before the House vote.

Shown Disrespect

Wilson “kind of winked at that element” of society that has shown disrespect to Obama because of his race, Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson said yesterday. “He said it’s OK.”

“We will probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside intimidating people,” Johnson said. “That’s the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday that Wilson’s outburst was “based on racism,” the Associated Press reported. Carter, speaking yesterday at a town hall at his presidential center in Atlanta, said “there is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president,” AP reported.

After Richardson’s appeal for action in the caucus meeting, House Democratic Whip James Clyburn, whose South Carolina district abuts Wilson’s, told party members he wanted to give the Republican a chance to apologize to the chamber.

Apology Demanded

Clyburn, who is black, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer later that day demanded Wilson apologize on the House floor. The following day, Democratic leaders said they would seek the resolution if Wilson failed to do so.

“A simple apology to this House would have ended the matter,” Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said yesterday during floor debate on the measure. “Presidents, nor any of us, ought to be subjected to such conduct.”

Wilson, 62, repeatedly refused to offer another apology, saying the one he gave Obama through a call to the White House was sufficient.

“The president said the time for games is over -- I agree with the president,” Wilson said during yesterday’s debate, referring to a comment Obama made in his health-care speech.

Obama “graciously accepted my apology and the issue is over,” Wilson said, adding, “there are far more important issues facing this nation.”

Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio called the resolution a “partisan stunt,” and urged his colleagues to oppose it. “Joe Wilson is a decent human being; he did the right thing,” he said.

‘Side Show’

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, in a statement, called the Democrats’ rebuke “a stunning example of hypocrisy.” Steele, the first black to head his party, said the Democrats “don’t want an apology. They want a side show” to deflect attention from the health-care debate.

Wilson called Obama a liar when the president said new health-care coverage in pending legislation wouldn’t benefit undocumented immigrants.

The two-paragraph House resolution states that Wilson’s outburst was “a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session to the discredit of the House.” It says the House “disapproves of the behavior” of Wilson.

“This is not a partisan stunt,” Clyburn said yesterday. “This is about proper decorum that takes place on the floor of the House.”

White House Position

The White House refused to get involved in the dispute. “That’s House business,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said yesterday about the resolution.

FactCheck.org, a Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog group, said Obama told the truth when he said his health-care proposal wouldn’t benefit undocumented immigrants. The legislation’s critics say it lacks enforcement provisions to ensure such people wouldn’t be aided.

Wilson’s campaign Web site carried a video of his wife, Roxanne, saying she asked him after the speech, “Who’s the nut that hollered out ‘you lie?’”

“He is very passionate and fighting the good fight,” she said. “My husband doesn’t deserve the treatment that he’s getting from Congress and I’m very proud of him.”

Decorum hasn’t always been the rule in the House, as related in Robert Remini’s 2006 history of the chamber. Debates turned especially nasty during the 1850s, in the buildup to the Civil War, wrote Remini, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a National Book Award winner.

In his book “The House,” Remini wrote that harsh words exchanged by lawmakers over slavery-related issues sparked one “melee” in which “fifty or more representatives rushed at one another. They wrestled, shoved and punched one another as the Speaker, James L. Orr of South Carolina, pleaded for order.”

“The madness finally turned to comedy,” Remini wrote, when “John F. ‘Bowie-Knife’ Potter of Wisconsin reached for the hair of William Barksdale of Mississippi and pulled off his wig. ‘I’ve scalped him,’ cried the startled Potter, which set the whole house laughing. And that ended the melee.”

To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net; Brian Faler in Washington at bfaler@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: September 16, 2009 00:00 EDT

A. Havnes
09-16-2009, 08:34 AM
How pathetic. So dissenters are now all racist? What if Wilson had been black? Then what would they say?

cheapseats
09-16-2009, 11:00 AM
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IF BLACK KANYE WEST CAN PUBLICLY DISS A WHITE COUNTRY STAR
WHITE JOE WILSON CAN PUBLICLY DISS A KINDA BLACK PRESIDENT
l

cheapseats
09-16-2009, 11:05 AM
l


AMERICA’S BIGGEST BROTHEL AND BEST PAID WHORES
REBUKED “YOU LIE” WILSON FOR BREACH OF DECORUM

ROFLMAO


l

cheapseats
09-16-2009, 01:11 PM
l


BEFORE OBAMA, I WAS CALLED A ******-LOVER BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS
IN REIGN OF GREAT NON-WHITE HOPE, I AM CALLED A RACIST BY WIGGERS

Just goes to show, you can't please all the assholes all the time.


l