Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) accused Democrats of “curb-stomping veterans” because the Washington D.C. World War II Memorial had been closed after Republicans forced a government shutdown over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law.
[…]“There is no other way to put it. Democrats are curb-stomping veterans,” he wrote.
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pseudonymous in nc
Once again, Steve Stockman’s biography appears, quite modestly, to refrain from mentioning any military service record.
Pro-jec-tion.
fka AWS
Is the Vietnam memorial open?
ranchandsyrup
Is Stockman a big Ed Norton fan or a big white supremacist fan? It’s irresponsible not to speculate about his American History X fixation.
dmsilev
Hmmm. ‘Curb-stomp’ appears to be defined as “To place someone’s mouth on a cement curb, and then stomp on their head from behind to break out their teeth.”. I’m sure the honorable Congressman from Texas has video, or photographs, or eyewitness reports, or recordings of the voices in his head, or something, of Democrats committing such a heinous act on WWII veterans.
Or the Congressman is an ass-hat.
One of those.
Matt McIrvin
The Newsmax headlines are going for broke today.
Tone in DC
Just when I think Orwell couldn’t be doing more half gainers in his grave…
Yeah, gashole. Of course you’re right. And that Rodney King should have stopped repeatedly trying to hurt the cops’ billy clubs and tasers with his face and back. That’s assault.
MattF
This is the “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted” guy. I call ‘troll’.
Cacti
In the Virginia governor’s race, McAuliffe releases a new radio ad lighting up Ken Cuccinelli for inviting Ted Cruz to come and campaign for him.
VA has 144,753 federal employees.
Tommy
Am I alone in knowing what the phrase “curb stomp” means? That a person is laying in the street, their head on a curb, and you stomp on it with your shoe? Look I get politics can get tough. You say all kinds of things. I could see me saying I’d “fuck you up” and /or this or that. I can’t see myself ever saying I’d “curb stomp” you. Just saying.
Oh and the whole curb stomp thing, wasn’t that kind of a Nazi white supremacist thing?
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: ‘Conservatives Strongly Back McConnell’. I’m sure it’s a *complete coincidence* that a story of that sort shows up now that Yertle is facing a strong primary opponent.
Citizen_X
I thought Rand Paul’s supporters were the ones who were big on curb stomping.
Roger Moore
These idiots really are Walter Mitty types, aren’t they? The imagine themselves as superheroes while running around doing the most mundane things. Giving a long, meaningless speech on the Senate floor is just like the Bataan Death March, closing the WWII memorial is like curb stomping veterans, and they have to pack heat everywhere they go so they can stop the hordes of Those People who are going to kill them.
ETA: Also, too, missing “Hoekstroika” category.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: When you absolutely, positively, have to project a whole multiplex… why go small?
Cacti
Maybe he can get together with Randy Neugebauer and find more female Park Service employees to scold.
Steve Greer
What is the use of curb-stomping someone with dentures?
Gravenstone
Perhaps the good Congressman would like to personally experience an example of being curb stomped? Then he might choose a bit more discretion in his future comments about things he clearly doesn’t fucking understand.
Cris (without an H)
He forgot “literally.”
Berial
I’m getting REALLY fucking tired of seeing ‘conservatives’ all over the internet saying variations of “Why must Republicans give in? The senate is the one rejecting things! It’s THEIR FAULT! THEY WANT THE SHUTDOWN!”
Has a US House, EVER, in history acted the way the current House is acting? If it’s never happened like this before, I really wish the MSM would put that out there OVER AND OVER so those assholes wouldn’t try to weasel out of what ‘THEIR’ guys are doing to the country.
It’s always the same with these guys. “I’m the victim! They aren’t doing everything EXACTLY AS I WANT!” It’s like half our country suddenly became Eric Cartman.
Edit: Or maybe not so suddenly.
beltane
Oh, goodie. Can we all play this game? Let’s see, how about this: “By seeking to block the Affordable Care Act, the Republican party is waging a genocidal campaign of extermination against tens of millions of Americans. If allowed to carry out their bloodthirsty plan, the Republican Party, including Steve Stockman of Texas, will be guilty of the largest mass murder of human beings since WWII. Stop the slaughter of innocent American citizens! Defeat the Republican Menace!”
Hawes
You keep using words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Amir Khalid
“Curb-stomping” strikes me as a more-than-slight exaggeration. The WWII veterans were, at worst, slightly inconvenienced by the closure. Cutting off pay for park rangers who still had to come to work, and then insulting one of them for doing her job, surely comes much closer: it might not do actual physical harm, but it must cut a person deep to be treated like that.
Laur
What does curb stomping even mean? Is that a term? Do I have to look it up on urban dictionary?
And yeah, open the monuments! fuck the kids and their preschools!
TAPX486
On MSNBC just now they were talking about Boehner’s latest press conference. Alex Wagner asked don’t the republican understand it when Obama says ‘I will not negotiate with hostage takers’.
Well the answer is simply No they don’t because for most of the GOP English is a second language. Their first language is MORON!
SiubhanDuinne
He called POTUS what??
ranchandsyrup
Saw this yesterday on a tumblr of people advocating for assassination due to Obamacare.
Nothing personal, eh?
Elizabelle
FWIW, Arlington National Cemetery is open for burials and to visitors.
Arlington House (the former Custis-Lee Mansion) and the tram are not operating.
weaselone
Maybe someone should bring up the treatment of the Bonus Army by Republicans during the Great Depression.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
My heart breaks for the old veterans but if it had to happen, I’m glad it happened to a key Republican constituency group. Might as well find out what they’re voting for before they cross the rainbow bridge.
njb
There’s no other way to put it – Republicans are a raving pack of syphilitic howler monkeys.
Tommy
@Berial: I think Salon has a run down of interviews with journalist from other nations. Spain, Norway, South Korea, Lebanon, Japan, all kinds of other nations. They were asked how they reported what is happening here back home. They all said they were confused and didn’t know how to report “a government shut down” cause the concept for them was foreign to their readers.
The lady that was a reporter for Al Jazeera said it best IMHO. That she was from Lebanon said felt her nation has a government that was FUBAR and could do nothing, then she got assigned to report from DC and she realized we were worse. Way worse.
It makes me sad as an American to read this shit.
Comrade Dread
And I’m now of the opinion that Republicans pretty much think that the Federal government consists only of sneering bureaucrats wanting to shut down Reardon Steel and thinks that any good things that exist (like police, firemen, Armed Forces Channel, national parks and monuments) are the results of magical faeries that couldn’t possibly be impacted if the Republicans hurt the mean ol’ bureaucrats.
That these idiots hold any power at all is sad.
The Dangerman
So, 2 more weeks of this shit? Or does the Debt Limit get passed before the CR (if that’s even possible)?
rda909
@Citizen_X: Naw, they’re into “curb twerking.”
Booger
What’s with the fawning reverence for this particular group and this particular monument? It’s not ‘hallowed ground;’ it’s a ten-year old marble monstrosity that looks like it came from the Third Reich, shoe-horned into the Mall because folks felt sorry for Bob Dole. The vets were pawns, co-opted by the usual suspect posse of chickenhawks and flag-fetish camera whores. Full of sound and fury, signifying squat.
srv
The man who defeated the French and the Americans, Vo Nguyen Giap, dead at 102.
Keith P.
“Curb-stomping” is the only way I could phrase not letting people into an area. Like that time the last administration curb-stomped protestors by putting them in a “free-speech zone”. So much blood.
priscianus jr
Yes. there is another way to put it, Mr. Stockman. You and your friends are the ones who closed the Memorial, now you’re blaming it on the Democrats. Nobody’s falling for it except the usual idiots.
MattF
@njb: Well then, you’re lacking sympathy for howler monkeys– considering that they probaly caught the syphilis from a Republican.
gravie
So the latest right-wing outrage — as reported by a friend of mine on FB, who linked to countless breathless accounts in the right-wing media — is that private parks on Federal land are being closed “on direct orders of the White House,” despite the fact that the Federal government doesn’t pay the employees or maintain the facilities. Can anyone with more knowledge about how these Federal-private deals work shed light on this? I tried to research it a bit, but can’t find anything useful.
Belafon
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: What the WW2 vets discovered is that Republicans will come in and break down barricades set up by the black man to keep them out of their memorial. And then harass government employees who are keeping them out of the memorial. And then declare they will hold meetings as to why the memorial was closed.
I’m pretty this group of WW2 veterans does not know why the memorial is shut down.
celticdragonchick
Last night I had a beautiful dream
Stockman on the guillotine
Belafon
@gravie: Please show me where there’s a private park on federal land? I did not know there was such a thing.
MattF
@gravie: It would be useful to find out what the facts are– but I think what’s happening is that the outraged wingers are trying to find a rational explanation for their rage, and the explanations they’re coming up with don’t quite work. Hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with parks.
PaulW
There is no other way to put it: Republicans are refusing to own up for their own shutdown.
But then again, cowards never do own up.
Seanly
@Belafon:
Actually, there are reports that the Mississippi veteran group (the ones on Tuesday morning) were warned before their trip that a shutdown might be in effect and they should reconsider.
@gravie:
There are private concessionaires who run facilities at some of the parks. Some park employees (like cooks or cleaning staff in a lodge) probably work for a company with a contract with the park. But no, there are no private parks within federal parks.
It’s federal land and if the federal government feels they must be closed to access because no one is available to patrol or man the gates, then so be it.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Belafon: B-rinng!
Tommy
@Booger: I don’t know. I lived in DC for many years. On Capital Hill. I would often joke I didn’t even need to peddle, I could just hop on my bike and be on the Mall. I went there more then you can imagine. I fucking hate the WWII Memorial.
You want amazing head to the Vietnam Memorial. Most days a lot of flowers under somebodies name. I’ve seen wives and mothers in the fetal position wanting to sleep there.
I got nothing against the WWI memorial. Both my grandparents served. Neither of them are with us, but if they went to DC to visit it, and there was a cheap barrier in their way, they wouldn’t need Steve King to get into the place.
Suffern ACE
@PaulW: The CNBC folks are now simply saying that it doesn’t matter. What shut down? Have you noticed the effects? I sure haven’t. Blah blah blah.
Tommy
@Suffern ACE: Of course.
There is a story I like to tell. I am a hiker/camper. Each year I spend at least a week with a college buddy back 20 years ago. We are trying to hit every National Park.
Two years ago he brought this tea party guy with him. My friend and I are raging liberals. But polite. We listened to him bitch about this or that and didn’t say much.
One day I went to go pay our camping permit. He was like, I will pay for this and handed me a few twenty.
I am like dude it is $12 night.
He was so confused, and I noted, “hey government is kind of cool isn’t it?”
Oh and the next day he almost died, white water rafting, and he forgot to tell us he can’t swim. I went in and got him out of the river. I actually told him there was a part of me, just a little, that wanted him to drown, then jumped in.
Eric U.
@Booger: first time I saw the WWII memorial I thought it looked like they got their design cues from the Nazis in Wolfenstien. I like the Korean war memorial a little better. I hope I am not playing into the republican narrative when I say that I am not sure what the purpose of closing some of these monuments down is exactly. I have never noticed that they are manned on a regular basis.
@Belafon: seems like lots of federal facilities are run by concessionaires that actually derive their income from entrance/user fees. I think Cape Canaveral is like that. Maybe this is what the wingnuts are talking about. I assume those places are shut down now
burnspbesq
I met one of Stockman’s staffers on a flight from DC to Houston a few months ago. She seemed like a perfectly nice, reasonably bright young woman.
I wonder whether “it’s a good job and I’m getting valuable experience” is very comforting to her when her boss pulls stunts like this.
Belafon
@Seanly: In that case, I retract the part about them not knowing about it. Everything else still applies.
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: OK. I don’t get your comment in this case.
Redshirt
This little anecdote is a perfect summary of our current political environment. Repukes shut down the government, then demand a memorial be opened for “ARE TROOPS!” and blame evil Obummer for closing it, even though it’s obvious they closed it.
Reality? Wish we had it.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@Belafon: B-rinng!
burnspbesq
@Eric U.:
The Ahwanee Hotel’s website will allow you to make a reservation, but according to this LAT article you can’t get there because all of the entrances to the park are shut down and all but a handful of the NPS employees are on furlough. Everybody was supposed to be out of Yosemite by 3:00 p.m. yesterday, although there are surely a non-trivial number of folks out in the back country who will be wandering in over the next several days.
latimes.com/local/la-me-shutdown-yosemite-20131003,0,1866078.story
stratplayer
@ranchandsyrup: Well, that sure was depressing as fuck!
opiejeanne
@Booger: The fawning reverence of WWII vets? Or these idjuts using them for a photo op? I seem to remember Tom Hanks had a hand in getting that memorial started.
My dad wanted to see that thing before he died so I took him there in 2005, when he was 87. Granted, the design is not the best it could have been, although seen from the air and facing the Lincoln Memorial it looks pretty good. We also wheeled him over to the Korean War monument and Vietnam wall. They both have greater emotional impact than the WWII memorial, but he liked his too. I remember that he was disappointed that the Signal Corps wasn’t represented in one of the bas relief panels and said he was going to contact someone requesting that it be added. We did spot the Kilroy was here signs.
He died last September at age 94, and that trip to DC was the last trip he took with us, decided it was too uncomfortable to travel.
Patrick
@Suffern ACE:
CNBC is just FoxNews light. Rational people should care less what CNBC says. BTW – one of the biggest pundits, Cramer, recommended Bear Stearns as a buy a few days before they went bankrupt.
Citizen_X
@Berial:
In US history? No. Ever? I’m thinking, sure, early thirties, Reichstag…
(Yes, I WENT THERE. So sue me, Godwin.)
nemesis
“We are losing the shutdown argument! Quick! Make outrageous statements that misdirect the media away from the real story!”
opiejeanne
@nemesis: Yeah, no foolin’.
Gravie
Oh yeah. I recognize this “private parks” story for what it is — frantic flailing around to distract from the real story — but was hoping for some facts to counteract the misinformation. It does get wearisome, trying to swat down the all the lies.
StringOnAStick
My husband and I had been planning a day to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park, like we do fairly often. But this time we’d planned to make sure we stopped in Estes Park and spent plenty of money to help out the tourism-dependent businesses that are suffering so badly currently because there is no easy or short way to get there thanks to the recent severe flooding/road destruction. Park’s closed, and while the businesses of Estes Park have been begging people to come up and visit, the main reason people do so has all the gates locked currently. I do hope some of those rethuglican small business owners are thinking this shutdown over.
ranchandsyrup
@stratplayer: Agreed. Also depressing.
schrodinger's cat
Thread needs kitteh, a diversion from the crazy polyticks. Click my bloo name, since WP is eating my comments with links.
Is I being moderated? Goes to sit in the nawty chair.
nemesis
@Tommy: The CNBC folks are now simply saying that it doesn’t matter. What shut down? Have you noticed the effects? I sure haven’t. Blah blah blah.
Although such is expected from the Wall Street Apology Network, the mere fact that essential activities continue to be performed works against us. We should make damn sure no Medicare payments go out to hospitals, no SS checks go to seniors and the frigging service academies need not be playing football this weekend.
Redshirt
@nemesis: Effects? Didn’t you hear ARE TROOPS! were prevented from going to a WW2 memorial?! Outrage!
Villago Delenda Est
As a veteran, let me state, for the record, that the search needs to begin NOW for an apple tree sour enough to be suitable for the stringing up of Steve Stockman.
nemesis
If the shutdown is so popular with the bagger crowd, then why wont their elected officials take credit publically for the shutdown?
If Im a bagger and my rep isnt crowing about how proud he is of shutting down big gummit, then, well, Im gonna be somewhat confused. But Ill find someone to yell at about Obama causing me to be confused and stuff.
Long Tooth
I’m forced to assume at this point that most Texans enjoy being lied to by their political representatives (local, state, and federal). Either that, or they are truly the stupidest people on the planet.
Origuy
The Cliff House in San Francisco is on land leased from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Even though it’s right off the Great Highway, as a concessionaire of the NPS, it is closed. I suppose the people who maintain the facility, patrol the parking lots, etc., are Federal employees and are furloughed.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Dread:
I think something like this is at the core of the desire to shut the government down. The Republicans believe in their heart of hearts that government is always the problem so that a shutdown is a good in itself. A shutdown is basically a crucial test of whether people like government or not. The Republicans are genuinely expecting people to like the shutdown and take their side, and they’re surprised when people are more annoyed or upset by the inconvenience than thrilled by the lifting of the government boot from their neck.
cckids
@nemesis: no SS checks go to seniors
pseudonymous in nc
@Eric U.:
You can argue that Albert Speer got some of his aesthetics from American federal architecture, but yeah, the WW2 Memorial is of that ilk.
The Brokawest Generation got cheap houses, cheap college education for themselves and their kids, and get Social Security and Medicare in retirement. (Adjust downwards if non-white.) I don’t begrudge them any of that, but I do begrudge the idea that they hold a permanent veto over every aspect of government.
schrodinger's cat
@ranchandsyrup: Why should we care what crazy people think?
nemesis
@cckids:
The deomgraphic that consistently supports gop principles and the baggers is the very group that would be hit hardest and first with SS checks being suspended.
I expected push back. Yes, it sounds, and is, painful. And wrong. Yet at this stage, Im concerned many Americans agree completely with CNBC’s assessment that “nodoby is noticing” (pain-wise) the shutdown.
If real pain is felt, or in the case of SS checks, if the threat of real pain were to be staring down elected officials, then we could solve this manufactured crisis in a matter of minutes.
Im hoping that doesnt sound mean-spirited or inhuman. My money would be on a quick resolution to the problem if checks were in danger.
kuvasz
You fight fire with fire with assholes like Stockman. The only way to deal with these miscreants is to do to them what they do to others. Attack them, attack them, attack them, using their level of rhetoric.
Most of these mouth breathers are sociopaths who know the boundary conditions of civil discourse and edge ever closer to it. They are akin to one’s older brother who harasses his younger sybling to provoke actions that force the parent to discipline to younger child once he retaliates. But, there is no parent watching and the Right needs to have their collective mouths bloodied in the same manner they have tried to bloody the mouths of their opponents. No fucking prisoners.
I am reminded of Rosa Luxemburg, whose belief in her political philosophy supported the rights of people to express their opinion, even her political enemies, until her enemies, the Freikorps put a bullet in her head.
matt
there’s no other way to put it, stockman is the kind of pedophile who would rape his own kids if he thought it would score political points.
Roger Moore
@pseudonymous in nc:
They aren’t the ones who are flipping out and shutting stuff down. There isn’t enough of the GI generation to do a lot. The Tea Party is mostly Silents with some Boomers and Gen-Xers thrown in.
shortstop
When I was a wee tiny little bitty girl, my sister, our friends and I would occasionally get het up to the degree that we’d be running around the house doing a rough approximation of scenes from Lord of the Flies. My mother would issue a verbal warning and, if we were too far gone to be pulled back by this simple admonishment, she’d completely separate us until the spell broke. Is there any way to put the entire Republican caucus into solitary confinement for the weekend?
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Probably with a lot of boomers, who didn’t get laid in the 60’s and have never forgiven the hippie chicks from looking at them and going “ewwww!”
Shakezula
Curb stomping is the new Lynching. Or shoving down the throat. I lose track.
I also can’t figure out why WWII vets are the Republican Pet du Jour. We’ve got two memorials to people who served in Vietnam and one for soldiers who served in the Korean War. All. Closed. So I guess FU to anyone except WWII vets.
Joel
They want this “closure” to be their new Benghazi. And it might be, but not in the way that they hope.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shakezula:
The irony is WWII vets fought against fascism and militarism.
Both of which the GOP is extremely fond of.
Quicksand
@beltane:
Yes, this is literally true. There is no other way to put it.
Seanly
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s is some weapons grade crazy. I look forward to our benevolent insurance companies always acting on behalf of their clients.
One problem with the guy’s libertarian utopian is that it isn’t economically nor resource efficient (see Philadelphia fire insurance companies). And I liked all the rascist code-words embedded in the red quotes from some published crackpot.
Anarchy, whether it’s the 1999 WTO protest-kind or some high-brow libertarian fantasy land, won’t be a sustainable society. Sorry, but there will always be some form of coersion in the market.
PaulW
@Suffern ACE:
And there again lies the problem. The media elite are in a wonderful little bubble with their circle of friends earning 6-figure incomes wondering why the rest of us don’t fly off to Ibiza before the hurricane hits the Panhandle.
They haven’t felt the effects but there’s 800,000 people and their families who have, right off the bat. And then there’s millions of other Americans inconvenienced if not outright suffering without the support of public services.
PaulW
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because banana aardvark purple shimmy, that’s why.
(puts on Napoleon’s hat) (plays flute marching off into the sunset)
pseudonymous in nc
@Roger Moore:
Oh, for sure. And the WW2 vet groups in DC so far have shown some discomfort being used as political pawns. But they need to make it clear that draft-avoiding GOPers don’t get to pose as their tour guides.
ranchandsyrup
@schrodinger’s cat: You don’t have to. I found it interesting yet depressing that particular flavor of crazy is proliferating.
ranchandsyrup
@schrodinger’s cat: Also, isn’t the OP about what a crazy asshole thinks??
g
@Seanly: If they are private concessionaires working in a public park facility, the federal government is contracting them. If the government is shut down it won’t be able to pay the contractor, ergo, the private contractor needs to shut down.
JoeyJoeJoe
This is the same Representative who, back in 1995, was found to have been communicating with “patriot” groups after the Oklahoma City bombing. Democrats could remind people of what his friends did if he wants to attack Democrats using that kind of rhetoric.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Roger Moore: “Giving a long, meaningless speech on the Senate floor is just like the Bataan Death March,”
To the audience, certainly.
To the Conservitard in love with the sound of his own voice, not so much.