What I got for my birthday…
I have to admit that I have a mix of emotions today with Atkins’ resignation. I am sad that it came to this. I am sorry for Adkins’ family. I sincerely hope John gets the help that it sounds like he needs. On the other hand, I am ecstatic that the system worked. I am happy that the BS that he and “Scum of the Earth” Oberle hinted at didn’t cause any waffling.
Most of all I am proud of Dave Burris for being a stand up guy. Understandably, Dave couldn’t take a stand for a long time, but when he really felt that this had gone far enough and that Adkins had finally worn out his welcome, he took decisive action at considerable risk. Thank you, Dave.
I would also like the record to state that I would not have been in favor of expulsion except for the fact that he lied to the ethics committee. He did knowingly lie, and for that he earned this outcome.
Tags: John Atkins Diet
The early Carl Kaminski report from the scene was interesting. He dwelled on how sad everyone was.
It seemed like, beyond Atkins, the clubby government types were lamenting the end of an era. The end of a system that conferred huge perks (like the ability to break the law) on legislators.
Happy Birthday bro!
many happy returns
it only took half a year….not bad for government work
Amen.
Now maybe they can take a vote on the three insurance bills that will help the people of Delaware. Naw, that would piss off all those insurance lobbyists.
Jenson was crowing this afternoon about how this proved the R’s were more ethical than the D’s. Let’s see, it was an R who lied and hid the scandal before the election and misled the people in his district. It was an R who had to be threatened by his own party chairman before he did the right thing. But that makes the R’s better than the D’s?
The sad thing is they don’t see this as twisted logic. It’s actually the way their minds work. Very scary! Or, it’s just more PR hype programmed by Frank Luntz and the Republican think tanks.
Whichever it is I’m glad I don’t subscribe to it.
Can’t we just once enjoy a breakthrough victory for public integrity without siding up and constantly slicing down the partisan loaf?
D, R, I, G, L, etc. – we all have reason to be glad today as political activists and people who want good government, above all.
Bravo to all of you who kept the drums beating. Every bit helped.
But we still have MUCH work ahead, friends.
Hey Tyler!
I’d like that too! Except Jensen started it this afternoon. And we learned from the swiftboaters that we can’t just stand by and let them attack us. Those days are over. If we are attacked we will defend ourselves.
Sorry Tyler but we’ve been bullied long enough by this crowd — and I don’t include you. Are you sure you are a Republican?
Onward gang!
Rebecca,
If you can provide ONE Democrat(ic) official that called out for Atkins’ expulsion or resignation, then you win. Not only did Dave make his stand, but there were several Republican legislators who did the same.
Meanwhile, Bob Gilligan (who, in the HB 4 controversy months ago said he didn’t order his caucus to do anything) ordered his caucus to not make any public comments… and they followed him lockstep toward censure.
Rebecca,
The twisted logic continues. Now you have to prove that Democrats were more outraged at Atkins that Republicans.
I can see it now. After Dems get us out of Iraq, the wingnuts here are going to complain that they did not do it fast enough.
This is grapevine on the final straw.
What happened was, within the last several days, the House leadership learned there was a teen-age babysitter, hired to watch the Atkins’ children, in the home when the couple had its fight, and Atkins allegedly coerced the babysitter into silence.
What a loser.
Heya, Rebecca!
“And we learned from the swiftboaters that we can’t just stand by and let them attack us. Those days are over. If we are attacked we will defend ourselves.”
I am glad for that. I will be right there to help. The “swiftboaters” were/are trash. Their gutter tactics and character assassination schemes have no legitimate place in public life. They should be faced down and slapped silly wherever and whenever their ilk should again surface from the bog.
“Sorry Tyler but we’ve been bullied long enough by this crowd — and I don’t include you.”
Thank you for excluding me. I consider them more like a vicious organized mob than a crowd.
But I also think it is becoming very clear every day just how distinct and separate they really are from the grassroots Republican party, of which I consider myself part. Now even much of the national Republican elected leadership, though behind the curve, is moving righteously to alienate them. (And it’s about damn time they finally wake up.)
When even a hardcore right-winger like Bob Novak points out the unprecedented and near-comprehensive isolation of Bush, you can read between the lines how this really extends to the entire Bushie/neo-con/criminal/warmongering sect of which Bush has been the titular, bumbling face man.
I think it is becoming clear that it has not just been Democrats being bullied but the whole damn country, to include even those erstwhile Republican supporters who have been made tools of the Bush mob, whether out of fear or plain stupidity.
It doesn’t take a hard core hater of all things Republican to see that Bush’s agenda has never included the health, success, or even continued viability of the Republican Party. It is certainly not lost on many bewildered Republicans, thankfully growing in number, how Bush has done more damage to our party than even the most rabid Republican-hater could possibly dream of inflicting.
Bush’s treatment of the Republican party is and always has been to co-opt, control, dominate, purge, and ultimately corrupt it in service to his and his loyalists’s despicable ends. Just like his nasty cabal has done with every otherwise decent American institution their tentacles have infected.
But as far as being a Republican, I am far more worried about my country and its fate under this criminal administration than I could ever be about my party. If making the country right again means disempowering my own party, so be it.
Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. I only hope the Republican party takes them to heart and can some day emerge from them as a positive force in our political life, free of these nasty fringe elements of which it has in recent years become all too seized. If not, it deserves nothing but perpetual wilderness.
Bush’s treatment of the Republican party is and always has been to co-opt, control, dominate, purge, and ultimately corrupt it in service to his and his loyalists’s despicable ends. Just like his nasty cabal has done with every otherwise decent American institution their tentacles have infected.
Thanks for this Tyler, but here’s the thing: Smart people knew this in 2000, and a hell of a lot more people knew it in 2004. What disgusts and terrifies me is the initial and ongoing gullibility of the grassroots Republicans and their willingness to defend Bush long after the truth became obvious. And among Republican leadership, not one voice emerged to stand up against Bush. Not that the Democrats were much better, until lately.
Tying all that back to Atkins…neither party in Delaware has a corner on public integrity or public corruption. Each is responsible for its own house.
Atkins is out because Republicans ultimately put their foot down and ‘cleaned house’.
No conscientious Republican should think the Democrats owed some responsibility or obligation to this task.
No conscientious Republicans should feel any need to elevate our party’s standing through critical comparisons to Democrats.
Just having a guy like Dave Burris in our leadership is already reason enough to be proud and hopeful about where we are headed.
Okay An0nym00se!
John Kowalko (D) walked into the chamber with a bill to expell Atkins, just in case.
I don’t want to win a pissing contest here. I’d just like the R’s to take a class in logic. Otherwise the Bushies are going to continue their destructive reign.
Tyler,
Thanks for your comments. I come from a long line of Republicans and they are totally bewildered and upset by what has happened to their party under the worst president ever. I’m sorry for all of us.
I hear you, anon. I am only one voice and I have used it the best I could, for years.
It has been very very frustrating, infuriating, and increasingly frightening watching how sheepish and slow to react this country has been in the face of such a single-minded, sustained assault on even our most core values and essential governing principles.
Fear is a powerful weapon, especially in the arsenal of manipulative, duplicitous, megalomaniacal tyrants. It is all too easy for shameless fearmongers, cloaked behind a veil of authority, to capitalize on uncertainty, hesitation, and intimidation.
For unflinching powermongers fear is an easy way to make others flinch in their path. As you alluded, a whole hell of a lot of people from all persuasions have either bowed to or flinched at the Bush regime’s excesses at some point or another over the last 6 years.
Thankfully fear only takes power so far… before brute force is required. As more and more people have come to reject the Bush regime’s use of fear they are naturally rejecting the power derived from it.
It has taken far too long for far too many. But better late than never.
Let’s just hope the power of the American people never has to face down some desperate resort to brute force by a fast-imploding Bush regime.
I am less worried about blaming who went along with it in the past than I am about empowering whoever is prepared to put a stop to it in the days ahead.
Rebecca,
So did Dick Cathcart. Reps Lavelle, Hudson, and Valihura all about expulsion earlier this week. County Chair Burris made very clear his feelings, back when censure was supported across the board by House leadership. I call those who made their feelings known “leaders”.
“John Kowalko (D) walked into the chamber with a bill to expell Atkins, just in case.”
And I have in my hand a list of secret communists…
“The “swiftboaters” were/are trash.”
So these decorated combat veterans are “trash” ?
thanks for the insight into your character.
And what of the decorated combat vets they trash? Oh, that’s right…wrong political persuasion. Democrat Purple Hearts aren’t worth as much as those of garbage-spewing neo-con political hitmen, eh boatsy?
I trash them for their sleazy political tactics, not the sufficiency of their wounds or their combat service….like they make a habit of doing to honorable men.
Are you a combat vet, steamy? Have you laid boots on foreign soil and carried arms for your country in hostile territory?
I have. You going to swiftboat me too?
Think again, Jack.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
(Ahem) The Swift Boat Vets didn’t come into being until John Kerry decided to run as a war hero, in a manner reminiscent of JFK, complete with the medals he’d thrown over the White House fence during an antiwar protest. They called into question the validity of Kerry’s three Purple Hearts and subsequent easy out from Vietnam, and Kerry has yet to release his records in response. (Any grunt will tell you that officers often recommend each other for medals, and can even recommend themselves.)
If any mark was left, Nick, it was on Kerry’s character.
Some quotes re : SBVT
“Completely nauseating, dishonest, dishonorable” – John McCain
“Vitriolic and hyperbole” – General Tommy Franks
“I can speak to the process, that we did extraordinary careful checking on that kind of medal, a very high one, that it goes through the Secretary. So I’d stand by the process that awarded Kerry that medal and I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition. I feel he deserved it.” – Senator John Warner
These “Swift Boat” smear-mongers get no free passes for their Rovian garbage from this vet.
Lies are lies. No goose-stepping allegiance to George Bush gives them special veteran status to trash someone else’s war record.
They are scum, plain and simple.
Incidentally, how twisted could it possibly be that trash-peddling political mercenaries claiming to be patriotic veterans (as if they have some special licesnse) can dare question ANY combat veteran WHOSOEVER on the behalf of some half-assed AWOL daddy’s boy Air NG flyboy yahoo hiding out in Texas from the ‘Nam?
You don’t have to like Kerry to know that the SBVT are a bunch of shameless BS artists.
They dishonored the military and every other veteran out here, all for the glory of George W. Bush, all in accordance with the lowlife schemes of Herr Karlheinz Rove. Goebbels would be proud.
man, you are twisted with hate.
Talk about off the rails! Kerry dishonored himself and his fellow servicemen, and got all upset when someone called him on it. Boo hoo, poor little Johnny’s train ride to the White House got derailed by the truth. Good thing he has his wife’s billions to comfort him.