Posts with the tag 'hypocrisy'
Bob Beckel, taking a page right out of Barack Obama’s strategy book (the chapter on playing the victim card at every turn) whines about angry readers who wrote to him in response to a poorly written post at The Fox Forum about the “arrogance” of George Bush. He opined,
Is it my imagination, or are many of you angry? If I were a Republican and facing the rejection of conservatism on an unprecedented scale this coming November, I suppose I’d be angry as well. Perhaps I can help you understand why your political philosophy is about to be rejected by the American people.
Yeah, we heard the same “you’re going to lose big time in November” line before back in 2004. But, Beckel’s wishful thinking is combined with a lack of understanding of what is really going on. Conservatism is not being rejected. Far from it. The truth is conservatives are frustrated when Republicans they elected stray from conservative principles. If conservatism was being rejected, as Beckel wants to believe, then Barack Obama wouldn’t be trying to win votes shifting his positions towards the center, and taking more conservative positions on the Second Amendment, tax cuts, even abortion.
1. Conservatives are supposed to be fiscally responsible yet when your crowd inherited a trillion-dollar surplus from Bill Clinton, Bush/Cheney and a Republican Congress turned it into a $3-trillion-dollar deficit.
You certainly won’t find fiscal conservatives justifying the increases in spending, but Beckel is absolutely ignoring the impact of the 2000-2001 Recession and 9/11. It is also worth noting that two key economic achievements of the 1990s, welfare reform and the balanced budget, while signed by Bill Clinton, came to be because of the efforts of the Republican Congress.
2. Conservatives strongly support the war in Iraq but won’t help pay for it. Never has our country been at war without asking and getting our citizens to help bear the financial burden…until this war. Conservatives don’t want to give up Bush’s tax cuts for the top 5% of wage earners to help pay for this war. Why?
I guess I must be in the top 5% of wage earners, because how else can I explain the tax cut that I received? But, I’m not in the top 5%, so, enough with that argument. Also, Beckel is either choosing to ignore the record economic growth that resulted from Bush’s tax cuts. And of course, Beckel’s argument loses all credibility when you consider government tax receipts went up as a result of those tax cuts.
3. The American people got tired of being lectured on “family values” by conservative clergy and Republican members of Congress, e.g. Larry Craig, who didn’t practice what they preached.
I’m sure the American people are tired of being lecture about the rich paying “their fair share” of taxes by rich Democrats in Congression who keep large chunks of their personal wealth in off-shore tax shelters to avoid paying taxes on it. I also can’t help mentioning Democrat governor Eliot Spitzer, who built his career on breaking up prostitution rings, only to be involved in one himself. Though, it may be true that conservatives are more likely to punish the hypocrites in their party than liberals are to punish the hypocrites in their party.
4. Or maybe the voters got tired of Republicans controlling the US House of Representatives for 12 years during which they handed out more wasteful pork projects than all the pork handed out by Democrats in the 42 years preceding the GOP takeover.
And what have Democrats done to control spending and cut pork since returning to the majority? Oh yeah, nothing.
5. Or maybe voters got angry when they learned the Vice President of the United States manipulated intelligence and misled the American people on why war with Iraq was in our national security interests.
Despite several investigations by various bipartisan and independent commissions and committees, all concluded that there was no manipulation of intelligence, and that statements made by the administration were supported by the intelligence available at the time.
6. Or maybe the public didn’t like George Bush vetoing legislation to provide health insurance for millions of kids.
Another ridiculous point predicated on the belief that health insurance should be funded by the government regardless of whether federal assistance is necessary. The Democrats’ proposed expansion of SCHIP would have provided taxpayer funded health insurance to children in families who didn’t need such government assistance - but also would have left many who needed it, with no such assistence.
7. Or maybe the public got embarrassed by Republicans in the Bush Administration who refused, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to accept the reality of global warming, aka “The Flat Earth Society”.
No, what’s more embarrassing are Democrats who think global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, and who are afraid to debate skeptics of global warming.
Beckel then concludes his poorly written list with a self-righteous rant filled with feigned resignation about his alleged experience with conservatives. If the situation were reversed, and a conservative pundit attempted to generalize liberals based on experiences with a select few, Beckel might have written something about how you can’t judge an entire party or ideology, based on an angry, vocal minority.
I expect Beckel to look at things through a partisan lens, but now I think he’s just blind. As a liberal, he certainly finds it in his best interest to talk about elections with an attitude of inevitability of the eventual positive for his party, but doing so really destroy’s his credibility as a political strategist and pundit.
Tags: Bob Beckel, Conservatism, debate, hypocrisy, liberal lies
July 5th, 2008
In response to the attacks on McCain’s military service, Obama said the following yesterday:
“For those who have fought under the flag of this nation – for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country – no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.”
But, when asked today if Weasel Clark should apologize for his attack on McCain’s military service, he had a much different attitude.
REPORTER: Do you not feel that Clark owes McCain an apology?
SEN. OBAMA: I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine.
I guess the real question is why Obama couldn’t have simply answers, “Yes, Clark owes McCain an apology.”
For someone who has made a point that “words matter,” he should also realize that a lack of words can matter too.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: And the Obamaniacs just keep doing it:
So I too honor John McCain. And, like General Clark, I acknowledge his sacrifice for his country. But being a prisoner of the Vietnamese and serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee does not automatically qualify one for the position of Commander-in-Chief — understanding risks, gauging your opponents and being held accountable does. We must end this glib obeisance to sacrifice and ask deeper questions: is a man who sings “bomb, bomb, bomb … bomb, bomb Iran” a man who understands risks? Is a man who says that we must keep our troops in Iraq until we achieve an ill-defined “victory” really know how to gauge America’s opponents. If we want to hold people accountable, then let’s stand behind my friend Wes Clark — and hold John McCain accountable for what he’s said. - Lt. General Robert Gard (Ret.), Vets for Obama, on the kook-left hate-site Daily Kos
Tags: Acts of Hatred, Barack Obama, Defeaticrats, hypocrisy, John McCain
July 1st, 2008
…but the hypocrisy has already been exposed.
Former Fannie Mae Chairman James Johnson said he has quit Senator Barack Obama’s vice presidential search committee after the Wall Street Journal reported he may have received preferential mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial Corp.
Johnson said that while he has done nothing wrong, he left to avoid being a hindrance to Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort,” he said in a statement. “I believe Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime.”
Johnson’s ties to Countrywide became a campaign issue after Republicans pointed out that Obama had been critical of the mortgage lender in campaign speeches. Johnson’s role as a political insider also contrasted with Obama’s pledge to bring change to Washington.
I don’t think this puts this issue to rest. As Dan Balz of the Washington Post notes, Obama’s defense of Johnson raises questions…
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Team McCain comments, from NRO’s The Corner:
Jim Johnson’s resignation raises serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment. Selecting the vice presidential nominee is the most important decision a presidential candidate can make and one even Barack Obama has said will ’signal how I want to operate my presidency.’ By entrusting this process to a man who has now been forced to step down because of questionable loans, the American people have reason to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown he will only make the right call when under pressure from the news media. America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours. That’s not change we can believe in.
Yep.
Tags: Barack Obama, hypocrisy
June 11th, 2008
Barack Obama is getting flak for tapping Jim Johnson as part of his running mate search team. Johnson, you may have heard, has ties to a subprime lender.
James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company’s CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The Journal said at least two of the mortgages, among a series of loans made available to people Countrywide officials called “friends of Angelo,” were at rates below market averages, though it is difficult to predict a market rate without access to nonpublic information about a borrower’s credit history and other factors that can reduce interest charges on a loan.
Among the loans to Mr. Johnson, according to the Journal, were a $5 million home equity line of credit against a house in Ketchum, Idaho, a 5.25% loan of $1.3 million for a home in Palm Desert, Calif., and a 3.875% loan of $971,650 for a home in Washington, D.C. The interest rates applied for the first five years of the loans.
“That reeks most high,” a public relations specialist and vocal critic of Mr. Mozilo, Bonnie Russell of Del Mar, Calif., said. “Where’s the ‘change to believe in’ if they’re playing the same old game using the same old players?”
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has criticized Countrywide’s executives. “These are the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis. Two million people may end up losing their homes,” Mr. Obama said in March at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, Pa.
The Chicago Tribune reported that the senator from Illinois “fumed” over a total of $19 million in bonuses set to be paid to Mr. Mozilo and the president of Countrywide, David Sambol. “They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What’s wrong with this picture?” Mr. Obama asked.
In a written statement issued in March, the senator called the payments “an outrage” and suggested Mr. Mozilo and others had “tricked” homeowners into unaffordable loans. “These executives crossed the line to boost their bottom line,” Mr. Obama declared.
A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Danny Diaz, yesterday called the loans to Mr. Johnson “highly questionable” and said they conflicted with Mr. Obama’s public comments. “Barack Obama needs to immediately address this matter; otherwise, his rhetoric will continue to prove to be nothing more than complete hypocrisy,” Mr. Diaz said.
In response, Camp Obama has release talking points, charging that the story is “overblown.”
I’m sure if Barack Obama was caught on video tape accepting a bribe, that would be “overblown,” “irrelevent,” and/or a “distraction.” too.
RNC spokeswoman Liz Mair released the following statement in response to Obama pathetic talking points.
In view of both his own rhetoric and his own personal history with regard to housing deals, Barack Obama should know better than to try to dampen down discussion of Jim Johnson and his dealings with Countrywide with claims of this story being ‘overblown.’ If Obama wanted to demonstrate the kind of forthright leadership Americans expect to see in their would-be Commander in Chief, he would answer voters’ questions rather than attempting to duck or dismiss them.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Just an observation…Hillary “suspended” her campaign, right? Well, I think that she knew about this sort of thing via oppo research. Could it be that she’s just waiting for Obama to implode over the next six weeks and then organise a floor fight (without her fingerprints, of course) at the convention to dump Obama and pick her? Time will tell…
Tags: Barack Obama, hypocrisy, liberal lies
June 10th, 2008
Barack Obama is trying to capitalize on a recent story about two McCain advisors who are linked to a 527 group that is attacking Obama.
Of course, Obama has his own issues with campaign officials and advisors, such as the advisor who recently left after it was reported he held talks with Hamas. But, there’s also this story, reported yesterday by The Washington Post, about Obama’s campaign co-director who is also a federal lobbyist for the government of Puerto Rico.
Ethics watchdogs said that the high-profile role of Francisco J. Pavía appears to contradict the Obama campaign’s ethics guidelines, which forbid federal lobbyists from working on staff. But Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Pavía is an “active volunteer” — not a paid staffer — and can hold the job without running afoul of the campaign’s rules.
Because all campaign have co-directors who are just active volunteers.
Obama’s hypocrisy over connections to lobbyists has been well documented but highly ignored by masses. Not too long ago, Obama alleged that lobbyists were running McCain’s campaign…
Really, what does all this finger pointing prove? Obama talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk. He may think he’s doing himself a favor nitpicking over advisors connections to this group or that, especially given his own past problems (which there is always a crafty excuse for) … For a candidate who claims he doesn’t like campaign distractions from the issues, he certainly has a love for distractions he thinks he can benefit from politically.
Tags: Barack Obama, hypocrisy, liberal lies, lobbyists
May 29th, 2008
Oh, I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read this quote from Barack Obama.
“The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record,” Obama said. “I’ve been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I’ve said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That’s what they do.”
Sounds exactly like what Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have done with John McCain… of course, they’ve gone further, deliberately twisting McCain’s words, evening splicing sentences together to alter the meaning.
Obama praised his wife’s patriotism and said that for Republicans “to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class … and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable.”
I guess Obama finds himself and his own party detestable.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Advice to Mrs. Obama - if you don’t want to catch any political flack, then don’t make any political statements outside of generalised support for your husband. You want to be in the political kitchen? Then get used to the heat…
Tags: Barack Obama, hypocrisy, John McCain, liberal lies
May 19th, 2008
Egomaniac Barack Obama appears even more desperate today as he continues whine like a 5 year old child about Bush’s speech to the Knesset, which Obama thinks was an attack directly on him.
Barack Obama has called President Bush’s comments on appeasement “exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and alienates us from the rest of the world.”
Obama criticized Republican rival John McCain and President Bush for “dishonest and divisive” attacks in hinting that the Democratic presidential candidate would appease terrorists.
Obama strongly responded Friday to the comments Bush made in Israel on Thursday and McCain’s subsequent words. Obama told a town hall meeting, “That’s the kind of hypocrisy that we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer.”
Of course, the fact that Obama, by every indication we’ve received on the campaign, would be a terrorist appeaser, but let’s face it, he’s trying to make an issue out of something that really wasn’t about him specifically. No one can deny that Obama is part of a larger group of individuals who seem to believe that we can sit down for tea and biscuits with terrorists and the world will be A-OK after that. But, Obama may just not have enough experience to have a realistic understanding of the world and our enemies.
Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, McCain said he took the White House at its word, but then he weighed into the spat himself, saying: “This does bring up an issue that we will be discussing with the American people, and that is, why does Barack Obama, Senator Obama, want to sit down with a state sponsor of terrorism?”
Asked if Obama was an appeaser, McCain said Obama must explain why he wants to talk with leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and added that Obama’s position was a serious error. “It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel. My question is, what does he want to talk about?”
The answer is, Obama doesn’t want to talk about anything that may hurt his candidacy. He feels he is exempt from explaining himself or his positions when such positions could hurt his candidacy.
Keep crying Barack. Waaaa… Waaaa.
Tags: Barack Obama, hypocrisy, Israel, John McCain, President Bush
May 16th, 2008
So, we find out the other day that not only were members of Congress (including Nancy Pelosi) briefed on the interrogation techniques used against capture terrorists, but that they were supportive and some even urged interrogators to “push harder.” Yet, Despite this information, Democrats are still hot and bothered over destroyed interrogation tapes and Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence, is claiming that Democrats were not informed.
Congress summoned CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden to Capitol Hill to explain his agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, as multiple investigations began into who knew about and approved the decision.
Hayden is to testify in a closed session Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and on Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee.
Among the questions he’ll face is whether Congress was notified about the tapes’ destruction. The chairman of the House panel, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said Hayden’s assertion last week that lawmakers were informed “does not appear to be true.”
According to the Washington Post article “Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.” So, obviously, there’s not denial that a briefing occurred, it’s just the memory game… pseudo-denials by claiming they don’t recall what was discussed, or just not commenting.
I think the Democrats need to be pressed on this. Obviously at one point they were more interested in doing what was necessary to protect this country. Unfortunately now, it’s just politics.
Tags: CIA, hypocrisy, liberal lies, Michael Hayden, Nancy Pelosi, Silvestre Reyes, torture, waterboarding
December 11th, 2007
This story from the Washington Post clearly proves how today’s objections to waterboarding, particularly from Congressional Democrats, is purely political grandstanding. When briefed on the interrogation techniques used against captured terrorists, the reaction from those in the room “was not just approval, but encouragement.” Even current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there and “did not raise objections at the time.”
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
[…]
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”
And where does this newfound disapproval come from? The answer is obvious, and I’ve been saying it for a long time. Democrats have forgotten 9/11 and the lessons they should have learned from it.
“In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic,” said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. “But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’ ”
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 — by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding — did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey’s confirmation hearings for attorney general.
This article also proves that Republican lawmakers were speaking truthfully when they said members of Congress had been fully briefed on the interrogation methods used against captured and suspected terrorists. Opposition to the practice makes for good political theatre when trying to make a spectacle of Mukasy’s confirmation hearings, or what is bound to happen over the issue of the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes. The bottom line is this: Democrats knew about waterboarding and supported it. Their opposition to it today comes from their desire to further politicize the war on terror, and undermine our national security.
Tags: flip-flopping, hypocrisy, Mukasey, Nancy Pelosi, partisan, Terrorism, torture, waterboarding
December 9th, 2007
Older Posts
