Republican Hypocrisy category archive

It’s a coordinated campaign of calumny; hate sells, and hate is what they got.

Image via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Celebrate President’s Day with the Rude One (warning: rude).

Teabaggery in a nutshell: Handouts for me, but not for thee.

Via BartCop.

Juanita Jean assesses Rand Paul, serial plagiarist:

Rand Paul lives in the movie Groundhog Day where he keeps trying to steal without getting caught.

Details at the link.

Addendum:

Noz adds a lawyer’s perspective.

“Anti-regulation” Republicans attempt to regulate wind energy out of business.

Via Juanita Jean.

My friend and I were talking yesterday about what it would be like to have no heat when the temperature is in the 20s and you have no fireplaces or other sources of heat and, likely, because of frozen pipes, no water. I don’t want to imagine.

I used to live on the Main Line, where it seems all cold Hell is breaking lose. It really was a nice place to live; I feel for the persons freezing in their dwellings.

But I have been made cynical, I guess because I pay attention.

When I read this story, all I could think was that here’s yet another wingnut governor who decries the evul fedrul guvmint except when his hand is out.

Not nice people.

In the Roanoke Times, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein points out three major issues with Constitutional “originalism,” the theory the U. S. Constitution should be interpreted as if the horse were still the primary mode of transportation and outhouses the primary sanitation device. Here’s the first:

Originalists contend that their approach is best because it reduces the discretion of judges, stabilizes the legal system and ensures that the Constitution’s meaning is settled by the judgments of We the People, who ratified its provisions. Scalia argues that originalists help to produce a “rock-solid, unchanging” Constitution – and that if the document reflects the views of people long dead, well, that’s fine, because those who are living are always free to amend it.

It seems like an appealing argument, but it faces three objections. The first is historical. Did those who ratified the Constitution embrace originalism? If not, originalism turns out to be self-contradictory, because the original understanding rejected originalism as Scalia and Thomas understand it.

Sunstein is charitable to treat originalism as a subject of polite discourse.

It is, at its origination and in its manifestation, an intellectual scam, a pretty theory to give legitimacy to those who would return our social structures to status quo ante bellum (and you know to which bellum I refer).

Via BartCop.

Historiann explains.

Let The Richmonder explain.

You can’t make this stuff up (emphasis added).

Republican Rep. Gordon Denlinger, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Fiscal Policy, an elder in the Zeltenreich Reformed Church of New Holland, Pa., is circulating a memo seeking co-sponsors for his effort.

“Specifically, I plan to propose a new section in Article I – the Pennsylvania ‘bill of rights’ – that will prohibit government from punishing an individual or entity if the individual or entity makes hiring or other employment decisions, or provides services, accommodations (including housing accommodations), advantages, facilities, goods or privileges based on sincerely held beliefs,” the memo says.

When I grew up in the Jim Crow South, I knew many folks who made “hiring or other employment decisions, or provide(d) services, accommodations (including housing accommodations), advantages, facilities, goods or privileges” based on sincerely held beliefs–beliefs that they had the God-given right to lord it over darkies, wimmens, and any one else who was not a white folk like them.

Folks who think like that were bigots then, they are bigots now, and they will be bigots tomorrow.

These are folks who put the “sin” in sincerity.

Charles Krauthammer clutches his pearls because President Obama “never had his heart in the Afghanistan War.”

Why the hell should he?

It was George the Worst’s War, and he blew it. In the process of not getting Osama bin Laden, he sent hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghanis to useless, pointless death (and put First Son in harm’s way).

Nevertheless, what Krauthammer and his fellows most want is for you to forget that George the Worst ever happened. Even more than that, they want you to forget that Krauthammer, Cal Thomas, David Brooks, and their like spent eight years trying to convince you that George the Worst was the greatest thinker since Socrates.

Why these folks have not been expelled from my local rag’s editorial pages escapes me. I guess that, once you whore yourself out for wingnut welfare, you are fixed for life.

Right-wing hacks: Always wrong, never penalized.

And, yes, I’m fed up. Fed up that intellectual incompetence seems to be a job requirement for “conservative” political columnists.

They are not nice people.

Delaware Liberal explicates democracy, teabagger style.

In the Bangor Daily News, Ethan Strimbling crunches the numbers and finds the actual welfarm queens:

So, there you have it. Twenty-five percent of our corporate welfare programs show possible fraud of $223 million. Two tenths of a percent of our human welfare programs show possible fraud for a total of $293,000.

Yet where do Republicans focus all their energy? Well you know. The question is why? Unfortunately, the answer to that is simply pure ideology and politics.

Follow the link for the arithmetic.

It’s just mean for the sake of being mean.

E. J. Dionne explains:

What is the greatest fear of conservatives when they warn against the dangers of big government? It is that a leader or the coterie around him will abuse the authority of the state arbitrarily to gather yet more power, punish opponents and, in the process, harm rank-and-file citizens whose well-being matters not a whit to those who are trying to enhance their control.

This, of course, is a quite precise description of what happened when Gov. Chris Christie’s aides ordered the closure of some access lanes to the George Washington Bridge last September.

Wait for it.

Via C&L.

Via Bartcop.