Republican Hypocrisy category archive

John Cole reports on attending a presentation by Bill Maher:

One of the funniest things Maher said last night was a riff on how a certain element of the GOP just can’t deal with Obama as President-

“There is something different about him that I just can’t put my finger on! What makes him so different from the previous Presidents that would drive them insane? There’s a word they want to use, but just can’t, so they start screaming things like SOCIALIST. Ask them what a socialist is, and they tell you ‘I dunno, but I think they like fried chicken.’”

The editorial board of the Roanoke Times gets it.

A snippet:

Republicans demand the FAA quit playing politics with air travel. But the FAA isn’t. It’s simply complying with a previous demand by members of Congress, especially Republican ones, to make foolish across-the-board spending reductions.

The very public death of the Washington Dream Act has left those in Olympia who killed the legislation grasping for a way of explaining why they wouldn’t permit the state Senate even to vote on it.

The latest line, peddled on a conservative radio talk show: Democrats’ purpose in sponsoring the legislation — aimed at making undocumented college students eligible for state financial aid — was to make Republicans look racist.

Indeed.

Coals. Newcastle.

Via Bartcop.

Rick Perry, taker, not maker.

Republicans, rugged individualists, except when they aren’t.

Republicans only think about one thing.

When I was a young ‘un and integration came to my school (meaning 11 black kids joined my high school senior class of 70 or so), the grown-ups were deathly a-skeered that a black kid might dance with a white kid, so they cancelled the prom.

A group of parents organized a “private party” at a local firehall. Every not-black member of the senior class and his or her date was invited–and no one else.

To give you an idea of how long ago that was, it was long before I accumulated three grandkids.

I hoped that that sort of nonsense was over, but noooooo (emphasis added).

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) has refused through a spokesperson to endorse one town’s first-ever integrated high school prom, saying that he would rather not take sides on the issue. According to Atlanta’s WMAZ Channel 13, politicians from both parties have stated their support for black and white students from Wilcox, Georgia, but Deal declined to join them.

Raw Story spoke to activist Bryan Long of the progressive group Better Georgia, whose group has asked Georgia elected officials “to publicly support the students of Wilcox County who are fighting to end a ‘separate-but-equal’ high school prom.”

I’m trying to figure out how there are two sides to this issue.

I’ve got it!

There’s the right side and there’s the wrong side.

And the thing is, Rand Paul probably believes his own propaganda.

Republicans don’t lie just to voters.

They lie to themselves, too.

Via TPM.

The one certain statement about Republicans and race is this:

They are so sealed in their bubble of whiteness that they just don’t get it.*

__________________

*Not that I do get it, but I sure as heck get it more.

When someone says, “I am not a racist,” he belies himself. He provides prima facie evidence otherwise.

For example.

Jeez oh man, can’t Republicans figure out that racial slurs are not common parlance in public discourse (except, perhaps, amongst themselves)?

They are used by whaddyacallem?

Oh, yeah.

Racists.

I’ll stop now. I could go on, but I’ll stop now.

The bread is long gone, as Dick Destiny points out.

Now, no more circus.

The annual air show at Oceana Naval Air Station has been canceled as a result of federal budget cuts, the Navy announced today.

The cancellation this afternoon came less than an hour after Naval Air Forces announced that the Navy’s famed Blue Angels aerial demonstration squadron would not fly the rest of its 2013 schedule, a result of across-the-board cuts demanded by sequestration.

I went to an airshow once, in Willow Grove, Pa.

It was a lot of fun, especially touring the planes that were on display and watching the C-130s reverse and parallel park (this ability is so they can land and take off from short runways with no room to turn around).

Nevertheless, it was ultimately little more than PR for the flyboys.

Skip to the seven minute mark:

Dick Polman has some words for Republicans bemoaning sequestration and demanding, “Hey, cut the other guy’s stuff!” A nugget:

But Republicans have reserved their finest whine for the spending cuts at rural airports. (Yes, cancer patients on Medicare are getting turned away, but Republicans are most upset about the rural airports. Go figure.)

Do read the rest and savor his last paragraph.

I don’t want to spoil it.

Once again, Republican tribalism trumps Republican professed* beliefs.

Frank Rich:

Few states are more conservative than South Carolina, yet Sanford, whose traditional marriage included one man and two women (his wife and his Argentinian mistress, now his fiancée), easily beat a fervent Christian conservative opponent in a Republican primary. Conservative hypocrisy about marriage has been and will be a gift that keeps on giving to late-night comedians and the Democrats.

The chutzpah is astounding. A Democrat’s political career would be over (think: Anthony Weiner, Elliot Spitzer).

______________________

*”Professed”–what they claim they believe, as opposed to–oh, never mind.

Republicans discover that the evul fedrul guvmint actually does useful stuff.

They sowed the wind. Now they reap.

Now, nearly a month after President Obama was forced to issue the sequestration order, the central source of GOP’s real sequestration anxiety is becoming clear.

“I am disappointed to learn of the FAA’s decision to implement the budget sequestration by closing the air traffic control tower in Columbia,” wrote Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO). “This decision is disappointing not only because it presents a safety concern, but it is unwise from a budget perspective as Columbia’s tower is part of the Contract Tower Program that is cost-effective for taxpayers. There is plenty of waste that can be trimmed by administrators implementing the budget sequester and there is absolutely no need to put Columbia workers on unemployment because of the Obama Administration’s poor choices on where to cut.”

Sequestration generally provides agencies little flexibility to determine what parts of their budgets to cut — agencies with broad missions have to cut every program by the same percentage. But the majority of FAA’s employees are air traffic controllers, and as a result, FAA has identified and announced its intent to close nearly 150 relatively low-volume towers to help meet its $600 million sequestration this fiscal year.

Notice that all government spending is waste until cutting it affects their districts.

Pah!

An oxymoron, now! with extra, added morons!

Tony Norman struggles to wrap his mind around the concept of “Frederick Douglass Republicans.”

I can’t summarize or excerpt the piece and do it justice. Just go there.

Much like Historiann, whom I cited yesterday,* Jonathan Chait is not impressed with Senator Rob Portman’s about face on gay marriage, asking whether it is pro-gay, or simply pro-Portman.

Buried in the article is this nugget:

The signal failure of conservative thought is an inability to give any weight to the perspective of the disadvantaged. It’s one thing to argue that society can’t afford to provide all its citizens with access to health insurance. It’s quite another to dismiss the needs of the uninsured because the majority has insurance. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Paul Ryan dismissed universal health insurance as “a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.” The construction was so telling — “we” meant the majority who have access to regular medical care and would rather not subsidize those who don’t.

The Republican Party, the party of “I’ve got mine.”

____________________

*When I wrote the post and scheduled it to post today.

Excerpt:

Here’s a very simple economic formula that works: People who supported the Iraq War don’t ever, ever, ever get to complain about deficits or spending.

Via C&L.