Republican Hypocrisy category archive

In the Guardian, George Monbiot describes astroturfing. A nugget:

I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek. They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen.

Rowell and Matthews found that one of the messages Mary Murphy had sent came from a domain owned by the Bivings Group, a PR company specialising in internet lobbying. An article on the Bivings website explained that “there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved … “

The whole thing is worth the four minutes it takes to read it and will leave you wondering realizing what astroturfers have to hide and why they have to hide it.

Afterthought:

Sounds awfully like “bearing false witness” to me.

Take the quiz.

. . . like a rake’s old conquest of last week. From Kiko’s House:

As sheer mean-spiritedness goes, it will be tough to top the successful Republican effort to block Democratic legislation to provide medical care to rescue workers and others who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke at the site of World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001.

While the bill, which passed the House in September, could be inserted into the already top-heavy tax-cut bill that may yet be passed before the 111th Congress adjourns, the Republican obstructionism — based on a stated concern that the $7.4 billion in medical care was too dear — betrayed an immorality that makes a mockery of claims of fiscal responsibility, and the bill will be deader than a doornail when the 112th Congress convenes in January.

When the dew was no longer on the rose,
when votes no longer came from the pose,
support for the rescuers, well, away it goes.

Paul Harris, writing at the Guardian, analyzes the duplicity of Republicans on economic policy. A nugget:

The hypocrisy is staggering and almost beyond belief. One of the arguments the Republicans continually use to justify cutting jobless benefits is that America cannot afford such largesse because it would inflate the deficit. Too bad, they say, but these are tough times and you just have to grit your teeth and take the pain to get the nation’s fiscal house in order.

Yet, that very same deficit would also be massively boosted by saving Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy from expiry. That, however, does not seem to bother them. It’s unfair, they howl, to raise anyone’s taxes at such a time – failing to point out that “raising taxes” is very different from letting tax cuts expire on time (as they were designed to do, not by Obama, but by President George W Bush).

It is a staggering confidence trick that the Republicans are seeking to pull off. Except that most such con jobs at least vaguely try and disguise themselves. This one is being carried out in plain sight.

Afterthought:

If you are already rich, you can never have so much that Republicans won’t want to give you more.

Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe:

Senator Brown and his fellow Republicans are itching to get to the important stuff — extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But before they play Santa to the rich, they must play Scrooge to the jobless.

As Christmas lights twinkle, Republicans want to cut off benefits that are paid from the revenue that workers produce. With carolers crooning about peace and good will, the GOP supports tax cuts that will add to the deficit they supposedly want to reduce.

This yuletide pageant is a study in shameless hypocrisy.

Read the whole thing.

Dick Polman attempts to take a balanced look at the hoopla over the TSA’s recent changes in its scan and search process. He recalls his time reporting from England and Ireland during The Troubles and does not find the TSA’s procedures particularly oppressive in comparison. I can’t say that I agree fully with him–much of what TSA does is truly little more than theatre (such as confiscating shampoo)–but his attempt at level-headedness is worth a read.

Buried in the column is an explanation of why right-wing leopards, who have slavishly supported every assault on civil liberties performed in the name of security by a Republican president and who shamelessly wish to police persons’ bedrooms, are trying to shed their spots have suddenly discovered the Fourth Amendment:

Forgive my confusion, but I always thought that conservatives favored a robust government response to the terrorist threat, using all available means. Waterboarding? Check. Warrantless phone surveillance of Americans? Check. Invading the wrong country and borrowing money from China in order to fight it? Check. But requiring that flying Americans give up some privacy in a public area, for the purpose of enhanced security? No check. Better to accuse Obama’s TSA of government overreach, since that fits the ongoing oppositional narrative.

Of course, if the TSA had decided against implementing these stricter measures, and a plane was subsequently blown up by a passenger, the conservative backlash would be savage. Obama critics would swiftly declare that this wimpy administration had failed to do what was necessary to keep Americans safe.

Jonathan Zimmerman discusses Confederate Revisionism in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Confederate Revision: that’s the attempt to whitewash slavery out of the causes of the Civil War.

Teabaggers claim to be all about the voice of the people.

Except, of course, when the people disagree with them.

Lukovich:

How low can they go? Still to be seen.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

If you doubted that Republicans could be so craven as to put their own political interests above national security, the proof was delivered Tuesday: Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl announced he will block New START, which calls for the resumption of nuclear controls that until now have had bipartisan support.

Holding our nuclear security hostage solely to embarrass President Barack Obama is a new low.

Facing South analyzes cases of “voter fraud,” in which illegal voters are alleged to have cast improper votes, and finds not much of anything. Elections are stolen in the counting room (and in the Supreme Court), not in the voting room.

So why is this an issue: It’s all about the scary black folk (emphasis added):

The modern crusade against voter fraud started in the civil rights era of the 1960s, with growing anxieties among white politicians and voters over the growing power of black and urban voters.

. . . Republicans tapped into — and inflamed — these fears with outrageous claims of black voter fraud, which not only riled up the conservative base, but also laid the groundwork for “anti-fraud” campaigns that could depress Democratic turnout.

In 1964, the Republican National Committee launched “Operation Eagle Eye,” which appointed a “ballot security” official in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The odious Republican Southern Strategy lives on. As Dennis G is fond of pointing out, the Republican Party has become the Confederate Party.

Glenn Greenwald:

A 22-year-old Nebraska resident was arrested yesterday for waterboarding his girlfriend as she was tied to a couch, because he was wanted to know if she was cheating on him with another man; I wonder where he learned that?

Read the whole thing.

It is really difficult to argue with the Booman’s argument.

And I haven’t read any of Dostoevsky’s novels.

Republicans don’t want persons to vote, because Republicans know that their policies are inimical to the polity.

Persons, such as this one, who think there is no difference between the parties are not paying attention.

Not voting for one candidate is equivalent to voting for the other.

Todd was complaining in his podcast that Christmas decorations have started to appear in stores in Honolulu and All Hallows’ Eve has not yet passed.

Which sets the stage for Adam Felber’s rant against the phony war on Christmas war. A nugget:

But ultimately… who cares about this? Why are you even reading this far? The truth is that there’s a big lie that you have to believe in order to swallow this “War on Christmas” malarkey, and that’s the idea that the phrases “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” were not always part of our cultural (and advertising) lexicon, but were in fact invented in a stem cell lab by George Soros in 2002.

My memory says otherwise. And my experience says that the only honest reason for anyone to wish anyone a happy or merry holiday or Christmas is because they are wishing someone some small measure of happiness or merriness. Those wishes are something that you are giving away, and as such they are the only holiday wishes that you have any right to control. Any further grumbling isn’t protecting your holiday – it’s just helping ad rates on Fox News while choosing a “righteous” way to nurture a hot little flame of anger and resentment in your heart that might otherwise be extinguished by genuine “Christmas spirit.”

Read the whole thing and get some chuckles along with some truth.

In teabagger world, freedom of speech is rewritten to freedom of approved speech.

Dick Polman comments. A nugget:

Granted, passions are running high in this campaign season. But given the fact that a young woman in Kentucky was subsumed by a foot for having the temerity to protest a tea-party candidate, and that a reporter in Alaska was handcuffed and carted away by tea-party Senate candidate Joe Miller’s bodyguards for having the temerity to ask pesky questions, perhaps it would appear that the right has an insufficient grasp of the First Amendment. It’s enough to make me want to take my country back.

Shaun sums it up.

. . . it is manifestly obvious that the people who will be targeted will largely be minorities and the polling places will be largely in minority neighborhoods. In other words, people who wear brown faces and not brown shirts.

Dengre looks at the history.

Afterthought:

I remember my Daddy’s making sure he paid the poll tax so he could vote. It was only $5.00, but it was enough to disenfranchise most of the black folks, at least the ones who passed the literacy test.

Sample literacy test question for white folks:

What is the name of the Constitution of the United States of America?

Sample literacy test for black folks:

Compare and contrast the influence of the writings of Voltaire and the writings of Locke on the underlying political philosophy of the United States Constitution.

Blaming the victim is a much larger Republican thing.