Political Hypocrites

Michele Bachmann is telling people to break the law and calling for civil disobedience:

At a rally at the Minnesota State Capitol on Saturday, Bachmann declared illegitimate the potential route that House Democrats could take to pass the health care bill. She was specifically railing against a parliamentary tactic by which the House could skip voting on the Senate bill by declaring it passed as part of the reconciliation bill. Bachmann pronounced this to be taxation without representation. "They have just started a revolution -- and they did it," said Bachmann.

"But mark my words, the American people aren't gonna take this lying down," Bachmann later said. "We aren't gonna play their game, we're not gonna pay their taxes. They want us to pay for this? Because we don't have to. We don't have to. We don't have to follow a bill that isn't law. That's not the American way, and that's not what we're going to do."

Not the American way? Where were her complaints when the Republicans did the exact same thing?

– The 2001 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 1836, 3/26/01]
– The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 2, 3/23/03]
– Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 [HR 4297,5/11/06]
– The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [H. Con Res. 95, 12/21/05]

(By tlw3 via Alan.com)

Bachmann never once called those pieces of legislation illegal or un-American, despite the very same rule being used to pass them. As matter of fact those are the very issues that Republicans, like Bachmann, love campaigning on. They consider it huge victories for their party.

But the fact that Bachmann is out there trying to provoke people to break the laws of this land is a violation of her oath of office. She is supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not define it. Given that, she should be either censured or suspended from the Congress, and that should actually come from the Republican leadership. Instead they stay silent on her crazy ramblings, so from now on when she calls for illegal activities we will say it’s the GOP calling for them. By their silence, it makes it obvious that the GOP is sanctioning what she says, so they must agree with it – right? That’s exactly what we would have heard if this was 2006 and a Democrat was doing this.

How many times have we heard Republicans say that health care reform will lead us to “socialized medicine”? How many times have they used Canada as an example of what we don’t want to be? Well check this out:

Sarah Palin's family use to "hustle" across the Canadian border to get healthcare, the former Alaska Governor said
this weekend.

In a speech in Calgary, Palin called it "ironic" that while growing up in a small Alaskan town near the Canadian border, her family used to sneak across to take advantage of the Canadian healthcare system.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," she said, according to Medicine Hat News (via Dave Weigel.) "And I think now, isn't that ironic."

Yup – the queen of the GOP used to use that horrible Canadian medical system. She has brought an entirely new meaning to the word hypocrite.

Remember last month how the GOP constantly said cameras should be rolling during health care negotiations? Now that there’s a chance for that, well look at what’s happening:

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) today echoed Rep. John Boehner's (R-OH) supposed concern that televising President Obama's bipartisan health care reform summit would turn it into a "media show" -- even after both called for him to make the process more transparent.

Much like Boehner, Enzi was one of the Republicans who earlier called for Obama to televise the health care debate on C-SPAN, in the name of "increased transparency."

What are these Republicans afraid of? There must be something there. I mean if they had such a great position then you would think they would want the cameras rolling. I guess their position isn’t that great after all….

Last night Rachel called out dozens of GOP lawmakers who constantly blast the stimulus package just to go back to their districts and tout the successes of it. This was an awesome segment on the hypocrisy of the GOP.

Last week news broke that Sen. Richard Shelby had placed a hold on almost all of President Obama’s nominees in lieu of getting funding for some of his pork projects. Now he has retreated:

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama will stop blocking Senate confirmation of about 70 government appointees nominated by President Barack Obama, his office said.

Shelby had placed "holds" on most of Obama's nominees, delaying the Senate from acting on them, in a dispute over federal spending involving his state.

"The purpose of placing numerous holds was to get the White House's attention on two issues that are critical to our national security – the Air Force's aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI's Terrorist Device Analytical Center," Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo said in a statement Monday night.

The problem for Shelby is that he has now been exposed as a major hypocrite. How can he continue to call himself a conservative after going to such extraordinary measures to secure pork? Any challenger to Shelby’s seat will have a field day with this.

Yesterday Sarah Palin finally addressed Limbaugh’s use of the word “retard” and as expected, she approves!

PALIN: I agree with Rush Limbaugh. He was using satire to politically correct —

WALLACE: He used the “r” word.

PALIN: He used satire. Name-calling by anyone, I teach this to my children and you teach it to your children and grandchildren, too. Name calling by anyone is just unnecessary. It just wastes time. Let’s speak to the issues and — [...]

PALIN: I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel has been reported, did say that. there is a big difference there. Again, name-calling, using language that is insensitive, by anyone, male, female, Republican, Democrat, is unnecessary. It’s inappropriate. Let’s all just grow up.

As Think Progress points out, Rush used the phrase over 40 times saying, even saying there was going to be a “retard summit at the White House”.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sarah seems upset with name-calling, yet look at what she says immediately after that:

They are kooks. I agree with Rush Limbaugh.

Either amnesia sets in or her personality just switched, because Sarah goes right to name calling. And let’s not forget that name calling was her big ploy while making campaign speeches, calling people terrorists, socialist and anything else she could think of.

One final thought about this. Why in the world is Fox News spending part of their Sunday show interviewing employees? This would be like Joe Scarborough being the big guest on Meet the Press. It’s fine to have them on a panel, but as the headliner? Please….

Talk about being busted. Last night while giving her little speech to the tea bagger convention, Sarah Palin is caught reading answers from her palm. Not only that, but in the same speech she also gets on Obama as a “guy with a teleprompter”.

Obama went to the House GOP and answered questions for a couple of hours, all without a teleprompter. Palin walks into her fan club and can’t answer softball questions without writing the answers on her hand? Welcome to the world of incompetence.

Yesterday during the President’s Q&A session with House Republicans Mike Pence asked President Obama why he won’t support across the board tax cuts like Reagan wanted. This has been a key issue for Republicans for decades and I am wondering why they never did it when they had total control of the government.

Think about it for a minute. During the Bush years, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate, Republicans never enacted such a widespread tax cut. Instead they only focused on the wealthy. They even went as far as securing these tax cuts through reconciliation, so they didn’t have to face a filibuster.

As matter of fact, under Obama we had had more widespread tax cuts than we ever did under Bush. 95% of working families saw tax cuts last year.

I think it’s just really interesting that Republicans only seem to want these tax cuts when Democrats are in control. Sounds like they are afraid that the cuts could lead to big fiscal problems and the Republicans don’t want to be the ones steering the ship when they occur.

John McCain blasted off a campaign email last night that stated the following:

During his first year in office, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have amassed a $12.4 trillion deficit that is growing each day.

A trillion dollars a month? Wow that’s amazing for a party that hasn’t accomplished that much due to Republican obstructionism. So we need to mark that as a flat out lie.

But it gets even better. This is from Media Matter’s fact check:

In fact, the FY 2009 deficit, which totaled $1.4 trillion, was already estimated to be $1.2 trillion when Obama came into office and "virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years" are due either to policies implemented under President Bush or to the recession, which began during Bush's tenure, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Now what big policy implemented under Bush would have raised it so much? Maybe TARP – the bank bailout. And yes this would be the very same bank bailout that McCain suspended his campaign to go to Washington and help make sure it passed.

I would much rather see some tea bagger win McCain’s seat than him get sent back for another term. This guy isn’t just a hypocrite – he’s a flat out liar.

(h/t Cesca)

This is something I never thought I would see:

Senate Republicans said Thursday that they would try to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move that several acknowledged was an effort to delay President Obama's health-care legislation.

Late into the night, Democrats emerged from a huddle confident that they would muster the 60 votes needed to thwart the GOP effort at blocking the military spending bill as an antiwar liberal said he would set aside his reservations and support choking off the filibuster in order to keep the chamber on a timeline of holding a final health-care vote before Christmas. The vote on the defense spending bill was to occur after 1 a.m. Friday, too late for this edition.

So they are willing to hurt our troops and our fight against terrorism because they don’t like health care reform?

They are willing to cause a terrorist attack on this nation because of this?

Don’t the Republicans take the war on terror seriously? Sounds like they are living in a pre-9/11 world.

Table turning is fun in a sad sort of way, but the filibuster was busted at about 2am this morning by a vote of 63-33. Sorry Republicans – our troops will get their money no thanks to you!

There’s a lot of bitching by Senators about the cost of health care reform. For example:

And on Sunday, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) echoed her colleague, telling "Fox News Sunday" that should the latest version of health care reform prove insufficient in bending the cost curve, she and others would "have to go back to the drawing board."

"Absolutely," said McCaskill. "We'll go back and look at other proposals. ... We have to be saving more money for our government then we are spending."

Funny timing on this, especially with the $636 billion defense appropriation bill coming up this week. We need real politicians who will look at our expenses in defense and wonder why we have to pay almost ten times that of any other nation.

I keep thinking back to the Bush years and every time someone in Congress wanted someone from the Bush administration to testify the Republicans would give cover to Bush by arguing about “executive privilege”. At that time so many of us on the left kept thinking “I wonder if they will do the same when we have a Democrat in the White House”. Well now we know:

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, joined Sanchez in demanding Rogers' testimony on Friday, a day after Secret Service director Mark Sullivan took responsibility for the incident in an appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee.

Peter King was one of those that constantly helped Bush with cover from congressional testimonies. Apparently to King the White House should only be exempt if a Republican is in it. Forget what the actual issue is, because he sure didn’t want Bush officials to testify when it was about Walter Reed or the failing wars. Those issues are no where as important as someone showing up uninvited at the White House.