hypocrisy

The big scandal going on now is a video of Michele Bachman speaking at an event over the weekend, where it was edited to make it appear as though she said “who likes white people”. Here’s the video from Perez Hilton:

However the full video shows an entirely different statement. While the rain was pouring down, Bachmann said “who likes wet people”.

The original video was shot by Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain. McCain is shocked that someone would do this to his video too:

This right here is a big doozy when it comes to the hypocrisy of Tea Party politicians:

Tea Party aligned Georgia Rep. Tom Graves (R), who castigates Washington for fiscal irresponsibility, reached an out of court settlement Wednesday after he was sued for defaulting on a $2.2 million loan -- which his attorney argued is the bank's fault for lending him the money in the first place.

Graves and his business partner Chip Rogers -- who is the state Senate's Republican majority leader -- took out a $2.2 million loan from the Bartow County Bank in 2007 to buy and renovate a local motel. The project soon went belly-up.

If this was you or me, Tom Graves would be lecturing us about personal responsibility, but that doesn't apply to him or the Tea Party people. That is evident by all their actions. They can take government programs like farm subsidies, Medicaid or anything else, but it's because "they need it", yet if you lose your job and need government help to get your child healthcare, well then you are a failure trying to live off the government.

I'm sorry, but it's total bullshit and that's a big reason why Americans are becoming increasingly fed up with the this party of frauds. It's beyond time to declare the Tea Party a cult of hypocrisy and brush them aside. Hopefully our media will listen now.

As you have most likely heard by now Anthony Weiner has admitted to sending the lewd photos of himself over the internet, including the now infamous bulge shot.

I can't begin to explain how frustrating this is. It's not for the main subject of this story, his bulge and internet habits, but rather for his handling of the whole situation. Weiner went out and made false claims of being hacked and a lot of his supporters, including myself, accepted that story. He lied to us all and that is inexcusable.

If Weiner would have come out last week and said "hey I made a stupid mistake and there might be more of these out there. I apologize for this", but he didn't. He became defiant and took to lying, knowing tons more evidence was floating around the inter-tubes.

Stupid? Stupidity doesn't even begin to describe this!

Then we have the whole Andrew Breitbart angle. Breitbart has no journalistic standards what-so-ever and sure didn't exhibit any in the handling of this story, but he did get it right. I know a lot on the left will still take to blaming Breitbart, but let's be honest with ourselves; if some blogger on the left got a picture of Boehner's flannel-clad boner that he sent to some girl, it would be picked up by every other blog on the left. That's the name of the game we all play.

There is one place that I still lay blame on this story and that is with the media. Yeah they should have reported it, but they have also kept on this story non-stop. Part of the blame does go to Weiner and his crap story at the beginning, but this story still garnered much more attention from the media than did the Mark Foley story, which is very similar except the fact that Weiner wasn't engaging in this activity with underage children.

But how does Weiner get off?

We already know there has been a lot of past hypocrisy when it comes to the GOP and healthcare mandates. Mitt Romney imposed a mandate as governor of Massachusetts and many Republicans applauded the system. Then the Democrats put in a mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act and Republicans instantly jumped on them being unconstitutional (again – a point I do happen to agree with), but if your head isn’t spinning enough, take a look at this from the Paul Ryan plan (h/t JM Ashby):

Given this history, it would be surprising if Republicans were to endorse a comparably freedom-squelching measure in another bill. But on April 15, that is essentially what they did, when all but four of the 239-member House Republican Caucus approved Rep. Paul Ryan's fiscal 2012 budget resolution, the successor to Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" plan for massive tax and spending cuts.*

Hearing the Republicans pound their chests as the anti-earmark crusaders has me laughing. I decided it was time to look for some historical data on earmarks, which ended up validating my suspicions.

First thing you will notice is that the source of this chart is from the very conservative Heritage Foundation, using data from the also very conservative Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense. I wonder if these two groups recognize what I have in the data? Look at the biggest years of earmark spending and the number of earmark bills. The two biggest years just so happen to be years that the Republican Party controlled Congress.

But apparently these groups didn’t even look at their own charts. Read the top part; “Despite pledges from President Obama and congressional leaders to curtail earmark spending, the practice has continued at previous levels”. While the number of earmarks is still high (though much less than in 2005), the cost of these projects have seen a pretty substantial drop.

By now I’m sure everyone has heard that Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely from MSNBC for contributing to political campaigns without disclosing those contributions to his superiors at MSNBC.

There has been a lot of back and forth over this decision in the blogosphere and twitterverse today. I have mixed feelings on the story.

In Defense Of MSNBC

MSNBC does have a policy in place:

NBC and MSNBC TV require permission of the president of NBC News. (MSNBC.com is a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft.)

"Anyone working for NBC News who takes part in civic or other outside activities may find that these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest.  Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns or groups that espouse controversial positions.  You should report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the President of NBC News or his designee."

I meant to hit this story yesterday. It also exemplifies the problems I’ve posted about in the past when it comes to MSNBC.

Markos and Joe Scarborough got into a little Twitter back and forth a couple of months ago:

JoeNBC: The Sestak story is as unbelievable a cover story as Nixon throwing little Checkers under the bus. A farce on it's face. Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. The press will let this laughable story slide.

markos: Like story of a certain dead intern. RT @JoeNBC: Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1.

Markos: But if you want to talk about bullshit "scandals", @JoeNBC, there's this one about Joe Sestak and the White House you might've heard of.

JoeNBC: @markos Unbelievable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count.

Markos: @JoeNBC, I've never suggested you're a murderer. I've noted media hypocrisy in going after Gary Condit. But he was Dem. You aren't.

JoeNBC: Anyone in media who interviews @markos, know that you're extending your credibility to someone who regularly suggests that I'm a murderer.

Markos: A bit touchy, @JoeNBC? Links for where I accuse you of being a murderer please.

Joe Scarborough, a person of such thin skin that he will block anyone that disagrees with him on Twitter, didn’t like that. Like a child being picked on in school, Joe ran and told the teacher principal, or in this case, the president of MSNBC. That resulted in this email being sent to Markos:

Markos,

Via Techcrunch comes a very interesting story out of Pennsylvania. Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Tom Corbett, has subpoenaed Twitter in attempts to identify some anonymous critics:

The account @CasaBlancaPA, whose owner is identified as ‘Signor Ferrari’ (a criminal in the film Casablanca, played by Sydney Greenstreet) on Twitter, links to this blog in the bio section. The blog, hosted on Google’s Blogger service, is dedicated to “exposing the hypocrisy of Tom Corbett” according to its subtitle.

This will be one of those cases to keep an eye on.