All Posts Tagged With: "Hypocrisy"

Running Time: 26 Minutes, 45 Seconds.

While I have no regrets about my vote and support for the current president I am thoroughly disgusted by the “do as I say, not as I do” that Obama has demonstrated with his appointments of former lobbyists in direct contradiction to his much touted ethics order. Hypocrisy grates on me more than most other irritants. I will call Obama on it just like I called out the previous administration and others on it. Campbell Brown is spot on with her commentary on the matter:

Unfortunately, we are again asking the president to explain why exactly he announced, with great fanfare, new ethics rules if he had no intention of abiding by them.

The Obama administration is yet again asking for a waiver to its very own rules about hiring lobbyists.

This time, it is the new treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. He wants a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs to be his top aide at the Treasury Department.

My view is simple: Mr. President, if you want to hire former lobbyists because you think they are the best people to do the job, then hire former lobbyists. Just don’t hold a big news conference first to tell us how your administration is going to be so different from previous administrations in that you won’t be hiring lobbyists.

Don’t make your disdain for lobbyists and your pledges that they won’t wield influence in your administration a centerpiece of your campaign.

It’s the hypocrisy and the double-talk that makes so many of us so cynical. Do what you think is best for the country. Just be straight with us about how you’re going to do it.

President Bush, along with a sloppy and incontinent Republican majority in Congress, managed the feat of discrediting free market economics without ever practicing it. It was the Republicans who passed the Medicare prescription drug bill, and the bloated farm bill, and the transportation pork. This disqualifies most Republicans from challenging the gigantic new trough feeding that is about to begin under the Democrats.

— Mona Charen, nationally syndicated neoconservative
columnist, political analyst and author

The following video clip is an excerpt from the documentary Outlawed, a film produced by WITNESS, in partnership with more than a dozen other human rights groups around the world. You can read more here.

Two years ago, the Democrats took control over both houses of Congress after one of the worst corruption scandals in Washington in recent memory. However, I didn’t have any illusion that things on Capitol Hill were going to change much, even after Congress passed legislation in 2007 to limit the influence of lobbyists. And things really haven’t changed much. The Democrats didn’t learn much from the Republicans’ corruption, quite simply because power corrupts.

Yesterday, as Think Progress reports, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “invited top lobbyists to join him for an inaugural brunch Monday where he pledged that he will still do plenty of business with them.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Reid. “And Obama will be meeting with them too.” When asked to clarify his remarks, given Obama’s promises to change that part of Capitol culture, Reid responded that lobbyists are part and parcel of the job.

“People should understand that lobbyists, per se, are someone’s father, mother, son, daughter,” said Reid. “They work for a living.” The Democratic leader’s sons and a son-in-law have worked as lobbyists.

According to Sen. Reid, there’s “nothing wrong” with being engaged in a dirty, corruptive business if we all would just understand that these people are “someone’s father, mother, son, daughter.” Using Sen. Reid’s logic then, people should understand that mobsters, per se, “are someone’s father, mother, son, daughter” and “they work for a living,” so there’s nothing really wrong with what they do, right?

The analogy is absurd, but so is Washington leadership’s dancing around the dirty little game that they all continue to play even while publicly lamenting “special interests” and “corruption” in government. It’s a lot like Sen. David Vitter criticizing the morality of former President Bill Clinton’s indiscretions with the White House intern while himself engaging the services of prostitutes.

The hypocrisy is infuriating.

The culture of corruption is nauseating.

The business-as-usual is disheartening.

Mr. President, you have declared that change has come to America. When will long overdue and desperately needed change come to Congress?

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

— President Franklin D. Roosevelt

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

— John the Apostle

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I am literally amazed at how much fear and fear-mongering there has been among many Christians about Barack Obama, his candidacy during the presidential campaign and now on the dawn of his presidency. The rumors, distortions and outright misrepresentations of the man, his beliefs and his policies are staggering. Some are even calling on Christians to pray that the new president fails. (I guess I shouldn’t be too concerned since there was a concerted effort to get Christians to pray that God would rain on Obama’s outdoor convention acceptance speech and that proved to be fruitless.)

I suppose some of this really shouldn’t surprise me. It just disappoints me. Much of the rhetoric is blind partisan ideology over any sound theology. What is disappointing is that many Christians are holding Barack Obama to a higher standard than they held his predecessor whom they identified and unreservedly embraced as one of their own. As one example, a Christian friend on Facebook posted the following note Continued

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side … The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”    — George Orwell

Says Sullivan, “M.J. Rosenberg applies this quote to Gaza, but it also reminds one of events in the US these last eight years.”

Last week, zTruth posted a similar story, except that the religions were reversed…

If this doesn’t take the prize for being two-faced, I don’t know what does.

… a very controversial Islamic organization wants an investigation because a little toy of Jesus was handed out in a kids meal at a Long John Silver in the Mall of America in Minnesota that offended the Muslim parents of a 3 year-old boy.  A 3 year-old boy, folks.

At the end of the post, zTruth rhetorically asks, “isn’t this totally two-faced?”

I don’t know, is it? Perhaps. But consider this: If it had been Christian parents of a 3-year-old boy who had just found a Muslim “toy” in their Long John Silver’s kid’s meal, do you think they might be offended? If so, would they and/or any one of the fundamentalist Christian organizations who would undoubtedly join the uproar be considered “totally two-faced”?

Also consider that this wasn’t just a toy. The local news reports about this story describe the “toy” as “a notepad that featured a quote from the Bible.” Also worth noting is that the parents requested an alternative toy, but was told “only notepads with Bible verses were available.”

This wasn’t just a toy figurine. It was “a notepad” with Bible verses. Now, again, imagine if this were a notepad with passages from the Koran and Christian parents found it in their child’s meal. Would they be offended? Would it be considered “totally two-faced” that they were offended?

If Christians are offended by the encroachment of other religions — especially Islam — into “our” spaces, especially in non-religious settings where we don’t expect to be confronted by religious expression, how then can we ridicule and lament people of other faiths and religions who get offended by Christian symbols found in non-religious settings?

What was Christian literature doing in a Long John Silver’s kid’s meal anyway? Seriously? Are we going to be proselytized at the restaurants that we eat now? Is that what we want?

I can tell you that I don’t want to find a Muslim or any religious item in my child’s meal at a fast food restaurant. Do you want a local fast food restaurant to add Muslim, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Scientologist or Kabbalah symbols or evangelistic materials to your meal?

Just some food for thought.

Think Progress calls Bill O’Reilly to account:

Despite his annual tirades against the so-called War on Christmas and people who say “Happy Holidays,” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has a “Great American Holiday Quiz” up on the Parade Magazine website:

When the three CEOs of the Big Three automakers showed up on Capitol Hill this week looking for government handouts, ABC News noted:

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

… Wagoner’s private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, said what everybody was (or should have been) thinking:

There’s a delicious irony of seeing private luxury jets flying into DC, and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses. It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. Kind makes you a little bit suspicious as to whether or not…we’ve seen the future. There’s a message there. Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled to get here? It would have at least sent the message that you do get it.

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Watch it: