Tag Archives: hypocrite

John McCain actually compared a planned raid to a surprise attack: bin Laden vs. Benghazi

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pimmyjalmer: Rachel Maddow facepalm.

Josh Marshall asks: is this the stupidest thing McCain ever said?

“Under what circumstances? Why was reference to Al Qaeda left out? There are so many things that have happened. The interesting things finally, we knew in hours of all the details when we got bin Laden, they making a movie out of it and we are ten weeks later and finally our ambassador to the United Nations, who appeared on every national Sunday show, is now saying that she gave false information concerning how this tragedy happened as far as the spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video.”

As Josh points out: “…you tend to know more about a raid you spent a year planning and executed yourself than a raid on your compound which, as kinda tends to happen in these [situations], you didn’t know about in advance and happened in dark.”

Yes, it’s a great mystery that we had “all the details” about a long-planned raid — and it’s simply dereliction of duty that we can’t foretell the future.

After his comment, perhaps it’s worth noting that John McCain graduated sixth from last place (894th out of 899th) in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Ironically, he called Susan Rice “not very bright“ (Rice graduated from Stanford University with honors, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. at Oxford University). Of course, he’s a rich conservative white man, so… that makes him qualified to judge those who aren’t.

It’s somehow fitting that John McCain’s legacy will be Sarah Palin, who has proven herself to be one of the dullest knives rattling around in our nation’s junk drawer.

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“The conspiracy therefore was not to mislead the American public but to mislead America’s enemies. If Rice had gone beyond her unclassified talking points and said that Ansar al-Sharia was suspected to be behind the Benghazi attacks, no doubt she would now be being hounded for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” — Peter Bergen, CNN (AS)

Senator Harry Reid calls John McCain on his Benghazi bullshit

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“One of you, Senator McCain, has gone so far as to make the outrageous claim that this event was “worse than Watergate”—despite the fact that there is no evidence that any crime was committed, no evidence of any cover-up, and no evidence that the administration has characterized the incident in any way that has not been consistent with the Intelligence Community’s contemporaneous assessments.”

— Harry Reid, rejecting McCain’s request to form a Senate committee to investigate the attack on Benghazi last September. McCain had made the request in part because, per internal Senate rules, he’s term-limited out of his seat as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the formation of a new committee would allow him another perch from which to delve into the Benghazi matter. Reid derided McCain’s request as an attempt to use the Senate as “a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” and excoriated the senator for skipping a classified briefing on the incident in order to hold a press conference. source (via shortformblog)

Related: 

John McCain asked why he skipped Benghazi briefing: “Who the hell are you…?”

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Huffington Post: 4:25 p.m. — CNN published a more detailed account of its exchange with McCain, in which, when asked why he wouldn’t comment on missing the briefing, the senator responded, “Who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”

When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn’t there.

“I have no comment about my schedule and I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media,” McCain said.

Asked why he wouldn’t comment, McCain grew agitated: “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”

When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, “I’m upset that you keep badgering me.”

The “Maverick” doesn’t like being called on his reindeer games.

John McCain skipped a classified briefing on Benghazi to hold a press conference

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Who has time for actual facts and intelligence on anything when there are political games to be played? Not bitter, bitter John McCain, who’s still reeling from 2008.


image: ThinkProgress

Think Progress: On Thursday morning, CNN’s Dana Bash reported that McCain may have chosen to hold a joint press conference with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) rather than attend a closed-door briefing about the attacks: I have to tell you something that just happened on Capitol Hill, and that is our senate producer Ted Barrett just ran into John McCain and asked about something that we’re hearing from Democrats, which is John McCain is calling for more information to Congress, but he had a press conference yesterday instead of going to a closed briefing where administration officials were giving more information. Well, Ted Barrett asked John McCain about that, and it was apparently an intense very angry exchange and McCain simply would not comment on it at all. 

McCain’s fake concern over Benghazi

Dave Weigel: Josh Rogin reports that John McCain and Rand Paul, both of them very public critics of the administration over Benghazi, skipped yesterday’s private hearing on the debacle. And McCain spent basically the entirety of Wednesday criticizing the administration — TV in the morning, a press conference in the late morning, a Senate colloquy after President Obama attacked him.

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image: Andrew Sullivan (Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) speak during a news conference on the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya. The Senators called for a ‘select’ committee, like during the Watergate era, to investigate the terrorist attack. By Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call.)

Yesterday John McCain had plenty of time for demagoguery during a press conference on Bengazi – but had no time for a classified briefing about the attack

When GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham stepped before the cameras Wednesday and renewed their calls for a Watergate-like committee to probe the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Libya, their longtime partner — Sen. Joe Lieberman – was noticeably missing. Lieberman later emerged from a classified, closed-door briefing with a much different message: A special congressional committee is unnecessary — at least for now. Lieberman says his Homeland Security Committee could handle a broad investigation into the deadly Benghazi assault just fine.

…Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, backed up her chairman, Lieberman, and dinged McCain, a member of the panel, for missing Wednesday’s nearly two-hour briefing in the Capitol.

Related: 

John McCain’s lawn: it’s dried up, bitter, and he wants you off it

Tea party Rep. Scott DesJarlais had affair with a patient then pressured her to get an abortion

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But let’s not mistake who’s being wronged here — it’s Scott DesJarlais! His campaign says ‘the revelations are “old news from the last election cycle that Tennesseans have already widely rejected.’” So suck it, gotchalamestream media! This has nothing to do with family values, pro-life values, or hypocrisy. DesJarlais says Tennessee approves of this behavior — so move along … nothing to see here.

A pro-life, family-values congressman who worked as a doctor before winning election as a Tea Party-backed Republican had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion, according to a phone call transcript obtained by The Huffington Post.

“You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in the call while negotiating with her over whether he’ll reveal her identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as “sacred.”

“You told me you would have time to go with me and everything,” the woman complains.

“I said, if I could, I would, didn’t I? And I will try,” DesJarlais says. “If I can [find] time, you’re saying you still will?”

“Yeah,” the woman answers.

The two bicker over when they can meet to hash out a solution, and they make clear the nature of their relationship when DesJarlais says delaying a resolution isn’t fair to his wife.

“This is not fair to me. I don’t want you in my life,” the woman says.

“Well, I didn’t want to be in your life either, but you lied to me about something that caused us to be in this situation, and that’s not my fault, that’s yours,” the doctor responds.

“Well, it’s [your] fault for sleeping with your patient,” the woman fires back.

After arguing for a bit about who came on to whom — with the woman seeming incredulous at DesJarlais’ interpretation that she made the first move — he gets back to the abortion.

“If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let’s do it,” DesJarlais says.

“Well, we’ve got to do something soon. And you’ve even got to admit that because the clock is ticking right?” he says at another point.

If the Republican Tea Party didn’t run hypocritical candidates, they’d have no candidates to run.

Romney campaign rally song: “I want my label to say: Made in the USA”

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LIKE AN ORWELLIAN FEVER DREAM, the following song played at the end of a Mitt Romney campaign rally in Iowa last month: “I want my label to say: Made in the USA.” You can watch a clip here. The lyrics:

THE FAMILY IS POOR WHEN THEY GET BACK HOME ♪♪ WE GOT TRACTORS, WE’VE GOT PLOWS, WE’VE GOT TO KNOW HOW ♪♪ KEEP YOUR REGULATIONS UP IN D.C. ♪♪  YEAH I WANT MY HOME TO SAY BUILT IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ SO PAY OUR MINERS TO DIG OUR COAL ♪♪ BUT THEY’LL TURN RIGHT UP THERE AND HIDE THE AIR ♪♪ SOLAR ENERGY, THEY DON’T CARE ♪♪ TODAY IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ YEAH, IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪  YEAH I WANT MY LABEL TO SAY MADE IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ WE’LL BUILD THE BEST DAMN CAR ♪♪ WORKING WITH YOU, YOU WORKING WITH ME ♪♪ JOBS TODAY IN OUR COUNTRY THAT’S WHAT I SAY ♪♪ I JUST WANT TO BE BETTER, THAT’S FOR SURE, IT’S STILL MADE BY THE NEIGHBOR NEXT DOOR ♪♪ HEY I WANT MY LABEL TO SAY MADE IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ U.S.A. ♪♪ AMERICAN JOBS IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ AMERICAN JOBS IN THE U.S.A. ♪♪ – via: CSpan

Who wrote the song, who’s singing it? I can’t find it on teh google. If anyone knows, please comment — I’m interested.

So the King of Bain — the man who, for years, leveraged and destroyed American businesses for profit, the guy who outsourced and off-shored American jobs to China and everywhere else around the globe for profit and who wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt, the multi-millionaire who says half the country is dependent on government and won’t take responsibility for their own lives while he pays a lower tax rate on his income than most working people pay on theirs and hides his wealth in secret accounts in the Caymans, Bermuda, and Switzerland to avoid taxes — has the cojones to play that song at one of his political rallies.

This proves two things: 1) Romney thinks the Republican base rubes are such complete idiots, so overcome with Obama Derangement Syndrome and lacking in basic information about him and his background (with zero desire to learn more), that they’d vote for Satan himself if, on the ballot, there was an “R” behind the name “Satan,” and 2) Mitt Romney knows his base rubes pretty well.

Related songs: 

Why did Mitt Romney choose such a two-faced, lying hypocrite as a running mate?

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Surprise! It’s Lyin’ Paul Ryan again!

Will network and cable news pick up this story? Because it’s important for the American people to know that aside from the GOP shoving a presidential candidate at us who refuses to release his tax returns to the American public (!), that candidate’s running mate has serious problems with telling the truth — Ryan is a pathological liar.

If Romney and Ryan were Democrats, this news would be repeated on an endless, 24/7, hysterically screeching, taped loop on all networks and radio stations, not to mention being scrolled on the bottom of every tv screen in the country. Because that’s how our “liberal media” works.

EXCLUSIVE–The Nation: Paul Ryan Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is barnstorming the country, promising to repeal every provision of the Affordable Care Act if the Romney-Ryan ticket is elected. But a letter he wrote to the Obama administration may undermine this message.

On December 10, 2010, Ryan penned a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services to recommend a grant application for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district. “The proposed new facility, the Belle City Neighborhood Health Center, will serve both the preventative and comprehensive primary health care needs of thousands of new patients of all ages who are currently without health care,” Ryan wrote.

Paul Ryan's request for Obamacare funds

The grant Ryan requested was funded directly by the Affordable Care Act, better known simply as health care reform or Obamacare.

The letter, among several obtained by The Nation and The Investigative Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a stark reminder that even the most ardent opponents of Obamacare privately acknowledge many of the law’s benefits.

[...] In addition to undercutting his political message about health reform, the letter may also add to an emerging narrative that Ryan has a double standard when it comes to critiquing major Obama policy achievements. Shortly after Romney announced that Ryan would be joining him on the Republican ticket this year, theBoston Globe revisited a story showing how Ryan quietly lobbied the Obama administration for stimulus grants. Ryan voted against the proposal and denounced it to the press without disclosing his requests for stimulus cash.

Ryan first denied responsibility for the stimulus grant requests; but later confessed that his office had sent the letters. Continue reading…


image: detonationradio 

Paul Ryan hypocritically attacked President Obama in his speech

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Bloomberg points out the hypocrisy in Paul Ryan’s speech:

Ryan attacked Obama’s Patient Protection Affordable Care Act for being laden with “mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country.” He was talking about mandates such as the one Mitt Romney imposed in Massachusetts.
Ryan decried “$716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.” But the budget House Republicans passed this year, which Paul Ryan wrote, keeps Barack Obama’s Medicare cuts and adds another $205 billion on top.

— Paul Ryan’s Hypocritical Attack on Barack Obama

Can you guess who said it? Regarding a stimulus bill, on the House floor…

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“In recessions unemployment lags on well after a recovery has taken place. We’ve got to get the engine of economic growth growing again because we now know, because of recession, we don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security, to fix these issues. We’ve got to get Americans back to work. Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back. That is the constructive answer we’re trying to accomplish here on, yes, a bipartisan basis. I urge members to drop the demagoguery and to pass this bill to help us work together to get the American people back to work and help those people who’ve lost their jobs.”

“We have a lot of laid off workers, and more layoffs are occurring. And we know, as a historical fact, that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, unemployment is going to linger on and on well after that recovery takes place. What we have been trying to do starting in October and into December and now is to try and get people back to work. The things we’re trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested, proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost their jobs… It’s more than just giving someone an unemployment check. It’s also helping those people with their health insurance while they’ve lost their jobs and more important than just that unemployment check, it’s to do what we can to give people a paycheck.”

Give up?  Continue reading →

You might be Mitt Romney’s running mate if…

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Juan Cole: you might be Paul Ryan if…. 

If you claim to be a free marketeer but want to keep $40 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil in the budget, you might be Paul Ryan. When it comes to green energy, the Right says it has to be profitable on its own, but won’t give it a level playing field.

(Not to mention, Ryan and his wife own stakes in four family companies that lease land to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan.)

If you would raise taxes on the middle classes; but your budget would allow your wealthy running mate Mitt Romney to pay almost nothing in taxes, you might be Paul Ryan.

If you are against deficits in an economic downturn and during a Democratic administration, but voted for all the measures that ran up the deficit under Bush and erased Clinton’s budget surplus, you might be Paul Ryan.

Read all…

Don’t pay 15¢ more for a Romney-supporting Papa John’s hot turd pie!

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Instead, pay 15¢ more at another pizza place (a better pizza place) — because 15¢ is a small price to pay for more people in America having health care.

Last night, Stephen Colbert took President Obama to task over the less than 1% increase Obamacare is adding to the price of Papa John’s pizza. Click the image to watch. (via: comedycentral)

And another thing:


via: christopherstreet

George Romney vs. his own son: “One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.”

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image: romney2012

“One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.” — George Romney in 1967 when he released 12 years worth of tax returns.

When Romney accused opponent of hiding “wrongdoing” by not releasing her husband’s returns

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Buzzfeed reports that “Mitt Romney’s top advisor and longtime confidant Eric Fehnrstrom didn’t take kindly to unsourced allegations by Harry Reid that the former Massachusetts Governor hadn’t paid any taxes for 10 years saying: “Have you no decency sir?”"

“”I don’t think there is anything behind it. He hasn’t produced any evidence,” Fehrnstrom told Fox News yesterday. “I’m telling you speaking on behalf of the governor that those charges are untrue, they are baseless and there is nothing to back them up. This reminds me of the McCarthy hearings back in the 1950s,” Fehnstrom said.

“It may also remind people in Massachusetts about something more recent. In fact, Fehrnstrom himself didn’t always think the burden of proof fell on the accuser. In 2002, Mitt Romney’s gubernatorial run Fehnrstrom was Romney’s attack dog, hitting his opponent Shannon O’Brien for not releasing her husband’s tax returns.

“Fehrnstrom accused O’Brien, who released her tax returns every year since 1998, of being disingenuous by releasing her but not her husband’s returns, a former lobbyist who had worked with Enron implying the returns would show wrongdoing.”

It’s always a different story for Willard when the shoe’s on the other foot.

Is anyone surprised that the King of Bain uses the word “poppycock”?

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Gawker found a video of our man Mittens using the word “poppycock” in 2004:

“Then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney defended President George W. Bush, who was facing attacks on his economic record by Democratic candidate John Kerry.” Romney said:

“The people of America recognize that the slowdown in jobs that occurred during the early years of the Bush administration were the result of a perfect storm. And an effort by one candidate to somehow say “Oh, this recession and the slowdown in jobs was the result of somehow this president magically being elected…” people in America just dismiss that as being poppycock.  And they recognize it as that.”

You know what? Unless the people in America have suddenly transformed into 19th-century robber barons and tycoons, I’m pretty sure poppycock isn’t a word they throw around when they don’t believe something.

So liberals are elitists? When’s the last time you heard poppycock come out of a liberal’s mouth? Romney says it in the first 40 seconds below — and surprisingly he doesn’t preface the remark with, ‘I do say, good sir!’ nor is he wearing a monocle. So there’s that.

Also (more importantly) — think about that excuse Mitt was giving for GWB’s job recession. It’s truly poppycock and hypocritical to not apply this logic to President Obama — especially to President Obama. If Bush’s first term was a ‘perfect storm’ (of his own making), then Obama has spent his first term trying to repair eight long years of Bush-storms.


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FACT: In 2004, after John Kerry released 20 years of tax returns, a top Romney aide demanded more

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His standards have dropped just a little since then.

“Throughout history, presidential candidates have disclosed income tax information prior to Election Day. We believe Americans value disclosure and transparency in campaigns.” – Senior Mitt Romney adviser Ed Gillespie, quoted in a 2004 RNC press release, urging Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to release more tax information.

(via: think-progress)