Ah, Hypocrisy. Where Would the GOP be Without You?

The McVeighists

I ran into this term being presented as a descriptive of the far-right gun loons: McVeighists. I'll just snag the word's usage from the thread:*

...Makes you wonder if somebody should start the American Security Foundation for Regulating the Militia Well. And we need to start calling them the McVeighists. Posted by Overreach THIS!

...Mercy me! The *REAL* history of militia in Whiskey Rebellion is that a bunch of insurrectionists didn't want to pay a tax. So, like these modern-day McVeighists, they took up arms against the United States government, i.e., a terrorist "militia." The United States used well-regulated troops (*not* seditionist wackaloons) under George Washington, fortunately, to successfully put down the treasonous "militia." ... Posted by Overreach THIS!

The McVeighists is very, very good. As in "There's way right, and then there's McVeigh right."

Or, if that's too subtle: " The McVeighists. Polite society brought to you by the people who blew up a day care center full of kids." Posted by erica

I agree, Erica, that we need to go there. That's who these people are. With their watering the tree of liberty by killing people. Domestic enemy is good, too. Let's try some honesty. "The McVeighists and our other domestic enemies." Posted by Overreach THIS!

*Found in the really excellent comments for this article. Starting with this one (read the whole thread if you have time).

Q: How Do You Know a Right Winger is Lying?

A: Their mouth is moving.

"Why Alan, isn't that a bit harsh?" No. The recent rash of domestic terrorism is a perfect case in point. We'll stick to the terrorist assassination of Dr. George Tiller but since Obama was elected we have had three major terrorist attacks in this country carried out by right wing extremists.

Bill O'Reilly says he never suggested Dr. Tiller should be killed and he says he never called him "Tiller the baby killer." Well, not only did he constantly refer to Tiller as "Tiller the baby killer," in 2006 he said on his radio show:

OK. So, I'm the fascist, I'm the bad guy, I'm the problem. Not Tiller. No, he -- no, no, no. He's a good guy. Now, Tiller's pumping all kinds of money into obviously the attorney general race. He wants the guy that's gonna let him off the hook to win. Those of you listening in Kansas, you ought to know that. You know, I don't -- I'm not gonna tell you who to vote for. You guys know these guys better than I do, but I tell you what, anything Tiller wants, I'm voting the other way. And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech.

But despicable? Oh, my God. Oh, it doesn't get worse. Does it get worse? No. Back with your calls and comments.

"Oh, but that's just that wacky Bill O'Reilly. Nobody takes him seriously." Well, you're wrong about that. An uncle of mine (RIP) who became shockingly right wing after being "born again" said once, in a grave and serious voice, "Bill O'Reilly is looking out for you, believe me." Made me sick with anger but he was in the hospital so I bit my tongue. I guarantee you the man that shot Dr. Tiller worships O'Reilly and the rest of the Fox News machine. They incite this kind of violence.

O'Reilly is only one example. How about "activist judges?" Here's one thing I can tell for sure, when a conservative says he is against "activist judges" he is saying he wants the most activist of judges as long as they're conservatives. When he says he wants them to follow the Constitution as written he means interpret it according to the right wing world view.

When conservatives say they want to protect the environment you can rest assured they're about to poison as much land as possible in as bad a way as one can imagine.

When conservatives say New Deal liberalism has ruined the economy they are lying. Using the GDP as measure you will find that when Republicans have been in power we have had the worst GDP growth. The best growth has been under Democrats. Jimmy Carter is the only Democratic President who has done worse than a Republican, Reagan (who did worse than every other Democrat), but Carter's economy was better than every other Republican President. Our most prosperous years were when the government was taxing corporations and the wealthiest the most. The New Deal got us out of the Great Depression. "That's not true, it was WWII," I hear some feeble minded conservative mimic parrot out there. WWII was the epitome of "tax and spend." We taxed the richest in this country 91%, the government took complete control of business and industry in this country and regulated what we could eat, how much we could drive, and when our lights were on or off and we came out of the war the government shifted the wealth to the not wealthy amongst us with the GI bill, rural electrification, the minimum wage, protections for unions, and works projects. The way we waged WWII is the closest we've come to communism and right wingers will agree that it brought us out of a depression.

The truth is that conservative policies have ruined the economy every single time it's been ruined. Reagan brought us a horrible recession which GHW Bush kept us in and under GW Bush our economy weakened and our capital system collapsed.

Here's yet another HUGE conservative lie: "We follow the intent of the Founding Fathers." Nothing could be further from the truth. The Founding Fathers believed in education and science while conservatives are opposed to and supicious of both. The Founding Fathers were from very firm to rabid in their belief in the separation of church and state while right wingers want evangelicals everywhere and everyone else elsewhere. The Founding Fathers believed your privacy was sacrosanct while Republicans have pressed for reduced protection from being stopped at random and searched, more surveillance of private citizens, and spying on people simply for having different opinions than theirs (they spied on the Quakers, for Christ's sake!). And don't even get me started on habeus corpus.

How about this lie: "We want to reach across the aisle." When the Republicans held power in the Congress and the Executive they totally shut out the Democrats (who took it like a bunch of fucking pussies, I'd like to throw in here), including not even allowing them to use a proper meeting room for their caucus. They put the "fuck you" in bi-partisanship.

Here's a few more:
Colin Powell's speech before the U.N.

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"The United States of America does not torture."

"It was just a few bad apples." - Donald Rumsfeld

So if you hear it come out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnel, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, or any other "conservative" figure the exact opposite is true.

Learning from Peru

From Harper's Magazine:

Presidential Accountability

By Scott Horton

The president ran a vigorous counter-terrorism program. With super-secret clearances, he caused terrorists and their helpers to be “disappeared” and tortured for intelligence value. Several of them died in the process. His assistants succeeded in keeping all of this under wraps for years, but then, after he left office, prosecutors began a painstaking process of establishing the facts. The penalty? Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori sentenced to twenty-five years for crimes essentially identical to those committed by George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney. Former President Bush, behold what the future may hold in store:

The former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was today convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to 25 years in what was described as a landmark ruling for human rights cases in Latin America. A three-judge panel found the 70-year-old guilty of authorising a military death squad during the state’s “dirty war” against Maoist rebels in the 1990s. The 15-month trial, held at a special forces police base just outside the capital, Lima, was the first time a democratically elected Latin American leader had been tried on home soil for human rights abuses.

“This court declares that the four charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt,” Judge Cesar San Martin told the courtroom.

Halliburton Works For Al Qaeda?

Click on the cartoon to see full scale.

A 24-year-old staff sergeant was electrocuted when he took a shower at a US Army base in Iraq.

He wasn't the first. At least 12 soldiers and marines have been electrocuted by shoddy wiring and construction at US bases built by Halliburton.

No one is that inept. Halliburton is obviously working for Al Qaeda.

The streets of Baghdad are safe. Combat has ceased. Yet our troops continue to die.

But now is no time to go wobbly. If we pull out now, all the sacrifice will have been in vain!

...and Dick Cheney's trust fund has another massive check deposited into it.