Tag Archives: hypocrisy

Cheapening of values

Americans of all stripes are witnessing in real time how our political values no longer hang on politicians’ stated views of key issues and their actions juxtaposed to their stated policies.

Consider what is occurring in Georgia, where the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate — Herschel Walker — has been revealed to be a stunning hypocrite on an issue that demands absolute sincerity.

In any other era, revelations that a staunch opponent of abortion would allegedly have demanded a girlfriend abort a pregnancy would spell the end of a candidacy. Herschel Walker would have resigned his candidacy and left the campaign for someone else to salvage.

These days? Georgia GOP voters are shrugging it off. Party leaders are backing Walker, doubling down on their support for this ignoramus who actually has said that “there is no shame” in demanding an abortion “if I had done it.”

Oh, there’s more. It has been revealed that Walker has four children with four women and has been estranged from at least one of his sons since the young man’s birth.

Remember, too, that Walker is campaigning as an evangelical Christian who opposes — he says — abortion in all cases; he makes no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or the health of the mother.

Despite all of that, Walker remains a potential spoiler in the race against Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, the incumbent who is seeking election to a full term.

Walker could still win this race! Why? Because it’s all about power! Republicans want to get control of the Senate. They are driven solely by the prospect of Herschel Walker — an individual with zero knowledge of any public policy — defeating a competent senator who, by the way, also serves as senior pastor of Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta … the same house of worship where the great Martin Luther King Jr. preached to the faithful.

Yes, we are witnessing a degradation of policy and the ascent of power as this hideous issue plays out.

It is a sickening turn of events.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Do as I say, not do …

This is the opening paragraph of a story published today by the Texas Tribune …

Monica De La Cruz, a firebrand Republican running in a fiercely competitive South Texas race, received thousands of dollars for personal business interests from federal COVID relief programs despite disparaging federal assistance programs as harmful to the U.S. economy.

Man, you just have to love the kind of reporting that exposes politicians’ hypocrisy in this Age of Hypocrites.

Here’s the rest of the story. Take a peek. It’s worth your time.

Monica De La Cruz cashes in on COVID aid, trashes programs | The Texas Tribune

The Tribune points out that De La Cruz is the latest Republican — yeah, this is mostly a GOP affliction — to criticize Democrats’ policies while scarfing up the goodies for their own gain.

So it is with this GOP candidate for Congress.

Do you recall in 2020 when Republicans railed against President Biden’s efforts to pump money into repairing and upgrading our infrastructure? Then, once Congress approved it Biden signed it into law, they stood up and boasted about all the money that was coming to their states and congressional districts.

The Tribune reported further about De La Cruz’s duplicity: “Monica De La Cruz raged against relief funding for Texas small businesses, but what she didn’t mention was that she and her family happily took nearly $200,000 of that same aid for themselves. Her hypocritical agenda of ‘Help for me, but not for thee’ is politics at its worst and South Texans deserve better,” said Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Where I come from, such blatant hypocrisy is a deal-breaker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

McConnell: hypocrite in chief

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I will spare you the various and assorted nicknames that have been plastered onto U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

He stands before me now as the government’s premier hypocrite. The hypocrite to end all hypocrites. The man who gives hypocrisy a bad name.

I know that he’s far from alone in the hypocrite cabal. Government is full of them. And yes, both parties have their share of hypocrites.

However, the Kentucky Republican is relishing in his hypocrisy. The man who stiffed President Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat because he didn’t want to do in an election year is ramrodding a Donald Trump pending selection to probable confirmation … in an election year!

The difference? Obama is a Democrat; Trump is a Republican.

And yet the hypocrite in chief blames Democrats for “playing politics” with the federal judiciary. Excuse me while I puke!

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the bad form to die less than 50 days prior to the next presidential election. That hasn’t stopped McConnell from unleashing his partisan hounds.  He vows to get a nominee confirmed before the election.

Oh, what about that presidential election year taboo? Well, that was then. Principle doesn’t apply when there is a partisan political advantage to be explored.

Dang, I almost wish I could move to Kentucky to campaign actively against this clown’s re-election. That won’t happen. I will have to rely on this blog to vent my rage at the way this guy manipulates the levers of power to his maximum political advantage.

Maybe I should admire how this guy can do this. I would, except that his ends all work at cross purposes with my own world view. I do not want Donald Trump to nominate a third justice to the Supreme Court. He is going to select some far right-wing ideologue … while pretending to agree with whatever judicial philosophy guides her.

And this is being brought to bear by the hypocrite in chief.

This, I suggest, gives us all the reason in the world to vote Donald Trump out of office.

Hypocrisy infects the media, too

Media critics, pundits and commentators love to blast politicians for their hypocrisy. Goodness, there’s so much of it out there.

But a stunning compilation of criticism and commentary began making the rounds on social media not long after Donald J. Trump announced his intention to meet with Kim Jong Un, the brutal dictator of North Korea.

It comes from the Fox News Channel.

Fox paraded a number of commentators and “contributors” who were simply aghast — aghast, I tell ya — that Barack Obama said he would be willing to meet with the enemies of the United States.

How could a U.S. president say such a thing? How could he want to meet with Kim Jong Un? Doesn’t he know what kind of monster Kim Jong Un is, how he treats his people, how he denies them the rights that should be afforded to all human beings?

That was the sum of the Fox News commentary at the beginning of the Obama presidency.

Take a look at it here.

Ah, but then Donald Trump announces that he has accepted Kim’s invitation to meet. He wants to elevate “Little Rocket Man” to the same level as the Leader of the Free World.

How did that go down in the Fox News Channel newsroom? Hey, it’s a show of statesmanship. It’s an act of boldness. Trump is exhibiting international leadership.

That’s how the Fox team assesses a U.S.-North Korea summit now.

Hypocrisy? Certainly!

I believe the Fox News Channel needs to be, um, more circumspect when it considers whether to unload on politicians for their own hypocritical displays.

Americans are numb to congressional hypocrisy

It’s no surprise to anyone that hypocrisy exists in the halls of federal government power.

What I think is a surprise is how we are now so numb to it, that it doesn’t bother us.

U.S. Senate Republicans are in the process of doing precisely what they criticized their Democratic colleagues of doing just eight years ago. They are meeting in secret to cobble together a health care overhaul they say will replace the Affordable Care Act. In 2009, Republicans were frothing at the mouth because of what they said was occurring when Democrats crafted the ACA.

Video recordings of Republican Senate and House leaders bear out their anger then. Eight years later, well, here we go again.

The weirdness of it, though, shows itself in the apparent tolerance among average Americans at what’s going on.

A newly elected president, Barack H. Obama, sought Republican help in crafting the ACA. He didn’t get it. They stiffed him. The ACA process did include public hearings and testimony from those who favored and opposed it.

Another president new to his office, Donald Trump, hasn’t extended his hand to Democrats. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are plowing ahead with an ACA replacement with no input from Democrats, no public hearings, no testimony.

Same song, different verse? Yes. The major difference appears to rest in the tacit acceptance that hypocrisy is now the norm in Washington, D.C.

I’ll go on record here to say that not all Americans accept this as business as usual. I believe it stinks to high heaven!

Honesty should go far in public life

Must we demand our public officials be perfect in every way?

Of course not. Scripture tells us we’ve had one perfect man walk among us. The rest of us are sinners … pure and simple.

The question is worth asking, though, in the wake of a scandal involving a member of the U.S. Senate running for election to a seat to which he was appointed.

John Walsh, D-Mont., was caught plagiarizing a master’s thesis at the Army War College. He didn’t just copy a sentence of two without attributing their source. Oh no. Walsh lifted huge sections of his thesis from other people’s work and then sought to pass it off as his own.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/213398-montana-senator-backtracks-on-ptsd-comments

He blamed the act initially on post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from combat duty in Iraq. Now he’s backing off. The criticism has been intense, as it should be. The plagiarism likely will doom his election effort; Walsh had been selected to fill the rest of the term of Max Baucus, who quit to become U.S. ambassador to China.

The point about perfection among public officials is key here.

I don’t expect politicians to be perfect. I do expect them — to paraphrase a common saying — to be better than the average bear.

By that I mean we should expect them to live up to the manner in which they sell themselves to voters. Walsh held his military record up as a reason to vote for him. Now that record has come under attack by virtue of the plagiarism to which Walsh has admitted.

Politicians run on morality all the time, only to have it revealed that they’ve cheated on their spouse, or broken the law along the way, or done something in their past that some would consider to be immoral.

John Walsh’s transgression isn’t the worst improper act ever committed. It does, however, betray a hypocrisy that voters shouldn’t tolerate. No one is perfect. Voters, though, should demand that the people who represent their interests just be better than the rest of us.

That’s not too high a bar to cross.