Liberal Hypocrisy

[Soul Crusher]

Email Scandal Reveals the Hypocrisy of the Democratic Party
Townhall.com ^ | July 26, 2016 | Rachel Marsden
Posted on 7/26/2016, 1:50:34 PM by Kaslin



The self-styled "party of unity" has been exposed as a collection of manipulative dividers. The facade that Democrats present to American voters is crumbling.

WikiLeaks has released more than 19,000 internal emails from Democratic National Committee officials, claiming that the massive leak is merely Part 1 of a "Hillary Leaks" series. The emails reveal DNC favoritism toward Hillary Clinton, who'll be officially nominated for the White House this week, at the expense of her vanquished Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down Monday just as the party's national convention was getting underway.

How did the documents get out? The FBI will no doubt launch a thorough investigation free of any political bias, just as it did when it cleared Clinton of wrongdoing after finding 110 email chains containing classified material on her vulnerable private server.

Sifting through the DNC emails, it becomes clear why the party is freaking out. The documents don't undermine democracy itself, as Sanders' supporters are claiming. Rather, they undermine the illusion of democracy that the Democratic Party is selling to the American public and to the rest of the world.

At the party level, the emails provide a glimpse behind the curtain of an organization that purports to stand for hope, love, unity, democracy and progressiveness, revealing instead an elaborate effort to create division and to protect the establishment status quo.

There's also damage at the international level. When internal documents reveal attempts by Democratic Party brass to undermine one of the candidates in what is supposed to be a fair and democratic process, it demolishes the moral authority that American leaders have to criticize other countries for being "undemocratic."

If Clinton is elected president, will she lecture other nations about the importance of a free and independent press? That would seem wildly hypocritical in light of some of the revelations from the DNC leak.

After Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC political talk show "Morning Joe," called for Wasserman Schultz to resign because of her perceived mishandling of the Democratic primaries and the DNC's favorable treatment of Clinton, Wasserman Schultz wrote an email to Chuck Todd, political director of NBC News, with the subject line, "Chuck, this must stop."

DNC communications director Luis Miranda, expressing his displeasure with "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough in a note to DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach, wrote: "(Expletive) Joe claiming the system is rigged, party against (Sanders), we need to complain to their producer."

How could Clinton possibly preach to other nations about the importance of transparent and democratic elections after her party's national committee derided her Democratic opponent?

In one email, Wasserman Schultz, whom Clinton has adopted as an "honorary chair" of her campaign, responded dismissively to an email quoting Sanders' desire to stay "in this race to California." Wrote Wasserman Schultz: "Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do."

The leak also revealed that Paustenbach had sent an email to fellow DNC communications staffer Miranda about potentially trying to derail the Sanders campaign: "Wondering if there's a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."

Sanders and his supporters naively assumed that their candidate would receive fair treatment from those responsible for overseeing the process. Most Americans would assume this to be true for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation.

And how could Clinton ever accuse Republican rival Donald Trump of bigotry after DNC officials were caught discussing the use of religion as a wedge issue?

"Does [Sanders] believe in a God," Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, wrote in an email to a colleague. "He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."

The biggest victims in this scandal are the idealistic Americans who supported Sanders and thought that the system would be fair to their candidate. They were betrayed across the board. Sanders has now fallen into line behind Clinton -- he spoke in support of her Monday night at the convention. It was the equivalent of Che Guevara showing up in a business suit and starting a new job at Goldman Sachs.

Sanders supporters had sought an anti-establishment revolution. The DNC leak shows that they're right about the system being rigged, right down to the level of their own party. There's only one candidate left for them now -- and it clearly isn't Hillary Clinton.

[Soul Crusher]

 

[Dos Equis]

Obama Forgives 107 Gun Felons Amid Calls for Stricter Gun Control
By Mark Swanson   |    Wednesday, 10 Aug 2016 

President Barack Obama has forgiven 107 federal inmates who were convicted of gun crimes during his administration while at the same time pushing for stricter gun controls, according to a story in The Washington Times.

According to the Times report, of those 107 who were either pardoned or had their sentences commuted, their dealings with a gun included:

•Using firearms while dealing drugs;
•Carried firearms despite felony convictions;
•Caught lying to gun dealers;
•Carrying firearms with registration numbers removed.

Yet this is the President who repeatedly calls for reform to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

"This is the most incredible hypocrisy," Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, told the Times. "The president has commuted the sentences of dangerous criminals who were convicted of gun-related charges. But then, he does everything in his power to block law-abiding gun owners from purchasing firearms."

The Times reports Obama has forgiven a total north of 600 federal inmates, more than his nine predecessors combined. And just last week gave this explanation as to why.

"Our focus really has been on people who we think were overcharged and people who we do not believe have a propensity towards violence," the Times quoted Obama.

Apparently 107 felons who carried guns while selling drugs don't count as having a propensity for violence.

"On one hand, the Obama administration is attempting to limit law-abiding Americans from exercising their Second Amendment right and protecting themselves from harm," Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., told the Times. "On the other hand, the president will let criminals with firearm-related offenses off easy."

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Obama-Forgives-Gun-Felons-Calls/2016/08/10/id/742958/

[Dos Equis]

WashPost Bashed Bush on Katrina, Dismisses ‘Outrage’ Over Above-It-All Obama
By Scott Whitlock | August 21, 2016

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza on Thursday offered up a defensive piece explaining “why President Obama isn’t stopping his vacation to visit the Louisiana flooding.” Obama has since reversed course and said he would visit, but the Cillizza dismissed the attacks against the President, condescendingly explaining, “Cue outrage.” The Post, however, is the same paper that called George W. Bush’s Hurricane Katrina flyover to be the second “worst” moment of George W. Bush’s presidency.         

When it comes to Obama, Cillizza first insisted that “there's really no such thing as a vacation for a president of the United States.” That's certainly not how the Post felt about Bush and Katrina. The President’s initial refusal to cut short his vacation “speaks to Obama's unique and long-lasting commitment to not playing by a core rule of modern politics: making at least some decisions based on ‘how it looks’ and/or ‘how it will play.’"

As though this explains it all, the journalist defended, “Obama just doesn’t like to fake it.”

Speaking of faking outrage, Cillizza did not point out that in 2008 Obama mocked Bush as “a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid.”

As though it exempted himself from the spin he was offering, Cillizza preemptively defended his article by excusing, “But this piece is about how Obama thinks of himself. Not how you or I think of him.”

This is how Howell Raines, the then-New York Times editor complained about Bush and Katrina.

"The dilatory performance of George Bush during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude....The populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the welfare of people, it was caring. The churchgoing cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."
 - Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, September 1, 2005.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2016/08/21/

[Dos Equis]

FLASHBACK: Networks Worried About Release of Personal Information When It Hurt Obama
By Geoffrey Dickens | October 3, 2016

While Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network reporters and anchors were quick to pounce on Donald Trump’s private tax returns being released, they didn’t seem to express the same concern when candidate Barack Obama was having his personal information looked into.

Back in 2008 when it was revealed that Obama’s personal passport information was being examined by Bush administration State Department officials the terms “skullduggery,” “political dirty tricks” and “bombshell” were being thrown around.

On the March 21 edition of NBC’s Today show, Matt Lauer and correspondent Andrea Mitchell examined the “firestorm”:

MATT LAUER: Let’s begin, though, this morning with the firestorm of controversy after these three State Department employees were caught spying at Barack Obama’s passport files. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has the latest overnight developments on this story. Andrea, what is the latest?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, there is so much going on, Matt. Good morning. Today, top State Department officials are meeting with department lawyers before reporting to Barack Obama’s Senate office. But so far they have no explanation for three separate unauthorized breaches into the senator’s passport file by contract employees.
 ...
 Two contract employees were fired, one was disciplined. But although department spokesman Sean McCormack said that the violations were merely the result of imprudent curiosity, not political dirty tricks, under questioning, officials admitted they had not yet even begun to investigate the motives or the timing of the breaches.
 ...
 A person’s passport files can include a treasure trove of personal information, and passing that information on can be a criminal offense. In the 1992 campaign, the first Bush administration was accused of illegally accessing candidate Bill Clinton’s passport files and that led to a three-year special counsel’s investigation. No one was ever charged. Thursday night, Obama spokesman Bill Burton called the violations an outrageous breach of security and privacy.

Later on that evening’s NBC Nightly News the story expanded to include that John McCain and Hillary Clinton’s information had been looked into as well, but the focus remained on how Obama was hurt:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: It was quite a bombshell when the news broke late last evening. Someone working for the US State Department had taken a look inside Barack Obama’s personal passport file. And it happened not once, it turns out, but three separate times. Obama issued a statement expressing outrage. The State Department promised to get to the bottom of it. And in getting to the bottom of it, they found more. Someone had taken a peek at Hillary Clinton’s file and John McCain’s. It’s another swerve in this wild campaign.

Over on the March 21 edition of ABC’s World News, anchor Charlie Gibson announced: “It could be a major breach in security. It could be a simple matter of snooping. The secretary of state called all three presidential candidates today to tell them their passport files had been improperly accessed by State Department contract employees. In the case of Barack Obama, his file had been accessed without permission three times in just the past few months. An investigation is under way, to determine if political dirty tricks might be involved.” His colleague Jonathan Karl, on the March 22 Good Morning America, wondered: “The question now is, was this a case of political dirty tricks or simply incompetence?”

And Katie Couric, on the March 21 CBS Evening News, introduced the passport story this way: “Was it political skullduggery or maybe just bureaucrats with time on their hands? We don’t know the reason yet; but in a breach of security, people working for the State Department got into the passport files of all three presidential candidates: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Whatever the motive, it raises questions about how well the government is guarding the personal information it has on all of us.”

Fast forward to today and the network anchors and correspondents seemed more concerned with how the release of Trump’s tax returns will hurt him politically and less on the ramifications of guarding personal information.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2016/10/03/flashback-networks-worried-about-release-personal-information

[avxo]

Agreed that there's a double standard — not surprising. But let me play devil's advocate for just a second:

The fact is that Obama's passport and CBP files were of no political interest (unless you were a kook who thought that he wasn't born in Hawaii and a massive conspiracy spanning decades and thousands of people was being perpetrated) and Obama didn't make his birthplace an issue.

Trump, on the other hand, repeatedly said that people would be impressed with his wealth, his tax returns, etc, etc. so he made them an issue himself. Also, contrary to "custom" he hasn't released his returns claiming that he's under audit (btw, I think his refusal to release is a smart move on his part). This is a political issue, because some voters clearly want to know about Trump's interests and the potential for conflicts, which don't go away even if he lets his kids manage the companies.

But Trump will do what Trump will do and so far that's worked well for him. He's changed the politics rulebook and everyone else is scrambling to figure out what the game is.

I think we scrutinize people way too much and in the wrong way. Media demand health tests and cite results — as if somehow the average voter knows what an A1C test signifies. Media demand detailed tax returns and discuss line items — as if it somehow the average voter knows the tax code sufficiently well to evaluate the data. Media dig about friendships and "incidents" in grade school, as if little Johnny Candidate's friendships in 3rd grade and his penchant for bringing the teacher apples is, somehow, significant.

Supposedly serious reporters ask candidates about their childhood pet or their favorite toy or whether the fried butter at the State Fair was good. And after a long and elaborate answer about the trauma of losing Fido, his many hours of play with a He-Man action figure and an epicurean dissertation into fried butter, there may be 90 seconds left about serious policy issues.

It's fair to ask a candidate tough questions and to question whether he lives up to his own standard. And sometimes, it's fair to seriously investigate a candidate's past. But we've simply gone overboard.

In a way, this could have been Trump's biggest contribution to our political process. Before he Hulk-smashed the nominating process, we were rapidly moving to a system where people had to be groomed for President and live perfect lives from the very moment the sperm and egg fused until the moment they're sworn in. Alas, he may have smashed a little too much.

[Dos Equis]

But today she is crying about Trump.   

[Howard]

The rank and file GOP idiot wanted Trump instead of SEVERAL other decent conservatives that had a real shot at beating Hildabeast.
I voted for Rubio in the primary but I would have loved to vote for most of the other primary candidates.

Now we have an unhinged blowhard that will lose BIG time in the electoral college.
Congrats Trump supporters, you gave the Whitehouse to Hillary. Blame YOURSELF.

[Soul Crusher]

Flashback: Gore Refuses to Concede Election, Demands Recount ‘to Ensure All the Votes Are Counted’
grabien.com ^ | 10/19/16 | blog
Posted on 10/20/2016, 9:29:58 AM by drpix

Al Gore, speaking from the White House the week after having lost the general election, explains why he refused to concede the race:

"The effort that I have underway is simply to make sure that all of the votes are counted, and when the issues that are now being considered in the Florida Supreme Court are decided, that will be an important point. But I don't want to speculate what the court will do."

(cont'd)

(Excerpt) Read more at news.grabien.com ...

[Soul Crusher]

Scarborough Rips MSM’s Hypocritical ‘Freak Out’ Over Trump Refusal to Blindly Accept Election Result
Comments Permalink
 
 
 
Posted by Mark Finkelstein      Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 8:12am
Scarborough to Liberals: Bathe In Your Hypocrisy!
mika-scarborough-mj-10-2o-16
Every couple of weeks, Joe Scarborough rebuilds lost conservative street cred by going on a good rant against liberals and the MSM. He did so in spades on today’s Morning Joe, comprehensively crushing libs for their hypocrisy in “freaking out” over Trump’s wait-and-see answer at last night’s debate to the question of whether he’d accept the results of the election.

Excerpts: “the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he is an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections . . . hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election.”




Note: before Joe went on his impressive rant, Mika Brzezinski narrated a good montage that Morning Joe had assembled of statements by the MSM and Dem candidates over the years, including Al Gore and Howard Dean, accusing elections of being “stolen,” etc.



Note Dos: Things even got a bit chippy between Joe and the mild-mannered Harold Ford, Jr., a Hillary backer. When Ford tried to get Joe to acknowledge that there had never been a presidential candidate who had questioned the election results, Scarborough shot back “Harold, Harold, I’m not on the witness stand.”

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Do you know what? This is an example, the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he’s an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections.

I had to sit through Fahrenheit 911 and a lady was sobbing violently behind me on the Upper West Side about the election being stolen from George Bush and I patted her halfway through, I go, it’s all right, it’s all right, ma’am. It’s all right. It’s all a lie anyway.

Democrats have been whining for 16 years, they’re still writing articles about how Bush stole the elections in 2000 and 2004. So this holier-than-thou attitude about this is the first time anyone has suggested that the election is not a sacrosanct process, it’s a joke! So you guys bathe in that hypocrisy if you want to, I’d just like to hear how the debate went. Go ahead, bathe.

HAROLD FORD, JR.: But Joe, you can’t you can’t–the difference is what Michael just said: it’s the candidate himself. You will have spectators, voters, political officials, elected officials all contemplating, writers saying that this didn’t happen this way, they stole it, Bush did this but you never had the presidential candidate do what he did last night —

JOE: So, let me be very specific. My target this morning for my mockery are the very people that are writing articles today on their blogs that are saying [mocking melodramatic tone]: this is a threat to the democracy, the electoral process in America is sacrosanct and if we ever doubt this are we no better than Putin? Those are the people I’m mocking. I’m not comparing him to Al Gore.

FORD: Can you acknowledge there has never been a presidential candidate to do what he did last night?

JOE: Harold, Harold, I’m not on the witness stand here. I am just saying it is rich that the very thing that the Democrats — I had a lady come up to me yesterday who I know very well, she’s a dear, dear friend of the family and she said, oh, Joe, oh, Joe, how horrible will it be if Kate has to grow up in a country with a president that doesn’t respect women any more than Donald Trump? I said, it will be about the same as having middle-school boys grow up in a world where Bill Clinton was President of the United States. It’s pretty bad. And, you know, said —

FORD: I don’t know how that relates to what we’re talking about.

JOE: It relates to the hypocrisy that Democrats forget everything that they’ve been saying on their blogs, in their newspapers, in their magazines over the past 16 years. I’m not even mad about it. It’s very funny and here’s the great thing: it’s all on Google. I ask you to do what Hillary Clinton asked last night. Just Google all of this and you will see that Democrats, who are shocked and stunned and deeply saddened this morning, were the very ones — hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election!

 

[James]

Scarborough Rips MSM’s Hypocritical ‘Freak Out’ Over Trump Refusal to Blindly Accept Election Result
Comments Permalink
 
 
 
Posted by Mark Finkelstein      Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 8:12am
Scarborough to Liberals: Bathe In Your Hypocrisy!
mika-scarborough-mj-10-2o-16
Every couple of weeks, Joe Scarborough rebuilds lost conservative street cred by going on a good rant against liberals and the MSM. He did so in spades on today’s Morning Joe, comprehensively crushing libs for their hypocrisy in “freaking out” over Trump’s wait-and-see answer at last night’s debate to the question of whether he’d accept the results of the election.

Excerpts: “the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he is an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections . . . hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election.”




Note: before Joe went on his impressive rant, Mika Brzezinski narrated a good montage that Morning Joe had assembled of statements by the MSM and Dem candidates over the years, including Al Gore and Howard Dean, accusing elections of being “stolen,” etc.



Note Dos: Things even got a bit chippy between Joe and the mild-mannered Harold Ford, Jr., a Hillary backer. When Ford tried to get Joe to acknowledge that there had never been a presidential candidate who had questioned the election results, Scarborough shot back “Harold, Harold, I’m not on the witness stand.”

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Do you know what? This is an example, the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he’s an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections.

I had to sit through Fahrenheit 911 and a lady was sobbing violently behind me on the Upper West Side about the election being stolen from George Bush and I patted her halfway through, I go, it’s all right, it’s all right, ma’am. It’s all right. It’s all a lie anyway.

Democrats have been whining for 16 years, they’re still writing articles about how Bush stole the elections in 2000 and 2004. So this holier-than-thou attitude about this is the first time anyone has suggested that the election is not a sacrosanct process, it’s a joke! So you guys bathe in that hypocrisy if you want to, I’d just like to hear how the debate went. Go ahead, bathe.

HAROLD FORD, JR.: But Joe, you can’t you can’t–the difference is what Michael just said: it’s the candidate himself. You will have spectators, voters, political officials, elected officials all contemplating, writers saying that this didn’t happen this way, they stole it, Bush did this but you never had the presidential candidate do what he did last night —

JOE: So, let me be very specific. My target this morning for my mockery are the very people that are writing articles today on their blogs that are saying [mocking melodramatic tone]: this is a threat to the democracy, the electoral process in America is sacrosanct and if we ever doubt this are we no better than Putin? Those are the people I’m mocking. I’m not comparing him to Al Gore.

FORD: Can you acknowledge there has never been a presidential candidate to do what he did last night?

JOE: Harold, Harold, I’m not on the witness stand here. I am just saying it is rich that the very thing that the Democrats — I had a lady come up to me yesterday who I know very well, she’s a dear, dear friend of the family and she said, oh, Joe, oh, Joe, how horrible will it be if Kate has to grow up in a country with a president that doesn’t respect women any more than Donald Trump? I said, it will be about the same as having middle-school boys grow up in a world where Bill Clinton was President of the United States. It’s pretty bad. And, you know, said —

FORD: I don’t know how that relates to what we’re talking about.

JOE: It relates to the hypocrisy that Democrats forget everything that they’ve been saying on their blogs, in their newspapers, in their magazines over the past 16 years. I’m not even mad about it. It’s very funny and here’s the great thing: it’s all on Google. I ask you to do what Hillary Clinton asked last night. Just Google all of this and you will see that Democrats, who are shocked and stunned and deeply saddened this morning, were the very ones — hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election!

 

Video:

[Yamcha]

Good to see that Podesta cheats on his wife.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22197

[Yamcha]

Could you imagine if 9/11 happened with today's MSM?

[mazrim]

Could you imagine if 9/11 happened with today's MSM?

That is funny until you realize that probably would be the portrayal. "If only a white male had done it"

[Dos Equis]

Funny how history has a way of repeating itself.

Flashback: Bill Clinton cheered 11th hour indictment that doomed Bush re-election
By Paul Bedard (@SecretsBedard) • 10/30/16

Whispers of "payback" are being directed at Hillary Clinton after she decried as "unprecedented" the surprise FBI revival of its probe of her email scandal.
 
That's because 24 years ago, as former President George H.W. Bush was surging back against challenger Bill Clinton, a special prosecutor raised new charges against Bush in the Iran-Contra probe, prompting Clinton to claim he was running against a "culture of corruption."
 
Many Republicans claimed that the indictment made by special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh against former Reagan-era Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger the weekend before the 1992 election cost Bush a second term. The indictment, later thrown out, challenged Bush's claim
that he did not know about a controversial arms-for-hostages deal that dogged the Reagan-Bush administration.
developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.

When it came, Clinton seized on it, saying for example, "Secretary Weinberger's note clearly shows that President Bush has not been telling the truth when he says he was out of the loop." Clinton added, "It demonstrates that President Bush knew and approved of President Reagan's secret deal to swap arms for hostages."
 
Powerline blogger Paul Mirengoff wrote, "What goes around comes around."
 
He concluded:
 
The Clintons seized on the new indictment, howling about a "culture of corruption" that supposedly pervaded the administration. Bush's poll numbers declined and Bill Clinton won the election.
 
Shortly after the election, a federal judge threw out the new indictment because it violated the five-year statute of limitations and improperly broadened the original charges. President Bush then pardoned Weinberger.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/flashback-clinton-cheered-11th-hour-indictment-that-doomed-bush-reelection/article/2606000#!

[Dos Equis]

Trump echos Bill Clinton (and Obama) on immigration.  Liberals can be such hypocrites.

[Dos Equis]

Chaffetz hit for iPhone vs. health care comment – but Obama made same argument
By  Adam Shaw   
Published March 07, 2017
FoxNews.com
 
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz sparked fury online Tuesday after saying Americans may have to choose between buying a new iPhone and health insurance – yet the criticism glossed over similar remarks made by then-President Barack Obama.

Chaffetz was speaking after House Republicans revealed their plan to replace ObamaCare. Responding to claims the plan doesn’t guarantee access to care for low-income Americans, he said:

"Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want. ... Americans have choices, and they've got to make a choice. So rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care.”

Chaffetz’s remarks to CNN sparked a firestorm on social media as “iPhones” quickly became a top trending topic, as did “TrumpCare.”

Jared Yates Sexton
✔  ‎@JYSexton 
Chaffetz's phone comment reveals truth behind this plan: GOP is literally wiling to let poor people die because they think they're greedy.
4:03 AM - 7 Mar 2017
3,697 3,697 Retweets 5,405 5,405 likes

Jordan Uhl
✔  ‎@JordanUhl 
Pick one. Healthcare or a way to contact your family. Chaffetz says you can't have both!
4:02 AM - 7 Mar 2017
238 238 Retweets 389 389 likes
 
The controversy was widely reported, with some outlets expressing outrage at the congressman’s comments.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote that Chaffetz’s comment “revives the ‘poverty is a choice’ argument." Meanwhile, Slate declared: “GOP’s most embarrassing Congressman strikes again” while Yahoo News went so far as to break down the exact cost of an iPhone, both for a Verizon contract and an AT&T contract, to compare the cost to health insurance.

Yet left unsaid was that Obama made similar comments in 2014. In a town hall meeting with Spanish-language outlets, Obama was asked about a man who had written in saying he still couldn’t afford insurance.
 
In a lengthy answer, Obama speculated about someone making $40,000-$50,000 a year, who thinks an insurance option that costs $300 a month is too much.

“I guess what I would say is if you looked at that person’s budget and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone … cell phone bill, other things that they’re spending on, it may turn out that they just haven’t prioritized health care because right now everybody is healthy," he said.

“Nobody actually wants to spend money on health insurance until they get sick,” he added.

Chaffetz later clarified his comments on Fox News’ "America’s Newsroom," and conceded he didn’t make his remarks “as smoothly” as he could.

"What we're trying to say -- and maybe I didn't say it as smoothly as I possibly could -- but people need to make a conscious choice and I believe in self-reliance," he said. "And they're going to have to make those decisions."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/07/chaffetz-hit-for-iphone-vs-health-care-comment-but-obama-made-same-argument.html

[Dos Equis]

Sorry Ben Carson Critics: Obama Also Referred to Slaves as Immigrants
by Charlie Spiering
7 Mar 2017
 
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was roundly criticized by celebrities like Samuel Jackson after he referred to the slaves from Africa as immigrants with dreams and hopes for their children’s futures.

But President Barack Obama used similar language to include African-Americans descended from slaves among the immigrants who helped shape America.

Here is Obama in 2015:

Certainly, it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more.

Here is Carson:

That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=111241

[Moontrane]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/books/involuntary-immigrants.html?pagewanted=all

 

Involuntary Immigrants

By James M. McPherson;
Published: August 27, 1995

THE BLACK DIASPORA By Ronald Segal. 477 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.50.

DURING the four centuries after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, some 12 million people left sub-Saharan Africa for the Western Hemisphere. They were not voluntary immigrants. They came aboard slave ships, packed almost literally like sardines. At least one-tenth of them died before they reached the New World. Millions of others perished on the trek from the interior of Africa to the coast, or during the hard months of "seasoning" in the Western Hemisphere. The slave trade brought a demographic disaster to Africa outweighed only by the deaths of even greater numbers of indigenous peoples in the New World from the epidemic diseases Europeans unwittingly carried with them.

[The Ugly]

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/books/involuntary-immigrants.html?pagewanted=all

 

Involuntary Immigrants

By James M. McPherson;j
Published: August 27, 1995

THE BLACK DIASPORA By Ronald Segal. 477 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.50.

DURING the four centuries after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, some 12 million people left sub-Saharan Africa for the Western Hemisphere. They were not voluntary immigrants. They came aboard slave ships, packed almost literally like sardines. At least one-tenth of them died before they reached the New World. Millions of others perished on the trek from the interior of Africa to the coast, or during the hard months of "seasoning" in the Western Hemisphere. The slave trade brought a demographic disaster to Africa outweighed only by the deaths of even greater numbers of indigenous peoples in the New World from the epidemic diseases Europeans unwittingly carried with them.

I recall a young hitchiker what once became my involuntary girlfriend. Tied to that bed and all, 48 hours of involuntary sex/violence like you wouldn't believe.

Best weekend of my life.

[Moontrane]

I recall a young hitchiker what once became my involuntary girlfriend. Tied to that bed and all, 48 hours of involuntary sex/violence like you wouldn't believe.

Best weekend of my life.

Be hip, y'all
Use rohypnol

[TuHolmes]

Sorry Ben Carson Critics: Obama Also Referred to Slaves as Immigrants
by Charlie Spiering
7 Mar 2017
 
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was roundly criticized by celebrities like Samuel Jackson after he referred to the slaves from Africa as immigrants with dreams and hopes for their children’s futures.

But President Barack Obama used similar language to include African-Americans descended from slaves among the immigrants who helped shape America.

Here is Obama in 2015:

Certainly, it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more.

Here is Carson:

That’s what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=111241

Delivery is a bitch man.

I don't think Carson would have received as much heat if he had delivered it the way Obama did.

Still, it's very hypocritical of people to jump over Carson like this. Absolute bullshit.

[Moontrane]

Delivery is a bitch man.

I don't think Carson would have received as much heat if he had delivered it the way Obama did.

Still, it's very hypocritical of people to jump over Carson like this. Absolute bullshit.

Yes, he can be inartful. 

[bike nut]

The rank and file GOP idiot wanted Trump instead of SEVERAL other decent conservatives that had a real shot at beating Hildabeast.
I voted for Rubio in the primary but I would have loved to vote for most of the other primary candidates.

Now we have an unhinged blowhard that will lose BIG time in the electoral college.
Congrats Trump supporters, you gave the Whitehouse to Hillary. Blame YOURSELF.

I'd just like to bump this post to illustrate its uncanny predictive accuracy and the intelligence of the post's author.

GFY Howard, you knob wrangler.

[Dos Equis]

Delivery is a bitch man.

I don't think Carson would have received as much heat if he had delivered it the way Obama did.

Still, it's very hypocritical of people to jump over Carson like this. Absolute bullshit.

I agree.  I don't have a problem with that either on of them said.  Neither of them was trying to downplay slavery.