Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
August 24, 2012
How do you encourage the right-wing idiocy that Obama was born in Kenya and thus an illegitimate President, while not getting the tar of hate on yourself? Why, by making a little “joke” about it, like Mitt Romney did today while campaigning in Michigan.
“I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital,” Romney said. “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”
The text says I’m one of you. The subtext says my opponent is an “other,’ not like us at all. Romney, who is used to getting away with irresponsible language in his prepared texts, often shows his true self when ad libbing. His prepared texts say that he knows that Obama was born in the United States. His true self says, encourage the crazies to hate Obama and to vote for me.
<a href=”http://www.hypersmash.com”>www.hypersmash.com</a>
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Tags:birth certificate, ethics, Kenya, Obama, other, Romney
Posted in Ethics-general, hypocrisy, Lying, Politics | 5 Comments »
August 21, 2012
There’s a fake report all over the internet that Mitt Romney said he was “too important to go to Vietnam.”
It’s breathtakingly arrogant, if true, and it’s not true. It originated on a website called “News That’s Almost Reliable,” according to the apparently infallible source of rumor-debunking, Snopes.com.
Romney, the über-hawk who wants to go to war in so many places, got four deferments—all legal—as a young man during the Vietnam war. But whatever he may have thought, there’s no record of his ever saying that he was too important to go to Vietnam.
Shame on whoever started to spread the story. Everybody else, when you hear of a story that’s too good (or too bad) to be true, first use your head, then check it out—not on left-leaning or right-leaning blogs but with reputable news sources, and if there’s any doubt, with Snopes.com.
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Sources: Photo from PoliticalRapids blogspot, idea from Richard Broida via Facebook
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Tags:“News That’s Almost Reliable”, “too important to go to Vietnam”, ethics, PoliticalRapids, Richard Broida, Romney, Snopes
Posted in Ethics-general, Lying, Politics | 11 Comments »
July 20, 2012
Romney is at it again, doctoring what Obama said, and saying that the doctored version shows that Obama doesn’t understand or believe in America. Sadly a lot of people have bought Romney’s falsification.
Here’s what Obama said in Roanoke, Virginia on July 13:
“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
The Romney commercial doctored the quote, dropping all but the underlined part, to change Obama’s meaning (more…)
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Tags:Charles Krauthammer, commercial, doctored quotes, ethics, lying, Obama, Roanoke, Romney, success, who built your business
Posted in Ethics-general, Lying, Politics | Leave a Comment »
July 18, 2012
Americans welcome people who are different. They enrich our culture. They bring new energy to our society. They do us proud as a melting pot of cultures.
Americans shun people who are different. They debase our culture. They take our jobs. They seduce our children. They talk like foreigners.
So it was with Germans and Irish in the early 1800s. So it was with Jews and Chinese in the late 1800s. Italians in the early 1900s. Africans forever. And so it is with Muslims today.
At our best we befriend the stranger and his children, we treat them kindly, we hire them, and we defend them. At our worst we demean them, discriminate against them, exploit them, and attack them.
America at our worst is five House Republicans, led by Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who have accused countless American Muslims who work for the U.S. government of being secret agents (more…)
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Tags:American Muslims, ethics, hatemongers, Hilary Clinton, House Republicans, Huma Abedin, immigration, John McCain, melting pot, Michele Bachmann, Mike Hais, Morley Winograd, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, History, Immigration, Politics, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
July 12, 2012
House and Senate Republicans have forfeited any claim to ethical behavior. They were sent to Washington to do the people’s business; they make a mockery of their oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”
Congressional Republicans are doing anything BUT “well and faithfully discharging the duties” of their offices. They have now voted 33 times to repeal or defund all or part of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). Yesterday every one of the House Republicans voted for repeal, along with five Democrats. Before any of the hours of sham debate and the wall-to-wall press and TV coverage, every last one of them knew that their vote would have no effect. None. Nowhere. Never.
For to repeal the ACA, they well knew, after the bill passes the House it would have to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, then signed by President Obama. Did any of them expect that the President would sign repeal of his (for better or worse) signature legislation?
Meanwhile, the Senate Republicans are keeping pace with their House colleagues’ renunciation of their Constitutional oath. (more…)
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Tags:advise and consent, Affordable Care Act, duty, ethics, House, House Republicans, judicial nominations, Mitch McConnell, oath of office, Obamacare, one-term President, repeal, Senate, Senate Republicans
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Health care, hypocrisy, Politics | Leave a Comment »
June 17, 2012
Joanne ____ is one of America’s twelve million illegal immigrants. She was brought to the United States from Mexico as a baby by her parents. She has a younger sister and brother who are American citizens because they were born in the United States. Her sister is in her last year at Harvard; her brother is in high school.
Five years ago alumni of the North Hollywood High School Class of 1957 decided, as part of their 50th reunion, to give a scholarship to a deserving senior. The school’s top choice was Joanne, and so she was awarded the scholarship. With that financial help and her own tenacity and hard work Joanne got her degree from the California State University, Northridge, a year ago. She’s spent much of the past year looking for work, but it’s been a hopeless case because she can’t produce the necessary papers.
Until yesterday, when President Obama announced that the United States would no longer consider deporting people like Joanne—people who had been brought here illegally as children, earned a high school diploma or GED, or served in the military, and had behaved well—had what we would call a record of good citizenship, were they citizens. Moreover the government will give them permits to work in the US for two years, renewable indefinitely.
In effect the President granted by executive action much of what the Dream Act—stymied only by an especially ugly Republican filibuster (more…)
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Tags:California State University Northridge, Class of 1957, deportation, Dream Act, ethics, executive action, illegal immigrants, Mexico, Mitt Romney, North Hollywood High School, Obama, path to citizenship, Republican filibuster, scholarship, veto, work permits
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Immigration, Politics | Leave a Comment »
April 21, 2012
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is a darling of the Republican right, so much so that many pundits have tagged him as a front runner for the #2 spot on the Republican ticket with Mitt Romney. If Romney were to choose Rubio, goes the reasoning, it would solidify his position with the party base that has always mistrusted him. And as a bonus, Cuban-American Rubio might help Romney with the growing numbers of Latino voters who have been turned off by his unbending anti-immigrant position.
Immigration is the one issue on which Romney and the right are together: seal the borders and hunt down and deport everybody who isn’t here legally, all 12,000,000 of them.
Rubio showed he’s not one who goes along to get along, in all likelihood forsaking any chance at the VP spot on the Romney ticket. He just announced his sponsorship of a modified version of the DREAM Act, which would allow children of illegal immigrants to obtain legal status in the United States.
Some on the Left have rejected Rubio’s proposal as a betrayal of American values, but chalk that up to hyper-partisanship. Rubio clearly wants to help young people, brought here illegally when they were small children, to stay in America legally and to get an education and a job.
Rubio’s is a story of courage and compassion, and of a too-rare politician who rejects ideology in favor of solving a serious national problem. Hooray.
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Tags:children of illegal immigrants, compassion, courage, Cuban-Americans, Dream Act, ethics, hyper-partisanship, immigration, Latino voters, legal status, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, party base, Republican right, Republican ticket, Vice Presidential nomination
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Immigration, Leadership, Politics, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
March 4, 2012
Rush Limbaugh has apologized for calling Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute for supporting health insurance coverage of contraceptives.
He was immediately swamped with outrage from the Left and from several sponsors of his radio talk show who announced that they would sponsor no longer.
Rush posted an apology on his website yesterday. After explaining his position against insurance coverage of contraceptives, he concluded:
“My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”
I’ve written before about the three types of apologies:
Category 1 is the defiant apology:“I’m sorry if you think I did something wrong.”
Category 2 is the evasive apology:“I may have made an innocent mistake, and I’m sorry for it—if I actually did it.”
Category 3 is the real apology:“I did something wrong, and I’m sorry for it.”
Rush gets only provisional credit for a Cat. 3—provisional (more…)
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Tags:ABC This Week, Ann Coulter, apology, Bill Maher, bimbo, contraceptives, Daily Beast, Democrats, dumb twat, Ed Schultz, ethics, George Will, health insurance, John Boehner, Kathleen Parker, Kirsten Powers, Laura Ingraham, Matt Taibbi, Michelle Malkin, MSNBC, prostitute, Republicans, Rolling Stone, Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke, Sarah Palin, slut, types of apologies, Washington Post
Posted in Apologies, Ethics-general, hypocrisy, Media, Politics | 3 Comments »
February 3, 2012
Mitt Romney said he’s not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net. And if the safety net needs repair he’ll fix it.
This proves he doesn’t care. If he thinks the safety net is OK he’s out of touch, and his out-of-touchness proves his lack of concern.
The safety net leaves millions of minimum- or low-wage earners without enough to feed, clothe, and shelter their families, leaves them dependent on emergency room visits for any medical care, and—if they’ve been unemployed for a long time—facing termination of their unemployment checks. And candidate Romney, along with nearly unanimous Republican Senators and members of Congress, are reflexively opposed to “fixing” the safety net.
But appearing so heartless can be costly to a Presidential candidate. So Romney tried to lie his way out of it, saying he misspoke. But he didn’t misspeak. Misspeaking is when I call my granddaughter by her sister’s name. Misspeaking is when John McCain tells a Romney gathering that he’s confident that President Obama will cure the nation’s ills. Misspeaking is not saying something, then when challenged explaining what you said. He didn’t misspeak.
The interview that got Romney into this mess went like this:
The candidate told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Wednesday that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” explaining that he’s concerned about the middle class (more…)
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Tags:CNN, compassion, ethics, Jon Ralston, lying, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, middle class, misspoke, Mitt Romney, pants on fire, poor people, safety net, Soledad O'Brien, very poor
Posted in Apologies, Ethics-general, Government, hypocrisy, Politics | 1 Comment »
January 24, 2012
Rick Santorum explained today why he didn’t challenge the woman who, at a Santorum town hall yesterday, pronounced President Obama a foreigner and a Muslim.
“I’ve said repeatedly that President Obama is not a Muslim and he’s qualified. It’s not my responsibility to defend the President. I’m not here to defend the President against scurrilous attacks. It’s not my job, it’s yours [referring to the media]. It’s your responsibility to defend the president, not mine. When the media and others say lies about me and call me names and do things … it’s OK and, in fact, it’s promoted and encouraged and made fun of when we do it. Stop it.”
Santorum was being questioned on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program by political writer John Heilemann, who then pointed out that John McCain had responded honorably in a similar episode during the 2008 campaign. Santorum responded indignantly.
“It’s very clear. I am not John McCain. I’ve never been like John McCain. I’m not running as a candidate who’s anything like John McCain.”
Amen.
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Tags:ethics, John Heilemann, John McCain, Morning Joe, Obama Muslim, Santorum
Posted in Ethics-general, Media, Politics | 4 Comments »
How do you encourage the right-wing idiocy that Obama was born in Kenya and thus an illegitimate President, while not getting the tar of hate on yourself? Why, by making a little “joke” about it, like Mitt Romney did today while campaigning in Michigan.
Ethics Bob 