The great hypocrisy contest: You pick the winner

The nation is having a hypocrisy contest -- and you're invited!

1. Stimulus. This post demonstrates the staggering number of Republicans who blasted the stimulus bill when it was under debate, but who later took credit for it. For example, here's John Boehner on June 15, 2009:

With Ohio’s unemployment rate the highest it’s been in 25 years, I’m pleased that federal officials stepped in to order Ohio to use all of its construction dollars for shovel-ready projects that will create much-needed jobs.

Yet he voted against that bill. And you know that he'll rail against the stimulus package when talking to a teabagger symposium.

Boehner is hardly the only Republican doing an impersonation of Janus. Republican congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia is scoring the Democratic governor of that state for being too slow to spend stimulus funds -- even though Wolf voted against the stimulus package. Over a hundred other GOPers did the same stimulus two-step.

Yes, the Democrats are using this example of Republican hypocrisy in a coordinated attack. They are right to do so, both tactically and morally.

2. Swiftboating. The right has no choice but to rehabilitate Bush and Cheney. The tactic will probably succeed, since Americans have such short memories. Many young people do not know the year in which the 9/11 attacks occurred. (Quite a few can't even tell you the month.) At this point, most Americans have probably forgotten that the banks were bailed out under Dubya, not under Obama.

Still, I wasn't expecting so brazen an attempt to rewrite history as this: How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History, by John Gibson of Fox News. This is the same guy who did so much to gin up the "war on Christmas" scare. Yes, it's a real book, not a joke: I've seen the thing on the shelves.

What truly galls here is the title. Gibson

defines “swiftboating” as “undermining character and credibility, no matter whether the charges are accurate,” and accuses the left of trashing not only the president, but the Iraq war, the war on terror and conservatives at large.

Swiftboating is a left-wing thing, it seems. It was done to Bush, not by the Bush forces. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Gibson (if he really is the author -- you never can tell in these realms) hopes his readers have forgotten how the term came about. And they probably have, just as they have forgotten the year 9/11 took place.

(Actually, the left did discover the joys of swiftboating in 2008. But in that case, the target was Hillary Clinton.)

3. Exec pay. From AlterNet, by way of lambert:

Meanwhile, 2009 was a record-breaking year for Wall Street bonuses, as firms issued $150 billion to their executives. 100% of these bonuses are a direct result of our tax dollars, so if we used this money to create jobs, instead of giving them to a handful of top executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5 million people.

So while US workers are now working more hours and have become dramatically more productive and profitable, our pay is actually declining and all the dramatic increases in wealth are going straight into the pockets of the Economic Elite.

Here we have an example of across-the-board hypocrisy -- a toxic cloud which casts the same stink over both Republicans and Democrats. I'd say the biggest hypocrites are the Tea Partiers, since they claim to be a populist movement -- yet they are the ones who fulminate the loudest at any attempt to cap the pay of execs at the too-big-to-fail banks. They would also scream "Socialism!" if that money were diverted to jobs creation.

4. Terror/not terror. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says that pilot Joseph Stack -- who, after writing an anti-government manifesto, tried to crash his plane into an IRS building -- was not a terrorist. In other words, Stack wasn't an Arab.

This, from the post-racism administration.

5. Senator Charles Grassley has told his constituents that he was responsible for a bill to make sure that Iowa National Guardsmen received due compensation. Grassley -- you've already guessed it, haven't you? -- actually voted against the bill.

6. More stimulus. Lambert's headline tells the story:

Obama cancels construction program that creates jobs 18 times better than his own lousy stimulus package

7. The Wall Street Journal accused Barack Obama of declaring "war on bankers." What war on bankers? That's like accusing Jenna Jameson of leading a war on pornography.

Even by WSJ standards, that editorial just bubbles over with hypocrisy. The Journal's bottom line holds that Bayh resigned because Obama and Dems have gone too far to the left. (!!) (I'm sorry: Make that (!!!!!)). In fact, the American people want Obama to be more committed to principle. I've linked to this poll previously.

8. The Obots (don't) send their regrets. Myiq2xu has submitted a beautifully-written piece which details pretty much everything that has gone wrong over the past two years. Yes, the prog blogs have turned against Obama, yet -- hypocritically -- they still despise those of us who turned against him prematurely.

You would think that now that we have been proven right and they have been proven wrong that the rest of Left Blogistan would apologize for the way they treated us the past two years. Sadly, no. They continue to treat us like we have cooties, dandruff, halitosis and body odor. Jane Hamsher would rather hang out with Grover Norquist than acknowledge our existence.

There is a whole lot of blame to go around for what happened, the lion’s share belonging to the Democratic party leadership. But the leaders of the “reality-based community” in Left Blogistan should be ashamed of themselves. Not because they were wrong in their judgment (they were) but because they abandoned their principles.

Some of the big bloggers joined in with the unhinged behavior and promoted the numerous fauxrages and wankfests while the others sat silently and let it happen. But whether they are guilty of sins of commission or sins of omission, they are certainly not innocent. Nor does admitting a year later that they were a “chickenshit” when it mattered absolve them of anything.

Even now they can’t be honest about what they did (and/or failed to do) which is the real reason they continue to shun us. Like Banquo’s ghost, we remind them of what they want to forget.

Now, YOU pick the winner! I have given you the eight to hate, as of this evening. Who deserves the day's Grand Hypocrisy Prize?

I'm going to have to give it to the teabaggers, for pretending to be a populist movement even though they manifestly are nothing of the sort. But the silver medal in hypocrisy goes to the prog-bloggers who would rather drink turpentine than admit that folks like me were right all along.