Sarah Palin - Since this is my Blog and this is low hanging fruit, let our first inductee into our Republican Hall of Shame to be Sarah Palin. This is the person NRO (No Real Opinions) calls "The One". Yes, she is the one that makes Hillary Clinton look good. Hillary Clinton - your prototypical lawyer and politician - was constantly investigated and had a hunger for power. But she didn't quit to write books or go on the speaking circuit. With this being said, if you beleive Sarah Palin quit for the reasons she stated - no lame duck, no business as usual, etc - go down to your workshop, get out a 16 oz hammer, and hit yourself in the head with it.Picture yourself driving in you car with a sick kid trying to find someone to treat him/her. You're driving a car given you by the person who used to run your sick kids to the hospital. But the car is a piece of shit - it's been run into the ground. It stalls, makes noises, and you have to invest major bucks into it just to keep it from dying completely. So, while you are trying to fight a dying car trying to get your sick kid to the hospital, somebody is in the back seat texting everybody she knows while yelling at you that you are basically, an idiot. Turn right! Turn left! Too fast! Too slow! Are we there yet?!?!!? If you knew anything about driving sick kids for treatment, you would know that I have to pee!
Well, that person is Sarah Palin in the back except she's back seat presidenting. Imagine yourself the republican president of the United States with Hillary barking in the backseat like Sarah Palin. Seriously, this is the best we can do? Out of 300 and some million people, one of your strongest voices is a woman that cashed out of public office to advise on matters she knows nothing about (except what she reads in "all" of the news publications)?
Sean Hannity- Our second inductee to the Orphaned Republican Hall of Shame is non other than that bastion of conservatism himself, Sean Hannity.
I listen to Hannity from 3:00PM to 5:00PM most days and 20 minutes or so on my way home from work. I work in an office and enjoy having talk radio in the background as music is too distracting for me. So, I don't hear about the insanity that is Hannity second-hand - I usually hear the nutty things he says firsthand. However, I don't watch his TV show - that is too much for me. At least Hannity has the gumption to put liberals on ahead of his loyal BushBots and ditto-heads and argue with him. I really can't think of any other talking head that takes on his opposition like that. So, you have to give credit where credit is due.But Hannity is one of the biggest phonies ever - and apparently with a horrible memory. He considers himself a "Reagan Conservative", However, he doesn't tell us what part of Reagan he is like. Did he like the Reagan that pulled our troops out of Lebanon after a terrorist attack? Does anybody reading this that thinks I'm full of shit believe Hannity would give Obama a pass had Obama did the same thing?
Or does Hannity like Reagan's economic policy? To be fair, Reagan inherited a mess from Jimmy Carter. It was a horrible recession with long gas lines and interest rates through the roof. So, Reagan tried "trickle-down" economics. Basically, by reducing taxes, people spent their money on more coffee pots. And since those coffee pots were being made in American factories, more jobs were created. I know there is some dispute in terms of whether this worked or not, but I happened to believe those tax cuts did. But like every other president after him - including Barack HUSSEIN Obama - Reagan didn't cut spending. Instead, he spent a ton of money on defense programs becoming the biggest deficit spender in modern history at the time. Right now, Obama is deficit spending to keep our economy from completely collapsing. But tax cuts alone won't work - those coffee pots are not made in America anymore. So, when people spend their tax cuts at Walmart, that money goes out of the country and gives more Chinese people jobs. But right now, according to Hannity, Obama is a complete failure because of the debts that are piling up - as if this has never happened before. How can Obama defend himself to prove himself right? Do nothing and put our economy in the hands of more Enrons, WorldComs, and Fannie Macs? Prove Hannity wrong by standing by and allowing the economy to tank?
Bush instituted his tax cuts roughly 10 years ago. However, he could not make them permanent because by law, the tax cuts needed to be paid for. Because they are not paid for, they are required - by law - to expire. So, Obama has cut discretionary spending. He has drawn down our troops in Iraq - all of this saving tons of money. I doubt it's enough to comply with the law regarding those tax cuts, but Obama has said he will extend tax cuts for people/businesses making less than $250K a year. Now, most people having their heads explode over small businesses think that most small companies will be affected - which is false. If a company has a net income - meaning they clear $250K a year after payroll, materials, and expenditures, they are doing pretty damn good. And if they are not writing off as much as they can to reduce their gross income, they need a new accountant. My point being, a small business making over $250K a year in profit is the exception - not the rule. So, it is true that 95% of people will continue to get tax cuts. The other 5% will still be paying lower than they were under Reagan.
But most of all, it's the intellectual dishonesty. Do you think there is any chance in the world of Hannity defending the following examples had they be done by Obama? For example?
- Joe Biden leaking Valerie Plame's name to David Axelrod and Rahm Immanuel so they could pass this information on to the media.
- A high ranking official lie to a grand jury to protect the actions of Joe Biden.
- The entire Iraq War debacle.Being 100% wrong about every facet of the war including finding out they had no WMD.
- Creating the Department of Homeland Security - an entire new level of bureaucracy.
- Just before an election, Obama sending out $600 checks to everyone.
- Define the United States as a "battlefield" so people could be picked up as a terrorist and be denied their rights?
- Warrantless wiretapping?
- Have the attorney general legally redefine toture.
Clearly, Sean Hannity is a man of politics - not principle. That's his right and he has every right to make every penny he can from it. But for touting himself as a libertarian or "Reagan Conservative" (as he has called himself), at the end of the day he he is just a low-down stinking liar. He's a propagandist of the highest order and is followed by more tools than Craftsman has in it's tool chest. For this and every other harmful thing he has done to our country in the name of money, he earns his place in The Orphaned Conservative's Hall of Shame.
