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On Tuesday night, Florida GOP Golden Child Sen. Marco Rubio delivered a pre-written "response" to President Obama's State of the Union address where he bravely knocked down strawman after strawman, criticizing the president for things he didn't say, and for failing to address subjects that he, in fact, did (like "Medicare" and "early education").

During the senator's speech, he made a point of mentioning that he doesn't live among "millionaires" but instead among immigrants, retirees and senior citizens on fixed incomes. One would be forgiven if they came away believing that Senator Rubio lives in the barrio, among some of the poorest people in Miami.

Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren't millionaires. They're retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They're workers who have to get up early and go to work to pay the bills. They're immigrants who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy.

Problem is, Rubio's working class home has been up for sale at the bargain price of more than two thirds of a million dollars as he seeks to move out of that neighborhood to DC.

We are all hypocrites now and again. It seems to be a key ingredient of human nature, to ignore those who advise us to "judge not lest ye be judged," as we looks towards our friends, neighbors and political leaders with the scowl of Simon Cowell, as if we're Charles in Charge and they're Tyler Durden from Fight Club.

So that is who we are as a species. If we screw up it's bad luck. If the guy or gal down the hall does, there was evil intent or they are incompetent or quite likely a member of the Palin family trying to do another reality show (nice work Lifetime!). Although, to give Bristol Palin credit, she deserves some kind of a prize for convincing 1.1 million people who actually thought the idea of watching Dancing Moms to be a good one, to put the Cheetos aside once the mom-folk stopped undulating, lean forward in their Barcaloungers and turn the channel to anything where Bristol Palin was not.

But I digress. Yes, human beings are hypocrites. If we weren't we wouldn't get just so darn offended when we find out our favorite athlete went to the team that paid the most money or senator such-and-such said a bad word. Lord knows neither of these offenses would ever befall any of us.

Yet, that group of gray hairs reenacting their very own libertarian Woodstock, also known as Tea Party faithful, they seem to almost delight in their hypocrisy. Often we talk about this this in terms of their not-quite-personally-valued family values fetishes. For if you added up those lucky duckies who have, at one time or another, been enjoined in marital bliss to Bob Barr, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, you could probably start a small village of home-schooled, Jesus-campers.

But on the economic front, this do-as-I-say-not-as-I'd-ever-think-of-doing is just as pernicious, if not more.

On Wednesday, Sam Stein of The Huffington Post made this abundantly clear on that day's edition of Morning Joe. Stein was on the panel with former (and kind of still current) Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has compared Social Security to slavery, and had just gone on a long exposition about how it was unconstitutional, abrogated our freedoms and was just a downright terrible idea in general. So Stein asked Paul a simple question. "Are you on Social Security?"

I bet you know the answer! Of course Ron Paul cashes his Social Security checks. Sure, he has the means so he doesn't have to accept them. As a former doctor, and from those kindly old newlsletters he published in the 1990s that helpfully warned us about all those criminally inclined (as high as 95% in Washington DC alone!) and "fleet of foot" black men walking--or perhaps running--among us. But much like his idol Ayn Rand, who thought Social Security was evil until she accepted it and Medicare under her husband's name, and more recently Congressman Paul Ryan, who utilized Social Security survivor benefits to attend college, Ron Paul is a hypocrite of the highest order.

Social Security is a-ok to do for them (not currently for Rand, as she has passed on) as it currently does for millions of Americans in providing a necessary income supplement to retirement or benefits for children who have lost a parent, but won't do anymore for the hoi polloi if the Pauls and Ryans get their way (yes they are not trying to eliminate it, but they are trying to privatize it, which in light of what happened in 2008, is a swell idea).

Of course this is a widespread trend. Tea Party hero-cum-lunatic Congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois, who screams at constituents about spending like Chris Christie screams at constituents about, well, everything, was found to be delinquent by a judge in paying child support to the tune of $100,000 (personal responsibility!). Or Michele Bachmann of the Children-Of-The-Corn eyes, who happily accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies for the family farm while thinking this kind of government spending for anyone else to be a conspiracy on par with the moon landing! And, of course, all you have to do is look at the members of Congress who repeated Tea Party slogans while killing the public option, only to accept their swanky government-provided health insurance, thank you very much.

Hypocrisy is the worst of human nature. And it is in all of us. It's just in the Tea Party a lot more.

Follow me on Twitter @cliffschecter

This piece was first published at Al Jazeera English

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Oh, C&Lers, you've picked a good one, and timely too. In 38th place, we have a March 4th rant about Republican family values as compared to everyone else's. Yes indeed, it's a timely reminder, given Newt's newly discovered piety and grace through the blessings of Catholic bishops and the lovely Callista.

But you see, It's OK If You're A Republican (IOKIYAR).

It's always helpful to review how hypocritical Newt Gingrich is when it comes to "family values."

There is an old adage that always was a lot of comfort to those of us who barely survived our junior high school years: if you stand up to bullies, you’ll find they tend to be cowards not very far beneath the surface. Part of it is that they are so used to people cowering and giving way before them that when someone does stand up and fight back, they don't how to handle it.

We are seeing that play out right now in the world of politics. Big corporate interests and conservative Republicans are so used to bullying people into easy submission, that when someone stands up to them, they lose it awfully fast.

My first example is Republican reaction to the President's budget speech last week. Can you believe the level of high-pitched whining coming from Republicans when the President pointed out the fairly obvious fact that their budget is a tad bit unfair because it takes health care and nursing home coverage from seniors and those with disabilities while giving massive new tax cuts to millionaires? Seems obvious to me, but when Obama stood his ground and made these self-evident points, these guys squealed like stuck pigs. "Partisan,” "class warfare,” and all that. Ryan even complained that Obama invited him to the speech but then criticized his plan, which sounded a lot to me like Newt being invited onto Air Force and then complaining about his seating assignment. Now, as Jon Stewart hilariously pointed out, this is coming from a party whose leaders have spent the last three years calling Obama a socialist, communist, Nazi, and a friend of terrorists, questioning his citizenship and his religion and his patriotism. Great on the old dishing it out thing, not so much on the taking it thing.

Here's another example: Wall Street bankers fretting about the "moral hazard" of homeowners having their mortgages written down or about the fact that other businesspeople are tired of having the big banks make tens of billions of profit off of swipe fees while refusing to negotiate on the issue. The big Wall Street banks have been so used to having their way all the time, unfortunately with either party in power, that when anyone challenges their right to do whatever they want, they get very hurt. They were appalled when Obama and other Democrats said the mildest things in reproach while working to pass last year’s financial reform bill. One Wall Street billionaire, chairman of Blackstone Stephen Schwarzman, even compared Obama to Hitler, saying about a modest proposal to close a big loophole for wealthy bankers, it’s a "war... like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Schwarzman and other top bankers are said to be furious about the fact that Obama occasionally suggest modest new regulations and taxes on the elite circle of financial wizards who created a the biggest financial bubble in history, wreaked trillions of dollars of destruction on the economy (both ours and the world’s), got saved by our government and the taxpayers, and got to keep not only cushy jobs but their nifty bonuses anyway.

Now they are appalled that Elizabeth Warren might want to force them to not have misleading fine print in their consumer financial documents. They are outraged at the idea that Dick Durbin and retail businesses might want some oversight that would keep them from charging whatever swipe fees they want to charge. They are deeply disturbed at the moral hazard of underwater homeowners getting their mortgages written down a little. They take umbrage at the idea that a senior citizen taking in $14,000 a year in Social Security isn’t willing to sacrifice by letting their benefits be cut, or to have to pay $6,000 more a year in out-of-pocket Medicare costs. If we don’t stop outraging these poor Wall Street bankers so much, they might have to get treated for hypertension.

When they aren’t comparing Obama to Hitler, or complaining to their friends at very expensive dinner parties, they are spending lots and lots of money. Campaign contributions, lobbying expenses, advertising, money to the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove front groups that is harder to trace because there is no reporting requirements. And a lot of this money will go back to Republicans so they can do PR campaigns attacking Obama as being too “partisan,” or engaging in “class warfare.”

By the way, speaking of front groups, here’s the other thing the Republicans and Wall Street are colluding on: using Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s rating services to support their agenda. I wrote last week about Moody’s changing the rating on Wisconsin to help Scott Walker’s jihad against unions. Now Standard and Poor’s are issuing vague threats — engineered to get headlines — about lowering the federal government credit rating if we don’t do “something” about the deficit sometime soon. The problem, as I wrote last week, is that having the two companies at the heart of the financial fraud, the two companies who rated everything their client banks asked them to as AAA bonds regardless of how weak they were, be the arbiter on good fiscal policy is like having a convicted murderer be a character witness at your trial. This is politics pure and simple, with Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s continuing to serve their main clients’ agendas no matter how much fraud is involved.

Congressional Republicans and the big banks are classic bullies, used to getting their way on all issues all of the time. When you stand up to them and ask for something as foreign to them as fairness and decency, they lose it and lash out in return. Obama, and Democrats, and progressives in general need to keep them from getting away with it.

Ugh. I am so tired of the media just lapping up the Republican lies regarding the priority of deficit reduction. Poll after poll have shown that most Americans just don't care about lowering the deficit right now, wanting Washington to focus on getting jobs to Americans over reducing the deficit, showing that most Americans have more sense than the whole of the DC Beltway media and the politicians they enable.

But the GOP is pandering to a very small, select, albeit vocal, minority of Americans. And they're willing to do so in the most stupid and petty ways. Case in point: Republican Representatives Steve Womack (AR) and Randy Neuberger (TX):

The House formally began debate, which is expected to last three days, Tuesday afternoon following some wrangling over the hundreds of amendments lawmakers want to attach to the package.

More than 400 amendments were filed Monday night. Among them were a proposal from Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., to eliminate funding for the president's Teleprompter and one from Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, to strip funding for the alteration, repair or improvement of the executive residence of the White House and instead divert that amount to deficit reduction.

Womack later retracted his amendment because he couldn't figure out exactly how much money the teleprompter cost, satisfied that he had made his point.

He made his point with me, that's for sure. He's proven that he's a petty, pandering Republican without a clue of anything resembling fiscal responsibility.

Wow. Wow wow wow.

This tweet is just too much, given the undocumented labor scandal Lou Dobbs is now embroiled in:

Meg Whitman had an illegal immigrant maid for 9 yrs and fired her when she found out? She didn't try to help her get legal status? Not good 2:20 PM Sep 29th via web from Midtown Center, New York

Now, he may be right about Whitman, but talk about casting the first stone... Today Lou Dobbs becomes the latest uber-wealthy public figure to shamelessly flog the immigration issue while simultaneously benefiting from undocumented labor in his home (or rather, estate).

The Nation has a devastating report out today, the result of a year-long investigation, on Dobbs' use and abuse of undocumented workers. Five of Dobbs' workers stated that the ex-CNN anchor knew that they lacked papers but looked the other way as they tended his multi-million dollar estate.

Watch the take-down video:

The reporter, Isabel McDonald, spoke to one immigrant worker, who she identified as Marco Salinas:

An old friend of Salinas's worked as a groom with some of the horses owned by Dobbs, and he had sent word that Salinas could be hired on as a groom at the Vermont stable contracted to care for the Dobbs Group horses.

Continue reading »

David Broder in the Washington (Republican Propaganda) Post:

The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his Argentine romance has been such ripe fodder for the gossip mills that the essential governmental question has almost been forgotten.

Whether Sanford can resolve the mess he has made of his personal life is of little concern to anyone but the people involved.

But when he disappeared for five days, telling no one in his administration or even his security detail where he had gone, he did something totally irresponsible. Had any kind of emergency occurred, South Carolina would have been leaderless.

At the moment Sanford abandoned his duties in secret pursuit of private pleasure, he in effect tendered his resignation.

The Legislature should insist he follow through on it.

Now while I agree with the sentiment that Sanford abandoned his job to follow his little brain, er...heart to Argentina, I'm struck by the difference in Broder's tone from his coverage of Bill Clinton's infidelities:

One of the most revealing statements Broder -- or, perhaps, any political journalist -- has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).

Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the "Washington Establishment" -- which under anybody's definition includes both Broder and Quinn -- was so angry at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place ... and it's not his place."

Broder's implication -- that Washington was his place, not the president's -- is arrogant enough. But Broder's other comment speaks volumes: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to."

What a difference ten years can make. Of course, it has nothing to do with Sanford being a Republican, does it, Dean Broder?

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Oh, this one was fun to watch. Ari jumped onto the ice with a Hypocrisy Double Axel, immediately attacking the Obama administration and the "Democrat" party for... wait for it... being childish!

Yeah, Ari, because calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" is so awesomely mature. (I know you are, but what am I?)

But that was just the beginning. Ari was spinning and leaping all over the place as he clutched his pearls, wondering over and over what happened to the "post-partisan" Obama? To hear him talk, he was puzzled and hurt by the vicious slash and burn tactics of the president and his party, and kept repeating how "childish" it all was.

Shuster wouldn't stand for his nonsense, though. He cited chapter and verse, including the time Ari attacked Move On and the entire Democratic party as "unpatriotic" over the General Petraeus ad.

Just go watch it. If this is the best media spokesperson the Republicans can throw at us, we're in good shape.

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Huckajesus celebrates Chick-Fil-A's commitment to gay hate. Yeah, that's right in line with Jesus' instruction to "Love one another."

And then there's Rick Warren's tweet, celebrating the awesome turnout for Chick-Fil-A's "Hate a Gay" Day.

@dancathy just called me. #ChickFilA has already set a world record today, with 7 more hrs to go in the West. #OutOfChicken

— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) August 2, 2012

Woo. How loving. How accepting of others. Way to "meet them where they are," Rick Warren.

Why all the Chick-Fil-A "hate the gays" action from certain sectors of their customer base? From the LA Times, what Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy said on the air:

"We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit," he told the Biblical Recorder. On the radio, he observed: "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage."

Cathy's outburst ignited a very predictable outbreak of partisan posturing centered on the choice: ban or boycott?

Boycotts were organized on Facebook and Twitter, which brought out the right wing in all their crispy glory, organizing a "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" today. This is what Warren and Huckabee were celebrating.

Let me share the fallout. I wonder if Chick-Fil-A expected this. Jane Devin, a writer living in Tucson who also happens to be gay, drove by a Chick-Fil-A where the lines were longer than she had ever seen in her time there:

I drove by the Chik-Fil-A on Broadway Street in Tucson and the drive-thru line was backed up to the street. I’ve never seen more than five cars in their drive-thru before and now, at 9:00 at night, there were dozens and dozens of them.

My reaction surprised me. It felt like all those people—young men in pickup trucks, moms with kids, older couples—were stepping on my chest. It felt like hidden bigotry had come out to make itself known. It felt like hatred and rejection. It felt like go home, you’re not wanted here. My response was visceral. My gut ached, a sob caught in my throat, and my eyes welled up with tears. I couldn’t drive away fast enough. And I’m not a person who cries easily, at least not usually, but I cried all the way home. Just those couple of minutes of seeing how many people are anti-gay, anti-me, hurt more than I could have ever expected.

And worse yet:

Perhaps because I am something of a hermit—and maybe because my sexual orientation isn’t blatantly obvious to most people—I felt pretty safe here.

I don’t feel safe here anymore.

That line at Chik-Fil-A touched me like a banner of unwelcome, like a vigilante caravan of people who could hardly wait for the opportunity to openly express their belief that I was an enemy to be conquered—someone they longed to see be put back in her place as an anamoly, a threat to society, a pervert, a half-person.

It broke my heart.

This is what hate does to people. It rends them.

Here's a memo to the Christians out there: Churches are under no obligation to perform same sex marriages even if the law of the country says the state must allow them. This is why we have separation between church and state. The state can't tell your churches what requirements must be met for a pastor to perform a marriage ceremony, and you can't tell the state they can't sanction marriages you won't perform. That's the country we live in. Get used to it.

This Chick-Fil-A nonsense is not about people going to war over buying out the local fried chicken joint to support free speech or enterprise, or whatever excuse they're giving. It's about people going to war because other people are different. Different is justification in their little minds for hate.

It's about sending a public, ugly, hateful message. Jane got it loud and clear. I imagine many others did too.

I hope Pastors Huckabee and Warren feel good about what they've said and done here. Jane has already written off Christianity because of attitudes like this, long before now. Yet both of you stand there and claim to be all holy and righteous and pious while you're busy at work publicly humiliating and threatening another person's way of life. A way of life that in no way threatens yours.

I daresay you wouldn't know Jane is gay if you ran into her on the street. But she would know you hated her for it.

Here's another tweet from Rick Warren:

The urge to disgrace anyone never flows from grace. It comes pride, envy, or hate.

— Rick Warren (@RickWarren) July 31, 2012

Yes, well. I see what you did with the first tweet, so this one is worse than meaningless. You tried to disgrace every gay person in the country with that little celebration of the open demonstration of disdain. You should consider your tweets to be a running commentary, one not separate from another. When viewed in their totality, a picture emerges that is quite different from the pious, righteous man you claim to be.

Yes, Jane would know what you thought of her, and Jane would be right.