Jon Stewart recently did a segment on The Daily Show, where he joked that Fox News and, by extension, conservatives…are the NEW liberals.  Enjoy:

While Stewart is clearly joking, the point he makes is quite serious and worthy of a moment’s reflection.  Here’s a glance at what has changed in the arguments we hear from the conservative camp since the election:

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  People and grassroots organizations peacefully protesting the war and other actions of the administration…are unpatriotic, perhaps even traitorous, and are “hurting America.”

NOW: People and faux-grassroots organizations, protesting using violent and often racist imagery (some even carrying weapons)…are patriots exercising their Constitutional rights in an inspiring display of democracy in action.

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  People who criticize the President during wartime…are unpatriotic, and are hurting our soldiers by helping the terrorists.  U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

NOW:  People who criticize the President (still during wartime, mind you), are patriots who value our soldiers and are helping our country.

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  Bush and his Congress need to act quickly to bail out the financial system before we have a total collapse!

NOW:  Why did Obama and his Congress bail out the banks without any strings attached?  Just more Democrat-led fiscal irresponsibility!

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  Bigger, costlier government…great!  As long as they tell us it is “making America safer!”

NOW:  Bigger, costlier government, no matter who it is going to help…even if it helps EVERYBODY in the country…is SOCIALISM and must be stopped!

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  Fiscal responsibility:  what is that?

NOW:  These Democrats are fiscally irresponsible and it’s going to destroy the economy!

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  It’s ok to bend, even break our constitutionally protected freedoms and guarantees of due process of law…it’s even acceptable for the government to break the law…as long as it is making us safer.

NOW:  We’re losing all of our freedoms!  This administration wants to take away our Constitutional rights!  NOTE:  Ironically, they can’t point out a single freedom they’ve lost under Obama.

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  So what if they’re collecting phone records, reading emails, and wiretapping domestic conversations…I’m sure they’re keeping us safer.

NOW:  Obama is going to collect our data through the census…and is compiling an “enemies list” by asking people to send in myths they hear about health care reform.  He must be stopped!

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  Those liberals…why are they always whining and trying to play the victim?

NOW: All the liberal media is ganging up on us, and they don’t want to let us say what we want to…and they are always pointing out all these facts that make us look bad!

AND THE HERE’S BIG ONE…

BEFORE THE ELECTION:  The government can be trusted to tell us the truth and to handle things properly.

NOW:  The government always lies and can’t do anything right.

Jon Stewart is right to shed some light on this obvious, pervasive hypocrisy…and it would be oh-so-much funnier, if the level of the conservatives’ convenient self-deception weren’t so extreme, so profound, so widely unacknowledged.

Sorry about that: the entire week I collected news items, but my current workload forced me to work through my break times at work (that’s usually when I post new entries) and then in the evening, I would log on from home and do a little more work. I hope you’ll forgive me, but after finishing my work for the day…I just wanted to get as far away from my computer as possible.

Well, things are normalizing again in my hectic little world…so here is a list of curious items for your perusal…you decide: hypocrisy or simply ironic?

HYPOCRISY OR JUST IRONY (STUPIDITY IS ALWAYS A VIABLE THIRD OPTION):

- Obama’s refusal to make good on his commitment to end (or at least modify, or put on moratorium) “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” leaves me in utter disappointment and disbelief. His complete avoidance of the topic is also very distressing, as he opts to avoid even weighing in on the side of what is right. A short while ago, he allowed a valuable, veteran soldier with fluent Arabic-speaking skills to be discharged from the military under the DADT policy. Now there’s this story…watch the clip…seriously. Lt. Col. Fehrenbach is a decorated, WAR HERO, pilot. And…he’s about to be discharged under DADT. His choice to fight the discharge stemmed from a hope that Obama’s election into office would allow him to continue to serve. His hopes are rapidly diminishing. Given that Obama’s ascendancy to the highest office of the land would not have been possible if many men and women (without so much as half the power of the president) hadn’t stood up and fought for HIS civil rights…how can he dodge such an obvious opportunity to perform the same, righteous duty? So…is it HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- Also on the subject of gay rights, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons has declared that, as an attempt to protect marriage between a man and a woman, he will be vetoing an upcoming “domestic partnership rights” bill. The same Jim Gibbons…who right now is in the middle of an EXTREMELY messy divorce, after claims that he had an affair with a Playboy model. If he’s “protecting marriage” from gay people…who will protect marriage from HIM? HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- Proving that there is no shortage of hypocrites on the subject of gay rights, Michael Steele decided to interject his rarely-sought opinion. Citing the GOP’s long-standing verbal commitment to small business (I qualify “commitment” with “verbal” since nobody has actually seen this commitment in action), Michael Steele claimed that a way that conservatives can attempt to justify their beliefs on gay marriage to liberals (without invoking the “because God says so” defense) is by arguing that it would be bad for small business. He says that employers would now have to extend spousal benefits to gay employees and the expense would be onerous. Of course…if someone REALLY cared about small businesses, they’d support gay marriage…since small businesses would benefit to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars (and that’s marriage-related businesses, alone). HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- That’s not all for Steele (remember, he operates under a four-foolish-statement-per-week minimum). He also delivered a speech recently, in an attempt to “revitalize” the floundering Republican Party. He said “Republicans are turning a corner,” and that, “the Republican Party will be forward-looking,” and also, “Republican Party will not shy away from voicing our opposition to the president’s policies,” and lastly that “Ronald Reagan never lived in the past.” He emphasized that their salvation resided in all their “new ideas.” Well, firstly: how can you “turn the corner and stop apologizing” when nobody has really apologized, almost all the Republicans who helped Bush and Cheney are still in power and were never held to account…and, in fact, NOBODY has been held to account? Secondly…did you ever “shy away” from voicing opposition? Isn’t your problem that you are ALWAYS voicing opposition…and sometimes doing so in a way that reveals you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about? Third, how can you be “looking forward” and praising Ronald Reagan for doing so…when you are constantly invoking Ronald Reagan, the president from OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO? And lastly, how can you claim new ideas, when you present NONE in your speech, and the RNC’s first upcoming order of business is to vote on whether or not to start calling the Democratic Party, the “Democrat Socialist Party?” HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- The GOP is losing support in nearly EVERY demographic group…especially people with educations (I’m sorry…but that correlation has always made me snicker a bit). As a result…they say they are trying to “reinvent themselves“…they say they have a “big tent” where everyone is welcome…they say they are going to form a “council” to find out what Americans really want. And yet…they continue to drum anyone who is not “ultra-conservative and ultra-religious” out of the party. As one Republican strategist points out, at present they have changed absolutely nothing and still trot out the same dyed-in-the-wool GOP extremists to represent their party: “If it’s 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we’re headed for a blowout. That’s just the truth,” says GOP strategist John Weaver. HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- Hey! Remember all those times that the Bush Administration told us that the war in Iraq was not a “crusade” and how it had nothing to do with the “Christian mission,” and that it CERTAINLY wasn’t some sort of attack on Islam? Remember how they said it was really just about those hard-to-find “weapons of mass destruction?” Yeah well…then why did Rumsfeld’s briefings to the president feature cover pages with pictures…and BIBLE QUOTES about kicking some ass in the name of Jesus? Oh yeah, and secondly, I wonder if they realize that the Constitution of the United States STRICTLY PROHIBITS such demonstrations of personal religious convictions within governmental actions…as do the laws of “common sense” and “professionalism.” HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

On that note: here’s Stephen Colbert’s take…

- No doubt you’ve noticed how EVERYTHING the Republicans oppose is now referred to by them as “socialism.” It’s curious…they claim to be the defenders of civil rights, child labor laws, food safety, Social Security, minimum wage laws, environmental protections…but back when these battles were being fought, do you know what Republicans called ALL these things? That’s right…SOCIALISM. Here’s a clip of Congressman Steve King, going absolutely ape in his attempt to decry all things progressive. It makes you wonder: Once all these things have been accepted and implemented as “positive change,” will the GOP will try to take credit for them, too. HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- First Bristol Palin said that her baby was a “blessing” and that teen abstinence was “not at all realistic.” Then she became abstinence ambassador (whatever the hell that means) and said teen abstinence is the only answer…but not because she AT ALL regrets having a baby as an unwed teen. Both motherhood and the baby are still a “blessing” and she has NO REGRETS. Now…she says: “Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex. Think about the consequences. If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody.” Um, Bristol…the baby is either the “convincing reason not to have sex as a teen” and therefore also “the convincing reason to teach teens about birth control“…or he’s the greatest freaking “blessing” in your life who you have “no regrets” about. You can’t say that it’s a “moral issue” and not a “teen motherhood sucks” issue when trying to dodge the obvious necessity of birth control education…and then say “don’t have teen sex” because “teen motherhood sucks.” HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- In the last 24 hours, I have heard two Republicans (Boehner and Gingrich) call Nancy Pelosi an un-American liar for accusing the CIA of misleading the Congress. They question Pelosi’s patriotism despite the fact that THEY have accused the CIA of misleading Congress in the past, AND that a number of other officials back Pelosi’s accounts, AND that there are numerous examples throughout recent history of the CIA misleading Congress, AND that the ranking Republican (Hoekstra) on the House Intelligence Committee is CURRENTLY ALSO ACCUSING the CIA of misleading Congress, AND that the documents the CIA has provided so far are filled with obvious missing and inaccurate data (my personal favorite is the 2002 CIA record that says they covered Enhanced Interrogation Techniques at a particular meeting…four years before that euphemism came into usage, indicating that the notation was only recently entered). HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

- The GOP cares about healthcare…and small business…and you. And no, they are not in the pocket of either the pharmaceutical industry or the insurance industry. And that’s why their Health Care Reform plan, just released today…would cost small businesses and you MORE money than your current plan. They are calling it the “Patients’ Choice Act of 2009” and apparently the “choice” they are alluding to is your choice to leave things as they are…or small businesses can give up their insurance-related tax break so their employees can get a $2000 check ($6000 if you have a family) which will only cover about HALF of the average person’s insurance costs (you’ll just have to find some way to pay for the rest). Oh, and everything else will be left in the hands of the private companies…because they’ve done such a good job of providing insurance to everyone so far. They also vaguely propose setting up some sort of little council to watch over the companies to make sure they don’t selectively pick only the wealthiest and healthiest people to insure. Oh, and just so GOP members won’t have trouble shooting down the Obama plan, conservative communications advisor Frank Luntz has provided them with lots of ugly sounding words they can use to describe it…but when asked what company paid for him to write the memo, Luntz only said, “It’s not relevant.” You can probably guess some of the companies it could be. HYPOCRISY or JUST IRONY?

That’s all for now…if things stay as they are, I will hopefully be writing to you again in the next day or two.