*It’s Okay If You’re a Republican.
Let’s start with Alaska shall we? Imagine the outrage of this had happened to a Democrat:
Former Gov. Frank Murkowski pardoned a select handful of individuals in his last days in office, among them the son of a state employee the governor had appointed.
“You have exhibited positive behavior and positive attitude since this incident,” Murkowski wrote in a Nov. 30, 2006, letter pardoning Ryan Angelo Sargento of a misdemeanor theft charge. “I want to assist you in continuing to be a productive, contributing member to your family and community. I trust you will not abuse the purpose of this extraordinary action.”
Sargento, 28, now has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 30-year-old John Lee Taylor Jr., who was shot in Mountain View on June 2.
Police found a bag of suspected drugs and 9 mm shell casings at the shooting scene, and witnesses told investigators the dispute may have started after Taylor sought out Sargento because he had Taylor’s cell phone, according to police.
Nothing in court and pardon records suggest that Taylor’s death might have been avoided had Sargento not been pardoned in 2006, although Sargento has had continual problems with the law since the pardon.
Oh wait, we do know what would have happened: Non-stop media coverage of a pardon of Marc Rich by an outgoing President Bill Clinton is one example (at least Rich didn’t kill anyone).
And who can forget Willie Horton’s criminal acts while on a weekend release from prison was blamed on then Presidential Governor Dukakis. Dukakis had no specific involvement in deciding who to release under that program nor was it a program he had initiated, as opposed to Gov. Mike Huckabee who advocated for the release of convicted Wayne Dumond
The bottom line is simple. Mike Huckabee championed the release of a specific convicted rapist who, once release, raped and killed a woman in Missouri. The furlough policy advocated by Mike Dukakis led to the furlough of Willie Horton, who raped a woman in Maryland and stabbed her fiancee. But Mike Dukakis had never heard of Willie Horton, whereas Mike Huckabee was well aware of the crimes and dangers posed by Wayne Dumond. Anyone who doesn’t see the substantive difference between the two cases just isn’t looking.
Dukakis slid into obscurity. Huckabee was rewarded with his own Fox News show.
Then there is the more recent example of Helen Thomas. After an illustrious career she made one outrageous error in her old age stating the Jews in Israel should return the land of Palestine to the Palestinians and return to Germany and Poland. She promptly resigned the next day.
Yet when has Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh ever been forced to resign for their constant racial slurs and incitement to violence against liberals, minorities and President Obama.
Remember these? First Beck:
Then Limbaugh playing Barack the Magic Negor:
Then of course. Billo, imploring Al Qaeda bomb San Francisco, or comparing Gays to Terrorists:
Still employed last I heard.
As for deficits, Barack Obama is the worst President in history for running up the deficits that are destroying our economy. When Bush ran up deficits far in excess of what Obama has done, what was the Republican response back then?
The line is not likely to make this week’s eulogies to Ronald Reagan, but when Vice President Cheney allegedly declared, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he summed up an enduring argument from the former president’s economic legacy.
In late 2002, Cheney had summoned the Bush administration’s economic team to his office to discuss another round of tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill pleaded that the government — already running a $158 billion deficit — was careering toward a fiscal crisis. But by O’Neill’s account of the meeting, Cheney silenced him by invoking his take on Reagan’s legacy.
And now for a note on Sex scandals. One name: Democrat Eliot Spitzer. He was caught with a prostitute and forced to resign as Governor of New York within a few days. But what about Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada, caught in an adultery and hush money cover-up scandal? Has he resigned from the US Senate? Of course not. Still a Senator in good standing.
Or what about Republican Senator David Vitter? He’s still in office, having refused to resign and he;s running again for re-election to the US Senate. And he’s likely to win.
So I doubt Senator Lisa Murkowski’s father is in any trouble. Just as all those Republicans who continue to support off and on shore oil and gas drilling (Sarah Palin, anyone) will get off scot free.
While President Obama catches hell for the Deep Horizon disaster, it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney who gutted the Mineral Management Service’s budget and regulatory authority and stocking it with Republican cronies who approved BP’s safety records without even doing the safety checks themselves. Yet no one is rushing to make Republicans the bad guys in this case.
Just like they weren’t the bad guys for allowing mountain top removal and oil and gas “fracking” in Pennsylvania and West Virginia which has caused and continues to cause untold damage to the environments of those and other states as this teaser for the documentary “Gasland” makes clear:
Did you catch that part about the regulations being relaxed to the point of essentially being useless in 2005? And who pray tell ruled the political landscape in 2005? Why Republicans of course. Just like they were in charge when Enron cheated California residents out of billions of dollars in one of the largest White Collar crimes in history. Or when they allowed Wall Street to run rampant with its unregulated derivatives trading nearly sending our country into a second Great depression.
Somehow the US media rarely seems to get around to making that connection that it has been the policies of the Republican party which have destroyed our economy, our environment, and fought costly and unnecessary overseas wars to little or no benefit while helping to weaken our military. If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d have to wonder why that is, but I already know the answer: IOKIYAR.
