The above is an actual billboard located on I-35 near the town of Wyoming, Minnesota. It’s been garnering quite a bit of attention, and has become the new big gag among the right-wingers. Do a Google Image search of “Bush Miss Me” and you’ll see that it’s been reworked as one of those “motivational posters” and slapped on half the wingnut blogosphere.

Considering that half the stuff people are “tired” of are direct results of actions taken by the Bush administration, and the other half are the result of right-wing hysteria and Republican obstructionism, the suggestion of “missing” the Bush era is more akin to blackmail than a call to better times.

It’s like a kid who wants to sit in the front seat of the car on a family trip, and when he gets put in the back seat does nothing but scream, kick, and throw things until everyone else just gives up and gives him what he wants.

The difference is that with the punk kid, he eventually gets tired and shuts up.

In the fallout from the failed crotch-bomb plot over Detroit, many have pointed out the fact that right-wingers have been particularly dishonest and hypocritical. Conservatives have been putting outright blame on Obama for the failure to catch this beforehand, whereas they blamed Clinton for the 9/11 attacks, not Bush; where Obama is to blame for an intelligence agency ignoring the father’s warning, Bush was somehow not to blame for ignoring a plethora of warning signs, several of which were delivered directly to him. Where Bush was hailed as “keeping us safe” even while the Shoe Bomber, in almost identical a fashion to the Crotch Bomber, attempted to blow up a plane to the U.S., Obama is criticized for not keeping us safe. And while Republicans excoriate the Obama administration for the lack of security, they brazenly ignore the fact that they themselves voted down more funding for airport security. Not to mention the fact that criticizing Bush on terror or security was seen as near-treasonous, while criticizing the president today is apparently not at all a problem.

I look at these criticisms and reflect on why I don’t blog on politics quite as much now: it’s all trite. Of course they’re acting like that. Of course the facts don’t matter one bit. Of course Republicans are being hypocritical, lying bags of scum; hasn’t that been all too well established? Just like it’s been established that Democratic politicians are generally weak-kneed sissies afraid of their own shadows.

The pattern is pretty simple: anything a conservative does: good; anything a liberal does: bad–even if the two acts are identical. Just claim they’re different somehow, ignore logic and consistency, blame any evidence to the contrary as an artifact of the “Liberal Media,” and there you have it. The neoconservative narrative. Throw in some social religion for further control, a few more tax cuts for the rich, disregard a few more civil liberties (while always steering clear of the control-irrelevant gun ownership), deepen the dependence on corporations, and you’re getting close to seeing the overall sheep-herding architecture of the New Conservative Society. Within that twisted framework, even Sarah Palin makes perfect sense.

John McCain:

“[Obama] said there would be a change in the climate in Washington,” McCain said. “There’s been a change. It’s more partisan. It’s more bitterly divided than it’s been.”

McCain, when prodded by host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” said that the administration “in some ways, of course” more partisan than the White House under President Bill Clinton.

Yes. All Obama’s fault. He hasn’t tried one bit to appease Republicans, while the GOP has been breaking its back trying to lean over backwards to give Obama everything he wants.

As evidenced by Republicans using the filibuster twice as much in the first half of this session of Congress than ever used before. See how much they’re trying?

Predictably, Republicans are launching scathing attacks against Obama for sending out “Holiday” cards from the White House:

A Republican lawmaker with a mission to save Christmas is aiming his latest salvo at President and first lady Obama, who’ve followed in a recent tradition to eliminate the mention of Christmas in the White House holiday cards.

The card selected by the Obamas announces: “Season’s Greetings.” Inside, it reads: “May your family have a joyous holiday season and a new year blessed with hope and happiness.”

But Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., said abandoning Christmas at Christmas is just plain wrong. On Tuesday, he introduced a resolution calling for the protection of the sanctity of Christmas. So far, 44 lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, have co-signed the bill.

“I believe that sending a Christmas card without referencing a holiday and its purpose limits the Christmas celebration in favor of a more ‘politically correct’ holiday,” Brown told Fox News Radio on Thursday.

Even Fox News, in the above report, mentions that George W. Bush sent out “Holiday” cards, though they only mention the 2008 card–and they call the “Holiday” card a “recent trend” (and they use “Democrat” as an adjective).

David Greenberg of Slate noted, however, that it’s hardly a “recent trend,” as Eisenhower first sent out “Seasons’ Greetings” in the 50’s. Reagan sent out “Holiday” cards for most of his term, as did Dubya (though he included Old testament passages inside, which mollified only some Christmas Warriors).

The point is, after the long string of accusations against Obama for things that many presidents have done before, including his ardently Conservative Christian predecessor, don’t you think that Conservatives would, by now, be checking to see if their accusations are hypocritical? And at least modifying their accusations to match?

But they aren’t; instead, they are simply demonstrating, quite baldly, that they want to attack Obama for the sake of attacking Obama, and hypocrisy doesn’t bother them. Obama could sneeze and they attack him for not blessing himself. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t attacked him for being left-handed yet.

First we had “hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

Now, it’s “You should have said ‘green balloons.’”

The victim told police that Jetton hit her on the face very hard and then remembers waking up to find Jetton allegedly choking her and having sex with her, according to the affidavit. The next morning, Jetton woke up, kissed the victim and allegedly said: “You should have said green balloons,” according to the affidavit.

This just a month after he divorced his wife.

Why is it the bible thumpers and family value pushers who turn out to be the most perverse?

Okay, I have to blog on this. If the story is familiar with you, jump to just below the video.

Remember about a month and a half ago when Al Franken proposed an amendment concerning rape and government contractors? Some contractors have a clause hidden in the small print which forbids female employees raped by their colleagues overseas from suing the rapists in court. The rapists are never prosecuted because they commit the crime in Iraq (although hundreds of cases of rape have been reported, not a single one has been prosecuted, despite the DoD having the power to do so), so a civil suit back home is the victim’s only recourse. Their employers, however, forbid this with the contractual small print, forcing the women to submit to binding arbitration that will favor the rapists.

The case came to light when Dawn Leamon, a KBR (formerly Halliburton) employee attempted to get the courts to allow her to sue her rapists. Ms. Leamon was drugged and then brutally raped and sodomized by her co-workers in Iraq. KBR employees told her to keep quiet, warning her that she would be in danger if she pressed the case, and tried to get her to sign a non-disclosure form. Her laptop was confiscated and her movements were restricted, while her rapists walked about free without any repercussions. Eventually, KBR tried to enforce the clause forbidding a civil suit.

Hearing of this, Al Franken was incensed. Franken has, for a very long time, been an ardent supporter of U.S. troops, having done multiple tours for the USO. On his radio show, the one thing that would make him genuinely furious and would even move him to tears would be the mistreatment of the troops. This is not some flash publicity thing for Franken, it is instead a core value very close to his heart.

As a result, Franken proposed an amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill which would forbid such terms in contracts written by government contractors. Immediately, Republicans attacked the amendment. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions claimed that “Congress should not be involved in writing or rewriting private contracts,” something that Jon Stewart highlighted as rank hypocrisy considering the GOP’s mission to do exactly that where ACORN is concerned. Sessions further classed Franken’s amendment as “a political attack on Halliburton,” despite KBR no longer being a part of that organization. One KBR Iraq rape victim said that the amendment “means the world to me…It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”

When the amendment came up for a vote, no fewer than 30 Republican senators callously voted against it. Stewart did a cutting piece on the matter:

OK, so that’s the story. 30 Republicans vote against victims of brutal rape, and vote for KBR to shield gang rapists from lawsuits. Naturally, this will, without any doubt, lead to criticism that these senators are pro-rape. That may be unfair–they may just be pro-military-contractor, and incidentally be pro-rape. But they had to know that the criticism would be forthcoming, or else they are unimaginable idiots.

So, when the criticism naturally came, what was their response? Blame Al Franken. Why? Because he’s not doing enough to suppress the criticism. Seriously. You can’t make up crap like this.

Despite the fact that Franken himself is not doing the criticizing, it is rather interesting how his GOP colleagues are dumping this directly on him:

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.

And so what will they do about it? Cornyn continues:

“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

So. Franken proposes an amendment to help victims of brutal rape. Republicans politicize it, and vote with the contractors and the rapists, giving hypocritically flimsy justifications. Republicans are very rightly criticized as not protecting rape victims. Republicans then blame Franken and threaten him.

I am sorely tempted to say, “So, what else is new?”

Conservatives are insisting that Obama is crushing the First Amendment by treating Fox News for what it is, namely, a partisan, right-wing propaganda machine. They’re hypocritical idiots, of course.

Back in the real world, things are a bit different. In fact, with a new journalistic shield law, Obama is moving to protect First Amendment rights far more assiduously than Bush ever did–more, in fact, than conservatives would like. But this was never about actual First Amendment rights; it was about abusing journalism and twisting it into a political tool, they trying to hide behind the First Amendment.

Just to get it straight: the First Amendment protects the individual’s right to speak freely, and protects the press from government interference or intimidation. It does not, as Carrie Prejean seems to think, shield you from being criticized when you say something stupid. And it does not mean, as most conservatives seem to think, that you can pretend a propaganda machine is an objective news outfit and be “protected” from others telling the truth. Nor does it mean that you can bully the White House into giving that propaganda machine the same access as actual journalists.

It’s hard to express as often as I would like the absolute horror we barely dodged last November. While tea-baggers and assorted wingnuts rant and rage and rend their hair over imagined, hare-brained delusions about Obama, the fact is, he’s been one of the most respectable figures in the Oval Office for quite some time. Before he came to office, the wingnuts created out of whole cloth a host of racist names and stereotypes for relatives populating his family; none were true.

Bush 43… well, he was Bush. Himself a former substance abuser, the family has lots of bad apples and skeletons, and way too much drama, between his wayward twin daughters and the brother involved in banking scandals, something which plagued the elder Bush 41 as well. Clinton had his affairs and other assorted scandals. Reagan had a dysfunctional family, and Carter had brother Billy. Ford’s wife had substance abuse. Vice presidents have added their own woes, though usually they are less colorful than the primary, they can be a distraction when something does turn up.

Compared to most recent presidents, Obama easily sails above the rest and wins hands-down as the most respectable in his personal life.

However, had we elected McCain… or, more to the point, in a few years, if somehow Palin were to be elected… Holy crap. I blogged on this before, the white-trash soap opera that is life in the Palin compound, and it just gets more and more lurid.

What’s new in the week’s episode? Well, Levi says that he has the goods on Sarah, stuff that would destroy her… while he signs on to pose Full Monty in Playgirl magazine. As you recall from previous episodes, Levi was the father of Bristol’s illegitimate baby, born out of wedlock after mommy raised Bristol on abstinence-only principles. Propped up to be Bristol’s husband for show on the campaign trail, that quickly fell apart and since then the Palins and Johnstons have been feudin’ something’ fierce. Yes, Palin would bring back real American family values to the White House! After those sluts Sasha and Malia have befouled the First Family’s abode, think how refreshing it’d be to have the nice Palins in residence.

I know, I know–melodrama is aside from the important issues. The reason I bring this up, however, is the same reason people make hay of the adulterous and other sexual dalliances among right-wingers: not because the acts themselves are really anything worth paying attention to, but because they highlight the rather stark hypocrisy inherent in right-wing culture.

In this case, it’s that the right wing constantly makes crap up about Obama in order to look down on him, while they adore someone like Palin, whose personal-life antics are extraordinarily scandalous.

Imagine if Obama’s daughter were 17 and became pregnant with some high-school jock after Obama went lecturing everyone about not having sex before marriage, and that after trying to effect a shotgun wedding, that fell apart and the boy starts spewing dirt and a whole-out family feud erupts. The right wing would experience a year-long orgasm of strutting the Superior Dance, while endlessly going on about how Obama is disgracing the White House and should resign.

But they can’t wait to elect someone whose family scandals are exactly that and far, far more.

Imagine that Michelle had belonged to a political party that promoted secession. Imagine that her brother were arrested on felony charges, or the boy who knocked up their daughter posed nude while his mother got arrested on drug charges.

Seriously, IOKIYAR.

I know that this is old hat, but it bears pointing out.

Conservatives claim that Obama is “bankrupting America” because, in response to an economic crisis, he put forward a stimulus bill in his first month in office which will eventually cost the United States a total of $787 billion.

On the other hand, conservatives to this day say that George W. Bush saved the American economy almost exactly eight years ago because, in response to an economic crisis, he put forward a tax cut plan (primarily benefitting rich people) in his first month of office which was projected to cost the United States a total of $1.6 trillion.

I’m pretty sure that $1.6 trillion is something like double $787, but I didn’t use a calculator to check. Of course, since 2001, inflation has made that $1.6 trillion into $1.9 trillion, but who’s counting? Well, these guys are (PDF), actually, and they say that Bush’s overall tax cuts wound up costing the United States $2.5 trillion. Again, no calculator, but I think that’s triple what Obama spent.

So: Bush spends $2.5 trillion in tax cuts mostly for rich people, and he saved the economy, while Obama spends $787 billion on a stimulus to create jobs, and he’s bankrupting us.

Did I miss the part where conservatives offered a cogent explanation of how these two opinions are reconcilable?

The White House has come out fighting against Fox News, correctly identifying it not as a news organization, but a propaganda tool for the Republican Party–something that everyone has known for a long time, but right-wingers deny so they can keep up the pretext.

Karl Rove has complained about this White House stance bitterly. Keep in mind that Rove was the Republican Party’s star political operative for more than half a decade, arguably longer. He personifies right-wing politics more than anyone else alive. And he now works for Fox News.

So we have Rove, working for Fox, attacking the president for saying the Fox is a Republican outfit.

Isn’t that like a serial killer denying he’s a murderer by saying, “If you keep calling me that, I’ll kill you like all the others”?

When Obama was nominated as the Democratic candidate more than a year ago, conservative bloggers started there and then to unload Bush’s economic mess on Obama. After the fact, more conservatives reached back to Obama’s nomination to claim that everything after that date was his fault.

When Obama won the presidency–more than two months before he could take office and actually do anything–most of the right wing immediately termed the economy the “Obama Recession.”

Shortly after Obama took office, when the stock market continued the fall that had started under Bush, conservatives blamed it all on Obama.

So I think it’s pretty firmly established: according to conservatives, Bush no longer controlled the economy. Everything was going down the tubes, so it must be all, completely, 200% Obama’s fault. he owns this economy, irrevocably, irreversibly.

Obama passed his stimulus law back in February. Almost instantly, things started turning around. Job losses decreased dramatically. Within a few weeks, the stock market plummet halted and reversed itself. People started to see signs of recover. And today, the Dow hit 10,000.

So naturally, Fox News has now branded this “The Bush Recovery.”

Wow. Even for conservatives, that is fantastically hypocritical. And that is saying a lot.

One ongoing vein of outrageous hypocrisy on the Republican side of things is the gall they have to act like complete weasels when in power, but now that they are out of power, they warn Democrats that they better not even think of doing the stuff that Republicans did as if it were their god-given right. The latest example comes with the GOP’s last-gasp attempts to shoot down Net Neutrality:

Now out of power, the Republican party is preaching the virtues of bipartisanship. A new letter from 18 Republican senators to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski opens with a line of congratulations but moves quickly to the real business at hand: telling Genachowski that he had better not plan on moving forward with his ambitious net neutrality agenda unless he has bipartisan support.

“Such a major policy shift should be contemplated only with all of the FCC Commissioners involved,” says the letter. “To do it with just one party reduces the confidence the public and the Congress has in the proposal.”

Yep, the whole “you MUST be bipartisan” crap. When the GOP ruled the roost, they had zero interest in acting bipartisan; they steamrolled through anything and almost everything they wanted, and went into nuclear hissyfits if the Democrats even hinted at disagreeing.

But now that Democrats have the majority, Republicans are insisting on bipartisanship, even within regulatory bodies like the FCC–a stance you can be absolutely certain will completely disappear three seconds after they regain a majority again.

Even after making the same appalling, preposterous displays again and again and again, the brazen, utter gall of the GOP never fails to astonish.

After spending a week attacking Obama and shouting to the world that Chicago is a horrific place to hold an Olympics, Conservatives are now squealing with glee that America has lost its bid, seeing this as a way to paint Obama as an abject failure and possibly a prelude to greater failures to come. Glenn Beck crowed, “Oh, it’s so sweet! Enjoy this — savor this moment!” Rush Limbaugh said that he was “gleeful” and “happy.” Pretty much every conservative blogger and pundit took the opportunity to revel in America’s defeat.

What a pretty sight.

I can honestly say, without any reservations whatsoever, that had Bush tried to get the Olympics for Texas, liberals would have been behind him on it. We hated the man, we detested his policies, but we actually love America, and an Olympics would have been about that, and not about Bush. We criticized him for the economic bad news, we decried the numbers of soldiers killed, but we never expressed happiness for these things. The right-wingers accused us of that, of course, but it was never true. But here they are, admitting their joy at America’s failure for all to see. If there is anything about America that I find shameful, it is these people and this attitude.

We are supposed to be standing together when it’s America’s interests at stake. Remember how we all stood together on 9/11 and the days after, Democrats and Republicans united? How Bush had a 90% approval rating, showing that we had joined behind the presidency as a unified nation? Later on, we started to wonder: if the same thing had happened with Gore or some other Democrat as president, would the conservatives have rallied around the president and shown a country united?

I think we can guess what the answer to that would be. The right-wing exultation at losing the Olympics truly shows the real colors of the conservative movement today. “Country First”? Ha! What a sick joke. These people don’t give a rat’s ass about America. If Gore had been president on 9/11 and the attacks had not been prevented, they would not have stood by him and shown unity, they would have torn him to pieces. They would have gone to their soapboxes and smugly cheered about how the liberal was a failure. Their focus is not on love of country but rather on the love of party. Had Bush rallied for a Chicago Olympics, the conservatives would have said it was a great thing–and it would not have been for Chicago’s sake, or for America’s sake.

This is the poverty of conservative “patriotism”: it’s not love of country, it’s love of partisanship. They love America only when it is painted red. Any other color, and they despise it and wish for its downfall.

Addenda:

Joe Scarborough, of all people, is making a great deal of sense:

Chicago is a beautiful city that would have made a perfect backdrop for the Olympics. The President was right to fly to Copenhagen to try to land the games, not for the sake of his city, but for the good of his country. The fact President Obama failed makes me respect him more for taking the chance, and the fact many right-wing figures opposed the President’s mission shows just how narrow-minded partisanship makes us all. [...]

And it just occurred to me: Republicans are now cheering the decision of foreigners snubbing the United States. How about that.

Also, I have found mention that Bush rallied to hold the 2012 Olympics in New York. No liberals campaigned against it, no left-wingers rejoiced when he failed. The only way I would criticize Bush on this would be if he failed to campaign enough.

Alan Grayson is making waves with his chart labeled, “If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.” Republicans are outraged at this, and are calling for censure and so forth, comparing it to Joe Wilson’s broach of protocol on the floor.

Seriously, the hypocrisy is blinding.

Yes, Grayson is being an ass. But he is bringing up the rear behind a majority of Republicans. Obviously, Republicans don’t want you to “die quickly.” But neither are there “death panels,” a concept which (a) is pretty much equivalent to the nutballery that Grayson is pushing, and (b) which the majority of Republicans have been pushing, agreeing with, and/or condoning for the past few months.

In short, Grayson has just barely caught up with the majority of Republicans in being, to use the technical terminology, a dick.

For Republicans to call for his censure is as idiotic as it is hypocritical. Censure was called for in Joe Wilson’s case because he went way too far, shouting a terrible insult at the office of the president during an event of the highest order. What Grayson is doing now is simply what many high-level Republicans have been doing for quite some time now: lying on the floor of Congress about how the other party wants Americans to die. When Republicans do this, it draws criticism, but as far as I know, no calls for censure.

Who knows, maybe Grayson was aiming for just this: to use the same stupid lies against Republicans that Republicans have been hurling at Democrats, so that Republicans would become outraged and would be tricked into ironically decrying their own tactics.

Poor widdle Fox News… dey got snubbed by big bad brezident Obama! Waaaahhhhh!!!!!!!

Obama went on a media campaign blitz around the Sunday-morning news show circuit today to push health care reform, visiting Face the Nation, Meet the Press (NBC), State of the Union (CNN), This Week (ABC), and Al Punto (Univision), in addition to 60 Minutes and David Letterman, and a few other appearances.

Fox News got left out. And now they’re going into full-force whining mode, with Chris Wallace appearing on O’Reilly’s show, complaining that the Obama administration is “the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

Oh, please. First of all, Chris, you’re the one who’s being a crybaby; the definition of that term is someone who complains like a child because they feel they’ve been wronged. The administration’s not being a crybaby–they didn’t whine when you snubbed them by not airing the president’s speeches (never did that with Bush, did you?), and now they’re just deciding not to visit your show. The only one whining is you. And this is not the first time, either–you guys do this every single time it looks like Fox News might not get treated like the news organization they’re not. When Democrats say they’re not going to let the propaganda arm of their political opponents run their debates, you whine about how they’re “afraid” of you and how they’re destroying journalism.

Face up to it, you schmucks: you chose to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, you take every chance you get to smear and attack and lie and fearmonger, you call the president a fascist and a Nazi and worse, you organize political events where the president’s life is threatened and crazies sport signs with racial epithets, you refuse to carry the president’s speeches and addresses while all the other networks run them… and guess what? Sometimes the president won’t appear on your talk shows so you can snub him in person. Surprise!

When Bush was president and you did nothing but carry water for him, you guys got the lion’s share of exclusives. That’s the deal you made. Live with it and stop acting like infants.

Joe Wilson made a stir this week when he shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during an address to Congress. He shouted the (false) accusation when Obama made the (correct) statement that the health care plan he seeks does not provide coverage for illegal aliens.

So, what is ironic? Six years ago, Wilson voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (PDF). In that bill, Title X, Subtitle B, Section 1011 allows for “reimbursement of emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens.”

In other words, Wilson voted for having taxpayer dollars pay for health care for illegal immigrants.

Oops.

Look at this vile, evil statement made to schoolchildren by the President of the United States:

“Let me know how you’re doing. Write me a letter — and I’m serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.”

Ack!! Not only is he indoctrinating children to achieve his political agenda, but he’s collecting their addresses as well for an enemies list!! Death squads will be sent to their homes to murder their grandmas!!! Nazi socialist PIG!!!

Oh, wait. That quote was from President Bush (41) talking to school kids in 1991. Completely different case. Never mind.

Remember a few days ago when I mentioned Jim Greer, the Florida Republican who made that over-the-top rant about how Obama’s stay-in-school speech was really an attempt at forced socialist liberal political indoctrination?

There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

“Republicans get up and go to work,” he would tell his son. “Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks.”

This man not only talked to his son about Republican values, he went into public-school classrooms and talked about them as well.

That man is Jim Greer — the same Jim Greer who, as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, just threw a nationwide hissy fit, claiming that the classroom is no place for politics and Barack Obama’s “indoctrination.”

One Seminole County mother, Barbara Wells, remembers the day Greer spoke to her son’s sixth-grade class. “My son said he made some sort of Hillary Clinton joke,” she recalled.

Aren’t Republicans classy?

Back before 2006, Republicans reacted so strongly to Democrats’ using the filibuster to stop the nominations of Bush nominees that they nearly “went nuclear,” to use their phrase. Now, Republicans had allowed only 81% of Clinton’s court nominees to be confirmed in his first four years, whereas Democrats let in 95% of Bush nominees in the same time period; Democrats were far less obstructionist with Bush than any Congress had been with a president for a while. But that kind of stuff doesn’t matter when you vent fake outrage; Republicans became outwardly furious with Democrats, and called their method of blocking extremist judges–the filibuster–“unfair” and even “unconstitutional,” insisting that a straight, up-or-down vote with a 50%+ majority deciding was the only honest and American way of doing things. The filibuster represented “tyranny by the minority,” Bill Frist said, which must be “thwarted.”

All that changed, of course, when they lost power; suddenly, they abandoned all their angry rhetoric about the filibuster and instantly fell in love with the procedure. With Democrats in power, Republicans started using the filibuster constantly, setting historical records with its use, doubling the number of times it had ever been used in a session of Congress. They were using the cloture vote as a political cudgel, using it early and often; it was their new best friend.

So, it would be hard for Republicans to get more hypocritical than that, right?

Well, never underestimate the Republican propensity for outdoing themselves.

Chuck Grassley, the Senator who recently made waves after Obama praised him as looking for real solutions, promptly went nuts and starting riffing on the “Death Panel” theme. And now he’s saying that the “straight up-or-down” 50%+ majority vote that his party, just a few years ago, claimed was the only “fair” and “constitutional” way to go, is not enough; he’s saying that even the 60% super-majority using the filibuster is not enough. No, now he’s saying that if Democrats want to pass health care reform, they should have to produce an 80% super-duper-majority:

The final healthcare reform bill to make its way out of the Senate should have as many as 80 members voting for passage, one of the lead Republican negotiators of the health package said Wednesday.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said it’s his preference to see the vast majority of his colleagues on board with a final healthcare bill.

“It ought to be from 80 people in the center of the Senate, I would think,” Grassley said during a news conference with Iowa reporters.

Nor was that a misstatement; Grassley repeated the exact same sentiment to the Washington Post, and Orrin Hatch chimed in to agree. (Both Hatch and Grassley previously hailed Republican bills passing with fewer than 60 votes as “bipartisan.”) He even is coupling this talk with calls for “bipartisanship.” Apparently, Republicans have departed from their ugly definition of “bipartisanship” meaning “when we are in power, you do whatever we say,” and now define the term as, “you do whatever we say all the time, no exceptions.”

Anyone from the right want to up the crazy from that?

Every last Republican politician should be asked the following questions:

Question: Do you oppose socialized medicine?

Probable Answer: Yes.

Question: Then you favor shutting down Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration.

Probable Answer: No!

Question: You can’t have it both ways. Medicare, Medicaid, and the VHA are all socialized medicine. If you oppose socialized medicine, then you oppose those three programs. So, you either support government-run health care–in which you should support the “Public Option”–or you oppose it–in which case you must state your opposition to Medicare, Medicaid, and the VHA.

Probable Answer: [any number of variations on bald-faced lies, squirming out of answering, changing the subject, etc.]

Any self-respecting journalist would have to ask this question. Too bad we have a Liberal Media™ in which Republican politicians are allowed this flagrant, hypocritical inconsistency, while Democrats are grilled on “euthanizing grandma.”

Damn Liberal Media™!