Combs Spouts Off

"It's my opinion and it's very true."

  • Calendar

    July 2024
    S M T W T F S
     123456
    78910111213
    14151617181920
    21222324252627
    28293031  

  • Recent Posts

  • Tag Cloud

    al qaeda barbarism big government blogging colorado congress corruption culture democrats denver economics economy elections environmentalism firearms freedom global warming gop gun control guns health care human rights humor iraq islam islamofascism israel journalism leftists liberty media bias military moonbats msm music obama politics presidential candidates republicans socialism soldiers spending terrorism war weather

  • Archives

Posts Tagged ‘hypocrisy’

« Previous Entries

Anti-gun CA state senator charged with firearms trafficking, corruption

Posted by Richard on March 27, 2014

There’s nothing unusual about gun control advocates turning out to be hypocrites (there are many more examples, from Carl Rowan to Sean Penn). But Leland Yee takes the cake. Yee is the leading gun control advocate in the California state senate — not an easy distinction to achieve, I’m sure. It turns out, if charges are true, that he’s been involved in international weapons trafficking and associated with a criminal gang leader:

SAN FRANCISCO — In a stunning criminal complaint, State Sen. Leland Yee has been charged with conspiring to traffic in firearms and public corruption as part of a major FBI operation spanning the Bay Area, casting yet another cloud of corruption over the Democratic establishment in the Legislature and torpedoing Yee’s aspirations for statewide office.

Yee and an intermediary allegedly met repeatedly with an undercover FBI agent, soliciting campaign contributions in exchange for setting up a deal with international arms dealers.

…

Yee, D-San Francisco, highlights a series of arrests Wednesday morning that included infamous Chinatown gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, whose past includes a variety of charges including racketeering and drug crimes. Targets of the early-morning raids appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.

A 137-page criminal complaint charges 26 people — including Yee and Chow — with a panoply of crimes, including firearms trafficking, money laundering, murder-for-hire, drug distribution, trafficking in contraband cigarettes, and honest services fraud.

Yee is charged with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms, as well as six counts of scheming to defraud citizens of honest services. …

The charges are particularly shocking given that Yee has been among the state Senate’s most outspoken advocates both of gun control and of good-government initiatives.

Laws are for the little people.

UPDATE: Wow. The affidavit alleges Yee offered to provide $2 million of automatic weapons to Islamic rebels.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Skewering the Democrats’ messaging

Posted by Richard on March 24, 2014

This awesome picture needs to be disseminated as far and wide as possible. Democrat’s hypocrisy exposed:

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

How ‘Pro-Choice’ are Democrats?

Posted by Richard on September 6, 2012

When Socialist Democrats talk about being “pro-choice,” they’re invariably referring to a woman’s right to choose abortion over childbirth. Reason TV went to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and asked delegates and attendees about some other choice issues, like what you choose to put in your body, what school you choose for your child, and whether you choose to join a union. The result is amusing and (to me at least) not at all surprising.

It seems that Socialist Democrats strongly support your right to make the choices they approve of. And the government’s “right” to stop you from making “bad” choices.


[YouTube link]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Voting is easier than reporting on Holder speech

Posted by Richard on July 11, 2012

Eric Holder spoke at the NAACP convention in Houston yesterday, and he railed against voter ID laws:

Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to aggressively fight new voter-identification laws during a speech Tuesday to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which has argued the policies make it harder for minorities to vote.

…

The Obama administration is arguing before a panel of three federal judges in Washington, D.C., this week that Texas’s new voter law is too restrictive and, under its identification requirements, will make it hard or impossible for poor people to vote.

Hypocrisy alert: In order to get into the convention to report on the speech, members of the media had to present not just press credentials, but a “government-issued photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license).”

The Obama administration has been aggressively fighting any and all state efforts to clean up voter registration rolls or require voters to identify themselves at the polls, arguing that these are efforts to “disenfranchise” people. Yes, they are — they disenfranchise dead people, felons, and non-citizens.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Another gun control hypocrite hoist by his own petard

Posted by Richard on January 28, 2012

San Francisco’s new sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, helped found the Green Party of California, worked for Ralph Nader in 2000, and was a strident advocate of gun control. Even MSNBC described him as “fiercely liberal –even in the context of progressive San Francisco.” Before being elected sheriff, he served for seven years on the Board of Supervisors, where he worked hard to strengthen San Francisco’s already-stringent gun control laws.

Recently, Mirkarimi was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence battery, child endangerment, and “dissuading a witness” (Is that like intimidating a witness, but more polite? Or just more politically connected?) for an incident involving his wife. Since the initial charges, two former girlfriends have come forward alleging that he abused them, too. And it’s been reported that Mirkarimi has a bad temper and tyrannizes his staff.

As a result of the arrest, and to the surprise of many, he was forced to surrender three handguns that he owns. According to CBS San Francisco, “Mirkarimi would not comment about any aspect of his gun ownership, where he kept the weapons or in what manner the firearms were stored.” That’s interesting because one of the gun control laws he helped strengthen last year mandates that all guns be securely locked up (and unavailable for self-defense).

David Cordrea, while not exactly sympathetic to Mirkarimi’s plight, pointed out the injustice of the laws Mirkarimi and his ilk have long supported, and which are now applied to him:

“If Mirkarimi were convicted on the domestic violence charge, he would not be able to carry a gun as sheriff,” reporter Joshua Sabatini claims.

True, but it would entail more than that. If convicted, “thanks” to the infamous Lautenberg Amendment, he would be a prohibited person under federal law, forbidden not only to carry a gun, but to own or even touch one—forever.

And a protective order is enough to disenfranchise him from his fundamental right to keep and bear arms prior to being convicted of anything.

…

But even if convicted, a prohibition of a fundamental natural right over a misdemeanor is overkill. …

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb was less measured:

“Mirkarimi’s case presents a massive irony,” Gottlieb observed. “Here’s a man who has supported restrictive gun control measures while on the Board of Supervisors, and yet he had three handguns. He just was elected sheriff, and now he’s accused of a crime that, if he is convicted, could cost him his gun rights for the rest of his life under federal law.

“Perhaps Mirkarimi’s biggest problem is that he is now exposed as a double-standard elitist,” he continued. “News reports about this case over the past few days suggest that he may also have an anger-management problem.”

…“Someone who has been legally disarmed over a criminal charge,” he concluded, “should not be permitted to serve as a chief law enforcement officer. Someone like Mirkarimi, who has done whatever he could to discourage others from owning firearms, should admit his world-class hypocrisy and walk away from the public arena.”

Admit his hypocrisy? I’m not holding my breath. But I look forward to hearing him argue that he can continue to fulfill the duties of sheriff without so much as touching a gun.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Mobile mayor’s hypocrisy

Posted by Richard on January 1, 2012

Mayor Sam Jones of Mobile, Alabama, is a member of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization that advocates much stricter gun control laws and opposes letting private citizens carry guns. On Dec. 20th, Jones returned home to find a burglar in his garage. He held the man at gunpoint until police arrived.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) pointed out the hypocrisy — and possible illegality — of the mayor’s actions:

… According to published reports, Jones was returning home from an errand, driving his private vehicle. “His bodyguard, who drives the mayor’s city vehicle, was not on duty,” the Press-Register newspaper reported. And now there are questions about whether the mayor has an Alabama carry permit.

“Here is a municipal mayor who has a bodyguard, and believes it is okay for him to carry a gun, but he belongs to an organization that consistently works to keep everyone else from carrying,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “If the mayor is legally licensed, why does he belong to a group that has fought to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their self-defense right?

“If Mayor Jones doesn’t have a permit,” he continued, “then he is a poster child for the double standards that elites like Mayor Michael Bloomberg believe separates them from the citizens they serve. Either way, Mayor Jones owes it to his constituents to show them his carry permit, and to oppose any further attempts by Mayors Against Illegal Guns to prevent private citizens from exercising their constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.

“It is no surprise that average American citizens are fed up with government officials at all levels,” Gottlieb observed. “We’re glad that Mayor Jones had the means and the willingness to protect his property, but we are stunned and disappointed that he belongs to an organization whose very essence is to make it virtually impossible for average citizens to do likewise.”

What he said.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

A basic question of judgment

Posted by Richard on June 25, 2011

Walter Russell Meade's latest is entitled The Failure of Al Gore: Part One. Part One? Really? This calm, measured essay utterly destroys any credibility the Goracle had and leaves him a wretched, quivering mass of inconsequential protoplasm, something from which one quickly looks away. A Part Two strikes me as completely unnecessary. Although I look forward to it with pleasure; I can be somewhat mean-spirited at times, and besides, Meade's wordsmithing is simply a delight.

By all means, read the whole thing. Here's just a smidgeon to whet your appetite: 

A fawning establishment press spares the former vice president the vitriol and schadenfreude it pours over the preachers and priests whose personal conduct compromised the core tenets of their mission; Gore is not mocked as others have been.  This gentle treatment hurts both Gore and the greens; he does not know just how disabling, how crippling the gap between conduct and message truly is.  The greens do not know that his presence as the visible head of the movement helps ensure its political failure.

Consider how Gore looks to the skeptics.  The peril is imminent, he says.  It is desperate.  The hands of the clock point to twelve.  The seas rise, the coral dies, the fires burn and the great droughts have already begun.  The hounds of Hell have slipped the huntsman’s leash and even now they rush upon us, mouths agape and fangs afoam.

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world.  He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry.  A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation.  Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption.  This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents.

Marvelous.

(HT: Instapundit)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

An unhappy anniversary

Posted by Richard on June 18, 2011

Mark J. Perry remembered the grim historical significance of this day (emphasis in original):

This is a post to recognize the 40th anniversary of the day in 1971 that President Nixon declared that the U.S. government would start waging a "War on Drugs" war on peaceful Americans who chose to use intoxicants not approved of by the U.S. government (HT: Don B.).

Q: Which repressive country puts the most people in jail for violating government laws? 

A. Iran
B. Saudi Arabia
C. Libya
D. Egypt
E. United States of America

Well, it's not even close…………..

Read the whole thing. And read Perry's other recent posts on the subject here, here, and here.

It's widely known that in their youth, each of our last three presidents chose to use intoxicants not approved by the U.S. government. Yet each of them subsequently supported, advocated, and directed a policy of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of non-violent "drug offenders" every year, and even sanctimoniously claimed that it's for their own good.

Would Clinton, Bush, and Obama be better off today if they'd been arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for 3-5 years when they were young, destroying their careers before they got started? Would the country be better off today if they'd been … 

Um … maybe I shouldn't go there. Just weakens my argument.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Wienergate triggers time warp

Posted by Richard on June 12, 2011

(With apologies to David Spade) 1998 called. It wants its lame justification for Democratic misbehavior back.

Before I even clicked the Instapundit link (Actress defends Weiner, says 'everyone lies about sex'), I just knew it was going to be Janeane Garofolo:

A liberal actress and comedian is strongly defending embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), saying "everyone lies about sex" and expressing hope he becomes the mayor of New York City.

During an appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Janeane Garofalo said, "Anthony Weiner deserves to be supported and hopefully he will be mayor of New York one day. I'm serious. He is a Democrat [who] actually fights for the things liberals and progressive and rational people care about.

"I don't know why he's being thrown under the bus. He hasn't done any — he hasn't broke any laws," she said.

What's next — the reprise of stories like this? Or maybe the MSM will offer a new, updated meme: sexting to strangers is OK sometimes, like when it's a substitute for actual infidelity (although that line may be a hard sell given the rumors about Wiener that are floating around). 

Like Glenn Reynolds, I don't recall anyone recycling the "it's just lying about sex" argument regarding Mark Foley. Or Mark Souder. Or Christopher Lee (OMG, he sent a picture of his bare chest to a woman he met on Craigslist!)? And can we ever forget all the sympathy and support Hollywood and the MSM offered to the obviously sexual-identity-conflicted Larry "wide stance" Craig? 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Bogus photo arguments

Posted by Richard on May 5, 2011

There may be a good reason for not releasing the photos of bin Laden's corpse, but I haven't heard it. This nonsense about the photos representing a "national security risk" certainly isn't a convincing one. Bin Laden preached a gross perversion of Islam, right? And all the good Muslims are glad he's gone, right? So the "backlash" and anti-Americanism that the administration and its supporters are worried about would have to come from supporters of bin Laden and al Qaeda, right?

News flash: they already hated us and wanted to see the Great Satan destroyed. They already know we killed their leader. How much more anti-American can those pictures make them?

But here's what really galls me about these arguments: the people who are now so terribly concerned that these photos might inflame Muslim public opinion and incite violence against the US are the same people who insisted that every panty-on-the-head, jihadist-humiliating picture from Abu Ghraib had to be disseminated far and wide, regardless of the consequences. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Compare and contrast: Libya and Wisconsin

Posted by Richard on March 18, 2011

Like me, Daffyd was struck by the irony of public employee union protesters and their bused-in supporters in Madison, Wisconsin, using the slogan "This is what democracy looks like!" Unlike me, he thought to draw a parallel with events in Libya (and Egypt, and Iran), and to formulate a test for determining whether a protest movement is furthering democracy (emphasis in original):

I see a very simple test, derived from the rule enunciated by Ann Coulter anent the potential need for a union. Last month, the hot-right chick wrote:

The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

I understand the distinction the blonde bombard is making, though I still disagree with her formulation; if you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money, your best bet is still Capitalism: Get some "hand" in the game by making yourself a more valuable employee, then negotiate a raise or promotion.

Still, the Coulterism is succinct and full of pith, easily adaptable to the distinction between Libya and Madison. Let's phrase it thus:

  • If you're protesting because neither election nor even dissent is allowed, then what you have is an uprising of freedom.
  • If you're protesting because you lost the election — then what you have is an anti-democratic, totalitarian front.

See? Politics needn't be abstruse or recondite. Betimes the most basic rules are best.

Just a reminder: Gov. Walker campaigned on the bill that the union protesters protested against, and he won. The Republicans elected to the legislature (in a massive state-wide wipe-out of Democrats) promised to support Walker's bill, and they won. So "what democracy looks like" is exactly what the union thugs objected to.

As Daffyd noted, the union protesters' effort was anti-democratic. In fact, given the numerous death threats against Republican state legislators — totally ignored by the MSM, of course — I'd call it fascism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Obama maximizes carbon footprint

Posted by Richard on March 1, 2011

OK, I'll admit this is pretty much a "dog bites man" story, given the long history of ruling class leftists hectoring the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while jetting about the world. But it's worth noting, nonetheless, since the MSM surely won't. It seems that Barack and Michele Obama just can't find a competent personal trainer in the D.C. area (actually, there's no evidence they ever tried). So they're having their Chicago personal trainer flown into Washington every week to see to their fitness needs. 

I guess it's not easy getting rid of the extra pounds put on by scarfing up ribs, but is it really necessary for the taxpayers to pay an exorbitant amount to make sure that the First Lady doesn't look like the total hypocrite she is when she lectures us about our diet?

(HT: Instapundit)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Shocker! The New York Times employs a double standard!

Posted by Richard on November 30, 2010

This isn't really news, now is it? It's been clear to many of us for years that the New York Times' real, but unspoken, motto is "All the news that fits our agenda, we print." In the latest example, here's how the Times explained their decision to publish a series of articles based on the stolen documents released by WikiLeaks:

The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. … The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.

And here's how they explained their decision just over a year ago to ostentatiously ignore the ClimateGate documents:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here. 

Compare and contrast. Extra points for explaining how the Hadley CRU's leaked documents illuminated the goals, successes, compromises, and frustrations of the anthropogenic global warming proponents in a way that the fawning media coverage they receive cannot match.

PowerLine's Scott Johnson didn't want to belabor the point, simply noting that "the two statements are logically irreconcilable." James Delingpole, on the other hand, thought it important to belabor the point, and he helpfully offered a few other examples of the Old Gray Lady applying its peculiar situational ethics to promote its ideological agenda.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Tax cuts for liberals

Posted by Richard on August 6, 2010

Like most Socialist Democrats, Manhattan's Rep. Jerrold Nadler (SD-NY) is adamantly opposed to extending the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year. If he and his colleagues have their way, January 1 will usher in the largest tax increase in American history. Everyone in America who pays income taxes will be hit with a huge tax increase. Well, almost everyone. 

Nadler and some of his Socialist Democrat colleagues from New York are sponsoring a bill that would "adjust tax brackets proportionally in regions where the average cost of living is higher than the national average." Like the tony New York districts they represent. And districts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California … Oddly enough, most of the regions that would qualify for the Nadler tax breaks are heavily Democratic and represented by Socialist Democrats in Congress.

The higher taxes imposed on those of us in Flyover Country would more than pay for it, of course. The Wall Street Journal called it the "Blue State Tax Preference Act."

It's not news that the Socialist Democrats are big fans of income redistribution, but this is a twist. Instead of redistributing income to help the poor and downtrodden, now they're going to redistribute the tax burden to help rich liberals.

One could argue that this is an implementation — albeit limited in scope — of trickle-down economics. And ironically, this news came just as Christopher Taylor pointed out a couple of recent MSM articles that unwittingly acknowledged the validity of trickle-down theory.

Apparently, trickle-down economics is a good idea for the constituents of Socialist Democrats, but the rest of us are out of luck. 

Once again, I'm reminded of George Orwell's Animal Farm: "Some animals are more equal than others."

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Do as they say, not as they do

Posted by Richard on May 14, 2010

Let me see if I've got this right: the administration that vociferously condemned Arizona for telling its cops to inquire into the immigration status of people whom they have reason to believe have committed a crime has taken into custody three men whom they believe may have some peripheral connection to a crime … for "immigration violations."

Wow. My irony meter is pegged. 

I'm sure that in the next few days, various administration officials will once again be congratulating each other and crowing about what a great job they're doing protecting us from terrorists. Like they did after they cleverly prevented that bomb in Times Square from exploding. And when they brilliantly stopped that airliner from being blown up at Christmas. And when they bravely saved all those soldiers at Ft. Hood from being gunned down … Oops, that last one didn't end so well — but that wasn't a terrorist attack, it was just some lone nut.

Oh, wait. Those other two were just lone nuts, too, weren't they? Tea partiers disgruntled about taxes or something? 

I'm so confused. Too many narratives! What's the narrative today? I can't keep all the narratives straight.

I know — today's narrative is that ICE is doing a great job and this administration is right on top of that big illegal Pakistani immigrant problem in the Northeast. I wonder if those three Pakistani guys were Mirandized. 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries