Laughing about the Hypocrisy

 

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania State Representative Wendy Ullman (in the image) were joking about wearing masks. 

 

A video of this with an open mike audio has been making the rounds.

 

At face value it looks like the Governor and Representative were saying we wear masks just to fool the public.  However, not having the full context (and I'm not likely to get the full context), I'm not going to call 'hypocrisy' on them.

Local Newspaper report here.

Video with open mike audio is here.

SCOTUS Nomination Hypocrisy or Not

In February 2016 after the death of Justice Scalia, then President Obama nominated Justice Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

There was a dispute as to whether the Senate should take up the nomination. 

In September 2020 after the death of Justice Ginsberg, then President Trump nominated Justice Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Again there was a dispute as to whether the Senate should take up the nomination. 

Among those disputing the issues, I have chosen 4 people (I was at one time only going to discuss one person but it makes more sense to discuss a quartet) whose opinions on whether the Senate should vote on confirmation in the 4th or 8th year of a President's term) were as follows:

Senator Lindsey Graham: 2016 Against; 2020 For

Senator Mitch McConnell: 2016 Against; 2020 For

Senator Charles Schumer: 2016 For 2020 Against

former Vice President Biden: 2016 For; 2020 Against (then Senator Biden was against in 1992).

Graham and Biden are in the first image.  Schumer and McConnell are in the second image.

I will discuss the Graham opinion change first since it is relatively simple and overtly stated.

Then I will discuss the McConnell opinion which is more complicated.

Regarding Graham:  2016, Senator Graham was specific and said that  he opposed a nomination in that year and would oppose a nomination in 2020 (see the collection of quotes link below).  In 2020 he had changed his mind and sent a letter (see link below) to various Democratic Senators explaining why. His reasoning was that Democratic smearing of Justice Kavanaugh in 2018 required a the change in position.  I don't follow this reasoning as it seems a non sequitur, something like, 'I won't pay you the money I owe you since you insulted me'.  However, it may make sense to Graham and I can't find any response from the addressees objecting to the reasoning.

McConnell's 2016 statements regarding the nomination to the SOTUS that year include conditions or caveats. For example, in one statement (the collection of quotes link below) he referred to an appointed by a lame duck (Obama was term limited in 2016, Trump is not term limited in 2020, although he would be a lame duck if he lost the election in November 2020). In another statement (the collection of quotes link below) McConnell notes that in 2016 the President was a Democrat and the Senate was majority Republican (as of this post the President is a Republican and the Senate is also majority Republican). I don't understand this reasoning entirely although it seems to me it has more substance than Graham's reasoning.

This brings me to the Schumer and Biden opinion change.  I have been looking for them to defend their opinion change and haven't found any. Neither have I found third party defense of their opinion change nor any reporters who even asked them about it. Now, the focus of the news is the confirmation of Justice Barrett and I suppose there will be no defense of the opinion change.

I would rate all but McConnell as hypocrites to some extent but Schumer and Biden more so since they feel no need to even acknowledge the issue. I would rank Graham as slightly less of a hypocrite than Schumer or Biden as he has a defense even if I don't think it makes sense. I'm giving McConnell a break on this since he does make a substantive case that the two situations are different. 

Finally, I acknowledge the Babylon Bee's take on this:

Nation Surprised To Learn All Politicians Are Hypocrites

The 1992 position of then Senator Biden is discussed here.

Senator Graham's Letter re 2020 situation is here.

Collection of quotes from 2016 and 2020 is here.

 Washington Post OP Ed on this calling McConnell an 'apex predator' is here.

A defense of McConnell  is here

Senator Cruz expands on the 'one party holds the Presidency, the other the Senate' reason here.

 

Babylonbee humor on this is here.

Pelosi Accused of Social Distancing Hypocrisy - I think not

 

On August 31 Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi had her hair done at a hair salon. I take this as a shampoo, coloring and blow dry.

Normally this is not news. However, during the quarantine months, this may be news.

Apparently, Pelosi contracted with a hairdresser who had a contract with a hair salon. The hairdresser did shampooing and other tasks in the hair salon.  The local, San Francisco, ordinances do not permit this and in fact, only on September 1 did the local ordinance allow hair shampooing in and outside setting. In the image, the hair dresser is wearing a mask but Pelosi is not.

Several columnist call this hypocrisy, some even call it "Queen of Hypocrisy".

There have been many episodes of this kind, for ex  ample, Dr. Fauci in the stands at a baseball game in July not wearing a mask. 

In general there are two problems with calling it hypocrisy. Although both Fauci and Pelosi have made pronouncements like "wear facemasks, be safe, social distance", these statements are not absolute, e.g., you don't have to wear face masks if it is just you and your spouce. Anyway the first problem with calling it hypocrisy is that neither Fauci nor Pelosi has authority over local ordinances. The second is that such ordinances are, as noted, complex and have all kinds of caveats about, for example, requiring mask when social distancing is not possible. 

Pelosi claims not to know what the social distancing ordinances are for hair dressers and that is a believable claim. However, she might have made a more robust apology and noted the suffering of the nail salon and other similarly affected business owners.

In Fauci's case, the woman to his left is his wife and he doesn't need to mask protect himself from her. The person to his right is perhaps endangered by Fauci's non mask wearing but Fauci claims that he was eating and drinking at the time and you can't do this masked. This seems reasonable although given that the stands were essentially empty they could have spread out a bit more and still been able to talk to each other.  Fauci's case is weakened because when he  threw out the ceremonial first ball of the game he wore a mask while being 60 feet from the catcher but then after the pitch he did get closer so it would have been mask-required then.

Anyway, the distance of Pelosi and Fauci from authority to issue ordinances and the complexity of the ordinances do not allow a simple verdict of hypocrisy.

Post Script: Pelosi now thinks the salon should apologize to her. 

 

Post Post Script: Now Salon Owner says she is receiving death threats.

So, although not a hypocrite on this point, Pelosi seems to be a bad person.

Powerline calls it "Queen of..." here.
More complete news of this incident is here.

Article on the Fauci incident is here.

Fauci's ceremonial first pitch is here. 

 

Actress Kristy Swanson did wear a face mask for her shampoo and hair work here

The Debate Exception

Back during 2019 Senator Kamala Harris criticized former VP Joe Biden on the issue of sexual harassment.  By June 2020 Harris fully supported Biden with no reservation. In an otherwise friendly interview on late night TV earlier this summer, Harris explains the change by saying, "It was a debate" about 7 times while laughing.



The video is available here. 


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King Alexander Yannai on Hypocrisy

The King Priest Alexander Yannai, aka, Alexander Janneaus, was dying and gave his wife Solome the following advice (per BT Tractate Sota),

"...beware of hypocrites who appear like the Peru-shim [Pharisees] as their actions are like the act of Zimri [public copulation with an idol worshiper in Numbers 25, which is this week's parshah] and they request a reward like Pinchas..."

Interestingly, according to the historian Josephus, Alexander Yannai was actually anti Pharisee, to the point of occasional persecution, but his wife, Solome had a brother who was among the leader of the Pharisees. Solome became Queen, the only Queen of the 2nd commonwealth, after Yannai died and her brother became head of the Sanhedrin (per Josephus explicitly and also implicitly in various parts of the Talmud).



The first image is of a 16th century artist and is from the Wikipedia website of Alexander Janneaus.

The second image, also from Wikipedia, is a 17th century creation showing Yannai feasting while Pharisees are being executed.

Sort of Admitting to Hypocrisy

Dr. Mark Lurie is a professor specializing in epidemiology at Brown University.

Back in March 2020, Lurie said, 

"The virus doesn't care about your party affiliation or you political beliefs....If you don't follow the CDC recommendations, you're increasing (the chance) that you're going to get infected and that you're going to infect other people... "denialism" is something that's been seen at the beginning of other epidemics, but the more coronavirus infiltrates our daily lives, the more people are going to take it more seriously." 

But in today's New York Times, Lurie, who apparently joined some of the non socially distanced protests, is quoted,

 “Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice....But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy and saying that was dangerous behavior. I am still grappling with that.”

Mark Lurie's comments after social distancing back in March are here.

Mark Lurie's comments post protests are here.

Mark Lurie's page at Brown University is here.

Bill deBlasio Covid 19 Hypocrite

 
From March to late May New York City had covid19 testing guidance that said 'test if you have symptoms'. That guidance was changed in early June to 'everybody should test'. 

It is about two weeks since the guidance was changed and Mayor of NY City, Bill deBlasio hasn't been tested.  Also, he has symptoms. 


His office put out a public announcement that basically says, 'he doesn't feel like it'.  

This is a pretty straightforward case of hypocrisy.  I doubt it has much effect however because deBlasio was widely regarded as a stubborn jerk before this.  The second image shows a protest at the Mayor's official residence on June 2.

I will admit that one of the justifications for 'everybody getting tested' in NYC is to facilitate tracking contacts which in the case of deBlasio is essentially a futile mission given the thousands of anonymous contacts he has had in the past few days. 



First image is deBlasio at a protest on 14 June.

Image and article from The Gothamist  is here.

Police Defunding for you but not for me

Natalie Martinez is the President of the Los Angeles City Council. She recently gave a speech advocating substantially reduced funding for the LA Police.   

For several months, Martinez had requested 24/7 protection at her home. The police provided it, for a while with round the clock stationing and later with some stationing and some frequent patrols.

I would be inclined to give Martinez a break on calling it hypocrisy based on a change in her policy but, as it turned out, she called off the round the clock protection when the situation was brought to her attention and also said that the protection was due to a security threat. The LA PD indicated that they had no information regarding the threat. Thus, I'll have to call hypocrisy and better yet, as a case of self correcting hypocrisy.

First image is from a Martinez press release.

The second image is from the article in Daily Wire.

Daily Wire story is here.

Could the Grim Reeper a Hypocrit

 
 In Florida there is a lawyer named, Daniel Uhlfeder who is the principle of the eponymous law firm of DWUhlfederLaw.  


In early May, Daniel dressed as the Grim Reeper at a Florida beach to warn or possibly predict deaths from congregated in groups.


In June, the same fellow attended a George Floyd protest, where he was masked but most people were not.



This information comes from his tweet stream.



Since he wore his mask at the second event, he could say he was doing his social distancing and not responsible for others. Or he could say that the necessity of the second event outweighed the need to keep social distancing. Or he could say he changed his mind about social distancing.



In any case, I don't think this makes him a hypocrite. It just makes him look silly (but maybe he got clients in the second event).


Grim Reeper tweet is here. 


Tweet from protest is here.

former Sport Reporter defends his apparent hypocrisy

On 29 May 2020, a former sport (mostly NBA related) journalist, Chris Martin Palmer, tweeted an image of an affordable housing building burning in downtown Minneapolis, MN apparently approving the burning of even more buildings.

Then on 31 May 2020, the same person tweeted (without an image) that a Starbucks near his gated community was burned and wanted the 'animals' out of his neighborhood.

He was challenged on this as other tweeters told him it was hypocritical.

I read through some later tweets of his. It seems he justifies it by saying that the people doing the former were protesting and the people in his neighborhood were threatening.  He even thinks this distinction is obvious.  I'm lost as to how he understands motivations of crowds of people just by casual observation.

The image capturing both tweets is by someone named daniel4liberty. 

The reason Mr. Palmer is no longer a reporter, apparently has to do with a dispute between Palmer and Kevin Durand at least per this article.

Palmer has more recently been in dispute with LeBron James.

The Sporting News covered this issue here.

Lawyer admits Hypocrisy in Letter to NY Times

The May 4 New York Times had a number of letters to the editor commenting on a New York Times editorial.  The editorial was about the allegations against Joe Biden and recommended an investigation.

One of the letters to the editor was by a woman named Karen Wilson of Dallas, Texas who describes herself as a 66 year old lawyer and a survivor of violent rape.

She disagreed with the editorial. I am quoting the end of her letter, 

.

"...We cannot survive as a democratic society with Mr. Trump in office for four more years. The need to get him out of office overrules every scruple we may have. I will live with my hypocrisy and believe that tens of millions of Americans will feel the same."

So there you have an admission (or claim) of hypocrisy on this issue (although I don't have her previous statements so I couldn't tell if she were being a hypocrite or not).

The source of all the NYTimes published letters to the editor on that subject, that day is here.

An Interesting Bit of Plague Sex and possible Hypocrisy

The first image is  Neil Ferguson who is a mathematical biology professor at Imperial College in London.

He has advised British leaders for two decades on medical issues, e.g., the mad cow disease many years ago.  Basically, his recommendations have been implemented.

In the UK, his mathematical model predicted 250,000 deaths in the UK unless the country basically shut down. The country did shut down and per his advice, social visits were banned.

However, Professor Ferguson had a friend, Antonia Staats (she is 38, he is 51) who has visited him a number of times while the country was shut down.  She visited him for sex, notwithstanding that both she and Ferguson are married to other people. Staats has defended her action by saying that, first, she is in an open marriage and second, that because of this, the visit is actually being part of the Ferguson family or that the Fergusons and the Staats are one family.  

Notwithstanding this defense, Ferguson is being removed from an official advisory position (I'm not sure if this was a paid position).  

I'm pretty sure, based on the reporting of this that many, maybe most, people in the UK are angry about this, maybe for hypocrisy.  However, I've not found the specific advice that Ferguson provided the Government regarding what is social visiting and what is family. Thus, I'm not able to judge whether it is hypocrisy.

anyway, some reporting:

The Spectator's report is here.
The Daily Mail's report (I used their pictures) is here
The BBC report is here.  
The Telegraph's report is here.
The Guardian's report is here.

Donna Brazile says it is not Hypocrisy

Donna Brazile, former chair of the DNC, addressed the Tara Reade allegations against former VP Joe Biden. This was a few days ago (actually May 1).

She sort of addressed the hypocrisy issue.


Here is a piece of the interview (on the Fox News where Brazile is a salaried commentator).

FLEISCHER: -- Do you believe Tara Reade?
BRAZILE: She's given interviews, we've heard from her, but we respect women. That's -- the bottom line is respect women --
DANA PERINO: Donna, Ari is trying to ask you, Donna, do you believe Tara Reade? 
BRAZILE: There's no hypocrisy here. You respect women, you believe women. They have a right to tell their story.

So Brazile is cognizant of the issue of hypocrisy.

Of course, neither she nor her interviewers actually state what the hypocrisy is, which I find annoying. To do so one would have to research previous interviews with Brazile and find out exactly what she said about, for example, the case of Christine Ford or going further back in time, Juanita Broderick. 

FWIW, I worked with Brazile briefly in 1993 in coordinating a report on the Federal response to the great Mississippi Flood of that year. She was an undersecretary in the Dept of Agriculture or special advisor to the President as I recall (although her bio doesn't show this).  I found Brazile to be easy to work with, friendly, responsive, and smart (of course that was then).

The transcript of the interview is here.

Ruth Allyn Marcus Mentions Hypocrisy About Herself

Ruth Marcus (first image) is a columnist for the Washington Post. She also authored a book "Supreme Ambition" which argues that Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth in her testimony regarding, then nominee, now Supreme Court Justice, Judge Brett Kavanaugh (he was a Judge at the point of nomination).

She wrote a column in the Washington Post on the issue of whether Tara Reade was telling the truth about Joe Biden (Reade alleges sexual assault). 

Marcus actually acknowledges the problem of hypocrisy in her column.

"...Outrage over misbehavior only by those with whom we have ideological differences is not righteous — it is hypocritical. Skepticism about accusations only when they are made against someone with whom we are ideologically aligned is not high-minded — it is intellectually dishonest...."

I would give her more credit for this if her analysis of Reade's accusations were more objective e.g., Marcus says that too much time has passed for an investigation of Reade's accusations (about an event that allegedly took place in 1993) but also contends that Blasey Ford's accusations (about an event that allegedly took place in about 1982) were not investigated enough. 

Notwithstanding that, at least Marcus does admit there is a potential issue which is more than many.

The column by Marcus is here.

Rose McGowen, one of the founders of the "MeToo", had some nasty words for the Washington Post in this tweet. I don't think it was about the Marcus opinion but about a news article that downplayed the Reade accusation.

The return to disposable bags and hypocrisy

Among other jurisdictions, Boston has modified their anti-one-time-use bag policy during the corona virus 2020 pandemic. The policy was two years old and was one of the most strict in the nation as it required all grocery bags to be recycled or to be for multi uses. An op ed in the Boston Herald stated that this, i.e., the change in policy, was hypocrisy.

I'm unable to even analyze this as I can't figure out what the hypocrisy is. Changing policy during a crisis is not hypocrisy, it is changing policy. For what it is worth I think the anti one use bag policies around the country, including where I live, are frequently poorly thought out and dishonestly justified but that is a different issue.

The op ed is here.

The policy being changed is here.

Is AOC a Flaming Hypocrite Regarding School Choice

That is the accusation (as noted below I disagree).

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has no children of her own but is godmother to a girl.  Per an article in the NY Post which in turn referred various primary sources, AOC has denounced charter schools. AOC also bragged about helping her cousin's daughter (AOC's god daughter) into a charter school.

Several people have called AOC a hypocrite for this.

I don't.

If AOC had said, "nobody should send their children to a charter school" that would be different. However, AOC is in favor of (I think) abolishing charter schools nor advocating boycotting them. So as long as charter schools exist I don't consider it hypocritical to use them. 

The situation is analogous to someone who supports,say, a higher capital gain tax than currently exists, but does their taxes using existing rules.


Opinion Piece here.

That's also where the image is from.

Prince Charles burns 162 tons of carbon to meet Greta

I've done climate change hypocrisy before. 

However, this time I have a nice graphic to go along with it and also some quantification.

The first image shows Prince Charles meeting Greta at Davos a few days ago. Subsequent to this, Prince Charles spoke at Davos about Climate Change and how important it was, how we must address it with urgency, etc.

The Daily Mail put together a nice itinerary of the private flights Charles took in the days before and after the Davos meeting with Greta (second image - click to enlarge). 

They (the Daily Mail) summed up the carbon footprint as similar to 18 times the per capita yearly carbon footprint in Britain.

The image of Charles and Greta is from the BBC 

The chart and narrative explanation is from here.

White Pants Suit Hypocrisy

Back a few years ago the NYTimes had a news article praising Hillary Clinton for wearing a White Pantsuit.

A few days ago, the NYTimes had a news story criticizing Tulsi Gabbard for wearing a white pants suit. 

It seems like hypocrisy except that perhaps, a white pantsuit worn at an inaugural is, in some way, different 
 from a white pantsuit worn at a debate. 

The images and information come from a tweet by Glen Greenwald and is available here.  Greenwald notes that the NYTimes article criticizing Gabbard is aware that Mrs Clinton wore a white pantsuit and the article's 'logic' is provided in the article.

Tom Steyer, spending campaign money to prevent spending campaign money

Like some other people who have run for President without having served in a previous elected office (George Washington, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and Donald Trump come to mind), Tom Steyer is counting on name recognition to get him at least partway there

He is using his own wealth to fund advertising himself. Apparently, he is responsible for 67% of all TV advertising for candidates for President in 2020 (almost $50 million). This despite the fact that he is only a recently announced candidate and despite the fact that there were ten to twenty other candidates just in the Democratic party who were running serious campaigns for President.

What makes this interesting to me is that prominently, on the TomSteyer.com website is the following quote, 

" Corporations and special interests have bought politicians and influenced Washington for too long"


I'm not calling this hypocrisy since the point is he wants to change things and has to work within the pre-change system.  It is, however, somewhat laughable because the fact that he has spent so much money and still polls at somewhere around 1% nationally shows that, just maybe, he has overestimated the influence of campaign funding.

The estimate of Steyer's campaign spending is here. 

The Steyer for President website is here. The image above came from that website.

A link to some polling where Steyer was at 1% as of today is here.

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Biden	Warren	Sanders	Buttigieg	Harris	Yang	Klobuchar	Booker	Castro	Gabbard	Steyer	Bullock	Delaney	Spread
RCP Average	10/30 - 11/12	26.0	20.8	17.8	8.0	5.3	2.8	2.3	2.3	1.3	1.0	1.0	0.8	0.8	Biden +5.2
Economist	11/10 - 11/12	23	26	17	9	5	4	2	1	2	2	1	1	1	Warren +3
Politico	11/4 - 11/10	32	19	20	8	5	3	2	3	1	1	1	1	1	Biden +12
Monmouth	10/30 - 11/3	23	23	20	9	5	3	2	3	0	0	1	0	0	Tie
The Hill	11/1 - 11/2	26	15	14	6	6	1	3	2	2	1	1	1	1

Arnold and Greta and Arnold's Cars

 Arnold Schwarzenegger famously feted global climate activist Greta Thunberg by loaning her Arnold's Tesla for some of Greta travels in North America. 




The first image shows Arnold, Greta and the Tesla. The two met in Vienna Austria).


This was part of Arnold identifying himself as a

climate activist. 


It turns out that Arnold's lifestyle is, well, a model of carbon intensity. The man owns many vehicles including the tank (Arnold is in front of it in the second image) and a Porsche (Arnold is driving it in the third image).

The fourth image is Arnold driving something called a Pinzgauer all terrain vehicle.

Is Arnold a hypocrite? Yes and not a very self aware one at that. There isn't anything special about this hypocrisy either but I actually like the pictures of the cars (and the tank).

The image of Arnold and Greta and the Tesla is from an article here.

The images of Arnold and his tank and Arnold and his Porsche from an article here. The article has images of many of Arnold's other vehicles.

The image of Arnold and the Pinzgauer is from an article here. Apparently, Arnold took this vehicle out for some errands.