Joe Wilson: The White House Has a "Double Standard"

Just now on Fox News' "Hannity" show, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson ("Joe the Heckler") was happy to accuse the Democrats and the White House of a "double standard" when it comes to bad manners. Then Hannity encouraged viewers to go to his own Hannity.com website to contribute to Wilson's political campaign committee.

Apparently, whatever double standard the Democrats and the White House have makes it perfectly fine for Congressman Wilson to shout out "You lie!" in an unprecedented fashion in the middle of the President's speech last night.

SEAN HANNITY: "Do you think there's a double standard, Congressman?"

REPRESENTATIVE JOE WILSON: "There really is ... I truly am humbled ... I respect the President. I respect the the Office of the President, but I believe they do have a double standard."

SEAN HANNITY: "Maybe the President will invite you to the White House for a beer. I know that the left has targeted you, Cpngressman, and I have a link on my website for those that want to support you on Hannity.com"

That, my friends, is what accepting a clearly disingenuous (though humble) apology from another right-wing ideologue gets you. Fundraising by a Fox News pundit and accusations of holding a double standard.

Lovely.

Comments

[xinunus1]

The MYTH about 47 Million Uninsured AMERICANS

45.7 Million Uninsured Breakdown
----------­----------­----------­----------­----
Illegal Immigrants = 9.3 million
Medicad Undercount = 6.4 million
Medicaid/SCHIP Eligible = 4.3 million
Childless Adults = 5.0 million
Over 300% of Poverty = 10.1 million
Remaining Uninsured = 10.6 million

Medicad Undercount – People who are on one of two government health insurance programs, Medicaid or S-CHIP, but mistakenly (intentionally or not) tell the Census taker that they are uninsured.

Medicaid/SCHIP Eligible – Eligible for free or heavily subsidized government health insurance (again, either Medcaid or SCHIP), but have not signed up.

Childless Adults – Adults between ages 18 and 34 and without kids.

Over 300% of Poverty – Do not fit into any of the above categories, and they have incomes more than 3X the poverty level.

Remaining Uninsured – U.S. citizens, with income below 300% of poverty, not on or eligible for a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance program, and not a childless adult between age 18 and 34.

*NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS FREELY AVAILABLE ON THE CENSUS WEBSITE.

[wandajbrn]

People, we better take notice of the constant references that have racial "undertones" like this issue
being brought to the forefront now. What scares me is the fact that we will eventually have to address the issue of immigration reform. And when we do you will think the 60's are back! The true color of
racism will shine through but it will turn "VIOLENT." You can see the flakes of violence floating in the air at these stupid tea parties and town halls. Openly carrying a weapon and not being called out on
it when children are killing each other in schools, I mean where does it stop? When innocent people get killed because some FOOL wants to show everybody they have the right to carry it , is just plain stupid. Only a COWARD would expose innocent people to this type of tactic. I'm so afraid that coming to any public event "STRAPPED" is going to end up with an idiot pulling the trigger and someone dying for nothing. The way people acted when John McCain tried to introduce immigration reform is the main reason what Joe Wilson did is so dangerous. People BLEW up the whitehouse switchboard!
Do you think these same people won't come out of the woodwork when the word "Amnesty is said?"
Wanda - Mississippi

[SeriouslySarah]

wandajbrn, you are the first comment I read and I completely agree with you.

[dlbnext]

Let's give anyone in this country who came in illegally health care insurance. That's 11 million people at $400 a month for 12 months. Only another $55 billion a year, or a half trillion for 10 years. Send the bill to the tax payers (that's you) or just print monopoly money until we get 1920's Germany hyper inflation? We are becoming detached from reality as if everything stood just by itself and the cause or the social justice in doing so had no undesired effects. Right now, John Williams of Shadowstats has calculated that if every thing and everybody were taxed 100% we could not pay our debt, not to mention at 100% taxation the economy would collapse. We need to get balanced if we are ever going to create a better world.

[guntotinganglion]

REPRESENTATIVE JOE WILSON: "I respect the President. I respect the the Office of the President"

Certainly an interesting way of showing this respect he says he has. Scream at the President, lying openly about

SEAN HANNITY: "Maybe the President will invite you to the White House for a beer."

I'd like to see Obama invite Hannity over to the WH for a beer...and then break the bottle over his thick skull. Not that that would change anything in Hannity's cretinous comments, or his idiotic behavior, but it would have to feel really good doing it just the same. And with as thick a skull as SH has, I think there'd be little worry that he'd be hurt by a beer bottle breaking on it.

[SeriouslySarah]

I also would love to see that

[bicommuter]

wow, scary. just went to hannitys site. he actually has a count down ticker till the 2012 election.

[dlbnext]

bicommuter. Are you advocating a one part system? No checks and balances? What happens when the one party starts dictating to you things you don't want? Have you studied the history of countries with one party systems?

[BlueFloyd]

as KO says:

'Fox NEWS' ...a brand name, like 'VIRGINITY Condoms'

[stanjam]

Someone at a news agency is hosting a link on his site so people can donate money to a political candidate? Now I am not surprised about this from the "Fair and Balanced" Fox News, but we should all be ashamed and disgusted.

This is akin to a blatant admission that they are neither fair nor balanced. We desperately need for the Republican party to either change, or for another party to replace them. We no longer have a two party system in this country, just the Democrats and the lunatic right wing fringe. In my view we need three, maybe four parties in this country. Call them progressives, Democrats, Conservatives, and Republicans, and I am not sure the Republicans should be a part of it, but the lunatic fringe does have the right to be heard, I guess.

We also need better education in this country, and better news reporting. A populous smart enough to not be fooled by the fear mongering and one line arguments, and news that is willing to report, investigate, and not pontificate.

[pamelalady]

Hannity & those at Fox are hypocrites!
What I find so hard to reconcile to is why they are not upfront and truthful..­.
they HATE blacks & minorities!
Period.
I'm from the southeast and as we state...
SAY IT LOUD AND BE PROUD!
So many would simply respect that!

[SeriouslySarah]

I like it. Admit the truth.

[tantrictim]

http://tiny.cc/mlu6B

The controversial congressman has been a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans. Max Blumenthal, author of the just-published Republican Gomorrah, asks: Did he remain so even after it became a hate group?

[Sumocat]

You really need to read or see the full quote to understand the absurdity of this "double standard." It starts from a clip of a speech by Bush.

[THEN-PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: By the year 2042 the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt if steps are not taken to avert that outcome. The only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.

(BOOS)]

I don't know exactly who was booing then, but they seem to have been booing higher taxes, bigger borrowing, and massive cuts in Social Security. In other words, they were booing with the president, not at him, and I'm pretty sure the Dems wouldn't have done that in 2005. The only thing Hannity seems to have shown is that Republicans in Congress can't be respectful no matter who's the president.

[Falafel]

Since when is it OK for a news website to facilitate campaign donations? Oh, that's right, fox isn't news.

[fabricnthreads]

You always know when someone says, "I am truly humbled," they are NOT truly humbled.

[thebirdstheword]

typical victim-playing by the wingnuts.

funny that they don't go into detail about that supposed "double standard." could it be because there isn't one?

[Tim303]

I've heard this "have a beer on the lawn" thing a couple of times today and yesterday. I believe it's the new r.a.c.i.st code. It surely refers to the racial profiling incident and Skip Gates. The idea being that Hannity is acknowledging, with a wink, the true intent of Wilson's words.

[Lee Andrew]

The great state of South Carolina has a history of unruly rudeness. Take for example the rebellion at Fort Sumter and thus becoming the first state to succeed from the Union.

Then there's the instance of the South Carolina Confederate delegation that the slave trade be restarted - it was rejected by the confederacy.

And there this:

U.S Representative Preston Brooks entered the US Senate Chamber and beat Senator Charles Sumer into unconsciousness with his cane.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

The state continues to incorporate the Confederate flag into its design and remember its gift to the nation the late US Senator Strom Thurmond the segregationist.

And finally there's then there's the scandalous adulterous adventures of current South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford who has a penchant for hiking Argentine tail.

US Representative Joe Wilson is the icing on that proverbial cake. His sophomoric rudeness must not be tolerated - He's got to go.

Make it so.

http://www.actblue.com/page/huffpostposse

[shotoftruth]

Right you are about South Carolina's racial history. It is the only state of the Union in which the federal power of martial law, granted first to President Grant under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, was ever exercised. Lawless Democrats then physically attacking Republican officeholders that were then, as now, the only hope of oppressed former slaves. Lawless Democrats in white sheets hanging judges, sheriffs, and former slaves. Yep South Carolina and its racists, lawless, white-sheeted Democrats have a bad history of racism.

[Donnie Fowler - Huffpost Blogger]

You know, say "Democrats" all you want ... but what the Democratic Party in the South represented until the 1950s and 1960s was the continuing hyper-conservative and even reactionary politics of the state. South Carolina has always been at the forefront of the CONSERVATIVE movement in the U.S., no matter what party label you put on it. Today, that label and legacy sits in the Republican Party.

[TedB]

Those 'Democrats' are the ones Lyndon Johnson lamented losing ,as he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "for a generation," and are the ones that the modern Republican party is so proud to have recruited during the Reagan Revolution.

[DonRoberto]

Yeah, Strom Thurmond, Ron Reagan, all those guys were Democrats at one time. They left the party over Truman's integration of the armed forces. There was a later mass exodus of racists from the Democratic Party in the 1960s, following the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Voting Rights Act, etc. The reactionary remainder left in the 1980s, as "Reagan Democrats".

So yeah, there was a point in history where the Republicans were the reformers. But the last Republican "reform" President was Teddy Roosevelt, and that was over a century ago. Where are all the GOP liberals who will carry out those reforms?

As to South Carolina's history, you don't have to go back in time to the bad old Democrats. Sanford, Wilson, Confederate flags over the statehouse --- the Party may have changed, but they're wearing the same old sheets.

[billw8017]

The President had the right of it when he recognized Wilson's outburst by simply saying, "That's not true." Democrats have come across as the more honest party even given Clinton lying like a gentleman. Lillian Carter, Jimmy's mother, told a reporter that she didn't expect her boy to lie except in the ordinary polite way that people do. The reporter said, how's that, and Mrs Carter said, well ... Do you remember when I met you at the door and said how pretty you are, and how glad I was to see you ...

In the run up to our Civil War, Congress got less polite, there were fist fights and one Senator injured another by attacking him with his cane. We expect more civility and George W, visiting London, was forestalled from speaking to the Parliament as Reagan and Clinton had done before him since the English couldn't assure his handlers that he wouldn't be booed out.

Franklin Peirce, a remote ancestor of Barbara Bush, and the driver of his carriage were once arrested on the streets of Washington for public drunkenness when they ran over a pedestrian. Calmer heads prevailed, and the President was released. Monroe and Secretary of the Treasury, William Henry Crawford got into a little quarrel as Crawford expected Monroe to support his run for the Presidency. Monroe despite being weakened by a stroke took up a tongs from the fireplace and threatened Crawford who was just recovering from being bedridden.