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It never ceases to amaze me (and I should have ceased being amazed long ago) about how rampant hypocrisy runs in our nation’s capitol.
As president Obama ramps up his Afghanistan campaign, the holier than thou members of the House and Senate, along with the ever present media talking heads, are screaming about rampant corruption in Afghanistan and the Karzai regime.
These bastions of morality, these followers of the letter of the law, think corruption in Afghanistan is somehow more terrible than the corruption inside the DC Beltway.
My question for all the corruption complainers is - did aliens somehow come in and suck your memories out of your tiny Beltway brains?
Let’s refresh everyone’s memory about corruption in our own backyard:
The Presidency of Richard Nixon - payoffs, burglary, obstruction of justice - the list is huge
The Presidency of Bill Clinton - sex scandal, fundraising crimes, Hazel O’Leary, et al
The Presidency of George W. Bush - Halliburton, Blackwater, Scooter Libby, Abramoff, K Street
Senator John Ensign
Cong. William Jefferson
The Presidency of Ronald Reagan - Ollie North, Iran Contra, John Poindexter, James Watt, Michael Deaver, et al.
Cong. Tom Delay - pre “Dancing With the Stars”
Cong. Duke Cunningham
Former Speaker of the House Jim Wright
You get the idea.
An that’s just national. If you look at any state, you’ll see the same corruption: bribes, featherbedding, kickbacks, manipulation of legislation for personal gain, lying, cheating,…… you get the idea.
Here in Oklahoma, where our Congressional delegation is so hell bent on talking about Afghanistani corruption, have bad memories as well.
Here in Oklahoma we’ve had:
Governor David Hall sent to prison
Governor David Walters pleads guilty to crimes
Former State Senator Gene Stipe - the Godfather of patronage and personal gain while in office
Former State Auditor Jeff McMahan
Former State Rep. Mike Mass
Former Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Reinhart
Senator Jim Inhofe and his insurance company
Senator Tom Coburn and his association with the Senator Ensign Affair
Cong. Mary Fallin and Trooper-gate
The incidents of corruption and scandal on a state and national level go for pages and pages. In fact, if you listed all the political corruption in the US that’s happened in the last 10 years, they would probably cover more pages than the Congressional Healthcare Reform Bill.
The people of the United States are under the mistaken impression that we are somehow better than everyone else, that we’re something to aspire to be like.
Take another look at the brief list of corruption by US politicians.
We have a long way to go before we can lecture another country on their corruption problems.
Countries in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
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