His remarks have come back to haunt him, Boston.com reports. Heck, he couldn’t even get Hitler’s name right, spelling it “Adolph” instead.
So what did he write that caused the Twitter pot to boil over?
“Even Adolph [sic] Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons.”
While the White House apologized for not sending a higher-ranked official to the Paris rally, which was attended by more than one million people, Weber issued a rather generic apology in an “I misspoke myself'” vein.
“I need to first apologize to all those offended by my tweet. It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler,” he said in a statement issued by his office, per The Huffington Post. “The mention of Hitler was meant to represent the face of evil that still exists in the world today. I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-semitism and hate.”
Weber (R-Tx) has made a habit of going after Obama and has called him a “Socialist dictator” and Kommandant-in-Chef.” [sic] Spelling and logic may not be strong suits for Weber, perhaps. In this case, the congressman was venting bile because Obama signed an executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 per hour, Boston.com reports. Giving people a decent wage they can live on turns the Republicans absolutely apoplectic. The veins in Weber’s temples must have bulged out over that one.
Representing Texas’ 14th Congressional District, Weber was reelected to his second term in November, having defeated Democratic challenger Don Brown by more than 25 percent of the vote. This does not speak well for the intelligence of right-wingers in Texas.
The rest of his statement called for the world to unite and stand together against Islamic extremism, The Huffington Post reports.
“Today, we are facing the evil of Islamic extremists who are attempting to instill fear and murdering the lives of innocent people from Paris to Nigeria to Jerusalem and all over the world,” he said. “The President’s actions or lack thereof is my point of contention. Islamic extremists have shown they are not going away, and instead are hungry for more blood.”
While he is correct that we must stand against such cruel tyranny, it’s also entirely clear that the extremists of the Republican Party — the Tea Party — aren’t going away either, and in their fascist little hearts they are also hungry for more blood; but it’s blood in the form of poverty. Extremist Republicans tout nationalism, and show nothing but disdain for the most basic human rights. They are obsessed with national security and inflict painful, crippling ideas that religion and government should be intertwined at the feet of their corporate gods.
Think fascism isn’t strangling America? Try telling that to Michael Brown and any other young black man terrorized by our militarized police.
This column by Paul Krugman points out the extremes Republicans have gone to in their seemingly endless efforts to crush the poor under their heels at the behest of their corporate masters.
When the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare,was rolled out many Republican-controlled states fought hard against implementing an important part of the act which would have expanded Medicaid, and this in turn denied health coverage to nearly five million low-income Americans. What’s really incredible about this, Krugman noted, is “that they’re going to great lengths to block aid to the poor even though letting the aid through would cost almost nothing; nearly all the costs of Medicaid expansion would be paid by Washington.” Disgusting. Shame on the Republicans.
These very same states are also slashing benefits for unemployment, education financing and more than that, Krugman writes.
“As I said, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the G.O.P. is hurting the poor as much as it can.”
Krugman also notes that if the Republicans had won the White House in 2012, they would have done even worse. It would have been a bloodbath for Medicaid, food stamps and other antipoverty programs.
Now they have gained control by a much larger margin than they had before, so it’s just going to be more of the same for low-income people, only on a much larger scale almost certainly.
Politicus points out that the policies promulgated by House Republicans have been particularly cruel to poor and middle class Americans.
“Whether they are losing the pensions they paid into, struggle feeding and housing their families on poverty wages, or face certain death due to lack of medical care, tens-of-millions of Americans know for a fact that when Republicans are allowed to control government spending, America is cruel and inhumane to its own citizens,” Rmuse wrote in Politicus.
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned the United States–considered to be the wealthiest nation in the history of the world for its mistreatment of poor people, Politicus notes.
In 2012, policies enacted by the Republicans were responsible for keeping more than 640,000 Americans without housing, and the G.O.P.’s much-beloved sequester will keep increasing these shockingly tragic numbers for several more years. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget in 2014 administered barbaric cuts in order to create tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, Politicus notes. Ryan and Senator Patty Murray worked out a two-year budget that was signed by President Obama, but Republicans fretted that they had not inflicted enough cruel Draconian austerity measures that would target the poor, senior citizens, children, veterans, and the middle class.
Ryan’s 2015 budget is even scarier, chopping $732 billion away from Medicaid, it would also eliminate funding the the Affordable Care Act that had been set aside to improve physician payments in Medicaid, The Huffington Post reports. Completely inconceivable, the report argues that states would magically or miraculously devise a new and improved Medicaid program despite a cut of $732 billion over a period of 10 years, or 26 percent by 2023. This result of Republican magical thinking is due to the fact that the money would be delivered in the form of a block grant. Obviously, with more than one-quarter of the funding slashed, this means that there will be some health care rationing as opposed to increased provider payment rates.
While not all Republicans are heartless regarding the poor, some are exceedingly cruel. Such is the case of John Johnston, an Indiana Republican who was running in the 2014 election but fortunately lost to a Democrat, had this to say about the poor, according to Forward Progressives:
“For almost three generations people, in some cases, have been given handouts. They have been ‘enabled’ so much that their paradigm in life is simply being given the stuff of life, however meager. What you see is a setting for a life of misery is life to them never-the-less. No one has the guts to just let them wither and die. No one who wants votes is willing to call a spade a spade. As long as the Dems can get their votes the enabling will continue.”
Granted, the Republicans aren’t seemingly as cruel as Hitler either, but when they criticize Obama over every little trifle, as they like to do, when those like Randy Weber compare him to the Nazi leader, they had better look in the mirror. Perhaps then they will see themselves for the hypocrites that they are.
