There's hypocrisy ... and then there's James Inhofe
by digby
Look, he's never been the most consistent guy around and it's pretty obvious he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But this really takes the cake. Here's Joan Walsh:
Inhofe, of course, believes his state deserves those resources, even though he voted down aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing confronted Inhofe about his calling the Sandy aid bill a “slush fund,” and the brazen right-winger insisted the two issues shouldn’t be linked.
“Let’s look at that, that was totally different,” Inhofe told Jansing. “They were getting things—for instance that was supposed to be in New Jersey, they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington D.C., everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy taking place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”
Inhofe’s answer is too dishonest to fully parse. First of all, there was Sandy damage way beyond New Jersey, including in the Caribbean and Washington D.C. too. And Inhofe had different objections to the Sandy bill at the time. In a rambling, hard to follow Senate floor speech blocking Sandy aid last December, the Oklahoma conservative objected to the bill’s timing – “There’s always a lot of theater right before Christmas time… We shouldn’t be talking about it right before Christmas” – even though it was already going on two months since the storm ravaged the east coast.
Here's the Youtube of Inhofe's incoherent rant against Hurricane Sandy funding. One of the commenters writes:
Do you think New Yorkers will be as kind to us as you were to them?
I hope not.
They won't. They actually believe we are one country. James Inhofe doesn't.
By the way, President Obama's BRFF Tom Coburn is being consistent saying he won't vote for disaster funding for his own state unless there are offsetting cuts elsewhere. And that means he not only thinks it's cool that some states already pay far more in taxes and get less back than Oklahoma, but their citizens --- only the poorer ones natch --- should also give up what little they do get for Oklahoma's disasters. Win, win, win for Tom Coburn.
Harry Reid should bring a funding bill to the floor and make Tom Coburn vote against it. Maybe his constituents will be impressed by his consistency. Maybe ...
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