CNN iReport

The Right's hypocrisy and lies know no bounds.

They are empty of ideas, empty of power, empty of trust, yet they are now kicking their feet and whining louder than ever, purposely obstructing the President's attempts to turn the economy around every chance they get.

Their actions are more blatantly dishonest and hypocritical than ever. They decry that which they themselves do more than anyone else. They make up blatant lies about things in bills that just don't exist or they don't understand. Lastly, they are trying with everything they've got to rewrite history and blame the two year recession on a President who's been in power for less than 2 months.

The reason? Politics. They are quite simply worried for their jobs and are in full campaign mode for 2010. They aren't betting the farm. Rather, they are betting their mansions that the farm will fail. Having nothing to offer on their own, their strategy is to make the opposition's policies fail in any way possible. Secondary to that is obstruct the process and make as much noise as they can about anything they can that sounds bad, even if THEY were the authors.

Examples:

1) A House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend "thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area -- including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse." The bogus talking point was frequently referenced on Fox News on Feb 11 and 12 by Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.  The staffer later admitted that the report was bogus.

2) The stimulus bill included funds for Acorn. :  The House version of the stimulus bill does indeed include about $1 billion in funding for the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program and another $4.2 billion ($2.2 billion in the Senate's version) in funding for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). Neither program is new:  CDBG has been around since President Ford (a Republican) signed it into law in 1974, while the NSP was authorized in 2008 as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act signed into law by President Bush.  While Acorn has received grants for it's work in this area in the past, many no-profit agencies compete for and receive those funds.

3) Eric Cantor stated on Fox News: If you look at the bill that passed the ways and means committee yesterday, for every dollar spent to help small businesses, four dollars is being spent to help upkeep the grass on the lawns of Washington. Again, what does that have to do with a stimulus bill? In reality, the bill at that time contained $880 million in small business spending PLUS $20 billion in small business tax cuts vs $200 million in National Mall renovations.

4)   Fox News' Glenn Beck falsely claimed that "only 3 percent" of the Democratic economic stimulus plan would be "spent in the next 12 months." Beck's figures were based on a partial Congressional Budget Office cost estimate that excluded faster-moving provisions in the bill. According to the CBO's full cost estimate of the bill, 11.2 percent of the $816 billion bill would be spent in the first seven-and-a-half months after the bill is enacted, and, when including the bill's tax cut provisions, $169 billion -- or 20.7 percent of the bill's total cost -- would take effect in the first seven-and-a-half months.

5)  Glenn Beck attacks stimulus bill over things he doesn't understand. On his Fox News show, Glenn Beck again attacked the recovery act by citing a provision he did not understand. Beck stated that the final version of "[t]he spending bill, clean of earmarks, has ... $800 million for carbon capture projects." Meanwhile, on-screen text read: "$800M to Carbon Capture Project: What Is That?"

Beck previously attacked an earlier version of the bill by citing a similar provision he said he did not understand. The final version of the bill appropriates $800 million for the Department of Energy's (DOE) Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) Round III Funding Opportunity Announcement, which, according to the agency that implements it, is "seeking to partner with industry to demonstrate the next generation of technologies to capture and sequester ... carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power generation facilities." Yet, as Media Matters for America previously noted, in June 2008, Beck criticized "liberals in Congress controlled by the radical environmental special interest groups" for "block[ing] clean coal technology." For those of you who don't know, Clean Coal Technology is a pet issue for conservatives wanting to look like conservationists.

6)  On the Auto industry bailouts, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that "the average UAW United Auto Workers worker" earns "[a] hundred and fifty-four dollars ($154) an hour if you look at - you know, if you add in all of the benefits." In fact, a recent Barclays Capital analysis reportedly found that U.S. automakers "pay an average of $55 an hour in wages and benefits to hourly workers.

7) Bobby Jindal:  The stimulus includes] $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring". The truth: The stimulus bill does not allocate any high speed rail money for specific projects. In fact, any stimulus money for high speed rail would be allocated by Obama transportation secretary Ray Lahood-a Republican.

The 'volcano monitoring' part is almost as misleading. According to ProPublica, the relevant portion of the stimulus money is for "U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities." It seems obvious that employing geologists, building facilities, buying equipment, and paying people to map the country all have a stimulative effect. But more importantly, why does Bobby Jindal think monitoring volcanoes is a bad thing for the government to be doing? There doesn't seem to be any immediate way for private enterprise to profit from monitoring volcanoes (maybe selling volcano insurance?), but there is obviously a huge public benefit from making sure volcanoes are monitored: warning people if a volcano is going to erupt. Isn't that obvious?

8)  The Omnibus spending Bill:

Republicans are now railing against the Omnibus Spending Bill, having delayed passage just long enough to make their talking points. What they won't say is that first of all, total earmarks account for .09% of the Omnibus bill and were held, as REALLY promised by President Obama, to 1994 levels. Of that .09%, 40% are Republican earmarks. In fact, 5 of the top 3 and 6 of the top 10 earmarkers are Republican. The minority leader has more earmarks than the majority leader. Their holding up this bill "on principle" as they state, rings hollow and blatantly hypocritical.

The list of lies and hypocrisy goes on with no end in sight. Republican Senator Patrick McHenry has actually admitted in a recent article in the National Journal that their strategy is not to come up with anything constructive, but to obstruct at every turn for the sole purpose of marketing the conservative cause.

"We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. "Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint."

If you think that your Republican elected officials are in it for "Country First", you are sadly mistaken. A new campaign of lies and hypocrisy has begun. This is the tried and true Republican political M.O. we've seen time and again. The same methodology and ideology that sank this nation is doing it's best to keep it down for its own selfish purpose. I wonder who will believe it this time?