Danehy

From the Goldwater Institute to the Christian Right, Tom says you guys can suck it

Back in the day, the three worst things that a young guy could be were dishonest, disloyal and cheap. Now, as an adult, I realize that the worst thing you can be is a hypocrite. Alas, America is awash with hypocrites these days. Let's count down to the worst of the bunch.

5. The Goldwater Institute. These people dishonor the person for whom their cabal is named by wailing against government waste and then turning around and arguing that private contractors who get fat at the public trough by running quasi-public charter schools shouldn't have to explain where the taxpayer money went. Their logic(?): Not having to account as to how and where taxpayer money is being spent helps "streamline" (their word) the process and is therefore cost effective.

So, give me a whole bunch of money. I'll spend it, but I won't tell you what I spent it on and then you can trust me that I saved you money. Gee, I don't think so.

I don't know if there is any evidence that the late Senator Goldwater would have supported charter schools. But it's for damn sure that he wouldn't have been in favor of the use of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money without any accountability.

The Goldwater Institute people (who also have glaring conflicts of interest in this matter) are hypocrites on a grand scale.

4. The Wall Street Journal. This is truly one of the finest newspapers in America. I really don't care that it leans to the right (sometimes way to the right), it's well done. I have no problem shelling out four bucks for the weekend edition with its book reviews and political commentary.

However, WSJ Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker recently took the convoluted stance that his paper will not refer to lies that emanate from the Trump Administration as "lies." Baker said, "I'd be careful about using the word 'lie.' 'Lie' implies much more than just saying something that's false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead."

That deflection might work with common folk, but we're talking about somebody who, starting tomorrow (ugh!) will be one of the most powerful people on the face of the earth. He is surrounded by professional people whose job it is to tell him the truth. If he takes in the truth and then spits out the opposite, he is lying.

Maybe he could hire Ivanka to be his truth provider. When he's rubbing up on her in public, she could whisper, "Daddy, that's a lie ... and you're creepy."

3. Arizona Republican Legislators Who Claim to Care About Public Schools. Twenty years or so of breaking the law and attempting to squeeze the life out of Arizona's public schools contradict any words that come out of their mouths. They care about public education like Hitler cared about Hanukkah.

2. Congressional Republicans Who Used to Care About Budget Deficits. Remember these people? They're the ones who had both feet on the brake while President Obama was trying to use the tried-and-true method of stimulus spending to get the country out of the Great Recession. "Deficits bad!," they howled. But now that tax cuts for the super-rich and increased defense spending are going to ravage the budget process, all of a sudden these same people are saying, "Deficits no big deal." Hypocrites.

1. The so-called Christian Right. Y'all can take your Bibles and have a big ol' book burnin' because you guys are hypocrites by the millions.

Look, I get it. You didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton. (I said in this column that she was a bad candidate; however, your rabid hatred of her was a bit overdone.) You hated her politics. You hated her family. You believed to your tarnished souls that the Devil wears pantsuits.

But you didn't have to vote for Donald Trump. Conservative Catholics claimed that he is anti-abortion, but if he's telling the truth about that (and that's always a big "if" with that clown), he's only been holding that view for the past couple years. And not a whole lot of people actually come to Jesus in their late 60s.

Please don't blurt out your knee-jerk response to this question. Think about it and keep the answer to yourself. If you had to bet your rent money on this, do you think that Donald Trump might have paid for an abortion or two in his lifetime? Yeah, I think so, too.

The thing is, if you don't think that God wants a woman to be President, that's fine. But instead of voting for a woman, you chose to vote for somebody who brags about feloniously assaulting women? I don't get it.

You could have voted for the Mormon guy, Evan McMullin. Heck, you could have voted for the stoner dude from New Mexico. God would have forgiven you.

Instead, you voted for the guy who claims to be a billionaire but is so cheap, he stiffs minimum-wage workers and cheats creditors out of what is owed them. You voted for the guy who is disloyal to his fellow Republicans and for the guy who is so dishonest, he literally lies more often that he tells the truth.

That makes you conservative Christians the biggest hypocrites of all. You guys can just suck it for the next four years.