The assassination attempt yesterday in Arizona against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is terrible for the country. I followed the story closely yesterday. It’s been a crazy 24 hours on the news, blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook. There is a lot of embarrassment to go around today. Many partisans were quick to blame the attack on the “climate of hate” on the right. Just read Paul Krugman’s take on the attack not knowing anything about the attacker.
The thinking is simple on the left: The right is full of extremists and if there’s any violence in politics it’s most definitely going to be on right. Bill Maher made this case on his HBO show a few months ago. It’s beyond me why seemingly intelligent people like Maher make such ignorant comments. The truth? Violence is a universal human problem.
This author had the honor of working undercover with the FBI during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Several Left-of-Center activists made firebombs which they had intended to use on law-enforcement personnel and on Republican delegates. The FBI thwarted the plans. However, rather than express concern over the intended violence, the New York Times and the Huffington Post (among many others) immediately set out to control the narrative and to “minimize” any political damage from such Leftist extremism. The MSM decided to focus on the so called peace activists feeling betrayed and threatened by the government for having infiltrated their efforts, rather than the fact that such efforts spawned such violence. Never once did the MSM use the term “Leftwing Extremist” or even acknowledge that such violence was wrong. Never once did they mention that the FBI had prevented violence. They even went as far as promoting the erroneous claim that the government was to blame for the violence. Once the Leftist would-be bombers admitted their guilt, the MSM dropped the story and never denounced the intended violence.
Exactly. What about the Discovery Channel gunman? The Unabomber? The list goes on and on. Now I expect this kind of stupidity from people like Jane Fonda, but many on the left and in the media were quick to blame Palin just because a Democrat had been shot. The truth appears that the gunman, Jared Loughner, is no fan of anyone, especially Sarah Palin. He’s an anarchist who didn’t belong to any political philosophy. He is, quite simply, deranged.
Although if one “speculates” he was described as left wing by someone who allegedly knew him two years ago. Now that the truth is out I expect the left and the media to “urge caution” after all caution was initially thrown to the wind.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: During ObamaFest 2008 (otherwise known as the 2008 presidential election) then Senator Obama could do no wrong. Hanging out with former terrorists? No big deal. Spreading the wealth around? He didn’t really mean it. Attending a radical church? Nothing to see here, move on… The Daily Caller has some more JournoList revelations. This time, members of the group were trying to figure out how to spin the Jeremiah Wright story:
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
This is how these people think. It’s okay to slander people as long as the progressive agenda moves forward. Is it really that surprising then that Obama received the greatest media coverage in modern history? From the beginning I didn’t think it was possible for someone with such a lack of experience and ties to shady characters to get elected. I underestimated the members of the liberal media. It’s beyond me how any liberal can complain about the Right’s paranoia when it comes to mainstream news coverage.
Saint FDR: Historians are frothing at the mouth defending Franklin D. Roosevelt’s record during the Great Depression. Over the decades there’s been some kind of deification of Roosevelt’s policies during the Depression. The problem is that upon analysis the story doesn’t add up. Amity Shlaes has a point by point take on Conrad Black’s assertion that FDR’s policies saved the economy. I love Shlaes and I’m happy to learn she’s writing a biography about Calvin Coolidge. If she would only write one about Lindsay Lohan, then I’d really be stoked.
About Massachusetts: As a followup to yesterday’s post about the electoral college, I am so sad to learn that the popular vote legislation being kicked around in Massachusetts wouldn’t take effect until enough states have passed identical legislation. In other words, I won’t hold my breath waiting for this trend to sweep the nation. As an interesting side note, the Constitution actually calls for the election of electors, who would then cast votes for the President. The founders envisioned a true republic in which the only popular election was for the House. True wisdom.
Top Ten Most Left-Biased American Journalists: Big Journalism is doing a series on biased leftist journalists. One of my favorites, the indelible Paul Krugman is #3. The cartoon character Krugman is a hypocrite at best and at worst an ugly partisan hiding behind a Nobel Prize. “But he writes for the New York Times!?!” So what? Who cares?
That’s all I got today. It’s only Tuesday. Tuesday nights mean Hell’s Kitchen on FOX and endless Google searches for the latest on Lindsay Lohan. Now that’s my kind of entertainment.
As President Obama’s agenda crashes against a Gibraltar of unpopularity many liberal elites are trying to figure out what went wrong. Predictably, they’re looking in all the wrong places for the answer. The two most popular scapegoats are stupid Americans and evil conservatives. According to liberals there is no problem with the agenda since their intentions are as pure as the driven snow.
Krugman doesn't have time to understand alternative opinions.
Conservatives aren’t evil. No political philosophy is perfect; however, simply dismissing everything someone thinks just because one feels intellectually superior is dangerous. Gerard Alexander had a great article last week titled Why Are Liberals So Condescending? Alexander does a superb job of explaining the depths of this phenomenon.
This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will “open the floodgates for special interests” to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.
It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years’ worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: “What do these people really believe? I mean, they’re not stupid–life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth?”
Paul Krugman is a perfect example of this kind of thinking. The man is so partisan he can’t even see his own hypocrisy. It’s seems a bit naïve to point this out but not every liberal shares this worldview; however, this condescending attitude among elite circles is a lot more prevalent on the left than it is on the right.
Paul Krugman is such a sad fellow. His partisan rants in the New York Times make “progressives” feel good about their terrible economic practices. They think to themselves, “Krugman is an economist and he agrees with us, so we must be doing something right.”
Now Krugman is upset at Republicans for moaning about deficits. It seems he’s not very concerned about the growing debt:
Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates
That’s all well and good. Those crazy Republicans are just trying to scare the public like they did about Iraq. I wonder what Krugman thought about deficits during the Bush administration? Oh, I don’t have to wonder, Google enables me to search myself. Here’s Krugman’s take on deficits in 2003:
Still, do deficits matter? Some economists worry, with good reason, about their long-run effect on economic growth. But I worry most about America’s fiscal credibility.
You see, a government that has a reputation for sound finance and honest budgets can get away with running temporary deficits; if it lacks such a reputation, it can’t. Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger, as a share of GDP, than those that plunged Argentina into crisis. The reason we don’t face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order.
Well Mr. Krugman, which one is it? American fiscal credibility is much worse in 2010 than it was in 2003, but now he’s completely changed his attitude. It seems Krugman is only concerned with deficits when a Republican is in charge. Krugman’s observations aren’t from an economics standpoint, but they represent the views of a bitter hypocritical liberal quite well.
Does Krugman even bother to read his own drivel?
I deeply respect what Paul Krugman accomplished as an economist. His work in new trade theory earned a Nobel Prize in economics. However, he has become so partisan in his editorials that he is quickly diminishing his reputation. He was on This Week with George Snuffleupagus… I mean Stephanopoulos… and he claimed that in the climate change debate “there is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.” This ridiculous statement earned Krugman the Watts Up With That? quote of the week. I guess we can give Krugman a break since it appears climate change is not his area of expertise.
I wish that was the only problem with Krugman. Last week he wrote an article about the Tobin tax that was odd. It’s odd because for someone who is supposedly an intellectual giant in economics, he’s completely naïve when it comes to tax evasion. Greg Mankiw was left scratching his head after reading Krugman’s claim that financial transactions will not be moved if there’s a Tobin tax.
This is the danger of extreme partisanship, especially in regard to economics. Krugman is basically just endorsing whatever stupid new plan the Democrats come up with. From an economics perspective the Democrats don’t have many bright ideas right now. For Krugman I guess he’s decided to sheath the sword and just deal with the fallout. As long as the Democrats keep dreaming up new ways to tax productive people investors are going to quit investing. Until investors have confidence again the economy is going to stall. It seems like Krugman would understand this simple concept, but it appears he can’t see through his political blinders.
Conservatives must stand up against this tidal wave of liberal ignorance. Earlier this week James von Brunn shoots up the D.C. Holocaust Memorial Museum and immediately every major media outlet in the nation labels him a “right-wing extremist.”
You see, only people on the far right hate Jews (Rev. Jeremiah Wright excluded). I should note that Wright only dislikes Zionist Jews (whatever that means). Paul Krugman at the New York Times blames the shooting on the “right-wing extremism” that is “being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” This is typical “progressive” ignorance.
The fact is that von Brunn wasn’t a member of the “extreme-right”. Jonah Goldberg at the The National Review connects the dots:
Never mind that von Brunn isn’t a member of the far right. Nor is he a member of the far left, as some on the right are claiming. He’s not a member of anything other than the crazy caucus. Von Brunn’s True North is conspiratorial anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. He’s not a member of the Christian Right. In fact, he denounces Christianity — just as Hitler did — as a Jewish plot against paganism and Western vigor. Nor is he a capitalist. Again, just as Hitler did, he hails socialism as the solution to the West’s problems.
Still, if we are going to play this game where we take the words of politicians and pundits, compare them to the words of murderers and psychopaths, and then assign blame accordingly, then let’s blame the New York Times, Chris Matthews, left-wing blogs everywhere, and the academics who penned The Israel Lobby (which blames a fifth column of Israel loyalists for our troubles).
I don’t really care if leftist blogs like the Daily Kos can’t see the forest for the trees. Those are outlets that kneel at the altar of Left. The problem is that mainstream news outlets are stuck using outdated templates.
The first story I read about this shooting on CNN had already labeled the psycho as a member of the extreme-right. Liberals have been successful at painting the “far right” as offshoots of Hitler for far too long when the truth is a lot more complicated. The political spectrum is certainly a lot more diverse that far right and far left. I won’t hold my breath waiting for educated news because the press is invested in this narrative.
Putting aside other objections to that nomenclature, if von Brunn is a member of the far right, then it would be helpful and journalistically responsible if the press would start calling Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, et al., moderates and centrists. That won’t happen, because the whole point of these exercises is to paint the Right as an undifferentiated blob of evil.
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