The Tucson Massacre: Paul Krugman et al. Continue to Get Pounded
And rightly so:
Roger Kimball:
Loughner’s pistol was probably still warm when Krugman wheeled into print in an effort to make political capital out of the tragedy. “Assassination Attempt in Arizona” should join that rogues’ gallery of disgusting Times stories that wallow in the gutter of political innuendo and mendacity even as they preen themselves on their exhibition of holier-than-thou virtue.
The folks at Powerline instantly got to the crux of the matter with The Contemptible Krugman, noting that he was among the first to “seek political advantage from mass murder.” Krugman’s column, they show, belongs to the Lillian Hellman species of utterance as described by Mary McCarthy: everything he wrote is a lie, including “and” and “the.” “We don’t have proof yet that this was political,” Krugman begins, “but the odds are that it was.”
Charles Krauthammer:
Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.
[. . .]
. . . fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.
See also John Hayward, The Climate of Krugman. And don't miss Pat Buchanan, Poisonous Politics.
maverickphilosopher.typepad.com
The Climate of Krugman
The Paper of Record hits rock bottom.
by John Hayward
01/10/2011Trackback Link
Within hours of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, lunatic “economist” Paul Krugman raced to put up a blog post blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the attack. “For those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target,” said Krugman, “the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that ‘the whole Tea Party’ was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list.”
Somehow the New York Times left Krugman on the payroll after this disgusting example of mindless idiocy, and he’s decided to double down, expanding on his deep thoughts at greater length in an op-ed called “Climate of Hate.” With the publication of this editorial, the New York Times hits absolute rock bottom. Not only is it slanderous, and easily fisked by a six-year-old with a dial-up connection to Google, but it’s a perfect example of someone very deliberately trying to create a “climate of hate.”
“When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised?” Krugman begins. “Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?” After he approvingly cites Bill Clinton’s disgusting attempt to pin the Oklahoma City bombings on Rush Limbaugh, he says “you could see, just by watching the crowds at the McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again.”
Ah, so this whole “democracy” thing is just too dangerous for us benighted rubes, eh? Political opposition to the sainted Left is inherently illegitimate, and should be swept away. Let us pause to note that this is one of many times in his essay that Krugman demonstrates his near-complete ignorance of actual news, and conveys the sense he can’t be bothered with Google searches. If he had tried one before humiliating the Times with this op-ed, he would know that Jared Loughner, the Tucscon shooter, has been obsessed with Giffords since at least 2007, long before there were any McCain-Palin rallies.
Krugman throws out some vague allegations about “a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials.” Then he concedes “the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled,” BUT “that doesn’t mean his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.” Actually, yes, that’s exactly what it does mean.
“Something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence,” pontificates Krugman. Oh, and the Left bears no responsibility for that? They’re the ones who drop titanic mandates and mountains of regulation on American citizens. Their President has given us 20 months of crushing unemployment. They stole over $800 billion from us for “stimulus” pork and slush funds, and Krugman has gone on record saying he thinks they need two or three trillion dollars more.
The Democrats cranked up class-warfare rhetoric to a fever pitch during the lame-duck session of Congress, denouncing anyone who resists higher tax rates as greedy and unpatriotic. They bent over backwards to get miserable crooks like Charlie Rangel out of trouble with the lightest slap upon the wrist, flaunting their corruption in the face of a population boiling with impotent rage. When the president of Mexico denounced America on the floor of Congress last year, the Democrats rose to give him a thunderous standing ovation. But all this “climate of hatred” is coming from the guys on conservative talk radio?
“Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right,” Krugman asserts. Oh, really? How about the Democrat President? At various times during his Administration, Barack Obama has said the following:
If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. – June 2008.
I want you to go out and talk to your neighbors… I want you to argue with them, get in their faces. – September 2008.
I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry. – March 2009.
If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,” if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder, and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on November 2. – October 2010.
So none of that rhetoric contributes to the “climate of hate?” ......
Shall we step into the minor leagues, and talk about New Hampshire state house candidate Keith Halloran, who responded to the plane crash that killed Alaska Senator Ted Stevens by wishing Sarah Palin was on board? Another New Hampshire Democrat, Timothy Horrigan, was forced to quit the state legislature for saying “A dead Palin would be more dangerous than a live one” and “if she was dead, she couldn’t commit any more gaffes.” If that’s not good enough, we could take a step back into the fetid swamps of Bush hatred, when liberals actually made movies about assassinating him.
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