Political Hack Paul Krugman Says Never Mind the Facts

Jared Lee Loughner is an anarchist psychotic who seemed to have had a personal vendetta against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since 2007. But this has not stopped the left from immediately blaming Sarah Palin for her "Targeting Map" and/or the political rhetoric from the right in general. The left wing's political hack, Paul Krugman is crossing his fingers and praying he can make a nexus to the Republicans saying, “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was….You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.” This of course has no basis in fact at all. But the left uses this propaganda, where the same lie is repeated over and over until it is hopefully believed. The left has also tried to fan the flames, trying to create the impression that the right has been perpetrating toxic hate speech, when in reality it is nothing of the kind. The problem is the political rhetoric of right, while not hateful, has been very effective, so the left has been trying to portray the speech as something harmful, with the anticipation that at some point a violent incident like the Arizona shooting will occur, so they can blame the violence on the right and respond with their prepared narrative. The problem here is it looks like the left has jumped the gun and will be unable to show the casual effect they were hoping for; but it will not be for the lack of trying.

One of the key players in blaming right wing rhetoric for this horror is Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the man leading the investigation into the shooting in Arizona. In an interview with Fox’ Megyn Kelly, Sheriff Dupnik first berates Republicans with "We see one party trying to block the attempts of another party to make this a better country," then places the blame squarely on the right wing TV and radio. "There are a whole lot of people in this country who are very angry about the politics of people like Gabrielle," Dupnik said. "There was a lot of vitriolic statements made night and day on radio and TV about her support of health care, about her support of some of the other things, and some of the vitriol got .... a lot of people agitated." But when asked if the sheriff had discovered anything in his investigation that suggested that Loughner was "listening to radio or watching television and was in any way inspired by what he heard or saw?" Dupnik said no. So no facts to back up any of his accusations, just partisan rhetoric. What he didn't say was, while Gabrielle Giffords was a target of the Tea Party, she is a Blue Dog Democrat, who's conservative views on the 2nd Amendment and Border security is what won her her reelection, despite voting for Obamacare. If the extreme right was going to target a democrat for assassination, Ms Gifford would have been far down on the list. Further, Lounghner also killed Federal Judge John Roll, who was known for his respect for the Constitution and states right; also not an obvious target of the right. What is beginning to emerge, however is a pattern were Dupnik ignored numerous complaints about Loughner's volatility and is now trying to lay blame elsewhere to divert attention from himself.

But as Byron York from the Beltway Confidential remarks in his article, Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings. The title alone says volumes as it speaks of the hypocrisy of the left.

"But the question is, is there any evidence that the suspected shooter in this particular case was a Sarah Palin fan, read Sarah Palin's website, was a member on Facebook, watched her tweets, or anything like that?" "None at all," (congressional reporter Jessica) Yellin responded. "And there is no evidence that this was even inspired by rage over health care, broadly. So there is no overt connection between Sarah Palin, health care, and the [shootings]."

In an exclusive interview with Mother Jones, a friend of Jared Lee Loughner, Bryce Tierney, said Loughner once asked Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at a rally “What is government if words have no meaning?" Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."

Still Krugman won't let it go. In an Op-ED piece Climate of Hate Krugman, rather than apologize for his earlier blog statements, he wrote, "It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate." In other words, there is simply no nexus between the shooter in Arizona and the Tea Party or any political rhetoric for that matter, but I'm going to try and make one anyway. He goes on to say, " Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? (What does that matter if it's irrelevant to the shooting?) Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right (as one of my favorite bloggers Krugman is Wrong responded to this,"the left will just keep saying it over and over again, like they said the Tea Party protests were violent despite no violent action ever taking place").

Krugman continued, "It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P." Of course Bachmann was referring to be being armed with information that would be dangerous to the Democrats energy bill, but how about candidate Obama saying, ""If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun?" Krugman is so oblivious here he can not even comprehend how, while trying to demonize his enemy, he is demonizing himself and the Democratic Party. But never mind that. The left had been anxiously waiting for this moment and were "locked and loaded" with their replies (oops my bad). With no evidence, no facts, no information to contradict that Jared Lee Loughner is anything other than a psychotic killer, or that he was even aware of Michele Bachmann's political rhetoric or even who she is, Krugman becomes that which he professes to so concerned about, the toxic purveyor of political hate. Krugman is everything that is wrong with politics; even with all partisanship aside he is simply dishonest. And Americans despise a liar.