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Paul Krugman – Dishonest Jerk

Paul Krugman is one of the most maddening columnists alive today. He’s an unabashed liberal, which is fine. Except that he constantly denigrates Republicans and conservatives for being deceitful, dishonest and hypocritical. The problem with his criticism is that it is a major case of the pot calling the kettle black.

The following is from a post on The Corner at NRO quoting from a James Taranto piece in the Wall Street Journal which illustrates his most recent utterance of hypocritical blather.

James Taranto has a great take-down of Dr. Krugman today. Apparently the conscience of a liberal is schizophrenic:

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.”What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view—but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics“:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

As John Hinderaker points out in this post at Power Line, “…only the existence of Frank Rich prevents Krugman from being the world’s worst columnist”. My only modification would be that Thomas Friedman would also prevent Krugman from holding the title.

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Ah…The Virtues of Tolerance

I always love love it when people preaching “tolerance” throw out quotes like the one below from Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter).

“I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals,” he continued. “Now I am in the very fortunate position where I can actually help or do something about it.”

Yes, hatred is one of the hallmarks of the compassionate, tolerant individual.

The story the quote comes from is here. Now, what he’s supporting is actually a good thing – a group that provides a 24/7 suicide prevention hotline for the LGBT community. No one should be made to feel that ending their life is the only choice open to them. But the cognitive dissonance in statements like the one above always just drive me crazy.

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The Things That People Say – NPR Edition

I was listening to NPR this morning on the way in to work.

Now your first question is probably, “Why are you, an upstanding, conservative, Texan listening to NPR?” The answer is that I have grown so used to listening to talk radio during my commutes that I find it hard listening to anything else. On a normal day I would listen to the local sports talk radio station but on the weekends they usually pipe in a Sporting News Radio feed that I have little interest in. So NPR is my fall back and I usually find it’s smug snobbery amusing.

Anyway, I’ve always been fasinated by the dumb things that people say, especially when said on TV or Radio – where you would think that people would be on their A game since they know they’re being recorded. There were two episodes that made me do an audio version of a double take.

The first was on the program “HumanKind” which is a very touchy-feely new-agey show. The guest was Rob Warden who has been an investigative journalist and now works for the Center On Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. He dedicates his time to exonerating wrongfully convicted felons (a worthy cause, no doubt). He described all of the different cases he’s worked on in the last thirty years and then the interviewer asked what percentage of prisoners are actually innocent of the charges that put them there. Rob said that it was generally believed about 5%, but that a new study posits that it could be as high as 10%, and that he believed that 10% was probably close to the correct number. Later on in the interview he said that in all of his years covering police investigations he had never seen a competent police investigation. That’s when I did the double take. So let me get this straight Rob. In your opinion there are no police investigations in the past 20 to 30 years that have been handled compentently and yet you agree that there only 10% of the prison population that are innocent? The cognitive dissonence in those two statements is astounding. Can you really believe that there are no competent police investigations and that only 10% of the prison population is innocent at the same time…I guess if you work for Northwestern.

The second was during an NPR news segment. They had a guy on from an Information Technology think tank and he was commenting on Obama’s SOTU statements about China’s, Germany’s and India’s economic and technological growth and how those countries weren’t playing for second place. Then the president said that he would not accept second place for America (cue applause)! Well this guys says, “…I think the president is right, we should not accept being second to none and right now we are second to none…” The funniest part about it to me was that the interviewer let this guy go on saying “second to none” (he said it four or five times) without correcting him – she just left him out there flapping in the wind. I guess think tanks are scraping from the bottom of the barrell these days.

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Why Texas Is Better

The Wall Street Journal has a good article/interview with Rick Perry. In it he talks about how Texas has been able to sustain higher economic growth rates and employment amidst the sagging national economy and how fiscal conservatism is the GOP’s ticket back to the game.

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“Jeez-O-Peet” Is Funny

Man, I love Jonah Goldberg’s writing style and of course the content is dead on as usual. Heck, maybe I’ve found my soulmate! Here’s his take (from The Corner at National Review Online) on the ongoing sensitive stylings of the idiot that is Mark Sanford:

Memo To Mark Sanford: Man Up and Go Home [Jonah Goldberg]

I’ve not had much to add to what’s been said around here about Mark Sanford, and I still don’t have much new to say. But Jeez-O-Peet it’s time for this guy to step down. Go in the woods and bang drums, wear dresses at the shopping mall or become a Trappist Monk — whatever you need to do to get your act together on your own dime and on your own time. South Carolina, it seems to me, is not a state where politicians are expected to air out their “personal journeys” from the Governor’s mansion and I know the Republican Party doesn’t need to become an unseemly hybrid of est seminar, Plato’s Retreat and Bible Camp. Invoking King David as your inspiration for hanging around like a lech at a strip club after last call was stupid enough, but if you’re going to do that, you can’t start crying (again) about your Argentinian girlfriend or blathering on in a way that might cause John Belushi to descend from heaven just to smash your guitar against the wall. If stepping down makes it harder for the GOP or for some rivals to run for governor, Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care. You need to get off the stage.

The GOP needs to march to your office and tell you, “Look, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

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Is The First Amendment On Life Support?

If you need examples of how America is moving in the direction of our neighbors to the North and across the Pond regarding curtailing free speech and religious expression, look no further than the three below:

Obama’s administration is moving to “restrict criticism of stimulus projects” because, you know, the stimulus is so important and critical that it trumps your 1st amendment right to free speech.

And then there’s the hopsital worker in Mansfield, Texas. She has a daughter in Iraq and decided to display an American flag in her office on Memorial Day. But the flag “offended” one of her co-workers and the hospital made her take the flag down. It looks like the hospital has now apologized and let her put it back up, but the fact that they would have made her take it down in the first place is just ludicrous.

And finally, there’s this couple in San Diego who are being threatened with fines if they don’t shut down the weekly Bible study that they hold at their home every week for about 15 people.

I think this quote from Reagan sum up my thoughts best –

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.