Krugman is a doozy today. I am sure every lefty site will link to it, because KRUGMAN IS FIRED UP. THE LEFT NEEDS TO BE FIRED UP! It isn’t that their ideas many times stink, it is that they are NOT FIRED UP! IF you aren’t protesting everything the GOP does, you are part of the problem! They need to PUT THEIR OUTRAGE TO USE!
At any rate, the title is ‘Dereliction of Duty, ‘ and it goes down hill from their, claiming the administration attitude towards fighting terrorism has ranged from benign neglect to willful inaction. He even breaks out a quote from a former administration official who states:
“They’re making us less secure, not more secure.”
Presumably, this administration official is to be believed, because he is non-partisan and, of course, the most important qualification is that he is attacking a Republican administration. On the other hand, Dick Morris, George Stephanopolous, Gary Aldrich, Floyd Patterson- those guys are all damned liars.
At any rate, have fun at the orgy of Bush bashing this column will create. And remember, Democrats need to get fired up!
Kevin Whited
Oh yes, and the part Krugman left out — after he resigned, Rand Beers joined the John Kerry campaign as national security advisor.
Oh, and the other part Krugman left out — the guy is a registered Democrat.
Now, that’s fine. If he had such vehement differences with the Bush Administration on policy (and it’s clear he did), then the honorable thing to do was resign. But the mere fact he resigned doesn’t mean he was RIGHT about any of it.
Barney Gumble
My own working theory is that the Bush admin WANTS more attacks to happen-to keep alive the fear of a foreign menace used since time immemorial.
Funny how you couldn’t find a single error of fact in his column.
HH
Yet the party that took political advantage of the attack in Saudi Arabia was the Democrats. Hmm.
http://justoneminute.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_justoneminute_archive.html#200431684
http://justoneminute.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_justoneminute_archive.html#200431558
jesse
Hey, it worked for Republicans. Your ideas are God-awful, you’re just really angry and have a lot of people screaming everywhere. Imagine what liberals with good ideas could do.
The man on the side with all the lying screamers shouldn’t get too snarky about people raising their voices.
Dean
You know, if someone said that Dems believed what Barney wrote, they’d be accused of “demonizing” opponents, “questioning their patriotism,” and irresponsible accusation.
Wonder what that makes of Barney’s comment?
John Cole
Barney:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/truthsquad061703.asp
MonkeyPants
“Imagine what liberals with good ideas could do.”
1.) I’ve yet to see a liberal with a “good idea”
2.) Liberals with reactionary ideas have caused a lot of harm to this country. Go google ‘Great Society’.
Thanks, John, you beat me to it.
MonkeyPants
Imperial Falconer
HH
Mario Cuomo’s and Donahue’s “we write with quills” all over again…
Barney Gumble
HH: Neither of your links mentions Saudi Arabia, Khobar Towers etc.
John Cole: Luskins “Argument by Incredulity”, a long favorite of evolution deniers, doesn’t serve him well here. Is there something mysterious in that Krugman didn’t name the committee? Is somehow ‘last Thursday a house subcommittee met’ difficult to verify? Luckin obviously didn’t try to find out-just like his sole research on Sabo was a look at his web site..a real reporter could have called Sabo’s office..why didn’t Luskin?
It also seems Luskin couldn’t catch Krubgman incorrect about the lower budget..the best he can come up with is “there’s bound to be an FY04 supplemental request later on.”
Not your most impressive defense, John.
Monkeypants: “I’ve yet to see a liberal with a “good idea””
Next time you work more than 40 hours a week, feel free to refuse the overtime pay. Instead of sending your kid to school, chain him to a machine in a factory. Tell OSHA you don’t want your workplace free of chemicals and man-eating machines. Feel free to molest your kid too-there’s no child welfare any more. Hop in your Corvair and drive fast around corners. Remove the turn signals and seat belts from the Corvair. Drive it over a bridge that hasn’t been inspected since it was built. Stop at the drugstore and buy some laudanum (heroin) over the counter. Fire that guy from the county who makes sure that a full gallon of gas comes out of the pump, and there’s no water in it. Ditto the guy makes sure your favorite restaurant doesn’t have roaches in the chili.
Shall I go on? I could.
Robin Roberts
We know that you can go on, Barney, the problem is that like Krugman you go on and on devoid of factual basis.
FDL
Robin, here’s a fact for you. Since the creation of the EPA, rivers no longer burst into flame.
Dodd
The man on the side with all the lying screamers shouldn’t get too snarky about people raising their voices.
That’s true. So why are you kvetching?
Dodd
Wasn’t the EPA created while Nixon was President?
Can’t either of you come up with a *new* idea that’s good? You know, one that’s relevant to today’s political discourse. You know, like Kucinich’s Department of Peace. Something like that, only not incredibly silly.
Barney Gumble
“We know that you can go on, Barney, the problem is that like Krugman you go on and on devoid of factual basis.”
Are you denying the existence of restaurant inspectors, Robin? What exactly is non-factual? There really was an unsafe car called the Corvair. Children really were chained to factory machines. What exactly is non-factual, Robin?
Dodd: what do you mean by *new*? Conserving oil is an old idea but certainly relevant today. Free speech, religious tolerance and fighting corporate corruption aren’t new but they are relevant.
Or do you mean specific legislation like the 1998 Class Size Reduction? Or achievements like getting the Ukraine, Bazil and South Africa to abandon nukes?
Or do you want ME to come up with a new idea? How about revoke the citizenship of American CEO’s who incorporate their companies in Bermuda?
Barney Gumble
Hey, Calpundit did an even better evisceration of Luskin here.
HH
So Graham, etc. taking political advantage of the Saudi Arabia attack, aided by MoDo, requires a link? This stuff is common knowledge. My link was Tom Maguire’s evisceration of Krugman, which you conveniently ignored.
Barney Gumble
“So Graham, etc. taking political advantage of the Saudi Arabia attack, aided by MoDo, requires a link? This stuff is common knowledge.”
No, it isn’t.
And that minuteman bullshit is just that-bullshit.
“Krugman SEEMS to”, “of what seems to be the moment”, “…a possible source is this analysis…”
That’s some crack reporting, huh? Come back when you got a fact, Jack.
The ‘rubbing hands gleefully’ story sounds like bullshit too. Minuteman is the only source for this.
And STILL nobody has found a single error of fact in that column.
HH
Nice non-response.
You’re unaware of Graham using the Saudi Arabia bombing to attack Bush? You’re unaware of MoDo’s misquote which was repeated by Begala, Press, etc.? Somehow I doubt this.
Barney Gumble
How odd, I demolished Tom Minuteman McGuire and you ignored it.
Funny how it’s now you who has a “non-response”.
Your latest post is the 3rd time this thread you’ve failed to back up your Saudi Arabia BS with some links to source material.
HH
Believe it or not, “bullshit” is not “demolishing.”
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030522.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/13/bombings.reax/
Graham’s opportunistic statements were echoed by others.
Dodd
“How about revoke the citizenship of American CEO’s who incorporate their companies in Bermuda?”
A typically authoritarian-liberal response. How about, instead of doing that, we do something to make keeping businesses in America more attractive? Instead of all but pushing our most successful corporations out the door, how about we take notice of the incontrovertible – and ir-reversible – fact that the economy is truly global and conform our policy to reality? Lower taxes, rein in the excesses of the bureaucratic regulatory state, repeal the Davis-Beacon Act; things like that. Then we can keep more jobs at home, increase out competitiveness, *and* collect more tax revenue from companies we would otherwise drive out of the country.
Anyway, my real point is that almost nothing you specified is actually a matter of debate. We might quibble about tiny details at the edges of those things but if you really believe, for instance, that the GOP would abolish universal public education, restaurant inspections, and child welfare laws if not for the tireless efforts of well-meaning liberals then you, sir, are a complete idiot.
Likewise free speech and religious tolerance. In fact, liberal dogma on these rights is frequently at odds with their unfettered enjoyment (and don’t even get me started on “the right of the People to keep and bear arms”, property rights, or freedom of assembly). Corporate corruption, OTOH, was a boom industry during Clinton’s tenure. But when Ken Lay and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin called *this* Administration looking for some help, they were told no. So much for that one.
Which really only leaves you with conserving oil. I take it that’s an offhand proxy for ‘concern for the environment.’ I realize that it is part of the left-wing catechism that the Right would strip mine the whole country bare if not blockaded at every turn, but what’s *really* going on is a debate about how to balance the trade-offs between conservation and the requirements of human society. And *conservation*, I would remind you, has its roots in *conservative* tradition (hence the shared etymological root). The secular religion called environmentalism is *not* the same thing.
So, really, you don’t have any new ideas. What you have are one or two of John Stuart Mill’s ideas – ones with which some 99 44/100ths of the population agree and which, I’m sorry to say, were not incorporated into our law due solely to the efforts of liberals.
I read your comments here fairly regularly, Barney. It’s Mr. Cole’s site, so it isn’t my place to wonder why he puts up with you. But my impression is that, as a general rule you carp, complain, cast aspersions, sling vitriol, vomit bile, hurl accusations, and generally demonstrate the depths of your ignorance and the breadth of your hate. Out of the scores of your comments I’ve read, I could probably count the number that were actually constructive on one hand. You are genuinely civil only slightly less often. You call yourself a liberal but you seek only to destroy, not to build. That strikes me as decidely *il-liberal*.
Coles Clowns
On Maureen Dowd:
“Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore. (Applause.) And we’ll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the al Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn’t matter how long it’s going to take…”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030505-4.html
“Al Qaeda is on the run,” the president said in Little Rock, Ark. “That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”
But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/28/opinion/28DOWD.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
So you’ve got a misquote on the the 24th that was corrected in her next column on the 28th. This is your Liberal Arkansas project? Didn’t you read the updates at the spinsanity link?
—
Graham quote: Way to go, Graham. Since what you would call “taking political advantage of the Saudi Arabia attack” others would call “debating the important issues of the day”, it’s just your interpretation.
How in the hell this proves–your words–“So Graham, etc. taking political advantage of the Saudi Arabia attack, aided by MoDo, requires a link?”
What in the hell did MoDo say about the Saudi Arabia attack? Nothing-you just made it up.
—-
Dodd: “Lower taxes, rein in the excesses of the bureaucratic regulatory state, repeal the Davis-Beacon Act; things like that.”
This “race to the bottom” is UNWINNABLE by America, OK? We can never work cheaper than the Bangledeshi’s. We can never have lower taxes than Hong Kong. American employees will never be cheaper than Chinese prison labor.
“But when Ken Lay and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin called *this* Administration looking for some help, they were told no.” That was after the bankrupcy-how convenient that you forgot Kenny Boy and Bush’s entire previous history.
Start trying to be honest and I’ll take you more seriously.
Dean
Coles Clown:
Silly point: Dowd did not “misquote,” not by deliberately using ellipses to edit out words that FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE the meaning. Omissions that were sufficient to justify corrections by newspapers that used it. And no “correction,” just a re-citing of the same quote, this time w/o ellipses (and no mention of the previous, mistaken quote).
Serious point: The “race to the bottom” has little evidence to support it. Companies decide where they are going to site factories depending on a host of factors. Not just wages, but also tax policies, general infrastructure of the host country, level of education (and other related aspects) of the workers. Why did BMW build a plant in AL, rather than Brazil? Why is there so much foreign investment in the United States?
Yes, for low-skill jobs, we may well not be able to out-compete China. But so long as we engage in trade, that is going to be the case. That was true in the 1950s, relative to steel and Japan (although our current steel industry is far more efficient, having gone through painful reforms). Or cars (but would you prefer that we kept building the s***-jobs of the 1960s, or do you think that improvements in cars might have something to do w/ the competition from Toyota/Honda/Datsun-Nissan).
Or has free trade gone out your liberal lexicon as well?
HH
Try to follow here, Coles Clown – Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia.
Dodd
“This ‘race to the bottom’ is UNWINNABLE by America, OK? We can never work cheaper than the Bangledeshi’s. We can never have lower taxes than Hong Kong. American employees will never be cheaper than Chinese prison labor.”
They don’t have to be; they’re far more productive. But they still won’t be hired if we don’t make at least some effort to make staying here more attractive. That’s not a “race to the bottom,” that’s competitiveness. American businesses are not bottomless wells from which we can dip endlessly, Democrats’ apparent belief to the contrary notwithstanding.
“‘But when Ken Lay and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin called *this* Administration looking for some help, they were told no.’ That was after the bankrupcy-how convenient that you forgot Kenny Boy and Bush’s entire previous history.
Start trying to be honest and I’ll take you more seriously.”
Having you take me seriously is not very high on my list of concerns. Especially not when I remind you that Clinton’s SecTreas tried to get special favours for Enron and you respond with an error (that call was made *before* Enron declared bankruptcy, *not* after – he was trying to keep their credit rating from being downgraded, which turned out to be the last straw before they were forced to declare bankruptcy). But I’ll be generous and assume you did that out of ignorance, not malice. But the same cannot be said for accusing *me* of dishonesty for pointing this stuff out.
It doesn’t matter what relationship Governor Bush had with the CEO of one of his state’s biggest companies when that company was believed by all to be doing well. What matters is how he and his staff handled it when they were asked to bail them out. And we haven’t even mentioned the Congressional Democrats who refused to question Rubin when they had their little investigation. That you don’t give a damn about anything any Democrats did in this mess tells me everything I need to know about you. Your (anonymous) hypocrisy speaks volumes.
Barney Gumble
Despite your claim of Grahams every utterance being common knowledge, your blundering buffoon boy Bush renders the point moot. Thanks to the wails of the “how dare you criticize the President in a time of WAR!” crowd, many held back their criticism. (I didn’t). But since President Clever Hans strutted around the carrier Lincoln in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and declared the fighting over in EARLY May (5th? 6th?) and these criticisms come from LATE May, your snittage is irrelevant. Unless you would like to declare a permanent curfew on criticizing Der Freeper-in-Chief?
And since a quick search showed that Graham co-authored that Godwin’s Law Patriot Act, fuck that Godwin’s Law Graham. You keep him, he’s one of yours anyways.
And where’s a single error of fact in that Krugman column?
HH
Never mind the parade of misquotes that was one of his columns last week. Never mind his misleading statements in this column. Pound the table.
Last I checked, Graham had a D by his name and he was running for president with that D.
Barney Gumble
I just counted-that was your 7th post to this thread where you couldn’t name one error of fact.
A misquote is an error of fact.
Before you start, you are aware of the difference between a paraphrase and a quote?
You posted a bunch of fiskings of “Dereliction of Duty” on your site, you must have seen ONE. Go!
Zel Miller is a D too-that doesn’t make him one of mine either.
Dodd
I found one. He implied that the hearing was closed to the public on the grounds that “classified” information would be presented and reported that none was. In truth, the hearing was closed out of concerns over “sensitive” data which it might be harmful to national security to reveal. IOW, the committee followed a fairly sensible rule: err on the side of prudence when discussing the country’s “weak points.”
His failure to note that Beers is a registered Democrat and now a Kerry campaign advisor isn’t an error of fact but it borders on being a lie of omission. Those facts are rather important ones to know when judging how much weight to give to a statement as explosive as the one Krugman uncritically quotes.
But those won’t satisfy you. You’ll bend over backward to explain them away with some Clintonian parsing. So here’s a flat out lie: “[P]ort security, identified as a top concern from the very beginning, has so far received only one-tenth as much money as the Coast Guard says is needed.”
No. The budget request for *one* program that falls under the heading of “port security” (TSA’s Operation Safe Commerce Program) saw a significant decrease in the Administration’s funding request. I love how Krugman is only too happy to quote the precentages when it makes something sound scarier but totally ignores them and prefers actual dollar amounts when discussing tax cuts. In this case, it was a cut from 27.5 million to 2.5 million. So his 1/10 stat is correct – but only for that one program.
According to the TSA $265 million is being spent on port security in 2003, almost triple the amount spent in 2002. Krugman took a program that represents a tiny little piece of that total and that was obviously being shuffled into some other part of the bureaucracy and presented it as the whole pie. That not just an error of fact, it’s a bald-faced lie.
Barney Gumble
“He implied”. Dodd, could you at least TRY and figure out what a quote is?
“The subcommittee’s chairman promptly closed the meeting to the public, citing national security — though no classified material was under discussion.”
That’s a direct quote from “Dereliction of Duty”, Dodd, and there’s nothing implied about it.
“…has so far received only one-tenth as much money as the Coast Guard says is needed.”
What part of has so far received is unclear to you? A lot of things get promised in airy fairy pie-in-the-sky budget “requrests”. Here it is nearing 2 years since 9-11-2001.
has so far received Get it?
Henry, haven’t heard from you yet.
HH
“Error of fact” is now not anything misleading, a lie of omission, etc. I notice. The multiple problems have been noted and you keep moving the goalposts.
Again one of his previous columns included multiple misquotes as noted further down in Maguire’s blog. So he has made many errors of fact, quite a few of them well-established but suddenly this one column is all that “counts.”
Barney Gumble
So, you can or cannot name even one?
HH
Errors of fact that any objective person would have to concede have been named, you simply keep moving the goal posts and ignoring the points raised, etc. etc. We’re going around in circles.
Barney Gumble
“Because not putting all the facts out there IS an error of fact. Facts were left out by Krugman. End of story.”
Think you can live up to your own standards, HH?
You would *never* leave out facts, would you?
Who gets to decide what ‘objective’ is–you?
Barney Gumble
cricket…cricket…cricket