NYT Columnist: Thank You Very Little, Democrats

Uber liberal NYT columnist, Charles M. Blow, “congratulates” the left for their ghoulish attempts to link the right to the Tuscon massacre.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

[…]

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Paul Krugman, last seen flailing for air in said pit, could not be reached for comment.

 

NYT Delusional Headline Of The Day

House G.O.P. Leader Signals He’s Open to Obama Tax Cut

Welcome to Bizarro World.  Or, more appropriately, welcome to a failing Democratic president and party heading into the midterms.  According to the New York Times, the Bush tax cuts are now Obama’s tax cuts.   More proof the rump swabs at that paper will stop at nothing to portray Obama in a positive light.  This is the same paper that railed against ALL OF the eeeeevil Boooosh tax cuts for the last eight years and now it’s all good? 

So, according to their logic, letting the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 expire must be the Obama Tax Increase, right?

Delusional New York Times Headline Of The Day

After a net loss of 54,000 jobs in August and an uptick to 9.6% unemployment, this is the headline in today’s New York Times:

Growth in Jobs Beats Estimates, Easing Concerns

Oh really?  Whose concerns were eased exactly?  At least the author didn’t completely skip the pesky 54,000 lost jobs as Obama did in his Rose Garden comments yesterday.  Hot Air notes Reuters also got the talking points:

However, Reuters unexpectedly finds this to be good news:

U.S. employment fell for a third straight month in August, but the decline was far less than expected and private payrolls growth surprised on the upside, easing pressure on the Federal Reserve to prop up growth.

Nonfarm payrolls fell 54,000, the Labor Department said on Friday as temporary jobs to conduct the decennial dropped by 114,000.

Private employment, considered a better gauge of labor market health, increased 67,000 after a revised 107,000 gain in July. In addition, the government revised payrolls for June and July to show 123,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

So we created 40,000 fewer private sector jobs and the unemployment rate went up, and that’s a surprise on the upside? That’s mighty fine spin by Reuters … and completely expected.

Lipstick on a pig.

Peals Of Laughter Broke Out In The Briefing Room

It wasn’t supposed to be funny, but members of the White House Press Corps couldn’t help themselves.  They were reacting to the following statement from Robert Gibbs:

“This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”

It looks as though the love affair between Obama and the reporters who cover his administration has soured.

President Obama and the media actually have a surprisingly hostile relationship – as contentious on a day-to-day basis as any between press and president in the last decade, reporters who cover the White House say.

Reporters say the White House is thin-skinned, controlling, eager to go over their heads and stingy with even basic information. All White Houses try to control the message. But this White House has pledged to be more open than its predecessors – and reporters feel it doesn’t live up to that pledge in several key areas:

— Day-to-day interaction with Obama is almost non-existent, and he talks to the press corps far less often than Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush did. Clinton took questions nearly every weekday, on average. Obama barely does it once a week.

— The ferocity of pushback is intense. A routine press query can draw a string of vitriolic emails. A negative story can draw a profane high-decibel phone call – or worse. Some reporters feel like they’ve been frozen out after crossing the White House.

— Except for a few reporters, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs can be distant and difficult to reach – even though his job is to be one of the main conduits from president to press. “It’s an odd White House where it’s easier to get the White House chief of staff on the phone than the White House press secretary,” one top reporter said.

— And at the very moment many reporters feel shut out, one paper – the New York Times – enjoys a favoritism from Obama and his staff that makes competitors fume, with gift-wrapped scoops and loads of presidential face-time.

And he hasn’t held a press conference in over ten months.  The next one should be very interesting. 

Gates Memo To Obama: Your Iran Nukes Policy Is Useless

It appears as though Gates wasn’t buying the whole outreached hand for the unclenched fist theory.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, touched off an intense effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a revised set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

I feel so much better.  Don’t you?

A side note:  I don’t condone the New York Times leaking this highly classified information whatsoever, but you have to wonder about the hissy fit that Barry, Gibbsy et al must be having over the betrayal by their number one cheerleader in the press.

I Love The Smell Of Hypocrisy In The Morning

James Taranto busts Paul Krugman for being for the Senate filibuster before he was against it.

From yesterday’s WSJ Best of the Web Today:

“The big step by extremists will be an attempt to eliminate the filibuster.”–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 29, 2005

“We need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. . . . So it’s time to revise the rules.”–former Enron adviser Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 18, 2009

Paul Krugman, extremist.

Confirmed: Maureen Dowd Has Officially Dropped Her Basket

In her column today, Maureen Dowd says that she just knows that Rep. Joe Wilson wanted to follow up his “YOU LIE” shout during Obama’s speech to Congress with the word “boy.”  Because, according to the NY Times’ resident dolt, all Southerners are paranoid racists.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

and

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

I’m from Boston so I must be a racist, too.  You know, that whole busing thing.

This will be the meme for the rest of Obama’s presidency; disagree with The One and you are a racist.  It’s getting old and it will fail.

So much for being post-racial.