NYT's Paul Krugman Proves Once Again Why He is Always in the Running for AssHat of the Year.

Paul Krugman - Two Time Winner of Diogenes' "AssHat of the Year" Award

Hillary's 'Email Thing Doesn't Rise to the Level of a 'Scandal.' 

NewsBusters

Paul Krugman's Monday New York Times column hit all of the sweet spots that make liberals smile, defending both President Obama and Hillary Clinton while bashing President Bush and the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. And what of the Democrats? Well, Hillary's "email thing doesn’t rise to the level of a 'scandal.'" Meanwhile, "the modern GOP is basically anti-rational analysis; it’s at war not just with the welfare state but with the Enlightenment."  

Plus: Last week, after being annoyed that he was being treated by some as a partisan hack, despite his stellar "analysis and track record," he insulted libertarian economist Stephen Moore on his nytimes.com blog. 

After claiming Monday that none of Obama's alleged "Katrina" moments were disasters after all, and marking Obamacare as "a huge success," he turned viciously on the tenure of President George W. Bush.   

"Beyond that, Katrina was special in political terms because it revealed such a huge gap between image and reality. Ever since 9/11, former President George W. Bush had been posing as a strong, effective leader keeping America safe. He wasn’t. But as long as he was talking tough about terrorists, it was hard for the public to see what a lousy job he was doing. It took a domestic disaster, which made his administration’s cronyism and incompetence obvious to anyone with a TV set, to burst his bubble...."   

On Hillary Clinton keeping sensitive government documents on her personal server while serving as Secretary of State, well, that doesn't even deserve the term "scandal." 

"I know, now I’m supposed to be evenhanded, and point out equivalent figures on the Democratic side. But there really aren’t any; in modern America, cults of personality built around undeserving politicians seem to be a Republican thing. True, some liberals were starry-eyed about Mr. Obama way back when, but the glitter faded fast, and what was left was a competent leader with some big achievements under his belt – most notably, an unprecedented drop in the number of Americans without health insurance. And Hillary Clinton is the subject of a sort of anti-cult of personality, whose most ordinary actions are portrayed as nefarious. (No, the email thing doesn’t rise to the level of a “scandal.”)...." 

An August 28 blog post at nytimes.com found the esteemed-economist turned Democratic hack in an arrogant and defensive mood, calling the tech elite "stupid" for failing to see the badness radiating in waves off the Republican Party and its medieval mindset. 

....In fact, policies that the tech elite support, like carbon taxes, are supported only by the left wing of the Democratic Party; the entire Republican Party is controlled by climate denialists, and anti-science types more broadly. And in general the modern GOP is basically anti-rational analysis; it’s at war not just with the welfare state but with the Enlightenment.  

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Cheetos vs. Strawberries: NAACP Attempts to Explain Man Made Global Warming Racism

 The Genius of Black America's Leadership

Global warming is why cops arrest black people who break the law. Global warming causes black children to get suspended from school for misbehaving. Global warming is why it’s easier to get Cheetos than strawberries in black neighborhoods.

Note: No Government Cheese was Harmed in the Making of this Post

DownTrend

Madeleine Taylor is Executive Director of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP. Today she wrote a column for Cleanenergy.org, in which she tries to make the case that man-made global warming is racist. I know, it sounds crazy enough already, right? There’s actually much much more lunacy to be had. It turns out the NAACP has an official policy concerning global warming and one of the “racist” impacts they claim is the lack of strawberries.

Here is what Taylor says is the NAACP’s position on man-made global warming:

"Climate Change is about Katrina, Rita, and Ike devastating communities in Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, Climate Change is about our sisters and brothers in the Bahamas who will be losing their homes to rising sea levels in the coming few years. Climate Change is about people in Detroit, Ohio, Pennsylvania..."

Yes, because we all know that no white people live in the Gulf Coast region and therefore they did not feel the impact of the aforementioned hurricanes. And of course there’s no white people in Detroit, Ohio or Pennsylvania. Okay, I’ll give ‘em Detroit.

"Climate Change is about sisters and brothers in West Virginia who are breathing toxic ash from blasting for mountain top removal. Climate Change is about our folks in Thibodeaux, Louisiana who are being forced to move within the next 10 years because rising sea levels will result in the submersion of the coastal land that is their home currently."

So far the NAACP rant is trying to take things that happen to everyone and make it seem like they only affect black people. Essentially they are saying it rains harder on black people than white people. If that doesn’t seem crazy enough, there’s this:

"It’s about the fact that race–over class–is the number one indicator for the placement of toxic facilities in this country. Climate change is about the fact that in our communities it is far easier to find a bag of Cheetos than a carton of strawberries."

The only thing I can think of is that blacks have become so accustomed to blaming all of their problems on racism that now that they think global warming is racist. They are throwing in every grievance they can.

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Bayou Renaissance Man Just Thinking Out Loud

A Presidential election hypothesis . . .

Just thinking aloud here. Bear with me.

FIRST: Donald Trump seems to either scare the crap out of, or piss off, most of the Republican Party establishment. So far, so good. Anyone who does that to those ***holes can't be all bad.

SECOND: I suspect the Republican Party establishment will move heaven and earth to nominate anyone but Trump as that party's Presidential candidate for 2016. They'll use every trick in the book, and a few that no-one's ever written down, to accomplish that. They want someone they can control, who'll parrot their message and be faithful to the moneybags that fund them.

THIRD: I suspect Trump will be pissed off enough that he might just do a Ross Perot and run as an independent candidate for the Presidency.

FOURTH: I suspect most Democratic Party establishment figures now agree, whether openly or not, that Hillary Clinton is 'damaged goods'. She's carrying so much baggage, actual and potential, that she can be taken down by any one of a number of scandals spinning out of control. She's also 'old guard' Democrat, out of step and out of touch with a growing liberal/progressive surge (that's behind the rise of Elizabeth Warren and other further-left figures).

FIFTH: I suspect the Democratic Party establishment will move heaven and earth to nominate an 'old guard' Democrat (for example, Joe Biden) as that party's Presidential candidate for 2016, because they're afraid of someone they can't control. Elizabeth Warren is unlikely to get their nod, as is anyone wanting to move out of the path set by President Obama (who's been reliably controllable on most issues).

SIXTH: I suspect an 'establishment' candidate will piss off enough Democrats that an independent left-wing candidate becomes a real possibility. What about Michael Bloomberg? He, like Trump, can afford to spend what he likes of his own money to get into the White House, and raise a middle finger to the establishment in doing so. He'll also attract a lot of left-wing/progressive support, particularly if he asks Elizabeth Warren or someone like her to be his running mate. The liberal urban enclaves, where most Democratic voters are concentrated, would be a shoo-in for them.

So, we may see a match-up between two main political parties AND two independent, rich, self-made candidates who don't care what their respective party establishments think - a four-way fight. Wouldn't that be interesting? Both Trump and Bloomberg have very high name recognition, and very large pools of voters who are probably favorably disposed towards them. I wouldn't be surprised if both of them polled higher than the 'establishment' candidates in an election - and with 'spoiler' candidates on both sides of the fence, the result would be very hard to predict.

The 2016 elections might become a whole lot more interesting than I'd thought . . .

(Bayou Renaissance Man)

A Good Monday Morning

The Perfect Product

Pretend you’re the scam artist. You’ve found the perfect product. 
Your product is invisible, nobody can see or taste it. You don’t need to hire employees, because you don’t need to make your product,  it's already made. You don’t need to ship your product because it's already everywhere. No shipping or handling.

Your product never fails because it’s fictional. Nobody can publish a review of your product, since they can’t actually touch it. This protects you from the pesky folks at Consumer Reports. They can’t road-test your product and find flaws, because your product doesn’t exist.

Getting billions of people to buy your imaginary, non-existent product is like getting them to feed a unicorn. They never actually meet the unicorn, but they pay each day and pay extra when you announce the unicorn is “sick.” If they refuse to give money for the unicorn, you pass laws (taxes and fees) forcing them to. Then, you heap guilt on top – since anyone NOT feeding the unicorn is bad.

Everyone's A Customer.

Most scams target a person or group. But Global Warming targets everyone on earth because everyone breathes air and uses electricity. If you don't live in a tree house, you're using gas/electricity for heat. And everyone owns a light bulb. Since these things are “sins,” the crooks get you – just for being alive.

In short, Global Warming scammers sell an invisible product thats everywhere and used by everyone.

It's the perfect scam.

When folks discover the scam, the thieves change its branding from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change.” This way, their sales pitch covers everything that could possibly happen. Socialists know that “Green is the new Red.” In other words, if they can’t sell you Communism, they’ll gain control via Environmentalism. So government tells us cars/people are making the planet hotter and demands trillions in new taxes to “fix” this problem.

The notion that governments scam you is troubling. So troubling, that most folks don’t want to think about it or worse yet, do anything about it. Since you wouldn’t murder your neighbor, you have trouble imagining other people murdering their neighbor. Yet every year, a handful of people, for various reasons, murder their neighbor. It keeps happening even though you have trouble imagining it. This tendency to assume “what’s true for me is true for others” makes sense in many cases. But in some cases, that belief is totally false. 

Con artists exist. And some aren’t after your wallet – they’re after everyone’s wallet.

Complete Text of Obama's Statement on the Houston Police Officer's Execution:

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

* No Tuxedos Required *

Pulled from the comments - H/T BluesJunky