Paul Krugman is not holding back, and good for him! Have the Republicans no shame? Does it take an Economics professor to finally stand up and say, the way the Tea Party Republicans are acting is truly un-American?
But watch out! The right wing propaganda machine is going to get really wound up over this one, and their politically correct speech police (thou shall not criticize Republicans) will be screaming about the outrage of calling a Republican un-American.
Here's what Krugman said.
The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.
...
Back in 2009 climate skeptics got hold of more than a thousand e-mails between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia. Nothing in the correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety; at most, we learned — I know this will shock you — that scientists are human beings, who occasionally say snide things about people they dislike.
But that didn’t stop the usual suspects from proclaiming that they had uncovered “Climategate,” a scientific scandal that somehow invalidates the vast array of evidence for man-made climate change. And this fake scandal gives an indication of what the Wisconsin G.O.P. presumably hopes to do to Mr. Cronon.
If you mention NAZI and anyone in the same sentence, the outrage from both parties will quickly dismiss anything you have to say. But just because Eisenhower built America's interstate highway system based on the NAZI Autobahn, it doesn't make him a NAZI. Just because the American military copied the rocket designs of the NAZI military, it doesn't mean our military are NAZI's. And just because the Republican Oligarchs have built a finely tuned propaganda machine with it's own TV, radio, and newspaper networks, that rivals that of Germany in the 1930's, it doesn't make them NAZI's, but it certainly makes them un-American.
The Republican party has become nothing more than a misinformation megaphone to manipulate those who are too lazy to do the work to become the informed citizens that our founding fathers intended. The Republican elected officials are at war with the middle and lower classes of America in an effort to keep most Americans economically dependent on the ruling Oligarchs. Their tools are lies, money, intimidation, voter suppression, and manipulation.
Through the most ridiculous anti-citizen rulings of the conservative Supreme Court, to the crushing of any government help to the most needy of Americans, the Republicans repeatedly act against the many, for the benefit of the few.
Remember, the American revolution was not started on the grand premise of democracy for all over the birth right ruling of a single man. It was an economic revolution, when the ultimate Oligarch (king George III) decided to crush America's middle class by taxing them into poverty, the revolution began. The only difference today is there is more than one Oligarch, and rather than taxes to crush the middle class, they use the tools of a modern economy to steal the last material things that make a modern life bearable.
The Declaration of Independence declared the "pursuit of happiness" as an unalienable right. Living in unpayable debt, poverty, jobless with no hope, and having sickness with no care, most certainly will prevent the pursuit of happiness. And yet this is exactly what the Republican policies are doing to millions of Americans and they know it, and they don't care.
Is trying to crush the middle class and the poorest among us for the benefit of the wealthiest among us un-American? Are Supreme court rulings that directly put the citizens of a country at an elective disadvantage to the corporations of a country un-American? Are trying to prevent citizens from voting un-American? Is creating a huge media propaganda machine to misinform the public un-American?
You're damn right it is!
Update: Just noticed another Krugman diary very well worth the read:
Krugman and the Smears of the Cracked Teapot Party
Obviously Krugman is on to something here.