Krugman's PEST

I used to get irritated by people like Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd. OK, let me be honest. People who have absolutely no regard for the truth make me very, very angry.

So, I basically stopped reading their columns long ago.

Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that Krugman has blatantly lied yet again (is the sky blue?) and John Podhoretz at the The Corner noticed.

This just gives further proof that the "intellectuals" of the Left have never really been able to get over the 2000 election. Remember PEST? PEST was one way to describe the psychopathology of the Left after the 2004 election results came in giving Bush a decisive win. I considered it yet another way that they could wallow in their victimhood, a state they enjoy being in, for the most part.

But the 2004 election only added insult to injury. The contested results of the 2000 election were singularly traumatic because the Democrats, having rarely read the U.S. Constitution, were stunned to discover that the Founding Father's had provided a way to prevent geographically small, but populous parts of the country from dictating to the rest.

But the Left also desperately wanted to cling to the belief that Gore really "won" in Florida. Many said that when the matter was studied it would prove this belief.

Of course, when the matter was studied, it proved the opposite.(also here) That is why news accounts of the results didn't make it to the front pages. What paranoid wants their precious delusion proven wrong? The Democrats and the Left moved on, with an completely new set of delusions to keep them occupied and victimized, never having admitted the truth even to themselves.

Somewhere in the deep, dark reaches of Krugman's addled brain, there must be just the teensiest flicker of shame over the fact that such a bald-faced lie would make it into his column. I know I maintained that we are primarily a "guilt culture" rather than a "shame culture"--but jeez, experiencing just a little shame at such a blatant distortion of the facts would be soooo psychologically healthy.

I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

UPDATE: Podhoretz has more here and here. One quote:

Merely by pulling up the New York Times's own electronic morgue at his desk, Krugman could have avoided making the mistake of claiming that Gore was ruled the winner in two independent media counts. If he didn't, he's lazy. If he he did, he's spectacularly dishonest. And he doesn't strike me as lazy.