Krugman Warns GOP Victory Will Prolong Recovery & Punish American Workers

Like many Americans I’m a little baffled by some Congressional leaders and candidates who seem to care less about the actual merits and long-term implications of policy decisions than they do about fueling voter anger and frustration to simply trash President Obama, denounce his agenda and shackle his efforts to help guide the nation back to fiscal health and create jobs.

Few grasp the implications of the Republican War on Reality better than Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton University professor of economics, author, columnist and one of the worlds leading economic thinkers. In an op-ed piece in Today’s New York Times Krugman pounces on conservatives who brand debt-relief and government stimulus as a “reward for the undeserving.”

Recognized as a leading liberal thinker, Krugman rarely shies from calling Obama out when he thinks the President is wrong.

At a lecture at Princeton University yesterday Krugman voiced grave concerns about how tomorrow’s election results could slow the pace of the economic recovery should months of angry Tea Party rhetoric, character bashing and misinformation about the real causes of the global economic meltdown push Republicans into slim majorities in the House and Senate.

Krugman calls out the "Hell No" Republican leaders who've offered blanket opposition to the Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy. Some of the same politicians who helped loosen regulations to permit large banks to lend at the unsustainable rates that drove us into the mess we find ourselves and fed the incessant global appetite to borrow and spend during Bush's two terms.

On the eve of a mid-term election Republicans seemed poised to further erode the crumbling middle class, vilify the unemployed and increase the federal deficit by insisting tax cuts for the wealthy are the magic pill.

Helped, Krugman warns, by fickle progressives who may step into the voting booth tomorrow and re-align with the GOP because they're upset that niche hot-button issues like GITMO, immigration, clean energy and same-sex marriage were pushed aside - helping to put the same people who bear a large responsibility for driving us into the Great Recession in the first place, back into office. Madness.

Happy Halloween from the KKK!

No those weren't men dressed in KKK costumes on the lawn of a Warrenville, South Carolina home on a recent Saturday night, nor was any pre-Halloween chicanery on the agenda.

The radical Tea Party's bank-rolling of perpetually pissed-off extremist candidates like New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is apparently bearing all kinds of fruit.

Dovetailing the movement's "us versus them" anger issues, the Augusta Chronicle reports the Warrenville Klan ceremony was the first KKK cross-burning made open to the public since 1985.

Newly anointed Duwayne Johnson celebrated his ascension as the new Grand Wizard of the All American Invisible Knights by welcoming three new members with a good ole' fashioned cross-burning.

Why bother reporting about a seemingly obscure branch of a fractured, decentralized bankrupt hate organization?

"We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage." according to Chip Berlet a veteran analyst of the radical right in the US.

Americans need to pay attention when cowards who put on hoods to conceal their identities while espousing hatred aren't scared to crawl out of the shadows. We need to remember this is the byproduct of divisive Tea Party rhetoric.

As millions prepare to dress up for Halloween parades and parties, it's important to be reminded that costumes like the ones pictured above ARE scary in terms of the dark legacy of murder, terrorism and racism they represent.