Paul Krugman's Damage

The New York Times is in a generous mood.

Times Select is celebrating "Free Access Week" from November 6 - 12. (This dispells the notion that the best things in life are free.)

I guess dramatically limiting the readers of their columnists' articles by no longer having them available online free of charge has had its drawbacks.Their message reaches a far narrower audience. They end up preaching to the choir.

So why was this week chosen to be Free Access Week?

I think The Times columnists are eagerly anticipating big wins for the Dems on Tuesday.

Accordingly, The Times libs want to gloat and gloat big.

The larger and more diverse the readership the better.

Courtesy "Free Access Week," Paul Krugman's latest column is easily reaching the masses.

What a treat!

His column, "Limiting the Damage," makes me wish that I didn't have access to the work of The Times columnists.

Life is better without them.

Krugman writes:

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

What a nut!

Krugman really hates President Bush. I get the feeling that he's counting down the days until he leaves office.

Whatever the results on Tuesday, Bush will be president for two more years.

Krugman needs to accept that reality.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

HAHAHAHA

Krugman is emphasizing that "scathing editorial" in The Military Times.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Rep. Tom Reynolds already discredited the significance of the editorial.

The Times is repeating the Russert lines.

Very lame.

Bush will do what he's been doing since the beginning of the war, listening to his generals on the ground and not paying attention to the retired ones brought out of mothballs to bash the President.

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

Krugman is exhibiting a trait often displayed by libs -- an uncontrollable urge to slip into psychobabble.

I think Krugman has been spending too much time with Maureen Dowd.

Krugman's depiction of Bush as the insecure bully worrying about undermining his manhood is just plain weird.

He must have consulted with dippy Dowd on that.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

Alas, Krugman sounds like a goof on a radical Left website.

What's missing from Krugman's analysis and conclusions?

REALITY.

The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism — almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied — may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America’s future.

Where does this guy get off charging Bush with cronyism?

Bill Clinton was King Crony.

...The public, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 and was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, seems to have figured most of this out. It’s too late to vote Mr. Bush out of office, but most Americans seem prepared to punish Mr. Bush’s party for his personal failings. This is in spite of a vicious campaign in which Mr. Bush has gone further than any previous president — even Richard Nixon — in attacking the patriotism of anyone who criticizes him or his policies.

Pardon my bluntness, but this is pure crap.

When has Bush attacked anyone's patriotism?

I am putting out this challenge again. Give me a direct quote citing Bush "attacking the patriotim of anyone who criticizes him or his policies."

You won't find one.

Krugman must have a guilty conscience. Perhaps he feels a tad...oh, I don't know, unpatriotic?

That said, it’s still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry’s botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I’ve got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.

The libs are the fiddle players.

Kerry didn't botch anything. He insulted the intelligence of the troops loudly and clearly.

Can't he hear himself talk? Didn't he realize that he had said something terribly out of line? Is the problem that he can't stand to listen to himself talk?

If he had truly botched a joke, he would have somehow covered up or immediately apologized for it.

Whatever, it wasn't too bright.

Moreover, the potential for vote suppression and/or outright electoral fraud remains substantial. And it will be very hard for the Democrats to take the Senate for the very simple reason that only one-third of Senate seats are on this ballot.

I don't believe this guy!!!

If Krugman is looking for voter suppression and outright electoral fraud, he need look no further than Wisconsin.

Read more here, here, here, and here.

What if the Democrats do win? That doesn’t guarantee a change in policy.

The Constitution says that Congress and the White House are co-equal branches of government, but Mr. Bush and his people aren’t big on constitutional niceties. Even with a docile Republican majority controlling Congress, Mr. Bush has been in the habit of declaring that he has the right to disobey the law he has just signed, whether it’s a law prohibiting torture or a law requiring that he hire qualified people to run FEMA.

I'm amazed that such trash is published by The New York Times. As Lefty as the paper is, I still expect just a bit of integrity and a grain of truth from The Times.

Just imagine, then, what he’ll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don’t have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a “cataclysmic fight to the death” if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas — which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush’s history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.

This is important to remember.

The Dems have no concrete plans for the country other than to attack Bush and members of his administration.

They claim investigations and impeachment are not a priority for them. That's a lie.

Three things are certain with a Dem congressional victory -- Death, higher taxes, and impeachment proceedings.

But here’s the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush’s ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That’s why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.

I am disgusted by Krugman literally blaming Bush for the deaths of American soldiers.

DEMS VOTED FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ. IF DEADLY MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE, THEN THEY MUST BE HELD RESPONSIBLE AS WELL.

And another thing--

Why is one-party rule an acceptable utopia when Dems are the party in charge?

Let's face it Krugman is a Dem operative, partisan hack.

Many Americans, myself included, will not be voting to give power to the Dems. We've seen the consequences of that -- higher taxes, a weakened military, and a disastrous foreign policy.