Paul Krugman

Times Watch’s end-of-year awards issue celebrates the best of the worst quotes that appeared in the paper or were uttered by Times reporters and columnists during 2011.

The New York Times spent much of the year in pro-Obama defense mode, excoriating the Tea Party and conservative opposition to Obama's agenda. Yet the paper found one movement it could embrace wholeheartedly – the leftist campouts known as Occupy Wall Street. And sometimes - as when China-loving columnist Tom Friedman spouted, "If this were China they would have walked to the game in the snow, and doing calculus along the way," Times journalism was just too ridiculous to take seriously. Paul Krugman made his usual sterling showing as well, using the tragedies of 9-11 and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to attack conservatives.

This year there were three categories of bias:

Back in 2008 and 2009, the Media Research Center’s year-end awards for the Best Notable Quotables were dominated by journalists fawning over the greatness of Barack Obama. In 2008, our winner for “Quote of the Year” was Chris Matthews for his on-air exclamation that upon hearing Obama give a speech, “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time it wasn’t hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical dynamite at anything that stands in the way of his radical worldview.

Krugman outdid himself for outrage in 2011. Every year the Media Research Center collects a panel of willing conservative journalists and talk show hosts and puts them on a  sickening roller coaster ride through the worst media bilge of the last twelve months to arrive at the Best Notable Quotables of the Year. Paul Krugman sat in the sulfurous center with three “bests.”

It's always interesting to see how the several thousand readers who voted in the MRC's "public ballot" differed from the 48 media experts who selected our Best Notable Quotables of 2011 (a panel which included talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Neal Boortz, Human Events editor-in-chief Tom Winter and Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby). This year, there were six categories where our readers and the judges disagreed -- although sometimes the margins were extremely close.

Let's start with the biggest disagreement, in the "Media Millionaires for Higher Taxes Award." By a healthy margin (68 to 53), our judges chose an April 17 quote from CBS's Bob Schieffer, as he was questioning Rep. Paul Ryan on Face the Nation: "Why do these rich people need another tax cut? I mean, they’re already rich....Why cut their taxes some more?"

Last week, MRC announced the results of our "public ballot" for the worst media quotes in 2011, sort of the "People's Choice Awards" version of our Best Notable Quotables of 2011. This morning, the official results -- chosen by a distinguished panel of 48 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers -- are in, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has won the dubious honor of "Quote of the Year."

On the morning of September 11, 2011, during the ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Krugman wrote on his NYTimes.com blog that conservative opportunists had "poisoned" the date: "The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”

You knew this was coming.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman - might he finally be realizing that our budget deficits can't possibly be solved by just eliminating the Bush tax cuts? - is now calling for marginal rates even higher than when Bill Clinton was in office:

Paul Krugman, who three months ago called for space aliens to invade earth in order to get the government to spend more money, attacked Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on ABC's This Week Sunday referring to the former House Speaker as "a stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

“Many [OWS] protesters say the lawless visitors constitute a tiny fringe and are not representative of the movement, which, they say, has espoused nonviolence and mutual aid. Some have suggested moving the kitchen area and the comfort station out of the park to discourage freeloaders from congregating there. But there are concerns that even if the criminal and antisocial elements are a small minority, they are becoming visible enough to tarnish the image of the entire group.” – From a November 6 story by Cara Buckley and Colin Moynihan.

vs.

“It was difficult, if not disingenuous, for the Tea Party groups to try to disown the behavior. They had organized the rally, and under their model of self-policing, they were responsible for the behavior of people who were there. And after saying for months that anybody could be a Tea Party leader, they could not suddenly dismiss as faux Tea Partiers those protesters who made them look bad.” – Reporter Kate Zernike on page 139 of her 2010 book “Boiling Mad – Inside Tea Party America.”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman may not be making a speech addressing the lefties at the anti-Wall Street camp-out in Zuccotti Park, but he visited on Thursday and blogged about it at nytimes.com Friday morning, “Trying to Unwarp the Debate,” concluding with a big wet kiss to the protesters: “Thank you, OWS." He also unleashed personal insults at the "clownish" and dishonest Rep. Paul Ryan, who dared submit a credible federal budget plan.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman appeared on Charlie Rose’s talk show on PBS Wednesday night to discuss the leftist-anarchist Occupy Wall Street movement against inequality. Krugman’s encomium to the movement (he recently turned down urgings by his lefty fans to speak at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan) begins around the 6 minute 45 second mark of the segment:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s Tuesday morning blog post no doubt left his hordes of leftist fans bereft: “Why I’m Not In Zuccotti Park.” That’s the space in Lower Manhattan that’s been occupied by the loose affiliation of leftist Wall Street protesters for four weeks running. The brief item in full:

It seems New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been better behaved than Tea Party attendees.

Read the following paragraph from Monday's "Panic of the Plutocrats" and you be the judge:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman showed his usual class when discussing Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, whose comprehensive budget plan calls for transforming Medicare into a voucher system in order to preserve the financially imperiled program and to trim the deficit. For his efforts, Krugman claimed that Ryan’s “voucher would kill people, no question.”

Krugman featured as a talking head in a CNN “Up Close” profile of Ryan by CNN journalist Gloria Borger that aired Sunday night.

[Video below the break.]

Classless Krugman on "Fake Heroes" of 9-11 like Bush

“What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.” – Columnist Paul Krugman in a blog post at nytimes.com the morning of September 11.
 

News Flash: Paying Taxes Now Voluntary, According to New York Times

“Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More Of Millionaires – Called ‘Buffett Rule’ – Populist Sales Pitch to Press the G.O.P. in Budget Talks.” –  Headline to lead story of September 18.
“President’s Plan On Deficit Mixes Cuts And Taxes – Foes See Class Warfare – Trimming Entitlements and Asking the Rich to Pay More.” – Headline to lead story of September 19.

In a Thursday morning post setting the table for last night’s Republican presidential debate in Orlando, New York Times chief “Caucus” blog reporter Michael Shear became the latest Timesman to falsely finger the Tea Party audience at a CNN debate last week as cheering on the prospect of letting a hypothetical man die for lack of health insurance.

Shear listed six things to watch for in Orlando last night. The last item:

The lengths Paul Krugman will go to further the lie that the rich don't pay their "fair share" of taxes knows no bounds.

In his New York Times column Friday, the Nobel laureate in economics claimed, "[T]he federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes":

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman just can't stop offending of late. Krugman confounded even liberals with his ill-timed blog post on the morning of September 11 decrying President George W. Bush and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as “fake heroes” in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. In his Friday column “Free To Die,” he suggested Republicans would prefer people die for lack of health insurance, using as evidence the dubious claim that the audience watching CNN’s Republican debate “erupted with cheers” at the prospect of a (hypothetical) man dying for being unable to afford intensive care. Has Krugman actually watched the clip?

Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan.

But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.”

Former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld has had a subcription to the New York Times for roughly 60 years.

As he told radio host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo Tuesday, he cancelled it as a result of Paul Krugman's "repulsive and repugnant" blog posting on 9/11 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, liberal media outlets and their members have been talking about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme since at least 1967.

Add New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to the list of detractors as demonstrated by something he wrote for the December 1996/January 1997 issue of Boston Review:

The outrage concerning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's disgusting comments on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 came from all quarters of the political arena Monday.

Never one to mince words, Fox News's Greg Gutfeld on "The Five" said what many Americans were feeling about this liberal sociopath, "Go to hell, Paul Krugman, you bearded, bitter buffoon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Paul Krugman wasn’t the only old soul at The New York Times who refused any urge to be patriotic on September 11. Former Times reporter Chris Hedges unleashed a tirade on Truthdig on Saturday. It was titled: “A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe.”  He began by suggesting coverage of 9/11 was sanitized by the Bush "lap dogs" of the press because the occasion “demanded images and stories of resilience, redemption, heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and generosity, not collective suicide in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and despair.”

Hedges lamented that the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks wasn't turning everything over to the diplomats to negotiate and apologize profusely for our support of Israel. He charged the 9/11 dead were exploited to "sanctify the state's lust for war," and the "plague of nationalism" took effect immediately, which is "anti-thought" and racist to boot. He really hates the people with big American flags:

On this solemn commemorative day, we at NewsBusters have made a point of holding our rhetorical fire against liberals as a gesture of respect to those who lost their lives that day and subsequently. There is much we could say and, starting tomorrow, will say.

An exception has to be made for one Paul Krugman, who seems, earlier life, to have been a decent and civilized person. Since he began writing a column for the New York Times, however, Krugman has experienced a veritable descent into madness, principally due to Bush Derangement Syndrome. Today, Krugman decided to proudly expose his neurosis for the entire world to see in an execrable rant on his Times blog. His post is preserved in full below:

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York Times reporters overcame enormous danger and duress to perform often-heroic feats of journalism, as proven by the Pulitzer Prize winning “Portraits of Grief” series, which commemorated the lives of every single victim of the terrorist attacks. But in the months and years that followed the paper reverted to partisan and liberal ways, even when the subject was the deadly attack on their hometown.

On Sunday the Times will print a special section marking the 10th anniversary of 9-11 (you can read it online now). In anticipation of the paper's commemoration, here’s a sampling of the paper’s years of slanted coverage related to the attacks.

Exactly what country does New York Times columnist Paul Krugman actually reside in?

Before you answer, consider the following sentence from his article Monday:

If it's Sunday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must be "saying something really stupid or outrageous."

On ABC's "This Week," the Nobel laureate told host Christiane Amanpour, "If Obama called for endorsing motherhood, the Republicans in the House would oppose it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It often amazes that liberals in this country revere New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as being an expert economist.

Take for example Friday's intellectually challenged piece entitled "Bernanke's Perry Problem" in which the Nobel laureate accused prominent Republicans such as the Texas governor and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan of preventing the Federal Reserve chairman from enacting monetary policy that would save the economy:

"[I]f you see me quoted as saying something really stupid or outrageous, and it didn’t come from the Times or some other verifiable site, you should probably assume it was a fake."

So marvelously wrote Nobel laureate Paul Krugman at his New York Times blog Wednesday:

Liberals like Rachel Maddow and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell often express their deep and abiding concern for the well-being of children. Well, most children anyway. Providing they aren't "hideous".

On her show last night, Maddow was talking about New York Times' columnist Paul Krugman suggesting that Americans should respond to our economic malaise as if threatened by invasion from outer space. Much the same idea has been expressed before, Maddow pointed out, citing an episode of the '60s TV show "The Outer Limits" and the graphic novel and movie "Watchmen" as precedents. (video after page break)

Oh those whacky liberals.

On Sunday's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," New York Times columnist - and, ahem, Nobel laureate - Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy (video follows with transcript and commentary):