Can He Be Serious?

Thomas P.M. Barnett — self-styled strategic planner — has reacted to the latest bin Laden tape by posting this:

Not so much a warning as yet another offer of civilizational apartheid. Last spring Osama told Europeans they had 90 days to leave the Middle East or he promised to have all of them still there killed–one by one. This time he sounds a far softer note, in effect telling Americans it doesn’t matter who wins the election, there will be no peace until America “respects” the security of Muslim states in the region: “Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security.”…

Take Osama’s offer, America. In your heart, you know he’s right . . . about us. We’re a selfish, greedy country, full of guns and self-hating polemicists. We’re not built for this long-haul conflict. We just got lucky on the Cold War because it was led by the Greatest Generation. We don’t have that leadership now because we don’t want that leadership now. Bush is the most polarizing president in anyone’s memory, beginning to eclipse Nixon with this campaign. Neither he nor Kerry could ever hope to rule over anything but a severely divided and self-doubting nation after this election.

Take Osama’s offer, America. Let the self-healing truly begin.

Is he serious? Perhaps. There’s this:

If Kerry wins, it’ll be put up or shut up on Iraq, and most European experts expect a booming silence from the Old Continent come 3 November if winner Kerry starts speed-dialing his chums across the pond.

I think the last prognosis is a bit gloomy, reelecting the European tendency to want to weasel out of any difficult job as quickly as possible (but understanding their reticence on this one because it’s completely our doing). I don’t think Europe stonewalls Kerry because it really would create a backlash–hence the depressive fear of a Kerry win (Mon Dieu! Now we must actually help the Americans!).

Plus, I don’t think the price tag the Europeans assume will be so hard for us to meet will actually be that hard to meet. Here’s the list from the editor of Die Zeit, the hugely influential German paper:

(1) After Abu Ghraib, we have to promise to the world that we’ll be more careful in following the Geneva Conventions [Hell, I’ll throw in an apology if they’d like]

(2) That we work to dramatically reduce our own nuclear stockpile at home and not just tell others to stay away from WMD [Wow, that one would be really hard, wouldn’t it?]

(3) That we enter into serious discussions on how to fix Kyoto [Easy, get India and China into the treaty]

(4) “a return to a less arrogant tone of conversation” [Again, not exactly stressing]

That’s it! That’s the entire list to get Europe to come to the aid of the US in Iraq!

Tell me any of those is hard for Kerry, then tell me Bush is capable of making any of them happen.

And this:

…My point is this: the strategic despair is on our side (our troops decry: “My God, there’s too many of them to kill, we’ll never get the job done!”), when it should be on our opponents’ side (“My Allah, there’s too many of them to kill, we’ll never get the job done!”). So guess who’s talking about pullout and who’s talking about jacking up the effort?

The only way we effectively jack up the effort is to internationalize the military occupation force dramatically, plussing up our total numbers hugely. That’s how we’ll create strategic despair on their side: filling our ranks with New Core troops who have a long and bloody history of killing Muslims. We can generate that strategic despair in the minds of the terrorists fielding a team of almost exclusively European-descent countries. We need to change the occidental skin tone of this force and fast. Otherwise the terrorists think all they need do is wait out the Americans just like they waited out the Sovs in Afghanistan.

Any other talk of getting more aggressive in Iraq is complete bullshit. Ask any knowledgeable military officer who’s been there: there is no military solution to this situation—only a political one.

The question of this election is—therefore—who will get you that solution fastest and at the lowest cost? A nuanced and deal-cutting Kerry or the steadfast and full-of-certitude Bush?

That may well be the choice between winning and losing in Iraq.

And this:

…Here’s the interesting conclusion on foreign policy from these two*: they see the neocons as being a spent force, so the real question for Bush II is who rules the roost: the social conservatives or the anti-gov types?

My point is this: either way it goes, this administration will be sorely restricted in its ability to continue this global war on terrorism. That’s why I know Kerry will do better: not just the change in his tone, but the leeway offered within his party.

There’s a brilliant, all-knowing “strategic” planner for you. The world and its workings can be explained in glib, assured — if defeatist — tones. Barnett must be hoping for a slot in a Kerry administration,** so that he can wave his magic wand and transform the world into a place where Americans are beloved by Euro-snobs and Islamofascists. It’s all so easy to do — just surrender.

__________

* “‘Bushism’: This president has remade the politics of the right,” op-ed by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2004, p. A16.

** Or as a script writer for “The West Wing” — where every problem, no matter how complex or irrelvant to the legitimate functions of government, can be solved in an hour (including commercials) by wise, all-knowing, all-seeing President Bartlett and his merry band of genii.

Left-Wing Logic at Work

Lambert at corrente opines:

If OBL says 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other, and Kerry says 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other… That makes OBL and Kerry moral equivalents, right?

No, it simply shows that Lambert is stupid if not duplicitous. Osama admitted responsibility for 9/11 (no news there), but he didn’t say that it happened without help from others.

Nor does the case for regime change in Iraq hinge on Iraq’s degree of involvement in 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was — and is — a means of removing an avowed enemy of the U.S. and gaining a base in the Middle East. If Bush wins re-election, watch the dominos fall in Syria and Iran — both of which are assuredly sponsors of terrorism.

P.S.

It’s obvious that Osama favors a Kerry victory. Why else would he go to such lengths to try to discredit Bush and remind American voters that the “choice” is ours?

Does that equate Osama and the American left? It would by the left’s vilely strident, anti-war, anti-Bush rhetoric. But I won’t stoop to the left’s level of illogic. I’ll say only that some on the left sympathize with Osama’s ends and means because they’re essentially acting out a form of adolescent rebellion.

Restore Free Speech

The L.A. Times reports:

Stung by a radio campaign to oust veteran Rep. David Dreier, the National Republican Congressional Committee has filed a federal elections complaint. It contends that an ongoing campaign by a pair of radio talk-show hosts represents an illegal contribution to Dreier’s opponent.

That’s the Incumbent Protection Act — also known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) — in action.

Osama Parrots Michael Moore

In the newly released videotape bin Laden also says (via Drudge):

[W]e never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.

What was Bush supposed to do, don his Superman outfit, fly instantly to Metropolis, and perch all 50,000 (?) citizens on his shoulders? Or was he supposed to start barking orders left and right, without detailed knowledge of events on the ground and in the air? By the time he had learned all there was to know, it would have been too late to start giving orders.

In this country, we don’t wait for Allah or Premier Stalin to tell us what to do. We rely on free individuals and institutions to do the best they can do with the resources at their disposal.* That concept seems to be beyond the ken of religious and irreligious fanatics like bin Laden and Moore.

__________

* If the FAA and armed forces of the United States were less prepared for 9/11 than they might have been, the blame rests with Clinton as much as anyone. What was he doing on the morning of 9/11, and with whom was he doing it?

Bin Laden Threatens SUV Owners

That’s one of the implications of the newly released videotape made by bin Laden (or an actor), somewhere, sometime since the Dems nominated Kerry. Via Drudge, bin Laden says:

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doesn’t mess with our security has automatically secured their security.

In other words, America should get out of the oil-pumping lands of the Middle East and al Qaida will leave America alone.

I’m sure there are many left-leaners and pseudo-pacifists out there who 1) are ready to believe bin Laden and 2) ready to do the deal. Before they consider it seriously, however, they ought to think of what would happen to the price of oil and the state of the U.S. economy if we were simply to abandon the Middle East to bin Laden and his thugs.

Hundred of billions for defense, not one cent for tribute.

Who’s Got the Brains?

An article at Wired News asks “Dems, GOP: Who’s Got the Brains?” The gist of the article, if you read it closely, is that Dems tend to be more emotional than Republicans. As for who’s smarter, I answered that question when I wrote “The Right Is Smarter Than the Left.”

The Devil You Don’t Want to Know

TradeSports has opened contracts on identity of the 2008 Republican nominee. As of now, contracts are available for Tenn. Sen. Bill Frist, Ariz. Sen. John McCain, ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, Homeland Security Sec’y. Tom Ridge, Nat’l Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, N.Y. Gov. George Pataki, Colo. Gov. Bill Owens, Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, Va. Sen. George Allen, Neb. Sen. Chuck Hagel, and HHS Sec’y. Tommy Thompson.

Mostly big-government Republicans and RINOs, with the exception of Allen, who’s probably unelectable because of his “hard” image.

Libertarian Republicans need to get serious and coalesce around an attractive, small-government, pro-defense candidate. Are there any out there?

The Devil She Knows

Megan McArdle (aka Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information) has decided how she’s going to vote:

Kerry’s record for the first fifteen years in the senate, before he knew what he needed to say in order to get elected, is not the record of anyone I want within spitting distance of the White House war room. Combine that with his deficits on domestic policy — Kerry’s health care plan would, in my opinon, kill far more people, and cost more, than the Iraq war ever will — and it’s finally clear. For all the administration’s screw -ups — and there have been many — I’m sticking with the devil I know. George Bush in 2004.

And that’s only the conclusion of her long, perceptive explanation. Read the whole thing here.

Paul Johnson on Election 2004

Paul Johnson, a British historian perhaps best-known for Modern Times, assesses the stakes in the election of 2004:

The great issue in the 2004 election — it seems to me as an Englishman — is, How seriously does the United States take its role as a world leader, and how far will it make sacrifices, and risk unpopularity, to discharge this duty with success and honor? In short, this is an election of the greatest significance, for Americans and all the rest of us. It will redefine what kind of a country the United States is, and how far the rest of the world can rely upon her to preserve the general safety and protect our civilization….

…September 11…gave [George W. Bush’s] presidency a purpose and a theme, and imposed on him a mission….[H]e has been absolutely right in estimating the seriousness of the threat international terrorism poses to the entire world and on the need for the United States to meet this threat with all the means at its disposal and for as long as may be necessary. Equally, he has placed these considerations right at the center of his policies and continued to do so with total consistency, adamantine determination, and remarkable courage, despite sneers and jeers, ridicule and venomous opposition, and much unpopularity.

There is something grimly admirable about his stoicism in the face of reverses, which reminds me of other moments in history: the dark winter Washington faced in 1777-78, a time to “try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine put it, and the long succession of military failures Lincoln had to bear and explain before he found a commander who could take the cause to victory….[S]omething persuades me that Bush — with his grimness and doggedness, his lack of sparkle but his enviable concentration on the central issue — is the president America needs at this difficult time.

He has, it seems to me, the moral right to ask American voters to give him the mandate to finish the job he has started.

This impression is abundantly confirmed, indeed made overwhelming, when we look at the alternative….[T]here are six good reasons that he should be mistrusted. First, and perhaps most important, he seems to have no strong convictions about what he would do if given office and power. The content and emphasis of his campaign on terrorism, Iraq, and related issues have varied from week to week. But they seem always to be determined by what his advisers, analyzing the polls and other evidence, recommend, rather than by his own judgment and convictions….

…Second, Kerry’s personal character has, so far, appeared in a bad light. He has always presented himself, for the purpose of Massachusetts vote-getting, as a Boston Catholic of presumably Irish origins. This side of Kerry is fundamentally dishonest. He does not follow Catholic teachings…[and] since the campaign began it has emerged that Kerry’s origins are not in the Boston-Irish community but in Germanic Judaism. Kerry knew this all along, and deliberately concealed it for political purposes. If a man will mislead about such matters, he will mislead about anything.

There is, thirdly, Kerry’s long record of contradictions and uncertainties as a senator and his apparent inability to pursue a consistent policy on major issues.

Fourth is his posturing over his military record, highlighted by his embarrassing pseudo-military salute when accepting the nomination. Fifth is his disturbing lifestyle, combining liberal — even radical — politics with being the husband, in succession, of two heiresses, one worth $300 million and the other $1 billion….Sixth and last is the Kerry team: who seem to combine considerable skills in electioneering with a variety of opinions on all key issues. Indeed, it is when one looks at Kerry’s closest associates that one’s doubts about his suitability become certainties….[T]he man Kerry would have as his vice president is an ambulancechasing lawyer of precisely the kind the American system has spawned in recent decades, to its great loss and peril….

Of Kerry’s backers, maybe the most prominent is George Soros, a man who made his billions through the kind of unscrupulous manipulations that (in Marxist folklore) characterize “finance capitalism.” This is the man who did everything in his power to wreck the currency of Britain….He has also used his immense resources to interfere in the domestic affairs of half a dozen other countries, some of them small enough for serious meddling to be hard to resist. One has to ask: Why is a man like Soros so eager to see Kerry in the White House? The question is especially pertinent since he is not alone among the superrich wishing to see Bush beaten. There are several other huge fortunes backing Kerry….

I don’t recall any occasion, certainly not since the age of FDR, when so much partisan election material has been produced by intellectuals of the Left, not only in the United States but in Europe, especially in Britain, France, and Germany. These intellectuals — many of them with long and lugubrious records of supporting lost left-wing causes….

Behind this front line of articulate Bushicides…there is the usual cast of Continental suspects, led by Chirac in France and the superbureaucrats of Brussels….Anti-Americanism has seldom been stronger in Continental Europe, and Bush seems to personify in his simple, uncomplicated self all the things these people most hate about America — precisely because he is so American. Anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism, is not, of course, a rational reflex. It is, rather, a mental disease, and the Continentals are currently suffering from a virulent spasm of the infection, as always happens when America exerts strong and unbending leadership.

Behind this second line of adversaries there is a far more sinister third. All the elements of anarchy and unrest in the Middle East and Muslim Asia and Africa are clamoring and praying for a Kerry victory….[Bush’s] defeat on November 2 [would] be greeted, in Arab capitals, by shouts of triumph from fundamentalist mobs of exactly the kind that greeted the news that the Twin Towers had collapsed and their occupants been exterminated.

I cannot recall any election when the enemies of America all over the world have been so unanimous in hoping for the victory of one candidate. That is the overwhelming reason that John Kerry must be defeated, heavily and comprehensively.

(From Paul Johnson’s “High Stakes,” National Review, October 25, 2004. Thanks to The American Thinker for the tip, and to the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research for the complete text.)

Ray Fair’s Prediction

Yale econometrician Ray Fair, whose model of presidential election outcomes I have discussed here, has issued his final prediction for the 2004 election. He believes that Bush will get 57.70 percent of the two-party popular vote. If that were to happen, Bush would walk off with 461 to 518 electoral votes (explanation here, see method 3).

I see a much closer election, with Bush getting about 51 percent of the two-party popular vote and somewhat more than 300 electoral votes. I’ll issue a final prediction on election eve.

Al Qaeda’s Candidate…

…isn’t Bush:

No, my fellow countrymen you are guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You are as guilty as Bush and Cheney. You’re as guilty as Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Powell. After decades of American tyranny and oppression, now it’s your turn to die. Allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood matching drop for drop the blood of America’s victims. [al Qaeda operative “Azzam the American”, via ABC News]

So it must be Kerry.

The Illogic of Helmet Laws

Liberals love laws that require bicyclists and motorcyclists to wear safety helmets. The usual reasons:

1. Taxpayers defray the cost of emergency services that go to the scene of accidents.

2. The failure to use helmets results in higher health-care costs and, thus, higher health-insurance premiums.

Proposition number 1 isn’t universally true. But even if it were, so what? Accidents aren’t caused by the use or non-use of helmets. Almost any accident involving a bicyclist or motorcyclist will require emergency services, whether or not the rider incurs a head injury.

Proposition number 2 overlooks the fact that non-helmeted riders are less likely to require prolonged, expensive care — because they’re likely to die more quickly than helmeted riders.

That brings us to the real proposition — number 3: Bicyclists and motorcyclists should wear helmets for their own good. The insistence on helmet laws is simply another liberal pretext for telling others how to lead their lives.

Here’s a deal for helmet-loving liberals. If you’re a bicyclist (likely) or motorcyclist (unlikely), you can wear a helmet if you want to. In return, non-liberal bicyclists and motorcyclists will agree that you don’t have to sport an American flag on your helmet.

Peace in Our Time?

The European Union — an idea whose time has come and gone — is about to become as permanent as a modern marriage, with the signing of the EU constitution. Here’s the story from BBC News:

Heads of state from across the EU will be in Rome for the ceremony, to be held in the same room where Treaty of Rome was signed to establish the EU in 1957.

The ceremony will be held amid a row about the views of prospective Italian EU commissioner Rocco Buttiglione.

Incoming President Jose Manuel Barroso has withdrawn his entire proposed team and has hinted he may make changes….

A squadron of F-16 fighters is expected to enforce a no-fly zone over the city centre for the duration of the ceremony….

On Thursday Mr Barroso said he is considering making a number of changes to the commission, despite controversy focussing on Mr Buttiglione.

The Italian, a devout Catholic, has been widely scorned by MEPs unhappy at his views on a range of issues, including homosexuality and the role of women in society….

Although the constitution will be signed in Rome on Friday, member nations still have to ratify the document individually before it comes into effect.

Some clauses within the constitution have caused divisions in EU states, notably plans for an EU president and a change in voting systems.

Member states can choose to hold a referendum in order to ratify the treaty or to put the issue to a parliamentary vote.

A number of countries have chosen to hold a public vote, with the first scheduled for Spain in February 2005.

The memory of World War II — the impetus for the EU — was vivid at the EU’s inception in 1957. But thanks to Europe’s American-engineered peace and prosperity, a European war has become as likely as an outbreak of laissez-faire capitalism in France. The merger of European countries is no longer necessary to the future peace and prosperity of Europe, but the formalization of the EU will proceed because of pressure from the bureaucrats and politicians who stand to benefit from it.

I predict that the EU will dissolve — in fact if not in law — within 20 years. Moreover, I won’t be surprised if the union is dissolved by intra-EU disputes that lead to a European “civil war”. That would be the ultimate, tragic irony of Europe’s misguided attempt to secure a lasting internecine peace through an arranged marriage of incompatible partners.

Ballots for the Intelligent

Regarding the purportedly confusing Ohio absentee ballots, Eugene Volokh says:

…I think well-designed ballots should be understandable even by people of below average intelligence — there are quite a few voters like that, and one doesn’t want them to be confused, either. More to the point, ballots should be understandable by people who are intelligent but who are distracted, or who don’t invest much time in following directions closely….

Why should we tailor ballots to fit the needs of those who are stupid or distracted? If you’re too dumb or distracted to understand a ballot, you shouldn’t be voting. The loss of liberty can be traced to too much democracy (see here and here). Complex ballots might be an antidote for excessive democracy.

The Ketchup Lady’s Twisted Logic

THK sez:

The perpetration of certain myths that diplomacy and alliances are a sign of weakness is Neanderthal. I never heard of teaching a child to make enemies so they can get along in the playground.

And I never heard of teaching a child to believe that someone who lies to him or betrays his trust is an ally. But I didn’t have the advantage of Ms. H-K’s “liberal” education.

Remembering Paul Nitze

Paul Nitze died on October 19 at the age of 97. Most readers are probably stumped by the name. Here’s a bit of his bio, from Wikipedia:

Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 – October 19, 2004) was a high-ranking United States government official who helped shape Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations.

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Nitze attended the Hotchkiss School graduated from Harvard University in 1928. After working in investment banking, he enter government service during World War II. In 1942, he was chief of the Metals and Minerals Branch of the Board of Economic Warfare, until named director, Foreign Procurement and Development Branch of the Foreign Economic Administration in 1943. During the period 1944-1946, Nitze served as director and then as vice chairman of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey….

In the early post-war era, he served in the Truman Administration as head of policy planning for the State Dept (1950-1953). He was also principal author in 1950 of a highly influential secret National Security Council document (NSC-68), which provided the strategic outline for increased U.S. expenditures to counter the perceived threat of Soviet armament.

…In 1961 President Kennedy appointed Nitze assistant secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and in 1963 he became the Secretary of the Navy, serving until 1967.

Following his term as secretary of the Navy, he served as deputy secretary of Defense (1967-1969), as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) (1969-1973), and assistant secretary of Defense for International Affairs (1973-1976). Later, fearing Soviet rearmament, he opposed the ratification of SALT II (1979). He was President Ronald Reagan’s chief negotiator of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1981-1984). In 1984, Nitze was named special advisor to the president and secretary of State on Arms Control. For more than forty years, Nitze was one of the chief architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. President Reagan awarded Nitze the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 for his contributions to the freedom and security of the United States….

I met Nitze in 1965 when, in his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, he was gracious to a young analyst (me) whom the Commandant of the Marine Corps had called upon to make a dubious case for sending more Marines to Vietnam.

Nitze later served as a trustee of the defense think-tank where I was chief financial and administrative officer. He spoke seldom, but when he did he cut to the heart of the matter.

Nitze was a rare “public servant” who truly served his country. He was hard-nosed, non-partisan, and brilliant.

Nailing a Neo-Marxist

I read an online excerpt of Cornel West’s Democracy Matters several weeks ago, but I decided not to blog about it because I didn’t know where to begin. It is simply one of the worst pseudo-intellectual excretions I’ve ever stumbled into. Luckily, Will Wilksinson was willing to hold his nose long enough to deal with West’s waste, in an essay at Tech Central Station). Here’s a sample of Wilkinson’s take:

…A fellow professor once quipped: “Cornel’s work tends to be 1,000 miles wide and about two inches deep.” In a new book, Democracy Matters,…West promises to examine a triple threat to democracy: “free-market fundamentalism,” “aggressive militarism,” and “escalating authoritarianism.” Despite the occasional insight and illuminating connection, mostly we observe Professor West in his thousand-mile pool, out of his depth, gurgling in dropped names like a baby face-down in a puddle….

…Despite West’s intellectual posturing, Democracy Matters is a prime example of the quasi-intellectualism of the far left, a triumph of moralizing, name-dropping rhetoric over argument. West’s wide-ranging erudition is impressive, but nowhere provides a curious but skeptical reader with a reason to believe that the market does in fact have this kind of distorting effect on our minds, or a corrosive effect on democracy as it is less tendentiously understood. West engages no advocates of the free market, nor does he even deign to knock down straw men. Overestimating the world-making powers of language, West simply slaps negative labels on his opponents and declares victory. The choir is no doubt delighted.

That’s more than enough of Cornel West.

The Meaning of the Election

Virginia Postrel has it exactly right:

[A] Bush victory will be interpreted as public approval (a majority’s, at least) of his executive style and personality, of the war in Iraq, and of his economic policies, particularly the tax cuts. A Kerry victory will be interpreted as public rejection of Bush’s temperament, of the war in Iraq, and of his tax cuts and of his pro-business (and in some cases pro-market) policies.

I wish I’d said it.

Killing Two Birds…

…with one story, from The Washington Times:

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned….

So much for Russia. So much for Kerry and the Democrat defeat-mongers.

Next.

Cutting Krugman Down to Size

Donald Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid) really, really, really, dislikes Paul Krugman. Luskin responds to a reader who takes him to task for making an issue of Krugman’s shortcoming in the vertical dimension:

…Reader Vivek Rao asks, ” I’m on your side — the side of free enterprise — and try to help in the fight against Krugmanism. But I think that mocking his height is overly personal and detracts from your site. We dislike him because he’s a nasty, dishonest, socialist — not because he’s short. Right?” Fair question, and the answer is “yes.” I don’t dislike Krugman because he is short. But I do dislike him for more reasons than just that he is a nasty, dishonest, socialist (though I admit he is certainly all those things). Another reason I dislike him is his haughty, arrogant pose of infallibility — the snotty, condescending, know-it-all tone he assumes when he writes from the august pages of America’s newspaper of record. I do not intend to ever grant him the authoritativeness he pretends to have, or accord him any respect at all based on his pedigree or position. One way I can puncture his pedigree and position is to constantly show that this man is not the titan he pretends to be. As anyone knows who has seen him on television or in person, he is a short, pudgy, whiny, stuttering, shifty-eyed, ill-groomed, gray little homunculus. Keep that in mind when you read his New York Times columns — it puts everything in perspective. Am I stooping to name-calling? If I am, too bad. The emperor has no clothes, and I intend to keep calling him naked.

Saying that Luskin really, really, really dislikes Krugman is an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that Luskin loathes Krugman — and I empathize with Luskin. Krugman is a lying rabble-rouser of the first order. His presence on the op-ed pages of the Times speaks volumes about the prevailing mentality and standards of that once-great newspaper.