If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman Fries” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Paul \”The Little Professor\” Krugman, who in his column \”We\’re Not Greece,\” notes: This tells...

Ronald Brownstein at the National Journal: If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. That comparison comes with many footnotes and asterisks. But it shows how the economic debate between the parties could look very different over time — perhaps by November, more likely by 2012. More important, the comparison underscores the urgency of repairing an American job-creation machine that...

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman Fries” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Gail \”The Colander\” Collins, who in her column \”The Annals of Arlen,\” writes: (Martha Coakley,...

Oops? The Republican vying for Rep. Jerry McNerney’s seat in California’s 11th district, Brad Goehring, posted the following to his Facebook account yesterday: If I could issue hunting permits, I would officially declare today opening day for liberals. The season would extend through November 2 and have no limits on how many taken as we desperately need to ‘thin’ the herd. Of course, he claims it was a joke. And, maybe he didn’t hear about the last few times conservatives made “shooting at liberals” jokes. The post has been deleted, so maybe figured it out. But, as...

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman Fries” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s was a little difficult: both columns were a little dry, and neither said anything ridiculous. So, I\’ve...

It will surprise no one to hear that Ross Douthat makes me mad.  He makes me mad because his views are stupid, and because he doesn’t seem to believe in things like “data” or “facts,” and he also makes me real mad at the NYT Op-Ed page for hiring him in the first place.  As Amanda Marcotte aptly points out in her takedown of Douthat’s column yesterday, his writing typically concludes with a take-home message “so factually incorrect that the newspaper ought to run the correction alongside it.”  Marcotte and Rachael Larimore are currently hashing out the...