Please feel free to post your own refutations of this column -- which, incidentally, is remarkably silly even considering the source.

I should note two things: The political reporter Byron York states that the Democratic voters quoted in the poll mentioned above were involved in the nominating process and only small percentages of them rated homeland security or fighting terrorism as primary concerns (i.e., number one or number two from a list of options). Obviously this group does not include all "loyal Democratic voters" in those states, although I'd be surprised if polls taken of larger subsets of loyal Democratic voters yielded substantially different results.

Also, a re-reading indicates that the term "anti-American" wasn't directly connected to Michael Moore by Mr. Krugman or anybody else he quoted in the column, although it's certainly implied that Michael Moore is part of the large group of Democrats that Mr. Krugman claims is characterized in that fashion. Joe Klein is quoted saying Michael Moore exhibits a "hate-America tendency." Judging from Michael Moore's public statements (both in America and overseas), that seems almost incontestable.

Paul Krugman wrote that Enron was "bigger" than 9/11.

My guess is that "most" would think that moonbattery. Probably upwards of 85% of the general public.

And, of course, Krugman cashed his $50,000 check from Enron and was probably impressed by the company's pace-setting style, back in the days of Clinton (1999, I believe).

Who's this "esteemed Mr. Judd" character that Matt speaks of?

Jim in Chicago:

I believe that the 'esteemed Mr. Judd' is the evil twin of Orrin Judd. You know, the guy who loves soccer.

It sounds better than "esteemed Mr. Anglosphere" or "esteemed Mr. Violently Anti-Soccer."

Paul Krugman is a silly moonbat. Unfortunately there are too many donkeys that walk in lockstep with this jack ass.

On a side note, I would like to thank you guys for this blog. It has become my favorite. I am very impressed on how prolific, consistent and entertaining it is.

The real issue is that few politicians on either side seems to know enough about war and history to be a good war leader.

The one quality that everyone seems to lack is an understanding of how to maintain morale during wartime. Although the situation in Vietnam and Iraq is very different, I believe that essentially George W. Bush and Rumsefeld is making the same mistakes as LBJ and McNamara - treating the war too much as a technocratic exercise, not mobilizing the populace, and excessive claims that victory is around the corner that has destroyed their credibility.

Strangely for me, the only President who seemed to have done a good job of that was the first Bush. Although he made severe mistakes in how he ended the war, his prosecution was superb and kept the country very united. Future Presidents would do well to study how he (and others) did that.

Chris,

The way he did it was simple. The media supported him and wrote the truth about what was going on. The MSM of today forgot how to do that. All they know how to do is print anything that is anti-Bush and under the circumstances precisely how do you expect the government to get the message out? Unless the government takes over some of the media so that they can report their version of the truth. Without that, then we just have to hope that the troops keep supporting the president and the population of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the majority of the country continue supporting the troops. Krugman, Herbert and the rest of the Pinch Sulzberger crew are doing all they can to bring this president down and will do anything to do that regardless of what it does to the country.

I really do wish Krugman and Herbert would try to prove all the statements they spout. When they fail, and they surely would fail, then maybe the country will have a chance to win this war and beat the terrorists.

dick:

Did you see the 'debate' between Krugman and Bill O'Reilly (on some show like Russert's)? Krugman stumbled all over the place and looked terrified most of the time. Bill was angry and it showed (most of the time). At one point, I thought Krugman was going to dive under the table.

Those guys from the Times won't go anywhere they might get challenged - they are too scared. They stay in Manhattan and expect oohs and aahs.

Pinch must feel that he is saving the world, because he is destroying his newspaper.

Actually, the "Esteemed Mr. Judd" is the owner of a vanity blog with pretensions of impartiality, where 90% of the content, like his book, is someone else's words, and where the comments are edited or deleted to prevent anyone saying anything cleverer than he, or making any arguments contrary to his prejudices better than his.

One must speak very, very well of such a host if one wishes to stay a poster on said blog.

Ptah:

Wrongo.

* There are no -- repeat no -- pretensions of impartiality.

* Most of the content is someone else's words because OJ knows blogs where people simply talk about themselves are frequently boring. This isn't the celebrity circuit.

* People say clever things and OJ keeps them up all the time. Most of the stuff he deletes is offensive. And when he deleted a Robert Schwartz comment some time ago that struck me as relatively mild, Mr. Schwartz emailed some BroJudd posters to let them know he was quitting the blog. I emailed OJ and let him know I thought deleting his comment was a bad move.

* I called him the "esteemed Mr. Judd" because I think he's a good guy and I wanted to be polite.

Ptah:

By the way, your post is still up, isn't it?

Matt: I assumed you called him the esteemed Mr. Judd to yank his chain.

David Cohen:

Well, a little of that too. Note my earlier defense of myself in post #5. ;-)

*sighs* I'm a programmer who used to use Moveable Type for my own blog: individual authors use separate log-ins, and receive e-mail copies of comments to their articles. Other authors don't get e-mailed, so Orrin would not get an e-mail of my comment in THIS post, which was written by you. And unless he has your password, he can't come in and delete that, or any other comments made on posts that he DID NOT post, like the ones I've done here. He won't know about these comments unless he reads this in the same way I do. With comments on his own posts, I've seen him remove them within five minutes.

His edits are a bit more pernicious: he'll edit a comment to make the commenter look dumber or more of a racist, or blunt the force of it to make it easier for him to answer. Do I have proof? Yes, I do, and when I hinted on how I got it, I was temporarily banned.

Were they offensive? Depends on your definition of offensive, but I'd rate Orrin as Islamist in what he calls offensive. I'd be glad to show them to you. I just wish I had the time to post them, with commentary, on my own website.

By islamist, I mean having a low tolerance for anything that makes him look less than brilliantly witty and clever.

I had wondered what happened to Robert S.

The problem with arguing (with the proprietor) in these comments isn't that stuff gets deleted or altered - it's more that people believe that they can really change his mind. Somebody who blogs is very unlikely to say "I was wrong". I think I have seen a mild version of that statement twice in roughly 2.5 years here, which is more than for almost any other blog I read. Some, like Captain Ed or people like Lorie Byrd, apologize when they make factual errors in their analysis, but Orrin doesn't post like they do. Others, like the lamentable PoliPundit, just screech when challenged. Orrin doesn't do that, either. He one-lines 'em to death.

Of course, if a commenter is grinding his own ax, that isn't going to help matters. I think we can all can recognize people in our lives who remind us of the more strident commenters here.

Ptah:

He ought to know my password, since he sent it to me when he first invited me to sign up and post articles, and I've never changed it.

I know that OJ occasionally edits stuff in the ways you mention. I haven't always agreed with this but he's always been upfront about it.

M email is:

HailVarsity@hotmail.com

You can certainly send me anything you want to.

*bows* thank you Matt. I am rather occupied at the moment and will need a few days to not only upload the evidence, but stitch together a commentary to explain it and put it in context. I had premonitions that I should have done that earlier, but I am still in the learning stage of getting used to newly acquired capabilities, and continue to blunder on when I should pause and reconsider.

For instance, I overrode that premonition when I typed in the word "impartiality": I confess to feeling rushed when I typed that in, because I had relatives just arrive. After sleeping on it, I feel that the word "tolerance" was a better word, but probably still not the best. But I stand by the "vanity" word: there are many ways people stroke their egos, only one of which is writing a blog about oneself.

Oh, and change your password: Until you said you didn't change it, he would have assumed you did. Now he knows.

But then again, he'll hardly delete it now, since you embedded a reference to it. Deleting it, without changing YOUR comment, would cue people into realizing something was up, because you referenced a comment that wasn't deleted, but there'd be no record of that comment, meaning that the deletion HAD taken place.

And thanks for that link to the policy on comments: I was looking for one on the masthead when I first suspected he was deleting comments, and was wondering if I HAD violated a guideline.