Free Republic

As regular readers know, the game is all about forcing Krugman to admit publicly that he lied in his August 19 Times column when he declared the simple truth: “Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.” Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore. In truth, the media recounts, which looked at what would have happened if the Florida supreme court’s recount order had not been derailed by the U.S. Supreme Court, would have confirmed the win by George W. Bush under almost all recount...

The Fake Crisis Economist Paul Krugman explains Bush's latest con -- social security By ERIC BATES To hear George Bush tell it, Social Security is about to go broke. Since his re-election, the president has launched a full-scale campaign to convince the public that the retirement system will run out of money starting in 2018. "The system goes into the red," Bush told reporters on December 20th at a rare press conference. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is." Social Security, he concluded, "can't sustain that...

PRINCETON, New Jersey Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that Americans have a poor opinion of President George W. Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq. A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months - a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Bush's favor - has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche...

People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials weren't sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism. But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the halls of the Army War College. I was one of the few commentators who didn't celebrate Paul...

It was a merry Christmas for Sharper Image and Neiman Marcus, which reported big sales increases over last year's holiday season. It was considerably less cheery at Wal-Mart and other low-priced chains. We don't know the final sales figures yet, but it's clear that high-end stores did very well, while stores catering to middle- and low-income families achieved only modest gains. Based on these reports, you may be tempted to speculate that the economic recovery is an exclusive party, and most people weren't invited. You'd be right. Commerce Department figures reveal a startling disconnect between overall economic growth, which has...