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Krugman and Friedman? Fuck yeah, New York Times! Jackpot!

After an embarrassing showing yesterday, the OpEd page comes roaring to life today with a subscription-justifying one-two hit of reasonable moderate liberalism and fiery moderate liberalism — Paul "Big Dog" Krugman and Thomas "Wife-Askin' Ass-Kickin'" Friedman. Gail, baby, you earned your paycheck today.
Is this what every day of TimesSelect will be like? Will they all be this exciting, this well-argued, this impressively mustachioed? Will it last forever? Will we stay together?

Find out, after the jump!

Ah, Paul Krugman. The furry li'l Princetonian's feeling a bit nostalgic today: "Remember the stock market bubble?" he begins. Oh, the fun we had! Then he kinda loses me. Housing bubble? I neither know nor care what that is. I live in a Gazebo in Fort Tryon Park, what do I know from housing bubbles? But Paul does his best to convince me it's important, quoting an expert in bubblenomics who says this "may be the biggest bubble in U.S. history." Sure, that sounds pretty big. But it's nothing compared to the biggest bubble in British history.
You know, Krugman kinda operates like local tv news. His job is to constantly tell you that the sky is falling, that we are so totally screwed, that you should be terrified to leave the house, except he does it with statistics instead of police sketches of black people. This is why he's so valuable — keep the people afraid, Paul! This is the biggest fucking bubble ever and it's gonna explode!! Ten points, Mr. Krugman. You've convinced me to be worried about something I don't understand.


Now, on to Thomas Friedman. Friedman is not in his usual jovial idiot mood. No, Friedman is downright pissed. Don't fuck with National Book Award-winning author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, man, no "world is flat" jokes or attempted explications of his tortured metaphors, no desperate attempts to figure out if he's such an awful writer because he's actually that simpleminded or if it's a canny and dangerous method of cultivating a huge, simple-minded audience, no, there will be none of that today because Tom's making like George C. Scott in Hardcore, head in his hands, shouting "TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!" Well, "shut it down," but it's close enough.
The "it" is Guant namo Bay. "Shutting it down" is a magical panacea that will make Arabs stop hating us and turn Iraq into Athens circa 5th century B.C. and bring Brad and Jen back together and pay for a new Jets stadium and calm the housing market. Thomas Friedman knows this because he is IN LONDON. Also, this isn't the first time Friedman has called for the immediate closing of a political black eye. Almost exactly one year ago (May 13, 2004), he wrote that someone up top should say: "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training — with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft."

Yes, brilliant idea! Hey, how about the My Lai IMAX Theater! And the Wounded Knee WalMart!

I seem to have gotten a little off-track. What I meant by all this is that I have LexisNexis and therefore no need to pay extra for any of these losers. And I really, really miss Maureen Dowd.-AP

Running Out of Bubbles [NYT]
Just Shut It Down [NYT]