553 Comments

I get the impression that retirement from The NY Times has been liberating for you Dr. Krugman. Thank you for speaking so plainly at a time when the mainstream media is sanewashing, putting lipstick on pigs, and chattering about the Orange Emperor’s new clothes.

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Can't wait for his thoughts on the media cowardice that we're already seeing going into the second Trump administration.

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I was just thinking the same... Paul Krugman, unchained! And with music!

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Paul Krugman,Unchained! That should be the title of this substrsck or his next book.

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Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, was always free to write while at the The New York Times.

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And how many times have you seen f-bombs in the opinion section? Sometimes it’s not possible to adequately convey the true state of affairs within the bounds of conventional civility.

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Yeah. The NYT would never have allowed a piece on "fuck-you money," even "I have so much money I can do as I please."

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Is an F-bomb related to the content he was writing about?

He is the same old Krugman otherwise - brazenly honest in his views as he always has been.

Why he left we do not know, but no one so far says he was restrained, unlike those who left WaPo and LAT.

He was writing less and less often for NYT so it seemed he had one foot out the door already for awhile now.

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I believe he explained in his first post here that he left so that he could write more and do different kinds of writing than he could do at the NYT.

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Thanks

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Childish gibberish

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Because Lewis Knows…

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really? quite the fool lewis...

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Sure he was. He wouldn't have had to come to substack to write the truth if the NYtimes wasn't censoring him.

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Perhaps, like most of us now, Paul recognized that it was time to just acknowledge reality, and NYT has some filters, shall we say. All the baby boomers are about to see their golden years get flushed . To many that feels like freedom.

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I thought Dems liked facts and evidence?

Krugman had been writing less and less often for NYT for quite awhile now, and I was not surprised when he finally left.

I am happy he is here, but we do not know why he left.

Now he can write whenever he pleases and does not have limited space.

He has no deadlines to meet either, so maybe this is his version of retirement and a way to be on his own schedule.

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You know nothing.

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Hmmm..... your ad hominem attacks suggests that you are the one who knows nothing. No substantiation, no reasoning.

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To be fair, we really don’t know what went on between Krugman and his editors. For all we know there was a standard of fair and reasonable censorship to not gratuitously use profanity, or discuss the personal failings of the editor in too pointed a way. There might have been other things. I believe Krugman said he was retiring.

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au contraire, seek help lewis, i am sure there are fine adult classes available near by...

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this, thanks

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He's free to write every day. Thank you Paul!

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Hey dude, fuck off. Ps: go fuck yourself.

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Very clearly a comment troll. Best to ignore him/her/them.

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You are right of course. Atleast elsewhere one could just block the goof.

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what DA said..

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Um even he said that’s not the case

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I wonder.😳

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I disagree.

I never, ever, saw Krugman restrained at NYT - not one bit!

Now word choice, maybe, but never content.

He has always seemed like a man unfettered by the need to engage in diplomacy which could cause a watered down version of the truth and facts.

And yes, I'm sure there were plenty of bruised egos regarding some of his comments.

Oh well, "sicks and stones" as they say.

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Yes to that!

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Spot on. What makes trump so dangerous isn't how dumb he is, or how far-right he is, it's how insecure he is, and therefore so easy to manipulate by the horrible people around him

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Robert Reich had a thoughtful note out last night revealing some insecurities about the people around him as well.

Link: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/tomorrow-will-be-a-terrible-day/comments

Interesting to see that a wonky economist has pretty good musical taste as well.

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You must have missed Dr. Krugman's weekly newsletter while he was at the NYT. Come for the wisdom, stay for the tunes!

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I missed the music for sure.

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Paul's analysis of our Oligarchs prostrating themselves before our strongman is eerily reminiscent of how Putin did the same a few decades ago to cement his power in Russia. Except our are doing so without the additional motivation of Tall Building Syndrome!

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Bit different in Russia. In the IS oligarchs run things. In Russia the government run the oligarchs, they’re there at Putins patronage.

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So far . . .

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Pure fantasy.

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You may be right. More likely we'll only sink to the level of semi-autocracies like Hungary.

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Trite sneering snark is always easier than thinking.

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He's not being manipulated. He told us what he is in 2015.

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Sure he is. Matt Gaetz was Dumpy's initial pick for AG because he sat next to Dumpy on his plane and kissed his ass for a couple hours. No thought, no vetting, no research. That's how Dumpy operates. The Saudis got great treatment by Dumpy in spite of killing and dismembering Adnan Kashoggi because they again kissed his ass during his first visit and then spent barrels of money at his DC hotel. That's the definition of MANIPULATION.

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The Saudis, Putin. . .

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Yep - tell Cheeto that his hair looks good or that he came up with a good idea (which was certainly someone else's idea) and he's all yours. Well, yours until the next person to flatter him shows up in 10 or 15 minutes...

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plus he seems to actually fear putin...

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Putin is an extremely bad man, who he has a cadre of thugs that carry out his wishes.

When I was there back in 2010, fear was palpable at the mere mention of his name. Our tour guide lost one of our party for a while, when we were touring the Kremlin plaza. She was absolutely terrified. She had to report it to her superiors. She must have been fired because we never saw her again.

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Projection?

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Not manipulation, merely transaction. If you can't pay Trump off with cash--like Tik Tok's Yass, or Elon Musk--you do it in kind.

"Cash, ass or grass--nobody rides for free!"

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DUH. It's called politics.

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No

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Enjoying your vapid pointless responses backed by nothing. Keep whining away, that'll show 'em!

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As you probably know, Professor Krugman's line "There will be so much whining, you'll be sick of whining" is a tribute to one of President Trump's sayings. I thought Krugman's adaptation was funny.

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Yes. It's certainly not impressing anyone here.

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now lewis, we've already talked this over, get help there are so many useful drugs for your condition...

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Strychnine?

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drumpf has had years of proof that he's an idiot and just wants to prove it to the rest of us...

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Shallow. The "idiot" owns the Supreme Court.

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please, try a little harder lewis...

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I think this is his best, sadly.

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There is a Soviet-era joke where people interviewed for a position are asked 'what is 2+2?' and are shown the door when they answer '4'. Finally, a smart one answers 'what does the Party want it to be?' and gets the position. Today's Republicans seem to have taken a lesson from this.

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Professor Krugman: if these billionaires weren't such destructive sociopaths, i would look at them as a never-ending source of amusement. but as things stand, their greed is so damaging to the rest of the world, and their vast hoard of wealth -- like smaug sitting on his pile of gold, silver and gemstones -- makes the world hate them, and with good reason. i mean, how many homeless people could they house? how many hungry people could they feed? how much healthcare could they provide to the sick? they would still be amongst the richest billionaires in the world if they actually helped others. but instead of helping others, they are content to blow rockets into bits in our night skies and threaten all of us with their own miseries -- never mind that we all have enough problems of our own to be going on with.

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Smaug is the perfect analogy, if only we had Bard the Bowman.

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Add to insecurity, extreme levels of greed. There is no class more greedy than the rich, or as I think we should start labeling them, "the looter class."

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Weirdly it seems unique to the post-Microsoft tech industry. Gates built his empire before the dot-com boom and Cuban got rich by knowing exactly when to cash out, but I think of a lot of guys like Elon and Zuckerberg (who was problematic long before this post implies, if we're being honest; remember that Facebook was a big vector for disinformation in 2016 that Zuckerberg did basically nothing about) have the insecurity of being a nerd in middle school and literally never moving past that.

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Spot on re: Marky Mark...in fact Zuck and Elno should be more properly known as members of the BBC - the Billionaire Boys Club, because at bottom they embody the arch-type of the man-child, an imperfectly formed, post-adolescent-not-quite- adult, but one falling upwards because of extreme wealth. Frat-boy cringeyness writ large, propelled by the cachet of "world's richest...yadda-yadda".

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On some level I appreciate the last-gen billionaires like Charles Koch who legitimately doesn't give a shit if you like him or not, but at least the Kochs fund the opera and I cannot think of anything like that that tech billionaires are doing.

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Funding opera doesn't begin to make up for the enormous long term damage Koch has done through funding ALEC and other rightwing groups.

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The opera? Seriously? Kinda' like putting lipstick on a pig.

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It’s far better than anything Elon Musk has ever done for America.

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Perhaps it mitigates the harm, but Koch has so much to answer for. JMHO

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so does Musk? Not sure why you're taking so much pain to argue with "this right-wing billionaire sucks, but at least he does some philanthropy."

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DUH

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They fund Nova on PBS, too. Not saying that makes them heroic or their misdeeds excusable.

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The oil barons in Houston suck, but a big reason why Houston has far more museums and the like than Austin is because they actually fund that stuff, unlike Elon and Friends in Austin.

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The Gilded Age wealthy had a sense of civic duty to fund libraries, museums, national parks and conservation. Today's super wealthy say what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. Mine is bigger than yours. Greed, fear, and insecurity dominate their days.

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koch ego ruined the MET sidewalk...

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David was the philanthropist. He is dead, although he probably left a trust to support the arts. Charles just wants a theocracy.

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Re "problematic" Zuckerborg, remember that he came up with Facebook so he and his pals could rate the appearance of women who were smart enough to keep their distance...

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Unfortunately it appears to be fuck all y’all money at this point.

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This. Well done.

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I agree with Joseph Heller about billionaires, " I'll have something he'll never have, I have enough."

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“What’s the point of being rich?

Past a certain level of wealth, it can’t really be about material things. I very much doubt that billionaires have a significantly higher quality of life than mere multimillionaires.”

Thanks, Patrick, for the perfect quote about having enough. Whether it is a competition to be the richest of the rich that drives them, or Krugman’s idea of having “fuck you” money, I agree with Joseph Heller.

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I don't know. It seems to me there is something else going on. I think there is an inner cult of extreme wealth that has gone over to some form of social Darwinism 'We are wealthy so we are a separate superior species.' I have read a little about a form of prosperity christianity, that Putin privately touts. I have seen some of the wealthy who were positives in the public square change and adapt values more consistent with Putinism. Our sharp decline definitely started with Reagan and trickle-down.

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Ronzo was the beginning of the end of the experiment that was America.

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This is our Third Gilded Age. The same cycle of extreme concentration of money & power by Conservative ultra-elites.

If we don't reset like we did twice before, *then* it's the end of the experiment. Meanwhile, we can all roll up our sleeves and pitch in.

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A surprising headline from a gentleman I always saw as a quiet force for sanity. But you aren't wrong. It's the miser effect. The hoarding of money for the sake of money isn't about economic insecurity but filling an emotional void. If Andreessen wants to be revered as a hero he should start acting like one. The great hallmarks of heroism are courage and selflessness -- not attributes we see in the likes of him, Bezos, Zuck, or Musk. When self-interest is so craven and greed so transparent, the term to apply is not hero but villain.

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And gratitude - don’t forget gratitude.

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And generosity to those with less, like Jimmy Carter building houses for the poor in long into his 90's.

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I believe you’ve nailed it — the billionaires humiliating themselves before a grifter will never have enough. With their wealth they could do immense good in this world, and it might actually fill their emptiness, AND they’d still have more wealth than most of us can ever imagine … but instead of being good humans, they are just poor little rich kids who whine about everyone. I will always remember Musk whining about changes to income tax which would make more of his earnings taxable - “It’s not income from a job, it’s income from my investments. I would have to sell some investments!!” Oh, the horror of it - he’d have to pay his fair share. Which of course wont’t happen now because he bought our government.

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History will remember Bill (& Melinda) Gates much more fondly than any of your list. And Buffet, not for his living philanthropy - I can’t recall anything he’s done there - but that he readily joined Gates’s Living Pledge. It’s notable that NONE of the craven four has also joined.

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Jeff Tiedrich wrote a post titled "American CEOs are fucking pumped they can act like dicks again" and included this quote from the Financial Times "I feel liberated" said a top banker, "we can say retard and pussy without fear of getting canceled." As you so rightly note, its the insecurity. Acting like dicks makes them feel like real men.

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They simply can't wait until they can start using the N-word again...So sad.

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They hate being called for their bad behavior, and told "no!"

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Several years ago I read Jon Ronson’s book “The Psychopath Test.” He said that 95% of sociopaths are in prison the other 5% run large corporations. Still sounds about right.

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I used to say that if Steve Jobs had been a little dumber, he would've been a con man.

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The only problem I have with this assessment is that after reading it, one starts to feel pity for them; which is a huge mistake. I think it must be made clear that they did it to themselves.

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You misspelled "contempt" as "pity." They're pitiful but not pitiable. They did it to themselves, but more important is what they're doing to us.

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Yes, and as the saying goes 'familiarity breeds contempt' so get your popcorn ready for the backlash against the billionaire bros.

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I wonder how long it will take the rank-and-file GOP voter to realize "they've been had."

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It will take until the right-wing propaganda machine has been dismantled.

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No, they deserve our deepest sympathies. *And* generous tax cuts to help ease their pain.

Please urge your Congressperson to sign on to the GOP's 2025 "Leave No Billionaire Behind" bill.

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“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.”

Dorothy Thompson ~’Who Goes Nazi’

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Imaging playing this at the 2025 Inauguration.

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Thank you very much for this quote. It caused me to start reading and learning more about this amazing woman, Dorothy Thompson, who is certainly relevant today. I am trying to find how to view the documentary made about her. She was married to Sinclair Lewis I learned. 🙏

https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/personal-story/dorothy-thompson

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Like I’ve said for a while now: Hitler was a Nazi fucker. But he wasn’t a fucker because he was a Nazi - he didn’t even start the thing- he was a Nazi because he was a fucker.

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Pamela, thank you! Thank you! Dorothy’s essay is so spot-on, so prescient of today’s climate. I’m not saying the MAGA crowd are Nazis - that would be incorrect, and glib too - but they certainly attract the types she skewers. And for me the most dangerous type is the frustrated intellectual, the acknowledged “smartest man in the room”.

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It seems that after a certain amount of money they lose their concept of "enough" and can therefore never be satisfied. The windfall they'll likely get from our treasury in the new administration is totally beside the point, because no way can it be big enough. It is pitiful, but I agree with Skepticat that contemptible is more apt.

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Pity? They deserve far worse than a mean but accurate Substack article. How do you see pity here? I don’t care what they did to themselves—they are literally destroying your children’s future. They should die of cancer, painfully.

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Clarification: I was talking about the writing style, the rhetoric, Krugman is using to describe what is extreme anti social behavior in what are just 12 yr old angry wannabe middle class boys who read Atlas Shrugged and decided they found the light and stopped learning. They do NOT deserve anyones pity and we all must be very careful that we do not say or even imply their is anything about them that is deserving of such emotions.

They feed off of contempt like it is all you can eat comped breakfast buffet at the four seasons hotel in beverly hills.

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Yeah…..no

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Perhaps the fact that they did it to themselves is the most pitiful part of all.

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“Alexander wept for he had no more worlds to conquer,” an appropriately fictional quote made apt by circumstances. Trump’s fear is understandable, he’s an old man who will soon face The End no matter what he does. Mark, Elon and Jeff have no such excuse

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Funny - when I read that quote, I hear it in the voice of Hans Gruber, the antagonist from Die Hard, who quoted it in the film.

Gruber, as it happens, met with the sort of demise that usually awaits former Putin supporters.

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The site I found to substantiate that it’s a fake quote centered that scene in their critique.

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The is also a hidden reference to Burt Reynolds in there

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Paul, I appreciate you and Jennifer Rubin leaving your respective fallen newspapers and making Substack the place for the TRUTH and NO SANEWASHING of the OAF (Orange Asinine 34x Felon)!!!

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But, Jennifer Rubin has a paywall. No comments unless you’re a paid subscriber! I can’t afford to pay for all the substacks I wish to read and comment on.

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At least most of them let us read their content without a paywall. As far as making comments is concerned, I think it's good they have a paywall. Otherwise they would be overwhelmed by trolls.

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The New York Times fully endorsed Harris, so what are you yapping about?

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Yes but the argument is the NYT kept peddling out the 'both sides are equally valid' narrative and sanewashing of Trump.

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We say this because its true. The times coverage of the election was atrocious, and don't even get me started on their anti trans crusades. The paper has no credibility anymore.

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Yes!!! Thank you!!

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It has always been the paper for justifying the Status quo.

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Have someone read it to you Lewis, for crissakes.

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now please remember, lewis is special...

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God, Lewis go away! You’re on the wrong page! Head on over to the Nazi pages. You’re tiresome and quarrelsome and no one is impressed

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By now we’ve seen enough of this comment troll. Best to ignore.

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Not enough! They continually published articles, headlines, etc. that supported MAGA!

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Do you even hear yourself? Me thinks you’re exactly the “yapper” you complain about.

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