Krugman vs. O'Reilly on Meet the Press

[Xenu]

Fascinating watch. Suprnova has the torrent, for those so inclined. Any thoughts? Ryan?

[Patrick M]

Ryan is too good to use torrents.

Cause he thinks people are out to get him.

Little does he know...

...no one cares.

[Rspaight]

Oh, poop. I don't mess with torrents because I know they'll take over my life like they have yours, and I'll do nothing but sit around trying to author DVDs of eight Page/Plant shows.

Anyway, there's a transcript of this here. I've seen clips of it (BTW, it wasn't on Meet The Press, but on Russert's show on CNBC), and it's interesting -- on paper, Krugman slaughters O'Reilly. He's got facts and reason, O'Reilly's just blustering and ranting. But on video, O'Reilly totally dominates the show through sheer self-confidence while Krugman comes off as exactly what he is -- an economics professor.

This little snippet is a good illustration:

RUSSERT: Can't you make the case that tax cuts stimulated the economy?

Prof. KRUGMAN: George Shultz is a good economist and a partisan Republican. He's a good enough economist that he knows how to make a chart that is true but misleading. And what that chart shows you is just rates of change. Doesn't give you any sense of level. And what it's really telling you is that after three terrible years on jobs, we've had one year where the rate of change is OK. But that's like saying, 'Well, we're down 400 feet, and we've now climbed 100 feet, so we're back where we started.' And it's not true. The fact is--simple comparison--in the 2002 economic report of the president, which they--you know, this is the Bush administration that's put out after 9/11, it's put out after the stock market crash--they said by--you know, on average in 2004, we're going to have 138 million payroll jobs in the United States. The actual number right now is about 131 million, so we're seven million short of where the Bush administration said we were going to be. And they said that after these blows. So it takes a lot of spinning to call that success. And, you know, think above all--when people say, 'We want less government,' you know, let's talk about what that means. You actually go through the numbers, and the only way you can get a significantly smaller government, the only way you could bring spending in line with the amount of revenue that we've lost from the Bush tax cuts, is to cut deep into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid 'cause that's where the money is. The federal government--you know, a Bush administration official once said, 'The federal government is, basically, a big insurance company that's got a sideline business in national defense.' And if you're talking about smaller government, let's be clear, that's a euphemism for saying, 'Let's slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.'

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, I don't buy that all. And, you know, Mr. Krugman is a smart guy, but Mr. Krugman was absolutely dead 100 percent wrong in his columns two years ago when he predicted the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper recession. You can read his book and see how wrong he was.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Actually, you can read it. I never said that.

Mr. O'REILLY: Sure you did...

Prof. KRUGMAN: I said that it would lead to a lousy job creation...

Mr. O'REILLY: ...column after column after column. You made the point, in your book, OK, that these tax cuts were going to be disastrous for the economy.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: They haven't been.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I'm sorry, that's a lie.

Mr. O'REILLY: It's not a lie.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Let me just say it's a lie. I said they were ineffective at job creation. And if you look at the Bush administration...

Mr. O'REILLY: Hold on, hold on. Hold it. Now 'ineffective at job creation,' what is that? Semantics now?

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, it means that...

Mr. O'REILLY: The economy is based on job creation, and you're saying it's ineffective. Don't call me a liar, pal. That's what you do all the time, and I'm not going to sit here and take it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well--no. I'm sorry. You just did.

Mr. O'REILLY: 'Ineffective'? You can--that's the biggest bunch of spin in the world.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Find a place where I said that they were going to cause a recession.

Mr. O'REILLY: You said--you...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Find a place where I ca--said it.

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, you want to call it ineffective in job creation. What is a recession? A recession is when the GNP...

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...goes backward. Everybody knows it's going forward.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I...

Mr. O'REILLY: Pounded column after column: 'Disastrous for the economy,"Tax cuts are disastrous.'

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, I...

Mr. O'REILLY: It hasn't been.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I said the tax cuts were not going to be effective at creating jobs, and the job creation...

Mr. O'REILLY: And you were wrong.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...record is lousy.

Mr. O'REILLY: In your opinion.

Prof. KRUGMAN: This is the worst...

RUSSERT: There has been a net loss of jobs.

Prof. KRUGMAN: There has been a net loss of jobs.

Mr. O'REILLY: Since when?

RUSSERT: In the Bush administration.

Prof. KRUGMAN: In the Bush administration.

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, 9/11 did it. Not happen? Did it not happen?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Again, 2002 economic report of the president, they said we were going to be seven million jobs ahead of where we are now.

Mr. O'REILLY: OK, they were wrong. I'll say, again, I'm not defending them.

Prof. KRUGMAN: They--the job creation over the last 10 months, the 1.5 million...

Mr. O'REILLY: Look...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...which the Bushies boast about, that is a slower pace of job creation than Clinton had from ninety...

Mr. O'REILLY: We've got a 5.6 percent unemployment rate here. In the state of Florida, which is one of the states that's going to be the election (unintelligible), you got over 60 percent saying the economy is good or excellent. It's a state-by-state situation, all right? And I'm just tired of this stuff.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, I'm tired of...

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, if you think it's bad, fine.

Prof. KRUGMAN: You know...

Mr. O'REILLY: And if Bush made a mistake in his estimation of job creation, you're probably right.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Look, let's...

Mr. O'REILLY: But you paint Armageddon; so does your newspaper. And it's baloney.

RUSSERT: All right. We need to stop.

Krugman obviously knows a lot more about Bush's job creation record than O'Reilly, and O'Reilly is obviously the one trying to spin Krugman's columns. But on video, all you see is O'Reilly blustering over the top of this meek little bearded guy.

Ryan

[lukpac]

disastrous

[Rspaight]

Gosh, he sure likes that word, doesn't he? This is only one I found that really matches up with what O'Reilly's on about:

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/91901.html

Ryan

[lukpac]

"job creation"

[Patrick M]

Oh, poop. I don't mess with torrents because I know they'll take over my life like they have yours, and I'll do nothing but sit around trying to author DVDs of eight Page/Plant shows.

I'll have you know I haven't downloaded a torrent from STG in two weeks!

I watched this last night (I am not too good to open up my ports and share my bandwidth). Krugman is too meek to go up against a blowhard like O'Reilly.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200408080001

Funny, I don't recall Bill doing his own research on the Florida recount.

[Xenu]

Ehh. Where you see meekness, I see contempt and a slight amusement. I thought that a few of Krugman's jabs were unnecessary ("this isn't your show; you can't cut my mike"), but O'Reilly quickly evens out the table, calling Krugman a commie, a kook, and everything else.

I thought the MediaMatters explosion was priceless.

And what did O'Reilly think he was doing attempting to define a recession for an economics professor?