"that lost ideology"

Oh, Joan! Your fides are so bona!

Depending on how you define it, that "lost" ideology can be found in many western european countries that seem to be doing quite well -- arguably, significantly better than we are.

As a well-educated adult you took a job with an avowedly socialist newspaper -- but I guess we're supposed to gather that you didn't really mean it.

Its perfectly understandable. Why I remember when, just out of university, I took a job at The Weekly Standard. Heh-heh, and some wags say that makes me a "conservative"! But don't call me conservative. That's crazy! I don't even know what that means! I mean there isn't any such thing as "truth" anyway, so how can I possibly be wrong!

Weak.

You ought to just get a big tattoo on your forehead that reads, "Frightened Liberal".

Joan do you ever write anything in which you add value beyond what has already been done 100 times in other parts of the lefty blogosphere?

Your columns seem to be 90% taking safe shots at consensus villains and 10% weaselly contrarian attempts to prove your bona fides to the Village overlords who frighten you.

Why don't you try to get ahead of the curve or take a chance for once?

"I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law"

I too have had occasion to travel to, in my case, Amsterdam to conduct, ahem, field research as an observer-participant into the effects of their relative decriminalization of drugs. I'm happy to report that decriminilazation was a wild success! And I do mean wild.

After having spent a lifetime doing intensive research into the effects of drug criminalization in the U.S. -- also employing the observer-participant methodology -- I think its, uh, high time I trucked on over to Portugal to see if I can add anything to Glenn's findings. I think a phenomenological study into the diversity of drug decriminalization effects is in order. Strictly in the interests of advancing scholarship, of course.

Sorry for yet another fanboy post but nobody does it better than Glenn. Normally when I comment I try to add something that the original post forgot or underemphasized or got wrong. But with Glenn there's usually nothing to add -- you just read it and weep.

Leonard said,

"Krugman is upset because he believes that the Geithner plan will waste taxpayer money supporting unrealistic prices for toxic assets that are irredeemable junk. For him, the fact that investors are delighted just proves his point. Anything that makes Wall Street happy must be a sellout to the "wheeler dealers" who got us in this mess.

As Vishnu argued in a previous comment, this really goes way too far in the direction of drawing a moral equivalence between what the Republicans/plutocrats are saying and what the Krugmanites are saying. The plutocrats are the assholes who got us in this mess in the first place, have no economic theory that isn't disproven every 5 minutes, and casually throw around names like "socialist" with no concern whatsoever for accuracy or truth.

Krugman, on the other hand, is a Nobel Prize winning economist with an amazing knack for almost always being right. His critics and the middle-of-the-roaders like Mr. Leonard here hate him because he always comes out on top.

People like Leonard incorrectly perceive an equivalence between the far right and what unjustifiably passes for the far left in America. People like Leonard also don't have the brains or the balls to make the right call as to who has the better of the debate and instead use the middle of the road as their heuristic.

Krugman, just like a Limbaugh or Goldberg, therefore must be wrong ex hypothesi since he is not in the "middle". Therefore a guy like Leonard feels he can safely attack a guy like Krugman, who is approximately 1000 times smarter than he is. Over and over, people like Leonard call Krugman shrill. And over and over again people like Leonard are made fools of as Krugman turns out to be right again.

The problem with people like Leonard is that, rather than learn from this experience and adjust their heuristic to give Krugman's views greater weight and Limbaugh's less, they do just the opposite. They get pissed at Krugman and look for chances to show him up. Meanwhile, Limbaugh hasn't made a fool out of them (they were right that Limbaugh was wrong) so he doesn't suffer in their eyes.

Get a clue Leonard. You're way out of your league, buddy.