Nemesis

T-Type Nemesis from the Resident Evil world, I believe. Image via Monster Wiki.

Dr. Krugman on Bret Stephens, January 2014, in response to Stephens's outrageously bad attempt to demonstrate to the world that income inequality hadn't gotten any worse in the US since the 1990s:

In his piece Stephens trashes Obama, accusing him of making a factual error when he did no such thing; then proceeds to commit just about every statistical sin you can imagine in an attempt to minimize the rise in inequality. In the process he leaves his readers more ignorant than they were before. When this is what passes for argument, how can we have any kind of rational discussion?

Oh, and just FYI: this is the kind of journalism that the great and the good deem worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.

Now Stephens is joining the New York Times as a columnist, presumably replacing the terminally fatigued David F. Brooks (whose imminent departure was scooped at Rectification Central a month ago, kiddies). I hope he holds the Friday spot so he can feel Krugman's cold glare across the page whenever he issues a fact-challenged denial of global warming or announces that Barack Obama "just isn't very bright."

He seems twice as arrogant as Brooks, more than twice as willing to lie for the cause (Brooks's lies are mostly sheer laziness nowadays), and thinks he's got a literary style. I'm looking forward to it.