NY Times: Quest for 'balance' is a "cult destroying America"

From the NY Times' ghastly Paul Krugman, July 26, 2011:

"The cult that is destroying America"

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis...it’s...obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has...poisoned our political system.

...the cult that I see as...a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

So Krugman thinks balance and centrism is a bad thing? Even claims it's a "cult"? Gee, he may want to check that with his master at the White House, since Obozo said six times in his campaign speech Monday night that he was the one with a "balanced approach."

We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.

Ah yes, the insane demand that the government not continue borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it insists on spending. Insane stuff like that.

So what do most news reports say? [That] both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. [I]nfluential pundits [are] calling...for a new centrist party, a new centrist president...

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president.

Krugman claims Obozo is a centrist? A moderate conservative? Yeah and I'm your Aunt Sally. This guy is nuts.

[H]is only major change to government-- [health reform] — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

So did all of us just dream that stuff about "32 unconfirmable 'czars'" running the departments? The "Stimulus" (aka Porkulus) bill? Killing "Don't ask, don't tell" so gays can be openly, stridently gay in the military? And these are just a few examples.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters...to understand what’s really going on. [Certainly no one reading Krugman's article would have any idea!]

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

Remember that the situation Krugman just described as "the clearest, starkest that one can imagine short of civil war," is that the news media are too balanced.

Roll that around your mind for a few seconds.

How can one even begin to rebut a piece so totally disconnected from reality? I don't see how any rational person could link Krugman's statements to reality.

And in considering the debt ceiling talks now taking place, how in the world could anyone expect to negotiate effectively when the other side is led by people who are yelling the equivalent of "The earth is flat!"?