Someone apparently designated this the weekend for liberal media types to come out against President Obama. And did they ever. And then there was Chris Matthews on Sunday questioning whether the President had been fiddling while Rome burned. Says Matthews: “He should have been focusing on the economy, instead he was focused on making history with health care.”

Is this going to result in further calls for drug tests from Robert Gibbs? I think it’s safe to say when one speaks of the “professional left” Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman are at the top of many people’s list. And if this morning’s This Week panel was anything to go by they are very, very angry.

Christiane Amanpour made her much-anticipated debut as host of This Week this morning. Other than her presence it was difficult to find anything else about the show that was different. While it goes without saying that Amanpour is one of the most recognizable and well-respected names in television reporting, much of the anticipation in regards to her takeover of ABC’s long-running Sunday show was a direct result of the impressive mark Jake Tapper managed to leave during his temporary takeover of hosting duties.

John Stossel is really betting his hat on the theory that props lead to ratings. On today’s America Live, he visited host Megyn Kelly to talk about the debt crisis in Greece in what is becoming a recurring outfit for him– a ball and chain coiled around his suit, which he uses to symbolize the “road to serfdom” that America is now on due to the increasing debt.

On Meet the Press yesterday the New York Times‘ David Brooks weighed in on the topic on everyone’s mind this weekend: Arizona’s new immigration law. Brooks concern was less about the civil right abuses the law may leave a (very big) open window for, than how this new law will allow the Democrats to push at lot of other important stuff to the side and focus on purely political goals.

Today’s This Week roundtable discussion on Arizona’s new controversial immigration law provided a fairly solid microcosm of the spectrum of the reactions nationwide. George Will is sympathetic; Paul Krugman thinks the Tea Partiers are hypocrites and is upset immigration will likely cancel out Climate Change reform; Cynthia Tucker thinks we are harkening back to South African apartheid. Video and remarks after the jump.

It’s very unusual for New York Times-people to take their squabbles public. But today, Paul Krugman did just that in a blog post entitled “Andrew Ross Sorkin Owes Several People An Apology.” Yikes!

Sigh. Granted, Paul Krugman is one of the preeminent columnists and economists on the planet. Also, he’s won the Nobel Prize. Still! I suspect this lifestyle, as described in this week’s New Yorker profile of Krugman, is not one any sort of media person can probably hope to have in the future. Sigh. It certainly sounds nice. Also, nice to see credit his wife Robin Wells being recognized for her blogger-like contributions! Plus, how great is this picture.

Newsweek and The New Republic recently published “America the Ungovernable” and “Is America Ungovernable?“, respectively, making the case that perhaps the recent political, economic, and social turmoil in the country is not a product of bad leadership, but the nature of the nation. If two major news and political publications run with the story, it’s officially a trend.

Luckily, Charles Krauthammer is around to nip this mildly insulting talking point – we’re ungovernable as a people? – in the bud.

If President Obama’s goal this week was to alienate and anger just about everyone than it would seem he has succeeded. Last night’s late-breaking news that the president would announce a three year spending freeze on most domestic programs during tomorrow’s State of the Union has met with angry responses on the left — Obama is the new Hoover!

There were signs that hard core Liberals were getting frustrated with the President Obama late last year when it became apparent he was not going to go to bat for the public option, but that’s nothing compared this scathing blog post titled “He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For” [!!!] from fellow Nobel Prize winner and Liberal stalwart Paul Krugman. It’s a doozy.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is calling this economic decade ‘The Big Zero ,’ saying “It was a decade in which nothing good happened.” Paul and I smoke insanely different tobacco. As an entrepreneur that has managed a hedge fund now for 11 plus years through bubbles and crashes, I almost take offense.

Season’s greetings? Speaking on This Week With George Stephanopoulos this weekend, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that there is still a “reasonably high chance” of a sharp economic contraction in 2010. As optimistic as the financial markets have been, Krugman said that he doesn’t see “where it’s supposed to come from,” and is especially worried about the second half of the year. Video after the jump:

Today is the last day of Movember. That’s right, Movember. Don’t look for it on your caledar, mofo, unless you belong to some weird pagan sect that can’t spell. No, Movember is so named because it’s a MOVEment, about MOustaches. If you’ve noticed your gentlemen friends sprouting wantonly on their upper lips, well, that may [...]

Climategate has slowly but steadily bubbled up from fringe meme on the Internet to hot-button political and scientific cause. Do a set of emails from a hacked climate research server show that global warming is a hoax? Paul Krugman contends that there was “not a single smoking gun” to Climategate, and that the global warming skeptics using the hacked emails as evidence need to brush up on their science.

The New York Times Magazine this weekend features a profile about three generations of the comedic Elliott family. But one aspect of the writing of the story seems a bit funny: Chris’s father is Bob Elliott, one half of the legendary radio comedy team Bob and Ray. Bob’s wife’s first husband was Raymond Knight, a [...]

Mediaite experienced some déjà vu this morning when the press release for the brand new Atlantic 50 landed in our inbox. The ’50,’ we were informed “follows hundreds of leading opinion-makers and commentators to provide an essential framework to the day’s best analysis and most daring and important arguments.” Sound familiar? To us, too!

There is nothing populist about Vanity Fair‘s annual top 100 Information Age powers list — it is brazen in its celebration of the worldwide corporate aristocracy. What can we say, we’re suckers for power rankings. But as the media’s old guard works on curbing its exorbitance in the midst of a shifting economic reality and technological innovation, is there any room on the list for the Elite Media?

Myths and falsehoods about health care reform,” that brings clarity to the misrepresentations and obfuscations about the Health Care debate over the past few weeks. It’s a depressing read though: As you go through it, myth by myth, the distortions are clear and incredibly frustrating to see. (They also come almost exclusively from Fox, which by no means is the only place spreading misinformation but, from this document, certainly seems to do so reliably!) Take a look.

A.J. Daulerio is the editor of Deadspin.com, pretty much the top sports blog around and so enjoyably written that even non-sports people are fans, perhaps because of headlines like this: Mets Third Base Coach Does Not Like My Pants And Will Not Eat My Poop Sandwich (UPDATE). (It ‘s the helpful updates that make the [...]

“Niall Ferguson has many things: a position teaching at Harvard, a column in the Financial Times — and a child’s understanding of race.”

— Touré on MSNBC, in response to Niall Ferguson’s FT column where he likened Barack Obama to Felix the Cat because they were both “black and lucky.”

Blog fights are not just for the Tumblrs, even Nobel prize winning economists/columnists are susceptible! Behold NYT‘s Paul Krugman, who reacted harshly to Niall Ferguson‘s lede in a FT article last week, which compared Obama to Felix the (Black) Cat. Krugman has since referred to Ferguson as a whiner, and a now poseur. Who knew he had it in him.

James Fallows isn’t being subtle about pointing the finger at Betsy McCaughey for spreading the “Death Panel” rumour. Neither is the New York Times, or Joe Conason at Salon, or Greg Sargent at the Plumline, singling out McCaughey on the front page for derailing the health care debate with pernicious rumours. Again.

How did a lede like the one in Niall Ferguson’s column today make it past the Financial Times editors? The Financial Times is British paper and so arguably not quite as sensitive to the historical racial nerves Ferguson’s lede touches on. But still! Are we supposed to conclude that Barack Obama is lucky because he is black?

This past Thursday Mediaite celebrated its one month anniversary. A couple of people have since asked us if we could break down our over all traffic numbers and publish the most trafficked Power Grid pages since July 6. The answer is yes! Turns out the results are actually sort of fascinating: who knew Christopher Hitchens had so much Power Grid game! Check out our inaugural Top Ten Power Grid Players after the jump.