COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The New York Times endorsed John Kerry today in a laughable essay that, in any other mainstream outlet, would pass for anti-liberal satire.

He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core.

No. Men with strong moral cores don't have to flip flop. Nor do they exploit the children of candidates to score political points.

The Times editorial board then goes on -- in the face of an economy better than it was in 1996 by any measure you care to name, in the face of the fall of the Taliban, in the face of burgeoning democracy for millions of people abroad who had only known oppression, in the face of rape rooms being shut down, torture chambers being shuttered, an expanding economy, and Libya abandoning its nuclear program -- in the face of all this, characterizes the president's term as "disastrous."

Normally, I would expect such intemperate language from a pajama-clad blogger.

Nearly four years ago, after the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency

These losers will never get over it. But it wasn't the Supreme Court that awarded the presidency. The USSC simply recognized the fact that Al Gore had yet to win a single count.

Had Al Gore EVER been ahead in Florida, he might have had a beef. The New York Times, unfortunately, would love to disenfranchise the voice of Florida voters, and credit the Supreme Court with Bush's victory.

Hell, the New York Times is still throwing around the journalistically inappropriate phrase "anti-choice agenda," which I wouldn't even let fly in a high school newspaper.

When the nation fell into recession, the president remained fixated not on generating jobs but rather on fighting the right wing's war against taxing the wealthy.

It's one thing to disagree with supply-side theory. It's quite another to be so ignorant of economics - or so mired in left wing ideology that you can't even frame your argument. An editorial board that cannot even grasp that both supply-siders AND Keynesian economists would agree that tax cuts stimulate economic growth cannot possibly hope to coach their reporters to clear-eyed and balanced coverage. They don't even understand it.

As a result, money that could have been used to strengthen Social Security evaporated

Nice try, bozos. But the fact is that general fund money CANNOT be used to "strengthen Social Security." It is simply impossible as a matter of logic and structure to do so. The ONLY ways Social Security can be strengthened now is via some form of privatization, an increase in Social Security taxes in years going forward (which would only be relevant for the fiscal year in which the money is collected) or a reduction in promised benefits.

There is no way to use current revenues to strengthen Social Security against a cash-flow problem in future years unless you are willing to privatize. What else are you going to do? Buy Treasuries, dumbass? It's impossible. (Some idiot always writes in and says "put it in a bank." To be insured by what body? And to be invested in what? Congratulations, loser, you just privatized Social Security!)

But an institution that can't even properly explain Social Security again has no hope of coaching its reporters to provide decent and informed coverage, since they are wallowing so deeply in ignorance they are unable to discern between analysis and pablum.

The Times mentions the Bush Administration's "disrespect for civil liberties" (without getting more specific). The thing is, every time I turn around, it's the DEMOCRATS threatening to sue TV stations and attempting to suppress the free flow of ideas.

Immigrants were rounded up and forced to languish in what the Justice Department's own inspector general found were often "unduly harsh"
conditions.

Welcome to Clinton Era immigration policy. Ask any Haitian.

Men captured in the Afghan war were held incommunicado with no right to challenge their confinement.

Precisely. Combatants don't get to challenge their confinement. They've never been able to challenge their confinement. They're not normally charged with crimes. The New York Times - again hopelessly ignorant of the conventions covering the legal status of prisoners of war and how they've historically been held - doesn't even appear to have the candlepower to create an informed analysis, but instead tries to apply wholly irrelevant peacetime domestic legal practices to protect the rights of CITIZENS and residents of the United States to the conduct of a war on foreign soil.

Enemy combatants have a right to humane treatment. They do NOT have a right to "due process" in the same way that an American criminal suspect does.

Mr. Ashcroft appeared on TV time and again to announce sensational arrests of people who turned out to be either innocent, harmless braggarts or extremely low-level sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who, while perhaps wishing to do something terrible, lacked the means.

Lovely. And I suppose that in the Magical Kingdom of Kerry, we're going know a priori which low level Al Qaeda sympathizers who wish to do something terrible will lack the means, so Kerry will leave them alone?

What a stupid, stupid policy assumption.

He sold the war to the American people, and to Congress, as an antiterrorist campaign even though Iraq had no known working relationship with Al Qaeda.

False.

Richard Clarke himself argued that a large Iraqi presence at the chemical weapons plant in Khartoum was probably "as a result of the Iraq-Al Qaeda agreement" (page 128 of the 9/11 commission report).

Richard Clarke also warned against provoking Bin Ladin into moving into Iraq, where Al Qaeda would then be placed at Saddam's service it would become much more difficult for the US to find Bin Ladin. (p. 134 of the 9/11 commission report.)


And we haven't even gotten to Zarqawi, yet.

Hussein was harboring at least three known global terrorists: one was Zarqawi, known to have Al Qaeda links. The others were Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas.

The president was clear: "We will draw no distinction between the terrorists, and those who harbor them."

But Hussein's decision to provide aid and comfort to Zarqawi - and by some accounts, to arm him - alone falsifies the New York Times's claim.

I chalk the Times' sloppiness up to their curious inability to distinguish the difference between "links to 9/11" and "links to Al Qaeda."

Al Qaeda is bigger than 9/11.

He sold the war to the American people, and to Congress, as an antiterrorist campaign even though Iraq had no known working relationship with Al Qaeda. His most frightening allegation was that Saddam Hussein was close to getting nuclear weapons. It was based on two pieces of evidence. One was a story about attempts to purchase critical materials from Niger, and it was the product of rumor and forgery. The other evidence, the purchase of aluminum tubes that the administration said were meant for a nuclear centrifuge, was concocted by one low-level analyst and had been thoroughly debunked by administration investigators and international vetting.

The Times is proffering two shameless lies, back to back.

Saddam's attempt to buy Uranium from Niger have been documented further since the 'sixteen words' story from 2003. The New York Times conveniently leaves out the two reports that would damage their argument.

Indeed, the British intelligence report says that the allegation was "well-founded," and has been further corroborated by a separate American report. You don't find that in the Times, though.

And unfortunately for the Times' reputation for intellectual honesty, a leading Iraqi weapons scientist has just recently published a memoir testifying that Iraq did have a nuclear centrifuge, buried at Qusay's behest in a backyard garden in or near Baghdad.

The Times, somehow, omits the fact that this memoir exists. Are they THAT out of touch and ill informed?

Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.

True. Except that they had figured that out under Clinton, if not before. You think Iran's only been working on a nuke since 2001? Given that Saddam was right across the border, how stupid can you be?

As for North Korea, the Clinton era fecklessness with which we caved to their already developed efforts to create a nuclear bomb (an effort that probably dates back to the 1980s) has been well documented. The Times' desperation in trying to tie the North Korean and Iranian nuke programs to the Bush Administration, without mentioning our resounding bloodless success in Libya, is surreal indeed.

Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands

Here the Times is demonstrating a breathtaking ignorance of Christianity and Western Culture as a whole, which I have already explained here.

Along with record trade imbalances, that increases the chances of a financial crisis, like an uncontrolled decline of the dollar, and higher long-term interest rates.

Ok, chicken little: didn't you guys just get done arguing that Bush had ignored job creation? So why are you now kvetching about a decline in the dollar against other currencies--a development that makes American exports more affordable abroad and has a tendency to boost employment. Actually, a weak dollar is a markedly pro-labor policy, and is generally frowned upon by traditional Republican constituencies: i.e., the owners of capital.

Second, it is arguable that interest rates are currently too LOW, as people on fixed incomes--retirees, mostly--are having trouble generating sufficient income off of their nest eggs on which to live, which is a product of low interest rates.

I mean, 20-30 year rates are hovering near multi-decade record LOWS, you dumbasses!!!!

Third, I defy any of you guys to show me any evidence positive correlation between US deficit levels and interest rates over the last 30 years.

Inflationary expectations dwarf deficits as a market force driving long-term interest rates.

The Department of Homeland Security is famous for its useless alerts and its inability to distribute antiterrorism aid according to actual threats

Question for the Times: Have we had another attack on US soil since the creation of the department?

Of course, the answer is no.

SO HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THOSE ALERTS ARE USELESS, YOU IMBICILES???

the administration has managed to so strain the resources of our armed forces that the nation is unprepared to respond to a crisis anywhere else in the world.

Bullshit. The Navy and Air Force--our traditional first-responders and fire brigades, are largely uncommitted. The Army is straining under some force management issues. But there's still enough slack to clobber the bejeezus out of anyone who's foolish enough to come looking for a fight. "Unable to respond" my ass.

Mr. Kerry has an aggressive and in some cases innovative package of ideas about energy, aimed at addressing global warming and oil dependency.

Wonderful. If they're so good, how come he hasn't gotten any of them through congress in 20 years?

In the Senate, he worked with John McCain in restoring relations between the United States and Vietnam

Yeah. He also crashed the Paris peace talks in 1972, in a move that streched the bonds of legality and broke the bonds of decorum.

There's plenty more, but I just ate, and the Times is upsetting my stomach.

The bottom line is this: The Times endorsed the Democrat, the Pope is still Catholic,
In other news, women are different than men, and the Laws of Thermodynamics continue to regulate the transmission of energy.



Splash, out

Jason