The Gray Lady makes a mess

NYT Public Editor condemns McCain/lobbyist story

This would be the same NYT that continues defending its first Pulitzer, won by Walter Duranty for covering up Stalin's Ukrainian genocide. And if they've ever condemned Senator Arthur Vandenberg for helping sell the US into a foreign war after British Intelligence placed at least two high-born sluts in his bed, I've never seen it.

NYT's Executive Editor, Bill Keller, defends the article. The April 11, 1999, Style section of the Times announced the wedding of then-Managing Editor Keller and author/journalist Emma Gilbey. That article concluded:

The bridegroom's first wedding ended in divorce.

Well, yes it did. Bill had his own adulterous relationship with Emma. Emma got pregnant; Bill divorced his wife and abandoned his two kids; Bill and Emma married; Bill got promoted to Executive Editor. But Emma, well-known for her "power dating," was John Kerry's ex-girlfriend. Did she unduly influence the Times' endorsement of Kerry for President?

I'm no fan of McCainiac. Or Barack Star. Or Satan-In-Heels. If Ron Paul is not on the ballot, I'll write him in. But the timing of this hit piece is most strange. McCainiac has plenty of ethical lapses, past and present, to be hammered with. Why a sex-for-favors scandal, especially such a thin one, and why now?

Bush: "Criminal idiocy toward Cuba will continue"

US Embargo Of Cuba To Continue Despite Castro Resignation

Excuse me, where's the adult supervision here? The US embargo of Cuba, now in its 49th year, is an abject failure on its own terms. Sane people, faced with such a record of failure, long ago would have re-evaluated their actions.

Embargoes traditionally are considered acts of war. So the US, in five decades of war, has failed to unseat the blowhard dictator of a tiny, impoverished island 90 miles from our own shores. It's worth pondering, especially in light of the 2 - 3 billion dollars per week we're burning in Mesopotamia, and the McCaniac's promise of a new Hundred Years War.

No doubt, the Bu'ushists will tell us that the embargo is necessary to "defend our freedom." As if the old Commie, or his slightly younger and less windy brother, could muster an invasion force that wouldn't be repulsed by the local gun club. We wouldn't have to call the military back from their garrisons in 126 foreign countries, where they attend to such vital American interests as killing and maiming innocent civilians, humiliating men in front of their wives and children, and raping schoolgirls.

Meanwhile, Ana Belen Montes rots in a Federal women's prison for spying for Cuba. Allegedly, her skewing of intelligence reports kept the Clinton Administration from accurately assessing the threat Cuba posed to the US. The court should have looked up "paranoia" in a dictionary. Other Americans have had their lives ruined by Federal stormtroopers, for the heinous crime of bringing Cuban cigars into the US.

Dubya says he wants to bring "the blessings of Liberty to the Cuban people." Someone should tell him that voluntary, mutually-beneficial exchange, unfettered by government interference, is one of those blessings.