Having attended today's "peace rally" in Washington, DC, I was interested to see the fawning report of the day's events in the New York Times. Although calls for the impeachment and/or assassination of various US government officials, along with hopes of "Victory for the Iraqi Resistance" went unreported in the Times story, new ground was broken. Keeping in mind this is an actual news article and not an editorial from the Times, it was interesting to see this passage:

The rally and a march around the White House that followed were sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.

Since leftists refuse to define anything, including their sop moniker of "progressive", it was good to see the Times point the rational among us to at least one group, the Answer Coalition, "which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives".  Some examples of what "progressive" means to the Times from claims on Answer's own website (note: please do not be confused by 'claims', they are usually much different from what are commonly known as 'facts'):

• More than 100,000 Iraqis have died since March 20, 2003.
• The Bush administration does pose a grave and imminent danger to any country or people's movement that dares to follow an independent path from the United States: Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Korea, Philippines and more.
• The real U.S. military budget is now over $500 billion - more than all other countries in the world put together - in the name of "national security." But when the security of the people of New Orleans and the entire Gulf region was ripped to shreds by Hurricane Katrina, the racist, anti-poor Bush administration did almost nothing for days.
• The Bush administration carried out the coup and kidnapping of Haiti's democratically-elected government on March 29, 2004.

A sample of those who make up the self-styled 'Steering Committee' for Answer:

• IFCO/Pastors for Peace (a pro-Castro group)
• Partnership for Civil Justice – LDEF (a legal mouthpiece front for various leftist groups and causes, including support of Mumia Abu-Jamal)
• Nicaragua Network (a pro-Sandinista group)
• Korea Truth Commission (a group concerned with alleged US war crimes during the Korean War. Concern over documented Chinese and North Korean crimes - war, human rights, etc - seems to have escaped this group)
• Party for Socialism and Liberation (is any description really necessary?)

A taste of what the Times means the next time they use the label "progressive" to describe any of their myriad of leftist pet projects.

Since the New York Times is now charging $50 to access its columns which you review, I figure it's only fair that the folks who regularly read your website ought to chip in and buy you a subscription. So now I've done my little part with a $25 donation through Amazon.com. Hopefully someone will chip in the other half. Thanks for the work -- good to know that someone is sifting through the garbage that regularly spills out of the Times so I don't have to.

Here is what Krugman said about Ronald Reagan on Monday:

"By all accounts Ronald Reagan, who declared in his Inaugural Address that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," wasn't personally racist. But he repeatedly used a bogus tale about a Cadillac-driving Chicago "welfare queen" to bash big government"

Reagan used the example to show that those on welfare should not be driving luxury cars. It seems that it is Krugman who is engaging in racist stereotyping, by assuming the driver is a black woman.

And who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I."

The French news media were captivated by Hurricane Katrina, pointing out how the American government's faltering response brought into plain view the sad lot of black Americans. But this time the French, who have long criticized America's racism, could not overlook the parallels at home...

Only four days before, a fire had swept an apartment in south Paris, killing 12 people, most of them black. And just days before that, 17 black people died in a single blaze. Since April, 48 people, most of them children and all of them black, have died in four separate fires in Paris.

I wanted to share a story with you about the Katrina "victims" who have fled to Texas. I've been listing to a radio station in Dallas that raised a bunch of money from its listeners and tells daily stories about the people they have helped. Yesterday, they talked to a lady who had been rescued our of a building in New Orleans and ended up in a shelter in Arlington (just outside of Dallas). The station used some of the money they have raised to pay to transport this lady from the shelter to her mother's house outside the state. They talked to her yesterday and she asked them to take her back to Dallas after she found out they were giving people free apartments there. She said she was board living with her mother and called leaving the shelter the worst mistake of her life. What ever happened to "beggars can't be choosers"?

(2005-09-21) -- In the same week The New York Times launched a $50 per year online subscription service and cut 500 jobs from its payroll, the publisher said today that the new Times Select service will now include "exclusive online access to embittered former reporters."

"We have to look at every revenue opportunity," said publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. "So, we're providing our ex-reporters with subscriber-only blogs where they can spill the beans about their anonymous sources, ideological bias and clever techniques for maintaining the appearance of objectivity."

...Mr. Sulzberger refused to disclose how many readers had subscribed to Times Select before today, but he added "both of them are delighted so far with their new, deeper relationships with Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof."

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:48 PM | link