Stranger Than Fiction

Krugman: "The point is that the privatizers consider four years of policies that relentlessly favored the wealthy a fait accompli, not subject to reconsideration. Now that tax cuts have busted the budget, they want us to accept large cuts in Social Security benefits as inevitable. But they demand that we praise Mr. Bush's sense of social justice, because he proposes bigger benefit cuts for the middle class than for the poor.
Sorry, but no. Mr. Bush likes to play dress-up, but his Robin Hood costume just doesn't fit." [NYT]

Herbert: "It might have been better if Mr. Bush had stayed in closer touch with his earthly father. From the very beginning the war in Iraq has been an exercise in extreme madness, an absurd venture that would have been rich in comic possibilities except for the fact that many thousands of men, women and children have died, and tens of thousands have been crippled, burned or otherwise maimed." [NYT]

Rich: "Much as we all delight in the latest horse-milking joke, the happiest news in comedy last week was the announcement that "The Daily Show" will be spinning off a new half-hour on Comedy Central starring its "senior White House correspondent," Stephen Colbert. Make no mistake about it: the ratings rise of Jon Stewart's fake news has been in direct relation to the show's prowess at blowing the whistle on propaganda when the legitimate press fails to do so. The correspondents' dinner, itself a "Daily Show" target last week, could not have been a more graphic illustration of why, at a time when trust in real news is plummeting, there's a bull market for fake news that can really be trusted to know what is fake." [NYT]

Nature at Bay: "President Bush's policies suggest that he not only has failed to learn from past mistakes, but is determined to repeat them on a more destructive scale. The obvious example is his fixation on opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This bespeaks an intellectually bankrupt energy policy and would certainly cause trouble for wildlife. Yet the Arctic is hardly the only illustration of the administration's insensitivity to wilderness values." [NYT]