Fuckin' A

Krugman gets this right: (via Times Select)

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media...

...That said, it’s still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry’s botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I’ve got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.

The coverage of the Kerry story continues to gall at me, a fucked up joke that gets two days of wall-to-wall coverage, when Bush makes malaprops hourly and gets a pass. And then when it is over, the press blames Kerry for not doing something fast enough...when the fact is, it should NEVER have gotten that play. The editorial judgment of the broadcast media is disgusting and they ought to be ashamed. If these clowns had been around, James Buchanan would have gotten a second term.

Via Atrios.