07.24.11
The Good Boy notices the obvious
Top Good Boy Nicholas Kristof gets around to noticing the biggest security threat to the country in today’s NY Times opinion piece.
I’ve always loathed the guy.
Back at the beginning of the war on terror Kristof had a hand in screwing up the anthrax investigation, helping to guarantee the authorities would go off after the wrong man — Steven Hatfill.
The tipster source who put Kristof onto this eventually paid for it with her career.
But Kristof never did although years later he lamely conceded that he had managed to “afflict the afflicted.”
Kristof kept his place at the toniest estate in journalism, polishing his reputation as a hand-ringingly sincere butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth wise man who wants nothing but the best for everyone.
Today Kristof gets around to doing something that must have caused that person a bit of pain — naming the Republican Party as an obvious security threat, one greater than the foreign bogeyman we’ve grown accustomed to hearing of on a daily basis.
IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.
Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.
We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home …
So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.
Effing brilliant, Nicholas. Such a good boy!
The rest of the column devotes itself to budget-cutting on education because — in addition to despising science — Republicans don’t like any money for things the wealthy have no use for. Which includes reading programs for children.