The "Reckonings" columnist in today's New York Times blames Argentina's economic woes on a currency system that pegs the Argentine peso to the dollar. This monetary "rectitude," the columnist claims, "is responsible for Argentina's looming catastrophe."

In fact, it's a stretch to blame the dollar for Argentina's woes. After all, America's economy is also pegged to the dollar, and while our economy has been lagging recently, it has not been in as long or as severe a decline as Argentina's. And much of Latin America went through much tougher economic times than Argentina did a few years ago as a result of the crisis in the Mexican peso, which is not fixed to the dollar. Back then, Argentina fared pretty well in comparison to its neighbors.

The Reckonings columnist circles in on one possible source of the problem, then rejects it in a breathtaking sleight of hand. "You might think, given all the talk of debt default, that the problem was government profligacy," the columnist writes. "But Argentina's budget deficit has ranged between 1 and 3 percent of G.D.P., not bad for a depressed economy, and its government debt is only about half of G.D.P., better than many European countries. By the numbers, Argentina's fiscal picture looks better than America's did a decade ago."

These numbers miss the point. What's relevant is not only the size of the budget deficit but the size of the budget. If high taxes are being charged to cover a bloated public sector that is crowding out private enterprise, the effects on growth are likely to be negative even if there is little deficit and little government debt.

Moreover, there are political corruption problems in Argentina that probably have had a lot worse effects on the economy there than the ideas of the "right-wing think tanks" the columnist blames for the country's woes. If a visitor to Buenos Aires can't take a taxi for fear of being robbed by the taxi driver, and if the country's Jewish-owned banks are shut down amid accusations of anti-Semitism, and if the president of the country is secretly smuggling arms on the side, it seems a bit of a reach to blame the country's economic problems on the currency policies recommended by right-wing think tanks in Washington. A country could have the best monetary policy in the world, but if there's no rule of law, the growth won't be there.

Almost Exclusively: The lead editorial in today's New York Times reports, "Mr. Bloomberg invested what is believed to be over $50 million into a campaign in which voters came to know him almost exclusively through his carefully tailored TV ads." Maybe the Times editorialists should turn off their televisions and turn on their radios, or at least open their mailboxes. Or read their own newspaper. A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports, "In the final days of the campaign, Mr. Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg L.P., was ubiquitous: on television and radio, in mailboxes, on Web sites. Mr. Bloomberg even mailed videotapes, in which he appealed for votes, to households across New York."

Public Service: A front-page news analysis in today's New York Times refers to Michael Bloomberg as "a Republican candidate with no prior public service." This is an echo of an election day e-mail sent to some readers of the New York Times on the Web, which said, "As you know, Election Day is finally here. In New York City, a Mayoral race is drawing to a close. The two candidates are Mark Green, a long-time Democratic public official, and Michael Bloomberg, the founder of the media company of his name, who has never held public office and is running on the Republican ticket." An article elsewhere in today's New York Times reports that Mr. Bloomberg "donated tens of millions of dollars to the Johns Hopkins public health school" and that he served on the boards of Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's funny how that doesn't qualify as "public service" by the Times's definition. What the paper seems to be trying to say is that Mr. Bloomberg never has been elected to a public office before, or that he never worked for the government before. "Public service," like "public interest," is one of those terms that is often in the eye of the beholder.

Temple Mount: A dispatch from Berlin in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "If no agreement can be reached on Jerusalem, the question will be deferred, but Palestinians would continue to control the holy site there known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount."

"Continue to control"?

While in practice, at the discretion of Israel, Palestinian Arabs have some administrative control over the plaza atop the Temple Mount, it is a wildly inaccurate statement to say that the Temple Mount is now under Palestinian control. The Temple Mount is in Jerusalem, which is, by Israeli policy and American policy set forth in law, an undivided city and the capital of Israel. Israeli police control access to the site, and a retaining wall of the Mount is used as a site for Jewish prayer. Israel conquered the area from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, and it has not ceded control. If the Palestinians "control" the Temple Mount, as the Times claims, how was Ariel Sharon able to walk around there on his famous inspection trip?

SPECIAL CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENT: Editors, reporters, page designers, photojournalists -- Smartertimes.com was founded June 19, 2000, "dedicated to assembling a community of readers to support a new newspaper that would offer an alternative to the dominant daily." That effort has now advanced to the point where searches are underway for certain staff. Editors, reporters, page designers and photojournalists willing to work long hours in an entrepreneurial, start-up environment are invited to apply. Positions are available in New York City, Albany and Washington, D.C., and in features and culture as well as "hard" news. Successful applicants will be sagacious scoop-getters, who can write smooth fast, who don't mind working hard and who are excited about covering New York. For all positions, a premium will be placed on versatility. Interested candidates should contact [email protected] with a letter and resume. This is an equal opportunity employer.

Alongside the front-page news article on the mayoral race, today's New York Times carries a box headlined "Voting Information." This three-paragraph box is mostly straighforward information, on the order of, "The polls will be open from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m." The Times reports, "Officials at the Board of Elections said that voters with questions or in need of assistance may call the office's toll-free number: 1-866-VOTE-NYC (1-866-8683-992)." Then comes this doozy: "In addition, the New York Public Interest Research Group and Common Cause will operate a voter help line from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. today, at (212) 772-4463."

What in the world is the Times doing directing voters to a voter "help" line run by liberal advocacy groups with distinct stakes in the outcome of the election? If the New York Republican Party or the National Rifle Association or even, for that matter, the AFL-CIO or the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League set up a "voter help line," would the Times run it in the box labeled "voter information"? Just because these liberal advocacy groups claim they operate in the "public interest" or in the "common" cause doesn't mean their get-out-the-vote efforts should get a boost from the ostensibly objective New York Times news department.

Israeli Lobby: A dispatch from Beirut in today's New York Times reports on a new U.S. list of terrorist organizations that includes Hezbollah. "Indeed, it is widely assumed here that Israel was behind the new list, particularly after the influential Israeli lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee," appaulded it," the Times reports. Never mind the newspaper's, er, appauling misspelling of "applaud." The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is not an "Israeli" lobby. It is an American lobby. It is funded by American donors and its board of directors is composed of Americans. It is not registered as a foreign agent. It is based in Washington, D.C. One could call it a pro-Israel lobby or a lobby for Israel or a lobby for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, or even, in newspaper shorthand, an Israel lobby. But it's inaccurate to call it an Israeli lobby.

Labor Market: Today's New York Times carries an article that runs under the headline, "Attacks Hit Low-Pay Jobs the Hardest." This is kind of funny, coming a day after yesterday's front-page Wall Street Journal headline, "Slow Economy Takes Unusually Heavy Toll on White Collar Jobs." If you go to the subheadlines, it becomes clear that the articles are pretty similar. The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported, "As Service Sector Weakens, Once-Hot Labor Market Is Quickly Turning Cold." Today's New York Times reports, "Many of the Unemployed Were in Service Industry." Not only is the New York Times late a day on this story, it also injects its oft-parodied "World Destroyed in Nuclear Annihilation; Poor, Minorities Hardest Hit" spin.

Lost in Worcester: An obituary in today's New York Times reports on the life and death of Edward Boland. The article quotes "Representative Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Worchester, Mass." That's Worcester, not "Worchester." The New York Times ought to know -- the New York Times Company bought the Worcester Telegram & Gazette in January 2000, for a price that was reported at $295 million. The paper has since been run by managers in Boston whose main objective seems to be squeezing the highest possible profit margins from the Worcester paper in order to subsidize the fat-laden New York newspaper.

Late Again: The Science Times section of today's New York Times carries an article that runs under the headline "No Second Term for Surgeon General." The Associated Press moved an article on November 2 that ran under the headline, "Surgeon General To Leave Govt. in Feb." That article reported "'My term ends on Feb. 13 and I don't plan to stay on,' Satcher said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press." The Times waddles in late again, without any credit to the AP.

SPECIAL CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENT: Editors, reporters, page designers, photojournalists -- Smartertimes.com was founded June 19, 2000, "dedicated to assembling a community of readers to support a new newspaper that would offer an alternative to the dominant daily." That effort has now advanced to the point where searches are underway for certain staff. Editors, reporters, page designers and photojournalists willing to work long hours in an entrepreneurial, start-up environment are invited to apply. Positions are available in New York City, Albany and Washington, D.C., and in features and culture as well as "hard" news. Successful applicants will be sagacious scoop-getters, who can write smooth fast, who don't mind working hard and who are excited about covering New York. For all positions, a premium will be placed on versatility. Interested candidates should contact [email protected] with a letter and resume. This is an equal opportunity employer.

The lead editorial in today's New York Times comes out in favor of keeping the American war against terrorism bogged down in Afghanistan. It does this in a backhanded way, praising President George W. Bush. "Americans trust Mr. Bush's leadership on foreign policy because his direction has been fair and nonpartisan, rising far above the ideology on which he campaigned. He has steered clear of political grandstanding, consulting Democrats as well as Republicans, and ignoring the hawks in his own party who have been demanding a wider war," The Times says.

It's not just the hawks in the Republican Party who have been demanding a wider war. A September 20, 2001, letter to President Bush said, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a 'safe zone' in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means."

That letter was signed by, among others, former Representative Stephen Solarz, a Democrat, and by Leon Wieseltier and Martin Peretz of The New Republic, who aren't exactly well-known Republicans. In addition, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, has also called for targeting Iraq in the war against terrorism. He has done this repeatedly, but one recent example was in an op-ed piece in the October 29, 2001, Wall Street Journal. The Times's depiction of the demand for a wider war as a somehow "partisan" position of the hawks in the president's "own party" is contradicted by the facts.

Moreover, it's not even clear that the president has been "ignoring" these hawks, as the Times claims that he has been. It is possible that there are secret actions being taken against Iraq, or that Mr. Bush intends to take on Iraq in the next phase of the war.

Finally, the "trust" indicated by polls of the American public on how Mr. Bush is handling foreign policy has no relation to his decision not to immediately expand the war, despite what the Times suggests. A recent Reuters-Zogby poll found 74% of American support widening the war to include Saddam Hussein.

Not in the Times: The New York Times coverage of the mayoral campaign has been focusing on the candidates' TV commercials and personal appearances at the expense of the highly targeted direct mail campaign, which is in some ways more interesting. The latest Bloomberg move has been to mail Democratic women voters on Manhattan's Upper West Side a campaign flyer that says, "Bloomberg for Mayor: Pro-Choice and Anti-Death Penalty, Promoting Universal Health Care and Cracking Down on Illegal Guns." This strikes Smartertimes.com as at least worth noting in passing, coming as it does from a candidate who is nominally a Republican.

Pastrami Problem: An article in the metro section of the New York Times reports that during a visit yesterday to Katz's Deli, Michael Bloomberg "ate a hot dog with mustard -- and nibbled on some corned beef." This is a major campaign blunder, and the Times just lets it slide without comment. Any real New Yorker would know that at Katz's the right thing to order is the pastrami.

The cover article in today's New York Times magazine reports that before September 11, in New York City politics after Mayor Giuliani, "The pendulum appeared to be swinging at least slightly back to the left, which is to say back toward a more activist, ambitious government."

It's stuff like this that really makes one wonder what alternate universe the Times lives in. The whole point of Mayor Giuliani's administration was that it was activist, ambitious government. Unlike the previous administrations of "the left," which basically threw up their hands and assumed that nothing could be done about problems like squeegee men, crime, and welfare dependency, the Giuliani administration set ambitious goals for decreasing crime, improving the quality of life in New York and moving welfare recipients into work.

The Times magazine article claims that after September 11, "The critique of Giuliani came to an immediate end, and so did hopes for a new era of government activism."

By "government activism," the Times magazine seems to mean not crime-fighting and welfare-to-work programs but rather taxing and spending and intervening with market forces. But even by that strange definition, the claim that September 11 doomed hopes for a new era of government activism is suspect. An article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times reports, for instance, that "It is a good bet that after a long period in which the virtues of unfettered capitalism have been almost unquestioned, the next new economy will reflect a wartime drift back to a recognition of the importance of government and a post-boom hangover induced by excessive faith in market forces to get it right all the time."

The Times magazine article, in other words, asserts that September 11 meant the end of "government activism." The Times Week in Review article asserts that September 11 meant the beginning of a new recognition of the importance of government.

It's perfectly reasonable that people would differ on this question. But the magazine and the Week in Review section are both part of the Times news report. When, on the same day, they assert opposite answers to the same question, it tends to undermine the credibility of the report. It would be more accurate if both articles acknowledged that there are different views on the effect of September 11 on the role of government. Instead, each article takes one side of the question without acknowledging the other side. That's an approach more at home on the op-ed page than in the news report.

Rudy the Builder: An editorial in today's New York Times asserts about Mayor Giuliani, "as mayor he has not been known as a builder." The Times magazine cover article reports, "It is axiomatic that the next mayor's central task will be rebuilding. But rebuilding what? If it is merely office space, then he may not even equal Giuliani, during whose tenure millions of square feet of commercial office space have gone up in Times Square alone." Maybe the Times editorialists should read their newspaper's own magazine to find out about the mayor's reputation as a builder in the newspaper's own neighborhood.

Neediest Cases: The metro section of today's New York Times kicks off the annual appeal for the newspaper's Neediest Cases Fund, a Times-backed charity to which the newspaper appeals to its readers for support. The subheadline of the article says, "The Times Neediest Cases Fund Helps a Man Who Has No Home." The Times catches up with this man on the night of October 30, when the man spent the night sleeping on the subway. How is the Neediest Cases Fund involved with this man? Well, the article says, the Neediest Cases Fund partly funds the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies gave a $10,000 grant to Project FIND, the Times reports. Project FIND uses the money to give out bag lunches at a cafeteria, the Times reports, adding that "One of the aims of the project is to attract the homeless to a cafeteria, where Maury Sherman, a social worker, can help them get off the streets, said Cynthia Dial, executive director of Project Find."

The Times tells us that the man now sleeping on the subway found about the cafeteria "last winter." Well, if the man is still sleeping in the subway after all these months of getting "help" from the Neediest Cases Fund, it's not exactly clear that the Neediest Cases Fund-funded project is achieving its aim to "help them get off the streets." Maybe the subway counts as off the streets?

The article further notes that the "Man Who Has No Home" spends some of his money on "cigarettes and periodic visits to off-track betting parlors." Now, far be it from Smartertimes.com to second-guess how the "Man Who Has No Home" spends his money. He has what the newspaper describes as truly serious health problems and a sad family story. Although Project FIND has not yet succeeded in finding him a permanent home, it sounds like the organization has provided him some valuable assistance. Still, of all the heart-tugging hard-luck cases the Times could pick to kick off its "neediest" cases campaign, it seems strange that the paper would choose this one, essentially appealing to the paper's readers to subsidize a man's cigarette and gambling habit. At least the Times gets some credit for not hiding the facts about where the money is going.

An article in the Arts & Ideas section of today's New York Times masquerades as an even-handed look at a dispute among scholars of Islam, but is really a nasty, one-sided smear against Martin Kramer, the editor of the Middle East Quarterly. And against the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which published a recent book by Mr. Kramer.

The Times article quotes John Esposito, who is identified as "a leading American scholar of Islam and the founder of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University," as saying, "If you look at Martin's own profile, and that of his publisher -- which are not primarily concerned with what is best for America -- it's clear that there is an agenda here, which is to discredit the entire Middle East establishment."

If Mr. Kramer and his publisher, the Washington Institute, are "not primarily concerned with what is best for America," what are they primarily concerned with?

The paragraph that precedes the "best for America" quote in the Times notes helpfully that the Washington Institute is "a group that has close relations with Israel," and that Mr. Kramer once served as the director of an academic center in Tel Aviv. At this point, you don't have to be an anti-Semite or a Jew paranoid about anti-Semitism to get the sense that Mr. Esposito, with the help of the Times, is invoking the old dual loyalty canard, the idea that American Jews are somehow less than patriotic Americans and are in fact loyal to Israel before being loyal to America. The Washington Institute, after all, has close relations with Turkey and with the U.S. State Department, as well, but it is only the relations with Israel that the Times sees fit to mention.

It is nasty enough for the Times to collaborate with Mr. Esposito in making this charge. One could argue that the Times is right to print it because it is newsworthy that someone in Mr. Esposito's position would make such a disgusting and false charge. But what's really inexcusable is that neither Mr. Kramer nor the Washington Institute is given a chance to defend against this accusation. Nor is there a follow-up question to Mr. Esposito: There's no sign that the Times reporter said to Mr. Esposito, "Gee, you say that Mr. Kramer and the Washington Institute are not primarily concerned with what is best for America. Who do you think they are concerned with what is best for, and what do you base that assessment on?"

The Times drops the ball on this story in other ways, too. The affiliations of Mr. Kramer and his publisher are probed. But left totally unexamined are Mr. Esposito and his center at Georgetown, as well as a professor from the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, who is also quoted in the article. If the Times is going to get into the fact that Mr. Kramer's publisher has "close relations with Israel," why not also mention the fact that Mr. Esposito's center was funded by Hasib Sabbagh, who made his fortune in construction in a variety of Arab anti-Israel dictatorships? Or that Mr. Esposito's university marked the 50th anniversary of Israel's founding with a lecture series called "Palestine: 50 Years of Occupation." (The West Bank and Gaza only were "occupied" in 1967, so the program seemed to reject even the very existence of Israel.) One speaker in that 1998 Georgetown lecture series referred to the Holocaust as "Jewish propaganda," Seth Gitell reported in the Forward newspaper at the time. Georgetown University was also the venue for a February 24, 1998, speech by the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad, at which Mr. Awad stated, "who of [Clinton's] advisers ... is opposing the latest agreement with Iraq? Look at their last names. Look at their ethnic, their ethnic or religious or racial background."

No wonder the main Web page of Mr. Esposito's "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" refers those seeking "more information on Muslim communities and organizations in the United States" to none other than the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Looks like the Times and Mr. Esposito are taking Mr. Awad's advice.

Today's New York Times carries a front-page news article under the headline, "Police Overtime Since Attack Creates Retirement Incentive." The story goes on at great length about the "problem" of high overtime expenditures at the police department since September 11 and the incentive that gives officers to retire with an unusually high basis for their pensions.

It's by no means clear that retirements in the police department are a "problem." After all, the Times has been whining for years about the lack of racial diversity in the department. A new group of recruits would be less experienced, but it also might be more energetic, more representative of the city's changing population, and more likely to meet new, higher educational standards while working for lower pay. Smartertimes.com doesn't much buy into the Times's complaints about the current New York Police force, but for a newspaper that has been complaining for years about all the old white guys on the force to now all of a sudden raise an alarm about the "problem" of a wave of retirements is pretty rich.

The really amazing thing about today's Times article, though, is that while it dwells at great length on the personnel and budget implications of the police overtime, it doesn't say a thing about the effect that the additional officer hours have had on crime.

In fact, as Smartertimes.com noted on October 28, crime complaint statistics are down dramatically in New York since September 11. The most recent week's statistics are also down. As Smartertimes.com said October 28, it is possible that the decline is because even criminals were sufficiently shaken by the events of September 11 to take a momentary pause. It is possible the decline is because the enhanced civic feeling in the wake of the attack has encouraged law-abiding citizens to do more than they would have before in terms of reporting suspicious behavior and intervening to prevent criminal behavior. It is also possible that the decline in tourism means there are fewer targets for criminals. But it's also possible that all of this police overtime, in addition to having an effect on the city budget and the retirement plans of police officers, has helped reduce crime.

The Times and other critics of the NYPD have gotten a lot of mileage the past eight years from the theory that the drop in crime is the result of the booming economy, and that policing has had nothing to do with it. But since September 11, the New York economy has been cratering, and the crime rate is still falling. A cynic might think that a reason the Times has been so reluctant to report these facts is that it undermines the newspaper's theory that crime is driven by poverty.

Notoriety: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that Bill Clinton has endorsed Mark Green for mayor. The Times reports, "In Harlem, Mr. Green had some distractions of his own competing with the notoriety of the man he was with. A small crowd afforded Mr. Clinton his customary rock star welcome of shouts, screams, whistles and applause." Here's what the Times stylebook has to say about "notoriety": "Means more than just fame. Use it only to mean 'unfavorable repute.'" It may be accurate to speak of Mr. Clinton's notoriety, but not when it is followed by talk of a "rock star welcome" and "applause," unless the Times is somehow trying to cast aspersions on the residents of Harlem.

Objectivity: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on the hiring of Geraldo Rivera by Fox News. The Times reports that Mr. Rivera's hawkish position on the war against "terrorists" is "something that could leave him open to questions about his objectivity." The Times doesn't bother to actually find anyone who is raising these questions. Does reporting on the war against terrorists even call for "objectivity"? If the Times gave any credence to the idea that expressing an opinion beforehand was inconsistent with providing fair and accurate news coverage, it shouldn't have elevated its editorial page editor to executive editor of the newspaper. Mr. Rivera, just like the new Times editor, should be judged by his news report, not the opinions he expresses outside the news report.

Note: Beginning this month, Smartertimes.com will be running some non-New York Times-related original material, much of it about New York City.

Ice Cream Scoop: BROOKLYN -- After months of preparation and years of wrangling with the landmarks commission, ice cream maker Mark Thompson was scheduled to open a new ice cream parlor in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge here on September 12.

The terrorist attack intervened, and Mr. Thompson spent the weeks after September 11 giving away ice cream to firehouses and rescue workers.

But the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory has now opened its doors to paying customers, selling ice cream that is so good that it is almost enough to distract customers entirely from the broken but still beautiful skyline that can be seen through the ice cream store's window.

The ice cream store itself is set in an old firehouse at the foot of Old Fulton Street, between the River Cafe and the Bargemusic barge. Tin ceilings and walls and an old-fashioned record player lend a whiff of the past to what used to be the firefighters' galley. But what is really remarkable is the ice cream, which has a wonderful creamy texture and an intense, farm-fresh taste.

The ice cream is unusual because it is egg-free. "My theory on ice cream is there's three main ingredients -- cream, milk and sugar," Mr. Thompson says. In commercial ice cream, even superpremium pints, eggs are often added as a thickener to make ice cream in a European, custard style. But the egg-free ice cream made at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory feels a bit lighter on the tongue.

The other unusual factor is the ingredients. The peaches in the peaches and cream flavor were picked at their peak of ripeness and come from a 30-acre farm in Pennsylvania owned by a friend of Mr. Thompson's. The vanilla comes from Nielsen-Massey, a firm that Mr. Thompson says is to vanilla beans what Peter Luger is to steak. The cream comes from a variety of sources in New Hampshire and Vermont, though Upstate New York is also a possible source. "You're getting into a different season now, and cows are eating different things, and it actually affects the flavor of the ice cream," Mr. Thompson said.

For all the fancy ingredients, the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory's prices are still on the low end for a high-end New York ice cream purveyor. A small cone is $2.50, and a kiddie cone can be had for 95 cents. A sundae topped with a dulce-de-leche-like caramel sauce, a dollop of cloud-like whipped cream, and a strawberry in the place of the standard cherry is $3.95.

The place is already drawing customers who live in Dumbo, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights, where longtime ice cream parlor Peter's on Atlantic Avenue closed in the past year. But with the nearby River Cafe (which owns the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory) and Grimaldi's pizza (a perennial Zagat's pick for best of New York) already drawing Manhattan residents with sophisticated palates to the site of the Fulton Ferry landing, it's only a matter of time before the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory becomes a destination dessert stop.

For now, Mr. Thompson, who is 41 and worked 18 years at the Water Club, on the other side of the East River, isn't seeking a big burst of opening-related publicity. He says, "We're trying to let the ice cream speak for itself."

The lead editorial in today's New York Times, about the anthrax attacks that have killed four persons and closed buildings in New York, Washington, New Jersey and Florida, concludes by saying of the attacks, "These are tragedies for the individual victims but not, so far, a mass threat to the public."

One can see the temptation to reassure the public in an effort to avoid panic, but that closing line strikes Smartertimes.com as callous and unjustified. If the secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson, came out with that kind of remark, you can bet that the Times editorialists and columnists would be all over him for trying to downplay the threat. The "tragedies" here extend beyond the individual victims to their families and friends and to the tens of thousands of additional Americans who have had their lives altered by false anthrax threats, by testing and by new security precautions. Subways have been delayed, offices have been evacuated, the House of Representatives was shut down, the Supreme Court has been forced from its courthouse. To say that "These are tragedies for the individual victims but not, so far, a mass threat to the public" misses the point. It sure looks like these individuals are being targeted as part of an effort to threaten the public.

Photo-Less Obit: The New York Times today carries an obituary of a photographer who the paper says was on the staff of the Times "from 1967 until he retired in 1996." It seems strange that the Times did not illustrate the obituary with any pictures taken by the photographer, or with any pictures at all, for that matter. The obituary says the man was "a top general assignment photographer" who "won awards within the Times" and who "won the George Polk Memorial Award for photo reporting in 1955 for a picture taken for United Press of Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, 'listening' by using her fingertips, to Eleanor Roosevelt." It also says the man was "especially noted for his pictures of the Kennedy administration." So why not show at least one of these images to Times readers?

Can't Spell: A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times renders a last name as "Lehman." The metro section also includes excerpts from the interview that the article is based on, in which the last name is rendered "Leahman."

Can't Count: A news article on the front page of today's New York Times reports, "American officials flew to Pakistan to discuss ways of preventing Pakistan's small arsenal of nuclear weapons, said to number fewer than 20, from falling into the hands of extremists if the government was toppled by Islamic militants within the army." Never mind the grammatical point that the "if" calls for a "were," not a "was." Never mind the falsely reassuring "small" -- 19 nuclear weapons doesn't seem like such a small arsenal if you are on the receiving end of it. (Ask the Japanese.) The passive "said to number" leaves out who it is that is doing the saying. The New Yorker reports this week that "According to United States government estimates, Pakistan now has at least twenty-four warheads."

Can't Count: A dispatch from Kandahar in today's New York Times reports on Taliban claims that 11 people were killed at a Red Crescent dispensary there. That report quotes a man who identified himself as the owner of the bombed buildings as saying that "3 people, not 11, had been killed." Yet a front-page article from Washington in today's Times reports "Taliban officials said that air strikes hit a medical dispensary belonging to the Red Crescent and a neighboring house before dawn today, killing 13, and they escorted a group of foreign journalists and television crews to the site."

The front-page article from Washington puts the Taliban claim at 13 and doesn't mention the countervailing claim that 3 people had been killed. The article from Kandahar puts the Taliban claim at 11 and notes the countervailing claim that 3 people, not 11, had been killed. Granted there's a war going on and it is hard to get an exact fix on the number of deaths in a raid on enemy territory. But it would confuse readers less if the Times editors could catch some of the factual contradictions in the newspaper's own news report before it hits the streets. That way the reader who sees only the front-page article from Washington might not be left with a wrong impression about the death toll.

A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports on the Bush administration pressing Congress to pass an "economic recovery package." The Times reports, "Most economists are forecasting that the economy will bounce back by the middle of next year, assuming that Congress and the administration will pass some combination of tax cuts and spending increases to augment the Federal Reserve's continuing campaign of interest rate cuts."

The phrase "most economists," when found in a New York Times news article, is a pretty reliable indicator that whatever information follows should be taken with a giant slab of salt. The same reporter whose byline is atop today's dispatch was writing on February 5, 2001, in the New York Times as follows: "Many economists doubt that the tax relief can be enacted quickly enough to make much difference to the economy this year. Republican leaders in Congress say they probably cannot send a tax bill to Mr. Bush before this summer, suggesting that any changes in withholdings would take effect in late summer or early fall. History suggests that the economy is likely to be recovering by then, especially since the Federal Reserve is already cutting interest rates and is considered likely to continue doing so in coming months."

Smartertimes.com wrote back in February that "If this New York Times news reporter really has a direct line to what 'history suggests' will happen quarter-by-quarter in the U.S. economy, he ought to be off making a killing in the stock market. As it is, the Times just looks silly passing off economic guesswork as news reporting."

Sure enough, it is past late summer and past early fall and despite the Times claim of what "history suggests," the economic recovery seems nowhere to be found. Some of that might be blamed on September 11, but probably not all of it. Now the same Times reporter is telling readers that "Most economists are forecasting that the economy will bounce back by the middle of next year." Is there any good reason for a Times reader to believe that today's prediction will be any more reliable than the one the Times made in February? Doesn't the same analysis hold as the last time around? That is, if the Times reporter really has reliable information on the timing of the economic recovery, he should be off making a killing in the stock market. There's nothing wrong with the Times reporting what "most economists' or "many economists" are saying, but it would be nice if the paper reminded readers that "most economists" and "many economists" are often wrong when they try to predict what will happen in the U.S. economy a year ahead of time.

Clear Differences: Monday's New York Times editorial endorsing Mark Green for mayor said of Michael Bloomberg, "His ideas on the issues are similar to those of many Democrats in New York, including Mr. Green." A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times about yesterday's mayoral debate reports, "The debate brought out some fairly clear differences between these two men on issues." There seem to be some fairly clear differences between the Times news department and its editorial writers on this issue.

Not in the Times: No mention in today's New York Times of the fact that Mark Green's mayoral campaign is sending glossy mailings to the homes of Jewish voters in New York, blaring, "Republican Mike Bloomberg favors having children say the Lord's Prayer in New York public schools every day." The mailing also has a headline that says, "Rabbi Criticizes Republican Mike Bloomberg's Support for Having Jewish School Children Recite the Lord's Prayer." This is newsworthy in its own right but even more so given that Mr. Green has been accusing Fernando Ferrer of running a divisive campaign and had himself promised a positive campaign. It's odd that the Times doesn't consider this tactic to be worth a mention in its pages. The Green mailing also says Green will "increase pay for teachers for better performance" -- a formulation that has been somewhat controversial with the teachers' union because of the linkage between pay and performance.

Today's New York Times reports on its front page the results of a New York Times/CBS News poll. The Times headline over the news article about the poll results is, "Survey Shows Doubts Stirring on Terror War."

Curious about this, Smartertimes.com checked the Web site of CBS News, the other news organization that sponsors the Times/CBS poll. CBS was this morning reporting the same poll results in a story that it runs under a headline that reads in part, "Support For War Effort Is Strong."

Hmm. If two news organizations can make such widely disparate interpretations of the same poll data, in a poll that they both sponsored, then the data must be really murky, one would think. Maybe support for the war is running at, say, 55% or has fallen from the early levels of 90% to a mere 60%. Nope. The poll reported today asked, among other questions, "Do you approve of the military attacks led by the United States against Afghanistan?" The survey, a telephone poll of 1024 U.S. adults, found 88% approved and 8% disapproved.

It's not just the headline in the Times that is skewed. Check out this sentence from the article: "In another sign of mounting uneasiness about the war, only 29 percent said they were very confident in the ability of the United States government to maintain the international alliance of countries that support the military campaign; two weeks ago, 46 percent were very confident."

The Times labels this "another sign of mounting uneasiness about the war," but it may be more accurate to label it a sign of mounting uneasiness with the multilateralism espoused by the New York Times editorialists. The poll doesn't ask people whether their support for American military action depends on whether foreign governments that were not attacked by terrorists on September 11 "support" the action; it's likely that Americans would support American retaliatory strikes even if they were unilateral and not conducted as part of an "international alliance." The shift in opinion on this question over the past two weeks is probably a healthy one, based on a more realistic assessment of the true nature of the regimes of our "friends" the Saudis and our "friends" the Pakistanis. It also may be based on comments like those of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr. Wolfowitz was asked, "Is there a danger that, as it were, in the efforts to preserve the coalition that some of the objectives of the United States and Britain are being --" Mr. Wolfowitz responded, in part, "We don't talk about 'the' coalition. The secretary talks about 'coalitions' and I think that's the right way to think about it." So when the Times poll asked about "the international alliance," it was testing support for a concept that not even the U.S. secretary of defense supports. Would the New York Times interpret Mr. Wolfowitz's comment in Sunday's Telegraph as "another sign of mounting uneasiness about the war"? If the paper had noticed the comment, maybe it would have. After all, in a paper that runs a poll showing 88% approval of the war effort under the headline "Survey Shows Doubts Stirring On Terror War," anything is possible.

Senator McConnell: Senator McConnell of Kentucky has a wonderful letter to the editor of the New York Times this morning that the Times deserves at least some credit for printing. The Senator writes about the New York Times, "It has become difficult to take seriously an editorial page that argues that in the wake of attacks on our country, missile defense is less relevant while simultaneously arguing that campaign finance reform is 'more important than ever.'"

The lead editorial in today's New York Times endorses Mark Green for mayor. One paragraph, about Michael Bloomberg, begins, "Other than his business successes, Mr. Bloomberg has offered little during the campaign." The paragraph continues, "His ideas on the issues are similar to those of many Democrats in New York, including Mr. Green."

The editorial concludes with praise of Mr. Green for "a sensible approach to public policy."

Huh? The editorial says Mr. Green and Mr. Bloomberg have similar ideas on public policy. Yet when Mr. Bloomberg expresses those ideas, the Times says he offers "little." When Mr. Green expresses those ideas, the Times says he offers "a sensible approach to public policy."

Most Influential: A news article in today's New York Times refers to 1998, when "Gerald B.H. Solomon, New York's most influential House member, announced he would retire." Rep. Solomon was influential as chairman of the Rules Committee, but to say he was "New York's most influential House member" is a matter of opinion. There are arguments to be made that Bill Paxon, a member of the House leadership; Charles Rangel, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, or Ben Gilman, who was chairman of the House International Relations Committee, were more influential than Mr. Solomon.

Mr. Brodsky: A dispatch from Albany in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a dispute about the state budget. The article quotes a "Mr. Brodsky" but never gives the man's title or his first name. It sounds like Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, but there's no way for a reader to know for sure based on the Times article.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times claims that the terrorist attacks on America will result in an increase in crime. The Times claims that responding to reports of spilled powder and "bolstering security in public places" will make police departments "slower in responding to crimes" and will mean that police "may not be able to close as many cases." As a result, officials are concerned that "the crime rate could begin to rise again after a decade of decline."

The Times article goes on to report that new demands "may force already understaffed departments to consider jettisoning crime prevention tactics like community policing, which have been praised for contributing to the decade-long drop in crime but require considerable manpower."

The Times makes the claim that "There are no statistics yet on how the war on terror has affected local policing," and then goes on to quote officials at the FBI, and in the Philadelphia, Seattle and Los Angles police departments about how their work has been affected. Boston, Atlanta and Memphis are also mentioned.

There are so many flawed assumptions and reporting gaps in this article that it is hard to know where to start. Let's begin, though, with the idea that "bolstering security in public places" is somehow inconsistent with a decline in crime rates. It's absurd on its face. If there is a lesson of the decline in crime over the past decade, it is that the job of police is not to "respond to crimes" or to "close cases" but to reduce the number of crimes and therefore the number of cases that are ever opened. In other words, to bolster security in public places. Measuring police success by response time is a hallmark of an old, failed model in which police rode around in cars and the time they spent outside the car actually solving problems was considered a negative, because it was bad for the department's response time. Which would you rather live in -- a community with very little crime, or a community with a lot of crime but where the police are guaranteed to show up very quickly after a crime happens? Most people would probably prefer the community with very little crime.

The Times writes this article about how terrorism will affect policing by interviewing police in Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia, but not by looking at what is going on in the city that has been hardest hit by terrorism -- the newspaper's supposed home town, New York. Had the Times included New York in the article, it would have found that the claim that "There are no statistics yet on how the war on terror has affected local policing" is false. In fact, the New York Police Department has been releasing, as usual, its weekly Compstat numbers that track crime in the city. The most recent citywide Compstat report, which runs through October 14, shows that crime complaints were down for the 28 days ending October 14, 2001, by 10.4% from the same period in the year 2000.

Now, there are a variety of possible explanations for this decline in crime. One is that even criminals were sufficiently shaken by the events of September 11 to take a momentary pause. Another is that the enhanced civic feeling in the wake of the attack has encouraged law-abiding citizens to do more than they would have before in terms of reporting suspicious behavior and intervening to prevent criminal behavior. Another is that the decline in tourism meant there were fewer targets for criminals. But one particularly intriguing possibility not mentioned in the Times article is that the redeployment of the New York Police Department in the wake of the September 11 attack has contributed to the decline in crime reports. It has been widely reported that, following the September 11 attack, the NYPD reassigned many undercover police officers and detectives who had been serving in special units. Their new assignment was uniformed foot patrol -- a cornerstone of the "community policing" strategy. The Times claims that cities are considering jettisoning community policing in the wake of the terrorist attacks, but in fact what is happening in New York may be the opposite -- a move toward community policing. And it may be working to reduce crime.

All of this is highly speculative at this point. Still, so are the claims the Times passes along from Seattle, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. It's weird that a front-page Times roundup on the effects of terrorism on policing would so glaringly omit what is going on in New York City.

Can't Count: A news article in today's New York Times reports on America's Muslim population, which the Times says is "estimated variously at two million to six million." Strange that the Times today would use 2 million as the low estimate, when just as recently as October 25 the Times reported, "In an interview, Egon Mayer, a sociologist at the [CUNY] Graduate Center and Brooklyn College who directed the study with the sociologist Barry Kosmin, estimated the total American Muslim population, based on the findings, at 1.8 million adults and children."

Can't Count: The lead article in the Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times, by the newspaper's architecture critic, refers to the site of the World Trade Center by saying, "This is where 6,000 people lost their lives." In fact, the Times reports elsewhere in today's newspaper that the estimated toll at the World Trade Center is now 4,464 dead or missing, plus 157 dead on the two hijacked planes, including 10 hijackers.

The same Arts & Leisure article carries a frothing attack on "corporate architects," asserting that corporate architecture as currently practiced is inconsistent with imagination, and, bizarrely, that "In corporate culture, no one ever dies." One of the firms the Times critic turns up his nose at as "inferior" corporate architects whose interests are at odds with the public's is Fox & Fowle, which has been hired by the New York Times company to work on the newspaper's new headquarters tower on 8th Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets.

Can't Count: One article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that Mayor Giuliani arrived "an hour late" for a news conference to endorse Michael Bloomberg. Another article in the same section reports that he arrived "75 minutes late."

Poverty: The business section of today's New York Times runs an interview with an author. The Times asks, "Were the terrorists motivated by more than anti-American ideology?" The author answers, "Perhaps we should not have been surprised that the success of capitalism should have also created violent hostility among those who've been left out -- people with no power in the world of international diplomacy. They feel that the squalor and poverty of their lives is something being done to them by those who do have the power." It's silly for the Times to devote space to passing along unchallenged the claim that "poverty" was a cause of the September 11 attacks on America. The terrorists themselves were mainly from middle-class backgrounds. Osama Bin Laden has a fortune estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, and another terrorist mastermind who may have had a hand in the attacks, Saddam Hussein, has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine to be in the billions of dollars.

New In Letters: The Letters about the Times section was updated Friday with comments about fish, dolphins and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Letters about Smartertimes section was updated Friday with comments about the Global Positioning System, Orthodox Jewish burial practices, and press criticism in wartime.

A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "In Egyptian newspapers, the United States is portrayed as a case study in immorality: corrupt, hypocritical, anti-Islamic, anti-Arab, weak, uncaring about civilian casualties in Afghanistan and swayed by a Zionist lobby."

Later on, the Times article refers to the same press as "government-controlled."

And then, a few paragraphs later, the Times says, "Some members of Egypt's elite are also aware that the bitterness now expressed against the United States could, at some point, redound against the moderate Mubarak government and against them."

If the Egyptian press is so virulently anti-American, and the Egyptian press is controlled by the government, why does the New York Times persist in describing the Egyptian government as "moderate"? It doesn't make much sense to speak about the bitterness against the United States redounding against the Egyptian government when the Egyptian government is a key disseminator of the bitterness.

Opposed: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that widening the American military campaign to include Iraq "is opposed by Arab countries and European allies already nervous that the American campaign is being seen as a Western assault on Muslims." This is wishful thinking by the Times; it's certainly premature. If indeed Iraq turns out to be linked to the Anthrax attacks on America or the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- and the Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer is certainly an intriguing sign of this -- then no European "allies" of America would oppose American retaliatory strikes against Iraq. If they do, then it's inaccurate to use the word "allies" to describe them.

Roche: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on the Pentagon's decision to award a $200 billion contract for a new fighter jet. The Times also reports that James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, "was in charge of the selection process." The Times article reports that the team awarded the contract "includes Northrop Grumman, which will build the central fuselage and design the plane's radar and stealth systems." Nowhere, however, does today's Times mention that immediately before becoming secretary of the Air Force, Mr. Roche, according to his official biography, "held several executive positions with Northrop Grumman Corporation, including Corporate Vice President and President, Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector." He'd been with Northrop Grumman since 1984. Mr. Roche has a truly stellar reputation in Washington and Smartertimes.com would wager he made his decision strictly on the merits. But it does seem odd that the Times article doesn't even touch on the issue of how Mr. Roche handled the unavoidably awkward matter of making a $200 billion decision that affected his former colleagues.

Public Interest: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times refers to "the city's 13-year-old campaign finance law, which is considered a model by public interest groups." These groups are only in the public interest if one believes that the public interest lies in having, as a practical matter, limits imposed on political speech. The Times may be of the opinion that that is the public interest, but there are plenty of people, including the framers of the First Amendment, who hold and held a different view. The Times news article could have respected this difference of opinion by labeling these free-speech restriction groups as something other than "public interest" groups.

New In Letters: The Letters about the Times section was updated last night with comments about fish, dolphins and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Letters about Smartertimes section was updated last night with comments about the Global Positioning System, Orthodox Jewish burial practices, and press criticism in wartime.

The lead editorial in today's New York Times expresses support for a proposal by Senator Clinton and Senator Schumer "that would grant tax credits to businesses and residents that stay in or move into" the area of "Lower Manhattan." A news article in the Times metro section says "The plan calls for giving a $3,000 tax credit per employee to any business that agrees to return to Lower Manhattan or to set up shop there for the first time. The credit would be offered for up to five years."

The Times editorial is headlined "A Pragmatic Aid Plan" and calls the Schumer-Clinton tax-credit package "a good place to start."

Now, Smartertimes.com is all for lower taxes. But there's a difference between lowering taxes across the board and designing tax cuts that are so narrowly tailored that they amount essentially to government subsidies or spending in the guise of tax cuts. There are so few facts available about the Schumer-Clinton-Times tax credit plan that it is hard to tell which category the plan falls into, but the initial signs aren't good.

The Times doesn't say whether the senators are proposing that the tax credit be fully refundable. In other words, would non-profit organizations or money-losing startups that move into lower Manhattan qualify for the $3,000 and receive the full amount as a tax rebate, even if they owe no taxes?

The Times doesn't say what the definition of "employee" is under the plan. Suppose Al Smith starts a business in Lower Manhattan whose main purpose is to exploit the Schumer-Clinton-Times tax credit. Mr. Smith hires 100 "employees" at a salary of $50 a year. Their primary duty is to help Mr. Smith qualify for the tax credit. The government pays Mr. Smith $3,000 in tax credits for each employee. Mr. Smith walks away with a profit of $2,950 per employee. Not a bad business for Mr. Smith, but it's hard to see how this is a particularly efficient way of helping New York's economy. By rewarding "employees" rather than profits, the tax credits encourage inefficiency and make-work jobs. Say there are two companies that do the same thing. One company has 10 talented, highly motivated employees that make a total of 100 widgets a day. Another company has 20 mediocre employees that make a total of 100 widgets a day. Under the Schumer-Clinton-Times plan, the company that hires the mediocre employees and fails to motivate them well gets twice the tax credit.

It's also not clear whether the tax credit would create new growth or just shift it from one part of New York to another. Is it really good policy for the city, state and federal governments to encourage businesses that already exist in Harlem, downtown Brooklyn or Midtown Manhattan to pick up and move to Lower Manhattan? Why not lower tax rates citywide and make all of New York City a magnet for businesses from Connecticut, Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey?

Also unclear is who exactly is being rewarded under the Schumer-Clinton-Times plan. The Times editorial refers to "businesses and residents that stay in or move into" Lower Manhattan. But if the businesses and residents are going to "stay" there anyway -- and some have very little choice, having invested lots of money in their current facilities and being anchored to other institutions like the courthouses and the stock exchange -- why spend taxpayer money to pay them to do something that they were already going to do? The news article says the tax credit would go "to any business that agrees to return to Lower Manhattan or to set up shop there for the first time." That seems to suggest that if a business left and then returned, it gets the tax credit, but if it stayed the whole time, it gets no tax credit. That doesn't seem right, either, because those who left end up getting more benefits than those who stood their ground. Granted, not all of this is discretionary when it comes to the business owners. An office building that is closed because its windows have been blown out is a different situation than one whose tenants have decamped because they find the smell unpleasant and the view depressing. Still, these are complicated issues. The view here is that the free workings of the commercial and residential real estate markets will do a better job of restoring Lower Manhattan than will targeted tax credits. If the senators and the Times have suddenly come to see the benefits of tax relief, it would be nice to see them support it citywide.

And, to argue on the terms that the Times and the senators have used to oppose many of the other tax cuts that have come down the pike in recent years, it's quite likely that the tax credit they are proposing would be "regressive" and would mostly benefit the rich. Why should small entrepreneurs and taxi drivers in Queens and the Bronx who have been struggling to make it in this city have their tax dollars spent to subsidize big Wall Street firms that have been making billion-dollar profits in the past few years and paying their executives millions of dollars a year? When things get tough, these Wall Street guys -- along with the Times, Senator Schumer and Senator Clinton -- want the working man's tax dollars to pay to give the big firms a per-employee pay-off in gratitude that they don't permanently move their businesses to New Jersey?

Palestine: A dispatch from El Paso in the national section of today's New York Times reports on man charged with smuggling immigrants. "He recruited Middle Eastern clients in Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Greece, the prosecutors said," the Times reports. It's unclear whether the error is the Times's or the prosecutors', but there is no such country as "Palestine."

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "Officials said the Postal Service, whose 800,000 workers make it the nation's second-largest private employer after Wal-Mart, was in the process of ordering new machinery that can irradiate mail to remove contaminants, in the same way food is treated."

Only the New York Times, in its wisdom, could consider the Postal Service a "private employer." The Postal Service is owned by the federal government. It doesn't pay taxes. It has a federally granted monopoly in exchange for a federal universal-service obligation. Its postal rate changes must be approved by a federal commission. It is controlled by a board of governors appointed by the president. Its employees have a legal status similar to federal employees and are covered by many of the same laws and regulations. It has its own police force of postal inspectors who have the authority of federal law enforcement officials. If the Postal Service is already a private employer, what was its postmaster general from 1998 to 2001 doing writing in the September 2, 2001, Washington Post, under the headline, "I Ran the Postal Service; It Should be Privatized": "I can't believe that 25 years from now the Postal Service will still be owned by the federal government"?

After the Taliban: An editorial in today's New York Times comes out against allowing "the discredited warlords" of the Northern Alliance to rule Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. The Times writes that such a government "would have little chance" of "acceptance by important neighbors like Pakistan." That's a weak argument for rejecting the Northern Alliance. Why should America care what Pakistan wants? Pakistan liked the Taliban government and America's reward for that choice was thousands dead at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. When Israel was created in 1948, it had little chance of acceptance by its important neighbors, but that was not a good reason to oppose its creation. Taiwan has little chance of acceptance by some of its important neighbors, like Red China, but that is no reason for America to abandon it. Pakistan is a military dictatorship that is supporting terrorism against India, a democracy. There's no reason for America to defer to its whims. Pakistan's nuclear capability is not a reason -- America should have eliminated it long ago.

The Times editorial further complains that the Northern Alliance has "ethnically unrepresentative leaders." Well, the list of editors and executives on the Times masthead is also "ethnically unrepresentative." The U.S. Congress is "ethnically unrepresentative." So what? Afghanistan is in the midst of a civil war. The Times editorialists seem to think the new government there should be created not by the winners of the war but by the beneficiaries of some sort of racial quota system. It would be nice if the new government were ethnically representative but more important is that it is free and democratic and adheres to the rule of law.

Second Time: An article in the Circuits section of today's New York Times reports on the use of global positioning system units at the World Trade Center site. "Officials are examining the idea of hoisting an antenna on 3 World Financial Center, across the highway from the trade center site, that would boost the hand-held computers' signals and give them a clearer shot to satellites." The Times made the same error in describing how GPS units work on September 29. Smartertimes pointed that error out at the time, and the New York Times ran a correction on October 3. The devices don't send signals; they receive signals from satellites. So to refer to boosting the hand-held-computers' signals is nonsensical. What is being boosted is the satellite's signal; the antenna would give the satellites a clearer shot to the computers.

Stalin: The Bloomberg-Green-Stalin coverage in the metro section of today's New York Times is even worse than yesterday's, and yesterday's was the topic of a Smartertimes item. Today a Times columnist accuses Mr. Bloomberg of adopting "the tactics of Joseph McCarthy" and a "political memo" that begins on the metro front accuses Mr. Bloomberg of engaging in "hyperbole." The Times "political memo" describes the Stalin question as an "unwelcome" subject. The Times doesn't even consider the possibility that, with New York and America now engaged in a war, the fact that Mark Green woefully misunderstood the intentions of America's foe in the Cold War is even the slightest bit relevant. Mr. Green is going around town campaigning for mayor in part by bragging about the number of books he has written. It's not McCarthyism to go look at what the books say and hold Mr. Green accountable for siding with the Soviet propaganda line against Ronald Reagan. If Mr. Green were to now acknowledge he was wrong about Stalin's intentions, that would be one thing. But given that Mr. Green has so far been unwilling to make that acknowledgement, it seems to Smartertimes that it is entirely justified for the Bloomberg campaign to press Mr. Green on the Stalin issue.

During Fidel Castro's visit to New York last year for the United Nations Millennium Summit, the Cuban dictator made time to visit the offices of the New York Times, an article by Julie Pecheur in the current issue of the journal Correspondence recounts. As Castro walked down the portrait gallery, he asked, "Where is Herbert Matthews's portrait? There was a good journalist!"

Though the Times's man in Havana had long since retired and died, the newspaper's nearly slavish devotion to the Communist dictatorship on Cuba continues to this day. Sometimes, as today, it descends to the point of self-parody.

The Times metro section today carries an article on a Cuban-government sponsored propaganda tour by a group of Cuban musicians. The article's third paragraph passes along unchallenged a quote by one of the Cubans, who claims, "In Cuba, people don't have pistols. There are problems in Cuba, but we don't have gangsters." There are, of course, people with pistols in Cuba -- they work for the government security forces charged with capturing and torturing political dissidents, labor union organizers and religious leaders. They are, by any reasonable definition of the term, gangsters.

The Times article goes on to report that the musicians "rap in Spanish and come from a socialist world." "Socialist" is a euphemism for the system in Cuba, which would be more accurately described as Communist.

The Times article goes on to quote unchallenged the claim by an American that "the Cubans have an advantage in not having a music industry to contend with." The American claims that "Art here is a reflection of what the record labels want. That's why you see these negative stereotypes of mostly minorities in hip-hop." No American record executive is given a chance by the Times to point out that funding from the record industry offers more of a chance for financial success and artistic freedom than does the apparent alternative, funding from the Cuban government. No American record executive is given a chance by the Times to defend the American record industry from what seems like a thinly veiled accusation of racism.

The topper is the claim that one of the musicians rapped about "those Cubans who take to the sea because of their dire economic condition and end up drowning." This is such an outlandish distortion that it might be funny if it weren't being mobilized in defense of such a brutal and evil regime. It is not merely "their dire economic condition" that causes Cubans to take to the sea. That, after all, can be blamed -- wrongly -- by Castro on the American economic sanctions against Cuba. It is the lack of freedom that causes them to flee, and for that the Communist dictator and his henchmen are to blame. It is a closed-door policy by Castro that restricts emigration by normal, safer methods and causes Cubans to flee by sea on rickety boats.

Stalin: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "The Specter of Joseph Stalin Descends Over Mayoral Race." The Times reports this story in a whimsical tone that suggests the issue is beside the point. That is the position of Mark Green's mayoral campaign. The Times article begins, "Never mind the state of the public schools, the qualifications of the two candidates or even what the city should do to recover from the attack on the World Trade Center. The campaign to be the next mayor of New York turned yesterday on two unlikely subjects: Stalin (as in Joseph) and South Africa."

At issue is a passage in Mr. Green's 1982 book that says, according to the Times, "At his first press conference, Reagan said he knew of 'no leader of the Soviet Union since the revolution' whose aim was not world revolution, a view which ignores a Soviet leader named Joseph Stalin, who pushed for 'socialism in one country' instead of Leon Trotsky's approach of 'world revolution.'"

Never mind Mr. Green's use of "which" instead of "that." His unthinking acceptance of Stalin's slogan as representative of Stalin's genuine intention shows him as a dupe of the Communists. Reagan saw through that. If Stalin genuinely was not aiming for world revolution (or, more accurately, world domination), why was the Soviet Union pouring millions of dollars into funding Communist parties, propaganda efforts, front groups and revolutionary activity abroad?

The Times handles this by reporting, "Several scholars of Soviet history said in interviews yesterday that while there were debates about whether Stalin had renounced the concept of world revolution, Mr. Green's abbreviated version reflected a well-known school of thought and did not seem to be particularly pro-Stalin." Well, at issue is not whether Mr. Green's side of this debate is "well-known" but whether it is correct. The Times goes on to quote Robert Conquest, who is a brilliant scholar who is well aware of Stalin's true intentions. But his quote is used merely to reinforce the Times-Green position that this is all an amusing sideshow. If Mr. Green still believes today that Stalin was not bent on world domination, he's lost the vote of at least one New Yorker.

Booing: Senator Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton were roundly booed Saturday night at a benefit concert in New York. The New York Times reports this news today in the context of an article that devotes a headline, a photo and 17 paragraphs to the booing of Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen and exactly one half of one sentence to the booing of Senator Clinton. The crowd's reaction to the ex-president is not mentioned at all.

NY Post: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times complains about the New York Post that "Since the attack, The Post has aggressively criticized local and national leaders." The same could be said of the New York Times. Today's Times, for instance, carries a headline that says, "Criticism of Postal and Health Officials Grows Louder." And the September 13 New York Times was full of criticism of President Bush, including an editorial that said it was "disturbing" that Mr. Bush did not field questions from the press in the hours after the September 11 terrorist attack. A New York Times Times columnist on September 14 accused Republicans in Congress and the White House of "disgraceful opportunism" and suggested they "are not true patriots." The important question to consider is not whether the criticism has been aggressive or not but whether it is justified. That is a question that the Times does not get into.