Betting against your country should be a bad thing, but it's become routine for the left. Here are three items in the past two days that illustrate it in action.

First up, Larry Kudlow on the New York Times and the economy:

When the weaker-than-expected preliminary report on gross domestic product was first published in late January, the New York Times featured a story about it on the front page of its Saturday morning business section. The author was left-of-center Louis Uchitelle, a reporter who groused in his story about soft business investment (outside of computers and software) as well as weak export sales to foreign countries. A month later, however, we have the revision of the GDP report for the last three months of 2004. The new data show a much stronger economy.

The initial estimate of 3.1 percent GDP growth for last year’s fourth quarter was revised upward to 3.8 percent. Business investment was revised higher to 18 percent from 14.9 percent. Included in this, the rise in non-high-tech business investment outstripped high-tech investment (by 15.2 percent to 13.7 percent, both at annual rates) for the first time since 1994. Private-sector domestic output — what Economics 101 students might remember as consumption plus investment (or C+I) — came in at an outsized 5.5 percent growth.

So what did the New York Times do with this upbeat economic story? It buried it. Rather than place the news on the front page of the business section, the Times editors shoved it on page B4. Instead of carrying a senior reporter’s byline, the copy came from Reuters News Service.

The NYT is astonished.

"[T]his has so far been a year of heartening surprises," according to Tuesday's lead editorial about developments in the Mideast, "each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance."

That's a nice line about what "few in the West thought," isn't it? But the Times may be confusing "the West" with its one-dimensional and utterly predictable editorial staff. There's no shortage of Westerners who took Arab liberalism seriously, if only because they were paying attention to Arab liberals.

Soderberg: It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.

Stewart: [President Bush's] gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.

Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.

Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--

Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!

Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work.

As Steve Green notes, "the Democrats could have - should have - led the charge. 40 years ago, they would have. 60 years ago, they did".

Yes they did. But that was prior to the Class of '72.

Oh and one more, and this seems like as good a place as any to hang it. I had started to write a post last night on Robert Byrd's latest rhetorical escapade, with references to Godwin's Law, the Klan, and the like. But then I noticed that James Lileks described Byrd's droppings better than I ever could and decided not to reinvent the wheel. Or in this case, the Bleat.

(Incidentally, Byrd seems crying out for the Democrats to send to an early retirement, preceded by a strong rebuke. Start fresh now in West Virginia with somebody more vigorous--or at least conscious. It's a double political metaphor moment just waiting to happen: a Sister Souljah moment followed by the Torricelli gambit!)