Bizarro world New York Times

Did some Wall Street Journal editors slip into the Times’ offices last night? First they suspended their internationalism-worship long enough to run this editorial: “Iraq needs a credible U.N.”

Urgent steps, including high-level demotions and dismissals, are already under way to address the security failures. U.N. officials returning to Iraq face unavoidable risks, but everything that can be done to make them safer must be done. Ferreting out the murky details of the financial scandal, and meting out appropriate punishments, is no less urgent or important.

Then this opinion piece from the Heritage Foundation made it past the gatekeepers:

Payroll employment may well continue to surge in the next few months. If it does, it will be a vindication of economic optimists who have pointed to the household survey as the better jobs indicator of the last three years. We should be prepared for the job numbers in the payroll survey to permanently look anemic compared to other measures. This is the brave new economy, and the work force of 2004 can no longer be measured by an outdated definition of a job.

George Will noted that the jobs issue could hurt Bush in November if Americans feel underemployed. Judging by the household survey, there’s a lot more people who believe they’re working, even if the official payroll survey claims they’re not.