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# Posted 1:08 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

WHEN IT RAINES, IT POURS: You didn't think Howell Raines was fair and balanced during his tenure at the NYT? Well, Raines' latest op-ed shows just how much he was holding back during his reign on West 43rd Street:

If George Bush wins the presidential election, Americans can mark it down as a triumph of thug politics...

P. Diddy would be proud.

The New Politics birthed in the '60s, which stressed altruism and good government, has been displaced by an intellectual crudeness that was inherent in the modern American conservatism that began slouching toward Washington after the Republican convention in San Francisco in 1964...

Thank God the convention was isn't Dallas!

The most dangerous trait of the Internet is not merely its speed, but its creation of demand and credulity for unverified information. Perhaps for the first time since invention of the printing press, a new information technology has become more efficient at spreading disinformation than knowledge...

Whereas old technologies, such as television, spread enlightenment and joy. What, you think I'm talking about CBS? I meant Fox!

In another amazing shift, a foreigner, Rupert Murdoch, and his handpicked chairman of Fox News, the campaign strategist Roger Ailes, have become the most important standard setters in the nation's political journalism.

Oh my God! Not a foreigner! What next, a Catholic in the White House? Even worse, a Jew!

By the way, I'd bet Bill Keller and the rest of the NYT would love to hear Ol' Howell say that they've been brainwashed by Roger Ailes.

Will a Kerry victory bring the promised end to the much-discussed division among the American electorate?...I'm not sure that will happen with the best of wills.

You said it.

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