Fitzzz & Feingold!

Why does anyone listen to Gingrich?

Or Klein?

Was what Klein was doing to Gingrich what they’re talking about when coining terms like “Journalistic Felatio”?

Newt Gingrich was the fucking Speaker of the House: 2nd in line for the Presidential Succession. Damn powerful to the max! During that time, what did that “man of ideas” accomplish? As Bill Clinton once so elegantly put it: “It’s a fucking coup d’etat!” While schtupping his own secretary, Newt was trying to overthrow the elected Democratic President about adultery…

I think Joe Klein is somewhat ‘left’ himself…As in ‘…Left like a rotting carcass on an ideological Highway of Death’.

Nothing like a little false-flag intellectual bankruptcy peddled as prudent punditry to help give peace a chance in minds not totally enthralled with cognitive dissonance, however.

LOL Jane, and shouldn’t this be filed under Bigotsphere too? *grinz*

Now to go catch up on the articles I haven’t seen yet, and still wrapped up in the middle of the 9 pages and counting of ass drubbing he’s getting on his post alone. Sweeeeeeet.

It’s almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he’s on a tear. And he’s almost always on a tear of some sort…. As the man said, Newt may be carrying too much baggage to be President, but wouldn’t it be fun—and a boon for our democracy—to have him onstage in the coming debate?

Interesting that Klein is considerably less charitable in his assessment of Howard Dean, who might be considered something of an “idea man” and “party-ologist” for the Democrats:

[M]ost Democrats…make fools of themselves even when they speak the truth. The party chairman, Howard Dean, was not inaccurate when he said, “The idea that we are going to win this war … is just plain wrong.” If Dean had added the word militarily, most generals would agree with him. The trouble is, Dean—as always—seemed downright gleeful about the bad news. He seemed to be rooting for defeat.

Clearly Joe isn’t hampered by intellectual consistency.

Besides their known propensity to lie to achieve their ends, there’s another really good reason to not believe anything bushco says about Iran’s nuke capability…

State Department sees exodus of weapons experts
Feb. 07, 06
Knight Ridder- State Department officials appointed by President Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them with less experienced political operatives who share the White House and Pentagon’s distrust of international negotiations and treaties….

How do people like Joe Klein even get gigs like that, let alone keep them? There are thirty of forty people who comment here who have forgotten more about world affairs (yet retain a lot, unlike myself) than that guy ever sought to know.

OT, sorta from previous thread. Has anybody here ever gotten a response from Alaska Pete when he shows up? He’s no troll, but seems to interact very little. And sometimes he says important stuff.

Clearly Joe isn’t hampered by intellectual consistency.

Nor by intellectual honesty.

Klein’s a freak and a poor excuse for a political journalist. Apparently, he doesn’t recall the turmoil that Gingrich and the rest of the GOP caused during the 1990s, turmoil that resulted in the attempted impeachment of a President for an act that at best rated a censure. And he helped set the stage for the GOP-caused bullshit that has rocked this country during the new millenium.

Besides that, he helped derail health care reform, wasted millions of dollars on fruitless investigations, and shamed his post with his own philandering and hypocrisy.

Even most conservatives I know don’t like Newt Gingrich. And, frankly, the last thing the federal government needs right now is more ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The current administration doesn’t suffer from a dearth of ideas; rather, all the ideas it generates suck.

What we need is someone who can lead and take action and accomplish something. That Klein doesn’t understand this proves that he needs to get the hell out of the Beltway.

Not that I feel strongly about it. :-)

I tuned in to the show just as Stephanopolous was picking his teeth up off the floor from Kline’s remarks.

If this is going to play out like Iraq, then apparently Kline wants to avoid the rush and side with the hawks before the last-minute rush.

It’s also possible that he thinks becoming a pariah to the left is a good way to increase his readership….either scenario is pathetic.

hizzhoner

There are 201 comments now, and some are truly priceless.

sans-culotte, great, great link in number 8, thanks.

I think the “most stupid Joe Klein quote of all time” contest may have been a little premature. Maybe it should be a monthly weekly feature.

Ed*ard Teller @ 6:29 pm (#9) - How do people like Joe Klein even get gigs like that, let alone keep them?

For some reason, the phrase “journalistic fellatio” springs to mind …

The fact that Joe Klein can still pursue a career in the media after being caught anonymously peddling a book of utter lies that he pretended was A Thinly-Veiled Exposé of the Clintons should tell us all at least one thing:

If you’re doing the bidding of the Republican Party, there is no sin that you can commit that will suffice to banish you from public life — unless the sine is to become an effective critic of Republican policies.

Remember how the GOP/Media Complex just loooooved Scott Ritter back when he was with UNSCOM and attacking Bill Clinton’s handling of Iraq. But when he started opening fire on George W. Bush, suddenly an old (and as turned out, dismissed) morals charge was dredged up against him. Now, that morals charge had existed long before Ritter first hit the TV cameras. It was only after he became a Bush critic that the media suddenly cared about it.

Joe Klein and Newt Gingrich, hacks, hasbeens, and second rate thinkers: they were made for each other and the era of Bush.

BBC has a good news story on Iran http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4915026.stm

Well….I’m sorta late to this Klein party. Why is he so reviled? I remember back in the 90’s….the stuff over him being an author of a book, but not using his name, etc…but that to me, was something of a blip. What’s he done to piss everyone off?
If he truly is very conservative, but pretends to be liberal….that’s weird. Why? Why doesn’t he just come out and say he’s a conservative? There must be much I don’t understand about this guy.
Ghostman

Newt Has No Ideas

The idea that Gingrich has ideas comes from people who have no idea what ideas are. He’s like the couple in line in Annie Hall, talking about Marshall McLuhan, who totally misunderstand him. The only difference is that he held a big important position, and so people like the Tofflers were loathe to be as bold as McLuhan was in the movie, talking to a couple of ananymous New Yorkers.

But, just to point out two whopping examples. First was his attempt to associate himself with Edwards Deming, “The Man Who Invented Quality.” The problem was, evrything Demming believed in was the opposite of what Gingrich believed. Gingrich tried to appropriate Deming by saying that his ideas wouldn’t work in a culture where no one took responsibility. But Deming’s work was based on the assumption that workers want to do the best they can, and that management is where the problems come from. I wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times back in ‘96 or so dealing with this. In fact, Deming was so oriented toward trusting internal motivation that he was opposed to tests and grading in primary and secondary education.

Second, Gingrich framed his whole pseudo-intellectual exercise in his phony college course on the mis-approporiation of Peter Drucker’s concept of discontinuities from The Age of Discontinuities. Gingrich’s useage was just another go-round of blaming the 60s for destroying America. In the base/superstructure schema, his battle cry was “Get the hippies out of the superstructure!”

But Drucker was writing about the impact of fundamental transformations in the base–and these transformations took place starting in the late 1800s, producing all sorts of social stress in the period that Gingrich witlessly idealized as part of the stable march of progress that tghe 60s derailed.

Now, let me stress–there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking ideas and putting your own spin on them. But Gingrich does this while claiming that there is no spin at all, drawing on the authority of people who he completely misrepresents.

In short, he gives intellectual fraud a bad name.

Thanks John, That story came by a few months ago with little fanfare, but it seems mighty important to me that the State Dept has been shoving Valerie Plames out the door in favor of Michael Browns.

The end of the article is telling too…

Key arms-control issues since President Bush took office:

The Bush administration’s arms control policies began with a refusal to submit a global treaty to ban underground nuclear-test blasts indefinitely for Senate ratification.

The administration withdrew the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and blocked international efforts to conclude a pact on verifying compliance with a global biological-weapons ban.

The administration also rejected a mechanism for verifying that the United States and Russia are adhering to a 2002 accord to cut deployed nuclear warheads, has embraced new uses for nuclear arms and is spending billions modernizing and improving the U.S. arsenal….

So, Bush is violating the NPT and other nuclear arms control treaties left and right but wants to go to war against Iran for pursuing its “inailable right” to pursue nuclear technology.

TREATY ON THE NON-PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Article IV
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty…

Of course it’s a valid assumption that Iran’s program is not for peaceful purposes, but that’s still just speculation at this point. Iran has a guaranteed right to do what they are doing so far.

I think blogging is a fine thing. Seriously, I do. I blog at Newsfare, and just today I lavished praise on Jane and Christy for their untiring work which, I believe, has just led to a highly unusual event: the New York Times editorial page responded directly and cogently to an editorial in the Washington Post. I have been reading the Times for more than 40 years, and I have never read an editorial like that one.

Lately, though, I find it particularly, um, interesting to imagine that we may all be happily blogging away while Bush sends in nuclear weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians, incidentally helping all his little pals make money by raising the price of oil to, say, $120 per barrel.

Oh, the power of our very own left blogosphere!

Through such meditations, I now believe I can finally grasp the numb, sardonic quality of German post-WWII art and literature. Imagine what we will all be writing if Bush really does incinerate some town in Iran as a display of his warlike prowess. There will not be shame enough on the planet to express our horror. Numb impressionistic humor will once again be the order of the day.

I plan to have my first few short stories ready in advance.

I love Ms Hamsher’s smackdowns of these creeps. These two are so full of themselves… It is sickening.

Carry on Lady Jane. We got you covered!

Cujo,“journalistic fellatioâ€HAHAHAHA!I was just thinking Joe may have recived a stain on his suit,when I read your comment.F’n A!

Folks, I’m just an average guy that loves his family, his country and considers himself lucky to be blessed with all that accompanies being an American.

In light of all that has transpired since BushCo has taken charge, I think the Iran war drums are far and away the most dire. The revolt of the Generals is encouraging but in so many ways not enough to stand as a roadblock to the voracious machine that is the military/industrial complex. Many prominent ex-military men quickly find their way to plum jobs with the very same corporations that profit from war. They hitch their saddles to the GOP raison d’etre and I have a hard time tructing their motives. Here’s hoping that the recent mutinous uprising is more than just a “we’d have done it differently” stance. Our current path leads straight over a cliff.

To protect the future of my two sons, I’m prepared to do more than just talk and type, I’m ready to stand up and fight, in any form necessary. Just let me know where to be.

Peace!

Ghostman, you can just use FDL’s search feature on the left. Jane has done a lot of posts about Joe. Corporate media retains him as a “talking head” of the left, when he is just the opposite. This feeds into other stories Jane has done on “Republican welfare.” Using Abramoff kind of money to establish “non-profit” think tanks which do nothing except publish neo-con talking points under the imprimatur of the objectivity of their “think tanks” and the corporate media.

Ralph…

I read with interest your comment #23. But I am not sure what the point is. Is this a call to action to stop Bush from attacking Iran? And if so, what kind of action do you suggest. Clue me in please.

Ghostman @ 6:47 pm (#20) - The search box thing here doesn’t work. Try Googling for “Joe Klein in his own words” in the firedoglake.blogspot.com domain (use the advanced search).

Jay;
First we fight in the polls,we can protest in the streets.And protest we should.We cannot and should not send our country into anarchy.First I belive in America,Second,do you think Bush would love to declare Martial Law and sespend the elections?Emperor George anyone?

Wolcott too is unhappy about Iran http://jameswolcott.com/archiv.....freedo.php

Cujo359 @ 6:58 pm (#29) - Apparently, I should amend that to say “doesn’t work for me”. Google generally works better, anyway. I used to use it a lot when I had to navigate Cisco’s site.

Make that suspend.Woops.

#27….ok, I see. He’s two-faced, and devious (the think tanks), and an imposter to progressive thinking. Wow….I guess….well, we all like to share company with those we feel comfy with. This guy seems to make it a point to be branded on the left…then blatantly talks “on the right”. I guess, ultimately, I just have a hard time getting into the head of someone like that. Thanks for the info.
Ghostman

fuck Joke Line, that is all, I refuse to read more than the first graf of this post. Fucking gingrich, it’s a shameful failing of our side that this evil piece of filth doesn’t have to walk down the street with a bag over his head.

I just watched the Sopranos. For all their supposed badasshood, can’t hold a candle to Cheney. God, their bullshit looks like fuckin Gandhi.

Cujo, I just tried it. It brought back a few Joe Leiberman’s too, but the Joe Klein’s showed up too.

Sharkbabe #35…

I like it! Now don’t hold anything in. Hear?

Ghost;
This guy is constantly portrayed as representing the left or liberals.And he spits GOP talkind points like some demented furby.Week after week,same old sh*t.When he ventued onto HuffPo last week many of us were too glad to,well tell him how we felt.

DMM,

I think that the Bushies (neocons really) would relish the opportunity to crack down on dissent in all its forms. Iran is part of their PNAC agenda of global hegemony: we’ll take by force what we deem in the best geopolitical interest of the mighty USofA. It’s all about the natural resources that dwindle and become more critical by the day as China, India et al. speed toward industrial maturity.

As my favorite sign during the anti-war protests pre-Iraq read. “How did our oil get under your sand?”

I suspect the very worst from these freaks, including what really happened on 9/11 and how far they’re willing to go to grow the empire. Martial law included. I make none of my judgements lightly or without much research.

I belive I may have referred to him as a self-important prick.But I ment it in the best possable way.

John Casper @ 7:04 pm (#36) - That’s why I tried to use “Joe Klein”, which works fine on Google, but not here.

God, look at that picture of him - I mean really look at it. It is to fucking hurl. We need to bury the fuck out of these fucks. That is all. Goodnight my fdl loves.

Oh, look at that. You can type:

site:firedoglake.com “Joe Klein”

in the Firefox Google box and it gives you the same thing. I don’t know if there’s a smart bookmark thing on Internet Exploder, but if there is you might want to try it and save a bit of time.

He looks positively Hitchens-esque.

Sorry Cujo, I missed your 32.

To rephrase Ohdave….does anybody listen to Gingrich or Kline? Jest like the pseudochristian fascists, we pay WAAAYYY too much attention to broken down liars and hypocrits like these two. Jest kick ‘em in the kneecaps (as my man MarkfromIreland would instruct)and move on. Take ‘em down and humiliate ‘em and move on to the next battle…

KEEP THE FAITH, THERE ARE TOO MANY TARGETS AND NOT ENOUGH AMMO!!!

Jay;
Let’s not forget that in the Katrina aftermath,with the guard overseas they sent in regular military to’quell the unrest’.A terrible precedent,not what the military is for.Made me think.

if the administration can get away with it, our country will attack Iran as part of their grand scheme which was layed out a long time ago by his sick fraternity….him and his friends made this decision long before the man took office. (the docmentation is their for all to see on the sicko fraternity’s website, the PNAC)

this man believes he can be the very usher of a doom prophesized in the 1800’s by “dispensationalists”, and he actually wants to cause what they think will be the Armageddon, he is a dispensationalist (look it up) and he wants to bring about the battle that will bring forthe the end of days.

he believes he can force the will of this prophesy as if he were the almighty himself, as if G-d listens to his beck and call and he believes he is the messenger of death

because of the administrations decision to initiate war on a second front unprovoked, (which was against every single American military general and strategist’s advise if they weren’t in the sick fraternity bent on world domination known as the PNAC), our military ability is so weakened and so stretched, the nuclear option is the only way we can prosecute yet another war, and that might very well have been the plan all along, a nuclear attack initiated by us for no reason what so ever.

Iran is 10 years from a nuclear weapon and any action based on the nuclear threat from Iran is fabricated, there is no nuclear threat, the president knows there is no nuclear threat, and any fear monguering in that regard is inteneded to have the sheep of this country follow him yet again to yet another war he is craving to have and that he is inept to conduct.

we need someone in office that knows what to do when we are challenged as a nation, and not someone who has proven inept, who has proven to make decisions that have only made matters worse, and not someone who has brought us to the brink of nuclear war and holocost, and certainly not someone who has been incorrect at every military decision.

and we need someone who would not have kept in office people as unquaationably incapable like rumsfeld…a man who proves every single day to have no military clue whatsoever

and we certainly do not need a man who has forced into retirement any general who proves their knowledge correct, insightfull and who has successful experience in the military arena

we can only pray congress will do their sworn duty and provide the oversite that has been sorely missing

to date, their irresponsible performance has brought us to this place we are today, with a man in office who thinks he can overthrow the world for the sake of his pals oil profits (a commodity we don’t even need if only we had maintained the policies that were designed to have us energy Dependant and which have been rescinded)

I am predicting (praying) the presidents intention to initiate world war three and usher the battle of armageddon will fail.

I think the congress might finally understand that their irresponsible performance in oversite has created an office with absolute power, and obviously, that power has corrupted absolutely.

I predict (pray) congress will do what we elected them to do, and if there is truly a god, the vision that inspired our forefathers to write oversite into this lands great constitution, congress will hopefully provide the check and the balance for which they are there in the first place, I will pray they will put a stop to what is happening to this once proud beacon of world leadership and democracy.

congress has date renegged in their obligation and in their very function

yet if they renew their purpose they can possibly be the tools that avert world war three, this won’t be the battle of armadedden, it will be the doom that is brought at the will of one sick fraternity with a puppet at the end of tethers of the marionette

Ok, so this guy is a joke…and he fools nobody around here. But…he still writes for Time? And Time calls him their “liberal viewpoint guy”, or some such?
Why not go after Time? Call Time a joke due to its lunacy re: Klein.
Ghostman

angie @ 7:18 pm (#44) - He looks positively Hitchens-esque.

Back in the ’80s, we called that “shitfaced”.

Norske,

I’m not old enough to remember Vietnam, but I wonder if the current state of revolt from the ex-Generals is starting to scratch the surface of the wave that finally got us extracted from Southeast Asia? Any insight?

Am I the only one who thinks that Joe seems to go a little heavy on the eyeliner in his TV appearances?
I mean WTF is up with that?

One can only guess that the excessive makeup heightens Newt’s pleasure when Joe glances up from the task at hand.

I think we need to start a new meme…

Say this every day to whoever will listen…

“The deceitful conservative Joe Klein…”

Use the same phrase in every letter to Time you should send to complain about whatever verbal atrocity he spouts off about, in print or on the air.

After all, he’s actually supporting the American-hating conservatives with every phrase he mutters, and he’s lying about being a Democrat, or a liberal, which marks him as both unwilling to admit what he is, and willing to lie about what he is.

If every blog owner, poster and every dairy-maker simply used, where applicalble, the phrase “The deceitful conservative Joe Klein…” whereever applicable, it would eventually get onto the talk shows.

Since the conservatives don’t consider Klein one of theirs, repitition of this phrase will leave Klein without a constituency, and Time will find him an anachronism unworthy of a salary.

My two bits…

I have long had Joe Klein in my mental “ignore list” - when he’s on TV, it’s a good time to go to the bathroom or let the dog out… some assholes are worth listening to since they represent a political tendency or the other but Klein is just useless…

Funny jib jab-like bush parody.

Let’s Bomb Iran!
http://www.4tvs.com/iran/index.html

DMM,

“Let’s not forget that in the Katrina aftermath,with the guard overseas they sent in regular military to’quell the unrest”

Whoa! “Regular military to quell the unrest”? I think you’re mistaken.

“Ex-NATO chief joins calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation” April 17, 2006
“WASHINGTON: A former NATO commander on Saturday joined six other retired generals in calling for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.
“I believe secretary Rumsfeld hasn’t done an adequate job. He should go,†General Wesley Clark told Fox News Channel in an interview. Clark said Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had pushed the United States into Iraq, and said the invasion “had no connection†with the war on terror….”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/d.....006_pg4_11

does anyone have Joe Klein’s schedule?

Because I consider myself both a liberal and a leftist….. and IMHO, what Klein wrote about “leftists” were “fighting words”. So I want to show up somewhere that Klein is speaking, identify myself as a “Democratic leftist” and DARE him to stand directly in front of me and say what he wrote about “Democratic leftists” in front of me.

I’m THAT pissed off about it.

Joke Line sure can write.

Conjuring an image of the great giraffe hunter as a vaudevillian space dog muttering “exit, stage left” requires a special skill.

Know nothing. Know Klein.
Huff and puff up my ideological arse.
Gingrich never had an idea except to cabbage onto a lot of money by saying what the money wanted to hear.
What is that loud sucking sound I hear?
Fellas fellatiotiating other fellas by the shores of gitchee-goome. Take em out and take em down. enough of these clowns. Genuine sated simulated brains for sale.

Cozumel;
I may be,but I seem to remember news to that effect,as I have no link(yet)I must pose the question to the room,anyone else?

Ghostman #49, just my $0.02, it’s a very, very target rich environment. Jane, Christy, and others spend most of their time on the WaPoo, the New York Times, Russert (Pumpkinhead), Matthews (Tweety) and others such as John WATB Harris and Jim Church Lady Brady. Judy Miller is history, as a journalist, we hope. If you see something bad in Time or Newsweek, link to it, they might use it in a post and credit you, “Ghostman.”

DMM.

National Guard, yes. “Regular Military”, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

In the future, can we please refer to any idiot who thinks that nukes just absolutely have gotta absolutely remain “on the table” as a member of the Insane Klein Posse?

Just askin’

“Internet Exploder”
LMAO.

It would have been during the reports of gunfire at rescue ‘choppers and massive murder and rape at the Superdome stories.

DMM, If any of those stories would have turned out to have been true. They were all BS

O.K. my bad,would they have been returning Iraq vets,may have been the source of my confusion.Guess I’ll have a look at your link,thanks.

53 palamedes says:
I think we need to start a new meme…
“The deceitful conservative Joe Klein…”

Conservative? Joe Klein is an America humping ‘rightist’.

Lurid reports of rape, murder in Katrina’s aftermath exposed as frauds
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2....._prn.shtml

Reports of anarchy at Superdome overstated
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....yth26.html

Yeah,I do remember that those reports were discredited.At the time MSM was whipping into a frenzy about it.

Cannot believe this is Woody Guthrie’s biographer.

At the time MSM was whipping into a frenzy about it.

We all remember that. Most still believe it.

BullGoose @ 7:38 pm (#69) “The deceitful conservative hump Joe Klein…â€

Has a down-to-earth, Sipowicz-ian kinda ring, doesn’t it?

klein and newit,sorry but I just went deaf to anything these idiots have to say. The repub cons must really be desperate to drag out these clones…baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Paul Rosenberg @ #21 above is right when he says Gingrich has no ideas.

The clever sophistry Gingrich employs to give the illusion that he’s an idea man is based on his selecting fragments of other people’s ideas, deliberately misrepresenting them by reducing them to disingenuous soundbytes, and then juxtaposing one set of the these soundbytes next to another set in order to discredit one while elevating the other. He creates the illusion of deductive reasoning where in fact whatever position he is advocating appears to have validity soley based on the fact that he’s used it to discredit another opposing idea.

He was pretty good at this manipulation too until the power he’d achieved went to his head and derailed his little megalomaniacal mini-juggernaut.

C’mon, Newt is a good moral man. Adultery, fornication, dishonesty, corruption… He is the quintessential moral Republican. He’s the absolutely newtessential conservative. And look out! He’s calling for “reform” again. If only he would make his #1 reform priority impeaching the President as he did in 1994.

“The editorials of the Post are strictly out of my purview and specifically not in my job description. Deborah”

Someone over at Kos says they got this from Lil’ Deb. Anybody else get one who can confirm?

74 Cujo359 says:
“The deceitful conservative hump Joe Klein…â€
Has a down-to-earth, Sipowicz-ian kinda ring, doesn’t it?

Sorry, any sentence with the phrase “hump Joe Klein” in it has a spew chunks kinda ring.

Well I’m now stepping very carefully,Again,thanks for the link Cozumel.While reading it,I noted exception #3
The President of the United States can waive this law in an emergency; Cut and pasted from document.
I belive I remember a small stink about this at the time.I MAY BE WRONG!Never ment to change the thread from kicking Joe to kicking me,but if I deserve it,kick away.I go seeking info,one way or another.this keyboard works slowly.

Oklahoma kiddo, in comment #28, thank you for your reply.

Sorry, the point is that I don’t have a suggestion! That’s why I wrote the comment. I guess it wasn’t very clear. I fear that, as amazingly sharp as our best bloggers have shown themselves to be, we are still collectively almost powerless.

I am, how to say, beyond disheartened about that realization. And I do think humor has a place in the human condition… which condition does not seem to be improving over time. Oh, yes, our physical setup is temporarily much improved over the last few hundred years, but we are still locked into a perverse struggle… against ourselves, somehow. It’s odd, and even somewhat funny.

During the catastrophe of looting in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion, I was frantic to make a difference, somehow. I wanted to save our country, and the world, from the horror of Bush’s fascism. And of course, I really still do want to help. But I’ve learned and thought so much since then, and find I’m no longer sure that humankind can ever be saved from itself.

I so hope Newt makes a serious run at the Presidency. He won’t beat out the likes of Hagel, but it can only help paint the GOP as a whole as ethically challenged.

BullGoose @ 69)“The deceitful conservative hump Joe Klein…â€

Nice ring to it.

backspace @ 64
“Insane Klein Posse”

Really funny.

“The Kleinis” would be my entry.

Durn, I missed the previous thread. I could have done some blogwhoring about my post on Iran. Looks like you guys got worked up on it though. Scary stuff.

Jane Hamsher @ 7:52 pm (#78) - Did she explain whom you’re supposed to complain to?

DMM,

“The President of the United States can waive this law in an emergency”

That’s correct, and it wasn’t done. In my opinion, given the magnitude and urgency of the situation in this instance, it should have been in.

- Cozumel (ducking) ; )

just now on CNN - they were doing their Sunday night poll question - Should Rumsfeld Resign? and had to preface the playing of the taped viewer responses with a warning that for the first time in 3 years all the responses agreed and no one should think this was partisan bias … they then played the soundbites from viewers - most of whom sounded … well, I’ll say “quite mature” … and all of them said yes, he should resign with several he should be kicked out or run outta town thrown in.

Wonderful!

Alright here goes,this story sites National Guard and Federal Troops.I’m reading that as regular military or Army.At the time I was very disturbed by it,seeing it as a misuse of the military.(not the Guard,its their job).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.....d_violence

Off topic but sick sick sick. Is this is the type of thing red states do when they’re allowed to govern themselves? http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCAT.....index.html

Omaha school district to resegregate… I’m not happy.

#88….I may not be understanding your questions on troops in the katrina aftermath…..but elements of the 82nd airborne were deployed….they just sort of walked up and down deserted streets. They encountered no hostility, took no fire, etc. But they were there in N.O. for just a bit.
Ghostman

Bill #89

Yes

The funny thing is, there is not a progressive blog on the net where someone like Joe Klein could post comments without being banned as a concern troll or moby. But in the librul media…

DMM,

Yeah, “Federal Troops” were there but NOT in a “law enforcement” capacity.

My last comment on this subject (I hope) ; )

Hey,I’d much rather kick Joe!But I value the opinions of fellow FDL’ers.Consider the matter closed.

OT but an interesting link about AIPAC:

http://boston.indymedia.org/fe...../index.php

with photos of a group of “Young Jews Support Palestinian Rights” holding a seder outside AIPAC’s offices - complements of a Moon of Alabama poster.

The message on Katrina is not merely that troops were unavailable, it was that what Federal preparedness, in the face of obvious warnings ignored up to and including the presidential level, was grossly inadequate, Federal resources were made available were incompetently deployed, that Federal officials responded with racism and indifference, that the same Federal officials (again including the chief executives) fell over themselves to award sweetheart contracts to their usual cronies, and that the same Federal officials precipated the crisis in the first place by repeatedly denying the state funds to maintain and upgrade flood control infrastructure. Katrina is not the exception or anything unusual… it just has all the usual ingredients of how Bushco goes about the business of ruling. With utter callousness, cruelty, incompetence, venality and corruption. Like Iraq, it’s a perfect case study….

Thanks Jane for all the great links. I read all of the HuffPosts, and they really did demolish jokeline. There were my favorite bits:
From Jane Smiley ===So, Joe Klein, I wonder if you’ve noticed in the last five years that in the name of patriotism, the right wing has decimated the treasury, broken the army, wrecked the bureaucracy, silenced the media, gelded the opposition party, handed the public lands over to private interests to exploit as they please, dirtied the air and water, impoverished the working class, damaged the schools, outsourced the jobs, and laid waste to the public health. You haven’t said much about that, but that’s what I call America-hating.===

From Trey Ellis ===As Progressive as many of the opinions on the HuffingtonPost and the Nation and Mother Jones might seem, almost no one is espousing a position that is as radically left as those espoused by this nation’s radical right. How many Trotskyites do you see talking with Wolf Blitzer about a permanent and significant redistribution of wealth? How many Spartacist Leaguers advocating re-education camps for the bourgeoisie are on talk radio?===

DMM @ 8:06 pm (#88) - Such deployments have been done at least twice before. One was in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce a school desegregation order (101st Airborne Div.), and the other was Detroit in 1967 to help quell riots there (82nd Airborne Div.).

Can you tell there’s a new thread?

Joe Klein is scum. Go read my letter to him.

I hope so,I’m feeling a little punch-drunk!

I found out that Joe Klein is an anagram for PREVARICATING DOUCHEBAG.

I know there doesn’t appear to be enough letters, but try it you will see.

-GSD

How perfect is that? Joe and Newt? If Joe Klein managed to avoid being labeled a brown-nosing, shill-whore thus far in his career of brown-nosing, shill-whoring he could not have attached himself to a more perfect symbol of brown-nosing shill-whoring than Newt Gingrich to make it a done deal.

Where it like a badge of honor, Joe. Way to walk the plank there, Joe. We here on the side of the left, progressive “America haters” are just so pleased to help you to officially pigeonhole your self.

Perhaps the salty after taste Klein has in his mouth, resulting from the constant licking of Joementum’s wrinkly sack, may have caused some type of allergic reaction to confuse his ideology of being a liberal when he’s actually a conservative b*tch. :)

On the totem pole of hack pundits….Joe brings up the bottom. I even have more respect for Sean Hannity because he is honest about who he cheerleads for.

Who do you see about having the liberal label lifted from Joe’s jacket? Shilling for the corporate media meal ticket by pretending to be a liberal, as he sucks up to all things Republican, is getting old.

It can’t be known for sure, of course, but both Jumpin’ Joe Klein and Jumpin’ Joe Lieberman, in my opinion, are sulking that they are not as deeply appreciated by Democrats as they feel they should be. Yes, this did not start recently. For Lieberman, it may have begun after his presidential bid became such a self-mockery. For Klein, it probably began before he wrote Primary Colors, and I imagine there was some seminal event that caused him to feel unloved before that. Either way, the two have turned into Democratic Party-attacking right-wing spinners and should be treated similarly to how Brownback and Limbaugh are treated - with situational disdain and humane empathy for their self-righteous ignorance.

Underlying both of their turns for the worse, also in my opinion, is a certain kind of low-grade post-Holocaust hysteria among certain American Jews and others (Hey, stop that! I’m Jewish!), such that whenever the subject of Israel arises - and that has been THE subject really since Sharon invaded the ‘Temple Mount’ on his armed provocation - a self-justifying defensiveness is activated that autonomically overrides any and all previous ideology.

Sharon’s intentional provocation was the signal event for a major phase escalation in the Western imperial agenda to accumulate more land and power in the region (nicely followed by first the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations and next by ….). Notice how nicely it exploded the Democratic pursuit of a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. After that, it was all downhill for hope in that pursuit. The stage was then set for the big new imperial push, which pulled into its wake all willing hegemony apologists and acolytes, including of course the expected usual insane American Christian Armageddonists.

And after that it has been all undertow, with formerly normal people now abandoning all pretense of evenhandedness or equanimity. Because it’s all about us versus them, you see. Nazis or angels. YOUR CHOICE, you understand. Now, that’s what I call a hysteria. That’s what I call a syndrome. Call it the Joe Syndrome, if you will. They’re coming for us! Mustn’t let it happen again! Strike the enemy first! Attack in all directions! Abandon all hope, all ye who are terrified. “Hysteria soon finds a missile” is what Virgil wrote in The Aeneid. Smart dude, huh?

Too bad, really. The Joes were really alright before. You have to work hard to shed that post-Holocaust PTSD. It’s worth it, though. Maybe they’ll snap out of it someday. BEFORE they and their buddies spring the Apocalypsse trap.

a true hack. Klein even says that it is evidence of broadminded new something or other that Newt would praise Hilary Clinton talking about electronic medical records, and discuss bipartisan primaries in seemingly bipartisan terms. What crap. Newt Gingrich has dressed up his reactionary, and very partisan agenda with this kind of rhetoric for years. If we could only see the inclusive progressivism behind his libertarian futuristic brilliance, hey, there is room for everyone, he says. That is very old Newt, and Klein is such a hack, he can’t even write accurate inside political baseball.

I quite liked Primary Colors - the book and the movie. I even forgot John Travolta was a scientologist for a second. So in honor of the nineties Joe K ,I will try and put my best spin on his present posturing.
Joe doesn’t like the leftist policies of the pinko rose from ODESSA Texas, he really doesn’t.
Policies like massive deficit funding, world revolution through state terror, totalitarian police states with CHEKA’s, Gulag’s and etc.
It’s just all Marxist-Leninist red fascism and red terror all over again.
So Joe is throwing himself on the grenade for us by exposing these Marxist-Leninist evils.
Thank you Joe - a grateful nation salutes you friend.

Watching Joe Klein on This Week made me think back to my time in the Army specifically are training for dealing with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons. It was rather perverse in that we all knew that in cast of such an attack we would not survive. And, yet they we were training how to put on gas mask and a MOPP suit in the fastest time we could. Even though we would joke about what would happen none of us from the enlisted men to the officers ever wanted any country and certainly not are country to ever use such weapons because we, more than most people understood what the out come would be. Somewhere between 75 to 80% casualty rate and for those who survived what real chance did they have of really surviving for the long term the percentages were quite low. Why? Because a lot of these agents are precedent. Meaning that they survive in areas that one might least suspect. Like under the eves of houses, the underside of leaves and in car wheel wells just to name a few.

Please remember once deployed there is no going back and the consequences are beyond anything we would care or dare to imagine.

Remember Klein’s suggestion that Bush get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is one hell of a new Katrina story…

In Attics and Rubble, More Bodies and Questions: NYT
The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. Many of them, like Ms. Blanchard, were overlooked in initial searches.
http://articles.news.aol.com/n.....0000000001

There was a time, if we are to believe Herblok cartoons, when journalists were just reporters, carrying pencils in their hatbands and hanging out in smoky bars. But now they are pundits, sending their offspring to Sidwell Friends School, and aspiring to join the Cosmos Club.
They who once rocked the boat, when they were in steerage, are now securely up in POSH. Question the reasons for war? You must be kidding.

Joe Klein isn’t even the worst of them. He is at most a hole in the air.
When these guys fill the Mencken room at the National Press Club there is a sense of sadness and sacrilege.

You forgot liar. He lied about his authorship of Primary Colors, and actually attacked a guy for fingering him as the author. The man has no ethics.

I’ll put here what the HuffPost, for some reason, did not print (and I was not obscene).
I was at a panel lecture in September 2004, with Eleanor Clift, Joe Klein and Jon Meacham moderating, at the 92nd Street Y. Joe’s main contribution was to call Rove a political assassin. After the event, Eleanor Clift was happy to stand around for over an hour talking to “informed voters” but Klein looked nervous at being around actual people and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I told him I might post his remark about Rove, which I did http://www.democraticundergrou....._id=903801 , and he looked none too happy about that. He seemed during the evening to be hoping that the Democrats would win, possibly to save him from his own worst instincts, but obviously we have disappointed him again.

Joe Klein is a total douche.

Gingrich Is Our Very Own Crazy Chalabi!

Gingrich is our own home-grown crazy Chalabi: Totally full of wacko B.S. and maniacally self-aggrandizing. Everything HE touches blows up in OUR faces.

Yes, he’s crazy. For instance, in 1996 while leading the House he got $18 million approved to overthrow the government of Iran and worked at it with the CIA. Consequently, about 20 U.S. airmen were killed in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia because of it, and the whole matter dropped through the floor never to be heard about again.

Gingrich is our insane weirdo uncle who lives in an asylum attic, not Thurber-like but a Stephen King and Kafka version, in which he descends the attic stairs every so often with a dangerous and stupid idea that certain other asylum inmates like the sound of. More damage and death occurs, naturally, and then he climbs back into the attic and all memory of his mental illness seems to vanish by the time he descends the stairs again.

Many more Gingrich stories like the Khobar Towers story exist. Collect them all!