I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and a whole bunch of other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003. Their motivations involve a confused conflation of what they think are Israel’s best interests with those of the United States. They are now leading the charge for war with Iran.
2008. August. “Palpably true, but unspoken in polite society?” Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, ladies and gentlemen.
Other blogs today are on the Boy King’s hubris and presumption. Old news to our merry little band here.
Klein’s item is a cut above (below?), just for the sheer lunacy and hilarity. He’s always been superficial and thin skinned, especially when the netroots exposed his vacuity. Klein’s obtuseness has those extra secret ingredients: astounding narcissism and self-absorption. To him, this secret [sic] about neocons can be revealed now because *he* is being attacked. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
We give Klein 4 Leos out of 5. If he had waited for Beijing, the Chinese judge might have made it an even 5.
1300 Number says
i’ve huge respect for joe klein. thansk for sharing.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Joe Klein shares your respect for Joe Klein.
A Random Quote says
“People will ask where they’ve been and ‘What have you been doing with them?’ – “They’ll all get lawyers.”
~Dick Cheney
(Speaking againt releasing
innocent detainees)
Dark Side, Jane Mayer
A Random Quote says
“A stash of explicit pornography belonging to Franz Kafka has emerged after being ignored by scholars anxious to preserve the writer’s image, new research suggests.”
~Dalie Alberge,
The Times (London) 8-2-08
(irony unintended)
Anon says
Anals of Empire:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4443213.ece
” … The final, oddly moving moment of epiphany comes to Delves Broughton as he is wandering through a rainy Boston and pauses to read the plaques on the Old North Church. One is to “Paul Revere, 1735-1818. Patriot. Master Craftsman. Good Citizen. Born on Hanover Street. Lived on North Street. Established his bell foundry on Foster Street and died on Charter Street.” The brevity and quiet pride, the pioneer hardiness and unshowy self-sufficiency of Revere’s plaque seem in powerful contrast to the bloated and blustery style of the town’s world-famous business school, its restless, rootless, money-driven alumni now “disappearing to the ends of the earth in search of opportunity, worrying about work and life … “
Comment says
Btw – just started watching ‘John Adams’ – it’s pretty good. Better than we expected. Some great stuff. It manages to squeeze some real good history in. It is far better than most true history movies. We thought it would be like Gods & Generals , in the sense that we’d like it, but none of our friends would. But it’s better than that.
re W – from Oliver Stone – Looks good so far. What is Tweety so worried about –
Comment says
Speaking of Hubris – It’s not really accurate to say Obama has it – He has chutzpah. He may have hubris when he gets in power. But now that’s just specualtion – Looking it the history of that word use in English, from its classical origins, it’s most applied to actions of people in power. Bush is a classic case of hubris (Bush is also uppity -lol) since people have died and American has lost ground because of his unwillingness to admit error or lose face. McCain probably lacks to capacity to admit we were lied into war or he would confuse the willingness of many Dems to be lied to with the actual lies.
McCains biggest warning sign of hubris was noted by Colonel Lang – when McCain sort of closed his eyes on the stump and repeated , mantra-like, that he would ‘never surrender’ in Iraq. Surrender to who? McCain did not say – nor did he seem to know. Maybe he was being political. But who knows.
We are a bit surprised how much traction McCain has gotten with that provably wrong stuff about the hospital in Germany – We think the psychology on the right is such that it just propels that kind of thing, true or not. It’s a nasty business. But in any event – McCain will lose this race card battle down the road. Rick Davis whining will come to naught eventually –
We think Buchanan was on stronger ground with Ludicris – We just saw that video and it was like some white nightmare of rapping mayhem. Nixon must be looking down (or up) and wondering how McCain was able to get Ludicris to do that for him
Dr Leo Strauss says
Lieberman invented the Internet with Gore. Move along, nothing to see here. Move along.
Anon says
We though this Media Matters thing about Milbank was interesting – because (unlike a number of Media Matters targets like Tweety) most of what they accuse and cite against Milbank hinges on the presumption that Milbank is supposed to be fair and evenhanded. In fact, Milbank does crop quotes in a way to make Obama look worse. But he does so in manner that would be regarded as acceptable if done by a Republican operative.
We forget what it was speciofically the caused Obama people to regard Milbank as a problem. but we do know that Milbank had been giving speeches that were very misleading in describing Obamas relation to Lieberman – Essentially, that Obama betrayed Liebermam by campaigning against him –
This is the kind of technically true but misleading statement one makes when one want to harm a candidate – In reality, Obama was criticised in 06 from the netroots when he broke with them and campaigned for Lieberman. It was unpopular with his base.
It was Lieberman who decided to continue running after he lost to Ned Lamont in the primary – Obama had campaign for him before the primary, then obviously backed the nominee.
Objectively, it was murkey situation and Lieberman was sort of the one, if anyone, who was showing ‘hubris’
In any event, to make long story short – Milbank has been presenting the revisionist version of this story when he should know that it is misleading in a broad sense.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200807300009?f=h_top
Anon says
Supposedly that guy who ran that crazy compound in Waco that Reno turned to rubble actually was a good guitar player. That doesn’t excuse his cult behavior (though Reno also handled it poorly) – but just to point out he was good at music. That being said – Arianna makes a good point here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/judy-miller-the-wrong-pos_b_115961.html
DrLeoStrauss says
re Dole 2008, one of the explanations that makes the most sense to the Stiftung is that at some subconscious level, McCain is unconsciously self-sabotaging himself. We are pretty sure he still loathes Rove and the Right with a fiery passion but realizes instrumentality wise he is beholden to them.
His Id sold alot of his soul for ambition ‘I want, I want the Presidency’. But one wonders how much Dole 2008 is his Super Ego suborning his Id — in hilarious fashion. But in retrospect a few years now to himself, much to his own relief.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003246.html?nav=rss_print
Comment says
Uncle Pat has been pushing this Ludicris rap song (it is amazing how stupid some of these pro Obama celebs are – just incredible!) for a couple of days now – Payback time for ‘whites’ having to apologize for Cunningham and the other radio types.
IMO – McCain has been doing everything opposite – He got all righteous and indignant when Cunningham and New Yorker etc make arguably inappropriate comments about Obama – Then he reckless and casually makes far more serious charges that amount to calling Obama a traitor.
It’s like oil – McCain should have flip flopped on Alaska, but not Beach drilling – Instead, he did the opposite.
Also – His argument that he would rather lose an election than lose a war , makes no sense – It presumes a ‘backstab psychology’ exists among the general electorate that likes to lose wars, but that virtuos John McCain resists the demagogic temptation to appeal to them by calling for loss, weakness, and surrender.
Had McCain limited this dark either/or choice to the Dem primary voters, it would have been a lame, but standard GOP operating method. But he extended it to the general electorate.
Also – This biz about comparing Barack to various female celebs is likely to blowback into McCain camps face in various ways, down the road.
We think McCain could win if he just let others attack and smear – sort of like Bush did – and he , McCain, rode along with Boone Pickens energy plan – a major pork barrell job of energy independence – coincidently helping the midwest meth belt – and the rust belt. He could pitch as entirely defense related and dangle all that federal money in front of corporate donors – Oh wait .. Mr. Reform. Yeah!
He could have called for a trillion in capital investment – just for energy indepence infrastructure – The anti bog spending meme has died in Iraq –
As Cheney said, deficits no longer matter …
Comment says
Wattenberg was kinda sad – giving a sorta Last Hurrah defense of the Iraq war (‘don’t you know Saddam was also into terror … giving Palestinians money …’) While Wattenberg says this Stewart is just laughing at him and the audience laughs too.
Wattenberg seems not to know that he should just STFU and get to work figuring out how to trap Obama into the next war instead.
Comment says
Speaking of neocons – Jon Stewart is giving Ben Wattenberg a hard time. Wattenberg resents it. Funny stuff.
Comment says
Someone needs to give Millbank a wedgie – We bet he’s been on the enemy list for while – for their own reasons. Same with Halperin. Both constantly frame issues to Obamas disadvantage – then give ‘both sides’
Klein has jumped ship – He has abandoned McCain. Obama is just cooler – McCain was pretty damm cool in 2000. But dude, that’s ancient history.
re Neocons – We have not checked out Commentary for a while – the last time we went over there, we got sick of seeing that stupid IQ story stuck on the top 5 list. It just seemed as obnoxious as the NY TImes website, on the day of the huge Tsunami, the most popular story was about Spas and herbal treatments.
Yeah – you are right on. It is weird to discover the Neocon malevolence now – We predicted many would discover the nasty neocons once the war was waged – Once Iraq was done.
Do we think Klein and other pro war liberals fell for the Bush intel and worried about Saddam’s nukes? No – they wanted the war as much as Kristol and Co. It was obvious.
We do think some on Congress were fooled (HRC and others should have known better), but Klein and all those war cheerleaders are bit late to the game.
Now he has all that crap on his shoe. Anyway, Klein should know better than to mouth off now. Part of the game is to not not say things like that. He would have beeen better off being more sophesticated – by saying the opposite. Had Klein defended the neocons instead, everyone would assume he was being insincere and self-interested, but the message would get accross – Plus, he would avoid personal calumny
DrLeoStrauss says
Should Obama be simply a mirror image of the Warlord in the enemies list, another reason to wonder how much the Boy King really represents change. Your point about narrative control is a good one. So far, his campaign is terrific at it and there is no reason Dole 2008 will suddenly ‘get game.’
Klein is as you say. Especially when he keeps bragging he was on stage with the Grateful Dead . . . (one wonders how that goes over with the hard working lunch box — the Tweety crowd, the kind put in a honest day’s work, play by the rules, and knew true blue collar values.
Comment says
We think Millbank got a bit creative with that hearsay quote from Obama – We predict he will regret it. The Obama people are very aware that fake quotes (like this one invented by Dowd) were attributed to Kerry (“who among us doesn’t love NASCAR”) under a casual/humor guise – But they came party of his narrative.
They are going to make Millbank pay for that – They already regard him as an enemy
Comment says
We always thought Klein’s narcissism was hilarious because he revealed so many blind spots – He is especially funny when he talks about the importance of being cool and popular with the babes – And he says this all with this ‘tude , as if to say, he is not some oddball gremlin, but some kind of legandary party animal.
Comment says
Klein is creative – His Annoymous novel was excellent, IMO – But when we found it is was him, some of it sounded kind of ridiculous coming from his pen. Then he rested on his laurals – phoning it on, mostly. We just read some of his stuff in old 80s New York mags – some of it pretty good. But we did not notice , post Dukakis, he expressed a wish for a Dem who played poker – Obama is a big poker player – as was Nixon. Perhaps this is why he turned on McCain. Although maybe not – McCain is running a terrible campaign – McCain still opposes drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, but he want to drill on everyones beaches.
Ofcourse McCain has the politics opposite and for some reason decided not to flip flop on ANWR of all things.
Comment is still waiting for Obama to attack McCain for targeting Canadian and Mexican oil imports.