Ideologues in Extremis

I'm hoping that after the election, these guys will only be able to find solace in dark basements with a few of their closest confidants.

Keep up the good work, Joe!

Joe Klein, you don't have to explain yourself to that Moaz azzhole.

Say it with me Joe....FUHK YOU MOAZ!!!

Enough said.

My Dad had a way of calling something I'd said or done "clever" that made me instantly ashamed of how shallow I'd been. Moaz retort was very clever.

btw
cnn poll of polls 50 to 42 Obama
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/map/polling/
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538 52 to 46 Obama
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
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Pollster 51 to 42 Obama
http://www.pollster.com/
.
These are the most conservative, and 538 has a lot of food for thought lately on the election.

Speaking of the character of John McCain, dday discusses a post by Matt Stoller from Open Left that might interest you. Certainly more worth reading than the twits at Commentary.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/myth-of-maverick-by-dday-matt-stoller.html

Hey, Joe the fumbler:

Let me take advantage of the posting lull caused by the complete collapse of the blogging infrastructure of your incompetent corporation to remind you that you easily equaled the crazy quilt logic of Moaz in your heyday as a Bush groupie. We remember how you backed the war, Joe, and how you excoriated Democrats for not giving Bush the right to break the laws at will.

It was Joe Klein who thought Bush's anti-terror power grab was wise and prudent. It was Joe Klein who admired the brilliant General Petraeus. It was Joe Klein who mocked the Democrats for being out of touch with America's crazed militarists. The Internet never forgets, Joe, and compilations of your greatest blunders will be circulating until you retire. Stupid, stupid, stupid will be your epitaph.

OT, check out the great troll name I got! Thanks for the crash, Time.com administrators...

OBAMA IS A MUSLIM!! I HATEZ THE LIEBRAL MEDIA!!!

This has been a troll test. It was only a test.

Joe, I hope you're starting to realize that the vast, vast majority of spokespeople for the American right wing simply don't argue in good faith.

ivb,

Thats as powerful an article as I have seen. The person who needs to see it most is AMC though. And when she finally puts up a blog you should not only put the link back up but also cut and paste some of the content. The curtain has been pulled back on that fraud for the world to see

ivb--

The timing is interesting. The knives are out all over. They'll blame teh gai media as much as they can, but this looks like too big a disaster to not lead to internal warfare.

Look at the last two days!! It's hard to imagine a worse couple of days for a campaign.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/myth-of-maverick-by-dday-matt-stoller.html

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DDay is correct, Klein. Read the post. Go on, do it. I dare you.

Now, I'm not trying to diminish what you're doing and saying here with this post, and in general what you've been up to lately with your comments on McCain. That said, Day is correct to point out that you and some of your pundit buds were previously willing to overlook McCain's darker impulses in the past and cut him way too much slack. McCain has always been the same guy we see on the trail in 2008 - you just didn't care to call him on it previously.

Again, for now you are the enemy of my enemy, but if Barack Obama pulls off this election, I have no doubt that all too soon you'll be at his throat for some perceived slight to moderation. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Carry on, Joe.

Ooops, I see ivb beat me to posting the DDay post. Apologies.

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Donut

I am a supporter of Obama. I'm also aware that I am a supporter of Obama, so I know that I need to be careful to differentiate valid arguments and viewpoints from those that seem reasonable because of my wishful thinking. It takes a little bit of effort, but it comes in handy if I ever happen to be wrong about something. All I need do is simply acknowlege that I was wrong and move on.
This is in sharp contrast to people, who when confronted by information that fails to support their view, take their shovel and simply dig themselves deeper into their holes. Arguments that used to seem to result in widespread agreement now suddenly have the opposite effect and simply make their proponents seem foolish.

I think we can all readily point to examples of what I'm talking about.

Deliberately missing the point in order to score a point against you. It's all they got. They haven't got any facts that fit their world view anywhere, they just gotta lash out.

phd9,

For all of the talk BillO and Hannity do deriding Huffington Post and Dailykos neither of those sites have filth like freerepublic or townhall have. Investors business daily is another purveyor of the most ridiculous of smears against obama. Its amazing that they get free passes for the most part because even our liberal/progressive champions like KO and Maddow dont waste their times exposing those idiots. Well I saw this site from politico yesterday and I think its funny while being enlightening about just how far and wide the right wingers jumped the shark since the campaign started when it comes to smears

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2008/10/great-moments-in-election-year-blogging.html

I begin to feel like a broken record broken record broken record, but "hate, fear and greed" are the only things the ideologues have. Arm them with knives, and let 'em at each other. I'll just stand over here...

I would think the whole "palling around with Pinochet thing would destroy the 'I'm against torture' and the anti-terrorist meme's of McCain at the same time, but you know, the press would have to report the story for that to happen.

If you think the stuff at Commentary is great, try swinging by the freepers every so often.

Watching them go batsh!t over the Ashley Todd faux assault and then watching them climb over themselves to backtrack/blame Ron Paul for the whole thing is hilarious.

Over/under still has her as a "Barack Obama plant".

Mr. Klein, was misspelling the writer's name (according to the blog in question it's Maoz, not Moaz, as you have it) merely an error on your part, or was it a juvenile attempt to diminish him? Meanwhile, I see he must have scored a real hit, given your churlish, ad hominem response.
I'm a liberal who, while somewhat apprehensive about Obama, will probably end up voting for him. But I have to tell you, after reading Maoz's post I went back and read your original post on Ifshin, and then I re-read Maoz's article, and Maoz is right -- you most definitely were making a comparison or an analogy. The fact that the best you (and your amen corner here) can do is engage in gratuitous name-calling is very instructive.
I used to admire your writing and reporting, Mr. Klein, and recommended your book "Politics Lost" to many friends, but this election has caused you to become unhinged.

Have you really loathed Bill Ayers from a distance for forty years? If so, then you and Bernardine Dohrn are the only people on the planet to have given Bill Ayers more than a second's thought for thirty-nine of those years. Seriously, the election isn't about how you feel about some third-rate bomb-thrower from the sixties or how the ossified nitwits at Commentary feel about you.

Jay Rosen twitters a link to George Packer writing about the end days of conservatism.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/step-back-a-mom.html

Media Matters hit similar highlights:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200810240017?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com

It's like they think if they turn up to 11 and then to 12 it will start working again.

I think only the right is fascinated with Joe the Plumber. I think it's because the rich never really knew anyone who actually worked for a living.
The rest of us could care less about the guy. I think he's a plant by the McCain campaign desperate for anything to seem like he is 'in touch'

As for the Ayres thing. The rightwing is stuck in the 1960s. They probably think Nixon is still president and when they turn on their tv they look for Bonanza and cannot figure out why they can't find it and why everything is in color.
Most of them are still fighting the Vietnam war, still think hippies exist and that communism is still a threat.
That is when they are not seeing Terrorists under their bed and think it's raining Nazis outside.
They are so obsessed over things that happened 40 years ago and cannot let it go and move on.
They throw out the insult Pinko and we all scratch our head wondering if they realize it's the 21st century.
That is nice thing about Obama. He is post boomer and doesn't bring that baggage with him and why someone like Ayres is not a big deal to serve on a board with and be nodding aquaintence with. It was sooooooooo long ago and way before his time. sort of like a boomer would look at some bank robber out of the 1930s.
But, the right cannot get this. They think don't realize Obama came of age during the punk, new wave and Live Aid era. Things like Weathermen are just people giving the forecast and the 1960s is ancient history. so, while the right thinks it so important and such a big deal, people of Obama's age group look at that time as just so long ago and totally different era from them.
The right really needs to get out of the 1960s and realize Vietnam, hippies, Nixon and all that is just not relevant anymore.

vwcat wrote:
I think only the right is fascinated with Joe the Plumber. I think it's because the rich never really knew anyone who actually worked for a living.
The rest of us could care less about the guy. I think he's a plant by the McCain campaign desperate for anything to seem like he is 'in touch'

I don't believe Wurzelbacher is a plant. I see him as a small-time skinhead punk who saw an opportunity to bring the uppity n****er down a notch and gave it his best shot.

McCain, being the careless opportunist he is, has glommed on to Wurzelbacher as representative of the kind of small-minded, intellectually incoherent racists he'll need to have any chance of winning this race in the waning days, and is doing what he can to promote his association with these other dinosaurs.

Given the sort of enmity he has built up in the nation -- and in his own party -- I can't imagine how how he stays in the Senate much past Obama's Inauguration Day. Outside of the sycophants Liebermann and Graham, he won't have any friends left.

hey alanalda,

If you actually DID read Joe Klein's post about Ifshin there is no way you can come back thinking he was equivocating Bill Ayers to Ifshin. Hell if you go back and look at the comments you will see ALL of what you term his amen corner saying he should write about G Gordon Liddy whom IS an equivalent of Bill Ayers instead of continuing to get on the tireswing and yearn for the McCain of old. Of course its weird that you say you read this post then went to Maoz's post then looked at Joe's earlier post when as of late last night and this morning the archives still hadn't been brought back online here. I guess maybe you had a magic computer but it sounds like you are doing a bit of trolling. But if you are on the up and up and you DO have a magic computer, go back and look at all of Klein's posts recently and see how many of us you see amening him. Even the articles critical of McCain or complimentary of Obama. You see we use our own version of the fairness doctrine here. When we think Klein is beingn fair on in this case someone is being unfair towards him we say so. When Klein is unfair or somebody he brings into a post is being unfair we say that too. Now you are entitled to your own opinion for sure, but so are we. THATS the American I live in.

@alanalda: Can't speak to Joe's intent in getting Moaz's, or Maoz's, name wrong, but he's perfectly correct that the point is not making equivalencies between Ifshin and Ayers, but rather focusing on McCain's reaction to them both. McCain can parse all he wishes, but he comes to the conclusion that conveniences him politically, which is that Ayers counts as a terrorist but Ifshin, because he was a personal friend, does not. McCain has made those exceptions all through his career.

Look at the lobbyists around him. McCain rails against the special interests that have gripped Washington, but he has no problems having lobbyists as his closest advisers, even those who have been taking payments up until recently or those who have been lobbying on behalf of companies that have business in front of McCain's committees. Look at his railing against Obama's (lack of) experience, yet he not only picked Palin as his running mate, he recently defended her by saying that she was the most qualified of an recent VP candidate.

McCain's sanctimony means that he always has extenuating circumstances why the standard doesn't apply to him, as though he's the only one capable of making those distinctions but no one else is.

Maoz is right about one thing about equivalencies: the relationship between McCain and Ifshin was close based on close friendship, but the relationship between Obama and Ayers was much much less. Only really knew each other from being on the same educational board. Not equivalent at all.