Hmm, Krauthammer is spectacularly wrong about something? You don't say!

September 06, 2012 05:00 PM

Krauthammer on Clinton's DNC Speech:
 'A Giant Swing and a Miss' 

"It was vintage Clinton in that it was sprawling, undisciplined and truly self-indulgent,"

What the fuck speech was this freak watching?

 "This is one of the strangest nomination speeches, I think, ever given. ... I think it was a wasted opportunity of what could have been a great, stirring, rousing endorsement of Obama."

Yeah, why did he waste so much time giving a great, stirring rousing endorsement of Obama when he could've, um. . .
You know, the fact that the crowd was clearly stirred and roused should indicate the stirringness and rousingness of Clinton's address.

Gawd, Krauthammer's a fucking idiot.

Interesting Logic

In an apparent attempt to accelerate its death-spiral from relevance, the Atlanta Journal Constitution recently gave a guest spot on its op-ed page to one Jonathon Zimmerman, author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”

And being a purveyor of phony nostalgia evidently qualifies you to speak on recent First Amendment rulings.

The case had to do with a girl posting negative comments about her teacher on the internet, but the interesting part is this:

If we really care about protecting free speech, we need to teach our kids some basic principles of civility.

And that means we sometimes have to restrict their speech — even on the Net.

If we really care about protecting free speech, we must restrict speech.

Wow. I had to let that rattle around my skull for a minute. Because I'm thinking I must be misunderstanding something. But no. Apparently, Jonathon Zimmerman's plan for protecting free speech is to have less free speech.

I could see making an argument for restricting what kids can say on the internet. I don't agree, but I could understand making an argument based on "free speech is not absolute, one can't yell 'FIRE!' in a crowded theatre," or whatever. I could understand that. But to argue that limiting free speech is necessary in order to protect free speech? I don't even understand that logic.

Not to be outdone in the insane logic department, Charles Krauthammer weighed in on the same AJC op-ed page with this gem:

Charles Krauthammer: Modernity may carry lethal impact

which makes the basic argument that "so what if Toyota kills a few people now and then, cars are fricking awesome!"

So, mostly just dickish pro-corporate, anti-regulation claptrap from one of the kings of claptrap, but in the middle of this screed, he poses this:

The questions are: How do you distinguish the idiosyncratic failure from the systemic — for example, the single lemon that came off the auto assembly line versus an intrinsic problem inherent in that model’s engineering?

See, that's actually not difficult, Chuck. Distinguishing between a problem in one car and a problem in many cars is about as easy a distinction as one can make.
And then, this:

And don’t imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities — approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn’t stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond — knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.
The calculation was never explicit, but it was nevertheless real. We were quite prepared to trade away a finite number of human lives for speed, and for the efficiency and convenience that come with it.

Okay, it is true that companies like Toyota do coldly calculate the price of a human life. They add up how much it would cost to fix a design flaw versus how much they might lose in lawsuits if some of their customers die. (Same as Ford did with the Pinto, and all the SUV makers did with rollovers)
But the speed limit story is not an example of this. The speed limit story is an example of consumers making an informed choice to accept the increased risk of driving faster in order to gain the convenience the faster speed would supply. With Toyota, the company decided to force a risk on uninformed consumers who gained nothing from unwittingly accepting this risk, in order to increase profits for Toyota.
Do you really not see the difference? In one case, Joe says "I'm in a hurry, it's worth it to me to take the risk of driving faster." In the other case, Mr. Toyota says "I want to make more money. It's worth it to me to put Joe at risk of death or injury if it increases my stock price. h, and by the way, DON"T TELL JOE!!!"

But I think today's George Will extravaganza of nonsense might beat both of them.
Will writes a column about the new update coming to the DSM. Of course, this update hasn't been released yet, so Will is forced to sneer at changes that he heard may possibly be included in the new version:

The revised DSM reportedly may include “binge eating disorder” and “hypersexual disorder” (“a great deal of time” devoted to “sexual fantasies and urges” and “planning for and engaging in sexual behavior”). Concerning children, there might be “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria.”

And then the topper:

Another danger is that childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled “disorders” to be “cured.” If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.

Ooh! Good point! Except that the incredible amount of concentration, focus, and dedication required to produce a concerto, or any piece of serious music, is pretty much the exact opposite of the type of behavior which would indicate a diagnosis of ADHD.

But, hey. Why let logic stand in the way of a good zinger aimed at the "intellectual elite?"
(To which, by the way, you used to belong, Mr. Will.)

Charles Krauthammer Is Not Good At Understanding Things.

The myth of '08, demolished

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, November 6, 2009



How many ways can Charles Krauthammer be wrong in one column?

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult.

Well, this may technically true, but only because moderate Democrats are afraid of their own shadows. But really, why should two gubernatorial elections that no one gives a fuck about affect the passage of health care reform? The people of new jersey ousted a Democratic governor who was widely viewed as incompetent and corrupt. Oooooohhhh, shiver! Virginia elected a republican governor? Shock! horror! The Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, ran a horrible campaign. Here's Oliver Willis' 2-sentence analysis of the Deeds campaign: He opposed cap and trade and said he would opt out of the public option. Way to suppress the base vote, dude.

So the democrat who opposed Barack Obama's policy initiatives lost.

But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

Really? The Republicans picked up two governorships, while Democrats picked up a Congressional seat they hadn't held in over 100 years. Not exactly a landslide, Chuck.

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

Honestly, the decline in the Republican electorate had a lot less to do with Mr. Obama than it did with the Gawd-awful job Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans had done in the recent past. That's why the Democrats took majorities in both houses in the 2006 elections in which Mr. Obama was not running. People were fed up with the incompetence and malfeasance of the Bush administration and his colleagues on the Hill.


This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.
See, like I said. People were sick of the war (Bush), there was an intensely upopular president (Bush), Greatest financial collapse (Bush), and John McCain was seen as an extension of Bush. Barack Obama's personal charisma was not exactly the defining factor here.

What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent.

Remember two paragraphs ago, when you scoffed at the idea that the Republican Part should be seen as a party of "angry white men?" 'Cause it kinda seems like you're now saying that the young folks and the minorities not turning out is what got the Republican elected in Virginia. So the Republican guy wins when it's mainly old white men voting, but no, the republicans are not the old white guy party!



Nope, no angry white men here!













White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe because no one cares all that much who the state attorney general is? Maybe people pay more attention to the governor's race, especially since gubernatorial candidates do way more advertising on the TV?

Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.

Oh. That makes total sense. Unless you look at the exit polling.

Still, majorities of voters in both states (56 percent in Virginia and 60 percent in New Jersey) said President Obama was not a factor in their vote today. Those who said Mr. Obama was a factor in New Jersey divided as to whether their vote was a vote for the president (19 percent) or against him (19 percent). In Virginia, slightly fewer voters said their vote was for Mr. Obama (17 percent) than against him (24 percent). (source)

The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African American president. November '08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated.

Yes. those young people will never vote again. That was the one time that that particular generation of voters will ever ever go to the polls.

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm -- deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years -- because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed.

No, as previously discussed, the democratic governor of new Jersey was very unpopular and widely believed to be corrupt. No one in New Jersey went to the polls thinking "I'm going to vote for Chris Christie to demonstrate my belief that the Democrats misinterpretted the results of the 2008 election. (pulls lever) There! That'll show 'em! Hey Democrats! I got yer mandate right 'ere!"

Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his "New Foundation" for America -- from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

Where to begin with this one? First, the Messianic imagery. That's all in your head, Chuck. just because you and a bunch of other douchebag pundits want to keep implying that Obama has some sort of messiah complex doesn't make it any truer.
Second, why do you act shocked that Obama would try to act on the platform on which he ran? You act like he kept all his plans a big secret, and people voted for him just because of his bright smile or whatever, and then he sprung these ideas on us out of the blue. People voted for him because they wanted healthcare reform and they wanted a president to adress the climate crisis.

Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt -- the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters -- as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

Gee, where would they get that idea? The tea-paties were relentlessly promoted on FOX, sponsored by Dick Armey's lobbying firm, and many featured appearances by FOX on-air personalities. (Here in Atlanta, we got Sean Hannity)

And will you jokers stop saying that Obama has Expanded taxation"? Everyone earning less than $200k a year (most Americans) got their taxes CUT by this administration. See, this is the kind of misinformation that these teabaggers get from FOX and from you, and from a bunch of other lying assholes that get these people up in arms to defend the upper income bracket from any possible tax increase while they think they are defending themselves.

And no president in modern times expanded government more than your guy Bush. Under the Bush administration, we got an entire new Federal department (Homeland Security), the expansion of government survreillance programs, and the Federal Government deciding it had the right to void habeus corpus if it wanted to, violate FISA laws if it wanted to, and authorize torture if it wanted to. For eight years, you assholes were fine with all this, and now, NOW you suddenly develop a fear of government power? Now you're all suddenly civil libertarians? Fuck you! Where the fuck were the tea parties when the previous administration was using the Constitution as toilet paper?


Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent).

Yeah, that's interesting. Of course, a majority do support a public option (despite all the tea-party propaganda against it) and a large majority were in favor of the increase in the minimum wage. And Barack Obama's approval rating is still over 50% with a disapproval rating of 42% , (source) but yeah. Clearly there are way more conservatives.

Oh, and let's see whom Americans trust on the subject of healthcare:

That would be President Obama 55%, Republicans 37%.

So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election -- and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed -- is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.

Debacle? Debacle. Do you have any idea what the word debacle means? It doesn't mean losing two governorships. Losing majorities in both houses and the White House in the span of two elections, now that's a debacle!

I'm starting to think they really believe their own b.s.

The other day, whenIi was writing about Bill Donohue, I got to thinking: Does he really believe his own b.s.? Does he really think that Western civilization and culture are being beaten down by multiculturalism, or that anyone who makes a Christian-friendly movie gets "run out of Hollywood"?

And of course, he's not the only one who seems determined to play the victim at every turn. Check out today's helping of bullshit from Charles Krauthammer.

Fox wars

The 'post-partisan' president makes an enemies list

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, October 23, 2009

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led [by] and following Fox."

The signal to corporations is equally clear: . . . Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

. . . the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent.

Fox News is no monopoly. It is a singular minority in a sea of liberal media. ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC vs. Fox. The lineup is so unbalanced as to be comical -- and that doesn't even include the other commanding heights of the culture that are firmly, flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

So, maybe Charles Krauthammer actually believes that making an unflattering (though demonstrably correct) remark about FOX News is tantamount to declaring war.

And maybe he does really believe that ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. are lefty equivalents of FOX.

You know, I could maybe give him MSNBC if we ignore the fact that they give Republican Congressional alumnus and Gingrich revolutionary Joe Scarborough his own show. And ignore the fact that they trot out Pat Buchannan every couple of days as if he had anything legitimate to say. But even if we pretend that MSNBC is the liberal FOX, no rational person could think that ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. are doing anything other than doing a second-rate job of reporting the news. So I had been assuming that people like Krauthammer were just being disingenuous. But maybe they aren't. maybe they really do think of themselves as victims.

I think people of that ilk have confused supremacy with parity. I think that they look at FOX, where their view is given complete supremacy (and facts be damned) and they actually see it as fair and balanced. Whereas they look at, say CNN where their viewpoint is treated as one possible point of view they actually see this as an attack on them and their values.

Maybe this is why, when the cashier at Wal-Mart says "happy holidays," thus acknowledging that some people celebrate Channukah or Kwanza, or nothing, they see this as a "War on Christmas!" Maybe they really do feel this way, as if Christmas is under attack from some unseen malevolent force.
So maybe Bill Donohue really looks at multiculturalism as a threat to Western Civilization. Maybe in his mind, if the Dead White Men canon is not taught as the indisputable pinnacle of achievement, it's the same thing as saying Shakespeare Sucks! To a normal person, it sounds like "Shakespeare was a great writer, but so were James Baldwin and SEI SHŌNAGON. But to the Donohoes of the world, it's one or the other. If Omar Khayyamm was a great poet, then somehow that diminishes Keats and Whitman.

It's like you say to a Philadelphia fan, "hey, the Phillies are a great team, but the Yankees are looking pretty good, too" and the guy from Philadelphia shouts "Why are you always running down the Phillies?"



So maybe this is why these folks always seem to think that everyone's against them, everyone's out to get them!
Look, Krauthammer even thinks "the foundations" are biased against the right.

. . . . flagrantly liberal: Hollywood, the foundations, the universities, the elite newspapers.

The foundations include groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Family Research Council, the Hoover Institute, The Free Congress Foundation, the CATO Institute, The RAND Corporation, the Adolph Coors Foundation, the Koch family foundations, and the various Mellon-Scaife family foundations. And there are more conservative/right-wing foundations where these came from.
And sure, there are also progressive foundations like People for the American Way, MoveOn.org, etc. but the right-leaning groups far outstrip progressive ones in numbers, money and influence. But to someone like Krauthammer, the fact that there are progressive foundations at all translates in his mind to the world of the foundations being biased towards the left. Either the foundation-o-sphere is the exclusive domain of right-wing opinion or it is irreperably slanted against the right. There is no in-between.

Maybe that's why there's no reasoning with people like that.

Charles Krauthammer Update: Still An Idiot.

When I opened the Op-Ed section of the paper this morning, I saw this headline over Krauthammer's column:

Let's Be Honest About Death Counseling

And I thought, Honest? Well this will be a refreshing change of pace!
Then the column begins:

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

And I thought, Yes! Finally! Let's do that! Let's have a reasoned discussion.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room.

Oh my God! Has Charles Krauthammer gained some semblance of sanity? (clouds open, angels sing)

I've got nothing against her.

Really? Nothing? Not the fact that she's a bald-faced liar? Not the fact that she is the one who injected the term "death panel" into our national political discourse? Not the fact that she stood silently smiling when attendees at her rallies shouted "kill him!" at the mention of Barack Obama? Not the fact that she fleeced the taxpayers of Alaska, abused her power for personal vendettas and then quit before her first term was up?




I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent.

Really? You mean in the same way that William Shatner is a remarkable musical talent?

She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Okay, back on track. Let's have our reasoned discussion now.

We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat.

Oh, here we go. I knew it was too good to be true.

First of all, the only reason that Section 1233 is "notorious" is because of the lies spread by dimwits like your pal Sarah. And do you really think that doctors are going to spring end-of-life counseling on patients that haven't requested it? "well, your test results look fine, Mr. Smith, have you ever considered a DNR? Ka-Ching! I spoke about end-of-life issues, pay up, Medicare!"



What do you think such a chat would be like? Do you think the doctor will go on and on about the fantastic new million-dollar high-tech gizmo that can prolong the patient's otherwise hopeless condition for another six months? Or do you think he's going to talk about -- as the bill specifically spells out -- hospice care and palliative care and other ways of letting go of life?

Right, because doctors HATE expensive, life-prolonging procedures. They make way more money letting their patients slip unfettered into the sweet embrace of death.

No, say the defenders. It's just that we want the doctors to talk to you about putting in place a living will and other such instruments. Really?

Yes, Really.

Really? Then consider the actual efficacy of a living will. When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called "the old man's friend" to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself -- no matter what piece of paper you signed five years earlier.

A living will is for times when a patient CAN"T speak for himself. You can't really believe that a doctor would tell a patient " sorry, fully conscious patient, I know you say now that you want to live, but I've got a paper here that says otherwise! Nurse! To the death chamber with this man!" Idiot!

You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment.

Yes, and if you are able to make your wishes known at the time, they will of course be honored. Again, living wills are only brought into the picture when a patient is unable to speak or otherwise communicate his wishes. The point is to avoid ending up like Terry Schiavo, lying brain dead in the hospital for years while the family is torn apart fighting over what your final wishes may or may not have been.

My own living will, which I have always considered more a literary than a legal document, basically says: "I've had some good innings, thank you. If I have anything so much as a hangnail, pull the plug."

Then what the hell are we talking about? You have a living will, so you must understand that it is not a contract that can be enforced against your will.

I've never taken it terribly seriously because unless I'm comatose or demented, they're going to ask me at the time whether or not I want to be resuscitated if I go into cardiac arrest. The paper I signed years ago will mean nothing.

That's what I've been saying! Why am I even here? You're arguing both sides of the issue against yourself!

And if I'm totally out of it, my family will decide, with little or no reference to my living will.

Oh shit! You just keep getting stupider! Why would you bother having a living will if you expect everyone to ignore it? You obviously have strong feelings on the issue, why would you want other people deciding for you?

Why? I'll give you an example. When my father was dying, my mother and brother and I had to decide how much treatment to pursue. What was a better way to ascertain my father's wishes: What he checked off on a form one fine summer's day years before being stricken; or what we, who had known him intimately for decades, thought he would want? The answer is obvious.

Ok, let me give you an example. Terry Schiavo. (yes, again!) Her husband, who had known her intimately (hopefully more intmately than you and your brother had known your father) believed that her wishes were to not be kept artificially alive by machines. Her parents believed the opposite. It ended with the courts, the media, and a bunch of imbecilles in Congress being involved in what should have been a private family tragedy.
Hopefully, you and your brother came to the same conclusion regarding your father's wishes, but a lot of families won't. And, not for nothing, but you and your brother might have both been wrong.

Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money.

That statement is too disgusting to merit comment.

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

Why would you assume that the doctor, whose vocation is, as you say, curing and healing, would be inclined towards pressuring his patients to forgo medical treatment which is, by the way, how he earns his money?

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

No, you'd have to be a paranoid lunatic or a filthy liar to say that it is. Or an idiot like Charles Krauthammer.

How Dare Bill Clinton Rescue Two Americans?

I guess I'm a little naive. I thought it was a positive development that two American journalists had been freed from North Korea. Boy, do I feel foolish after reading this:

(source)

Yesterday, super-hawk John Bolton was upset that President Clinton. . .went over to North Korea to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. “It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists,” Bolton said. Even after news of their release, Bolton still called the move a mistake. “[T]his is a classic case of rewarding bad behavior,” he complained.

Gosh, John Bolton has never ever ever been right about anything ever, so maybe he's due. Could John Bolton be right?

“John Bolton is right,” declared the Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes.

Oh my God! Who is Steve Hayes? How much credibility does he have?

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and author of "The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America"

Oh.


Let's check the credibility-o-meter:















Okay, I think I'm going to go ahead and ignore him. Does anyone else want to weigh in?






Oh, Jeez! Looks like Dick Morris is going to take the hooker's toes out of his mouth long enough to make a statement.

Criticizing Bill Clinton's "awful," "ridiculous" trip to North Korea, Fox News political contributor Dick Morris said of the two freed journalists: "I feel badly for the two journalists, but what were they doing in North Korea in the first place?" Morris later responded to a question about "how were we supposed to get them home" by stating: "Maybe they don't come home. Maybe they go to North Korea and they live with the consequences of their decision to go there."

Thanks, Dick! That was truly a waste of everyone's time. I mean, we already knew that you're an asshole, so this doesn't really add anything, but thanks for dropping by. And don't touch anything. I don't have a strong enough disinfectant.

Anyone else? Krauthammer?




Well, it's the return of hostages in exchange for stuff. And we will learn about that stuff.














Stuff? What stuff?

There probably was an apology [offered by President Clinton in Pyongyang].

I don't think that really counts as "stuff.".

there was obviously a quid pro quo. The first of it we saw because we had Kim Jong-Il, who has had a stroke- - he's been wobbly and unsteady, and you can understand in a dictatorship like his how that begins the rumors of succession — so by standing up in the photos that we just saw, obviously engaged with Clinton, he looks like he is back in charge. That helps him personally.

Ok, so what Kim Jong Il got in return for freeing these two prisoners is that photos were taken of him standing upright? Seriously? You know he has his own news agency, right? They could release photos of him standing anytime they want. They could photoshop in Bill Clinton or Bill Cosby or Wild Bill Hickock. This is what we "gave" him?

Secondly, by getting a very high level envoy — you can't get higher level than a former president of the United States — it does help the North Koreans in their legitimacy.

Ouch, it really hurts to give that up! Recognizing the truth on the ground, that North Korea is de facto an independant nation? Wow, for that prize we should have got two journalists, Albert Pujolz, and a player to be named later!

And it probably has gotten stuff that we haven't even heard about and we may never hear about — aid in food and oil. All of that stuff will happen quietly in the future.

And we also gave up some imaginary, theoretical aid? My God! we was robbed! I gotta tell, you Charles, this was no hostage ransom.

But it was a hostage ransom. No question at all.

No, really. It wasn't. see, in a hostage ransom, you know what, forget it. There's a stray cat in the backyard, and I'm going to go explain it to her, because she has a better chance of getting it than you do.

So, I'm starting to think that John Bolton may have been wrong after all. Hmmm, but that would mean that I was right! Me and the rest of the sane world. Oh, everything makes sense again!

Charles Krauthammer Gets Even Stupider

The Moon We Left Behind

How can we leave behind the wonder and glory of the moon?

Let's see, the country is in its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the deficit is projected to be around a trillion dollars, yeah, let's go back to the fucking moon! Let's spend a ton of money on another moon landing just because it was fucking cool the first time. That can't really be the reason, right? Krauthammer must have some practical reason for suggesting re-starting the space program, right? No. Not really.

Why do it? It's not for practicality. We didn't go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it.

Ah, the wonder and glory of, um a dead hunk of rock in the sky?












Are you serious? A member of the far right is suggesting a massive federal government spending program and the only justification is the "wonder and glory?" Don't we have problems here on Earth we could better spend money on?

Don't we have problems here on Earth? Oh please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we'd waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we'd still be living in caves.

Oh, touche' Charles! Um, one quibble. The difference is that moving out of caves and into houses with doors and locks meant a much higher degree of protection from wild animals and the elements, where going to the moon is just pretty fucking cool. Many would argue that safety is actually more important than being cool. In fact, pretty much everyone but you, the Fonz, and the guys from Jackass.

After countless millennia of gazing and dreaming, we finally got off the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Within 66 years, a nanosecond in human history, we'd landed on the moon. We've done it with the most beautiful, intricate, complicated -- and ultimately, hopelessly impractical -- machine ever built by man: the space shuttle. We turned this magnificent bird into a truck for hauling goods and people to a tinkertoy we call the International Space Station, itself created in a fit of post-Cold War internationalist absentmindedness as a place where people of differing nationality can sing "Kumbaya" while weightless.

So the US space program is of vital importance, bu the International Space Station, well that's just a "tinkertoy" suited only for the singing of corny folk songs? Oh, yeah that makes sense.

The shuttle is now too dangerous, too fragile and too expensive. Seven more flights and then it is retired, going -- like the Spruce Goose and the Concorde -- into the museum of Things Too Beautiful And Complicated To Survive.

Who knew the caustic, venomous Charles Krauthammer was capable of waxing so poetic over a large piece of machinery?

Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We'll be totally grounded. We'll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

Or we could grow the fuck up. The only reason we ever went to the moon was to show up the Russians. We could stand on the surface of the moon and shout "look what I can do!" like a playground showoff. What are we going to prove by doing it again?

Charles, go back to your science fiction comic books and dream of mating with Barbarella in zero gravity and stop embarrassing yourself in print.

Krauthammer Strikes Again

Well, I did it again. I read an op-ed written by Charles Krauthammer. And Charles is off his meds. I really think he needs professional help, because his world just doesn't correspond to the real world.

Hope and Change -- but Not for Iran

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

Oh, is that what they're awaiting? 'Cause it looks to me like they just went ahead and started without us.

. . . after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

"treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience?" Really? Is this the part where we make up ridiculous actions and attribute them to people we don't like? I love this part! Let me try. Um, After treating stray puppies as convenient concubines, Charles Krauthammer then spoke favorably of "some initial reaction from my favorite crack dealer." Gosh, that is fun! Now, some may quibble over the fine points of whether Charles Krauthammer actually had sex with puppies, but I say he did in the same sense that Barack Obama treated the Iranian uprising as "an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations."




In Charles Krauthammer's mind, this is what a meeting between Barack Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei would look like.

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Right, referring to someone by his correct title is "abject solicitousness." When Obama does meet the ayatollah, the correct greeting would be to pat him on the head like Benny Hill, call him Shemp and give him a wedgie. Let him know that the USA is the goddamn alpha male!

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.

Oh my God! Are you seriously still on this "re-making the Middle East" kick? How's it been working out so far?

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.

Righ, which is why Communism was abandoned by China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, hey, wait a minute!

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

Holy Fuck! The domino theory? Are you fucking serious? How would that even work? Iranians overthrow their theocracy, and the Islamist dictators in other Arab states don't clamp down hard on the slightest hint of dissidence? Saudis rise up to oust the royal house of Saud, and King Abdullah just says, "well fuck it, it worked in Iran, what chance do we have? Throw down your weapons, fellas, it's time to go into exile! Freedom is on the march and there's no fighting progress!" You'd have to be a complete idiot to buy some rosy scenario about waves of democracy spreading throughout the Middle East. You'd have to be the kind of moron who bought the "we'll be greeted as liberators" scenario.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, President Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever."

Of course, Achmadinejad has about as much real power as Queen Elizabeth, but why let that stand in the way of a good rant?

The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change

Regime change? Regime change? How many Goddamn regimes are we supposed to change? And with what? Where are all these extra soldiers going to come from? Our military is already stretched to the breaking point, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are bankrupting us, and you want to get involved in another Middle Eastern Country? This is not a game of fucking Risk! This is real life, and the grownups are in charge now. So how about you shut your fat yap and let the grownups who live in the real world handle things, mmkay?

Charles Krauthammer's Universe

Why do I do it? When I see Charles Krauthammer's acerbic, caustic mug looking out from the op-ed page, why don't I just turn the page? Why do I read his belligerent drivel? Especially when it is headlined

Obama Shows Ambivalence About U.S.

and it begins with this:

WASHINGTON -- When President Obama returned from his first European trip, I observed that while over there he had been "acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating" between America and the world.

You have to wonder about a guy who begins by quoting himself.

Now that Obama has returned from his "Muslim world" pilgrimage, even the left agrees. "Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world. He's sort of God," Newsweek's Evan Thomas said to a concurring Chris Matthews.

By this point, I should know that we are about to take a journey through Charles krauthammer's world, which I imagine looks something like this:

That's right, in the Krauthammerverse, dogs wear suits, rabbits run butcher shops and this:is Mrs. Krauthammer.


Also, in his world, Charles can read minds. Especially the President's.

Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.)

How does he know what Barack Obama considers himself to be? He can read minds!

But he's apparently not the only one.

Recently Rush Limbaugh stated:

"I am better than most people but I don't think I'm God. Obama does. He's got a messianic complex."

How does he know? He can read minds! A year earlier, he had this to say:

Obama and a lot of Democrats think Americans and America are backwards. You know that they're embarrassed of this country. They think we deserve to be in a constant state of decline because of our excesses and our bullying and our imperialism. They enjoy the suffering of Americans at the gas pump because they think it's Americans' fault.

In a 2008 editorial, the CarolinaCoastOnline stated:

Well, should Mr. Obama be elected, he plans to change the part about our being able to cling to guns — because he intends to severely curtail our right to cling to them by taking them away

Did Obama ever say anything about taking away guns? he didn't have to, because even the Carolina Coast Online News can read his mind.

But in the Krauthammerverse, not only is the president's mind easy to read, it is filled with "cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect."

How does the president distort history? Apparently by mentioning it.

He told Iran that, on the one hand, America once helped overthrow an Iranian government, while on the other hand "Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians."

So, does Krauthammer deny that the US once sponsored a coup against the Iranian government? Not exactly.

A CIA rent-a-mob in a coup 56 years ago does not balance the hostage-takings, throat-slittings, terror bombings and wanton slaughters perpetrated for 30 years by a thug regime in Teheran.

Of course, there might never have been a "thug regime in Tehran" had the CIA not overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran and re-installed the hated Shah as dictator. And it seems unlikely that the Iranians would have considered the US to be their enemy had we not been responsible for the tyrannical oppressive rule of the Shah. So without the CIA "rent-a-mob" coup, there probably would have been no hostage-taking and no terrorist-sponsoring theocrats running Iran. But that's beside the point. The real problem (on planet K-hammer) is Barack Obama's compulsion to find fault with his own country For instance:

Obama offered Muslims a careful admonition about women's rights, noting how denying women education impoverishes a country -- balanced, of course, with "meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

Now to a normal person, living in the real world, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Who would deny that women have yet to realize full equality in the US? (women still earn about 75 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make) But what is Krauthammer's perspective on this?

Well, yes. On the one hand, there certainly is some American university where the women's softball team has received insufficient Title IX funds -- while, on the other hand, Saudi women showing ankle are beaten in the street, Afghan school girls have acid thrown in their faces, and Iranian women are publicly stoned to death for adultery.

Ok, Chuck, no one said that women don't have it a lot worse in the middle east, but are you really saying that the biggest problem faced by American women is Title IX funding?
Did you know that, according to FBI statistics, in 2008, there were 229 forcible rapes reported in Birmingham, Alabama alone. There were 257 just in Anchorage, Alaska. Your home townof New York, NY reported 890 rapes in 2008. And that around 1 million women per year seek medical attention due to domestic violence. I'm sure you must have had some idea, since you were a psychiatrist at massachussets general in the 1970's. But you're going to ignore that, just so you can pretend that Barack Obama was "creating false equivalencies."

Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics.

There he goes, reading Obama's mind again. But he's not very good at it, since Barack Obama did not make moral equivalencies or self-flagellate.

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

No, you know what's disturbing? Someone who refuses to see any fault in one's own country. Someone who brushes aside a history that includes slavery, the genocide against Native Americans, Jim Crow, overthrows of foreign governments (Iran, Guatemala, Chile, etc.) and just insists that anyone who acknowledges our past transgressions is "distorting history." If I thought it were possible for Charles Krauthammer to feel shame, I would suggest that he should be feeling it now. But that would be kind of pointless. Asking Krauthammer to feel shame is like asking a Swede to be Chinese. It just can't happen, and it won't even make sense to the Swede.