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In the midst of his June 16 Swampland blog screed leveled against the "unhinged" Sen. John McCain for his criticism of President Obama's low-key response to the Iranian election, Time magazine's Joe Klein also worked in a comparison of hardliner Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's support base with former U.S. President George W. Bush's core supporters: It is not even clear that Ahmadinejad--who has significant backing from the sort of people who support Republicans here (the elderly, the religious extremists) plus a real following among working-class Iranians--would have lost this election, if the votes had been counted fairly. (I tend to...

On May 20, Politico had an interesting little treatment of columnist Charles Krauthammer crowning him as the most important conservative columnist of the day. A brief overview of his life and his emergence as the most reliable voice against Obamaism served as the main subject for the piece, but a few quotes on Mr. Krauthammer made by other columnists added a sense of how respected Krauthammer is to scribe Ben Smith's piece. All the quotes were complimentary but shockingly, in one of those quotes, lefty Time columnist Joe Klein seemed to hint that a person in a wheelchair was incapable...

This blog has had many differences with Joe Klein of Time magazine, whom I once considered a very friendly acquaintance before he accused me and those who argued for an aggressive policy in Iraq and with Iran of being war criminals and began spouting anti-Semitic conspiracy nonsense that, were his name Christiansen instead of Klein, would have seen him booted from the payroll of Time magazine faster than you could say Rickstengel. Now he has done something low and indefensible even for him. In an interview with Politico, Klein ascribes what he views as the deficiencies in Charles Krauthammer’s worldview...

We may have hit a new low in the category of tasteless, ignorant comments made by one pundit about another . . . Politico has an article today about Charles Krauthammer rightly depicting him as an eminently articulate and influential conservative critic of Pres. Obama. Then comes this [emphasis added]: “There’s something tragic about him too,” Klein said, referring to Krauthammer’s confinement to a wheelchair, the result of a diving accident during his first year of medical school. “His work would have a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he’s writing about.”

You're not seeing things and it is not a spoof picture from The Onion or any other satirical website. The image you see to the right (larger version below the fold) is a painting by artist Michael D'Antuono called "The Truth" that will be officially unveiled at Union Square in New York City on April 29 to mark President Barack Obama's hundreth day in office. Here are the details from the official press release: Can You Handle 'The Truth'? NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael D'Antuono may raise more questions than answers when he unveils his highly controversial new...

Discussing on MSNBC Thursday night his latest screed for Time magazine (“The Bush Administration's Most Despicable Act”), Joe Klein maligned the Bush-Cheney administration, telling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue host David Shuster: “I think this has been a profoundly un-American administration.” Klein, whose piece for the January 19 edition of the magazine contended Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials “perpetrated what many legal scholars consider to be war crimes,” lamented on MSNBC that “it's going to be very hard to prosecute these people” but, he ruminated about “the fanciful idea” that “it might happen overseas” with “Cheney being snatched mid-stream while,...

One of the ways I got to know John McCain a decade or so ago was through a mutual friend—a fellow by the name of David Ifshin. I knew David through Democratic Party politics. He was a stalwart moderate, a member of the Democratic Leadership Council and an occasional adviser to Bill Clinton. Our wives were, and are, close friends. But McCain’s relationship with David was far more interesting. Ifshin, you see, had been a vehement anti-Vietnam radical. He had even gone to Hanoi at the height at the war and given a speech denouncing the American pilots dropping bombs...

Time's Joe Klein is giddy. Convinced Sen. Barack Obama is barreling down the straightaway towards the electoral finish line with Sen. McCain choking on his dust, Mr. Anonymous is cheering the promise of big government and wealth redistribution, seeing an Obama victory as a mandate for LBJ-like big government activism.

She did fine, I suppose. She was animated and confident. She displayed an ability, for the first time since her convention speech, to repeat with a fair amount of credibility, the formulations that her handlers had given her. You knew she was well prepared when practically the first words out of her mouth were, "Go to a kids' soccer game..." She had that folksy thing down - -SNIP- Indeed, Sarah Palin's high-energy performance in the vice-presidential debate was the most glaring demonstration - since George W. Bush's performances in 2000 - of how little you can get away with knowing...

Remember all those months of the MSM building up the myth of Barack Obama, the Lightworker of unique spiritual powers whose image was frequently photoshopped to present his blessed head surrounded by a halo? Well, now Time magazine columnist, Joe Klein, is upset that Americans are supporting Sarah Palin because of another "myth" of a small town frontier America. Those who create the myths really shouldn't be complaining about what they perceive as myths but that is exactly what Klein does in his column (emphasis mine): Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade....

Subtract the subdued demeanor and the good tailoring, and how much difference is there between Brian Williams and Keith Olbermann? Take Williams' post-Palin speech analysis last night. The Nightly News anchor suggested that Palin's appeal is rooted in racism, then made a clarion call to his fellow MSMers to keep up the good fight against her. Have a look at the video, here. First is a clip of Ann Curry interviewing a woman delegate after the Palin speech, then Williams, then Joe Scarborough this morning. ANN CURRY: What was the most important message, do you think, that Governor Palin gave...

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic interviewed Time’s Joe Klein about, among other things, Klein’s recent assertion that Jewish neoconservatives have “divided loyalties.” The interview is quite a journey into the angry and emotional world of Joe Klein. Klein says, for example, that he is “very, very angry” at the Jewish blogosphere. When asked about why he puts the adjective “Jewish” in front of the word “neocons,” Klein pays homage to his own courage. “It’s about time,” he says. “I think everyone else is too afraid to do it.” He accuses those who have a different assessment of the importance of...

The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease. It seems to have gotten worse over the past few years, with thermostats routinely set at 68deg.F, and sometimes even 65 deg., in the (far too many) hotel rooms I've suffered on the campaign trail. "Americans seem to keep their houses cooler in summer than they do in the winter," muses Edward Parson, an environmental expert at the University of Michigan Law School. But it's hard to know for sure, since there are no comprehensive studies that measure air-conditioning trend lines...

Monday on CNN's "Election Center" with Wolf Blitzer, Time Magazine columnist Frank Rich said, Well, I just think that the image is kind of hilarious when you think about it: Barack Obama at a country club sipping a martini. It's kind of a parody of the Republican view of the world. Everybody belongs to -- since when do we start letting people like Barack Obama into Republican country clubs? It's obvious the implication Rich is making, so let's cut to the chase....

In a statement reminiscent of Howard Dean’s controversial statement from 2005 about the RNC and "people of color," Time magazine columnist Joe Klein blasted Karl Rove’s recent slam of Barack Obama on Monday’s "Election Center" program on CNN. "I just think that the image is kind of hilarious when you think about it: Barack Obama at a country club sipping a martini. It's kind of a parody of the Republican view of the world. Everybody belongs to -- since when [did] we start letting people like Barack Obama into Republican country clubs?" "People like Barack Obama"? That sounds like Dean’s...

How deep into the Dem mindset is Joe Klein? The Time columnist can't figure out why Hillary Clinton drives Republicans up a wall. He candidly admitted this today, chatting with Brian Williams on MSNBC. BRIAN WILLIAMS: On the Republican side, does John McCain blunt back the attack, the insurgents on the right? JOE KLEIN: I think to a certain extent he will. He'll have a lot more -- you know Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee would give him a great assist. Because the Republicans are completely berserk for reasons that kind of escape me about Hillary Clinton. She's not...

A few days after Thanksgiving, I asked Mike Huckabee what had surprised him about voters over the past six months of campaigning. "The intensity of the immigration issue," he said immediately, and then added, "I honestly don't know why it's gotten so hot." Huckabee gets points for candor: most of the presidential candidates I've spoken with in recent months feel the same way but aren't about to say so. It is difficult to spend a day on the trail and not see the anger explode.This is especially true in the Republican Party. John McCain, the sponsor of immigration-reform legislation, has...

When thinking of Hillary Clinton, do the adjectives "moderate" and "spontaneous" spring to mind? They do for Joe Klein, assigned by Time magazine to write its cover-story profile of her last week. Joe Scarborough let Klein's characterization slide this morning. But when Klein played the "spontaneous" card on last night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews devastated him with a clip of Hillary at her wooden worst. Klein offered his assessment during the 8:30 AM ET half-hour of today's "Morning Joe. View video here.

It's long been my belief that the GOP hole card in 2008 is going to be a rancid furriner-bashing anti-illegal-immigrant smear campaign. Make no mistake, whatever lipstick they put on this pig, the bottom line is the same old know-nothing nativism that has been a minor American stain since the Protestants began to get worried about the Irish Catholic surge in the 1840s (among some of our earliest settlers, the only acceptable immigrants were slaves). I tend to be an extremist on this issue. I am wildly in favor of immigration, legal and illegal. I realize that national security--i.e. terrorism--requires...

As far as Chris Matthews is concerned, David Petraeus, four-star general, commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, someone who has devoted his life to serving our country, is no better than Charlie McCarthy, a ventriloquist's dummy.View video here. As I noted yesterday, "Hardball" host Matthews had gone apoplectic over the fact that in his initial response to a senator's question, Petraeus wouldn't say whether the war in Iraq makes America safer. Shortly thereafter, in the course of the same Senate testimony, Petraeus made clear his view that America's security is indeed tied to our effort in Iraq. I observed that Petraeus's...