Crooks and Liars and the Goldberg Variations

The Patriot "Jesus General" has posted my new letter to Jonah Goldberg.

Click here to give a read. I wonder if Jonah will respond.

Moral Hazards

via Digby (this is just some highlights. Please read the entire article)

Perhaps it would be instructive to take another little trip down memory lane. Jonah knows very well what a real story is because he was up to his ears in one of the biggest political sex scandals in history. From Michael Isifkoff's award winning MSM articles on the Lewinsky affair:

There was another guest at Jonah Goldberg's house in the Adams Morgan section of Washington that day. For some months, Newsweek's Isikoff had been in touch with Tripp – "hounding" her, Goldberg claims. Aware that Isikoff knew of rumors that Clinton was having an affair with a former White House staffer, Goldberg suggested to Tripp that she play the tapes for Isikoff. Uncomfortable with the whole taping process, Isikoff declined to listen and left Goldberg's house. In their many phone conversations that fall, Lewinsky complained to Tripp that she was being neglected by the president... By the fall of 1997, Lewinsky was complaining that Clinton's ardor for her seemed to be cooling. He wasn't calling her much, and he rarely returned her increasingly frantic calls. Lewinsky was restless and bored at the Defense Department.

Isikoff listened later, needless to say. So did the entire country. That little meeting at Jonah's house led to the impeachment of the President of the United States. They came this close to forcing him from office. Goldberg and the entire GOP establishment knew without doubt that they had a story and they were not afraid to lead the media to it by the nose. And just look at what an oozing chunk of soap opera tabloid offal it was.

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The Obama Derangement Syndrome officialy has begun. We know the right wing smear machine went into over drive during the general election, but I wanted to kick it off with one of the finest Conservative yes men there is, Jonah Goldberg. He once famously wondered why liberals didn't like Dick Cheney very much.

Anyway, here he is on Hannity and Colmes getting very frothy over Obama's pick of Eric Holder as AG and even the mention of President Lincoln...

Goldberg: I agree I think we should give Obama a chance to spread his wings. We should also give him a chance before we start comparing him to Lincoln. The guy's not even president yet.

Colmes: He's not comparing himself to Lincoln, he's reading the Doris Kearns Goodwin book...

Goldberg: Actually he is. Actually he is. He compares himself to Lincoln quite often in his speeches... (No, he's really not.) Alan, you keep saying that he doesn't, but he does.

Colmes: Newt Gingrich says he's impressed with how Obama is using Lincoln, do you disagree with Newt Gingrich?

Goldberg: I'm impressed with how he's gotten away with it. Yeah, I'm impressed how so many people in the media have completely turned into head past the sphincter suck up to the guy. That's impressive.

Colmes: Newt's impressed with how Obama is utilizing Abraham Lincoln as a role model.

Goldberg: Yeah. I'm impressed with how he's getting away with doing it. I disagree with Newt, uh, that he's actually using him very much as a role model. He's NOT EVEN President yet. And I find this so fascinating, the way the press wants this guy to be Lincoln. Everyone hopes he'll be like Lincoln. You know, Lincoln had to be Lincoln because we were on the verge of a civil war that racked up 600,000 American dead. Seems to me that I don't want to have a Lincoln. I don't need to need to have a Lincoln.

Wow, where to go in this rant. So is he saying that Newt is part of his sphincter club? I think we do need an exceptional president right about now, don't you? Or maybe an FDR. I'll be happy with a good effort by Obama, though. Everyone -- everyone except rabid ideologues like Jonah Goldberg -- wants Obama to succeed because we are in two wars where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and maimed, our complete economic system is in a perilous state with people losing their jobs like crazy since Bush. And Goldberg is foaming at the mouth because Obama reads about Lincoln.

This is what Conservatives will be doing to Obama all through his presidency. And I say, go for it. They are just looking like children crying that Billy took their Tonka truck away in the sandbox. Americans want real answers, not Insane Clown Posse behavior directed at the man they just elected.

See the Tucker/Goldberg video here from Jun 26, 2007:

Tucker: ....you're apt to see hyperventilation. People hate Cheney on this visceral level. What is so hate-able about Dick Cheney?

Goldberg: I have no, I really ... I truly have no idea. I like Dick Cheney. Love to have a beer with the guy -- I think one of the things that bothers them is that he doesn't care! The opposite of love isn't hate -- it's indifference.

The Doughboy should know that America hates Cheney. That's not me saying it, that's every poll known to man.

OurFuture: Everything about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been nationalized - except the profits and the pay scales of their executives.

The Washington Note: Israel deals with reality in the region. Exchanging prisoners is better than exchanging rockets.

earthfamilyalpha: The Stupid Economy

Washington Monthly: How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds.

Angry Bear: Did Jonah Goldberg learn about the economics of oil from Dr. Newt Gingrich?

The Washington Independent: The Bush Crime Family's latest latest consigliere, Michael Mukasey, claimed executive privilege, in CIA leak matter. Unsurprisingly, Don Dubya sees nothing wrong with treason.

Cliff Schecter: September 11, 2001: They knew but did nothing

Tennessee Guerilla Women: Madeline Albright: Sexism in Politics

Whistle-Blower: Feds have a backdoor into wireless carrier - Congress reacts

Cynics' Party: Farted, Sat, and Nothing More

Sunday Bookchat: This week, Joseph Stiglitz tallies the real cost of the Iraq war, Steve Weinberg tells the tale of the tycoon and the muckraker, and Carl Zimmer describes the Republican Party's favorite bacterium. Meanwhile, Philip K. Dick gets another long-overdue honor and Jonah Goldberg gets a pantload of dishonor.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: MobLogic, black woman unhinged, Pruning Shears, Middle East Diaries

Robert Reich's Blog: I remember watching Mr. Reich on 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos' several months ago. George Will scoffed when Reich flatly predicted stated the country was headed for a recession. Here, the former Labor Secretary examines the politics of an economic nightmare

James Fallows: The best thing I didn't see on the Fox News Channel

Mick LaSalle: Barbara Stanwyck for president

Bloggingheads.tv: Will Wilkinson with guest Jonah Goldberg...Jonah talkin' a lot of sh*t out the side of his neck.

Alternate Brain: Pentagon vs White House. You wont be seeing this in any American 'media'...

Consortiumblog: Any Democrat who uses the Reagan pander deserves to catch hell

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Ah...the Doughy Pantload strikes again. Speaking in front of the Heritage Foundation (because, honestly, who else could sit through this tripe?) to pimp his latest book, Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg tries again to prove Moynihan wrong, not only by coming up with his own facts, but his own definitions as well.

The primary definition that Goldberg ignores for his own version is "Fascism." In Doughy Pantload World, "fascism" means "something bad". This is something I've suspected for many years about conservatives: They don't actually know the definitions of the epithets they like to throw out to dismiss and demean the left. They just think it means "something bad." For example:

To sort of start the story, the reason why we see fascism as a thing of the right is because fascism was originally a form of right-wing socialism. Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

Um, actually, not so much. Mussolini was dubbed a fascist because he founded the Fascist Party, you big, fact-ignoring dope.

Jonah's hatred of Hillary Clinton knows no rational bounds (the original sub-title was "The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton"--Mussolini as an American politician--who knew?) and he steals liberally from Naomi Klein to dive head first into the Godwin abyss with fantastical allusions to 1984 and some Big Brother bleak bureaucratic scenario of DMVs with Jumbotrons with nanny-state advisories on breastfeeding, based on Hillary Clinton's It Takes A Village.

The dizzying logic of it all just shows you why if Jonah Goldberg is one of the great thinkers on the right (and certainly, he's has prominent enough platforms from which to spew this tripe to argue that point), the right is bankrupt of intellectual honesty and comprehension.

(Update: BG thanks her fellow liberal bloggers for this.)

Pandagon: Obama shows strong; racists freak out

The Opinion Mill: While the conservative bookshelf groans under the weight of screeds loaded with childish insults (insert title of Ann Coulter book here) and historical "analysis" that would disgrace a middle school student (Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is the current, overripe example), a series of progressive writers appeared last year to take on wingnut dogma about free markets and "supply side" mumbo-jumbo.

One Big Union: News and notes from the frontlines of organized labor

Drinking Liberally in New Milford: Hillary Clinton's 103 delegate lead over Obama

Velvel on National Affairs: The failure of moral courage (h/t Make Them Accountable)

archpundit: When pandering doesn't work; Immigrant bashing fails in Iowa

I swear he earns his nickname every single time he says anything.

Oliver Willis:

Why Is Jonah Goldberg A Complete Idiot?

If you want to know one big reason why the newspaper industry is in the toilet, look no further than the Los Angeles Times. After years of browbeating from well-financed conservatives about their "liberal bias", newspapers like the L.A. Times feel compelled to be "fair and balanced" by giving column inches in their paper to random conservative idiots who don't know dick. The L.A. Times decided to give their shingle to Jonah Goldberg, editor of the right-wing National Review. And so, in one of the major papers in the country, Goldberg is given lots of column inches to mull over the really brilliant idea that we ought to test people before they go to the polls.

What could possibly go wrong?

Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people about the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up, instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment.

Golly gee whillikers, Mistah Goldberg, why don't we have tests at the polls here in America? Although, I seem to remember a historical precedent for just such a thing. Why did this noble experiment not continue through until the modern day? Let's go on to the Internets and check it out. Oooh, here we go Mister Goldberg, here's the historical precedent for your idiotic moronic stupid-ass idea the Los Angeles Times printed up in a newspaper they actually sold to people for actual federally-backed U.S. currency: Read on...

Matt Ortega asks that if by his own definition, Jonah just declared himself unfit to vote.

Check out this exchange between Hugh "The Cowardly Lion" Hewitt and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. It's nothing short of remarkable.

MI: The central argument [for war in Iraq] was weapons of mass destruction.

HH: That was Colin Powell. Again, that's spin. Michael Isikoff, that's spin.

We can debate ideological differences all day long, but we need to have common ground to work off of, which usually consist of things we would call FACTS. With Hugh Hewitt, there are no facts, just SPIN. Now, Hewitt thinks US foreign policy should be run on GUESSES, but when asked to guess, that's SPIN too...

I'll remind Howard Kurtz of Digby's piece describing Hewitt's function for the extreme/Koreshian right of the GOP.

Hewitt stands apart, actually, as being even more craven and unprincipled than the rest. In that way he serves an important purpose for the right. His mere presence in the discourse serves to make people like John Podhoretz and Jonah Goldberg seem like paragons of rectitude by comparison.

People of the center or left who continue to help Hewitt pretend to be a credible person by appearing on his show can no longer be considered credible themselves. By encouraging Hewitt's blatant intellectual corruption they are irrevocably tainted by that intellectual corruption themselves.

So how is Hewitt's pick of Rick Santorum as a Supreme Court Justice doing these day?