Thanks Jane. digg

IIRC, even that den of extremism, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, has had Khalidi on as a guest.

Good for Klien.

And Klein, too.

I wish Bill Kristol were a stateless person.

His flippant, derisive, anti-American rant on TDS last night was enough for me — he should simply be expelled before he does more harm.

When Joe got thrown off the McCain plane, he said no biggie-no need to fight that battle. Joe’s got a pen and he knows how to use it. Good on him.

My understanding is that there is much more frank discussion and criticism of Israel’s government policies by the press IN Israel than there is here.

He should go back to doing bland impersonations of Fernando Lamas.

Klien may be an othodox jew… I saw him in a kosher restaurant a 7 years ago… having lunch alone. Who knew?

Joe Klein has gone a long way towards redeeming the hackery he got so much grief for around these parts, myself included.

The word defamatory needs to be in this post. Baselessly alling Khalidi or anyone else with a public career and livelihood an anti-semite is defamatory enough, but neo-nazi? That’s a textbook case.

Call it the DL, not the ADL.

The NeoCons are pro Israel and bash anyone who does not agree with their view of a militant Israel. Except of course when the NeoCons are selling out Israel which they do by silence.

So Bush got the extra oil he was after, but 300,000 barrels is just a few percent of Saudi Arabia’s daily production - it won’t have a real impact on global oil availability. Therefor, the most interesting aspect of this deal is what Bush was willing to offer the Saudis for such a literal “drop in the bucket.” Reuters hints at nuclear co-operation, but the WhiteHouse spells it out: “The United States will assist the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia develop civilian nuclear power.” The key is providing enriched uranium so the Saudis won’t need to complete the fuel processing cycle themselves.

http://www.undergroundpolitics....._deal.html

Saudi Arabia the country that gave us Ossama is getting Nuclear Reactor tech I am sure that if a few pounds of Uranium, Plutonium etc go missing and get into the hands of Al Quieda, Israel will have nothing to worry about.
But where oh where are Holy Joe and all the Bush Neocons when Israel needs them?
Saudi Arabia is a lot closer to Israel than Iran and no they do not like Israel either.

Those TIME folks, unlike, say, writers at the Washington Post, are quite educable; they really read and respect their commenters.

The word defamatory needs to be in this post. Baselessly alling Khalidi or anyone else with a public career and livelihood an anti-semite is defamatory enough, but neo-nazi?

Pot, meet kettle.

(((((Teddy & ratfood)))))

Does this mean “Joke Line” gets retired? (Or at least put in storage.)

1,812 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Ah Citizen Hamsher, you are far too gracious and forgiving of ol’ Joe Klein…this is the guy who has gorged himself on all the cocktail weenies he ken eat and played footsy with the fascists in congress and this administration for years and now when he’s tryin’ ta change horses before the one he’s been ridin takes ‘im over a cliff he cries foul when the bastards smear ‘im with shit he used ta spread on others. No dear, ol’ Joe Klien deserves everything he gets from these gobblins and then he ken go fuck himself.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, ONCE A FASCIST…

Also who says the Saudi’s can’t or won’t buy Uranium from another country?
Iran has the ore and is working to build the means to process the ore and is lots closer for a missile strike.
I’m sure that Bush and Condi in their Memoirs will say that No one could have foreseen that Saudi Arabia would buy Uranium from other sources.
It was always assumed by Bush that America could cut off the Saudi Uranium supply if the Saudi’s got militant about Israel.
Nobody in the Bush White House thought that a country that hates Israel might buy Uranium on the side to be made into weapons.

MAN!
it just doesn’t and won’t get any better than this!
Jane Hamsher blogging about the latest from Juan Cole. These are the days, folks. May we never have to look back on these days with nostalgia, these times when we have access to the best writers and thinkers on the political blogosphere are here and now!
Awesome “write” there Jane. I don’t get over to IC often enough.
Thank you for this!

The press in the US is now ranked 119 in the world. They have gotten in bed with the propogandaists and their soiled.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19388

HEAR, HEAR!

Spencer is freshly up in Attackerman!
Green Hell

Yep, the “new journalism.” It’s why we’re winning elections.

This is just more Reich Wing fuckery which they do love to sling!! this cycle is not going their way so they are trying to find something to discredit Obama and all Democrats with what every they can gin up in their devious minds. It is time for them to become a part of history that is used as an example of how far a party will go to stay in power even when they have become the most corrupt party in history!!

John McCain complains about Obama knowing a guy with PLO connections but despite all the money the Saudi’s give to Ossama the Saudi’s never end up the the Terrorist watch list.
Yet Iceland does because they can’t pay their debts? Maybe Iceland should give more money to the Bush family, John McCain or England’s Labor Party?
Free trade with Columbia McCain apparently does not think that killing union organizers is terrorist activity and that Columbia is a safe partner for free trade.
Safe for Wallmart maybe? An example for Wallmart?

The attack on Prof. Khalidi comes from the same manipulators that smeared Obama because his name isn’t Smith or Jones. It’s a nativist attack that has worked well for generations — Irish/Italians Need Not Apply; No Dogs or Chinese Allowed in Park — but which, this cycle, has become too worn to work well.

Such attacks cost would be Senator George Allen his seat in Virginia in 2006; I hope that it helps lose the White House for John McCain. But its practitioners will be back. They’re the same ones who convince oil field and car workers, and insurance clerks that billions in tax breaks for their companies makes them better employers or corporate citizens. No, it just makes them more profitable, more politically powerful, and more inclined to be predatory.

i agree. and if we are headed for at least a couple years of major economic hurt (roubini is now predicting 18-24 months as best case if proper gov actions are taken immediately), i expect the scapegoating of nonwhites to seriously escalate. we have to be prepared to counter it.

Ironically, in imitation of the effects of McCarthyism on experts on China, a successful attack against Prof. Khalidi and his peers would ensure that our government had even fewer experts on the Middle East, surely one of the world’s hottest spots for generations to come, at least until we have cost-effective energy alternatives for petroleum.

How like the GOP that made George Bush its leader to prefer being blind and angry — assuring continued wealth to makers of war’s tools — to being smart, balanced and informed. Peace isn’t profitable, nor does it help demagogues and their whispering bureaucrats build unchallenged power.

An old saw has it that to acquire wisdom, you must walk for a time in another’s shoes. The neocons disdain that approach, and are determined to make everyone else wear theirs, though some GOP’ers would steal yours when their own wear out, then try to convince you that going barefoot was good for your soul.

It’s not just “nativist”. It’s specifically anti-Arab. Your elision of this fact reminds me of a very minor quibble I have with Klein’s post, which has a lot of zing. He says:

And even worse than that is the McCain campaign’s tendency, driven by thugs like Goldfarb, to imply that Barack Obama is soft on Islamic terrorism–and perhaps even a closet Muslim himself–by linking his name with people who have Arab names like Rashid Khalidi. This is the vilest form of anti-Americanism.

It’s not just bigotry against people with Arab names, like the principal target, Barack Hussein Obama. The millions of Arabs in this country are also incidental targets, but targets nonetheless here. It’s truly vicious and focused hate that has multiple levels — there’s the campaign-incited fever and inchoate rage of xenophobes across the country, but it’s also a case of neocon elites defaming and trying to purge academics critical of Israel.

The defamation of Khalidi (a representative at the Madrid talks!) will go unpunished, as well as unrefuted by Obama, the only person in a position to defend him from open defamation and slander by the leader of a major party.

This should serve as a reminder to everyone (if our presence in Iraq weren’t already) of how successful neoconservatives have been defining the terms of the debate.

Lisa Derrick is hosting John Cusack upstairs at the Mothership!
FDL’s Afternoon at the Movies: John Cusack Joins Us with War Inc.

Yes, and I would be surprised if it is only 18-24 months.

I think it will take longer to sort out and administer the changes in housing - for individuals, communities, the “market”, and its lenders. It will take that long for workers fired at a merged GM/Chrysler to find new jobs, at lower wages. Long term changes in other industries, health insurers and financial services among them, may take that long to become apparent, much less be reckoned with.

Fortunately, I think that blogs can help “out” the hypocrisy of purveyors of hate and division as tools to acquire electoral advantage. For many, though, knowledge is not insight or an opportunity to change; it is just sharper, more protracted pain. I think Obama knows that in his bones, and it’s one reason he is so cautious and calm.

That that will retard achieving progressives’ goals would be an acceptable price if it keeps the peace. But we shouldn’t take the equation for granted. Rather, we should follow FDR’s command to his progressive followers, “I agree with you. Now make me do it.”

i don’t think it’s a trade off between progressive’s goals and social peace. i think it’s a bind -regardless of what obama wants to do. if he acts quickly to limit the recession to 2 years, if he puts in place the kind of regulation that can help protect the us, then he risks being seen as controversial and scary. but if he doesn’t act, the risks are that much worse in the future - to say nothing of the millions of people harmed.

personally, i want him to go with option #1. and one way to make that more palatable to obama is for us to be the crazy leftists. that would give him more political space to do what needs to be done. would he take it? i don’t know, but i think we have to give him the chance.

I beg to quibble. My point was that such attacks were part of a class of attacks with deep roots and that they would not go away, either with time, education or their temporary failure.

I made no elision. My comments were simply not necessary, as Jane, Scott Horton and Glennzilla had already made clear that the attack against Khalidi was “anti-Arab” — the currently most reviled “other” or “foreign” element in American politics, along with variations on “Muslim” and “Islam”. It was also an expression of the Jewish neocon campaign to keep criticism of Israel the state within excessively and harmfully narrow bounds, much narrower than that engaged in by Israeli nationals or their many friends. Glennzilla, especially, has written several articles on the latter.

An irony apparently lost on Goldfarb and others is that they are applying an offshoot of a sociology about demonizing “the other”, one of whose prime intellectual sources was an earlier Columbia University Arabist and sociologist.

Part of that Jewish neocon campaign to restrict debate on Israel to their preferred, narrow, ultra-hawkish terms is an intra-Jewish, not an anti-Arab, campaign.

Sorry to go OT - but this is great - John Dingell tells TV news obsses to NOT call election early -

http://www.tvweek.com/news/200.....s_dont.php

You are so right about bigotry of anyone ethnic on the part of the lily-white GOP. However, what is also troubling is the smearing of respected professors Kalid and Ayres. Attacks on university professors are particular red flags that show a subtle undermining of freedom of thought. Obama is a former professor used to discussing ideas with other professors that he might not necessarily agree with, but are essential to understanding other points of view in our diverse world. The international community already considers the US isolationist, xenophobic, warmongering and incurious. We have the opportunity to elect a president who is willing to be educated on diverse points of view and willing to listen without taking knee-jerk action. That president is Barack Obama.

Thanks Jane, excellent post. Goldfarb was simply an embarrassment on Sanchez’ show, and indeed the whole attack on Khalidi is an embarrassment.

I fully agree that Joe Klein has been doing heroic work in this area - note this post from last summer on some of his hitbacks against the neocons.

Apparently it’s gonna be an even tougher sell for McCain. Leslie Stahl did a joint interview with John McCain and Khalidi back in her inaugural year on “60 Minutes”. If Khalidi is supposed to be a spokesperson for the PLO, and the PLO is our enemy, then what’s McCain doing appearing on the same program with him, and also giving Rashidi’s organization funding.

Here the McCain campaign is screaming “show the footage…show the footage” and they are just asking for the presentation of the publicly broadcast footage of his appearance with Khalidi days before the election. That footage wasn’t “embargoed” - and there must be a lot of people with archived copies of it out there somewhere. If “^0 Minutes” doesn’t show it, someone else surely will.

This is just one more idiotic move by a campaign that couldn’t do anything right.