Of the nearly 700 messages I have received since Kristol’s selection was announced — more than half of them before he ever wrote a word for The Times — exactly one praised the choice.
Rosenthal’s mail has been particularly rough. “That rotten, traiterous [sic] piece of filth should be hung by the ankles from a lamp post and beaten by the mob rather than gaining a pulpit at ANY self-respecting news organization,” said one message. “You should be ashamed. Apparently you are only out for money and therefore an equally traiterous [sic] whore deserving the same treatment.”
What is Clark’s biggest issue with the man who publishes WH press releases masquerading as independently written pieces?
That is not why I think Sulzberger and Rosenthal made a mistake, and I agree with their effort to address an Op-Ed lineup that, until Kristol came aboard, was at least six liberals against one conservative who isn’t always all that conservative. I’ve heard all the arguments against Kristol — he is “wrong” on Iraq, he is overexposed as editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular commentator on Fox News with nothing new to say, he is an activist with the potential to embarrass The Times with his outside involvements — and one of them sticks with me:
On Fox News Sunday on June 25, 2006, Kristol said, “I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution” of The New York Times for publishing an article that revealed a classified government program to sift the international banking transactions of thousands of Americans in a search for terrorists.
Publication of the article was controversial — my predecessor as public editor first supported it and then changed his mind — but Kristol’s leap to prosecution smacked of intimidation and disregard for both the First Amendment and the role of a free press in monitoring a government that has a long history of throwing the cloak of national security and classification over its activities. This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation.
Great, Kristol thinks any reporter who tells the truth about the administration’s lawbreaking and spying on citizens should go to jail. Gotta luv the way Kristol thinks…independnet investigative journalism should be a crime.
This is a decision I would not have made. But it is not the end of the world. Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down. Safire was greeted with jeers and got off to a rocky start, calling Watergate “a tempest in a Teapot Dome” before eventually acknowledging that he had been “grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong.” He went on to a distinguished, 32-year career at The Times and, agree or disagree with him, he was a compelling presence on the Op-Ed page.
Does anyone really think that Bill Kristol will ever acknowledge being “grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong.” about anything? Safire was at least, to his credit, intellectually honest. Though I disagreed vehemently with most of what he wrote, he gets a level of grudging respect.
Kristol, on the other hand, supports and pursues the most extreme views, both when it comes to both political and constitutional issues. He is an authoritarian extremist posing as a mainstream conservative Republican. He has no qualms about supporting and promulgating factual inaccuracies and is so in love with the prospect of eternal war that he gets almost giddy when discussing the possibility that we might shed more blood of brown skinned people in the Middle East.
Kristol was hired on a one-year contract for what amounts to a mutual tryout. He will continue as editor of The Weekly Standard and on Fox, but Rosenthal said Kristol would not advise candidates or take any other active part in the presidential campaign. If Kristol is another Safire, he has the chance to prove it. If not, he and the newspaper will move on, and the search will resume.
Mark your calendar. With any hope, in a year, we can be rid of his poison. At least as far as the Times Op-Ed pages.
While the Vélib is the largest program to date, Paris is not alone in its cycling enthusiasm. Various cities across the globe have implemented successful bike-sharing systems in recent years, including Barcelona, Stockholm and Berlin. Beijing, known as the Kingdom of Bicycles, recently unveiled plans to unleash 50,000 bikes in time for the 2008 Olympics.
Bike-sharing fever has even spread to the United States, a country lacking a robust bike culture but one where car-sharing has thrived and biking is becoming more mainstream. In San Francisco, the city Board of Supervisors is set to vote on a contract with Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. that would establish a bike-sharing program in return for advertising rights on transit shelters. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley visited Paris in September to test the Vélib in action and is considering a similar program for the Windy City. New York City, Portland and Washington, D.C. officials have also expressed interest.
Margo O’Hara, communications director for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, points out that reducing dependency on the automobile–and the carbon emissions, pollution, and traffic it creates–is the most obvious attribute of bike-sharing, but a well-designed system has other virtues.
“The cool thing about bicycling,” she says, “is that it’s public. You’re able to talk to people on your commute to work, as opposed to being in this confined vacuum of a car.” Bike-sharing also provides a cheap, sustainable appendage to under-funded and overcrowded mass transit systems. “Bike-sharing is not going to replace bus or rail transit,” says DeMaio, “but it’s really complimentary … because it does extend these other modes of transit’s reach.”
I would love to see that happen here, but I think drivers need to get more bike-friendly before it does.
RHIAD, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah described the U.S. as the world’s leading state sponsor of warfare in the Middle East and called on Arab allies to help the Saudi government curb the threat “before it’s too late.”
In a speech at an opulent, palace-style resort here today, King Abdullah accused US’s militant Christian Evangelical government of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to foment instability in Iraq , Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas, while ordinary Amerians face economic hardships, political and democratic repression.
“US’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” King Abdullah said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left)
is greeted by Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh.
cool response indeed, chimpy shows up with a back-handed $20b dollar arms deal to sweeten the pot:
Bush delivers arms sale to Saudi Arabia
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – President Bush, on his first visit to this oil-rich kingdom, delivered a major arms sale Monday to a major ally in a region where the U.S. casts neighboring Iran as a menace to stability.
Bush’s talks with Saudi King Abdullah also were expected to cover peace between Israelis and Palestinians and democracy in the Middle East.
The administration was notifying Congress of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to the Saudis. It is “a pretty big package, lots of pieces,” national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on Air Force One.
The sale is an important part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the defenses of oil-producing Gulf nations, such as Saudi Arabia, against threats from Iran.
.
. reuters
while the other side of his mouth is guaranteeing that the israelis will get even better stuff:
Israel to get “smarter” U.S.-made bombs than Saudis
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The United States has agreed in principle to provide Israel with better “smart bombs” than those it plans to sell Saudi Arabia under a regional defense package, senior Israeli security sources said on Sunday.
Keen to bolster Middle East allies against an ascendant Iran, the Bush administration last year proposed supplying Gulf Arab states with some $20 billion in new weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits for the Saudis.
The plan has angered Israel’s backers in Washington, who say the JDAMs, which give satellite guidance for bombs, may one day be used against the Jewish state or at least blunt its power to deter potential foes. Israel has had JDAMs since 1990 and has used them extensively in a 2006 offensive in Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government dropped its objections to the proposed Saudi deal in July after securing U.S. military aid grants worth $30 billion over the next decade.
Two Israeli security sources said the United States further mollified the Olmert government with an “understanding in principle” that future JDAM sales to Israel would include advanced technologies not on offer to Saudi Arabia.
“We are checking which of the top-of-the-line JDAMs will become available to us. The agreement is that Israel’s qualitative edge will be preserved,” one source said.
.
. reuters
is it any wonder chimps approval rating is 12% among the saudi population, and falling across the ME and the world?
…A recent poll conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow, a bipartisan group whose goal is undermining world support for terrorism, found only 12 percent here view Bush positively — lower than Iran’s president or even al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden — and more think warmly toward Iran than America. Top among the reasons are the chaos in Iraq that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and the widespread Arab feeling that the United States is biased toward Israel and not serious in seeking Mideast peace.
The state transportation department’s decision to allow a controversial anti-illegal-immigration group to adopt a stretch of Interstate 5 in San Diego County infuriates some Latino groups and anti-bigotry activists.
In late November, Caltrans granted permission to the San Diego Minutemen to join its Adopt-A-Highway road-cleanup program, which allows individuals, organizations, businesses or public agencies to “adopt” stretches of state highway to clean up, either by themselves or by hiring a contractor.
In what a Caltrans spokesman said is a coincidence, the stretch of freeway that the group adopted is the one on which the Border Patrol’s San Clemente checkpoint sits. – linkage
Clark Hoyt on Bill Kristol’s hiring: [NYT ]
What is Clark’s biggest issue with the man who publishes WH press releases masquerading as independently written pieces?
Great, Kristol thinks any reporter who tells the truth about the administration’s lawbreaking and spying on citizens should go to jail. Gotta luv the way Kristol thinks…independnet investigative journalism should be a crime.
Yikes.
Forgot the LINK.
Does anyone really think that Bill Kristol will ever acknowledge being “grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong.” about anything? Safire was at least, to his credit, intellectually honest. Though I disagreed vehemently with most of what he wrote, he gets a level of grudging respect.
Kristol, on the other hand, supports and pursues the most extreme views, both when it comes to both political and constitutional issues. He is an authoritarian extremist posing as a mainstream conservative Republican. He has no qualms about supporting and promulgating factual inaccuracies and is so in love with the prospect of eternal war that he gets almost giddy when discussing the possibility that we might shed more blood of brown skinned people in the Middle East.
Mark your calendar. With any hope, in a year, we can be rid of his poison. At least as far as the Times Op-Ed pages.
coming to US cties? Alternet
I would love to see that happen here, but I think drivers need to get more bike-friendly before it does.
.
RHIAD, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah described the U.S. as the world’s leading state sponsor of warfare in the Middle East and called on Arab allies to help the Saudi government curb the threat “before it’s too late.”
In a speech at an opulent, palace-style resort here today, King Abdullah accused US’s militant Christian Evangelical government of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to foment instability in Iraq , Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas, while ordinary Amerians face economic hardships, political and democratic repression.
“US’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” King Abdullah said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left)
is greeted by Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I thought Saudi Arabia was our friend…</snark>
Score another one for Team Bush: Uniting everyone against the US.
cool response indeed, chimpy shows up with a back-handed $20b dollar arms deal to sweeten the pot:
while the other side of his mouth is guaranteeing that the israelis will get even better stuff:
is it any wonder chimps approval rating is 12% among the saudi population, and falling across the ME and the world?
l’d say the “not serious” is spot on…ya think?
lTMF’sA
Hugo Chavez Y Naomi Campbell…news or gossip???
http://www.javno.com/en/lifestyle/clanak.php?id=114083
Coincidence? Right…
Institutionalized racism at its best.
I wonder what would happen if an Impeach Bush group applied to clean a visible stretch of a highway?
When it comes to funding, even DHS sez’ keep the faith-based.