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Joe Klein's Enlightenment Continues.
Blah3 Feed — Klein seems to have come to his senses after being hit with one too many negative ads from the McCain campaign. He blogged about it again today (while talking about the swill that Jerome Corsi just put out about Obama) - but as usually happens, once his eyes were opened about McCain's phony Maverick-ness he's begun to grasp some larger truths. Emphasis mine: ...

Losing His Base
Obsidian Wings — ... not cast a vote to subsidize, even though he supports big subsidies for nuclear power. (...) That [ed.: clean renewable energy] is what this election should be focusing on. Everything else is just bogus rhetoric designed by cynical candidates who think Americans are so stupid — so bloody stupid — that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power — when you didn’t." Second, Joe Klein, writing about Jerome Corsi's new book: "Back in the day, John McCain ...

The Politics of Hate
Political Animal — THE POLITICS OF HATE.... Joe Klein responds to Mary Matalin, publisher of Jerome Corsi's shiny new book alleging that Barack Obama really is a secret Muslim after all: But hey, Mary stands to make big bucks off this scholarship, which I'm sure was submitted for peer review and otherwise held to the highest editorial standards and I'm sure her reputation and mediagenicity won't be damaged by this poisonous crap, and we're all friends here, aren't we? And, yknow, they say politics ain't beanbag...and it's all in the game to tell innocent, well-intentioned people that Barack ...

Klein points to ‘evidence of a severe character defect’
Political Animal — ... Klein has come a long way since then. Noting McCain’s reluctance to condemn Jerome Corsi’s hatchet-job, and McCain’s support for Joe Lieberman’s smear this week, Klein doesn’t seem to recognize McCain anymore. ...

Nice work, Joe, but then, you helped create this environment
Brilliant at Breakfast — Joe Klein, who had as much to do with the obsession with the Clenis™ as anyone, has finally realized what he hath wrought -- now that it's too late and no one will go along with him: ...

Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight, Praise the lord I saw the light.
SteveAudio — Joe Klein, who should be henceforth known as Swamp Thing, has always been one of those "fair and balanced" news people we keep hearing about. You know, truth, justice, and the American way. Of course, he has spun this for so long that he actually believed it. Yesterday he wrote this on his Time blog (called Swampland, get it? Sorry.): I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear--that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations--had been confirmed by a ...

Joe Leads the Way
Talking Points Memo — ... Joe Klein: There's no way to "explain [the kind of campaign McCain is running] other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used." ...

Joe Klein Lowers The Boom On Corsi, Matalin, McCain
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — ... , makes a stern denouncement of the entire Swift Boatesque operation behind Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation. It's damn near pugilistic, and pointedly criticizes all the parties involved. ...

TIME's Joe Klein: McCain has "a severe character defect"
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — Why does Joe Klein hate America? [T]here is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the "putting America first" front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: Mcain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action...you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was ...

McCain’s Cronies: Playing Unrepentant Footsie With Ralph Reed
Firedoglake — ... like a moth who just can't stay away from the corruption flame, given the sheer number of lobbyists and other questionable cronies, big money bundlers buying corporate inroads by funding his Presidential run, and other issues that have cropped up...including serious questions about what all that money has bought from the sinking maverocity sham. But this is a new low for the McCain Corruption Express, even for a campaign that has sunk pretty far into the ditch as it is. To wit: ...

Losing your mom to the slime
Interesting Times — This piece by Joe Klein represents some of the best work of his since his eye opening moment with John McCain. But I still have to wonder at this opening paragraph : I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear--that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations--had been confirmed by a new book. I told her not to worry, that many reputable people had looked into the matter and Obama was more likely to be spotted in Whole Foods than praying in a mosque. (Since my mother has never been to Whole Foods, so she didn't quite get my ...

Friday McBush Bashing (Olympic Edition)
Discourse.net — ... Joe Klein, at TIME’s Swampland blog, is so disappointed in McCain that he seems to be bidding for membership in the ...

McCain’s Cronies: Playing Unrepentant Footsie With Ralph Reed
The Hollywood Liberal — ... , even for a campaign that has sunk pretty far into the ditch as it is…. John McCain is like a moth who just can’t stay away from the corruption flame, given the ...

Jerome Corsi's "Obama Nation" and the Root of Language Crime
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash — Slime-merchant Jerome Corsi's latest psychotic episode in print, The Obama Nation , is published by Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions, whose editor, Mary Matalin (yeah, that one) calls the book "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." I ran across Ms. Matalin's literary appraisal-cum-Elmer Gantry salesmanship in Joe Klein's Time magazine column. Mr. Klein, however, had experienced a somewhat less agreeable encounter with the book; in fact, he called it "trash," "poisonous crap" and "swill." No, Mary, I haven't read the book, nor do I feel compelled to do so ...

McCain's Decision
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Joe Klein tells the truth: McCain isn't confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama's patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary--and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush ...

Joke Line has his
d r i f t g l a s s — "It's a Cookbook!" Moment. Via the delightful Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast: Nice work, Joe, but then, you helped create this environment Joe Klein, who had as much to do with the obsession with the Clenis™ as anyone, has finally realized what he hath wrought -- now that it's too late and no one will go along with him: Back in the day, John McCain was the sort of politician who would stand first in line to call out this sort of swill. (As, I'm sure Barack Obama ...

McCain finds Corsi hatchet-job funny, then backpedals
Political Animal — ... his Senate colleague and dismiss Corsi’s work. Yes, the circumstances are slightly different now. This time Corsi’s target is McCain’s direct rival, not just the nominee of the rival party. But the underlying point remains the same: Corsi is lying, McCain knows it, but he refuses to say so because the lies may benefit him politically. It’s the difference between honor and whatever’s left of McCain’s character. Time’s Joe Klein argued the other day: Back in the day, John McCain was the sort of politician ...

So What Happened to Klein?
Shadow of the Hegemon — He's almost acting like, well, a journalist. That can't be right. I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear--that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations--had been confirmed by a new book. I told her not to worry, that many reputable people had looked into the matter and Obama was more likely to be spotted in Whole Foods than praying in a mosque. (Since my mother has never been to Whole Foods, so she didn't quite get my wry allusion.) "I hope so," she said, dubiously. ...

So What Happened to Klein?
Shadow of the Hegemon — He's almost acting like, well, a journalist. That can't be right. I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear--that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations--had been confirmed by a new book. I told her not to worry, that many reputable people had looked into the matter and Obama was more likely to be spotted in Whole Foods than praying in a mosque. (Since my mother has never been to Whole Foods, so she didn't quite get my wry allusion.) "I hope so," she said, dubiously. ...

Lying Joe Klein Denounces Lying Liars Against Obama
NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias — Barack Obama’s official fight-back packet against anti-Obama author Jerome Corsi carries an endorsement of sorts from Time magazine. In a yellow Time-like banner on the top-right of the cover is the Time logo and the words "Trash" and "Poisonous Crap." The nasty words come from a Time "Swampland" blog post by one Joe Klein, who decries all the "filth and lies" from the "right-wing sludge merchants." Question: since when does "Anonymous" Joe Klein, who feverishly lied for months in 1996 about authoring the Clinton roman a clef "Primary Colors" ...

Free Advice, Worth Every Penny
Talking Points Memo — ... so I'm sure a real one could come up with much better. But the point is. Don't demand or beg or please or even ask. It's silly and weak and achieves nothing. McCain's weakness is that he's abandoned everything he always said he believed in, just to be president. Against Bush/Rove attacks? Now they run his campaign? Reform? Now he's for all of President Bush's economic policies. It's the mix of flip-flops and moral failures that made his one time admirer diagnose him with a "severe character defect." A lot of people can see McCain's moral and character problem. But it ...

Joe Klein laments the GOP 'disgrace'
Political Animal — ... , "sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics -- the spin and hucksterism -- as unworthy." Klein added that if McCain chose the low road, "McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor. That's probably not the way he wants to be remembered." That was nearly five months ago. As McCain's campaign grew more offensive, Klein's disappointment became more palpable. Last month, the Time columnist said " there is no excuse " for McCain's ugly style of campaigning, other than to say it is "evidence of a severe ...