I think I've made my feelings about Bill Kristol very clear in the past, but allow me to reiterate: He is never right. He is wrong constantly. Anything and everything he says is a pathetic mix of lies and ignorance.

Now that we're clear, I have to ask, what will it take before the New York Times realizes that they are paying for utter and complete wrongness to pollute their paper?

In less than six months since his column began, the New York Times had already issued at least three corrections for factual errors in Bill Kristol columns.

Today, he's given his editors another reason to keep their red pens close at hand.

Kristol's assertion that the 9/11 attacks "did not result in a much-feared (by intellectuals) wave of popular Islamophobia or xenophobia" in this country will surely come a surprise to the millions of Muslims and immigrants in this country.

This goes against plentiful data and the lived experience of Muslims, Arab Americans and immigrants in our country. Many Muslim Americans reported increased hostility toward them after 9/11. Shockingly, Kristol's "non-existent" Islamophobia and xenophobia have also proved deadly for a number of Americans who became victims of hate crimes after 9/11. (See Divided We Fall for a moving account of this painful reality.)

Considering the amount of xenophobia that Bill Kristol and his PNAC buddies have unleashed on this country in pursuit of their agenda, I'm surprised he thinks he can write this without bolts of lightening striking him down.

    In the midst of all the convention hooplah, some important stories get missed. That seems to be the case with the tale of Bush ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been engaged in some very irregular cozying up with Pakistani presidential hopeful Asif Zardari.

Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing “advice and help.” “Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

A senior American official said that Mr. Khalilzad had been advised to “stop speaking freely” to Mr. Zardari, and that it was not clear whether he would face any disciplinary action.

State and White House officials from Negroponte on down are said to be furious with Khalilzhad for his planned vaction with Zardari and his unofficial contacts at a time when the US wants to be seen as neutral in the Pakistani presidential race. Zalmay is an old political hand who knows the rules and White House plans but decided to break them anyway. Why?

Well, maybe its just that, like other neocons, Khalilzhad doesn't think the rules apply to him. The founding PNAC member certainly didn't mind interfering in Afghan elections to get his old buddy Karzai elected (although that was probably on White House orders). Maybe he felt he could do the same for his new friend Zardari with impunity.

But the worrying element is that there have been rumors for a while that Khalilzhad, who is Afghan born, has his sights on the Afghani presidency himself. While Karzai has been confrontational with Pakistan about its ISI intelligence agency and their support for the Taliban (something Zardari has been helpless to do anything about). He's also allied himself strongly with India in response to Pakistani treatment of Afghanistan -something that led to the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul recently, carried out by ISI proxies.

If Khalilzhad does have his sights on the presidency, then he could be a very different matter. Despite his neocon credentials he was an early and staunch supporter of the Taliban - chaperoning their officials to a Unocal Oil party in their honor and declaring in a 1996 WaPo op-ed that "The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran." He went on to say that the Taliban's brand of Islam was more akin to that of Saudi Arabia...

Zardari is by some accounts quite unstable and paranoid - if an alliance with the ambassador would definitely appeal to the highly corrupt Pakistani politico. He might think that he would thereby get U.S. protection, just like Musharraf did, by default even if the Bush administration didn't originally intend to extend it. Kalilzhad might be thinking that Zardari can leverage him into power. India, I'm sure, has thought of all this already and will have been burning up the phones to the White House since the story broke, demanding to know what the runaway ambassador thinks he was doing.

  Boy, this is great. On the same day Bill Kristol says this:

"NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. [...] 'What they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.'

"That’s pretty astonishing, since there seems to be absolutely no basis for the charge."

The newspaper in which he said it says this:

"Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California. "

What's even worse is that his editors were forced to change the online version of the article and make a note at the bottom that a different version was published in the print version. How many more times does Bill Kristol have to be proven completely and utterly wrong before the Times fires him?

  This week, Americans were introduced to Wrong-Way McCain. To be sure, it's the same John McCain ("McSame") who would continue the policies of George W. Bush that 80% of Americans believe have put the country on the wrong track. It's also the same "Jukebox John" who has changed his tune 61 times on issues foreign and domestic, including a dizzying 10 times in two weeks back in June. But as he showed repeatedly over the past several days, Wrong-Way McCain is also the Republican presidential nominee who simply can't keep his stories straight.

Whether the result of crass political opportunism, transparent deceit or just plain confusion, on at least 7 occasions this week alone, Wrong Way McCain couldn't remember what he stood for, if anything at all.

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(via HuffPo. click for full-size image of both horrendous photoshop jobs)

In case you needed any more proof that FOX News is produced by 12 year olds with the temperament of 5 year olds (not to mention the Photoshop skills of 8 year olds), here you go. After NYT reporters Jacques Steinberg and Steve Radicliffe wrote a story critical of the propaganda news station, Fox & Friends hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade get their revenge by showing very poorly photoshopped images of the two.

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MediaMatters has more:

After putting up the photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe, Fox & Friends also featured a photograph of Steinberg's face superimposed over that of a poodle, while Reddicliffe's face was superimposed over that of the man holding the poodle's leash.

Below is a screenshot of Fox & Friends featuring the photo it used of Steinberg, with the original photo on its left. Comparing the two photos, it appears that the following changes have been made: Steinberg's teeth have been yellowed, his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further.

UPDATE: The Times responds:

Neither Steinberg nor Reddicliffe were reachable for comment Wednesday. But Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton called the Fox photo work "disgusting," and the criticism of the paper's reporting "a specious and meritless claim."

"It wasn't a hit piece," Sifton told E&P. "It was straight news. This was a hit piece by Fox News. It is beneath comment." Asked if the paper planned to respond to Fox's actions, he said no: "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."

As my esteemed colleague Logan noted the other day, Bill Kristol embarrassed himself (again) last week when he claimed on the pages of The New York Times that he couldn't find a single instance where an eventual Presidential nominee lost by a primary by a 41%+ margin. The Old Gray Lady finally caught up with blogosphere and has issued a "correction" to Kristol's column.

Correction: May 21, 2008

In his column on Monday, Bill Kristol said he could not find a recent primary in which the candidate who would go on to win the nomination lost by as big a margin as
Barack Obama lost by (41 points) in West Virginia.
Mitt Romney won the essentially uncontested Utah primary on Feb. 5 with about 90 percent of the vote.

Also, the California Supreme Court is based in San Francisco, not the state capital, Sacramento.

Jeremy Jerry Skurnik of RoomEight, the blogger who first caught Kristol's error, isn't satisfied with the dismissive apology. Read why here.

John Cole says it best:

I am noticing a trend here. Kristol claims government is inefficient, ineffective, and bad, gets a bunch of his buddies elected, and proves it. He also rails against the MSM, claims they can’t get their facts straight, gets a job at the NY Times, and proves it.

For years now, FOXNews pundit William Kristol has been wrong on nearly every subject he's chosen to write about or speak to. His follies at Fox are legendary, and since bringing his special brand of fact- & research-free hackery to the pages of the New York Times, he's made not one, not two, but now three glaring gaffes to add to his comical body of work.

Think Progress:

In his New York Times column today, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol tried to find reasons for conservatives to be optimistic about 2008 elections, despite the claims of some Republicans that “the Republican brand is in the trash can.” To support his argument, Kristol pointed to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary:

On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin.

Apparently Kristol didn’t look hard enough. Writing at Room Eight, New York political consultant Jerry Skurnik says it took him “all of 2 minutes to find what Kristol couldn’t find.” On Feb. 5, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 85 points in the Utah primary: Read on...

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In one of the odder transformations seen this primary season, some of the harshest critics of Hillary Clinton are now championing her candidacy with great gusto. Kristol seems to lead this pack of concern trolls from the vast rightwing conspiracy, but we've also seen Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough,and Karl Rove among others rush to her defense. And then last month's bizarre endorsement from her once arch nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife.

In this clip from yesterday's Fox News Sunday Kristol rallies to her side saying, "She is a better candidate than he is. "

And Kristol continues today in the NY Times:

I normally don’t claim to speak for other members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. After all, we’re each nefarious in our own, individual way. Indeed, we often disagree with one another.

But I do think I can speak for most of my fellow right-wingers when I say this: We once looked forward with unambivalent glee to the fall of the house of Clinton. Many of us still do. But we also see the liberal media failing to give Hillary Clinton the respect she deserves. So, since we conservatives believe in giving credit where credit is due, it falls to us to praise Hillary.

Of course, the disdain for all things Clinton has not lessened one iota among these people. The annoying clucking sound we hear is only Republicans savoring the prospect of Democratic discord, their only real means to retaining the White House.

Info from the Youtube link:

Thomas Friedman, the author and NY Times columnist, was invited to Brown University to give a keynote speech on Earth Day, before a packed auditorium. His talk, titled "Green is the new Red White and Blue" was about how corporate environmentalism (based on putting a price on the atmosphere, and investing in biofuels and techno-fixes) can restore America to its "natural place in the global order." Luckily, this outrageous neoliberal capitalist propaganda was interrupted with a suprise visit from the Greenwash Guerrillas.

And further information from the Brown University newspaper.

After the pie hit Friedman and splattered on his face and torso, the two jumped offstage and ran out of the southeast exit of the building, followed closely by a man trying to catch them. A police officer also ran toward the exit but stayed inside.

The thrower was eventually caught by police, who detained her in Salomon's lobby before moving her elsewhere.

"One of the offenders was apprehended, placed in the custody of the Brown Department of Public Safety and identified as a Brown student," University spokesman Michael Chapman said in a statement released Tuesday night. "The University will review this incident through its non-academic disciplinary system to determine the appropriate response."

Update: John Amato: You may remember that Mr. Friedman was one of the main cheerleaders in the media for the US to go into Iraq and kick a little ass because "we could."

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Friedman: What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This. That Charlie is what this war is about. We could of hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could of hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

  image by Driftglass

Dear New York Times,

Word has it that the Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., decided last fall that it was time to add another Republican columnist to the paper’s op-ed page, and the decision early on was to find a “lightning-rod conservative.” For reasons that I’ve never entirely understood, you picked the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.

Now, it’s always difficult for any large institution to admit a mistake, especially on the heels of some high-profile embarrassments. I understand that. This is especially true when someone in a position of authority makes a poor employment decision, hiring the wrong person for an important job. (I suspect it’s tempting to adopt the president’s approach, and pretend that the unqualified hire is doing a heckuva job, no matter how humiliating the person’s on-the-job performance.)

But there comes a point at which the paper’s reputation matters more than the embarrassment that would come from admitting a mistake.

If Kristol were just a conservative hatchet-man, his columns would simply be predictable. After nearly five months of columns, however, the problem is more jarring — his work is that of an awful columnist, a weak writer, and a boring political observer. This isn’t about ideology; it’s about talent, or in this case, the lack thereof.

Take today’s column, for example. Without a hint of satire, Bill Kristol devoted his entire 800-word column in the nation’s most important newspaper to scrutinizing Passover press releases.

He is, in other words, making the New York Times look silly.

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There are some smackdowns that are just better than others.  I don't know why this tickled me so, but my mother, who shares my love of Gene Kelly movies, clipped this out of the dead tree version of the NY Times.  Patricia Ward Kelly, the widow of the great Gene Kelly, took umbrage to Maureen Dowd's casual reference to Bush's soft shoeing as acting like Gene Kelly.  Can you blame her?

Surely it must have been a slip for Maureen Dowd to align the artistry of my late husband, Gene Kelly, with the president's clumsy performances. To suggest that ''George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly'' represents not only an implausible transformation but a considerable slight. If Gene were in a grave, he would have turned over in it.

When Gene was compared to the grace and agility of Jack Dempsey, Wayne Gretzky and Willie Mays, he was delighted. But to be linked with a clunker -- particularly one he would consider inept and demoralizing -- would have sent him reeling.

Graduated with a degree in economics from Pitt, Gene was not only a gifted dancer, director and choreographer, he was also a most civilized man. He spoke multiple languages; wrote poetry; studied history; understood the projections of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. He did the Sunday Times crossword in ink. Exceedingly articulate, Gene often conveyed more through movement than others manage with words.

Sadly, President Bush fails to communicate meaningfully with either. For George Bush to become Gene Kelly would require impossible leaps in creativity, erudition and humility. 

Oh, snap!  You get more truth in column inches in that letter than the last four years of Judy Miller's tenure at the NY Times.

  I’m starting to think the adulation for John McCain among New York Times columnists is making the transition from odd to unhealthy.

Last week, Nick Kristof praised McCain for pandering and lying, but only because McCain is bad at it. Yesterday, apropos of nothing, Bill Kristol praised McCain for being patriotic. Today, David Brooks, demonstrating unusually flawed timing, praises McCain for keeping lobbyists at arm’s length, after a week’s worth of evidence proving the exact opposite.

You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but political consultants are as faddish as anyone else. And the current vogueish advice among the backroom set is: Go after your opponent’s strengths. So in the first volley of what feels like the general election campaign, Barack Obama has attacked John McCain for being too close to lobbyists. His assault is part of this week’s Democratic chorus: McCain isn’t really the anti-special interest reformer he pretends to be. He’s more tainted than his reputation suggests.

Well, anything is worth trying, I suppose, but there is the little problem of his record. McCain has fought one battle after another against lobbyists and special interests.

What on Earth is David Brooks talking about? To hear him tell it, Obama has manufactured a wildly irresponsible charge against McCain that has no foundation in reality.

More accurately, the only analysis that’s wildly off base here is Brooks’.

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Keith Olbermann looks at the silver lining of the John McCain lobbyist scandal...for John McCain. After months of excoriation by the right wing talkers, having a negative story by the "librul" New York Times (psst...wingnuts--Judy Miller, William Kristol, David Bobo Brooks, I'm just sayin') gives the opportunity for the Limbaughs and Ingrahams to rise up in indignation and defend McCain from the mean liberals pointing out that Mr. Straight Talk may not be such a straight talker.

LIMBAUGH: The important question for John McCain today is is he going to learn the right lesson from this and what is the lesson? The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them; you cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them. You are a Republican. Whether you are a conservative Republican or not, you are a Republican. And at some point the people you cozy up to, either to do legislation or to get cozy media stories are going to turn on you. They are snakes. And if the right lesson is not learned from this, uh then it will have proved to be of no value. It’s a great opportunity her for Sen. McCain to learn the right lesson, understand who his friends are and who his enemies are. And he’s had that backwards, for way too long.

Understand who his friends are? It's been said before, Republicans are not so big on facts.

As usual, Jack Cafferty sure didn't mince words when he succinctly summed up where we stand so far with the NYT's revelation of McCain's unusually close ties to telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman, and asked his viewers to weigh in on whether it will hurt his chances come November:

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Cafferty: Someone is lying. The New York Times dropped a bombshell on John McCain this morning with a front page story that could cost him the White House. It's great reading: an improper relationship with a lobbyist, a woman named Vicki Iseman, his inner-circle convinced they were having an affair, all happening while he was Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was representing telecom companies who had business before McCain's committee. The two of them together at fundraisers, in his office, aboard private corporate jets ... It got so bad that his closest friends and advisers finally stepped in to save McCain from himself.

This is all according to the New York Times. The problem with the story is it's a little on the skinny side. Most of it's based on unnamed sources and that detracts from its credibility. On the other hand the Times byline contains the names of four reporters who were not likely to go their editor and say 'look what we've got' if they didn't have it, and reportedly as far back as December McCain was pleading with the editors at the Times not to run this story.

McCain's explanation for all of this comes up short. "It's not true" aint going to cut it. For one thing McCain has been here before. Remember the Keating 5 and the Savings and Loan scandal? And it's highly unlikely that the Times information from McCain's inner circle of advisers is all false. You don't publish a story of this magnitude unless you are on pretty solid ground. So stay tuned, because there is a lot more to come. ...

That sounds about right. So what do you think? Is this a mess that's just going to snowball and bury the McCain campaign or could the scandal actually wind up helping him? So far, McCain seems to think so, as his campaign has now begun exploiting the controversy for a quick buck. How do you see this all playing out?

Clark Hoyt, the public NY Times said that Bill Kristol should never have been given a job because he wanted to prosecute the NY Times for running the "bank data mining" story. Here's Hoyt:

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.

One would think that journalistic ethics should count for something. If you're a warmongering conservative---those rules need not apply. (h/t Jason)

UPDATE: Think Progress says that: "New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes today that Kristol “refused to talk” to him about his comments or the controversy over his hiring, which Hoyt calls “an odd stance for someone who presumably will want others to talk to him for his column.”