Joe Klein, Do You Really Think Crazy Pete Is Credible?!?!?!

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Mr. emptywheel and I have a running joke about "English Day"–where your dog, for one day only out of his entire life, can speak and understand English. What would we learn in that one day, we speculate, when McCaffrey the MilleniaLab could tell us precisely what he was thinking?

Which gives me another cool idea–"Source Day"–where for one day, we can see all of the sources that journalists use and consider credible. Because there’s nothing that would damage journalists’ credibility further than to discover that they consider certifiable loons like Pete Hoekstra credible.

But that’s just what–thanks to Christy–Joe Klein apparently believes. From Crazy Pete’s column in NRO:

As one of Klein’s sources for the complex technical and legal pointsthat seem to be in contention — and because Klein, his critics, andDemocrats in Congress have accused Republicans of trying to“misrepresent” these issues — it is important to correct and clarifythe record on three critical points, which also bear heavily on thebroader debate currently at hand.

Crazy Pete’s column, btw, is no more coherent than Joe Klein’s articles on the topic, so I guess we can surmise where Klein borrowed his abysmal logic from.

But here’s the thing. Crazy Pete is, well, crazy. He’s one of the guys who still believes that Iraq had WMDs. He’s the guy who thought it’d be a good idea to put a bunch of Iraqi documents (and Al Qaeda documents dumped in just for fun) online, regardless of the fact that the documents included plans from Iraq’s pre-1991 nuke program. He’s the guy who hired Fred Fleitz to write propaganda on Iran for the HPSCI.

In short, he’s nuts, and very much in the business of creating propaganda. And that’s the guy that Joe Klein finds so credible that he’s unwilling to refute, even if the plain language of the document in question proves he is wrong.

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  2. Gromit says:

    Re McCaffrey and English Day. Someone told me that when you die, the heaven/hell decision is made not by St Peter, but by all of the animals who were watching you when you thought no one was watching. I kinda like that. Except for the suicidal tropical fish that leaped out of his tank on top of my dresser and died inside my socks & underwear drawer. I’m worried about him.

  3. emptywheel says:

    Gromit

    I’m actually convinced that McC does know English. I just bought a new car, and in the days before I got it I kept telling McC that he and I were getting a new car, and that he would have windows on the new car.

    Granted, he saw me get out of the car when I rolled up to the house. But from that point forward (I had both cars in front of the house for about 4 days), he never once tried to get into the old car–the car we had driven since I got him. He kind of waltzed right up to the new car and said, â€show me my new window.†So he knows English. He’s just not talking.

  4. earlofhuntingdon says:

    On a blackly humorous but related matter, Dan Froomkin rides again. Commenting on Bush’s need to give book reports on his current reading to his fav neocon bloggers at their private monthly gatherings, Froomkin puts one of Mr. Bush’s choices in its proper context:

    â€Contrary to what its title might lead some to believe, A Confederacy of Dunces is not a White House novel. Library Journal describes it as being about a ’loud, lying, hypocritical, self-deceiving, self-centered blowhard who masturbates to memories of a dog and pretends to profundity when he is only full of beans.’â€

    Thanks, Dan

  5. Ishmael says:

    I’d love to hear what Barney the White House dog could tell us about what he saw and heard around W. His Master’s Voice indeed!

    OT, but there seems to be relatively little interest in Rudy’s use of state troopers at public expense to visit his mistress – which I seem to recall was the subject of an independent counsel investigation when it involved another public figure – but I guess Joe Kline has neither the time nor the background to look further into the matter.

  6. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    In a sense, ’Confederacy of Dunces’ may be an allegory of this WH. Been awhile since I read it, but the main character wears a hunting hat and has a habit of pulling the ear flaps down to shut out any conversation he doesn’t want to hear. Kind of Bushlike.

    Ishmael, don’t lose hope entirely; Joe Klein may not be looking into it, but I gather that others are seeing a fairly good ’story’ on the Rudy front.
    Here’s hoping that Rudy’s gonna need a hunting cap with earflaps soon, too

  7. Mary says:

    Here’s the bad thing.

    David Kris is a VP for Time Warner and in charge of ethics areas. If Klein wanted a fairly even handed EXPLANATION of the legislation and issues, couldn’t he have picked up the phone and received some input?

    OT – but Woot to Leahy on his maneuvering in the USA firings/subpoenas.

  8. Neil says:

    Interesting that Hoekstra thinks the arguments about FISA are from the â€Far Left.†Does the â€Far Left†mean we can ignore them because they are unreasonable? I think that’s what it means.

    Over the last week, a venomous debate has raged between Time columnist Joe Klein and his far-Left critics about the meaning of Democratic legislation aimed at how foreign targets in foreign countries are treated under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

    And the complaints amount to nothing more than â€straw-man complaintâ€, which of course means straw-man argument, the metaphor mixed in such a way as to again prejudice the reader, not on facts but on general contempt for the opposing point of view. These are not the earmarks of a compelling argument about legislation but rather quite prejudicial nonetheless, let’s read on…

    The straw-man complaint of the Left, however, is that Americans who talk to targeted foreigners in foreign countries might incidentally have their conversations intercepted. It takes a pretty good degree of self-absorption or paranoia for someone to believe that efforts to target al-Qaeda operatives in foreign countries are somehow about them. If someone in the U.S. is talking to al-Qaeda, I believe most Americans would not find it controversial that the intelligence community needs to know about it and in fact would expect our intelligence professionals to be aware of it.

    Raise your hand if you have no problem if the government records your conversations incidentally because the government suspects the person on the other end of the line is Al Queada. Is the Al Queda list anything like the no-fly list Mr. Kennedy? We know just how accountable the government acts when no one is watching and for that matter, how responsible the government acts when everyone is watching except for the government (reads Katrina.)

    Crazy Pete. The Far Left. Straw-man Complaint.

    Is Pete a policy guy or a progressive hating partisan? Never mind that Pete is framing opposing arguments in such a way they are badly misrepresented and obviously indefensible… what was that about straw-man arguments?

  9. randiego says:

    Ishmael – I commented somewhere last night that I thought the Kos diarists predicting Rudy’s demise due to this issue were mistaken.

    IOKIYAR will be proven for the 1,654,732nd time

  10. Ishmael says:

    randiego and ROTL:

    I thought Rudy looked nervous when Anderson Cooper put him on the spot last night, so maybe there is more to this that he is afraid will come out (maybe the police escorts were bringing Judith Nathan to the Hamptons as well), but I think he will ride this out on the â€sloppy accounting†meme. What the Establishment media will wield as a sword against a Democrat like Bill Clinton will instantly be used by the same media as a shield to protect a Republican – â€well, Clinton did it too, so we’ll give Rudy a pass and show how bipartisan we areâ€. The way Time circled the wagons around Klein shows how willing they are to protect and promote Republican talking points.

  11. Teaeopy says:

    Klein might do better to find some web sites helpful in figuring out what legislation means or might mean (unfortunately, some of the legislative language is engineered to not have an inconveniently precise meaning). I need help myself, but I’m not misleading thousands of readers. EFF’s Deeplinks Blog can be a helpful resource.

  12. Kathleen says:

    Facts just do not seem to matter any longer. You know it’s the â€perception†of what or how it happened that matters.

    Judy Miller’s source or was it actually 2 sources that she accessed or fed the false WMD intelligence sure have a lot of blood on their hands…Judy is swimming in it.

  13. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    Ishmael, most of the ’debates’ make me so crazy that I don’t often see much more than TPM or C&L video clips, but I’ll make it a point to check out your reference re: Rudy.

    The ’circled wagons’ at TIME suggest a lot of thin skin, wounded egos, and fear. It must be scary to be inside a Big Media organization right now. I wonder what their financials look like?

    On a lighter note, here are two links to today’s McClatchy online. The first is for TNH football fans — McClatchy flags Huckabee for being ’Out of Bounds’ and posts a penalty. Today was the first time that I’ve stumbled on this ’political referee’ feature. IMHO this is exactly what a sane and responsible press should do

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/ele…..22296.html
    They may need a whole new set of bright yellow flags just for Rudy 8-

    And earlier today there was a message stating that reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay had to ’get back to their day jobs (of reporting)’ and stop answering so many reader questions in a Q&A forum about Iran. The message wording (signed simply ’the boss’) gave me a chuckle; as if ’real humans’ hanging out at the water cooler were gently being told, ’Back to the Salt Mines, everyone.†Made me smile.

    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iran/

  16. LisainManistee says:

    I miss all the fun! I was busy all day and didn’t get a chance to read the news and look what happens… Pete goes and makes an ass out of himself once again.

    How on earth does Klein think Pistol Pete the lying Dutchman is a reliable source on ANYTHING, much less anything having to do with intelligence? (Pete doesn’t have any, so he couldn’t be an expert on intelligence.)

    Pete still to this day claims that Saddam had nukes and he published the proof of it on the internet. He says the only reason nuclear weapons weren’t found was because Saddam smuggled his nukes into Syria or Iran. (You know, because Syria and Iran were such big Saddam supporters.) I know Pete claims this tripe because I was once in the same room with him when he made those ridiculous claims and heard it with my own ears.

    Pete Hoekstra is nuts. He’s just batshit crazy, there’s no other explanation… I’ve been in the same room with the man and I can assure you it isn’t just him blowing smoke, he REALLY believes the bullshit he spews. He’s just freaking insane.

  17. Rayne says:

    You wrote the piece I wanted to write, EW — except I could find enough news in Pete’s stupidity to get by my editors. [sigh]

  18. freepatriot says:

    none of this explains why klein is uninterested in finding the truth

    nor does it explain why joe klein wopuld attempt to write an article about a topic he doesn’t understand

    joe klein said he didn’t know what the truth was, and he wasn’t interested in finding out what the truth was

    who gives a shit about batshit insane pete hokstra

    why the fuck is joe klein writing about this issue ???

    he can’t comprehend the issue, he doesn’t care about finding the truth, and he’s TOO FUCKING LAZY TO ACTUALLY READ THE FUCKING BILL

    we don’t need to know about klein’s repuglitard source cuz we already know about joe klein’s â€so called†journalism skills