The great thing about Bill Kristol is that he’s a VERY effective predictor of the future.  Whatever he thinks and says, expect the opposite.

It takes talent to be so consistently wrong on every issue all the time.  You gotta admire him: He’s like Inspector Clouseau, or Agent 86, Max Smart, he’s so dumb.

Like a weather vane, see which way Kristol is blowing and go the other way!

Thanks, Bill! Keep up the good/bad work!

Whoa….ain’t he and his NYT cousin T. Friedman always on the same track?

You know what they say about those Kristol and Friedman boyz:

“Always wrong, never in doubt.”

Jason, Judith, bill (I like the little “b” for him), Thomas….aw heck, add that Brooks fella as well…..

...What a way to make your money, no research needed, no checks to balance, no truth missed.  All of that and with no supervision.

“The New York Time: the old gray-shades of truth….ah, lady.

or…...where the truth dies, but WAR and Delayed reports about NSA phone taps happen. Of Record!

OIY Romira,

For you and every other knee-jerk Christian who just does NOT get it:

“The struggle is in the mind. We must bury our own monsters and stop condemning people. We are all Christ and Hitler.”-John Lennon

On WAWA Blog October 9, 2008 I wrote:

John Lennon was born 68 years ago today. His physical presence left us 9 days after Dorothy Day’s did in 1980.

Dorothy Day entered the Catholic church, I left it.

It was at the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by John Lennon’s honesty, I tuned out the institutional church.

Up until I was about six years old, every Sunday morning was spent in a glass-encased room at St. Bernard’s one holy Roman Catholic Church, in Levittown, Long Island.

The glass-encased room was called, and literally was, the Cry Room.

Growing up with television, it was natural for me to stand up close against the soundproof glass and watch ‘the show’ on the other side.

Every so often, I’d hear the priest’s voice filter through the loudspeaker above my head. But it was all Latin to me: and back then, it really was!

I see myself now, just as I was then, surrounded by squirming kids and uptight adults, engulfed by the sounds of crying and whining, and I truly believed that was church.

Once my younger brothers had grown, I got to be in the main room and the show lost its mystery to me, for the Latin had been changed to English and quickly became routine.

When I was 9, in 1963, two life altering events occurred.

By Thanksgiving that year, I was overfilled with images of JFK being shot and John-John during that motorcade. He was just a little guy in a short coat with his knees exposed who saluted as his father’s casket rode by and many of America’s other children also bid goodbye to their childhood.

But, three months later, the gloom was gone, for the Beatles appeared on a Sunday night in my living room, and the world as I had known it changed again.

In the summer of ’66, it was reported that John Lennon made a comment to a friend and reporter that the Beatles were more popular with my generation than Jesus was.

I agreed with him, for my friends and I knew every lyric to every Beatles song, but nobody ever quoted Jesus.

Lennon made me think about my own hypocrisy, and that led me to drop the institutional church.

It was in July on a Saturday afternoon…

The Rest:

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1062&Itemid=211

Thanks Robert,

I offer you my book review:

Patriot Follows the Money and Exposes Foreign Agents

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”-Theodore Roosevelt

Patriot and author, Grant F. Smith, Director for the Institute of Research Middle East Policy publication, Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal, exposes how US Middle East policy has been formulated and thrives due to the dearth of relevant reporting on AIPAC’s activities.

It begins with Senator Fulbright’s on target questions to Jewish-Agency-funded US foreign agents who did not register with the Justice Department or disclose their true financing, funding flows and covert activities and illuminates how AIPAC: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee operates “within a murky nexus regulated by four important but seldom enforced US laws.” [1]

The lax enforcement of The Logan Act, The Foreign Agents Registration Act/FARA, the 1917 Espionage Act, Thompson Memorandum guidelines for prosecuting corporate crime coupled with the fear of being labeled anti-Semitic and a media who have failed at their commission to seek and report the truth have all colluded to exert an undue influence over Congress and thus; we the people of America to be “under the de facto influence of a powerful foreign interest.” [2]

Smith documents how AIPAC-a constellation of individuals and organizations that make up the “Israel lobby” continue to actively steer USA foreign policy in a militant and pro-Israel only direction.

Senator Fulbright’s concerns over activities of unregistered foreign agents who worked to influence public opinion and policy resulted in the 1963 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings to investigate the Jewish Agency and uncovered the “conduit” operation run by the American Zionist Council. In 1959, The American Zionist Council was renamed AIPAC.

Within eight years, the Council received over a half a million “from the Jewish Agency to create a favorable opinion in this country for Israeli government policies. The Senate investigation closed down the conduit, but the extensive propaganda activities still go on…[and] by 1998, “US aid to Israel exceeded $3 billion a year, the highest amount of US aid given to any country.” [3]

“AIPAC’s illegal tactics harm America…[and] corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined…Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer estimated the total cost of [the] prolonged conflict in the Middle East at $3 trillion [in 2002 USA dollars and he] lays a good deal of the blame for this at the doorstep of AIPAC.” [4]

On George Washington’s birth date, his Farewell Address has been read aloud in Congress ever since 1896. However, his warning has not yet seeped into the consciousness of our elected officials…

The Rest:

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=959&Itemid=202

THANK YOU Tony Wicher!

Thank you for being an agent of change and for your open mind.

I come at everything as a Christian ANARCHIST- meaning I question everything I hear from church, state and media and my foundation is The Beatitudes:

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=64&Itemid=195

What is driving me crazy at this moment is that our youth have been so brainwashed by a watered down Christianity that has little to do with what JC was all about.

My heart breaks for the generation that will inherit an economy driven by the Industrial Military Media Security/Surveillance Complex.

However, i am relieved that the republicans are out of the White House and bags of wind like Kristol are being exposed for what they are: WRONG!

I know in my heart/gut that the battle to regain America’s moral compass and our standing as a leader of the FREE world is going to take all of US working together.

As a born agitator, I confess that provoking dialogue gets me off.

“My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.”-Unamuno

I have great gratitude to all those who are already politically engaged, and i sincerely thank you Tony for doing something to be a part of the change.

But, right now I must focus on my next article:
“Shministim Leading the Way to a New Israel” so i will say thanks for the conversation and bye bye for a while.

xoxe
http://www.wearewideawake.org

By eileen fleming, December 11 at 9:23 am #

“We the people need to WAKE UP and comprehend that what we have is a government by those with the biggest bucks and a corporate media who don’t ask hard questions, but prefer to take down dictation from politicians and regurgitate it as ‘NEWS’!

There are over 70 lobbyists PER congressional representative.

Are any of those lobbyists representing YOUR best interests?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eileen…the lobbyists & AIPAC pay the US congressional representatives well. They have been that for many years.

Take a look at who is on their list & the year-to-date $$$ amounts/career total:

PRO-ISRAEL PAC CONTRIBUTIONS TO 2008 CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/November_2008/pdfs/nov08pac-charts.pdf

By eileen fleming, December 11 at 9:23 am #

“And so, I am not going to sit on my ass and wait for Obama to prove himself an agent of change;”
——————————————————————————
Quite right, Eileen. For the past two years I have not been sitting on my ass either. I have been working to save my country by getting Obama elected. I still can hardly believe that we succeeded. Obama has said all along that the movement he is leading only begins with getting him elected; he will require the active support of millions of people to succeed in taking our country back from the cabal that has controlled us and still has its goons in the highest levels of our government. So please, keep up the good work. I like your web site. Let us join together. But I think you should see Obama as someone on OUR side who is coping with tremendous negative forces, is doing the best he can and needs all the help he can get.

Dear nrobi and Tony,

You both missed my point.

We the people need to WAKE UP and comprehend that what we have is a government by those with the biggest bucks and a corporate media who don’t ask hard questions, but prefer to take down dictation from politicians and regurgitate it as ‘NEWS’!

There are over 70 lobbyists PER congressional representative.

Are any of those lobbyists representing YOUR best interests?

This nation was founded NOT by religious zealots or neo-cons, but by revolutionaries, dissidents, agitators and visionaries who gave US power that we have not yet seized!

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

“And, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence

A healthy democracy thrives on dissent and the healthiest democracies are those when the politicians are afraid of the people, for what pols desire most is seeking power and keeping it.

Totalitarian regimes are able to control the people with FEAR, mindless entertainment and the endless pursuit of keeping a roof over head and bread on the table.

And thus, the people have no time to THINK, Question and Dissent from the status quo;

And so, I am not going to sit on my ass and wait for Obama to prove himself an agent of change;

I am dedicated to DOING SOMETHING:

I read, think and write and:

“Writing…is hard because you are giving yourself away, but if you love; you want to give yourself. You write as you are impelled to write, about man and his problems, his relation to God and his fellows…

“The sustained effort of writing, of putting [words down while] there are human beings [with] sickness, hunger, sorrow…

“I feel that I have done nothing well, but I did something.”-Dorothy Day

Me too and I do it first on WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/

Eileen,

Obama has not even been inaugurated yet. So far I still think his election is the best thing that has ever happened to this country, and we should all be thanking whatever god we believe in, if any, that he won. I think he’s very smart, the best politician to come down the pike in my lifetime, and his heart is in the right place. You won’t hear any negativity from me about Obama for a long time. Any criticism I offer is friendly and constructive. I believe such constructive criticism coming from strong supporters is much more likely to be effective than shrill denunciations.

This posting had nothing to do with “Christian Zionism,” and its illegitimate children, the policies of the Par Right Wing-Nut Republicans.
I find it offensive that an article regarding the hazards of prognostication, should find itself the step-child of a posting about how “Christian Zionists,”  have taken over an administration that has yet to happen.
My aren’t some people quick to push an agenda that has nothing to do with what an article states, and then take over a thread that cannot and does not mention Israel or its policies one bit.
That being said, I wish to say, that the pundits that have made such wild prognostications are without doubt, chewing their blankie’s by now, if only for the fact that these things were said, where they were recorded for all posterity and can be referenced at any time.
I would hate to have my predictions be able to be referenced at any time and hope that no one remembers anything that I have said at any time.
I especially like the “Bear Stearns,” prediction by Wild Man of Wall Street Jim Cramer, should he ever make another prediction such as this, I would hope that someone would bring up that prediction and let it speak for itself.

Dear Tony Wicher,

I am NOT at all pessimistic- i am a realist with a radical hope who cuts through the BS and questions EVERYTHING and trusts NO politician or pundit.

I affirm that what is required is Common Sense and truth telling is essential in that endeavor!

The USA had NO enemies in the Middle East, until Israel became our best friend in the world.

The USA has NOT been an honest broker and the conflict is NOT between equals; but between one of the greatest military powers the world has ever known and an indigenous people who have been suffering for 60 years because ‘civilized’ white men dumped their guilt over Hitler’s atrocities on a people who had nothing to do with the Jewish holocaust.

Common Sense is needed to address ALL conflicts if they are ever to end.

Common Sense went MIA after THAT DAY we call 9/11 BUT Common Sense founded this nation:

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet “Common Sense” [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion… The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”-Tom Paine  

This AM i posted Jeff Halper’s [American Israel and founder ICAHD] COMMON SENSE FRAMING, PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS:

IF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TRULY SEEKS A BREAK-THROUGH ON THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT.

I am emailing COMMON SENSE offerings to Obama nearly every day @

http://change.gov/page/s/contact

Do i think it will make a difference?
YES, because i have radical hope; a pessimist would NOT even bother to do anything more than kvetch!

xoxe
http://www.wearewideawake.org

Bill Kristol is a propagandist.  But what’s the harm in that…. so he’s “wrong” a few times, no harm done… right?  How dangereous are Kristol’s “white lies”?  How about this…?

“Chin writes that the “roots of the George W. Bush administration’s policy for Iraq regime change can be traced to strategies formulated since the early 1990s by a small network of inveterate Cold Warriors linked by philosophical lineage and war-intelligence policy collaborations.” Chin continues by saying that “this tightly-knit cabal stretches across the current and previous White Houses, the State Department, the CIA, the National Security Council, the boards of neo-conservative think tanks and the boards of transnational corporations (including Washington-linked energy and war-technology companies). Virtually all of the players are members of elite planning bodies, such as the Council on Foreign Relations. Many of them are indicted criminals—five individuals were direct participants in the Iran-Contra operation.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Regime_change

He(Kristol) is the chairman and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Kristol is the son of Irving Kristol, who is “often called the ‘godfather’ of the neoconservative movement”, and Gertrude Himmelfarb.

David Corn calls Kristol “the No. 1 cheerleader for the Iraq war....”

....”He was “one of the architects of the blueprint for regime change found in the [September 2000] document, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century’”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_Kristol

>> So the matter isn’t so much that Kristol is wrong, but more one of why Kristol regurgitates his message, again and again.

Joseph Gobbels, “    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

  Lest we forget.

http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

I had a wry chuckle at the lead-in line.

“...Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark…”

~~~

Sounds exactly like many of the armchair pundits right here at Truthdig. Some of them with the largest (and oldest) crystal balls, even CONTINUE the predictions long after they’ve already been proven to be the liars that they are.

Meantime, I don’t get why the Times hired Kristol. EVERYBODY knows he’s a contract propagandist for the neo-cons, and has been since the beginning.

Meantime, how did we get to talking about Zionism on yet ANOTHER thread, (first comment out of the box) that has nothing to do with it? Like, how did Bill Kristol’s and these 9 other bad predictions lead to Christian Zionism that is all Obama’s fault?

I guess I must be naive.

Yeh gosh, let’s just ignore all the corruption and illegalities that took place in caucuses around the nation by Obama’s camp. endless displays of out right disruption of voting, illegal tactics and the 100’s of 1000’s of complaints that were turned in on the issue to organizations.

the msm doesn’t ever cover the topic. they loved obama from day 1 and hated clinton from day 1.

so they made zero effort to report the real news of what was going on during the primaries..

and 99.9% don’t know the final tally of the delegates that each won. 

truth is that obama didn’t win shit- the dem party and it’s thugs forced hillary out-  neither had enough for the actual nom,  she had more actual votes, and she was forced out.

keep the bullshit alive people..

Eileen,

Although I largely agree with your criticism of Zionism, I do not share your pessimism about what will happen to Israel/Palestine under the Obama administration. Both Obama and Clinton did indeed pander to AIPAC and Israel like mad, but those things were all said during an election and should be taken with a grain of salt. The question is what will they DO in this concrete situation where they really NEED a resolution of the conflict as the cornerstone of a Middle East peace agreement. I do believe they will lean on Israel quite a bit to get an agreement along the lines currently proposed by the Arab league, a two-state solution and more or less complete withdrawal from the West Bank. Now, to me (and probably to you) this solution is far inferior to reunification into a single multicultural democracy, but I am hoping that somehow during the negotiations the light will dawn on the participants.

I knew not to drink from Obama’s Kool-Aid of so called change when he chose as his VP, Biden, a blatant and pandering ‘Christian’ Zionist, who stated on Shalom TV, “There is this inextricable tie between culture, religion, ethnicity that most people do not understand…You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, I am a Zionist.” [1]

“Christian Zionism is a contradiction in terms…Christian Zionism is adding fuel to the tensions between Muslims, Christians and Jews…[A] ‘blind spot’ of Christian Zionists is the fact that the Palestinian people, every day and in every aspect of their lives are living under an oppressive military occupation.” [IBID]

On September 14, 2008, after New York Congresswoman Maloney and soap star Deidre Hall, took their final bows addressing Central Florida Women for Obama, I infiltrated the ‘back room’ to be allowed a few minutes with the Congresswoman. I had more than a few questions, so I handed her a few paper copies of my September 13, 2008 article, Questions for the Christian ‘Quartet’ Pursuing the White House Regarding the Holy Land:

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1028&Itemid=204

I requested she deliver the copy of my Memoirs in Occupied Territory that I signed to Joe Biden with a quote from St. Augustine: “HOPE has two children. The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it.”

Congresswoman Maloney said she would deliver my offerings and even added, “I’ll read it too and get back in touch with you.”

I am still waiting for that part of hell to freeze over.

The Rest:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1117&Itemid=213