Put Charles Krauthammer on Lithium Immediately!

That tears it. I always thought Charles Krauthammer was clinically insane. Now we have proof. Somebody put him on lithium before he hurts himself:

Media Matters - Krauthammer: Goss was "trying to deal with the jihadists inside" the CIA: From the May 5 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, with guest host Jim Angle:

ANGLE: Now, Charles, one of the interesting things here is that Senator [Pat] Roberts [R-KS] was talking about the fact that Goss was essentially rebuilding the CIA after some very difficult years, two tumultuous episodes in which its competency was questioned, and rebuilding the size of the agency.

KRAUTHAMMER: And also trying to deal with the jihadists inside the agency, the people who consider themselves the loyal opposition, which really is the role of Congress, but who oppose administration policy, had been leaking, and had been trying to undermine and obstruct administration initiatives. One of the roles he had adopted, Goss, was to go after these people. He fired Mary McCarthy, who supposedly was the leaker on the secret prison story. And I think there's some -- you know, if you look at this, you could say, "Well, maybe he was defeated by that element in the CIA." From what I've heard, that's not so. And the next -- and his successor's going to be as tough on the leakers as he was...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[Zappatero]

SaurKraut is no journalist.

More likely he's an affirmative action hire by Rupert Murdoch.

[howard]

it's been a couple of weeks since i had the chance to trot out my "i'm not a blogger triumphalist but" argument, which is that the one thing political blogging is accomplishing is making the well-paid op-ed pundit economically useless. Who buys the wapo to read a clown like krauthammer (or so many of the other well-paid hacks that occupy valuable real estate)?

someday, a publisher will wake up and realize this fundamental truth, and the krauthammers of the universe can go off and start blogs and see if any of us ever again cares to read a single utterance of theirs. personally, i suspect that date will be somewhere in the next few years (times select suggests an alternative approach, btw: see if the op-ed pundit is economically viable, although at $50/throw, it will take an enormous number of subscribers to pay the salaries of krauthammer, samuelson, will, ignatius, hoagland, and the rest of the usual gang of clods and idiots).

[PaulC]

"someday, a publisher will wake up and realize this fundamental truth"

I wouldn't be so sure. If you look at some of the relics being carried on the comics page of many newspapers, you have to wonder if publishers pay any attention to the outside world.

[A. Zarkov]

I think you would put him on Thorazine (or its modern equivalent) not lithium. Lithium treats the manic-depressive (now given the more PC name “bi-polar disorder). I don’t that think one can describe Krauthammer as manic-depressive. I suppose the offending phrase is the hyperbole “jihadists inside the agency.” All he is saying is there is and was political opposition to the administration inside the agency, and someone has taken it upon himself to declassify information and leak it to the press. Now perhaps that person or persons had good intentions for violating the terms of his employment and other laws in the interests of a greater good. If so they should self identify and take the consequences, not hide behind the press. Recognize this stuff for what it is: inside the beltway political warfare. See the book “Wedge” for a history of the war between the FBI and the CIA. I’m glad I just moved away from that horrid area. There is a meanness in DC that bores its way even into workings of ordinary everyday life. In Washington, they won’t only cast the first stone; they will throw the whole rock pile.

[Uncle Jeffy]

"I always thought Charles Krauthammer was clinically insane. Now we have proof."

Slow reaction time, Brad. Those unfortunate souls like myself who've seen Der Fruitcake's ugly mug in the local papers for years knew this a long time ago. Unfortunately, we can't banish him to a galaxy far, far away - he's already there.

[centrist]

fighting jihadist...or using hookers with "the dukestir"!

[piotr]

Jihadists tend to be prudes and took dim view on cavorting with prostitutes. Goss should wait for the virgins.

It would be nice if Krauthammer would provide us with ideas how to keep our domestic Taliban at bay. Say, require a joint visit to a stipper club as a part of interview process for federal employees.

[JRossi]

Lithium is a mood stabilizer, not an antipsychotic. It doesn't work well for acute psychosis as a single drug. People in an acute manic crisis are often given a mood stabilizer plus an antipsychotic. Thorazine is rarely used these days due to its poor side- effect profile. Zyprexa is often used for acute psychosis in schizophrenics and bipolar patients due to its rapid onset of action and relatively good short-term side-effect profile. Plus the drug reps give us samples.

[coriolis]

Neither Lithium or Thorozine would help Dr. K. The jackass suffers (or rather we suffer and he exhibts) a personality disorder. Personality disorders do not respond to medication. He needs 4+ years of psychotherapy (to give him the perspective to recognize his poor thinking) combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to train his mind to avoid the maladaptive behavior he has adopted to deal with his damaged psyche. In any event, prognoses is very poor because his defense mechanisms are so entrenched any mortal would be exhausted after three months of treatment.

BTW: BPD is not "more PC" than MDP. It is more descriptive because it groups BPD with mood disorders rather than with psychotic disorders, as psychosis while dramatic is only a repercussion from the overstressing of the brain during the manic stage.

[Sarabeth]

"Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

Isn't there a law of balance which states:
"Whereas the body politic may from time to time be afflicted by the tenure of a shitty president,
And whereas it would disadvantage the president unfairly, and may even give rise to sulking, shouting, tanrums and other boorish behavior if the press corp were not equally crappy,
Therefore let it be known for all time by these presents that by the immutable will of the Gods of Politics, the press corps may not ever rise above crappy whensoever the president do be shitty."

So we get the President we deserve (we re-elected him for crying out loud, after knowing who he was, we jolly well deserve him), and we get a matchingly commensurate press corps.

[Esq.]

It can be entertaining to sit down with the DSM-IV and play amateur shrink. It looks like large portions have been imported into wikiopedia.

My favorite is Narcissistic personality disorder, which literally tends to result in guys doing time, but entirely due to the fault of others. Just ask them.

I would conclude that the article in question suggests hallucinations and large doses of anti-psychotics (Haldol) should be applied asap.

[Jim Dandy]

Brad, you're too kind. You're throwing back at him his silly "lithium" attack on Al Gore. But Herr Kraut doesn't deserve such lightness of touch.

Rather, his case is one of an acute excess of bile. Just look at his facial contortions when expressing his bilious political commentary.

Sadly, for that diagnosis there is no other long-term treatment than extracting the liver.

[Barry]

Coriolis, what Krauthammer needs is to be fired, and forced into productive work for a living. Between AIE, Washington Post and the other syndicated papers and magazines, he probably earns more than any of us, just for spewing his psychosis.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/opinion/08krugman.html

May 8, 2006

Who's Crazy Now?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some people say that bizarre conspiracy theories play a disturbingly large role in current American political discourse. And they're right.

For example, many conservative politicians and pundits seem to agree with James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, who has declared that "man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Of more immediate political relevance is the claim that the reason we hear mainly bad news from Iraq is that the media, for political reasons, are conspiring to suppress the good news. As Bill O'Reilly put it a few months ago, "a good part of the American media wants to undermine the Bush administration."

But these examples, of course, aren't what people are usually referring to when they denounce crazy conspiracy theories. For the last few years, the term "conspiracy theory" has been used primarily to belittle critics of the Bush administration — in particular, anyone suggesting that the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to fight an unrelated war in Iraq.

Now here's the thing: suppose that we didn't have abundant evidence that senior officials in the Bush administration wanted a war, cherry-picked intelligence to make a case for that war, and in some cases suppressed inconvenient evidence contradicting that case. Even so, it would be an abuse of the English language to call the claim that the administration misled us into war a conspiracy theory.

A conspiracy theory, says Wikipedia, "attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance." Claims that global warming is a hoax and that the liberal media are suppressing the good news from Iraq meet that definition. In each case, to accept the claim you have to believe that people working for many different organizations — scientists at universities and research facilities around the world, reporters for dozens of different news organizations — are secretly coordinating their actions.

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing.

The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred....

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/opinion/19herbert.html

January 19, 2006

Who Will Stand Up for the Constitution?
By BOB HERBERT

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-THOMAS PAINE

•

Al Gore offered a civics lesson this week for anyone willing to listen. Speaking at Constitution Hall in Washington, the former vice president said:

"As we begin this new year, the executive branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses."

Americans do not seem especially concerned about this incredible affront to the integrity of the government and the rule of law. The attitude of a slender majority seems to be that if the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney see fit to dismantle the heretofore sacred system of checks and balances, so be it.

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll showed that 51 percent of respondents felt that in the fight against terror, it's fine for the government to engage in the warrantless wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mail. In other words, it's fine for the president to break the law.

I find it peculiar that an awful lot of Americans who would be outraged by the burning of the American flag are positively sanguine about the trampling of the Constitution.

One of the ugliest aspects of the Bush administration is the outright deceit that is such a major aspect of its modus operandi. Tens of thousands of men, women and children are tragically dead because of the war in Iraq, which was launched from a monstrous superstructure of deceit. Why wouldn't we expect the administration to deceive the public about the illegal spying of the National Security Agency?

As Mr. Gore noted, "During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the president went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place."

The president was either lying, or -- I don't know what.

So why is the president illegally spying on Americans when the administration can so easily comply with the law by secretly getting warrants from the terminally compliant court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? ...

[A. Zarkov]

anne:

Professor Volokh at UCLA law says:

“I should note that I generally don't post entire articles from newspapers or magazines, because that would probably infringe the copyright in the articles.”

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_05_07-2006_05_13.shtml

He teaches copyright law, so possibly he has a somewhat informed opinion on the matter.

[Charles]

A. Zarkov, the United States Army is battling and killing jihadists. We are supposedly "at war" with them. They are the enemy.

When Americans start painting other Americans as the enemy, they are doing the equivalent of starting a civil war. The effect on the remaining employees of the CIA is to demoralize them.

This is really dangerous. Even though the Bush Administration has exaggerated the threat of Al Qaida by three orders of magnitude, it does exist. If the agency charged with monitoring their activities is destroyed, there really could be a worst-case terrorist incident.
______________

I like Jim Dandy's solution for Krauthammer's bile problem, but would suggest that removing the gall bladder would, alas, suffice.

[modus potus]

Ah, yes. The "Prometheus" option.

[A. Zarkov]

Charles:

I don’t think Krauthammer is going to demoralize the CIA staff. Having known some CIA people I can tell you what demoralizes them—institutional and DC politics, especially the former. Actually the traffic alone is enough to demoralize anybody. I just moved from that very area about a week ago. Many people who work in McLean, Fairfax, Great Falls, etc area travel one to two hours to work because they can’t afford local housing on those stingy government salaries. And don’t get sick for extended period of time because the feds don’t provide any kind of short-term disability insurance. Three hours of total commute time really can tire a person.

Three orders of magnitude is 1,000—do you really think we should reduce the resources devoted to fighting Al Qaida by 1,000? That kind of budget cut would really demoralize them.

[Jim Dandy]

Charles: Thanks. Your scalpel goes directly to the source - a more efficient solution.

[obscure]

But the clincher is that Krauthammer used to be a... PSYCHOTHERAPIST!!!

Can you imagine the damage he did?

[Charles]

A. Zarkov thinks that people will not be demoralized by being labeled enemies of the state by propagandists of... the state.

Well, sure. Traffic can definitely wear on one. Not to mention standing in line at the grocery, taking care of kids, boring sermons, and those PTA meetings!

But I suggest you look back at the history of the early 1970s, when wrongdoing at the CIA was exposed. It demoralized the agency. Why? Because all of us want to be seen as good guys. And when your own side is telling you that you are no good, it hurts.

What was done in the 1970s was necessary. The Agency had broken the law and needed to be reined in. But what Republicans are now doing to the Agency is gratuitous. They are demoralizing the very people who have tried to prevent the Agency from being politicized.

Can we cut spending on what the Administration calls anti-terrorism by three orders of magnitude? Just about. Consider how much is spent on Iraq. When a couple of thousand guys can make you spend tens or hundreds of millions *apiece*, they've won. They've gotten you to defeat yourself.

I would suggest that spending be cut by *two* orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars is appropriate for Al Qaida. Improving border security and port security are things we should be doing anyway and can be counted separately.

When there is too much money made available, we do stupid things like invade other countries.