Sarah Palin's Toenails

I suppose one could find weirder blog topics, but you'll have to check Robert Stacy McCain for the background: "Blogging About Pathetic Perverts and Also Andrew Sullivan’s Sarah Palin Toe Fetish."

Andrew Sullivan Moving to Daily Beast

The news is here.

And when you finish that recall the piece a while back at The New Ledger, "Through the Looking Glass With Andrew Sullivan."

And always entertaining commentary from The Other McCain, "Who Speaks for America?":

A Harvard-educated, AIDS-infected, Internet-cruising, marijuana-using gay British expatriate presumes to speak for Americans who reject Sarah Palin because of “a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship.”

We await a response from Sarah Palin’s uterus ...

In any case, I saw this first on Twitter, but if Memeorandum starts a thread I'll be updating. Last time I really read Sully was during the Iran democracy protests in 2009, and he was indeed a force of nature at the time. Other than that, I can do without RawMuscleGlutes.

ADDED: In bonus pervy news, I'd forgotten that David Frum was blogging a while back at the left's leading forensic gynecology outlet, and from that whacked pedestal he defended pro-pedophile blogger Alex Knepper against the folks at NewsReal Blog. And of course recall how well that turned out: "Pro-Pedophile Propaganda: For It Or Against It, David Frum?"

OKAY, now a thread at Memeorandum. And the link there to New York Times, "Andrew Sullivan Joins Tina Brown’s ‘Daily Beast’/'Newsweek’ Team":

The launch date of Tina Brown’s reinvented Newsweek after its merger with her Daily Beast Web site remains vague, but Ms. Brown’s efforts to continue building an impressive roster do not: Andrew Sullivan announced Sunday that his popular blog, “The Dish,” would be leaving TheAtlantic.com and joining Ms. Brown’s team in April.

Also, Tina Brown's announcement, "Andrew Sullivan Joins The Daily Beast!"

I tweeted on this a little earlier, suggesting that Sully might actually lift Newsweek's viability. When Niall Ferguson published his critical cover story over there a couple of weeks ago it was the first time that I'd been genuinely interested in reading the magazine. Tina Brown's a veteran at this sort of thing, although as for Newsweek's potential success, it's like "the British are coming," or something ...

Amanda Marcotte, Digby, and TBogg Nominated for 'Moore Award' at Daily Dish

Just saw this over at Memeorandum. Turns out voting is open for the annual Daily Dish awards, and Amanda Marcotte's currently in first place at one percent for the "Moore Award," which recognizes "divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric." Her nomination is here. I wrote about Amanda Marcotte yesterday, and I'm going to try to get her attention on Twitter later if she's back from holiday travels, which may be so by the looks of her review of "True Grit" at Pandagon (from a feminist perspective, of course). Digby and TBogg are also nominated, and while the former --- who's basically a blogging imitation of Frank Rich --- doesn't interact, TBogg's the occasional BFF of American Power. Misogynist and racist (and stupid), no doubt he and Amanda were made for each other. In August, TBogg demonstrated his divisive discourse by telling Bill Kristol to "Fuck off and die ... Seriously, just fuck off and die, you evil piece of shit."

Added: Idiot John Cole defends TBogg, and more:

I’m proposing that pretty much every one do what I’m about to do, which is to suggest that I think we all agree the world would be a much better place if Bill Kristol was dead. Let’s give Sully so many nominations he doesn’t know what to do with them.

And I found Digby's nomination, for "comparing right-wing media to facilitators of the Rwandan genocide," which illustrates my comparison to Frank Rich.

The Atlantic Turns a Profit, With an Eye on the Web

At NYT:

How did a 153-year-old magazine — one that first published the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and gave voice to the abolitionist and transcendentalist movements — reinvent itself for the 21st century?

By pretending it was a Silicon Valley start-up that needed to kill itself to survive.

The Atlantic, the intellectual’s monthly that always seemed more comfortable as an academic exercise than a business, is on track to turn a tidy profit of $1.8 million this year. That would be the first time in at least a decade that it had not lost money.

Getting there took a cultural transfusion, a dose of counterintuition and a lot of digital advertising revenue.

“We imagined ourselves as a venture-capital-backed start-up in Silicon Valley whose mission was to attack and disrupt The Atlantic,” said Justin B. Smith, president of the Atlantic Media Company, who arrived at the magazine’s offices in the Watergate complex in 2007 with a mission to stanch the red ink. “In essence, we brainstormed the question, ‘What would we do if the goal was to aggressively cannibalize ourselves?’ ”

What that meant more than anything else was forcing one of the nation’s oldest magazines to stop thinking of itself as a printed product.

Separations between the digital and print staffs in both business and editorial operations came down. The Web site’s paywall was dismantled. A cadre of young writers began filling the newsroom’s cubicles. Advertising salespeople were told it did not matter what percentage of their sales were digital and what percentage print; they just needed to hit one sales target. A robust business around Atlantic-branded conferences took off.

The strategy is not a cure-all template for troubled media companies, of course. The Atlantic, a tiny enterprise compared with vast corporate magazine empires like Time Inc. and Condé Nast, has only about 100 business and editorial employees and a circulation of 470,000. A scale that small means that a few million dollars could push the company over the top — an amount that would barely register on the balance sheets of many other publishers.

Since 2005, revenue at The Atlantic has almost doubled, reaching $32.2 million this year, according to figures provided by the company. About half of that is advertising revenue. But digital advertising — projected to finish the year at $6.1 million — represents almost 40 percent of the company’s overall advertising take. In the magazine business, which has resisted betting its future on digital revenue, that is a rate virtually unheard of.

RTWT.

There's a discussion of publisher David Bradley, who bought the magazine in 1999 and immediately drove it into the ground. Banging his head against the wall, he conceded failure and adopted the changes cited above, along with new editorial leadership. What's fascinating is the decision to turn The Atlantic into a blogging headquarters and destination for online readership (looks like a model to me, although NYT discounts it). Andrew Sullivan accounts for 25 percent of The Atlantic's traffic, and both Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat did well there before moving on. Megan McArdle is an interesting voice, and perhaps Ta-Nehisi and Goldberg add some utility, although not for me. Longstanding Atlantic writer James Fallows also blogs there. But it's mostly Sullivan that's interesting to me. No need to provide much background. He went so far overboard that even folks at The Atlantic questioned his sanity. That said, I don't ever recall the top editors questioning Sullivan during his years-long descent into an obstetric gynecology-induced paranoid personality disorder. He hardly speaks for America, in any case.

That said, The Atlantic is a heavy-duty high-brow magazine, and while I don't blog it too often, I still respect it and enjoy reading it.

I can just do without all those lefty bloggers.

Added: R.S. McCain links: "Math Problem: If the Atlantic Monthly Makes a Profit of $1.8 Million a Year ..."

A Simple Respect For the Office?

A simple respect for the office she seeks would not reflect itself in these increasingly callow, sarcastic, cheap jibes at a sitting president. But sadly, like so many now purporting to represent conservatism, there is, behind the faux awe before the constitution, a contempt for the restraint and dignity a polity’s institutions require from its leaders.

Andrew Sullivan is up to his old tricks again, and Robert Stacy McCain nails it:

A Harvard-educated, AIDS-infected, Internet-cruising, marijuana-using gay British expatriate presumes to speak for Americans who reject Sarah Palin because of “a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship.”

We await a response from Sarah Palin’s uterus.

More at the link.

Andrew Sullivan on Failure of DADT Repeal

I rarely read Sullivan anymore. He's an afterthought, really. But clicking on his link right now at Memeorandum I find an interesting bit of drama, frankly. The video's a year old, but it's a change of pace worth sharing at the least. He's certainly articulate, not to mention passionate. "The gay community has been betrayed by its leadership," he warns. I favor repeal, so that puts me on the same side as Sully on this issue. I probably can't put in another good word for him, however. So, for what it's worth, "McCain Wins On DADT":

I think this could be a huge deal for the relationship between gay voters and the Democratic party. Over 75 percent of the public wants the ban ended, and yet even when the Democrats control both Houses and have a president opposed to the policy, they failed to end it in two years. Why? Because, sadly, it was not a real priority; and because the main lobby group, the Human Rights Campaign, is so enmeshed in the Democratic party establishment, it has no clout at all.

RELATED: Joe.My.God is alleging that a staffer in Senator Saxby Chambliss' office left a comment at the blog saying "all faggots must die." Obviously not good, if true, although something feels just too neat about this story, and considering how far lefties will go to destroy conservatives, I'm waiting 'till all the facts are in.

Charles Johnson Now Guestblogging at Andrew Sullivan's!

Just kidding.



But close.



Dave Frum and --- wait for it! --- David Weigel are guest blogging at Dr. Andrew Forensic Gynecologist Sullivan's blog.



See AoSHQ and Robert Stacy McCain for the details.



Meanwhile, King Charles has yet another report of his growing forensic investigations into Robert Stacy McCain's so-called neo-confederate past (safe Google link here):

Leon Wieseltier on Andrew Sullivan's Anti-Semitism

It's been a while, but I wrote of Andrew Sullivan's anti-Semitism previously. See, "Andrew Sullivan: Anti-Semitic Neocon Derangement."

As good a case as I might make, it's nothing compared to Leon Wieseltier's utterly breathtaking decimation of Sully, "Something Much Darker" (via Memeorandum):

Consider some squibs that Sullivan recently posted on his blog. “Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights),” he declared on January 13. “But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing–that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran–is something else. Something much darker.” Michael Goldfarb is the former online editor of The Weekly Standard, about whom the less said, the better. Charles Krauthammer is Charles Krauthammer. I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” What sets them apart from their more enlightened brethren is the unacceptability of their politics to Sullivan. That is his criterion for dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.

As far as I can tell, Krauthammer’s position on torture is owed to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for American security, and his position on the war in Gaza to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for Israeli security, and his position on Iran to a deep and sometime frantic concern for American and Israeli security. Whatever the merits of his views, I do not see that his motives are despicable. Moreover, Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted. Unlike Sullivan, he does not present feelings as ideas. Most important, the grounds of Krauthammer’s opinions are no more to be found in, or reduced to, his Jewishness than the grounds of the contrary opinions–the contentions of dovish Jews who denounce torture, and oppose Israeli abuses in the Gaza war, and insist upon a diplomatic solution to the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability–are to be found in, or reduced to, their Jewishness. All these “wings” are fervent Jews and friends of Israel. There are many “Jewish” answers to these questions. We all want the Torah on our side. And the truth is that the Torah has almost nothing to do with it.

Sullivan is hunting for motives, not reasons; for conspiracies, which is the surest sign of a mind’s bankruptcy. These days the self-congratulatory motto above his blog is “Of No Party or Clique,” but in fact Sullivan belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington. Sullivan might have a look at the domestic pressures–in lobbies and other forms–upon American diplomacy toward China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Cuba, and give a thought or two to the elaborate and sometimes exasperating nature of foreign-policy-making in a democracy; but he prefers not to dive deep into the substance of anything. It is less immediately satisfying than cursing and linking. Does Sullivan think that Obama’s engagement with Iran–which, accurately described, is an engagement with the Iranian dictatorship and not with the Iranian people–is paying off? Does he believe that the Israeli war against Hamas was an unjust war, or that Israel should have continued to absorb Hamas’s rocket attacks–which were indisputably criminal–and not acted with force against them? His answers may be inferred from his various ejaculations–“the pulverization of Gazans,” for example, is a phrase that is calculatedly indifferent to the wrenching moral and strategic perplexities that are contained in the awful reality of asymmetrical warfare–but they are not so much answers as bar-room retorts; moody explosions of verbal violence; more invective from another American crank. Worst of all, the explanation that Sullivan adopts for almost everything that he does not like about America’s foreign policy, and America’s wars, and America’s role in the world–that it is all the result of the clandestine and cunningly organized power of a single and small ethnic group–has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people.

And this is not all that is disgusting about Sullivan’s approach. His assumption, in his outburst about “the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing,” that every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one. Bigotry has always made representatives of individuals, and discerned the voice of the group in the voice of every one of its members. Is everything that every gay man says a gay statement? I will give an example. On October 15, 2001, when the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldered, Sullivan published a piece in the Times of London called “A British View of the US Post-September 11.” In this piece he accused Bill Clinton of “appeasement,” and praised George W. Bush for assembling “the ideal team” for a “task” that “cannot be done by airpower alone,” and had kind words for America’s “world hegemony”–the politics changes, the fever remains the same–and also included this unforgettable sentence: “The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.” A fifth column! It is a genuinely sinister sentence. I wish to emphasize two features of Sullivan’s comment. The first is that it is an exercise in demonization: it divides the American people into good Americans and bad Americans. The second is that it is in no way an expression of Sullivan’s homosexuality. It must never be said that when Sullivan lauded the bellicosity of Cheney and Rumsfeld–which wing of American Christianity, by the way, shall we blame for them? –he exchanged the company of the good gays for the company of the bad gays. To say that would be homophobic. Here is what such homophobia would look like: Most American homosexuals, of course, retain a respect for art, and compassion for the other, and support for minorities. But the Sullivan-Shmullivan wing of American homosexuality–that celebrates and believes in torture and war, and endorses the pulverization of Afghan villages with glee, and wants to attack any country where Al Qaeda may be found–is something else. Something much darker. Get it?

RTWT at the link.

Dan Riehl says the enormity is much more than anti-Semitism: "Sullivan is Actually Not An Anti-Semite." Brad DeLong, in a wide, winding path, comes to the same conclusion. And others on the left have circled the wagons.

But I'm with Wieseltier on this one. See also, Darleen Click, "Excitable Andy: ‘Watch out for the Jooooos!’."

Dennis Prager: 'An Open Letter to Charles Johnson'

I did finally read the New York Times piece on Charles Johnson, but I haven't updated for want of something additionally useful to say. But via Glenn Reynolds, I got a kick out of Andrew Sullivan's extreme defense of political flexibility (which is mostly just an attack on those anchored souls with firm convictions). See Glenn for the link, or Google, "How The Internet Enforces Rigidity‎."

And for something serious, from someone of highly respectable ideological thinking, see Dennis Prager's, "An Open Letter to Charles Johnson": (via Memeorandum):

Dear Charles:

As you know, over the years, I was so impressed with your near-daily documentation of developments in the Islamist world that I twice had you on my national radio show — both times face to face in my studio. And you, in turn, periodically cited my radio show and would tell your many readers when they could hear you on my show.

So it came as somewhat of a shock to see your 180-degree turn from waging war on Islamist evil to waging war on your erstwhile allies and supporters on the right. You attempted to explain this reversal on Nov. 30, 2009, when you published “Why I Parted Ways With The Right.”

You offered 10 reasons, and I would like to respond to them.

First, as disappointed as I am with your metamorphosis, I still have gratitude for all the good you did and I respect your change as a sincere act of conscience. But neither this gratitude nor this respect elevates my regard for your 10 points. They are well beneath the intellectual and moral level of your prior work. They sound like something Keith Olbermann would write if he were given 10 minutes to come up with an attack on conservatives.

The rest of the letter is at the link.

The 'Glutes of Steel' Award

I missed yesterday's award entry from Doug Ross, "The 2009 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards." And I had to laugh at this: "The 'Glutes of Steel' Award for Mocking Andrew Sullivan goes to: IowaHawk."

I was thinking earlier that Sullivan's buffoonery's now been overshadowed by Charles Johnson's. But Sully still comes in for a pretty good slam here and there, for example, from Glenn Reynolds yesterday (responding to a Daily Dish post attacking Instapundit without linking):

The more you argue that way — and the more you make it all about your self-satisfied sense of moral superiority — the less persuasive you are. Which, by now, has made you pretty damned unpersuasive indeed.

Glenns' responding to Sullivan's hysterical entry, "How Cheney Made America A Torture Nation." And clicking one of Instapundit's links to previous interations, we find this:

HMM, AGAIN: I’m not sure what Andrew Sullivan means by this post, in which he incompletely quotes my post here.

Perhaps he’d care to address the (omitted) quote from the Times debate about Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats endorsing waterboarding? Well, all kinds of people were endorsing torture back then and have later changed their tune, though Barack Obama was still sounding iffy last Fall. I, on the other hand, have always opposed torture — even when it got me compared to Mike Dukakis, — and even back in the fall of 2001. But, as I said a number of times, I think the subject has been turned into a partisan weapon — ignoring the pro-torture stands of many Democrats (and see this, too) — and that’s made me suspicious of the motives of those pushing it. In Andrew’s case, it may cause some people to forget how vigorously he supported the Iraq War, and George W. Bush, for a while, until his interests turned to gay marriage, and going after Republicans, but not so much Democrats, on this issue. Some people still remember.

Check the links there as well ...

GLUTES BACKGROUND: Richard Goldstein," The Real Andrew Sullivan Scandal: His Private Life Is None of Our Business. His Public Life Certainly Is," and Richard Kim, "Andrew Sullivan, Overexposed."

RELATED: Christopher Badeaux, "Through the Looking Glass With Andrew Sullivan."

Charles Johnson Descends to Banning LGF Visitors by Blocking ISP Addresses

I visit Little Green Footballs once in a while, mostly to get a look at the latest libel campaign Charles Johnson is waging against someone (today he's running yet another attack against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer). Recall that C.J. came out the other day, basically announcing that he's total flaming Rocky Horror fanboy leftist.

And this past few weeks, King Charles has been defending the IPCC scientists currently involved in one of greatest scientific scandal in decades. No surprise there, it turns out. But don't try to argue Climategate with the Lizard-Master, even by e-mail -- unless you're looking to get ISP-banned, like Lee Doren over at Right Wing News, "Could Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs Get More Absurd?" (with emphasis added):

Within the last two weeks, to help inform Charles about the data, I sent Charles a lecture from Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. M.I.T. Climatologist (a higher quality lecture with better sound will be uploaded next week), and earlier today I sent him phenomenal analysis from the American Thinker about what "Hide the Decline" actually means. I advise everyone to take a look at both.

Well, after sending Charles the American Thinker link this afternoon, I am now banned from Little Green Footballs.

No, I don't mean I cannot comment. I don't mean I cannot share links. I mean I cannot view his website. Instead, I get a 403 Forbidden page.

Evidently, sending Charles a lecture from a professor about climate science, during a week when he is writing about climate science, and a link about the tree ring data to explain what "hide the decline means," conflicts too much with his religious, yes religious, beliefs.

No doubt, Lee's not the first, but C.J.'s going pretty far to control the entire Internet prevent critics from repudiating his lies.

And a liar he is, it turns out that Charles Johnson was for climate skepticism before he was against it. Check Weasel Zippers, "Charles Johnson Shocked, SHOCKED to Learn There are Actually People Who Don't Believe in Man-Made Global Warming ....":

And this is something that's pretty common among ideological opportunists who've switched from (purportedly) right to left. Andrew Sullivan nearly lost all he had with the RawMuslGlutes scandal and his bareback licentiousness; and that's not to mention the demands that Sullivan be deported for criminal possession of controlled subtances (which but for his status as an Obama wannabe-squeeze would have resulted in his expulsion from the country).

There's also the piss-ant E.D. Kain, who possesses the moral backbone of a leech. In speaking about C.J.'s crazed machinations, E.D. suggested, "If you are honestly committed to conservative principles, you simply don’t abandon them because of the reasons Johnson lists." Ha, and that's coming from a guy who used to run a neoconservative blogging platform entitled "Neoconstant," but who burned all his bridges to the writers he recruited there when he developed a man-crush on Andrew Sullivan himself!

The ridicule just writes itself!

It's just obvious that this kind of pathological deceit is routine among the ideological invertebrates who've slithered over to the left, or who just wormed their way back to familiar ground after a period of rank political duplicity.

Either way, these are just really bad people.

Best Conor Friedersdorf Tweet Evah!

I'm almost rolled over laughing! Talk about hammering Conor Friedersdorf!

I'm checking my @AmPowerBlog replies and I find one from Sandra Binder. And then clicking on her page we get this beauty:

So now I am totally following Sandra's tweets!

Hopefully next she'll put ever-so-worthy E.D. Kain on the chopping block, and not to mention Andrew Sullivan (no link for him, but R.S. McCain's on the case, "Kentucky Census Right-Wing Lynching Fake Hate-Crime Suicide Schadenfreude Update).

No doubt Dan Riehl's hip to it (see, "Conor Friedersdorf vs. Dan Riehl").

Who says Twitter's worthless!!?

Ann Althouse on Andrew Sullivan's Campaign to Destroy Sarah Palin

From Ann Althouse, ""Andrew Sullivan Has Discovered the Michelle Goldberg/Ann Althouse Diavlog." Ann rebuts one of the "lies" of Sarah Palin, alleged by Sullivan:

Calling something like this a lie marks you as someone who's centered not on finding out what is true, but on destroying someone. It doesn't motivate me to go through the rest of the long list systematically to see what each item is about, and it certainly doesn't make me want to look at the list and accept the conclusion that wow, Sarah Palin really is a terrible liar.

Click Memeorandum if you want to see Sullivan's long, long list of Sarah Palin's "lies." As everyone knows, this man is truly sick.

A Final Solution to Understanding Andrew Sullivan

This essay is a genuine masterpiece, "Through the Looking Glass With Andrew Sullivan."

It desperately needs more links than the two now up at a Memeorandum, Patterico's Pontifications and RedState. A third I found while searching for the author, Christopher Badeaux.

I am unaware of Mr. Badeaux. I'm pleased to come across his work. I'm also extremely fascinated by this comment at Solomonia, which mentions that part of the essay which is indeed most compelling:

Oh bravo. This is priceless, a must read.

I've been following the Iran story on Sullivan's blog, which otherwise makes me nervous - and couldn't help but encounter his piece on Froomkin and other references to "neocons".

I love the paragraphs in the linked story about his disdain for Bush, The Big Spender, juxtaposed with his admiration for President Obama, the Even Bigger Spender.

Great stuff.

Yes, great stuff, magisterial even.

I've noted lately that I'm in the middle of two of Sullivan's books, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality and The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right.

Yet, I'm still figuring out Andrew Sullivan. The woman's comment above offers an excuse to excerpt the a hefty portion of the passage in question. The key is Sullivan's anti-Semitism. I've blogged on this a couple of times recently. Only only Ace of Spades HQ has offered as comprehense an explication of Sullivan's Jew-hating as Badeaux here:

More than his fascination with the delivery of Trig Palin, more than his quixotic quest to convince anyone other than himself that the Catholic Church is a Protestant denomination, perhaps the largest image for which Andrew Sullivan has been known these last fifteen years is a political wanderer. A Brit unable to vote in this country, its governance ranks up there with his obsession with the Pet Shop Boys (in fairness, topics of roughly equal gravity) in the volume and intensity of his writings. Long-time readers of Sullivan – those who do not speak seriously of the Elder Gods – note that he was an iconoclastic supporter of Bill Clinton, who was disgusted by the Clintons by the time they left office; then an iconoclastic supporter of George W. Bush, who was disgusted with Bush by the time he left office; and is now a fairly open, unabashed, gushing admirer of President Obama. What’s interesting, though, is how his politics have changed in just four years.

Here he is discussing George W. Bush’s 2004 Convention speech:

THE END OF CONSERVATISM: But conservatism as we have known it is now over. People like me who became conservatives because of the appeal of smaller government and more domestic freedom are now marginalized in a big-government party, bent on using the power of the state to direct people’s lives, give them meaning and protect them from all dangers. Just remember all that Bush promised last night: an astonishingly expensive bid to spend much more money to help people in ways that conservatives once abjured. He pledged to provide record levels of education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more Pell grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system. I look forward to someone adding it all up, but it’s easily in the trillions ....

Barely four years later, here he is discussing Barack Obama’s Convention speech:

It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety. It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism - in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy….

I’ve said it before - months and months ago. I should say it again tonight. This is a remarkable man at a vital moment. America would be crazy to throw this opportunity away. America must not throw this opportunity away.

Know hope.

What’s remarkable here is what’s missing: Talk of tax reform, talk of control over rampant spending, talk of prudence. Remarkably, at the height of the Iraq War, Sullivan seemed fixated on spending, and with Iraq under control and terrorism muted and spending through the roof, his first focus was on the war powers of the Presidency. A cynic might say that Sullivan could only see Bush’s weaknesses and was inordinately blind to Obama’s.

But we’re not cynics here. Instead, we are devotees trying to track our way through Sullivan’s mental progression, disciples whose only hope lies in understanding how so great a man could so completely whipsaw from a critical view of a man he’d once supported to a sycophantic lay worshiper of another, equally obvious politician.

Some attribute this to President Obama’s pretty face. That’s demeaning. Some attribute it to George W. Bush’s stance on gay marriage – but that would be ridiculous, not merely because it would suggest that Sullivan is a one-dimensional writer obsessed with sex, but also because it would make Sullivan seem like an utter nutter for hating former Vice President Dick Cheney (a proponent of gay marriage and federalism) with the intensity of a thousand suns. (It would also raise questions about the man’s sanity in another way: Candidate Obama was clear that he opposed gay marriage, and occasionally likes to have a good laugh about angry, protesting gays. Yet Sullivan’s admiration continues.)

No. These are too prosaic, too common, too easy to destroy. What could drive a man from admiration and defense for a governor from Texas who hewed to Sullivan’s then-preferred doctrine of subsidiarity to calling him a war criminal? What could so completely rearrange a man’s entire view of the world – other, of course, than some terrible disease afflicting his mind?

The answer is obvious: The Jews.

One sign of a writer’s mental disfigurement, laziness, undiagnosed psychoses, or, obviously in the case of Sullivan, inhuman insight, is the gradual realization that the term “neoconservative” is a useful stand-in for “Jews whose loyalty belongs first to Israel, and then to the United States, if at all.” Sullivan has clearly reached this point, as one can note from some of his most recent thoughts.

Putting to the side that Danielle Pletka is not, actually, a neoconservative in the traditional sense of the word — she’s been a mainstream conservative, along the lines of John Bolton (who, despite all the boxes drawn online, also rejects the neocon label), for years — this really is a remarkable foray. It’s impressive not only for the acceptance of the blood libel to which the Left has grown too accustomed the last eight years; not only for the implicit suggestion that Sullivan and President Obama have the freedom of the Middle East at heart (a suggestion belied by every word from President Obama’s mouth since he accused the Jews of driving the U.S. into the Iraq War in 2002); but also for the conclusion summed up in the title of the post — “Neocons For Ahmadinejad.” A man who once praised the virtues of incremental change and guarded optimism now sees the public expression of these things as proof of support for a murderous puppet for a dictatorial regime, and therefore for the regime itself – so that America will be forced into a war against Iran.

We who only dwell in an I.Q. range between 100 and 200 would be disturbed were our writing to seem appropriate at The American Conservative or Mother Jones; indeed, for many of us, that would be a signal moment, the point at which we sit down, take a deep breath, and ask a physician for some mind-altering medication. Sullivan transcends such petty concerns, and adopts – presumably because no writing form, no matter how dipped in madness, can remain beyond his formidable talents – the paranoid style so beloved of chlorpromazine recipients the world over, in writing on the Washington Post’s decision to fire its disturbed columnist/blogger/hack, Dan Froomkin:

A simply astounding move by the paper - getting rid of the one blogger, Dan Froomkin, who kept it real and kept it interesting. Dan’s work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should.

But this descent into anti-Semitic madness — a case of using indirects to find direction out, certainly — cannot be real. After all, Sullivan denies this canard as being unworthy of response. After all, many of his best friends are Jewish ....