"The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom have what Palin once called the 'actual responsibilities' of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity."

So wrote New York Times columnist Frank Rich in a piece that won't appear in print until Sunday, but was clearly intended to scare the Dickens out of the Times' few conservative readers on Halloween.

After all, in his "The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York," Rich unapologetically said no matter who wins in Tuesday's election for a House representative from New York's 23rd district, "the Republicans are the sure losers":

The Weekly Standard, founded by editor William Kristol and owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is now under new ownership.

The conservative magazine has been acquired by Clarity Media, parent company of the Washington Examiner.

The deal, first reported by the L.A. Times on June 10, was made official this afternoon.

Clarity Media Group is owned by conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz, who wants to boost his political influence.

On Monday's Countdown show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann blamed the Bush administration for the fighting between Russia and Georgia, charging that "the U.S. knowingly provoked Moscow for years by building up Georgia's military," and asked if "the administration essentially stoked the fires of this conflict by the way we contributed to the building up of Georgia and sort of encourage its president to do something like this." The MSNBC host was also distressed at the words of "neoconservatives" who favor a firm response against Russia, and referred to "troubling neocon echoes." Guest Flynt Leverett expressed his concern that "a very powerful group of neoconservative fellow travelers in the Democratic Party" would undermine Barack Obama's "more nuanced approach" to dealing with the situation as these neoconservative "elements" move into the Obama campaign. (Transcript follows)

The voters had a temper tantrum last week . . . Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an angry two-year-old. -- Peter Jennings, November 14, 1994, on the Republican landslide.

[C]onservatives . . . can choose to stand aside from history while having a temper tantrum. But they should consider that the American people might then choose not to invite them back into a position of responsibility for quite a while to come. -- William Kristol, February 4, 2008, on conservative aversion to McCain.

It's one thing to have been bawled out by the late Peter Jennings. But do conservatives have to have their knuckles rapped by one of their own, Bill Kristol? Apparently yes, as per the Weekly Standard editor's New York Times column of today, Dyspepsia on the Right.

As a conservative media critic, I often hear liberal journalists say that the reason there aren't more libertarians or conservatives in the media is simply because lefties are more interested in news writing and opinioneering than righties. They are quite quick to deny there is any kind of discrimination--despite the experiences of Susan Molinari at CBS, Ben Domenech at the Washington Post and pretty much any right-leaning journalist in the business who doesn't make a habit of bashing Republicans like Pat Buchanan.

This pattern of vitriolic anger and rage at the temerity of a right-winger daring to venture into the left's inner sanctum of the press is once again on display with the New York Times's recent hiring of Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol to be a columnist. Things have gotten so out of control that even the paper's public editor (aka public fig leaf) is protesting the hire. As before, inevitably, leftish reporters and editors are raising objections about the slightest thing. In Kristol's case, as Gabriel Schoenfeld writes (h/t Power Line), Times public editor Clark Hoyt is straining at a comment he made during an appearance on Fox News Channel:

Over at City Journal, writer Harry Stein underlined just how infuriated liberals are that the New York Times has hired William Kristol as a columnist. "For conservatives, long accustomed to self-serving liberal pieties about tolerance, the orgy of outrage at having to face an alien point of view was wonderful to behold...Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times:

– "William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol is a beady eyed warmonger."

– "Worthless suck up Kristol should be cleaning toilets in public restrooms for his GOP ‘friends.’"

Time magazine has terminated its relationships with its two conservative columnists, Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol. The New York Observer has the details:

The exact reasons for the departures of Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Kristol, both high-profile backers of the Iraq war, are not entirely clear.

“I was very happy to work with them,” said Mr. Krauthammer on the phone from his Washington office. “And I have a lot of things that occupy me.”

Asked if he would have preferred to stay with the magazine, Mr. Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, suggested there wasn’t much of a choice. “It’s a hypothetical that didn’t arise,” he said.

Truth be told, I was hoping "Fox News Sunday" would totally ignore Friday's announcement that the Global Warmingist-in-Chief won the Nobel Peace Prize.

After all, mainstream news outlets regularly boycott events they deem un-newsworthy, like people receiving the Medal of Honor, for example.

As such, in the grand scheme of things, what really was the significance of a charlatan winning an award -- one that had previously been given to that marvelous humanitarian Yasser Arafat, no less! -- exactly one day after a real American hero was posthumously bestowed one of the finest honors in our land to a deafening media silence?

Despite my skepticism, as the panel discussion began Sunday, and Bill Kristol enunciated likely the exact sentiments shared by people still capable of thinking for themselves, I realized just how fortuitous it was for this to be the first topic on the docket (video available here):