Time columnist Joe Klein’s article in the magazine this week is titled "Kill Your Air Conditioner." Klein detests the quality of air-conditioned air, and thinks everyone in America ought to live to his tastes: "The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease." Air-conditioning is "bad for the planet," he writes, but "Unfortunately, it is not as bad as I’d like it to be." He sides with Jimmy Carter and the "dreadful cardigan sweater" over the Bush-Cheney policy of "malignant neglect." Klein says we should break out the thermostat police as a presidential campaign issue. "I'd like to see both candidates call for an immediate 5deg.F thermostat adjustment, just to get the conservation ball rolling."

No one should ever suggest that liberals always believe "If it feels good, do it," at least when it comes to consumer comforts. How does Klein foresee checking up on every American’s thermostat adjustment? Or would the nanny state begin by cracking down on hotels and commercial buildings? Klein began his lecture by lamenting how an innkeeper had to keep the AC on for a 75-degree day:

I'm still trying to figure out who died and made Joe "Anonymous" Klein Time magazine's foreign policy expert-in-residence. The sometime presidential primary fiction writer apparently thinks John McCain's statement on the Bush administration's nuclear deal with North Korea is too "grudging":

...Congratulations to George W. Bush for finally making the correct choice--diplomatic engagement, regional talks that enabled quiet unofficial contacts with the North Koreans, which then led to direct negotiations--in resolving this dispute. Wonder what John Bolton is thinking this morning?

Update: John McCain has just released this statement, which is a bit too grudging for my taste, but does raise the appropriate questions going forward

So let's see: Klein praises Bush but takes a mild swipe at Sen. McCain for having the gall to suggest that North Korea might not live up to its word, which it clearly has a history of doing.

In a statement reminiscent of Howard Dean’s controversial statement from 2005 about the RNC and "people of color," Time magazine columnist Joe Klein blasted Karl Rove’s recent slam of Barack Obama on Monday’s "Election Center" program on CNN. "I just think that the image is kind of hilarious when you think about it: Barack Obama at a country club sipping a martini. It's kind of a parody of the Republican view of the world. Everybody belongs to -- since when [did] we start letting people like Barack Obama into Republican country clubs?"

"People like Barack Obama"? That sounds like Dean’s "You think the RNC could get this many people of color into a single room?... Maybe if they got the hotel staff in there."

"Election Center" substitute host Wolf Blitzer read Rove’s quote earlier in the segment, which began 22 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program: "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall, and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Here's another sure sign the new HBO Campaign-2000-nailbiter movie "Recount" will have a liberal slant. (Sunday NB post on a review in Entertainment Weekly magazine, "HBO's 'Recount' Movie: Favors Democrats, Harris as Cruella De Vil"). In a full-page newspaper ad appearing on the back cover of the A section of Monday's Washington Post, it was endorsed as "terrific" by a list of Gore-voting liberal media notables: Joe Klein, Matt Cooper, Jonathan Alter, Tina Brown, George Stephanopoulos, and Judy Woodruff. The movie's slogan is "The future of the nation was hanging by a chad."

We haven't seen these quotes in print, so we assume they come from a celebrity screening or publicist interview. The text below in bold tells you which words were increased in size for emphasis:

The votes are in.

Joe Klein, Time.com: "Terrific"

Matthew Cooper, Portfolio.com: "HBO is as good as ever. Watch ‘Recount’ and see...[they do] history better than any other studio."

Jonathan Alter: "This is the seventh presidential campaign I’ve covered for Newsweek and Recount conveys the nitty gritty of politics better than any movie I’ve ever seen."

In this week's cover piece for "Time" magazine entitled, "Obama: The Game Changer," Joe Klein praised John McCain for having won the nomination by being "a pariah to blowhards like Limbaugh." However the Time magazine columnist advised the Arizona senator to keep it clean as he warned: "If McCain wants to maintain his reputation as a politician more honorable than most, he's going to have to stop the sleaze."

The following is the full excerpt as it appears in the May 19 edition of "Time" magazine:

In his victory speech after the smashing North Carolina results came in, Obama went directly after both McCain and the media. "[McCain's] plan to win in November appears to come from the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election," Obama said. "Yes, we know what's coming. I'm not naive. We've already seen it, the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

Charles Krauthammer's column in Friday's Washington Post strongly smacks the media for being "in the tank" for Barack Obama. In reference to Hillary Clinton's tall Tuzla tales and Barack's adoring media, the headline in the print edition is "The Fabulist vs. The Saint." But the headline writers at washingtonpost.com used an inflammatory headline on the home page on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's shooting death: "Stories to Slay Saint Obama." Isn't there a tiny difference between more objective news coverage and an assassination? [UPDATE: Rechecking at 8:45, the post.com home page header was already changed to "Barack Obama is No Saint."]

Krauthammer was appalled at how CNN's Anderson Cooper and Time's Joe Klein insisted no one could discuss Obama's relationship with his minister, Jeremiah Wright. His conclusion recalled New York Times writer Michael Kelly's "Saint Hillary" article exploring her "politics of meaning" in 1993. He wrote: "Saint Obama awaits his Michael Kelly." Not his James Earl Ray.

On Wednesday’s CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric did a segment on why politicians lie and suggested completely false statements made by Hillary Clinton, about sniper fire in Bosnia, and Barack Obama, about how his parents met, were really no different from this statement from John McCain: "It's called Al Qaeda in Iraq. And, my friends, they wouldn't... if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base, they wouldn't be establishing a base, they'd be taking a country." Couric prefaced the quote by claiming: "John McCain's rhetoric doesn't always pass the smell test, either."

The McCain quote was followed by liberal Time Magazine columnist, Joe Klein, explaining that: "John McCain doesn't need to exaggerate his biography. It's a spectacular biography. But he does exaggerate the threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is a small Sunni group in a majority Shiite country. He says they could take over if we leave. That's an exaggeration." Just because Klein disagrees with McCain’s argument does not make it an exaggeration. Also, Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party was Sunni.

The following was adapted from the Media Research Center's April Fools Day Media "Reality" Check. The quotes are all fabrications written by the imaginative News Analysts at the MRC.

Panicked by the success of Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" — urging conservatives to vote for Hillary Clinton in upcoming primaries to keep the Democrats in disarray — liberal reporters are becoming even more outspoken in praising the man they regard as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, Barack Obama.

CBS's Harry Smith sounded like a teenage groupie on the April 1 Early Show: "Obama's rock star status is reaching historic levels. His rallies attract more fans than a Hannah Montana concert and seats are impossible to get. Believe me I've tried." Over on ABC's Good Morning America, correspondent Claire Shipman didn't want either liberal to lose: "Think of the race as a pro wrestling match between Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt. Whoever loses, it will be America that winds up feeling bruised."

Applauding Barack Obama's March 18 speech, Time's Joe Klein (file photo at right) argued that most people will understand why the Illinois senator could not throw his pastor under the bus, even as Klein applauded the fact that Obama made his grandmother a speedbump on the bus ride to the Denver convention (emphasis mine):

The part about his grandmother is the real payoff, though: I'd say that most white people, over a certain age, have had grandmothers like that. (I had two such.) And I suspect most fair-minded white people who hear that section will understand: Obama can't toss aside the pastor--who, after all, was probably a powerful father figure for a man whose own father disappeared when he was two years old--any more than I could, or would want to, toss aside embarrassing old Grandma Rae, who almost always produced some dreadful jaw-dropper at Thanksgiving.

Now, perhaps Wright was a father figure in some ways to Obama. But doesn't that spiritual father-son relationship over decades require maturation with which the "son figure," Obama, would avail himself the opportunity to respectfully but sternly rebuke Wright and ultimately to leave the congregation if and when such concerns went resolved?

How deep into the Dem mindset is Joe Klein? The Time columnist can't figure out why Hillary Clinton drives Republicans round the bend. Klein candidly admitted so today, chatting with Brian Williams on MSNBC.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: On the Republican side, does John McCain blunt back the attack, the insurgents on the right?

JOE KLEIN: I think to a certain extent he will. He'll have a lot more -- you know Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee would give him a great assist. Because the Republicans are completely berserk for reasons that kind of escape me about Hillary Clinton. She's not a wild lefty, she's a fairly moderate person. But she's the enemy, and if she materializes on the Democratic side, you're going to have a united and fierce Republican party.

View video here.

Quickly reacting to the December 9 Washington Post's front page revelation yesterday that some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding interrogation techniques YEARS ago, Time's Joe Klein sought to silence criticism of Democratic hypocrisy.

Klein's excuse? Democrats were swept up by post-9/11 fear and paranoia:

When thinking of Hillary Clinton, do the adjectives "moderate" and "spontaneous" spring to mind? They do for Joe Klein, assigned by Time magazine to write its cover-story profile of her last week.

Joe Scarborough let Klein's characterization slide this morning. But when Klein played the "spontaneous" card on last night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews devastated him with a clip of Hillary at her wooden worst [second video link, at foot].

Klein offered his assessment during the 8:30 AM ET half-hour of today's "Morning Joe.

View video here.

What is it about leftist pundits and their singular inability to accept good news about Iraq -- if they acknowledge any good news at all -- then use that news to formulate illogical policy suggestions? Time Columnist Joe Klein, while duly reporting the extremely good news in Iraq, draws all the wrong conclusions from that info based solely on his desire to cut and run in his titled, "The Ramadi Goat Grab." The MSM just cannot accept ANY good news from Iraq without spinning it as verging on failure.

Time's Joe Klein, aka the Anonymous who wrote "Primary Colors," painted a very nasty portrait of the crop of 2008 Republican candidates for the presidency on his October 24 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Particularly of note, Klein referred to the former Republican governor of Massachusetts as a "troglodyte.":

Look at Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, you know, ran as a liberal against Ted Kennedy in 1994. Then he ran as a moderate for governor, and now he's running as a troglodyte. It's unbelievable.

Video (1:13): Real (2.01 MB) and Windows (2.28 MB), plus MP3 audio (563 kB).

Romney has come under fire from conservatives, and perhaps quite fairly, for his flip-flopping on key issues over the past two decades. Yet no respectable pundit on the left or right would characterize the affable family man as a "troglodyte."

Even so, Klein's invective went unanswered by host Joe Scarborough, who helpfully added, "And it seems to work in all cases."

In his recent article, Time.com's Joe Klein makes the case that the white male vote is the key demographic in the 2008 presidential campaign. So if you're Joe Klein - and you want to speak to the typical white male voter - who do you interview? Well, you were right if you guessed has-been country singer Merle Haggard.

That's right. Joe Klein's article is titled "Does Merle Haggard Speak for America?" and of course details Haggard's alienation from the Republican Party and support for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Time's Joe Klein (file photo at right) has a bit of a hypocrisy problem. After earlier saying he wanted to "throw up" after seeing President Bush showcase "snowflake babies," children adopted as frozen embryos, during a ceremony marking his veto of a bill to expand federally-funded destruction of embryos for medical research, Klein professes disdain not at Democratic partisans who used 12-year-old Graeme Frost to plug the vetoed SCHIP expansion, but conservative bloggers who brought scrutiny to bear on Frost's parents, Democratic officials, and a lapdog liberal media that uncritically relayed the Frost family's account.