Glenn Greenwald chronicles many predictions made by Bill "The Vampire" Kristol. My favorite: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/bill-kristol-pundit-superstar.html Enjoy!
A couple examples: March 17, 2003: November 30, 2005: You go with the facts you wish you had, not the facts you have. Guys like foolish, foolish William are in what we call the fantasy-based community, which one can define as people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious denial of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act fantastically, such actions come up against reality. And while you're studying that collision—judiciously, as you will—Kristol will masturbate again, revelling in other new fantasies, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. William's one of history's masturbators . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study how he gets off.
I'd love to find a website that maintains various predictions from pundits across the political spectrum. I have only been able to find selected predictions; usually by people with axes to grind. But these were certainly eye-opening. He should lose some credibility for being as wrong as he was.
In December Jon Stewart bent him over his desk and sodomized him, came, and then did it again after the commercial break.
I don't care what any of this thread is about, I know where it ends. Rep for Nostradumbass. Had me rolling.
That was possibly the best part!! You get the sense that Kristol and Stewart might hang out, that they're definitely friendly if not friends, but Stewart was just laughing in the poor dumb bastard's face the whole time about how wrong Kristol was about Iraq, how ludicrous his thoughts on the topic, and how he was constitutionally unable to admit it. It was like watching the cool kid in high school mercilessly tease the outcast, who had to sit there and take it, if you had a really, really good reason to hate the outcast.
The now-defunct Brill's Content once did a study like the one you describe here. (This predates the Fox News explosion.) I can't remember many of the details, other than that John McLaughlin's predictions fared the worst. His predicitons were wrong something like 70% of the time.
Is this the one where Kristol protests that Jon just uses him as a punching bag? Cuz in that one, I was completely blown away by the sidestepping and backpedaling Kristol gave about terrorism worldwide vs. in the US. Jon should have stomped firmly on that, but surprisingly, he let it slide. It shown a real bright light onto Kristol's flawed thought process though.
Actually, you should start one line earlier: We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. Simply as a reminder that not everyone was convinced of the WMD argument. There is now this ridiculous talking point out there that everyone looked at the same intelligence and everyone thought he had WMD so lets just move on. That is not the case. I, personally, thought that he probably did have WMD just from the onslaught of propaganda before the war. Still, I did not support the war because I was not comfortable about the concept of proactive war on a gut feeling. I wanted some proof and frankly, as impressive as Colin Powell's dog and pony show was at the UN, I was not anywhere close to convinced. My recollection of those months leading up to the war was that I had that gut feeling that what I was being told was right, AND that they would produce the goods prior to war. They had to, right? Then as we inched closer and closer, it became obvious in the fall of 2002 that they weren't going to produce the goods. I became firmly entrenched against bush and his war during his state of the union in early 2003. I had just read about those aluminum tubes about two weeks before the speech, and how they were a dead end because they were not capable of use in creating nuclear weapons. They were simply made to produce conventional weapons. Then, bush got up there and lied his ass off. That was it for me. As disappointed as I was in my president for his blatant march to war without justification, I was more disappointed in the "media" for not calling him on his lies. For not demanding proof -- not only of his possession of WMD, but his ability to deliver them in a way that he would be a threat to us. When I hear the bs about the drone that could fly over here and dump chemical weapons on our cities, I literally bust out laughing. The guy was launching scud missiles into thr frickin Mediterranian Sea at the height of his military power during gulf war I because he couldn't effectively target Israel from a few hundred miles. Now, after a decade of sanctions, he was going to pin poin attacks 3,000 miles away? Back to kristol. Along with his neocon buddies, they really should burn in hell for starting this process and planting these ideas in the mind of a simpleton, black and white president. Who knows where these dominoes might end up falling. At its worst, it could lead to region wide fighting along sectarian lines that will disregard current borders, and could suck in Israel to the war we have all been dreading and hoping to prevent. Because of the dire consequences, I could see myself supporting some sort of new build up policy with competent people in charge, but we don't and won't have anyone competent in charge until 2009. Therefore, I'm on board with a policy of redeployment and containment. Try to curtail sectarian violence by using brutal airstrikes if necessary. If our system really, REALLY worked as intended, bush would be removed from office -- not as punishment -- but from recognition that he is completely out there at a time when our very security is at risk, and that he has lost the respect of the military that he leads in a time of war.
Well, his buddy, Kagan, came up with the "surge" concept to counter the counterattack from the realist republicans like Baker and his study group. They suggested reapproachment to the neighboring countries, and gradual troops reduction starting in 4-6 months, and the neocon camp is pushing for more troops, in the name of a 'surge'; a two year surge!!! ( remember, before the war they were telling us how it will be "quick IN&OUT" and getting a lot of flowers and candies on the way in! ) Mel, you are insightfully smart.
Maybe he's always been this way and I never noticed, but Bill Kristol seems to become more comically evil by the day. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/11/obama-slavery/
To say that they've "jumped the shark" would falsely imply that there was a time when they had some redeeming quality to them that has now passed. They have not "jmped the shark" for the simple reason that they always sucked to begin with.
i said this in another thread, but all neocons, with Kristol near the top of the list, need to take like a five year break when it comes to predictions..... especially ones comcerning foreign policy. Mario Mendoza thinks thier success rate is laughable.