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(image: farmtoon 2007. click the Golden Star of the Seer on Madame Kristols forhead for larger view. There isn't really anything called the Golden Star of the Seer (I don't think). I just made that up (I think). But you're welcome to scour the Wikis for evidence otherwise if you like. I'd appreciate it.)


"we can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy." ~ Bill Kristol, Nov. 21, 2002 (source: David Corn / The Nation. see link below)

Noted luminary and body politic charmer Bill Kristol regularly holds forth, as you are no doubt aware, from his elite hoodoo parlor of spirited op-eds and and enchanted policy spells otherwise know as the Weekly Standard magazine. Where he is Editor and High Sexton to the grave diggers and bell ringers of the neoconservative movement. Likewise, The Amazing Kristol is also a frequent vendor of various opinionated moonshines, quacksalves and foretokens dispensed from the midway of the televised tonic shop that is FOX News. As you are no doubt aquainted with too.

But now, as David Corn reports in The Nation, Kristol has been invited to practice his blindfolded shuffle of major arcana among the pippins and parlor pundits at TIME magazine.

Leave no fortuneteller behind! Maybe TIME/WARNER will hire Pat Robertson to propound on the future weather components of soybean yields in the Tidewater region of Virginia and how this data will dovetail with a rise in aberrant homosexual behavior among Democrats! God bless. That all seems fair enough to me if you consider Kristol some kind of merit marker in the wonderwork department.

Afterall, Kristol's prognostications on Iraq are only slightly more reliable than Jeron Criswell King's forebodings concerning outbreaks of cannibalism in Pennsylvania. Except Criswell was kidding. I'm sure they would both (Criswell and Kristol) look equally splendid in sequined tuxedo with turquoise and gold lurex Bat Ayin tichel.

Anyway, as Corn notes, Kristol will continue to practice his black art behind the shiny cover of TIME and there ain't much anyone of us can do about it now. Except, for instance, to ogle the tabloid photos of Jennifer Aniston's boobies while waiting in the grocery store check-out line instead of thumbing through the pages of TIME. Which is ok with me. Two boobies are better than one I say; and I'd rather look at the two hearty specimens that regularly appear on the front cover of Jennifer Aniston than the sneaky anemic little nipple that's soon to be hiding behind the front cover of TIME.

I speak here for myself of course - naturally, i don't eat much soy - but, in any case, I'm sure (just to be on the safe side) that flipping through the pages of one of those homebuilder mags with the dozens of pictures of dreamy floorplans and tidy landscaping will satisfy any variety of grassroots boycott efforts as well.

Thereby avoiding any temptation one may struggle against to flaunt ones sexual preference in the supermarket exit lane.

Moving along...

Alright then; enough about the magazine publishing business. What I wanted to get to from the start were Kristol's own contributions to the art of future-gazing. It's quite a remarkable portfollio as you may already know. A regular attache-case full'o bangles and beads and dry hole chicken bones that would impress any whammy-happy starstruck mooncalf fool. Which, apparently, TIME magazine feels some need to buttress and profit from. In any event, here are a selection of some of the prophet Kristol's many divinations (and other cock-eyed scratchings) visited upon us down through the years. I plucked them from a Jan 02, 2007 post by Anonymous Liberal titled Bill Kristol Superstar and published at Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory. Additional Kristols can be harvested from David Corns Nation article linked to above.

Ok, off we go. For the record:

N August 26, 2002 Weekly Standard:
Reading the Scowcroft/New York Times "arguments" against war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are. European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly "concerned" with the administration's alleged failure to "make the case."

N April 4, 2003 National Public Radio:
"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

N April 28, 2003 Weekly Standard:
The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on
terror and terrorist states.

N March 22, 2004 Weekly Standard:
[T]here are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath. The perpetually sour American media focus on the tensions between Shiites and Kurds that delayed the signing by three whole days. But the difficult negotiations leading up to the signing, and the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise. This willingness is the product of what appears to be a broad Iraqi consensus favoring the idea of pluralism.

N July 26, 2004 Weekly Standard:
What the Bush administration did say--and what so many reporters seem to have trouble understanding--is that Iraq and al Qaeda had a relationship that, by its very existence, posed a potential threat to the United States.

N October 29, 2004 Weekly Standard (column
titled "Politicizing the bin Laden Tape"):
Is there any development in the war on terror, however grave, that the Kerry campaign won't try to exploit for partisan advantage?

N November 1, 2004 Weekly Standard (column titled "Bin Laden v. Bush"):
Osama bin Laden's videotape is an attempt to intimidate Americans into voting against President Bush.

N March 7, 2005 Weekly Standard:
Just four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, ended an era. September 11, 2001, ended an interregnum. In the new era in which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key moment--perhaps the key moment so far--in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the right response to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and accelerating progress.

N April 4, 2005 Weekly Standard (re: Terri Schiavo):
After all, we are a "maturing society," as the Supreme Court has told us. Perhaps it is time, in mature reaction to this latest installment of what Hugh Hewitt has called a "robed charade," to rise up against our robed masters, and choose to govern ourselves. Call it Terri's revolution.

N November 30, 2005 Weekly Standard (column
titled "Pelosi's Disastrous Miscalculation"):
All this made me think the 2006 elections could result in a Speaker Pelosi. I now think that unlikely. Pelosi's endorsement today of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender. Bush's strong speech today means the GOP is likely to be--if Republican Congressmen just keep their nerve--the party of victory. Now it is possible that the situation in Iraq will worsen over the next year. If that happens, Bush and the GOP are in deep trouble. They would have been if Pelosi had said nothing. But it is much more likely that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less the same, or improve. In either case, Republicans will benefit from being the party of victory.

N December 26, 2005 Weekly Standard (column titled "Happy Days!"):
If American and Iraqi troops continue to provide basic security, and if Iraq's different sects and political groups now begin to engage in serious, peaceful bargaining, then we may just have witnessed the beginning of Iraq's future.

N April 4, 2006 Weekly Standard:
What was striking, following the mosque bombing, was the evidence of Iraq's underlying stability in the face of attempts to undermine it. The country's vital institutions seem to have grown strong enough to withstand even the provocation of the bombing of the golden mosque.

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There ya have it. Bill Kristol, the guy in the office pool who assured everyone that the Kansas City Royals would win the 2006 World Series! Which earned him the sports editor job at TIME magazine in 2007.

Who says trumpery is dead?

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