Geez, I long for the days when The Trilateral Commission and Communists were going to have us all engaged in constant war and roaming the streets suffering from abject poverty.

Oh, wait! We ARE engaged in constant war and fighting off abject poverty! Ah, the good old days have returned!!

It's not surprising coming from a conservative but what I find more disturbing about that paragraph is the notion that the positions stated by Obama are somehow dangerous, unAmerican, or fringe. I don't know how old McCarthy is but those positions were held by millions and millions of Americans in the '60s and '70s.

I guess McCarthy assumes that Obama is like so many conservative "thinkers" whose political views (and emotional maturity) stop developing when they're college-age.

the analysis offered by "serious" and "respectable" conservative voices

I must confess I'm not familiar. Who are these voices and when were they heard? Must have been before I was born.

Just as the line between the GOP establishment and the unhinged GOP base has become blurred in recent decades, so too has the line between the analysis offered by "serious" and "respectable" conservative voices and the unbalanced tirades put forward by the nutty conservative fringe.

I thought for a while it was unique to the Clinton years, but the last nine years have covinced me I was being too generous. At least half the time when I read the "serious" people on the right, I think they've been hacked by a unusually deranged Freeper or the Onion.

They do this all the time on getting hysterical about something which is so mainstream Eisenhower or Reagan have said it. It would be nice to see an adult in the group, clearing his or her throat and saying sotto voce.."Err, lads, Reagan said he was a citizen of the world and he promoted nuclear disarmament...."

For pure gaffawing, see the always entertaining dimwittery of Victor Davis Hanson, speaking of Palin after the usual "LWers all pick on her" bitter whine:

" In the long run, she can lecture, earn a good income through speaking, develop a coterie of advisers and supporters, take care of her family, not have the constant political warring on all flanks, and invest time in reflecting and studying issues, visit the country, meet leaders, etc. She's not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she's a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight."

Right, Palin is a budding Margaret Thatcher.

Oh, how this reminds me of the heady days when it was common to see the NRO denizens cheep amin themselves that Fred Thompson was the next Ronald Reagan. They tear down their old heroes in order to try and build up their new matchstick faux-heroes. It's a strange kind of denial, and it keeps taking hold of people who are supposed to be at the top of their profession.

On the serious side, it's a little alarming to see this happen so frequently . You can't meet people halfway if they're this seriously detached from reality.

McCarthy's game is to reawaken memories of 1968 radicals. The GOP have been living off this for decades. Remember how they linked John Kerry to Jane Fonda? Deep down these people are still fighting the Vietnam War. Indeed, for a lot of them the whole rationale for the Iraq War was to expunge the disgrace of Vietnam. In some ways that was a war that had more to do with the psychopathologies of the US right than it did with its ostensible goals. McCarthy's post just confirms that these pathologies are still there.

"Conservative thinkers" don't even make it to college age emotionally or intellectually - at best their "sophmoric" baloney is high school level. Actually, "thinker" - which is a word that assumes the object being described is capable of doing so - is "a fact very much not in evidence" with these droolers.

All real Americans support nuclear war, as well as industrial waste, open-pit mining, extinction of unnecessary species and summary execution of unproductive people.

But you don't understand a central tenet of the movement conservative faith -- military spending is free!

National Review is, by some measures, the flagship publication of contemporary conservative thought. And yet, this is what it's reduced to publishing

And in doing so, still represents the flagship of contemporary conservative thought. The decline of the National Review simply refelects the decline of conservative thought in general, as exemplified by the McCain / Palin campaign in 2008.

They must really hate Eisenhower since he's the one who warned the US about the military-industrial complex and the dangers inherent in that merger.

And regarding "the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement":

since, at the time, we had the nuclear capability to destroy every Russian city several times over, it's not clear what at all was so delusional or dangerous about a freeze on production of more such weapons--not a unilateral nuclear disarmament--just a freeze. McCarthy is using overheated, question-begging rhetoric to do his thinking for him.

This is like the "crying wolf" post earlier today. McCarthy gets paid to write something negative, and this is the best he can find for now. The 1983 article by Obama is pretty darn tame for a college article. It's not extremist, alarmist or hyperbolic in any way - unlike McCarthy's nonsense.

Here in Texas, we speak of people who are all hat and no cattle. To modify that nugget to fit McCarthy, I would say that he is all ass and no hat.

If Obama was "effusing enthusiasm" over the nuclear freeze movement in that old article, I missed it somehow.

Steve, you're living in a bubble. I beg you to put forth some progressive ideas in this blog. Your obsession with idiotic right wingers and their stupid talking points is mind numbing.

You have this wonderful forum with tons and tons of traffic and it's a daily parade of stupid right wing bullshit.

Why not one post on the Alaskan mining waste decision by the supreme court a few weeks back that seriously threatens our country and our children's future? Why not one post on cash for clunkers and it's merits? Why not one post on Taibbi's evisceration of OBama's bankster buddies? (In my opinion the ommision of any link to Taibbi's take down says a great deal about this blog.) No post on a bunch of kids getting their heads blown off in Afghanistan today?

It's frustrating that progressives are blowing their chance by chasing rightwing bogeyman down rabbit holes on a daily basis.

Democrats have majorities across the board and you are complaining about some shithead columnist no one who works for a living cares about or has ever heard of. Very little that gets discussed on this blog and several others affects people's lives, it's all political parlor games and spit ball fights. It's completely baffling.

I guess I'm tilting at windmills myself if I expect something different at this point.

My question is how does an article about American militarism in the Columbia student paper relate to McCarthy's earlier questions about Obama's ties to Ayers? Even if this article did reveal something damaging about Obama, how does Ayers enter into the equation? Perhaps a literary analysis of the article will reveal that it was actually ghostwritten by Ayers.

I would say in NR's defense that an unedited post on the Corner isn't exactly something they have "published". I'm sure they've properly published a lot of stuff on this level, but it just doesn't sound right to point to this specific post in isolation as evidence that they are publishing rubbish. The problem is that they continue to let McCarthy post these unedited rantings on their main blog even after he continually humiliates them with these asinine conspiracy theories.

Ho hum.

Read the Obama's original standard survey piece. Read McCarthy's take, wondered why he bothered. Re-read Steve's take, wondered why he bothered.

Guess Steve has to fill up the time somehow. What a way to lose an audience.

You write as if Obama said something naive or disreputable in 1983 - the third year of Reagan's first term, when the country was engaged in the largest peacetime military build-up in history; the White House had officially rejected detente; the US was sponsoring what the administration viewed as proxy wars against the Soviet Union in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, and Afghanistan; the country was gripped with triumphalist war fever over the bizarre invasion of the tiny island of Granada; and policy toward the Soviet Union was controlled by ideologues like Caspar Weingberger and Richard Perle who were not bothered by the idea of nuclear war and at times seemed to welcome it.

It sounds to me like Obama wrote a level-headed and reasonable article in response to the insanity of the official policy of the time.

There is plenty of room on the Internet. You can always dazzle the world with your topics if you don't like the ones that someone else writes about.

People complaining about what Steve chooses to cover remind me of the folks who bitch about someone celebrating their birthday, what with the starving children in Africa and all that.

Hei Matt, your concern is duly noted.

Will you at least be so kind to continue trolling this site? I'm sure your loyalty is much appreciated.

"People complaining about what Steve chooses to cover remind me of the folks who bitch about someone celebrating their birthday, what with the starving children in Africa and all that."

There wouldn't be children starving in Africa if everyone just sent them a piece of their birthday cake! :-)

"The article shows that Obama dreaded American "militarism" and its "military-industrial interests," while effusing enthusiasm for the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement."

I want to thank McCarthy for letting America know that the president thinks the SAME way today on these issues as he did 16 years ago which shows he's had a lot of time to research and think about them. This is a plus for the president since it shows the strength of his convictions.

What McCarthy wrote would come as a surprise to me if what Obama wrote in college was so far removed from what he is saying today.

Something about McCarthy's statements in this article caught my eye. He cannot prove Obama had terrorist ties to William Ayers, so he uses the old neo-con manuever: when in doubt, lie. I'm sure that if he had the answer to the question of whether Obama engaged in terrorist activities with Ayers that he would be the FIRST to shout it from the nearest rooftop.

You have this wonderful forum with tons and tons of traffic and it's a daily parade of stupid right wing bullshit. -- grinning cat, @14:29

So, you *have* noticed that Steve has a lot of traffic... Ever wondered why? Has it ever occurred to you that, maybe, just maybe, he has decent traffic because people enjoy what he writes -- including the trivial bits -- and his "take" on things? Nobody's forcing anyone to read and comment here.

I won't suggest, as others have done in the past, that you stop reading and save yourself from having daily bilious attacks about the contents. I won't even suggest that you start your own blog, and build up your own "audience", with your Sturm und Drang articles and 27/7 angst, outrage, etc.

What I'll suggest instead is much more up my libra-ish alley: when you see a good/reliable article somewhere, that you think is worth being discussed here, write to Steve and point him to it. A lot of us do just that. Much more sensible than foaming at the mouth like you do. Which, BTW, is much more tiresome to me -- and I dare say to others as well -- than Steve's subject choices.

Steve can be reached, directly:
admin@thecarpetbaggerreport.com

The phrase "conservative" and "thinker" haven't belonged in the same sentence since the early 1960s, when the GOP decided that it's future rested on fomenting anger and resentment in southern whites for Democrats and their policies of civil rights, a social safety net, etc.

Now a days, the GOP isn't a political party. It's a cult.

That's not to say Dems have the magic bullet that will make everything better. But at least some of them seem to be trying.

The GOP platform pretty much consists of:

* Tax cuts for rich people (but convincing the ignorant they'll benefit)

* Bigotry against gays, immigrants, and non-whites (and, any more, doing so blatantly)

* Pandering to religious conservatives and the uneducated (despite enacting policies that harm those groups)

* Invading/bombing nations that aren't threats (while not having the guts to serve themselves)

* Prattling on about "family values" (often while cheating on their spouses)

That's pretty much it. And anyone who disagrees with any of those (see: Powell, Colin) is blackballed and smeared as "not GOP enough."

It's sad, scary, and insane.

P.S. What the holy hell is it with all the concern trolls whining about the posts here?

If you don't like it, don't read it.

There's no gun to your head making you read this site. No medical condition that forces you to post here. No law saying you can't start your own site and post whatever the hell you want.

So for the love of all that is holy: Stop you incessant complaining and leave the rest of us the hell alone, or just leave -- trust me, you won't be missed.

And remember that Eisenhower warned us against the "miltary-industrial complex."