In case you haven't heard of him, John Podhoretz is a wingnut who works for the fascist propaganda rag, Commentary. His latest bit of silliness is to try to start a pissing contest with Time Magazine's Joe Klein, a conservative commentator who just isn't willing to be crazy enough to satisfy the neocons. (Note: "neocon" is really just a euphemism for "fascist.")

Podhoretz is one for wild flurries of rhetoric as was the case recently on his blog:

It is the view of Time magazine’s leading political columnist, and a former friendly acquaintance of mine, that bloggers on this site are more dangerous and threatening to the future of the world than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Our intention in highlighting the words spoken by Iran’s president, he says, is to scare his parents in Florida and thereby achieve our vicious foreign policy aims. And he does not wish to accuse us of dual loyalty, but, darn it, he just can’t help himself, as he does it three times.

Klein defends himself from this nuttiness here.

However, connoisseurs of unintentional humor can have a field day with what Pohhoretz says without Klein's help. Pohhoretz's rant certainly is an overly dramatic reading of what Klein actually says. You would think that Klein is out to get Israel, something the extreme right always claims when anyone, including Jewish people like Klein, question the dangerous and foolish policies of the far right government in that country.

The underlying assumption is really funny too. We all are supposed to be obligated to believe that the policies of the right in Israel must be flawless. Never mind the fact that the right's policies here in the US have been ruinous for our country.

Pohhoretz's dramatic passage also is silly because it insists that Ahmadinejad is a threat "to the future of the world," a claim that sounds like it is out of a bad 50s scifi movie. In the real world, Ahmadinejad is not much of a threat to anyone for the simple reason that he isn't in charge of Iran. The Supreme Leader, not the President calls the shots in that country.

Just because we have a powerful president here in the US does not mean we should assume things work that way everywhere. In most countries, presidents are largely figureheads. In Iran, presidents have some administrative powers, especially on domestic issues. However, the notion that an Iranian president would have the power to decide whether or not that country goes to war is laughable.

How can a magazine like Commentary hope to be taken seriously by anyone but dittoheads when their writers show such incredible ignorance on the most important foreign policy issues of the day? You have to wonder what's next. Will they claim that Andorra has weapons of mass destruction, and we need to start bombing immediately?

The only thing about this that isn't funny is that the writers at Commentary have had some access to the Bush regime because their rhetoric provides a cover for the corporate interests and Christian religious extremism that drives the Mideast policy of the crooks who illegally occupy the executive branch.