This is pathetic, folks. Some hack named Joe Klein over at Time magazine actually thinks that Obama was all that and a bag of chips in reference to the televised healthcare summit. Here is his two cents on Obama and the healthcare summit:

Shame on me. I was elsewhere yesterday and missed the health care summit. I’m catching up now, and the tea leaves seem to indicate that Obama came out well ahead of the Republicans. How do I know that? From Matt Drudge, of course. I mean, Drudge’s takeaway from the summit is that the President talked a lot--actually, the President, the Congressional Democrats and Republicans each spoke an equal amount–the Times of London found it boring and the networks turned to other programming.

Reading between the lines, you can conclude that the Republicans had nothing very interesting, or clever, to say (and were never able to get the President’s goat). And that the President was his usual, unflappable, well-informed self. You can also conclude that not much progress was made at the summit, as Karen reports here–but that’s a huge surprise, right?

Reading further, in the New York Times, I can’t find any indications that the Congressional Democrats were actually present at this meeting. Certainly, they had nothing notable to say, no new compromises to propose–which leads to another obvious conclusion: the Republicans have been absolutely recalcitrant in this process, but the Dems are no bargain, either.

I remain convinced that if the Republicans actually wanted to deal with this issue, they might have gotten some major concessions from the President–malpractice reform, for sure; perhaps a greater use of insurance polices that emphasize catastrophic coverage (as the Republicans wanted), maybe even a system–as John McCain proposed during the campaign and health wonks everywhere favor–that truly limited the deductability of  corporate health care benefits. To get these things, however, the Republicans would have had to say yes at some point. As in, YES, I’ll vote for the bill if you throw in malpractice and pay for it with the money you get from limiting deductability. That is what happens in a negotiation. That is what is supposed to happen in a democracy.

But the obvious truth here is that the Republicans do not want any sort of health care bill to pass at all because they do not want to hand President Obama a victory. Shame on them.

It is plain to see that Klein just doesn’t get it. He says that he didn’t watch the summit yet has the gall to bash the GOP as the party who doesn’t want any healthcare bill to pass – all because of depriving the POTUS of a victory. Whatever that means.

And Joe goes on to say that Obama, the Democraps and Republicans all got equal time speaking – which is not the case at all.

Then there was the disrespect from the mouth of Obama; conveniently, Klein didn’t bring that up. Obama dissing McCain and a host of others. Obama saying he lost track of the time in terms of speaking because “he is the president.” And just as importantly, Obama refusing to get rid of “reconciliation”. The narcissism, the condescending attitude and just plain being out ofd touch – all three traits were on full display at the summit.

So for some hack from a MSM magazine to just assume that the GOP doesn’t want helathcare reform in order to score political points is wrong and ignorant.

Which explains why TIME’s readership is on a par with MSNBC’s viewership – down in the basement. TIME ceased to be a magazine a long time ago and they just illustrated that in spades by ill-advisedly putting Klein’s diatribe online.

Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein says he has found no discernible pattern yet in President Obama’s “mistakes” and it’s simply too early to judge him on these “mistakes.”

Here’s how Klein starts off his Time column:

Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn’t go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall’s coming down. He didn’t make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats’ being taken hostage in Iran. He didn’t show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference (a moment memorably satirized by Saturday Night Live). He didn’t come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to — and given congressional Democrats too much control over — healthcare reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans.

To read the entire column, please click here. I promise you – the column just validates my point that the lamestream media still doesn’t get it.