Dowd: Desperately Seeking Obama

I think Maureen Dowd has a crush on Barack Obama.

I'm certain.

She's probably like Chris Matthews. I bet when she hears Obama she gets a thrill going up her leg, the way Matthews does; but she won't admit to it.

In her column, "Desperately Seeking Street Cred," Dowd scratches and claws at Hillary Clinton while she playfully teases Obama.

She writes:

It used to be that [Obama] was incandescent and [Hillary] was merely inveterate. Now she’s bristling with life force, and he looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke.

Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn’t, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She’s still a long shot and she’s 14 years older than her rival.

Yet she’s the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he’s the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.

This is a setup. Dowd speaks admiringly of Hillary before she goes in for the kill.

...Even some Obama fans find Hillary’s toughness and shameless shape-shifting compelling. Having lost the White House twice to brass-knuckled pols, the Dems may be drawn to a woman who thinks like Karl Rove.

James Clyburn, the influential black congressman from South Carolina, says that some blacks are buying into the 2012 Tonya Harding conspiracy theory: that the Clintons know they can’t beat Obama this time, so they are “hell-bound,” as Clyburn put it, to shred him so he’ll lose to McCain and Hillary will be able to try again in 2012 — when McCain is 76.

In interviews, Clyburn called the tactics of the Clintons and their henchmen “bizarre,” “disingenuous” and “scurrilous.”

...Hillary is burdened by her husband’s inflammatory remarks on race and her own willingness to burn the party to save the party.

The Nixonian Hillary has a ravenous hunger that Obama lacks. Literally — at a birthday party in Philly for her photographer, she was devouring the chips and dip with two hands — and viscerally.

I would like to know what Dowd thinks was so inflammatory about Bill's remarks on race. She's very vague.

She's certainly not vague about what she thinks of Hillary. Dowd casts her as a she-devil.

When a lib compares another lib to Karl Rove, that's about as low as one can go.

Calling Hillary "Nixonian" is also quite a shot.

But Dowd really gets vicious when she calls Hillary a pig with the chips and dip.

There are so many complaints about the superficial nature of this presidential race, yet Queen lib Dowd isn't exactly steering away from the superficial and focusing on substance in this column.

After slamming Hillary, Dowd dwells on the very matters that Obama wants to go away.

At Joe’s Junction gas station in Indianapolis, Obama did his best to shoo away the pesky elitist label. Accused by an Indianapolis reporter of looking like a GQ cover, he said he has only four pairs of shoes and buys “five of the same suit and then I patch them up and wear them repeatedly.” But his campaign refused to reveal the brand, presumably because it’s not J. C. Penney.

He dutifully enthused about carbs, assuring reporters that when he had dinner as a child with his Kansas grandparents, the food “would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana. A lot of pot roast, potatoes and Jell-O molds.”

But then he resumed wry whingeing about his 37 bowling score, explaining that he finished only seven frames, including two that “were bowled by a 10-year-old” and another by a 3-year-old.

“I don’t want to go out of my way to sort of prove my street cred as a down-to-earth guy,” he said, after going out of his way.

It's crazy that a presidential candidate is trying to win votes by saying he grew up on meals of "pot roast, potatoes and Jell-O molds."

What is that?

Dowd is perpetuating the superficiality and silliness, and so is Obama.

When Obama says, “People know me,” Dowd concludes:

Not yet, but we will, one of these years.

She makes it sound like we don't know Obama.

I disagree. We are learning about him. He's not a smooth talking unknown anymore. That's his real problem.

Dowd: ANOTHER "Hillary Sucks" Column

Maureen Dowd has been critical of Barack Obama, but she's relentless when it comes to bashing Hillary Clinton.

Today, she writes another installment, "Begrudging His Bedazzling."

She writes:

David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said [Senator Clinton] seemed “dumbfounded” by the Obama sensation.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

Those aren't just truisms of politics. They're truisms of life.

If only Dowd would quit ignoring those truisms when she writes her columns.

...The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can’t turn on her own charm and wit because she can’t get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she’s pea-green with envy.

After saying she found her “voice” in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the “Saturday Night Live” skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC — a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist — are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Oh, good grief.

Did you find Hillary's changing hairstyles when she was first lady to be "dizzying and unsettling"?

I didn't. I see no connection between her hair in the 1990s and her 2008 presidential campaign.

I don't agree with Dowd that Hillary is struggling to find a persona. She knows herself and she's comfortable in her own skin.

Hillary's problems aren't about some weird insecurities and an unstable image. They stem from her struggle to find a way to stop the erosion of support she has experienced since the Obama-mania fad took hold. Rather than being herself, she's taking wild stabs at trying to be what voters want. That's her mistake. Rather than remaining calm, she panicked when Obama surged.

Moreover, "beating on the press" is NOT the "lamest thing you can do," as Dowd suggests. Her complaints about the press have been ineffective, but they also have been valid. I can imagine her frustration.

Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson received unfavorable press. As a result, their campaigns fizzled. That doesn't mean they weren't qualified. They were superior candidates compared to John McCain, but they couldn't undo the damage done by a hostile or disinterested press.

The lamest thing Dowd can do is say that Hillary is still considered a contender because of the "utter open-mindedness of the press."

What a joke!

Hillary is still a contender based on the delegate count, not because the press is open-minded. Unreal.

No "White Bitch Month"

Maureen Dowd looks at the role of gender in the Democrat presidential primary race.

She writes:

It’s not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more — misogyny or racism.

Many women I talk to, even those who aren’t particularly fond of Hillary, feel empathy for her, knowing that any woman in a world dominated by men has to walk a tightrope between femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability.

They see double standards they hate — when male reporters described Hillary’s laugh as “a cackle” or her voice as “grating,” when Rush Limbaugh goes off on her wrinkles or when male pundits seem gleeful to write her political obituary. Several women I know, who argue with their husbands about Hillary, refer with a shudder to the “Kill the Witch” syndrome.

In a webcast, prestidigitator Penn Jillette talks about a joke he has begun telling in his show. He thinks the thunderous reaction it gets from audiences shows that Hillary no longer has a shot.

The joke goes: “Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it’s not fair, because they’re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there’s no White Bitch Month.”

Yeah, that hurts.

Those strong negatives really haunt Hillary.

Of course, jokes like that — even Jillette admits it’s offensive — are exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don’t want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated — again.

And since women — and some men — tend to be more protective when she is down, it is impossible to rule out a rally, especially if voters start to see Obama, after his eight-contest rout, as that maddening archetypal figure: the glib golden boy who slides through on charm and a smile.

It's interesting that Dowd would mention the "glib golden boy" thing.

Watching Obama deliver his speech in Madison, he projected almost an arrogance that was somewhat off-putting.

I guess when 17,000 people wait for hours to hear you speak for less than 30 minutes you can get a little full of yourself. Trouncing Hillary in the day's primaries may have played a factor in his demeanor as well. It's always nice to show just a bit of humility.

In Obama's defense, it's a difficult line to negotiate. He should come off as confident and commanding, as presidential; but that can come off as cocky and smug.

I would suspect that most of the faithful at the rally were simply overwhelmed by being in Obama's presence. His committed followers won't turn on him, but independents and those less spellbound might.

Those close to Hillary say she’s feeling blue. It’s an unbearable twist of fate to spend all those years in the shadow of one Secretariat, only to have another gallop past while you’re plodding toward the finish line.

I believe that Hillary feels blue. I can see it.

This must be a shock for her to be in such a tight race and in danger of losing when for so long she was so far out in front.

Dowd's uncharacteristic sympathy for Hillary is quickly followed up with a list of Hillary's flaws.

Dowd concludes, "If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours."

In other words, Hillary's possible failure wouldn't be because Americans rejected a woman in the role of the Democrat nominee for president. It would be because Americans rejected Hillary.

I don't know that Dowd can back up that claim.

If Obama fails, will it be his fault, not ours?

When one frames the contest in terms of race and gender, I don't see how one can back away from the impact of race and gender in the event of failure.

Darkness and Light

I still say that Maureen Dowd missed her calling.

She's wasting her talent on political commentary. She should write romance novels, heavy on the drama. She would also be good at pop psychology, a cross between Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura.

In her column, "Darkness and Light," she tackles the Clintons' collective psyche, finding similarities with (GASP!) Dick Cheney.

That comparison is about low as one can go in the world view of liberals.

She writes:

Hillary Clinton denounced Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, but she did not absorb the ultimate lesson of the destructive vice president:

Don’t become so paranoid that you let yourself be overwhelmed by a dark vision.

I think Hillary truly believes that she and Bill are the only ones tough enough to get to the White House. Jack Nicholson endorsed her as “the best man for the job,” and she told David Letterman that “in my White House, we’ll know who wears the pantsuits.” But her pitch is the color of pitch: Because she has absorbed all the hate and body blows from nasty Republicans over the years, she is the best person to absorb more hate and body blows from nasty Republicans.

Darkness seeking darkness. It’s an exhausting specter, and the reason that Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, Claire McCaskill and so many other Democrats are dashing for daylight and trying to break away from the pathological Clinton path.

“I think we should never be derisive about somebody who has the ability to inspire,” Senator McCaskill told David Gregory on MSNBC on Tuesday. “You know, we’ve had some dark days in this democracy over the last seven years, and today the sun is out. It is shining brightly. I watch these kids, these old and young, these black and white, 20,000 of them, pour into our dome in St. Louis Saturday night, and they feel good about being an American right now. And I think that’s something that we have to capture.”

Tuesday’s voting showed only that the voters, like moviegoers, don’t want a pat ending. Even though Hillary reasserted her strength, corraling New York, California and Kennedy country Massachusetts, she and Obama will battle on in chiaroscuro. Her argument to the Democratic base has gone from a subtext of “You owe me,” or more precisely, “Bill owes me and you owe him,” to a subtext of “Obambi will fold at the first punch from the right.”

...As she talked Sunday to George Stephanopoulos, a former director of the formidable Clinton war room, Hillary’s case boiled down to the fact that she can be Trouble, as they say about hard-boiled dames in film noir, when Republicans make trouble.

“I have been through these Republican attacks over and over and over again, and I believe that I’ve demonstrated that much to the dismay of the Republicans, I not only can survive, but thrive,” she said.

And on Tuesday night she told supporters, “Let me be clear: I won’t let anyone Swift-boat this country’s future.”

Better the devil you know than the diffident debutante you don’t. Better to go with the Clintons, with all their dysfunction and chaos — the same kind that fueled the Republican hate machine — than to risk the chance that Obama would be mauled like a chew toy in the general election. Better to blow off all the inspiration and the young voters, the independents and the Republicans that Obama is attracting than to take a chance on something as ephemeral as hope. Now that’s Cheney-level paranoia.

Dark, light, the devil, the dragon, hard-boiled dames, film noir.

It's hard to believe that she is talking about Super Tuesday and the Democrat candidates, with a nod to her favorite piñata, evil personified -- Dick Cheney.

I guess that's what it takes to be a Pulitzer Prize winning writer.

Dowd concludes:

[I]f [Obama] wants to be president, he will still have to slay the dragon. And his dragon is the Clinton attack machine, which emerged Tuesday night, not invincible but breathing fire.

After wading through Dowd's drama, I think it's fair to say that she hasn't lost any of her intensity when it comes to slamming the Clintons.

Obama is the light, goodness.

Hillary and Bill are darkness and fire.

It's interesting that Dowd so frequently mocks President Bush as having a simple-minded, black and white view of everything.

I think this column exhibits the same qualities that she so frequently identifies with our 43rd president.

Hillary's Face

A lot has been said about this picture.

Of course, queen lib and gender-obsessed Maureen Dowd gives her reaction.

It's not really a reaction as much as it is an opportunity to paint Rush Limbaugh as a sexist Neanderthal.

I don't think that Limbaugh was saying it's right that there's a double standard when it comes to judging the appearance of aging men and women. I think he was pointing out a reality of our culture.

Furthermore, I don't think Dowd has the moral authority to be outraged about someone stating the obvious, that women have a heavier burden of trying to look physically perfect and forever young than men do.

Would Dowd like to make her BOTOX records public?

There's no question that the photo of Hillary shows a tired, worn woman.

What's wrong with that?

She's 60. She has a grueling schedule. Her face is lined, as it would be at this point in her life.

Personally, I admire women confident enough in their abilities and inner worth to look their age without fear of rejection.

Women who take it to the extreme and opt to go the freakish cosmetic surgery route have serious self-esteem issues.

It's sad that some women, and men, believe the most important quality that they have to offer the world is a creaseless face and bloated misshaped lips.

I see nothing wrong with that photo of Hillary.

What's wrong is our twisted culture that puts such value on the superficial and those quick to use the absence of wrinkles as the measure of an individual.

Dowd, the Dominatrix, and Obambi

Maureen Dowd has cast Hillary Clinton in the role of a dominatrix in her column, "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

Of course, Dowd casts Barack Obama as the subject of Hillary's "attention." She supposedly whipped him into submission at the last debate; and Obama was a willing participant.

Dowd really writes some bizarre stuff.

According to Dowd, Hillary disciplines Obama. She flicks the whip at Obama. (Those are her terms, not mine.)

Dowd stands in awe of Hillary's November 15 debate performance. She gushes that Hillary used "her voice, gaze and body language to such punishing effect that Obama looked as if he had been brought to heel. It was a mesmerizing display." (Obama, the dog "brought to heel" -- Is Dowd trying to put Obama in the bitch role?)

There was nothing mesmerizing about Hillary's debate performance on Thursday. The lib media keep saying she was so spectacular, but she wasn't.

She was the beneficiary of softball questions, no decent follow-ups, an overwhelmingly and vocal pro-Hillary audience, and a lib media mob that want America to believe she can walk on water.

Yeah, Hillary had it so tough.

This part of Dowd's column is so weird:

Other guys, like Rudy, wouldn’t even be looking for a chance to greet Hillary, as Obama always does. Other guys, like Rudy, wouldn’t care if she iced them.

But she can tell that Obama does care, that he doesn’t want her to not like him or be mad at him, that he responds to the sort of belittling treatment that she sometimes dished out to her husband and his male aides at the White House, yelling at them and calling them wimps if they disappointed her.

Obama may be responsive to Hillary’s moods because he lives with another strong woman who knows how to keep him in line. Michelle said she let her husband run for president only when he agreed to give up smoking, and she’s a master at the art of the loving conjugal put-down.

It drives me nuts when Dowd's writes this sort of psychobabble drivel.

Her obsession with Obama is truly embarrassing. The marital analysis is especially strange.

When Hillary walked onstage Thursday, Obama stood to her left waiting to shake hands and say hi, as he and Edwards had done with Chris Dodd. She turned her body away, refused to meet his eyes and froze him out. Again. And he looked taken aback. Again.

For the rest of the night she owned him.

This is really goofy.

It sounds like a bad screenplay.

"For the rest of the night she owned him." That reads like a dime-store romance novel.

Dowd thinks she has Hillary figured out:

She is a control freak — that’s why her campaign tried to coach wonky Iowa voters to ask wonky questions — and her male rivals are letting her take control.

I believe Hillary tries to be a control freak, but she fails. She fails miserably.

Dowd seems to be so caught up in her Hillary as dominatrix fantasy that she fails to grasp how weak Hillary really is.

She's weak in terms of her qualifications to be president.

Her husband's resume isn't hers.

HILLARY WAS NOT A GOVERNOR. SHE WASN'T THE PRESIDENT. SHE WASN'T CO-PRESIDENT.

She's not likable. She's not a charismatic person. She's shrill. She doesn't tear up and become emotional in public. She's dramatically less teary than "I feel your pain" Bill.

Furthermore, she's not controlling her "male rivals," her political opponents.

Dowd can't make a convincing argument that Hillary is a control freak when she doesn't bother to control her husband. She seems to have no problem with the out of control Bill.

How would Dowd explain that? Hillary absolutely must be in control but she willingly has spent her adult life as Bill's doormat.

So does she find wimpy men such as Obama to dominate in order to compensate for the way Bill walks all over her?

How's that for psychobabble?

I don't know why Dowd as well as some other female columnists and pundits keep focusing on the gender dynamics of the race.

And Dowd's sadomasochistic imagery involving Hillary and Obama is particularly inappropriate. It's creepy.

Why can't Dowd and the others leave sex out of this? Can we talk about the issues? The issues matter.

I WOULD NEVER VOTE FOR HILLARY BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN.

I'M NOT ROOTING FOR HER BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN.

I WOULD NEVER SUPPORT HER BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN.

ANYONE CAN CALL HER A BITCH. THE "ALL BOYS CLUB" CAN ATTACK. I WON'T VOTE FOR HER.

I vote my pocketbook. I don't vote my genitals.

Mushy Dowd

Maureen Dowd seems to be trying to fill the void left open by the writers' strike.

In her column "Mushy: Handsome in Uniform," Dowd has taken one of her breaks from reality and lapsed into creative writing again.

This time she fantasizes about President Bush and his relationship with Mushy, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf.

She writes:

President Bush came to the steps of the Capitol yesterday for a Second Inaugural do-over. Here is the text of his revised speech:

ON this day, when we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, we must remember: Constitutions don’t work for everyone. It’s not a one-size-fits-all type deal.

We are led, by recent events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the repression of liberty in other lands.

Once I thought my daddy was a wimp for cuddlin’ up real close with dictators, tradin’ stability for freedom. But now I gotta admit, that’s a darn fair trade. As I told Mushy last night on that cool, high-tech videophone I got in the Sit Room, the best hope for expanding peace is expanding dictators.

In America’s ideal of freedom, we are ennobled by a heart for the weak. But we must also have a heart for the strongmen.

Sometimes when the soul of a nation speaks, we must listen. But if that soul is housed in a bunch of trial lawyers wearing identical dark suits and calling my man Mushy a “dog,” I say, bring on the batons. Police tear-gassing lawyers is really just a foreign version of tort reform, which I support.

Those lawyers should be in jail. Mushy told me they were reckonin’ to represent Osama when General-General catches him. Which will be any day now. He’s a man of his word.

I don’t blame Mushy for dissolving that disloyal Supreme Court. When I needed to subvert the democratic process during the 2000 recount, my Supreme Court was totally supportive.

House arrest for that fired chief justice sounds very relaxin’, especially if he’s got a feather pillow.

...I looked into Mushy’s eyes and saw a master, a man committed to helping us fight terror. And sometimes we must fight terror with tyranny. He promised me he’d be a more low-key autocrat, stop wearing that scary uniform — at least when he’s playing tennis.

From now on, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of tyrannical movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending democracy in our world so liberty can thrive.

We will persistently clarify the moral choice before every ruler and nation: Choose oppression, which can work, as we see with our Arab allies, or freedom, which — O.K., I admit it this once — we can’t make work in Iraq.

...Condi was very worried about Mushy suspending the Constitution, but Vice says Constitutions are for sissies. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Mushy’s press blackout. He thinks we can learn a few lessons from him.

...All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will ignore your oppression and excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will not stand with you.

I wonder. Does Dowd really believe what she writes?

Are her columns true reflections of her opinions, or is she just giving her lib elite audience what they want?

Is Dowd really able to swallow her own tripe?

---"As I told Mushy last night on that cool, high-tech videophone I got in the Sit Room, the best hope for expanding peace is expanding dictators."

---"The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the repression of liberty in other lands."

---"When I needed to subvert the democratic process during the 2000 recount, my Supreme Court was totally supportive."

---"[S]ometimes we must fight terror with tyranny."

---"From now on, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of tyrannical movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending democracy in our world so liberty can thrive."

---"Choose oppression, which can work, as we see with our Arab allies, or freedom, which — O.K., I admit it this once — we can’t make work in Iraq."

---"Condi was very worried about Mushy suspending the Constitution, but Vice says Constitutions are for sissies. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Mushy’s press blackout. He thinks we can learn a few lessons from him."

---"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will ignore your oppression and excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will not stand with you."

This stuff is sick.

Dowd despises Bush and Cheney and Rice with every fiber of her being.

Her mercilessness is her defining characteristic as a columnist.

This piece, however, is particularly caustic.

It's hard to distinguish between her hate for Bush and her hate for America.

Maureen Dowd, Hillary Clinton, and the Intern Factor

Why is it that Mitt Romney has been criticized for putting Hillary Clinton in the league of an intern when it comes to her experience?

This "loaded" word was considered by some to be an insult to Hillary. It's supposed to be a cheap shot to even utter the word "intern" around her, dredging up images of thongs and cigars and stained blue dresses.

"She's never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn't run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern," Romney said.

The Boston Herald says that's a "loaded" word when talking about the senator or her husband because of the former president's well-documented relationship with then-intern Monica Lewinsky in the mid-'90s.

A Clinton campaign spokeswoman had this to say about Romney's remark: "Hillary Clinton is a two-term United States senator who has represented the United States in 82 countries around the world, and has been one of the nation’s leading advocates for children and families for 35 years," Ann Lewis said in a statement, according to the Herald. "Trying to diminish her service isn't going to help Mr. Romney's weak and rudderless campaign."

As for the Romney campaign, spokesman Kevin Madden sent this response when we asked if Romney had intentionally alluded to the Lewinsky affair when he used the word intern:

"Governor Romney offered a substantive contrast between his record of experience as a chief executive in both elected office, at the Olympics and in the private sector compared to that of Senator Clinton.

"Senator Clinton doesn't have any comparable experience, and the governor's point is that, at this place in time, he is a better choice in that capacity than someone who needs on-the-job training as a chief executive.

"I'd disagree with any hyperactive analysis that a reference to needing on-the-job training has anything to do with the past Clinton administration."

So Romney is slammed for playing dirty just because he questioned the level of Hillary's experience.

Will Maureen Dowd be attacked by the Clinton camp because of her column today, directly confronting the significance of Hillary and the intern factor?

From the no longer "Select" columnist of the New York Times:

It’s an odd cultural inversion.

The French first lady, the one in a role where wives traditionally ignored and overlooked their husbands’ peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping their marriages intact and running the Élysée Palace, has fled her gilded perch, acting all-American and brimming over with feelings and feminist impulses.

The former American first lady, the one who’s supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband’s peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House.

Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French.

...In Essence magazine, Hillary sounded très French, très laissez-faire, talking about her marriage. “Now obviously we’ve had challenges as everybody in the world knows,” she said. “But I never doubted that it was a marriage worth investing in even in the midst of those challenges. And I’m really happy that I made that decision. Again, not a decision for everybody. And I think it’s so important for women to stand up for the right of women to make a decision that is best for them.”

In addition to the warrior strategy, the one that led Hillary to back President Bush on the Iraq war and the Iran drumbeat, the senator has a girlfriend strategy.

Hillary recently told an interviewer that they should talk like “two girlfriends,” and last week her campaign theme was: “Women Changing America.” She returns to Wellesley tomorrow to launch Hillblazers, a bid to attract young Hillarys to the campaign. She will be back in the setting of her 1969 feminist triumph as the commencement speaker who described her class’s desire for a “more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living” and who spoke truth to power, chastising Edward Brooke for being out of touch.

Hillary doesn’t speak truth to power any more. Now that Mark Penn believes women can carry her to victory, Hillary speaks girlfriend to girlfriend.

That tack, Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, would only work if she were “willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband’s sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain that it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest — and most womanly — ideals and convictions, for the Clintons’ political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he’s used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake’s characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification.

“In glossing over her husband’s actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judgment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness and added to the pain delivered upon these women.”

Dowd is not cutting Hillary any slack.

If a Republican dared to write or say anything remotely like this, that individual would be crucifed by the Left.

I guess it's OK for Dowd to seemingly attack because by the end of her column, Dowd points out that Hillary's handling of her philandering husband serves to prove that she's the superior candidate.

...But maybe the qualities that many find off-putting in Hillary — her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness — are the same ones that make people willing to vote for a woman.

Few are concerned that Hillary is strong enough for the job. She is cold-eyed about wanting power and raising money and turning everything about her life into a commodity. Yet, the characteristics that are somewhat troubling are the same ones that convincingly show she will do what it takes to beat Obama and Rudy. She will not be soft or vulnerable. She will not melt in a crisis.

And, unlike Obama, she doesn’t need to talk herself into manning up. Obama whiffed in the debate last night when Brian Williams and Tim Russert teed up the first question for him to take on Hillary — something the debate dominatrix never would have done.

Bottom line: Dowd is calling Hillary a man.

Dowd is saying that Hillary is more of a man than Barack Obama. (Have you noticed she loves to poke at Obama's manhood?)

Will Dowd be criticized for using the term "dominatrix" to describe Hillary?

Is that a "loaded" word?

There's so much in this one column over which Hillary and her people would cry foul if they chose. They certainly would if it came from Republicans.

---She has abandoned the women that Bill dumped at the side of the road when he was finished with them.

---She has whitewashed his abusive pattern of preying on "women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful" for his sexual gratification.

(Sounds very "intern" to me.)

---She has off-putting qualities, including: "her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness."

---"She is cold-eyed about wanting power and raising money and turning everything about her life into a commodity."

---She's manly.

---She's a dominatrix.

---She acts so French.

Dowd gets to say it all. She gets to tackle the intern factor head on.

That's because Dowd is arguing that Hillary's marriage to hound dog Bill makes her uniquely qualified to be President of the United States.

In Dowd's world, a woman strong enough to accept a lifetime of betrayal and humiliation from her husband -- tempered by adultery, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace -- is fit to be leader of the Free World.

Catty Maureen Dowd Attacks the Republicans' Wives

Now that miserable failure TimesSelect is no more, it's easier to access New York Times columnists.

Thrilling. The unwashed masses can once again read their "wisdom." What a privilege!

Maureen Dowd mainly takes on Rudy Giuliani in her Sunday column. But "Uxorious or Spurious?" isn't just about Giuliani and his relationship with the NRA.

As usual, Dowd veers off into odd name-calling and very personal attacks.

Rather than sticking to commentary about the GOP candidates and the issues, she shamelessly slams their wives.

I don't know if it's laziness on her part, but it seems that she lifts lines from her diary and slaps them in her columns. Some things are better left unsaid in a public forum. Dowd hasn't learned that.

If she wants to claw at Giuliani, he's fair game. Fine.

However, I don't see why she has to draw blood from his wife and the wives of the other GOP candidates.

First, Dowd accuses Fred Thompson of exploiting his beautiful wife to win approval with the NRA audience.

Fred Thompson had already spoken to the group, recalling palling around with Charlton Heston, shooting skeet with some good ol’ boys from the N.R.A., and hanging out at gun stores and gun shows.

After guns, sports, Moses and a reference to his young ’uns, there was only one other ingredient needed for Flintstone Fred’s testosterone cocktail: a sexy blonde. Introducing his wife, Jeri, he drawled, “I think she’d make a much better first lady than Bill Clinton.”

Because Jeri is an attractive woman, does that mean that she shouldn't campaign for her husband or join him at appearances?

I find the lib media to be particularly vile in the way that they belittle her and treat her like an object.

When Dowd gets into the cell phone call that Giuliani took from his wife Judi during his speech to the NRA, she goes way beyond analyzing that incident and brutalizes Giuliani's wife. (By the way, I think that call has received a ridiculous amount of attention and analysis.)

Dowd writes:

First The Times’s Marc Santora noted that it wasn’t the first time Rudy had interrupted an appearance to take a call from his Princess Bride, as Vanity Fair dubbed her. He did the same thing in June in Hialeah, Fla., with more mushy talk during a rally.

This suggests either that Friday’s call was staged to humanize the dictatorial former mayor, or that Rudy is afraid of Judi’s digital wrath, or that the candidate is still struggling with how to integrate his third wife into his campaign, after her puppy-killing, husband-hiding, cabinet-sitting rough start.

Dowd seems to be taking a cue from Hillary Clinton's pal Tom Vilsack by joining him in going after Giuliani's personal life. It's not smart for liberals to make the private lives of the candidates an issue, considering Hillary is likely to be the Democrat nominee.

Dowd attributes the NRA phone call moment to either Giuliani's castration by Judi or his efforts to work this supposedly evil woman into his campaign.

Simply put, Dowd's analysis is really ugly and uncivil, really unnecessary.

Dowd doesn't stop there. She describes Mitt Romney's wife and children this way:

The episode also provided ammunition to Mitt Romney’s camp, which sensed an opportunity to highlight their candidate’s scary-perfect wife and scary-perfect kids.

I am really sick of liberals referring to good people, politically conservative people, as "scary-perfect," "Stepford Wives," etc.

If they can't find something to criticize, then the liberals criticize the fact that there's nothing to criticize. Have you noticed that?

I don't think conservatives would get away with being so cruel to the wives of the Democrat candidates. And if they did, I would lose respect for them if they engaged in such attacks.

It's a double standard. Same old, same old.

For all their self-proclaimed enlightenment, overflowing with respect and compassion, liberals don't hesitate to mercilessly slam women.

New York Times' Troubles

The New York Times is in dire straits.

First, it was forced to lop off over an inch. (Size matters.)

As if that shrinkage wasn't humiliating enough, today there's word the propaganda rag is giving up on TimesSelect.



Back in 2005, The Times starting charging online readers for access to some of its columnists.

Maureen Dowd's drivel could no longer freely be accessed via the New York Times website.

I know of one time when the TimesSelect wall was torn down.

During the week of the November 2006 elections, the lib outlet celebrated with "Free Access Week." Online readers were granted the privilege of reading their best and brightest.

Times Select is celebrating "Free Access Week" from November 6 - 12. (This dispels the notion that the best things in life are free.)

I guess dramatically limiting the readers of their columnists' articles by no longer having them available online free of charge has had its drawbacks.Their message reaches a far narrower audience. They end up preaching to the choir.

The New York Post is reporting that the days of TimesSelect are ending--permanently.

The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

TimesSelect was a miserable failure.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. must be pretty cranky these days.

I know what would cheer him up. He needs to expose another secret anti-terrorism program. He gets such joy from subverting the government.

Obama's Ethics Reform Plan

Barack Obama's ethics reform plan is kind of like Bill Clinton being the keynote speaker at a seminar about remaining faithful to your spouse.

MANCHESTER, N.H -- Democrat Barack Obama on Friday vowed to institute ethics reforms if elected president, including tough restrictions on lobbying by former political appointees.

The first-term Illinois senator, who has backed legislation to reduce the influence of big money and special interest in lawmaking, offered several proposals. Most notable would be prohibiting political appointees in his administration from lobbying the executive branch for the remainder of his time in office.

Those who join an Obama administration would not be able to work on regulations or contracts directly related to their former employers for two years.

"When I am president, I will make it absolutely clear that working in an Obama administration is not about serving your former employer, your future employer or your bank account — it's about serving your country, and that's what comes first," he said in a speech at New Hampshire Community Technical College in Manchester, N.H.

..."In our democracy, the price of access and influence should be nothing more than your voice and your vote," he said.

Perhaps Obama thinks no one in New Hampshire is familiar with Tony Rezko.

You know Tony Rezko, right?

November 5, 2006

BY DAVE MCKINNEY AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters Contributing: Mark Brown

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama expressed regret late Friday for his 2005 land purchase from now-indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko in a deal that enlarged the senator's yard.

"I consider this a mistake on my part and I regret it," Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times in an exclusive and revealing question-and-answer exchange about the transaction.

In June 2005, Obama and Rezko purchased adjoining parcels in Kenwood. The state's junior senator paid $1.65 million for a Georgian revival mansion, while Rezko paid $625,000 for the adjacent, undeveloped lot. Both closed on their properties on the same day.

Last January, aiming to increase the size of his sideyard, Obama paid Rezko $104,500 for a strip of his land.

The transaction occurred at a time when it was widely known Tony Rezko was under investigation by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and as other Illinois politicians befriended by Rezko distanced themselves from him.

In the Sun-Times interview, Obama acknowledged approaching Rezko about the two properties being up for sale and that Rezko developed an immediate interest. Obama did not explain why he reached out to Rezko given the developer's growing problems.

Last month, Rezko was indicted for his role in an alleged pay-to-play scheme designed to fatten Gov. Blagojevich's political fund. Rezko also was accused of bilking a creditor.

"With respect to the purchase of my home, I am confident that everything was handled ethically and above board. But I regret that while I tried to pay close attention to the specific requirements of ethical conduct, I misgauged the appearance presented by my purchase of the additional land from Mr. Rezko," Obama said.

How clean is Obama?

Queen lib Maureen Dowd wonders about his judgment.

In a catty column taunting Michelle Obama, Dowd brings up Obama and his sleazy dealings with Rezko.

Michelle conveys the appealing idea that she will tell her husband when he’s puffed up or out of line. She aims high — she ordered her husband to stop puffing on cigarettes as he started campaigning. But then, why didn’t she see the red flags on the Rezko deal?

In order to get a bigger yard for their new house on Chicago’s South Side in 2005, the Obamas got into what the senator now confesses was a “boneheaded” real estate arrangement with a sleazy political dealmaker named Tony Rezko, who has been indicted on influence-peddling charges.

On Monday, The Chicago Sun-Times reported more shady Rezko news: “Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems,” from a lack of heat to no lack of drug dealers and squatters.

Mr. Obama riposted that “it wasn’t brought to my attention.” But isn’t that where a dazzling, tough, smart and connected wife could help a guy out?

Obama and ethics --- I think he has a lot to learn.

Maybe we still have a lot to learn about Obama and his ethics.
_____________________

An aside: The name Tony Rezko comes up in connection with Wisconsin's ethical, pure, untouchable Gov. Jim Doyle.

Dowd and Two Tonys

Maureen Dowd's column, "A Tale of Two Tonys, Exiting Beleaguered," is truly bizarre.

Yes, Dowd's columns are always strange. It's normal for her writings to reveal some personal emotional instability. Her vulnerable little girl routine is usually accompanied by incredible arrogance and self-indulgence -- an odd mix for a woman her age.

Dowd is the perpetual adolescent -- not quite a child, but not a mature adult.

I guess that's why she rates as the queen bee lib. She exhibits all the angst and the whining that typify the lib elite. She has meaningless babble down to a science.

Her rambling analysis of the lives and times of Tony Soprano and Tony Blair has all the import of a mediocre Freshman English essay.

She talks about Blair through the lens of The Sopranos. Dowd finds parallels in the fact and the fiction. Then she lapses into a discussion of David Chase with the depth found in a TV Guide article.

She writes:

They’re both going out, not with a bang, but with a bing.

As they go dark, the two Tonys are bitter, paranoid and worn down by their enemies and scheming erstwhile allies. They both live in a bleak universe of half-truths, compromises and betrayals, a world changed utterly by the violence they set in motion. They were both brought low by high-stakes mistakes.

...Tony Blair fears the feral beast. Tony Soprano is the feral beast.

The two Tonys found that their skin was never thick enough. And they stumbled into trouble with their Juniors, Junior Bush and Junior Soprano. Before he steps down in two weeks, Tony Blair decided to let loose with one of those self-pitying Tony Soprano-style rants that drove Dr. Melfi to terminate him. Call it No. 10 Downer Street.

...On his first visit to Baghdad Monday, Gordon Brown vowed never to repeat his partner’s mistake of politicizing intelligence to go to war. We’ll have to wait to see if David Chase, the Garbo of cable now pursued by a feral beast of disappointed “Sopranos” fans, is feeling as paranoid and thin-skinned as the two Tonys, and as deeply surprised by the consequences of his actions.

Mr. Chase, an apocalyptic tease, gave us a gimmicky and unsatisfying film-school-style blackout for an end to his mob saga, a stunt one notch above “It was all a dream.” It was the TV equivalent of one of those design-your-own-mug places.

Even though I loved the first few years of “The Sopranos,” Mr. Chase always struck me as passive-aggressive. The more fans obsessed on his show, the longer his hiatuses would grow and the slower his narrative velocity moved. His ending was equally perverse, throwing the ball contemptuously back at his fans after manipulating them and teasing them for an hour with red herrings — and a ginger cat.

So Dowd compares the "beleaguered" Tony Blair to the "beleaguered" Tony Soprano. She weighs in with some armchair psychology on David Chase.

So what?

What's the point?

Bottom line: Dowd was left unsatisfied by the final episode of The Sopranos, I think.

Or maybe she was left unsatisfied by Tony Blair.

It could be that Dowd is leaving the ending of her column open to interpretation. We are supposed to fill in the blanks.

Why the open-endedness?

She may want to keep her options open as far as a future movie deal goes.

Dowd Taunts Michelle Obama

Maureen Dowd is like the junior high school girl with a crush on a boy who doesn't know she's alive.

Dowd desperately wants Barack Obama's attention. She desperately wants something.

How to get it?

Attack his wife.

In her column today, "She’s Not Buttering Him Up," Dowd expresses her discomfort with Michelle and Barack Obama's shtick on the campaign trail.

She writes:

Usually, I love the dynamics of a cheeky woman puncturing the ego of a cocky guy.

I liked it in ’40s movies, and I liked it with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, and Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis in “Moonlighting.”

So why don’t I like it with Michelle and Barack?

Tell us more, Maureen!

What are your insights on why you don't care???

I wince a bit when Michelle Obama chides her husband as a mere mortal — a comic routine that rests on the presumption that we see him as a god.

The tweaking takes place at fundraisers, where Michelle wants to lift the veil on their home life a bit and give the folks their money’s worth.

At the big Hollywood fund-raiser for Senator Obama in February, Michelle came on strong.

“I am always a little amazed at the response that people get when they hear from Barack,” she told the crowd at the Beverly Hilton, as her husband stood by looking like a puppy being scolded, reported Hud Morgan of Men’s Vogue. “A great man, a wonderful man. But still a man. ...

“I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right?

“And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive. For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his 5-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.”

She said that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she’d like to meet him sometime.

Dowd goes on to cite a litany of other instances of Michelle Obama tweaking her husband -- the god-like, messiah candidate.

What's weird about the column is that Dowd never gets around to really explaining why she's uncomfortable with Michelle Obama's comments.

Dowd does bash her for failing to rein in Obama's dealings with the sleazy Tony Rezko.

...Michelle conveys the appealing idea that she will tell her husband when he’s puffed up or out of line. She aims high — she ordered her husband to stop puffing on cigarettes as he started campaigning. But then, why didn’t she see the red flags on the Rezko deal?

In order to get a bigger yard for their new house on Chicago’s South Side in 2005, the Obamas got into what the senator now confesses was a “boneheaded” real estate arrangement with a sleazy political dealmaker named Tony Rezko, who has been indicted on influence-peddling charges.

On Monday, The Chicago Sun-Times reported more shady Rezko news: “Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems,” from a lack of heat to no lack of drug dealers and squatters.

Mr. Obama riposted that “it wasn’t brought to my attention.” But isn’t that where a dazzling, tough, smart and connected wife could help a guy out?

So what is the point of Dowd's rambling column?

Is it to expose wife Michelle as slimy?

Is it to draw attention to candidate Barack's dirty side?

Like so many of her columns, this one is a weird, personal, PSYCHOanalytic piece with just a bit of news tossed in to lend it an air of credibilty and purpose beyond her own navel-gazing.

Since Dowd can't seem to understand why she doesn't like Michelle Obama's comments about the "real" Barack, I'll offer some amateur analysis of my own.

Dowd doesn't like the fact that Michelle Obama has a successful career, and a husband and children.

Michelle Obama has it all and Dowd can't stand it.

Yes, that works.

Eleanor Clift's Extremism

I think of Eleanor Clift as one of the media wonder women of the Left.

Helen Thomas, Clift, and Maureen Dowd are the run amok voices of liberal extremism.

Depending on your politics, they can be considered either superheroes or the enemy's useful idiots.

Clift has an interview with Jimmy Carter in the upcoming issue of Newsweek.

There are some excerpts online.

Although Clift questions Carter about Ken Stein's criticism of Carter's new book and the allegations of plagiarism, it seems like Clift isn't being a tough reporter as much as she's serving as an enabler for Carter.

Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters has a stinging account of a column Clift wrote shortly after Tim Johnson suffered his health crisis, "Tim Johnson's health crisis is a reminder of the fragility of the Democratic majority. What the party should do now."

Clift begins her column:

The possibility that the Senate might yet remain in Republican hands is a godsend for President Bush. With his Iraq policy in shambles and the Joint Chiefs of Staff resisting a last call to arms, Bush must have been wondering whether the higher power he consulted before taking the country to war had abandoned him.

Word that South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson had suffered a brain hemorrhage that could leave him unable to serve out his term has repercussions throughout the body politic. On a human level, everybody hopes and prays for Johnson’s recovery. But this is Washington, and with the Senate poised to do real damage to Bush and his war party, not everybody’s prayers will be answered.

Sheppard comments:

I’m not kidding you, folks. That’s really how she started an article that was published roughly 24 hours after the Senator was rushed to the hospital. Frankly, I’m so disgusted that I don’t want to cut-and-paste any more of this disrespectful drivel. Those with a stronger stomach than I should click on the link above, but I’m outtie, for I need to go scrub this filth from my fingertips, hug my children, and imagine a world where people have more concern for their fellow man than Eleanor Clift obviously does.

Here's some more of Clift's "disresepectful drivel":

Just as Wellstone’s untimely death cost the Democrats a key Senate seat, Johnson’s illness should inject a sense of urgency into the Democrats’ agenda. No one would have put the robust-looking Johnson on an endangered list. Democrats have plenty of octogenarians and septuagenarians to worry about making it through to the next election. A health crisis that strikes without warning is a reminder of the fragility of the Democratic majority. With the direction of U.S. policy for the next two years riding on Senate control, Democratic leaders can’t afford to sit around figuring out how to position the party for ’08.

That's beyond bad taste.

She's so callous.

Clift certainly destroys the myth that libs are compassionate.

When I heard of Johnson's health emergency, I didn't think of control of the Senate.

I came to terms with the Dems being in control of Congress weeks ago.

It didn't even cross my mind to do anything other than hope and pray for a speedy recovery for him and wish his family the best at this difficult time.

Clift's fretting over all those Dem octogenarians and septuagenarians is postively ghoulish.

It truly creeps me out.

Politics trumps human decency for some of these libs. Disgusting.

Another disgusting Clift moment came on The McLaughlin Group this weekend.

In a discussion about the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, Clift screeched that the war in Iraq is lost.

She said, "This is about managing defeat."

Why are these Lefties so bent on insisting that the U.S. has suffered a humiliating loss in Iraq?

It's as if victory isn't in the Dems' vocabulary anymore.

Did Truman look at Japan and approach the war in the Pacific as how best to manage defeat?

Clift and her defeatism is nuts.

By studying history, we can learn from mistakes; but we also can learn from triumphs.

The libs don't get that.

Dowd: "The Oval Intervention"

I didn't get to this yesterday, but I still want to make a few comments about Maureen Dowd's column, "The Oval Intervention."

Dowd writes:

It is not a happy mood in the Oval Office.

Poppy is sobbing, his face in his hands, slumped in one of the yellow-and-blue striped chairs. Laura is screaming the words “Oscar de la Renta” and “rendition” into her cellphone, still seeing red after showing up at a White House gala in the same $8,400 red gown as three other women who did not happen to be first lady.

Bob Gates is grim-faced, but not as grim-faced as Barbara, whose look could freeze not only the Potomac but the Tigris and the Euphrates. Scowcroft is over on the couch, trying to nap while Kissinger drones softly in his ear.

And, of course, there is the Deprogrammer for the Decider, James Baker, perfectly suited in bright green tie and suited perfectly for his spot behind the president’s desk.

The Council of Elders had hoped this Apocalypto moment wouldn’t be necessary. They had assumed that the scorching Iraq Study Group report would have the same effect on Junior as the bucket of cold water that Mr. Baker’s strict father, a lawyer known as “the Warden,” used to throw on his face to wake him up as a boy.

But Junior is trying to wriggle away completely, offering a decidedly cool response to the attempt to yank him into the reality-based community. He rallied his last two allies — his English poodle and his Scottish terrier, Blair and Barney.

I don't think Dowd is clever.

I don't find her style amusing. There's nothing cute about her column.

I think she is shockingly disrespectful. The way she mocks former President Bush makes me sick.

Dowd imagines the scene in the Oval Office.

Her talents, and I use the term extremely loosely, are being wasted. Dowd is a pulp fiction writer. Hollywood is calling...

He is loath to give up his gunslinger pose to go all diplo. He cleaves to the neocon complaint that it is the realists who are now being unrealistic, thinking the administration can bargain with Syria and Iran, or that the Army can train Iraqi security forces (or, as they are known there, death squads) in a matter of months when they haven’t been able to do it in years.

The Velvet Hammer is undeterred. He’s doing an all-out intervention, locking Junior and Barney in the little study next to the Oval. To stress the seriousness of the situation, they don’t give the president his feather pillow.

The group gathers at the door of the study. “My boy,” his dad tells him between sobs. “We love you. We’re here for you. We’re worried about you. You’re not just hurting yourself, you’re hurting others. This is a safe place. No one’s judging you …”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” Junior snaps. “I just actually read 96 pages of your friends’ judging me in that cowpie report.” Barney woofs in support.

Barbara can be heard muttering from across the room. “We were right about Jebbie.”

Henry the K lumbers up to the door and in a low Teutonic rumble says: “It’s time we stopped taking care of you and started caring about you. Would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

...Baker gently nudges Laura aside. “Now son, hear me out. We’ve disabled your enablers. Rummy has written his last self-serving memo. Dick’s got his hands full explaining his darlin’ new grandchild’s Two Mommies. Don’t bother calling for Condi. She’s at the bottom of Foggy Bottom. You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”

It’s not sinking in. “We must achieve our objective,” Junior sputters. “Our objective is success. To succeed we must have success. If we don’t win, we lose. We are the winners. We can’t let the … we’re in an ideological struggle and that’s why we have a strategy … AL QAEDA! We must help democracy in Iraq succeed because … ISLAMOFASCISTS! … that is the objective of a successful …”

Barney scratches at the door, trying to cut and run.

Enough.

Our enemies, the Islamic extremists, have a friend in Dowd, queen of the Left, lib elite goddess.

You remember our enemies, the Islamic extremists, don't you?

They're responsible for acts of unspeakable terror.



They intend to destroy Israel.

THEY DON'T WANT TO TALK. They want to win. They want to defeat us.

I agree that an intervention of sorts is in order. The U.S. has been "intervening" since the fall of 2001.

Lefties like Dowd just don't understand that sometimes interventions are forced to be made via the barrel of a gun.

This struggle against our enemies has been reduced to a disgusting political game.

It's about our security.

It's about ending the violence.

It's about achieving peace.

It's not a joke.

Dowd: Goodness Gracious!

Maureen Dowd's column is particularly catty today.

She's so bitter that I pity her. She seems just miserable.

"Good Gracious! The Truth!" dwells on former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the new man, Robert Gates.

The woman absolutely hates Rumsfeld. She despises him with every fiber of her being.

I think Dowd's disdain for Rumsfeld runs even deeper than the scorn she harbors for President Bush.

It's so intense that it creeps me out.

Of course, Dowd doesn't cut Bush any slack.

For instance, she can't even bring herself to mention the President by name. She mean-spiritedly refers to our President as "Junior" and "43."

Once, she mentions the "Bush administration," and once, she refers to "the old Bush 41 gang."

Dowd refuses to show the President of the United States enough respect to use his name.

It's really quite childish, but typical of radical liberal elite speak.

She demeans President Bush, thereby asserting what she believes is her intellectual superiority.

Goofy.

Dowd begins:

First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.

The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.

That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.

Dowd is declaring President Bush to be a failure.

She enjoys saying, "Ha ha, your plans to make Americans safer and free millions of oppressed Iraqis failed."

The pleasure that Dowd and those of her ilk take in the difficulties in Iraq is disgusting.

The Lefties have been rooting for an Iraqi quagmire from the opening days of the war in 2003.

I don't get why they want defeat so badly.

I understand it. They don't care about the Iraqis. They don't care about our country. They don't care about the consequences of surrendering to Islamic extremists.

They care about power and their own aggrandizement.

These aren't bleeding heart libs. These are very selfish people.

In her column, Dowd spins what Gates had to say during his confirmation hearing yesterday. She relishes his belief that Iraq is no bed of roses.

It was the sort of realistic assessment that never came from Rummy, except when he privately admitted in a classified Nov. 6 memo that their Iraq strategy was “not working well enough or fast enough,” offering a silly hodgepodge of wildly tardy or dubious options, like telling the Iraqis to “pull up their socks.”

It was chilling to see in print that the man who spent nearly four years overseeing the war did not have any idea what to do in Iraq; his basic plan was not so much to fix the problem as to lower expectations. The memo, reported by Michael Gordon in The Times on Sunday, offered the following lame-brained prescriptions to manage perception:

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ” And this: “Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist.”

So with the Pentagon deciding whether to Go Big, Go Long or Go Home, Rummy urged the White House to Go Minimalist and simply streamline the spin.

Junior took the advice to manage perceptions by minimizing Rummy two days after he sent the memo. The walls had closed in on W.; he could no longer minimize the war, which was escalating, or the perception that it was not going well, which had spread into Republican ranks. Even Gen. Peter Pace, yes man that he is, acknowledged on Monday that “We’re not winning but we’re not losing.”

Disagree with Rumsfeld.

Point out his mistakes.

Be glad he's gone.

Fine. I don't have a problem with that.

But what's with the need to belittle the sitting President, "Junior," during wartime?

"Junior" is still the Commander-in-Chief.

Does Dowd have to try to score political points off of Rumsfeld's departure?

Does she have to mercilessly flog the current adminstration, all the while keeping a huge smile/smirk on her face?

I'm very uncomfortable with Dowd the Dominatrix.

It's not only what she says that's a problem. It's how she says it.

I don't get the feeling that she's with us.

It's an attitude thing.

There was no blathering yesterday about “known unknowns” or “Henny Penny” pessimists. The soft-spoken, vanilla Mr. Gates offered a sharp contrast from the finger-wagging, flavorful Rummy. In a remarkable shift from the mindless bellicosity and jingoism of the last few years, Mr. Gates said he did not favor military action against Iran or Syria.

When did Rumsfeld say that he favored military action against Iran or Syria?

When has President Bush ever said that he favored that approach?

Goodness Gracious, Maureenie! That would be never!

Even though he was a member of the Iraq Study Group, Mr. Gates conceded that there would be no silver bullet. “It’s my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq,” he said. Asked by Robert Byrd who was responsible for 9/11, Saddam or Osama, Mr. Gates did not try to fudge. “Osama bin Laden, Senator,” he replied. Asked who has represented a greater threat to the U.S., he repeated “Osama bin Laden.”

Duh.

This is idiotic.

Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11.

Gates didn't reveal anything that we don't already know.

Again, when did Rumsfeld say that 9/11 was Saddam's plan?

When did Bush say that?

It drives me nuts when Dowd lies via her baseless insinuations.

The question that Dowd ends with is whether Gates will be allowed to make changes in U.S. strategy in Iraq.

That's not really the issue.

As I see it, what matters is whether Gates intends to achieve the objectives that President Bush and his administration have held all along in regard to Iraq.

Success in Iraq means leaving behind a functioning, stable government, and not a reign of terror and torture and mass graves.

Is it really that difficult to comprehend? Is that truth so hard to grasp?

Dowd can't handle the truth so she makes up her own reality.

Goodness gracious! Dowd needs to acknowledge the truth!

Dowd Demonizes Dick

In "Vice Axes That 70's Show," Maureen Dowd displays her usual lunacy.

This time, she digs her claws into Dick Cheney. She digs deep, ending the year with a big, liberal, paranoid bang.

It's vintage Maureenie - exactly what we've come to know and ... , well, what we've come to know.

Dowd writes:

We start the new year with the same old fear: Dick Cheney.

I can't say that I'm afraid of Dick Cheney. Nope, I'm not starting off the new year with that fear.

Maureenie doesn't speak for me.


The vice president, who believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping, is so pathologically secretive that if you use Google Earth's database to see his official residence, the view is scrambled and obscured. You can view satellite photos of the White House, the Pentagon and the Capitol - but not of the Lord of the Underworld's lair.

Maureenie is being intentionally misleading. She asserts that Cheney "believes in unwarranted, unlimited snooping." That's ridiculous.

The Vice President believes in doing all that we can do to protect ourselves from TERRORISTS. That's not the same as a license for "unwarranted, unlimited" snooping.

Have 900 hundred FBI files been discovered in Cheney's office?

Oh, that's right. I'm thinking of the Clinton White House.

If the Bush Administration has been digging into the private lives of individuals not considered to possibly have connections with TERRORISTS, or individuals that do not pose a possible NATIONAL SECURITY RISK, I would deem that a shameful, inexcusable abuse of power.

For instance, if the FBI files of prominent Dems were found in Cheney's possession, I would call that a serious infraction. Such actions would be akin to the abuses under President Clinton. It would be completely unacceptable.

However, as usual, Maureenie makes generalizations that she cannot back up.

While she calls Cheney "pathologically secretive," I think Maureenie is pathologically delusional.

"Lord of the Underworld's lair"? That is positively cartoonish.

Maureenie has truly lost it. She sounds like the looniest of the Left, and that is really loony.

Vice is literally a shadow president. He's obsessive about privacy - but, unfortunately, only his own.

I consider the New York Times and Maureenie to be obsessed - with bringing down the Bush Administration.

"He's obsessive about privacy - but, unfortunately, only his own."

What a silly statement!

Like so many libs, Maureenie has gone so over the top that her views are laughable. What she writes cannot be taken as serious analysis.

Speaking of privacy, a few months back, didn't the New York Times attempt to snoop into the adoption records of the children of John Roberts?

YES. Privacy concerns? Right.

That brings to mind another example of liberal hypocrisy.

In September, Michelle Malkin wrote:

"Have you heard what Democrats working for Sen. Charles Schumer at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee tried to do here in my home state of Maryland to bring down Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele?

"Steele, a rising star in the party, is considering a Senate bid. Two of Schumer's staffers, including a former researcher for David Brock's Media Matters, obtained Steele's credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly and willfully obtain a credit report under false pretenses.

"There has been no outcry from privacy advocates, the ACLU, the champions of clean campaigns, or any major MSM editorial board. Needless to say, if it had been Republicans involved in this outrageous scheme and the target had been a liberal minority politician, it would be a front-page NYTimes scandal. The Times (surprise, surprise) has yet to cover the story..."

The libs' selective outrage is so unbecoming, not to mention discrediting.

Back to Maureenie:

Google Earth users alerted The Times to this latest bit of Cheney concealment after a front-page story last week about the international fears inspired by free Google software that features detailed displays of things like government and military sites around the world.

"For a brief period," they reported, "photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured." So Google replaced those images with unaltered photographs taken by a private company.

Even though the story did not mention the Cheney residence - and even though it's not near the White House - The Times ran a clarifying correction yesterday that said, "The view of the vice president's residence in Washington remains obscured."

Fitting, since Vice has turned America into a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that turns things upside down.

Considering that the Pentagon was hit and the World Trade Center was destroyed by TERRORISTS, does anyone really think that it's out of line to obscure the details of high profile targets?

Way to assist TERRORISTS, Google! Very nice.

Moreover, is Maureenie actually saying that Cheney controls Google? She is suggesting that he somehow managed to keep views of his residence shrouded in secrecy.

That's just goofy. Typical Maureenie.

Guys argue that women tend to stew and hold grudges more, sometimes popping up to blow the whistle on a man's bad behavior years later, like a missile out of the night, as Alan Simpson said of Anita Hill.

Yet look at Cheney and Rummy. Their steroid-infused power grabs stem from their years stewing in the Ford White House, a time when they felt emasculated because they were stripped of prerogatives.

More of Maureenie's psychobabble and armchair psychoanalysis--

Funny, as well as psycho.

Clearly, Maureenie has issues.

Rummy, a Ford chief of staff who became defense secretary, and his protégé, Cheney, who succeeded him as chief of staff, felt diminished by the post-Watergate laws and reforms that reduced the executive branch's ability to be secretive and unilateral, tilting power back toward Congress.

The 70's were also a heady period for the press, which reached the zenith of its power when it swayed public opinion on Vietnam and exposed Watergate. Reporters got greater access to government secrets with a stronger Freedom of Information Act.

Chenrummy thought the press was running amok, that leaks should be plugged and that Congress was snatching power that rightfully belonged to the White House.

So these two crusty pals spent 30 years dreaming of inflating the deflated presidential muscularity. Cheney christened himself vice president and brought in Rummy for the most ridiculously pumped-up presidency ever. All this was fine with W., whose family motto is: "We know best. Trust us."

Oh my God! Maureenie has really gone over the edge. I think she's in desperate need of an intervention.

Her construction of these lame scenarios creeps me out. It's weird.

The two regents turned back the clock to the Nixon era, bringing back presidential excesses like wiretapping along with presidential power. As attorney general, John Ashcroft clamped down on the Freedom of Information Act. For two years, the Pentagon has been sitting on a request from The Times's Jeff Gerth to cough up a secret 500-page document prepared by Halliburton on what to do with Iraq's oil industry - a plan it wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.). Very convenient.

Defending warrantless wiretapping last week, the vice president spoke of his distaste for the erosion of presidential authority in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

"I do believe that, especially in the day and age we live in, the nature of the threats we face, it was true during the cold war, as well as I think what is true now, the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," he intoned. Translation: Back off, Congress and the press.

Checks, balances, warrants, civil liberties - they're all so 20th century. Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency.

Maureenie is truly doing a disservice here.

She is completely dismissing the realities of past presidencies, Dem presidencies. Maureenie is the Queen of Sins of Omission.

Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?

Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace.

Of course, she's suggesting that the Demon Dick wanted to personally profit from U.S. oil consumption.

Gee, what did the Clinton Administration do to help the country kick its oil addiction?

Maureenie fans, consider this:

Researchers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government examined the environmental policy record of former President Bill Clinton. Environmental quality improved overall during the decade, the researchers found, continuing a trend that began in the 1970s, although improvements were much less than during the previous two decades.

From 1997, something else to consider:

[In the 1996 election, Clinton's] record on the environment wasn't based on a record of positive achievement but instead on his attacks on Congress. The president had prevented deep cuts in spending on the Environmental Protection Agency and he claimed credit for stopping the most egregious attempts to revise regulations such as those regarding endangered species and water quality standards. But the real Clinton environmental record centers not on the salvation of Nixon-era regulations and agencies, but on what has been left undone.

Criticism from environmental groups has centered on the lack of action in two important areas: local air-quality control standards and global greenhouse emissions. On air-quality, the White House has taken what it would like to call a centrist position. The Clinton administration remained silent on demands by EPA head Carol Browner for tougher standards, but also resisted Republican demands for changes that might reduce standards for certain localities.

If we are to accept the theory that Cheney was motivated by a quest for personal profits from oil, what was Clinton's reasons for failing to push for stricter environmental regulations and alternative energy sources?

Obviously, in terms of the truth, Maureenie is thoroughly misguided and intentionally misleading.

She's lucky that the Times and other lib propaganda rags suffer from the same lack of direction and morality. The woman has an audience that accepts her babbling as gospel and buys into the demonization of Vice President Cheney.

It's sad, but true.

A Rehabilitation Project

Ironic.

The New York Times gave Maureen Dowd the task of trying to restore some credibility to the floundering paper.

The assumption is that having Maureenie come down hard on Judith Miller will somehow exonerate the Times for all of its failures that have been unearthed since Miller left the clink.

True, Maureenie is rough on Miller, but she pledges allegiance to Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller and the Times. As usual, she contradicts herself repeatedly in the space of a single Op-Ed piece, one of Maureenie's special talents.

She criticizes Miller's jail stint as a "career rehabilitation project."

I find that particularly ironic since Maureenie's column is no more than a feeble attempt at rehab for the Times.

She writes:

I've always liked Judy Miller. I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate's Becky Sharp.

The traits she has that drive many reporters at The Times crazy - her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur - have never bothered me. I enjoy operatic types.

If anyone is operatic it's Maureenie. That's probably why Miller's annoying traits don't bother her.

Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times's seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official's background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.

At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, "I think I should be sitting in the Times seat."

It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.

All these years later and Maureenie needs to tell that story. Gee, maybe some of Miller's traits didn't sit too well with Maureenie after all.

I would bet that Maureenie wanted to write: "It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. Bitch."

She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet "Miss Run Amok."

Judy's stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed "incestuous amplification." Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

Remember, the White House's case for war fit perfectly with the Clinton administration's reasoning for taking out Saddam.

Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.

When Bill Keller became executive editor in the summer of 2003, he barred Judy from covering Iraq and W.M.D. issues. But he acknowledged in The Times's Sunday story about Judy's role in the Plame leak case that she had kept "drifting" back. Why did nobody stop this drift?

Judy admitted in the story that she "got it totally wrong" about W.M.D. "If your sources are wrong," she said, "you are wrong." But investigative reporting is not stenography.

Blame it on the intelligence gathering that spanned administrations.

By the way, the Times did some positively stellar investigative reporting when it came to Hurricane Katrina. Rape, murder, and thousands and thousands dead in the aftermath of the hurricane--yeah, that was really great reporting.

Earth to Maureenie....That was nothing but the stenography of rumors and falsehoods.

The Times's story and Judy's own first-person account had the unfortunate effect of raising more questions. As Bill said yesterday in an e-mail note to the staff, Judy seemed to have "misled" the Washington bureau chief, Phil Taubman, about the extent of her involvement in the Valerie Plame leak case.

She casually revealed that she had agreed to identify her source, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, as a "former Hill staffer" because he had once worked on Capitol Hill. The implication was that this bit of deception was a common practice for reporters. It isn't.

She said that she had wanted to write about the Wilson-Plame matter, but that her editor would not allow it. But Managing Editor Jill Abramson, then the Washington bureau chief, denied this, saying that Judy had never broached the subject with her.

So, Miller is a liar. Et tu, Maureenie?

It also doesn't seem credible that Judy wouldn't remember a Marvel comics name like "Valerie Flame." Nor does it seem credible that she doesn't know how the name got into her notebook and that, as she wrote, she "did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby."

An Associated Press story yesterday reported that Judy had coughed up the details of an earlier meeting with Mr. Libby only after prosecutors confronted her with a visitor log showing that she had met with him on June 23, 2003. This cagey confusion is what makes people wonder whether her stint in the Alexandria jail was in part a career rehabilitation project.

Judy refused to answer a lot of questions put to her by Times reporters, or show the notes that she shared with the grand jury. I admire Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller for aggressively backing reporters in the cross hairs of a prosecutor. But before turning Judy's case into a First Amendment battle, they should have nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade.

Ah, hindsight!

Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.

Dramatic, isn't it? Typical Maureenie.

The title of Maureenie's column, "Woman of Mass Destruction," kills me.

It has a dual meaning. The obvious one is Miller's plethora of articles citing the presence of WMD in Iraq. The slightly more subtle meaning is Maureenie's opinion that Miller has had an effect at the Times equivalent to that of deploying a WMD in its newsroom.

Unquestionably, Miller has played a role in further damaging the credibility of the Times. However, it should be noted that the paper has been an absolute, worthless mess for years.

The whole dysfunctional crew at the Times is in desperate need of intensive, in-patient rehab.

I don't think even that would be enough to boost readership and restore believability to its "news."

Of course, the diehard libs will cling to it as the paper of record. That is symptomatic of their delusional state and further indication that they, too, are in need of rehab immediately.

The fact is the reputation of the Times as a credible news source is beyond rehabilitation.

Even a tough column by Maureenie, (no doubt, she donned her Emma Peel black leather catsuit to write it), can't put the Times back together again.