As much as Nick hates to admit it, Friedman needs to lose the mustache.
Growwwl.

October 17, 2004
Vote and Be Damned
By MAUREEN DOWD

First Dick Cheney said that supporting John Kerry could lead to another terrorist attack.

Then Dennis Hastert said Al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency than under President Bush.

Now the Catholic bishops have upped the ante, indicating that voting for a candidate with Mr. Kerry's policies could lead to eternal damnation.

Conservative bishops and conservative Republicans are working hard to spread the gospel that anyone who supports the Catholic candidate and onetime Boston altar boy who carries a rosary and a Bible with him on the trail is aligned with the forces of evil.

In an interview with The Times's David Kirkpatrick, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver said a knowing vote for a candidate like Mr. Kerry who supports abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research would be a sin that would have to be confessed before receiving communion. "If you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" the archbishop asked. "Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes."

As Mr. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein wrote, Catholics make up about a quarter of the electorate, many concentrated in swing states. These bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are organizing voter registration and blanketing churches with voter guides that often ignore traditional Catholic concerns about the death penalty and war - the pope opposed the invasion of Iraq - while calling abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate "nonnegotiable."

"Never before have so many bishops so explicitly warned Catholics so close to an election that to vote a certain way was to commit a sin," the Times article said.

Once upon a time, with Al Smith and John Kennedy, the church was proud to see Catholics run for president. The church was as unobtrusive in 1960, trying to help J.F.K., as it is obtrusive now, trying to hurt J.F.K. II.

The conservative bishops, salivating to overturn Roe v. Wade, prefer an evangelical antiabortion president to one of their own who said in Wednesday's debate: "What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith. I believe that choice ... is between a woman, God and her doctor."

Like Mr. Bush, these patriarchal bishops want to turn back the clock to the 50's. They don't want separation of church and state - except in Iraq.

Some of the bishops - the shepherds of a church whose hierarchy bungled the molestation and rape of so many young boys by tolerating it, covering it up, enabling it, excusing it and paying hush money - are still debating whether John Kerry should be allowed to receive communion.

These bishops are embryo-centric; they are not as concerned with the 1,080 kids killed in a war that the Bush administration launched with lies, or about the lives that could be lost thanks to the president's letting the assault weapons ban lapse, or about all the lives that could be saved and improved with stem cell research.

Mr. Bush derives his immutability from his faith. "I believe that God wants everybody to be free," he said in the last debate, adding that this was "part of my foreign policy."

In today's Times Magazine, Ron Suskind writes that Mr. Bush has created a "faith-based presidency" that has riven the Republican Party.

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official for the first President Bush, told Mr. Suskind that some people now look at Mr. Bush and see "this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." He continued: "This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them."

The president's certitude - the idea that he can see into people's souls and that God tells him what is right, then W. tells us if he feels like it - is disturbing. It equates disagreeing with him to disagreeing with Him.

The conservative bishops' certitude - the idea that you can't be a good Catholic if you diverge from certain church-decreed mandates or if you want to keep your religion and politics separate - is also disturbing.

America is awash in selective piety, situational moralists and cherry-picking absolutists.

These fuckers should lose their tax-exempt status.

--PunkDavid

I disagree with almost everything she says...but she does make me laugh. Mo is the only lib that I've ever read that actually has a sense of humor.

"America is awash in selective piety, situational moralists and cherry-picking absolutists."

The only thing I think I've ever read by her I can agree with.

Stupid post, but it has to be said:

She's hot!

hell yeah.

In the words of my best friend:

Love to see her ankles in her hair.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/opini ... oref=login

Hiding Breast Bombs
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: November 25, 2004

WASHINGTON

It always makes me feel slimy and humiliated, as though I'm in one of those cheesy women-in-prison movies, with titles like "Caged," "Slammer Girls" or "Reform School Girls."

First you have to strip, unzipping your boots, unbuckling your belt and unbuttoning your suit jacket while any guys standing around watch. Then you have to walk around in some flimsy top and stocking or bare feet. Then you have to assume the spread-eagled position. Then a beefy female security agent runs her hands all the way around your breasts, in between, underneath - again with guys standing around staring.

Flying on business, I've gone through this embarrassing tableau two dozen times in airports all over the country in the last couple of months. I've been searched more than Martha Stewart. I watched a Transportation Security Administration screener brusquely insist that my friend take off her blazer even though she had on only lingerie underneath - a see-through camisole - and the man behind her was leering.

Airport screening procedures are more reactive than imaginative. There's an attempted shoe bombing, so all passengers must shed their shoes. Two female Chechens may or may not have sneaked explosives onto Russian planes, so now some T.S.A. genius decides all women are subject to strips and body searches.

I get flagged for extra security every time I buy a one-way ticket, which seems particularly lame. Doesn't the T.S.A. realize that a careful terrorist plotter like Mohammed Atta could figure this out and use his Saudi charity money to pop for round trips even if the return portion gets wasted?

In two articles in The Times, Joe Sharkey has chronicled the plaints of women angry about new procedures in airport security that have increased both the number and intensity of the airport pat-down, or "breast exam," as one woman put it.

He described the experience of Patti LuPone, the singer and actress, at the Fort Lauderdale airport, who resisted taking off her shirt and got barred from her flight, and of 71-year-old Jenepher Field, who walks with the aid of a cane, being subjected to a breast pat-down at the airport outside Kansas City, Mo. (Do we have intelligence telling us that grandmothers are part of Al Qaeda now?)

Even a stripper complained in an e-mail message to Mr. Sharkey that she found her experiences degrading: "On one occasion a screener flat out asked if they were fake."

Somebody tell me what quantity of explosive material they have found through these strip searches, because I've got a hunch it's zero. How many billions are they wasting on this?

Maybe we're not at the Philip K. Dick level of technology yet. But how about some positive profiling? If airport security can have a watch list for the bad guys, why can't it develop a watch list for the good guys? Can't there be a database of trustworthy American frequent travelers who are not going to secrete things in their bras? After all, no one is going to sneak anything in there without our knowledge. Can they at least get a screen?

I know it's not just women who are uncomfortable; a guy I know said a male screener at the Miami airport recently stuck a hand down the front of his pants, making him feel "totally manhandled." And I heard the sad tale of a red-faced Washington businessman who took off his shoes, only to show the room the red painted toenails he had forgotten to wipe off.

Barry Steinhardt of the A.C.L.U. told Court TV that the new procedures are not only "an open invitation for harassment" - there are not enough female screeners, so sometimes men are doing the pat-downs of women - but they're also "not particularly effective."

I've never wanted to complain because I assume there are inconveniences that go along with greater security. But I would feel less creepy if I thought this were part of an effective overall strategy of protecting the country. I don't.

Iraq is draining money we should be spending protecting ourselves. Only 3 to 5 percent of containers coming into ports are checked, and only a tiny percentage of air, rail and truck cargo is inspected. Congress is turning homeland security money into another avenue of pork. Tom Ridge is still making fuzzy ads telling people to have a plan of action and referring them to his Web site, which hasn't gotten much beyond duct tape.

If we were buttoning up the borders and making the airlines safer, unbuttoning in public would be more bearable.

Bold emphasis mine. I wholly agree with that statement.

This upset me more than anything I've read since the election. I don't know how she can manage to stay in contact with her family. If I came from a family like this, I'd have quit school to become a marijuana cultivator in the Northwest and never have contact with them again.

--PunkDavid

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/28/opinion/28dowd.html

Blood Is Thicker Than Gravy
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: November 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — I've been surprised, out on the road, how often I get asked about my family. They're beyond red - more like crimson. My sister flew to West Virginia in October to work a phone bank for W.

People often wonder what our Thanksgiving is like.

It's lovely - if you enjoy hearing about how brilliant Ann Coulter is, how misguided The New York Times's editorial page is, and how valiant the president is as he tries to stop America's slide into paganism.

This year, my brothers were on the warpath about news reports that Maryland public schools did not teach about Thanksgiving from a religious perspective. "Who do they think the Pilgrims thanked?" demanded Martin. "God."

There are moments - when my brothers are sharing some snarky thing Rush Limbaugh said about me, or the latest bon mot from Pat Buchanan, with whom they grew up - that I'm tempted to stuff my ears with my mom's potato stuffing, or go off and read a book by David Sedaris about normal family life.

People often ask me why President Bush inspires such passionate support. My brother Kevin, a salesman who lives in Montgomery County, Md., can answer that; here is a recent e-mail message, trimmed for space, he sent to friends:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

Now, just as four years ago, I breathe a huge sigh of relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked deck. No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in their attempt to influence the outcome of an election. ... He never complained, just systematically set about delivering the same consistent message. You may remember that four years ago, I felt physically ill watching the Democrats try to legislate their way to the presidency. ...

A very big thank you to Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Rob Reiner, Bill Maher, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Al Franken and Jon Stewart for your involvement. You certainly energized the base. Now, please have the courage of your convictions and leave the country.

To Bob Shrum - Cut your fee.

To Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart and Paul Begala - You don't seem quite as smart without a great candidate.

To The New York Times and The Washington Post - If Bush and Reagan were so stupid, how did they both go four for four in elections involving two of our biggest states and the presidency without your endorsement?

We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.' They are people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out. They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silent prayer and the words 'under God' are offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed to use them. ... My wife and I picked our sons' schools based on three criteria: 1) moral values 2) discipline 3) religious maintenance - in that order. We have spent an obscene amount of money doing this and never regretted a penny. Last week on the news, I heard that the Montgomery County school board voted to include a class with a 10th-grade girl demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber and a study of the homosexual lifestyle. The vote was 6-0. I feel better about the money all the time.

To Dan Rather - Good luck in your retirement.

To Gavin Newsom - Thanks for all of the great shots of the San Francisco couples embracing their mates at City Hall in direct defiance of the law.

To P. Diddy - 'Vote or Die' might need a little work.

To John Edwards - Thanks for being there.

To my friends - only 1,460 days until the next election. Stay vigilant. The Democrats, CBS, the NY Times and the Post may think Hillary is the perfect antidote for all those 'stupid' voters out there.

Best regards, Kevin"

What specifically upset you so much?

I think the way that she presented her brother's email without commentary and just let it speak for itself. I've been trying to convince myself that the "moral values" people who run my country are actually pretty good people who have their hearts in the rights place, even if their assholes are a bit too tight. His email set me back a long way towards thinking they are closed-minded, short-sighted, bigoted, hateful people who have simply not evolved along with the breadth of human knowledge. It just makes me really sad, sad and scared.

--PunkDavid

What parts of the email made you think that? Not sure I saw the hate or bigotry anywhere.

Funny that you use that language though. That's exactly what I thought after reading the post-election "analysis" by Dowd, Friedman, and Krugman.

Here are the parts that made me the most upset, for a variety of reasons.



I just stop taking people seriously when they start talking about the "liberal media". Even if the New York Times and CBS News are liberal (and I think they are quite even-handed), there are plenty of TV and newspaper outlets out there to at the very least balance them out on the conservative side. So that just started him off on the wrong side of my tolerance for conservatives.



At least he and I share that in common, except I thought it was the Republicans trying to strong-arm their way into the Presidency in 2000. And Republicans claim that they oppose trial lawyers and judicial activism.



I don't recall any of those people ever saying they wished to leave the country. It is one thing to say you want to leave the country because you can't stand how things are going. It is entirely another thing to tell someone to leave because you're in power and they don't agree with you. That is called hatred, and that brand of hatred is particularly un-American.



Yeah, their moral values over my personal freedoms. Anyone who is willing to give up their freedom for security deserves neither.



Oh, and they've seen a lot of that, have they? Maybe they should stop watching the films produced by right-to-life organizations and they wouldn't ever have to see that. I could go on for 15 minutes about how stupid and uninformed this whole "partial-birth abortion" ban is, but if the religious conservatives want to keep telling themselves that this procedure is common and is done for convenience and not only when the mother is in danger of grievous injury, then let them believe it. How can you speak logical sense to someone like that?



God forbid a 16 year-old know how to use a condom or learn about homosexuals. Painful ignorance.

That's about it. I guess it is just disturbing to me that so many people can see the world so completely differently from the way I do, and to have such a radically different idea of what American stands for. I take great pride in my desire to seek the truth in all things. I don't pretend to know it, but I believe that my honest desire to do so will in the end be the best way to approach knowing the truth in all things. I see people like the author of this email as people who take far too much in life on faith. Faith in the Bible, or their religious leaders' interpretation of the Bible, faith in their government, and mostly faith in their own righteousness. How can one know truth if they don't seek it, but just accept what they are told.

You see the reason I am so disturbed by this is because people like this inspire hatred in me for them. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be like them. I don't want to live in a world of prejudice and fear, and yet I feel that way about them. I want to believe that people are inherently good, but this article set me back to thinking they are not.

I have been in a pretty peaceful place for the past couple weeks where I was beginning to believe that I was overreacting to how bad a state the world and the country are in now. I was willing to be tolerant and sit back and see what will happen with the nation under the control of the far right. But after reading this, I just want to bash this guys skull in, and everyone else who thinks like him. I don't want to feel this way, but I do, and I'm sorry that I do, but I can't deny it. I hate this man, everyone like him, and every single thing that they stand for with every fiber of my being, and I can't believe that they are in control of my country.

I love America. It's a beautiful place, and I worship the words of the Constitution like some people worship the Bible. To me it is the most perfect work of man on earth. Those people don't believe in the same America I do. If they want, they can still have God be the first priority in their lives in my America, but I can't have America be the first priority in my life if they put their God above America.

I'm just gonna stop now, but I could keep going.

--PunkDavid

Liberal and conservative are in the eye of the beholder. On this board, I'm considered extremely conservative, but if I were to go to a conservative website, I'd be considered too liberal. If someone sees the way the media covers stories as "liberal" or "conservative", that is merely a reflection of their personal stance on the issues and, imo, not really a reason for intolerance.



If you both thought that, why the eye roll? Clearly you both saw the same thing happening, with the only difference being which side you were for (or against).



This seems to be a favorite of "conservatives", and other than the Baldwin rumor (that I'm aware of anyway), it's just nonsense. Then again, I've heard nonsense coming from the liberal camp too.



I realize you're equating one issue (morals) for another (security), but I think this one really is a touchy subject. I think (my opinion here) that the issue isn't so much about moral values (to me anyway) as it is about respect. I don't want to watch two homosexuals making out in the park at 2 in the afternoon. I also don't want to watch two heterosexuals making out in the park at 2 in the afternoon. I damn sure don't want every 4 year old in the park to have to deal with it. It's called respect for those around you. When that is missing, people tend to get upset and lash out. This is where moral values enters my world.

For those that are just against homosexuality in general, I have no idea. Stupid beliefs run deep I guess.







This is a list of reasons for late term abortion from abortionaccess.org, a prochoice website. I'm sorry, but many of these reasons are not life threatening situations. The 45 year old that thought she was menopausal? The mother of 2 on welfare? The battered woman who won't be "free"? I'm sorry, but these examples do NOT change my mind on this issue. These women are not in life threatening danger and the procedure is just too barbaric for me to condone this under these circumstances. If this is what the pro choice people list as examples, they need to revamp the list.



For some, this is a matter to be discussed (or not discussed) at home. Doesn't your attitude actually state that in this instance you are for pushing your moral values on others?



Tolerance is a two way street. It seems to me that these 'people' and their lack of tolerance have inspired hatred from you. Why? Because you, like them, are intolerant. I could be completely misreading this, but that's what I read.

(to everyone) why is it so unfathomable to understand that different people feel just as strongly as you do, but they are on the other side of the fence? Why do they have to accept what you want without question, but for you to see where they are coming from is impossible? Why are they dismissed as "religious nutjobs" or "liberal nutjobs" or whatever type of nutjob you want to label them as? Is it that difficult to understand that they might, maybe, have some valid points?

I'm not asking for everyone to change sides, but maybe just for a moment realize that "the other side" isn't full of morons or hate mongers or communists, but that each side has many very intelligent people that somehow formed the opinion they have.

I could go on, but I'll stop now too.

I agree with one comment, I listen to alot of radio(right and left) and I do have to say, I dont want us to be all PC, but after rush hour traffic, this crappy election and sitting in a cubicle for 8hrs a day, I could do with out the words" traitor, communist, biggot, etc..) coming from both sides. It inflamatory and it serves no greater purpose.....I know I should turn off my radio.....

You make many good points. I admit that I am intolerant of the views expressed in the story. I wish I were more tolerant. I think that intolerance begins with the conviction that the other person is just plain wrong, at least it does for me. It's not about me being right so much as it is about the other person being wrong. Obviously an opinion, but that's where is comes from, and I certainly can't convince myself that the views that I detest are anything more than just plain wrong. That would be lying to myself, and like I said, I seek truth. "Thou shalt not kid thyself" is my 11th Commandment.



The eye roll was over the Republican positions on trial lawyers and judicial activism and their methods after the 2000 election.



I totally respect that. If you are equally bothered by gay and straight excessive shows of affection in public, that may be a it prudish, but it's not bigoted, and I think that you should not have to be subjected to that show.

However, I would like to distinguish your position from the positions of a great many, and dare I say most, social conservatives. If a person is OK with a straight couple kissing but is revolted by a gay couple kissing, then he is a bigot. If a person has no problem with an old man giving his wife a peck on the cheek, but has a problem with a young man giving his young man friend a peck on the cheek, he is a bigot. And if a person has a problem with two men walking hand-in-hand in public, but has no problem with a couple in white shirt sleeves and black ties walking up to a person on a bench to try to hand him religious literature, that person is a hypocrite. To a person like me, being forced to listen to someone exercise their First Amendment right to free speech by proseletizing or invoking God in a public setting is just as distasteful as it is for a social conservative to have to witness a gay couple exercise their First Amendment right to free association in a public setting. I hope that example, while not a perfect analogy, gives you some idea of how a feels about having to listen to religious preaching. I respect their right to do so, but I'll surely leave or change the channel if I can.



I agree, those are not all good reasons for a late term abortion. The list is of course coming from an advocacy group's webpage, so just like all advocacy groups that are focussed on one issue, they take their arguments to the logical (and somtimes illogical) extreme. While they may use those arguments to fight legislation against late term abortions, the medical facts are that the procedure is exceedingly rare, and is almost never done unless either the mother or the baby is in VERY serious medical distress. Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with limiting the procedure as long as a "health of the mother" exception existed, but as the law was passed, it will cause some dead or sterilized mothers because a doctor wouldn't remove a non-viable fetus for fear of legal prosecution.

To quote Bill Clinton, "Abortions should be safe, legal, and RARE."



Perhaps you're right. But I have a feeling that if a parent objects to their child learning about brith control and homosexuality in school, they're not going to feel comfortable talking to their kids about it at home. Out in the real world, teenage sex and homosexuality still exist whether you talk to your kids about those things or not. And of course, that attitude implies that homosexuality is a choice, not a precondition. That argument could occupy another thread on its own, but I would just ask everyone, "why would ANYONE CHOOSE to be a homosexual? Would it be for the social stigma, or because the 'parts' don't fit?"



No, I think you're reading it right. It would be lovely if people of such utterly diametric world views could live side by side in peace, but I just don't see it right now in this time and place.

"Love, peace and harmony,
Love, peace and harmony.
It's very nice, very nice, very nice, very nice,
But maybe in the next world."



That would be ideal. I certainly would never expect anyone to accept what I want without question. Questions improve everything. But like I said in my original post, I think that the main underlying deficit of social conservatives is their lack of questioning, their unwavering faith. I may seem to some on this board to be someone who has an opinion about everything, but I don't. I am actually very slow and deliberate in forming my opinions, it's just that I spend a lot of time thinking about the sorts of things discussed in this forum, so I have come to many conclusions already about these things. I don't have such strong opinions about bands and music as some peole do over in the other forums. The point is that I find it very hard to compromise with somone, or even to respect their opinions, when I am trying to speak the language of secular logic, and they are trying to speak the language of religious faith. When we are speaking the same language, I may disagree, as I do with you, PJDoll, but I can respect my adversary.

Every now and then I have to go through feelings like this to be able to see my own hypocricy, and then try to correct it. I end up changing my methods of political argument, and find that I may have been wrong, but I always end up just as certain as ever that the social conservatives are wrong and for all the wrong reasons.

--PunkDavid

I thought I'd post this one because she hit upon two of our recent threads, Troops vs. Rumsfeld, and Bush and his Jackboots.

http://nytimes.com/2004/12/09/opinion/09dowd.html

Lost in a Masquerade
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 9, 2004


WASHINGTON

Hoooo-rah! Rummy finally got called on the carpet.

Not by the president, of course, but by troops fighting in Iraq. Some of them are finally fed up enough to rumble about his back-door draft and failure to provide them with the proper armor for their Humvees, leaving them scrambling to improvise with what they call "hillbilly armor."

The defense secretary had been expected to go to Iraq on this trip but spent the day greeting troops in Kuwait instead. Even though Pentagon officials insist that security wasn't an issue, I bet they had to be worried not to travel the extra 40 miles to Iraq.

Rummy met with troops at Camp Buehring, named for Chad Buehring, an Army colonel who died last year when insurgents in Baghdad launched a rocket-propelled grenade into Al Rasheed, a Green Zone hotel once frequented by Western journalists and administration officials that is still closed to guests because - despite all the president's sunny bromides about resolutely prevailing - security in Iraq is relentlessly deteriorating.

As Joe Biden told Aaron Brown of CNN about his visit to Falluja, "They got the biggest hornets' nest, but the hornets have gone up and set up nests other places." He said that a general had run up to him as he was getting into his helicopter to confide, "Senator, anybody who tells you we don't need forces here is a G.D. liar."

Rummy, however, did not hesitate to give the back of his hand to soldiers about to go risk their lives someplace he didn't trouble to go.

He treated Thomas Wilson - the gutsy guardsman from Tennessee who asked why soldiers had "to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" - as if he were a pesky Pentagon reporter. The defense chief used the same coldly cantankerous tone and squint he displays in press briefings, an attitude that long ago wore thin. He did everything but slap the kid in the hospital bed.

In one of his glib "Nothing's perfect," "Freedom's untidy" and "Stuff happens" maxims, Rummy told the soldier: "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have."

It wouldn't make a good Army slogan, and it was a lousy answer, especially when our kids are getting blown up every day in a war ginned up on administration lies. Remember when the president promised in the campaign that the troops would have all the body armor they needed?

These young men and women went to Iraq believing the pap they were told: they'd have a brief battle, chocolate, flowers, gratitude. Instead, they were thrust into a prolonged and savage insurgent war without the troop levels or armor they needed because the Pentagon's neocons had made plans based on their spin - that turning Iraq into a democracy would be a cakewalk. And because Rummy wanted to make his mark by experimenting with a lean, slimmed-down force. And because Rummy kept nattering on about a few "dead-enders," never acknowledging the true force, or true nationalist fervor, of the opposition.

The dreams of Rummy and the neocons were bound to collide. But it's immoral to trap our troops in a guerrilla war without essential, lifesaving support and matériel just so a bunch of officials who have never been in a war can test their theories.

How did this dangerous chucklehead keep his job? He must have argued that because of the president's re-election campaign, the military was constrained from doing what it is trained to do, to flatten Falluja and other insurgent strongholds. He must have told W. he deserved a chance to try again after the election.

He had a willing audience. W. likes officials who feed him swaggering fictions instead of uncomfortable facts.

The president loves dressing up to play soldier. To rally Camp Pendleton marines facing extended deployments in Iraq, he got gussied up in an Ike D-Day-style jacket, with epaulets and a big presidential seal on one lapel and his name and "Commander in Chief" on the other.

When he really had a chance to put on a uniform and go someplace where the enemy was invisible and there was no exit strategy and our government was not leveling with us about how bad it was, W. wasn't so high on the idea. But now that it's just a masquerade - giving a morale boost to troops heading off someplace where the enemy's invisible and there's no exit strategy and the government's not leveling with us about how bad it is - hey, man, it's cool.

She's baaaaack....

Anyone else share her slight optimism? Is public opinion starting to sway enough?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/opinion/10dowd.html?

Why No Tea and Sympathy?

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 10, 2005

WASHINGTON

W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.

There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.

A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?

Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.

And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.

The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.

Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.

The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.

The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?

W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.

It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.

Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.

Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.

September 3, 2005
United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

Haunted by Hesitation

By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/opini ... een%20Dowd

Published: September 7, 2005


It took a while, but the president finally figured out a response to the destruction of New Orleans.

Later this week (no point rushing things) W. is dispatching Dick Cheney to the rancid lake that was a romantic city. The vice president has at long last lumbered back from a Wyoming vacation, and, reportedly, from shopping for a $2.9 million waterfront estate in St. Michael's, a retreat in the Chesapeake Bay where Rummy has a weekend home, where "Wedding Crashers" was filmed and where rich lobbyists hunt.

Maybe Mr. Cheney is going down to New Orleans to hunt looters. Or to make sure that Halliburton's lucrative contract to rebuild the city is watertight. Or maybe, since former Senator John Breaux of Louisiana described the shattered parish as "Baghdad under water," the vice president plans to take his pal Ahmad Chalabi along for a consultation on destroying minority rights.

The water that breached the New Orleans levees and left a million people homeless and jobless has also breached the White House defenses. Reality has come flooding in. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been remarkably successful at blowing off "the reality-based community," as it derisively calls the press.

But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course - who believes them?

This time we can actually see the bodies.

As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.

The Bush administration bungled the Iraq occupation, arrogantly throwing away State Department occupation plans and C.I.A. insurgency warnings. But the human toll of those mistakes has not been as viscerally evident because the White House pulled a curtain over the bodies: the president has avoided the funerals of soldiers, and the Pentagon has censored the coffins of the dead coming home and never acknowledges the number of Iraqi civilians killed.

But this time, the bodies of those who might have been saved between Monday and Friday, when the president failed to rush the necessary resources to a disaster that his own general describes as "biblical," or even send in the 82nd Airborne, are floating up in front of our eyes.

New Orleans's literary lore and tourist lure was its fascination with the dead and undead, its lavish annual Halloween party, its famous above-ground cemeteries, its love of vampires and voodoo and zombies. But now that the city is decimated, reeking with unnecessary death and destruction, the restless spirits of New Orleans will haunt the White House.

The administration's foreign policy is entirely constructed around American self-love - the idea that the U.S. is superior, that we are the model everyone looks up to, that everyone in the world wants what we have.

But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths. They see some conservatives blaming the poor for not saving themselves. So much for W.'s "culture of life."

The president won re-election because he said that the war in Iraq and the Homeland Security Department would make us safer. Hogwash.

W.'s 2004 convention was staged like "The Magnificent Seven" with the Republicans' swaggering tough guys - from Rudy Giuliani to Arnold Schwarzenegger to John McCain - riding in to save an embattled town.

These were the steely-eyed gunslingers we needed to protect us, they said, not those sissified girlie-men Democrats. But now it turns out that W. can't save the town, not even from hurricane damage that everyone has been predicting for years, much less from unpredictable terrorists.

His campaigns presented the arc of his life story as that of a man who stumbled around until he was 40, then found himself and developed a laserlike focus.

But now that the people of New Orleans need an ark, we have to question the president's arc. He's stumbling in Iraq and he's stumbling on Katrina.

Let's play the blame game: the man who benefited more than anyone in history from safety nets set up by family did not bother to provide one for those who lost their families

I really can't stand Maureen Dowd. I enjoy reading the opinions of those who have different opinions than I do, if they are done well. However, everything I've read by Maureen Dowd has come across as rude, sarcastic, insulting to everyone who does not agree with her, and condescending. Am I the only one here that feels this way?