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Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Chuck, if Boom has a past of inciting what you believe are racist threads, that's one thing. But at no point along the way did I get the sense that he was trying to do that.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

So are you suggesting that Mo Dowd is trying to bring the black man down. The Times?

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Boom, come on man. We know each other well enough. I know exactly why you don't want Obama winning this thing. You've made it clear to everyone(well everyone who has read your racist posts) what "type" of person you are. Don't back pedal.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Chuck - I am flattered that you seem to think that my post here would have more impact than a Mo Dowd column but I just don't think that is realistic.

It sounds like your beef is really with the Times and Mo Dowd. Perhaps they have an agenda.

BTW - I like Obama. Think he is best canidate so far of the democrat party canidates to announce.

I do think though that he needs to be able to stand up to the scrutany of national media. It's something that he has not had to deal with .

The days of a Warren Harding becoming president are over.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

This column represents everything I hate about political journalism, and everything that's bullshit about the way we follow politics in America. I don't give a damn if Maureen slams Obama at all. I'd welcome it, in fact. At least that would be something. But this snobbish, fluffy high school popularity riff is a joke. And it's really a shame that she weilds so much power irresponsibly. She was one of the biggest offenders in the whole "Al Gore likes to exagerate" thing, to the point where she was putting things in quotes that NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED because it suited her storyline. It annoys me to no end that she finds herself so clever for this souless tripe, and that she's probably out congratulating herself right now with Alessandra Stanley and Michiko Kakutani over $16 martinis over the snarky "too busy writing books about himself" line.

The Sex and the City analogy is perfect. Politicians are just characters in her HBO drama, and when they don't fit into her neat little box, it doesn't matter. She's found her little gimmick with Obama now, and watch, it's going to get beat into the ground. You will see countless references to the Men's Vogue cover and the smoking in every column about him. And the sad thing is, other reporters pick up on it because she's so widely read. It doesn't matter whether's liberals or conservatives. As soon as she gives them a nickname, she's made up her mind about them. When Sarah Vowell was filling in for her while she was on book leave, it was amazing how much better Vowell was, and Vowell isn't even a journalist. It showed what a fraud Dowd has become.

You watch. She's do it to Republicans too, and you won't think it's cute. McCain will be nothing more than a flip-flopping opportunist and a hot head. Romney will be the mysterious Mormon. Brownback will be the dumb religious hillbilly.

And Rudy? Good god. Every night before she passes out on her couch watching Grey's Anatomy DVDs, I'll bet Maureen prays to her God that Rudy gets the GOP nomination.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Obama is going to receive the most bipolar coverage in American political history. He will be both the most covered candidate, ever, and yet there will be little depth to the coverage. Wolf Blitzer will repeatedly say that Obama is the most covered story since Napoleon went to Russia and Hannity will say that Obama is receiving less scrutiny than the average plane landing in O'Hare Airport.
Everyone will talk about him, but little will be said

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

"After talking to high school journalists, he took a sniffy shot at the loutish reporters who were merely whispering where’s the beef: “Take some notes, guys, that’s how it’s done.”

If A-rod said something like that you guys would be all over him. Obama seems to have taken a bit of combative approach with national media. I see nothing wrong with Dowd pointing it out.

Most of the membership here seemed to like it when she was all over Rummy.

She is good at what she does. She finds that hole in the cashmere sweater that no one else can see. Then she picks away until its a big hole and you have to throw away the sweater.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon


Boom,

Sorry to interrupt but your robe and hood came in and we need to make an appointment for you to try them on when you are free.

Thanks.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Ace the fact that I am joining the Jesuits was suppose to be our secret. I had not even told 21 yet.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Are the Jesuits allowed to have sex? Never mind. Probably moot.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

Mo is a political assasin. Who will be next in her sights. John Edwards come on down.

Mama Hugs Iowa
By MAUREEN DOWD
When she was little, Hillary Rodham would sit on a basement bench and pretend she was flying a spaceship to Mars. Her younger brother Hugh, perched behind, would sometimes beg for a chance to be captain.

No dice. ''She would always drive, and I would always have to sit in the back,'' he once told me.

Through all the years of sitting behind Bill Clinton on his trip to the stars, Hillary fidgeted and elbowed, trying to be co-captain rather than just wingman, or worse, winglady.

Finally, in Iowa, she was once more behind the wheel of her spaceship to Mars. She didn't have to prop up Bill after one of his roguish pratfalls. She didn't have to feign interest in East Wing piffle -- table settings and pastry chefs and designer gowns. She didn't have to defer to her male colleagues in the Senate, stepping back to give them the limelight.

She positively glistened as she talked about how ''I'' -- rather than the ''we'' of '92 -- would run the world.

Humbly, graciously, deftly, she offered Iowa the answer to that eternal question, What Is Hillary Owed?

Everything.

John Wood, a self-described ''plainsman,'' Republican and machinery-and-tool salesman from Davenport, asked Hillary how she would handle the world's evil and bad men, provoking the slyly ambiguous retort: ''What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?''

He said afterward that he was more worried about her ability to face down villains, ''being a lady,'' but conceded, ''The woman did good today.''

(His question was reminiscent of Ali G's interview of Newt Gingrich, when the faux rapper asked whether a woman president would be turned on and manipulated by evil dictators, given that, with women, ''the worse you treat 'em, the more they want you.'')

As YouTube attests, Hillary didn't care about style as first lady; she was too busy trying to get in on Bill's substance. She showed off a long parade of unflattering outfits and unnervingly changing hairdos.

In Iowa, her national anthem may have been off-key, but her look wasn't. It was an attractive mirror of her political message: man-tailored with a dash of pink femininity.

''I think you look very nice,'' a veteran of the first gulf war told her in Des Moines.

''Thank you!'' she answered, beaming and laughing.

When Geraldine Ferraro made her historic run in '84, she tried to blend a mother's concerns into her foreign policy answers, but it did not work so well once she started getting her nuclear terminology mixed up.

Hillary dealt with the issue head-on -- ''I'm a woman; I'm a mom'' -- hoping to stir that sisterly vote that Ms. Ferraro failed to draw after it turned out that many women were skeptical about one of their own facing down the Soviets.

Unlike Barack Obama, who once said he was bored by the suburbs, she introduced herself in the land of bingo and bacon as a product of the suburbs, wallowing in the minutiae of kitchen-table issues.

 

Re: Mo Dowd Sticks a Pin in the Obama Balloon

cont

W. and Cheney have lavished attention and money on Iraq, leaving Americans feeling neglected. Hillary offered Iowans a warm bath of ''you,'' homey rumination rather than harsh domination.

(Though Jon Stewart warned on ''The Daily Show'' that her slogan -- ''Let the conversation begin!'' -- will not help her with men. ''I think the typical response would be, 'Now?' '' he said, adding that her new Iraq policy is, ''America, let's pull over and just ask for directions.'')

Thomasine Johnson, a 66-year-old African-American from outside Des Moines, complained that Hillary talked too much about ''traditional women's issues,'' but many in the audiences seemed enthralled.

The Achilles' heel of ''The Warrior,'' as she is known, is the war. She expressed outrage about Iraq, but ended up sounding like a mother whose teenage son has not cleaned up his room: ''The president has said this is going to be left to his successor and I think it's the height of irresponsibility, and I really resent it.''

She uttered the most irritating and disingenuous nine words in politics: ''If we had known then what we know now. ''

Jim Webb knew. Barack Obama knew. Even I knew, for Pete's sake. The administration's trickery was clear in real time.

Hillary didn't have the nerve to oppose a popular president on a national security issue after 9/11, and she feared being cast as an antiwar hippie when she ran. Now she feels she can't simply say she made a bad decision. And that makes her seem conniving -- not a good mix with nurturing.