Maureen Dowd has a problem. She can't make up her mind. First she bitches that women are focused on "catfights" and "scheming to trap men," but then when a woman rises up, she reverts back to her obsession with machismo. Evidently Ms. Dowd doesn't understand that some things are worth fighting for, which includes war.
Considering Ms. Dowd's last book,
Are Men Necessary?, which was basically interviews with people in the next cubicle to hers at The New York Times, you really have to wonder how much the woman gets out. She could have borrowed my research, which proves to me a stripper knows more about relationships than Dowd. But the real problem is that Dowd doesn't seem to understand the relationship between leadership and fighting the fights that need to be fought, not just the battles you think you can win.
Snip...
What Dowd doesn't get and doesn't try to understand is that
speaker-elect Pelosi's main priority is ending the war in
Iraq. That's just too big a task for Dowd to contemplate, choosing instead to whittle the battle down to the lowest common denominator, Dowd's main turf. Pelosi is pissed and she's punishing Hoyer for the past!
Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and eloquent Republican lawyer who argued the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, was warming up the rabidly conservative Federalist Society crowd for John McCain with a few sexist cracks about Botox.
It reminded you of just how idiotic Republicans can act sometimes. The only thing worse than hearing the first female speaker of the House filleted in such a lame way was seeing the first female speaker of the House flail around in her first big week in such a lame way. It reminded you of just how idiotic Democrats can act sometimes.
Nancy Pelosi's first move, after the Democratic triumph, was to throw like a girl. Women get criticized in the office for acting on relationships and past slights rather than strategy, so Madame Speaker wasted no time making her first move based on relationships and past slights rather than strategy.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/opinion/18dowd.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26hpQ3DQ26pagewantedQ3Dprint&OP=21395943Q2FQ23bX@Q23Q5EMzFFQ5EQ23r33UQ23PPQ23PQ2AQ23F!Q26eQ26FeQ23PQ2ALFbLQ255Q5EaQ22">Squeaker of the House, by Maureen Dowd
I guess
Dowd would rather Pelosi now court affection after the rejection of Murtha.
Of course, Dowd didn't say a thing when month after month William Safire was out pushing the Atta met in Prague with Iraqi's 9/11 fantasy, much to his embarrassment. She just loves Mr. Safire, so she wouldn't dare insult her friend. Dowd stood by her man.
I smell hypocrisy. Or maybe it was just an early deadline. At least she let
Mort say this.
Snip...
But it's Maureen Dowd's closet fetish for machismo that underlies her mojo; though, if truth be told, it isn't exactly in the closet. She just feels guilty about it.
Even as the speaker was acting girlishly churlish, John McCain was mas machoing the machismo president. In twin speeches Thursday, he wooed the Republican base. "He's trying to be the leader of a party that hates his guts," said Rahm Emanuel, the new chairman of the House Democratic caucus.
Mr. McCain told a Gopac dinner audience that he wants more troops in Iraq than even W. is willing to send.
"It is not fair or easy to look a soldier in the eye and tell him he must shoulder a rifle again and risk his life in a third tour in Iraq," he said. "But ask it we must. If, and I emphasize if, we have the will to win."
Mr. McCain is right that the deteriorating situation on the ground calls for more boots and if troops start to withdraw, further chaos will ensue. But even many of the generals and hawks in his own party now believe that a lasting military victory is impossible, no matter how many troops America sends. The best that can be hoped for by the Republicans and Senator McCain - who will have trouble running as a cheerleader for more war in a nation sick of war and heartsick at so many deaths - is that James Baker can finagle a dignified exit.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/opinion/18dowd.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26hpQ3DQ26pagewantedQ3Dprint&OP=21395943Q2FQ23bX@Q23Q5EMzFFQ5EQ23r33UQ23PPQ23PQ2AQ23F!Q26eQ26FeQ23PQ2ALFbLQ255Q5EaQ22">Squeaker of the House, by Maureen Dowd
Forget Nancy Pelosi, speaker-elect who is fighting to get out of Iraq. Fighting with all her might, including a majority leader fight that, regardless of the loss, sent the message that
getting out of Iraq is job one.
James Baker will give us a "dignified exit," clucks Ms. Dowd. Well, at least we're talking to Iran and Syria.
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