This overheated, simplistic, conspiracy-theory rhetoric is worthy of a Berkeley high school sophomore. Surprised Dowd's column wasn't accompanied by an illustration using the millionaire in the top hat from Monopoly!
Posted on 06/29/2002 2:05:29 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON
Dick Cheney is a sly old fox. He wanted the Congressional cat to start chasing its tail. So he sicced the F.B.I. dogs on it.
The vice president called Porter Goss and Bob Graham, the chairmen of the Congressional intelligence committees looking into the 9/11 security debacle, to berate them about a leak to the press detailing missed interceptions at the National Security Agency about "zero hour" and "the big match." Never mind that this story had been circulating for months and that any number of agencies could have leaked it.
A churlish Cheney spurred the Goss & Graham team to call up John Ashcroft and ask him to conduct an F.B.I. inquiry into whether their committees had been guilty of the leak.
Mr. Cheney created a Machiavellian Mobius strip: the F.B.I. is now investigating the committees that are investigating the F.B.I.
Faced with the specter of interviews, polygraphs and new leak accusations, the lawmakers will be so busy playing defense with the G-men, they won't have time to go on offense against W.'s men. They'll grow tentative about rooting through sensitive, damaging material about the F.B.I. for fear that the F.B.I. will find their fingerprints.
Everywhere you look these days, you see situations that are absurdly contradictory and circular and self-defeating. Reality has turned into one huge, self-consuming loop. Call it Catch-2002.
Nervous that the stench of mendacious and felonious Big Business will cling to Republicans, the president is speaking out loudly against the latest robber barons. Mr. Bush must condemn deep-pocketed corporations that gave him the money to get elected president so he can be re-elected and protect corporations' deep pockets. Catch-2002.
We must helplessly witness spectacularly greedy and fraudulent corporations as they betray stockholders and lay off thousands of workers even as they pay or prepare obscene bonuses for the very executives who were wittingly or unwittingly betraying the stockholders. Catch-2002.
And here's Martha Stewart, who thought every kitchen needed a propane torch for browning meringues. After making a fortune giving us tips about the myriad rules of perfect homemaking, she faces ruin as a result of suspicions about a stock tip and an indifference to rules. Catch-2002.
At a fund-raiser on Thursday night at the Chelsea nightclub Lot 61, Al Gore tried to link the president to the business scandals, telling young supporters: "You see now what it means to have an administration that's that committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick."
Al and Tipper gathered fund-raisers and donors for a retreat this weekend at Memphis's Peabody Hotel, hoping the fat cats swanning amid the ducks would signal Democrats that Al is ready to rumble.
Democratic poobahs hate the thought of a Gore campaign. But they have to pretend they're willing to do the Tennessee waltz in 2004 because they don't want to let the Democratic rage of 2000 subside. They're stuck acting as though the guy who lost the election even though he won could win again even though they're sure he'd lose. Catch-2002.
On Monday, the president declared that he would deal only with a democratic leader of Palestine — Abu Jefferson — even though he deals with the region's kings, autocrats, tyrants and military dictators stalling on democratic elections. Catch-2002.
The Washington Post had a front-page article last week reporting that a significantly higher percentage of American college graduates are women and quoting experts saying that would make it harder for women to find suitably smart mates.
And a new study from Rutgers about why more men are putting off marriage suggests that moms who warned daughters that guys would think, "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk free?" may have been right: women have sex to get men to marry them, but men think they don't need to marry because they're already having sex.
Which brings us back to the dread findings of Sylvia Ann Hewlett: Women having trouble finding husbands get better educations and bigger jobs to support themselves, which ends up scaring away possible husbands. Catch-2002.
IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.
2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.
3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved ("Dubya" is stupid; "Poppy" is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.
4. It is much better to be cute than coherent.
5. Maureen knows best. Her long years as a columnist (doing basically what your great-aunt Tillie does in the nursing home bull sessions, but getting paid for it) have given her deep insight into foreign relations, politics, welfare, the Constitution, and all other topics. To disagree with Maureen in any way is not only a sign of being wrong, it's a hallmark of pure evil...or at least membership in the NRA, which is pretty much the same thing.
6. It is usually possible and always desirable to name-drop and name-call in the same sentence.
7. The particulars of my consumer-driven, shamefully self-involved life reveal universal truths.
Clinton set the standard, businesses followed in line. This is an easy target.....if the Republiwimps ram it home.
W's men? How many new FBI agents came on board between Feb and Sept of 2001?
Like he 'protected' Enron, Maureen? Oops. Oh, and let's compare the Democrat corporate doner list to the Republican list. Not a whole lot of difference and the Republicans don't get the ecology groups money and precious few donations from the unions.
What a lefty loon this aging name-dropper is becoming.
This overheated, simplistic, conspiracy-theory rhetoric is worthy of a Berkeley high school sophomore. Surprised Dowd's column wasn't accompanied by an illustration using the millionaire in the top hat from Monopoly!
Could someone tell Mo she is chasing her own Chihauhua tail. I guess her masters(ediotrs) at the NYT think her chasing her tail around will bring down Bush and she laps it up like a thirsty dog.
Oh well, just like at any other dog and pony show, a person just laughs at the spectacle.
The way Al Bore bent over and kissed it, the last thing he should be talking about is giving someone the short end of the stick.
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