[Pokey78]

"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."

At least she used the entire quote this time.

---

She still can't get over him.

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From Oxblog:

IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD

1. 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.

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Explanation of the Dowd/Douglas connection: by Miss Marple- 2/11/03

Ms. Dowd was escorted around New York and DC for many months by one Michael Douglas of Hollywood fame and fortune. She got to go to all the best parties, was photographed for the tabloids, and was picking out a gown to wear at the Oscars. Of course, Michael had become interested in her during Clinton's impeachment, when she had written some very anti-Clinton columns. After a few weeks of the Michael treatment, she began to write anti-Starr, ant-Newt columns, ignoring Clinton.

Then Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. In an amazing coincidence, Michael Douglas dropped Ms. Dowd like a hot potato, and instead picked up a hot tomato, Catherin Zeta-Jones, who subsequently bore him a son and they were married.

Ms. Dowd cannot get over her tragic loss. Her columns are increasingly anti-Bush, in the hope of impressing her lost love, Michael.

In addition, we think she has a secret crush on the President and is trying to get him to pay attention to her. Ha!

[Shermy]

Flashbacks. I guess at Woodstock she didn't hear the "Don't eat the brown acid" announcement.

[BerniesFriend]

I know I sound like a broken record..but WHERE ARE THE CZJ PICS????????????? Does anyone think, if I may start a new line here, that CJZ would make a good Wonder Woman in a feature film???

[Enduring Freedom]

The Dowd is a washed-up old spinster and a 'Rat shill.

She will perish with the rest of her kind just like Jayson Blair, Phil Donahue and George Steph.

[MJY1288]

I think old "gutter gums" Dowd has finally cracked, no more of the usual "Frat Boy" comments or the usual "Bush is an idiot" screeds.

I think that sour, vile, nasty witch, Maureen Dowd is really worried, and YES she still cant get over the flight suit

[ladyinred]

My goodness, I do think Ms. Dowdy inhaled!

[liberalnot]

i h-a-t-e-d that song when it came out. i was in college and my roommates played that over and over and over and over. one day when they were stoned and partying, i took that record off, and put the sons of the pioneers "cool, clear water" on and blew their minds! they did not forgive me! i thought it was funny.

[Southack]

"But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated"

Good grief, the poor flacks at the NY Times are so uneducated that they are confusing "decimated" with "incapacitated", as if the two words were interchangeable.

They are not.

Decimated means that you've killed one out of every 10 people.

Gee, do ya think that the other 9 might still be capable of doing some damage, Maureen?!

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Now the snobs at the NY Times are getting their word useage corrected by a country boy in rural Alabama (yes, that would be me).

[TomB]

"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."

But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.

Like I said earlier, this is a rather transparent attempt to get the heat off for misquoting Bush last week. You can bet there's a lot of squirming going on at the Times.

But while she gets the quote right this time, she STILL gets the meaning wrong. She still maintains that Bush is saying Al Qaeda isn't a problem anymore. In addition, if you read Bush's quote, it says that the terrorist organization "is slowly, but surely, being decimated". Note the tense, "is being" implies that we are still in the process of "decimating" them. However, in the next paragraph she says that "Al Qaeda...was not decimated". No Maureen, it would be impossible for Al Queda to be decimated when it is still being decimated.

Just more Mo playing with words instead of herself.

[Jhensy]

Karl Rove's re-election strategy is designed to tug 9/11 heartstrings

Source? DNC talking points don't count, Maureen.

[Alas Babylon!]

The Vietnam era/Hippie protesters were despicable in their hatred of the military (or loathing, if you're Clintonian). The military was not to blame for the Vietnam war, it was democrats in the Presidency and Congress that gave us that war. To spit on men who were returning from hell on Earth, which they had no choice in going to, was wrong, selfish, and totally immoral. The fact that folks today trust our military to do the right thing is wonderful! Leave it to Dowd to find something wrong with that. I'm sure here 60's era friends think the way she does, but after all these years, they and she are still whiny, selfish babies who continue to direct their venom at the wrong people.

[Jimmy Valentine]

What the heck is this woman putting in her morning oatmeal? I haven't read her in a while, but she is completely off the board with this stuff! She never used to be quite so shrill and unreasoning.

Crazy!

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

[TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa]

Limbaugh continued: "It's obvious Maureen Dowd hasn't gotten over her breakup with Michael Douglas who she thinks is a real American president but he didn't do anything but utter the words written for him by Aaron Sorkin and stand where someone director told him to stand and have his hair coifed by somebody who knew what to do, and then he blew it by running off with Catherine Zeta-Jones, leaving Maureen Dowd in the lurch. All she's got now is bourbon for mouthwash, and it's showing on her columns."

[McGavin999]

As Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek, the Bush team does not want the public to pore over the president's daily intelligence briefings, like the one given on Aug. 6, 2001, at the Crawford ranch that dealt with the possibility that Al Qaeda might hijack airplanes

Anyone want to tell me just when the American people have been allowed to "pour over the president's daily intelligence briefings"? Personally, I don't feel comfortable with people having access to those briefings.

[Billthedrill]

Oh, Mo, what a painful read. I don't honestly think that "deep-sixing" the sixties antiwar chic was high on anyone's list of objectives in Iraq, but it is, in fact, precisely what happened. All the vacuous inanities of that fabulously inane decade were resurrected - Dowd resurrected her share - recycled, reused, brought forth as revealed truths and demolished in the space of a few weeks. Holdovers on every university campus and editorial lounge in liberal America are wearing black armbands in mourning. The price of smarmy self-righteousness has plummeted on the commodities exchange because the reserve stocks are overflowing. Dowd can joke about it, but it's sort of like pretending that brown is your favorite color when you've just had your nose rubbed in it.

[Roscoe Karns]

In their preferred calendar, more Gingrichian than Gregorian

Another stupid clunker from Mo. (or as she might say, more doody from Dowdy.)

[Political Junkie Too]

Bush presses the public to take him on faith...

"I did not have sex with that woman..."

-PJ

[gorush]

"At least she used the entire quote this time. "

But yet in her next sentence she reiterates her original misrepresentation by stating "But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated;" Once again she insists upon using "Al Qaeda" as the subject instead of "the half that are dead or captured" that was originally inteaded, i.e. said.

Anyone THAT intentionally deceptive must be a miserable human indeed.

[Jonez712]

That old hag pisses me off. Last fall we had to choose a newspaper article to refute, and naturally, I chose one of Ms. Dowd's editorials. It was the one entitled "The Emperor's New Tutor," if you remember it.

What a jag off.

[expatpat]

If she thinks re-quoting the same statement Bush made without the sleazy distortion is going to get her off the hook, I hope she's wrong. We need to push the NYT for Discipline for Dowd over that.