Well, I got done with my Spanish final, and to celebrate, I think I'll fisk the latest Maureen Dowd column. These are always fun.
Guns and Peanut Butter By MAUREEN DOWDSo let's see. What's our swell choice here?
A guy who mimed being a fighter pilot on a carrier versus a guy who mimed throwing his medals over a fence?
She almost makes it too easy. That statement was completely false. President Bush really was a fighter pilot, and John Kerry really did throw medals over a fence. And they might have been his, too. At least that's his story this week. I love how Dubya apparently isn't a real pilot just because he never went to war.
An incumbent who sticks with the wrong decisions based on the wrong facts...
As opposed to a columnist who thinks that her opinions are facts?
...versus a challenger who seems unable to stick to one side of any decision, right or wrong?
I'll take the guy who actually does what he says he's going to do, thank you very much.
A Republican who's a world-class optimist, despite making the world more dangerous and virulently anti-American...
Oh no! Some people don't like us! WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!! Why do you think we have the world's most powerful armed forces?
...versus a Democrat who looks like a world-weary loner...
That must be Dowdspeak for "botoxed Frenchman."
...even as he pledges to make the world safer and more pro-American?
YOU! FREAKING! IDIOT!!! SOME PEOPLE ONLY LIKE AMERICANS WHEN THEY'RE DEAD!!!!! WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE THAT?!!
A president who can't go anywhere without his vice president to give him the answers...
I guess that doesn't include press conferences. New Dowdspeak word: Anywhere= The 9/11 commission!
...versus a candidate who can't go anywhere without his campaign butler/buddy to give him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
Did Kerry actually say that? I haven't been following that story.
Incidentally, I trust a president who has made some of the toughest decisions of the last decade more than a candidate who can't even make his own snacks.
Bush campaign strategists don't seem worried that every positive development the administration predicted would happen if we invaded Iraq has soured into the opposite.
We said we would depose Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein is now in U.S. custody, and his psychotic sons are roasting in hell. I'm glad we could clear this up.
As an article on Monday in The Times noted about the growing ranks of angry Muslims: "The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered."
Too bad that's been happening for years. They're just finding out now that they can get away with their little jihad games because so many people are afraid of being "Islamophobic."
Communing with the Higher Father and the Almighty, President Bush has either stumbled into a Holy War or swaggered into one.
Does Dowd have to meet a certain "statements that make no sense to sane people" quota in these columns? I think that was it.
In their new book, "The Bushes," Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, who interviewed many Bushes, including the president's father and his brother Jeb, quote one unnamed relative as saying that W. sees the war on terror "as a religious war":
Considering the fact that we were attacked by terrorists who thought they were pleasing Allah, I'd say that's fairly accurate.
"He doesn't have a P.C. view of this war.
Good. There's one more reason it isn't like Vietnam.
His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians.
They're actually trying to kill "infidels," but that's pretty close.
And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."
Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Bush strategists seem to believe that the worse Mr. Bush makes things, the better off he is, because nervous Americans will cling to the obstinate president they know over the vacillating challenger they don't know.
Something tells me this woman wouldn't last very long as a mind-reader.
Senator Kerry's talent for turning a winning proposition into a losing one is disturbingly reminiscent of Al Gore, who somehow managed to lose an election he won.
"Electoral college? What's that? Is that the university Bush's daddy got him a free ride through?"
So is Mr. Kerry's sometimes supercilious manner, and his habit of exacerbating a small thing with an answer that is not quite straight.
What an understatement. That's like saying that the sun is "not quite cold."
When the senator was asked last week whether he owned a gas-scarfing Chevy Suburban S.U.V., he replied, "I don't own an S.U.V.," only to have to admit, when pressed further by reporters, that his wife owns the S.U.V. "The family has it," he said lamely. "I don't have it."
I was going to make a humorous comment here, but I can't top Kerry's actual words.
The White House pounds Mr. Kerry for not playing straight on small-bore stuff, even as they don't play straight on huge-bore stuff.
"BUSH LIED! BUSH LIED! HALLIBURTONWARFOROILDIEBOLDCHIMPHITLER!!!!!"
The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, pronounced the administration "in denial" yesterday, after hearing Condi Rice's briefing for House Democratic lawmakers.
"They lie so much, they don't even know they're lying!"
"This is an administration that told us that our troops would be welcomed with roses," Representative Pelosi said.
I really don't remember them ever saying that, but I'm pretty sure the footage of celebrating Iraqis wasn't a figment of my imagination.
"Instead, it's rocket-propelled grenades.
Did you think we wouldn't have to kill anybody before we freed the rest of the country? It's not war without an enemy.
This is an administration that told us that the Iraqi government would be able to pay for its own reconstruction, and soon. And now it's costing nearly $200 billion to the American people."
What happened to the $87 billion that you were complaining about? That didn't belong to the Iraqi government.
She added: "And it was expressed by the national security adviser now that yes, there was disappointment — disappointment? — about the Iraqi security forces not being able to secure the region that they were assigned to.
"We can call them liars, but they're not allowed to admit shortcomings! That way, they always look worse than us!"
And this is the judgment that the American people have placed their confidence in?"
According to polls, they trust him more than John "Unnamed Foreign Leaders" Kerry.
Mr. Kerry errs on the side of giving the answer he thinks people want to hear, even as Mr. Bush errs on the side of giving the answer he expects people to accept as true.
Kerry gives the answer people want to hear because he thinks people are too dumb to think for themselves. Bush gives the answer he expects people to accept as true because he actually backs up his statements and sticks to them. If he doesn't accept it as true, he probably doesn't say it.
When the president was asked yesterday by a reporter whether it would take an all-out military offensive to put down the violence in Falluja, and whether this would impede the transfer of power on June 30, he was reassuring, despite news of the aerial bombardment of Falluja by U.S. gunships and the 70-ton battle tanks being rushed in to aid marines in the escalating fight.
It almost sounds like she feels sorry for the "insurgents," doesn't it?
"Most of Falluja is returning to normal," the president said, presumably defining normal as flattened.
I'll admit that he shouldn't have said that, but still, as soon as we kill the friggin' terrorists, maybe it can return to normal. But that might make them hate us! OH NO! WE'RE SO MEAN!!!
Anyway, is that 10 minutes to normal, as Karen Hughes would say? Or 10 years to normal? And what on earth is normal, when you're talking about Iraq chaos theory?
Normal=all enemies dead. That sounds pretty simple.
I need a new columnist to fisk. Any suggestions?
Posted by CD on April 29, 2004 03:40 PM