[lit-ideas] Re: NYTimes.com Article: The Prince of Tides, Tacking and Attacking

  • From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:24:32 -0400 (GMT-04:00)

-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sep 23, 2004 9:09 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: NYTimes.com Article: The Prince of Tides, Tacking and 
Attacking


If all Dems had your head-in-sand attitude, Amago, Bush surely would sail to
another 4, maybe 8 years.
Carol


Moron Dowd is an idiot.  The only sand is in her head.  Kerry's problem was 
that his first set of campaign managers took a high road strategy.  They blew 
it, and they're gone.  His new managers are out there swinging.  I'll agree 
with you that the masses don't know issues from wishful thinking, so it's going 
to take a lot of hammering on Kerry's part to get the message through, and it 
is late, but he's doing it.  The only person Dowd is helping with junk like 
this is herself and maybe Bush.  Since she works for the NYT, I'm not 
surprised.  They're a conservative paper with a liberal image.  I mean really, 
what's the point of printing this crap 40 something days before the election?


Andy 



>
> The Princess of Tides Maureen Dowd gratuitously and viciously attacked
Clin=
> ton when he was campaigning.  In my opinion she was no better than Safire
w=
> ith his Talk Radio style mud slinging.  I can't take her seriously.  She
se=
> ems here to be jumping on the bandwagon.  I heard Madeline Albright
intervi=
> ewed regarding Kerry, and Albright supported him.  She said his position
wa=
> s consistent.  The speech Kerry gave on Monday buried Bush.  Except to
thos=
> e who prefer wishful thinking to reality.
>
>
> Andy Amago
>
>
>
> The Prince of Tides, Tacking and Attacking
>
> September 23, 2004
>  By MAUREEN DOWD=20
>
>
>
> =20
>
> LOS ANGELES - I had to come all the way to Hollywood to
> find Democrats who can actually sound sincere when they say
> John Kerry has turned a corner.=20
>
> Mr. Kerry is looking for corners to turn in his campaign
> just as frantically as the president is looking for corners
> to turn in Iraq. (I rate Mr. Kerry's chances higher.) But
> even here, among the right's despised liberal cultural
> elite, some disenchanted Democrats are already lusting for
> the Clinton restoration in 2008.=20
>
> "Kerry's always trying too hard to prove his guy-dom," one
> influential Democrat sighed, "while Bush comes across as
> more of a real guy."=20
>
> Republicans back in Washington are not only mocking the
> spandex-coated Mr. Kerry's windsurfing video in their ads;
> they scoff at the notion that the wind's at his back.=20
>
> "I'm not sure it's turning a corner to do Regis and Kelly,"
> sneered one who has taken to talking about Mr. Kerry in the
> past tense.=20
>
> The Bushies' perverse private calculation about why Mr.
> Kerry can't get traction would be comic if it weren't
> tragic: he can't effectively argue that he could do
> something differently in Iraq because W. has so bollixed up
> the place that even a change at the top wouldn't help.=20
>
> "He'd never be able to get any other countries to help us,"
> one Bush insider said. "Even the British only have 7,000
> troops in Iraq, compared to our 150,000." (The London
> Observer reported that despite growing dangers in Iraq, the
> main British force will soon be cut by a third.)=20
>
> Mr. Kerry has finally begun to fight back and put the focus
> on Iraq instead of Vietnam. His speech on Monday was
> compelling and, unlike W.'s toxic cotton-candy spin, has
> the additional advantage of being true.=20
>
> Going after Saddam, as the senator says, was a diversion
> from our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden. We have "traded a
> dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."=20
>
> We have, as Mr. Kerry says, a president and vice president
> who are "in denial" in a fantasy world, and who are guilty
> of "colossal failures of judgment." W. did "hitch his wagon
> to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who
> disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the
> uniformed military."=20
>
> America's credibility in the world has plummeted, as Mr.
> Kerry says, just at the time we have to deal with the truly
> scary spokes in the "axis of evil": the ones who are a real
> nuclear threat, not an imaginary one.=20
>
> Yet Mr. Kerry's case has a hollow center. He was asked at
> his press conference on Tuesday about W.'s snide reminders
> that his rival gave him authority to go to war (and,
> playing frat pledge to W.'s rush chairman, inanely agreed
> that he would still have voted to give that authority even
> if there were no W.M.D.).=20
>
> That vote, he replied, was correct "because we needed to
> hold Saddam Hussein accountable for weapons. That's what
> America believed."=20
>
> Not all Americans.=20
>
> The administration rolled the Democrats on the
> authorization vote. It was clear at the time that going
> after Saddam to punish Osama made no sense, that Cheney &
> Co. were going to use Saddam as a lab rat for all their old
> neocon agendas. It was clear, as the fleet sailed toward
> Iraq, that the Bush crew had no interest in diplomacy -
> that it wanted to castrate the flaccid U.N., the flower
> child Colin Powell and his pinstriped State Department,
> snotty Old Europe, and the despised Saddam to show that
> America is a hyperpower that is not to be messed with.=20
>
> As I quoted a girlfriend saying in September 2002, a month
> before Mr. Kerry's authorization vote, "Bush is like the
> guy who reserves a hotel room and asks you to the prom."=20
>
> When Mr. Kerry says it was the way the president went about
> challenging Saddam that was wrong, rather than the fact
> that he challenged Saddam, he's sidestepping the central
> moral issue.=20
>
> It was wrong for the president to take on Saddam as a
> response to 9/11, to pretend the dictator was a threat to
> our national security, to drum up a fake case on weapons
> and a faux link to Al Qaeda, and to divert our energy,
> emotions and mat=E9riel from the real enemy to an old enemy
> whose address we knew.=20
>
> It was wrong to take Americans to war without telling them
> the truth about why we were doing it and what it would
> cost.=20
>
> It wasn't the way W. did it. It was what he did.=20
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/opinion/23dowd.html?ex=3D1096964767&ei=3D=
> 1&en=3Da7d640185d9b3f02
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
> Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
> reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
> Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
> now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:
>
>
http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do?mode=3DSubscriptionT1=
> &ExternalMediaCode=3DW24AF
>
>
>
> HOW TO ADVERTISE
> ---------------------------------
> For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters=20
> or other creative advertising opportunities with The=20
> New York Times on the Web, please contact
> onlinesales@xxxxxxxxxxx or visit our online media=20
> kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
>
> For general information about NYTimes.com, write to=20
> help@xxxxxxxxxxxx =20
>
> Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html



------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: