I always fucking regret it when I read Dowd’s horrible swill, but there I was on the NY Times Web site today, and her March 3 column was on the “Most Popular” doohickey in the sidebar, so I clicked on it. What a fucking mistake. Without even getting into how fucking painful it is to read her turgid meaningless prose, let’s just talk about how she is a destructive lying sack of shit.
The column is entitled “Stage of Fools”, and the premise is that Saint John McCain is like motherfucking King Lear–yes, she quotes fucking Shakespeare–railing against Congressional earmarks in the final 2009 fiscal year omnibus bill. Just to get some facts out there–which, to her credit, are actually presented in the column–the total omnibus budget bill is $410 billion. The total amount of earmarks that Saint McCain sought an amendment to remove is $7.7 billion. That’s ~1.9 fucking % of the bill. Not much in the grand scheme of things.
In a rational world, Dowd’s column would be about how it is just political grandstanding on McCain’s part to be railing against <2% of an omnibus spending bill. HAHAHAHAHAHAH!! Here are Dowd’s characterizations of the bill:
offensive bipartisan pork
In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.
Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.
a budget festooned with pork
the first pork-filled budget from a new president
the bloated bill
First, it strains the English language to the breaking point to consider <2% earmarks–even if you concede that all of those are so-called “pork”–as “festooned with pork”, “pork-filled”, or “bloated”. Second, it is a total fucking lie that all earmarks–defined as particular spending lines inserted by particular legislators to fund shit in their own districts/states–are “pork”. Many of these earmarks are for things that are good and useful expenditures.
Dowd is a destructive blight on this country, and I continue to be outraged that she is granted a platform of prominence by the NY Times. Oh, and what a fucking surprise: she manages to work the hated Clinton name into the column:
It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by President Obama’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.
Fuck you, Dowd. You wake up every morning and thinks to yourself, “Hmm. Now what can I viciously lie about today that is going to make life more difficult for as many of the little people as possible, and how am I going to work the Clintons into it?”
12 comments
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BB
March 5, 2009 at 4:34 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Don’t you think Dowd was responsible for Gore’s loss in 2000 to some extent? if she hadn’t been ranting, enough people may have voted so that FL was irrelevant.
thoughtcriminal
March 5, 2009 at 5:01 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Oh, I dunno, when it comes to destructive blight columnists out there, I first think of Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post or George Will pretty much anywhere. Fuck ‘em all, eh?
Mo MoDo
March 5, 2009 at 11:39 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
At least by mentioning King Lear she indirectly called McCain a senile codger.
leigh
March 6, 2009 at 2:06 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
and yet they’ve been ok with handing over billions to GM, which claims they’re going to default on their current “loans” so we should give them more.
wha?
Connecticut Man1
March 6, 2009 at 8:46 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Never mind that the bipartisan-filled rant of McLame duck was crying over his own election campaign promises not being fulfilled. Obama said he would address the problem of Pork, but he never said it was his number one priority, nor did he outline the difference between Republican pork and Democratic pork.
Republicans would like to define pork as anything that is good for the average citizen. Me? I would define it as a lot of the money wasted on things like the prison industrial complex to abuse people for stupid things like smoking a joint or dumping money into fallacies like clean coal. I could list more but I am sure you get the point.
Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde
March 6, 2009 at 10:21 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
What’s sad is there was a stretch where she was funny-snarky, and less obsessive about all things Clinton. That stretch, unfortunately, was about a decade ago. Since then it’s been embarrassing to have (for quite a while) the lone female voice on the NYT Op-Ed be so irrelevantly idiotic.
Gail Collins was a great addition and she’s now the only one I make a point of reading every time, but I’m still disappointed that both female columnists are “humorists” (however loosely that applies to Dowd). Collins’ humor is pointed, but still–they don’t have single female voice among their analysts/pundits.
Except, you know, the lady blogger types, who are only online.
Anonymoustache
March 6, 2009 at 12:11 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I can’t wait till she’s finally whacked like Kristol was. Maybe we should start a write-in campaign saying that we can’t stand NYT anymore because they keep pandering to fuckheads like Brooks and Modo. NYT is in trouble like any other paper and maybe this is the time to get a boycott op going and get their fucking attention. I read less and less of it anyways and I can’t even stand to click on all this shit like Modo—haven’t for a while now.
Suzan
March 7, 2009 at 5:32 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
All newspapers are in big trouble right now due to not having a clue as to why no one reads them or pays them for advertising anymore, and it would be too sweet to exact some “tribute” from the Times if for nothing more than the damage it wreaked when it let Judy Miller transcribe Chalabi’s and the Iraq Study Group’s propaganda about WMD.
After the Kristol choice I was ready to see it go down in toto.
I wonder if a blogtopia campaign could exact some real admission of error and change in “the paper of record” from a ship that has surely touched the tip of the iceberg?
Larry Ayers
March 10, 2009 at 11:30 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
So I gather that you don’t like Dowd? At least she doesn’t use “fuck” every other word! I’m just pullin’ your chain, CP!
octopod
March 16, 2009 at 5:49 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I agree. However, I would like to point out that “festooned with pork” is an abjectly hilarious mental image. It’s like fuckin’ Cockaigne in here, man.
msphd
March 21, 2009 at 12:36 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I agree. She’s an embarrassment to women’s issues, a waste of a token woman writer slot, and a force of evil to boot. Blecch.
sub
September 16, 2009 at 3:11 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
BB -
wow i didn’t know dowd was responsible for gore’s loss. i thought i hated, her, now i love her!….
if you’re left of dowd, and all you people are, there’s no hope for you. Kristol has more intellect than the lot of you combined…..