It's good to see MoDo is back to her old pre-9/11, lightweight pajama party frivolousness. I hate it when she tries to act like a grownup.

Ms. Dowd is not all that relevant anymore in "setting the debate". It is all just so frivolous, what she writes! Sometimes she cooks up a nice soufflé. I mean plenty of air supporting some content. But lately I think she has had a string of flops

1. I find much fault with current political coverage, especialy the way they cover politicians to the exclusion of politics. I cannot agree that Bill Clinton's role in his wife's administration is not a political issue.

2. The press is not entirely at fault in our difficulty in determining Sen Clinton's opinions. She helps them by being strategically ambiguous. She chooses to never give an answer that is direct enough that it can be used to impeach her credibility no matter what she does. This is a sign of a quibler and I have had more than enough of this kind of parsing to last me the rest of my life. I do not want another president who is going to be arguing the definition of 'torture' or 'is' in futile defense of their credibility.

WTF? When did Hillary Clinton lie under oath? Oh yea, I forgot we are to continually and reflexively blame every problem in America on Bill Clinton getting a BJ and lying about it.

That's the joke...

I may have chosen the wrong story to make my point because Pres. Clinton's role can be an issue. This article however was a puff piece masquerading as news.

In most instances, I do not see Sen Clinton as being "strategically ambiguous", - careful, yes. And, honestly, I do not blame her.

No matter what she says or does, she's going to get jumped on. Part of that is because she is a Clinton, part is because she's a woman, part of it is because she's the front-runner, and part is because many pundits just want to be the cleverest guy in the room.

If you look at her voting record since she's been in the Senate and read her speeches since she's been in public life, you'll pretty much see where she stands on almost everything.

Here's an exercise for you. When I studied piano, I'd periodically get stuck on a piece, unable to hear in my mind's ear what it was supposed to sound like because I'd gotten a wrong track settled in my hands and mind's ear. My teacher would have me do some physical exercise, then take a few deep cleansing breaths, shake my hands, sit down at the piano and try again with "fresh ears"

That's what I'd recommend: study Sen Clinton as if you'd never heard of her. Read her writings, listen to her speeches, etc. I think you'll hear a thoughtful, extremely smart committed person. You certainly won't hear empty campaign promises.

I just have no problem at all seeing where Sen. Clinton stands on torture and I'm tired of the wide-eyed disengenuousness of the pundits who twitter on about this.

I still think it's all about the sex.

MoDo is still pissed that she and others can't get Hillary to admit the following:

Yes, Bill and I are "swingers". We always have been. Bill can do anyone he wants, so can I, and sometimes we do them together. Why was I furious at Bill for doing Monica? Just because it went public- Monica just wasn't my type. At least he's not crawling around on men's room floors, or wallowing in a diaper.

Say, Mo, what are you doing for the weekend? Want to come down to Camp David? We still have a key to the hot tub room. Laura won't mind, she really likes to watch! Let's find out how much you'd really like to pet a kitty....

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

I don't normally read MoDo (or should I call her DoDo?), but I'd been out of town, and I went to the NYT website yesterday to catch up on the Krugman columns I had missed while I was away.  I knew before I clicked on the link that reading that column was going to be a mistake, and DoDo proved me absolutely correct.

I am at least comforted to know that column struck so many others as particularly egregious!  How on earth did Dowd get that gig, anyway?  Surely there are far better female columnists the Times could have chosen for that spot, if that's what they were looking for.

Maureen Dowd, like Hillary Clinton, is showing more and more of her true nature over time. It is not a pretty picture in either case. I have no time for Dowd or Clinton, and it has nothing to do with gender. Both of these women are simply too concerned with their own power/influence to have anything meaningful to say to me.

It is Bush who tortures the definition of 'torture' and President Clinton who did it with 'is'. I have not seen Sen clinton say anything aproaching this level of foolishness in public but neither had Bush II or Clinton I at this point in their careers. I have no need to go back over Sen Clintons speaches and position papers. I have been watching all the candidates since this election cycle started and before. She so carefully parses her statements to be devoid of anything that she could be pinned down on that it is sickening.

The object of speach should not be to speak so that you can be understood. It should be to speak so that you cannot be missunderstood. She rarely raises to this level of clarity even on trivia like whom she would prefer to win a childrens game played by adults. If she cannot be unambiguous about trivia how can we trust her carefuly parsed statements on matters of import?

She is not being attacked because she is a woman. The character of some of her attacks may be afffected because of her gender but it is she far more than any candidate who plays the gender card at every oportunity. If one wishes to be treated as an equal the one must act as one. Pointing out the gender of people who have raised questions about her credibility to attack them instead of answering the attack on its merrits or lack there of is sexist behavior and intelectualy dishonest ad hominem attack to boot. If she wants to see how one should handle an issue like this she should watch Sen Obamas handling of the issue of his race. He never brings up and dissmisses it as irrelevent when questioned on it. He said, 'If I loose it will not be because of my race.'

Can't help but offer Bob Somerby's latest...quite relevant:

www.dailyhowler.com

Read all of it, but particularly "Welches at War" further down the page.

Enjoy.

You don't need to waterboard a cat. Just put tape on its paws and it'll talk.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

1. I did not complain about the former presidents roll or her statements on what it will be. I was responding to a post that said that he is a non-issue. His roll is not a non-issue. That is all I was saying.

2. I did not say she was arguing about the definition of torture. I said we do not need another president who would argue the definitions of words like 'torture' or 'is' trying to salvage lost credibility. I though these were clear references to the troubles that our two previous presidents got into that are part of the conversation in the popular culture of political discourse. I must have been wrong because you are the second person who missed my meaning. I will try to make my references clearer in the future.

3. If Sen Clinton thinks she has already won and can concentrate on the general election already then she should use her crystal ball and decide who is going to win the GOP primary as well. Then she can run against him. GWB is not going to be in the next election so she is not running against him. I personaly think she is counting her chickens before the eggs have hattched. I find cockieness unatractive, and am not the only one who thinks so. If she wishes to compete in the general election it would behove her to win the primary first.

Again...comical.

Would this be 'playing the gender card'? In her high school senior year she ran for president of the Student Council (?) and lost. The man who beat her back then said recently that she went around telling whoever would listen that she was beaten because she was a girl. He said it wasn't quite true, but what was true was she just wasn't very well liked.

Of all the books on her I've read what comes through is she is very secretive, feels she is entitled to be president (reminds me of Bush and his god), has 'enemies' and doesn't take well to advice from others. That profile is not of an individual we want in the Oval Office.

I don't want Hillary to win the nomination that's for sure, but this kind if idiotic carping about her is disgraceful just as it is whenever they do the same kind of thing to Obama, Edwards or anyone else. It's amazing what an idiot like Maureen Dowd gets paid to write this utter garbage. It's even more amazing that anyone takes her seriously.

As for the quote about being "cold eyed" about power and making everything in her life a commodity, in fairness to Senator Clinton, the very same remark can be made about anyone who is a serious candidate for President in either major party. It is only a matter of how apparent that is in each of the individuals, not whether or not it is true. Anyone running for President in a serious manner has to face the fact that in order to raise the obscene amounts of cash necessary to be competitive, this "cold-eyed" approach is not negotiable but in fact required. This is a criticism akin to accusing a successful business person of turning a profit by having a "cold-eyed" approach to the bottom line. As a criticism it's simply moronic. She is a serious candidate for President so yes, she is going to have to be very businesslike as far as raising money is concerned. It's totally unfair to say that this is somehow a personal quality of hers that is unique and uniquely evil.

All Dowd and her ilk are interested in are the cutesy, two-bit and utterly shallow criticisms of people they don't like. It's exactly like being out of favor with the group of nasty, pompous, girls who rule the social roost in 7th or 8th grade. It's sickening.

There's plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made about Senator Clinton. I wish Dowd and her fellow airhead "journalists" would make them. But the kind of things we're talking about here is just pure illegitimate bullshit.

What books would those be?

The book by Carl Bernstein, the name of which escapes me. "Hell to Pay" by Barbara Olson (which I took with a grain of salt) and "The Truth about Hillary" by Edward Klein. Those are all I can remember but there were others. (All available at my library, by the way.)

Sen Obama simply said he favored the govonor's plan.

I would offer you a similar chalenge. Can you site some examples of her giving an unambiuous, non parsed, declarative answer to any question?

but this kind if idiotic carping about her is disgraceful just as it is whenever they do the same kind of thing to Obama, Edwards or anyone else.

Yes. It really doesn't matter who the target is. What matters is the viciousness behind it.

As you say:

It's sickening.

Talking about pets is not so innocent.

Take the Michael Vick case. NFL and other sports figures have been associated with murder and rape in the past, but Vick's crimes against dogs brings more outrage. America is a pet loving, especially dog loving nation. That comment on the cat was an attempted kick in the groin on MoDo's part. For Hillary's part, she should be glad she didn't use the dog to dump on her. MoDo is irrelevant when it comes to the relevant.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

Reminds me of FDR's comment about statements made against his dog:

"my opponents have even gone to making verbal attacks against my dog Fala. Now I don't mind the verbal attacks, my family does not mind the verbal attacks, but Fala does mind...." and the rest is history.

Where's FDR when we need him?

Note: paraphrased from memory.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

Why is it considered "evasive" to give a complicated answer to a complicated question?

Succeeded on her own? I think that she could have, but she apparently didn't. Of course all I know about her is what I have read about her, gotten from listening to her and sheer speculation on my part. How could it be otherwise?

I don't think she's a 'terrible woman'. I just don't think she'd be a good president. I feel the same way about most of the male candidates up for grabs.

"She purports to champion the cause of women at the same time as she puts up with a philandering husband"

That is one low blow! Many of us have had philandering husbands and stayed or left as befitted our individual circumstances. To whine that she's anti-feminist because they worked out their marriage is just too low for words....Nothing without a man? I'm surprised anyone who reads this site would say that.

Given Sen Clinton's strengths, I think she probably would have done perfectly well.

I can't believe you said all that.

How has she not succeeded? Raising an apparently good kid, helping her husband, running for the U.S. senate and getting elected, president of her class at Wellesley, going to Yale Law school, being named one of the top 100 lawyers in the U.S., volunteering as defense counsel for the Children's Defense Fund, serving on the democratic committee on the Watergate hearings, was appointed in 1977 as chair of the board of The United States Defense Corp., pushed legislation through the congress in the 90s to make adoption laws more comprehensive and "user friendly", created a dept. at the U.S. dept. of Justice for women/violence issues, was the keynote speaker at the United Nations Fifth International Conference on Women's rights, was chair of the Bar Association's Committee on Women in the Profession, started an organization to make it easier for women to enter the political arena around the world, worked to increase funding for breast cancer research and provide vaccinations for children and many, many more accomplishments. Now where has she failed to succeed in life? By not divorcing her husband?

Mo tried to act like an adult?

CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com

Who cares what Gerald Ford thought? That's irrelevant.

Hillary Clinton is being attacked because she is a strong woman.

Why should Hillary Clinton have had a position on the Governor of New York's proposed driver licensing policy? Here's a clue! She is not running for State office in New York or any other state. She is running for POTUS and as POTUS she would have nothing to say about the driving licence regulations of New York or any other state. She wasn't expecting such an asinine question and so wasn't prepared to answer it. Funny how Obama apparently knew it was coming and had a ready answer for it.

The beltway crowd never really left high school. They've never grown up, never stopped polishing their "game." Dowd is an archetype of this phenomenon.

Do you honestly think that a man who was a frontrunner in a closely fought primary would not be attacked, or is this a failed attemt at humor?

Thanks for the tag team ad hominem attacks! When the attacks get personal it lets me know that the other individual has no argument.

It is my opinion that running a primary where the candidates do not crticise each other and point out the other candidates weakness is a sure fire way to nominate a candidate with flaws that will prevent them from getting elected. The candidates should of course refrain from personal attacks and false claims like the swiftboaters, but that should be the standard even in the general election. An attack on a candidates positions or lack there of is not a personal attack. There have been no attacks in this primary season that were out of bounds or that would hurt a candidate in the general election any more than would have been the case had the issue never come up in the primary.

Having no position on the issue would have been a fine answer in my opinion. I would have been satisfied with either position on this issue or no position, but not BOTH. She is Kerryesque in her answers and will be skewered for being for it WHILE she is against it.

I gave you her follow up answer - she understands it, she has not taken a position for or against it because while it may be necessary, the UNDERLYING problem is not solved by it.

I'm not for it or against it either - and yes, I do understand where Spitzer is coming from.

I've been trying to figure out why I don't like Hillary as a person. Is there a book out that paints her in a favorable light because every book I've read leaves me not liking her.

That said, I'm a left-of-left Dem, actually a socialist, and as I read Hillary's politics, I read centrist. But then she'll stand behind an amendment to outlaw flag-burning, she'll vote for the Iraq war, she'll vote to support Bush on the Iran issue - all of which turn me against her. Any candidate with that record will not get my vote.

Obviously, her defenders - at least on this site - don't find her record particularly disturbing.

Too many of us believe liking a candidate is a good guide to whether they would make a good President. We "liked" George. (Al was turned into someone we didn't like.) On policy, we focus on were we disagree with known persons, often pinning our hopes on unknowns whom we "like".

We want our two party sytem to turn out at least one person we like and who we are pretty much in agreement on most important issues. It could happen, but don't bet your money (or your country) on it.

Kevin Russell Cook

Oh my God! Fala's DEAD???

I have no opinion on wether she is a Cubs fan or not. I think that actualy caring who wins is silly. I think that sports are part of the weapons of mass distraction that are destroying our nation. What I was complaining about is that after she said she would have to swap sides in a game between her two teams she attacked Rudy for saying he was rooting for Boston. It is the most trivial issue in the campeign but she cannot resist dishonestly attacking someone for making the same kind of remark she did. It is hypocrtical even in matters of trivia.

She didn't attack Rudy for any such thing. She was JOKING, Larry.

I'm not particularly fond of liars and Hillary lies a lot - as do most politicians - but there's lying and then there's lying.

Hillary has said that her mother named her after the famous Hillary who scaled Everest in May of 1953. Hillary was born in '47. That kind of lying reveals, to me, a person I can't trust. Afterall, given the power that the presidency has accrued through recent years, being able to trust a president is vital.

I don't. I think I'm personalizing it because I wouldn't marry a man who treated me the way Bill treated her, even before they were married. She's had to spend a good deal of her marriage either keeping Bill out of other women's beds or bailing him out when yet another woman goes public. I just wouldn't do it. For sure she wanted to succeed with him and giving up her marriage would have made that impossible. And, she could have done it without him. I would admire her if she'd - in my eyes - kept her integrity, dumped the bastard, and run for president.

Which reminds me, how the hell does Laura do it. How about Pat Nixon? Jackie? Eleanor? There's got to be and have been a big dose of something in those gals - and there's obviously a big dose of something in Hillary. Is it an admirable something? I'm not so sure. ?Maybe it's good sex?

Phelicity, I'm barely left of center and I can't figure out those votes. I neither like nor dislike Sen Clinton, having never met her, but the facts of her life lead me to admire her in many ways. Part of that is probably that we are of the same generation and therefore had many of the same challenges.

I tend to defend her because I find so many of the criticisms based on Republican talking points and not things she has actually said or done or else they tend to be based on some kind of hocus-pocus mind-reading that I find funnier that the Republican evolution denying.

We seem to be in a data overload stage. It will be interesting to watch what happens after the primaries.

Who will these people who obviously abhor Sen Clinton support if she is the nominee? Rudy Giuliani? Dennis Kuchinuch? Inquiring minds want to know.

Clinton gave a thoughtful answer pointing out that there were pros and cons. Do you really expect that she would stand there and say "I don't know?" This is a debate, not a question and answer period.

Oh, for pities sake!

My mother told me that I was named after a famous literary character and I, naturally, believed her. When people asked me if if was named after that particular character, well known to adults in the 60s, I always said yes. However, when I was old enough to read the play she was referring to, I found that my name is spelled slightly differently, though still a standard spelling that is essentially the same as the source.

Am I responsible for the fact that my mother told me the origin of my name, yet got the spelling a little wrong? If I were a politician and recounted my mother's story, would I be called a liar because Mom chose an alternative spelling to the original name? Would you call my character into question because of a slight and meaningless discrepancy?

By the way, John Edwards' given first name is "Johnny", not John. Are you going to slam him for abandoning his countrified moniker in favor of a more sophisticated version? I hear he has some authenticity issues....[/snark]