Maureen Dowd is funny this morning:
WHAM! BLAM! POW!
Way to crack the gal right across the kisser, when she’s already on the ropes from so much conservative wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Senator Sam Brownback suggested it would be futile for the “very decent lady,” as he dismissively called her, to compete with John Roberts’s masterly performance because that would be like “following Elvis.”
Pat Buchanan told Keith Olbermann that conservatives were “agonized,” “depressed,” and “virtually heartbroken,” and Charles Krauthammer wrote: “If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.” Ouch.
And yet, I still think the Dems should reject her. We don’t need no stinking Bush apologists on the court. Let Miers “twist in the wind” for a while, and then send her packing back to Texas and her whacko church.
W.’s case for her elevation is their closeness, because she is, as Alexander Hamilton put it, one of the “obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”
Heh.
Ms. Coulter not only said that she was unhappy about Georgie and his pick, but also when she blamed us (the lefties) for it. She said that because of us Georgie is running scared now. What the Fuck? He owns everything, he runs everything, every Crony is his personal Homey with loyalty oath signed in hand…….how in the hell can he be scared of me?
He can be scared of you for the same reason Nixon was: he’s coming unhinged. Maybe God has stopped talking to him and he’s terrified. As they say down here, “He just ain’t right.”
…it’s always Emmanuel Goldstein’s fault.
Annie is such a brainless nut, why does anyone ever bother with her?
“obsequious instruments of his pleasure” – oooh, I love that quote!
Agreed, let them have a food fight ’til their pie-throwing arms are exhausted; each additional pie makes the Democrats look a little bit more like the adults in DC.
Then if he turns around and nominates a right-wing extremist, we nail him from the high ground, with statesmanlike prose, demonstrating that we’re the only party capable of protecting our constitutional liberties as we go into the 2006 election season.
But it may happen that W decides to turn on the fundies – nothing gets his ire up more than being challenged. He may decide to tell them all to go f$%^ themselves if he gets mad enough, and find a nominee that is acceptable to his true friends, the corporate plutocrats, a situation in which we might have more influence.
By the time the post-Miers nominee comes along he may be without a big hunk of his brain trust, and dealing with the court opening from a position of even greater weakness – and we can again take the high ground and offer to help him select a nominee acceptable to both parties – an offer he might take if he’s been bloodied enough by the far right.
I suspect all this is exactly what Sen. Reid is up to.
that gives some grounds for opimism about the Dem’s ability to be an opposition. I hope you’re right.
So do you think that any of the “security moms” who drank the koolaid and voted for Bushie will be alert enough to recognize the blatant misogyny of these blowhards on the right? All I know is that I’ll enjoy watching to see if that happens.
…some credit, I’ve seen less and less of the “Harry Reid says she’s ok, and the wingnuts hate her, so let’s confirm her” line in the last few days.
Miers is a disastrous hack, whose chief qualification, it seems, is that some believe that her loyalty to the president is so strong that she’s essentially a bought-and-paid-for vote. Between wingnuts who want their guarantees to be more ideological than personal, elitist wingnuts who are really bothered by the SMU degree, and the occasional self-respecting wingnut who insists that his “philosophy” be wrapped in “ideas” not cronyism, even the right seems embarrassed by this one.
But as you correctly argue, Boo, the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. I’d be happy to see a big, bipartisan rejection of Miers. The country would be a better place for it.
I think Harry Reid gave her a wink and a nod knowing that the far right would react exactly as they have – by coming unhinged. They have lived, breathed, and sweated blood for this moment since 1980. The appearance of his approval is toxic to them, even though I suspect they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I don’t believe any Democrat has come out and endorsed her; they’re all holding fire until they see who if anyone is left standing after the fight on the right dies down.
And Harry can say “Who, me?” if accused of duplicity. “All I was trying to do was act like a responsible senator and reach across the aisle to do the nation’s business…”
I had been thinking that ole Harry had hoodwinked the right. I mean, they must be thinking that if Reid likes her, she must be a fem-nazi who will declare “free abortions for everyone.”
These confirmation hearings could be pretty entertaining if she is all crony without a good knowledge of the law and precedent. We can laugh at her and then send her packing. The constitution was written by a fairly secular bunch. We need to question these nominees about their religious beliefs and do they override the law of the United States. So that they are not legislating Christianity from the bench.
I don’t think Bushie is sending her there to support their brand of Christianity (although that might happen too). I think he’s sending her there to protect his own ass and the plutocrats who support him. So the senators better pay attention and ask her some questions related to those issues as well.
Sounds like Brownback is competing to top Chris Matthews’ sexism.
who is Haitian born, French, black, and a woman. She is consistently described in the press as a “journalist.” Most of Canada is very pleased with her appointment.
It’s time to stop thinking of a person’s gender and to hone in on qualifications.
That’s why I call myself “cotterperson” instead of a name that automatically identifies my gender. It’s ideas I’m interested in online. If it were a job, it would be qualifications, of course.
Canadian culture is on the leading edge, from everything I see, but I do want a Norwegian electric car more than anything! I wish my “greatest country in the world” would open up its eyes and see what we could be.
I just put that about Matthews in because I don’t know if anyone else notices it. We seem to be inured to it here — certainly in the Arkansas Ozarks where I live!
It’s pretty bad when you get “Borked” by Bork himself.
I wonder if there’s more to this for the right wing. They’ve been putting up a good front defending all of Bush’s misadventures (Iraq, et al) when in their heart of hearts many of them know it’s been disastrous but their pride won’t let them admit a mistake. This could be the chance they’ve been looking for to make a face-saving jump off the sinking ship.
The base may be about to turn on W.
they are all a little lightheaded…too much oxygen reaching the brain all of a sudden after they removed their lips from Bush’s ass.
Just showing off now that I’m learning my blog vocabulary.
But that was REALLY funny!!
Or maybe they have extracted their heads from his butt to come up for air and can see things more clearly now.
I took a trip over to the other side at redstate and see that its amazing how much the conflict over there is a mirror image of ours. Check it out here.
Here’s The New Republic’s list of the top 15 in the Bush “Hackocracy”.
TNR gives a lengthy description of each which explains their hack status, but I can’t reprint it all due to copyright issues.
They are all definitely unqualified hacks, of that there is no doubt.
This alone makes me wonder if
How would you like to be called “poor Harriet?” I feel sorry for her, too. Just the name – so respectable and well meaning – gives me a pang. This is not to offend all you other Harriets; I wouldn’t want to offend her either. The name evokes a dutiful Daddy’s girl type of girl. She might submit verse to the Hallmark Card Co. She always shares her hymnal in church. You can count on Harriet to whip out the freeze-dried funeral food as soon as she hears of a “passing.” She’s usually the first visitor to the bereaved family. It’s
is nasty and small of me, but this is what she makes me think of. I tell you this because I think she’ll need a little sympathy and compassion once she faces some of those horrible old men in the Senate.
Pleasantly ambiguous John Roberts, with his bland good looks and Stepford family,got off so easily. He had rehearsed all the roles in an embarrassingly
predictable script and showed himself open to old boy camaraderie.. He was gracious about giving facetime to his interviewers and played to their vanities well. Why did no Democrats insist on more? Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Roberts with his short but impeccable resume scares me more than Harriet, who has yet to be a judge of any kind of all.