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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 27, 2017 - 06:58am PT
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here's where we draw attention to worthy essays on a broad range of topics. most of mine will be anything but political, but oh well.
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March
15, 2017
"Donald, this i will tell you"
Dear Donald,
We’ve known each other a long time, so I think I can be blunt.
You know how you said at campaign rallies that you did not like being identified as a politician?
Don’t worry. No one will ever mistake you for a politician.
After this past week, they won’t even mistake you for a top-notch negotiator.
I was born here. The first image in my memory bank is the Capitol, all lit up at night. And my primary observation about Washington is this: Unless you’re careful, you end up turning into what you started out scorning.
And you, Donald, are getting a reputation as a sucker. And worse, a sucker who is a tool of the D.C. establishment.
Your whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open borders and the Obamacare “disaster.”
And you were going to fly in on your gilded plane and fix all that in a snap.
You mused that a good role model would be Ronald Reagan. As you saw it, Reagan was a big, good-looking guy with a famous pompadour; he had also been a Democrat and an entertainer. But Reagan had one key quality that you don’t have: He knew what he didn’t know.
You both resembled Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons, floating above the nitty-gritty and focusing on a few big thoughts. But President Reagan was confident enough to accept that he needed experts below, deftly maneuvering the strings.
You’re just careening around on your own, crashing into buildings and losing altitude, growling at the cameras and spewing nasty conspiracy theories, instead of offering a sunny smile, bipartisanship, optimism and professionalism.
You promised to get the best people around you in the White House, the best of the best. In fact, “best” is one of your favorite words.
Instead, you dragged that motley skeleton crew into the White House and let them create a feuding, leaking, belligerent, conspiratorial, sycophantic atmosphere. Instead of a smooth, classy operator like James Baker, you have a Manichaean anarchist in Steve Bannon.
You knew the Republicans were full of hot air. They haven’t had to pass anything in a long time, and they have no aptitude for governing. To paraphrase an old Barney Frank line, asking the Republicans to govern is like asking Frank to judge the Miss America contest — “If your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”
You knew that Paul Ryan’s vaunted reputation as a policy wonk was fake news. Republicans have been running on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and they never even bothered to come up with a valid alternative.
And neither did you, despite all your promises to replace Obamacare with “something terrific” because you wanted everyone to be covered.
Instead, you sold the D.O.A. bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. You were so concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.
As The Times’s chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse put it, the G.O.P. falls into clover with a lock on the White House and both houses of Congress, and what’s the first thing it does? Slip on a banana peel. Incompetence Inc.
“They tried to sweeten the deal at the end by offering a more expensive bill with fewer health benefits, but alas, it wasn’t enough!” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau slyly tweeted.
Despite the best efforts of Bannon to act as though the whole fiasco was a clever way to bury Ryan — a man he disdains as “the embodiment of the ‘globalist-corporatist’ Republican elite,” as Gabriel Sherman put it in New York magazine — it won’t work.
And you can jump on the phone with The Times’s Maggie Haberman and The Washington Post’s Robert Costa — ignoring that you’ve labeled them the “fake media” — and act like you’re in control. You can say that people should have waited for “Phase 2” and “Phase 3” — whatever they would have been — and that Obamacare is going to explode and that the Democrats are going to get the blame. But it doesn’t work that way. You own it now.
You’re all about flashy marketing so you didn’t notice that the bill was junk, so lame that even Republicans skittered away.
You were humiliated right out of the chute by the establishment guys who hooked you into their agenda — a massive transfer of wealth to rich people — and drew you away from your own.
You sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.
That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.
They’re counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”
You got played.
It took W. years to smash everything. You’re way ahead of schedule.
And I can say you’re doing badly, because I’m a columnist, and you’re not. Say hello to everybody, O.K.?
Sincerely, Maureen
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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Mar 27, 2017 - 07:04am PT
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Give her another Pulitzer for that one.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Mar 27, 2017 - 07:08am PT
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" And Ziggy Played Guitar"
Z has and now you ,
the troubles continue to roil
& the best eyes an' eyes of all of us. See it clearly!
Many Don't want to look , Never mind, the Russians have won.
Let's hope that in the shake out
Evil bastardtrump gets moved here
To Danbury Federal Prison in Danbury CT
to be sure he deserves Leanworth but that is to much to hope for.
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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Mar 27, 2017 - 07:29am PT
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Trump may think he is the second coming of ray gun, but even ray gun's family doesn't believe that.
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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Mar 27, 2017 - 07:57am PT
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he needs to clean house and that involves admitting he was wrong, a quality Mr. Obama had, and Trump is incapable of.
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John M
climber
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Mar 27, 2017 - 07:59am PT
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Hahahahaha.. great column. Its just hard to fathom how crazy things are right now. Laughing is about the only way to tolerate it.
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Mar 27, 2017 - 08:03am PT
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That gave me a good chuckle over the morning tea. Thanks hooblie
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Lollie
Social climber
I'm Lolli.
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Mar 27, 2017 - 09:55am PT
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Shared that.
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Mar 27, 2017 - 10:06am PT
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When Maureen is not indulging in snark, and that is one of her favorite pastimes, she can be quite good. She is especially good when she is on a subject that she is personally passionate about. This essay shows how good she can be. I just wished she rose to this level more often and stopped trying to be cute so much of the time. If you want humor with your insight Ms Petrie and Ms Collins are your best bet.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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Mar 27, 2017 - 10:07am PT
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Dowd may be a columnist, but Trump is a communist - a commie stooge, anyway.
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Mar 27, 2017 - 10:21am PT
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I saw that column the other day also. Spot on.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Mar 27, 2017 - 11:13am PT
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Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
William Shakespeare
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Mar 27, 2017 - 11:51am PT
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Is it just my imagination, or have we not heard too much from Presidential SpokesCobra Kellyanne ConJob lately?
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 27, 2017 - 01:50pm PT
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While the stoopid American main loon media continuously focuses on the idiot Trump the real perpetrators of the corrupt US administration is never focused on.
These traitors in our upper echelon of US go on unheeded with no restrictions, administration after administration.
Americans and their stoopid media are way too stoopid to even know what's really going behind the curtain.
Just follow the clown car of the brainwashed mainstream idiot media and their daily whitewashed stoopid reporting.
That's all that's needed for the brainwashed zombie American robots ......
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Mar 27, 2017 - 02:14pm PT
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“The American press is a shame and a reproach to a civilized people. When a man is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and manufactures public opinion.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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Mar 27, 2017 - 02:26pm PT
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Upthread is one of the most unintelligible rants ever posted on the forum. Always fishing for red herrings, this dude. Notice these mysterious black helicopter operators never have names?
Back on Earth, this line is one of Dowd's best...
ou sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.
That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Mar 27, 2017 - 03:16pm PT
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pud, why not admit that the guy is an embarrassment rather than attacking everyone and everything but him?
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