Bill Maher, Maureen Dowd, and the Clueless Democrats

🚨NEW: Bill Maher, Maureen Dowd say Dems' woke era isn't over🚨

DOWD: "[Dems] just stopped being any fun. They made everyone feel that everything they said and did, and every word, was wrong. And people don't want to live like that."

MAHER: "No. Do you think we're over that… pic.twitter.com/4DKEqYZXDE

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) March 30, 2025

Chuck Todd: GOP Exploiting Biden's Denial of 7th Grandchild

NBC's Chuck Todd accuses GOP of trying to 'exploit' Biden over not acknowledging his 7th grandchild https://t.co/jzHKua9QyI

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 10, 2023

From FOX News:

NBC host Chuck Todd claimed the GOP was trying to "exploit" President Biden over his refusal to acknowledge his seventh grandchild and said Republicans were using Hunter Biden to beat up the president.

Todd brought up New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and her "tough piece" on the president and his refusal to acknowledge his seventh grandchild at the very end of "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

"I think we all understand the personal challenge and concern and all of these things that the president has here, but his political foes see this and they’re trying to exploit. There is no doubt, every day DeSantis and Trump try to use this to beat up Biden," Todd said, asking NBC's Garrett Haake how it was working.

It's amazing that Chuck Todd is willing to acknowledge the FACT that Biden has seven grandchildren.

Maureen Dowd is correct regarding Biden's callousness.

"Joe Biden’s mantra has always been that ‘the absolute most important thing is your family.’ It is the heart of his political narrative. Empathy, born of family tragedies, has been his stock in trade. Callously scarring Navy’s life, just as it gets started, undercuts that," she wrote.

"What the Navy story reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is," she added.

Dowd seems to suggest Biden's age is to blame for his refusal to include his seventh grandchild in his family. It has nothing to do with Biden being 80 years old and everything to do with him being cruel and selfish.

Does 72-year-old Grandma Jill share her husband's "dated and inauthentic" view of family? Is age her excuse, too?

The fact is the Bidens are frauds. They aren't good people. Good people don't make it a policy to pretend their grandchild doesn't exist.

Maureen Dowd's Excellent Edible Pot Adventure

I don't read Maureen Dowd's columns anymore.

I used to read and write about her stuff quite regularly.

I decided she was just a waste of time and I quit giving her work any attention.

However, when I noticed she was trending on Twitter, I wondered what was up.

Dowd wrote a column about her experience in Colorado with a legalized pot edible, "Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude."

The caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child.

Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more. I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop.

What could go wrong with a bite or two?

Everything, as it turned out.

Not at first. For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand.

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

It took all night before it began to wear off, distressingly slowly. The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label.

I reckoned that the fact that I was not a regular marijuana smoker made me more vulnerable, and that I should have known better. But it turns out, five months in, that some kinks need to be ironed out with the intoxicating open bar at the Mile High Club.

Yes, Maureen, you're an old woman.

Good grief. You should have known better.

Ed Perlmutter and Ryan Frazier - SLAP

Democrat incumbent Ed Perlmutter, of Colorado's 7th Congressional District, was so frustrated talking about ObamaCare with his challenger, Republican Ryan Frazier, that he made an unfortunate error.

Perlmutter slapped Frazier, literally.

Frazier said, "Don't hit me, man. Come on."

It wasn't much of a hit, just a swat at Frazier's hand, but it was very strange.

The Dems are really losing it.

Would Maureen Dowd call Perlmutter a Mean Boy?

Video.


We do not slap. That's not nice.
_______________

Meet Republican Ryan Frazier.

Maureen Dowd: Republican Mean Girls

Maureen Dowd, queen bee liberal, is caught in junior high school. Poor Maureen never grew up. She has the perspective of a teenager rather than the post-middle-aged woman that she is.

She writes about "Republican Mean Girls" with all the angst of a 13-year-old.

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women — Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine — have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

No one is more of a tormentor, no one is more snide, no one is more cold than Dowd.

Funny that the ultimate Liberal Mean Girl would be ripping on women playing in what's still a male-dominated world - politics.

Dowd has zero tolerance for conservative women.

Like her fellow Leftists, she wants to destroy them. Dowd, however, is using a different approach than her comrades. So far, most of the attackers smear the conservative female candidates as extremists and nuts. Dowd tries another angle, probably because those slurs haven't been effective.

Dowd attempts to dip into a sensitive psychological place and manipulate memories she hopes will resonate with the public. She casts the Republican candidates, those strong and talented women, as Mean Girls.

I don't know if Dowd really sees them as Mean Girls. Is she that immature and insecure and screwed up?

Could be.

Dowd actually criticizes the Mean Girls while simultaneously being one herself.

...“Man up, Harry Reid,” Sharron Angle taunted him at their Las Vegas debate here Thursday night. That’s not an idle insult, coming from a woman who campaigns at times with a .44 Magnum revolver in her 1989 GMC pickup.

With casino red suit and lipstick, Angle played the Red Queen of the Mad Hatter tea party, denouncing career politicians and ordering “Off with your head!” and “Down with government benefits!” Even sober and smiling beneath her girlish bangs, the 61-year-old Angle had the slightly threatening air of the inebriated lady in a country club bar, tossing off outrageous statements and daring anyone to call her on them.

The debate between the former boxer and the former competitive weight lifter, the soft-spoken Mormon and the outspoken Christian, was a source of fascination because the rivals perfectly represent the two caricatures of the midterms: The Washington incumbent and master of back-room deals who’s been around forever and lost touch with people versus the wacky new-breed Tea Party challenger who’s hiding from and hating on the press, spouting a lot of weird stuff and vowing to do what Barack Obama didn’t: Shake up Washington.

...Angle has been pressing the case, underwritten by Karl Rove’s operation and other conservative groups that have made the majority leader their No. 1 target, that Reid must be punished for being in a socialist triumvirate with Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. In the debate, she went for the jugular, asking him how he became “one of the richest men in the Senate” after coming from Searchlight “with very little.”

Reid, who cloaks his ambition and brass knuckles under a mousy facade, looked as if she had slapped him. He called her “my friend,” but clearly did not think of her as his “pet,” as he unfortunately dubbed Chris Coons, the Delaware opponent of the bewitching Christine O’Donnell.

He said that was “really kind of a low blow,” adding that he had been a successful lawyer before becoming a pol, and “did a very good job in investing.”

Aside from their political differences and policy positions, Dowd should be championing these strong women.

Doesn't she admire them for fearlessly taking on their male opponents rather than cowering, weak and defenseless?

It seems Dowd wants women to revert to being seen and barely heard. (Actually, she wants only conservative women to be silenced.)

She also employs a sickening double standard when it comes to judging Republican women. Compare that with her tolerance for the behavior exhibited by male candidates.

Dowd didn't call Obama a Mean Boy when he went for the jugular on John McCain. She doesn't call him a Mean Boy when he goes for the jugular as he attacks "the other side" now.

Obama has made the demonization of his political opponents an art form, yet he doesn't get the label Mean Boy. His cruelty and divisiveness don't earn him that title from Dowd.

Dowd is inconsistent. She doesn't make sense. In short, she's true to form.

Speaking of Republican Mean Girls, to my knowledge the candidates cited by Dowd haven't resorted to physical violence like Democrat Mean Girls.

Oh, yes. Democrat girls can be very, VERY mean.

One example: Democrat Cynthia McKinney.

When McKinney was in Congress, she verbally slapped around a Capitol police officer and actually punched him.

That's mean.

Another example: Democrat Milele Coggs.

Alderwoman Milele Coggs of Milwaukee's 6th District hit a poll worker with her car after she got into an argument with him.

That's really mean, much worse than girls who would "steal your boyfriend" and "spread rumors that you were pregnant."

Maureen Dowd, George W. Bush, and the Ground Zero Mosque

This is a stunning turn of events.

Maureen Dowd, the absolutely rabid, Bush-hating, New York Times queen lib, now is praising President George W. Bush and calling on him to speak to Americans.

This woman has spent over a decade trashing Bush, mocking him, belittling him, dissing him in every possible way.

Dowd would write columns, actually little vignettes, with imagined dialogue between Bush and his father, or Bush and Dick Cheney.

They were vile, horrible pieces.

But now, Dowd is begging for the wisdom of George W. Bush.

Dowd writes:

The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.

George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It’s time for W. to weigh in.

She has got to be kidding!

Bush, the idiot. Bush, the dunce. Bush, the cowboy. Bush, the frat boy. Bush, the chimp. Bush, the shrub.

Time to weigh in, buddy.

Good grief.

Dowd does get in some shots at Bush, albeit misdirected ones as usual.

This — along with immigration reform and AIDS in Africa — was one of his points of light. As the man who twice went to war in the Muslim world, he has something of an obligation to add his anti-Islamophobia to this mosque madness. W. needs to get his bullhorn back out.

Oh, Bush has an obligation to share his wisdom and bring some good sense to the Ground Zero mosque debate because he went to war twice in the Muslim world.

So Bush owes the Muslim world his vocal support of a mosque at Ground Zero?

OBLIGATION?

I believe Bush went to war in the Muslim world because WE WERE ATTACKED BY RADICAL ISLAMISTS ON 9/11.

Does Dowd live in New York? Does Dowd live on this planet?

Cardinal William Levada and the New York Times

According to Reuters, the Vatican attacks the New York Times. The Vatican is victimizing the Times.

The headline: "Vatican Attacks New York Times Over Abuse Coverage"

The Vatican attacked The New York Times on Wednesday for its coverage of the sexual abuse of children by priests, rejecting accusations that Pope Benedict had mishandled a series of abuse cases before he was elected.

Signalling it had decided to take the gloves off in its reaction to coverage of sexual abuse, a Vatican statement referred specifically to two reporters and a columnist.

"I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on," said the 20-paragraph statement written by Cardinal William J. Levada.

It seems strange to me that the Vatican is being depicted as the bully, "signalling it had decided to take the gloves off," when the Vatican is merely setting the record straight, responding to inaccuracies and biases in reporting by the New York Times.

Here's the full text of Cardinal Levada's "20-paragraph statement":

The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI:
how it looks to an American in the Vatican

by Cardinal William J. Levada
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

In our melting pot of peoples, languages and backgrounds, Americans are not noted as examples of “high” culture. But we can take pride as a rule in our passion for fairness. In the Vatican where I currently work, my colleagues – whether fellow cardinals at meetings or officials in my office – come from many different countries, continents and cultures. As I write this response today (March 26, 2010) I have had to admit to them that I am not proud of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness.

I say this because today’s Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein, a senior columnist, headlined “Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest,” and an accompanying editorial entitled “The Pope and the Pedophilia Scandal,” in which the editors call the Goodstein article a disturbing report (emphasis in original) as a basis for their own charges against the Pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting.

In her lead paragraph, Goodstein relies on what she describes as “newly unearthed files” to point out what the Vatican (i.e. then Cardinal Ratzinger and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) did not do – “defrock Fr. Murphy.” Breaking news, apparently. Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims.”

But in paragraph 13, commenting on a statement of Fr. Lombardi (the Vatican spokesman) that Church law does not prohibit anyone from reporting cases of abuse to civil authorities, Goodstein writes, “He did not address why that had never happened in this case.” Did she forget, or did her editors not read, what she wrote in paragraph nine about Murphy getting “a pass from the police and prosecutors”? By her own account it seems clear that criminal authorities had been notified, most probably by the victims and their families.

Goodstein’s account bounces back and forth as if there were not some 20 plus years intervening between reports in the 1960 and 70’s to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and local police, and Archbishop Weakland’s appeal for help to the Vatican in 1996. Why? Because the point of the article is not about failures on the part of church and civil authorities to act properly at the time. I, for one, looking back at this report agree that Fr. Murphy deserved to be dismissed from the clerical state for his egregious criminal behavior, which would normally have resulted from a canonical trial.

The point of Goodstein’s article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time. She uses the technique of repeating the many escalating charges and accusations from various sources (not least from her own newspaper), and tries to use these “newly unearthed files” as the basis for accusing the pope of leniency and inaction in this case and presumably in others.

It seems to me, on the other hand, that we owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors. These efforts began when the Pope served as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and continued after he was elected Pope. That the Times has published a series of articles in which the important contribution he has made – especially in the development and implementation of Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, the Motu proprio issued by Pope John Paul II in 2001 – is ignored, seems to me to warrant the charge of lack of fairness which should be the hallmark of any reputable newspaper.

Let me tell you what I think a fair reading of the Milwaukee case would seem to indicate. The reasons why church and civil authorities took no action in the 1960’s and 70’s is apparently not contained in these “newly emerged files.” Nor does the Times seem interested in finding out why. But what does emerge is this: after almost 20 years as Archbishop, Weakland wrote to the Congregation asking for help in dealing with this terrible case of serial abuse. The Congregation approved his decision to undertake a canonical trial, since the case involved solicitation in confession – one of the graviora delicta (most grave crimes) for which the Congregation had responsibility to investigate and take appropriate action.

Only when it learned that Murphy was dying did the Congregation suggest to Weakland that the canonical trial be suspended, since it would involve a lengthy process of taking testimony from a number of deaf victims from prior decades, as well as from the accused priest. Instead it proposed measures to ensure that appropriate restrictions on his ministry be taken. Goodstein infers that this action implies “leniency” toward a priest guilty of heinous crimes. My interpretation would be that the Congregation realized that the complex canonical process would be useless if the priest were dying. Indeed, I have recently received an unsolicited letter from the judicial vicar who was presiding judge in the canonical trial telling me that he never received any communication about suspending the trial, and would not have agreed to it. But Fr. Murphy had died in the meantime. As a believer, I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead.

Goodstein also refers to what she calls “other accusations” about the reassignment of a priest who had previously abused a child/children in another diocese by the Archdiocese of Munich. But the Archdiocese has repeatedly explained that the responsible Vicar General, Mons. Gruber, admitted his mistake in making that assignment. It is anachronistic for Goodstein and the Times to imply that the knowledge about sexual abuse that we have in 2010 should have somehow been intuited by those in authority in 1980. It is not difficult for me to think that Professor Ratzinger, appointed as Archbishop of Munich in 1977, would have done as most new bishops do: allow those already in place in an administration of 400 or 500 people to do the jobs assigned to them.

As I look back on my own personal history as a priest and bishop, I can say that in 1980 I had never heard of any accusation of such sexual abuse by a priest. It was only in 1985, as an Auxiliary Bishop attending a meeting of our U.S. Bishops’ Conference where data on this matter was presented, that I became aware of some of the issues. In 1986, when I was appointed Archbishop in Portland, I began to deal personally with accusations of the crime of sexual abuse, and although my “learning curve” was rapid, it was also limited by the particular cases called to my attention.

Here are a few things I have learned since that time: many child victims are reluctant to report incidents of sexual abuse by clergy. When they come forward as adults, the most frequent reason they give is not to ask for punishment of the priest, but to make the bishop and personnel director aware so that other children can be spared the trauma that they have experienced.

In dealing with priests, I learned that many priests, when confronted with accusations from the past, spontaneously admitted their guilt. On the other hand, I also learned that denial is not uncommon. I have found that even programs of residential therapy have not succeeded in breaking through such denial in some cases. Even professional therapists did not arrive at a clear diagnosis in some of these cases; often their recommendations were too vague to be helpful. On the other hand, therapists have been very helpful to victims in dealing with the long-range effects of their childhood abuse. In both Portland and San Francisco where I dealt with issues of sexual abuse, the dioceses always made funds available (often through diocesan insurance coverage) for therapy to victims of sexual abuse.

From the point of view of ecclesiastical procedures, the explosion of the sexual abuse question in the United States led to the adoption, at a meeting of the Bishops’ Conference in Dallas in 2002, of a “Charter for the Protection of Minors from Sexual Abuse.” This Charter provides for uniform guidelines on reporting sexual abuse, on structures of accountability (Boards involving clergy, religious and laity, including experts), reports to a national Board, and education programs for parishes and schools in raising awareness and prevention of sexual abuse of children. In a number of other countries similar programs have been adopted by Church authorities: one of the first was adopted by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in response to the Nolan Report made by a high-level commission of independent experts in 2001.

It was only in 2001, with the publication of Pope John Paul II’s Motu proprio Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela (SST), that responsibility for guiding the Catholic Church’s response to the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clerics was assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This papal document was prepared for Pope John Paul II under the guidance of Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Contrary to some media reports, SST did not remove the local bishop’s responsibility for acting in cases of reported sexual abuse of minors by clerics. Nor was it, as some have theorized, part of a plot from on high to interfere with civil jurisdiction in such cases. Instead, SST directs bishops to report credible allegations of abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is able to provide a service to the bishops to ensure that cases are handled properly, in accord with applicable ecclesiastical law.

Here are some of the advances made by this new Church legislation (SST). It has allowed for a streamlined administrative process in arriving at a judgment, thus reserving the more formal process of a canonical trial to more complex cases. This has been of particular advantage in missionary and small dioceses that do not have a strong complement of well-trained canon lawyers. It provides for erecting inter-diocesan tribunals to assist small dioceses. The Congregation has faculties allowing it derogate from the prescription of a crime (statute of limitations) in order to permit justice to be done even for “historical” cases. Moreover, SST has amended canon law in cases of sexual abuse to adjust the age of a minor to 18 to correspond with the civil law in many countries today. It provides a point of reference for bishops and religious superiors to obtain uniform advice about handling priests’ cases. Perhaps most of all, it has designated cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics as graviora delicta: most grave crimes, like the crimes against the sacraments of Eucharist and Penance perennially assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This in itself has shown the seriousness with which today’s Church undertakes its responsibility to assist bishops and religious superiors to prevent these crimes from happening in the future, and to punish them when they happen. Here is a legacy of Pope Benedict that greatly facilitates the work of the Congregation which I now have the privilege to lead, to the benefit of the entire Church.

After the Dallas Charter in 2002, I was appointed (at the time as Archbishop of San Francisco) to a team of four bishops to seek approval of the Holy See for the “Essential Norms” that the American Bishops developed to allow us to deal with abuse questions. Because these norms intersected with existing canon law, they required approval before being implemented as particular law for our country. Under the chairmanship of Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and currently President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, our team worked with Vatican canonical experts at several meetings. We found in Cardinal Ratzinger, and in the experts he assigned to meet with us, a sympathetic understanding of the problems we faced as American bishops. Largely through his guidance we were able to bring our work to a successful conclusion.

The Times editorial wonders “how Vatican officials did not draw the lessons of the grueling scandal in the United States, where more than 700 priests were dismissed over a three-year period.” I can assure the Times that the Vatican in reality did not then and does not now ignore those lessons. But the Times editorial goes on to show the usual bias: “But then we read Laurie Goodstein’s disturbing report . . .about how the pope, while he was still a cardinal, was personally warned about a priest … But church leaders chose to protect the church instead of children. The report illuminated the kind of behavior the church was willing to excuse to avoid scandal.” Excuse me, editors. Even the Goodstein article, based on “newly unearthed files,” places the words about protecting the Church from scandal on the lips of Archbishop Weakland, not the pope. It is just this kind of anachronistic conflation that I think warrants my accusation that the Times, in rushing to a guilty verdict, lacks fairness in its coverage of Pope Benedict.

As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s “disturbing report.” But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his “successor” Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

The New York Times' assault on the Catholic Church and discussion of the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy has been so vicious and misleading that I think the Vatican is justified in providing a very thorough response.

To permit the sliming of Pope Benedict stand without a reaction would be unfair to the Pope and the 1 billion Catholics worldwide.

The NYT has led a coordinated campaign against the Church, timed to coincide with Holy Week.

In addition to its "hard news" articles, the Editorial Board weighs in, and of course, there are the typical over-the-top columns by Maureen Dowd.

Read Dowd's contributions to the smear effort:

"A Nope for Pope"

The Catholic Church can never recover as long as its Holy Shepherd is seen as a black sheep in the ever-darkening sex abuse scandal.

Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” when he was the church’s enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys.

The church has been tone deaf and dumb on the scandal for so long that it’s shocking, but not surprising, to learn from The Times’s Laurie Goodstein that a group of deaf former students spent 30 years trying to get church leaders to pay attention.

...The pope is in too deep. He has proved himself anything but infallible. And now he claims he was uninformed on the matter of an infamous German pedophile priest. A spokesman for the Munich archdiocese said on Friday that Ratzinger, running the diocese three decades ago, would not have read the memo sent to him about Father Peter Hullermann’s getting cycled back into work with children because between 700 to 1,000 memos go to the archbishop each year.

Let’s see. That’s two or three memos a day. And Ratzinger was renowned at the Vatican for poring through voluminous, recondite theological treatises.

Because he did not defrock the demented Father Murphy, it’s time to bring in the frocks.

Pope Benedict has continued the church’s ban on female priests and is adamant against priests’ having wives. He has started two investigations of American nuns to check on their “quality of life” — code for seeing if they’ve grown too independent. As a cardinal he wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners and not take on adversarial roles toward men.

But the completely paternalistic and autocratic culture of Il Papa led to an insular, exclusionary system that failed to police itself, and that became a corrosive shelter for secrets and shame.

If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive. It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.

...The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.

...The nuns have historically cleaned up the messes of priests. And this is a historic mess. Benedict should go home to Bavaria. And the cardinals should send the white smoke up the chimney, proclaiming “Habemus Mama.”

"Should There Be an Inquisition for the Pope?"

It doesn’t seem right that the Catholic Church is spending Holy Week practicing the unholy art of spin.

Complete with crown-of-thorns imagery, the church has started an Easter public relations blitz defending a pope who went along with the perverse culture of protecting molesters and the church’s reputation rather than abused — and sometimes disabled and disadvantaged — children.

The church gave up its credibility for Lent. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are now becoming Cover-Up Thursday and Blame-Others Friday.

This week of special confessions and penance services is unfolding as the pope resists pressure from Catholics around the globe for his own confession and penance about the cascade of child sexual abuse cases that were ignored, even by a German diocese and Vatican office he ran.

If church fund-raising and contributions dry up, Benedict’s P.R. handlers may yet have to stage a photo-op where he steps out of the priest’s side of the confessional and enters the side where the rest of his fallible flock goes.

Or maybe 30-second spots defending the pope with Benedict’s voice intoning at the end: “I am infallible, and I approve this message.”

Dowd declares that today, Holy Thursday, should be known as "Cover-Up Thursday" and tomorrow, Good Friday, would be better referred to as "Blame-Others Friday."

Dowd is entitled to her opinion. If she wants to run with her charges against the Church, I'm sure she'll find a very receptive anti-Catholic audience to eagerly devour her writings.

In my opinion, however, it's disgraceful that she's showing such a lack of respect for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. She is so in-your-face and giving no thought to the faithful as we make our journey through Holy Week.

No one was more horrified and betrayed and disgusted and disillusioned by the Church's sex abuse scandal than its faithful members. As a member of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, I am demanding accountability.

All I ask is that the New York Times grant us, the Church, the same respect it grants Islam.

In February 2006, it refused to publish the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked protests, riots, destruction, and death around the world.

Major American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, did not publish the caricatures. Representatives said the story could be told effectively without publishing images that many would find offensive.

...Most television news executives made similar decisions. On Friday CNN ran a disguised version of a cartoon, and on an NBC News program on Thursday, the camera shot depicted only a fragment of the full cartoon. CBS banned the broadcast of the cartoons across the network, said Kelli Edwards, a spokeswoman for CBS News.

Only ABC showed a cartoon in its entirety, lingering over the image for several seconds during Thursday's evening news broadcast and on "Nightline."

I find the degradation of Holy Week by the New York Times to be offensive.

No, Maureen Dowd, Holy Thursday and Good Friday are NOT becoming "Cover-Up Thursday" and "Blame-Others Friday."

I guess the New York Times and the other media outlets picking up its stories don't mind offending Catholics. They aren't afraid to mock and insult us.

We won't riot and set the New York Times building on fire. No call for the deaths of the reporters and columnists will be issued by Church leaders. No need to worry about beheadings.

Timothy Dolan and Maureen Dowd

Former Archbishop of Milwaukee Timothy Dolan is fighting the good fight as Archbishop of New York.

I'm heartened by the fact that he is calling out the ugliest of those engaging in anti-Catholicism, particularly Maureen Dowd.

Read Dowd's October 25, 2009, column, "The Nuns' Story."

From the New York Post:

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has condemned The New York Times -- blasting the Gray Lady and its columnist Maureen Dowd for what he says are examples of unfair, prejudicial and just downright mean anti-Catholicism.

Dolan used his blog last Thursday on the Archdiocese of New York's Web site to rail against the Times a day after the paper refused to print his critique as an op-ed piece.

He singled out Dowd -- a poison-penned, Pulitzer winner and former Catholic-school girl -- for "the most combustible," "intemperate and scurrilous" "diatribe" she wrote on Oct. 25, which "rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish or African-American religious issue."

...Dowd's column, which zinged the Vatican for "two inquisitions" into nuns who eschew "old-fashioned habits and convents," was only the latest Times piece to spin Dolan's skullcap.

...Dolan's spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, told The Post yesterday that the archbishop's indictment of the Times was "the first time he has written or said something along those lines" since taking over from Edward Cardinal Egan last spring.

Zwilling said that when Dolan's piece was submitted to the Times, the op-ed page editor replied that the paper did not run "responses to what appears in the paper" and that "this is more of a 'Letter to the Editor.' "

Dowd's assistant yesterday said, "Maureen says she wants to leave her opinions to the column."

The Times did not respond to a request for comment.

It's stunning to me that the Times turned down a piece by the Archbishop of New York.

It was not a smart move. The publication looks very small and very weak. The Times can't control the dissemination of information like it once did.

Archbishop Dolan didn't need the Times to get his opinion out to a large audience. It's bouncing all over the Internet.

The Times was exposed once again as lacking fair and balanced coverage. Publishing the piece written by one of the most important Catholic leaders in the United States should have been a no-brainer.

But it's a new world.

What's wonderful about the new media is that Dolan's message is being heard. In fact, it's probably garnering more attention because of the Times' rejection.

Here it is for the world to read, posted on the Archdiocese of New York website:

October 29, 2009

The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it.


FOUL BALL!
By Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan
Archbishop of New York

October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!

Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

---On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

---On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

---Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

---Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday. Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally?

The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good.

I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.

Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.

Fantastic!

Thank you, Archbishop Dolan!

Obama, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow

Obama doesn't have a problem with the hosts of opinion shows on MSNBC.

He doesn't consider them the enemy, far from it. He welcomes them to the White House.

MSNBC fringe Leftist commentators Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were invited for an off-the-record briefing with Obama on Monday.

From TVNewser:

On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at the White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room.

...Update: The White House has sent TVNewser the complete list of those who attended the off-the-record briefing Monday: Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne, Ron Brownstein, John Dickerson, Rachel Maddow, Frank Rich, Jerry Seib, Maureen Dowd, Keith Olbermann, Bob Herbert, Gloria Borger, and Gwen Ifill. Several members of the staff also attended.

Oh, my God.

Obama spends two-and-a-half hours with Olbermann and Maddow and Rich and Dowd?

What did they talk about for that long?

Obama can yap for hours with these libs but he can't seem to fit in time to speak with his generals on the ground in Afghanistan and his handpicked commander, General Stanley McChrystal.

That's a disgrace.

The White House shows nothing but disdain for FOX News, seeking to crush it, but Obama courts the haters at MSNBC and the rabid Dowd.

Disgusting.

Has Obama ever invited Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity to the White House for an off-the-record briefing?

He really should if he doesn't want to appear like a jerk.

Dowd: "Gandhi Wuz Robbed"

Maureen Dowd has drifted off again into one of her imaginary worlds where she hears imaginary conversations. She writes down what she hears, puts the voices into a column, and it gets printed in the New York Times.

That's pathetic.

What's disturbing is that the imaginary exchanges Dowd chronicles involve real people.

Dowd's column, "Gandhi Wuz Robbed," is a conversation between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that took place only in Dowd's head, yet this crap is supposed to qualify as worthwhile commentary.

Not too long ago, Dowd declared that when Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" at Obama during his health care prime time performance before a joint session of Congress Wilson actually said, "You lie, boy!"

It's time for Dowd to start dealing with reality and stop playing her mind reading games.

It's weird and incredibly arrogant to put words in people's mouths.

Obama Nobel Peace Prize and Racism

People around the world are questioning whether Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don't agree with the Committee's decision.

I predict that it won't take long for Obama supporters to say that those of us questioning the wisdom of awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are racists.

Forget about making a rational assessment of Obama's accomplishments. Disagreement with the Committee's choice is really about the color of his skin. It must be rooted in racism.

I guess I just can't accept a black man being a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

I'm sure Jimmy Carter, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo, and other race-baiters would agree.

However, I do think Martin Luther King Jr. was completely deserving of the prize. That throws a wrench in the racism theory.

No matter. Some Leftists don't let a rational argument get in the way of a smear campaign.

Dowd: "Blue is the New Black"

In Maureen Dowd's column today, she writes about the plight of women.

She explains why women are so unhappy, "Blue is the New Black."

So am I blue or black? Black and blue?

Dowd writes that women the world over are miserable, with one exception: "The one exception is black women in America, who are a bit happier than they were in 1972, but still not as happy as black men."

Are these African-American women no longer black or are they just less blue?

I'm confused.

I didn't know I was so unhappy.

But then I suppose Joe Wilson didn't know that when he blurted out "You lie!" during Obama's health care speech, he really was saying, "You lie, boy!"

What would I do without Dowd to inform me of my innermost thoughts?

Krauthammer: Racism Last Refuge of Liberal Scoundrel

Charles Krauthammer comments on the Democrats strategy of using race as a ploy to silence opposition to Obama's health care plan.

Video.



Transcript

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The accusation of racism is a sign of desperation by people who know they are losing the national debate, and they want to hurl the ultimate charge in American politics. This is dealing from the bottom of the deck, and I agree that it is a disgusting tactic.

It's done as a way to end debate. The minute you call somebody a racist, the debate is over. You don't continue.

I mean, accusations of racism are the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel.

As for Maureen Dowd imagining a word that wasn't said, well, in my previous profession (psychiatry), I saw a lot of people who also heard words that weren't said. They were called patients, and many of them were actually helped with medication. The reason that she won't be, and others who are hurling the accusation, is because it's a deliberate attempt to change the subject and discredit the opposition with an unapprovable ad hominem.

Exactly.

I completely agree with Krauthammer.

One last point--

I know he's the doctor, but I have always contended that perhaps medication might help Dowd.

Obama: Kanye West "Jackass" Audio

Here's the audio.

Loud and clear, Obama calls Kanye West a jackass.



I don't know. Obama slamming Kanye West like that is sort of harsh. What is that really about?

Do you think it's because West is black?

I think Obama being half white may have something to do with his "He's a jackass" line.

I doubt that it's just because Obama really believes that West is a jackass. There must be more to it than that, some sort of darker undertones.

I'm taking a cue from Maureen Dowd's line regarding Joe Wilson:

"But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"

When Obama was talking off the record about how West treated Taylor Swift, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: That boy's a jackass."

Does racism underlie Obama's opinion of West?

Could be.

Jimmy Carter, Obama, and Racism

Jimmy Carter continues to disgrace himself.

He was one of the worst presidents in this country's history. He is one of the worst ex-presidents in this country's history.

Again and again, he shames himself.

Carter is up to his spiteful attacks again, unfairly slamming his fellow Americans as racists.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Transcript

JIMMY CARTER: I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way; and I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans.

And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.

It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.

Clearly, history shows us that Carter wasn't qualified to lead this great country. His presidency was a mess. That's a belief held by many people.

That's not about skin. Good grief.

Obama screwing up the country isn't about the color of his skin. It's about his agenda. Period. End of story. Race isn't a factor.

I do not believe that Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst was about race. It was about Obama's deception and the way he was misrepresenting his health care plan to the American people.

This video clip plays like pure propaganda. NBC and MSNBC keep pushing and pushing the racism angle.

Brian Williams' remarks clearly promote that opposition to Obama is based on race, and there are serious racial tensions in the country.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: During the interview, we talked about what some see as a heightened climate of racial and other hate speech since the election of President Obama. A certain number of signs and images at last weekend's big Tea Party march on Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes. And President Carter today said he is extremely worried by it.

(Carter's comments)

President Carter in Atlanta today. He went on to say that because of President Obama's personal qualities, he will be able to, quote, "triumph over the racist attitude that is the basis for the negative environment that we see so vividly demonstrated in public affairs in recent days," end of quote.

This is absolutely unconscionable.

This is clearly an orchestrated campaign to garner support for Obama by playing the race card. I hear the talking points coming from the White House, the Democrat leadership, their mouthpieces in the media, and the Dem minions.

The likes of Brian Williams, Maureen Dowd, and countless others have no qualms whatsoever about charging Americans with racism. That is vicious.

When President Bush was in office, did Williams do stories about the hate speech directed at him? Good Lord, did Williams complain about the anti-Bush "art," such as the work depicting a gun being held to President Bush's head or the movie made about his assassination, some Leftists' ultimate fantasy? Did he focus on the horrible signs and slogans and violence that marked the many marches protesting President Bush and his administration?

No, no, and no.

Where was Williams when all of those violent images and themes were being disseminated? Where was Carter?

So much ugliness directed at President Bush came from the Democrat leadership. Carter himself was at the forefront of that movement.

Carter disgusts me. He doesn't conduct himself as a former president should. No integrity. No honor.

Williams and the mob at NBC News and MSNBC disgust me. Maureen Dowd disgusts me.

Their racially divisive tactics are despicable.

I oppose Obama on government-run health care. I've called him a liar when he has told lies. Unfortunately, that has been often, but that does not make me a racist. I refuse to be intimidated by these horrible accusations being spouted by Carter and his comrades on the Left.

I'm truly angered by their total lack of decency and concern for the consequences of their inflammatory statements. What they are doing is wrong.

Something that has nothing at all to do with race -- opposition to instrusive policies and the growth of government by Obama and Congress -- is reported as being racial in nature.

What's really unforgivable is that the liberal media don't report on legitimate stories like the ACORN scandal, yet they report on a fabricated race war of their own creation.

It's the ugliest of lies.

Carter and Brian Williams and their like-minded cohorts are shameless.

The buck stops with Obama. The onus is on him to call them out now.
_________________

UPDATE: ABC jumps on the race bandwagon.

DAN HARRIS: They've waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil, raised questions about whether he was really born in this country, falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels, decried his speech to students as indoctrination and called him everything from a fascist to a socialist to a communist. And all that was before Mr. Obama's speech was interrupted by a Representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.

Read more at NewsBusters.

Bill Maher: Obama, Drudge, and Subliminal Racism

Bill Maher thinks racism plays a factor in how conservatives react to Obama, even if it's just a subliminal thing.

Maher says examples of Drudge headlines are revealing:



This is funny, but only to a certain extent, because charges of racism are being tossed around by Obama supporters.

Maureen Dowd didn't hesitate to call Joe Wilson a racist for calling out Obama for lying.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

...Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

There are plenty of other similar examples. Here are just a few:

Keith Olbermann

David Sirota

Janeane Garofalo

Chris Matthews

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond

New York Gov. David Paterson

I think these libs leveling the racism accusations are really just cases of the pot calling the kettle black.

Many have no problem when libs engage in disgusting displays of racism. Racist imagery is justified when the target is a black conservative.

Examples here:

Liberal Racists: The Black Face Gallery

HYPOCRITES.

Maureen Dowd: Joe Wilson, Racist

Maureen Dowd, and those of her liberal elitist ilk, are a disgrace.

In her column today, "Boy, Oh, Boy," Dowd shamelessly plays the race card when writing about Joe Wilson and Obama.

She has really outdone herself this time.

Dowd claims:

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

YOU LIE, DOWD!

Obama did lie to the American people.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

...The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

...But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Dowd makes me absolutely sick.

Her hypocrisy is nauseating. How can this woman be lecturing anyone about a "shocking disrespect for the office of the president"??? Give me a freaking break!

The years of aspersions cast at President Bush by Dowd, by Obama, and by the leadership of the Democrat party don't begin to compare with Joe Wilson's regrettable outburst.

It's idiotic for them to be claiming they're civil, that they take the high road in political debate. It's more than idiotic. It's a bald-faced lie.

And about the racism accusations--

DISGUSTING.

Again and again, the libs insist that opposition to Obama is grounded in race. That is so ugly. It's so sinister and so divisive.

When I refute Obama's claims and when I point out his many, many lies and broken promises, it has nothing to do with his skin color, just as when I reveal Dowd for the liar and the hypocrite that she is it has nothing to do with gender.

Wilson does not plan on apologizing for his outburst again, nor should he.

Video.



Once is enough. Obama accepted Wilson's apology on Wednesday night. The case is closed.

It should be noted that President Bush never received apologies from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, Democrat hacks in the lib media, etc., for their terribly unfair, disparaging, disrespectful and inappropriate remarks.

The list is endless and the apologies are long, LONG overdue.

Dowd owes Wilson an immediate apology for calling him a racist.

Dowd: Bite YOUR Tongue

Maureen Dowd has devoted her column in today's New York Times to casting aspersions on Sgt. James Crowley.

When liberal queen bee Dowd isn't twisting the truth and getting the facts wrong, she's completely making things up.

She's a lot like Obama that way.

In "Bite Your Tongue," Dowd slobbers all over Henry Louis Gates Jr.

She's quick to say that she's the daughter of a police detective. I suppose Dowd believes that gives her words more weight. Just as Dowd said that Cindy Sheehan's opinion on Iraq had more validity than President Bush's position because "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute," I'm sure Dowd believes that the "moral authority of the daughter of a cop is absolute" as well.

Well, it's not.

Dowd declares:

No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.

President Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted. His soothing assessment that two good people got snared in a bad moment seems on target.

It escalated into a clash of egos — the hard-working white cop vs. the globe-trotting black scholar, the town vs. the gown, the Lowell Police Academy vs. the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Dowd suffers from the same affliction as Obama -- an ego so massive that it clouds judgment, rooted in a profound arrogance, resulting in the spouting of asinine remarks.

Just as Obama made a fool of himself by saying the "Cambridge police acted stupidly," Dowd is doing the same thing.

Dowd is as biased as Obama, maybe more. She only talked to Gates and relays his account as if it's indisputable. Dowd didn't bother to talk to Crowley.

No bias there, right?

...Gates told me Crowley was so “gruff” and unsolicitous “the hair on my neck stood up.” Crowley says Gates acted “put off” and “agitated.” But the strong guy with the gun has more control than the weak guy with the cane. An officer who teaches racial sensitivity should not have latched on to a technicality about neighbors — who seemed to be outnumbered by cops — getting “alarmed” by Gates’s “outburst.”

Don't you just love Dowd's lecture on what a police officer should and shouldn't do? She should be teaching at the police academy.

Dowd argues that Gates is a weak guy with a cane and didn't have a gun.

So what? That's irrelevant. Police arrest unarmed people all the time.

Dowd bends over backwards to excuse Gates' behavior. Why?

What's really inexcusable is Dowd's deception. This woman either is too lazy to check her facts or she is intentionally disregarding that which doesn't fit.

She writes:

...Race, class and testosterone will always be a combustible brew. Our first African-American president will try to make the peace with Gates (who supported Hillary) and Crowley (whose father voted for Obama).

On the subject of Hillary, Dowd is woefully incomplete and gives the reader an entirely wrong impression.

Gates talked about Hillary and Obama in a 2008 article that appeared in Martha's Vineyard Magazine. Here's what Dowd didn't tell -- the truth:

Q: Is it true that you “flipped” from supporting Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama?

GATES: The Clintons are very dear friends of mine. I pledged my full personal support to Senator Clinton long before I’d ever heard of Barack Obama, in hopes that she would run for president. I thought she ran a brilliant race, and I feel her disappointment. There was only one person who could have defeated her, and that was Barack Obama.

I’ve talked to Obama several times, and I like and admire him. I’ve made the maximum allowable contribution to his candidacy. He’s been on the Vineyard two summers in a row, and I hope that that continues.

I think that either of them would be a great president. Because of the luck of the draw, Barack has won. In the best of all possible worlds, they would be on the ballot together in the fall. I think they would be a powerful ticket. It’s historic anyway, just having Barack at the head of the ticket, but imagine how much more historic it would be to have a black man and a white woman running for the president and vice president of the United States. I mean, my Lord, we’d kill two birds with one stone.

Q: Are you surprised to see an African American with a real chance at being president?

GATES: A year ago, I thought it was highly unlikely that a black man would get the nomination. I had no question about Obama’s qualifications, but I questioned whether our fellow Americans were ready for him. It’s one thing to win Martha’s Vineyard; it’s another to win West Virginia. Barack has a lot of work to do with white working-class Americans who have expressed reservations, through their votes, about his candidacy. But if anybody can do it, it’s him. He’s got the magic touch. He’s brilliant and charismatic, and he’s tough.

While Gates did initially support Hillary, he abandoned her for Obama. Dowd leaves that little fact out of her column.

In addition, Gates hosted a fundraiser for Obama at his home on Martha's Vineyard when Obama was running for the Senate.

For Dowd to assert that Gates supported Hillary for president is extremely misleading. She fails to say that Gates supported Hillary before he threw his support against her.

It's typical of Dowd to be factually inaccurate in her columns, but this one is really glaring, inexcusable. I don't think it's a factual error. I think it's more of a lie.

Dowd seems to find Gates just adorable, so witty.

...How can they ever reconcile their accounts? Crowley says he asked Gates to come outside and the professor replied, “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside.” Gates wryly suggests Crowley got the line from watching “Good Times” as a child.

“Does it sound logical that I would talk about the mother of a big white guy with a gun?” he asked. “I’m 5-7 and 150 pounds. I don’t walk on ice, much less (expletive) with some cop in my kitchen. I don’t want another hip replacement.”

I asked how he felt when he learned that Crowley was the one who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis, the black Celtics basketball star, in a vain attempt to save his life after a heart attack in 1993. He replied: “I don’t stereotype. I never saw him as the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe he was just having a bad day.”

What a charmer! Gates has such a wry sense of humor. His salty language is so cute. What's not to love?

And Gates says that if anyone thinks he’s a fiery black militant, they’ve got the wrong guy, considering he married a white woman, has mixed-race daughters and has white blood himself.

Again, irrelevant.

Gates was the guy who was yelling about being "a black man in America." That doesn't sound like a mild-mannered post-racial guy to me

No, Gates played the race card, and he definitely does stereotype.

In that way, he's a lot like Dowd and Obama.

Maureen Dowd and "Sarah's Secret Diary"

Maureen Dowd is obsessed, as are many on the Left, with Sarah Palin. She is absolutely obsessed. Maybe possessed is a better term.

What will it take for the Left to let Palin go? An exorcism? It's as though Palin has embedded herself in their souls and taken over.

I guess they see Palin as a very powerful woman and a very threatening woman. Dowd certainly wouldn't bother to devote column after column to trashing a bimbo.

In her column in today's New York Times, "Sarah's Secret Diary," Dowd exercises her Harlequin romance novel skills. Again, Dowd plays as the pulp fiction princess, a frustrated novelist.

Dowd writes:

Dear Diary,

I know. Incredibly lame.

No one understands me. It’s like I’m speaking some Eskimo dialect or something. Andrea Mitchell follows me all the way to Kanakanak Beach and I get a French manicure and set up this huge photo op for her, even though she spooked the salmon.

Todd and me are in our cool fishing bibs. Piper’s helping out on the boat. It’s an amazing day that shows how our Creator favored my beloved Alaska, gatekeeper of the continent, and makes a great shot for all the network reporters up here to milk. This progresses me away from my image as some kind of flaky “rogue diva” and back to my image as a tough huntin’ and fishin’ gal.

But Andrea makes such a darn big deal about how I’m quitting in the middle of my term.

“You’re not listening to me!” I snap.

She says maybe I didn’t want to go back to the nitty-gritty of Alaska politics after the bright lights of the national campaign.

“The nitty-gritty, like, you mean, the fish slime and the dirt under the fingernails and stuff that’s me?” I said. Awesome response, huh?!!

It’s the same old double standard. I am not one of those who would whine and cuss. It’s just not how I’m wired!!! But the minute I start to whine and cuss, the mainstream media totally misunderstands my verbiage and the combination of things that brought me to this place of knowing. And I know that I know that I know those crappy bloggers will put out more confliction stories.

I keep explaining what impacted me, but everyone seems more confused and ironic than ever. What is it about average, hard-working Americans like me that Americans can’t understand?

I love Alaska too much to waste any more time on her Bridge to Nowhere. I need to be able to go forth out there and fight for what is right. And what is right is for me and my First Dude to take that big fish run to the White House.

So people should stop being so stinkin’ mean to me because this is a goal-setting thing, a full-court press, a sub-four marathon. Karl Rove thinks I’m not prepared for the national stage??? Pundits think I should read a book before I write one??? Man, I feel a grizzly rising up in me!!!

Every mom we know multitasks. And I am one to believe I can use an all-of-the-above approach, too. I can abandon Alaska and ambition myself for the presidency. I can get bored with my job and fight apathy. I can take the easy path out to work hard on a path for fruitfulness. I can move on selfishly and call it altruistically. I don’t need a title now when I can shake up the good ol’ boys and get a better title in the end.

Actually, this isn't the stuff of a Harlequin romance novel. It's not like pulp fiction. This column is far less sophisticated.

This pretend diary has all the depth of a child lashing out in a tantrum.

I wonder if Dowd wrote mock diaries of her junior high and high school nemeses.

Her column reads like the spiteful mockery spewed by a really mean girl.

Rather than write a straight analysis, Dowd takes shots at Palin's life, her family, and her intelligence.

It's pathetic. It's not clever or insightful. It's all very weird.

You didn’t really think I was going anywhere, did you? I’m one of Google’s hot trends. We’re doing a fund-raising push this week on SarahPAC to destroy Obama’s attempt to destroy capitalism. And forget about Obama’s youth revolution. I posed for a cheesecake shot in Runner’s World with short-shorts and a crumpled American flag that’s destined to be on the bedroom wall of every conservative 12-year-old boy. It’s the metaphor, stupid! Heck yeah, I’m running! As I learned when I was a beauty contestant — flags and gams show you it’s about country.

And before you say anything though about the glam shots of me stretching and preening on the waterfront in my cute running outfits, don’t bother. That would be a sexist double standard.

Nobody said anything when Obama walked around in Hawaii without his shirt, showing off his washboard abs. Well, maybe they did, but I betcha they say more about me because, of course, we know by now, for some reason, a different standard applies to my decisions.

It’s just like when Obama, the One Who Must Be Obeyed, said his family was off-limits so everyone left them alone. But they never left mine alone. Thank goodness for that though because we hate being out of the limelight! It was a blast to see Bristol with my grandbaby Tripp on the cover of People as the ambassadress of abstinence!

Good grief. This is really nasty.

It's very clear that Dowd has no respect whatsoever for Palin. None.

Is it Palin that Dowd disdains or is it people like Palin?

Whatever, it seems that Dowd just isn't happy unless she has someone to hate with every fiber of her being.

I think it's possible that the Leftists hate Palin more than George W. Bush. That's saying a lot.

It’s the same different standard with the dirt-digging behind these frivolous ethics complaints. As I told the reporters who chased me up here, if I were in the White House instead of Alaska, the Department of Law down there would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out. Later, the media brats began making a big, fat ugly scene about there being no Department of Law in Washington.

I say, tell that to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who are risking their lives to protect our system of laws. How sad that the unpatriotic, godless media picking away at me will never understand it’s about country.

It’s about me running the country.

It’s about me running.

It’s about me.

The media doesn’t get Sarah Palin. I hear planes buzzing. Oh, no!! Have they all left?? Even that Time reporter who I showed how to smoke salmon???

Obviously, Dowd has issues. It's sad.

Instead of making Palin look bad, I think this column boomerangs on Dowd.

This column is a cry for help. She needs to talk to someone about her inner torment.

Perhaps Dowd keeps her own secret diary, Are You There God? It's Me, Maureen.

Sarah Palin -- Liz Trotta, Maureen Dowd

It's no surprise that the likes of Liz Trotta and Maureen Dowd are having a field day trashing Sarah Palin since she announced her resignation as governor of Alaska.

Trotta and Dowd have never retracted their claws. They never let up on their attacks on Palin.

Yesterday, Dowd devoted her column to Palin.

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

Usually we don’t find that exquisite battiness in our leaders until they’ve been battered by sordid scandals like Watergate (Nixon), gnawing problems like Vietnam (L.B.J.), or scary threats like biological terrorism (Cheney).

...As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.

On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an incoherent, breathless and prickly stream of consciousness to a small group in her Wasilla yard. Gobsmacked Alaska politicians, Republican big shots, the national press, her brother, the D.C. lawyer who helped create her political action committee and yes, even Fox News, played catch-up.

What looked like a secret wedding turned out to be a public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued: Sarah wanted everyone to know that she’s not having fun and people are being mean to her and she doesn’t feel like finishing her first term as governor.

I think it's completely legitimate to analyze and criticize Palin's decision to resign, but I don't think it's appropriate for Dowd to be so personal and caustic in her remarks.

I don't know why Palin made the choice to resign, but I certainly didn't see it as a "public unraveling as the G.O.P. implosion continued."

For nearly a year, Obama's camp and its mouthpieces in the lib media have hammered away at Palin, criticizing everything about her.

Why would her decision to step aside be a bad thing for Republicans if she's supposedly such an embarrassment?

Palin was deemed a drag on the Republican Party by many. Having her around allegedly hurts Republicans. Then, when she resigns, that's supposed to signify the party's implosion, as though Palin was holding it together.

The spin on Palin is as goofy as ever, and Dowd certainly contributes to the lunacy.

Then there are the comments that Liz Trotta made about Palin on FOX News yesterday.



Transcript

LIZ TROTTA: It's very easy to say that the liberal media is caving in on her, and yes, they are; but she has given them a lot of raw meat. The woman is inarticulate, undereducated, and I pose this question: 'What do you think William F. Buckley would have thought of her as the standard-bearer for the conservative party?'

I think a lot of this criticism is well-deserved.

...This is one of the rare cases where I think all the liberal stylists like Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, and the rest of them really have a case. I mean, she just begs for adjectives like flaky and wacky.

...[Maureen Dowd's column] was a well written, funny piece. And, you know, there's one other element here, and I think most writers are afraid to bring it up. They sort of skirt the idea that this is a woman who has used her good looks and her gender to really get ahead in the political world. That's something, of course, the men don't want to admit, and certainly not the women.

So what are we talking about here? We're not talking about a great statesman of profound experience whose banner is integrity. We're talking about somebody who, right from the get-go, has been a flashy person who gets into a lot of trouble and really has no credentials for any job.

Good grief.

That is so over the top. It's ridiculous.

She "really has no credentials for any job"?

That's nuts.

It's Palin Derangement Syndrome.

I don't see how Trotta or Dowd can be taken seriously. Their excessive bashing of Palin reduces their credibility.
_____________________

Andrew Breitbart writes about the media's assassination of Sarah Palin, "New York Times Barbie strikes again."

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall.

The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media.

For those who didn't pay attention, Mrs. Palin's unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media's preordained presidency of Barack Obama.

In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their time, many who saw sexism at play - the destruction of an ascendant Republican female icon was an urgent imperative for the Democratic Party.

In conjunction with the laws of political correctness as perfected by the Democratic Media Complex, it would take prominent women to take down an unlikely and unexpected conservative feminist symbol that threatened to steal away Mrs. Clinton's votes from the Chosen One.

...Misses Dowd, Couric and Fey - Obama's Angels (featuring Joy Behar in the role of "Bosley") - used a potent mix of mockery, snobbery and vitriol to undermine Mrs. Palin's feminist bona fides.

...Simply put, they are bullies. And female bullies - "Mean Girls" as Miss Fey's film calls them - are the cruelest kind.