maureen dowd: what IS this woman's problem anyhoo?

the woman hasn't had an original thought since forever. she's useful as a weathervane on what the punditariat are thinking (though you can figure that out just as easily by watching the sunday morning blab-a-thons [if you have a strong enough stomach]) and little else.

and oh yeah, re this "being turned down for the prom" -- it wasn't me that revived this thread this time round.

http://i24.tinypic.com/2s1qgsj.jpg

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: June 29, 2008

Go to Columnist Page »

OBAMA'S TROUBLING INTERNET FUND RAISING

Certainly the most interesting and potentially devastating phone call I
have received during this election cycle came this week from one of the
Obama's campaign internet geeks. These are the staffers who devised Obama's
internet fund raising campaign which raised in the neighborhood of $200
million so far. That is more then twice the total funds raised by any
candidate in history - and this was all from the internet campaign.

What I learned from this insider was shocking but I guess we shouldn't be
surprised that when it comes to fund raising there simply are no rules that
can't be broken and no ethics that prevail.

Obama's internet campaign started out innocently enough with basic e-mail
networking , lists saved from previous party campaigns and from supporters
who visited any of the Obama campaign web sites.

Small contributions came in from these sources and the internet campaign
staff were more than pleased by the results.

Then, about two months into the campaign the daily contribution intake
multiplied. Where was it coming from? One of the web site security
monitors began to notice the bulk of the contributions were clearly coming
in from overseas internet service providers and at the rate and frequency of
transmission it was clear these donations were "programmed" by a very
sophisticated user.

While the security people were not able to track most of the sources due
to firewalls and other blocking devices put on these contributions they were
able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly
from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and
bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they
were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle Eastern
countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in
Saudi Arabia.

Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a
similar pattern of limited credit card charges.

It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources
other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the
campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated
campaign financing laws.

It was also decided that it was not the responsibility of the campaign to
audit these millions of contributions as to the actual source (specific
credit card number or bank transfer account numbers) to insure that none of
these internet contributors exceeded the legal maximum donation on a
cumulative basis of many small donations. They also found the record
keeping was not complete enough to do it anyway.

This is a shocking revelation.

We have been concerned about the legality of "bundling" contributions
after the recent exposure of illegal bundlers but now it appears we may have
an even greater problem.

I guess we should have been somewhat suspicious when the numbers started
to come out. We were told (no proof offered) that the Obama internet
contributions were from $10.00 to $25.00 or so.

If the $200,000,000 is right, and the average contribution was $15.00,
that would mean over 13 million individuals made contributions? That would
also be 13 million contributions would need to be processed. How did all
that happen?

I believe the Obama campaign's internet fund raising needs a serious, in
depth investigation and audit. It also appears the whole question of
internet fund raising needs investigation by the legislature and perhaps new
laws to insure it complies not only with the letter of these laws but the
spirit as well.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/donations.asp

also, i don't understand why you continue to repost these ridiculous screeds that you know are wrong without comment; it does nothing but give them yet another undeserved airing where some gullible dumbfuck might run across them and believe them

yes, and what, how dare you not tell the truth on the internets

won't anyone think of the gullible dumbfucks

ilx: home of gullible dumbfucks

come on, maudow doesn't even sound like that. n she writes about celibate priests matchmaking and all other kinds o shit

if people turnin, they turnin

May all your futures be pleasant ones
Not like our present ones
Drink, l'chaim, to life
To life, l'chaim

ilx: home of gullible dumbfucks

27 new "please delete abusive post" threads in Mod Req by midnight.

as a gullible dumbfuck i have the right of deletion for this post directed at me

Nasty stuff. Saudi Arabia and China are just thrown in without special emphasis, but are obviously the poisoned pill you are meant to swallow.

This dirty trick is a lot more subtle than the false madrassa story. Whoever did it has a pretty good idea of how to plant a really flourishing false rumor.

Hatching one takes one or a few people a few days to brainstorm and refine. Squashing it takes a much larger effort and, like cockroaches, you can never kill them all. This one will almost certainly hurt Obama among many hundreds of thousands of voters.

The New York Times is absolutely pathetic these days. Wasn't it once some kind-of newspaper of record?

I can't find him writing about that particular column, but Bob Somerby has his usual coronary going after her bullshit for the last few weeks. Shit, it's a regular occurance now.

SHE DIDNT WRITE THE COLUMN GUYZ

srsly have yall even read maureen dowd before? no refs to clinton sex-life or bush as 'boy king', just a bunch of worldnetdaily style rumor-mongering

Looks like she did. It's got the byline and everything

ilx: home of gullible dumbfucks

-- and what, Thursday, July 10, 2008 7:28 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:uGC1YOmb7VEIyM:http://cardioplegia.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/sockpuppet300x386.jpg

RIP Dowd.

Somerby has been having a field day with NYT "Public Editor" Clark Hoyt's very public verbal defenstration of Dowd several weeks ago - over her her deeply weird gender politics. And Somerby's traced how chastened her columns have been since then. "Clark Hoyt gets results!"

http://www.236.com/images/photo2/3702/original/original.jpg

^ Heh heh

I can't type.

her column about the catholic priest who gives marriage advice was incredible. she's a bitter old hag.

Didn't it basically conclude that all men suck and aren't good enough to marry?

Yes. What was also awesome about that one is she didn't even have to write anything for it. (Unless she made the priest up completely.)

i doubt she made it up. I went to parochial school around the same time as Dowd and there were priests who specialized in this. in like 7th or 8th grade there was a padre who went around to all the schools in the diocese and gave a "sex talk" to the kids, separated by gender of course. the girls told us afterwards that he instructed them to "bite a guy's tongue if he sticks in your mouth." scare stories from a nominal celibate.

when Dowd righteously invokes her working-class catholic roots I just see red. what a phony.

LOL @ middle aged single woman looking to priests as fonts of wisdom on marriage and sexuality. maureen should have coffee w/peggy noonan sometime.

Dowd is like a bitchier version of Custos.

haaaaa omg holy shit

Nicole's description just above = lols, but I just stumbled across an equally worthy one due to this sequence of events:

A Dowd column.

Ta-Nehisi Coates's first response.

His second response, apologizing for having 'missed the tongue squarely positioned in Maureen Dowd's cheek.'

One of his commenters in response to his second post:

Irony should be a stiletto -- in Dowd's hands it's more like a lobster mallet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12dowd.html

But Sarah Palin can come across as utterly unready to lead the world — or even find the world on a map — and that doesn't reflect poorly on the rest of us.

It only means that she doesn't have enough mind grapes or thoughtsicles, as Tracy Morgan refers to brain droppings on "30 Rock," to be president soon.

a screaming lobster mallet?

...of love

don't know if I've ever read her, but I saw her on BBC on election night, and she was so tasty !!!

she's best with a bit of drawn butter, IMHO

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090518/ap_on_re_us/us_times_dowd

She claims she never read Marshall's post last week and had heard the line from a friend who did not mention reading it in Marshall's blog.

Uh, yeah.

So she'd willingly plagiarize her friend as well?

The early days of Dowd, reporter

Ok, do i want to actually read a column titled "The Tortured Mechanics of Eroticism," or should i just use that as a new display name?

hehe

it's about corsets, p. informative by modo stds.

surprised nobody has said "i'd let her torture my mechanics of eroticism" yet

really, you are? really? now that you've typed it out?

More than surprised. "Flabbergasted."

Her latest screw-up re the NYC mayoral race made Bill de Blasio's wife sound like she was calling Christine Quinn a childless, uncaring lesbian.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/please_fire_maureen_dowd_or_get_her_a_fact_checker/

Poppy Bush used to find her funny, which tells me everything.

she is like, america's cool aunt. as a kid, her jokes at thanksgiving seemed sophisticated and cool, like a portal into another, less humdrum world than the one you were familiar with. but looking back, as an adult, it's clear that she was a poseur in the end.

"in the end"

Reading her and colleague William Safire's attempts at bon mots and sophisticated banter was like watching old men trying to pee into the urinal.

still, the Clintons are subhuman garbage and i don't give a shit about style in political writing

xo

that was obvious from the revive

"subhuman garbage"

thanks for staying out of the election thread morbs, my blood pressure thanks you.

fuck you, that thread is for you and your fellow tourettesians

I was happy to see my friend's teenage son posted her 'HRC is the perfect Republican nominee' column on FB the other day, STYLE be damned

'scaling wokeback mountain'

her writing style is overwrought in a way seldom seen in this era, as if in crafting prose she's invented as version of 'wit' that has neither humor nor insight

no clue why you'd use a word like 'mandarins' to refer to people with perceived power in 2019, but she did it recently

she was best buds w/ Poppy Bush so she sure can pick em

plus using Rahm Satan Emanuel as her primary source this week

credit where credit is due. this opening was good:

My favorite “Twilight Zone” episode is the one where aliens land and, in a sign of their peaceful intentions, give world leaders a book. Government cryptographers work to translate the alien language. They decipher the title — “To Serve Man” — and that’s reassuring, so interplanetary shuttles are set up.

But as the cryptographers proceed, they realize — too late — that it’s a cookbook.

That, dear reader, is the story of OpenAI.

Unless you haven't seen that episode before. Maybe a spoiler alert, Mo?