Day-uhm! I do believe the McPalin campaign is performing something that I normally would have thought impossible. They are making MoDo into a sympathetic bystander.

Talk about your miracles…

Holy cripes, Nicole Wallace is a moron on a power trip. Did she (a) think it wouldn’t get back to MoDo or (b) more likely, was she planting it with blabby, gossipy, bored journos so that it would get back to MoDo?

And, either way, does she not know that while soem of us consider MoDo to be feckless, she has a long, long memory, and will have someone else plant the first dagger for her before she heads in for the beheading? And she will select someone from whom they will not see it coming at a time when they most need not to be buried ass deep in sludge.

This is going to be one hell of a Chinese water torture for Wallace and crew. Boo yah!

MoDo is in the tank for Obama.

I wonder how MoDo gets along with Ron Forunier or Charles Babbington and the rest of the AP crew?

Or maybe Hacktacular Howie is her good frined.

I never thought much of McCain, esp. after his lukewarm response to the swiftboating of John Kerry: but I have recently come to the conclusion that a monstrous vanity is at the heart of most of McCain’s actions and reactions. He is an extremely vengeful man when his vanity is piqued. I suspect that when he has capriciously voted against his party and his own core, conservative agenda, it has been in response to a blow to his vanity. Modo and McCain have in common this monstrous vanity. I have no doubt she will get even and that she will be a worthy foe to Senator McCain.

I think ALL the press should deplane for the duration of this campaign because:

1. MCCain isn’t talking to them. He only wants press coverage for his rallys.

2. Palin isn’t talking to them either.

So he’s just getting free press. It should stop!

Ari, This is way OT, but I don’t know where to ask.

I find two Oxdown navigation blocks:
i. recommended diaries
ii. latest diaries (5 most recent diaries, no list of earlier ones)

Cannot locate a list of diaries earlier than the five most recent listed in the latest block.

The “read more” at the bottom of the latest block,
(where I expected to find earlier diaries listed in reverse
chronological order) simply opens the most recent post.

Is this a glitch or a feature? Or am I missing something?

“It was disappointing because I didn’t think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney.”

Is she serious? Or as clueless as Palin? It sounds like she let all that “harmless” flirting go to her head.

I think less of the press for getting on the plane after she got kicked off. Just another sign of how wrong things have gone.

Also, she couldn’t get a room at a hotel?

Country First!!!

oh dear. she’d better stop in at Dunkin Donuts to get back into McPanic’s good graces.

maybe they didn’t know what was going on until Wallace gloated/warned them of what could happen.

“Ms Dowd? I have a Mr Letterman on the phone. He wants to know if you’d like to be on his show.”

Is she serious? Or as clueless as Palin?

I suspect she was being snarky. Likely failed to register with the intended targets. Republicans think “irony” is an adjective used to describe a garment that has had the wrinkles pressed out of it.

The other reporters probably like MoDo and will resent this - McC scores another PR coup. Yeah !

McCain and his people are jerks, of course, but Dowd reveals what a total waste of column inches she is by her remark. Bumping her from the campaign plane because the campaign doesn’t like something she wrote is juvenile and mean-spirited, but the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee MoDo a plane ride.

She has a prize position on the NY Times Op-ed page, and she basically puts out a high school gossip column, full of petty name-calling. For some weird reason she’s counted as a liberal despite her vicious attacks on the sexuality of every prominent Democrat: to her, male democrats are effeminate (”O’Bambi”, “the Breck girl”) and female Democrats are butch.

McCain, he’s Cheneyesque, only more dickier.

-G

No one calls him Miss Congeniality. That’s what makes ‘im so darn mavericky. He pisses off people on both sides of the aisle and outside in the press room. Look at ‘im go!

There seems to be a clear policy of deliberate hostility to the press emerging.

I was shocked to read MoDo’s column this weekend. A) It made sense. B) It was the first one in I can’t remember how long that didn’t claim Republicans are manly men and all Democrats are homosexuals.

So what is the McCain campaign playing at? Are the constant FUs to the press some kind of japery for the caveman wing of the GOP? (sorry, caveman, I’ll buy your car insurance anyway).

I do hope that a reporter who is traveling with McC will write a book about the campaign. It will surely be a best seller and I’ll bet filled with juicy things we can’t even imagine. I want the warts and all.

The more that McShame continues to shit in his lunch bucket the more the fourth estate negatives will snowball.

Nice freedom of the press, eh?

Christy’s comment reminded me of a little tidbit. Little Nicolle Devenish Wallace is partially, if inadvertantly, responsible for the poor administration response post-Katrina. Folks were at her wedding in Greece:

http://wonkette.com/tag/nicole-devenish

However, I’m sure they could have been just as incompetent had she decided to wed in the USofA.

My friends in the press can I offer you a crap sandwich fresh off the grill

ROFL

is there bbq sauce involved?

heh, heh…

Most of the reason the press kowtows to these people is fear of losing their access. The decision to ban Dowd probably had little to do with anything she had written, it was intended to send a signal to the rest of the press corp, i.e. overlook are shortcomings or you could be next. Hopefully it will backfire, McCain needs the media more than they need him.

Senator McShame is seeking advice now. Boy do I got some; senator grab your left ear with your left hand; now grab your right ear with your right hand; now pull your head ………..

Too bad Hunter Thompson isn’t around to be on the plane. “Along With Campaign Clusterfuck.”

707

He starts with a dry rub, then cooks it over low-heat with frequent spritzing of fresh lemon juice.

I want the warts and all.

that’s good, because no warts = no book.

Multiple flavors

Was Modo mean to widdull Sawah..?

Fear and Loathing (I’m Not Kidding!) on the McCain Trail?

Pretty safe bet Hunter would have started out banned. Still wish he was around, I think he’d have enjoyed covering this. I know I would have enjoyed reading his take on it.

rest of the press corp[se]

Fixed.

Now is not the time to place blame. We cannot blame MoDo for enabling Wars and Depression, while pretending to be a journalist. She was only one of a large herd of pigs with and without lipstick. But, being rejected by neo-cons might hurt her feelings.

Wouldn’t that be fun ! Those people flying around with him must be complete idiots. The press people have large egos and I think will get him.

Or maybe “Campaign of Lipsticked Swine.”

That explains it. I just thought they smelled funny.

You got that right. Nobody could have covered like Dr Gonzo would have.

which is why she should have skewered them for it publicly when it happened!

Egos that have to be ferried about in dump trucks.

Did you ever read Hunter’s essay from 9/12/01? Anybody who believes that all his good work was written decades earlier should read it. Absolutely prescient.

Agreed.

Oh, I think revenge is best served cold. Well planned and well executed.

BTW! Congratulations on all the great Oxdown diaries folks!!!

Believe I did but will dig it up again. Hunter was a very sharp dude. Ran into him in a bar in Aspen with a mutual friend. Very interesting and funny man.

Here is a link. Bear in mind that the initial estimates regarding the number of casualties was much higher than turned out to be the case.

Does anyone know, specifically, why MoDo got kicked off the plane?

Terminal case of the dumbs?

Hunter Thompson, 9/12/01:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn.....pe=package

and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — U.S. military forces launched airstrikes on a Pakistani village early Wednesday morning, two Pakistani military sources told CNN.
The U.S. conducted airstrikes on a village in the border area of North Waziristan early Wednesday, sources said.

The strikes occurred about 1 a.m. in a village in North Waziristan, a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, a Pakistani military source said.

Nobody can stand up to the Dowd.

I know of no other journalist who saw the big picture with that level of clarity so soon after the attacks.

good grief

Too much snark baggage. Plus a lethal weapon-her sharp tongue.

Take out a few lines and it could have been written yesterday.

and keep their hubris intact.

I’m sure a couple of lines were involved.

It is an amazing piece of work, one that nobody could have fully appreciated at the time it was written.

One of these guys is gonna put a Stinger in the bay of one of those helos and all hell’s gonna break loose.

heh heh

Wonder if it was an arc-light?

By most accounts, he like to carry around a salt shaker full and huff from it directly.

They were called deerings, nice little contraption with a screen and a crank in the lid that broke it into nice. . . oh, I read that somewhere.

Seems like usually we hear a helicopter has been lost but never what it ends up being attributed to. Maybe to avoid telling the enemy how effective they’ve been, as if they wouldn’t know. More likely to keep us folks at home in the dark.

I know what you’re referring too (don’t ask me how) but supposedly Hunter liked to snort it from an actual salt shaker, at least when he was at home.

5 o’clock follies

He da man

I’d think a fighter/bomber or two. High altitude is expensive and covers a huge area. Although having your mud brick home crumble a couple miles away adds a psyop advantage.

OT - Watching Mrs. Palin’s snide, catty jab at Biden on KO, and her “explanation” (fer gawd’s sake, would someone please buy that woman a “g”?), and I’ve officially decided that I hate her.

Mean, ignorant, and quite mightily proud of both.

Yep - I hate her.

Both. Let ‘em know that some 16 year old put a Stinger up a Blackhawk’s ass and all the kids will want one.

CNN was the winner when they said no photo-op without a reporter when she was meeting the world leaders. Too bad they settled for 30 seconds and still showed the photos, though.

This campaign has riled the press like no other!

It’s kinda funny how they constructed this one-way membrane around her - she can fire out, but no one can fire in.

Gwen Iffil - tear down that membrane!
Joe will be fine.

She’s wearin’ a full body condum?

Where’d them boys learn to use them Stangers.

Moose-skin variety.

Ian up at the Mothership!
Breaking: Senate to Take Up Bailout Bill Tomorrow

she can fire out, but no one can fire in.

hey - there’s some sexism in that there comment.

At least, I’m pretty sure there is.

Somewhere.

Stupidity in an endearing sort of way.

Charlie’d wait until the skids were almost down to where troops would hit the ground and put a B-40 in it. Didn’t happen often but made ya real nervous, particularly with a hot LZ.

And put claymores in trees. “A Bright Shining Lie” has a great passage on how scared they were of choppers at first. When the put cut outs on sticks and taught them to shoot at the tail rotor they got better.

“A Bright Shining Lie”

Great book.

You watchin the game?

wait, i forget…are we supposed to be mad about this or not?

Hmm This link should work:

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diaries/

Wow, that was stupid. Dowd is a clown but you are living in a country in which clowns are the most trusted commentators. And he’s old. Dowd can get dozens of columns out of “is McCain past it?”