Rise of the She-Hulks

Fight of the Valkyries

By MAUREEN DOWD

They are called the Amazon Warriors,

No one has ever called Hillary Clinton an Amazon Warrior. I wouldn’t discount the lesbian thing out-of-hand, though.

the Lady Hawks,

That sounds like a WNBA team

the Valkyries,

An off-shoot of the high-school literary magazine featuring “poets” with green hair, body image issues, and a trans-historical lesbian crush on Sylvia Plath.

the Durgas.

Of course, it would have to be Maureen Dowd that deifies the colossally flawed Hilary Clinton--twice. The religion of liberalism is in full force here.

There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war.

You’re still stuck on the Valkyries and Durga, which you made up. Actually this simply proves that women are equally flawed in their executive judgments as men.

And there is something positively predictable about guys in the White House pushing back against that story line for fear it makes the president look henpecked.

Henpecked implies that he’s getting some. President Obama is simply a weak person.

It is not yet clear if the Valkyries will get the credit or the blame on Libya. But everyone is fascinated

No one is fascinated. I’d rather dress up in drag and play the lead in a theatrical rendition of The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath is really taking it on the chin this write-up) than be party to this political apotheosis.

 with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Qaddafi.

Except:

a)     They’re about three weeks too late to be effective.

b)     The US policy in Libya is both poorly defined and inconsistent.

c)      The French emasculated Obama more than Hilary could ever hope to.

d)     This is a war that in no way shape or form advances US interests.

How odd to see the diplomats as hawks and the military as doves.

Perhaps this would indicate that the Obama Administration is far out of its depth in a world that demands grown-ups with a mature understanding of foreign policy.

“The girls took on the guys,”

And the American people lost.

The Times’s White House reporter Helene Cooper said on “Meet the Press.”

Yes, a female reporter chose to take the woefully boring gender angle. We’re at war, but you’re right; girl power in the fractured inner circle of the Oval Office is super-important. Nay: fascinating!

Rush Limbaugh mocked the president and his club of “male liberals,” saying: “Of course the males were opposed. It’s the new castrati ... they’re sissies!”

Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador and former Clinton administration adviser on Africa, was haunted by Rwanda.

Was, or is? What soothed her burdened conscience?

Samantha Power, a national security aide who wrote an award-winning book about genocide, was thinking of Bosnia.

And to think we only bombed Kosovo. So close!

Gayle Smith, another senior national security aide, was an adviser to President Clinton on Africa after the Rwandan massacre.

With all this guilt, you’d think that it was the United States that was trying to systematically exterminate the Hutu and the ethnic Serbs.

Hillary Clinton, a skeptic at first,

Keep in mind that the genocide in Rwanda was 1993, while Hilary was focused on thrusing pre-Obamacare on a country that despises the notion.

paid attention to the other women (putting aside that tense moment during the ’08 primaries when Power called her “a monster”).

This has all the makings of a Lifetime movie.

She also may have had some pillow talk with Bill,

Samantha Power, or Hilary?

whose regrets about Rwanda no doubt helped shape his recommendation for a no-fly zone over Libya.

I’m confused. Is Bill Clinton a chick now too?

How odd to see Rush and Samantha Power on the same side.

We’re watching the French lead the free world into combat, and you’re disconcerted about agreement between Rush Limbaugh and Samantha Power?

We’ve come a long way from feminist international relations theory two decades ago that indulged in stereotypes about aggression being “male” and conciliation being “female.”

Can I bridge the gap a little and just say that at least three of those chicks are kind of mannish.

And from the days of Helen Caldicott, the Australian pediatrician and nuclear-freeze activist who disapprovingly noted the “psychosexual overtones” of military terminology such as “missile erector” and “thrust-to-weight ratio.”

Great! We can all acknowledge that liberals were lunatics during the cold war! Can the theme of this column be “too little, too late?”

Caldicott wrote in her book “Missile Envy:”

How refreshingly clever! It’s a penis joke, but subtle. Very highbrow.

“I recently watched a filmed launching of an MX missile. It rose slowly out of the ground, surrounded by smoke and flames and elongated into the air — it was indeed a very sexual sight, and when armed with the ten warheads

I think there are some basic anatomical disconnects arising from the “ten warheads” concept. It’s not a goddamn hydra.

 it will explode with the most almighty orgasm.”

By all means, please consult some aeronautics experts and construct your own rocket-propelled vagina if it soothes your ridiculousness.

There have been women through history who shattered gender stereotypes, from Cleopatra to Golda Meir to the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, whose critics on the left sniffed that she was not really a woman.

To be fair, the average leftist would have no idea what to do with a woman if she fell in his lap.

 As U.N. ambassador, Madeleine Albright pushed back against Colin Powell on a Balkans intervention — “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Does the divergence from the gender stereotype excuse the fact that it was a profoundly dumb thing to say?

she asked him — and Condi Rice pushed ahead with W. and Dick Cheney on invading Iraq.

When President Obama listened to his militaristic muses, it gave armchair shrinks lots to muse about.

Which, after all, is the most important byproduct of going to war.

As one wrote to me: “Cool, cerebral president chooses passion and emotion (human rights, Samantha, Hillary, Susan) over reason and strategic thinking (Bob Gates, Tom Donilon).

Last week: “Cool, cerebral president chooses Butler over Old Dominion, Japan, Libya.”

This week: “Cool, cerebral president chooses Rio beach over America, job, responsibility.”

Is it the pattern set up by his Mom and Michelle — women have the last word?”

God it’s depressing that we’ve elected a man that reflexively subordinates his own opinion for that of others. Whether it’s a profound lack of confidence or a natural timidity, this man does not in any way resemble a leader.

White House aides smacked back hard on the guys vs. girls narrative. A senior administration official e-mailed Politico’s Mike Allen that Power, Smith and Hillary Clinton weren’t even in the meeting where the president decided to move forward and tell Rice to seek authority at the U.N. for a no-fly zone.

Ba-zing!

Wait, what was our intrepid Secretary of State doing while the President was making monumental decisions that affected our geopolitical standing and our ability to diplomatically engage the Muslim World? Backgammon? Spider Solitaire?

 Maybe they were already nervous that the president was sightseeing in Rio with his own girls and watching drum performances while senators like James Webb and Richard Lugar were charging him with overstepping his authority in Libya, and Dennis Kucinich talked impeachment.

Let’s all agree that he’s an extremely narcissistic man who has no respect for the checks and balances provided by the legislature.

Keep in mind that the government is also going to run out of money in about two weeks without a budget.

Whatever the reason, the spinners were so afraid that the president would seem to be a ditherer chased by Furies that they went so far as to argue that three of the women were not even in the room for The Decision.

And like LeBron James’ ESPN primetime special, this decision has also been widely acclaimed as a smashing success , both in substance and style.

So the women were in their place? Where, the kitchen?

OH! Do I finally get to tell my women drivers joke?

As compelling as the gender split is,

It really isn’t. Not even a little.

 it’s even more interesting to look at the parallels between Obama and W.

Why on earth would she bring this up with about 7 lines left in the column?

Candidate Obama said about a possible strike on Iran, “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Which, of course, was a factually inaccurate sound-bite designed to give cover to Obama’s desire to completely ignore the Iran issue. Still, no one called him on it then, so we might as well call him on it now.

Yet both men started wars of choice with a decision-making process marked more by impulse and reaction than discipline and rigor.

Hussein ignored a veritable deluge of paperwork backing UN resolutions and led the world to believe that he was on the precipice of making and exporting WMD materials. What’s more, he had already used WMD on his own people, making him a thousand times the monster that Kadafi is.

By contrast, Kadafi and the hard-liners of Libya collectively shat themselves after the invasion of Iraq. They ceased WMD activities and were docile house cats while President Bush was in office. With Obama’s brilliant idea that Muslim hostility was the byproduct of America projecting its anger and the accompanying Libya was a member of the UN Human Rights Council until it was “suspended” three weeks ago.

Also, you have yet to bring up anything about what President Bush said to compare against Obama.

Denouncing the last decade of “autopilot” for presidents ordering military operations,

That makes absolutely no sense.

Senator Webb

Oh. Now it makes sense.

 told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC: “We have not had a debate. ... This isn’t the way that our system is supposed to work.’’

I’m bored. I’m gonna make a sandwich.

Oh that’s why I need to get married.

Ruining Jack Nicholson

Matt Miller is a snarky little prick whose function is usually as an echo to the larger leftist narrative. Showing unexpected business acumen, the Washington Post website insists on placing him as the last item in their list of Op-Eds just about every time he has a column. I’ve graciously let him while away his time in obscurity because he rarely comes out with anything uniquely stupid. Things certainly changed today. With oil prices skyrocketing and Ken Salazar’s illegal moratorium on domestic oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico still in place, Professor Miller--and I say that with all the dripping disdain I can muster (which is considerable)--decides that it’s about time that we double or triple our gas prices. Y’know, for shits and giggles.

Can Americans handle the truth about gas prices?

Discussion Policy

By Matt Miller

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Hello again, everyone! I'm Matt Miller. And welcome to "You Can't Handle the Truth,"

Bob Barker you are not.

our weekly quest to see if Americans can face the facts needed to solve our most pressing problems - or whether we'll succumb to the curse that trapped the Romanempire

I will generously overlook this as a transcription error by the Post’s crack team of HTML-wielding code monkeys.

before it fell, when, as the pundit Livy put it, "the people could bear neither their ills nor their cures."

This is about the time where most Americans turn the channel to something awesome like The Chicago Code or Burn Notice. Fortunately for you, intrepid reader(s), I’m resilient enough to stick with it. I’ll watch reruns of Arrested Development later.

[Turns to the studio audience]

Matt: What do you say, America? Can we bear our ills?

Audience [roaring in unison]: No!

Forget Bob Barker, this dude’s not even a Drew Carey.

Matt: But can we bear their cures?

Audience: No!

Keep in mind that these are the beacons of professional journalism in the United States, whose unrivaled sobriety and integrity are unmatched by the great unwashed internet community. These are the prestigious writers whose colossal merit and astonishing mental capacity filter and analyze the news of the day. And these intrepid writers are the acolytes of the sacred First Amendment freedoms enshrined in our founding documents. Still, this asshole is writing studio-audience reactions for a hypothetical TV game show running inside his warped little head.

Matt [winking]:

Take a look at this guy’s stock photo on WaPo and fight to repress that reflexive vomit in the back of your throat. I need a Brillo pad and steel wool for my brain.

You see the dilemma.

Actually, I don’t. I assume that you’ll actually explain your wild suppositions, but that’s far more credit than this piece has thus far merited.

Today's rendezvous with truth? Gas prices. With Libya in chaos and Mideast jitters sending gas past $3.50 a gallon, we'll take on the most sacred cow in the entire bovine pantheon: the entitlement to cheap gas.

On the plus side, we’ve finally found an “entitlement” that Democrats are eager to get rid of: the entitlement to not be taxed. (Patriots know this as “freedom”)

In our pre-show poll, we asked our studio audience if they would support higher gas taxes (and thus even higher prices) to achieve a rare public policy trifecta.

Fuck me. This is going to be really dumb, isn’t it?

First, we'd reduce our dependence on oil.

I assume--and I’m going to have to assume a lot to make his arguments comprehensible--that he believes a gas tax would reduce supply and therefore reduce the market equilibrium price. That’s sound-enough economics, but woefully simplistic. The lack of valid substitute goods in the energy market means that oil and gas—as a whole—are goods with inelastic demand. Therefore, supply shifts imply small changes in quantity versus large increases in price. In other words, to significantly adjust the amount foreign oil consumed (quantity), you would have to use massive tax-induced supply shifts that would drive oil and gas prices to astronomical levels. Isn’t it just easier to drill in ANWR? Or re-open the Gulf of Mexico to exploration and drilling for American companies? Or project American power to break down OPEC’s monopolistic oil cartel?

Second, we'd create market incentives to invest in clean energy.

Actually, unbalanced tax impositions are the exact opposite of market incentives. (But then, so are the massive subsidies that we’re already giving to the “green economy.”) In fact, “clean energy” alternatives like the electric cars have proven so unpalatable that GM sold a whopping 281 Volts in February. I doubt that’s enough to cover their advertising budget this month.

It would be too cruel to tell you how the Nissan Leaf is selling.

And third, we'd raise much-needed revenue to shrink our budget deficit.

Well, that’s assuming that you don’t put American trucking and logistics companies out of business, drive international shipping to foreign competitors, crush retailers with skyrocketing inflation and generally hobble the economy by increasing wage demands for commuters—which gasoline taxes would.

In short, a big gasoline tax would achieve precisely zero of the above-stated goals, and be actively counterproductive to at least two of them.

As a bonus, we might eventually stop sending young Americans to die for oil in the Persian Gulf, too!

Lesser critics have gone into rage blackouts over such flippant espousals of nonsense. I prefer to save my ire for hippies.

Alas, 80 percent of you said "no,"

This means 80 percent of you reflexively loathe government intervention in the market in the name of making the market more efficient. Good for you! You’ve established adequate mental capacity to own and operate a waffle iron.

Wait a minute, I’m talking to Mat Miller’s non-existent audience from his non-existent television show…I’ll be by to turn in my waffle iron in the morning.

you would not support higher gas taxes, while only 20 percent said "yes" – and that's where it usually ends in real life.

That’s called “responsive politics.” Less intellectually strenuous commentators call it “democracy in action,” but that’s just foolishness.

But not on "You Can't Handle the Truth" - where public resistance to sensible reform

It must be nice to decide whether your ideas are sensible without any feedback loop from reality. You can take backhanded jabs at your better-informed colleagues for doubting the gospel of your word and snipe with moral righteousness upon the sane population that provides the backbone for your sustenance. It’s fun, right? Yeah, the apocalyptic hobo down the street thinks so too.

is just the start of the education campaign our politicians lack the guts or incentive to pursue!

It’s not our politicians job to educate us. It’s their job to communicate facts regarding the operation of the government and to represent our interests.

Before we turn to this week's quiz, let's check in with the lovely Angela Barrow,

Are you seriously making up co-hosts for your made-up show? What’s next week’s column? Twilight fan fic?

our damsel of debt. Angie, what's the latest number on the red ink we're running?

[Cut to curvy blonde in skimpy dress and high heels standing next to oversized national debt clock.]

Angela: It's so big tonight, Matt.

Keep your masturbatory fantasies to yourself, perv.

Matt: How big is it, Angie?

Angela: Mmmm . . . $14.2 trillion and rising.

Matt: Thanks, Angie - you always make the bad news a little easier to bear.

Wow. This is really sexist.

But now - time for another round of Mind-Altering Facts.

Jesus, forget Drew Carey; you’re not even a Louie Anderson.

You know how it works. Our studio audience - a representative sample of American voters - has instant-response devices to measure what they know, or don't.

First question: If you adjust for inflation, are gas prices today, with their recent spike, higher, lower or about the same as they've been over the last 40 years?

Sadly, I’ll play along. Higher.

Answer on your handheld, folks [camera pans audience as theme song from "Beverly Hillbillies" plays for six seconds] . . . Okay, let's see what we've got. . . . As the Truth Scoreboard shows, 60 percent of you think gas prices are now higher, 38 percent think gas prices are about the same and just 2 percent think they're lower than they've been in the past. . . .

Well, ladies and gentlemen, see if you can handle the truth, because adjusted for inflation, gas prices today are actually lower than they were decades ago!

Yeah…that’s not even close to true. Inflation-adjusted oil and gas prices were higher in 2008 than at any other point in post-war history. Oil prices now far exceed the 40-year average. In fact, the only point in that 40-year history that even comes close to right now was the oil shock of 1979.

Oil prices:

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Chart.asp

Gas prices:

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm

(keep in mind that gas has increased to over $3.50/gallon since this chart was made.)

[Gasps from the audience]

I know, your hypothetical audience is shocked by your brazen and easily-disprovable lies.

Next question:

Seriously, are we really moving on without examining the falsehood that you just told under the moniker of truth?

What does a gallon of gas cost today in England, Italy and Germany?

Um…please explain how foreign gas prices in stagnating economies are in any way relevant to the discussion of a purely domestic issue. Will we also be examining gasoline prices in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia?

Just pick from the choices now appearing on your dial. . . . Okay, here's what our audience says: Forty-two percent of you think it's between $3 and $4 a gallon; 22 percent say between $4 and $5 a gallon; and 36 percent say you have absolutely no idea!

Well, thanks for your candor! But here's the truth - in all three countries, a gallon of gas today costs more than $8!

Keep in mind, oil is a developed market with participating futures traders from across the globe. The only reason why gas is so high in Europe is because of obscene taxes that were designed specifically to reduce consumption. That’s why those miserable miscreants created the Smart car and believe that scooters are acceptable means of conveyance, which is only slightly less grotesque than the thought of Matt Miller winking at me.

[Gasps again]

I know, I know. Matt Miller winking is gross. Sorry for bringing it up again.

In a moment we'll go to primary battleground Iowa to see if these facts matter to voters,

Given that one is completely false and the other is completely irrelevant, I’m guessing no. Then again, this is a reflection of reality through the funhouse mirror of Matt Miller’s brain, so who the hell knows what’s going on.

but first let's check in at "The Safe House" with a Republican senator who says we need to raise taxes - so of course this person must remain nameless!

Damn right he would.

[Camera cuts to remote location where a figure sits in shadows]

Senator, what brings you to the Safe House today?

The liberal delusion that conservative opposition is based in anything other than an ideological schism.

What truth can't the American people handle?

Your grasp on the concept of truth has been pretty suspect all column. Might want to sit a few rounds out.

Senator [voice is scrambled electronically]: Matt, someone just has to say it. All of us in Washington know that higher gas taxes are part of the fix we need - but we're under enormous pressure not to admit this. Also, there's a way to do it called "tax and dividend" that means most Americans wouldn't feel a thing. What we'd do is rebate most of the proceeds from higher gas taxes via lower payroll taxes, so middle- and lower-income Americans wouldn't be affected at all; it'd be a wash.

This is all about dependency. This “tax and dividend” would take money away from consumers at the pump and distribute the money, via payroll taxes, to all workers. In essence, it is a transfer of wealth from drivers to non-drivers. Why? What for? Why do non-drivers need more money? They already enjoy life without the costs of a commute. Of course, government wants to take its slice before making the distribution. That way they can continue to finance interpretive dance classes for construction workers and herpetology classes for convicted sex offenders. This way, not only does it generate revenue by simply being meddlesome, it entrenches a class of non-driving workers as dependent on a tax policy that Democrats endorsed. In addition to making it very difficult to repeal, it also makes those dependants very reliable voters.

But folks hate the idea of higher gas prices so much that none of us are willing to talk about it publicly.

It’s a good thing this guy is hypothetical. This idea is so contrary to the conservative ethos, that even the GOP—which suffered through Lincoln Chafee and continues to endure Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe—would kick him out.

Matt: Senator, we know the courage it had to take to speak to us even under cloak of total anonymity, so thanks - and viewers should rest assured that the firm of Pricewaterhouse Coopers has verified the identity of this week's Safe House confessor as a bona fide United States senator from the state of . . . Just kidding, senator, not to worry!

[Crickets] Is it really a good idea to reprint a hypothetical bombed joke in a fictional recount of a nonexistent scenario? My better judgment says no, but then, there was obviously no judgment put into this column.

We go now to Homer's Diner in Des Moines,

Seriously, is this a game show, or a news program with correspondants? If you’re going to come up with a fictional TV show, you at least need it to fit a familiar format for hypothetical viewers. This is Bush League.

where special Truth correspondent and Time magazine columnist Joe Klein has been talking for hours with farmers, small-business owners, union members, college students and policy experts about this idea of a gas-payroll tax swap. Joe, any takers?

Joe: Matt, the amazing thing is the goodwill that's generated when people actually work through these issues together.

I’m bored again. It’s like he just ran out of substance and wanted to give a shout-out to a colleague.

[Video of Iowans talking around table]

As you'd expect, folks who drive long distances as part of their job start out violently opposed to higher gas taxes.

Yes, but then again, I’m guessing people with blue eyes would be opposed to a Blue Eye Tax.

But when you show them how most people's bottom line wouldn't be affected,

Everyone’s.

and lay out the broader benefits this kind of tax reform could bring the country,

None.

they're ready to be part of the solution.

By not enacting a gas tax.

Question: If peoples bottom lines aren’t affected, what broader benefits could gas tax reform possibly bring? This is, of course, the proverbial magic act that for some unknowable reason, private citizens like Matt Miller is advocating the government propagate against us: making something from nothing, deriving tangible benefits from no discernable cost. He knows that it’s hogwash, of course. Not all the money taken through this tax will be paid back. Yet he, as a future financier of the fraud, insists upon it. More to the point, he implies that those who object are the descendants of the social and political rot that felled the Roman Empire. Why? What masochism drives this? What reverence for they mysticism of government budgeting compels the avoidance of basic mathematical truth?

Matt: Joe, hold that thought. After a brief break we'll go back to Des Moines to see if real people

Read: fake people in Matt Miller’s misshapen head.

can cut the deals Washington can't . . .

He’s now running promos and teasers for a non-existent segment of fake television. Stunning.

and then come back for a final vote with our studio audience to see how many minds we've changed on the gas tax.

Precisely 20%. Those who were in favor of raising the gas tax are now opposed.

Plus - this week's finalists imitating Jack Nicholson's famous line in "A Few Good Men," in full Colonel Jessup regalia. You're watching "You Can't Handle The Truth"

I get to be Kevin Bacon. You’re Demi Moore.

. . . only on HBO.

Well at least that explains why this column sucked as much as Boardwalk Empire.