Having traveled by air a few weeks ago

[question everything]

these comments by Peggy Noonan resonated:

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

and

The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where grandma's hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conservatives don't like it. I'm certain Gate 14 doesn't.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120906741679842493.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

[williesgirl]

1. Right on. rec'd

[xxqqqzme]

2. That's a looong way around the block just

to take a slash @ Obama's patriotism.

noonan needs to get a real job & join the rest of America.

[Skittles]

3. she is a lying repuke whore

".....no one is questiong his patriotism" - yeah right Peggy :puke:

[tavalon]

4. The first part is spot on

The rest not so much.

[LibDemAlways]

5. One thing is for certain. The chimp could not

care less that a 90-year-old Alzheimer's patient has her shoes yanked off before being forcibly lifted out of her wheelchair to be wanded (something I witnessed at Sea-Tac), because it suits his purpose of keeping Americans in fear so that he and his corporate buddies can engage in the wholesale pillaging of Iraq.

Only a fool would think Bush gives a rat's ass about ordinary people. Unfortunately, there are millions of fools in this country.

[question everything]

15. This is horrible. We are treated like cattle (nt)

[struggle4progress]

6. Who cares what Peggy Noonan thinks?

[crimsonblue]

7. You forgot to add the part where the agent searches America's laptop, legally.

Recent court rulings have stated that the Feds may turn on any computer at borders and customs gates. Government in Action!

[lostnfound]

10. Funny how that got overlooked. Assaults on body image vs assault on free thought.

Her problem isn't that this is being done, so much as it is being done to HER.
I agree with the resentment of the whole airport pretense and in spite of the author the opening is pretty good.
She likes to be crutched by a sense of elitism, though, to get through life.

[Beam Me Up]

8. Stop flying. I did. Fuck them. n/t

[donheld]

9. I thought Peggy traveled by broom

:shrug::D

[depakid]

11. Poor Peggy. Having worked tirelessly for such such results

she now doesn't like them, and can only whinge about it in her columns.

[tanyev]

12. Peggy Noonan, Jan 4, 2002.

Sept. 11 did many important things. Somewhere on the list is this: It gave shape, purpose and meaning to the new president's presidency. On Sept. 10 the Bush administration was about faith-based social assistance, tax cuts, an improved military--the modern conservative agenda. And like all agendas it had many parts, and the parts became a blur. That happens in politics. Sept. 11 blew the blur away. The presidency is now about two things: ridding the world of madmen who seek to terrorize, and making America safer from weapons of mass destruction. Everything else comes after that.

He has become, as everyone has pointed out, a leader. Our leader, the American president. There are some who knew he always had this potential, had the gift of figuring things out quickly, deciding, delegating, saying what he was doing and why, getting folks to see things his way. A year or so before he announced he would run for president I read a quote about him from the Texas Democrat Bob Bullock. He and George W. had become friends as they worked together during Mr. Bush's first year as governor. Bullock was smart and tough. And when he was asked about Mr. Bush, shortly before he died, he said, "Let me tell you about that fellow. He's going to be a president, and he's going to be a great one." I watched him closely after that and read everything about him. In time, I came to think: Bullock is going to be proved right.

Mr. Bush is not obsessed with his legacy. This is good because it suggests he is emotionally and intellectually mature, which is how we want our presidents to be. When you walk into the presidency as a fully formed adult your first thought is "What should I do first and how and when?" When you walk into it with more vanity than sense, more hunger than purpose, your first thought is of what history will say of you. This is like moving into a new neighborhood and deciding the first thing you'll do is find out if the neighbors like you, as opposed to the more constructive, "I think I'll cut the grass, paint the house and join the civic organization." Mr. Clinton spent all his time thinking about his legacy, and by the end he had one: He was the president who spent his time thinking about his legacy while Osama made his plans. He wasted history's time. Mr. Bush isn't like this. Be grateful.

Mr. Bush works well with the competing personalities around him. He keeps Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz close, listens, seems to have an acute sense of what each can give him. He appreciates Mr. Powell's power as a leader and man of respect, and means to keep him close. He will have to, in 2002, which he has called "a war year." That war has many fronts and there are many ways to move forward on each; the war can become bigger or smaller, hotter or cooler, wider or narrower. When he makes his decisions he will announce them, explain them and argue for them with a striking plainness. The quality will be needed, and it is good that the president has it.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=95001687


We need a wet clean up at Gate 14. :puke:

[Itchinjim]

13. Fuck Peggy Noonan.

[hatrack]

14. Suck on it, Peggy. Your malignant Daddy-fantasies of Reagan paved the road, you greased the skids

And now you are shocked at your recent discovery of traces of simmering discontent in the land?

You enabled it. You wanted it. You made it happen. You're responsible.

So, again, I say - suck on it. It's yours.