Sunday's NYTimes Editorial Columns by Rich & Dowd: Bush & Reagan Bucket List Republicans Living In the Past & In Denial

Frank Rich's Sunday Column is entitled: Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead.

Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. ....the Clintons are hardly bigots, and the Democratic candidates all have a history of fighting strenuously for inclusiveness. By contrast, the Romney victory in Michigan is another reminder of how Republicans aren’t even playing in the same multiracial [or economic] American sandbox.

George W. Bush has led his party to the brink of disaster and cost it a generation of young Americans

[Romney's] retro persona exemplifies much of the present Republican dilemma. It’s not just that the old Reagan coalition of social, economic and foreign-policy conservatives has fractured. A more indelible problem for the Republicans in 2008 is that their candidates are utterly segregated from reality as it is lived by the overwhelming majority of their fellow Americans. The G.O.P. presidential field’s lack of demographic diversity by age, gender, ethnicity or even wardrobe, let alone race, is simply the leading indicator of how out of touch its brand has become.

Among [the republicans], Mike Huckabee alone made affinity for economically struggling Americans his calling card. Unfortunately, Huckanomics is more snake oil. All federal taxes would be replaced by a national sales tax that despite its Orwellian name (the Fair Tax) would shift more of the burden to middle- and low-income Americans.

Exit polls find that among voters in Republican primaries, as many as half have turned against the president. David Frum, the onetime Bush speechwriter, laments in his provocative new book “Comeback” that by 2008 his former boss “had led his party to the brink of disaster” and cost it “a generation of young Americans.”

MoDo Goes After Shrub and His Feeble Supplications to the Dictators of the Middle East in her column: Red, White and Blue Tag Sale

Hillary Clinton was right when she said it was “pathetic” that President Bush had to beg the Saudis to drop the price of oil.

In Abu Dhabi, he marveled at the royal family’s plans to build a city based entirely upon renewable energy. “Amazing, isn’t it?” W. said.

You know you’re in trouble when your Middle East oil pump is greener than you are.

One cascading rationale he offered for invading Iraq was the benign domino theory, that bringing democracy to Iraq would sway the autocrats in the region to be less repressive.

But when W. visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt last week, he did not have the whip hand. He could not demand anything of the autocrats in the way of more rights for women and dissidents, much less get the Saudis to help on oil production. He needs their help in corralling Iran, which has been puffed up by the occupation of Iraq.

Dowd also mentioned a sign I'd love to see "Hanging on the skyline of New York is a sign reading: “U.S.A. Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors.”

Anyone who thinks a businessman with a 50s sensibility can solve the complex problems of our time is still living in Reagan-world. And we know that his policies are what set in motion the rich getting richer while widening the economic gap at a pace that Shrub Bush and Dick head-guy Cheney have only accelerated.

Bob Herbert's column reminds us of the hard economic facts via a recent Economomic Policy Institute report which states:

“The distribution of wages, income and wealth in the United States has become vastly more unequal over the last 30 years. In fact, this country has a more unequal distribution of income than any other advanced country.”

David Cay Johnston, took a look at income patterns in the U.S. over the past few decades in his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).”

From 1980 to 2005 the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.) But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during that period. The standard of living for the average family has improved not because incomes have grown, but because women have gone into the workplace in droves.

90 percent of the population missed out on the income gains during the sacredly touted 'economic expansion' of the Reagan-Bush Republican Eras

The peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973 — when the average income per taxpayer (adjusted for inflation) was $33,001. That is nearly $4,000 higher than the average in 2005.

It’s incredible but true: 90 percent of the population missed out on the income gains during that long period.

Mr. Johnston does not mince words: “The pattern here is clear. The rich are getting fabulously richer, the vast majority are somewhat worse off, and the bottom half — for all practical purposes, the poor — are being savaged by our current economic policies.”

.....

For ordinary Americans, jobs are the be-all and end-all. And an America awash in new jobs will require a political environment that respects and rewards work and aggressively pursues creative policies designed to radically expand employment.

Kevin Phillips, a former supporter of Reagan and his policies, also radically changed his mind as he has documented the rich getting far richer much faster while working families have drastically lost ground under the republicans since 1980.

As Rich and others note, the Republican candidates are looking longingly into the past -- almost 30 years past! But the economic reality of these past 30 years will likely continue to show that invoking Reagan to democrats and working Americans is rocky territory fraught with danger and filled with fairy-tales and lies.

Even our British allies are giddy with anticipation of an election change: Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush.

Rich's column is already available here; Dowd's is here.

Technorati Tags:
Dubai, economic justice, economic stress, economy, Jobs

MoDo: Repugneocons Dying for Another Daddy

Old School Inanity

by Maureen Dowd

OP-ED Columnist, NYTimes,
Saturday, September 8, 2007


WASHINGTON

Dying for a daddy, the Republicans turn their hungry eyes to Fred.

Fred Thompson acts tough on screen. And like Ronald Reagan, he has a distinctively masculine timbre and an extremely involved wife.

In his announcement video, Mr. Thompson stood in front of a desk in what looked like, duh, a law office, rumbling reassuringly that in this “dangerous time” he would deal with “the safety and security of the American people.”

As Michelle Cottle wrote in The New Republic, far more than puffy-coiffed Mitt and even more than tough guys Rudy and McCain, the burly, 6-foot-5, 65-year-old Mr. Thompson exudes “old-school masculinity.”

“In Thompson’s presence (live or on-screen),” she wrote, “one is viscerally, intimately reassured that he can handle any crisis that arises, be it a renegade Russian sub or a botched rape case.” But she wondered, was he really “enough of a man for this fight,” or just someone who meandered through life, creating the illusion of a masculine mystique?

“What kind of male obsesses over his bike riding time, other than Lance Armstrong or a 12-year-old boy?”

Newsweek reported that some close to the Tennessean “question whether moving into the White House is truly Thompson’s life ambition — or more the dream of his second wife, Jeri, a former G.O.P. operative who is his unofficial campaign manager and top adviser.”

It took only two days of campaigning to answer the masculine mystique question. Fred gave an interview to CNN’s John King as his bus rolled through Iowa.

“To what degree should the American people hold the president of the United States responsible for the fact that bin Laden is still at large six years later?” Mr. King asked.

“I think bin Laden is more of a symbolism than he is anything else,” Mr. Thompson drawled. “Bin Laden being in the mountains of Afghanistan or — or Pakistan is not as important as the fact that there’s probably Al Qaeda operatives inside the United States of America.”

Usually, you can only get that kind of exquisitely inane logic from the president. Who does Fred think is sending operatives or inspiring them to come?

Fred is not Ronnie; he’s warmed-over W. President Reagan always knew who the foe was.

Fred followed W.’s nutty lead of marginalizing Osama on a day when TV showed another creepy, fruitcake manifesto by the terrorist, who was wearing what seemed to be a fake beard left over from Woody Allen’s “Bananas” and bloviating on everything from the subprime mortgage crisis to the “woes” of global warming to a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory to the wisdom of Noam Chomsky to the unwisdom of Richard Perle to the heartwarming news that Muslims have lived with Jews and not “incinerated them” to the need to “continue to escalate the killing and fighting” against American kids in Iraq.

Can we please get someone in charge who will stop whining that Osama is hiding in “harsh terrain,” hunt him down and blast him forward to the Stone Age?

Fred must have missed the news of the administration’s intelligence estimate in July deeming Al Qaeda rejuvenated and “a persistent and evolving terrorist threat” to Americans.

Pressed by Mr. King on the fact that the Bush hawks went after Saddam instead of Osama, Fred continued to sputter: “You — you’re — you’re not served up these issues one at a time. They — they come when they come, and you have to — you have to deal with them.”

Democrats pounced. John Edwards issued a statement saying, “That bin Laden is still at large is Bush’s starkest failure.” John McCain and Rudy Giuliani also stressed the need to take out Osama.

Fred quickly caved on the matter of men in caves. At a rally later in the day he manned up. “Apparently Osama bin Laden has crawled out of his cave long enough to send another video and he is getting a lot of attention,” he said, “and ought to be caught and killed.”

He continued to insist that killing bin Laden would not end the terrorist threat, without realizing that this is true now because, by not catching bin Laden, W. allowed him to explode into an inspirational force for jihadists.

Republicans are especially eager for a papa after their disappointing experiences with Junior. After going through so many shattering disasters, W. seems more the inexperienced kid than ever.

In Australia, the president called Australian soldiers in Iraq “Austrian troops,” and got into a weird to-and-fro on TV with the South Korean president.

W. cooperated with Ropert Draper, the author of a new biography of him, yet the portrait was not flattering. Like a frat president sitting around with the brothers trying to figure out whether to party with Tri-Delts or Thetas, W. asked his advisers for a show of hands last year to see if Rummy should stay on. And W. is obsessed with getting the Secret Service to arrange his biking trails.

“What kind of male,” one of his advisers wondered aloud, “obsesses over his bike riding time, other than Lance Armstrong or a 12-year-old boy?”

Technorati Tags:
Fred Thompson, Daddy Party, Lance Armstrong, Bin Laden

Maureen Dowd: History as an Alibi

When presidents have screwed up and want to console themselves, they think history will give them .... the historical equivalent of a presidential pardon.

History as an Alibi

By MAUREEN DOWD

NY Times OP-ED Columnist

July 11, 2007

On Friday, Condi Rice played hooky and spent the afternoon at the Tiger Woods golf tournament at Congressional Country Club in suburban Maryland.

She had lunch at the clubhouse with Tiger, who had dedicated the contest to American servicemen. She followed Phil Mickelson and Brad Faxon for a bit, after having them over to the White House on the Fourth to watch the fireworks. She gave interviews about her newfound affection for golf, laughing about her errant drives and “wicked hook.”

Like W. going out boating and fishing in Kennebunkport as Britain and its new prime minister, Gordon Brown, reeled from terrorist attacks, Condi acted as if she didn’t have a care in the world. And why on earth should she?

The homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, has a gut feeling that a Qaeda cell might be coming or already be here. “Summertime seems to be appealing to them,” he said, sounding more like a meteorologist than the man charged with keeping us safe.

With 30 mortars hitting the Green Zone yesterday and Army recruiting wilting, some Bush advisers are at long last coming around to the Baker-Hamilton report recommendation that they should engage in intense diplomacy with the countries around Iraq.

Someone might tell Condi — who said in one of her golf interviews that her zest for sports is so all-encompassing that “I love anything with a score at the end” — that she’d better get to work or America’s score in Iraq will be zero.

Why they continue to seek counsel from the man who kept the Vietnam War going for years ... is beyond mystifying.

The Iraq war she helped sell has turned into Grendel, devouring everything in sight and making it uninhabitable. It has ravaged Iraq, Bush’s presidency, the federal budget, the Republican majority, American invincibility and integrity, and now, John McCain’s chance to be president.

And there’s no Beowulf in sight. Just a bunch of spectacularly wrong hawks stubbornly continuing to be spectacularly wrong at what an alarmed Republican Senator John Warner calls “a time in our history unlike any I have ever witnessed before.”

Watching the warring tribes in Iraq grow more violent has caused the beginning of a reconciliation among the warring tribes in Washington, as they realize they have to get the car keys away from the careening president who has crashed into the globe.

With Republicans in revolt over the surge and losing patience, and Bushies worried, as one put it to The Washington Post, that “July has become the new September,” the president decided to do a p.r. surge to sound as if he’s acquainted with reality.

But in a speech in Cleveland yesterday, the president was still repeating his deranged generalities. Making a tiny concession, he said we would be able to pull back troops “in a while,” whatever that means, but asked Congress to wait for Gen. David Petraeus to debrief on the surge in September — rather than focus on the report due this week that says the ineffectual Iraq government has failed to meet benchmarks set by America.

It was ironic that his strongest supporter to the bitter end was the Republican who was once his bitter rival. There was speculation that Mr. McCain would come back from his visit to Iraq and revise his bullish support of the war to save his imploding campaign. But the opposite happened.

As his top advisers were purged, Mr. McCain went to the floor of the Senate to reassert his warped view that “there appears to be overall movement in the right direction.”

Like W., Senator McCain values the advice of Henry Kissinger and said, “We can find wisdom in several suggestions put forward recently by Henry Kissinger.”

Why they continue to seek counsel from the man who kept the Vietnam War going for years just to protect Richard Nixon’s electoral chances is beyond mystifying. But Mr. Kissinger holds their attention with all his warnings of “American impotence” emboldening radical Islam and Iran. Can’t W. and Mr. McCain see that American muscularity, stupidly thrown around, has already emboldened radical Islam and Iran?

The president mentioned in his speech yesterday that he was reading history, and he has been summoning historians and theologians to the White House for discussions on the fate of Iraq and the nature of good and evil.

W. thinks history will be his alibi. When presidents have screwed up and want to console themselves, they think history will give them a second chance. It’s the historical equivalent of a presidential pardon.

But there are other things — morality, strategy and security — that are more pressing than history. History is just the fanciest way possible of wanting to deny or distract attention from what’s happening now.

MAUREEN DOWD: My Very Own Juror

MAUREEN DOWD: My Very Own Juror

When the Scooter Libby trial ended, the media was found guilty. By the media. Which likes to obsess on itself. In the media.

The press gave short shrift to poor Scooter, whose downfall came from doing Dick Cheney’s bidding with “canine loyalty,” as Chris Matthews told Don Imus yesterday morning. Scooter’s facing hard time, even though others in the administration also spread the word about Valerie Plame.

But let’s get back to the media decrying the media, and the incestuous Beltway relationship between journalists and sources. Listening to all the lamentations, I excitedly realized I had a potentially incestuous relationship with a source inside the Beltway.

I went to Nativity grade school in D.C. with Juror No. 9, Denis Collins. I had an unrequited crush on his brother when I was in seventh grade. His dad was my dad’s lawyer, and both were Irish immigrants. My brother Kevin coached his brother Kevin in touch football. Our moms were in the Sodality together. His mom once chastised me for chatting up a little boy in church. We started in journalism together, Denis at The Washington Post as a sportswriter and Metro reporter, and me at The Washington Star as a sportswriter and Metro reporter.

This was a sure thing. I could get him to come over to my house and spill all the secrets of the jury that had convicted the highest-ranking White House official to be found guilty on a felony since Iran-contra days.

Unfortunately, Denis spilled them on the way over. By the time he got to my house, he was already so overexposed he announced, “I’m sick of hearing myself talk.”

From the moment he stepped out of the courthouse and into the press mob in his green Eddie Bauer jacket, Denis became the unofficial jury spokesman, bouncing from Larry King to Anderson Cooper and “Good Morning America.” I thought there still might be enough jury dish for me until I heard him say “Huffington Post blog.”

“Blogs are the future, right?” he said, explaining that he’d already posted his diary of adventures in federal court — right down to our incestuous Catholic past, which came up in the voir dire, when he also mentioned living across the alley from Tim Russert and working at The Post for Bob Woodward, and his nonfiction book about spying and the C.I.A.

“I was the perfect storm,” he said. Instead of me milking him for information, he tried to milk me for information. He asked about the pitfalls of being in a media maelstrom.

“Somebody called me up today and said: ‘Turn on Rush Limbaugh. He’s saying terrible things about you.’ ”

I empathized. One of my brothers always used to call Mom and tell her: “Turn on Rush Limbaugh. He’s saying terrible things about Maureen.”

Also, Denis’s wife, Pam, told him gleefully that someone on TV was making fun of his jacket. “Somebody said, ‘What’s with the green coat? It looks like something he got in high school.’ ” I asked him if he’d used any lessons from the nuns. “Accountability,” he said. “Do the right thing or get whacked over your head with the bell by Sister Mary Karen.”

Was Scooter’s fall Shakespearean? “He’s too many steps away from the king,” he said. “One of the jurors said, ‘He was too busy looking out for No. 1; he should have been looking out for No. 2 and then he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.’ One of the witnesses told us that Libby spent more time with Cheney than he did with his own wife and kids.”

What did the jurors think of Scooter’s wife? “Well, the alleged wife,” Denis corrected me. This was a very skeptical jury, then?

“We didn’t know anything about her,” he said, adding: “I said, ‘So, that’s Scooter Libby’s wife?’ and another juror jokingly said, ‘Do you have any evidence?’ ” So the jurors began calling her “the alleged wife.”

Like a good Catholic boy, he noted that the people who put “the longest nails in Libby’s hands were not reporters — they were people who worked for the government.”

I asked him how he would feel if W. pardoned Scooter.

“I would really not care,” he replied. “I feel like the damage has been done in terms of his reputation and the administration’s reputation.”

And what about the calls for Dick Cheney to resign or get the boot?

“Here’s the thing: Libby followed Cheney’s instructions to go talk to reporters, but there’s no evidence at all that Cheney told him to lie about it. So the question is, was Libby just kind of inept at getting this story out?”

Denis had to leave. He said he felt as if he were “coming out of a tunnel.” I just felt happy to have a hot source — even if I had to share him with the whole Beltway.

Open Letter to Maureen Dowd: How Oprah has become a tool of the Right Wing Republicans

MY OPEN LETTER TO the BRILLIANTLY SATIRICAL & SNARKY MAUREEN DOWD
re: A Giant Doom Magnet
by Maureen Dowd
February 17, New York Times
........................

Dear MD:

Loved your smart (and smart-ass) column! (see below for link):

Is it just me or has Oprah gone beyond inspiring to downright sanctimonious? And tedious.

Worse that that, Oprah has 'unconsciously' become a tool for rightwing ideology and republican 'non-compassionate' conservative capitalism above all else. Of course, it greatly benefits her (and all rich powerful people) for her 'consumers' to swallow this stuff hook line and sinker. Sure there's some value, of course -- we could all benefit from our own deeper spiritual and personal awareness -- but 'unconscious acceptance of an ideology' i.e., 'there is one-answer-for everyone' is the purview of fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism, and a message of ultimate powerlessness. (Did you ever read Susan Griffin's essay "The Way of All Ideology"?)

What was one of those things Oprah said yesterday that basically reinforced the 'blame the media' mantra of the right? I don't remember exactly (I'm sure you can get the transcript thru Lexus-Nexus) -- but the moment she said it, and attributed it to 'the media' -- what she actually stated was standard dogma and propaganda created and repeated by the rightwing/whitehouse/republican about whatever it was she said and attributed to the media. (damn my short-term and long-term memory!)

Anyway, okay, sure I'm into spiritual awareness, development of consiousness and accepting the bounty of the universe -- really I am! (I pretty much believe that saying that old twelve-step saying: 'religion is for people afraid of hell, spirituality is for people who've already been there')... But part of what disturbed me most and what I kept hearing was this:

separate the personal from the political, the spiritual from the material -- as if they aren't connected or related!

And 'don't worry about changing things out there, only worry about what's in here' -- as if they're not connected, as if they don't affect each other, each realm or sphere.

It also sounded very much like an (unconscious?) attempt to absolve lots people (regular everyday people, voting-age citizens -- not to mention Oprah herself and all those folks of power, privilege and means) -- of any responsibility for what the hell has been going on in this country for the past six years -- (more like 27+)!

As if Oprah the High Priestess is absolving us all of the leaders we-the-people have put in power and tolerated in their unceasing violence, greed, wars, lies, abuse of power, ultra-rich getting more obscenely rich ad-infinitum ..... while working people, families, children, poor, elderly, sick continue being told increasingly that 'you're on your own' and 'we got ours, to hell with you', 'if you're not smart/rich/fast/slick enough to be on top, it's your own damn fault' and other myths of rugged american individualism which excuse and foster blaming the victim -- indeed they require it to continue the myths. I'm sure there are other critical times in our history when people were casting about for 'religious' and spritual and magical answers to human-created catastrophies and eras of great turning points -- the inquisition, the crusades, the reformation, witch-burnings, the birth of fascism (and the world's collective denial about the Holocaust) come quickly to mind. It's not that spiritual lessons can't be learned, it's that some things require real action not simply passivity and navel gazing.

All this 'Oprah-ordained' stuff basically reinforces learned helplessness, forced individualism & social conformity and totally discourages collective political and economic action -- it promotes the unchecked power of the powerful and the continued psychological dependence of the masses on 'elite know-it-all gurus' (who know the secret nyah nyah nyah nyah) while discouraging people -- as groups and as individuals -- to engage together in actively challenging those in power and actively working for EXTERNAL changes while simultaneously developing personal spiritual power.

Oprah is also reinforcing and advocating black and white/all or nothing thinking -- again, benefiting those who have the most while disempowering and victimizing (i.e. blaming) those who don't and who are obviously are 'too stupid' (not spiritual enough) to get it the way Oprah does. Meanwhile people are suffering here, in Iraq, everywhere, but those who have the Secret surely don't have to worry about getting the stench of the stupid anywhere near their own sweet smell of success.

You rock.
love & hugs and the wisdom of the universe!
Buzzzed

#END LETTER#
........................

You can read some of MoDo's smart (and smart-ass) column below or HERE compliments of that rocking blogger: Donkey OD

A Giant Doom Magnet
February 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD

So I was sitting around watching “Oprah” yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.

All I needed to do was Unleash my Unfathomable Magnetic Power into the Universe!

Energy flows where intention goes. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Anyhow, Oprah taught me how to stop abusing myself and learn The Secret. I finally get it: because the Law of Attraction dictates that like attracts like, my negativity toward the president and vice president is attracting their negativity and multiplying the negative vibrations in the cosmos, creating some sort of giant doom magnet.

I need to examine my unforgiving stance toward them and use my power of visualization to let them know that in my consciousness and awareness, they cannot determine my destiny. I am severing those emotional and vibratory tonalities that keep me tied to their toxic energy, causing me to repeat the same old pattern of bemoaning in the newspaper their same old pattern of blundering in the Middle East.

Oprah did her second show in eight days on “The Secret,” the self-help book (and DVD) by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian reality-TV producer. The book hit No. 1 on the USA Today best-seller list this week.

At first glance, “The Secret” might seem like inane piffle, a psychobabble cross between Dr. Phil and “The Da Vinci Code,” a new-age spin on Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” But that’s a negative way of thinking.

James Arthur Ray, a teacher of The Secret method, who talked to Oprah, says it’s “very, very scientific.”

“If you think you’re this meat suit running around, you know, you have to think again,” he said. “You’re a field of energy in a larger field of energy.”

Oprah enthused that The Secret “really is touching a nerve around the world” because “so many people are hungry for guidance and meaning.” Ms. Byrne claims it improved her eyesight; others say it works on everything from weight loss to panic attacks to getting rich to snagging the mate of your dreams or a good parking space.

“We create our own circumstances by the choices that we make, and the choices that we make are fueled by our thoughts,” Oprah explained in her first show. “So our thoughts are the most powerful thing that we have here on earth. And based upon what we think — and [what] we think determines who we are — we attract who we are into our lives.”

Or as the book so eloquently puts it, “You must feel good about You.”

If it works on eyesight, can’t it work on foresight? Can’t we use The Secret on the secretive Bush White House to prevent a calamity in Iran?

According to the Sacred Principles set out by the Law of Attraction Specialists, the universe responds to your thoughts. So if I want certified chuckleheads to stop mucking up American foreign policy, all I have to do is let the universe know. I forgive the president for being a goose and the vice president for being a snake, and I start thinking about the sort of amazing, or even mildly competent, leaders I deserve to have in my life.

Maybe W. should read the book. He likes things biblical, and “The Secret” says it takes its Creative Process from the New Testament.

He would learn, as Mr. Ray said, that “trying is failing with honor,” adding: “Take the word ‘try’ out of your vocabulary. You either do it or you don’t.”

W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge.

A main tenet of The Secret is learning to avoid the chain reaction of churlishness, which begins with a single thought: “The one bad thought attracted more bad thoughts, the frequency locked in, and eventually something went wrong. Then as you reacted to that one thing going wrong, you attracted more things going wrong.”

It’s an apt description of Iraq policy. A bad thought that led to more bad thoughts, and the negative frequency is now locked in on Iran, which is responding with its own negative frequency.

With The Secret, W. will realize that all he needs to do to change his current reality is admit that it’s fake. (Similar to the wisdom of Dorothy clicking her shoes three times.)

Once he stops his chain reaction of negative thought, I can stop my chain reaction of negative thought. And then there will be peace on earth and parking spaces for everyone.

Maureen Dowd spirituality The Secret Oprah NYTimes Secret