Wont get into a whole thing about Scara Palin. But the fact that Friedman is still a voice bothers me to no end. Give me a bottle of whiskey and i will make more sense than him. It’ easy put pickles in your outhouse and you wont have flies in your constitution. If that aint good enough then shit on a stick and your friend will never ask for a tool.

There was one genuine pearl of wisdom in his column:

Maureen Dowd is off today.

Now, if he could just stick to that incisive type of statement, his columns wouldn’t read like NeoLiberalism for Dummies

‘self-generated’

This schtick is totally false, the Koch Bros and Dick Armey have been wildly flailing to get enough stupid people enough agitated to take their buses to rallies, and this is self-generated? Not even close.

Obama’s Rolling Stone interview gave the piper’s son (learned to smoke when he was young) his cue. When Blue Dogs like Obama talk about teabaggers like they’re a legitimate political movement, that pushes the rhetoric to the right, which is their intention.

If we’d have gotten Lieberman for President, we at least would have had a 60th vote in the Senate for a few months.

The truth you will never get in America

Israel Defense Forces soldiers used excessive force while taking over a Gaza-bound aid ship organized by Jewish and Israeli activists, the boat’s passengers said Tuesday, countering the military’s official version claiming that the takeover had been uneventful.

Earlier Tuesday the IDF reported that Israeli naval commandos peacefully boarded the Jewish aid boat attempting to break a naval blockade on Gaza, saying “IDF naval forces recently boarded the yacht ‘Irene’, and it is currently being led to the Ashdod seaport along with its passengers.”

However, testimonies by passengers who were released from police questioning later in the day seemed to counter the IDF’s claims, with Israeli activist and former Israel Air Force pilot Yonatan Shapira saying that there were “no words to describe what we went through during the takeover.”

Good morning, pups. As you know already, Friedman is flying solo since MoDo is off today. The Moustache of Wisdom had a spasm of what passes for cleverness for him, which Attaturk shows us above. He actually seems to believe there’s still a creature called a “moderate Republican.” Someone please tell him they’ve been extinct for at least 2 years now…

In case you want to experience the whole thing, without giving the Times hits, here he is.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got a variety of bagels with cream cheese. It poured down buckets last night, and is probably going to do it again today. I did get to do some work in the garden after work yesterday, so it’s looking less like a dead zone. Have a great day.

thanks, Marion, glad you got the rain. It’s scarce in many places, and we’re just recovering in N.TX.

Blue Dog Obama suffers under the same delusion.

He actually seems to believe there’s still a creature called a “moderate Republican.” Someone please tell him they’ve been extinct for at least 2 years now…

Just about the same length of time that the Progressive Democrat has been dormant.

Tea Party folks are being “used!” They are being manipulated by corporate interests who play on ignorance and legitimate fear. Most Americans do not believe in wasteful government. The corporate interest which funds the tea party folks, perceived as “grass roots,” is a rouse. It is a Trojan horse for corporations, filled with the same disgusting motives and tactics, which undermines life, liberty and impose “corporate servitude” on the governed. The reality today…….

Government is to be responsive to the needs of the governed, from which it derives it just and moral consent. Corporations like slave owners are concerned with one thing, profit. It was the lust for profit and the desire to perpetuate cash cows which Jefferson said would pose a moral hazard to the republic and undermine the rule of law! Jefferson is correct and the Tea Party folks are being played by the likes of Dick and Matt!

So “Dick/Matt,” I guess you guys have no problem wasting .80 cent of every American dollar spent on gas for decades. Money “squandered” is liberty lost. Ask the alcoholic whose destroyed liver from alcohol use, is dying. Ask the WWII Vet who is terminal from throat cancer, caused by cigarette smoking. Ask the family members of Americans killed by Agent orange or Gulf war syndrome? Tea Party folks are being played by the likes of Dick/Matt!

Tea Party folks are being played by the likes of Dick/Matt!

Charles and David actually, Koch that is.

Sadly, the way they are being used is by playing to the basest emotions, so it’s hard to be very sympathetic. When folks prove vulnerable to the appeal to racism and chauvinism at the expense of their own best interests, they are not going to be sympathetic in their suffering for selling out to corporate abuse.

I think there’s a rule (Federal Trade Commission, IIRC) that demands any Friedman thread must link to his archnemesis– Matt Taibbi:

So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.
What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last 10 years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quickly reinvent himself before angry gods remembered to dash his brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose.

OK, another one…
one

Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It’s not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It’s that he always screws it up.

[snerk] I loves me some Taibbi.

He has so much blood on his grimey hands I’m amazed his keyboard works.

He aided and abetted the crime of the war of aggression against Iraq that bush committed and I don’t take no stinking advice from this scum bag war cheerleader.

It’s time to publicly shame these war mongers, like tommy the bloodstained psychopath.

Seems Dick/Matt are enabled by the funds from Koch(s)?

oh.my.god. WashJournal wants to take off from the moustache, America’s core competency. pulling my pillow back over my head.

Sort of like the insanity of ongoing attention to Palin…if that’s what you want, maybe you get what you deserve.

Progressives are being used.American citizens have been played by the D&R party for 40+ years.

Whitman….already spent more than 100 Million…charming.

“When folks prove vulnerable to the appeal to racism and chauvinism at the expense of their own best interests,…”

One must question the intellectual development of folks proven to be vulnerable by voting against their own self interest? Must be that corporate free speech thing? Advertise a “lie” long enough via a little black box, Kierkegaard foretold, and the blind accept it as truth. Lets look back in American history and admit how many lies motivated by politics and profit considered “truth” at one time, have been discredited?

Same thing exists today. The only counter to “crap,” is exercising critical reasoning skills predicated on fact and expressing thought on sites as this, subject to peer review. Thanks for your response Ruth. It simplified my point. :)

PPL. PahLeeeeze! Calm down. It will only take about 6 to 9 months for this thing to be all over with. Yep, just one FU/Freidman Unit. (snark)

the trouble being, the rest of us don’t deserve the detritus we have to put up with, from all the attention to the crazee.

My pleasure … no, not really. I could do without the material to reflect on.

Good morning all.

We’re getting rain too. Not buckets, but nice slow soaking rains which is exactly what we need.

Interestingly, owing to the drought, there wasn’t enough nectar in the flowers for the bees to make a lot of honey. Plenty of pollen, though. But the rain in the last week has changed all that, honey production has sped up, and it looks like I might get a lot more honey. The girls have enough to get them through the winter, so everything they make from here on comes to me & my giftees. Yum.

As for Friedman, for years I’ve been describing him as having a moderate command of the obvious. Like the pols, though, it seems he’s going down the rathole & underperforming even that faint praise.

Regretfully all the remaining production is for the workers however we got a little, absolutely delicious, honey this year and hope for greater production next year.

I was surprised you took any out earlier in the season. My beekeeper will not allow any honey to be harvested until right near the end of the season. During part of the drought it actually looked like they were using up some already made, although that was probably not the case. In any event, you never know until the very end how much will be available, apparently. My second hive is still small, but will have enough to make it through the winter without supplemental feeding.

Nectar to enjoy. Very good.

BTW, both my hives had to be treated twice for verroa mites. That stops the queen from laying for about a week, thus reducing the workforce vs. what it would otherwise have been, with consequences for honey production. That’s another variable that happens during the season, the seriousness of which cannot be anticipated, so another reason to wait to harvest.

You referring to my thoughts? :( Hope not. In the event you are…. Truth hurts? I can understand why people do not want to reflect on truth. It involves work and the results hurts. But without hurt and pain, there would be no motivation to improve and evolve! Ask a “sober drunk” who has beat his “addiction” only to find the collective death of “brain neurons” in society has crippled collective critical reasoning skills. Talk about depressing…. But I make a cognitive choice to fight every day because my instincts have never been wrong…. ever!!

Replying to kking’s post# 20

“American citizens have been played by the D&R party for 40+ years.” Washington warned of this reality!

Got that right. However, the first part of your statement you can flush down the toilet with overprice toilet paper? It lacks any merit or value!

Let me ask you a question kking? America’s founders, what where they?

Progressives? Liberals? Conservatives? Radicals? What did they establish as a form of government, when compared with institutions of the old world? Kind of funny how the words slavery, servitude contained in the 13th Amendment are overlooked today? Like wasting .80 cents of every dollar you or your family members have spent on gas for decades. Now mandated health insurance under fear of tax penalty? Consider it a great value? Perceptions are never the realities in the war of words. The prize is the brainwashed mind and the money that is extracted at the expense of life and liberty. Ask the ghost of Dred Scott as he reviews a recent court case (United Citizens) giving to corporations “advantage” under the color of law. Akin to advantages which enabled and perpetuated the institution of slavery by virtue of a 1864 “SJC” decision which found Scott was inferior as a Negro, not entitled to the protection of law because Scott was adjudicated to be, “property?” Sure, tell me how progressives have been played. You can only be played if you allow yourself to be played. Today we are all “Dred Scott,” as the corporate interest, like the institution slavery was protected at the expense of life liberty and pursuit of happiness. Economically leveraged servitude derived under the color of law is inconsistent with the concept of Liberty. That is what is at stake here in America. The very essence of what our founders envisioned, Life, free of corporate/governmental manipulation, monopolies and the protection of god given inalienable rights for “human beings.” Not powerful artificially created legal entities which undermine legal protection for human beings, decimating life and liberty, in the lust for endless profit! Wake up folks Adams Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” and the benefits to society which fall of the kitchen table as scraps of food, or cat food, predicated on mutual benefits derived from self interest has been gamed. Just wait until the next drastic increase in the cost of energy used by Americans. Guess it take a rocket scientist to understand the concept of “energy and escape velocities” to overcome the effect of gravity and crashing, in an economic sense?

Is it my obvious focus on Social Security, or did Friedman just give SS cuts a pass in his extolling the virtues of being tough? If a virtue when acted upon causes great harm, is it still a virtue?

Found this brief cartoon which lays out the political attacks on Social Security (from the Frances Perkins Center):
http://www.youtube.com/user/FrancesPerkinsCenter?feature=mhsn#p/a/u/0/YPFnA0RUwrQ

What a bleak and mean vision this man possesses: A human’s worth may be calculated by the value they add to the economy.
Or by their ability to come up with cute names for an imaginary “movement”.
Some green tea in that kettle?

Up next, Thomas tells us about the dryness of water and how it relates to the rickshaw driver that carried him to the local Sam’s Club in Hong Kong. /s

Is Freidman a clone of David Brooks or is it the other way around?

It’s a sucky day for the NYT in general. Even worse than Friedman, the NYT Mag kisses Beck’s butt.