British Columbia on Canada's west coast is dating China and is English speaking Canada's healthiest, most prosperous and freest social democracy. Maybe knowing both the USA and China makes one truly appreciate social democracy.
Agreed. Shouting vulgarities at the slightest provocation is cray cray; also insulting to the rest of us just trying to read thoughtful and funny comments
Lousy metaphors aside, the CIA handlers at the NYT and Post seem to have issued their marching orders. Hold onto your lederhosen, the warhawks are chomping at their bits and beating their tin drums from atop their ivory towers.
A wide scale nuclear Holocaust could provide significant opportunities for Blackrock to bring additional rental housing stock to market. This shouldn't be overlooked.
Its called televangelism and everyone is trying to buy their own network. I hear Trump raised a billion for his own personal network. I am betting they are going long on their ability to con us for another 10,000 or so years.
Yeah, but even our creakiest bridges will handle a few decades worth of impoverished, subsistence-level survivors crossing it.
I'm hoping for a less drastic solution: A massive CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) Event.. We're due, nay, overdue, for a big one. Go read up on the Carrington Event (1859, I think). Something along those lines will take out all the communication satellites, which would be sad, until we see it also take out Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Reddit, Instagram, etc., etc.
Then, not so sad. Would take a looong time to recover, esp. as the work will have to be done by some people who have only ever used a math app., not actually done math.
The difficult adjustment, for some, to an Internetless world, would be more entertaining than the cringe and meme-fodder those people have provided these last few years. Just imagine, someone overhears the usage of "fatso" or "gaywad" or "lame" or "tard" and springs into virtue signaling mode...and they won't have anywhere to go with it.
I might miss some things about the Internet, but the entertainment value would be epic!!
I always wonder how they do that. Is there a CIA newsletter or a daily memo with today's talking points? Or did Friedman get the gig because of an uncanny ability to divine what they want before they tell him they want it?
Over the last two years, the CIA (and FBI) has done away with the old, awkward "provision of anonymous sources" and gone to a more streamlined model where their people work as "analysts" and "intelligence experts" directly FOR the media organizations. Matt generated a list of two dozen without even researching. They don't mess around with telling the media what to say so much as just go on the air and recite it themselves.
Holy crap...this is some funny shit. Matt is riffing like Robin Williams during his coke fueled genius younger days. There's too much funny stuff to reference all of it, so I'll just start and end with this hilarious line: "On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff." For us older, reformed hippies who remember Hunter S Thompson, this line is like morphine on an open wound. Thanks for some new memories Matt, too bad no one in the US media can write or talk or think like this - minus you and a handful of others.
Freidman, in typical fashion, exhibits the ramblings of a college student who can't believe he got the gig writing for his college newspaper. He's just so damned excited that people are paying him to write whatever thoughts come into his head, that he throws everything he's got - esp ill advised and hard to follow metaphors and similes - at the wall hoping some of it will make sense. To paraphrase J Peterman, the rest is a story.
"On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff."
This same passage made me wonder whether Friedman is not a talented surrealist on the order of of Ishmael Reed or Chuck Jones and he has just been clowning us all these years. Dressing up like Peter the Great and coming on to Elmer Fudd is like something Bugs Bunny would do.
Maybe the rocks are glass? Highly translucent quartz? I got nothin'.
I cannot believe I did not come up with the obvious; large, lovely, multifaceted crack rocks, with the boys from Langley underneath them. Really whiffing today.
I got a more Dali-esque image, with the giant, up in a tree that has a doorway in it, wiping Crimea off its shirtfront and wooing Ukraine. It would be called "Persistence of Friedman" or something eh?
You're scratching me where I itch with the CJ reference...and the foray into furry world, while disturbing is hilarious. Fortunately I can watch MeTv and see all kinds of currently designated inappropriate cartoons to remind my why my childhood was much funnier than kids today who have to watch sanitized nonsense that Trotsky and Friends would likely approve.
Twenty years ago the National Film Board of Canada filmed a documentary starring Aaron Mate called Discordia.
You can see Aaron talking to Noam Chomsky and ask yourself why America was so oblivious to what was going on in the world.
The documentary is brilliant as is Aaron.
Aaron was a truthteller then and was charged with sedition.
Twenty years later Quebec bans promoting any religion in its public spaces and the Canadian ACLU says this is undemocratic even as 80% of Quebec support Bill 21.
I live in a country Aaron helped create. We love our artists and intellectuals and we cherish our documentary film industry.
I don't think you will find many Friedman fans in these parts. Friedman is what drove us here in the first place.
As for Dubies. My government is stopping just side this of close to recommending dubies for citizens my age. our catalogue makes information more easily accessible than from Amazon. We can order by catalogue but we can tell what is in stock at our local retailer. They even suggest what to smoke for responding to Matt Taibbi. When you can' no longer roll your own or if you never have been able to roll your own professionally pre rolled saves a lot of spill.
Why would I troll Taibbi he is one of my journalistic heroes.
Don't tax your old lungs with bud, go with gummies. They act a LOT faster than the old brownies ever did, and some, blended with CBD to go along with the THC, are very pleasant.
you sir, are effing funny -side note - isn't the correct spelling "doobies" as in Doobie Brothers who named themselves after marijuana cigarette's idiomatic slang?
I have to say I agree. It's as though Taibbi got tagged and felt he had to respond to the "esteemed" professor and he started hyperventilating. There are some funny lines here, but much of it is painfully obvious and almost condescending in its assumption that his readers can't figure out on their on what's cockeyed and ludicrous about the metaphors Friedman mangled. Taibbi is at his best when he's flying, ad libbing, scatting. This article is like a parody of a bad Freshman comp paper attempting an extended exegesis.
Disagree. I may not be the sole reader who typically doesn't pay careful enough attention to have taken note of the fractured metaphoric disasters. So thanks Matt.
The notion that Putin has an inferiority complex because of the US is dead wrong. He thinks the US is a decadent, deeply confused, emasculated society at war with itself. He believes that he and Russia are on the right side of history and will survive and strengthen while the US shrivels or implodes.
Is he wrong? We'll see. But there's nothing weak or crazy about it.
Putin is thinking about Ukraine like every other Russian autocrat from Ivan the Terrible forward. As regarding Ukrainian nationalism, he has a point considering his focus through a Russian nationalist lens. Consider Ukraine’s historical development-
1-The traditional Kievan-Rus. North-Central Ukraine, where my people are from. Always a part of the Czarist state, and the predecessor to Muscovy-Moscow. Ukraine got Kiev, Russia evolved from Rus. This part of Ukraine is completely culturally intertwined with traditional Czarist Russia.
2-Southern Ukraine-Catherine the Great conquered the Tatars in the region along the Black Sea, who were the descendants of the Mongol Horde who invaded in the 13th century. Her boyfriend and main general Prince Potemkin oversaw the final defeat of the Tatars and also defeated the Ottomans. He founded the cities of Kherson, Nikolaev, and Sebastopol.
3-Western Ukraine-this region changed hands constantly between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburgs, the Russian Empire, and Poland , up until the end of WWII. The current national boundaries of Ukraine correspond to those of the Ukrainian SSR, as set by Stalin after victory in WWII.
Ukrainian nationalism is a thing, and much of it comes from the romantic notion of the Cossacks, who were based in Ukraine (although hosts existed in Russia proper and the Caucasus), who served as the Czars shock troops in exchange for ostensible local autonomy. Putin, imo, thinks of himself like a Czar and can’t understand why his ostensible “subjects” can’t stand him. Fwiw, my 86 year old aunt puts on Ukrainian cultural demonstrations-nesting dolls, Easter eggs, paska bread,etc. for any interested groups and sends her profits over to charitable groups for Ukrainian soldiers-care packages, artificial limbs. She also thinks Ukrainian President Zelensky is an Israeli spy! Like they say, you can take girl out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the girl!
Wow - now, that's a rendition of Eastern European history worthy of Thomas Friedman's drug-induced column. Geography too.
The only true part is that Ukraine, as an entity in its current borders, didn't exist until 1930s. And it is very much a creature of Stalin and his nationalities policy.
Most versions of paska (paskha) are based on quark (tvorog or curd cheese), with or without a dough base. In some Eastern Orthodox Churches (Assyrian?) there are versions with boiled eggs instead of quark. There may have been a local dough-only variation in the place where your family is from, but it is much more common in diasporas, where curd cheese is hard to come by or expensive. In Alaska there are quite a few followers of Russian Orthodox Church, and paska there is indeed a panettone-like bread.
Also all Easter foods are blessed by the priest - bread, paska, eggs (pysanki) and even sausages (kovbasa).
As for history and geography... You know that so-called "Kievan Rus" is a 19th century invention? It is not mentioned in any contemporary sources. This state didn't start in Kiev - the very first union of Slavic and Finnic tribes was based around Lake Ladoga, controlling the trade route from Baltic Sea to Volga. "Kievan Rus" wasn't limited to Northern and Central Ukraine either - it included almost all of Western Ukraine, modern Belarus, Moldova, pieces of Poland, Romania and even Slovakia. Neither did it stay in the "Czarist state". After Mongol invasion and break-up of the Golden Horde most of it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, succeeded by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Kiev didn't become part of Russia until late 17th century.
It's true that Potemkin forced the abdication of the last Crimean khan and founded several cities in so-called Novorossia. But Catherine's "escapades" are generally known as Russo-Turkish wars, because Crimea and the rest of the region around the Black Sea were actually parts of the Ottoman Empire. There was no "Russo-Tatar" war.
And Catherine wasn't the first to fight these wars. Russia fought with Turkey for the better part of 16 and 17 century. For a good reason too - Crimean khans (Ottoman vassals) were conducting regular slave raids on Russian (and Polish-Lithuanian) territories, running a brisk slave trade. An agreed upon estimate is about 2,000,000 slaves over 200 years. To put things in perspective, the total population of Russia in 17th century is estimated to be between 7 and 11 million.
Lastly, where did "Slobozhanshina" go? Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Wild Fields? It can't be part of "Kievan Rus", because it was under polovtsy, except for the most northwestern part. And it can't be "Southern Ukraine" captured by Potemkin for his girlfriend Catherine the Great. What happened to it?
Of course, this region had nothing to do with Ukraine, historically or otherwise, until Stalin decided that Ukrainian petite bourgeoisie needs a good injection of proletarian blood from Donetsk, but still...
At my grandparents Orthodox Church in Youngstown, Ohio-where the priest did indeed bless both the parishioners homes on personal visits and eggs, sausages,etc. at church, one could identify the region of Ukraine-to about 40 miles-a family was from based on the style of paska the wife baked at Easter.
If in Youngstown, Ohio, a priest was making personal visits to bless parishioners' homes, it's either something very specific to the region of Ukraine or a diaspora thing. I doubt you can find it anywhere in Ukraine or Russia (or other Orthodox countries, like Belarus or Moldova).
Normally, you assemble an Easter basket and bring it early in the morning to the church for a blessing. Instead of personal visits, there is an Easter procession. To spread the blessing to your home, Easter foods could be brought to animals and generally scattered around the house. Although this latter tradition may be very regional, since it has a strong whiff of paganism.
What I'm trying to say is that, unlike forms for baking Easter bread (under whatever name), traditions adapt and traditions evolve. Sometimes to the point that two traditions, which originated from the same source, can no longer recognize each other and even consider each other blasphemy.
I agree with Skeptic, Putin sees American imploding in on itself and takes advantage of the dithering, self defeating, self loathing sclerotic empire. Oliver Stones Putin Interviews captures this well.
I was glad Stone got those interviews, but a number of times Stone failed to follow up when Putin seemed to be going in an interesting direction. It was frustrating.
Of course, Stone is not a professional interviewer, and it showed; he often seemed to be going to his next prepared question rather really listening to Putin and picking up on threads.
An early example in the interviews is when they were talking briefly about Putin's childhood. Putin seemed to get a little misty eyed, and I think he was ready to talk about his mother, but Stone moved on. I wanted to hear more. But this happened any number of times.
Putin may not be completely wrong, but democracies do tend to be all of those things. It's the price we pay for having to find consensus. On the bright side, capitalism kicks the shit out of autocracy, socialism, communism (or any other dumb economic idea the geniuses have tried to come up with). The fact that he just can't give economic freedom a chance is the nail in any coffin that refuses to understand that enlightened self interest is the only natural way to allow people to thrive. The ash heap of history is chock full of the dictators and totalitarians who believed otherwise.
I am coming around to the perspective that Friedman is an autochthonous American outsider artist à la Henry Darger, some salient differences being that -- rather than decomposing in a mildewy garret -- Friedman has a column at the NYT and a house too big for him to tidy by himself. I hope he realizes all of the interior wall space is crying out for some muralism.
I get Friedman confused with David Brooks. Neither of them make any sense to me, as far as i'm concerned they might as well post from the surface of Mars.
They are neck and neck for being wrong about everything, all the time and never being called on it. That is one of the requirements for entering the US elite; being unapologetically wrong and taking no heed of it.
Now I want a cheaply animated Friedman and Brooks to travel to the Red Planet courtesy of their benefactor Elon Musk and engage in wacky hijinx. Working title: 'STACHE 'N' PATE.
Similar to “logorrhea”: excessive flow of words, or “flight of ideas”: manic output of loose associations. I would never apply these to Taibbi, for all his words, ideas, and unexpected metaphors. Why not?
The answer is in the five-dimensional graph of coherence, humor, good taste, and real insight plotted against demands on the reader. Literary efficiency
Ironically, it is the sort of thing the DNC would do. "Let's see...how can we alienate flyover country even more than ever before? Hmm...I know! By picking the person MAGA voters consider *the top traitor in America* to be the running mate for a guy who they also hate, and who will almost surely be dead or comatose within the next year."
While I liked this comment, I fear I am too dim to perceive the irony. It seems like something... that could happen, actually? The DNC abides within a potent reality-altering force bubble. I gave up on anything making sense to me any more when Biden got the '20 nomination.
I get your point. Everyone outside the Beltway might think it idiotic, but to bubble-dwellers it makes sense. I suppose the true "irony" (experience of an outcome opposite what you expected) will come later, when they actually run Biden-Cheney and lose in a landslide. Grimly hilarious, right?
That column was deranged and yet Cheney gave it 5 thumbs up (note: there were only room for 2 thumbs up but the NYT made an exception for both Cheneys)
There seems to be a lot of talk about replacing Harris. I'm wondering how they would go about kicking the first Black / Asian / Woman off of the ticket and how they keep votes. Even if the concensus is that she sucks, it's still going to piss people off if she's just replaced.
She has to run top of the ticket. Then MLK her in October. Riots, fear of violence, unanimous shrieking press, etc. Stick Michelle Obama in there or someone similar. Done.
Dude you clearly don’t have the imagination required to work for the Agency.
I don't, that's why i'm an insignificant gnat shitposting on forums.
I have to say that i do sincerely believe that MO has less than zero interest in the position. They made the history books, they made their money, not only do they have big cool friends, they are the big cool friends. But you're right, she's about the only person they could replace Harris with and get away with.
She’ll be the “healing” president, leading Oval Office Zumba Wednesdays and reading stories to POC trans kindergarteners in return for $15 billion from the Pritzkers and a luxury family bunker when Covid Omega is released.
I'm not saying that she doesn't suck, or that people don't know it or like her. But to replace her - white people are out. Guys are out. SO you'd have to find a willing woman that isn't white. And no, Stacey Abrams isn't going to bring it home.
Why does the replacement have to be a female poc? This is exactly why identity politics will fail. If race, skin color and gender are the only qualifications that D's are willing to consider then they deserve Kamala, and will continue to lose votes. It's funny how things have come full circle from the 1960s.
Those "qualifications" are precisely why they chose her.
This is typical of the Dems; they take an idea that has intrinsic merit; look beyond just old white males and twist it to choose anyone, with merit, personal qualities and even plain old likeability being irrelevant. No other reason can be found for choosing someone as lightweight and unlikeable as our pathetic VP.
Giving us the same product in a different package seems to work for a large segment of the confirmed Dem voting block, but it doesn't fly anywhere else.
You've already solved the dilemma. Have you forgotten the all of the box ticking sweepstakes in the VP search, and then for cabinet and other appointments? Sure, let them try to replace her with Pete Buttigieg and have 2 white guys on the ticket. My god, the cacaphony.
This "white people are out", "men are out", "Asians don't count" stuff is going to break down, and sooner than you think. People are rightly tired of it, they can see it doesn't work, in national politics or their workplaces.
Hell, by 2024 we might even be able criticize a murderer, who is black or female, as "harmful to the community".
[blinks] All the votes Harris won attempting the nomination on her own? Zero delegates to the convention. Not even one as the favorite child of California. What votes are really there to be lost?
My first instinct would be to agree with you. I didn't vote for the ticket, but i thought that Biden was nuts to pick her, for the reason you mentioned.
If i did vote for a ticket, you might not know why i did. Maybe i voted for Clinton / Gore for Gore and not Clinton? Maybe some people vote for the VP with a look to the future. Keep in mind that Biden wasn't doing so hot in the primaries either until SC. You never know, there might be a lot of people who don't like the idea of a Black / Asian / Woman being uncermoniously kicked off of the ticket without being consulted. Do they get a vote on it beforehand?
So who decides if Harris gets kicked off the ticket? Who decides who replaces her?
Did you know sweet Liz was born 9 months and 2 days after her daddy had lost his draft exemption status after they changed it from being married was sufficient to having to be a father due to the large number of US casualties in Vietnam, a war he supported?
After his wife's pregnancy was confirmed, Dick was so overwhelmed with happiness, he immediately called everyone he knew, starting with his local draft board.
How cool would it be if Hillary wins the Dem nomination and appoints Liz to vet candidates for her VP and she ends up by finding that person when she looks in the mirror, just like her Daddy.
There is no group of people less self aware than liberal lesser of two evils voters who to this day still can't accept their role in making this country the oligarchy it has become.
Putin committed the gravest sin to the oligarchy of the empire; he put the government/himself back on top with the oligarchy still in the middle and the workers at the bottom. China, the same. We operate in what I believe is best described as inverted totalitarianism with the oligarchy and corporations on top with the government below doing their bidding and the workers (who actually do everything) on the bottom. The struggle between the oligarchy and the government has gone on forever although in Egypt and Sumner the King would forgive debts from time to time to keep the people on their side for corvee labor and the military. In this sense, it used to be better; no jubilee now and they've cut your wages to where you have to borrow from them. Of course, they get the money by having the Fed and banksters conjuring it up from nothing. Forget about democracy, sucker, what we have is "manufactured consent"; the illusion of choice, you have no real choice, they own you unless you wanna live off the grid.
It's funny but only if you laugh so you don't cry. This abject moron getting paid tens of millions of dollars over 30 years to "explain" the world to Times readers encapsulates like nothing else how we got where we are. Trump is only possible as half of the folie a deux with this crap.
I about harfed up a lung reading this, Matt. Bravo! Friedman is such a toad, and his writing leaves me wartified, like a giant toadstool without a condom.
Nothing makes my day like Matt analyzing a Thomas Friedman piece. Thank you, thank you. I needed a good laugh. Can’t wait to see the competition results!
I can envision Friedman, as he was writing his column, feeling very proud of his wordsmithing skills and waiting for the accolades to pour in from his adoring NYT fan base. I hope no one shares Matt's column with him - he'd be crushed.
I was today years old before treading into the semi-solid output of T. Friedman. Good grief, this is painful. More like a Cornpop speech with ayahuasca and speed, maybe with a Lean chaser. I can't believe anyone would read this fool.
This is a nation whose foreign policy shifts between neocons and liberal interventionists, the only difference between them being their lying justifications for endless war and US imperial ambitions.
A man of his times in a place he belongs.
I hope that lard ass and his ilk live long enough to see the inevitable economic dominance of the PRC, made all the more possible by the very policies these fools have advanced these last 30 years.
How does Putin get out of a tree (what tools does he use)?
Step 1: Rhythmically rub a "Navalny gazing" poison around the knob of the tree
Step 2: Take a dose of Invermectin, and read the most recent gain of function literature
Step 3: Make speech about inflationary costs of FBI informants and how they have no business taking January 17th off since they killed MLK. Be sure to mention that when Americans are in your tree, it can be difficult to stay alive, avoiding being robbed, or raped. Just ask Native Americans of North America, Koreans, Vietnamese, Panamanians, Yugoslavs, Libyans and Syrians.
Step 4: Say a Mujahideen incantation roughly translated in Russian to F U Zbigniew
Step 5: Get a small piece of Larry Summers' liver biopsy (the oil should work) - Jabba the Hut
Step 6: Take off your shirt and whistle call for your horse to prepare an election pose
Step 7: Ridicule all people named Boris as stupid ass drunks who can't run a country
Step 8: Create a buffer zone around the roots of tree, so that the CIA can contain it. And call an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Tree Organization to recount the forgotten history of this tree.
Step 9: Ask for a delivery of the Beatles rendition of back in the USSR and a naked picture of Chrystia Freeland.
Step 10: Get Bellingcat to tweet the Atlantic Council about the tree's poisonous gaseous emissions - and have them bring in the white helmets to stage an actual rescue.
Step 11: Send the sanctioned bill to Moscow and Beijing
You might want to explain the love/hate relationship with Chrystia Freeland our Deputy Prime Minister and her book Sale of the Century and her exile from Russia. I think outside of Matt Taibbi this is not common knowledge anywhere outside of International political elites.
Michael Chomiak was her grandfather - Ukrainian Ultra Nationalist who emigrated to Canada after WW2 - the Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis (her father was an editor in chief for the Nazi's leading Ukrainian language paper. While the Nazi's and OUN-Bandera (Ukrainian nationalists) were both competitors and collaborators, they both had aims on Poland (Lviv area) and hating jews, leftists or non-aryans.
Freeland's grandfather not only was a big part of that apparatus which also includes genocide with their main function of propaganda and ethnic cleansing, but many leaders like Chomiak went unscathed after WWII - finding comfy cosy confines in capitalist countries -- who clearly were more worried about communists than war atrocities.
And so Chrystia can whitewash her families' Ukrainian past, and like Hillary Clinton blame it all on the Russians, which she is apt to do at a drop of a hat.
My great grandparents fled Ukraine in the 19th century. I've enjoyed the friendship of people born of Ukraine and Russians my whole life. I lived North of Peace River and I am not unaware of Chrystia's background. You cannot represent Freeland's Toronto district and hold those views. Ask Rosalie Silberman Abela ret. Supreme Court of Canada who was born in a DP camp after the war where both her parents survived the camps.
I am happily retired in a welcoming community I would not be welcomed in 50 years ago. Fifty years ago Bishop's University was the most homogeneous campus in Canada and that was when Canada was pretty homogeneous. Today Bishop's University looks like the world.
We know why the Cossacks killed Jews. They killed Jews to deflect the blame for the misery from the aristocrats to some helpless scapegoat.
First, this is not about you, Moe or your friends or relations.
Second, this is not about Canada either since we all know the US was an even larger Nazi importer after WW2 eh - See Operation Paperclip, The Gehlen network, and the number of Nazi scientists who emigrated in the aeronautics industry. The west became a haven for misfit Nazi's who wanted to work against the Soviets. No Nuremburg for these people.
Third, I am sure there is enough blame in genocide to go around. Nazi's, Ukrainian nationalists (OUN-A), Soviets, and a whole generation of hundreds of cultural, geopolitical battles that makes Croatia-Serbia-Macedonia-Bosnia-Herzogovinia-Slovakia-Slovenia look like in-fighting at a small family gathering.
But finally, do not piss down my back and tell me it's raining - that Michael Chomiak (Freeland's grandfather) was not responsible for being a part of the Nazi power structure in a genocide. The Ukrainian diaspora has many elements to it and is not uniform or singularly characterized - but the strident anti-communist flavors of Ukrainian nationalism emanating from people like Chomiak or Bandera are a huge problem, not something to bury your heads in Canadian Tar Sands.
Alberta is doing a fine job in educating its young. Sadly its Mormons, and Colorado based christianist churches, and a long legacy of the antiSemitic Social Credit Party still holds a great deal of power .
I still carry the scars of the Spanish inquisition. My ancestors were always the victims until the time I was born. It is not easy wielding power and being kind. Power or the lust for power is a disease. Not all Ukrainians are brought up to be peasants and Zelensky is the President .
In the words of the great Jewish Canadian poet, philosopher, public intellectual and gadfly to the elite Irving Layton 1912-2006.
"Let's stop talking about the holocaust. We don't want to give them any ideas."
I watched Ms Freeland melt Paul Krugman with a gentle stroke of her hand. She may not look like a playboy bunny but outside of my wife I can't think of any other woman I'd rather be around. She is like Eartha Kitt with an extraterrestrial IQ.
Repetition stalking in a board like this may feel like a viable strategy, but really it's the same thing credit card companies do with their mailings. The cluttery spam derails the reading experience.
And it's not like I wouldn't read e.pierce - he has had some quality posts over the years, so I see it as not the full piercing he's capable of....
Anyhow, he is not alone - the impulse to be combative online is always there and probably should be couched in the notion of "would I say this to the person if he/she is standing right in front me". That's all.
Submarines and message boards don't react well to bullets :)
Don't knock dating China until you've tried it.
Sincerely,
Eric Swalwell
China digs that he swallows well.
we see what you did there
What a great name Sara
You got that right. And we should be trying to date Iran rather than expecting our foreign policy by brutality to work.
When who we 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 want to date is AOC, of course. Just assk her.
AOC is definitely hot!
If you're into the equine look...
Evidently i am. Hot hot hot.
There is an old joke about rake-like teeth in here somewhere.
Just don't let her smile and it will go OK.
Snort!
British Columbia on Canada's west coast is dating China and is English speaking Canada's healthiest, most prosperous and freest social democracy. Maybe knowing both the USA and China makes one truly appreciate social democracy.
Please keep your autorectolingual practices to yourself.
Gonna vom.
You cray cray
Agreed. Shouting vulgarities at the slightest provocation is cray cray; also insulting to the rest of us just trying to read thoughtful and funny comments
Lousy metaphors aside, the CIA handlers at the NYT and Post seem to have issued their marching orders. Hold onto your lederhosen, the warhawks are chomping at their bits and beating their tin drums from atop their ivory towers.
The revolving door contractors are hungry and Biden's advisors want their cut.
A wide scale nuclear Holocaust could provide significant opportunities for Blackrock to bring additional rental housing stock to market. This shouldn't be overlooked.
Is there a futures market for disasters? I'd like to short the human race.
Its called televangelism and everyone is trying to buy their own network. I hear Trump raised a billion for his own personal network. I am betting they are going long on their ability to con us for another 10,000 or so years.
Stop spamming you retard.
Have I woken up in an episode of South Park? I'm fairly sure hatred of Canadians is not a thing in the real world.
I'm sure Naomi Klein would know....
Build Back Better with the Neutron Bomb!
Bomb Back Better.
this is a better formulation
lol, but the N bomb doesn't level buildings so we end up with the same old creaky bridges and whatnot
Yeah, but even our creakiest bridges will handle a few decades worth of impoverished, subsistence-level survivors crossing it.
I'm hoping for a less drastic solution: A massive CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) Event.. We're due, nay, overdue, for a big one. Go read up on the Carrington Event (1859, I think). Something along those lines will take out all the communication satellites, which would be sad, until we see it also take out Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Reddit, Instagram, etc., etc.
Then, not so sad. Would take a looong time to recover, esp. as the work will have to be done by some people who have only ever used a math app., not actually done math.
The difficult adjustment, for some, to an Internetless world, would be more entertaining than the cringe and meme-fodder those people have provided these last few years. Just imagine, someone overhears the usage of "fatso" or "gaywad" or "lame" or "tard" and springs into virtue signaling mode...and they won't have anywhere to go with it.
I might miss some things about the Internet, but the entertainment value would be epic!!
Oh, and to get to my point, the culture war, moved to physical reality arenas, would be dramatically transformed.
J. Frank Parnell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKeaVq6fUpw&t=90s
Has Wall Street priced that into their stock yet? I smell an opportunity.
Look at where Biden's advisors and cabinet were slumming in between Democrats (Blinken, Sullivan, Austin, etc).
It won't be. Disparage the cynical and corrupt all you like, but they never lose their focus.
like Lex Luthor creating more California coastline!
and the defense contractors
I think a thermonuclear exchange is the most optimistic outlook for 2022 at this point.
Sadly, it's almost welcomed...
Bringing this out once again....
https://imgflip.com/i/622gur
Be ready to update it to 2024, if we make it that far,
Oh, I know, and I'm standing at the ready to add a "4" to that, if whoever did the bumper sticker originally hasn't done it before I do!
Ha!
I love Tom Lehrer and I've memorized all the lyrics. Maybe we can teach the world We Will All Go Together When We Go..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs&list=RDfrAEmhqdLFs&start_radio=1
"guaranteed to cheer you up" Tom Lehrer
Classic! Thank you for that link. Now, I feel so much better...
u cray!
You clearly haven't white boarded the options.
True, but I waterboarded them
Yes. We go into withdrawal after so many days without a war. Opioids have nothing on American war profiteering.
I always wonder how they do that. Is there a CIA newsletter or a daily memo with today's talking points? Or did Friedman get the gig because of an uncanny ability to divine what they want before they tell him they want it?
Over the last two years, the CIA (and FBI) has done away with the old, awkward "provision of anonymous sources" and gone to a more streamlined model where their people work as "analysts" and "intelligence experts" directly FOR the media organizations. Matt generated a list of two dozen without even researching. They don't mess around with telling the media what to say so much as just go on the air and recite it themselves.
Reliable sources, amirite?
They're called "presstitutes."
That was a Freidman-worthy post there.
this was excellent
Holy crap...this is some funny shit. Matt is riffing like Robin Williams during his coke fueled genius younger days. There's too much funny stuff to reference all of it, so I'll just start and end with this hilarious line: "On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff." For us older, reformed hippies who remember Hunter S Thompson, this line is like morphine on an open wound. Thanks for some new memories Matt, too bad no one in the US media can write or talk or think like this - minus you and a handful of others.
Freidman, in typical fashion, exhibits the ramblings of a college student who can't believe he got the gig writing for his college newspaper. He's just so damned excited that people are paying him to write whatever thoughts come into his head, that he throws everything he's got - esp ill advised and hard to follow metaphors and similes - at the wall hoping some of it will make sense. To paraphrase J Peterman, the rest is a story.
"On the other hand, the image of a scorned gay giant with micro-wiener dressed as Peter the Great and trapped in a doorway talking to his shoulder-boil is pretty dynamic stuff."
This same passage made me wonder whether Friedman is not a talented surrealist on the order of of Ishmael Reed or Chuck Jones and he has just been clowning us all these years. Dressing up like Peter the Great and coming on to Elmer Fudd is like something Bugs Bunny would do.
Maybe the rocks are glass? Highly translucent quartz? I got nothin'.
I cannot believe I did not come up with the obvious; large, lovely, multifaceted crack rocks, with the boys from Langley underneath them. Really whiffing today.
I got a more Dali-esque image, with the giant, up in a tree that has a doorway in it, wiping Crimea off its shirtfront and wooing Ukraine. It would be called "Persistence of Friedman" or something eh?
You're scratching me where I itch with the CJ reference...and the foray into furry world, while disturbing is hilarious. Fortunately I can watch MeTv and see all kinds of currently designated inappropriate cartoons to remind my why my childhood was much funnier than kids today who have to watch sanitized nonsense that Trotsky and Friends would likely approve.
"Freidman, in typical fashion, exhibits the ramblings of a college student who can't believe he got the gig writing for his college newspaper."
Talk about stellar writing! This was a great line.
Twenty years ago the National Film Board of Canada filmed a documentary starring Aaron Mate called Discordia.
You can see Aaron talking to Noam Chomsky and ask yourself why America was so oblivious to what was going on in the world.
The documentary is brilliant as is Aaron.
Aaron was a truthteller then and was charged with sedition.
Twenty years later Quebec bans promoting any religion in its public spaces and the Canadian ACLU says this is undemocratic even as 80% of Quebec support Bill 21.
I live in a country Aaron helped create. We love our artists and intellectuals and we cherish our documentary film industry.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/discordia/
Bill 21 The best English translation of a legal document I have ever encountered.
http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-21-42-1.html
You are really right on Friedman. He's always pretending to be Joe Sixpack. But Taibbi funny here? More like incoherent.
Matt smoked Friedman!
Is that what he smoked? :-)
Dubies
I don't think you will find many Friedman fans in these parts. Friedman is what drove us here in the first place.
As for Dubies. My government is stopping just side this of close to recommending dubies for citizens my age. our catalogue makes information more easily accessible than from Amazon. We can order by catalogue but we can tell what is in stock at our local retailer. They even suggest what to smoke for responding to Matt Taibbi. When you can' no longer roll your own or if you never have been able to roll your own professionally pre rolled saves a lot of spill.
Why would I troll Taibbi he is one of my journalistic heroes.
Don't tax your old lungs with bud, go with gummies. They act a LOT faster than the old brownies ever did, and some, blended with CBD to go along with the THC, are very pleasant.
you sir, are effing funny -side note - isn't the correct spelling "doobies" as in Doobie Brothers who named themselves after marijuana cigarette's idiomatic slang?
Oh come now, if you're going to troll Taibbi at least do it with a little style
I have to say I agree. It's as though Taibbi got tagged and felt he had to respond to the "esteemed" professor and he started hyperventilating. There are some funny lines here, but much of it is painfully obvious and almost condescending in its assumption that his readers can't figure out on their on what's cockeyed and ludicrous about the metaphors Friedman mangled. Taibbi is at his best when he's flying, ad libbing, scatting. This article is like a parody of a bad Freshman comp paper attempting an extended exegesis.
Disagree. I may not be the sole reader who typically doesn't pay careful enough attention to have taken note of the fractured metaphoric disasters. So thanks Matt.
Maybe pierce is right . It seems like decades i have commented with anger and frustration to Friedman's idiocy.
I dunno, it's been many years since I read the Right Coast publications he was printed in, the refresher was welcome.
I like to think that this was his intention
Total agreement with you here.
The notion that Putin has an inferiority complex because of the US is dead wrong. He thinks the US is a decadent, deeply confused, emasculated society at war with itself. He believes that he and Russia are on the right side of history and will survive and strengthen while the US shrivels or implodes.
Is he wrong? We'll see. But there's nothing weak or crazy about it.
Putin is thinking about Ukraine like every other Russian autocrat from Ivan the Terrible forward. As regarding Ukrainian nationalism, he has a point considering his focus through a Russian nationalist lens. Consider Ukraine’s historical development-
1-The traditional Kievan-Rus. North-Central Ukraine, where my people are from. Always a part of the Czarist state, and the predecessor to Muscovy-Moscow. Ukraine got Kiev, Russia evolved from Rus. This part of Ukraine is completely culturally intertwined with traditional Czarist Russia.
2-Southern Ukraine-Catherine the Great conquered the Tatars in the region along the Black Sea, who were the descendants of the Mongol Horde who invaded in the 13th century. Her boyfriend and main general Prince Potemkin oversaw the final defeat of the Tatars and also defeated the Ottomans. He founded the cities of Kherson, Nikolaev, and Sebastopol.
3-Western Ukraine-this region changed hands constantly between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburgs, the Russian Empire, and Poland , up until the end of WWII. The current national boundaries of Ukraine correspond to those of the Ukrainian SSR, as set by Stalin after victory in WWII.
Ukrainian nationalism is a thing, and much of it comes from the romantic notion of the Cossacks, who were based in Ukraine (although hosts existed in Russia proper and the Caucasus), who served as the Czars shock troops in exchange for ostensible local autonomy. Putin, imo, thinks of himself like a Czar and can’t understand why his ostensible “subjects” can’t stand him. Fwiw, my 86 year old aunt puts on Ukrainian cultural demonstrations-nesting dolls, Easter eggs, paska bread,etc. for any interested groups and sends her profits over to charitable groups for Ukrainian soldiers-care packages, artificial limbs. She also thinks Ukrainian President Zelensky is an Israeli spy! Like they say, you can take girl out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the girl!
Wow - now, that's a rendition of Eastern European history worthy of Thomas Friedman's drug-induced column. Geography too.
The only true part is that Ukraine, as an entity in its current borders, didn't exist until 1930s. And it is very much a creature of Stalin and his nationalities policy.
By the way, "paska" isn't a bread. "Kulich" is.
Paska is definitely bread-I’ve eaten enough of it and seen it blessed by priests to know.
I certainly don’t know what’s false about the Kievan-Rus or Catherine the Greats military escapades. Perhaps you could enlighten us.
Most versions of paska (paskha) are based on quark (tvorog or curd cheese), with or without a dough base. In some Eastern Orthodox Churches (Assyrian?) there are versions with boiled eggs instead of quark. There may have been a local dough-only variation in the place where your family is from, but it is much more common in diasporas, where curd cheese is hard to come by or expensive. In Alaska there are quite a few followers of Russian Orthodox Church, and paska there is indeed a panettone-like bread.
Also all Easter foods are blessed by the priest - bread, paska, eggs (pysanki) and even sausages (kovbasa).
As for history and geography... You know that so-called "Kievan Rus" is a 19th century invention? It is not mentioned in any contemporary sources. This state didn't start in Kiev - the very first union of Slavic and Finnic tribes was based around Lake Ladoga, controlling the trade route from Baltic Sea to Volga. "Kievan Rus" wasn't limited to Northern and Central Ukraine either - it included almost all of Western Ukraine, modern Belarus, Moldova, pieces of Poland, Romania and even Slovakia. Neither did it stay in the "Czarist state". After Mongol invasion and break-up of the Golden Horde most of it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, succeeded by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Kiev didn't become part of Russia until late 17th century.
It's true that Potemkin forced the abdication of the last Crimean khan and founded several cities in so-called Novorossia. But Catherine's "escapades" are generally known as Russo-Turkish wars, because Crimea and the rest of the region around the Black Sea were actually parts of the Ottoman Empire. There was no "Russo-Tatar" war.
And Catherine wasn't the first to fight these wars. Russia fought with Turkey for the better part of 16 and 17 century. For a good reason too - Crimean khans (Ottoman vassals) were conducting regular slave raids on Russian (and Polish-Lithuanian) territories, running a brisk slave trade. An agreed upon estimate is about 2,000,000 slaves over 200 years. To put things in perspective, the total population of Russia in 17th century is estimated to be between 7 and 11 million.
Lastly, where did "Slobozhanshina" go? Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Wild Fields? It can't be part of "Kievan Rus", because it was under polovtsy, except for the most northwestern part. And it can't be "Southern Ukraine" captured by Potemkin for his girlfriend Catherine the Great. What happened to it?
Of course, this region had nothing to do with Ukraine, historically or otherwise, until Stalin decided that Ukrainian petite bourgeoisie needs a good injection of proletarian blood from Donetsk, but still...
At my grandparents Orthodox Church in Youngstown, Ohio-where the priest did indeed bless both the parishioners homes on personal visits and eggs, sausages,etc. at church, one could identify the region of Ukraine-to about 40 miles-a family was from based on the style of paska the wife baked at Easter.
If in Youngstown, Ohio, a priest was making personal visits to bless parishioners' homes, it's either something very specific to the region of Ukraine or a diaspora thing. I doubt you can find it anywhere in Ukraine or Russia (or other Orthodox countries, like Belarus or Moldova).
Normally, you assemble an Easter basket and bring it early in the morning to the church for a blessing. Instead of personal visits, there is an Easter procession. To spread the blessing to your home, Easter foods could be brought to animals and generally scattered around the house. Although this latter tradition may be very regional, since it has a strong whiff of paganism.
What I'm trying to say is that, unlike forms for baking Easter bread (under whatever name), traditions adapt and traditions evolve. Sometimes to the point that two traditions, which originated from the same source, can no longer recognize each other and even consider each other blasphemy.
I agree with Skeptic, Putin sees American imploding in on itself and takes advantage of the dithering, self defeating, self loathing sclerotic empire. Oliver Stones Putin Interviews captures this well.
Thank you -- Stone's "Putin Interviews" are truly outstanding and a must reading. Stone is, like Matt, a national treasure !!
I was glad Stone got those interviews, but a number of times Stone failed to follow up when Putin seemed to be going in an interesting direction. It was frustrating.
Of course, Stone is not a professional interviewer, and it showed; he often seemed to be going to his next prepared question rather really listening to Putin and picking up on threads.
An early example in the interviews is when they were talking briefly about Putin's childhood. Putin seemed to get a little misty eyed, and I think he was ready to talk about his mother, but Stone moved on. I wanted to hear more. But this happened any number of times.
Interesting comments - thank you and my regards, Boris
Ya America is a maelstrom, therein lies the creativity; Russian kleptocracts dampen the creative energy.
Putin may not be completely wrong, but democracies do tend to be all of those things. It's the price we pay for having to find consensus. On the bright side, capitalism kicks the shit out of autocracy, socialism, communism (or any other dumb economic idea the geniuses have tried to come up with). The fact that he just can't give economic freedom a chance is the nail in any coffin that refuses to understand that enlightened self interest is the only natural way to allow people to thrive. The ash heap of history is chock full of the dictators and totalitarians who believed otherwise.
Turner, bullseye 🎯 perfect.
Sounds like the New York Times has finally completed its metamorphosis into Weekly World News.
I am coming around to the perspective that Friedman is an autochthonous American outsider artist à la Henry Darger, some salient differences being that -- rather than decomposing in a mildewy garret -- Friedman has a column at the NYT and a house too big for him to tidy by himself. I hope he realizes all of the interior wall space is crying out for some muralism.
He's not worthy of the blessed Darger.
I get Friedman confused with David Brooks. Neither of them make any sense to me, as far as i'm concerned they might as well post from the surface of Mars.
They are neck and neck for being wrong about everything, all the time and never being called on it. That is one of the requirements for entering the US elite; being unapologetically wrong and taking no heed of it.
Now I want a cheaply animated Friedman and Brooks to travel to the Red Planet courtesy of their benefactor Elon Musk and engage in wacky hijinx. Working title: 'STACHE 'N' PATE.
https://youtu.be/8OshIzK0dN4?t=90
I want giant spiders from Mars. Maybe Friedman can lick Brooks' guitar strings.
I cannot believe you passed up the opportunity for a classic rock video in this space.
Different album, but i think i've posted this one on these blogs before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKcl4-tcuo
Ok, this one then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KEn0uOEILs
I want them in a Coen Brothers caper movie where they decide to rob each others' houses. "And then we'll split the profits!"
Is “metaphorrhea” a word, or a diagnosable condition?
Similar to “logorrhea”: excessive flow of words, or “flight of ideas”: manic output of loose associations. I would never apply these to Taibbi, for all his words, ideas, and unexpected metaphors. Why not?
The answer is in the five-dimensional graph of coherence, humor, good taste, and real insight plotted against demands on the reader. Literary efficiency
Perfecto! It is now !
excellent...i mean really excellent mash up
A fine neologism, there. Good as Freidman in a one-oared sailboat, trying to translate "The Cat in the Hat" into Urdu before his NYT deadline expires.
Ol' Tommy Boy is really on a roll. Just last week he proposed a Biden-Cheney 2024 ticket with a straight face.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/opinion/democratic-ticket-liz-cheney-2024.html
Ironically, it is the sort of thing the DNC would do. "Let's see...how can we alienate flyover country even more than ever before? Hmm...I know! By picking the person MAGA voters consider *the top traitor in America* to be the running mate for a guy who they also hate, and who will almost surely be dead or comatose within the next year."
While I liked this comment, I fear I am too dim to perceive the irony. It seems like something... that could happen, actually? The DNC abides within a potent reality-altering force bubble. I gave up on anything making sense to me any more when Biden got the '20 nomination.
I get your point. Everyone outside the Beltway might think it idiotic, but to bubble-dwellers it makes sense. I suppose the true "irony" (experience of an outcome opposite what you expected) will come later, when they actually run Biden-Cheney and lose in a landslide. Grimly hilarious, right?
That column was deranged and yet Cheney gave it 5 thumbs up (note: there were only room for 2 thumbs up but the NYT made an exception for both Cheneys)
Now I want to know which Cheney has 3 thumbs.
(I hate to write this, but let's be honest...it writes itself) Obviously "Dick" Cheney is the 3rd.
Glad you went first.
I actually did read that one. Yes, that will totally happen.
There seems to be a lot of talk about replacing Harris. I'm wondering how they would go about kicking the first Black / Asian / Woman off of the ticket and how they keep votes. Even if the concensus is that she sucks, it's still going to piss people off if she's just replaced.
She has to run top of the ticket. Then MLK her in October. Riots, fear of violence, unanimous shrieking press, etc. Stick Michelle Obama in there or someone similar. Done.
Dude you clearly don’t have the imagination required to work for the Agency.
I don't, that's why i'm an insignificant gnat shitposting on forums.
I have to say that i do sincerely believe that MO has less than zero interest in the position. They made the history books, they made their money, not only do they have big cool friends, they are the big cool friends. But you're right, she's about the only person they could replace Harris with and get away with.
She’ll be the “healing” president, leading Oval Office Zumba Wednesdays and reading stories to POC trans kindergarteners in return for $15 billion from the Pritzkers and a luxury family bunker when Covid Omega is released.
Now THAT'S the kind of imagination that'll get you a promotion. Or a plutonium pellet in the leg.
You think Hillary will allow that?
let her talk non-stop for 2 hours and I think you'll see a consensus forming
It might piss off the type of people who listen to NPR, but nobody else cares or likes her.
Sevender below has the only answer.
I'm not saying that she doesn't suck, or that people don't know it or like her. But to replace her - white people are out. Guys are out. SO you'd have to find a willing woman that isn't white. And no, Stacey Abrams isn't going to bring it home.
Why does the replacement have to be a female poc? This is exactly why identity politics will fail. If race, skin color and gender are the only qualifications that D's are willing to consider then they deserve Kamala, and will continue to lose votes. It's funny how things have come full circle from the 1960s.
Those "qualifications" are precisely why they chose her.
This is typical of the Dems; they take an idea that has intrinsic merit; look beyond just old white males and twist it to choose anyone, with merit, personal qualities and even plain old likeability being irrelevant. No other reason can be found for choosing someone as lightweight and unlikeable as our pathetic VP.
Giving us the same product in a different package seems to work for a large segment of the confirmed Dem voting block, but it doesn't fly anywhere else.
You've already solved the dilemma. Have you forgotten the all of the box ticking sweepstakes in the VP search, and then for cabinet and other appointments? Sure, let them try to replace her with Pete Buttigieg and have 2 white guys on the ticket. My god, the cacaphony.
We could squid game this by having Harris and Abrams fight to eat each other on live tv. We know who would win.
Appreciate the idea, but I don't ever want to see Abrams eat anything, even real food, much less Kamala Cakes.
Can we call dibs on the gladiatorial weapons? I say fascina for Harris and motorcycle chain for Abrams. Even things out a bit.
We the people would get eaten. Not that we already aren't.
This "white people are out", "men are out", "Asians don't count" stuff is going to break down, and sooner than you think. People are rightly tired of it, they can see it doesn't work, in national politics or their workplaces.
Hell, by 2024 we might even be able criticize a murderer, who is black or female, as "harmful to the community".
"...and how they keep votes."
[blinks] All the votes Harris won attempting the nomination on her own? Zero delegates to the convention. Not even one as the favorite child of California. What votes are really there to be lost?
My first instinct would be to agree with you. I didn't vote for the ticket, but i thought that Biden was nuts to pick her, for the reason you mentioned.
If i did vote for a ticket, you might not know why i did. Maybe i voted for Clinton / Gore for Gore and not Clinton? Maybe some people vote for the VP with a look to the future. Keep in mind that Biden wasn't doing so hot in the primaries either until SC. You never know, there might be a lot of people who don't like the idea of a Black / Asian / Woman being uncermoniously kicked off of the ticket without being consulted. Do they get a vote on it beforehand?
So who decides if Harris gets kicked off the ticket? Who decides who replaces her?
FDR ran with 3 different VPs - so there is precedent. Good question as to how anything gets decided in this administration.
It's decided "in a back room while smoking cigars."
Or the 2022 version: "in a sunlit fern bar with aromatherapy candles and reiki music."
That's their problem. They created the DEI, monster that will devour them all.
and if she wins, the "cackle" will become the new national anthem.
Maybe Liz found something compromising when she thigh-grabbed all that private financial data from JPMorgan.
Dick or Liz?
I'm serious, by the way.
I think you can infer this from the URL: "democratic-ticket-liz-cheney-2024.html"
Did you know sweet Liz was born 9 months and 2 days after her daddy had lost his draft exemption status after they changed it from being married was sufficient to having to be a father due to the large number of US casualties in Vietnam, a war he supported?
After his wife's pregnancy was confirmed, Dick was so overwhelmed with happiness, he immediately called everyone he knew, starting with his local draft board.
How cool would it be if Hillary wins the Dem nomination and appoints Liz to vet candidates for her VP and she ends up by finding that person when she looks in the mirror, just like her Daddy.
There is no group of people less self aware than liberal lesser of two evils voters who to this day still can't accept their role in making this country the oligarchy it has become.
Putin committed the gravest sin to the oligarchy of the empire; he put the government/himself back on top with the oligarchy still in the middle and the workers at the bottom. China, the same. We operate in what I believe is best described as inverted totalitarianism with the oligarchy and corporations on top with the government below doing their bidding and the workers (who actually do everything) on the bottom. The struggle between the oligarchy and the government has gone on forever although in Egypt and Sumner the King would forgive debts from time to time to keep the people on their side for corvee labor and the military. In this sense, it used to be better; no jubilee now and they've cut your wages to where you have to borrow from them. Of course, they get the money by having the Fed and banksters conjuring it up from nothing. Forget about democracy, sucker, what we have is "manufactured consent"; the illusion of choice, you have no real choice, they own you unless you wanna live off the grid.
Thanks. Grim but true. Would NOT make a good Dead song.
It's funny but only if you laugh so you don't cry. This abject moron getting paid tens of millions of dollars over 30 years to "explain" the world to Times readers encapsulates like nothing else how we got where we are. Trump is only possible as half of the folie a deux with this crap.
Folie a plusieurs?
"Folie a deux". Now that is one that says much in a direct manner.
Thanks for reminding me why I choose not to read Friedman.
I about harfed up a lung reading this, Matt. Bravo! Friedman is such a toad, and his writing leaves me wartified, like a giant toadstool without a condom.
Nothing makes my day like Matt analyzing a Thomas Friedman piece. Thank you, thank you. I needed a good laugh. Can’t wait to see the competition results!
I can envision Friedman, as he was writing his column, feeling very proud of his wordsmithing skills and waiting for the accolades to pour in from his adoring NYT fan base. I hope no one shares Matt's column with him - he'd be crushed.
I was today years old before treading into the semi-solid output of T. Friedman. Good grief, this is painful. More like a Cornpop speech with ayahuasca and speed, maybe with a Lean chaser. I can't believe anyone would read this fool.
"semi-solid output" 😂
This is a nation whose foreign policy shifts between neocons and liberal interventionists, the only difference between them being their lying justifications for endless war and US imperial ambitions.
A man of his times in a place he belongs.
I hope that lard ass and his ilk live long enough to see the inevitable economic dominance of the PRC, made all the more possible by the very policies these fools have advanced these last 30 years.
hilarious and well referenced comment!
Friedman has an "adoring NYT fan base"?? Jebus, how very sad.
The only thing that would be better than this column would be a long-overdue swipe at David Brooks.
How does Putin get out of a tree (what tools does he use)?
Step 1: Rhythmically rub a "Navalny gazing" poison around the knob of the tree
Step 2: Take a dose of Invermectin, and read the most recent gain of function literature
Step 3: Make speech about inflationary costs of FBI informants and how they have no business taking January 17th off since they killed MLK. Be sure to mention that when Americans are in your tree, it can be difficult to stay alive, avoiding being robbed, or raped. Just ask Native Americans of North America, Koreans, Vietnamese, Panamanians, Yugoslavs, Libyans and Syrians.
Step 4: Say a Mujahideen incantation roughly translated in Russian to F U Zbigniew
Step 5: Get a small piece of Larry Summers' liver biopsy (the oil should work) - Jabba the Hut
Step 6: Take off your shirt and whistle call for your horse to prepare an election pose
Step 7: Ridicule all people named Boris as stupid ass drunks who can't run a country
Step 8: Create a buffer zone around the roots of tree, so that the CIA can contain it. And call an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Tree Organization to recount the forgotten history of this tree.
Step 9: Ask for a delivery of the Beatles rendition of back in the USSR and a naked picture of Chrystia Freeland.
Step 10: Get Bellingcat to tweet the Atlantic Council about the tree's poisonous gaseous emissions - and have them bring in the white helmets to stage an actual rescue.
Step 11: Send the sanctioned bill to Moscow and Beijing
You might want to explain the love/hate relationship with Chrystia Freeland our Deputy Prime Minister and her book Sale of the Century and her exile from Russia. I think outside of Matt Taibbi this is not common knowledge anywhere outside of International political elites.
Michael Chomiak was her grandfather - Ukrainian Ultra Nationalist who emigrated to Canada after WW2 - the Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis (her father was an editor in chief for the Nazi's leading Ukrainian language paper. While the Nazi's and OUN-Bandera (Ukrainian nationalists) were both competitors and collaborators, they both had aims on Poland (Lviv area) and hating jews, leftists or non-aryans.
Freeland's grandfather not only was a big part of that apparatus which also includes genocide with their main function of propaganda and ethnic cleansing, but many leaders like Chomiak went unscathed after WWII - finding comfy cosy confines in capitalist countries -- who clearly were more worried about communists than war atrocities.
And so Chrystia can whitewash her families' Ukrainian past, and like Hillary Clinton blame it all on the Russians, which she is apt to do at a drop of a hat.
My great grandparents fled Ukraine in the 19th century. I've enjoyed the friendship of people born of Ukraine and Russians my whole life. I lived North of Peace River and I am not unaware of Chrystia's background. You cannot represent Freeland's Toronto district and hold those views. Ask Rosalie Silberman Abela ret. Supreme Court of Canada who was born in a DP camp after the war where both her parents survived the camps.
I am happily retired in a welcoming community I would not be welcomed in 50 years ago. Fifty years ago Bishop's University was the most homogeneous campus in Canada and that was when Canada was pretty homogeneous. Today Bishop's University looks like the world.
We know why the Cossacks killed Jews. They killed Jews to deflect the blame for the misery from the aristocrats to some helpless scapegoat.
The GOP has developed nothing new.
A couple things.
First, this is not about you, Moe or your friends or relations.
Second, this is not about Canada either since we all know the US was an even larger Nazi importer after WW2 eh - See Operation Paperclip, The Gehlen network, and the number of Nazi scientists who emigrated in the aeronautics industry. The west became a haven for misfit Nazi's who wanted to work against the Soviets. No Nuremburg for these people.
Third, I am sure there is enough blame in genocide to go around. Nazi's, Ukrainian nationalists (OUN-A), Soviets, and a whole generation of hundreds of cultural, geopolitical battles that makes Croatia-Serbia-Macedonia-Bosnia-Herzogovinia-Slovakia-Slovenia look like in-fighting at a small family gathering.
But finally, do not piss down my back and tell me it's raining - that Michael Chomiak (Freeland's grandfather) was not responsible for being a part of the Nazi power structure in a genocide. The Ukrainian diaspora has many elements to it and is not uniform or singularly characterized - but the strident anti-communist flavors of Ukrainian nationalism emanating from people like Chomiak or Bandera are a huge problem, not something to bury your heads in Canadian Tar Sands.
Alberta is doing a fine job in educating its young. Sadly its Mormons, and Colorado based christianist churches, and a long legacy of the antiSemitic Social Credit Party still holds a great deal of power .
I still carry the scars of the Spanish inquisition. My ancestors were always the victims until the time I was born. It is not easy wielding power and being kind. Power or the lust for power is a disease. Not all Ukrainians are brought up to be peasants and Zelensky is the President .
In the words of the great Jewish Canadian poet, philosopher, public intellectual and gadfly to the elite Irving Layton 1912-2006.
"Let's stop talking about the holocaust. We don't want to give them any ideas."
What does this have to do with Michael Chomiak or Chrystia Freeland? Not sure one sentence is relevant here.
Wait, wait.... is this Thomas Friedman?
I watched Ms Freeland melt Paul Krugman with a gentle stroke of her hand. She may not look like a playboy bunny but outside of my wife I can't think of any other woman I'd rather be around. She is like Eartha Kitt with an extraterrestrial IQ.
One ping Vasily.... One ping only
I got it, Sean Connery, that was the beginning of the communication that led to the defection. Very clever.
See you think epierce calling Canadians shit eaters 3 times in a row is 2 more than needed.
Repetition stalking in a board like this may feel like a viable strategy, but really it's the same thing credit card companies do with their mailings. The cluttery spam derails the reading experience.
And it's not like I wouldn't read e.pierce - he has had some quality posts over the years, so I see it as not the full piercing he's capable of....
Anyhow, he is not alone - the impulse to be combative online is always there and probably should be couched in the notion of "would I say this to the person if he/she is standing right in front me". That's all.
Submarines and message boards don't react well to bullets :)
Cool. I like e-pierce, he does have some important things to say. He seems quick to be irritated though, kinda grumpy
The Hunt for Red October dialogue missed you I guess :)
I'm sorry... my head is spinning. Did he have a stroke? Did he give a chimp his keyboard?
Your first time reading a Friedman column? How sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK6jKL2qWxo