July 5, 2010

"No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden."

When people see a column by Thomas Friedman and a humor piece in The New Yorker, by nature they will....

By nature they would... what?
Go buy the latest Thomas Friedman bestseller.
Subscribe to The New Yorker.
Increase their devotion to the Republican Party.
Breathe a sigh of relief that Barack Obama is President.
Bitch and snark about it all in the Althouse comments section.
  
pollcode.com free polls

25 comments:

tom faranda said...

Wow! First comment. And I voted "bitching and snarking."

Ron said...

Osama bin Laden is paradigm of The Untenured Lecturer.

JAL said...

I wanted to check three out of the five.

Not the Republican one. Not the bitching and snarking.

I would just love Tom Friedmam's new book. And I would love a susciption to The New Yorker and I sigh with relief (though somewhat dimished ecstasy) that Barack Obama is president.

And I love pulling poison ivy from around the dead tree we are going to cut down today.

Anonymous said...

* Wonder why either publication is still in existence.

Donna B. said...

I thought the most enlightening statement in the Friedman article was at the end: Maureen Dowd is off today.

Meade said...

No one ever said it better than Homer bin Simpson: “It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.”

William said...

Given a choice between torturing a metaphor to death and writing a simple, declarative sentence, mankind, and by mankind I mean Thomas Friedmann, will always choose to waterboard the metaphor....I thought that the unintended consequences of Obamacare would be longer waits for the Doctor and the delay of a generation or more for the cure to whatever illness from which I die. Not so. The unintended consequence was world peace and nuclear disarmment. It takes a visionary to see the far horizons of Obama's visions.

Anonymous said...

Spent yesterday at a BBQ with a couple of very disillusioned Obama voters.

Surprised to discover that they didn't even know about Obama's connection to Bill Ayers, and hadn't thought much about his connection to Rev. Wright.

Obama's radicalism caught them by surprise.

They still were pissing at Sarah Palin. I'd like Palin to become a Reagan Republican. I don't know if she is.

But these ex-Obama-ites don't seem to have questioned the ferocious hate campaign directed against Palin.

Curious. They know now that they were completely mislead by the press about Obama, but they still think that the vilification of Palin by that same press makes sense.

Of course, it bears noting that the ex-Obama-ites are Jewish. (I think that many members of the press who joined in the Palin attack are also.) Palin is the shiksa of their nightmares.

Unknown said...

I would have said, "Pull up Strategypage and get the straight story".

Unknown said...

One of the unintended consequences of reading Mr. Friedman's column is that my head exploded.

Yes, I knew better, and yes I should have taken personal responsibility and just said no, but anyway, thank God for Obamacare. I've got an appointment for a complete cranial resection in 2015. But if that's what it takes to make the Chicoms tremble and fly right, then I guess I'm a patriot.

From Inwood said...

That's why the Friedman is the intellectualoids' favorite read.

Seems he’s always able to interpret what happened in order to gain the deeper consequences of what happened. Or something.

It's an art. Or something.

But, wait. As a commenter noted in the article I quote below about another TF ramble, you left out the obligatory "A few days ago over lunch in a lovely cafe in a small town in southwest Switzerland, the future Finance Minister of France told me that my analysis of my navel was 100% correct..."

And I think you need another choice for your quiz. Something like:

Tom F is not as good a writer or would-be thinker as MoDo.

For a great take-down deconstruct of Flat-Brained Tom F, see

The Quintessential Tom Friedman MD Conservatarian 5/21/10

http://marylandconservatarian.blogspot.com/2010/05/quintessential-tom-friedman.html

*****************

Shoutingthomas:

Great insightful comment (i.e., it squares with my experience!). But, you’ve no doubt turned on C4.

Big Mike said...

I have no idea how I got bitching and snarking done before I discovered the Althouse blog. I was deprived and didn't even know it.

David said...

You have to go with the strong horseshit every time. It's human nature.

Kansas City said...

I think Friedman is about the most self absorbed man firmly encased in the liberal establishment bubble that anyone could imagine.

I guess he actually thinks that the powerful people in other countries are somehow influenced by the issue of health insurance in the U.S., or by the monstrosity of a legislative process and final bill that was produced?

How can he seriously believe that? It is some combination of a very limited mindset and complete gullibility when listening to others in his liberal world and in discussions with "intelligencia" in foreign counties.

And, to state the obvious, if Friedman's theory is correct, then Obama will become utterly powerless after he and his party are clobbered in November.

Foreign countries act in their own self interest and, if a course of action is not viewed in their self interest, they will not do it unless they percieve that America will make them pay a price for refusing to do so. Can anyone imagine any foreign leader (with the possible exception of Israel) that would fear Obama making them pay a price for not going along with him?

Brad said...

Donna B. wrote:

I thought the most enlightening statement in the Friedman article was at the end: Maureen Dowd is off today.

Maureen Dowd is "off" everyday.

damikesc said...

Having read the column and reader responses, I'm worried that these idiots have the right to vote.

I mustve missed the meme of criticizing the President is treasonous. Probably drowned out in people calling Bush a chimp or Fascist for pursuing less intrusive policies than the freedom loving Obama.

lemondog said...

No one ever said it better than Homer bin Simpson: “It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.”

If someone tells a lie in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, is it a lie?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kansas City said...

Fiedman is not lying. He is such a self absorbed dufus that he actually believes the passage of health insurance reform will enhance Obama's power in dealing with foreign countries.

This is a guy who is paid huge dollars by the NYTimes to think, and this is what he comes up with. Remarkable.

Anonymous said...

The other day over a lunch of camel at a cafe in Dubai, The Saudi Prince I had the privilege of dining with agreed wholeheartedly that the sprawling growth spread before us simply needed a big fuckin monorail, some cap and trade legislation, and good ole American optimism and can-do gumption to harness the energy of ingenuity, the power of freedom, and the spirit of pride.

bagoh20 said...

Some writer's try so hard. God bless the little tikes.

Revenant said...

World opinion about Obama's policies has declined from a year ago, although not nearly as much as American opinion has.

Revenant said...

Sorry, there was supposed to be a link in there.

traditionalguy said...

So why does an American President say repeatedly that the USA is a weak horse that is fading away? Because is what the Marxists taught him, and it makes him powerful. AlGore believes the Warmist fantasy because it makes him powerful. Nixon saw problems and corrected them. Obama is saying that failure is the only option and needs to be accepted by the USA.

Known Unknown said...

Ivory towers and everything!