It’s nice to see that everyone can agree that Tom Friedman is an asshole.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!
Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.
Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.
Second rate reporter says what?
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
The revolution will be supervised.
You are here: Home / A Moment of Christmas Unity
Maude
From the NYT today? I’m not reading anything by him.
He’s an ignorant fool.
Loneoak
Indeed, a cabbie told me Tom Friedman is an asshole just the other day.
General Stuck
There is no unity in Christmas, there is being in the black or the red, you liked your present, or didn’t. You hanged yourself in despair, or you put it off a while. Unity is for giant flocks of Starlings, not Americans, and especially not liberal Americans.
General Stuck
Otherwise, I’m in a surprisingly chipper mood as Christmas holiday spirit goes. Sort of like a last spiritual supper, before the republicans cause The Apocalypse next year.
me
Uh huh. I wonder if they didn’t trade one population calamity for another.
monkeyboy
Geeze, they are despising Friedman for his support of China’s 1 child rule.
China is very a complex place that has enormous problems. In many cases they have made the right policy decisions though the policies are somewhat implemented through brutality.
Consider the Cultural Revolution. At that time the elite (bureaucrats, university teachers, professionals) despised the peasants who made up almost all of the population. The elite in their leadership roles were doing little to advance the peasants and only thought elite issues worthy of consideration. Having the elite go live as peasants was one way to change attitudes.
Maude
@General Stuck:
Did you see that oldish movie with Heston as a surviver of a nuke war?
Repubs would like to start that war, if only in politics.
Got my bunker all outfitted with plastic and duct tape.
General Stuck
@Maude:
The Omega Man
pretty good one
Kevin Moore
@monkeyboy “Somewhat implemented through brutality”?
Bill Murray
@General Stuck: so you’re saying you don’t think Tommy F. is an asshole?
PS
Tomnuts roasting on an open fire … Kum-ba-ya … a short break in hostilities; football, anyone?
Mark S.
@monkeyboy:
Somewhat? Really?
sukabi
@Kevin Moore: can you imagine what that policy implemented here would look like? We’d make the Chinese look like pikers… Take a look at how we handle “security screenings” at the airports…
of course it would have the advantage of all the “pro-life” fanatics heads literally exploding, so there is that.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Mark S.:
My favorite line from yer link…
WTF is an ‘excess death’?
And does that mean all the deaths up to that point were simply fulfilling some sort of govt mandated quota?
James E Powell
@Loneoak:
Indeed, a cabbie told me Tom Friedman is an asshole just the other day.
This only counts if the cabbie was in Jakarta or Rabat or some such place. American cabbies, regardless of ethnicity, are American working class. The thoughts of such people are not relevant in Friedman’s world.
sukabi
@The Republic of Stupidity: just a guess, but I’m guessing it was those late term (month 8 & 9) forced abortions… and more than likely quite a few of the mothers who didn’t survive the procedure.
and adding, all the girl babies that were killed so families could have a boy.
General Stuck
@Bill Murray:
Don’t care enough to form an opinion. Nor to think you are a moron for asking the above question.
Mr. Poppinfresh
@monkeyboy: Did you seriously just attempt to justify the Cultural Revolution? I am actually in awe.
I think you need to read a few more books. Like, anything at all, really.
Please tell me this is just a troll.
Southern Beale
Bristol Palin has bought a $172,000 foreclosed tract house in Maricopa, Arizona. Some folks wonder if maybe she wants to start a meth lab.
I’m wondering if she isn’t planning to help Sheriff Joe Arpaio or something.
Turbulence
@The Republic of Stupidity: WTF is an ‘excess death’?
Ooh, I can answer this one. Basically, you look at a country’s death rate before and after some horrific thing happens, like the Cultural Revolution or the Iraq war or the Holocaust or what have you. Take the difference between the post-disaster death rate and the pre-disaster death rate, multiply it by the population size, and that gives you the number of excess deaths, per year of disaster.
In other words, as long as there is no obscene disaster happening, countries usually have a pretty stable death rate. When disasters show happen, the death rate usually climbs. The difference between the “normal” background death rate and the disaster death rate tells you the rate at which people are being killed by the disaster.
Excess deaths are really about large groups of people. It doesn’t really make much sense to talk about an individual excess death.
stickler
@The Republic of Stupidity: “Excess deaths” is a way to measure phenomena of mass mortality. Usually governments that engage in policies which result in mass starvation aren’t too interested in keeping precise records about exactly who died as a result of those policies. But lots of people end up dead anyhow.
“Excess mortality” is another way of expressing a sudden jump in the number of no-longer-living people. You measure the average number of people dying in China, say, between 1955 and 1960; then you take the average between 1960 and 1965. If the latter number is much bigger, then something must have caused Chinese people to shuffle off this mortal coil at a higher rate.
(EDIT: I see I was beat to the punch. Missed it by THAT much…)
The Moar You Know
It’s nice to see unity on this Christmas holiday.
Chyron HR
@Southern Beale:
172 grand in cash. You liberal elitists probably had to take out a mortgage to buy your homes in the coastal enclaves, but Real Americans just whip out big wads of hundreds and buy homes on a whim.
Wile E. Quixote
@monkeyboy:
Except that’s not what the Cultural Revolution was about. It was about Mao attempting to consolidate his power against a country that was turning against him after 20 years of his incompetent and brutal rule. Go read Jung Chang’s biography, Mao, The Unknown Story. If you ever pull your head out of your ass and do this you’ll find that Mao didn’t give a fuck about the peasants in China any more than Stalin gave a fuck about the peasants and workers in the Soviet Union. The Cultural Revolution was all about Mao murdering the people who opposed him and could have toppled him, and the corrupt junta he had surrounded himself with, from power.
You and Tom Friedman are both repugnant little shits who should be sold into slavery in North Korea. You’re both the kind of smug assholes that the Dead Kennedys wrote about when they wrote “Holiday in Cambodia.” and the world would be a finer place if both of you were working for a bowl of rice a day and ended your days with your heads skewered on a stake.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Turbulence:
@stickler:
Well thank goodness there’s a rational, coherent explanation for ‘excess deaths’…
I was thinkin’ mebbe some policy wonks in Beijing ran the numbers and came up w/ a big ‘Whoopsie! … we killed too many…’
***Chinese statistician smacking abacus on table top…***
Reminds me of that time American tobacco companies tried pitching the benefits of increased consumption to Eastern European countries as a way of reducing their pension expenses… just a simple business transaction, see?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Loneoak: Indeed, now that the earth is flat, the whole world can see what an asshole Tom Friedman is.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And if the world is indeed flat, wouldn’t that mean we’ll ALL be underwater when global warming really shifts gears?
Wile E. Quixote
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Yes, he did go there. Next up from monkeyboy, an essay on how the holodomor was just Joe Stalin’s way of implementing a new agricultural policy for the Soviet Union and how the Khmer Rouge killing fields were Pol Pot’s way of getting Cambodians to take more exercise in the scenic countryside.
gogol's wife
@Wile E. Quixote:
No need to try answering that one now. Thanks.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Loneoak: What you meant of course was that a cabbie gave you an earful that you were only able to digest fully when it caught your eye among your notes the following day, which were at hand because you had armed yourself with them after doing all the leg work the day before.
Otherwise, it’s just not Friedman.
Suffern ACE
I’m just going to pretend that monkeyboy has had too many rumballs and the gastritis is making him reach for the little red book.
Suffern ACE
I’m just going to pretend that monkeyboy has had too many rumballs and the gastritis is making him reach for the little red book.
catclub
@monkeyboy:
“The elite in their leadership roles were doing little to advance the peasants and only thought elite issues worthy of consideration. Having the elite go live as peasants was one way to change attitudes. ”
Sounds like something we need here. Let me know when unemployment becomes more important than the deficit.
Svensker
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
He’s a troll. He comes here spouting insane positions that he imagines really radical lefties would agree with — apparently hoping to get someone to agree, so he can go back to his puppet masters with his catch of the day. At least I assume that’s what he’s doing, otherwise it makes no sense.
handy
@Svensker:
I thought it was funny when someone called him Josh instead of the more dignified monkeyboy and he accused them of being anti-Semitic. That was probably the most bizarre plea I’ve read for someone to call one by their online pseudonym.
Southern Beale
@Chyron HR:
Guilty as charged. I’m so ashamed.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@handy: That was me. Fuck if I’ll ever call him Josh again. Fuck if I’ll ever call him ANYTHING again. That fucker’s nuts. Stay away from him.
Bill Murray
@General Stuck: well no problem as log as you have a better opinion of me than I have of you.
H&Ks
mere mortal
You know who’s an asshole? Yeah, the asshole who just made me read an article from Reason.
Ick.