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You have to understand that Thomas Friedman is an avatar of ineptitude. I can't possibly outdo Matt Taibbi's take on his recent book, so I'll link it.

But let's look at why this effort is doomed to failure. Friedman recommends it, so that's strikes one, two and three already. If Friedman said pants were convenient and comfortable, you'd be best advised to buy a kilt. He has such an incredible track record of being utterly wrong about everything imaginable.

Serious reason: It's centrist. According to voting records meticulously compiled by the right and the left, the voters will elect, at any given time, virtually no moderates whatsoever. If you're a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican, your legislators tend to vote, contrary to popular griping, 80% to 90% in line with your views. What people are really bitching about when they claim the parties are the same is that they're not getting their way, which is the whole point of the system.

The only reason we have moderate legislators is because some states happen to be evenly split. There is no centrist "base" for a centrist party to draw from, not in the US, not anywhere. There is no base because there's no ideology for them to get fired up about. An ideology can rest on a vision (e.g. progressivism) or principles (e.g. conservatism), neither of which centrism has.

The major parties duke it out to try to win the best compromise they can get for their base and centrism is a reaction to this. It is effectively saying that, somehow, they can arrive at a better compromise without the uncivilized process of duking it out. But to believe that you can arrive at that compromise without the fighting, you have to believe that people with passionate beliefs don't really mean it or you have greater insight than pretty much everyone or, as proof that establishment types can be conspiracy theorists too, shadowy figures are stirring them up to further their evil ends.

And, as the parent avers, it's already not terribly centrist. Most of these "non-partisan" organizations drift towards liberalism over time, the exact reasons for this dynamic are hard to pin down, but it happens all over the place.

I got the book The World Is Flat as a gift and, as lovely as the cover was, I was angry inside of one chapter and put it on the used book market after the second.

Thought maybe something was wrong with me, but apparently I'm in good company. Can't get enough of seeing people calling this guy out on his act.

For those that haven't gotten to read it here is the article by Taibbi I assume you're talking about, and anyone who reads it will be hard pressed to see Friedman as anything BUT an absolute moron.

As for TFA it isn't that we've reached "peak people" it is that the pigs destroy faster than we can create and by HUGE margins! Look at how many things now are "designed for the dump" so some multinational can force you to buy another rather than affordably fixing the one you have. Look at how much wealth is controlled by the top 3% and how much their hoarding tips the scales. These groups have NO problem with poisoning the water table with frakking, with making huge chunks of land uninhabitable with dumped toxins, whatever it takes to get them another 3% profits they are ALL for.

Frankly most of these problems could be solved if we had real laws with real consequences for causing disasters and massive environmental destruction, but instead these scum will just quietly cash out and leave the superfund sites to the rest of humanity to clean up. if we took a dozen of the top polluters and had their CxOs executed on national TV I bet they wouldn't be so quick to fuck everyone else for another percentage of profit, what do you think?

I think any post referencing Thomas Friedman requires a link to Matt Taibbi's classic article:

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. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses....

According to the mathematics of the book, if you add an IPac to your offshoring, you go from running to sprinting with gazelles and from eating with lions to devouring with them.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

A man walks into a bar and tells the bar tender

God might speak to the world through a burning Bush

and gets three years in jail.

Does that apply to the 9/11 terrorists too, or does your statement apply only to anti-India terrorists?

I didn't have those in India on my mind when I said that "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." Actually at the tyme I was thinking of Israeli Independence fighters, or terrorists. Irgun, the predecessor to today's Likud political party was even classified as a terrorist group by the new Israeli government after independence. Lehi, commonly called the Stern Gang, split off from Irgun, was another. Not only were these groups fighting the British with such acts as the King David Hotel bombing, but they were also in communications with NAZIs before and during WWII. In 1948 Irgun and Lehi attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin where 107 were massacred. Deir Yassin is still remembered. And guess who was an Irgun leader... Menachem Begin. Ariel Sharon led Israeli troops in the Qibya massacre. Here are more crimes of Ariel Sharon. And here's a list of more massacres in Palestine.

In 1956 David Ben-Gurion said of Arab Palestinians "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country ... There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it is simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army."

But he wasn't the only Zionist that wanted to expell Arab Palestinians. The Jewish group and magazine "Tikkun", which I read regularly, has the article The Long Path Out Of Denial: Zionism, Heartache, And A New Vision of Israel and Palestine.

Hell Israel even attacked the United States, in attacking and sinking the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967. But don't let reality and facts bother you.

Falcon

Friedman is famous for his terrible writing style (see "Flathead": http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html). He does not make any sense. In his book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" he presents Toyota as an example of the efficiency of the free market. Nevermind that Toyota got massive subsidies from the Japanese Government for decades, which makes it an excellent example of the protectionist infant industry argument (as Ha-Joon Chang points out in his book "Bad Samaritans"). He also was a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. This guy's perception of reality is so wrong that you can basically count on the opposite of his predictions to happen. Hmm. On second thought, that makes him really valuable.

"The rolling stone article is conspiracy drivel..."

Thoughts:

1) The linked article is not the article published on paper in Rolling Stone, although confusingly it has the same name.

2) A Slashdot comment is not meant to be a complete discussion of anything. A Slashdot comment can alert you to the need to do further research.

3) The actual Rolling Stone article in the paper edition only says things that have been reported elsewhere.

4) The bankers certainly knew there would be a crash, and that they would profit from the crash, and that the crash would be very destructive to everyone else.

5) Matt Taibbi's article, The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope lacks any humor. It's just stupid. In number 26, he guesses that the pope lives, and he dies. The point of the article seems to be that the pope gets less respect now; a big difference from 50 years ago. But it's a terrible article.

6) What is important is not what someone said, but the facts.

46 of 50.

Press outlets struggle with maintaining integrity and advertising dollars. Film at 11.

Seriously, why are people acting like the gaming press is any different from the "real" press? From the New York Times to my local "free" weekly, this kind of stuff happens all the time. Gaming journalism is no different than regular journalism. It's just that it's more blatant in gaming media because their stock in trade is reviews.

this country." I hear Friedman writes hilarious books.

Who, in his autobiography, admitted to lying to animal shelters so that he could adopt their cats, take them home, vivisect and kill them.

Of course, it's also possible that you're not thinking at all, that you're trying to use "Slashdot thinks Republican leaders would kill kittens" as some sort of slur against Slashdot, because you didn't know that until a few months ago Senate Republicans were in fact led by a man who killed kittens. For future irony, I suggest accusing the anti-Bush crowd of thinking that Bush would illegally wiretap our phones without search warrants or that Cheney would shoot a guy in the face.

This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. 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. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

Before anyone actually buys this terrible book please check out this hilarious review:

http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.c fm

And no I will not get any money if you click on the review.

You mean he doesn't know that The World is not Flat?! Despite somebody publishing a hit book proving just that? That level of ignorance is impressive!

Because everyone knows that a '80s TV-G show belongs on late night 'Adult Swim'

All of which might lend Klosterman some pathos if he didn't brag so much about his heterosexual conquests and quasi-cynical manipulation of scores of alleged girlfriends. More disturbing are his obsessions with teen and pre-teen pop culture, as exemplified by a creepy essay on Saved by the Bell -- I HAVE FOUND the metaphor for everything vile in my generation, and its name is Chuck Klosterman by Mark Ames

Now they are doing a two week trial of.... shudder... Saved by the Bell during their Adult Swim Block: Adult Swim 'Saved by the Bell' (note creepy Saved by the Bell homo-erotic image used to advertise the show...)

I wonder how long before they change it to the 'C'-Network or something to de-emphasize cartoons..

Well, at least I have one more season of Venture Brothers to look forward too until they pull the plug....

It's sad though... I saw so many shows I would have missed out on because of Cartoon Network, like the great series Paranoia Agent... I'll just have to pay more attention to the Internet from now on...

Everyone who intends to quote Friedman should be required to read this critique of his book first: http://nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm. It is one of the funniest articles I have read in a long time and it explains what is particularly annoying about Friedman.

Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end--and I'm not joking here--we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.

PS, why would I pay for NY Times editorials when I can get hilarious reviews of Friedman's latest for free from the NY Press's Matt Taibbi?

Much more insightful and entertaining than any NY Times op-ed, Paul Krugman excepted (Krugman: more insightful, not quite as entertaining)

Yeah, yeah--we've heard all about Super Spitzer and his winning battles against Big Bad Wall Street. How could we have avoided them, with every periodical in town on their knees working for his gubernatorial campaign, gurgling up endless column inches of pro-Spitzer spin? We're as happy as anyone that Spitzer is taking on giants of corruption and winning, but let's peek under the tights. Spitzer is less a ballsy bulldog than a run-of-the-mill politicking pussy. Instead of levying the appropriate punishment against Wall Street criminals who defraud their shareholders--that is, sending the CEOs who helm these corrupt companies to an Oz-like prison where they'd learn the joys of Crisco--Spitzer's white-knight act amounts to settling with the "corporate evildoers" for a mere pittance on their billion-dollar balance sheets. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board admits he's harmless, wanting only "a trophy dismissal, a big fine and favorable headlines." And though he rode into office in 1999 vowing to smash public-sector corruption, he's since learned the expedient lesson that it's unwise to ruffle the feathers of the political machine that lays the golden egg of incumbency and higher office--hence his studious failure to go after judicial corruption in the Brooklyn Democratic party.

Good article: George Bush is no conservative

# Fiscal: Government should only spend on those key areas where it is required (National Defense, for example), and it should spend within its means.

Twirlip denies it, but that is conservative by definition. The only inarguable meaning of "Conservative" is "like the tradional way", and traditionally, throughout 250 years of USA history, there was no national debt accumulation.

That wouldn't put a huge dent in the military, which tends to vote republican 80+ percent of the time (I saw a statistic at one time that showed military officers voted republican 8 to 1 over democrat... Here's an article about the Duke Study ).

I'd have to say from my own experience (former military officer talking here) that the percentage is probably higher than they think. I can count on one hand the number of real liberal democrats I encountered during all my years in the military.

Bush is respected by almost all the current and former US military personnel I know, in distinct contrast to Bill Clinton. When I was in the service, many officers and enlisted so despised Clinton that they refused to display any certificates, awards, decorations, citations, etc with his signature on them. Despite the prohibition on using "contemptuous words" against the commander-in-chief and elected officials, most guys were (privately) very frank about how they felt... The level of enmity was really remarkable.

SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN: Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft, calls Moore a coward

read that article, please.

Another example is David Eggers' McSweeney's Books, which is basically the publishing equivalent of an independent record label. This article relates that McSweeney's can do a very good looking hardcover (better than most of what you see at B&N or Borders) for $2.80/copy. Makes you think.

This one says:
For long sections of the film, I didn't take any notes; it's hard to scribble when your jaw is on the floor. ... Visually, the film is astonishing-and nearly unique-because it deploys so much cutting-edge special effects technology with so little fuss. It's arguably the first film with hundreds of spectacularly busy, yet curiously matter-of-fact, digital effects shots that somehow don't take you out of the movie.

Then you should also read this!

Your author in not only an "avowed Marxist" waiting for the communist revolution,

he's dangerous " Peaceful protests are doomed to be ignored. Only a dose of destruction leads to real social change" and "Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence "

and his "facts" are really fiction!

You need to be more careful when you take the "filter" off of your news sources.

I don't have time to educate all the ignorant americans in the world. Open your eyes.

Ahhh, Finally a real challenge! Your author Ted Rall is an excellent writer, and makes a strong case. I had to do some tough research on this one.

I thought communism was dead, but he's an "avowed Marxist" and he says he's waiting for the communist revolution. Ok, kinda peculiar, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

He advocates violence. He says "Peaceful protests are doomed to be ignored. Only a dose of destruction leads to real social change" and "Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence"
Well, that doesn't make him wrong either, but it certainly makes him dangerous. Expecially since he's waiting for a communist revolution.

Nope, what makes him wrong is that his facts are really fiction. No joke. He "quotes" Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban, except the book says nothing of the sort. I bet you don't believe me, well...

I found a website called spinsanity that goes after the idiots on BOTH sides. They soundly thrash Ann Coulter for labeling those who might be against the war "traitors", and they exposed the article you linked to.

In case you can't be bothered to follow the exposed link and read the article, here's a good piece debunking the article you linked to:

To understand just how weak Rall's case is, consider that he argued that the US has oppressed Afghanistan in his previous column , claiming that "[w]e've been at war with Afghanistan for years" and that "[t]his New War is merely an escalation of genocide by trade sanction." How the US could be both "at war with Afghanistan for years" and paying the salaries of Taliban government officials "[a]s recently as 1999" is never explained or even acknowledged.

So, unless you can support the Ted Rall article you linked to, and/or debunk my spinsanity.org article, then you missed again. I'll give you credit though, your link would have been a strong argument if Ted Rall wasn't full of crap. He almost had me fooled too.

Although I'd like to know the positions Mr. Gore might take, I don't think he has any to give. Check this out:

A New Refutation of the Very Possibility of Gore by Crispin Sartwell