"They muddy their waters to make them look deep." So of course Mr. Friedman needed "three rivers of rage." One river of rage would have been so pedestrian (not to mention "unserious"). See, the three rivers eventually merge just as they flow into the Persian Gulf. All of which fades into a picture postcard of China's Three Gorges Dam - thus re-igniting the Cold War. Is this guy Friedman a genius or what!

In a holly shrub outside my window, a red cardinal returned today. What pleasant music flows through a bird thorax! Who color coded the feather design wardrobe? Who put the white ring around the pretty duck's neck?

What is important to us?

We've all have decided.

`

There is a void of soul human. The human will act, and dress out of order. Intelligence isn't processed if one is void of soul. Thanks Holly. The natural attuned world of Nature observes. Watch how a animal, bird, with health will skip, and can have heathy desires to join in union.

What a dance. I watched turkey's do a fluffy dance yesterday.

There is a agony and travail. It comes with the beauty of love. The Love Infection is strong to the uttermost? Whoa. Giddy. Plato said to Diotima that he wanted a teacher who can reason and master love arts.

Plato did not seek a imitation. There is a conscience. There is a buzzing black and yellow bumble bee buzzing at the moment here at my window. Wild. Plato wanted to greet souls.

Plato called 'um souls that are pregnant. Wondrous beauty. It's trouble, misery, and mystery.

It's gotta be love!

We are apart of every person we have ever met.

Though, admittedly, it can be hard to tell the difference between satire and actual NeoCon arguments these days since the latter have become so outlandish and extreme that it's hard to write in a genre reliant on outlandishness and extremity to deliver its message.

Even worse, conservatives are notorious for not understanding irony (a study published. These days, a satirist runs the risk of having his ideas co-opted by conservatives who took them literally, so don't be surprised to see the "Persian Empire Argument" start coming up to defend action against Iran, complete with facile comparisons of the U.S. to the Macedonians/Greeks, the spreading of Hellenic civilization as spreading democracy, and John McCain as the new Alexander (albeit much older and less gay-gay-gay), the only man with the guts to cut the Gordian Knot of the Middle East with a few thousand tons of cluster bombs and a bunker-buster nuke or two.

The fleshy phallus thing wanders around sightless until the multi-egged (scratch that) eyed thing it bumps into grunts one out, so now the fleshy thing is a one-eyed phallus? And that sells Zunes?

Please, make it stop.

Here, P, a bit of a non-sequitur, but back atcha. 8')

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/the-first-genet.html

This is entirely Greenwald's doing, and entirely his fault. His construction is an abomination before God and Man, and now Bamage is just making it worse and worse.

The construction "phallic eyes" needs...not to be taken out, shot, buried--that would not be right, it would not be humane. But it does need to be trapped, in a have-a-heart humane trap, and transported to a lovely carribean island (uninhabited) where it can live out its life frolicking in the surf and eating coconuts. By no means should it be allowed to be seen by humans ever again, and most of all it should be kept away from small children.

If someone would take up a fund to do this, I'll gladly make a generous (for me) contribution.

Much obliged!

It's hardly in dispute that Iran is engaged in power plays in the Middle East. It would be much more surprising if they weren't meddling. They have legitimate national interests in what goes on in the region and they have factions in their government who would love to preside over a confederation of greater Shiastan extending through Mess-O-Potamia.

What, exactly, is our national interest in this issue?

I don't believe that curbing Iran's desire for control in the region is worth the blood and treasure our punditocracy thinks it's worth. But, I feel the same way about Iraq -- only more so. America is not infinitely wealthy. Our "newsmedia" no longer even covers the issue of exactly how much money is being pissed away every day on sustaining our presence in Iraq. Our world will not be forever unipolar; there are at least 4 nations or blocs which could grow and organize sufficiently over the next decade to provide us a serious run for our money (literally).

I'd far rather see Iran piss away it's peoples' wealth on sundry clients than watch our government do likewise.

but I just wanted to mention that if a person should hit that "read other letters" button, they will find all of a correspondent's letters in a format just like the "Letters" pages.

It might be a good thing to do if a person like you or me wanted to get a sense of whether a poster is worth your time.

And aren't we all, as the great Bob Dylan (nee' Zimmerman) noted: tired of wasting all my precious time?

Oh, don't think twice, it's all right!

Friedman took exactly the same stand as Rev. Wright on 9/11: essentially that our chickens came home to roost.

The difference between the two -- what dictates that one is insane and one is lauded -- is what they support going forward. If you are peace loving, you have very little free speech. If you support wanton murder, you can say ANYTHING and not get hung by your words.

Check it out against other examples. My statement is not hyperbolic. Our national discourse has built-in preferences for those who advocate evil -- preferences enforced not only by Fox or the WSJ editorial page (known trash), but by ABC, NPR, NYT etc., whose impact is more insidious given their liberal/MSM reputations.