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.

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.

"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!

My statement is not hyperbolic. Our national discourse has built-in preferences for those who advocate evil

I agree completely- what our national discourse has a preference for, in its bankruptcy, is film and scenario ideas which a producer would call "bankable". Given we could pact with some big-name stars.

Once any societal obligation to present facts was removed from the broadcast industry, the factual reporting sunk to the level of a crude melodrama, to match and compliment the featured fictional material. At last, complete unity between entertainment and news was achieved. A new military invasion carried no more responsibility than shooting a new adventure blockbuster.

But everybody's heard me rant about this before, so I'll stop.

But yeah, it is sad.

Perhaps he should try Beano.

...is that I was not one of those delivering the pies.

Fwiw, I would have made them square and flat.

Military analysts named in Times exposé appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast nets, cables, NPR

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805130001

A wonderful example of viral marketing, wasn't it?

It is gonna turn out that the entire "terrorist threat" in terms of how much America was endangered and what America needed to do about it, and could do about it, was a hoax!

My apologies to any who work in the "security" industry.

I was going to refer to an article I saw in The Week a few years back about how the regions of brain that process irony are less active in conservatives than liberals, but I couldn't find the article online.

"They muddy their waters to make them look deep"

So that's how the "Big Muddy" got that way!

Push On.

I've read the Friedman article, and I'm not sure that Glenn is being entirely fair- at least in this instance. While it is absolutely true that Friedman screwed up monumentally and repeatedly by conflating Iraq with Afghanistan and Al Qaeda- among a great many other things- his current article does not seem like the call to war Glenn makes it out to be.

Friedman's statement "[w]hen you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore" might be construed as another call for war against Iran- but the context seems to me to be more of a general explanation of how diplomacy is supposed to work in general.

And frankly, it seems pretty accurate. Even if you don't agree with the morality of threatening a country with war, it does happen to be one of the methods (along with economic and diplomatic incentives and pressures) of conducting diplomacy. Whether or not your favored method works is another matter entirely.

But then Friedman bluntly states "We're not going to war with Iran, nor should we." That is pretty unambiguous, and I don't see any of the normal right-wing hints that "war is the only option left" which might have been contained in his past articles. Perhaps Friedman has changed his mind about the merits of warfare with Iran- at least for the time-being, in which case he ought to get at least a crumb of credit.

I would be much more interested in reading Glenn's opinion on whether or not Friedman is right about Iran funding Hezbollah, or on how much influence Syria and Iran have on the Palestinian Territories. Since Friedman's article is mainly about how Iran and Syria are supposedly influencing the Middle East for the worse and how an Obama Administration might work to change that, it would be more immediately useful than a blanket condemnation for Friedman’s past actions- however deserved.