When you have an internal midwife fear is a natural response.
Unarmed, internal midwives good for the road back from Switzerland to Iraq, but there is always the danger of getting stuck in Rousseau whenever you are near Switzerland.
He needs to work in a story about the time this cab driver he knew helped deliver a baby in the back seat of his taxi.
Anyhow he is entirely right that I don't want Hobbes to be pregnant with me.
2 - How does Susie Derkins figure into this story?
I don't really pay attention to Times columnists the way you people do but that is an incredibly terrible paragraph.
Stuck inside of Hobbes with the Lockean blues again.
Few people in the American punditocracy are more consistently and persistently dumbassed than Tom Friedman. It shows up most frequently whenever he starts on about the Middle East, but I have a special place in my heart for the six or seven columns a year he writes explaining how the country needs a centrist third party, one that would reject the hardline positions of both major parties and bravely stand up for X, Y, and Z. Where X, Y, and Z are all actual planks of the Democratic Party platform.
Friedman is, to use an oft-borrowed phrase, a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.
Stuck inside of Hobbs with the Santa Fe blues again.
It's a niche outlet, and apparently there's a lot of demand in the niche for foolishness masquerading as seriousness.
I know that when our kids were born, making sure our midwife was well-armed was very important to us. That Hobbesean phase during the c-section was pretty dicey.
If only America had lent its power to the anti-Saddam forces, just imagine how well Iraq would be doing instead of floundering around in a Hobbesian breech-birth.
"Hobbesian" rhymes with "cohesion", right?
10: At their convention in Charlotte, I'd love to see someone put forward a motion to change the official name of the party from "Democratic Party" to "Centrist Third Party of the United States."
For a moment, I was looking for the "like" button for MAE's comment. FACEBOOK, WHAT HATH THOU WROUGHT?
Friedman is a weirdly mesmerizing speaker. He's mastered sounding sensible and compelling while spouting nonsense.
Muddy Waters went down to Louisiana to get him a mojo hand, which he used to have all you wimmins at his command.
Friedman made a different choice. He decided to have all the old, rich, white men at his command.
Its the only way to explain Friedman's appeal.
Friedman should have clarified whether he's refering to the traditional Iraq, or the Roth Iraq. Either way, well-armed external midwifes should be invested in the rye bums in theatre.
A Roth Iraq you have to pay a penalty if you need to access your midwife arms before Switzerland.
Friedman really is the worst of the worst of the serious, respected thinkers in the media.
27 s/b "serious" and "respected"
22: As you go up the stairs into the lobby.
23: When I was a kid, the nuns explained that if we were good, we would go to heaven, and if we weren't, we would go to "the other place." Now I know what they were talking about!
it is the white man's burden to be that well-armed midwife.
He needs to work in a story about the time this cab driver he knew helped deliver a baby in the back seat of his taxi.
He could adapt a Malvina Reynolds song.
Serendipitously, I have a friend who is beginning doula training in a month, who is also looking for someone to teach her to shoot. I think her politics are significantly different from what Friedman envisions, however.
I always thought "the other place" was "in the butt."
In other words, 23 gets it exactly right.
I just realized that Friedman is basing his reasoning on the recently-discovered original first-draft wording of the Second Amendment:
A well regulated Midwife, being necessary, to the security of a free, State the right, of, the people, to keep and bear Arms, shall not be, infringed.
In other words, 23 gets it exactly right.
This was the subtext of my 30 also.
Fuck Friedman. Doesn't exist for me.
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Syrian Revolt Richard Seymour, tl, vicious comment section.
Libya, Syria, and left Islamophobia ...Louis Proyect
Reflexive anti-imperialism and a romance with revolution can both cloud the understanding. And Conradian pessimism and humanism just ends with withdrawal and surrender to the bourgeois. Complicated.
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Greenwald's basic point is also worth repeating. Friedman is saying "To avoid the same outcome, we need to do the same thing we did last time."
Your tax dollars at work:
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/home-raids-grand-jury-subpoenas-portland-olympia-seattle/6233/
You see, the problem with Iraq was that we brought a knife to a midwife fight.
Ten examples of Friedman bemoaning the lack of Arab Mandelas, three of which also include midwife metaphors. (Via Taibbi)
Friedman's belief in the importance of Great Leaders is no doubt a factor in his ability to mesmerize rich old white men.
41 is fantastic.
There are certain problems with the statement "Without an external midwife or a Syrian Mandela, the fires of conflict could burn for a long time." Although I guess an external midwife is indeed more useful than an internal midwife. Especially for extinguishing fires. The external midwife can tell people to go get buckets of water, whereas the internal midwife is restricted to choosing when to release the amniotic fluid.
Not sure where the Syrian Mandela fits in, though he would at least demonstrate physical bravery so he could be your traditional axe-wielding smoke-braving firefighter.
I have a friend who really likes David Brooks, and in the moment, I can never think of just the right example for why he's awful. My friend liked the one about how certain teaching styles fail boys, since the "sit still in class" stuff isn't how the rest of the world works.
I think my friend takes this seriously since he teaches an Economics course and a ton of his students don't show up, because they have his powerpoint* slides. He started thinking that maybe he should do everything on the chalk board. He makes sure to include some material on the exam that they'll only know if they go to class. But he sort of says to himself, "I could just cash my paycheck of course, but I want to be useful, and what am I doing here if they don't need to come to class."
But does anyone have a list of Brooks's all time worst columns so that I can start working on changing my friend's opinion.
He's probably using beamer or LaTex's whatever
But does anyone have a list of Brooks's all time worst columns so that I can start working on changing my friend's opinion.
Two possibilities. And a fact-check post.
41: God, Friedman is such a fucking moron. Nelson Mandela needs to fly to Bethesda and kick his ass.
Friedman: I was walking down the street in Bethesda one day, and Nelson Mandela kicked my ass! I said "Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela, why'd you kick my ass?" And he said "'Cause you're a fucking moron!"
I am a day late as always but I love 45.