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Thomas Friedman on Energy
2008-09-07 18:59:00 Thomas Friedman, economics columnists for the New York Times, appeared on Meet the Press this morning and made three statements that are likely provocative. 1) He said that the country that develops a viable alternative energy system will lead the world economy for the future. 2) He said t
Thomas Friedman Misleads Jews on Full Obama Picture By Clever Omission
2008-05-21 03:53:00 Tom Friedman, man of the New York Times, writes to assure American Jews that Obama is no threat whatsoever to Israel?s security. His column is a nasty little piece of work, not for what it says, but for what it doesn?t say. It opens with a series of scare quotations purported from Barack Obama, all ...
By: Webloggin
Mandela's First Memo to Thomas Friedman
2008-05-21 01:54:00 by Arjan El Fassed Memo to: Thomas L. Friedman (columnist New York Times) From: Nelson Mandela (former President South Africa) ... Click on the headlines to read the full story!
Opposition for Opposition?s Sake? Thomas Friedman Gets a Pie in the Face (w
2008-04-24 21:21:00 As if on cue, the kind of oppositional tactics used by radical environmentalists at a few Earth Day 1970 events that I just wrote about, emerged on Earth Day 2008 when Thomas Friedman took a pie in...
By: Green Options
Thomas Friedman: What Can Brown Do For You?
2008-04-24 19:37:00 Soup Cans has the video and stills of Thomas Friedman Soupy Sales pie-in-the-face. The NYT columnist and "The World Is Flat" author (I'm still plodding through it), dodged the confection thrown by a wacko babe during his speech at Brown University.
By: Chickaboomer
NYT Columnist Thomas Friedman Hit With Pies During Keynote
2008-04-24 16:20:00 Thomas Friedman Hit in the Face by a Pie Here’s another example of left-wing idiots trying to suppress speech they don’t agree with. Our college campuses have become a cesspool of misguided left-wing ideology that is borderline dangerous. Thomas Friedman was invited by Brown University to speak and he deserved to be heard. Related PostsWeather Channel Founder Calls For Lawsuit Against Al Gore Over Climate ChangeVideo: North Carolina GOP Attack Ad Against ObamaVideo: New Hillary AdGeorgia Says Russia Shot Down Its Drone, Releases VideoVideo: Barack Obama Gives Hillary The Finger
By: The Hot Joints
Even a stopped clock
2007-10-24 07:04:00 Thomas Friedman is still full of shit but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. He proves it in today's column:Remember Iraq Now he gets it wrong up front: To the extent that the surge has worked militarily, it is largely because of what Iraqis have done by themselves for themselves ? Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders rising up against pro-Qaeda Sunni elements, taking back control of their villages and towns, and aligning themselves with U.S. forces to do so. Some Shiites are now doing the same.Well he's right that it's about what the Iraqis have done but he's wrong about what they have done. In reality the surge looks like a success because the Shia have completed the ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Friedman then shows an amazing grasp of the obvious: If you see that ? if you see Iraqi politicians surprising you by doing things they?ve never done before, like forging a self-sustaining political compromise and building the fabric of a unified country, then you can allow yourself some...
Quickest way to end the war......
2007-10-07 19:17:00 ......make them pay for it.I have thought for some time that the quickest way to end the war would be to add a surtax to the incomes of the top ten percent, the bloated oil company profits and the profits of the largest corporations. These groups would be ready to pull out in no time.That is the subject of Tom Friedman's commentary this morning,Charge It to My Kids Every so often a quote comes out of the Bush administration that leaves you asking: Am I crazy or are they? I had one of those moments last week when Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, was asked about a proposal by some Congressional Democrats to levy a surtax to pay for the Iraq war, and she responded, ?We?ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.?Yes, those silly Democrats. They?ll raise taxes for anything, even ? get this ? to pay for a war!Of course if Tom had been paying attention for the last six years he would realize that this kin...
NYTimes: Thomas Friedman Wants America to Get Over 9/11
2007-10-02 00:00:00 -By Warner Todd Huston Thomas Friedman thinks you are "stupid" if you still care about the atrocity committed against this country by Islamofascists in New York on 9/11/2001. He thinks "9/11 is over" and we all should just move on. Even worse, he has decided that we are no longer a ...
By: Publius Forum
NYTimes: Thomas Friedman Wants America to Get Over 9/11
2007-09-30 17:01:00 Thomas Friedman thinks you are “stupid” if you still care about the atrocity committed against this country by Islamofascists in New York on 9/11/2001. He thinks “9/11 is over” and we all should just move on. Even worse, he has decided that we are no longer a great country, but are filled with seemingly meaningless ...
Thomas Friedman: Hooked on War
2007-09-06 13:17:00 by Norman Solomon Reading his “Letter From Baghdad” column in the New York Times on Sept. 5, you’d never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States — “everyone loves seeing us tied down here” — stuck in the “madness that is Iraq.” And he concludes that the good Americans who have been sent to Iraq will not be deserved by Iraqis “if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids.” The column, under a Baghdad dateline, is boilerplate Friedman: sprinkled with I-am-here anecdotes and breezy geopolitical nostrums. For years now, the man widely touted as America’s most influential journalist has indicated that his patience with the war in Iraq might soon run out. But, like the media establishment he embodies, Friedman can’t bring himself to renounce a war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue. On the last day of November 2003 — eight months...
Iraq? Friedman Doesn't See It
2007-08-19 05:26:00 Seeing Is BelievingBy Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesIs the surge in Iraq working? That is the question that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will answer for us next month. I, alas, am not interested in their opinions.It is not because I don?t hold both men in very high regard. I do. But I?m still not interested in their opinions. I?m only interested in yours. Yes, you ? the person reading this column. You know more than you think.You see, I have a simple view about both Arab-Israeli peace-making and Iraqi surge-making, and it goes like this: Any Arab-Israeli peace overture that requires a Middle East expert to explain to you is not worth considering. It?s going nowhere.Either a peace overture is so obvious and grabs you in the gut ? Anwar Sadat?s trip to Israel ? or it?s going nowhere. That is why the Saudi-Arab League peace overture is going nowhere. No emotional content. It was basically faxed to the Israeli people, and people don?t give up land for peace...
Ticket to Nowhere
2007-07-18 05:53:00 I find Tom Tom's outrage over Bush's handling of the Iraq war to be cynically humorous. This guy has been behind the neo-con policy since it's inception. He still is. He's merelyl bent out of shape over the incompetent execution and resulting quagmire. ("Good morning, View Nam!") That said, at least Tommy Boy seems to have some human feelings in his capitalistic heart for those bearing all of the sacrifice for his previously beloved war.Help Wanted: PeacemakerBy Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesI can?t imagine how I?d feel if I were the parent of a soldier in Iraq and I had just read that the Iraqi Parliament had decided to go on vacation for August, because, as the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, explained, it?s really hot in Baghdad then ? ?130 degrees.?I?ve been in Baghdad in the summer and it is really hot. But you know what? It is a lot hotter when you?re in a U.S. military uniform, carrying a rifle and a backpack, sweltering under a steel helmet and worrying that...
War Drum Beats on The Brain
2007-07-11 06:30:00 Tom Tom Friedman's analysis in his latest Times op ed (scroll down) of how to handle the Iraq fiasco is as full of holes as the aftermath of an insurgent's car bomb explosion in an Iraqi marketplace. Yo--Tom. Absent from your discourse is the fact that the Iraqis -- not the U.S. installed, incompetent puppet government in Iraq -- but the Iraqi people want us out and have said so for years. Bush has said on the record that if the Iraqis want us to go, we'll go. Uh huh. Then why are we still there? We have made Iraq into a literal living hell. Is it any wonder that the people want us to get the hell out of their country? That's point one.Point two: no one is talking about the fact that our tax dollars have built permanent military bases all over Iraq (the Green Zone has been described as the equivalent of a small city) for a reason -- and it has nothing to do with any professed intention to eventually leave Iraq. No one is talking about disbanding these bases. No one is...
Sorry Thomas Friedman, The World Is Round - AlterNet
2007-07-05 09:01:00 Sorry Thomas Friedman, The World Is RoundAlterNet, CA - 2 hours ago"US power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world ...
The Whole World Is Watching
2007-06-27 07:20:00 By Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesThree years ago, I was catching a plane at Boston?s Logan airport and went to buy some magazines for the flight. As I approached the cash register, a woman coming from another direction got there just behind me ? I thought. But when I put my money down to pay, the woman said in a very loud voice: ?Excuse me! I was here first!? And then she fixed me with a piercing stare that said: ?I know who you are.? I said I was very sorry, even though I was clearly there first.If that happened today, I would have had a very different. I would have said: ?Miss, I?m so sorry. I am entirely in the wrong. Please, go ahead. And can I buy your magazines for you? May I buy your lunch? Can I shine your shoes??Why? Because I?d be thinking there is some chance this woman has a blog or a camera in her cellphone and could, if she so chose, tell the whole world about our encounter ? entirely from her perspective ? and my utterly rude, boorish, arrogant, thinks-he-can-bu...
Energy Dud
2007-06-24 07:58:00 The Capitol Energy CrisisBy Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesWhen you watch a baby being born, after a difficult pregnancy, it is so painful and bloody for the mother it is always hard to tell the truth and say, ?Gosh, that baby is really ugly.? But that?s how I feel about the energy legislation passed (and not passed) by the Senate last week.The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my feelings that we?re in a green bubble ? a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate America and presidential candidates about green this and green that, but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a green revolution at scale ? and if you don?t have scale on this you have nothing ? we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.No question, it?s great news that the Democrat-led Senate finally stood up to the automakers, and to the Michigan senators, and said, ?No more ? no more assisted suicide of the U.S. auto i...
The pomposity of Thomas Friedman
2007-06-17 20:49:00 Does Thomas Friedman report or does he opine? He claims the one, many claim the other. This Fox news clip seems to capture the man in a minute. And to me it isn’t a pretty sight. There is something preposterous about this pompous pundit who loves to reduce Big Thoughts to slogans and then, through the pulpit ...
By: Carson's Post
Thomas Friedman Challenges Graduates To Shape the World With ... - exduco.n
2007-06-10 12:22:00 Thomas Friedman Challenges Graduates To Shape the World With ...exduco.net, Italy -- 38 minutes agoThe Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century ...
Friedman's Green Folly
2007-06-03 05:07:00 Friedman gets it half right in today's Times op ed: Politicians continue to play "energy politics" instead of crafting meaningful energy policy. But despite the fact that certain of "America?s corporate icons ? G.M., G.E., A.I.G., DuPont, PepsiCo ? 'have all come out in favor of a national mandatory limit on carbon emissions,'" the problem will never be solved until we demand public financing of our elections. Politicians beholden to corporate campaign donations will never get serious about solving the environmental problem or any other problem as long as they fear biting the hand that feeds them. Further, Friedman's assertion that the only way to solve the energy crisis is to slap a slew of taxes on gasoline guaranteeing that its price will remain at unaffordable levels to millions of Americans whose budgets are already stretched to the limit is shortsighted, elitist, and dead wrong. That kind of thinking makes as much sense as the Energy bigwigs rational for gas price goug...
Iran Arrests Grandma
2007-05-30 06:23:00 Iran Arrests GrandmaBy Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesMan, was I wrong about Iran.I thought this regime was powerful and self-confident, and actually felt strengthened since we destroyed its two main enemies ? the Taliban and Saddam. That could not be further from the truth. This Iranian regime is afraid of its shadow. How do I know? It recently arrested a 67-year-old grandmother, whom it accused of trying to bring down the regime by organizing academic conferences!Yes, big, tough President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ? the man who shows us how tough he is by declaring the Holocaust a myth ? had his goons arrest Haleh Esfandiari, a 67-year-old scholar, grandmother and dual Iranian-U.S. citizen, while she was visiting her 93-year-old mother in Tehran. Do you know how paranoid you have to be to think that a 67-year-old grandmother visiting her 93-year-old mother can bring down your regime? Now that is insecure.It?s also shameful. Haleh directs the Middle East program of the Woodrow Wilso...
Laughing and Crying
2007-05-23 04:56:00 By Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesFirst I had to laugh. Then I had to cry.I took part in commencement this year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one of America?s great science and engineering schools, so I had a front-row seat as the first grads to receive their diplomas came on stage, all of them Ph.D. students. One by one the announcer read their names and each was handed their doctorate ? in biotechnology, computing, physics and engineering ? by the school?s president, Shirley Ann Jackson.The reason I had to laugh was because it seemed like every one of the newly minted Ph.D.?s at Rensselaer was foreign born. For a moment, as the foreign names kept coming ? ?Hong Lu, Xu Xie, Tao Yuan, Fu Tang? ? I thought that the entire class of doctoral students in physics were going to be Chinese, until ?Paul Shane Morrow? saved the day. It was such a caricature of what President Jackson herself calls ?the quiet crisis? in high-end science education in this country that you could only...
Playing the Hand We've Dealt
2007-05-20 06:17:00 By Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesLast week, President Bush appointed a ?war czar,? Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, to oversee everything we?re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan ? which raises the question: Who was doing this job up to now? The answer, amazingly, is no one. We?re like a fine restaurant that has decided five years after it?s opened ? and has lost most of its customers ? that it might be good to hire a head chef. Better late than never. General Lute comes advertised as smart and tough. Good. I hope his first memo to the president starts like this:Mr. President, if you look around the region, all those we?ve tried to isolate ? Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iraqi insurgents and the Taliban ? are stronger today than they were two years ago. We have to reassess our strategy, beginning by facing up to the fact that we?ve fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East.We brought down the hard walls that surrounded Iran by destroying Iran?s two archenemies ? the T...
Failing by Example
2007-05-17 05:02:00 If you can manage to overlook Tom-Tom's chronic inability to recognize his own complicity in instigating the Iraq War, today's op ed does manage to make a few salient points about the Bushies' subsequent strategic political blunders.Failing by ExampleThomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesIf you want to know why we are losing in Iraq, go back and read this story that ran on the front page of The Times on Saturday. It began like this:?Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers. ?You have a Monica problem,? Ms. Ashton was told. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, ?She believes you?re a Democrat and doesn?t feel you can be trusted.? Ms. Ashton?s ouster ? she left for another Justice Department post two weeks later ? was a critical early step in a plan that would later...
Only Halfway There
2007-05-13 07:21:00 By Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesI’m glad Democrats are keeping the pressure on President Bush for a withdrawal date from Iraq. It’s the only way to keep him and Iraqis focused on the endgame. But if Democrats really want to be taken seriously on foreign affairs, they need to recognize that they have only half a policy on Iraq. And it’s the easy half. You can’t be in favor of setting a date to withdraw from Iraq without also being in favor of a serious energy policy to radically reduce our dependence on oil — now. To call for withdrawing from Iraq by a set date, no matter what the situation is on the ground there — without a serious energy plan here — is reckless. All we would be doing is making ourselves more dependent on an even more unstable Middle East, because any U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is likely, in the short run, to be destabilizing.The Middle East today is deeply troubled. If we determine that our efforts to tilt that region in a different direction — by buildin...
Why Bush & Co. Should Resign
2007-05-09 05:50:00 Tom Tom concludes today's Times op ed with this statement about Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his role in (arguably) provoking a war with Israel in Lebanon: "In sum, Mr. Nasrallah may have won popularity for himself and Hezbollah by fighting Israel. But so what? Today, less than a year after a war that Hezbollah called a ?divine? victory, Lebanon is weaker and Israel is stronger. That?s what matters. And that is why, if the Hezbollah leader had any honor, he would resign." Too bad he didn't see any parallels with Bush and his unilateral war against Iraq. Paraphrasing Friedman's closing paragraph: "In sum, Mr. Bush may have initially won popularity for himself and his fellow neo-cons by fighting the imaginary threat of Saddam's Iraq. But so what? Today, after 5 year of fighting and ever escalating violence, Bush -- and America -- are weaker and al Qaeda is stronger. That's what matters. And that is why, if the American President and his administration had any h...
Tom-Tom Beats His Peace Drum
2007-05-02 06:04:00 Oh, boy. I can't wait to hear all your comments on Friedman's latest column. Let 'em rip. For now, I'll just say this: Tom-Tom, the world community is not as gullible, timid and malleable as the American public has been and apparently, still is. Your column is laughable. The Hail Mary PassBy Thomas L. FriedmanThe New York TimesOn Thursday there will be a regional conference in Egypt to discuss stabilizing Iraq, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will represent the U.S. President Bush should go instead and give this speech:I want to take this opportunity to speak to the Arab and Muslim nations gathered here today and to the world at large. I begin with a simple message: I?m sorry. I?m sorry that I rushed into the invasion of Iraq. I honestly believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was wrong, and I now realize that in unilaterally launching the war the way I did, you all feel that I breached a bond of trust between America and the world. Not only did that... |
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