Thomas Friedman's column today, "So Popular and So Spineless", bashes Europe and other parts of the world for no longer liking the United States so much thanks to the tender Presidential mercies of George W. Bush.  That is not the part I agree with: I think that after bigfooting in the Middle East, claiming the right to torture, blocking treaties on land mines and global warming, and cheerfully signing off from G-8 as "the biggest polluter in the world," we're not exactly in a position right now to demand that the rest of the world like us.  If Obama wins, we can start to move in that direction; if not, probably not.

The part I do agree with is that the world won't like a world where China and Russia are the ascendant powers.  Friedman provides the example of the Security Council resolution in Zimbabwe.  And, about that, he's right.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Poor Tommy Friedman in today’s New York Times suddenly noticed—nearly eight years after the penultimate event heralding all the disastrous indicators he trots out ¹—that America is in "debt and decline."  It all happened so fast, just in 2001 we had a terrific savings rate and budget surplus, and now well hell, all of mighty sudden we’re at "a 34-year low."  Thanks for telling us how screwed we are, Tommy, it’s so news to us.  When your brain can tell the reader why this happened with empirical proposals to fix it we might even think of you as a journalist.

Ta dah......... another stunning assessment of George W. Bush, his policies, and what a real president would do from Thomas Friedman in today's New York Time's column. Yeah, the inescapable Tom Friedman: a cheerleader of the war in Iraq. A public intellectual and New York Times Columnist... part of that liberal media about which we hear so much.

Thomas Friedman has a superb column in Sundays' New York Times about what he calls the Bush administration's "massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy."  And it gets better after that.

He discusses how everything the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans have proposed would further INCREASE our dependence on oil, rather than decreasing that dependence as we need to be doing.  And even the steps that might (very temporarily, and only after a significant lag time) decrease our dependence on FOREIGN oil would, by reducing the market incentives for conversion to renewable resources, ultimately increase our dependence not only on oil generally, but also on foreign oil.

Forgive me if I feel a need to call out Thomas Friedman for his June 11 column titled "Obama on the Nile."

My beef is with the media in general -- a set of folks I wouldn't normally associate with Friedman -- but here's how he begins:

This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s not my problem.

The column is about the Muslim world liking Barack Obama, but that's not what I'm concerned with. What concerns me is what Friedman thinks about his role at this juncture in history.

I don't know why Thomas 'Six Months' Friedman bothers me so much. Well actually I do. How can a bullshit artists who cares about investment potentional be sold as someone that understands the Middle East social environment.
 
After reading today's article, it really was crystal clear. But before talking about Friedman, a description of the Israeli economic situation from the BBC (Israeli economy is like ours, the really rich make rules, get thousands handed to them in envelopes, blame everyone else for the ills of the country...).

Israel's economic growth has forged a wider gap between the rich and the poor, and in so doing the otherwise welcome prosperity has had the peculiar effect of undermining some of the values that used to unite the country's people.

bbc

So, how does the esteemd New York Times describe this:

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world.

link to satan

In Act of Penance, NY Times
Reporters Climb Building

(reposted from my blog www.richieville.com)

Richieville News Service, NEW YORK, NY
The New York City Police announced today that contrary to earlier reports, the two men who scaled the outside of the 52-story New York Times skyscraper in Manhattan were not publicity-hungry thrill seekers. Instead they were the first of a group of Times staffers who are climbing the building as an act of penance for their failure to challenge the Bush administration's rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, other groups of current and former reporter-penitents were engaged in similar symbolic acts of contrition.

    Over at TPM Cafe, this week Fareed Zakaria's new book, "The Post American World" is being discussed.  In it, Zakaria repeats the theory of globalization's most toxic and unproven claim:  that countries which participate in trade together do not make war upon one another.  So if you want to prevent war, just participate in deep and interwoven trade with the other country and everything will be hunky-dory.

It's a lie.  Moreover, it is a dangerous lie that in real life as opposed to theoretical economics inhabited by that mythical creature, the "Rational Economic Man", was spectacularly refuted in the 20th century.

We begin with Mr. Frank Rich with The All-White Elephant in the Room. In form with wit and reason, Rich doesn't attempt to prohibit asking the "Wright" questions, but wonders why we aren't asking the "Hagee" questions. All of this, of course, wrapped in a delicious reminder that, yes, race is still an issue in America.
Oh, the double standard:

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama's long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama's judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates -- and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them -- we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

Emphasis mine. It's a good read, don't miss it.

Second is Friedman...

Last night on Bill Moyers I saw an interview with Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky of the world famous in Poland Institute of Expertology.

They were on Moyers to discuss their brilliant new work of satire: Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq: The Experts Speak, a compendium of quotes abridged with the occasional established facts about the expert prognostication we've been lucky to have endured during the run-up to and the duration of the War in Iraq.

The book opens with this quote:

You need someone in office who will tell the truth.

George W. Bush, Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency
October 17, 2000.

Experts agree: this is an essential quality of distinguished leadership. Even in Poland.

Thomas Freedman writes today on why the gas tax strategy is stupid and why we're not investing in alternative energy.  Man are the politics of this country stupid.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

In today's column, "Dumb as we wanna be" Thomas Friedman has discussed the McCain-Clinton gas holiday idiocy, along with the larger issue of failure to provide stable and significant incentives for clean energy and the attendant loss of American leadership in clean energy technology.

This is, of course, but one symptom of the still larger malaise of government run by and for the benefit of the biggist corporate vested interests.  We can hardly expect more from such a government.

What has boggled me is trying to understand what we can do to check and reverse this disastrous situation.  Certainly putting a Democrat like Obama in the White House and increasing Democratic majorities in Congress is a step in the right direction.  But I can't forget how ineffective the Democratic loyal opposition has been in moderating the course of this administration, even since 2006.

Tom Friedman is, for better and for worse, now back from his op-ed sabbatical.  In today's column, he hits a bulls-eye on the McCain/Clinton gas tax holiday.  Meanwhile, in his latest blog entry, Paul Krugman proves, once and for all, that he's in the tank for HRC.

Krugman openly acknowledges that the whole idea is nuts.  Like Friedman, he points out the economic fallacies behind the move.  Unlike Friedman, however, he lets HRC off the hook for her latest bad idea.

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, was pied while giving a keynote speech on Earth Day in Providence, RI. His talk, titled "Green is the new Red White and Blue", was about how corporate environmentalism (putting a price on the atmosphere, and investing in biofuels and techno-fixes) can restore America to its "natural place in the global order."

Read one for YouTube video...

This will be a short diary, especially given that I usually have trouble keeping mine down to a reasonable length.   But I mostly wanted to get this MoveOn ad out there, and hope that some friendly frontpager puts this ad up in the higher end real estate.

Though I called it an anti-McCain ad, it really is a condemnation of everyone who has kept the Iraq disaster going -- from Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?) to Tom Friedman, inventor of the infamous "Friedman Unit" (a phrase I hear the Mustached One despises).

The ad is directly below the break:

As a writer, Thomas Friedman is a goddamned miracle.

In the space of the first four paragraphs of today's column in the New York Times, Friedman compares US-friendly Persian Gulf countries to carnival workers at a weight-guessing booth, and also to the stuffed animals that a lucky carnival-goer could win at that booth.  

The United States is -- I think, having read this three times -- like a carnival-goer trying to win a stuffed animal at the weight-guessing booth.  But Friedman's point is not that the United States wants to win a US-friendly Persian Gulf country, which is what you'd think Friedman must mean, if those countries are stuffed-animal prizes at the weight-guessing booth; and his point is not that the United States wants to win something from a US-friendly Persian Gulf country, which is what you'd think he must mean if those countries are the carnies running the booth.

His point, which I confess I did not see coming, is that Iran is like a drug dealer.  Paragraph five:

Hot on the heels of the Joe Klein fiasco comes Thomas Friedman. In a column in yesterday's NYT, he writes a "letter"

There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this:

To: President Ahmadinejad

From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence

Subject: America

From Friedman: “The jihadists know that if they can defeat America — in the heart of their world — it would influence the whole region.”

Hmm, the domino theory again.

But I feel Friedman on this one. We cannot succumb to the jihadist. And the way to beat him is simple: Use all our steadfastness and resolve to militarily turn Iraq into a democratic utopia. If we don’t, the consequences are dire. The terrorists will “set up shop in Iraq”, and get nuclear weapons from Iran. THEY will then drag their nukes across the Mexican border (the sneaky bastards will be wearing sombreros presumably). And THEY will blow up Los Angeles. After which THEY’ll dance on the Arab Street. THEY’ll hit their women with more vigor. And worst of all, THEY’ll laugh.

THEY. Must. Be. Stopped