Free Republic

Nationalization has its consequences. Just note the rhetoric coming from some prominent voices on the left. The government's foray into offering services normally provided by the private sector by bailing out aging mortgage giants gives it the power to implement "green" building requirements, according to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He suggested Sept. 23 that any construction financed by government-funded mortgages should be certified "green" according to the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. "If we're going to be in the mortgage business as a government, then every government-funded mortgage -...

If John McCain can win this election race with a 50-pound ball called "George W. Bush" wrapped around one ankle and a 50-pound ball called "The U.S. Economy" wrapped around the other, then he deserves to represent America in the next Olympics in any race he wants -- swimming, cycling or track -- I don't care how old he is. He would be the Michael Phelps of politics. I confess, I watch politics from afar, but here's what I've been feeling for a while: Whoever slipped that Valium into Barack Obama's coffee needs to be found and arrested by the...

In his latest [book], "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," Thomas L. Friedman makes it clear that he wants to improve conditions for mankind. "I start from the bedrock principle," he writes, "that we as a global society need more and more growth." But because of climate change (hot), ever-more people (crowded) and higher material aspirations of all in a competitive global economy (flat), he believes that the world's growth is leading us toward catastrophe. Mr. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, describes this threat in the grimmest of terms. We should expect disasters "of a biblical scale," humans are...

In a recent article in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote that NATO is essentially irrelevant. It had been replaced by what he tongue-in-cheek calls NASTY: Nations Allied to Stop TYrants. NASTY is made up of what he calls three "like-minded English-speaking allies", America, Australia and Britain, with occasional French involvement. He claims "what these four countries have in common is that they are sea powers, with a tradition of fighting abroad, with ability to transport troops around the world and with mobile special forces that have an 'attitude'." All four nations, he notes enjoy playing either rugby or...

Agreeing with THOMAS FRIEDMAN: ...<excerpt> ... ... But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.So let us now coin the Mbeki...

Obama and the Jews Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said there has to be “an end” to the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank “that began in 1967.” Yikes! Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama said that not only must Israel be secure, but that any peace agreement “must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people.” Yikes! Pssst. Have you heard? I have. I heard that Barack Obama once said “the establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it.” Yikes!...

...They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil. Our president’s latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia...

ABC’s April 11 “World News with Charles Gibson” is showing they finally get it – ethanol production and high energy costs are causing food shortages worldwide. “[P]rices are rising across Africa, pushed up by the cost of oil and demand for biofuels,” ABC correspondent Jim Sciutto said. “Those biofuels are in fact a large part of the equation,” ABC correspondent David Muir added. “Many farmers around the world, who once grew wheat and rice, now grow corn and sugar cane instead, to produce ethanol a more lucrative market.”

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 "fear," that we have a dilapidated infrastructure, and that while America used to be "the gold standard," he believes "We aren’t anymore." Friedman is falling for the typical, leftist doom-and-gloom scenario and imagines that China is better than we are, Europe is more inviting, and...

Thomas Friedman shouldn't be so modest. His opening line in his column today proclaims his inability, based on his current trip to Iraq, to see the big picture there. But buried in his description of three experiences from his journey is a conclusion as unequivocal as it is harrowing. In the first anecdote in [subscription-required] Letter from Baghdad Friedman describes his experience visiting a U.S. Army platoon based in Baghdad's Ameriya neighborhood. As the author explains, this had been an affluent Sunni area that had first been ravaged by Shia militias and then by pro-Al Qaedi Sunnis who had 'imposed...

<p>CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 has issued a new video tape calling on Muslims to unite in jihad, or holy war, and support the Islamist movement in Iraq, a U.S.-based intelligence monitoring group said Wednesday.</p> <p>Ayman al-Zawahri is seen in the one-hour and 35 minutes tape dressed in white and addressing topics from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian territories and Egypt, said the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors al-Qaida messages.</p>

I'm actually beginning to think something could be afoot at the New York Times. On Monday, one columnist extolled the virtues of that fount of Western civilization, Hellenism. Tuesday, another columnist claimed freedom and liberty are distinct creations of Western civilization. Today, the celebrated Thomas Friedman offers up a laundry list of generalizations about Arabs that - from the keyboard of a conservative - would normally merit a Times editorial rebuke for ethnic stereotyping. Among Friedman's observations in his subscription-required column Mideast Rules to Live By: "What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All...

In a column written by Thomas Friedman for the New York Times, he asks "How dumb are we? It's your typical Bush hit piece, but one of his assertions caused me to up chuck my oatmeal. George Bush, Dick Chenet and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid.They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry - a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Bush and Cheney never ran away from combat service- and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.(bolf type is mine) The person that...

by Mark Finkelstein October 11, 2006 - 06:42 Not the smallest bird doesn't fall but liberal pundits blame it on George W. Bush. A refreshing change of pace this morning, then, in the person of Thomas Friedman, who writes that the major responsibility for avoiding future international catastrophe lays not at the feet of the current occupant of the White House, but in Moscow and Beijing. In the subscription-required The Bus Is Waiting, Friedman propounds the theory that the nuclearized N. North Korea and Iran will inevitably lead to a string of countries across Asia and the Middle East developing...

Some time back, The New York Times Foreign Affairs writer, Thomas Friedman (liberals genuflect here), wrote a fascinating tome entitled The Lexus and the Olive Tree. I was living and working in Minneapolis when I had the chance to see him speak about the book. By the way, if I heard him correctly, he said he had grown up in St. Louis Park, which is where pesky Air America liberal Al Franken now lives. Coincidence? The point of the book was based on some thoughts he had, in having seen the advanced robotics being used by Toyota to create their...

by Mark Finkelstein September 5, 2006 - 20:32 In the coming hours and days, my colleagues at MRC and NewsBusters are sure to provide comprehensive, in-depth analysis of Katie Couric's debut this evening as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. From the opening segment, whose message was that things are worse in Afghanistan than you realize, to an interview with MSM foreign policy fave Thomas Friedman decrying tax cuts, to anti-McDonald's crusader Morgan Spurlock, ahem, spuriously trying to pass himself off as an opponent of hype, it was all pretty predictable liberal stuff. But Katie did - unintentionally no...

In his recent bestseller, "The World Is Flat," Thomas Friedman warned Americans about the challenges of an era of increased globalization and international competition. In an ever "flattening" world, many jobs can easily be outsourced to skilled, lower-cost workers in other countries. Today, American workers have to compete against workers from around the world. Friedman explained what this should mean to American students by recounting a warning he offered his daughters: "Girls, when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, 'Tom, finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' My advice to you is:...

by Mark Finkelstein April 19, 2006 On this morning's Today show, NY Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman expressed the astonishing wish that the price of crude oil . . . go to $100/barrel ASAP. Friedman's theory is that extremely high oil prices are desirable because they would induce behavioral changes that would ultimately decrease demand and force oil prices way down. Here's how the exchange with host Matt Lauer unfolded: Friedman: "I hope the Iranians get as crazy as they want. My attitude toward the president of Iran is 'you go, girl', because the faster we get to $100...

by Mark Finkelstein March 2, 2006 Is it just coincidence? Barely a week after new media from Rush Limbaugh [subscripton required] to this column found the Today show appearance of NY Times foreign-affairs maven Thomas Friedman noteworthy, Today had him back again this morning. Could the new media be driving news choices at the antique? In any case, while the ostensible purpose of Friedman's appearance was to discuss President Bush's current trip to India, his most interesting comments came in relation to Iraq and by extension to the entire Middle East. His notion: the path from dictatorship to democracy in...

by Mark Finkelstein February 24, 2006 If NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman is for many the voice of the center-left foreign policy establishment in the U.S., then his nuanced and not-altogether-bleak assessment of the situation in Iraq on this morning's GMA merits consideration. It was tempting to headline this entry with the provocative notion Friedman floated that perhaps only a Saddam was capable of holding Iraq's fractious components together. But Friedman was by no means endorsing Saddam's despotic rule, musing rather whether Saddam was a cause or an effect. As Friedman put it: "Is Iraq the way Iraq is because...

Thomas Friedman's article, "A shah with a turban" (Views, Dec. 24), poignantly illustrated the rift between Iran's clerical dictatorship and the country's population, especially the youth. However, an inappropriate headline and cartoon by Kal undermined what was informative and valuable in his article. The implication that the shah's reign bears any resemblance to the present regime is inaccurate. Under the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iranians enjoyed incomparably better lives than what they have to endure today; moreover, the prospect for a stable Middle East appeared promising. Jews and other religious minorities thrived and prospered under the shah, who promoted religious...

The Times columnist does foreign policy punditry by clichéOn May 11, Thomas Friedman, America’s most influential foreign affairs columnist, began his twice-weekly New York Times op-ed this way: “In his book ‘The Ideas That Conquered the World,’ Michael Mandelbaum tells a story about a young girl who is eating dinner at a friend’s house and her friend’s mother asks her if she likes brussels sprouts. ‘Yes, of course,’ the girl says. ‘I like brussels sprouts.’ After dinner, though, the mother notices that the girl hasn’t eaten a single sprout. ‘I thought you liked brussels sprouts,’ the mother said. ‘I do,’...

<p>Thursday's bombings in downtown London are profoundly disturbing. In part, that is because a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country. In part, it's because one assault may have involved a suicide bomber, bringing this terrible jihadist weapon into the heart of a major Western capital.</p>

George Bush has a Dick Cheney problem. It's not the one you think: an overbearing, archconservative vice president imposing his will and ideas on a less-seasoned president. No, George Bush has a different V.P. problem. It is the fact that his vice president has made clear that he is not running for president after Mr. Bush's term expires in 2008. So Mr. Bush has no heir apparent. And that explains, in part, why his second term is drifting aimlessly, disconnected from the problems facing the country. "If President Bush had a vice president, or someone who was clearly designated as...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Rich Galen in his Mullings web log today said, "We have to be the dumbest superpower in the history of the planet. The latest example of Liberal intellectual rigor mortis is this business about closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay because of 'allegations of abuse.'" [Snipped comments about Dittocam problem] Mullings continues, "Senator Biden who wants to ride the Gitmo Train all the way to the White House in 2008, is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said on ABC's Sunday show, 'I think we should end up shutting it down, moving...

"Sure, a few may come back to haunt us," wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in arguing to close down the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Who are the "few" that Mr. Friedman is thinking of, and what exactly does he mean by haunting? Perhaps the case of Mohammed al Qahtani, a Guantanamo detainee profiled in the current issue of Time magazine, offers insight. From a Guantanamo logbook, Time reports that interrogators did a number of unpleasant things to al Qahtani to get him to talk. These included shaving his beard, stripping him naked, ordering him to bark...

For those of you who may be queasy about the way the Bush administration is approaching and prosecuting the War on Terror I invite you to consider, for purposes of contrast, the mindset toward foreign policy that springs from the worldview of liberalism. Generally, I refer you to the contrasting reactions of liberals and conservatives to charges against America. Specifically, I refer you to the May 27 column of liberal media icon Thomas L. Friedman, Middle East "expert" and New York Times columnist extraordinaire. If anything, Friedman is often more reasonable than many of his counterparts on the Left. He...

Thomas Friedman wants the wired world to let in the other half of humanity In working on his third book about global trends, Thomas Friedman discovered that the world has become smaller. In fact, so small it's "flat." A columnist for The New York Times, Mr. Friedman loves to travel our round planet like a photon in a fiber optic cable, picking up this hot new trend and that advice from a notable achiever, then collating it all into a globe- spanning metaphor of mega-meaning. In "The World Is Flat," this modern Magellan even admits, "I'm exhausted just writing about...

Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation magazine asks the question, "Can Democracy Survive Bush's Embrace?" Klein writes, “It started off as a joke and has now become vaguely serious: the idea that Bono might be named president of the World Bank.” Bono talks to Republicans as they like to see themselves: not as administrators of a diminishing public sphere they despise but as CEOs of a powerful private corporation called America. "Brand USA is in trouble...it's a problem for business." The solution is "to re-describe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values." Klein continues, “The Bush Administration...

Thomas Friedman recently wrote a column in which he outlined eight rules for Middle East reporting. They included Rule 1: "Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning's paper is out." Rule 3: "The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is commentary." Friedman's insights are good, but he's missed a number of rules that are more commonly followed by his colleagues. These include: Never file stories from an Arab capital; it's dangerous...

Thomas Friedman advises George Bush to make a silent tour of Europe when he meets with leaders on the Continent in February. Friedman believes that the only way for Bush to get people to like him is for the President of the United States to do his Marcel Marceau impression:

In the wake of U.S. aid to help Muslim and other victims of the recent tsunami, Colin Powell suggested that maybe, now that the Muslim world had seen "American generosity" and "American values in action," it wouldn't be so hostile to America.Don't hold your breath waiting for a thank-you card. If the fact that American soldiers have risked their lives to save the Muslims of Bosnia, the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Somalia, the Muslims of Afghanistan and the Muslims of Iraq has earned the U.S. only the false accusation of being "anti-Muslim," trust me, U.S. troops passing out...

For years now it's been clear that the Middle East peace process has left the realm of diplomacy and started to become an industry, with its own G.N.P. of conferences and seminars. But there is a new industry rapidly overtaking it in the Middle East, and that is the "reform industry." Every month there seems to be a new conference on reform in the Arab world. Indeed, I have been attending one here in Dubai, an amazing city-state on the Persian Gulf that is becoming the Singapore of the Arab East. What the reform process and the peace process have...

I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott said. "They call...

Sometimes it’s useful to stand back and ask yourself: If I could vote for anyone for president other than George W. Bush or John Kerry, whom would I choose? I’d choose Bill Cosby — on the condition that he would talk as bluntly to white parents and kids about what they need to do if they want to succeed as he did to black kids and parents a few months ago. The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public...

Well, the numbers are in and the numbers don't lie. At the Madrid aid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged 0 new dollars. Add it all up and the bottom line becomes clear: Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France. Ah, you say, but that's unfair. Germany and France opposed the war, so why should they pay anything more than their share of the paltry E.U. contribution? Actually, it's not unfair, when you remember that before the war France and...

TEL AVIV, Israel -- I learned something new the other night in Tel Aviv. I learned that your neck is actually the weakest part of your body. The Israeli police spokesman taught me that as he explained why the Palestinian suicide bomber's head was blown straight up, like a champagne cork, and was still sitting on a ledge atop the bus stop, like a human gargoyle. It was Tuesday night. I was on my way to Tel Aviv when the Hamas bomber blew himself up outside the Tsrifin base, near our route, so I dashed over. By the time I...

I have been trying to avoid writing about Thomas Friedman. Two years ago, when I had a serious drug problem, one of the worst symptoms was a monomaniacal obsession with Friedman. I called his office regularly from overseas, sent him rambling two-page letters, harassed him in 100 different ways. Once, I even called the office of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and, pretending to be Friedman himself, screamed at Sulzberger’s secretary. I told her that I was pissed, that "Arthur better get his car out of my fucking parking space" and that "golf this weekend [was] out of the f***ing question." I’d...

<p>Friday's Times carried a front-page picture of a skull, with a group of Iraqis gathered around it. The skull was of a political prisoner from Saddam Hussein's regime, and the grieving Iraqis were relatives who had exhumed it from a graveyard filled with other victims of Saddam's torture. Just under the picture was an article about President Bush vowing that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, as he promised.</p>

THE FINE ART OF BEING FOREVER WRONG by Dennis E. Fishel Have you ever noticed that there are people in advisory positions who never seem to be right, but who never lose their jobs? The investment arena has a lot of them, folks who tell you gold is just the ticket when it hasn't been the ticket for damn near 25 years, or who recommend penny stocks as legitimate opportunities for wealth rather than 1-chance-in-10 gambles. One guy, who shall remain unnamed here, fills radio space with ads for seminars on how to take the "dead equity" in your home...

Toogood Reports [Wednesday, March 19, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Whom to Fight? The problem with fighting our Moslem enemies, as many observers have noted, is that the terrorists never identify themselves with any particular nation. Thus, each Moslem nation – excepting the Saudis – enjoys plausible deniability regarding its role in 911. What no one, to my knowledge, has noted, however, is that deniability cuts both ways. Just as Islam could not openly declare war on America, America cannot openly declare war on Islam. But we can fight Islamic nations, while denying that we are fighting Islam. Were America...

I had a note this week from one of Dennis Prager's minions saying Dennis had read a piece of mine with interest. "As you know," it said, "Dennis is not confrontational. His main goal is to clarify issues for his listeners." Actually, it was news to me, but I guessed Dennis might be American since his staff assumed Canadians knew him and his m.o., something media personalities here would not take for granted. So I went on Dennis's show yesterday for an hour. It comes from L.A. and is opposite Dr. Laura's brutal, abusive phone-in (toward her listeners, never the...

Cuckoo in Carolina By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN he ruckus being raised by conservative Christians over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask incoming students to read a book about the Koran — to stimulate a campus debate — surely has to be one of the most embarrassing moments for America since Sept. 11. Why? Because it exhibits such profound lack of understanding of what America is about, and it exhibits such a chilling mimicry of what the most repressive Arab Muslim states are about. Ask yourself this question: What would Osama bin Laden do if he found out that...

Bush's Shame By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OLOMBO, Sri Lanka Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them. Since Sept. 11 all we've heard out of this Bush team is how illegitimate violence is as a tool of diplomacy or politics, and how critical it is to oust Saddam Hussein in order to bring democracy to the Arab world. Yet...

Recent events in the Middle East leave me wondering whether we're witnessing not just the end of the Oslo peace process, but the end of the whole idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When the Palestinians' Intifada II began over a year ago, in the wake of a serious proposal for a Palestinian state by President Clinton, I argued that Palestinians were making a huge mistake. When the party to a conflict initiates an uprising, then suicide bombing, at a time when the outlines of a final peace are on the table — as the Palestinians did...

The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is widely considered a sage on the Middle East, and he certainly is knowledgeable. But sometimes, when you read him, you have to ask yourself: “What kind of a sage says this? Or that? Or this?” I have asked such questions many times, sometimes in public. I am not exactly a Friedmanologist, though I’m an observer, and I commend to readers a piece on the columnist by Michael Wolff, the perceptive and always interesting media critic of New York magazine. On March 17, Friedman had a column praising (though in a backhanded...