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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman let his power lust just flow throughout the studio of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central on Thursday night. Promoting his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman discussed his concept of America becoming "China for a day," so that his dream of a green revolution -- all those allegedly planet-saving taxes and regulations and product bans -- can be permanently enacted. When Colbert lived up to his conservative character enough to insert that China has a totalitarian regime, Friedman simply replied "It is a measure of the frustration a lot of people in the...

Watching the Bush team wrestle with Iran, North Korea and Iraq reminds me of something that used to be said of the Reagan administration: The right hand never knew what the far right hand was doing. In fact, my bet is that when the inside history of the Bush team is written, we will discover that, contrary to its carefully managed image of a disciplined core operating from consistent, conservative principles, it has actually been one of the most internally divided administrations — ever. The only thing the Bush folks all agreed on was that they would never do anything...

Here’s a little foreign policy test. I am going to describe two countries — “Country A” and “Country B” — and you tell me which one is America’s ally and which one is not. Let’s start: Country A actively helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and replace it with a pro-U.S. elected alliance of moderate Muslims. Country A regularly holds sort-of-free elections. Country A’s women vote, hold office, are the majority of its university students and are fully integrated into the work force. On 9/11, residents of Country A were among the very few in the Muslim world...

Karl Rove, a Cancer on American Politics? "Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is." Posted by: Clay Waters 11/3/2006 10:26:59 AM Columnist Tom Friedman really wants the Republicans to suffer next Tuesday, judging by his Friday column (Times Select required) "Insulting Our Troops, and Out Intelligence." "George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do. "They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and...

Weekend Preview AnalysisNo one has complained about the format, so I'm sticking with it.Of the Sunday shows I'm most interested in ... well, frankly, none of them.  I want to hear what the various Israeli diplomats have to say, but I've been hearing the genocidal rants of the Jihadi's for most of my 51 years of life, so I'm really bored with why their reasons why they are entitled to commit genocide against the Jews and to enslave everyone else, including me an my children.Bremer is trying to cover his butt for all of the screw ups he made while...

Globalization guru Tom Friedman called Lou Dobbs, "a blithering idiot" in a lecture at Yale Law School last week... Friedman, three time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of bestsellers "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and more recently "The World is Flat" (which sold a million and a half copies, far more than Dobbs' viewership), begins his answer. "One of the problems", he begins, explaining that we need leaders who can explain the complexity, not who will just stir the pot, "is we have politicians that are making us stupid, who are throwing sand in our eyes." But then he...

Guests: Governor Rick Perry, (R-Texas); Dr. Ivor van Heerden, Director, LSU Hurricane Center; Aaron Broussard, President, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; Tom Friedman, The New York Times; Maureen Dowd, The New York Times; David Brooks, The New York Times Moderator/Panelist: Tim Russert - NBC News

The New York Times surely once had an institutional policy against cronyism. But between then and now, something must have happened to the Times, or to ethics. Maureen Dowd, whom I actually like when she gets off politics, published a collection of her Bush-bashing columns and the Times, her paper, got it quickly reviewed and (mostly) praised. I thought that strange. Maureen is a big girl now and she ought to hunt and fight for coverage and praise like the rest of us. Stranger still is the saga of Tom Friedman. Those of us in the writing and opinion business...

Recalling how John McCain's "code of honor" is what "separated him from his captors" in communist North Vietnam, on Sunday's Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer casually referred to how he "thought about that as yet another tale of torture and abuse came out about the POW camp we are running at Guantanamo Bay." Schieffer then proceeded to endorse New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's recommendation that "the prison ought to be shut down because the stories about it are so inflaming the Arab world." Schieffer presumed the worst about the uncorroborated charges related to detainee treatment, most of which...

I think it was about five months ago that Press editor Alex Zaitchik whispered to me in the office hallway that Thomas Friedman had a new book coming out. All he knew about it was the title, but that was enough; he approached me with the chilled demeanor of a British spy who has just discovered that Hitler was secretly buying up the world’s manganese supply. Who knew what it meant—but one had to assume the worst "It's going to be called The Flattening," he whispered. Then he stood there, eyebrows raised, staring at me, waiting to see the effect...

The other night on ABC's "Nightline," the host, Ted Koppel, posed an intriguing question to Malcolm Gladwell, the social scientist who wrote the path-breaking book "The Tipping Point," which is about how changes in behavior or perception can reach a critical mass and then suddenly create a whole new reality. Mr. Koppel asked: Can you know you are in the middle of a tipping point, or is it only something you can see in retrospect? Mr. Gladwell responded that "the most important thing in trying to analyze whether something is at the verge of a tipping point, is whether it...

 The New York Times' web site says that today's most emailed article was Tom Friedman's column titled Sunday News Quiz. Friedman writes:I'll give you 10 news stories from the past few weeks and you tell me what they all have in common. Friedman than recapitulates, in a sentence or two, ten recent news stories, all of which are intended to reflect badly the Bush administration; the general theme--reminiscent of leftism of the 60s and 70s--is that there is plenty of money for defense, while social programs are being cut. Friedman concludes:So what is the common denominator of all these news...

The de facto Arab Foreign Minister, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has long courted the Arab world and counts among his hosts Arab dictators across the region, now may be tinged by an unfolding scandal involving Saudi Arabia. Over two years ago, Tom Friedman introduced to American audiences a Saudi peace plan which consisted of Israel basically relinquishing control of lands captured in the defensive 1967 War, in return for vague promises of diplomatic recognition by the Arab world. This "peace plan" was created by Saudi Arabia to deflect attention from its role over the years of fomenting...

Many liberals are beside themselves. Things were bearable when they could delude themselves into blaming their loss of power on a "stolen" election. But with this decisive defeat, they're thinking, "It's not our America anymore." As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, "But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do -- they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America...

...There is no doubt that John Kerry showed great skill at embracing deeply contradictory positions, but that does not make him unusual; all politicians have mastered the art of self-contradiction. What was remarkable in this election is that one candidate, President Bush, never changed: He said what he meant and meant what he said. If the Democrats could not appeal to the moral values of people, that fact must have been lost on the 48% of the voters who supported Sen. Kerry.... I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering...

New York Times Urges: Forget 9/11 By Isaiah Z. Sterrett Oct 21, 2004 Forget about 9/11. It’s no longer important. In fact, it never even happened. Just ask Tom Friedman. In a truly revolting column entitled “Addicted to 9/11,” Friedman recently argued that Americans should forget about the slaughter of 3,000 of our fellow countrymen. “[M]any Americans,” he wrote, “are worried…that terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.” (By “many Americans” Friedman means “me and Al Gore.”) Yes, terrorism is transforming our society. Whereas four years...

While visiting Istanbul the other day, I took a long walk along the Bosporus near Topkapi Palace. There is nothing like standing at this stunning intersection of Europe and Asia to think about the clash of civilizations — and how we might avoid it. Make no mistake: we are living at a remarkable hinge of history and it's not clear how it's going to swing. What is clear is that Osama bin Laden achieved his aim: 9/11 sparked real tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East. Preachers on both sides now openly denounce each other's faith. Whether these...

Airline flights into the U.S. are canceled from France, Mexico and London. Armed guards are put onto other flights coming to America. Westerners are warned to avoid Saudi Arabia, and synagogues are bombed in Turkey and France. A package left on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art forces the evacuation of 5,000 museumgoers. (It turns out to contain a stuffed snowman.) National Guardsmen are posted at key bridges and tunnels. Happy New Year. What you are witnessing is why Sept. 11 amounts to World War III — the third great totalitarian challenge to open societies in the last...

If anyone doubts the power of the media to transform the policies of democratic governments, one need only to look to The New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman for proof. It was Friedman, after all, who a year ago invented the so-called Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East. Last February, reacting to the precipitous drop in American public support for the kingdom in the wake of mounting evidence of Saudi sponsorship of al-Qaida and hatred for the US generally, the House of Saud invited Friedman to Riyadh as part of a PR campaign. Over dinner in a gilded...

What loopiness masquerading as hard truths in Tom Friedman's column today. How on earth does rescinding future tax cuts help us win the war against Islamism, Saddam and al Qaeda? How on earth does firing Karl Rove help that either? Or cutting farm subsidies? Friedman has largely managed to absorb the idea that we are at war and that we need to win. good for him. But because there's not a Democratic president, he's conflicted. So he's telling Bush to adopt Democratic policies at home in order to win abroad. Run that by me again, would you? It's not that...