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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...