Thomas Friedman, why don't you break up?

Being important CEO types, Tom Friedman’s friends are sometimes 15 minutes late for their breakfast meetings. And when that happens, Tom Friedman thanks his friend for being late, since his guest’s tardiness has given him 15 minutes of peace and quiet, during which he can think peacefully. Hence the title of the chapter.

This is the only way to forge human understanding.

olol

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/07/22/a-brief-theory-of-very-serious-people/

@mtaibbi
Friedman has to be trolling people with this column.

https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/667005782190399488

Really, you don't have to read the rest of it.

looooooooooooooool

TF is beyond both parody and therapy.

Has anyone done a TF generator yet?

the New York Times has one

Ha

http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php

When thinking about the recent troubles, it's important to remember three things: One, people don't behave like muppets, so attempts to treat them as such inevitably look foolish. Muppets never suddenly shift their course in order to fit with a predetermined set of beliefs. Two, Romania has spent decades torn by civil war and ethnic hatred, so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, freedom is an extraordinarily powerful idea: If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then freedom is certainly its faucet.

is that from the random op ed generator or from this week's column?

If u can't tell, does it matter? (Random generator)

Oh boo.

I think a good name for Thomas Friedman's next book would be "The 3D-Printed Scimitar"

"Deutschland, Uber, Allah"

I've had the phrase " disrupting the world of camels" in my head all day.

Taibbi on Mr I Don't Know

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/thomas-friedman-takes-on-isis-20151119

Yep, didn't want to go too deep on the article itself but it's just straight up wrong in every way imaginable. Dubai is a terrible example of Arab start-up capitalism - most Emiratis are pretty much paid to do nothing, Kuwait has invested zip in the post-oil economy and is doomed unless it changes course PDQ, the "isles of decency" Tunisia and Jordan have more ISIS fighters per capita than any other countries in the world by a margin of three to one, Iran has a spectacularly good education system and has dramatically improved quality of life over the last thirty years, Saudi Arabia has a thriving industrial sector because of forward thinking investment in manufacturing, etc, etc.

yeah but capitalism! A hundred Starbucks will bloom.

Saudi has 91 Starbucks at the moment so it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

Wednesday's lede:

"Just get me talking about the world today and I can pretty well ruin any dinner party."

Are Thomas Friedman still an item?

later in that column: Bernie Sanders' ideas "died in 1989"

a single payer national medical system is a "dead" idea? Christ! who's going to tell all those Medicare recipients? and Europe? and Canada? and most of the rest of the world?

raising tax rates on the super wealthy is a dead idea? he fucking wishes.

birth of Taylor Swift killed Bernie's ideas duh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CofAv3nXEAArs9t.jpg

peter parker is among the undecideds

omg

this summer is actually the 10th anniversary of me learning about and hating Thomas Friedman

also the 20th friediversary

The bigger Clinton’s margin of victory, the less dependent she’d be, I hope, on the left wing of her party, and the more likely she’d work with Republicans, as she vowed during the last debate...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/opinion/can-the-us-win-this-election.html?_r=0

persuasive!

I say “hope” because I don’t know who the real Hillary is — the more Bernie Sanderish one speaking publicly or the more Bill Clintonish one who spoke privately to Goldman Sachs.

I know, Tom. I know.

Tom Friedman should have to eat the New York Times every time he publishes in it

pretty sure he does with a side of risotto

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-brief-selection-from-the-index-to-thomas-friedmans-ne-1789617753

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-reviews-thomas-friedman-book-thank-you-for-being-late-w453529

saw this guy in a garage last year. I didn't hold the elevator for him.

'as a man in a garage elevator told me last year, the world economy is like shoegaze -- it looks both down *and* forward . . . and uses a whole lot of effects pedals'

http://thebaffler.com/blog/friedman-dreams-electric-sheeple-johnson

https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/857266317287718912

Thomas Friedman: the US has to bomb 7 muslim-majority countries in perpetuity because um they're the real racists https://t.co/WIx3SRJt66 pic.twitter.com/gCsLJ1MYxK

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 16, 2017

Friedman . . . otm?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/stephen-paddock-las-vegas-terrorism.html

If only Stephen Paddock had been a Muslim … If only he had shouted “Allahu akbar” before he opened fire on all those concertgoers in Las Vegas … If only he were a member of ISIS … If only we had a picture of him posing with a Quran in one hand and his semiautomatic rifle in another …

If all of that had happened, no one would be telling us not to dishonor the victims and “politicize” Paddock’s mass murder by talking about preventive remedies.

No, no, no. Then we know what we’d be doing. We’d be scheduling immediate hearings in Congress about the worst domestic terrorism event since 9/11. Then Donald Trump would be tweeting every hour “I told you so,” as he does minutes after every terror attack in Europe, precisely to immediately politicize them. Then there would be immediate calls for a commission of inquiry to see what new laws we need to put in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Then we’d be “weighing all options” against the country of origin.

But what happens when the country of origin is us?

What happens when the killer was only a disturbed American armed to the teeth with military-style weapons that he bought legally or acquired easily because of us and our crazy lax gun laws?

Then we know what happens: The president and the Republican Party go into overdrive to ensure that nothing happens. Then they insist — unlike with every ISIS-related terror attack — that the event must not be “politicized” by asking anyone, particularly themselves, to look in the mirror and rethink their opposition to common-sense gun laws.

So let’s review: We will turn the world upside down to track down the last Islamic State fighter in Syria — deploying B-52s, cruise missiles, F-15s, F-22s, F-35s and U2s. We will ask our best young men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice to kill or capture every last terrorist. And how many Americans has the Islamic State killed in the Middle East? I forget. Is it 15 or 20? And our president never stops telling us that when it comes to the Islamic State, defeat is not an option, mercy is not on the menu and that he is so tough he even has a defense secretary nicknamed “Mad Dog.”

But when fighting the N.R.A. — the National Rifle Association, which more than any other group has prevented the imposition of common-sense gun-control laws — victory is not an option, moderation is not on the menu and the president and the G.O.P. have no mad dogs, only pussy cats.

And they will not ask themselves to make even the smallest sacrifice — one that might risk their seats in Congress — to stand up for legislation that might make it just a little harder for an American to stockpile an arsenal like Paddock did, including 42 guns, some of them assault rifles — 23 in his hotel room and 19 at his home — as well as several thousand rounds of ammunition and “electronic devices.” Just another deer hunter, I guess.

On crushing ISIS, our president and his party are all in. On asking the N.R.A. for even the tiniest moderation, they are AWOL. No matter how many innocents are killed — no matter even that one of their own congressional leaders was shot playing baseball — it’s never time to discuss any serious policy measures to mitigate gun violence.

Whoa that’s a helluva column. How the fuck did that come from Thomas Friedman?

how many Americans has the Islamic State killed in the Middle East? I forget. Is it 15 or 20?

tbf, this is not a good metric for the danger posed by the Islamic State.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-spring.html

The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.

tom friedman is worthless as a writer, how the fuck does he have a job

oh man, i read that last night and kept loling. so many friedmanisms in that

do you think he reads anything in his own newspaper?

does he speak arabic?

imagine being this credulous, each new day must be so exciting