Tom Friedman, NYT "Columnist"?

Or the Next Stage in Human Evolution?

This from the endlessly vacuous Thomas Friedman in today’s NYT…plus some commentary by yours truly.

Bush Disarms, Unilaterally
One of the things that I can't figure out about the Bush team is why an administration that is so focused on projecting U.S. military strength abroad has taken such little interest in America's economic competitiveness at home - the underlying engine of our strength. At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened - enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before - this administration is off on an ideological jag…

One thing I can’t figure out is if Friedman is just a plain, vanilla idiot with a few cliché sprinkles, or a willing kapo for the Neocons, or just an myth or illusion – like swamp gas UFOs and one scintilla of “Compassion” in a conservative – or maybe he’s just being so viperishly, “isn’t it interesting” bitchy-school-girl passive aggressive that his own archly clever “analysis” has finally Dopplered off into such an opaquely ultraviolet end of the spectrum that normal humans can’t perceive his brilliance.

Perhaps he has double-jump evolved right past us mere mortals?

Perhaps we will see a new, giant, fetal Tom Friedman floating in orbit around us, like the Star Child from “2001”? Smooth-faced and wise and pooping tomes on Global This And That on an hourly basis. Perhaps while he’s up there he can finish up the International Space Station? And give the Hubble it’s 10,000,000 mile oil change and tire rotation so we won’t have to throw it away into the Pacific?

Nah. He’s just a gassy little idiot.

We have a Treasury secretary from the railroad industry. We have an administration that won't lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent - at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators. And we have movie theaters in certain U.S. towns afraid to show science films because they are based on evolution and not creationism.

“Why, oh Lord, Why?” Friedman pleads to the heavens. As if the answer to his peevish prayers were something deeply mysterious. Like Aliens, maybe, or one a’ them runamok viruses, like in “28 Days Later”, and hey, was that a cool movies or what?

What is happening is not mysterious or fiendishly clever or even particularly well hidden, but Friedman doesn’t believe it. Like “The Purloined Letter” the real GOP agenda is just sitting there, right out in the open, for anyone to see, but this very obviousness completely baffles Our Mr. Friedman. He either cannot or will not call fascist assholes by their proper taxonomic term…which is “Fascist Assholes”.

The Bush team is proposing cutting the Pentagon's budget for basic science and technology research by 20 percent next year - after President Bush and the Republican Congress already slashed the 2005 budget of the National Science Foundation by $100 million. …
It's as if we have an industrial-age presidency, catering to a pre-industrial ideological base, in a post-industrial era…

What the fuck do you mean: “..as if?!” That’s exactly what we have, and have had for five years. That’s exactly the kind of a republicans Party we’ve had since the 1980’s. Please, oh wise News Person, in the name of Dope Smokin' Budda, Please! tell me you aren’t just noticing this now.

“[Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer in Japan] notes...”In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband."
Since it took over in 2001, the Bush team has made it clear that its priorities are tax cuts, missile defense and the war on terrorism - not keeping the U.S. at the forefront of Internet innovation. In the administration's first three years, President Bush barely uttered the word "broadband,..

Hey, Friedman: No broadband in the Bible, dumbass. Therefore it either does not exist or must be just another 3/8” Hex Driver in Satan’s Own Toolbox.

Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. But you need to be at a certain level to be able to claim your share of a global pie that is both expanding and becoming more complex. Tax cuts can't solve every problem. This administration - which often seems more interested in indulging creationism than spurring creativity - is doing a very poor job of preparing the country for that next level.

“…which often seems?!” Seriously, what the fuck is Tom Friedman’s fucking problem. He is standing on the very lip of Vesuvius with a mile-wide pillar of lethal sulfur gas, lava, boulders and pyroclastic debris fairly rocketing right past him -- bare inches from his highly-trained, news-hound nose -- and he reports decisively that, “I’m not sure, and I may be wrong, but does something smell just a wee bit “off”?”

And he pouts out this timorous little “Scuse, Mr. Prezit, sir, maybe, sir, you hadn’t noticed, sir, but…” sleeve-tugging excuse for a column. Tom Friedman, bravely telling a serial killer mid-carnage that he maybe, sorta, kinda doesn’t understand that what’s he’s doing is sorta, kinda, illegal.

No, Tom, we are at war, and they’re not doing a poor job of “preparing the country for that next level.” The “next level” they’re shooting for is National Fiefdom. The next level is a Two-Class Feudal State, with the plutocrats in the tippy-tippy-top one percent owning or controlling or influencing every single thing – the Government, the Media, the Economy – and the other 99% of us as disposable stoop labor and organ donors.

The next level, you hole-in-the-New-York-Times-where-there-used-to-be-an-actual-columnist, is the United States of Arabia, with the idiot scions of oil money dynastically ruling the private sector and the government by whim, and a roving band of Fundamentalist Morality Police acting as the Administration’s button-men, dragging journalists, judges and Joe Citizens into the streets and beating them with hammers if they don’t sound off that they Love Jesus, George Bush and Tom DeLay quick enough.

And at planning for that “next level”, they’re doing a fucking brilliant job. Maybe if you would bother to descend from your majestic Polar Orbit and take notice of what’s happening every day down here on Terra, the other kid’s wouldn’t think you’re a nothing but a puff of stink on a lazy breeze.