Thomas Friedman is Making Me Feel Bad
I’ve written some not-so-nice things about the guy over the years, but this is a pretty great column, eh?
Nevertheless, the part about Sarah Palin not being any more capable of reforming Washington “than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook” did make me wonder if Brookings’ well regarded health and budget expert Henry Aaron is in the DC phone book. I don’t want to put a link to the guy’s information up on the blog, but suffice it to say that the answer is “yes” and given his name (those of us whose family names start with the letter “y” are ultra-sensitive to who among us is walking around with privileged names) he’s very plausibly one of the first 100 listings in the DC phone book, and probably knows a great deal about how we could improve Washington.
That digression aside, the larger point is that Friedman is making a lot of sense.
46 Responses to “Thomas Friedman is Making Me Feel Bad”
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September 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am
i suppose it’s possible that you don’t know that bill buckley once famously said that he’d rather be governed by the first 100 people in the boston phone book than by the faculty of harvard.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Henry Aaron. Not Aarons. Feel free to delete this msg.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Well, to give Friedman his due, he has been taking this same line on infrastructure and particularly energy issues for a long time. On the other hand, to be less charitable, Friedman is a pretty easy guy to snow, so the fact that McCain is no longer snowing Friedman on his pet policy issues basically just proves that McCain has effectively abandoned the policy field to Obama. Which is what the McCain campaign has more or less explicitly told us they were doing.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Palin reformed Alaska’s politics, taking on and defeating the Chairman of the Republican party and the Republican AG, then the sitting Republican governor and eventually Ted Stevens. Then finally the oil companies who had corrupted state politics. Were she a Democrat, you’d be singing her praise to the heavens, assholes.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.
This is a problem: Friedman has bought into the mysterious media party line that somehow McCain’s support for the surge was a liability in the Republican primary. Huh? It was a huge asset. He wasn’t doing any profile in courage there. No matter how many times he says he was.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Palin reformed Alaska’s politics
Replacing older set of GOP assholes, if she did actually replace them, with the assholes from her high school ain’t reform.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Palin “reformed” Alaska politics by taking control from the older guard of Republicans in about the same way as Marlo Stanfield “reformed” The Co-Op when he took over control from Proposition Joe.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
gregor, 75% of the voters think so. You’d think so, too, if she were a Dem. Admit it.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Palin didn’t “take on” the corrupt Alaska crowd. She’s supported them. She ran for office “out of turn”. Criminy.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
DTM, I don’t know your reference, but she threw out the old crooks who were in bed with the oil companies, who had dominated Alaskan politics for a generation. There’s no hint anywhere that she has replaced the old crooks with new crooks.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
e o’neal, i have been thinking you’re an amusing little airhead, but it turns you that you’re just a jerk. explain to us, precisely, in concrete terms, what “reforms” palin has brought to alaska politics.
obviously, it ain’t the end of earmarking.
she can’t even decide if she supports stevens or not this election.
certainly it’s not the dramatic new efficiency of the government.
possibly it’s the increase of taxes on oil companies to fund an energy rebate for alaskans to which you are referring (that would, of course, be the obama energy plan on the state level, which john mccain opposes).
please: show us all the magnificent reforms.
and further please: show us that you understand anything about democratic politics. unlike the authoritarian party that falls into lockstep support of the stupidest of ideas (how many republicans suddenly don’t think the bush doctrine means anything? how many republicans think that being in charge of the national guard is adequate preparation on national security issues? how many republicans think that being able to see russia from alaska makes you a foreign policy savant? a whole lot more than did 17 days ago), democrats actually care about outcomes.
there are no reformist outcomes in alaska, so no, dems wouldn’t think she was just ducky if she were one too.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
J.D., she hasn’t fought every Republican every step of her career. Politics doesn’t work that way. But when she became head of the natural resources commission and learned what was going on, she fought them to the death, politically, and won.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
taking on and defeating… eventually Ted Stevens.
This is an interesting way to say “helped Ted Stevens run his 527, filmed ads with him when she ran for governor, and hasn’t disclaimed him even after he’s been federally indicted.”
September 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
If my name were Hank Aaron I’d probably go unlisted.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
howard, I’ve never been called an airhead by someone who can’t even use the Caps Lock key. Anyway, read this article and then tell me what BHO has done that compares. The Annenberg Challenge? The Woods Foundation? His routine “stray nukes” bill with Richard Lugar?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4466e28a-79e9-11dd-bb93-000077b07658.html
September 15th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
No way! That guy held the home run record?
(I’ve actually met the economist Henry Aaron before, and he’s a really good guy.)
September 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Matt, she killed his prize Bridge to Nowhere. Now tell me about the time BHO stood up to the rancid Daley machine. I’m waiting.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
if it makes you feel better, e. o’neal, you’re an AIRHEAD.
as for the article, yes, i’m actually quite familiar with the matter you raise here, and no, this doesn’t constitute some terrific piece of “reform.”
if you actually bother to inform yourself about this deal, you’ll note (as the article does), that this so-called “reform” constituted bribing energy companies to…do nothing (let me quote an alaska republican, shall i?: “State Senator Bert Stedman, a Republican who is co-chairman of the finance committee, said that in its contract with the chosen developer, TransCanada, the state bargained away too much leverage with little guarantee of success.
‘There is no requirement to lift one shovel of dirt or lay down one inch of steel,’ he said.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/politics/11pipeline.html?scp=1&sq=sarah%20palin%20+%20pipeline&st=cse.
that $500M, in a worst-case scenario, is owed back even if nothing ever happens on the pipeline.
so, as is sadly frequent when one deals with right-wing AIRHEADS, your lack of information renders your supposed defense of palin null and void.
now, you have any other examples of the marvelous reform that palin has brought to alaska?
PS. if a democrat had signed a deal that guaranteed $500M to an energy company in return for…nothing, i would despise him or her. why do you think this is something to praise?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
omigod: well, e. o’neal has officially joined the ranks of too-dumb-to-bother-with.
palin killed the bridge to nowhere! you really don’t know anything, do you?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
The NYT article “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes” is a good place to start for a description of what counts as “reform” for Palin.
And by the way, failing to take on Ted Stevens in her supposed “reform” of Alaska politics is not exactly a minor omission. In fact, the only thing that really distinguishes Frank Murkowski from Ted Stevens is that Murkowski stood in the way of Palin’s personal ambitions, and so with Stevens’ help she defeated Murkowski.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
By the way, I posted #20 before seeing #17. Obviously, E. O’Neal is too disconnected from reality to merit significant attention.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
howard, go to Alaska and take a picture of the Bridge to Nowhere under construction. Then I’ll believe the governor, who diverted the funds to other purposes, didn’t kill it. Does it depend on the meaning of the word “kill”, [expletive deleted]?
Murkowski had promised the companies $2 billion in incentives. Palin cut that by 75% and required them to match it. This is similar to states making infrastructure improvements to attract big manufacturing plants. We’re talking about a $40 billion pipeline, the biggest infrastructure project in American history, probably, other than the transcontinental RRs and the inter-state highway system.
Again, tell me what Obambi has done.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Let me join the chorus, E. O’Neal: You’re a moron. Or like the McCain campaign, you’ve got so used to lying that you don’t even notice when you’re doing it.
here’s some words. Here’s a picture.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
DTM, wow! Rewarding friends and punishing enemies! Why haven’t other politicians thought of that? Somebody needs to tell the Daley machine. This could change politics forever!
The NYT mountain labored and delivered a mouse. No wonder, they didn’t play it up as a lead story.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Cross-posted; that’s not a picture of the Bridge to Nowhere, that’s a picture showing that Palin supported up to the moment when she discovered that she wouldn’t have a federal earmark for it.
As for E. O’Neal’s current position, if you think Stevens cared about the bridge rather than the earmark I have some more bridges to sell you.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The level of argumentation here is astonishingly sophisticated. I feel like I’ve wandered into a modern Lincoln-Douglass debate.
All I have to say is, “Nyah, nyah, na, na, na! So’s your old man!”
September 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I, for one, find E. O’Neal’s ignorance quite amusing:
Palin reformed Alaska’s politics
She killed his prize Bridge to Nowhere
E. O’Neal, I’d like to share a quick thought:
Palin may have done some good things as a small town mayor and fledgling governor, but to suggest she is in any way prepared to be Vice President is comical. Her selection by McCain is an indictment on our political system and a slap in the face insult to the American people. If the American people are willing to vote into the White House a woman with zero foreign policy experience and limited knowledge about our national economy despite being in the middle of two wars and on the verge of an economic meltdown, then we deserve all the horseshit that would be dumped on our collective lives.
Your mindless posts in support of Palin are indeed amusing, but I would encourage you to take this election more seriously and stop with the drivel.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I can’t believe I just said that about myself. I really am going crazy.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
read this article
I did. It mentions that “even some of her biggest critics” praise her, and then quotes exactly one person: her own appointed state treasurer. Hard-hitting journalism!
September 15th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/politics/11pipeline.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
“But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.
“The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.”
September 15th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
E. O’Neal,
You are right, Palin isn’t doing anything the Daley Machine didn’t do.
And thanks for making my point.
Anyway, for those connected to reality, basically this boils down to an intramural struggle between the Murkowski faction and the Palin/Stevens faction, which the latter won. But as my original point implied, managing to win an intramural struggle doesn’t make you a “reformer”.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Yeah we’ve noticed that, impostor. I think I’ll leave the sandbox now. Why try to explain differential equations to toddlers? They just throw sand in your face.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
E. O’Neal,
Perhaps you are getting sand thrown in your face because you are an idiot that spends time making disingenous assertions on this blog. When your posts read as if you are a child don’t be surprised if the sand comes flying your way you moron.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Matt Weiner, one last comment, as I brush off the sand and re-join the grown-ups. Sarah Palin is not responsible for the ridiculous regulatory and legal delays we have in this country. The Dems create all these obstacles and then say we can’t drill, etc., because it will take ten years before we get any production.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Palin switched positions on the Bridge to Nowhere once it became clear that it was a non-starter. She didn’t “kill” it.
[See that frying pan over there. Yes, that one. Take it and hit me in the head with the broad flat side of that until my head chimes like a tuning fork. Yes. A little harder this time. Yes, that's better. That'll teach me to feed the trolls.]
September 15th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
e. o’neal, if you want to claim that palin, when faced with the awful prospect of alaskans paying for the bridge, suddenly decided that maybe it wasn’t such a worthwhile project after all, fine, go ahead and claim that.
that, of course, is not what you’re claiming….
meanwhile, of course, my dear sweet AIRHEAD, rewarding friends and causing havoc to enemies is, in general terms, typical of politics (although less often in towns of 9,000), but hiring high school classmates to fill all the jobs is a very special qualification.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
E. O’Neal,
I fixed your post:
Matt Weiner, one last comment, as I [continue to repeat known lies and make disingenous and useless arguments about nothing] and re-join [this worthless blog in which people actually debate my drivel as if it merits any discussion].
September 15th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
By the way, I do think there is something to the idea that what differentiates the likes of Bush or Palin from other patronage politicians is in part just the low quality of their friends.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I think I’ll leave the sandbox now.
I’ll hold you to that.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I’ve never been called an airhead by someone who can’t even use the Caps Lock key
The only time people use the caps lock key to capitalize letters is when they’re (A) yelling or (B) trolling.
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