Tom Friedman used to be a much more nuanced and thoughtful journalist before he moved to Washington and became a member of the Beltway orthodoxy. Having said that, Friedman, just like so many neocons, has always been the Jewish pudgy dork who wouldn't dream of serving in the military himself, but looks at wars in which his fellow citizens fight and die as an emasculating experience for himself. Wars to Friedman are a method of masturbation from which he derives far more sexual pleasure than conventional masturbation.

Friedman was one of those Jewish pudgy kids who was made fun of by the girls he desired which infuriated him to no end, because he always considered himself infinitesimally smarter and superior to the boys who did get laid and bullied him. He is making up for all his adolescent sexual frustration by repeatedly cheering on military conflicts in which boys like the ones who got the girls Pudgy Tommy desired so much will have to fight and die in. This is the essence of Friedman's virtual adherence to the Ladeen doctrine. He's not strictly a neocon, but his background and mentality are fairly similar. Nothing anti-Semitic about describing him as a pudgy Jewish guy, I'm Jewish myself, although not pudgy.

A few mega bestsellers and a marriage to a woman wo inherited billions made him very wealthy and very sympathetic to the supply-siders, trickle-downers and "free" trade and outsourcing artists. From there it a was a short ride to the neocons, American "exceptionalism" and "moral" imperialism. Friedman has always made people believe that his knowledge about a subject was greater than his actually knowledge. He is the master of catchy sound-bytes in which he changes reality to fit into his sound-byte framework. As far as his profound immorality-just read his justification for his support for the invasion of Iraq. To him, Iraq was nothing more than a laboratory in which an experiment in the exercise of American imperialism neocon style was conducted, and if successful, it should be applied to the rest of the Arab world. A million dead Iraqis and a few million displaced mean nothing to him.

Williams is a middle-aged man with blow-dried hair and heavy make-up who reads outloud mostly celebrity gossip, government propaganda and crime stories disguised as "news" from a teleprompter for 20 million dollar a year. His expertise on social issues like marriage longevity probably equals mine on building space shuttles. He needs to keep reading his "news", draw his 20 million dollar a year salary and shut the fuck up:nobody cares about his opinions on marriage.

Bellow average intelligence, profoundly ignorant of world affairs and perpetually lazy.

David Broder is going to say about Howard's stunning defeat that the Australian election cannot serve in any way as a reflection on Bush. Broder will say that Howard's extreme neocon, pro-Bush, pro-war, right wing positions had absolutely nothing to do with his defeat. It was only domestic considerations that made the Australians pick (the (wrong, no doubt) party according to Broder. He will plead with the new Australian PM to continue to ally himself with Bush and his war. Of course, when a European conservative party(in Europe even conservative parties are to the left of our Democratic party) wins an election, Broder gloats about the vindication of Bush in Europe and how American conservatism is making the Europeans see the light and reject the welfare state.

of what is so terribly wrong with the US establishment media. That infamous need for "balance" which results in presenting both sides of any argument, instead of presenting facts, reality and truth, which would also mean, heaven forbid, research, and confirmation of facts, aka Real Journalism. The most absurd, crazy and inflammatory positions are presented on equal footings with truthful and rational facts just so that the MSM would be able to claim that they don't takes sides. Creationists, aka I.D will balance out Evolutionists, deliberately inflammatory, baseless and provocative rumors about "Barak Obama the Muslim" are presented as a legitimate argument to counter reality. No doubt, The protocols of the Elders of Zion would be presented by the MSM as a POV if we lived in different times and a Nazi denial of death camps would be presented as a balancing POV to an interview of a death camp survivor.

Even if we accept the premise that the surge has caused a real and substantial reduction in violence around Baghdad, and even this is highly debatable, it should still be considered a miserable and monumental failure. Remember, the surge was supposed to facilitate political progress, but it has actually diminished any urgency toward political reconciliation the warring parties might have felt. There's no political progress whatsoever and the Iraqis are totally dependent on the US military for their security, since they live now in a failed and shattered state.

The Sunnis have been very willing to accept our money and weapons and reduce in return their violence against us, since they have already pretty much ethnically cleansed their areas of Shi'ia. They know that their eventual great battle isn't with the US, but with the Shi'ia dominated central government. We are supplying them weapons and money which they will use to fight the central government we have installed, thus ensuring long term mayhem. Brilliant.

If "Blue" America had more puunjabs, we wouldn't have Bush/Cheney and stolen elections. Democrats laid down quietly when Republicans used thuggery and fraud to "win" elections they had actually lost in the name of "we play by the rules even when our opponents don't". Gore and Kerry gave up on elections they had actually won just so they, heaven forbid, wouldn't be considered as "sore losers". Corrupt corporate media outlets such as Time pay no attention to bloggers or protesting Democratic politicians, but they just might respect Hunter Thompson types such as my man puunjab. Playing "by the rules" and being wimpy got us 8 years of Bush/Cheney and it's time to discard that cowardly mentality.