Tom Friedman, Suck on This

Tom Friedman, the New York Times Columnist, and blithering idiot, who is always suggesting that we should give the Iraq War, "Another 6 Months," is having financial difficulties.

You see, he married into money, a lot of money. His wife is an heir to the General Growth Properties fortune, and since September, the value of the stock in the company in which the family wealth is held has fallen in value from a high of $51/share to 35¢ a share (See stock chart below), taking the value of the family fortune from $3.6 billion to $25 million.

In fact, GGP is warning of a potential bankruptcy.



As to my saying, "suck on this," I am actually quoting Thomas Friedman, who, in an interview with Charlie Rose, suggested that it was imperative that we invade some Arab country to show that we were serius:

We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

...

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

(emphasis mine)

This places him in exactly the same position as the Rwandan radio broadcasters who were convicted of crimes against humanity, and any misfortune that he suffers for his continuing advocacy of an invasion that has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians renders me incapable of feeling the smallest bit of sympathy.

I guess it makes me a bad person, but I haven't had a hand in killing nearly a million Iraqis....Scratch that...We all had a hand in that as Americans, because it was done in our name, but he was cheer leading from his position atop the most respected news paper in the nation.

Here is the vid of the interview. Look at it, because this is what evil looks like.

Matt Taibbi Gets Owned by Thomas Friedman

We live in a strange world.

There are very few things that I depend on, but brilliantly crafted takedowns of Thomas "The Mustache of Stupidith" Friedman by Matt Taibbi is one of them.

Recently, he held a reader to, "Come Up With the Ultimate Thomas Friedman Porn Title, " and notwithstanding some fine entries by his readers, Thomas Friedman won the contest with his recent column, "This Ain't Yogurt."

I can only conclude the Friedman was aware of Taibbi's effort, and he took appropriate action:

The winner, of course, is Thomas Friedman himself, whose very next column after this contest was announced was entitled, "This Ain't Yogurt."

"Jesus F%$#ing Christ," noted a friend, impressed. "This Ain't Yogurt is more obscene than anything a mere commentator could think of."

"He took your contest," noted another "friend" of mine, "and shoved it right up your poop-chamber."

"Friedman's revenge," chirped a reader.

"Tom Friedman – human masterpiece machine," commented a fourth. "Matt Taibbi, Suck On This. Grab some bench, rook."

(%$# mine)

Tom Friedman, just this once, I take my hat off to you.

Tom Friedman, Suck on This: Part III

18 months ago, the Bucksbaum family, the owners of the General Growth Properties mall chain were worth about $4 billion dollars.

Following GGP's bankruptcy, it's $25 million, and Tom "Suck on This" Friedman is much more exposed to the downsides of that flat world that he espouses.

Tom Friedman, Suck on This: Part II

The Buksbaum family, one of whose members is Tom Friedman's wife, has been ejected from the management of General Growth Properties Inc., after financial irregularities were discovered.

Basically, what happened here is that GGP fueled its growth by leveraging itself up to its eyeballs:

Rather than apply for bank loans, General Growth began taking out short-term mortgages on its malls. As the mortgages came due, the company would replace them with even larger mortgages to provide cash for additional acquisitions.

This is what happens when you let the finance folks drive your business, rather than the other way around....It's also why people wonder how different Bernie Madoff was from business as usual in the US financial system.