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Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times &Foreign Affairs& columnist and author...

Oct 10, 10:01am    (5 reviews)  politics  http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/

Thomas L. Friedman

Oct 10, 10:01am  http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/ny-times-...

The New York Times & Log In

Oct 10, 9:52am  politics  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazi...

The New York Times & Log In

Oct 10, 9:39am    (2 reviews)  politics  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinio...

The New York Times & Log In

Oct 10, 9:38am    (1 review)  politics  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinio...

The Class War Before Palin
By DAVID BROOKS
(Part 1)

Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals. Richard Weaver wrote a book called, "Ideas Have Consequences." Russell Kirk placed Edmund Burke in an American context. William F. Buckley famously said he'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. But he didn't believe those were the only two options. His entire life was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.

Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines. They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.

Ronald Reagan was no intellectual, but he had an earnest faith in ideas and he spent decades working through them. He was rooted in the Midwest, but he also loved Hollywood. And for a time, it seemed the Republican Party would be a broad coalition -- small-town values with coastal reach.

In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.
Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party -- the anti-immigration fervor, the isolationism -- but stylistically he fit right in. As Fred Barnes wrote in his book, "Rebel-in-Chief," Bush "reflects the political views and cultural tastes of the vast majority of Americans who don't live along the East or West Coast. He's not a sophisticate and doesn't spend his discretionary time with sophisticates. As First Lady Laura Bush once said, she and the president didn't come to Washington to make new friends. And they haven't."

The New York Times & Log In

Oct 10, 9:17am    (2 reviews)  economics  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/opinio...

Green the Bailout! (I love Thomas Friedman, brilliant man)

(snippet)
But that is not the point of this column. The point is, we don't just need a bailout. We need a buildup. We need to get back to making stuff, based on real engineering not just financial engineering. We need to get back to a world where people are able to realize the American Dream - a house with a yard - because they have built something with their hands, not because they got a "liar loan" from an underregulated bank with no money down and nothing to pay for two years. The American Dream is an aspiration, not an entitlement.

When I need reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream, I talk to my Indian-American immigrant friends who have come here to start new companies - friends like K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy. He e-mailed me a pep talk in the midst of this financial crisis - a note about the difference between surviving and thriving.

"Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival," said Sridhar. "As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be No. 1." That is what America is about.

But we have lost focus on that. Our economy is like a car, added Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are the engine.

"I cannot help but ponder about how quickly we are ready to act on fixing the transmission, by pumping in almost one trillion dollars in a fortnight," said Sridhar. "On the other hand, the engine, which is slowly dying, is not even getting an oil change or a tuneup with the same urgency, let alone a trillion dollars to get ourselves a new engine. Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would return to the economy, including the 'transmission,' if we committed at that level to green jobs and technologies."

Indeed, when this bailout is over, we need the next president - this one is wasted - to launch an E.T., energy technology, revolution with the same urgency as this bailout. Otherwise, all we will have done is bought ourselves a respite, but not a future. The exciting thing about the energy technology revolution is that it spans the whole economy - from green-collar construction jobs to high-tech solar panel designing jobs. It could lift so many boats.

In a green economy, we would rely less on credit from foreigners "and more on creativity from Americans," argued Van Jones, president of Green for All, and author of the forthcoming "The Green Collar Economy." "It's time to stop borrowing and start building. America's No. 1 resource is not oil or mortgages. Our No. 1 resource is our people. Let's put people back to work - retrofitting and repowering America. ... You can't base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America."

The Bush team says that if this bailout is done right, it should make the government money. Great. Let's hope so, and let's commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure - smart transmission grids or mass transit - for a green revolution. Let's "green the bailout," as Jones says, and help ensure that the American Dream doesn't ever shrink back to just that - a dream.

Sounds like a good plan. Sounds like something Obama has a better chance of bringing to fruition than the cranky old Johnny Mac.

George W. Bush: Assume the Fetal Position! - Debatten - Feuilleton - FAZ...

Oct 10, 9:09am  politics  http://www.faz.net/s/RubCF3AEB154CE64960...

Lincoln Mitchell: Making an Obama Presidency a Success

Oct 10, 8:07am  politics  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mi...

The New York Times & Log In

Oct 10, 7:56am    (1 review)  multimedia  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/us/10t...

ACORN: Home

Oct 9, 6:51am    (1 review)  liberties  http://acorn.org/index.php?id=12340