Tremendous Friedman column: We used to try harder and do better

This is nothing a good, solid dictatorship couldn't fix.

 

The one we have now isn't getting it done.

 

Friedman's too smart of a guy to to not have thought this through. Globalization diluted America's strength and influence while also giving us cheap products. We've gone from a match-play (us vs. them) foreign policy to medal play. We're still Tiger Woods, but Tiger doesn't play every tournament, he doesn't win every time he's out there and he's hurt right now.

 

I'm not saying that being rich is a bad thing, but Friedman's married to a billionaire heiress and his everything was better then schtick is getting old.
Basically he's writing that the people in charge then, aka the Greatest Generation, had it all right, then the damn dirty hippies took over and screwed it all up.
Fewer than half the country votes and we get the country we deserve.
We simply on't deserve a good country right now.

 

BASF'd.

 

This isn't even in the area code, let alone the ballpark. Sorry.

 

Valid point, and ole flat earth Friedman also neglects to mention the connection between his past zealous support of unrestrained free trade policies and the decimation of our manufacturing base. I recall him years ago giddy with ideas of how firms would become sleeker and more efficient by utilizing cheap India and Chinese type labor in the new globalized economy. And now he wonders why nothing's made in America anymore.

 

Because you say so? That's actually pretty funny.

 

No, it's not funny.

But in the age of multi-billion-dollar corporate bailouts, pension-robbing disgraced CEOs, borrow-and-spend to oblivion, a resource-sucking war that isn't even on the books, and politicians of both parties not interested in governing -- as in responding to the needs and desires of the people -- but rather ruling, the contention that we're failing as a country because of your not-so-cleverly-code-phrased "people who can't even run their own lives" is pretty damned hilarious.

It's not even a drop in the bucket, comparatively.

ON EDIT: And 1982 wants its talking point back.

 

I have to side with Old Tony here. The poor are ruining this country. In my day, we'd just send some officers out there to knock them silly with the broad side of a baton.

Now you've got every poor man and his mother on medicaid. phhhpt, medicaid. Had Congress not been so pig-headed, I would have fixed that mess with HR1.

Now look where you are.

 

I assume you are being sarcastic.

 

I'm Richard fucking Nixon. What do you think?