Charlie Rose

davidhamber  09/20/2012 04:42 AM Report

It's hard for many Republicans to believe Romney could lose this election with his clear-cut goal is to lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans, assure 45 million Americans are not put on the health insurance rolls, increase military spending to continue our great military successes abroad,, use the Bain Capital approach get rid of useless public employees, stop any possibility of gay marriage in its tracks, appoint judges that will enforce a truly Christian approach to abortion and birth control, and to make clear once and for all that 47% of Americans are freeloaders?

davidhamber  09/20/2012 04:28 AM Report

When Friedman tells us that the humiliation of muslims is one of the central reasons for their violence outrage at western film makers, cartoonists, novelists, etc, I can't help think of the words of Figaro from Beaumarchais's Marriage of Figaro written in 1778: "I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca [Ethiopia], Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are “Christian dogs.” Since they can’t stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead." Those lines from Act V, Scene 3 of the play were written more than two centuries ago.

robert78  09/02/2012 08:38 AM Report

Tom Friedman misses the real point when he all but admonishes Obama for not fighting the socialist image that his adversaries tag on him. See, it is Obama's ingenuity to be 2 opposite things at the same time: a capitalist friend of big banks and big companies, and at the same time a socialist big brother to the down trodden masses.

Similarly, he manages to be a white man to whites and looks black to blacks. By contrast Mitt Romney is a white capitalist who cannot persuade his own party that he is white enough nor capitalistic enough.

HandForge  09/01/2012 05:36 PM Report

Great interview!

JimBullis  09/01/2012 04:27 PM Report

A point or two of information: Anyone can be an inventor. However, if a scientist attempts to invent, he becomes an engineer, by definition. He might or might not be very good at it.

However, the notion that 54 "mpg" is "huge" should be looked at more critically. There are different ways to achieve 54 "mpg". Cars can go very slowly, they can be very small, or they can be made highly efficient by aerodynamics. A car does not become much more efficient by making it a plug-in electric car. However, the EPA rule for MPGE for electric cars gives a false impression about efficiency.

That EPA formula for MPGE is a calculation done as if there was a mythical heat engine that did not discharge heat in the energy conversion process. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says this is not possible.

The fact that many scientists accept this MPGE falsehood is not encouraging about the quality of science. It certainly suggests that scientists should not be regarded as good inventors.

I am concerned that guest Friedman and the Obama administration place inappropriate confidence in their scientific advisors. The same concern holds for technical advisors promoting electric cars if these folks choose to endorse a myth as something true.

The fact that CO2 is excessive remains a problem, but this has to be solved by more careful innovations. And falsehood should not be a part of their promotion.

rjh1153  09/01/2012 11:04 AM Report

Way to go Charlie Rose. I used to respect you objectivism, but no more since you let this guy, Friedman, get away twice with saying the Republican party doesn't care about immigration. The Republican party does care about immigration. We hate 'illegal' immigration and there is a huge difference between the two and you were silent. Legal immigration is all of us who came here legally going back hundreds of years and illegal immigration is people breaking and entering our home illegally enmasse going back 30 to 40 years, since Kennedy died, since abortion was endorsed as legal by a born judiciary. Lawlessness is destroying our country and you didn't call it out when you had the opportunity. And don't think we the people didn't notice that, Mr. Rose.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/31/2012 02:25 AM Report

'Romney is renting the party.' What Thomas?

That sounds like Ron Paul, or after tonight's appearance on the Colbert Report, more like Jon Huntsman.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/31/2012 02:19 AM Report

Thomas tells us that Ann Romney missed the key vulnerability of Obama—a nice guy but just not up to the job. Her key line was Mitt Romney will not fail—great line but she did not build on it.

Charlie agrees that to make the sale they have to have the right stuff.

Yes Charlie, but not only who has the right stuff but what are the realistic expectations given the level of crisis and the amount of time it takes to fix the problem? (Real estate bubbles take years and years of recovery.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/31/2012 02:13 AM Report

Thomas tells us that Obama has taken foreign policy off the table. He has kept the country safe.

“No one is walking around the country saying I can’t live with Barack Obama as President.”

Boy is Friedman insulated. People hate Obama. Really hate him. You should see the email I get.

Obama is even used as a four letter word when people are having a bad day.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/31/2012 02:08 AM Report

I agree that we have socialism now with emergency room care for the poor and spreading that cost to everyone.

We did get almost $500 back from Humana thanks to Obamacare--80% to healthcare rule.

Guess what? Last week Humana sent a letter raising our rates almost 11% starting in November.

I hope Humana isn't betting on the repeal of Obamacare and trying now to do a little raking back of their rebate.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  08/31/2012 02:03 AM Report

Great question Charlie on entrepreneurship.

Check out Jon Stewart at the 2:14 mark:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-august-29-2012/rnc-2012---the-road-to-jeb-bush-2016---aasif-man dvi---convention-themes

8yrcombatvet  08/31/2012 01:59 AM Report

Slim, just admit you are a racist and hate everyone not like you. You sling a racist epithet while completely ignorant of me. My black wife admits in her experience the huge amount of racism in the black community pointed to everyone different, even those of a different shade, she is high yellow as we have been told in public by racists blacks against interracial marriages (perhaps only if it is a white man with a black woman). I just heard a black commentator call Micheal Steele an uncle tom. You need to become more self-aware and stop playing the victim.

Slim  08/30/2012 10:31 PM Report

Hey 8yrcombatvet, the reason 95% of blacks voted for Obama has everything to do with racism, white racism and the struggle to rid our country and politic of its four century stranglehold of black america. You'll have to excuse us for not trusting you conservative red neck types to handle that job for us; we've had our fill of your solution to almost everything we care most about.

tabs  08/30/2012 08:45 PM Report

Now comes part two:

Mr Friedman states that Europe and the Islamic world are in crisis just at a time where the world has become interdependent. Here one might add that the US itself is at a crossroads of destiny and is treading on the edge of catastrophe. So what does all this spell Mr Friedman, can't you see it?

One has posted on this Board several times about the economic tsunami that would be the equivalent of a Nuclear war if the US should descend into a fiscal or monetary crisis. The advent of an economic Nuclear war would at the very least be a restructuring of civilization as we know it if not its out right collapse. One might state that this is nothing new in the annals of human history.

As for evidence let us just take one little facet of the puzzle. In the US their has been a continuing polarization of the political process which means a narrowing of what is acceptable political thought by each faction. In an expansive or growing civilization there is an expansion and or broadening of thinking (Renaissance and Enlightenment)rather than diminution.

The devil is in the details that are mighty elusive to grasp when events are happening all around you. So what we can conclude is that the world is in a process of moving in a direction of a failing status Que which is causing fragmentation and chaos which will eventually cause a collapse of the existing order of things. From which a new phoenix will arise as power abhors a vacuum.

This will do for now!

C

tabs  08/30/2012 07:46 PM Report

So Mr Friedman what were you thinking in February of 2009?

The following is an e-mail sent to Mr Rose on or about the date indicated. It is posted in it's entirety for whatever it is worth. Here one is looking for the predicted trends rather than the absolute form that events took. This is because we view things from todays vantage point and are limited by only being able to relate future events in terms, symbols and images that we already understand. For example in 1870 how would one describe an aeroplane, automobile, computer etc?

Change

Tue, 02/03/2009 - 20:04 — tabs

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Events just don't pop up out of no where and take place. They are the logical or sometimes not so logical outcome of past events. If one is to understand an event one must have a view of history or past events and be able to put them into a context where one can see how one affected the other. How this chain reaction of events played out. So in this context President Obama is not orchestrating an agenda of change but riding the crest of a wave of change.

The seminal event of the last decade was 911. It was the last major fork in the road that has led us to where we are today. Everything stems from that event. From the Fed lowering interest rates to 1% to avoid a crisis of liquidity, to Enron to the the sub prime and CDS debacle. However events in a broader sense are the logical outcome of the ending of the American Post War economic Bubble. Each event or cross road of decision making from LBJ's putting the Social Security Trust Fund into the General Account has led America and the world to this place of financial crisis. In other words like every major power before America, we have spent the treasure that we had built up, in our case during WW2 and the Post War reconstruction of the world.

To predict the logical outcome of what is transpiring today is knowable in broad terms, as one can see trends developing as the logical outcome of today's events. However the ringer in the machine is the fact that each decision that has to be made in the future presents another crossroad which will produce a chain of events that is unique and unknowable at the present. That is not to say that an educated guess can not be made based upon the predilections of the times and of men

So what does the future look like going forward.

1. As stated before President Obama s riding the crest of a wave of change and is not orchastrating it. At such there is the beginnings of an Oliver Cromwell type of secular Round Head revolution which spells the end of conspicuous consumption and a get back to basics or austerity as dictated by the current financial times. This also has to do with the coming of a Green Economy and Global Warming concerns.

2. Within the political party that is now in complete power there is going to be a test of wills. Will Obama or the Barons of Congress with their fiefdoms prevail? Obama to be sure has assembled about the most politically adept team of centrists he could find within the constraints of his party. If Obama is everything that he is touted as being the Barons of Congress will fall in line, and the converse is true if Barry Obama should show up in the Oval Office. However one looks at it there is going to be what can be called a purge in the party once the honeymoon is over.

Who is going to get their way? The direction of the country depends on it. If Congress wins one will find a much more fragmented left leaning American policy in the future. If President Obama prevails a more balanced and cohesive view will transpire.

3. The Republican Party is in disarray and will be eclipsed if they don't change. Ronald Reagan is dead and his revolution is over having played itself out. Its time of relevance is over. Something new has to take its place and it is TOO EARLY in the game to discern what that direction is going to be. Events going forward will shape that direction.

4. Internationaly the American Empire aka Globalization is also under extreme financial and political pressure. The key will be if the world loses confidence in American leadership. So far, as has been stated America is still seen as the best hope going forward. That leadership depends on the fiscal responsibility of the American leadership regarding domestic policy. If the American government conducts itself in a business as usual fashion the world will lose confidence. If the world loses confidence chaos will rear it head in the world and any semblance of cohesion will be lost.

C

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richard-lipscombe  08/30/2012 06:08 PM Report

I love everyone's mate Tom Friedman...I love his writings on the global digital economy...I understand that he is a one-eyed Liberal but that does not concern me when he is talking about 'big ideas'...Problem with Tom - much as I love mate - you have had your fifteen minutes of stardom...It is gone and you are running around desperately trying to find it or rekindle it...Sorry mate it won't happen until or unless you come up with something 'remarkable' to say again...Good luck with that because I would love to hear whatever it is...

Here Tom looks like an idiot...Tax revenue and spending cuts - Obama's line - is not what America needs to arrest the decline of a nation in C21st...Ann Romney did say 'Mitt will not fail' as a Liberal, Tom did not hear it...He is out of his depth talking about all this - not only because of his Liberal bias... He has nothing to say other than I am a Liberal who hopes Obsma is re-elected...He made a great case for Obama as a success at presenting a narrative...A narrative is important but it is not enough to be President...YET, Tom says that ObamaCare is his great success! That says it all... Universal HealthCare should be a great achievement but Tom the President left the building of it to Pelosi, Reid, and Emanuel... IT was a clear case of 'you did not built that' Mr President...

cheers, richard.

8yrcombatvet  08/30/2012 04:47 PM Report

Friedman comments on a disconnect between the Republican view on being the successful decendants of immigrants and current policy on immigration. Like so many leftists, he fails to make a difference between legal and illegal immigration. To destroy a nation, destroy it's national boundaries and identity. Friedman also stretched the fabric of reality by claiming that Obamacare is really capitolism while the current system is socialism; even master propogandists cannot make that connection. To Slim: why do you want a black pundit? Shouldn't the color of their skin have no effect on ability? And I suppose 95% of blacks voting for Obama had nothing to do with racism either.

Slim  08/30/2012 02:13 PM Report

And before I forget, Charlie, don't you know any black pundits that can offer your viewers a more realistic, and thus more valuable, take on this presidential election and its ramifications and import to all sections of the nation?

Slim  08/30/2012 02:07 PM Report

Yet another critique of President Obama, this time by a liberal member of the "White Old Boys Club" of Amerika. He, along with Charlie, faults the president, as so many on the left do, with failures of initiative on many fronts, in governing the country during his first term. With support like this from his supposed liberal brethren, and opposition from the conservative wing of the "W.O.B.C., it's a miracle anything of his original agenda was accomplished.

REMant  08/30/2012 12:12 PM Report

I had (for once) no problems with Tom's perspective on Syria. But I think it should be noted the Baathist parties, Shiite- or Sunni-dominated, were the reformers, the nationalists, so it is hard to see how the answer to their increasing weakness can be removing them in the name of more reform or nation-building. It's like responding to a debt crisis by creating more debt.

I am less certain about the efficacy of the new fleet mileage standards. There are limits to the benefits to be achieved by the employment of more technology for only environmental reasons. These things take time, and have to meet cost-benefit requirements along the way to end up being really efficient, otherwise they assume the aspect of 5-year plans. It's not the goal of good management to lay down objectives alone, but to realize them.