- How about How about Ilhan Omar for the new post of “Religion Czar (or Czarina)”?
I had intended to offer some ‘picks’ of my own for President Biden to consider. But I realized it would be hard to top those Friedman has suggested, he in all seriousness.
How do you top Al Gore for EPA administrator? Except as maybe Energy secretary instead.
But, of course, SCOTUS nominations are a fertile field: Maxine Waters, Adam Schitt, Alcee Hastings (he has judicial experience)…these could be made immediately, in line with the Democrats’ devotion to packing the Court; Secretary of Commerce would be an ideal post for Bernie.
Establishment of a new Cabinet position, Secretary of LGBTQ Affairs, would produce a number of worthy prospects but certainly Mayor Pete would bring his unique perspective to the job.
I don’t know Mr. Friedman’s choice for Education secretary, Laurene Paul Jobs (Steve’s widow?) but certainly Mensa candidate Sheila Jackson Lee would bring a new dimension to the concept of “education”.
Certainly a place in the Biden Cabinet should be found for Congressman Mike Quigly (D,IL), obviously the most comical figure on Schiff’s “intelligence” Committee, and living proof that, in America, a person can still be a lawyer and a member of Congress with an IQ even lower than Maxine Waters’. Currently, Quigley is most famous for this intellectual gem: “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct…” (Hats off to Loyola Univ. Law School who gave this clown a law degree.)
Here is Thomas Friedman’s ‘advice’ to “President” Joe Biden on ‘picks’ for his new administration…NO JOKE!:
For vice president, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala or Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island; for Treasury secretary, Mike Bloomberg; health and human services secretary, Bill Gates; secretary of oversight for the trillions of dollars in emergency coronavirus spending, to make sure it’s done fairly and productively, Elizabeth Warren.
Attorney general, Merrick Garland; homeland security secretary, Andrew Cuomo; secretary of state, Mitt Romney; defense secretary, Michèle Flournoy; labor secretary, Ro Khanna (who co-chaired Sanders’s campaign).
Secretary of national infrastructure rebuild, a new cabinet post, Walmart C.E.O. Doug McMillon; commerce secretary, former American Express C.E.O. Ken Chenault; O.M.B. director, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio; education secretary, Laurene Powell Jobs; U.N. ambassador, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
HUD secretary, Ford Foundation chief Darren Walker; Interior secretary, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; energy secretary, Andy Karsner (a green Republican who led renewable energy for George W. Bush); E.P.A. administrator, l Gore A.
Thomas Friedman was never a serious journalist.
He writes for the NY Times…the prosecution rests.
Quite seriously, Thomas Friedman, in a sane Liberal world (an oxymoron), would be a disgrace.
Instead he is a best-selling author (The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, 2005) and one of the Democratic Party’s favorite communist-admiring journalists. (Recall Mr. Friedman’s famous ‘endorsement’ of one country’s “superior form of governance”:
“…really our (United States) Congress is a forum for legalized bribery. You know, that’s really what, what it’s come down to. So I don’t—I, I—I’m worried about this, it’s why I have fantasized—don’t get me wrong—but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don’t want to be China for a second… (but)… I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness… (as China). But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.
https://reason.com/2010/05/24/thomas-l-friedman-wants-us-to/
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Friedman’s best selling book, “The World Is Flat”, seemed to capture the imagination of even many moderate conservatives of the time (2005). I had several friends who shared many of my own conservative ideas who recommended the book to me. Many of them, unfortunately, had little notion of Friedman’s far left progressive leanings.
His book examined how developing countries and companies are affected by the flat world. Many of these countries, according to Friedman, had already started to create “favorable macroeconomic policies to attract foreign capital”. Friedman called it “reform wholesale.” But more countries need to engage in what he called “reform retail,” which” improves education, infrastructure, and government”. Among all these countries, China had, in his view, adapted the best to the flat world. Regarding companies, Friedman lists nine rules for businesses to follow to successfully take advantage of a flat world, including collaboration, small firms acting like large firms, and large firms acting like small ones. The most important rule is for firms to remember that they are bound only by their own imaginations. Friedman, above all, seemed to urge US companies to not think of themselves as “American” companies, but rather, “world entities. His admiration for China and an authoritarian form of government was already apparent then. (source: http://www.supersummary.com/the-world-is-flat/summary/) ; dlh
What America Needs Next: A Biden National Unity Cabinet
We need a political system that mirrors the best in us.
You have to read it to see how Goofy Friedman really is
In the last Democratic debate, Joe Biden declared that he would nominate a woman as his vice-presidential running mate. That felt right at the time. But times have changed. Biden needs to go much, much further: At the Democratic convention he needs to name not just his vice president, but his entire cabinet. And it needs to be a totally different kind of cabinet — a national unity cabinet — from Democrats on the Bernie Sanders left to Republicans on the Mitt Romney right. Why?
Because while most people are playing nice right now managing this virus, the wreckage, pain and anger it will leave behind will require megadoses of solidarity and healing from the top.
And even if we get to the other side of this crisis by January, there are going to be a set of wrenching debates around who got bailed out and who didn’t and around how much civil liberty we should sacrifice to track and quarantine Covid-19 carriers until there is a vaccine. If handled on a partisan basis, those issues will rip our country apart.
In short, if this isn’t the time to leave behind the hyperpartisanship that has made it nearly impossible for us to do anything big and hard for two decades, then when
Considering all the people who have come together in this crisis to tend to neighbors, contribute to hospitals, share scarce resources and learn from one another how to combat Covid-19, would it be asking too much for our political system to mirror the best in us rather than to continue to exacerbate the worst? Americans today deserve the government they need more than ever. It has literally become a matter of life and death.
Biden, because he doesn’t run anything right now, has had a hard time demonstrating leadership. The one giant contrast that he could draw with President Trump, though, is the approach he would take to governing.
Americans are not focused on this now — but they will be. And when they are, Biden needs to show that he isn’t running to be president of the 48 percent (or less), as Trump is; he’s not trying to suppress the vote, as Trump is; he’s not running to squeak by in the Electoral College, as Trump is. He needs to show he’s running to be a majority president, a unity president — but not just unity for unity’s sake, but unity of purpose based on a set of shared values for rebuilding America.
Biden should enlist people ready to embrace these values:
1) They have to believe in science — and not just around the coronavirus but around climate change, which is the next train coming at us.
2) If they were in power during this crisis, they have to have led their city, state or business in a way that took the science of this epidemic seriously from the start and cared for those under them.
3) They have to be open to taking extraordinary measures to help the poor, the unemployed and the bankrupted get back on their feet.
4) They have to believe that America thrives when there is a healthy balance between the public and private sectors, so anyone subscribing to the old idiot mantra of the G.O.P. thought policeman Grover Norquist — “my goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” — is not welcome.
5) They have to want to extend health care to every American, for starters by strengthening Obamacare and adding a public option.
With those criteria, Biden could name his team of rivals. (I proposed an earlier version of this when the race for the nomination looked deadlocked, but the world has completely changed since.) My recommendations:
For vice president, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala or Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island; for Treasury secretary, Mike Bloomberg; health and human services secretary, Bill Gates; secretary of oversight for the trillions of dollars in emergency coronavirus spending, to make sure it’s done fairly and productively, Elizabeth Warren.
Attorney general, Merrick Garland; homeland security secretary, Andrew Cuomo; secretary of state, Mitt Romney; defense secretary, Michèle Flournoy; labor secretary, Ro Khanna (who co-chaired Sanders’s campaign).
Secretary of national infrastructure rebuild, a new cabinet post, Walmart C.E.O. Doug McMillon; commerce secretary, former American Express C.E.O. Ken Chenault; O.M.B. director, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio; education secretary, Laurene Powell Jobs; U.N. ambassador, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
HUD secretary, Ford Foundation chief Darren Walker; Interior secretary, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; energy secretary, Andy Karsner (a green Republican who led renewable energy for George W. Bush); E.P.A. administrator, l Gore A.
“from Democrats on the Bernie Sanders left to Republicans on the Mitt Romney right” — now that is hilarious