Thomas Friedman bemoans the fact that President Obama hasn’t embraced the big cuts to Social Security and Medicare proposed by former senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles. Their plan is great if you think the country’s biggest problem is high-living seniors.

Failed Shopping Center Tycoon by proxy and international cab-driver whisperer Tom Friedman has officially attempted to join the 99%.

After referring to David Brooks as the “Bard of the 1 Percent,” I was assaulted with a barrage of threatening letters and phone calls from representatives of Thomas Friedman who insisted that he holds this title. I will let the two NYT columnists slug it out between themselves and deal with the substance.

Are there businesses out there who are saying that they will not hire or invest today because Social Security and Medicare are too generous? Will these businesses decide to hire more workers and expand their business if the government cut these benefits?

So there we have it; Thomas Friedman is once again letting his poor grasp of economics and arithmetic invent grand problems where there are none. What would be do without him?

The world has always been complicated. The world has always been big. Pace Tom Friedman, but the world has always been flat. The only thing that was small and simple was our own experience, and what people are really wishing for is not that the world become simple again, but that they become ignorant of its complexity.

Tom Friedman seems to alternate between days with provocative ideas that challenge conventional wisdom, for better or worse, and days with fantasies built on absurd notions, massive ignorance or delusion, which if implemented would be catastrophic. He’s equally certain and proud of both, so you have to be careful.

Oh thank goodness, Tom Friedman is here to tell us what the Tea Partiers really believe…and it is exactly what Tom Friedman believes.

Times columnist Tom Friedman watched the movie Invictus and writes that he wishes Iraq’s leaders would emulate Nelson Mandela’s “we have to surprise them,” by displaying religious/ethnic tolerance and magnanimous statesmanship in Iraq, because, I guess, Suck. On. This diplomacy is, uh, not helpful.

Very Serious Journalists, like James Risen, may look down their noses at bloggers, imagining us at our keyboards in our pajamas. They can laugh, but the kind of journalism practiced by FDL is running rings around them. “He said/she said” may work for the Village media, but FDL aims to sort out who’s right and why, and then tries to make things better. If FDL’s version of journalism appeals to you, we could use a little financial support to make things even better down the road.