Thomas Friedman, The New York Times

October 30, 2008

Thomas Friedman
The New York Times
236 West 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036

RE: Happy Halloween!

Mr. Friedman,

It’s untypically chilly today in Florida despite melting icebergs, drowning polar bears, borborygymous bovines, and Lord knows what else is in store for us if we don’t elect Senator B. Hussein Obama and his running mate, Curley Joe Biden, his bumbling buffoon Vice Presidential choice, a man who gives new and nuanced meaning to one of the great nouns in the English language. That noun is boob.

Your column says, in typical Jeremiad fashion, that the glory days of $4.11 a gallon gasoline are gone. The glories of which you sang, exercise, shrunken carbon footprints, love of mass transit, hope for cars that run on rainbow soup, inter alia, might be visited on us when gas sells for $6.11 a gallon. Obviously you are used to traveling by sedan chair.

You end by saying that the best hope for all things good, pure, and clean is tax breaks for the wealthy. That is what you said, isn’t it? If these companies can expense everything in the first year how will their “fair share” portion of the tax bill be paid? What happens if, after taking all these tax breaks, and shifting the burden to those least able to pay, it the company can’t produce any vehicles? What happens if they “uncreate” all those good green jobs?

Ah! The vagaries of the marketplace.

That’s why I began this little note with the salutation Happy Halloween.

You can go to the costume party as a HORSE’S ASS because that’s what you are. It’s a sad commentary that there are more HORSES’ ASSES than there are horses’ heads. The number should always be in balance; i.e. one HORSE’S ASS per horse. The New York Times seems to have a surplus of ASSES to heads. You are the leading example.