Wonkette

• THE WORLD IS FAT: Apparently the Great Russia-Georgia Conflagration of 2008 broke some stupid thing called the “McDonald’s theory of war” which surmises that two countries containing McDonald’s restaurants will never war with each other, because citizens on both sides will have become terribly fat slobs, all. This sounds like some hollow postulate Thomas Friedman would’ve “invented” during the rise of globalization! And that’s exactly true. The 21st century will be an new epoch of warfare in which gangs of fat asses kill the other side with robots from their Xboxes. [Guardian via Kottke]

Here is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman getting pied at Brown University by some Communists. It’s tragically comical, watching him slip ‘n’ slide across the stage like some… hmm… let’s think of a good Friedmanian way to say this… slip ‘n’ slide across the stage like a rikshawallah in Bangladesh trying to navigate the cyber-global marketplace while sending “SMS” messages via Blackberry to his half-koala, half-Robocop legal associate in Java (in Outer Space). [YouTube]

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a decent book many years ago and has since made a living by promoting the Iraq War, going on sabbatical, and coming up with useless concepts like these: “the world is flat,” “a Lexus is like an olive tree, in that both are on my book cover,” and “I used my NYT corporate Amex credit card to buy a trinket from this Pakistani, which I’ll conflate into a hackneyed worldview cliche.” This modern day soothsayer spoke to some kids at Brown University last night about the environment and got pelted with green pies, which is what happens in the Global Marketplace of Ideas. MORE »

Hey look, it’s a map renaming states after countries with similar GDPs! This is like a wacky Boing Boing item, but with less robot tapestries and fried iPods. [Strange Maps via Matthew Yglesias]

* Top White House staffers are “physically and emotionally exhausted, battered by scandal and drained by political setbacks,” say “insiders.” [WP]
* Bush has come to embrace globalization and interconnectedness. Close aide: “We’re seeing it in everything. Iraq. The ferocity of an irrational argument over the ports. Guest workers. China and India.” [NYT]
* Sen. Feingold (D-Wis.) calls for censure of Bush: “The president has broken the law, and, in some way, he must be held accountable.” [NYT, LAT]
* Most Republican presidential contenders agree that federal spending should be reduced and an optimistic tone should be presented. [NYT, USAT, LAT]
* Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf insisted that Bush stay the night, and he obeyed despite security concerns. [NYT]
* Texas pharmacists complain to Karl Rove about the shortcomings of the new Medicare plan. [NYT]