Everything Tom Friedman says is marbles

While I agree with some of the general points in his otherwise moronic op-ed from Tuesday (e.g., Green good, Detroit bad), Tom Friedman's typical carelessness with facts and reality in order to make some hey-man-you-gotta-see-the-Big-Picture point really grates on me.

In the article he touts an overseas plan to vertically integrate electric cars with electricity generation and distribution, and admonishes Detroit for not doing the same:

The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy — such as wind and solar — as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets — the first pilots were opened in Israel this week — plus battery-exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.

Great, just let me know when you get that "national electric car charging infrastructure" done here. Not to mention the cars that would plug into it (and charge themselves in a reasonable amount of time).

Of course there's nothing inherently stupid about big ideas. Sometimes they work. But what is stupid is to compare this zany startup to freaking Apple:

It just takes the right kind of auto battery — the iPod in this story — and the right kind of national plug-in network — the iTunes store — to make the business model work for electric cars at six cents a mile.

Might be a fair comparison if Apple also built the internet.