Today I read an article titled, Comcast on-demand movie test ruffling DVD retailers and this got me thinking of the late 1990’s telecom gold rush when people were making wild and crazy bets on broadband. How many times did I hear about videos on demand to your home back in 1999? After a while it went away for obvious reasons. Seven years later it has come back and it is a reality for millions of homes. This reminded me of Gartner Group’s Hype Cycle. In Gartner’s own words,
“The Hype Cycle highlights the progression of an emerging technology from market over enthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the technology’s relevance and role in a market or domain.”
Thinking about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the context of The Hype Cycle, Barack is clearly in “over enthusiasm” mode while Romney is entering step two, “disillusionment”.
The Washington Post on Romney,
The apparent gulf between the candidate who ran for the Senate in 1994 and the one getting ready to run for president has raised questions as to who is the real Mitt Romney. Is he the self-described moderate who unsuccessfully challenged Kennedy in the year of the Republican landslide, the self-described conservative now ready to bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, or merely an ambitious and adaptable politician? The answer could be crucial to Romney’s presidential ambitions.
It seems like Everybody Loves Barack. The polls? Check. The media? Check. Like Mitt Romney, Obama is a beneficiary of the good first impression. Obama also says one thing and does another. Mitt is currently* talking like a conservative when his record shows he is a moderate, hence the disillusionment. Obama talks like a moderate, but he is in fact, quite liberal. Won’t that lead to the inevitable next step?
Take a look at Barack’s record, courtesy of a great web resource, Project Vote Smart,
Immigration
2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the American Immigration Lawyers Association 88 percent in 2006.
2005-2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the U.S. Border Control 8 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Federation for American Immigration Reform 0 percent in 2005.
Education
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the National Education Association 100 percent in 2005.
Taxes
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the National Taxpayers Union 6 percent in 2005.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Americans for Tax Reform 0 percent in 2005.
Business
2005-2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the National Federation of Independent Business 12 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 39 percent in 2005.
Civil Liberties
2005-2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the American Civil Liberties Union 83 percent in 2005-2006.
Labor
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the AFL-CIO 92 percent in 2005.
Social Issues
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the National Organization for Women 100 percent in 2005.
2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Planned Parenthood 100 percent in 2006.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Gun Owners of America 0 percent in 2005.
2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Secular Coalition for America 90 percent in 2006.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Population Connection 100 percent in 2005.
Veterans
2006 In 2006 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Senator Obama a grade of B+.
2006 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 80 percent in 2006.
2005 Senator Obama supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 92 percent in 2005.
Disclaimer: Descriptions of organizations are derived from the mission statement or description produced by each organization. Project Vote Smart does not evaluate or edit these descriptions.
If that record won’t lead to disillusionment of the average voter, I don’t know what will.
Michael Oren has written a fantastic piece in today’s Wall St. Journal called “Jimmy Carter’s Book: An Israeli View” (subs req) in which he points out that Carter “in revealing his unease with the idea of Jewish statehood, (sic) sets himself apart from many U.S. presidents before and after him, as well as from nearly 400 years of American Christian thought.”
Mr. Oren offers numerous examples which I found to be quite informative. He provides a great histoical perspective and context. For example he points out that:
Generations of Christians in this country, representing a variety of dominations, laymen and clergy alike, have embraced the concept of renewed Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.
Here is a sampling of what some of our Founding Fathers and Presidents thought of the Jewish people and the Jewish State that Oren cites in his piece:
The passion was already evident in 1620 when William Bradford alighted on Plymouth Rock and exclaimed, “Come, let us declare the word of God in Zion.” Bradford was a leader of the Puritans, dissenting Protestants who, in their search for an unsullied religion and the strength to resist state oppression, turned to the Old Testament. There, they found a God who spoke directly to his people, who promised to deliver them from bondage and return them to their ancestral homeland. Appropriating this narrative, the Puritans fashioned themselves as the New Jews and America as their New Promised Land. They gave their children Hebrew names — David, Benjamin, Sarah, Rebecca — and called over 1,000 of their towns after Biblical places, including Bethlehem, Bethel and, of course, New Canaan.
Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress, predicted that the Jews, “however scattered . . . are to be recovered by the mighty power of God, and restored to their beloved . . . Palestine.”
John Adams imagined “a hundred thousand Israelites” marching triumphantly into Palestine. “I really wish the Jews in Judea an independent nation,” he wrote.
During the Revolution, the association between America’s struggle for independence and the Jews’ struggle for repatriation was illustrated by the proposed Great Seal designed by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, showing Moses leading the Children of Israel toward the Holy Land.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln said that “restoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans,” and that the U.S. could work to realize that goal once the Union prevailed.
By the century’s turn, those advocating restored Jewish sovereignty in Palestine had begun calling themselves Zionists, though the vast majority of the movement’s members remained Christian rather than Jewish. “It seems to me that it is entirely proper to start a Zionist State around Jerusalem,” wrote Teddy Roosevelt, “and [that] the Jews be given control of Palestine.”
Oren also desribes how pro-Israel Truman, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and both Bush 41 and the current 43 were (especially according to Oren- 43) and concludes his assessment of Carter’s book with this:
In his apparent attempt to make American Christians rethink their affection for Israel, Jimmy Carter is clearly departing from time-honored practice. This has not been the legacy of evangelicals alone, but of many religious denominations in the U.S., and not solely the conviction of Mr. Bush, but of generations of American leaders. In the controversial title of his book, Mr. Carter implicitly denounces Israel for its separatist policies, but, by doing so, he isolates himself from centuries of American tradition.
I could not agree more.
I can’t for the life of me understand how any Ameircan would trust liberals on economic matters. As we have chronicled for quite a while now on this blog and discussed on our radio show almost weekly, virtually every economic claim-argument that the liberal left has made has turned out to be wrong. We were told that the Bush Tax Cuts would lead to the “jobless recovery” and that we are “outsourcing” all jobs etc (4.5% unemployment now the lowest in our generation) and would “balloon the deficit” (it has shrunk significantly due to corporations and the “rich” shouldering disproportionately large portions of taxes flooding into the treasury).
Well now the current claim of the doom and gloom class warrior left is that “wages are stagnating.”
From today’s Wall St. Journal(subs req):
Over the past year, the real average wage for non-supervisory employees has risen 2.8%. That equates to about a $1,200 increase in purchasing power for the typical household this year. Last year, real median household income was also up 1.1% after inflation…a new Treasury Department analysis finds that, measuring from the start of the peak of each expansion, wages so far in this decade’s cycle are running ahead of the recovery pace during the 1990s.
For those who would like to see worker’s wages rise even more, the editors at the Journal have some suggestions:
…Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. If Congress lets them expire in 2010, as many Democrats are urging, the average family will suffer the equivalent of a $2,000 a year pay cut.
Second, slash the corporate income tax. A recent study for the American Enterprise Institute by economists Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur examined 72 nations over 22 years and found that “wages are significantly responsive to corporate taxation.” In today’s global economy, capital migrates across national borders away from high-tax nations to places where tax systems are less punitive. Workers suffer when capital flees, and job and wage growth slow.Many political leaders have adapted to this reality, which is why the average corporate tax rate across the globe has fallen over the past 25 years to an average of about 30% from 50%. The AEI study finds that, if the U.S. were to cut its 35% corporate tax to the OECD average of 30%, American manufacturing workers would gain nearly a 10% pay raise dividend within five years, which is the equivalent of roughly a $3,500 a year pay boost.
Bush and Congressional Republicans should argue stronly for making the tax cuts permanent and cutting hte corporate income tax. Make the case and dare Democrats to argue the same old same old- increasing taxes accross the board, increasing the min wage (i.e. govt wage and price controls), govt run health care (socialism), and more unions and trade protectionism (i.e. govt sponsered tarriffs). Make it a campaign issue for 08′ and let the chips fall where they may. I’ll put my money on the guys who are advocating pro-growth tax cutting every time.
Shock Magazine has gone out of business after eight issues. A big reason why is that they messed with Michael Yon. They should have asked the US Army public affairs office what it was like to mess with a Yon copyright. Here is the NY Post’s take,
The American version became ensnared in controversy almost from Day One when it ran a picture of an American soldier cradling a wounded Iraqi girl who was fatally injured in a roadside ambush.
The photographer, Michael Yon, objected, claiming that the photo had been purchased from a photo agency that had never obtained the proper rights.
Hachette apologized and offered to make a settlement, but when talks broke down, the photographer launched a campaign that succeeded in getting the magazine yanked from some large retail chains.
That hurt the magazine, since it was designed to be supported mainly by newsstand sales.
Diary of a Hollywood Refugee was able to give Michael the news,
my Christmas present to him as the day grows near when he returns to Iraq to provide us once again with the most emotive, honest, raw, “boots on the ground” dispatches from Iraq.
His response was that of a true warrior: “TARGET DESTROYED”
Michael will be in Iraq any day now. The Dispatches will start soon thereafter.
If you are able to support his work, and would like to do so, go here.
Update: Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald has a great article today on Shock’s demise.
Thanks to our friends at Red State for this:
Kwanzaa did not come about until the 1960’s. It was founded by a felon named Ron Karenga. Mr. Karenga spent time in prison for assaulting and torturing two black women. According to one of the the women in a Los Angeles Times article, the two women “were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Ms. Davis’s mouth and placed against Ms. Davis’s face.” For more on this, go here.
Let’s also remember Mr. Karenga’s own words. He noted, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of Bloods were partying.” You be sure to remember that quote when your child is forced to celebrate it at school. Be sure to also remember Mr. Karenga called Jesus “psychotic” and called Christianity a white religion black people should shun.
And when the President of the United States issues his Kwanzaa best wishes, remember this quote from Tony Snow, who said, “There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent.”
Now, I’d go on and tell you all about how Kwanzaa is meant to celebrate African heritage and is not celebrated in Africa and how the symbols of Kwanzaa are not used in African traditions or how Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson said “the whole holiday is made up. You won’t find its roots in Africa or anywhere else.” But there is no need. Just go check out the Wikipedia entry here.
Despite President Clinton’s repeated claims that he was “obsessed” with Osama Bin Laden, something his administration did, or didn’t do, caused his National Security Adviser Sandy Berger to turn into a thief, disgrace himself and betray his country.
Former national security adviser Sandy Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 and hid them under a construction trailer, the Archives inspector general reported Wednesday.
The report was issued more than a year after Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removal of the documents.
Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash.
The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger _ who had been President Clinton’s national security adviser _ was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of they failed to notify any law enforcement agency.
Berger, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents, was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.
The report said that when Berger was reviewing the classified documents in the Archives building a few blocks from the Capitol, employees saw him bending down and fiddling with something white, which could have been paper, around his ankle.
However, Archives employees did not feel at the time there was enough information to confront someone of Berger’s stature, the report said.
Brachfeld reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort.
“In total, during this visit, he removed four documents … .
“Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building).”
Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.
Berger, with the authorization of former President Clinton, was reviewing National Security Council documents on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, Sudan, and related presidential correspondence. The review was to facilitate Berger’s impending testimony before the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Simply put, he should have done hard time.
If you or I did exactly what Sandy Burger did, but at the local Department of Motor Vehicles, we would have done time. He did it at the National Archives, he stole national security secrets and destroyed them. He got off easy. Bill Clinton’s legacy as a terrorist fighter, er, not so much.
Great You Tube video of Danny Bonaduce giving the business to a Moonbat conspiracy theorist,
Watch until the end, its about 2 minutes and it is a classic. Go Danny Go.