A well deserved profile of Michael Yon this weekend by the Associated Press
Blogger Gains Following With Iraq Reports
After getting himself embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last year, he used his Internet blog to report on the car bombs, firefights and dead soldiers. But he also wrote descriptively about acts of compassion and heroism, small triumphs in the country’s crawl toward democracy and the gritty inner workings of the military machine.
Yon’s dispatches have been extolled by loyal readers as gutsy and honest reporting by a guy who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He has been interviewed and his blog quoted by major newspapers and TV news networks, and he has drawn comparisons to Ernie Pyle, the renowned World War II correspondent who shared the trenches with fighting soldiers.
You can listen to Michael’s Pundit Review Radio appearances from Iraq here.
You can read about one of his radio appearances here.
What’s up with Kerry’s filibuster call, and Hillary joining in his defeat? The Massachusetts Senate duo has even taken up blogging with the Kosmonauts? What is going on?
Bill at INDCJournal has the right idea, You’re killing the Democratic Party:
I have one complaint for Kos, Atrios, et al: hurry it up a bit, will you? We’d like to get on with building a viable two-party system from the ashes.
Todd Zywicki, writing at Volokh Conspiracy hits home with this obversation,
given the apparent inability of liberal talk radio (e.g., Air America) to get traction, I wonder if this has anything to do with the way that liberal and conservative blogs have evolved into having different structures. Think of it this way–if John Kerry were a conservative, he would have probably phoned-in a filibuster to Rush Limbaugh rather than blogging on Daily Kos. This leads me to wonder whether one explanation for the apparent difference between conservative and liberal blogs is that in some sense conservative blogs and talk radio work in tandem with each other, whereas liberal blogs essentially have to perform simultaneously both of the functions served by two distinct outlets by conservative media (talk radio and blogs). My impression is that liberal blogs tend to be in some sense larger and more centralized (such as Daily Kos), whereas conservative blogs tend to be more plentiful, smaller, and more decentralized in structure.
Even a relaible Bush hater like Joan Venocci of the Boston Globe is unimpressed,
Calling for a filibuster is a late, blatant bow to the left…Kerry’s enthusiasm for a filibuster is harder to fathom, except as more of the same from a perpetually tone-deaf politician. Why volunteer to look like a creature of the left if you are plotting a second presidential campaign? The perception helped undercut Kerry’s first presidential campaign.
HT: Instapundit
Armando over at Kos is blaming the vast right wing conspiracy for the Democrats problems,
Whatever happens in the next few days, as always the Media will do whatever they can to make Democrats look bad. Here’s my advice to Democrats who stand for the Constitution, DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM. Don’t let them explain you. You explain why you oppose Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The Colby College alumni magazine has published an extended profile of Pundit Review Radio that is sure to ruffle more than few feathers among the liberal alumni.
The article includes a good description of how Gregg and I went from typical liberal college kids to conservative bloggers and talk show pundits.
The best part is the behind the scenes insight on one of Michael Yon’s appearences from Baghdad.
This is a great profile and both Gregg and I want to thank Gerry Boyle, editor of the magazine, for giving us such as fair treatment.
Enjoy.
What a show we have lined up for Sunday evening.
In the 9pm EST hour, we are excited to announce that we will have with us Andrew Goldberg, the Managing Editor of the fabulous web site The Smoking Gun.
What a week for The Smoking Gun, having debunked author James Frey and his million little lies. Without a doubt, this is the most talked about story in America this week. What a site to see Oprah eat a big slice of humble pie. Here is the post that started it all,
The Man Who Conned Oprah
“Book Club” author’s best selling non-fiction memoir filled with fabrications, falsehoods, other fakery, TSG probe finds
Frey appears to have fictionalized his past to propel and sweeten the book’s already melodramatic narrative and help convince readers of his malevolence. “I was a bad guy,” Frey told Winfrey. “If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.” That is repeatedly apparent in his memoir, which announces, “I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal.” It is an incantation he repeats eight times in the book, always making sure to capitalize the ‘c’ in Criminal.
But he has demonstrably fabricated key parts of the book, which could–and probably should–cause a discerning reader (and Winfrey has ushered millions of them Frey’s way) to wonder what is true in “A Million Little Pieces” and its sequel, “My Friend Leonard.”
When TSG confronted him Friday (1/6) afternoon with our findings, Frey refused to address the significant conflicts we discovered between his published accounts and those contained in various police reports. When we suggested that he might owe millions of readers and Winfrey fans an explanation for these discrepancies, Frey, now a publishing powerhouse, replied, “There’s nothing at this point can come out of this conversation that, that is good for me.”
Well, that is certainly one thing that James Frey has said that is 100% true!!
Find out right from The Smoking Gun how they discovered Frey’s web of lies and what it has been like to them since this story blew up into a national phenomenon. If you would like to watch Frey squirm on Oprah, click here.
In the 8pm est hour we will discuss a controversial bill that is before the Massachusetts state legislature, H1641, THE MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKS. The bill advocates raising health curriculum to the level of math and science and promotes “age appropriate” sexual education beginning on pre-kindergarden classes. Read the bill for yourself. State Representative Ted Speliotis will be our guest in studio. We will also hear from David Parker, the Lexington father who has become a nationally recognized speaker on parental rights issues.
You can stream the show live at WRKO and call us toll free with questions at 877-469-4322.
About Pundit Review Radio
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin & Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. This unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening at 8pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Bostonâ??s Talk Leader.
On our radio show Pundit Review Radio last Sunday night I made the point with our guest and old college friend Andrew Grossman, director of Wal-Mart Watch, that the Maryland Democratic legislatureâ??s override of the GOP Governor Bob Erlichâ??s veto of their â??Fair Share Health Care Actâ? would be anything but â??fairâ? for the working poor and elderly on fixed incomes whose interests liberals routinely claim to represent.
It seems as though Professor Steve. H Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University who served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland (1976-77), and Professor Steven J.K. Walters a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland, concur with that assessment.
Utilizing an input/output economic model the professors forecasted the â??ripple effectsâ? of the new income and spending which could have emanated from Wal-Martâ??s planned construction of a new distribution center in the poorest county- Somerset- in Maryland, which because of the new legislation, will inevitably be cancelled.
In short, the legislation intended to liberate workers from Wal-Mart â??exploitationâ? will end up making them poorer.
The new distribution center would have resulted in more jobs, more economic output, higher compensation, and more tax revenues for the state of Maryland.
The center’s 800 employees would have created an additional 282 jobs among “upstream” suppliers and “downstream” retailers and service establishments; all told, the center would have boosted county employment by 14% and private sector employment by 20%.
â?¢ Total annual employee compensation in Somerset would have risen by $46.5 million, or 19%.
â?¢ Annual output (or “gross county product”) would have risen by $128.3 million, or 19%.
â?¢ State and local tax receipts would have increased by $19.2 million annually; this would include $8.5 million in property taxes, $5.6 million in sales taxes and $1.4 million in personal income taxes.
But thatâ??s not the only â??unintended consequencesâ? of this anti-growth/ anti-worker legislation:
Those losses, though dramatic, probably understate the full extent of the damage in this case. They do not include foregone employment and income from construction of the facility and related infrastructure improvements. What is more, Wal-Mart’s tentative plans for a second distribution center in Garrett County, in mountainous western Maryland, also appear dead. Garrett, with a poverty rate that is 70% above the state’s, is only slightly better off than Somerset.
How could Democratic legislators turn a â??blind-eyeâ? to the foregone economic benefit to the poorest of Maryland citizens the authors ask?
Partly, of course, they are simply eager for Big Labor’s votes and money and therefore subservient to its interests. The Service Employees International Union actually helped draft what became known as the “Wal-Mart bill.” Unable — so far — to organize workers at the company, the union’s immediate national strategy is to limit Wal-Mart’s competitive reach by raising its costs. Maryland was a shrewdly chosen place to kick off this campaign.
Ah, Big Labor- friend to the poor.
As I said to our friend Mr. Grossman on our program, this bill is nothing more than a mechanism to exert as much force as possible on Wal-Mart to raise their costs and make them less competitive until they agree to unionize their workers. Thatâ??s all pro-Big Labor union groups like Wal-Mart Watch really care about. And that is exactly what this whole sad charade is all about.
The authors correctly conclude that Wal-Mart in not the enemy but rather the â??front line soldiers in the War on Poverty.â? They are 100% correct.
Consider the report released earlier this month from Global Insights, an economic analysis firm, that evaluated Wal-Martâ??s impact on local communities and the wider economy. It was also reviewed by and independent panel of economists, including a scholar at the liberal Brookings Institute.
Global Insights found that Wal-Martâ??s expansion between 1985-2004 was associate with a 9.1 percent decline in the price of food at home, a 4.2 percent decline in the price of other commodities and goods, and a 3.1 percent decline in consumer prices overall, as measured by the CPI. The analysis concluded that Wal-Mart saves the average working family about $2,329 per year.
The real enemy of the â??exploitedâ? Wal-Mart employees is the â??Big Laborâ? Union backed organizations such as Wal-Mart Watch and their liberal-Democratic supporters who are pursuing their own selfish interests to enhance their own rapidly diminishing political power at the expense of the very same constituents they claim to represent.
I really hope that when our liberal friends who run Wal-Mart Watch, the Big Labor Union bureaucrats , and the elite liberal politicians of Maryland, sit down to dinner in their upper-middle and upper class suburban Maryland homes that they take a moment to consider and reflect upon the thousands of their impoverished Maryland fellow citizens in Somerset County who are going to suffer immeasurably because of this terrible piece of legislation they worked so hard to enact.
And the bleeding heart liberals wonder why the American people, by and large, donâ??t trust them with their wallets.
This is exactly why.
It’s pretty much axiomatic that liberal Democrats can’t be trusted on national security and were wrong on Iraq and the larger War on Terror in general. They are also consistently wrong on economic policy. Former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin who served under Bill Clinton (actually that was Monica but I digress) writes an article today in the Wall St. Journal entitled “We Must Change Policy Drection” (Subs Req.) in which Mr. Rubin lays out his prescription for economic growth. (Not that anybody asked him) Of course his prescription was typical Keynesian style higher taxes (“targeted” of course- one can infer on the “rich”) as well as more regulations on business, and entitlement/government spending.
He totally ignores the enormous economic impact that the Bush tax cuts have had and instead credits the largely accommodative easy money/low interest rates of the Fed for the economic growth that in his words has been “reasonably healthy.” What planet is Little Bobby living on? Reasonably healthy? Only a pointy-headed intellectual like Mr. ivy leaguer Bobby Rubin would claim that the 14 straight quarters of above average GDP growth, record low inflation, and unemployment could be characterized as “reasonably healthy.” Oh, and did I mention that Bush and the GOP were able to achieve this growth in spite of the Clinton Recession, The Clinton Era Corporate Scandals, the bursting of the Clinton Stock Market Bubble, 9-11, and Katrina?
He then goes on to attempt to claim that for future economic growth to continue that we can’t rely on supply side tax cuts which doesn’t really generate that much revenues to the treasury and is sure to exacerbate the long term deficit:
The proponents of supply-side theory who assert that tax cuts will wholly — or even significantly — pay for themselves (through increased growth and federal tax revenues), appear to be no more accurate now than they were in the ’90s. Then, they argued that tax increases included in our plan to address fiscal deficits were likely to lead to massive job loss, but what followed instead was the longest economic expansion in our history. Moreover, while 10-year fiscal deficit projections are inevitably unreliable, these forecasts could just as readily turn out to be low as to be high. What actually happens will always involve factors cutting both ways — the unexpected costs for Katrina and unbudgeted costs for Iraq and Afghanistan are already projected to exceed the unexpected tax revenues.
Blah, Blah, Blah.
To Rubin’s claim that tax cuts cause deficits (an old canard of the left that they stubbornly cling to):
Historical evidence has demonstrated that tax cuts have increased tax revenues to the federal treasury. Three times in 1900s (the 20s, 60s, and 80s) taxes were cut across the board. All three cuts stimulated the economy substantially and immediately and resulted in increases in tax dollars to the federal treasury.
The Harding/Coolidge tax cuts increased tax dollars to the federal treasury. Andrew Mellon, treasury secretary under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, engineered what were really the first supply side tax cuts in American history. As part of the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926 taxes where cut across the board. Top marginal rates decreased from 73% to 58% in 1922, to 50% in 1923, to 46% in 1924, to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929. IRS data shows that these across the-board tax cuts resulted in greater tax payments, especially by those in the highest tax brackets. When taxes were reduced from 60% to 25% on top income earners, taxes paid increased from $300 billion to $700 billion a year. During this period, top income earners also increased their share of the overall tax burden from one third in the early 20s to approximately two-thirds (of all taxes paid) by the late 20s.
Of note, between 1922-1928 average incomes of those earning greater than $100K increased by 15%. Those earning between $10K and $100K increased by 84%! Clearly, tax cuts â??lifted all boats,â? not just those of the rich.
JFKs tax cuts increased tax dollars to the federal treasury. In 1962, JFK, a Democrat, cut income tax rates across the board by 20% and proposed a 10% reduction in corporate income taxes to spur economic growth and job creation. (Legislation, which was supported by, then freshman Sen. Ted Kennedy- ironically one of the most vocal opponents of the current 2003 Bush tax cuts.) Over the next 4 years employment grew by over 1 million jobs. The economic growth rate increased from 4.3% to 6.6%. Additionally, tax receipts to the federal treasury grew from $48.7 billion in 1964 to $68.7 billion in 1968.
Reaganâ??s tax cuts increased tax dollars to the federal treasury. In 1981, Reagan cut marginal tax rates across the board. As a result, income taxes to the federal treasury doubled from approximately $500 million per year in 1983 to over $1 billion per year in 1989.
And, oh yeah, I might add that the lefties claimed that the Bush tax cuts would exacerbate the deficit and ruin the economy. Tax revenues to the federal treasury increased and the deficit has decreased from almost $400 billion to about $280 Billion- The exact opposite the tax and spend liberals claimed. Did I mention that since 2002 4.5 million new jobs were created?
Robert Rubin hasn’t earned the right to be taken seriously about his economic prescriptions given his dismal record:
The Rubinomics Lie– According to this argument, known during the Clinton years as “Rubinomics,” -tax cuts increase the money supply, which drives up interest rates and inflation and thereby increases the budget deficit. This line of reasoning is flawed on many levels. First, even though we are experiencing a mid-size deficit (about $300 billion in 2005, which is just a fraction of our 13 trillion-dollar GDP) interest rates have actually decreased. (From 6.03% in 2000 to around 4% in 2005.) Certainly, one cannot conclude that larger deficits cause interest rates to fall. However, it is incorrect to assert that rising budget deficits cause interest rates to increase. There is simply no demonstrable causal link.
As to needed reforms in healthcare, social security, and education, Mr. Rubin may want to ask his fellow liberals in Congress why they continually oppose and obstruct the vary market based initiatives and reforms that have proven to be the most successful (i.e. HSAs, individual voluntary retirement accounts, and school vouchers.)
Rubin is no doubt a very smart guy, but why are technocrats like him and former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich so impervious to empirical economic data that has demonstrated time and time again that the best way to achieve economic growth for all Americans is via permanent, deep, and immediate tax cuts (on personal income, dividends, capital gains, and inheritance), reductions in pork barrel/entitlement spending, reduced regulations on business, and free market reforms for healthcare, retirement, and education?
Al Gore to Publish Book about Global Warming
Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:45 PM ET
Rodale Books today announced its agreement with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to publish a book about global warming entitled An Inconvenient Truth to be released in April 2006.
Deadly freeze claims more lives in Eastern Europe
Jan 24 10:11 AM US/Eastern
A glacial chill claimed more lives in across Eastern Europe, forcing schools to shut and disrupting public transport as cold cracked rail lines. In Poland, a total of 39 people have died since a cold spell hit the country last Thursday, bringing to 161 the number who have died this winter, many of them homeless, police said. Temperatures in the south of the country plunged to minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit), while the capital Warsaw shivered as the mercury registered minus 25 C (minus 13 F) overnight Monday-Tuesday.