Bruce McQuain from Blackfive joined us once again for Someone You Should Know, our weekly tribute to the troops. Bruce spent 28 years in the U.S. Army and he is a veteran of the Vietnam war. He brings a perspective and understanding to these stories that we could never match.
This week Bruce told us about Sgt. Matthew Matlock, a noncommissioned officer from Company C, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment for actions he took under fire to save Soldiers in Afghanistan.
“You never know, really, what you’re made of until you’re put into that situation,” Matlock said. “You don’t really think about anything else except getting your guys out of there. That was all that was going through my head – these guys are going to make it home. And I made sure of that.”
Eighteen months passed since that day in Afghanistan. Matlock listened from the theater’s front row as Garrett spoke of his actions.
“Staff Sgt. Matlock fought with such incredible bravery, deliberately putting himself at risk time and time again to save the lives of his men,” Garrett said. “He stepped forward without hesitation and did everything we expect of a seasoned combat leader of any rank.”
Matlock, 26, a native of Amarillo, Texas followed in the footsteps of his father, William Matlock, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant. In 2002, he joined the infantry and underwent airborne training before joining 1-503rd, the battalion known as “First Rock,” where he served in the scout platoon sniper section. In March 2003, Matlock served a yearlong tour in Iraq. In 2005, he served a year in Afghanistan. Afterward, Matlock joined Company C, 1-503rd, rising from team leader to squad leader. In 2007, Matlock deployed again to Afghanistan. It was during that second Afghanistan tour when his actions merited the Silver Star, the military’s third highest award, given only for valor and gallantry in combat.
The Someone You Should Know radio collaboration began as an extension of Matt Burden’s series at Blackfive. Bruce does an incredible job with the series every week. The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 8-10pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.
Christian Science Monitor
India: Bhopal disaster lingers, 25 years later
Activists and residents protested Thursday to mark the 1984 Bhopal disaster in which a gas leak killed 4,000 Indians in one day. New Delhi researchers say water in the area is still contaminated, though the state government says it is safe.
New Delhi – It was the deadliest industrial accident in history. On Dec. 3, 1984, clouds of poisonous gas leaked from a pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, and were carried on the breeze to nearby slums, killing 4,000 people in one day. Over the next few years, countless more died.
Twenty-five years later, the factory, now an abandoned wreck, still leaks toxins into the groundwater and soil.
Activists and residents of Bhopal marked the anniversary Thursday with protests for accountability and justice.
New research by a New Delhi-based think tank, the Centre for Science and the Environment (CSE), shows that less than two miles from the site, the groundwater contains nearly 40 times more pesticides than the level considered safe. Around the factory itself, the pesticide levels are 560 times higher.
The pesticides contain compounds that have been linked to serious illnesses, says CSE. Indeed, campaigners say that a quarter of a century later, Bhopal, a city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, has an unusually high incidence of children born with birth defects.
Conservative estimates hold that 15,000 people died of illnesses caused by the leak within a few years. Activists say the health of at least 200,000 has been damaged.
This video contains disturbing images, but that is the point isn’t it, remembering what happened.
Sure, President Barack Obama would be the easy choice for Person of the Year. Let’s face it, the year WAS all about him (just how he likes it). He’s gotten enough attention, and besides, I don’t want to reward failure.
I’m going in another direction.
We’ve long abandoned the post-9/11 belief that we were focused on the wrong things, that cops, firefighters and soldiers were the heroes, not vapid, selfish empty celebrities. 2009 was a year in which our celebrity obsessed culture seemingly jumped the shark on a monthly basis. This was the year that TMZ became a more important news organization than CNN. People with no discernable talent beyond whoring themselves out became instant millionaires and celebrities. 2009 America is a society obsessed with manufactured reality and phony celebrities.
Here are but a few of the year’s lowlights…
Jon and Kate Plus 8
One of the biggest pop culture stories of the year was the sad saga of Jon and Kate Plus 8. We watched, in prime time, a family destroy themselves and implode, for our amusement. We saw a father of eight act like a child. We saw a mother more interested in maintaining her reality TV show than her family. Mercifully, the Octomom sideshow seems to have died down.
Teenage ‘Hollywood Hills Burglar Bunch’ Suspected in Celebrity Robberies
A group of teenagers obsessed with celebrities went on a crime spree robbing Hollywood’s young, rich and famous, everyone from Rachael Bilson to Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom. According to news reports, “An accomplice who is now cooperating with Los Angeles police said Rachel Jungeon Lee had orchestrated the robberies in order to fulfill her dreams of owning items previously belonging to Hollywood stars.” Now she is facing 20 years in jail.
Tiger Woods “mistresses”
When news broke about Tiger’s car accident and the unusual circumstances surrounding it, attention quickly turned to a National Enquirer story published two days earlier claining he was having an affair with a ” 34-year-old “New York party girl†named Rachel Uchitel.” In the next day, countless stories were published about Uchitel and her celebrity obsession. She became national news overnight. Tiger’s other side action saw this as an opportunity—to get famous, and maybe even rich. (Famous is more important than rich these days). Now, Tiger is facing a string of woman coming forward claiming they had affiars with him. Obviously ruining ones reputation is worth it if the payoff is celebrity, even for 15 minutes.
All of this garbage brings me to the exception to the rule. To a man thrust into the white hot spotlight of national media attention who manged to handle it with the same grace that got him famous in the first place. I am of course talking about US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger, the hero of the Hudson river landing.
Scene Systems did this incredible recreation of the flight using the air traffic control audio togteher with a video recreation of the flight, in real-time. This is chilling stuff. It also the greatest example of grace under pressure that you will ever see.
Sullenberger’s grace and humility remained intact even as the entire country stood and applauded. He became an international celebrity overnight yet it didn’t seem to interest him, and certainly did not change him. Imagine the offers he had flying at him, with companies frothing at the mouth to attach his heroism to their products. How many people would be able to handle instant celebrity and potential riches the way Chesley Sullenbereger did? Probably about as many as could land a 747 safely in the Hudson River.
Because he was the exception in this celebrity obsessed year, because he has undeniable skill and talents, because his was literally THE feel good story of the year, Chesley B. Sullenberger is the Pundit Review’s 2009 Person of the Year.
Much has been written about the motley crue of left wing radicals in President Obama’s administration. The most infamous example is perhaps Van Jones, once so proudly touted as an asset by Valerie Jarrett, he was ousted within days when the American people got wind of what he said and believed. Not much has been said or written, yet, about private sector experience of those surrounding President Obama. These are supposed to be the best and brightest that America has to offer. Looks more like the left and brightest that government has to offer.
Nick Schulz shares this great chart from JP Morgan,
The chart examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.
Schulz observes,
When one considers that public sector employment has ranged since the 1950s at between 15 percent and 19 percent of the population, the makeup of the current cabinet—over 90 percent of its prior experience was in the public sector—is remarkable.
Remarkable is one word for it. Horrifying is another. Clarifying is a third. Why clarifying? Because it brings into relief why every solution coming out of the administration seems to expand the roles and responsibilities of the government at the expense of the private sector. It’s no wonder that the so-called stimulus bill was anything but. A couple of days before signing the bill President Obama said,
“I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we’ll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell disagreed by saying,
“A stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary is none of the above. And this means Congress is about to approve a stimulus that’s unlikely to have much stimulative effect.”
Nine months later, the unemployment rate is 17% higher than the administration’s predictions ( with stimulus passed unemployment would top off at 8.5%, currently it’s 10.2%) and 49 out of 50 states have higher unemployment. The number of jobs created “or saved” by the stimulus bill has become a running joke across the country.
To their credit, President Obama and his team of career bureaucrats have had some successes. For example, when it comes to unemployed per job posting in the top 50 U.S. metro areas, one city stands out above all others. That city, all the way to the left of the chart, is Washington DC. Given who is coming up with the solutons to our economic woes, it is not surprising that the home of government benefits first and most.
And for the dreaded private sector?
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Who wants to put aside for a few minutes The Age of Obama, and take a look back at The Age of Reagan instead? I thought so.
Joining me last night was Steven F. Hayward, one of the country’s leading experts on the Reagan presidency, who has written an exhaustive two volume biography titled The Age Of Reagan.
With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the timing was just right to take a look back at this great president. I also wanted to talk to Steven about how Reagan is being mis-remembered, to use a George W. Bush phrase, by today’s conservatives. They had a rocky relationship with President Reagan. Today’s GOP could also benefit by reexamining not just Reagan’s substance, but his style.
The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 8-10pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.
James P. Othmer came to our attention with his first novel, The Futurist. He joined us a couple years back for an hour in studio to talk about the book.
James has now written a highly entertaining look at his career in the advertising business, including a stint as Creative Director at mega firm Young & Rubicam. James is a terrific writer, incredibly witty and funny. He tells some great stories about the creative process, clients and office dynamics. He also takes a look forward, at the future of advertsing itself. Like the political world we love so much, advertising has been turned on its head by new digital technologies.
This is an excellent read and reminds us of just how under assault we are each and every day by advertising images. This is a great look behind the curtain.
The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 8-10pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.