Number 5: Chevy Chase, late night talk show host
Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales said, “Chase’s show became eerily fascinating to watch once the specter of Totally Lost Cause took over — which happened by about the middle of the second week, or maybe by the middle of the second show.”
The show was simply awful. Also for consideration in this slot was The Magic Hour, another terrible late night show. The only reason Magic Johnson didn’t make the cut was at least his show had this epic appearence from Howard Stern.
Number 4: David Caruso, movie star
Struggling character actor with minor roles in films like Rambo, Caruso hit the big time when he was cast in NYPD Blue, one of the great television shows ever. He took his diva act and left the show 4 episodes into the second season. He had his sights set on the big screen. How’d that work out for him? His first film, Kiss of Death, cost $40 million to make and earned only $14 million. His second film, Jade, earned less than $10 million. Just like Japan, two bombs were enough, and he finally made his way back to small screen success in CSI Miami.
Number 3: Eddie Murphy, pop star
Enough said, er, sung.
Number 2: President Sarah Palin
Brought up to the big leagues too soon, Palin has crashed and burned under the white hot lights of national politics. To be sure, she was treated viciously by the press and for that they should be ashamed. Still, she gave them plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism as well. As I said the day she was selected by McCain, she simply is not ready to handle the media at this level. Why? A combination of factors, from lack of knowledge on the issues to lack of media training. She is simply nowhere near ready for the presidency, no matter how much conservatives love her. Those who think she is qualified are believing rather than seeing.
Number 1: President Barack Obama’s first term
Elected on the back of country’s desire for “change”, President Obama is squandering. what may have been the greatest reservoir of good will ever accumulated by an American politician. Voters were tired of George Bush. They craved change from the usual way of doing business in Washington. They were tired of the influence of money and special interests, the closed doors, the earmarks, etc.
President Obama’s idea of change was to radically remake the American economy in the image of Western Europe. He’s pushing for a cap and trade scheme that has already failed spectacularly in Europe. He is pushing for nationalized healthcare that has also been a disaster across Western Europe. In order to implement this “change”, many trillions of dollars in new taxes will be required of American citizens and businesses at a time when he says we are in the “worst financial crisis since the great depression”. Not to mention his oft repeated promise not to raise taxes on anyone making over $250K. By overreaching on two major power grabs, President Obama may end up with nothing but a new dog at the end of his first term. Hopefully.
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 Army Maj. John Detro, via IBD,
“Of the 50 men on the mission, 22 were wounded, five seriously. Thanks in great part to Detro and his team of medics, all of the Rangers survived and many of them are still on active duty. And the military reported the mission successful, with 50 terrorists killed.
For his sound judgment and exceptional performance, Detro was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor and the Purple Heart.
He also earned the admiration of his medics, who upon returning home nominated Detro for the Army Physician’s Assistant of the Year Award.”
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.
This is the first post of a new category, This Day in History. It is amazing how relevant history can be to current events.
I said on WRKO Sunday night that the Reagan mythology is hurting today’s Republicans. This came up when a caller or two compared Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan. I had a feeling that was coming and I brought with me to the studio my copy of Reagan: A Life in Letters . This is a compilation of personal correspondence he had over the years with friends, enemies, aides, journalists, lobbyists, columnists, citizens, soldiers and schoolchildren. It is a remarkable book and it lays to waste the idea that Reagan was a dummy or a puppet. He was engaged in the battle of ideas for more than twenty-five years. He was a student of politics and a professor in interpersonal communications. Palin could only dream of having his grasp of the issues or his ability communicate them.
Today’s conservatives forget that Reagan had a frosty relationship with them back in the day. They forget that he was a pragmatist and willing to compromise, see the 1982 tax hikes. Ramesh Ponnuru has a great column worth reading on the dangers of Misremembering Reagan: The Gipper still has lessons to teach — just not the ones we usually hear
Time Magazine’s July 20, 1981 story on the Sandra Day O’Connor nomination, not surprisingly, highlights conservative opposition,
Whether Reagan was playing shrewd politics, or merely following his own best instincts, almost did not matter. After naming O’Connor, the President suddenly found himself awash in praise from a wide range of political liberals, moderates and old-guard conservatives. At the same time, he was under harsh assault from the moral-issue zealots in the New Right who helped him reach the Oval Office. Although they had little chance of blocking the nomination, they charged that O’Connor was a closet supporter of the ERA and favored abortion.
In his diary on July 6, 1981, Reagan wrote,
“Called Judge O’Connor and told her she was my nominee for supreme court. Already the flak is starting and from my own supporters. Right to Life people say she is pro abortion. She says abortion is personally repugnant to her. I think she’ll make a good justice.”
That was Reagan. He was a pragmatist not a purist.
Time also cited Sandra Day O’Connor’s credentials,
“There were also ironies aplenty in Reagan’s choice of O’Connor. As a true-blue conservative, he had been widely expected to select a rigidly doctrinaire jurist in order to stamp his own political ideology on the court. Instead, he picked a meticulous legal thinker whose devotion to precedent and legal process holds clear priority over her personal politics, which are Republican conservative.”
Sandra Day O’Connor was a Wise Arizona Woman
In school, she was a high achiever and graduated from high school at the age of 16, then she graduated from Stanford Law School third in a class of 102.
How things change. Heard anyone calling Sonia Sotomayor “a meticulous legal thinker” lately? Not after being overruled 9-0 by the Supreme’s in the New Haven firefighter case.
Compare O’Connor’s resume with what Sotomayor said about her own,
“If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions, it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted,†she said on a panel of three female judges from New York who were discussing women in the judiciary.
Sandra Day O’Connor did not grow up in Greenwich, CT or attend Taft. Like Sotomayor, she was from a poor family. She was raised on a 300 acre cattle farm in Arizona during the depression! Sandra Day O’Connor went “the traditional numbers route”. Some call it the merit-based route.
Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald and Hub Blog joined me in studio last night for a fun hour of Salin Palin speculation. We had hoped to talk about Deval, the legislature, etc, but people were certainly ready with their Palin theories about the move and her political future. The callers were surprisingly rational. It seems the topic of Sarrah Palin drives people from both sides over the edge.
The Pundit Review Radio RSS feed can be found here.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
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.
Firefighters on disability race to retire
Pension-upgrade rule disappears tomorrow
Nearly 30 Boston firefighters with pending disability claims filed for retirement yesterday, just two days before a new state law ends a controversial benefit that allows them to significantly enhance their pensions if they claim career-ending injuries occurred while filling in for a superior at a higher pay grade.
…Suspected disability retirement abuses and pension excesses have been a chronic problem at the Boston Fire Department, prompting an inquiry by the FBI.
A Globe review of city retirement and payroll records last year found that, over the prior six years, 102 Boston firefighters had substantially enhanced their tax-free disability pensions by claiming career-ending injuries while they were filling in for superiors at higher pay grades. Some firefighters have sought the enhanced benefit after filling in for a superior for just one day, leading critics to call it the “king-for-a-day’’ provision.
Of course, the UNION is screaming because their big scam has been shut down. Here’s Robert B. McCarthy, president of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts,
McCarthy argued that the new law unfairly punishes all injured firefighters, not just those who claim injury while filling in for superiors.
“I don’t think they intended to punish every firefighter who gets injured in the line of duty, and that’s what it does,’’ McCarthy said of the new law. “How am I going to tell my guys to fight a fire and risk their lives if they’re not going to be protected?’’
Protected from what, exactly? Protected from angry taxpayers who are tired of firefighters scamming the system? Protected from the FBI, who is investigating the outrageous behavior of the UNION? Is it part of their job description to game the system for higher pensions? Is that some sort of constitutional right for public employees? The troth must always be open? If you chose to be a firefighter, your job is to “risk their lives” by fighting fires. It is nowhere in the job description that gaming the system is part of the job.
The Mighty Hub Blog is asking the right questions,
It’s hard to believe they could be so brazen. They’re pulling off a scam right before our eyes. But decades-old habits die hard. … Can we also have some serious reforms of an obviously abused ‘disability’ system? Will any Dem legislative leader step forward this morning to demand change? Or is that asking too much from Dem lawmakers who obviously didn’t want reforms in the first place?
Those are rhetorical questions, of course. House speaker Robert A. DeLeo, as we predicted, is dislocating his shoulder patting himself and his fellow hacks on the back for doing the bare minimum,
My View: People spoke and Beacon Hill listened
In the midst of these difficult times, the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate have done what so many thought we could not do — bring true reform to Beacon Hill.
Oh, spare me. All they did was get rid of some real pig at the troth behavior that they created and exploited for decades.
In other Beacon Hill news, the pols raised taxes yesterday by $1 billion including a 25% increase to the sales tax. Nothing says economic development and growth like massive tax increases! Congratulations southern New Hampshire, an economic boom is on the way, courtesy of fed up Massachusetts taxpayers. The feedbags are on and they are not done yet bleeding us dry. Up next, a new and improved GAS TAX.
Patrick hints at hike in gas tax
Governor Deval Patrick signed a budget yesterday that imposes more than $1 billion in additional taxes on Massachusetts residents and visitors, most of it through the first increase in the state sales tax in 33 years, even as he declined to rule out a future boost in the state gas tax.
We were warned that if we voted for the repeal of the state income tax in November 2008, we would see higher gas taxes, sales taxes and less state aide to cities and towns. Well, we they voted to keep the income tax, and we got all those other taxes anyway.
Welcome to Taxachusetts, home of a runaway hackarama and a comatose public.
Michael Jackson’s problems started at home, with his father Joe. They are well documented. The Jackson family is first in line among those who used and abused him. It is hard to believe that his father, at least, ever had his best interests at heart. Exhibit A, his performance today, as reported by MTV,
Birds of a feather
Michael Jackson’s Family Still Considering Funeral Plans
Father Joe Jackson calls press conference to announce record label; says Michael will not be buried at Neverland.Reporters gathered outside the Jackson family compound in Encino, California, on Monday morning for a press conference from Michael Jackson’s father, Joseph, during which they expected to hear about plans for the singer’s funeral.
But instead, Joe Jackson deflected most of those questions and talked about a new record label he’s launching with a former member of the classic R&B group the Chi-Lites, even as he defended detractors who questioned his comments about the label on the red carpet the previous night at the BET Awards, which were a tribute to the singer.
That got me thinking about pop tart Britney Spears. Like MJ, she was young, world famous and filthy rich. She was clearly going off the rails and headed for real problems. Her father, who may never have been a father of the year candidate, stepped up, stepped in and most likely saved his daughter from an early grave.
April 2007: Britney Spears’s Father Says She Was ‘Out of Control’Britney Spears’s father has publicly criticized his daughter, saying she blames her family and her manager for problems that are her own fault.
October 2008: Britney Spears’ Dad Granted Permanent Control of Her Affairs
January 2009: Britney Spears’ Father Obtains Restraining Orders Against Adnan Ghalib, Sam Lutfi, Jon Eardley
Is he the world’s greatest dad? Hardly. He has one teenage daughter who got pregnant and he allowed Britney to adopt the slutty school girl image to sell records. It worked like a charm, at first, thanks to shots like this 2003 Rolling Stone cover,
However, when it stopped working and things got really dark Jamie Spears did what he had to in order to save his daughter and for that I give him all the credit in the world. That is a lot more than can be said for Joe Jackson, that’s for sure.
Threats Watch’s Managing Editor Steve Schippert joined me tonight to discuss what is happening in Iran and Iraq. At ThreatsWatch,
Steve focuses on the strategic and operational impact of policy decisions and events, particularly with regard to emerging threats, such as Iran and Syria or the democratization efforts in Lebanon. Steve also contributes significantly on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Pakistan, North African conflicts and the War on Terror’s progress.
A Marine, Steve served during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He also has a background in information technology and we discussed the role of social media in Iran. He provided great insight into what is going on between the security services and the protesters. We also talked about Iraq, the upcoming elections, the timetable for withdrawal and the escalating violence.
I had the pleasure of meeting Steve a while back at the Milblog Conference. Great guy, great analyst and a great guest. I hope to have him back on soon.
The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
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 your radio every Sunday evening from 8-10 pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.