It is pretty easy to get caught up in the relentless negativity of the current environment. Sometimes we get a Shazam moment when ugly realities interrupt our trivial pursuits. Everyone has a moment or three like this in their lives. A shocking death in the family or a terrible medical diagnosis. We can all relate. These moments instantly rearrange what you thought was important, at least for a little while. I had one of those experiences this week. I’ll be attending two services for 40-year old men in four days. It got me thinking about something my producer Rob had sent me, but I had brushed past it. It turns out that other times that Shazam moment comes at 12:30am on Conan O’Brien.
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.
What a pleasure to welcome Tony Blankley to Pundit Review Radio. His bio is amazing, Reagan WH, advisor and spokesperson for Newt during GOP Revolution, decade on McLaughlin Group and as syndicated columnist.
Sticking with the perspective theme, we started by aksing about his recent column titled, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life“. We also talked about his new book American Grit. It tries to correct one of the real failures of the Bush administration, they never asked the public for any sacrifice towards the war effort. We talked about some of the most controversial proposals in the book, including media censorship during wartime, like FDR, and bringing back the draft. There were plenty of callers lined-up who had questions for Tony as well.
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.
Bruce McQuain from QandO 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.
Tonight, Bruce told us about Staff Sgt. Matthew S. Kinney,
“In the air, Kinney single-handedly treated five critical patients, controlling bleeding, administering pain control, dressing wounds and starting intravenous drips, according to the narrative. The wounds he worked on included partial amputations, femoral bleeding and gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
“On countless occasions, he demonstrated a willingness to lay down his own life for those he is sworn to protect,” according to the narrative. “By calling Apache fire onto the location of an enemy heavy machine gun during an ambush, he saved the lives of countless soldiers on the ground, as well as the lives of the entire medevac crew who had assumed a stationary hover over the kill zone.”
Mary Ann from Soldiers Angels Germany has a whole lot more, including a note from Matthew Kinney himself. Hat tip: Mudville Gazette.
The Someone You Should Know radio collaboration began as an extension of Matt Burden's series at Blackfive. Bruce McQuain from QandO does an incredible job with the series every week.
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.
Let me start this rant by saying when it comes to blogs I enjoy, Hub Blog is Nulli secundus second to none. In fact, it is nothing short of praecipuus precipuus excellent, distinguished and extraordinary!
On Friday, Hub Blog offered up a Grand Argumentative Compromise:
Anything below the Dow 7,000 could be theoretically blamed on Obama. The markets were going to fall to about the 7,000 level anyway, IMHO, based on historic norms, Obamanomics or not. Arguments that Obama’s responsible for everything since his inauguration — and the TV boys were making that argument last night — are simply looney-right nonsense.
I wrote in,
I wish I had you as a professor in college, what an easy grader! I might have even finished in four years instead of five. A ‘C’ for that un-stimulus bill over which he showed zero leadership? Wow. As for the stock market declines…yes, Bush got the ball rolling (downhill), but the decline has accelerated since February when the stimulus bill and the budget were released. His budget is a disaster and the market knows it. Bleeding evil rich bastards dry and raising costs on every citizen and business through a cap and trade scheme in the name of changing the weather is just plain insane. The stock market is voting with its feet. The most telling quote is from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official in today’s WSJ, “The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It’s opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate.”
This weekend the mighty Hub Blog returned fire and broke out the Latin to describe “movement conservatives” who are blaming the stock market meltdown on Obama,
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Guess which ‘movement’ is employing classic post hoc ergo propter hoc logic these days as it applies to the markets and as defined thusly:
The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy is based upon the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event. Post hoc reasoning is the basis for many superstitions and erroneous beliefs.
If you guessed the same ‘movement’ that blamed last fall’s Wall Street meltdown on Barney Frank, ACORN and the CRA and now blames the market on Obama, you’ve won!
In a follow-up post, came this shot directed at Pundit Review,
You’re going to have to put up with my newfound enthusiasm for Latin for a while. I’ll pound it into the ground until Kevin screams for mercy.
Data venia With all due respect Hub Blog I will not be lumped in with “movement conservatives†lightly! I don’t mean to be difficilis difficult, but thems pugna fighting words for a pro-choice, pro-gay matrimonium marriage libertarian leaning fella like myself. I have been objecting to the left’s assertion that this whole mess is the GOP/Bush’s fault. I’ve never said that Barney, ACORN and CRA were entirely to blame for the problem. I’ve said they were key contributors to it, just as lack of effective government regulation and homeowner lies and greed were. Here are ipsissima verba the very words themselves,
We didn’t get to where we are today overnight. The crisis we face is the result of a million bad decisions.
Let’s start with us, the public. Many of us thought it was ok to stretch it on a mortgage, after all, prices only go in one direction, up. Plus it was more important to keep up with the Joneses than it was to live within your means. Another set of consumers thought that flipping houses was the way of the future, so they bought and sold, fudged some numbers on their loan docs and many eventually ran into a buzzsaw when the market turned. The third group of consumers as I see it are on the low end of the economic ladder, those who were offered mortgages, often at the behest of the government, that they either couldn’t afford or understand.
The geniuses of Wall Street saw all of this mortgage activity as a form of product development. A technology company develops next generation hardware and software products to sell. Wall Street R&D develops next generation financial engineering which result in new products to sell, like collateral debt obligations.
What about the government? Plenty of blame to go around here too. Attempts by the Bush administration to regulate Fannie and Freddie in 2003 were rebuffed by Democrats like Barney Frank
The GOP has to shoulder some of the blame as well, they controlled government for six years while this travesty was allowed to fester. They clearly saw the need for increased regulation as demonstrated by the administration’s attempts to regulate Fannie and Freddie in 2003 and again in 2005. The fact is the GOP had the majority yet didn’t get it the increased regulation they knew to be necessary in place. Same deal with the House Democrats yesterday, they have the majority, and they too failed to get something done.
Everyone is to blame, but some more than others. However, when did this all start? Was there an event that we can point to that led to these millions of bad decisions and the subsequent crisis we now face?
If you believe that Fannie and Freddie are at the core of the crisis, then the answer is yes.
New York Times
September 30, 1999
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
What is so deliri crazy about that? How is that not an honestus honest assessment of the Wall Street mess? In fact, I’d have to say that is nec temere nec timide neither reckless nor timid. Wall Street, the public and government all deserve blame and they’ve all gotten it here.
When it comes to the stock market, haud ignota loquor! I speak not of unknown things! Experientia doce Experience teaches that the stock market looks forward, not backwards. Economic policy takes not weeks but months and years to have an impact. Nobody thinks the stimulus will start stimulating until the end of the year. Stocks are different. The market is a real-time measure of fidens confidence in the future. What the market sees is an environment where growth will be made even more difficilis difficult because of the policies proposed in the Messias Obama budget. Cap and trade, tax hikes and the other assorted BS it contains are malus bad for business, malus bad for jobs and malus bad for growth. The market knows this and is now aggressively discounting future earnings power because of it. It’s not a very radix radical theory.
Obama is tabulae rasae in quibus nihil scriptum est a blank slate with nothing written upon him and that is at the heart of this problem. Right now, Hub Blog would prefer nemine contradicente no one speaking against Messias The One and his responsibility for the market. No amount of Latin from Hub Blog will convince me that Obama’s policy proposals haven’t accelerated the recent stock market decline. I will continue to oppugn oppose, to contradict, or to call into question Obama’s policies and priorities because I believe they are malus bad for our country, starting with his God awful budget. Qui tacet consentire videtur He who is silent is taken to agree!
De fideli,
Pundit Review
This is nothing short of embarrassing. I think the Obama administration needs to get a Gift Zsar immediately. Can they hire Martha Stewart or something?
Before his trip, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was effusive in his praise of our new president. According to The Guardian, he “lavished praise on Barack Obama before flying to Washington for his first White House meeting with the new US president.” As is the custom, the Prime Minister of our closest ally came bearing some historically significant, appropriate gifts, including,
Mr Brown’s gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.
Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute.
Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.
Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.
And what did Mr. Restore Our Reputation In The World give to the leader of Great Britain in return?
President Obama gave Prime Minister Brown a 25-DVD box set of classic American films.
Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert couldn’t have thought of something like that in their wildest dreams! How humiliating, for Obama, and America.
The Daily Mail reports that “No 10 had tried to keep the present a secret, refusing to answer reporters who asked what President Obama had given to mark the reaffirmation of the special relationship.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not play second fiddle to Obama in the humiliating gift giving department. She is every bit his equal!
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administration’s vow to “press the reset button†on U.S.-Russia relations.
She handed a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift: a red button on a black base with a Russian word peregruzka printed on top.
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?†Clinton asked.
“You got it wrong,†Lavrov said.
Instead of “reset,†Lavrov said the word on the box meant “overcharge.â€
Instapundit says, “The country’s in the very best of hands.”
For you visual learners out there, from PageTutor,
This pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000)
Here is $1 Billion
And finally, here is what $1 Trillion looks like. BTW, those pallets are double stacked!
Pretty soon, you’re talking about real money!
Just wait until the reaction Obama gets when he names John Kerry as SecDef. That’s what I’m hearing.