"Inaugural" Special.
705P ET: Steve Moore, Wall Street Journal, with Simon Constable, DowJones Newswire, re John Galt, hero of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," watching the TARP 2 package, re John Galt watching the $850 billion stimulus package, re watching the inaugation festivities in which we begin to spend our way to prosperity. Re WASHINGTON - Invoking hope and history, President-elect Barack Obama rolled into the capital city Saturday night after pledging to help bring the nation "a new Declaration of Independence" and promising to rise to the stern challenges of the times. He kicked off a four-day inaugural celebration with a daylong rail trip, retracing the path Abraham Lincoln took in 1861. Full Story»
720P: Larry Kudlow, CNBC, re TARP 2 sails through the Senate, re the Gordon Brown. Alistair Darling Bad Bank, re the Inauguration and the Treasury's Bad Bank. Equity Investors Will Be Smiling at Year End - Steve Forbes, Forbes
735P: Professional Roundtable Jodi Schneider, CQ, Mona Charen, NRO, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, re the Obama inaugural celebration, re the whistle-stop from Philadelphia, re the Lincoln claims and the FDR New Deal comparisons.
750P: Continued re the $850 billion stimulus package so far, re the complaints of Democrats, re the new administration takes command. US Senate blocks finance chief hearings
805P: Joanna Lublin, Wall Street Journal, with Simon Constable, DowJones Newswire, CEO Firings on the Rise CEOs at six major U.S. companies lost their jobs in just the last eight days, a sign of turmoil to come, say directors and recruiters.
820P: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents Major Jewish Organizations, re the Israeli Cabinet votes "Unilateral Ceasefire" in Gaza, re the MOU signed on Friday 16 by T. Livni and C. Rice.
835: Financial Professionals, with Tom Donlan, Barron's, John Tamny, RealClearMarkets.com, Simon Constable, Dow Jones, Aaron Task, Yahoo Finance, re Forecasting Pain, From the U.S. to Australia - Nouriel Roubini, Forbes Government Solutions Are Slowing the Economy - John Tamny, RCM, The End of Citi's Financial Supermarket - Andy Kessler, Wall Street Journal
850P: Continued, re the legacy of Hank Paulson, rescuer or collectivizer, re TARP 2, what is it good for? US Senate blocks finance chief hearings
905P: Aaron Klein, WND, re the al-Shifa Hospital storage room full of Ismail Haniyeh and cronies, re the IDF closing the net, re the Olmert cabinet obeying the White House; re the Obama plan; re the IDF phased withdrawal, re the Spring '09 battle plan.
920P: Charlie Gasparino, DailyBeast.com, re Bob Rubin and the end of Citibank the Macy's of money, re the war between Ken Lewis, Bank of America, and the man he rescued, John Thain, Merrill, Lynch.
935P: Ronald C. White, Jr, author "A. Lincoln: A Biography." Abraham Lincoln's whistle-stop train trip, which Mr. Obama seeks to recreate, left Springfield, Illinois on February 11, 1861 enroute to his first inauguration on March 4. At the same time, another critical trip started when
Jefferson Davis, newly elected president of the Confederate States of America, departed his slave-owning plantation Brierfield in Mississippi on the same day, February 11, enshipped on the river to Vicksburg, and began his whistle-stop tour of his new country, the Confederacy. The New York Times published two columns side by side: "The New Administration," and "The New Confederacy." For the next twelve days, the public watched the progress of the two new potentates. Davis went to Mobile, Alabama, and eventually to Richmond, Virginia. The trains of the two presidents, both born in cabins in Kentucky, collided in April 1861 when the Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter
955P: Exeunt re the Barack Obama Inauguration, is it 1961 or 1933 or 2009? Conditions Today Aren't Like the '30s - Conrad Black, National Po
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KFI-AM 640 Los Angeles, 7-10P Pacific Time.
705P PT: Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, Protectionist Wave May Deepen Crisis A wave of protectionism is swelling around the world that could further damage struggling economies, re the similarities and differences between 2009 and 1933, re the China Price, re the safety and enviromental excuses for tariffs.
720P: Maura Webber Sadovi, Wall Street Journal, re Commercial Sector in California to Worsen California's Inland Empire has gone from a booming development smorgasbord to a basket case in a few years.
735P: Professional Roundtable with with Diana West, author, Larry Johnson, No Quarter and State (ret), Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, re the war on terror that the Obama administration inherits: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gaza and the West Bank, in Africa, in Iran. Obama: not important to kill bin Laden
750P: Continued re the Obama brand and the selling of the presidency as heroic, charismatic.
805P: Professional roundtable with Bill Whalen, Jim McTague, re the Arnold Schwarzenegger announcement that California will not refund withholding taxes, re the collapse of the California economy presages the other large states, re the TARP 2, re the stimulus package.
820P: Continued re complaint by small bankers against the Tarp that allows GMAC to offers Cds at cut rates. US Senate blocks finance chief hearings
835P: Matt Miller, author, "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas," especially the assumptions that our children will be better off than us, that all free trade is good, that taxes are bad.
850P: Bob Zimmerman, author, "Universe in a Mirror," re the new names for NASA chief, re the reports of Methane on Mars: organic or volcanic?
905P: Yoseff Bodansky, author, "Chechen Jihad," the Israel declares unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, re the three weekend campaign against Hamas that ends in failure, re the Obama ambition and the Tehran counter.
920P: Mary Kissel, Asia Wall Street Journal, re the China Price, re the push back by Chinese labor against the exploitation of the migrant workers by factories and mines.
935P: Willie Hensley, "Fifty Miles from Tomorrow," author, re growing up Inuit on the coast of Alaska north of Nome, re the discovery of native people's right, re the politics of the Alaska land.
935P: Exeunt re the Obama Inaugural and the irrational exuberance of the public.
The discussion with Mr. Zimmerman about the hints of Martian life should be a good one.
Instead of blandly well-spoken civil servants, the first humans to set foot on the Red Planet will be obsessive misfits not unlike Bert Rutan or the Martian Troika found in that quite wonderful novel of yours. Against all odds they will arrive in a leaky ship held together by masking tape and baling wire, then return to Earth to sell their story to reality television for billions of dollars, only to grow disgusted with the starlets and the cocaine and themselves, and so blast off once more, this time for Titan or the Kuiper belt, never to be heard from again. Of this I am sure.
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With best wishes to all my fellow JBS listeners,
Jonathan Case
From what I heard on the radio, Matt Miller is a socialist. Neither Matt nor JB questioned the philosophical issues of taxes or the programs that demand them. The tyranny of dead ideas? How about Karl Marx and John Keynes. As far as John's facebook page, been there, done that.
What happened to Josef Bodansky? I was looking forward to listening to his take on Israel and Tehran at the 9:05PM PT on KFI. It seems Matt Miller took Bodansky's spot and a segment from the WABC broadcast was repeated in the originally scheduled Miller time slot. I hope you have Josef Bodansky on very soon. He may be a little difficult to understand, but his commentaries are fascinating and insightful. Great job last night by Aaron Klein and Malcolm Hoenlein. Josef would have made a trifecta.
Hey, where's the podcasts for WABC?
Miller's analysis is deeply flawed by establishing the conclusions where he wants to go and manipulating the data to get there rather than letting the data take him to conclusions. The data he uses is too limited to be useful as well. His analysis of income realized by children as opposed to their parents fails to deal with the phenomenon of exploding single-parent households and its impact on the socialization skills and moral character of children; his failure to deal with the spending side of the entitlements problem; and his focus on property taxes supporting local schools as a cause of the disaster that is public education fails to deal with all the other, more potent influences on education policy. I buy a lot of books based on Batchelor's interviews with authors, but Miller's won't be one of them.
I liked John's comment at the end of the interview with Matt Miller - something like "I still have these dead ideas in my pocket and I'm holding on to them". Exactly. I think it was a great addition to the show to have him on - reminds us what we're dealing with. I also really have an undying curiosity about why seemingly intelligent people actively welcome socialism, and the only conclusion I've been able to reach so far is that perhaps their parents abused them when they were children.
I thought the Willie Hensley interview was fascinating. Possibly part of that is that I was born in Alaska, but another reason is that this guy seemed to have no bitterness over what's happened to him, a quality I really admire (one I could do a better job of emulating.)
For John Batchelor: John, I enjoyed the interview and hope your audience did as well. The sun is staying up longer and longer here in Anchorage and before too long, there will even be some heat coming down on us! Whenever you are ready to talk about Alaska again, just call! willie