- Guests:
- Bill Bradbury, Candidate for Oregon Governor; former Oregon Secretary of State, is proposing a "Bank of Oregon" if elected.
- Eric Hensal, "Designated human" at "Murray Hill Inc. for Congress" campaign.
- Bill Weise, Real Estate Agent, Evangelist, Author, who says he actually spent "23 Minutes in Hell"
- Conservative John Lott.
- Topics:
- State of the Union, Pimps and Corporate Personhood.
- Bank of Oregon
- Supreme Court ruled corporations have personhood, so can a corporation run for Congress?
- Could it be that "Everything You Know is Wrong"...about Hell?!
- "Bernanke doesn't deserve a second term"
- Bumper Music:
- Footloose, Kenny Loggins.
- Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
- Just Like You, Three Days Grace.
- Hot Hot Hot, Buster Poindexter (video).
- Live like you were dying, Tim McGraw.
- The Twilight Zone, Marius Constant.
- I Need to Know, Tom Petty.
- Democracy, Leonard Cohen.
- Today's newsletter has details of today's guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today's newsletter, it is in the archive.
- Quote: "The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Article: Obama needs to reverse course by Stephen Graubard.
"This has been a ghastly 12 months for President Barack Obama. As he prepares to deliver his first State of the Union address, none of the fair promises of his November 2008 victory has been fulfilled. The question now being asked, very properly, is whether he can recover in the next nine months, rescuing his Democratic party from catastrophic Senate and House losses in the mid-term elections. Even more importantly, will it be possible for him to proceed to win a second term for himself in 2012? The tasks are Herculean, though they might not have proved daunting for either of Mr Obama's most distinguished 20th century Democratic presidential predecessors, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Mr Obama could benefit from studying these earlier Democratic party administrations, so much more deft, feisty and innovative than his own. The proposition, commonly heard, that America's political and economic problems are infinitely more serious today betrays a woeful ignorance of the tumultuous 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, those able to recall the days when Roosevelt and Truman suffered obloquy and disdain comparable to and sometimes greater than what is now being meted out to Mr Obama know that neither ever capitulated to harsh criticism. It will soon be clear whether Mr Obama has the political skill, the fleetness of foot and the self-confidence to learn from his accomplished predecessors.
Does Mr Obama, in short, have the intelligence and the will to change course now, to show he is neither overwhelmed nor disheartened by his all-too-obvious failures and is in fact able to learn and profit from them? While there is no need for him to acknowledge the tactical and strategic errors he has made since entering the Oval Office - it has never been a presidential habit to admit fallibility - he must realise that his willingness to change course, doing so dramatically and expeditiously, will determine whether he survives as an effective leader."
- Member of the day was Marcia, who won a copy of "Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being" for blogging:
Let’s cut to the chase. What would I like to say to the president tonight? Who are you and what have you done with the Barack Obama we elected?
