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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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Christmas Shopping Season Opens Early At The Hugh Store |
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
4:59 PM |
Amid reports that the retailers are hurrying the Christmas shopping season, and hobbled by a cold, I am taking the weekend off and opening the Hugh Store for holiday shopping.
There will be a couple of more offerings next week, including my latest on the rebuilding of the GOP, but here are three possible gifts for the HH Show listener on your list.
The War Against the West brings together the most important interviews I have done in the past four years with experts on the war against Islamist extremism. These experts range across the political and professional spectrum, but whether it is Looming Tower author Lawrence Wright, historian Victor Davis Hanson, New York Times reporter John Burns or General David Petraeus, each of the experts knows their subject matter thoroughly and brings crucial knowledge on the enemy to the conversation. The audio version will be available in a few weeks, but the book provides a primer to the essential facts about the enemy.
For younger readers on your list: A Guide To Christian Ambition has been issued in paperback, and remains a favorite gift for high school and college students as well as young adults looking ahead to careers in which they hope to influence the world for the good.
For everyone on your gift list who wishes they knew more about William Shakespeare but don't know how to get started, send them my program with the United States Naval Academy's David Allen White, one of the country's great professors, who has been teaching the Midshipmen their Bard for more than a quarter century. This CD is all the introduction you will ever need to get hook on the great playwright.
And finally, for the HH Show junkie who wants to relive one of the most interesting years ever in radio, there's the Best of the Hugh Hewitt Show massive CD pack, with 14 CDs of the best conversations of the year.
Buy one or all, and check back next week as the other new products for this season roll out.
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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Intelligence Is As Intelligence Does |
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Posted by:
Carol Platt Liebau at
3:20 PM |
David Brooks seems awfully impressed with what he terms the "valedictocracy" filling the ranks of the Obama administration.
But as someone who shares Michelle Obama's almae matres of Princeton and Harvard, let me just say that Brooks' invocation of everyone's academic credentials, without more, is hardly reassuring. Wasn't it the "best and the brightest" who set up the situation leading to the Vietnam debacle?
Of course, one always hopes that the most intelligent people are the ones who will be leading this country. Where Brooks and the like go wrong is in necessarily equating intelligence with academic credentials. Trust me -- there are plenty of Princeton and Harvard summas I wouldn't trust to come in out of the rain without an umbrella. Book smarts and life smarts (otherwise known as common sense) don't always come in the same package.
And remember: Jimmy Carter was a graduate of the elite US Naval Academy (Annapolis). Ronald Reagan was a graduate of Eureka College. Now you tell me: Who was the smarter man, and the better President?
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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Obama's Economic Team |
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Posted by:
Matt Lewis at
3:03 PM |
Tim Geithner is expected to be named Treasury Secretary on Monday. He is thought of as being not a Wall-Streeter, but rather an acedemic sort. However, he was involved in the Bear Stearns and AIG Bailout.
... Bill Richardson is expected to be picked for Commerce.
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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McCain Econ Advisor Says He Was Wrong on the Bailout |
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Posted by:
Amanda Carpenter at
1:50 PM |
Not to sound cocky, but I've said again and again I thought John McCain lost the election the day he decided to support the $700 billion financial bailout. It was a turning point for me and, I think, many other conservatives who felt betrayed once again by the maverick.
Now the guy who advised McCain to do it agrees it was a bad move.
"We also make mistakes," Doug Holtz-Eakin said yesterday at the Heritage Foundation. “There’s no doubt about it--20/20 hindsight. I think the key strategic policy error of the entire campaign, that is mine, is believing that the bailout bill would help.”
Even worse, Holtz-Eakin said their campaign supported throwing $700 billion tax dollars to Wall Street because they thought was good politics. Not because it even had a whiff of being good policy.
“Financial markets were falling apart,” Holtz-Eakin said. “We were in a terrible position as a campaign in trying to figure out whether to continue to just take hits--which we were--or to try to do something about it when the bailout bill was stalled. We elected to go do something about it. It didn’t pay off as a campaign largely because getting that bill through was not helpful.” “That was the key strategic error that we really made,” Holtz-Eakin explained. “Had we stayed away from Washington, stayed away from being identified with that bill – which was ultimately against the John McCain brand-- that’s not a bill he normally would support-- we would have been better served in the long run, I believe. But, that financial market meltdown combined with bad strategic decisions, I think, was a real crippling combination of events.” H/T to the Business and Media Institute for covering the event.
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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David Cameron, Moderate Hero? |
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Posted by:
Matt Lewis at
1:13 PM |
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With the help of Adam Brickley, I'm out with a new column today that dispells the recent myths (being spread by moderates) about British Conservative Leader David Cameron. Here's a taste:
"In their minds, Cameron is the crusading moderator who wrested control of the Conservative Party from…well…conservatives -- dragged it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century -- and now stands ready to become Prime Minister in the 2009 Election. They are right on two counts: the first being that Cameron is a moderate and the second being that he is a political genius.
Indeed, there is much we can learn from Mr. Cameron, and even as a staunch conservative I think that elements of his template could be the keys to future Republican victories. However, the idea that he would be on board with their reverse-RINO-hunt is complete and utter rubbish -- and it shows great ignorance of how Cameron has revitalized British conservatism. If we really want to implement the Cameron model, we must first understand the details of what he did…and what he did differs starkly with the ideas currently being floated by angry moderates hungry for conservative blood."
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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Unwed Motherhood Reaches the Halls of Congress |
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Posted by:
Carol Platt Liebau at
12:03 PM |
California congresswoman Linda Sanchez has announced that she will become Congress' first unwed mother.
First, kudos to Sanchez, for -- of course -- not aborting the baby (it's a sad commentary that such congratulations are even necessary). From the linked story, however, it seems that she deliberately became pregnant out of wedlock; this wasn't an "accident" in any way, shape or form.
That, to me, is a sign of complete and utter irresponsibility. Since the dawn of time, single women have become pregnant accidentally. It's only in modern times that society has decided that it's A-OK for them to try to do so, even without any formal commitment (to them or their babies) from their children's fathers. While in some cases that may work just fine for the women themselves, it's not so great for the children who are deprived of a father who's been willing to make a commitment to them and their mother.
What's more, Sanchez is a highly visible Latina, who may well serve as a role model for many young girls, especially in her community. Interestingly, she insists that this is a "teachable moment" for them, presumably to learn when it's ok to become a single mother (!) and when it's not. Here's what she had to say:
I'm established in my life. I have a career. I'm financially stable. I have a loving, committed partner.
If the "partner" is so "loving" and "committed" -- why isn't he willing to put a ring on her finger and promise to love and cherish her 'til death they do part? And if he's not, is that really the kind of father she wants for her baby?
Apparently, Sanchez's "partner" told the press:
We have the rest of our lives to get engaged and married -- we don't have the rest of our lives' for Sanchez to become pregnant.
Given the ease and speed with which one can arrange to be married by a priest and/or at City Hall, it really doesn't take that much effort to tie the knot . . . at least for those who actually want to do it.
The moral obtuseness of the entire undertaking is unfortunate -- and unworthy of the example that a woman who'd like to portray herself as a groundbreaking congresswoman should be setting.
In some circumstances, single motherhood is the only option for a woman and her baby, and those women (and, of course, their children) are entitled to our compassion and concern. But to see it treated as simply another "lifestyle alternative" when it would be not only possible -- but easy -- to give the child a stable family with a married mother and father is profoundly regrettable.
Update And, by the way, this has nothing to do with the media "trashing" of Bristol Palin. In contrast to Sanchez, who seems to believe that what she's chosen to do is just great, everyone from the right to the left agreed that Bristol's situation -- a young girl who became pregnant out of wedlock -- was suboptimal, including her parents. What's more, Bristol Palin and her baby's father have implicitly acknowledged the importance of a family headed by married parents by announcing definite plans to wed, unlike Congresswoman Sanchez and her "partner." (In fact, Miss Palin sets a standard in that regard that the congresswoman should heed.)
It's easy for some among us piously to insist that no one should "judge" Bristol Palin or Congresswoman Sanchez. But there was no need to clarify standards of behavior in Bristol's case, as she and her parents already themselves recognized that, despite the fact that every baby is a blessing, Bristol's situation (and the behavior that led up to it) was unfortunate. In contrast, Congresswoman Sanchez just doesn't seem to get it.
Finally, it's easy to pretend that one has the high ground by insisting that no one has any right to express an opinion about others' sexual behavior. The problem with that "hands off" approach is that it ultimately results in the eradication of any standards, with the field being ceded to the most licentious among us. And in the end, who suffers? "The children," that group supposedly so beloved by the left.
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Friday, November 21, 2008 |
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Driving Us Crazy: Double Standard on Past Presidents... |
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Posted by:
Matt Lewis at
9:01 AM |
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On one hand, I agree with the notion that we need to move past Ronald Reagan. It is, after all, about the future. (It's not that we shouldn't remember Reagan, of course, but we also shouldn't use him as a crutch.)
... On the other hand, it strikes me as interesting that while we are being told not to dare mention Ronald Reagan, the media is simultaneously comparing Barack Obama to FDR and Abraham Lincoln (If I hear the words "Team of Rivals" one more time...).
I mean, yes, the 1980s were a long time ago -- but so were the 1940s and the 1860s!
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