"Scrooge & Marley" Special.
705P ET: Tom Lauricella, Wall Street Journal, re the Bernie Madoff scandal, re how Madoff presented his options plan, how it did not stand up to scrutiny, how few pressed him to clarify, re the spreading poison of theft, re how people are staying away from the Palm Beach Country Club, re how Bernie Madoff is now under house arrest 24 hours a day, re why isn't Bernie in Federal jail alongside lawyer scam artists Marc Dreier. Madoff Ran Vast Options Game. Madoff Created an Air of Mystery. Is Bernie Madoff the real Scrooge McDuck?
720P: Larry Kudlow, CNBC "Kudlow and Company," re the reluctant Bush bailout out of Detroit and the limits of the loans; re the Fed moves to zero, the Bank of Japan moves to .1, and the dollar rally cools; re Two (Anti) Mustard Seeds for Stocks .
735P: Professional Roundtable with John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Mona Charen, NRO, Jim McTague, Barron's, re the Blago revelations and the Blago fight song by Rudyard Kipling, re the long torture of Rahm Emanuel ahead and the extreme sport of Emanuel interrogation, re Al Franken catches up and Norm Coleman in hot water?
750P: Continued, re Bernie Madoff and the SEC, Bernie and the market bubble, Bernie and the crash of 2008, re can government cure greed and Bernie? How the SEC Got in Bed with the Madoffs. Literally.
A Christmas Carol in Prose: A Ghost Story of Christmas: "Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh ! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner ! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait: made his eyes red, his thin lips blue ; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.
805P: Richard Epstein, University Chicago Law, Hoover, re Blago and the Chicago Way, re the entitlement Cabinet: Arne Duncan to Education, Tom Daschle to HHS, Patty Solis to Labor; re Eric Holder to Justice, re smart people and big government.
820P: Claudia Rosett, Foundation Defense Democracies, re the case for regime change in nuclear weapons rogues, re the unlikely event that deplomacy will move North Korea or Iran to surrender the nuke programs; re how anti-proliferation worked in Soth Africa, Libya and Iraq, re the futility of talk with North Korea; re the near certainty that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons in the Obama administration. Who lost Iran?
835: Financial Professionals, with John Tamny, RealClearMarkets.com, Simon Constable, Dow Jones, Aaron Task, Yahoo Finance, re the reluctant Bush bailout of Detroit written in pencil, re Ben Bernanke moves the meter to zero interest rates, re the collapse of commodities led by oil plunge to $33.
850P: Continued, re the Ponzi of the 21st Century so far, Bernie Madoff and the con that had to fail, the the madness of plutocrats and their wannabees, re Bernie and the SEC, re has capitalism failed?
905P: Gideon Rachman, re the China boom is done and the China bust is possible, re the prospect of turmoil in China China's economy hits the wall, re Is World Government already in place? re And now for a world government.
920P: Aaron Klein, WND, re the end of the Hamas truce and the rocketing of the Negev, re the Olmert search for a deal, re the reports of an American government official from the ligislature entering Gaza surreptitiously in order to meet with Ahmed Yousef of Hamas.
935P: Donald Kettl, author, "The Next United States Government: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them," re the complete inability of the federal and state and municipal governments to work together to solve a problem, re the Mildred Paradox of healthcare and the Katrina catastrophe of 2005, re how the government functions aimlessly and reluctantly without a boss, re the government cannot fix a problem like Katrina because the government is reactive not proactive and there is no one long in government who is not good at ducking responsibility and blame-shifting, re Bernie Madoff and the next U.S. government.
955P: Exeunt with lessons from Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge, Bernie Madoff, Marc Dreier, Rod Blagojevich, Rick Wagoner.
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KFI-AM 640 Los Angeles, 7-10P Pacific Time.
705P PT: Jim Warren, TheDailyBeast.com, re Sam Zell and the Blago scandal, re did Blago's chief of staff John Harris (now resigned and perhaps cooperating with the
prosecutors) relay through a financial intermediary Nils Larsen to Sam Zell that the state would help with the sale of Wrigley Field if there were major editorial changes at the Chicago Tribune, re did Larsen or Zell inform the U.S. Attorney of this likely extortion, re why did Sam Zell speak to CNBC before he spoke to the Chicago Tribune about the matter, re is the Tribune empire that includes the LA Times in peril?
720P: Bob Shrum, NYU, re the Blago scandal and the Obama transition team, re the Blago conversations with Rahm Emanuel , re the 21 reported contacts between Emanuel and Blago or his chief of staff re Valerie Jarrett.
735P: Professional Roundtable Margaret Hoover, FNC, Larry Johnson, No Quarter, James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, re the Blago revelations and the Blago fight song by Rudyard Kipling, re Rahm Emanuel and his prospect of interrogation, re the distraction of Blago and the Obama Senate seat in the middle of picking the Cabinet and negotiating with Detroit.
750P: Continued re Bernie Madoff and the failure of the SEC; re the charge that the Bush years was one long Flapper Era bubble; re is George Bush the new Herbert Hoover?
805P: Professional roundtable with Craig Unger, Vanity Fair, Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, John Avlon, RealClearPolitics.com; re Arnold Schwarzeneggar starts the state worker furloughs; re the Blago scandal spreads and transforms into an impeachment mini-series; re Sam Zell and the deal from hell and Blago.
820P: Continued re: Bernie Madoff is a bubble creature; re is Bernie Madoff telling us we were greedy? Re Bernie Madoff and Chris Cox, forever entwined? Is Bernie Madoff the Ghost of Christmas present?
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone." " I will," said Scrooge. " But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob ! Pray! " " How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day." It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow. " That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. " I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer." " You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. " Thank'ee!" " You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, " by Three Spirits." Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done. " Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob ? " he demanded, in a faultering voice. " It is." " I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
935P: Carlo D'Este, author, "Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill," re Winston Churchill's post war struggles with the breakup of the Empire and his conversation with his father's ghost, re how Churchill's struggles remain intact, Palestine, Suez, India, Burma, Russia.
850P: Bob Zimmerman, author "Universe in a Mirror," re the troubled status of the space shuttle for the Obama administration, re the likely delay of the Hubble rescue missions to November, re Enceladus with water volcaonoes and tectonics, re the status of space tourism.
905P: Jon Hilsenrath, Wall Street Journal, re the Fed moves rate to near zero, re the Fed fights with lessons from the Great Depression, re the alarm that the central bank tools are not working. Bernanke's Fed Echoes FDR Fed Cuts Rates Near Zero Global Crisis Resists Central-Bank Moves
920P: Joseph Sternberg, Asia Wall Street Journal, re the credit crisis in Asia, re the Japan Central bank goes to .1, re the unemployment in China and Hong Kong, re the prospect of turmoil in the Asia economies with the simultaneous consumer crash and commodity crash.
935P: Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, author, "Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her," the story of a single moment of horror in 1945 when a young Japanese student pilot named Kiyoshi Ogawa plunged his Japanese Zero into the center of the flight deck of the Essex Class aircraft carrier Bunker Hill. The kamikazes were directed by Japanese Admiral Matome Ugaki, who called the mass suicide attacks Kikushu, or chrysanthemum water. Japanese poetry associates flowers with death. There were ten Kikushi raids launched between April and June, 1945, and they were increasingly deadly. The American fleet at Okinawa was losing more than a ship a day, and the famous Intrepid, now in anchor as a museum in New York, was hit and driven from battle on April 16. Mr. Kennedy has identified one particular hero of many whom he and many of the veterans today choose as the man who saved Bunker Hill, chief Engineer Joseph Carmichael. About ten minutes after the explosions, Carmichael heard a rumor spreading that the ship was sinking. He took to the public address system and gave a speech that matches anything of Ceasar's in strength and
950P: Exeunt Lou Ann Hammond, carlist.com, re the Detroit bailout by the reluctant Bush White House, re the burning fuse on GM and Chrysler.


John - Why can't I log in to the "Movable Type" side of the JBS site? I've registered and been told to wait for an e-mail with the pass code. Never got that. To tell you the truth, I've tried it so many times, I can't even remember the pass code I myself put in.
John,
I imagine you have your show for tomorrow night close to cast in stone, but I'm hoping you would spend a few minutes expanding the part about "Benedict Arnold Schwarnezegger" and mention his dealing with the Democrats on the budget. And in particular, the Democrats' ploy this week of raising taxes by calling them "fees" and thus avoiding the rule of a 2/3 majority to raise taxes, and the Republicans' threats to take the matter to court if signed into law. I think this is fascinating stuff and I'm particularly wondering if Arnold was dissimulating about his reasons for vetoing the Dems' budget. One thing I've learned from watching Sacramento is that the reason they say they're doing something is usually one possibility you can cross off your list when you're trying to figure out the reason they are really doing it.
Thanks
Something has changed... While I realize one night a week is not five, the show's focus is not what it was.
We the listeners tuned in for info re nat'l security and threats from our enemies; info less pervasively available elsewhere. Now except for a couple of segments on these issues, the show seems mostly a discussion of the same stuff everyone else is talking abt [politics, economy], seemingly per the Dems/media's marching orders. That is THEIR playing field, but that doesn't mean it deserves virtually all our attention. McCain made the same mistake of playing on that field, and not bringing attention to the old JB show issues [and his strengths!].
Pls restore the focus of the show to its old emphasis on the Republican/nat'l security issues, etc. What happened to the old guests such as Bodansky, Babbin, Vallely, McInerney, Nash, Hayes, Stratfor, Stephens? Pls bring them back.
Thanks!
Mark: The warfighter team is all healthy and busy. They are for hot wars, not this phony war of drift and reloading. The threat now is the collapse of national economies and the rise of anarchy. Russia is destabilizing. Huge pieces of the Ummah are now without cash or credit. Central China is dense with unemployed migrants on broken farms and the big cities are filling with college graduates who cannot get work. The Devils of the 1930s preyed on the unemployed and the faithless. Watching the deterioration of the markets is watching where the fires will start. Plows don't work when you can't buy seed. Guns always work. How long? In 1933, the London Times covered the Reichstag fire trial carefully. All executed or condemned. Blame the Communists. The long fuse was lit. J