Brian Gongol
We spent most of our show tonight covering the snowstorm that arrived in Iowa and landed in the metro during our regular timeslot. However, we did have time for just a few other things.
Who looks to the future today with the same kind of enthusiasm that used to be a part of the American culture? That enthusiasm for tomorrow was heavily driven by marketing and advertising that promised lots of better things on the horizon. Now that we're living better than ever before -- proving that things really are getting better all the time -- shouldn't we be even more enthusiastic about what's coming next? Why don't more companies promote their own visions of the future?
An excellent segment on Frontline this week offers an eye-opening perspective on Vladimir Putin, a man we haven't paid enough attention to in the US. He's shaping the future of Russia, and we'd better wake up to all of the consequences.
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are beating up on NAFTA again, for a sort of sick political gain that's going to hurt the country. NAFTA has been, on balance, extremely good for America as well as for our neighbors to the north and to the south. This is a profoundly awful time to start sticking our fingers in their eyes. Canada has been a long and reliable friend, and we really need a stable, prosperous Mexico to our south. NAFTA has been a three-way win for North America. Backing out on it now would be stupid. Just plain stupid. Clinton and Obama should be ashamed of themselves.
The YouTube outage this past week tells us a lot about Internet security and vulnerability. We need to think about our communications infrastructure just like our physical infrastructure.
Keywords in this show:
advertising •
Canada •
Clinton, Hillary •
free trade •
Frontine •
future •
futurism •
grandstanding •
infrastructure •
Internet outages •
marketing •
Mexico •
NAFTA •
Obama, Barack •
optimism •
politics •
Presidential candidates •
Putin, Vladimir •
Russia •
security •
snow •
weather •
winter •
YouTube