Liberal Talk Radio

I bought my Dad George Lakoff’s book on framing for Christmas. Dad’s a language nut with deep dislike of President Bush (second only to his hatred of the Yankees), so I knew he’d enjoy it. I basically accept Lakoff’s premise, which is that the Democrat-Republican divide comes down to a “Nurturant parent” vs. “strict father” [...]

Wonderful op-ed in today’s NY Times on the year of earthquakes. The author, Simon Winchester, writest that 2004 has much in common with 1906, a similar year for seismic happenings across the globe. Then the article goes deeper: Plate tectonics as a science is less than 40 years old. It is possible that common sense [...]

Slate has a piece up today comparing body counts in Iraq and Vietnam. Basically, the argument is that, if you control for advances in military and medical technology, Vietnam in 1966 is as deadly as Iraq in 2004. That’s frightening in and of itself. But it prompted me to do some investigation of my own. [...]

First, I was very interested in who would become the next chair of the DNC. The race was heating up, and I read Kos daily to see whether Fowler, Dean, Rosenberg, so some other dark horse would be the front runner. Then I got tired of the whole thing. Pretty quickly, actually. The DNC chair [...]

Sullivan’s guest bloggers bring up the idea that there is a coalition to be forged between bleeding-heart liberals and evangelicals, centered on their shared belief in helping the poor. They quote Kristof: Members of the Christian right…are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad — thus creating opportunities for common ground between left [...]

I’m thinking about a new feature here at B&P, we’ll call it “Phoneblogging.” In september, I moved to the 21st century by getting my first camera phone. So let’s start it out with some sage advice from the New York City Subway: There’s a joke in here somewhere about Social Security and the “third rail.” [...]

I don’t really know how else to say it. I cringed watching yesterday’s press conference on Iraq and Social Security, among other things. It’s painful watching this guy talk to reporters. Now I know how Tony Blair feels. Every time Bush and Blair have a joint press conference, Blair always steals the mic when it’s [...]

I hate corporate welfare. So it’s nice to see that it just might be unconstitutonal. Who knows if it will fly, but we can hope, can’t we?

So I’m pretty sure I’m against Social Security privatization, as the President has proposed it. I don’t know why, other than that most of the people I respect and listen to oppose it. But it occurs to me that there might be a progressive angle in aguing for privatizing Social Security. One thing that comes [...]

I’m pretty sure Matt Yglesias is an avowed multilateralist, so I’m puzzled as to why he’s writing stuff like this in TAPPED: …but the question of what it would have taken to pull Iraq off better deserves a rigorous look. As Beinart writes, “at the beginning of the fairly successful Bosnia and Kosovo nation-building efforts, [...]