Liberal Talk Radio

Seattle PI Columnist weighs in on the Eastern Washington secessionists, which I discussed last week.
The bottom line? East and West give and take more than either of us want to admit.
Speaking of the death of states as we know them, I finally finished Robert Kaplan’s An Empire Wilderness. A great book, [...]

Via Political Animal, I see Peter Gosselin’s three-part series on Risk in America from the LA Times has been compiled for viewing. This is an amazing series of articles that I’ve been reading from the beginning. When Bruno & the Professor: the Book comes out, you can bet we’ll be trumping some of [...]

Robert Reich’s op-ed in today’s NYTimes on Wal-Mart has turned some heads. Reich argues that ultimately the consumers have chosen Wal-Mart, and no one forced them to do so. It’s an interestingly balanced argument from someone as staunchly pro-labor as Reich.
He gets at the heart of the debate here:
But you and I aren’t [...]

Here’s a new feature, inspired by Kevin Drum’s Catblogging Friday. But less cute. We’ll call it Libertarian Friday. Will I start doing it every Friday? Who knows?
First, though he’s probably just a LINO, Bill Maher’s column in today’s LA Times is pretty funny:
Hollywood is nothing more than a restaurant that [...]

Between Will Saletan’s judicious number-crunching in biology and the Diamond/Orzag plan as relayed by Jonathan Weisman we may just be asymptotically approaching (as Mickey would say) a sensible, pragmatic response to the President’s Social Security gambit. It’s about time! The president is only moments away from offering to replace the Lincoln memorial with a [...]

Thus sayeth the fool behind USANext.
Shrill, right-wing blowhards are so CUTE when they try to be all “scientific” and stuff…

Today’s Slate piece on blogging vs. rapping is pretty entertaining. Amid all the mock sincerity, there’s an interesting point buried in here:
Essentially, blogging is sampling plus a new riff. Political bloggers take a story in the news, rip out a few chunks, and type out a few comments. Rap songs use the same recipe: [...]

The Democratic Party, and those who would attempt to re-invent it, should take note of Ed Kilgore’s roundup of the TNR 90th Anniversary issue:
Today there’s a strong sentiment, especially in the blogosphere, that we must closely emulate the conservative movement, and become as cynical, as fact-free, and as rigid as the opposition if we want [...]

Yet another resolution has been introduced into the Washington state legislature attempting to cleave the state in two along the “Cascade Curtain” which separates the rainy, trade-dependent, Democratic-leaning coastal region from the dry, agriculture-dependent, GOP-leaning inland empire. Eastern Washington’s mad, and I can see why. They keep losing statewide elections because they’re just [...]

Sorry for the light posts today… I know everyone’s looking for something to read because it’s friday and, here in Seattle anyway, sunny and warm.
Well, I got nothin’. So read this:
I have read, and you have read, all the people who say that the Democratic Party is dead. I read the New Republic with [...]