Liberal Talk Radio

“I just think reasonable people are more inclined right now to start thinking about ways our country’s future isn’t dependent on . . . oil from a region where there are a lot of very bad actors.” – Conservative activist Gary Bauer. And no, he’s not talking about Sean Penn’s latest trip to Baghdad. Seriously, [...]

…when first we try to enshrine corporate pork into the tax code: Washington state’s hopes of wooing an aircraft assembly plant that could be built by a major Boeing Co. rival may get a boost from a package of tax breaks designed for Boeing itself. France-based European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., the majority owner [...]

Via TPM, I see that Washington’s own Rep. Reichert got an earful on Social Security at a town meeting the other night. I guess now that he actually got elected, he can’t just walk out of the room like he did during the campaign. His constituents expect him to at least show up, even if [...]

“I don’t think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created.” – Rich Cizik, VP of the National Association of Evangelicals, as quoted by Bull Moose, wading into the global warming debate.

Noam Scheiber writes this in today’s NYT: By embracing a robust democratization agenda, the Democratic nominee in 2008 will be able to appeal to his base while also claiming the new, pro-democratization center. The Republican nominee, who has to win the nomination of a party at best indifferent to democratization, will enjoy no such luxury. [...]

Will Saletan on Tom DeLay’s deathbed conversion: This is what happens when you approach a tragedy as a politician rather than as a family member. You see quality of life as a slippery-slope abstraction, not as a reality affecting someone you love. You find it easy to impose a standard of documentation that would have [...]

Gov. Gregoire’s first budget is full of hikes in sin taxes. I hate sin taxes. What a stupid, bass-ackwards way to fund government. They should call ‘em “chicken-shit state legislator taxes.” See: Senate leaders told reporters the sin-and-death taxes will be relatively uncontroversial…

The NYT reports on CNN prez Jon Klein’s latest attempts to go toe-to-toe with Fox. But the devil is in the details: That gap in average viewing time has had a profound impact on CNN’s ratings: thus far this season, its average audience between 7 and 11 p.m. (775,000) is far less than Fox’s during [...]

Yesterday I referenced a snarky headline in Harper’s on Social Security. Well, today I got to read the article itself, by economist Michael Hudson. It’s a deceptively simple argument, but one worth sharing. Since Harper’s doesn’t make their content available online, I’ll try to summarize. He starts with a couple of bare facts (I couldn’t [...]

Someone on the Sounder commuter train from Tacoma is giving away free WiFi. Tight. Sit in the front car and log on to his network, powered by a portable battery-powered hotspot and, presumably, a cellular data link. WiFi on moving vehicles has been a holy grail for a while now. Boeing is working on adding [...]