Liberal Talk Radio

Rising gas prices cause unrest in Myanmar, General Motors cuts a deal with the union, and finally: is support slipping for the Puget Sound’s Roads and Transit package? Links Mentioned: The NYT on monks and fuel prices in Burma (backfill: gas rationing in Iran) … the skinny on the United Auto Workers’ VEBA … Ron [...]

Apropos of President Bush’s speech on global warming, King County Exec Ron Sims has an op-ed in yesterday’s Seattle Times urging a “no” vote on our local Prop. 1, the joint “Roads and Transit” measure. I already blogged a bit on the piece itself over at Orphan Road, but I want to take a step [...]

Talk about ambition! Here we are, the military’s plans to beat Iran fresh off the planning table, and the Secretary of the US Airforce is already planning for the war with China. [Secretary of the Air Force] Wynne directly linked the need for the F-35 to the potential threat posed by China. He rejected a [...]

I usually think Krugman is a windbag [takes one to know one!], but at least he, too, listens to B&P: As far as I can tell, America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, [...]

The official U.S. Government definition of “terrorist group” has now been changed to “some people we really don’t like right now.” Seriously, when a state army can be defined as a terrorist group, does the phrase still have any meaning?

It’s probably good news that California’s 55 electoral votes won’t be apportioned by vote (instead of winner-take-all, as is custom), but the whole thing reminds you why the Republicans are so good at winning despite their unpopular agenda. They’re always playing offense. If they’d gotten this initiative passed, what was once 55 solid dem votes [...]

Matt Yglesias notes that Tom Brokaw goes bird watching with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and notes, “it is striking that you tend not to hear about this sort of coziness between the media and political elites when said media elites are busy posturing as a vast brigade of Woodward and Bernsteins eagerly digging to the [...]

Um… I don’t suppose there’s any way we could hold the 2008 election right now, is there? Darn.

So, we may have mocked the little plant a bit when President Bush mentioned it in his State of the Union a few years back. But lo and behold, it’s shown up again on the cover of this month’s Wired magazine. Wired has a bit of a hyperbole problem (biotech will save the world!!) in [...]

Is there a “third way” for health care payments, one that relies neither on employers nor the Feds? Contemplating GM’s arrangement with the UAW — in which GM will set up a VEBA (“Voluntary Employee Benefits Association”) — I think there might be. This would be something similar to the classic model for a building [...]