Liberal Talk Radio

Hi folks. Very sorry, but the show had to take a back seat this week to a nasty case of British Petroleum’s Revenge (aka Montezuma’s Revenge, aka … well you get the point). Apologies for the unplanned holiday. Hope you had a great Memorial Day, and talk to you next week.

I have to admit that I’m not quite sure if I should pat myself on the back or start chewing shoe now that the Louisiana oil spill shows just how dangerous off shore drilling can be. After all, I was pretty pragmatic back when Obama announced that he’d allow expanded drilling. “Will never see the [...]

Lately on the show, I’ve been talking a lot about my growing fear of right-wing extremism. We’ve received a few comments from listeners, mostly accusing me of being a bit hysterical about the whole thing. And while I generally understand that criticism, I do think that the country’s taking an ugly turn. Apparently, I’m not [...]

Following up on my own post from yesterday, here’re my quick thoughts on the President’s State of the Union address last night. In general, I thought the speech was solid — rhetorically, not a masterpiece, but it accomplished what it needed to.  I was most impressed by the President’s solid instinct to generally avoid the [...]

Before I dive headfirst into the myriad pre-game coverage of tonight’s State of the Union, I want to take a moment to talk about a few things that I’d like to see … admittedly, the POTUS seems to have lost my cell phone number in the last few months, but I’m told he still reads [...]

News today that Congressional Dems have decided to put health care on the back burner. Who wants the over/under on when they get back to this? I’m setting it at 2016. Email me if you want in on the action.

Those of you who listen to the show somewhat regularly will know that, while I’m a big fan of markets, I’m also highly critical of one of the central tenets of neoclassical economics – the “rationality assumption”. In short, in order for its predictive models to work, neoclassical econ requires that all of the agents [...]

Nate Silver puts Martha Coakley’s chances at winning today at about 25%. We’re well past the point where we can deny that access to basic health care is a basic human right in an industrialized country. Further, the failure to pass health care reform will demonstrate the extent to which our country is beholden to [...]

I used to love the Olympics. Really I did. Even the patriotic schmaltz-fest that was the ’96 Games in Atlanta holds a special place in my heart (watching the Men’s Gymnastics finals, some friends and I put together our own version of a mixed-media relay … I’ll save that story for another time). So it [...]

Detroit Free Press has an interesting analysis of Cash for Clunkers.  Unlike the government’s own analyisis, which did not aggregate sales data across 2x and 4x models, the Freep totalled the sales numbers for all types of vehicles together. Among the findings: * Trucks, including that paragon of fuel efficiency, the Chevy Silverado (14 mpg [...]