Liberal Talk Radio

I have to admit, as a founding member of the reality-based community, I’ve been a little burned out on right-wing nut jobs lately.  What with the Birthers, the Obama-as-Joker posters (what the h*** is up with those?), and a certain gubernatorial abdication*, there’s not a lot more my shattered hope for the American polity can [...]

I’m still a bit shattered by the results of the mayoral race.  Nickels was a sophisticated, cosmopolitan leader who understood growth and what that means for Seattle.  Was he perfect?  Not at all. Nonetheless, Democracy (in this case, the torch’n’pitchfork “any bum but this one” variety) works its magic, and we’ll have a new mayor [...]

The White House takes on the Birthers directly: Attempting to put the issue to rest, once more, [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs assured reporters: “The president was born in Honolulu, in the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth…There are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country [...]

Okay, so maybe I’m the last one to hear about this (and it wouldn’t be the first time), but I caught some of Rachel Maddow’s show last night and found myself terrified by a video of a “birther” hijacking a GOP town hall meeting.  (Not the same video, ’cause I’m lazy, but here’s an earlier [...]

Score one for the U.S. against Brazil. After the G-8 summit, Lula made a show of presenting Obama with an autographed  Brazil jersey.  Kind of a fun, professional way of being annoying.  Not to be outdone: As the two leaders wrapped up their bilateral talks today, Lula had already taken out his earpiece providing interpretation [...]

Well, it’s happened.  I’m in complete agreement with the WSJ’s take on events in Honduras: This is a moment when the U.S. ought to be on the side of the rule of law, which the Honduran court and Congress upheld. If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward [...]

A strange, bizarre, and yet somehow pedantic rant from the increasingly irrelevant American far right: … thankfully, Americans are not buying it. In spite of the fact that one can drive by an open field on Saturdays and usually see it filled with young boys and girls playing soccer, the game’s popularity has not moved [...]

You don’t see many people begging to have the world’s Most Dangerous People given a new home in their backyards, but that’s how desperate Michigan has become. In a nutshell, former governor John Engler is suggesting that Michigan offer the Upper Peninsula as a new home for a prison for the suspected terrorists who have [...]

Finally, some public discussion of an idea that Bruno and I have been talking about for years – get rid of the U.S. Air Force. … the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps … At the moment, the Army, Navy and Marine Corps [...]

Since nationalization is in the news these days, I’ve been thinking a bit about a different kind of nationalization — specifically, the kind that happens when you’ve got a single buyer for a product, aka “monopsony”. This is what the defense industry is today, an industry that has only a single client. I’ve been noodling [...]