Liberal Talk Radio

On this week’s podcast, we discussed the President’s gimmicky pledge to freeze “non-defense” spending in 2011. For your edification, here’s a chart showing defense spending over recent years: To put that in context, the total discretionary budget for every other department of government combined — that’s education, HHS, agriculture, commerce, the VA, everything — totals [...]

The podcast is going to be 24 hours behind schedule this week, folks. A painting project at my house got out of hand and suddenly the day was over. It was sort of like the Iraq war, really. I went in all optimistic, assuming that the walls would greet my wife and I as liberators. [...]

The Mayor’s office announces: SEATTLE – Today Mayor Mike McGinn announced that outgoing Office of Sustainability and Environment Director Michael Mann will work with the McGinn administration to craft a plan for a public-private partnership to lead the economic recovery through a retrofit agenda in Seattle. Word is that Mann’s first effort will be to [...]

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 [...]

America’s House of Lords continues to brag about its own disfunction: The measure isn’t quite finished yet, but sources said the current version would cost just over $80 billion. Though that number may change as the process moves forward, it is clear Senate Democrats have no intention of moving a jobs package as large as [...]

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.

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 [...]

Ed Kilgore says the Democratic party may be preparing to strip them of their super status. The party won’t however, muck with the sacred and holy status of the blessed four states at the front of the primary calendar.

Our Sen. Maria Cantwell wants to bring back the Glass-Steagall act, the 1933 law that prevents investment banks from merging with retail banks. The law was repealed in 1999 under Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress and created such “too big to fail” behemoths as Citicorp. In general, I like the idea of big, simple [...]

Matt Yglesias says it’s Ben Nelson’s fault, not Barack Obama’s, that we haven’t gotten the change we’ve been hoping for with the new administration. As the theory goes, it doesn’t matter how much leadership or head-knocking or what have you the administration tries to engage in, the fact is that with unified 39-member GOP block [...]