The Podcast emerges from its undisclosed location to make a fleeting appearance at Drinking Liberally. Goldy and his panel of political wonks and blogoratti take the opportunity to celebrate the passage of sweeping health care reform legislation…because it IS a big fucking deal! At the same time, they express collective bemusement in the Republican response to the new law: “It’s Armageddon!”
At the local level, the panel takes bewildered delight in the decision by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to join the Florida anti-health-care-reform lawsuit. Rob, who everyone knows is running for Governor in 2012, has done a wonderful job maintaining the façade of a moderate Republican. The panel dissects the decision and concludes that the lawsuit was a huge political blunder, and one that will re-brand McKenna as something of a “far rightie Tenther nutcase.” Explaining McKenna’s blunder proves more elusive for the panel. Was it anger? Was it self-delusion? Was it extortion? Was he reacting to a potential primary challenge by Dino Rossi?
The panel wraps up with a discussion of the remaining reconciliation process and Republican prospects and reactions in the immediate post-health-care-reform world…seemingly, “no!,” “nuh-uh,” and “naaah.”
Goldy was joined by Drinking Liberally Seattle co-host Chris Mitchell, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, and me.
The show is 53:07, and is available here as an MP3:
[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_23_2010.mp3][Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]
Perhaps discuss the humiliation the Dems are facing having to vote YES on indefensible issues. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn said he wants a vote on his amendment to prohibit coverage of Viagra for sex offenders. New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg wants savings from Medicare cuts plowed back into the health care program for seniors, instead of being used to expand coverage to the uninsured. Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi wants to gut penalties on employers whose workers wind up getting taxpayer subsidized coverage.
Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said this:
TOO
DAMN
FUNNY!
You know this will result in snipits during the 2010 and 2012 Campaigns that will take time & energy to refute.
Imagine this–
Harry Reid voted for giving Viagra to Sex Offenders!! It will be both true and indefensible.
That’s what happens when you play these political games. Unintended consequences.
I met Lamar Alexander in Knoxville in 1978, when he was running for governor of Tennessee. He was wearing a red plaid shirt, which was remarkable because it was starched and pressed, and he was making a big deal about “walking across the state” and listening to people’s views while he ran for governor.
Of course, after a few questions and answers in front of the media, he took his walking stick and trudged on down the road – right to a waiting car which wisked him off to the Hilton where he spent the night before getting back in the car and driving a couple hundred yards short of his next media appearance, whereupon he would exit the car and “hike” up to the microphones again. (I learned this last part from a waitress at the Hilton, who overheard his campaign staff discussing his itenery with him over steak dinners in the hotel restaurant).
I haven’t taken anything Lamar Alexander says seriously after that.
“Harry Reid voted for giving Viagra to Sex Offenders!!”
Geez, throw sex offending Republicans a bone and they show no appreciation what-so-fucking-ever, the ungrateful bastards. So anyways, just how much Viagra did Rush Limbaugh try to take with him on his hoped for “I’m-gonna-get-it-on-with-child-prostitutes” vacation in the Dominican Republic? Just how big a jar was that?
Mr. Cynical,
“ That’s what happens when you play these political games. Unintended consequences.”
Another stunning example of Wingnut projection as Senate
RepublicansParty of NOers™ waste everyone’s time with their political games.BTW, Mr. Cynical, does all the lying you do in HA comment threads disrupt your sleep at all? Can’t you achieve your goal of being a shameless propagandist without actually lying? Just wondering.
By the way, the Seattle Times itself is carrying an article which portends it’s own demise. A short blurb….
“…advertisers are increasingly allocating more of their budgets to the Web. That’s where their customers are spending more of their free time. On top of that, Internet ad rates are less expensive, and the returns on online ad investments are easier to quantify.”
Source: Internet advertising appears to begin its comeback
But I’m betting that the Fairview Fannie editorial board will be focusing instead on another article, neatly summed up in it’s own headline: Newspaper ad revenue plummets to 1986 level
Of course, rather than admit that they are still trying to sell the media equivilent of buggy whips in an era which has rendered their technology obsolete, expect the Fairview Fanny editorial board to come out which another blast at Google, which it blames for all it’s problems and the decline of civilization as we know it. The “*gasp*” unfairness of it all, they actually send customers to the Times websites, without asking permission or even paying for the priviledge! In the course of such whining, they conveniently forget to mention that it was their own bad business decisions (going deep in debt to buy up other newspaper chains right before the bottom dropped out of the market) which is causing a good deal of their financial hemmoraging.
Of course, the Times vainly hopes that the government will amend the copyright laws to allow them to extort Google into subsidizing the Seattle Time’s operations. Perhaps they would do better if they paid Google some money to advertise their product more effectively!
Was that Chris Stefan on the podcast?
4. Darryl spews:
Lying? Another stunning example of Marxist projection by our Darryl.
Hey…how about the Columbia Center financial problems. Seattle is highly funded by downtown Commercial Real Estate.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....bia25.html
I expect this is the tip of the iceberg.
Lot’s of highly leveraged properties with businesses relocating.
Wait until the Income Tax gets pushed forward…if you want to see a mass exodus!!
Mr. Cynical,
“Lying?”
Yes…indeed. You’ve conducted low-grade lying for years here. You seem to be ratcheting up on the lying lately. Why? Can’t you use facts, figures, and sound reasoning? Or have you just become so numb to your lying that it doesn’t matter to you any more that your are lying?
Mr. Cynical, my friend, you might consider doing a little soul searching. You’ve gone astray.
“Another stunning example of Marxist projection by our Darryl.”
What the fuck are you babbling about?
“Hey…how about the Columbia Center financial problems. Seattle is highly funded by downtown Commercial Real Estate.”
I wouldn’t know…don’t live in Seattle, don’t really care.
Lamar Alexander! What a forward looking Republican leader..
Wants to build 100 nuclear power plants or some thing like that by 2050 or whenever…
It’d be nice if they didn’t cost many billions of dollars each and the nuclear industry didn’t want the government to foot a huge portion of the bill..
But any talk from Lamar of investing some billions into completing the research of the 60’s and 70’s into Liquid Flouride Thorium reactors and producing a licensable reference design like Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid (half-heartedly) attempted?
Not a peep.. Good old boy status quo only from Lamar. Cheaper nuclear power is not on his Republican agenda.
Great to hear the podcast again! Thanks, gents.
YLB @ 9: Alexander’s probably just trying to bring home the bacon on the nuclear issue. The federal facilities at Oak Ridge (just south of Knoxville) are antiquated and underused, and they’ve been talking about decommissioning them since the mid-1970’s. The Clinch River Breader Reactor was supposed to be the big alternative in the state (located west of Knoxville), but that got set aside during the Carter administration because – well, there just wasn’t any need for a new plant which essentially produced plutonium, we already had too much to handle, and no agreed disposal mechanism in place.
But it wouldn’t surprise me that Alexander would try to keep any of these projects alive. North-East Tennessee isn’t that much different, economically, from West Virginia or western Kentucky. If it weren’t for the huge federal investments via TVA in the late 1930’s and Oak Ridge during WWII, it would be an economic backwater, relying only on timber and mining. Even the Alcoa plant at Maryville, TN owes it’s existence to TVA.
By the way, Tennessee is one of those states where the state minimum wage has historically been below that of the federal minimum wage. This means that most small businesses pay less than the federal minimum wage. If you weren’t a college graduate, having a job which paid the federal minimum wage was considered good pay. When I was in college I was making $1.65 an hour waiting tables and tending bar (in the later half of the 1970’s).
Of course, the best job was working for the federal government itself, if you could get that job – it paid more than the federal minimum wage, even for non-college graduates. This engendered some jealousy from those who couldn’t get federal jobs – you would hear jokes about lazy and overpaid federal employees much the same way the wingnuts tell the same jokes here about union workers. But despite their protests and disparagement to the contrary, nobody would have rejected a federal government job if they were offered one.
Note to YLB:
Check the text of Darryl’s post to identify the Chris who participated.
Not C. Stefan.
@6
Nope I didn’t participate.
11 – Well, gee. I’m all for keeping Oak Ridge open and revitalized as that was where the research on molten salt reactors was done in the first place.
Maybe one person from those days is still at Oak Ridge.
So I support Alexander on that score.
However the uranium fuel cycle breeder reactors that can produce bomb grade plutonium – I’m not a fan of those at all.
The liquid flouride thorium reactor (developed by a world-class team at Oak Ridge in the 60’s) produces a negligible amount of PU and it’s not bomb grade.
12,13 – Yikes, so much to read. So little time.