Friday, December 13, 2013

2Political Episode 94

 






2Political Podcast Episode 93 is now available. You can listen to it or download it from the podcast site, 2political.com. You can leave comments there as well as download or listen to any episode (you can access the five most recent episodes from the list on the right side of my blog).

We begin today talking briefly about Linda Ronstadt at the 2013 National Book Festival. Then, on to a darker topic: The GOP Shutdown of the US Government. We’re annoyed.

Jason wonders how a junior US Senator from Texas became Speaker of the US House—because that’s what it looks like. The Republicans began their shutdown with no exit strategy, which was incredibly stupid. But are they crossing the line into treason? If they destroy the world economy, it would be worse than that.

We think that there has to be massive reform. Congressional Districts should be drawn by non-partisan commissions and politicians shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the process. Voters also have to stop voting to re-elect the same people who are causing all these problems. We also think the Republican Party needs to suffer a massive defeat in order to be able to rid itself of the teabagger lunatics. On the other hand, Democrats have been doing much better at standing up to Republicans than they’ve done up until now.

We end up with a rant from Arthur about a Washington Post piece that totally mucked up Australian history and displayed ignorance of The Commonwealth, parliamentary democracy—and pretty much everything else, to be honest.

Everyone’s welcome to leave a comment (agree or disagree!).

Links for this episode:
Linda Ronstadt at the 2013 National Book Festival – The blog post that Jason mentioned
The Nullification Party – the Andrew Sullivan piece Arthur mentioned
Australia had a government shutdown once. In the end, the queen fired everyone in Parliament. – The boneheaded piece from the Washington Post
Arthur’s blog, podcasts and videos can be accessed here.

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