Thursday, December 09, 2010

2Political Episode 45

2PP045 - 8 December 2010








2Political Podcast Episode 45 is now available. You can listen to it on the widget on the right side of my blog, or you can go the podcast site, 2political.com. You can leave comments there as well as download or listen to any episode.

This episode is un-edited, since Arthur is swamped with work. You've been warned! After Special Days, we talk about the Wikileaks circus. Neither of us really gets what the big deal is. The cables show that politicians are arrogant, duplicitous jerks—like we didn’t know that already? Were officials just embarrassed? Arthur thinks officials' reactions are WAY over the top, all out of proportion to what's really a non-existent threat. This is also being used as an excuse by the right to crack down on the free flow of information.

Then we talk about the tax cut deal. Arthur thinks that President Obama made some valid points in his criticism of the left—Jason has said some similar things—but the way Obama made those points was not helpful. Jason says it was a no-win situation for Democrats. Arthur thinks that liberals have every right to be pissed-off about the battle, but we appear to have lost. If so, Arthur says it's time to move on and organise for the 2012 elections to elect more liberals and progressives. He thinks that they should be focusing their energies on voting reform because it's critical to restoring citizen control of the country.

Comments let us talk about the presidential elections AND retirement funding—including something about international retirement funding! A couple more tangents extend this episode to longer than we expected. We're going to try to fit in one more episode this year.

Please leave a comment (anyone's welcome—agree or disagree!), or you can ring the 2Political Comment line on 206-350-3982.

Links for this episode:
What is Julian Assange Up To? – 3 Quarks Daily
A Voting Reform Finds its Moment –The Nation (h/t to Roger Green)
A “compromise” on taxes – The blog post on taxes Jason mentioned.
Creepier and creepier – The blog post Arthur mentions at the end of the episode.
Arthur’s blog, podcasts and videos can be accessed here.

Get 2Poltical Podcast for free on iTunes

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