Episode 52 – Amendments, Sausage Making and a Few Laughs

It may not seem possible, but Jeff and Glenn actually have fun explaining the Senate Finance Committee health care amendments. No, we’re not kidding. They go into the substance, but offer up a lot of laughs in this new episode of PoliTalk. Listen as they substantively explain what you need to understand about the process and about what’s in the bills, and laugh while they rip on each other, and clear through the blizzards of acronyms and legal-ease.  Tired of people screaming at each other on political shows? Always informative and entertaining, it’s straight-forward political analysis on PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.
Join us in Boston on November 10, 2009! Register now for Early-Bird Special Pricing, visit http://nationaldebateseries.com

Listen to the current installment of PoliTalk and get yourself informed, inspired, entertained and ready for the day… spread the word… tell two friends, and so on and so on…

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast from  iTunes and Zune

Senator Ted Kennedy Dies at 77

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the last surviving brother of former President John F. Kennedy, died Tuesday night at his home on Cape Cod. He was diagnosed with brain cancer earler in the year. He was 77.

According to Massachusetts state law, the state will need to hold a special election to fill his Senate seat.

Video on the Kennedy legacy (from Politico.com)

Episode 47 – Senate Ethics Cools Down, Health Care Hyperbole Heats Up

Dodd Cleared by Senators, in Political Peril with Public; Health Care Hyperbole: While Limbaugh & Palin Engage, We Talk Policy…

Glenn and Jeff take measure of the 2010 campaign (itâs not too soon) and try to ascertain its character while discussing Rep. Sestak’s race against Sen. Specter and Sen. Dodd’s political problems with his Countrywide mortgage and backroom deals made during the Stimulus negotiations. They also rail against the hyperbole in what is now the health “insurance” reform debate (guess we’re not reforming health care anymore) and actually complain that they don’t have legislation to read. Wow, these guys need a summer vacation. Thankfully for you, you can enjoy yours while they distill what’s really going on in Washington. Take PoliTalk to the beach with you on iTunes. Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Listen to the current installment of PoliTalk and get yourself informed, inspired, entertained and ready for the day… spread the word… tell two friends, and so on and so on…

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast from Podcast.com and iTunes.

Audio of Burris Conversation w/Blagojevich Released: He MUST resign

Listen to the audiotapes (thanks to myfoxchicago.com) and decide for yourself.  I have decided: he needs to do the honorable thing (hard to do when you don’t act honorably) and resign. He is a disgrace to the United States government. Keep in mind he said under oath that he didn’t engage in pay-to-play or in any schemes to trade the seat for funds raised for former Illinois Governor. — Jeff  P.S. Who answers their phone by saying “Burris speaking…” Whatever happened to Hello?!?!

Specter To Cure All

picture being used on specterforthecure.com

Former Republican and now Democratic Senator Arlen Specter wants you to donate to his re-election campaign in 2010 because as his website Specterforthecure.com states,

Without Arlen Specter back in the Senate to see it through, Specter for the Cure could be lost to the ordinary politics of Washington that kills real change.

You see, according to this website, the only way to insure that this legislation, gets passed and actually works as outlined is if Specter keeps his Senate seat. Notwithstanding the arrogance of this charge, it is pretty clear that this website takes a bill that has not been passed and makes it the theme to re-elect Specter.

The proposed bill starts off by saying:

To establish an independent Cures Acceleration Network agency, to sponsor promising translational research to bridge the gap between laboratory discoveries and lifesaving therapies, to reauthorize the National Institutes of Health, and for other purposes.

Read the bill. Specter is proposing yet another government agency. That is how we will find cures? He proposes to re-authorize the NIH? As if it was going to be shut down? Please… given that the Specter campaign is already using this to raise money, one has to question the motives.

Yet another reason why, in my humble opinion, Arlen Specter should lose his Senate seat. -Glenn

An Interesting Case AGAINST Judge Sotomayor

Now is not the time to render judgment…so let me start this entry by rendering judgment:) As the nomination process unfolds for a new Supreme Court Justice, I know from my experience in the Senate and in working on Justice Souter’s confirmation hearing just how important certain qualities are. Intellectual curiosity, empathy and innate political skills — the ability to move votes — to work justices behind the scenes, to negotiate — are three qualities that need be prized in the next justice. There’s no doubt that whoever rises to the top will have the requisite legal credentials. But would you run the risk of compromising the aformentioned qualities in order to meet a quota? Or, given a choice, would you select someone who better fits this criteria who maybe didn’t fit a politically-driven quota, like, oh I don’t know, former Senator George Mitchell? or maybe even former Vice President Al Gore?  To better understand my point, a point I made in our most recent Podcast, you can read this excellent article from NPR.org by Jeffrey Rosen — a brilliant writer and legal scholar… 

Health Care Reform: 2 Questions that MUST be answered

Health care reform is a joke unless it seriously answers the following 2 questions: 1) when someone suffers a serious illness, should someone profit financially, and if so, who and why? 2) Many, including Richard Scott, a multi-millionaire former mergers and acquisitions lawyer turned for-profit health care executive, attack any government involvement in health care as being overly bureaucratic. My question to them: how could the system they currently support, which made them millionaires by the way, which routinely denied my wife care she needed that I had to fight for, be more cumbersome, more bureaucratic, more byzantine, more complex and more confusing? Lets have a serious policy debate. But we can’t do that until we really expose what’s driving health care policy in Washington: and that’s the money and powered interests on all sides — liberal, conservative and everywhere in between. I’ve lots four people in my family to cancer, and the saddest thing is that I’m not alone in my struggles — there are too many people like me out there. As the debate rages on, nameless, faceless, voiceless people lay sick and dying — squeezed for profits, churned through heartless insurance bureaucracies. It’s enough to make you sick. — Jeff

Why Arlen Specter Should Lose His Senate Seat

Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/people/sweetgoddess/

Last week, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced that he was switching parties. Why do you ask? Well, it was not based on fundamental disagreements with policy. By his own admission, he was concerned that he could not win his party’s primary. Case in point, here is some of what was said on last Sunday’s Meet the Press.

David Gregory:

All right, let me ask you about this switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party.  Back in April of this year on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” you said this:  “So I’m trying to bring back those voters to the Republican Party.  We need balance and I’m trying to get people to register Republican. We need a second party.  Look here, our country is built on checks and balances.  The only check and balance in America today are the 41 Republican Senators who can talk and filibuster, otherwise, the White House, the House of Representatives will be a steamroller.” Well, Senator, you’ve now decided to join that steamroller.  What changed?

Arlen Specter:

Well, well, since that time I undertook a very thorough survey of Republicans in Pennsylvania with polling and a lot of personal contacts, and it became apparent to me that my chances to be elected on the Republican ticket were, were bleak.  And I’m simply not going to subject my 29-year record in the United States Senate to that Republican primary electorate. I’m not going to do that.

Excuse me Senator Specter? You do not want to subject your 29-year record to the Republicans of your state that have allowed you to be there for 29 years? Shame on you! You are now the poster child for term limits and political self-survival of the most selfish kind. I’d have a much easier time understanding your switching parties based on clear differences in political philosophies. However, you freely admit that your motivation is to stay in the Senate.

Democrats in your state should make note that you clearly represent your own self interests before any that you may commit to voters or a party. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that you have the right to do what you did. But, I believe that the voters from either party will have great reason not to trust you. At least have the courtesy to leave the party and declare yourself an independent as Sens Jeffords and Liberman did. However, your political calculus has you attempting to remove the competition from a serious primary fight by declaring now.

The Republican primary voters would be well served by rallying behind former Governor and moderate Republican Tom Ridge to run in the general election. They will not only gain the Senate seat back, but they will also breath some life back into the party as a mainstream party.

Financial Bailout Bill Passes House

In a vote of 263 for and 171 against, The US House of Representatives passed the updated Financial Bailout Bill that was passed yesterday by the US Senate. The Bill now moves to the President, where it is expected to be signed into law without delay.