Fun With Dick & Jane

Jay Fleitman, candidate for the republican nomination for the congressional seat for the 2nd district in MA was our guest for the entire hour. He’s a physician so a lot of the conversation was about health care legislation and tort reform. We also talked about spending, taxes, entitlements, Afghanistan, Iraq and the people’s anger at the federal government. Jay promises to be responsive to the people if elected, which as all you listeners know is one of my major issues.

We have a new producer at WESO and she and I haven’t quite figured out how to get the podcast into uploadable form. My apologies to Jay. Once we get the kinks worked out I’ll invite him to come back again.

Speaking of which, don’t forget to check out my newest venture: You Too Congress. If it is good enough for us, it’s good enough for You Too Congress!

Today’s show was really fun. I had expected to interview Jay Fleitman who is running for the republican nomination for the 2nd Congressional District in Massachusetts, but I had the wrong week. So Joe and I just talked politics.

First we have a new theme song – Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, which has absolutely no relevance to anything but is fun. Secondly I think I’ve got the podcast to 2 segments instead of 4. Let’s hope.

Joe and I talked Scott Brown, SOTU address, budget, debt, debt and more debt, the Virginia’s legislative victory (democrat) which makes it illegal to mandate health insurance (thus sticking a fork in any hope for resurrecting health care) NASA, Nancy Pelosi and affirmative action.

Meanwhile, I have a new project with some friends called YOU TOO CONGRESS which you can see here. We are pre-launch while we work out the bugs, but feel free to poke around. Congress gives itself a lot of perks on our dime and excludes itself from a lot of obligations. Our goal is to point those things out, which should lead to voting them out.

One can hope.

Today it was all about Scott Brown. Scott Brown, Scott Brown, Scott Brown.

Oh and I have a new co-host.

I apologize for the lack of recent activity. I am trying to learn how to edit my own podcasts (my friend Roger has been doing it) and I haven’t quite got the hang of it.

Most of my attention has been focused on the Scott Brown Senate Race and the coming launch of YOU TOO CONGRESS.

More about that later.

Sorry about the lateness of this entry – it slipped my mind in this holiday season

Tuesday’s show started with a discussion of the MA senate race – Martha Coakley v Scott Brown. Both Dick and I were chagrined that Brown has not come out more forcefully as the 41st vote against Obamacare.

We also talked about Gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill’s use of nearly $400,000.00 of state money to pay lawyers to defend him against contract rigging allegations concerning the state lottery.

We talked about the President’s tanking approval ratings (46% strong disapproval), the sharp downward revised GDP and other economic bummers.

Nevertheless the hour flew by, and some Christmas cheer actually surfaced before we were done.

It was a pretty dour episode this week. The economy and health care led the way – so the mood was understandable. We talked about the ballooning deficit, the huge disparity between public sector pay (average $119k) and private sector pay (average $51k) and the fact that the taxes from our $51k support that $119k).

WE also talked about the MA senate race. Dick is convinced that Coakley has it in the bag unless Scott Brown can get “in her face”. Sadly he may be right.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd both had their spot in today’s show. Dodd is losing ground in CT and Frank is reportedly crushing under the pressure. His district needs to wake up.

Much more on the podcast.

Today’s show was really fun. First of all it was election day – the primary to fill Senator Kennedy’s seat. We predicted Coakley (d) and Brown (r) to win and we were right. Dick then went into campaign mode and made the case for a republican taking the seat. Listening to the rest of the media you would have been hard pressed to know 2 republicans were on the ballot.

Next we moved to Climategate, which I have been talking about for 3 weeks. The story got more complicated right before the broadcast when the UN declared that CO2 is “a danger to human health” thus giving the executive branch the power to regulate without Congress – which of course will be used as leverage to pass Cap and Trade.

We talked a little about health care and then Dick told me something I didn’t know: Apparently the Obama administration threw Deval Patrick under the bus over the weekend. You will have to listen to see how.

Enjoy!

Our first topic today was Afghanistan, a subject Dick was anxious to talk about. My complaint is the CIC’s willingness to tell the enemy our exit strategy. Other than that I am grateful that the dithering has ended.

WE quickly moved on to the MA senate election. Dick is still planning on voting for Pagluica in the primary because he is not an incumbent. He is considering the republican, Scott Brown in the General. Certainly if you oppose the trillion dollar health care bill pending in Congress, you do not want to elect another democrat – or as Brown pointed out (according to Dick) “You can vote for the 60th vote for government run health care, or you can vote for the 41st vote against it.

We spent some time on Climategate, which Dick has still heard very little about in the state run media. I tried to impress him with the magnitude of the story, and the magnitude of the exposure to the press’ liberal bias in ignoring the story.

WE talked about the Globe story about President Obama’s National Economic Council director Larry Summers who lost $1.8 billion of Harvard’s money when he worked there. Like Tax cheat Tim Geithner, our President apparently thinks Summers is too big to fail.

We talked about the current tug on the President between interim senator Paul Kirk and Governor Deval Patrick over Cape Wind. Kirk wants to protect late Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry’s pristine ocean views in Nantucket Sound, while Governor Patrick wants to get on with it. Dick is convinced the President will side with the Governor. He is probably right.

At one point Dick suggested that taxing marijuana would solve the bulk of the deficit problems. I responded that I didn’t think the revenues from pot were that big. During the break I was deluged by people assuring me that everyone in the known universe smokes pot. I was surprised.

We also talked about the Salahi’s crashing of the state dinner, Nancy Pelosi’s flower budget (nearly $3000), and Mike Huckabee’s grant of clemency to murderer Maurice Clemmons.

Enjoy!

Dick spent some time on the MA senate race to open the show today. He will vote for Steve Pagliuca primarily because he is not an incumbent. I like Pagluica’s financial background (ex-partner with Mitt Romney at Bain Capital) but I hate his platform. He wants to tax the rich, expand government healthcare and crack down on Wall Street.

I brought up Climategate, which had not reached any of the media sources Dick relies on. I am hopeful that this huge scandal will put an end to the global warming baloney we have been subject to for so many years, and bring down the liberal media at the same time.

WE talked about The President’s unpopularity, and Dick reminded me that if he is not popular, he won’t be re-elected. I reminded Dick that a lot of damage can be done between now and 2012.

Next we talked about the health care vote on Saturday and Harry Reid’s $300 million Louisiana Purchase in exchange for Mary Landrieu’s vote. That didn’t seem to trouble Dick. So I wondered if putting $300 million for every senator’s vote in the bill would bother him.

We also talked about ACORN’s discovered document dump, the emerging policy in Afghanistan and Sarah Palin’s book sales of 700,000 in the first week. Amazing!

Dick and I had vastly different agendas today. He wanted to talk about Sarah Palin. He’d received an email from the MIA Father Peter who had written that the Oprah interview “was a disaster”. I saw the Oprah interview, and missed the disaster. I was disappointed that the interview was all fluff and no policy, but that was Oprah’s choice.

We then went on to the MA Senate race. Dick has decided to vote for Steve Pagluica who is in a 3 way race for the democrat nomination with Martha Coakley and Mike Capuano. His reasoning is that Pagluica is not an incumbent. He’s in a “throw the bums out” frame of mind.

We went on to the decision to try KSM in New York Federal Court, the attempt to quash the Congressional investigation into Fort Hood, and the current state of denial by this administration about the war on terror.

We talked about the errors in the government reporting on the stimulus bill. The government has reported millions of dollars creating hundreds of jobs in congressional districts that do not exist. It’s a joke. Interestingly, there is not one error on the side of under reporting either money or a job.

We talked about Geithner’s newly discovered overpayments to Wall Street firms while he served as the head of the Fed in NY, and the general state of the economy. The question is whether this can be sufficiently swept under the rug so that Geithner survives.

Joe (next door) wanted us to talk about the President’s waist deep bow to the emperor of Japan, the suicide Chicago’s school superintendent (who was a big part of the “let’s make money off the Olympics” team, moving GITMO to Illinois and the unconcession of Doug Hoffman in NY 23.

Enjoy!