Midweek Politics with David Pakman

This Week on Midweek Politics with David Pakman – August 19th, 2009

Produced by

David Pakman, WXOJ, Northampton, MA
Louis Motamedi, WXOJ, Northampton, MA

Total Running Time: 55:57

MP3 Podcast: Available with entire Midweek Politics Archive for Members

This Week’s Topics:

–Angry emails from conservative radio stations.

–The health care town halls continue, and conservatives say the Obama administration is backing away from the public option.

–A woman’s Rosa Parks poster is ripped up at a Claire McCaskill event, and all involved parties are thrown out, but critics say media outlets did not cover the fact that there was a no posters rule at the town hall.

–Glenn Beck has been one of the leading opponents of the Barack Obama healthcare reform plan and has lauded the current system as the best in the world, but recently went out of his way to say how horrible the system was from a firsthand point of view.

–More guns at Barack Obama healthcare town calls, this time moving simply from handguns to assault rifles, with the explanation that the gunmen are simply exercising their rights as Americans, and fighting for not only health care, but also gun rights.

–Rahm Emmanuel’s move to bring in conservative Democrats to the health care debate may or may not be working as planned as Blue Dog Democrats say they will not vote for bills to kill old people.

–The focus on the public option is partly replaced with talk of healthcare cooperatives, but conservatives say that will move from a plan where just the insurance is a death panel to a system where everything is one big death panel.

–The Arlen Specter controversy involving his appearance at Netroots Nation and his phone call to Chuck Grassley from backstage.

–Cash for clunkers is still thrown into the list of unsuccesful Obama initiatives, along with the stimulus and healthcare, and we debate whether it is too early to make any of those calls, and if they are even flat wrong.

–Pat Buchanan continues suggesting that Sarah Palin’s daughter’s ex boyfriend should be drowned.

–Lou Dobbs seems to have completely lost it, blaming liberals for trying to get him fired from CNN and calling Howard Dean a bloodsucking leftist, before offering a bizarre pseudo-apology.

–Joe the Plumber, our favorite fake-plumber-not-real-business-owner, will not go away, making a strange appearance at a conservative conference where he said when was younger he would have beaten up people like Nancy Pelosi.

–Robert Novak, one of the most influential political reports, has died.

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