LIBERADIO(!)

This morning we had a lovely discussion about blogging with the local queen and king, Brittney Gilbert (in absentia) and ACK. Everything I learned about commenting on blogs, I learned on The Muppet Show…

(hat tip: SvN)

We’ll be over at WashingtonPost.com watching our favorite alt-weekly editor “examine the qualities that make senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson an appealing — and potentially winning — Republican candidate.”

Nashville Scene Editor Liz Garrigan will be online live at WashingtonPost.com today, Monday, May 21 at noon ET, to discuss her article which ran in Sunday’s WaPo, He Sure Can Act the Part.

Submit your questions and comments before or during today’s discussion.

Say it with me now: Garrigan!

On tomorrow morning’s show during our Media Matters for America Smackdown with Elbert Ventura (8:30am CDT, WRVU 91.1 FM) we’ll be talking about presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. In anticipation, I revisited this excellent footage of Keith Olbermann delivering his own smackdown on New York’s most conservative mayor. Yeah, what he said.

This week I learned that the average weekly food stamp allotment is $21.00. I learned this because of the story of 4 United States congressman who are trying to live for one week on the amount of food that $21.00 can buy.

Isaiah J. Poole, executive editor of TomPaine.com, writes that one of “the members, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and his wife, Lisa, have maintained a blog about their experience. It’s a sobering read—not just the experiences of the normally well-fed politicians who are doing this for a week, but the comments of ordinary people who have had to do this, and worse, for weeks or months at a time. It makes you wonder how on earth a nation’s leaders can be so casual when spending public money on instruments of war, power and political advantage, and yet be so stingy when it comes to that most basic form of human compassion, making sure your neighbor has enough to eat.”

The Food Stamp program is up for reauthorization as part of the omnibus farm bill and McGovern’s family, along with Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Ohio), are participating in the National Food Stamp Challenge, intended to call attention to the need to increase food stamp benefits.

Government officials say that the current food stamp benefits are enough but we all know that there’s a difference between eating and eating well. My friend, Billy, subsisted on $3.00 per day for 100 days (his Lenten project) and he said that could afford food that would make him feel full (a bag of Doritos, anyone?) but that he couldn’t afford food that would make him feel full and was healthy.

Poole continues, “Even for those people who are not seeing eroding benefits over time, the reality is “there are health consequences” to living on such a limited budget for more than a few days. People on food stamps are often forced to choose foods with higher fat, breads that are not whole grain and processed foods with unhealthy levels of sodium and sugar—a dangerous combination for people prone to diabetes, heart disease or other diet-related health problems. ”

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Summary: In this episode you can hear the delight in our voices as we discover that a bipartisan group of Senators along with President Bush reached an agreement on immigration-reform legislation. Let the full Senate and House debates begin! I’ll get the popcorn…

Listen to: Dogs and Cats Living Together! (10:21 9.5MB)

Summary: We continue our candidate interview series with mayoral candidate and current Councilmember At-large, Buck Dozier. We ask him about turning Nashville into “The Athens Of Education In America,” his promise of transparency if elected, immigration, his vote on the civil rights ordinance that came before the council in 2003, and what kind of mayor he wants to be.

Listen to: The Buck Stopped Here (Interview with Buck Dozier) (22:45 20.8MB)

It is a big deal and the call for change is loudly resonating from the court of public opinion, Senate Democrats and Republicans, and now even his peers.

Two weeks after they held their 25th reunion, “fifty-six members of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ graduating class at Harvard Law School signed a quarter-page open letter” in the Washington Post “excoriating their former classmate for his ‘cavalier handling of our freedoms.’”

“Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of providing independent counsel,” the letter says. It calls on Gonzales to “relent from this reckless path, and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago.”

Ouch.

Summary: Did you hear the blistering testimony about Alberto Gonzales from James Comey, the former No. 2 official at the Justice Department under John Ashcroft? We did and we recap it during this portion of the show. Senate Democrats and Republicans heard it too and are calling for his resignation even more loudly than before. Tick-tock, Mr. Attorney General, tick-tock.

Listen to: Bring Me the Head of Alberto Gonzales (11:41 10.7MB)

16 May 2007
“An F In Health Care,” by Alec Dubro (TomPaine.com)
“What everyone who cares to look knows is that there are two health care systems in America—one for those with money and for those without.” We’ll continue the discussion on healthcare in America with Jonathan Cohn, author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crises – and the People who Pay the Price (Buy Now!), on Monday on WRVU, 91.1, at 8:10am.

15 May 2007
“Evil Empire: Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?,” By Chalmers Johnson (TomDispatch.com)
“The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.”

07 May 2007
“The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama coming from?,” by Larissa MacFarquhar (New Yorker)
The New Yorker hired a woman with a funnier name than the Senator to write this profile entitled, “Where is Barack Obama coming from?” MacFarquhar. “MacFarquhar.” “God Bless You!”

26 Apr 2007
“Schools and Race: Still Separate After All These Years,” The Economist
Five decades after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation, black and white children continue to learn in different worlds. And it could get worse

Tomorrow night, Thursday, May 17, the Tennessee Alliance for Progress will present A Forum on Faith and Immigration, the latest in their “Doing Justly: Integrating Our Deepest Spiritual Beliefs Into Our Professional and Public Lives” series.

Thursday, May 17, 2007
7:00 -9:00 p.m.
Vine Street Christian Church
4101 Harding Pike, Nashville

The program includes the documentary film, Dying to Get In, speakers Emily Snyder & Steven Miles of Strangers No Longer, David Lubell of TN Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, and Rabbi Saul Strosberg from Congregation Sherith Israel. A group discussion will follow.

Open your mind and your heart and leave the phrase “what part of illegal don’t you understand” at the door.