The Huffington Post requested contributors to name their dream team cabinet so I did my as a video just for fun.By draymond@facilityinnovations.com

Aired 12/03/06 Buying a Legacy week the news came out that Bush was preparing to start fundraising for his presidental library and was planning on raising five hundred million dollars. The announcement is astounding both in how early it is beginning and how huge the number is. It is orders of magnitude larger than any other recent presidential libr…

Aired 12/01/06 What is it? This week NBC became the first major media channel in the US to make an editorial decision to call the situation in Iraq a civil war. (Fox by comparison on Friday issued an official memo saying that they are to absolutely not call it a civil war.) You might think of this as simply a battle of semantics, of spinning the si…

Aired 11/27/06 A Big Week On Sunday the War in Iraq passed the duration of our involvement in World War 2. And the first week past that threshold looks to be a very significant one, with reports, summits, and new developments on the ground. Tags: Bush, Media, Maliki, James Baker, Al-Sadr, Iraq, Politics, Podcast…

Aired 11/24/06 Public and Private The Decision by Rupert Murdoch's media empire to drop the OJ Simpson hypothetical-tell-all book and interview was seen as his finally having pushed the envelope of taste too far. But I am not so sure. On their own enough people would have still tuned it to make it a ratings win for Fox in the time period, which was…

Aired 11/17/06 The Imp of the Perverse What on earth is OJ thinking? What makes him want to give what clearly everybody is going to regard as a detailed confession? It reminded me of a short story from Edgar Allen Poe, sort of a more intellectual version of The Telltale Heart. called The Imp of the Perverse. In the meantime there are just so many g…

Aired 11/17/06 Catching the Car While the War in Iraq is certainly the big picture issue of the midterm elections there will certainly be no easy solution and no obviously good one. So I believe that an important thing will be for the Democrats to quickly validate to voters that things are different because they were voted in. That is not so easy b…

Aired 11/10/06 Clark or Melvin The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld was a big story, but perhaps the real question is what does Bush expect from his successor? I example this question using the two men who held the position of Secretary of Defense in the later days of the Vietnam War. Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, media, Clark Clifford, Melvin Laird, podcas…

Aired 11/10/06 Riding the Swing What to make of the Democratic takeover in the midterm election? There will undoubtedly be as many answers as there are pundits. My initial take; It shows that despite all the massive efforts to force them into extinction the swing voter still exists. Tags: Swing Voter, media, 2006 Election, Democrats, podcast…

Aired 11/3/06 Sin The story of Ted Haggard captures the media and audiences because nothing quite grabs the public like an ironic comeuppance. But the whole coverage, and people's reaction, maked it sound like his big sin is homosexuality. I disagree. Tags: Ted Haggard, media, Sin, Homosexuality, podcast…

Aired 11/3/06 What I'm Tired Of As this midterm election drags itself toward a 2.6 billion dollar finish line I thought I would sum up with a bit of a rant about what I find most annoying about the entire state of american politics. Tags: Idiot, media, fear, Election, podcastBy draymond@facilityinnovations.com

Aired 10/30/06 Voting your Basolateral Amygdala One of the latest ads by the Republican National Committee doesn't try to tell you why they will be better or the Democrats worse. It doesn't actually tell you anything. It just scares you. That is all. The presumption is that if you are scared you will vote Republican. After five years (or longer) pl…

Aired 10/27/06 Stay the Stay In a month where over one hundred US soldiers will be killed the huge political debate this month is over the words "Stay the Course". But "Stay the Course" isn't a strategy. It isn't a policy or even a fully fleshed out idea. It is a Slogan. One hundred people are dying and we are arguing over which election year sloga…

Aired 10/13/06 Deja-Vu All Over Again (with apologies to Yogi Bera)Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequen…

Aired 10/13/06 Shooting for the Moon Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps …

Aired 10/13/06 Tax and Spend Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perhaps intentio…

Aired 10/13/06 Running up the Credit Card Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, per…

Aired 10/6/06 The California Credit Card Spin Cycle began as a set of voter registration/turnout pieces, so it has been something of a pattern to always to a set of analysis peices on the Ballot Propositions, Because in this land of safe seats frequently the only thing interesting is the propositions. Also they are frequently terribly complex, perh…

Aired 10/16/06 The Original Page Scandal Recently former Massacheusets representative Gerry Studds died. Ironically in the week just before his death his name was again all over the news as conservative commentators tried to say 'hey look what democrats did', event though it was nearly three decades ago. I beleive though that if they had looked dee…

Aired 9/29/06 Tired of War We have this tendency in America to want to call everything a war. We have a 'War on Christmas' and an all-encompasing 'Culture War' not to mention the big 'War on Terror'. Not to mention the REAL war (with real bombs and guns and deaths) in Iraq. Don't we seem a little like those folks in the mideast who scream 'Jihad' a…