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9:00 Rep-Elect Chellie Pingree, D-Maine

Chellie is a great progressive, former head of Common Cause.  She is in freshman orientation, learning the Capitol inside stuff as she gears up to take office in January.  She agreed to fight to restore our Fourth Amendment rights and start to repair the damage of the Republican Radicals who’ve been running the government.

9:30 Cliff Schecter, author of The Real McCain

Cliff is a savvy political operator who agrees with me that Joe Lieberman is a traitor to the Democrats and they should not go easy on him.  We also talked about GM’s full page ad—which I called an extortion note—demanding a federal bailout.

10:00 Jeffrey Feldman, frameshopisopen.com

Dr. Feldman is the author of Outright Barbarous, and an expert on framing and language.  We talked about his post that uses the wildfires in Calfironia as to hammer our “green” image and we had a lively discussion about bailing out automakers.  Check out his post on “The Reason Lieberman Must Go”

10:30 Rep. Dennis Kucinich  D-OH

Dennis is a true progressive, and we talked about the hearing last week where he confronted Neel Kashkari, head of the bailout team.  Kucinich is working on a bottom-up rescue plan for Detroit that will be announced later today.  We agreed that single payer health care can save manufacturing in the US, not just Detroit., and talked about the prospect of Bush pardoning members of his administration.