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Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
2012 Program Archive
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We begin with an analysis of whether super PACs will be able to buy the election for Mitt Romney and speak with presidential historian Allan Lichtman whose prediction system has correctly predicted the outcome of all US presidential elections since 1984. Since he has predicted an Obama victory, we look into whether money and a wildcard like Romney’s close friend Bibi Netanyahu could alter the equation. |
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Then we assess the chances of the CIA’s man in Egypt, Omar Suleiman, otherwise know as Egypt’s “Torture-in-Chief, becoming Egypt’s next president. We speak with Lisa Hajjar, a professor of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara and the co-editor of “Jadaliyya”. She has an article at Jadaliyya “Omar Suileiman, the CIA’s Man in Cairo and Egypt’s Torturer-in-Chief”. |
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Then finally we examine the state of American capitalism with William Lazonick, the director of the Center for Industrial Competiveness and the president of the Academic-Industry Research Network. He has an article at the Huffington Post and Alternet “How American Corporations Transformed from Producers to Predators.” |
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We begin on this Easter Sunday with an examination of religion in America, the most religious of all advanced industrial nations. Frank Schaeffer, whose father was one of the founders of the religious right, joins us to look into the religiosity of the televangelical world of mega-churches that preach right wing politics, the gospel of prosperity, hatred and exclusion. |
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Then Andrew Sullivan joins us. He has an essay at The Daily Beast “Christianity in Crisis”, and we discuss the politicization of religion in America and how Christianity might be returned to the core teachings of the prophet Jesus, a homeless man, who rejected materialism and ministered to the poor, the sick and the downtrodden. |
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Then finally we examine the separation of church and state, and how it might apply to Mitt Romney and his relationship with his Mormon faith. A former priest who became a civil rights worker, anti-war activist and community organizer, James Carroll joins us. He is the author of “Jerusalem, Jerusalem: The Ancient City That Ignited the Modern World”. |
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We begin with the “Age of Ignorance”, the title of an article in the New York Review of Books by Charles Simic, the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States. We discuss his forty year experience in teaching college students, where he finds that students coming out of high school know less and less every year. |
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Then we are joined by a former Secretary of the Air Force who headed the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office and was a Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Policy. A former nuclear weapons designer, Thomas Reed discusses his new book “Tehran Triangle” and the extent and nature of Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. |
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Then finally we speak with Jon Shenk, the filmmaker of a new feature documentary “The Island President” that closely follows Mohammed Nasheed’s first year as president of the Maldives, an island nation gradually being swallowed by the Indian Ocean due to the effects of global warming. We discuss this heroic man’s effort to save his country and alert the world to the peril of climate change. |
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| Following President Obama’s remarks yesterday that Ronald Reagan would not survive in today’s Republican primary, we begin with Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, the author of “The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008” and discuss the current Republican party and it’s likely standard-bearer Mitt Romney, as well as who might be his running mate. |
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Then we speak about the Ryan Budget, which the President, in tying it to Mitt Romney, described a cruel social Darwinism. Thomas Ferguson, a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston joins us to examine Mitt Romney’s economic priorities reflected in the Ryan budget that he has embraced. |
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Then finally, we are joined by James Kwak, the co-author with Simon Johnson of the new book ”White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why it Matters to You”. We expose the myths surrounding deficits and debts and what needs to be done to fix our economy, if and when political gridlock ends and an adult discussion begins. |
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| MUSIC: Bob Dylan - With God On Our Side; Intwine - Cruel Man; Titus Andronicus - Four Score and Seven; Leonard Cohen - Tower of Debt |
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| We begin with Karl Rove’s Fight Club, the title of a piece in Politico by Kenneth Vogel, Politico’s Chief Investigative Reporter. He investigated the Weaver Terrace Group, a coalition of GOP money bundlers and kingmakers who helped Republicans retake the House in 2010 and have even bigger plans for 2012. We discuss this difficult assignment for a reporter since the Weaver Terrace Group follow the Fight Club rule of not talking about who they are and what they do. |
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Then we speak with Paul Starr, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton who wrote an article back in January for the New Republic “The Health Care Mandate Really Was a Mistake” which argued that the President miscalculated about the courts, the politics and the policy itself. He is the author of a new book “Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform”. |
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Then finally we explore what the President and the Canadian Prime Minister said little about after yesterday’s “Three Amigos” summit, that is the contentious Keystone XL pipeline which is no longer about U.S/Canada relations, but domestic U.S. politics. Rodrique Tremblay joins us. He is a Professor Emeritus of Economics and International Finance at the University of Montreal and was a member of the Committee of Dispute Settlements of the North American Free Trade Agreement. |
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| MUSIC: Jose Gonzalez - Slow Moves; Fionn Regan - Lord Help My Poor Soul; Built To Spill - Hindsight |
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