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July 19 - Unmistakable Plagiarism in the Keynote Speech at the Opening Night of the Republican Convention; Hate Speech and Personal Attacks Dominate the Republican Convention
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We begin with the apparent plagiarism by either Melania Trump or her speechwriter with the use of identical passages from a speech by Michelle Obama at the 2008 Democratic convention which soon became apparent after the keynote speech last night by the wife of the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump. Paul Glastris, a former special assistant and senior speechwriter to President Bill Clinton, who wrote over 200 speeches for the president, joins us to discuss how such a clumsy and amateurish act could have happened and who might be responsible. And since the Trump campaign are arrogantly refusing to acknowledge the obvious, and nobody has fallen on their sword and taken the fall, could the former Slovenian model who insisted she wrote the speech herself “with a little help from others”, have lifted the passages from a similar keynote address by the wife of someone Trump has routinely vilified and spewed endless hatred and lies at, the President of the United States, Barack Obama?
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Then we look into the hate speech and personal attacks that dominated last night’s Republican convention, most of which were aimed at Hillary Clinton that animated the crowd and riled them up into chanting “lock her up”. Joining us is Ian Haney Lopez, a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley and author of “White by Law” whose latest book is “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class”. We discuss how racist hateful attacks against Obama are not even coded at the Republican convention where after addressing the crowd, soap opera actor and underwear model, Antonio Sabato told ABC News that Obama “is on the other side, the Middle East…the bad guys…we’ve had a Muslim president for seven and a half years”. |
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July 18 - How the Police are Reacting to the Possiblity of Becoming Targets; The GOP as the Party of Angry White People; How the Right Tears Down America
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We begin with the latest shooting of police officers, this time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where a sniper with a similar military background as the shooter in Dallas, ambushed police officers killing three and wounding three more. The award-winning investigative journalist who has covered the police and the criminal justice system for decades, Joe Domanick, joins us to discuss how police forces around the country are reacting to the possibility that they are becoming targets of the rampant gun violence in America. Joe is the Associate Director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of a number of books on policing, the latest of which is “Blue: The Ruin and Redemption of the LAPD”.
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Then, on this first day of the Republican convention in Cleveland, we examine the extent to which the GOP has become the party of angry white people headed by a racist demagogue who is the leading voice of the “birther” movement that has sought to de-legitimize America’s first African/American president with the claim that he is a stealth Kenyan, not an American, nefariously out to undermine America with a hidden agenda that Trump just hinted at on Fox News with the claim that Obama’s body language suggested he is in favor of shooting cops. Alan Abramowitz, a Professor of Political Science at Emory University and author of “Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States” joins us to discuss the demographics of the angry white voter and why they believe in Trump and his not-so-coded racist messages. |
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Then finally we speak with a long-time former senior House and Senate staffer, Mike Lofgren, the author of “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government”. He joins us to discuss his latest article at Consortium News, “How the Right Tears Down America” and why Trump’s call to “make America great again” resonates with working Americans who do not feel they are benefiting from the fact that the world’s 11 largest firms based on market capitalization, are American-based. |
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July 17 - Inside the Declassified 28 Pages on the Saudi Role in 9/11; Erdogan Calls the Failed Military Coup "A Gift From God"; The Amateur Theatrics Surrounding Trump's Pick for VP
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We begin with the release of the 28 pages from the joint congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks that were classified by President George W. Bush which now to some extent implicate the Bush family friend Prince Bandar who was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Veteran CIA officer Robert Baer, the author of “Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude”, who is now the national security analyst for CNN, joins us to discuss the contents of the declassified documents that detail contacts between some of the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi officials as well as efforts by the Saudi government to thwart U.S. efforts in combatting al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks.
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Then we speak with Asli Bali, the Director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA who was born in Turkey and has family in a country on edge after a failed military coup that the country’s autocratic President Erdogan has described as a “gift from God” which he is now taking advantage of with a vengeance as he rounds up thousands of military officers and judges in a purge that will accelerate his increasing power grab from what was a slow coup before the botched overnight attempted coup by elements of the military who claimed to be acting in the name of democracy. |
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Then finally we look into the absurd amateur theatrics surrounding Donald Trump’s pick of Mike Pence as his running mate with Pence getting wind that Chris Christie was weighing in on Trump to pick him so Pence went ahead and leaked to the press that he was the chosen VP which infuriated Trump who them had buyer’s remorse and second thoughts which Christie then leaked to the press in the hope that the decision could be reversed. Marjorie Hershey, a professor of Political Science at Indiana University whose research focuses on political parties, campaigns and elections, joins us to discuss the unseemly ambition of Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his desperate vice-presidential rivals Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich. |
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July 14 - The Shift in US Policy Over Syria; How Gilead Pharma Gouges Patients and Dodges Taxes; Incarceration Has Replaced Psychiatric Hospitalization
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We begin with the leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post indicating a major shift in U.S. policy over Syria which apparently is being negotiated in Moscow between Secretary of State Kerry and President Putin. Joshua Landis, the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma who writes the daily newsletter and blog on Syrian politics, “Syria Comment”, joins us to discuss the extent to which the U.S. is planning to sellout the moderate Syrian opposition and prolong the Assad family’s hold on a country they are largely responsible for destroying. With the Secretary of Defense opposing this policy shift, we will examine the internal battles within the Obama Administration and how the U.S. and Russia plan to work closer in coordinating bombing targets that focus on “daesh”, the Islamic State, and Al Nusra. |
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Then, following a recent article in The Huffington Post by Bernie Sanders “Taxpayers Funded a Lifesaving Drug and Guess What Happened Next?”, we speak with Frank Clemente, the Executive Director and co-founder of Americans for Tax Fairness who is the lead author of a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, “Gilead Sciences: Price Gouger, Tax Dodger”. We look into this report that is the basis for the Sanders article and find out how a tax-payer funded drug that treats Hepatitis C is now being sold by Gilead for $1,000 a pill making it the costliest prescription that U.S. public and private insurers, taxpayers and patients pay for. Meanwhile Gilead has dodged paying $10 billion on taxes on the obscene profits it has gouged from the public. |
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Then finally we speak with Dr. Azza AbuDagga, a health services researcher at Public Citizen’s Health Research Group who is the lead author of a new report that examines how incarceration has replaced psychiatric hospitalization for thousands of inmates with serious mental illness in America. We discuss how county jails are ill-equipped to deal with this overwhelming problem that is the result of the closure of State Psychiatric Hospitals and the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill who have been dumped on the streets and end up in the criminal justice system.
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July 13 - Will Journalists Dignify Trump as the GOP Standard Bearer Rather Than Judge Him as a Person?; Nationalist Fervor in China Amid Cries For War; While People in the Philippines Rejoice, Its New President Has Little to Say
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We begin with the furor over Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s blunt remarks about Donald Trump that are seen as violating judicial ethics but clearly represent her strong feelings as a citizen and a concerned American. We will explore the issue of professional ethics versus personal morality further and extend it into the field of journalism where many journalists are just as alarmed at the prospect of a Trump presidency as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But, as the Republican nominee for president, will journalists afford Trump more dignity in his role as the GOP standard bearer and treat him as an equal on the stage with Hillary Clinton, and therefore take him more seriously as a candidate rather than judge him as a person? Gabriel Kahn, a Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism where he heads up the Future of Journalism Project at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, joins us to discuss how journalists can be both objective and fair in their coverage of Trump without having to resort to the binary convention of “balance” and equivalence, whether false or not.
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Then we speak with Scott Kennedy, the deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of “Beyond the Middle Kingdom”. He joins us to discuss the explosion of nationalist fervor in China following the U.N. ruling against China’s activities in the South China Sea which has caused China’s censors to work overtime online to curtail rallying cries for war. We look into the backlash from the Chinese Communist Party’s encouragement of nationalism as a way to legitimize its continuing rule, and how Xi Jinping will manage tensions created by China’s assertion of rights that the U.N. has found to be baseless. |
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Then finally we examine the reaction to the U.N. ruling in The Philippines where there appears to be a lot of celebrating although the country’s new and controversial president has had little to nothing to say . Joining us is Gerard Finin, the Director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East – West Center in Hawaii where his area of expertise includes public policy, social change, development and urbanization in The Philippines. We will discuss whether this moral victory will translate into any practical gains for The Philippines. |
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