Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the agreement reached today in Moscow between Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin aimed at avoiding military clashes between Israel and Russia as Putin increases the deployment of weaponry and boots on the ground in Syria to support the besieged Assad regime. William Pomeranz, the Deputy Director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. joins us to discuss Israel’s concerns about transfers of the latest Russian weapons to Hezbollah and whether Putin will send Russian troops into battle against ISIS in Syria ahead of his address to the U.N. on September 28.

Part 2

Then we go to London to discuss explosive allegations in a new biography about the U.K.’s Prime Minister David Cameron written by the Conservative Party power broker Lord Ashcroft who accuses the Prime Minister of engaging in a sex act with a dead pig when Cameron was a student at Oxford University. Nico Hines, the London Editor of The Daily Beast joins us to discuss his article at The Daily Beast “David Cameron Accused of Sex Act With a Dead Pig” and whether this damning biography being serialized in the Daily Mail that revealed David Cameron’s alleged porcine proclivities, will hurt his party that rules parliament with a slim majority.

Part 3

Then finally we go to Iowa for an update on the primary campaigns from a rally for Jeb Bush and speak with David Redlawsk a polling expert and a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and a Fellow at the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. We discuss the latest polls released since the second Republican presidential debate last Wednesday that show Governor Scott Walker at less than 1%, forcing him to drop out of the race, but have Trump still in the lead although there are indications that Carly Fiorina is making an advancement from her earlier negligible polling.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Federal Reserve’s decision today to keep interest rates unchanged and speak with Robert Johnson, the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking who previously was Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and the Budget Committee. We discuss the assumption that, after eight years of trying to stimulate growth, Fed officials still lack confidence in the resilience of the economy, and also examine arguments against the almost zero interest rate policy that hurts pension funds, insurance companies and contributes to record low savings, while the anticipation that the Fed’s Quantitative Easing or QE will end soon, is creating instability in emerging markets.

Part 2

Then we look into the how the Republican presidential candidates handled foreign policy issues in last night’s second debate and speak with Roger Morris, who served on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under presidents Johnson and Nixon and is the author of “Between the Graves: America, Afghanistan and the Politics of Intervention” and “Kindred Rivals: America, Russia and Their Failed Ideals.” We assess the frightening levels of ignorance and belligerence, as well as the brazen distortion of recent history that had Jeb Bush claiming his brother George “kept us safe”, when clearly W failed to act on warnings that 9/11 was coming then led us into a most unnecessary and debilitating war in Iraq that we are still mired in and paying for.

Part 3

Then finally we get a rundown on the winners and losers in last night’s Republican presidential debate with David Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic where his latest article is “Who Won the Second Republican Presidential Debate?” We discuss how CNN’s format that encouraged sniping among the candidates by allowing anyone who was insulted an automatic rebuttal, led to a chain reaction of junior high name-calling that prevented any semblance of substance that may or may not have been forthcoming.