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February 10 - A Conservative Jeb Bush Now Appears to Be Moderate; Brinksmanship between Greece and Its Troika of Creditors; Judicial Confusion in Alabama on Same-Sex Marriage
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We begin with the release of a new book and a data dump of emails by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush who is running for president in 2016 and has called himself the first “eGovernor” because of the prolific use of his Blackberry. Joining us is Matthew Corrigan, Chair and Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Florida who is the author of the new book just out, “Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida”. We will discuss Jeb Bush’s record as a hardline conservative which belies his latest public persona as a more moderate Republican, which ironically will help him in a general election but hurt him in the Republican primaries where polling of likely caucus-goers indicates Bush is considered too moderate by 37% in Iowa and 41% in New Hampshire. |
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Then we examine the brinksmanship going on between Greece and the so-called troika of creditors; The European Commission, the ECB and the IMF, with senior officials in the just-elected Greek government who are saying they might look elsewhere to Russia and China for economic support as Greece’s new finance minister warns that the eurozone is a house of cards that a Greek exit from the euro could collapse. Economist Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research joins us to discuss what options Greece has and his article at Al Jazeera “Greece Needs an Exit Option”. |
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Then finally we speak with Carl Tobias, Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Richmond who has tracked same-sex marriage across the country. We look into the legal see-saw going on in Alabama with the state’s Chief Justice Roy Moore ordering probate judges in all 67 counties not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of Monday’s 7-2 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to let a federal judge’s order striking down the state’s same-sex marriage ban take effect, causing confusion that has already led to the arrest of a female minister on the grounds of disorderly conduct for trying to perform a same-sex marriage in a judge’s office. |
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February 9 - The HSBC Swiss Bank Files Reveal Full Service Tax Dodging; Obama and Merkel and the Different Security Cultures in Germany and the U.S.; The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Goes After Payday Lenders
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We begin with the report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, based on files from insiders at the Swiss branch of the British bank HSBC revealing the bank provided extensive services to wealthy customers including politicians, royalty, soccer and tennis pros, Hollywood actors, rock stars, dictators, arms dealers and criminal bosses, enabling them to avoid paying taxes and conceal millions in assets. William Black, the former chief prosecutor who investigated the savings and loan disaster and is the author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One,” joins us to discuss the list of 100,000 clients with accounts containing $120 billion and hidden assets of 204.5 billiion. |
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Then we look into the White House meeting between President Obama and German Chancellor Merkel ahead of her planned meeting on Wednesday with the leaders of France, Russia and Ukraine. A specialist on German security policy,Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, joins us to discuss the different security cultures in Germany and the U.S., highlighted by contentious exchanges at the recent security conference in Munich between Angela Merkel and Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain. |
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Then finally we speak with Rebecca Borne, Senior policy Counsel at The Center for Responsible Lending who focuses on regulatory and Policy issues in particular Payday lenders. She joins us to discuss recent moves by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to reign in the abusive practices of payday lenders, a $46 billion industry that charges up to 400% interest and hooks poor people on loan after loan to pay off earlier loans. We also look into how the prospect of new federal rules is driving payday lenders to lobby state legislators in Kentucky, Washington and New Mexico where they have tapped former Governor Jerry Apodaca as one of their lobbyist. |
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February 8 - A Moscow-Based Defense Analyst on the War in Ukraine; Blurring the Line Between Fact and Fiction in America's Wars; The Crossing of the Line Between Embellishment and Fabrication by NBC's Brian Williams
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We begin with the growing possibility of a war breaking out in Europe which the French president warned about as he met with Putin on Friday together with German Chancellor Merkel on her first trip to Moscow. We will go to Moscow and speak with a leading military analyst Dr. Pavel Felegenhauer who is the defense columnist for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications in the Russian media not controlled by Putin. He joins us to discuss last-ditch diplomatic efforts to avoid an escalation of the war in Ukraine and the Russian military’s deep involvement in the conflict that is allowing them to test their latest equipment and new “hybrid warfare” battle tactics against a vastly inferior military force that is begging for Western military hardware to match what is arrayed against them. |
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Then we examine the blurring of the line between fact and fiction that has fueled contentious political divisions among critics and commentators in response to the box-office success of the Clint Eastwood movie “American Sniper”. Author, filmmaker, journalist and explorer, Robert Young Pelton, the publisher of Dangerous Magazine and author of “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” and “Come Back Alive”, joins us to discuss his many observations from the frontlines of America’s recent battlefields and the facts and fiction swirling around the warrior culture that leads to the phenomenon of exaggerated heroics and “stolen valor”. |
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Then we examine further the line between fabrication and embellishment that has led to NBC’s news anchor Brian Williams stepping down from the anchor desk of the top-rated NBC Nightly News for what might be a short or long interlude, in the wake of claims Williams made about being under fire in Iraq which were recently disputed in a investigative article in Stars and Stripes. Veteran war correspondent and author of the bestseller “War is a Force That Gives us Meaning”, Chris Hedges, joins us to analyze the apparent need in our contemporary media culture of creeping infotainment, to glorify war and wartime heroics, possibly as a way to overcome the fact that we have not won a war since World War 11. |
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February 8 - A Moscow-Based Defense Analyst on the War in Ukraine; Blurring the Line Between Fact and Fiction in America's Wars; The Crossing of the Line Between Embellishment and Fabrication by NBC's Brian Williams
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LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
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We begin with the growing possibility of a war breaking out in Europe which the French president warned about as he met with Putin on Friday together with German Chancellor Merkel on her first trip to Moscow. We go to Moscow and speak with a leading military analyst Dr. Pavel Felegenhauer who is the defense columnist for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications in the Russian media not controlled by Putin. He joins us to discuss last-ditch diplomatic efforts to avoid an escalation of the war in Ukraine and the Russian military’s deep involvement in the conflict that is allowing them to test their latest equipment and new “hybrid warfare” battle tactics against a vastly inferior military force that is begging for Western military hardware to match what is arrayed against them. |
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Then we examine the blurring of the line between fact and fiction that has fueled contentious political divisions among critics and commentators in response to the box-office success of the Clint Eastwood movie “American Sniper”. Author, filmmaker, journalist and explorer, Robert Young Pelton, the publisher of Dangerous Magazine and author of “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” and “Come Back Alive”, joins us to discuss his many observations from the frontlines of America’s recent battlefields and the facts and fiction swirling around the warrior culture that leads to the phenomenon of exaggerated heroics and “stolen valor”. |
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Then we examine further the line between fabrication and embellishment that has led to NBC’s news anchor Brian Williams stepping down from the anchor desk of the top-rated NBC Nightly News for what might be a short or long interlude, in the wake of claims Williams made about being under fire in Iraq which were recently disputed in a investigative article in Stars and Stripes. Veteran war correspondent and author of the bestseller “War is a Force That Gives us Meaning”, Chris Hedges, joins us to analyze the apparent need in our contemporary media culture of creeping infotainment, to glorify war and wartime heroics, possibly as a way to overcome the fact that we have not won a war since World War 11. |
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February 5 - Will the West Arm Ukraine?; “The Road to Iraq: The Making of Neoconservative War” and How the Neocons May be Rewarded for Their Failures by a Clinton or Bush Presidencies
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We begin with the unscheduled trip to Ukraine by the leaders of Germany and France to confer with the Secretary of State and Ukraine’s president before going on to Moscow to offer a peace plan to Vladimir Putin. A leading international expert on contemporary Ukraine at the Center for Political and Regional Studies in the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, Taras Kuzio, joins us. He is the author of the new book “Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism” and we discuss his article at The Financial Times “Arm Ukraine and force Putin back to the negotiating table” as well as the apparent good cop-bad cop strategy underway to get Putin to the negotiating table, before the U.S. and NATO moves to arm Ukraine to defend itself in a war where Russia has already taken Crimea and a large area of Ukraine with the intervention of thousands of Russian troops with advanced military equipment in a blatant invasion that the ill-equipped and poorly trained Ukrainian military cannot match.
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Then we go to the U.K. to speak with Idrees Ahmad, a London-based writer and political sociologist who is a Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Sterling, Scotland and the author of the new book, just out, “The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War”. We will discuss the history of the war party of neoconservatives behind the Iraq debacle who manufactured an unnecessary and disastrously counterproductive war, the cost and consequences of which continues to this day. We examine why the architects of this endless tragedy have never been held to account and how they may come back as a part of a President Hillary Clinton foreign policy team or in another Bush Administration assuming there is sufficient amnesia in America to elect as their next president the brother of the “decider” who took America head-first into one of its greatest economic, military and diplomatic catastrophes in history. |
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