Full Program

Part 1

As this year comes to a close, we are looking back on some of the stories that dominated the news in 2013. Today we will focus on the rise and fall of the Tea Party in 2013 and begin with a broadcast of “Background Briefing” from May 16, 2013 when the Tea Party was claiming political victimhood. We analyze the real nature of the Tea Party movement with Chris Parker, the author of a new book “Change They Can’t Believe in: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America”. We discuss his thoroughly researched study of the Tea Party that presents itself as a new revolutionary phenomenon when in fact it is the old reactionary right re-packaged as a grassroots movement. With its funding from billionaires, it is much more the heir to the “Know Nothing Party”, The Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society than to those who inspired the American Revolution.

Part 2

Then from October 2, 2013 we speak with two Washington insiders who wrote the New York Times bestseller “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism”. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann were among the first to expose the capture of the Republican Party by extremists and we discuss the threat to the constitution posed by Tea Party radicals who want nothing short of unconditional surrender by Barack Obama of his presidency.

Part 3

Then finally from October 8, 2013 we look into arguments before the Supreme Court in McCutcheon versus the FEC that could strike down any remaining limits on spending on candidates and parties. Senator Bernie Sanders, who was in the Supreme Court and later spoke on the steps afterwards, joins us to discuss whether the Court will further empower a few billionaires like those behind the Tea Party shutdown, who are radically altering the American political landscape, moving the country further and further to the right.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with 15 Democratic U.S. Senators signing on to a hardline bill that would scuttle the initiative underway with Iran to curb its nuclear program. Max Blumenthal, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of the new book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” joins us to analyze the influence of Israel in determining U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the lack of an anti-war lobby in Washington to counterbalance the hawks on Capitol Hill bent on closing the door on Obama’s tentative moves towards peace.   

Part 2

Then we speak with Thomas Ferguson, a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts and a contributing editor to The Nation. We discuss a new poll from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling that indicates Republicans might pay a price for cutting unemployment benefits on December 28 since voters overwhelming support extending benefits, with a majority of fair-minded Americans apparently understanding the unemployed want to work and should not be punished for the economic downturn caused by Wall Street.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the possibility that a new threat of war from North Korea is likely to erupt soon as the new young leader Kim Jong Un, who has just executed his uncle the number two in the regime, moves to assert his dynastic rule over his impoverished nuclear-armed and militarized failed state. Sung Yoon Lee, a Professor of International Affairs at The Fletcher School of International Diplomacy at Tufts University joins us to discuss a new round of nuclear brinkmanship looming on the Korean peninsula.