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October 14 - Can Obama Refute a Blizzard of Lies While Putting Forth His Vision?; Does the Nobel Peace Prize Comply With Nobel's Will?; Will the Truth About Social Security Be Told?
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We begin with an analysis of what President Obama must do to reverse the momentum in the presidential campaign which the media claims is shifting in Romney’s favor. Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee joins us to discuss how Obama can refute a blizzard of lies coming from Romney while putting forth his vision for the future. |
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Then we look into the Norwegian Nobel Committee who just awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union which has some people scratching their heads. A Norwegian peace activist, Frederik Heffermehl, who has criticized the committee for not complying with Alfred Nobel’s will, joins us. He is the author of “The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted”. |
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Then finally we discuss the fate and future of Social Security about which in the first debate, President Obama inexplicably said that he and Romney agreed. Nothing could be further from the truth and we discuss the Republican war on Social Security with Eric Kingson, who served as a policy advisor on two presidential commissions on the future of social security. We discuss Pete Peterson’s successful billion dollar demonization propaganda campaign that has invented a social security crisis. |
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October 11 - A Vice Presidential Candidate Not in Tonight's Debate; Foreign Policy Issues Not Raised in the Next Debate; Will Biden Tie Ryan to Romney Tonight?
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We begin with one of the important challenges facing America that will not be discussed in tonight’s Vice Presidential debate and that is the failed war on drugs. The Libertarian Party’s candidate for Vice President of the United States, who should be participating in tonight’s debate, Judge James Gray joins us to discuss his candidacy and his book “Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It”. |
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Then, as next Tuesday’s presidential debate on foreign policy approaches, we discuss what will not be brought up in the debate with a former State Department Foreign Service Officer whose career ended when he wrote about his experience in Iraq in “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle For the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”. Peter Van Buren joins us to expand on his article in the Huffington Post, “Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won’t Be Raised in the Presidential Debates”. |
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Then finally we examine what is likely to be brought up in tonight’s Vice Presidential debate and the extent to which Joe Biden will attempt to tie Paul Ryan to Mitt Romney to try to make up for President Obama’s failure to challenge Romney who clearly ran away with the last debate. David Lowery, a Professor of Political Science at Penn State University where he is also the Director of the Center for American Political Responsiveness, joins us. |
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October 10 - Is the Supreme Court Poised to Strike Down Affirmative Action?; A Loophole in Oversight Leads to Meningitis Outbreak; "Do the Movies Have a Future?"
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We begin with an analysis of the arguments today before the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas which could spell an end to affirmative action. Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean and professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, who has argued before the Supreme Court, joins us to discuss whether the conservatives on the court, who seemed skeptical of race as a factor in determining college admissions, strike affirmative action down. |
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Then we look into the ongoing public health catastrophe from an outbreak of meningitis due to contaminated steroid shots 13,000 people have been exposed to that have caused 12 deaths nationwide. The former Associate Director for Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Human Research Protection within the Department of Health and Human Services Dr Michael Carome joins us to explain the loophole allowing manufacturers of this deadly, tainted product to escape regulation by the FDA. |
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Then finally the film critic for The New Yorker, David Denby joins us to discuss the corporatization of our culture, in particular the movies, where mindless, heartless and pointless effects-laden event movies tailored for 14 year old boys have replaced movies with stories and characters that adults used to watch. We discuss David Denby’s new book “Do the Movies Have a Future?” and the difficulty of connecting under-served audiences with outstanding independent films that can’t find distribution. |
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October 9 - An Analysis of Romney's National Security Policy; IMF Report on a Slowdown of Global Recovery; How Miners Used for Props by Romney Pay for Their Boss's Politics
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We begin with an analysis of Mitt Romney’s speech to the cadets at VMI that was billed as his vision of a new national security strategy. We speak with Lawrence Korb, who was an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration and is the author of “A New National Security Strategy in an Age of Terrorists, Tyrants, and Weapons of Mass Destruction”. |
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Then we examine a new report by the IMF warning that the global economic recovery is slowing and that growth rates in 2013 will be less than earlier projections. Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research joins us to discuss how austerity is slowing growth, particularly in the UK which the IMF singled out. But nevertheless Republican deficits hawks keep insisting Americans need a dose of austerity to prevent the country from falling off the fiscal cliff. |
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Then finally we look into a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Democratic Party against Murray Energy whose owner coerced the company’s coal miners to appear as a backdrop for a Mitt Romney rally in Ohio. The lawsuit was stimulated by an article in The New Republic “Coal Miner’s Donor: A Mitt Romney Benefactor and his Surprisingly Generous Employees”. The author of the article, Alec MacGillis, a senior editor at The New Republic, joins us. |
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October 8 - A Pollster on Romney's Surge in the Polls; Iran's Economy in Collapse; The International Crisis Group's Alarming Report on Afghanistan
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We begin with the presidential polls where the race is narrowing following President Obama’s lackluster performance in the first debate. Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll and the chief spokesman for the Florida and Ohio polls joins us to discuss how much Mitt Romney has gained and the president has lost as the election enters its last month. |
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Then, as the Iranian government’s oil revenues shrink from international sanctions while the regime continues to hide its nuclear program and finance the besieged Assad clan in Syria, we look into the collapse of Iran’s currency. A former advisor to the Director of the National Iranian Oil Company, Dr Sara Vakhsouri joins us to discuss the devastating effect inflation is having on Iran’s middle class and the poor who cannot afford basic food and medicine. |
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Then finally we speak with Paul Quinn Judge, the Director of the International Crisis Group, who have just released a devastating report on Afghanistan’s future when the US and NATO pulls out, “Afghanistan: The Long Hard Road to the 2014 Transition”. We discuss the report’s bleak findings and whether the Karzai government will deal with its own mismanagement and corruption to stave off a likely defeat by the Taliban. |
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The international crisis Group's
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