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July 29 - The "Mother of all Battles" For Aleppo; Obama's Unshakeable Versus Romney's Unconditional Support for Israel; Chemistry Between U.S. Presidents and Israeli Leaders
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We begin with the battle for Aleppo in Syria that the Assad regime has oddly characterized as “the mother of all battles”. A former member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff on the Middle East, Henri Barkey joins us to discuss the increasing desperation and destructiveness of the regime and the continuing disarray amongst the opposition. |
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Then we examine Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel where he has met with his close friend Prime Minister Netanyahu and will meet later with Sheldon Adelson and other of his major donors for a fundraiser at the King David Hotel on Monday. The former Director of Policy Analysis for the Israel Policy Forum M.J. Rosenberg joins us to discuss the difference between Obama’s unshakeable support for Israel and Romney’s unconditional support for Israel. |
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Then finally Aaron David Miller joins us. He is a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has been a Middle East advisor to six secretaries of state. His latest book is “Can America Have Another Great President” and he has an article at CNN “Will Israel Trip Help Romney?” that offers an historical perspective on the relationships of past U.S. presidents with Israeli leaders. |
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| MUSIC: Major Lazer - Get Free; The Smiths - Ask (The Bomb); Everly Brothers - Devoted To You; Beach Boys - Barbara Ann |
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July 26 - Mitt Stumbles on the World Stage; Our Economic Policy Debate Is a Sham; Droughts and Fires, The New Norm in the American West
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We begin with the Olympic Games in London that open Friday and speak with Francis Wheen, the deputy editor of Britain’s satirical magazine “Private Eye” to get a sense of the unintended comedy of errors that has accompanied Mitt Romney’s arrival in London. Before meeting the British Prime Minister, Mitt managed to offend him, prompting a rebuke from David Cameron who, in a snide reference to Salt Lake City, snapped that putting on the Olympics in London is not the same as holding the Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere. |
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Then we speak with the economist Justin Wolfers, a visiting professor at Princeton and professor in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. We discuss his article at Bloomberg “The U.S. Economic Policy Debate is a Sham”. |
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Then finally, we speak with author and conservationist William Debuys, the author of “A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the American Southwest”. We discuss the lethal combination of heat, droughts, insect plagues, windstorms and forest fires that will become the new norm in the American West. |
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| MUSIC: DC Talk - What If I Stumble; I Want My Bailout Money - Mike Adams; Mama Economy - Tay Zonday |
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July 25 - America's Move Towards Oligarchy; Unprecedented Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet; Ecological Panic Leading to Future Genocides
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We begin with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who testified Tuesday before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on “Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of SuperPACs”. We discuss his testimony in which he said that “we are well on our way to seeing our great country move toward an oligarchic form of government”. |
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Then we examine the unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet with climate scientist Thomas Mote who has been using satellite imagery to study ice changes in Greenland for the past twenty years. We discuss this phenomenon in the overall context of climate change, where receding glaciers and a Grand Canyon-sized rift from speeding ice melt in Antarctica, plus record droughts and floods, indicate that something is amiss. |
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Then finally we speak with Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale who spoke yesterday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC along with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and other foreign policy experts about ways to avert future genocides. We discuss how climate change and resource crises will cause ecological panic that will lead to mass killings in the decades to come. |
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| MUSIC: Peggy Lee - Ain't We Got Fun; Foreigner - Cold As Ice; Keane - Back In Time; Bob Dylan - Political World |
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July 24 - The Deadly Endgame In Syria; The First Catholic Official Jailed For Covering Up Child Abuse; The Pain In Spain
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We begin with the intensifying war in Syria where the embattled Assad regime resorted to the use of fixed-wing aircraft today in what is seen as a serious escalation. Joshua Landis the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, who writes the daily newsletter on Syrian politics “Syria Comment”, joins us to discuss the end game in Syria and the possible use of WMD’s. |
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Then we speak with the Executive Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, David Clohessy, about the sentencing today of the first high official in the Catholic Church to go to jail for covering up the abuse of children by Catholic priests. We discuss the long cover up and the billions spent to hide what seems to a systemic problem within the male-dominated Catholic clergy. |
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Then finally we look into the pain in Spain as speculators pile on, forcing up the borrowing cost of Spanish debt to unsustainable levels. Anthony Geist, Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle joins us. He is just back from Spain and we discuss how the average Spaniard is coping with austerity and soaring unemployment that again exposes the weakness of the political leadership of the Eurozone that appears consistently unable to get on top of a growing economic crisis. |
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| MUSIC: Fugazi - The Argument; Elliot Smith - Abused; Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias - Spanish Eyes; Arcade Fire - Half Light II |
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July 23 - The War on Whistle-blowers; The Phony Markets Versus Government Campaign; Nationalizing the Big Banks
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With editorials in both Monday’s New York Times and Los Angeles Times warning about intensified government efforts to not just go after whistle-blowers and leakers, but journalists too, we begin with Tom Devine, the Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project. He has represented or helped over 5,000 whistle-blowers and we discuss the spy hunt for whistle-blowers in the FDA and efforts in Congress to strengthen whistle-blower protection laws that Senators Kyl and Sessions are trying to sabotage. |
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Then we speak with Princeton historian Julian Zelizer about the Romney campaign’s attempts to portray President Obama as the anti-capitalist candidate and enemy of free enterprise who, according to Mitt Romney, wants Americans to be ashamed of success. The author of “Governing America: the Revival of Political History”, Julian Zelizer has an article at CNN “Campaign 2012: The Phony War of Markets Versus Government.” |
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Then finally historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz joins us. A former Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, he is the co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and the author of “America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy.” We discuss his oped in Monday’s New York Times “Wall Street is Too Big to Regulate”. |
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| MUSIC: Stevie Wonder - Big Brother; Fiddler on the Roof - If I Were A Rich Man; Devotchka - How This Will End; M. Ward - Big Boat |
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