Full Program

Part 1

Starting with foreign policy, we look at Syria on the brink, following Secretary of State Clinton’s warning to the Russians that unless they get serious about restraining the Assad killing machine, Russia will be responsible for Syria plunging into civil war. Aram Nerguizian, a Visiting Fellow in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies joins us to discuss reports that recently French President Sarkozy and Saudi Defense Minister Prince Salman were ready to bomb the Assad clan’s palace on top of Mount Qassioun, but the joint French/Saudi airstrike was vetoed by President Obama.

Then we switch to domestic politics and discuss our dysfunctional Congress with two veteran Washington insiders, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann. Together they have written a provocative best-seller “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism”. Both long-time observers and noted scholars of Congress, they have been effectively banned by the mainstream media because they break the sacred convention of phony balance by pointing out that the Republicans are largely to blame and that the Democrats can no longer be described as the liberal party and the Republicans as the conservative party. Now the Democrats are the conservative party and the Republicans are the radical party.

We begin with an update on the Egyptian elections and speak with Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab Politics at Georgetown University’s Center For Contemporary Arab Studies. He is just back from Egypt and we discuss the incomplete revolution that may be further reversed by the election of a president who represents the old guard.

Then, as many countries expel Syrian diplomats in protest, we speak with Asher Kaufman who is a professor of History and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has an article at CNN “Only Russia and China Can Stop Carnage in Syria” and we discuss whether international outrage over the Assad’s latest massacre of women and children will sway Russia and China to re-think their protection of the Assad regime at the UN Security Council and their support of the Annan Plan that is being so flagrantly violated.

Then finally we speak with Chuck Collins, the author of “99 To 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can do About it”. We discuss whether the almost unlimited financial resources and support from the mainstream media that the candidate of the 1%, Mitt Romney has, can be matched by grassroots mobilization and an awakened moral outrage among the 99%, many of whom want jobs and economic justice, not a so-called “job creator”.