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April 5 - Dumb and Getting Dumber; A Nuclear Weapons Designer on Iran's Nukes; The Filmmaker of "The Island President'
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We begin with the “Age of Ignorance”, the title of an article in the New York Review of Books by Charles Simic, the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States. We discuss his forty year experience in teaching college students, where he finds that students coming out of high school know less and less every year. |
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Then we are joined by a former Secretary of the Air Force who headed the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office and was a Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Policy. A former nuclear weapons designer, Thomas Reed discusses his new book “Tehran Triangle” and the extent and nature of Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. |
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Then finally we speak with Jon Shenk, the filmmaker of a new feature documentary “The Island President” that closely follows Mohammed Nasheed’s first year as president of the Maldives, an island nation gradually being swallowed by the Indian Ocean due to the effects of global warming. We discuss this heroic man’s effort to save his country and alert the world to the peril of climate change. |
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April 4 - The Republican Race to the Right; Ryan Ayn Rand and Romney; Exposing the Deficit and Debt Myths
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Following President Obama’s remarks yesterday that Ronald Reagan would not survive in today’s Republican primary, we begin with Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, the author of “The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008” and discuss the current Republican party and it’s likely standard-bearer Mitt Romney, as well as who might be his running mate. |
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Then we speak about the Ryan Budget, which the President, in tying it to Mitt Romney, described a cruel social Darwinism. Thomas Ferguson, a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston joins us to examine Mitt Romney’s economic priorities reflected in the Ryan budget that he has embraced. |
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Then finally, we are joined by James Kwak, the co-author with Simon Johnson of the new book ”White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why it Matters to You”. We expose the myths surrounding deficits and debts and what needs to be done to fix our economy, if and when political gridlock ends and an adult discussion begins. |
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| MUSIC: Bob Dylan - With God On Our Side; Intwine - Cruel Man; Titus Andronicus - Four Score and Seven; Leonard Cohen - Tower of Debt |
April 3 - Inside The Republican Money Machine; Did Obama's Mandate Miscalculate the Courts, the Politics and the Policy Itself?; How the Canadians See the Keystone Pipeline and American Politics
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We begin with Karl Rove’s Fight Club, the title of a piece in Politico by Kenneth Vogel, Politico’s Chief Investigative Reporter. He investigated the Weaver Terrace Group, a coalition of GOP money bundlers and kingmakers who helped Republicans retake the House in 2010 and have even bigger plans for 2012. We discuss this difficult assignment for a reporter since the Weaver Terrace Group follow the Fight Club rule of not talking about who they are and what they do. |
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Then we speak with Paul Starr, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton who wrote an article back in January for the New Republic “The Health Care Mandate Really Was a Mistake” which argued that the President miscalculated about the courts, the politics and the policy itself. He is the author of a new book “Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle Over Health Care Reform”. |
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Then finally we explore what the President and the Canadian Prime Minister said little about after yesterday’s “Three Amigos” summit, that is the contentious Keystone XL pipeline which is no longer about U.S/Canada relations, but domestic U.S. politics. Rodrique Tremblay joins us. He is a Professor Emeritus of Economics and International Finance at the University of Montreal and was a member of the Committee of Dispute Settlements of the North American Free Trade Agreement. |
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| MUSIC: Jose Gonzalez - Slow Moves; Fionn Regan - Lord Help My Poor Soul; Built To Spill - Hindsight |
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April 2 - "The Three Amigos" Summit and Tragedy in Tibet; Democracy Blossoms In Burma; Will Sanctions Revive Iran's Green Movement?
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We begin with today’s White House North American Leaders Summit, otherwise know as the “Three Amigos” summit, and speak with the Mexico City Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers, Tim Johnson. We discuss the upcoming elections to succeed Mexico’s lame duck President Calderon, and since Tim Johnson was recently McClatchy’s Bureau Chief in Beijing and is the author of “Tragedy in Crimson: How the Dalai Lama Conquered the World but Lost the Battle With China”, we also discuss the recent rash of self-immolations by Tibetans protesting Chinese rule. |
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Then we examine the elections in Burma that are being celebrated as an important step towards democracy, although the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won 40 seats in a parliament where the ruling military junta control the vast majority of the 664 seats. Dr. Josef Silverstein, a distinguished professor emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University who has written extensively on Burma, joins us to assess the changes ahead. |
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Then finally, as the noose tightens on Iran’s economy, we will gauge political dissent inside Iran to determine whether tightened sanctions and economic distress will revive the Green Movement or turn the Iranian people against the West. Roya Hakakian, an Iranian/American poet and journalist joins us. She has an article in the New York Times International Weekly “Where Did Iran’s Green Movement Go?” Unfortunately, the guest did not show. So, the host gave a background of the Iranian political landscape. |
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| MUSIC: Kunchok Tsering - Nowhere; Bob Dylan - Chimes of Freedom; Rolling Stones - Street Fighting Man |
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April 1 - Another War Based on Fake Intelligence?; The Republican Right Wing Stalinist Machine; A Plan to Use "Soft Power" Against Assad
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We begin with a repeat of history as the neoconservatives, who brought us the Iraq fiasco, are apparently manufacturing another case for war, this time with Iran. Jeremiah Goulka, a specialist on the politics and policy of U.S. national and homeland security joins us. He was sent to Iraq by the Bush Administration to investigate the State Department-designated terrorist organization, Mujahedin–e Khalq, the MEK, who the neocons are now using as a source of intelligence to build a case for war against Iran. |
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Then we speak with author and historian Kevin Baker about his essay in the New York Times Sunday Review “The Outsourced Party” which explains the strategy and mechanism behind the Republican party’s drift towards right wing radicalism, and the extent to which, through their interlocking network of billionaire-funded think tanks, media propaganda outlets and judicial activists on the Supreme Court, they are carrying the country with them. |
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Then finally, as some 70 Western and Arab Foreign Ministers meet in Turkey with the Syrian opposition to forge some unity and respond to the Syrian regime’s foot-dragging on the UN- Arab League peace proposal, we discuss alternative approaches with Henri Barkey. A former member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, he had a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times “Syria in the Balance: If the international community wants to stop the bloodshed and prevent disasters, it needs to act rather than react.” |
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| MUSIC: Elton John - Seen That Movie Too; Lee Greenwood - God Bless The USA; Randy Newman - Rednecks; Syrian Protesters - Bashar Must Go |
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