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What will it take for Kerry to beat Bush? HAROLD MEYERSON has some ideas; he writes for the LA Weekly and the Washington Post op-ed page.

State Senator SHEILA KUEHL of Santa Monica reports from Sacramento on the prison guards and the new budget, and Schwartzenegger and the girly men.

And SAUL LANDAU talks about his new book, The Business of America: how consumers have replaced citizens, and how we can reverse the trend.

Calendar note: Outfoxed, Robert Greenwald’s documentary about Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, opens in LA this weeked at Laemmle’s Fairfax theater on Beverly and Fairfax: view the trailer for “Outfoxed”

web extra: Will Ferrell as George Bush trying to tape a TV commercial: http://whitehousewest.com/

BARBARA EHRENREICH talks about George Bush and John Kerry — she’s now writing an op-ed column for the New York Times. Her book Nickel and Dimed was on the best seller list for 86 weeks.

Plus: The upcoming trial of Saddam — what kind of justice is this? IAN WILLIAMS explains — his new book is Deserter: Bush’s War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past.

And: Dissident Jewish writing about Israel and Zionism: ADAM SHATZ, literary editor of The Nation, looks at writers from Einstein and Freud down to I. F. Stone and Noam Chomsky. His new book is Prophets Outcast.

Also: The great new documentary, “The Corporation“ opens Friday July 9 in L.A. at the Nuart and plays thru July 22 — we’ll speak with producer-director Mark Achbar.

View the trailer for “The Corporation”: http://www.thecorporation.tv/trailer/
Get the book The Corporation by Joel Bakan

The president and the war: HAROLD MEYERSON, op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, comments on the transfer of “sovreignty” in Baghdad — and on the new poll showing Bush at his lowest approval ratings ever.

Also: the Supreme Court rules against the president on the prisoners at Guantanamo — DAVID COLE explains what rights they have — his new book is Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism.

And: The Rosenberg case and its effect on a family: filmmaker IVY MEEROPOL, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, talks about her new documentary “Heir to an Execution” — it’s been showing on HBO.

Plus: MICHAEL MOORE’s great new film, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” set records last weekend. DOUG HENWOOD comments.

Read Stuart Klawans in The Nation on Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”

See the CBS-New York Times poll: Bush’s lowest approval ratings ever.

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” View the trailer.

Abu Ghraib and the military’s cult of masculinity: CAROL BURKE explains the toxic combination of misogyny and homophobia in military culture. Her new book is Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture. She also wrote The Nation‘s cover story Kinda Fonda Jane: Why They Love to Hate Her.”

Also: the lasting relevance of 1968: the year the rocked the world: MARK KURLANSKY explains.

And TOM HAYDEN talks about gangs and the gang violence that has killed 25,000 young people in America since 1980, and the neocon politics of law and order that only make things worse. Tom’s new book is Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence, out now from The New Press. Tom recently wrote about the terrible prison fire in Honduras, “Homies were burning alive.”

How Los Angeles re-made its Mexican Past: historian WILLIAM DEVERELL explains — his new book is Whitewashed Adobe. Mike Davis called it “a landmark in Los Angeles’ difficult conversation with its past.”

Plus: our Iraq update with IAN WILLIAMS, UN correspondent for The Nation; his book Deserter: George Bush’s War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past, will be published by Nation Books in July.

Also: JONATHAN SCHELL of The Nation Institute talks about war, terrorism and protest; his new book is A Hole in the World.

Women, men and torture in Iraq: KATHA POLLITT, columnist for The Nation, comments.

Plus: REBECCA SOLNIT won the 2004 award for criticism from the National Book Critics Circle. Now she argues that despite the gathering political, environmental, and cultural gloom, we need “an imagination adequate to the possibilities.” Her new book is Hope in the Dark.

Also: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl“ was written 50 years ago as a cultural weapon and a call to arms. JONAH RASKIN talks about the most influential poem of the second half of the 20th century; and we’ll listen to Ginsberg reading. Jonah’s new book is American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation.

Web extra: the Gallup Poll approval ratings say Bush will lose in November.

. . . and check out the Cost Of War website.

Israel’s Gaza pullout plan: even Israel’s defense minister calls the Israeli settlements in Gaza a “historic mistake.” But the Likud party last week voted 60-40 against the plan. This Saturday night Peace Now takes to the streets in Tel Aviv to demand “Remove the Settlements.” What’s next for Ariel Sharon? AMY WILENTZ, former Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, has comment and analysis; she wrote the novel Martyr’s Crossing about Israelis and Palestinians.

Plus: the strange story of a 1913 murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta — and the lynching of the man accused of the murder — not a black man, but a Jew, Leo Frank. How and why an all-white jury convicted Frank largely on the testimony of a black man: STEVE ONEY tells that story: his book is The Dead Shall Rise: The Lynching of Leo Frank.

Also: May 17 is the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were “Inherently unequal.” Historian ERIC FONER co-edited a special issue of The Nation arguing that the promise of equality in education, and the rest of American life, remains unfulfilled.

Web extra: The Zogby Poll predicts Kerry will win in November.

JOHN DEAN says the Bush White House is “Worse than Watergate” in its secrecy and deception — a live interview about his new book.

Plus: ERIC SCHLOSSER says “Make Peace with Pot.” His book Reefer Madness is out now in paperback.

Also: IAN WILLIAMS, UN Correspondent for The Nation, will have commentary and analysis of events in Falluja and Najaf, as well as the plans for the Israeli pullout from Gaza.

Film of the week: “The Agronomist” by Jonathan Demme, about Jean Dominique, one of Haiti?s most prominent human-rights fighters. At the Sunset Five, the UA Marketplace (Pasadena) and the Monica on 2nd Street in Santa Monica.

Web extra: take a look at the MoveOn TV ad on the Vietnam war records of Kerry and Bush.

The Weather Underground: BERNADINE DOHRN talks about the violent New Left group of the sixties, and the documentary that PBS is airing Tuesday April 27 at 1000pm.

Plus: “In Search of Hezbollah”: ADAM SHATZ interviewed the head of the Shiite “Party of God,” admired throughout the Muslim world for its successful resistance to Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon.
Adam is also editor of Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Israel and Zionism.

And KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, editor of The Nation, talks about Taking Back America And Taking Down the Radical Right.
Katrina also writes the “Editor’s Cut” blog at TheNation.com.
Katrina will be speaking at the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA on Sunday April 25 at 1230pm in Korn Convocation Hall.
and Katrina will be signing Taking Back America on Saturday 2:00-3:00pm at The Nation Booth #344, Royce Quad

400 George Bush says “I have a plan to end the war on terror” : HAROLD MEYERSON of the LA Weekly and the Washington Post will have political analysis.

415 “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam” (Ted Kennedy said that): IAN WILLIAMS of The Nation comments on the news from Falluja.

430 Working at WalMart: DAVID SHIPLER, author of The Working Poor: Invisible in America, explains the problem.

445 RUBEN MARTINEZ has a new book out, a kaleidoscopic picture of immigrants moving to the US from India, Mexico, and Palestine: it’s called The New Americans. PBS video available at 888-572-8918.

NOTE: The Newsweek poll Saturday has Kerry ahead of Bush 50-43 — and 40% of Americans concerned that Iraq could become “another Vietnam.”