Trump Watch

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One year ago, Barack Obama was elected president. Yesterday, Republicans won some off-term elections – are voters telling us something?  JOHN NICHOLS comments; he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

The wildly popular “TIJUANA SOUND” of the 1960s, marketed by Herb Alpert, caricatured Tijuana as a sleepy Mexican border town. The real Tijuana, however, was an emerging industrial city with its own versions of the blues, rock & roll and jazz.  JOSH KUN explains: he directs the Popular Music Project  at the Annenberg School at USC; his installation “Last Exit USA” is at Steve Turner Contemporary, 6026 Wilshire Blvd.  PLAYLIST: Herb Alpert, “Tijuana Bull,” “All My Loving”;  Los Tijuana Five, “Suenos de California”;  Los TJs, “El Twist Despacio”; Los Tigres del Norte, “La Granja,” “El Otro Mexico.”

Also: DOROTHEA LANGE photographed  “Migrant Mother,” the icon of the Great Depression–an eloquent portrait of a survivor.  Lange went on to photograph Japanese Americans during their internment in WWII; those photos were banned.
NYU historian LINDA GORDON calls Lange “a photographer of demcocracy, and for democracy” — Linda’s new book is Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits.

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The CIA’s secret Predator war: JANE MAYER of the New Yorker reports on the secret war being fought with remote controlled unmanned planes in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The program has dramatically expanded under Obama.  “Nearly all the victims have remained faceless.”  Jane Mayer wrote about Obama’s predator war for the Oct. 26  New Yorker.

Plus: AMIRA HASS is the columnist for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper who has often told the hard truths about Israel and the Palestinians. Now she has received the International Women’s Media Foundation 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award for her remarkable bravery as an Israeli citizen who lives and reports from Gaza.  READ her column about the Gaza war, “Lucky my parents aren’t alive to see this.”

Also: WAL-MART, the largest private employer in the nation, is notorious for mistreating its workers in both American stores and Chinese factories. Historian NELSON LICHTENSTEIN looks at the company that started out in Bentonville, Arkansas, and built a corporate culture based in a remote region that was all-white, all Protestant, and almost all poor. Nelson teaches at UC Santa Barbara; his new book is The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.

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How did torture become official US policy?   What arguments did the Bush Justice Dept. use to justify inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment?  And what is being done to bring to justice those responsible?  DAVID COLE looks at the torture memos released by the Justice Department.  He teaches at Georgetown Law Center, he’s also a volunteer staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. His new book is The Torture Memos.

Plus: THELONIOUS MONK wasn’t a naive, childlike, eccentric character.  Historian ROBIN KELLEY says he was basically a musician trying to make it without compromising his vision.  Robin tells the story of the life, the times, and the music of  “an American original.” Robin teaches at USC; his much-heralded new book is Thelonious Monk.
PLAYLIST: “‘Round Midnight,”  “Well You Needn’t,” “Straight No Chaser,” “Sweet and Lovely” – 1947 Blue Note sessions.
WATCH Robin Kelley on Thelonious Monk HERE.

“It’s not a bill I’d vote for” – that’s what Howard Dean says about the health care bill the Senate Finance Committee passed yesterday with one Republican vote. Meanwhile, the Dems are caving on the banking bill:  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment – he’s an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, where his new piece is “Who Will Rein In Wall Street?”

Remember Ramparts? Remember the energy and political punch of this glossy New Left muckraking magazine?  PETER RICHARDSON explains how Bob Scheer and Warren Hinckle did it – his new book is A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America.

Also: the rise and fall of cigarettes in America.  ALLAN BRANDT talks about “the drama of consumer desire” in which advertising made cigarettes the tobacco of choice for nearly half of all Americans in 1950. Brandt teaches at Harvard medical School; his book THE CIGARETTE CENTURY: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America is out now in paperback.  (originally broadcast May 23, 2007)

For the record: today at 4 on KPFK, the fund drive will feature a guest host.

JOHN NICHOLS explains what’s next after the Senate Finance Committee deleted the public option from the health care bill the Senate will consider–despite the fact that the latest polls show 65% of the public in favor of a public option, which would allow people under 65 to buy into Medicare instead of private insurance.  John of course is Washington Correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

The KPFK Fund Drive continues: Our featured premium today will be the great book LIES MY TEACHER TOLD  ME by James Loewen. He surveyed the 12 leading high school American history textbooks and found “an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation.”    We’ll also feature the audio book of this devastating and important critique of what’s wrong with high school history today.

Only YOU can end the KPFK fund drive! call 818-985-5735 during the 4pm hour to pledge, or pledge online at www.kpfk.org.

Special note for listeners to the KPFK fund drive: during the 4pm hour today we will NOT cure cancer.   If you have cancer, go to the doctor.
PS: The truth about 9-11: 19 guys flew 4 planes into 3 buildings and a field.   George Bush’s role: incompetence.

For the record: today at 4 on KPFK, the fund drive will feature a guest host.

When Obama speaks to the nation (and Congress) about health care tonight, he needs to insist on a big and comprehensive plan that includes a genuine public option: “Medicare for all.”  JOHN NICHOLS will talk about what we want from Obama tonight.  John is Washington correspondent for The Nation and he writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Also: “THE LONG SIXTIES” – TOM HAYDEN argues that the movements of the sixties achieved deep reforms that made Obama’s election possible.  Obama, he says, in a “pure child” of the sixties – today caught between the social movements that propelled him to the presidency and the forces maintaining the present structures of power.  A commitment to the sixties goals of peace, justice and the environment could make Obama a great president.   Tom’s new book is THE LONG SIXTIES: From 1960 to Barack Obama.

Disasters can be  “a door back into paradise, the paradise in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.”  That’s the startling argument REBECCA SOLNIT makes; her new book is A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. I will be in conversation with Rebecca tonight/Wed. in the L.A. Public Library ALOUD Series, 7pm, downtown at 5^th and Flower streets.  Make a reservation HERE.

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FRIEDRICH ENGELS – “a foxhunting man, a womanizing, champagne-drinking capitalist” – and a lifelong revolutionary (and also collaborator of Karl Marx). Also, “far more adventurous than Marx when it came to exploring the ramifications of his and Marx’s thinking.” TRISTRAM HUNT explains – his eye-opening new bio is MARX’S GENERAL: THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF FRIEDRICH ENGELS.

Plus: our political update: How bad are things going for the Obama health care plan?  JOHN NICHOLS will comment on Obama’s bruising august — he’s Washington correspondent of The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Also: HENRY FORD’s Amazon colony: Ford’s greatest success of course was the auto assembly line; his greatest failure was an attempt to build a midwestern small town in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest.  NYU historian GREG GRANDIN tells that story – his book is FORDLANDIA: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.

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HAROLD MEYERSON talks about Ted Kennedy’s place in American politics — “He was, as he lay dying, new again,” Harold writes at The American Prospect Online — because “Kennedy outlived the Reagan-Thatcher conservative era to which for so many years he had led the opposition.”

Plus: Iraq: the Forever War.  DEXTER FILKINS  covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan starting 2001 for the New York Times.  Filkins describes “an arid, hopeless policy” in an unforgettable book: The Forever War.  It’s out now in paperback.  (first aired 9/17/2008)

And we feature a special Ted Kennedy edition of Your Minnesota Moment: Minnesotans remember Kennedy’s visits to the state.