Trump Watch

VICTOR NAVASKY is the renowned editor, writer, and teacher who has been at the helm of The Nation for almost thirty years, during which its circulation rose from 20,000 to nearly 200,000. He argues that, even in the age of the internet and Fox news, independent journals of opinion are vital to the health of democracy. His book A Matter of Opinion is out now in paperback – it’s a wonderful book, and a funny one too.
(archive edition, originally broadcast April 20, 2005.)

Also: the atrocities in Haditha and the upcoming primaries: our political update with JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent for The Nation — he writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Plus:The birth of post-sixties America: The turning point in our recent history came in 1973, when the Vietnam war ended, the Watergate hearings began, and Roe v. Wade became law. Andreas Killen will comment; his book is 1973 Nervous Breakdown.
PLAYLIST: Rolling Stones, “Angie, ”Stevie Wonder, “Living for the City,” Marvin Gaye, “Let’s Get it On.”

MORE STUFF TO READ: Jon Wiener on the LA Times op-ed page:
“Gun Research ‘Freak’-Out“

The bad news about right-wing Christians and their efforts to take over the country: A parallel culture has much of the heartland in the grip of a feverish religious fundamentalism. MICHELLE GOLDBERG will explain — she writes for Salon.com, and her new book is Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.

Also: The downsizing of America: 30 million full-time workers have lost their jobs since the early 1980s – but corporate layoffs haven’t made our economy healthier. That’s what LOUIS UCHITELLE argues – he writes about labor for the New York Times, and his new book is The Disposable American.

Plus: Jazz and the community arts in Los Angeles: STEVEN ISOARDI uncovers the nearly lost history of a revolutionary community movement: the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, started by Horace Tapscott when he left a successful career in Lionel Hampton’s band in 1961. The Arkestra provided affordable, community oriented jazz and jazz training in southern California. Steven Isoardi’s new book is The Dark Tree.
The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra plays at the World Stage in Leimert Park, 4344 Degnan Blvd. in South LA, Sunday May 28, 3pm.
Steve Isoardi discusses and signs The Dark Tree at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, Thursday, June 1, 7pm.

Web extra: The Blue Nation — Chris Bowers’s current political map of the US.

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There’s nothing really new about George W. Bush’s war to remove Saddam Hussein; for more than 100 years, presidents have been sending troops to change foreign governments they don’t like. And in almost every case, STEPHEN KINZER argues in Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, the invasions and coups have had “terrible unintended consequences.” Kinzer has reported for the New York Times from more than 50 countries.

Plus: Can the Democrats Win? HAROLD MEYERSON looks at the chances of regaining a Democratic majority in the House, and the Senate. Harold writes for the LA Weekly, the American Prospect, and the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: our Mother’s Day segment: Before the CLANCY SIGAL of the classic Going Away, before Clancy Sigal was blacklisted in the 1950s, there was Clancy the boy on the road with Jennie, his fierce and fabulous mother, a fire-eating bohemian of the 1930s and 1940s. She taught him never to scab and never to tell the cops who they really were. Now she is gone, and Clancy has finally broken his vow of silence. The result is glorious: A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son.
Clancy Sigal also wrote the screenplay for “Frida.”
see/hear Clancy Sigal: Dutton’s Bookstore, 447 N. Canon Dr., Beverly Hills, May 21, 2pm

More Stuff to read: Jon Wiener in the LA Times on Stephen Kinzer’s book Overthrow.

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The US occupation is the major source of instability and suffering for the Iraqi people, says ANTHONY ARNOVE in his new book, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal. Continuing occupation is both a wildly unrealistic and a reckless strategy – and it’s making the world a more dangerous place.
Anthony Arnove writes for The Nation, Z, and Monthly Review.
Anthony will be speaking Thurs 7pm at EsoWon Books, 3655 S. LaBrea.

And PHILIP ROTH has a new novel out – his 27th book. DAVID L. ULIN, book editor of the L.A. Times, talks about Everyman – it’s about one man’s sickness and death, about “delusions of immortality and fears surrounding the inevitable.”
READ David Ulin on Philip Roth’s Everyman

Plus: ELIZABETH KOLBERT of The New Yorker on global warming: she says that Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented “climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience.” The prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land.
Her new book is Field Notes from a Catastrophe: A Frontline Report on Climate Change.
Elizabeth Kolbert will be speaking at 7pm Wednesday at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Wilshire and Westwood in West L.A.

More stuff to read: Jon Wiener on “LA’s Two May Day Marches” at TheNation.com

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ROBERT SCHEER says “Saddam Hussein, who did not have a nuclear weapons program and was fundamentally at odds with Bin Laden, now sits in prison, while the dictator of nukes-R-us Pakistan and the theocrats of Iran have had their power immeasurably strengthened by Bush’s policies. Go figure. Actually, it would appear the public already has, explaining why our fearless leader has fallen so far in the polls.” Bob’s new book is Playing President: My Relationships with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton–and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.
READ BOB SCHEER’s column at TruthDig.com
BOB SCHEER at the BookFest at UCLA: Sat. 4pm, Schoenberg Hall, with Mark Danner.

PLUS: Torture and Truth: MARK DANNER has reported from some of the most dangerous spots on the planet. He’s visited Iraq three times in recent years. His new book is The Secret Way to War.
READ Mark Danner’s interview at TomDispatch.com
MARK DANNER at the BookFest at UCLA: Sat 4pm, Schoenberg Hall, with Robert Scheer.

ALSO: REZA ASLAN explains Islamic faith, history and culture — and criticizes the argument that we’re invovled in “a clash of civilizations” with Islam. His book No god but God is out now in paperback.
REZA ASLAN at the BookFest: Sun 230, Ackerman Ballroom

OTHER GUESTS FROM THE SHOW AT THE BOOKFEST AT UCLA:
Taylor Branch (At Canaan’s Edge): Sun 230, Moore 100
Leo Braudy (From Chivalry to Terrorism): Sat 1030, Young CS 24
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Blood on the Border): Sat 4pm, Moore 100
Chris Hedges (War is a Force): Sat 2pm, Haines 39
Adam Hochschild (Bury the Chains): Sat 1030, Young CS 24
Scott Ritter (Iraq Confidential): Sat 4pm, Schoenberg Hall
Clancy Sigal (A Woman of Uncertain Character): Sat 230, Young CS 50
Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost): Sun 1pm, Young CS 50
Kenneth Turan (Never Coming to a Theater Near You): Sun 3pm, Franz 1178
David Ulin (The Myth of Solid Ground): Sat 1pm, Royce
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation): Sun 3pm, Royce
Steve Wasserman (former Book Review editor): Sat 1pm, Dodd 147
Amy Wilentz (Martyrs’ Crossing): Sat 4pm, Korn
Sean Wilentz (The Rise of American Democracy): Sat 10am, Korn

Tickets required; info at http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/ticketing.html

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KEVIN PHILLIPS talks about the newest stage of the Republican majority: “a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, [and] rampant greed” – that’s how historian Alan Brinkley described Kevin’s new book, American Theocracy, in the New York Times Book Review.
READ Kevin Phillips online in The Nation this week.

Plus: HAROLD MEYERSON on the new immigrant rights movement: With each passing week, he says, “it seems to grow both larger and smarter.” Harold wrote about it in the LA Weekly; he also writes for The American Prospect and the Washington Post op-ed page.

Also: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix . . . .”
It’s the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” – DAVID ULIN, book editor of the L.A. Times, comments on the poem that changed America.
READ David Ulin on “Howl”

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CHALMERS JOHNSON on “THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE”: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, Chalmers Johnson maps America’s vast empire of military bases and the world that supports them. American militarism, he shows, is bankrupting the United States, even as it creates the conditions for a new century of virulent blowback. Chalmers Johnson’s bestselling book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic is out now in paperback.
READ Chalmers Johnson’s new interview at TomDispatch.com.

ALSO: TOM DeLAY is finished. We’ll have analysis from JOHN NICHOLS —he’s The Nation‘s Washington correspondent, and writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

PLUS: Global Warming: The Tipping Point. We are approaching the point when one out of every five living things on the planet will face extinction as a result of greenhouse gases. Over the past decade, the world has seen the most power El Nino ever recorded, the most devastating hurricane in two hundred years, and the hottest European summer on record, which killed 26,000 people in two months. TIM FLANNERY will explain: his new book is The Weather Makers.
Take a look at Tim Flannery’s terrific web site: www.tim-flannery.com

More stuff to read: Jon Wiener, “Imposing our will is simply our way,” L.A. Times, Mon 4/3.

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MIKE DAVIS asks, “Who is Killing New Orleans?”: “A few blocks from the badly flooded and still-closed campus of Dillard University, a wind-bent street sign announces the intersection of Humanity and New Orleans. In the nighttime distance, the downtown skyscrapers on Poydras and Canal Streets are already ablaze with light, but a vast northern and eastern swath of the city, including the Gentilly neighborhood around Dillard, remains shrouded in darkness. The lights have been out for six months now, and no one seems to know when, if ever, they will be turned back on.”
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PLUS: historian MICHAEL KAZIN talks about a hero and leader of the Christian left – William Jennings Bryan, who fought the banks and corporations and ran for president as a Democrat in 1896, 1900 and 1908 – and ended up as the voice of fundamentalism in the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial. Mike teaches at Georgetown; his new book is A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.

Also: AMY WILENTZ has just returned from Dubai, the Gulf state whose economy is based not on oil but rather on its free port (with the largest man-made harbor in the world) and, increasingly, tourism. We’ll have Amy’s eye-witness report on the emirate after the collapse of the American ports deal. Amy was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, and is a contributing editor of The Nation.

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1965-1968 saw the climax of the civil rights movement and the massive escalation of the war in Vietnam as well as the tremendous growth of the anti-war movement. The intense, dizzying and heartbreaking story of those tumultuous years has now been told with unprecedented power and insight by TAYLOR BRANCH. His new book is At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.
READ Gary Wills in the New York Review on Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge

Also: It’s the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq: JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent of The Nation, says “Nothing, not even the Bush administration’s deception and intransigence, has done so much to continue the quagmire as the failure of Congress to check and balance the madness of President George.”

Plus: Chicago’s Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among Americans about immigrant radicals. At the Haymarket demonstration, somebody threw a bomb that killed seven policemen. Eight labor activists were convicted of murder, and four hanged, although they were later proven innocent. Historian JAMES GREEN tells the story — his new book is Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America.

More Stuff to Read: Jon Wiener’s “White Collar Blues: Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch”

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Terror: The Bush Deception. According to the Bush administration website lifeandliberty.gov, we are winning the war on terrorism. DAVID COLE disagrees; he says Bush’s disregard of fundamental principles of human rights is the most likely source of the next attack. David teaches law at Georgetown; his article “Are We Safer?” appears in the March 9 issue of New York Review. his most recent book is Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism.
David Cole will be speaking on “Domestic Spying, Torture, and the War on Terror” in LA Wed, Mar. 22 at 700pm at 10000 W. Pico Blvd in West LA: email MSmall@akingump.com.

A Hard Bill To Swallow. Last Wednesday the House passed the National Uniformity for Food Act. HAROLD MEYERSON Says it “might better be named the Swallow at Your Own Risk Act.” In one swoop, the bill preempts roughly 200 state laws governing food safety. Harold writes for the Washington Post, The American Prospect, and the LA Weekly.

An Abortion Story. In 1998 in Buffalo, abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper. Days later, another local doctor, Shalom Press, was told he was “next on the list.” Now his son EYAL PRESS tells the story of a fight on the front lines of the war over abortion — in his home town. Eyal writes for The Nation; his new book is Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America.

ALSO: Your Minnesota Moment, news from my home town of St. Paul: Garrison Keillor says “Impeach Bush.”