Living in the USA

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Bailing Out Out Wall Street: Deregulation of banking and finance was a reckless move, and   DOUG HENWOOD has some ideas about a better bailout.
Doug writes for the Left Business Observer and The Nation, where his piece “Crisis of a Guilded Age” appears in the new issue.

Also: Why do Obama – and McCain — think the US can win in Afghanistan? ROBERT FISK of The Independent says “The Taliban are better trained, and – said to say – increasingly tolerated by the local civilian population.” 
Fisk has been covering the Middle East for 32 years and has received the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year award seven times.  His new book is The Age of the Warrior.

Plus: The Burning of Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel about Okies moving to California in the depths of the Depression is an American classic – 15 million copies have been sold. But in Kern County, the book was publicly burned, and banned from the library shelves.  RICK WARTZMAN tells that story – his hew book is OBSCENE IN THE EXTREME: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
Rick will be speaking Thurs Oct 2 at 7pm at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena.

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The Wall Street Bailout: “Wall Street is vanishing before our eyes,” HAROLD MEYERSON says, and “Wall Street’s investment banks plainly deserve to die.”  Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

Plus: Echoes of Nixon in the McCain campaign: McCain’s transition director, William Timmons, was Assistant to the President in the Nixon White House – he worked on the John Lennon deportation effort; and is Sarah Palin the next Spiro Agnew?  RICK PERLSTEIN will comment – his new book is Nixonland.  Rick will be speaking at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda at 730pm on Wednesday.

Also: The next American war: Pakistan?  After the Marriott bombing in Islamabad, Obama and McCain both want more US strikes into Pakistan.  TARIQ ALI says the “effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.”  Tariq’s new book is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. 
Watch Tariq on TomDispatch video. READ Tariq in The Guardian.

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Wall Street’s Epic of Destruction: WILLIAM GREIDER of The Nation will comment
– he says “What is being swept away is the monumental arrogance of celebrated financiers, and the fraudulent gimmicks that created lots of new billionaires by selling bad paper to the world’s investors.”

Iraq: the Forever War.  DEXTER FILKINS has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 for the New York Times.  Robert Stone noted “The contrast of his eloquence and humanity with the shameless snake-oil salesmanship employed by the American government.”  Filkins describes “an arid, hopeless policy” in an unforgettable book: The Forever War.
Dexter Filkins will be speaking at the downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series Thurs 9/18 at 700pm.

Plus: Moral relativism: who are we to judge other cultures?  What makes us think our standards should apply to everybody in the world — Isn’t that the problem with fundamentalist religions of all types?  On the other hand: do we live in a different world from Sarah Palin – or is it okay for us to make moral judgments about her?  STEVEN LUKES will explain – he teaches social theory at NYU and his new book is Moral Relativism.

More stuff to read: my new piece on McCain, Nixon and John Lennon at TheNation.com.

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Tracking polls show McCain taking the lead nationally in the last few days, and the ABC/Washington Post poll shows white women favoring McCain 52-41 since he picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate.  The Obama camp points to the electoral vote polls which still show him ahead 243-179, with 116 tossup.  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment – he’s executive editor of the American Prospect and op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

Plus: The forces of repression were all too evident in St. Paul last week at the Republican National Convention.  The arrest of Amy Goodman and her producers was only the tip of the iceberg.  We’ll speak with Chuck Samuelson, head of the ACLU of Minnesota, about the violations of constitutional freedoms, and the legal efforts to redress those offenses.
Watch video from CityPages of police attacking journalists

Also: A reporter investigates his own past as a drug addict: DAVID CARR of the New York Times looked up police reports and medical files and interviewed dealers and fellow junkies to find out what he did during his “detour into narcotics” in Minneapolis.  His book is The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life: His Own— it’s a recovery narrative like no other (which also has an amazing web site).  David also went back to St. Paul last week to report on politics at the state fair and on the police attacks on Rage Against the Machine concerts.

More stuff to read: my new piece at TheNation.com, “Sarah Palin and the Jews.”

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“The Dark Side” – that’s where Dick Cheney said we would have to go to “achieve our objectives” in the White House’s war on terror.  JANE MAYER has been investigating what “the dark side” really means.   Her conclusion: “the dark side” violated the constitution and American freedoms, and also made it harder to pursue Al Qaeda.  Jane Mayer’s new book is THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of how the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.  She’s a staff writer for The New Yorker and award-winning author of books about Ronald Reagan and Clarence Thomas.

Plus: Your Minnesota Moment:
The Republicans are convening in St. Paul, trying to deal with the media sharks circling around John McCain’s vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin — and her pregnant unmarried 17-year-old daughter, her Troopergate scandal, the fact that she was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it, and her status as the least qualified major party vice presidential candidate in modern history.  JOHN NICHOLS will comment from inside the convention hall in St. Paul — he is Washington correspondent for The Nation, and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.  He says the convention “is Palin’s party, not McCain’s.”

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ANDREW BACEVICH says even if Obama gets elected in November, he will disappoint us, and won’t be able to achieve his goals. That’s because the imperial presidency has eviscerated democracy; the endless wars have been a catastrophe for the body politic, and consumerism and debt are destroying the economy and the environment. Bacevich’s powerful and frightening new book is THE LIMITS OF POWER: The End of American Exceptionalism.

PLUS: RICK PERLSTEIN, author of NIXONLAND, talks about the tasks facing Obama: if he’s going to change anything in America, he will have to move quickly in the first days of his presidency – that’s the lesson of FDR and LBJ – it’s where the Clintons went wrong. Rick wrote about “The Liberal Shock Doctrine” in The American Prospect.

Also: Americans in Cuba on the eve of the Castro revolution – that’s the setting for RACHEL KUSHNER’s fascinating new novel TELEX FROM CUBA. For the Americans, plantation society in Oriente Province is a paradise – until the rebels come down from the hills.

More stuff to read: my review of Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew, from the LA Times.

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“Taxi to the Dark Side” is THE film of the year on the Bush Adminstration and torture – it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and tells the story of a taxi driver who committed no crime but was tortured and killed in Afghanistan. “Sooner or later we will need to understand what has happened in this country in the last seven years,” the New York Times reviewer declared, “and this documentary will be essential to that effort.” We’ll speak with ALEX GIBNEY who produced and directed the film.
We are proud to offer the DVD as a thank-you gift in the KPFK Summer Sign-Up for listeners who pledge $120 at kpfk.org or call 818-985-5735 during the show.
Watch the trailer for “Taxi to the Dark Side.”

Also: Why isn’t Obama doing better? the new LA Times poll has it at Obama 47 McCain 45, a statistical dead heat. We’ll ask JOHN NICHOLS, he’s Washington Correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com. (Note: Pollster.com does have Obama winning the electoral vote 264-180 with 94 in tossup states.)
Plus, Your Minnesota Moment: Why isn’t Al Franken doing better in his senate race against Republican Norm Coleman? Polls show Coleman 49, Franken 42, while Obama is ahead 48-43.

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How traffic works, and why we drive the way do: TOM VANDERBILT has been studying the most democratic place in America, where people of every race, class, religion, and age work together closely and successfully: in traffic. Tom answers questions like “Why does the other lane always move faster?” and “How much of bad traffic is caused by people looking for parking spaces?” Tom’s new book is TRAFFIC: Why We Drive the Way We Do. He also writes the blog “How We Drive.”

Plus: Randy Newman has “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country” on his new CD, “Harps and Angels.”

Also: Myth and Mysogyny after 9-11 – that’s the subject of SUSAN FALUDI’s book The Terror Dream—out now in paperback. It’s a story about flight-suit superheroes, cowering “security moms,” Jessica-Lynchesque helpless “girls,” and Daniel Boone–wannabe politicians. Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of the best seller Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women.” (Originally broadcast 10-31-07)

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The first military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay has come up with a predictable verdict of “guilty” for Osama bin Laden’s driver in the first US war crimes tribunal since WWII. But Salim Ahmed Hamdan was found “not guilty” of conspiracy. The ACLU has called the trial ‘an embarrassment.’ UCI’s new law school dean ERWIN CHEMERINSKY will comment.
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Also: As host to the Olympics for the first time, China wants to be seen not as a country with a low-wage capitalist labor system and totalitarian restrictions on politial expression, and not as a central force for global warming and environmental devastation, but rather as a friendly world power. JEFFREY WASSERSTROM will comment; he teaches Chinese history at UC Irvine, is co-founder of The China Beat blog, and his latest blog at the Huffington Post, with Kate Merkel-Hess, is ‘Five Things We Wish George Bush Would Read Before his Olympic Trip to China.’

Plus: Medical Marijuana is transforming the pot industry, making pot the leading cash crop in America in 2006 – when 20 million pot plants brought in something like fourteen billion dollars. DAVID SAMUELS of The New Yorker will explain — he spent six months with a pot broker in Venice, in pot grow rooms, and in other places where medical marijuana is produced, traded, sold and consumed in California.

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The LA Times laid off 150 people from the newsroom last week; the stand-alone book review was published for the last time last Sunday; this week the paper is the thinnest it’s ever been. The new owner, Sam Zell, seems to hold his employees in utter contempt. But what is his plan? How can he get more readers by offering them less? We’ll have comment from KEVIN RODERICK –he publishes the indispensable source on the Times, LAObserved — and from KIT RACHLIS, editor-in-chief of LA Magazine.
Thurs. Aug. 14, 7pm: “LA Without the LA Times?” panel with Kevin Roderick, Kit Rachlis and others: Downtown LA Public Library ALOUD series.

Plus: John McCain opposes contraception – have you heard about this from the mainstream media? KATHA POLLITT, columnist for The Nation, has been listening to McCain — she will explain. Also, Katha on the candidates’ wives, Michelle and Cindy.

Also: Bottlemania: Fiji Water comes from 5,000 miles away; they say that makes it better. Poland Spring is good American water, but the good people of Maine have been fighting Nestle to keep the multinational from taking all their groundwater and selling it to other people. Tap water should be better, but it has some problems too. Elizabeth Royte tackles the question, What is to be done? Her new book is BOTTLEMANIA: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.
Lots more info at Elizabeth’s water links: here.