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Last night Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s jobs bill, which would have taxed millionaires to fund infrastructure construction, repair schools, and rehire cops, teachers, and firefighters who have been laid off. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street grows. JOHN NICHOLS will comment–he writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.
Big Bill Broonzy – he left the Mississippi Delta to become a leading Chicago bluesman of the 1930s, singing about racial injustice alongside Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel; then traveling to Europe to ignite the British blues-rock revival of the 1960s with Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. BOB REISMAN explains – his new book is I Feel so Good: the Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy.
Playlist: “Black, Brown, and White,” “This Train,” “I Feel So Good.”
Also: Whatever happened to the American left? MICHAEL KAZIN says socialists. anarchists and communists never won much political power, but nevertheless their utopian spirit brought far-reaching cultural change. And then there were the Abolitionists: we could learn a lot from them. Michael’s new book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.
When Sarah Palin announced last week that she was not running for president, many wondered, what had she been trying to do during the last three years, when she seemed to be almost a candidate? Now we know: she was trying to make money.
From High Noon to The Ten Commandments, from low-budget horror films like Them! to noir melodramas like Panic in the Streets, Hollywood was a key arena for the giant U-turn in American politics that took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Review of An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman; Dissent, Fall 2011) . . . . continued 
In a move that dramatizes the political differences between Los Angeles and New York, several members of the LA City Council today declared their support for Occupy LA and introduced a resolution that will put the city officially on record as endorsing the demonstrators camped at City Hall. City Council president Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor, visited the encampment yesterday and said, “Stay as long as you need, we’re here to support you.” . . .
Also: 
Plus: The rise of a new American security state: Pulitzer-Prize winner 
They called it “rebuilding Iraq,” and Peter van Buren knows a lot about what went wrong — he’s a career State Department foreign service officer who spent a year there on a Provincial Reconstruction Team. I spoke with him recently on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.
Plus: L.A.’s jails are the worst in the nation – that’s what the ACLU says in a 
In a trial that never should have taken place, ten Muslim students at UC Irvine were convicted Friday of disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador on campus last spring.. . . .
Georgia plans to execute Troy Davis Wed. at 4:00pm Pacific — despite impressive evidence that he is not guilty, and support for him from Jimmy Carter, the former head of the FBI under Reagan, and Pope Benedict XVI. KPFK is preempting regular programming, including our show, for a Democracy Now! live broadcast from outside the state prison in Jackson, Ga.
Cops lie. Under oath, on the witness stand. “I saw him reach for a gun.” “I found the drugs in his pocket.” But what happens when juries refuse to believe their testimony? Do cops ever get in trouble for fabricating evidence or lying under oath? Do they ever get charged with perjury?
