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Leftists are worrying about Obama’s national security team—is this the change we need?  JOHN NICHOLS will have our Washington-in-Transition update.  John is Washington correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Peter Matthiessen won the National Book Award last week – he’s best known for The Snow Leopard, an account of his spiritual journey in the Himalayas.  PICO IYER will explain – he wrote an introduction to the new Penguin Classics edition of the book.

Your Minnesota Moment: Al Franken’s margin in the Senate recount may down only 13 votes – we’ll listen to more of our 2003 interview, where Franken talks about Rush Limbaugh.  “You’ve got to be compassionate,” he says.

Also: THE JAZZ EAR: jazz musicians not only play differently from others; they listen differently. BEN RATLIFF of the New York Times listened to music with a dozen jazz greats and talked with them about what they heard – we’ll focus on Dianne Reeves. Ben’s new book is The Jazz Ear.  PLAYLIST: Dianne Reeves, “Straighten Up and Fly Right” (2007); Aretha Franklin, “Mary Don’t You Weep” (1972); Sam Cooke, “Try a Little Tenderness” live medley (1964); Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Closer and Closer Apart” (2006); Shirley Horne, “Here’s to Life” (1991).

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Obama’s economic advisors are not a “team of rivals” — they’re a team of Rubins, the same people who brought us the 1999 Clinton deregulation that produced the financial collapse.   ROBERT KUTTNER will comment – he’s co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and author of Obama’s Challenge.

Also: The continuing battle against Prop. 8: TORIE OSBORN comments — her piece “Push Back on Prop. 8” appears in The Nation this week.

Plus: Your Minnesota Moment: AL FRANKEN will win the recount by 27 votes, according to the celebrated statistician Nate Silver.  We’ll listen to more of our 2003 interview with Al Franken, when Fox News sued him for the title of his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

Also: “Guyland” is the world of white, middle class males aged 16 to 26 whose passions are limited to sports, video games, and depersonalized sex – a world where the number one task is to demonstrate to the other guys that you’re not gay.  Sociologist MICHAEL KIMMEL will talk about this ugly, frightening place.  His book is titled (of course) Guyland The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.

More stuff to read: my new piece on Nate Silver’s prediction that Al Franken will win by 27 votes at TheNation.com.

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Obama is appointing lots of Clintonians–does that means he will NOT bring us the change we need?  HAROLD MEYERSON will explain — he is op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and editor at large of The American Prospect magazine. (New Yorker illustration: Richard Thompson)

TARIQ ALI says “victory” there would require 200,000 troops and massive carpet bombing.  Tariq’s new book is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power.

And: The spoof “New York Times Special Edition” is a work of satirical genius–Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men will tell all.

Your Minnesota Moment: the recount in Al Franken’s senate race begins today.  We’ll revisit our 2003 interview with Al Franken, when Fox News sued him for the title of his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

More stuff to read: my new piece at TheNation.com, “McCain’s Favorite TV Show, ’24,’ Brings Torture Back Sunday”

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JEFFREY TOOBIN talks about Obama’s tasks – and the next Supreme Court.  Jeff’s best-selling book The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court is out now in paperback. He’s a staff writer for The New Yorker covering legal affairs and a CNN senior analyist.

Also: The “No on 8” campaign defending gay marriage: what went wrong? RICK JACOBS will comment — he’s head of the Courage Campaign and he chaired Howard Dean’s 2003 presidential campaign in California.

Plus: Is Sarah Palin the future of the Republican Party?  THOMAS FRANK will examine the possibilities – his new book is The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, and he writes a weekly column for The Wall Street Journal.

Your Minnesota Moment: AL FRANKEN  is behind in his Senate race by about 200 votes, and his chances of winning the recount are pretty good: details HERE.

And we’ll pay tribute to three of our greats who died in the last week: Miriam Makeba the singer, John Leonard the literary critic, and Studs Terkel the author and hero of radio.

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How we did it: HAROLD MEYERSON analyzes the campaigns, and the results.  Harold is editor at large of The American Prospect and writes for the op-ed page of the Washington Post.

Also: Obama and History: ERIC FONER comments on the significance of America electing a black man as president.  Eric is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia U.,  and author of many books, most recently Our Lincoln.  His new essay in The Nation, “Rooted in Reconstruction,” explores the roots of black politics in America.

Plus: Obama’s first tasks: ERWIN CHEMERINSKY discusses what Obama needs to do with Gitmo, the Patriot Act, and civil liberties and civil rights.  Erwin is dean of the new law school at UC Irvine and an authority on constitutional law and civil liberties.

And: Your Minnesota moment: JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation explains what happened with Al Franken’s senate campaign – he lost by 477 votes, while Obama won by 300,000.

More stuff to read: my new piece at TheNation,com, “Life After Election Day: No more Todd, no more Track, no more Bristol.”

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Could McCain win? It’s not impossible:  JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation will look at the polls and the undecided voters in the swing states.  We’ll also have Your Minnesota Moment: Al Franken’s campaign to retire Senator Norm Coleman, and our new hero, El Tinklenberg, running against  Michelle Bachmann for the House seat for St. Cloud — she’s the one who called for a media investigation to determine which members of Congress are “anti-American.”

Also: VOTE SUPRESSION is a key part of the Republican strategy – but in order to change the outcome in a state, the vote must be close.  ANDREW GUMBEL will explain – he wrote Steal This Vote; his new piece at TheNation.com is “Protect This Election.”

And: NO on 8: JENNY PIZER of Lambda Legal Defense runs through the arguments about the initiative banning gay marriage in California.  Two key facts: Prop. 8 has nothing to do with schools.  Prop. 8 is about equality for all.

More stuff to read in the Huffington Post: my “Six Ways McCain Could Still Win”
At TheNation.com: my “Rich Old White Men: Still the Problem.”

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MICHELLE OBAMA: AMY WILENTZ explains how right-wing pundits made her into “a Black Power sistuh,” and how they raised the question: “Is she too black for America?”  In fact Michelle is a solid citizen of the black working and middle class, highly educated and motivated—and she’s had to downplay her education at Princeton and Harvard Law to avoid the Republican charge of being an “elitist.”  Amy Wilentz wrote about Michelle for the Washington Post.
WATCH Michelle Obama on Larry King Live –
READ “Meet Michelle” at the campaign website
WATCH MICHELLE dance with Ellen
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Also: “Century of the Self” — the award-winning BBC documentary on the engineering of consent in politics and the marketplace — how consumerism replaced democracy in our culture.  Starring Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jerry Rubin and the great Wilhelm Reich — written, produced and directed by Adam Curtis, who made the celebrated documentary “The Power of Nightmares.”  We’ll be featuring “The Century of the Self”as the KPFK Fund Drive continues–we’ll be asking you to support “radio powered by the people” and featuring this DVD as a thank you gift for a pledge of $90.

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How can we explain the incompetence, the corruption, the waste, the giveaways, the bridges to nowhere and the no-bid contracts in Washington, D.C., today?  The Republicans “have not done these awful things because they are bad conservatives,” says TOM FRANK; “they have done them because they are good conservatives.” They want government to fail, he argues, because that gives them a stronger argument for cutting regulations and taxes that reduce corporate profits.  We’ll be speaking with Tom about his new book THE WRECKING CREW: How Conservatives Rule, and featuring the book as a thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.

Plus: BOOGIE MAN: THE LEE ATWATER STORY is the award-winning documentary about the man who made George H.W. Bush president and paved the way for Bush Junior.  It explains how the culture war became the Republicans’ weapon of choice, and how blatant lies put several Republicans in the White House.  “Immensely relevant, compelling…Honestly, every adult in America should see it before casting another vote.” – Elizabeth Weitzman, NY Daily News.  We’ll be featuring “Boogie Man” as a thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.

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“In a nation ruled by swine,” Hunter Thompson wrote, “all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.”  Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is Alex Gibn ey’s documentary narrated by Johnny Depp.  Legendary critic Andrew Sarris calls it “the most absorbing film, fiction or nonfiction, I have seen this year.”  We’ll be speaking with ALEX GIBNEY about Hunter Thompson and “Gonzo” – we are featuring the DVD as a thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.

Also: “The Real McCain” is Robert Greenwald’s fact-filled documentary about the man who would be president — we’ll be featuring it as a thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.

Plus: ART SPIEGELMAN, who wrote the unforgettable comic-book Holocaust memoir MAUS, has a new book out: BREAKDOWNS: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@#*!  It includes a legendary and long out-of-print 1978 collection of Spiegelman’s comics, seminal works that changed how comics are made – along with Art’s story of his own young life and work.  We’ll be featuring Art Spiegelman’s BREAKDOWNS as a thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive.  Art will be speaking and signing at Vroman’s Bookstore, 995 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, this Saturday at 500pm.

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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.