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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.

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In an effort to shore up his support among Jewish voters, many of whom voted for Hillary, Obama visits Israel Tuesday and Wednesday. His schedule includes trips to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, and Sderot, the town that is the frequent target of Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. AMY WILENTZ will comment – she was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker. Her most recent piece, in New York magazine, discusses Jimmy Carter�s place in the current campaign: ‘a walking McCain talking point.’

Plus: Women in politics after Hillary: there’s a serious shortage of women in elected office. In the aftermath of Hillary�s campaign, HAROLD MEYERSON looks at the future of women in politics — and who is leading the next wave of female candidates. Hint: they aren’t from states where religious traditionalism is strong, or where old-line political organizations hold power. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.
SEE the Vanity Fair McCain parody of the New Yorker‘s Obama cover.

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Young people in the Mideast are not all religious fundamentalists. MARK LeVINE found Morroccans who loves Black Sabbath, rappers in the Gaza Strip, and a young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song.’ — Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest — across North Africa and the Mideast, Mark says. Mark is a musician and historian at UC Irvine; his new book about the globalization of popular music is HEAVY METAL ISLAM: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

Also: UC Workers on strike: JACK MILES writes in the LATimes, “A single parent living in Riverside County or Orange County needs to earn $24.74 an hour to make ends meet. . . . But after 10 months of negotiation, $11.50 an hour is the last, best offer the 10-campus University of California has made to 8,500 gardeners, janitors, kitchen workers, parking attendants and the like. In response, their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, called a five-day strike, which began Monday.” — continued here.

Plus: one Guantanamo story: Adel Hamad was a hospital adminsitrator from Sudan who was doing refugee relief work in Pakistan when he was taken from his apartment, hooded and shackled, and moved to Guantanamo Bay on charges of connections with al-Queda. He�s been there for four years. He has an attorney: STEVEN T. WAX, a federal public defender in Portland. Steve�s book is KAFKA COMES TO AMERICA: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror — A Public Defender�-‘s Inside Account — he�ll be speaking in the ALOUD series at the downtown LA public library, 5th and Flower streets, Wed. at 700pm: reservations free but recommended: here.

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‘If a place is truly beautiful,’ BARBARA EHRENREICH says, ‘you can’t afford to be there.’ Barbara’s new book is THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND; she’ll be reading and signing at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont, Thursday July 10, 7:30pm.
JOIN Barbara and the L.A. CLEAN Carwash campaign
WATCH Barbara on The Colbert Report— she tells Stephen, “I’m talking about the super-rich. I don’t think you qualify.”

Plus: LALO ALCARAZ of the Pocho Hour of Power talks about “Clash of the Pochos,” the July 27 KPFK benefit concert featuring Culture Clash.

Also: Obama in the center: TOM HAYDEN says Obama “could put his entire candidacy at risk if his audacity on the war in Iraq continues to shrivel.” Tom writes about Obama and the war in the new issue of The Nation. We’ll also talk about his life as a writer, and the relationship between writing and activism.
His new book, a collection of his writings over the last 40 years, is Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader.

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Ike was right about the Military-Industrial Complex — that’s what ROBERT SCHEER argues. The US military budget for 2008 was $647 billion, more than 25 percent larger, in real terms, than the one for 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war. The military-industrial complex today is more powerful, more wasteful, and more destructive than ever. Bob is editor in chief of Truthdig.com, co-host of ‘Left, Right and Center’ on KCRW; his new book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.

Also: A Palestinian life: Sari Nusseibeh is a leading Palestinian intellectual and political figure, a long-time advocate of a two-state solution, and the PLO’s chief representative in Jerusalem in 2001 and 2002. His memoir Once Upon a Country is out now in paperback (originally broadcast May 2, 2007).

Plus: the ‘good news’ from Iraq, we are told, is that ‘the surge is working,’ violence is down. TOM ENGELHARDT says ‘don’t be fooled’: “Iraqis are still dying in prodigious numbers, and significant numbers of those dying are doing so at the hands of Americans.” Tom’s prediction: “This cannot end well. Not for Washington. Not for the U.S. military. Not for Americans. And, above all, not for Iraqis.” Tom edits the indispensable blog TomDispatch.com; his new book is The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire.

Your Minnesota Moment: A state judge in Minneapolis ruled that Wal-Mart violated state laws on rest breaks and other wage matters more than 2 million times and as a result could face more than $2 billion in fines.