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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.

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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.