Barbara Ehrenreich: What’s Wrong with ‘Wellness’; plus David Cole on Trump and Mueller, and Katha Pollitt on Stormy and Melania

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Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the pressure to remain fit, slim, and in control of one’s body, even as the end of life approaches—and about the epidemic of unecessary testing pushed by our for-profit medical profession.  Barbara’s new book is Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer.
Plus: David Cole explains why the FBI raid on the offices and residences of Michael Cohen was not, as Trump said, “an attack on our country,” but rather an example of the rule of law.  David is National Legal Director of the ACLU and Legal Correspondent for The Nation.
And Katha Pollitt comments on the recent developments in the legal battle over the payoff to Stormy Daniels by Trump’s attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, and she explains why she likes Stormy, and why she’s sympathetic to Melania.  Katha is a columnist for The Nation.  4/12/2018

A Russia Strategy for Progressives: Katrina vanden Heuvel; plus Mark Hertsgaard on cellphones & cancer, & Stephanie Schriock on Emily’s List

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How progressives should think about Russia: Katrina vanden Heuvel talks about Putin and his history, the democratic opposition inside Russia, and assuring American election integrity in the face of threats from both Russians and Republicans.
Plus: How big wireless muddied the waters on cell phone safety research: Mark Hertsgaard reports on a special investigation by The Nation—and warns about the lack of testing of G5 technology.
Also: How women will turn the House from red to blue: 34,000 women contacted Emily’s List about running for office in the wake of Trump’s election.  Stephanie Schriock, the organization’s president, explains the organization’s training and endorsement procedures, and the project of Democrats retaking the House this November.  4/4/2018

Guns in Trump’s America: Adam Hochschild; plus Joshua Holland on Stormy Daniels & Tavis Smiley on MLK’s Last Year

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Adam Hochschild talks about his visit to a gun show, the NRA, the Koch brothers, and gun laws in America — his new piece, “Bang for the Buck,” is in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.
Next, Trump made his first statement on Stormy Daniels today — we turn to Joshua Holland of The Nation (our Chief Stormy Correspondent) for the update, and an answer to the question, “Why do 41 per cent of Republicans believe Trump’s version of the Stormy Daniels story?”
Lastly, yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — Tavis Smiley talks about King’s final year, which began with his Riverside Church speech denouncing the Vietnam War, and ended with his plans for a Poor People’s March on Washington.  (originally broadcast in 2015)  4/5/2018

How Trump Radicalized the Parkland Kids in Their Fight Against Guns: George Zornick, plus Micah Sifrey on Facebook and Sue Halpern on Trump vs. Libraries

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Last Sunday’s Rally for Our Lives shows that having Trump in the White House has made the demands of those wonderful Parkland kids more radical. George Zornick comments on the ways the Parkland students have transformed the fight for gun control.
Also: It’s time to break up Facebook: that’s what Micah Sifrey says, as Facebook’s business model—selling users’ data to advertisers, including political campaigns—has exposed the problem of monopoly power on the internet.
Plus: Why does Trump want to defund libraries? Sue Halpern explains; her new novel is “Summer Hours at the Robber’s Library.”
3/29/2018

Harold Meyerson: Trump v. Amazon; plus Amy Wilentz: Should Ivanka be Indicted? and Katha Pollitt on Russiagate

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Harold Meyerson comments on Trump’s attack of Amazon, the prospect of a Trump re-election, the new model for unions after the Janus v. AFSCME case.  His new article, “What Now for Unions,” is out now at Prospect.org.
Also, we ask Amy Wilentz whether Ivanka should be indicted — she describes the “grotesque abuse of power” that is the Trump kleptocracy.
Lastly, Katha Pollitt says, it’s time to “get real about Russiagate.”
3/29/18

 

Should Ivanka be Indicted? Q&A with Amy Wilentz.

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Jon Wiener: Ivanka is connected pretty directly to events at the center of the Russiagate investigations. Where do you think the strongest case could be made that she committed a crime?
Amy Wilentz: Possibly it’s the cover-up from the meeting on Air Force One after that fabled meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer. On Air Force One, the Trump team, including the president and Jared Kushner and Ivanka, crafted a message to the media saying that the Trump Tower meeting was largely about Russian adoptions and had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. Of course, we subsequently learned it was all about a promise of dirt on Hillary from the Russians.
TheNation.com 3/23/18

 

John Nichols: A Voting Rights Victory; plus Chris Hayes on Crime, and Rebecca Solnit on “Men Explain Things to Me”

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John Nichols reports on breaking news from Wisconsin: a victory for voting rights — in a special election that had been blocked by Gov. Scott Walker.
Plus: Chris Hayes talks about Trump, crime, and his new book, “A Colony in a Nation,” out now in paperback from W. W. Norton & Company.
Also today is the 10th anniversary of “Men Explain Things To Me.”  We hear the backstory from the author, Rebecca Solnit.
3/22/18

Hey, Democrats Are Actually Running to Win! Joan Walsh on the Democrats’ new strategy; plus Amy Wilentz on Ivanka, and Anna Deavere Smith on the school-to-prison pipeline

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After years of getting beaten in state legislative races, the Democrats have a new energy and a new wave of candidates—especially after last year’s stunning victories in Virginia. Joan Walsh reports.
Plus: Should Ivanka be indicted? She’s been part of some of the Trump administration’s conspiracies to obstruct justice, including the decision to fire James Comey as FBI director. Amy Wilentz reviews the evidence and considers the arguments.
Also: Anna Deavere Smith talks about the school-to-prison pipeline—that’s the subject of her one-woman show, called Notes from the Field, which dramatizes the real-life accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in a system where young people of color who live in poverty get pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It’s playing on HBO through the end of March.
3-22-18

Jasper Johns at the Broad: the New York Review

A complaint about the Jasper Johns show at the Broad Museum in LA: they hung his gorgeous “Summer,” part of his “Seasons” series of 1985-86, all wrong.
Johns’s paintings of the Eighties displayed “a new engagement with death, one that deepened amid the first awful years of the AIDS epidemic.” . . .
continued at the New York Review:  HERE 
3/21/18