Meditations and Molotovs – 07.17.17

On today’s program, Vince plays Part 3 of Adam Curtis’ documentary series, “The Trap.” The final program of Curtis’ 2007 series focuses on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis briefly explains how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill …

The Intelligence Hour with Kevin Shipp – 05.01.17

On the program our guest, the distinguished Admiral James, “Ace” Lyons, discusses the shocking US government cover up of the intent of the Pearl Harbor attack and intelligence intentionally withheld, indicating the attack was imminent; all of which was, essentially, a false flag to lead America to war.  In reality, the Japanese attempted to broker peace, which was rejected by President Franklin D. …

Edward Baptist – America’s Economy Was Built on Slavery, Not White Ingenuity—Historians Should Tell It Like It Is

The following is an adapted excerpt from the new paperback edition of The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist (Basic Books, 2016):  A beautiful late April day in 1937, seventy-two years after slavery ended in the United States. Claude Anderson parks his car on the side of Holbrook Street in Danville. On the porch of number 513, he rearranges …

Mike Elk – Lawmakers Want to Close the Loophole That Pays Disabled Workers Pennies An Hour

Recently released Census data reveal that, in 2015, the poverty rate dropped significantly for most demographic groups. One of the only groups who didn’t see an improvement were people with disabilities: the percentage of disabled Americans (age 18-64) living in poverty increased from 25.9% to 26.5%. For Americans without disabilities, the poverty rate decreased from 14.1% to 12.8%. The data …

Andrew J. Bacevich – The Decay of American Politics

My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television.  My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me.  Even as a youngster, …

NORMAN POLLACK – Clinton Incorruptible: An Ideological Contrivance

Goldman got its money’s worth at the Convention, $700k for two speeches, more a promissory note on behalf of the entire Wall Street community for continued support when and if she is elected president. Clinton, an engine of self-promotion that never turns off, makes Trump’s self-promotion infantile, tiresome, and dyspeptic by comparison. A coinciding of personas, public and private, is …

Barry Lando – SHOCKED BY TRUMP? CHURCHILL WANTED TO “COLLAR THEM ALL!”

Shocked by Trump? Churchill wanted to “Collar them all” We’re outraged by Donald Trump’s demand to clamp down on all Muslim Immigration and his assertions that America’s Muslim communities must know about the radical jihadis in their midst. We’re ashamed by the memory of Roosevelt’s interning more than 100,000 Japanese American residents and citizens during World War II. But Winston …

Michael Specter – Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, and AIDS

It will take somebody with more psychiatric sophistication than me to figure out how Hillary Clinton could have come to praise Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as she initially did earlier today, for having started the American conversation about AIDS “when, before, nobody talked about it.” President Reagan’s first speech on the subject wasn’t until May 31, 1987. By then, more than twenty-five …

Betting on the Wall Street Crash

If you read Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short or see the movie by the same name, you won’t find much about how the financial crisis of 2008 was set in motion more than two decades earlier. You won’t learn much about the roles of Ronald Reagan and his disdain for big government or about Bill Clinton’s faith in neo-liberalism, …