Month: July 2009

PBC f-bombs California’s “balanced budget”; MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe on Obama, and ACORN founder Wade Rathke on the economy.  WARNING: Strong Language. Your humble host is pretty angry at Schwarzenegger and the GOP for another phony budget deal based on false choices, brutal cuts, and more gimmicks that cut California off at the knees and ensure more red ink in the very near future.  Wolffe’s book is “Renegade”, with fascinating tidbits from last year’s campaign: Obama’s secret meeting with Rev. Wright, and his decision to name Hillary Secretary of State even before the primaries ended. We also talked about the ways Obama has disappointed the progressives who got him the nomination.  Postscript: two days after talking to Wolffe, I learned from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com that Wolfe has left Newsweek and joined a corporate PR firm, Public Strategies, which represents Lockheed Martin and the US Chamber of Commerice, among others.  My listeners deserve to know this, and Mr. Wolffe should disclose it to MSNBC viewers. Rathke describes his ideas for organizing workers and restructuring the economy, and responds to right wing critics, and Fox News in particular, who demonize ACORN.  He talks honestly about his brother’s embezzlement from ACORN, which has produced a wave of attacks, and phony “voter fraud” charges levelled against ACORN.  Rathke’s blog is www.chieforganizer.org  His new book is “Citizen Wealth”.

Mark Klein, the fearless retired A T & T tech who exposed the NSA’s secret splitter room in San Francisco, details the illegal interception of domestic communications, the coverup by most media outlets, and the senators who wouldn’t meet with him or allow him to testify and who worked so hard to legalize the Bush administration’s clear violations of the Fourth Amendment while protecting the NSA and the phone companies.  Please share this with everyone you know, and demand that our Fourth Amendment rights are honored. Mark tells his story in the new book “Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine…and Fighting It”.  The book is self-published and only available at www.amazon.com  This one-on-one interview runs 90 minutes.

NSA expert James Bamford talks about illegal domestic wiretapping, the sordid coverup by BushCo and Democrats, the NSA’s huge failures around 9/11, and the Israeli firms with Mossad connections that supply critical equipment for domestic spying.  This is the first installment of “The Boiling Frogs”, a podcast series PBC is co-hosting with Sibel Edmonds, the courageous FBI whistleblower.  Full info at www.123realchange.blogspot.com

One on one with filmmaker Andy Abrahams Wilson.  Under Our Skin is a powerful documentary about Lyme disease.  The film documents the cases of people who develop chronic Lyme disease, which leads to serious cognitive and motor losses, and even death.  It shows that the medical establishment denies that chronic Lyme even exists, and that many doctors who treat Lyme patients are punished by medical boards and insurance companies.  Be sure to visit www.underourskin.com to learn more and see some video clips like this one.

PBC sez, “This documentary opened my eyes to the layers of problems Lyme patients encounter, and a medical system corrupted by profit and power.  Please listen and look for the movie.”  More info at www.underourskin.com

One on one with Rev. Michael Dowd author of Thank God for Evolution.

Michael Dowd is interesting and inspiring.  He evolved from the Assemblies of God to the Baptists to the more progressive United Church of Christ, and was a pastor at churches in Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio. For 7 years, he has been an itinerant preacher, travelling the US to build bridges between people of different faiths and disparate world views.  We talk about creationism and evolution, PBC’s problems with organized religions, fundamentalist extremism and conflicts between Christians, Muslims and Jews, and religious opposition to same-sex marriage. www.thankgodforevolution.com

Non-profit news sites, Ray McGovern protests at Bush’s new house in Dallas, Rev. Billy runs for NY Mayor. Journalists Robert Parry and Jason Leopold talk about their non-profit, independent news outlets: consortiumnews.com and The Public Record, and Walter Cronkite’s impact on broadcast news and its decline since he retired. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern offers a humorous recap of his visit to Dallas and polite invitation to George and Laura Bush to attend his talk where he accused Bush of war crimes. Here’s a picture of Ray and protesters outside the new Bush manse in Dallas. You can read Ray’s letter and other posts at consortiumnews.com And Rev. Billy gives us a mini-sermon about his campaign to deny Mike Bloomberg a third term as Mayor of New Yawk. Support his campaign at voterevbilly.org

Activist David Swanson joins Peter to talk about a host of progressive issues, Harper’s magazine DC editor Ken Silverstein rates the prospects for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, and Gary Chew reviews 2 summer movies. Swanson’s new book, due 9/1/09, is “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency…” In this podcast, he offers strong views on investigations of torture, detention, wiretapping and abuse of the state secrets privilege. He also talks about Obama’s use of signing statements, which he had sharply criticized as a candidate just a year ago; he also talked about the progressive lobbying against the recent $100 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan.  Silverstein, who also writes the Washington Babylon blog at Harpers.org, details the array of lobbyists, corporatists, and Democrats who are trying to kill labor’s top agenda item, and says Obama is not pushing it at all.  And Gary Chew tells us about the new Harry Potter flick and Sacha Baron Cohen’s new insult and gross-out movie, Bruno.  www.tulsatvmemories.com

US Escalation in Afghanistan, the Truth about Cronkite and Vietnam, the voice of a former US detainee and torture victim, and an alert about new interrogation legislation. Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy and producer of a documentary based on the book, talks about Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan, his plans to visit soon, and the truth about Walter Cronkite and Vietnam. While pursuing a story about Britain’s victims in the “war on terror”, PBC found Moazzam Begg, the director of Cageprisoners.com, and learned of Begg’s own story of torture by US personnel in Afghanistan followed by 2 years at Gitmo.  Then he talked with Bill Quigley, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights who issued an alert about a Senate bill that would ban contractors from conducting interrogations and require video taping of terrorist interrogations.  The alert asks you to contact your senator and ask them to support the bill, despite reported opposition from the Obama White House.

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