Month: September 2023

How Delusion and Distraction Now Dominate Our Politics

We begin with how Speaker McCarthy is a prisoner of the madness that has captured the Republican party as he embarks on a fruitless impeachment of President Biden and a shutdown of the U.S. government at the end of the month. Joining us to discuss how delusion and distraction now dominate our politics is David Faris, a professor of political science at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a regular contributor to The Week and Newsweek. He is the author of Dissent and Revolution in a Digital Age: Social Media, Blogging and Activism in Egypt, Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics and, most recently, The Kids Are All Left: How Young Voters Will Unite America. We discuss his article at Newsweek, “The New GOP Mainstream Starts a Pointless Biden Impeachment Probe.”

What is Kim Jong Un Getting For Helping Putin’s “Great Victory in the Sacred Struggle” in Ukraine?

Then we examine the meeting between Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin and what Kim might be getting in return for supplying Putin with munitions for what Kim calls Putin’s “great victory in the sacred struggle” in Ukraine. Joining us is  Stephen Noerper, Founder and President of Asia Dialogue and a senior UN program adviser. A former State Department senior analyst, he has held fellowships at the EastWest Institute, East West Center, Korea’s Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security, and the Edward. R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy.

Child Poverty Has Doubled in a Year From an Historic Low of 5.2% to 12.4%

Then finally we speak with Karen Dolan, the Project Director of the Poverty and Race Project at the Institute for Policy Studies whose work focuses on anti-poverty issues, local democracy and empowerment, and peace. She previously coordinated the Economic Hardship Reporting Project with the late New York Times Best-Selling Author Barbara Ehrenreich, is author of The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty and has an article at The Institute for Policy Studies, “Poverty spiked sharply in the U.S. in 2022 after having declined in 2021.” We discuss how child poverty in the U.S. has more than doubled in a year from a historic low of 5.2% to 12.4%.