alan greenspan

Just what was it about Ayn Rand that attracted so many followers, and what is it about her books that keeps them flying off the shelves? We ask Corey Robin, Brooklyn College professor and author of a new piece on Rand at The Nation, and Eesha Pandit, feminist philosopher and Director of Advocacy at MergerWatch, to tell us what everyone sees in Ayn Rand. McKinley Nolan was a black GI who went missing in Vietnam forty years ago. The circumstances of his disappearance were never really figured out, but in 2006 someone thought they saw him on a busy street, still alive in Vietnam. The sighting touches off a search that leads Nolan's family from Texas to Vietnam and Cambodia, and this documentary follows their search for answers along with their lost family member, and while they're at it trying to understand deeper questions about life, loss, and war. Not long ago on GRITtv, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, recalled an example of Republican leadership very different from what we mostly see today. In the era of Glenn Beck and Karl Rove, would we ever see someone like Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, who spoke out against Joseph McCarthy's Communist-hunts? ; We bring you part of that conversation with Katrina, and actress Lola Pasholinsky reads a portion of Smith's Call to Conscience, from June 1, 1950 on the Senate floor.

Guest host Esther Armah is joined by Rosalind McLymont and and Akiba Solomon to  discuss Black History Month and Raina Kelley's Newsweek piece, The Nation's piece on the media-lobbying complex, and Ishmael Reed's New York Times op-ed about the film Precious. In the Kurdish region of Iraq, the people faced horrendous atrocities under Saddam Hussein, including in some villages the murder of nearly all men and boys. The Kurdish women, however, have been rebuilding and redefining their roles. A film by Mary Ann Smothers Bruni looks at three women who are working to strengthen their region and their nation. "No one could've seen this coming." We heard that line over and over again as the economy crumbled around our ears. Yet many people DID see it coming, and Dean Baker was one of them. Co-Director of the Center for Economic And Policy Research, blogger at Beat the Press, and author of a new book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, Baker is in studio to explain the causes of the crisis, the reasons the stimulus wasn't big enough, and why Ben Bernanke should've been fired, not reconfirmed. Yesterday, we aired the first part of activist and author Herb Boyd's recent trip to Haiti. Here is part 2 of "Haiti's Cri de Coeur" or "Cry from the Heart." Thanks to Free Speech TV for the video. Finally, in a video from Street Films, we take a bike ride to work with Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle.

Maybe it's not technically the end of a decade. But with the switch from Bush to Obama, it seems as good a time as any to look back at the 2000's--whatever you call them. Whether Time is right that it was the worst decade ever, or that's a bit of an exaggeration, progressives can't argue that a lot happened in the past ten years, and a lot of it was depressing. Katrina vanden Heuvel ofThe Nation, Mark Green of Air America, Faye Wattleton of the Center for the Advancement of Women, and Nancy Giles of CBS News Sunday Morning look back from Bush v. Gore to the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina to the Stupak amendment.