kennedy
GRITtv: Russ Baker: Military-Industrial-Financial-Intelligence-Oil Complex
This week not only commemorates Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, but also is the 50th anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower's prescient warning about the military-industrial complex, the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of George W. Bush--and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Russ Baker is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, and he joins us to talk about these anniversaries, and what they mean for the America we live in now and the history we've forgotten. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Email this pageGRITtv: Julian Zelizer: National Security Myths
Presidents who don't articulate some kind of distinct national security agenda leave themselves open to continual attack from their opponents and often fall into a defensive posture while trying to formulate their policies. By trying to avoid angering everyone, they often end up pleasing no one. That's what Julian Zelizer, Princeton professor and author of Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security - From World War II to the War on Terrorism, said in a critique of Obama's foreign policy in his first year. In his book, Zelizer lays out a history of national security policy in the U.S. and makes the point that bipartisanship has largely always been a myth here. Instead, presidents who succeed lay out a concrete plan for what they want and fight to get it accomplished. Obama, he suggests, should take a lesson or two from the past.
GRITtv: Lessons from Massachusetts
Scott Brown, a Republican with tea party support, won the special election for the last two years of Ted Kennedy's Senate term last night over Democrat Martha Coakley. Predictably, the blame game has already started, with critiques leveled at everyone from Coakley herself to the President. But what does this mean, both for Massachusetts and for the rest of the country? We ask Air America's Mark Green, Malia Lazu of The Gathering Project, and Ann Eldridge Malone of the Alliance to Defend Health Care if this election was a referendum on health care, on Obama, or on lousy Democratic campaigning.
GRITtv: Can We Scan Ourselves to Safety?
"There's money to be made and there are people out there who are going to say it can be done. And, yeah, it's techie and sexy and sounds good." That's Bruce Schneier quoted in a piece by Liliana Segura at AlterNet, talking about new airport security technology. In the wake of the failed underpants bombing attempt, new rules have been added, and discussion has ramped up of the use of full-body scanners and other invasive technologies. We ask Segura and Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent if we can scan ourselves to safety, or if this is just more security theater designed to get us to give up our civil liberties.
GRITtv: The F Word: Lessons Not Learned
A year ago I was freezing on the Mall with a few million others, watching the inauguration of a new President. Today I'm sweltering in my unnaturally hot office, fearing the inauguration of a new movement. A year ago, the mall was packed with grassroots democratic voters; young people, people of color, and activated independents whose massive discouragement with the political status quo had driven them to dig down, dismiss the conventional nay-sayers and work hard for change and for Obama. On inauguration day, this program, live in Washington, raised the question to voters. "If we are the ones we can believe in, and change is not simply about someone else, namely a president, what will progressives inaugurate?" A year on it looks as if it's not progressives who've spent the year inaugurating. If the Democrat's loss in Massachusetts is anything to go by, it's the anti-Obama Right who've spent the year creating a movement: some of it racist, some corporate, and some plain desperate … From war, to health care, to the Employee Free Choice Act, Democrats in the Obama administration have walked away from every proposition that stood a chance of igniting their grassroots base. Those now calling Coakley smug, know whereof they speak. Smugness is epidemic. -- Laura Flanders
GRITtv: Jan. 20, 2010
Scott Brown, a Republican with tea party support, won the special election for the last two years of Ted Kennedy's Senate term last night over Democrat Martha Coakley. Predictably, the blame game has already started, with critiques leveled at everyone from Coakley herself to the President. But what does this mean, both for Massachusetts and for the rest of the country?; Katrina vanden Heuvel looks back at the last year of the Obama administration and offers some prescriptions for fixing the Democrats' populism problem; Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who has a long history with Haiti, says that the country just cannot sustain another big earthquake. She joined us via phone, after another aftershock hit Haiti this morning; Mark Danner tells his stories of reporting from Haiti; we ask Liliana Segura of AlterNet and Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent if we can scan ourselves to safety, or if this is just more security theater designed to get us to give up our civil liberties.
GRITtv: Got Docs? RFK In The Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope
In 1966, at the height of the Cold War and Apartheid in South Africa, Sen. Robert Kennedy visited Cape Town, where his "Ripple of Hope" speech connected the U.S. civil rights movement with resistance to racial segregation in South Africa. On his visit, he spoke with banned African National Congress president Albert Lutuli and the Afrikaaner University Stellenbosch. Filmmakers Tami Gold and Larry Shore have teamed up to make "RFK In The Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope." It's this week's Got Docs.
GRITtv: September 10, 2009
In the headlines this week: Obama's much anticipated healthcare speech, Glenn Beck's attack on Van Jones and his subsequent resignation and another wave of foreclosures hits the country.
