Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: March 24, 2016 Rachel Price, author of Planet/Cuba, on the art scene in that country as Obama visits • Sam Stein, author of this article, on neoliberal housing programs, de Blasio style March 17, 2016 Ben Zachariah on the activities of India’s fascist BJP government at home and abroad • David Rieff, author of The Reproach of Hunger, on the economic development racket
Zoë Heller on My Turn
It’s always a delight to read Zoë Heller, especially so when she says this about My Turn: “a solid and persuasive guide to what has been characterized as shady or shabby or unprincipled in Clinton’s political career.” Other, less personally relevant, highlights from the piece: …[her memoir Hard Choices] fairly brims with “aren’t women amazing?” sentiments of the sort one finds cross-stitched on decorative cushions. …her much-vaunted “women’s rights are human rights” declaration in Beijing in 1995 (a speech that her supporters characterize somewhat implausibly as a watershed moment in feminist history)… Just as in 2008,… Read More
Varieties of Krugmanesque experience
Paul Krugman’s talking shit about Bernie Sanders again: Indeed, what the Sanders movement, with its demands for purity and contempt for compromise and half-measures, most nearly resembles is not the Trump insurgency but the ideologues who took over the G.O.P., becoming the establishment Mr. Trump is challenging. And yes, we’re starting to see hints from that movement of the ugliness that has long been standard operating procedure on the right: bitter personal attacks on anyone who questions the campaign’s premises, an increasing amount of demagogy from the campaign itself. Compare the Sanders and Clinton Twitter feeds… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: March 10, 2016 Anne Balay, co-author of this article, on the tough but romantic life of the truck driver • Lester Spence, author of Knocking the Hustle, on neoliberalism and black politics [Back after KPFA fundraising break. If you like these shows and want to keep them coming, please support KPFA. If you do, be sure to mention Behind the News.]
The New Republicans
In a remarkable New York Times story, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell has revealed the strategy of the Hillary Democrats as they face the challenge of Donald Trump: “For every one of those blue-collar Democrats he picks up, he will lose to Hillary two socially moderate Republicans and independents in suburban Cleveland, suburban Columbus, suburban Cincinnati, suburban Philadelphia, suburban Pittsburgh, places like that,” he said. In other words, they’re hoping to terrify the moderately conservative into voting for their candidate. Forget having any positive message that might attract disaffected “blue-collar Democrats,” meaning the white… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 