August 2 - Ransom Paid in Debt Hoax; What White House Strategy?; The Unemployed; Syria is Bleeding

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Part 1	We begin with Michael Lind, who has an article at Salon.com The Tea Party: The Debt Ceiling and White Southern Extremism. He believes the mainstream media have missed the story, portraying the Tea Party movement in ideological terms rather than regional terms. While Minnesota’s Michelle Bachman and Illinois’ Joe Walsh are the face of the party, the majority of its members in the House of Representatives are white Southern men.
Part 2	Then, James Carville joins us. He is a veteran political strategist who helped elect President Clinton twice and is a contributor to CNN. Having described the White House’s handling of the Republican-manufactured debt ceiling crisis as a rout from the beginning, James Carville offers up some optimism in terms of an election strategy for the Democrats in 2012. Now that John Boehner has proclaimed he got 98% of what he wanted out of the deal, its Boehner’s economy, and just like Harry Truman ran against a do-nothing Congress, Carville argues Obama should run against an all-cuts – no taxes on the billionaires – Boehner Congress.
Part 3	Then, we get an overseas perspective on how the recent, self-inflicted wound to America’s economy compares to the very real economic distress in Europe as the Greek crisis migrates to Spain and Italy. Amy Verdun, an expert on European politics at the University of Victoria in British Columbia joins us.
Part 4	Then finally, now that a determined minority has set the economic course of the nation that is bound to inflict further pain on the many while continuing to reward the few, Jeff Madrick, the author of Age of Greed, joins us to assess the victory of greed over governance.