January 28 - "How America Abandoned Egypt's Arab Spring"; "The Rich Don't Always Win," Will They Lose Tonight?; Obama Speaks to a House Divided Against Him that Uses Dog Whistle Coded Racism

Full program

Part 1

We begin with an update on Egypt now with the generals back in charge three years after the revolution, and the Supreme Commander Field Marshal Sisi having just been given the army’s approval to run for president. Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, the former US Ambassador to the Netherlands now a Professor of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, joins us to discuss her article at CNN “How America Abandoned Egypt’s Arab Spring” and whether the presidential election in April will mark the end of Egypt’s flirtation with democracy.

Part 2

Then, with President Obama expected to discuss income and wealth disparity in his upcoming State of the Union address, we speak with Sam Pizzigati, whose latest book is “The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class.” He joins us to discuss his latest article at The Washington Spectator “Plutocrats Ponder in the Alps” and the likelihood of Obama taking the Congress to task for enacting the agenda of the plutocrats at the expense of a viable middle class and living wages for working Americans.

Part 3

Then finally, in advance of the State of the Union, we discuss what kind of House the president is addressing, given that half of the room appear to have made a career out of demonizing Obama in ways that are both racist and disrespectful to the office of the presidency. Ian Haney Lopez, a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley joins us to talk about his new book “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class” and whether or not Obama will call out his tormentors in Congress who use race to unite and motivate their dwindling base.