July 28 - Loopholes in Preventing Sales of Firearms Used in Recent Massacres; Leaked Report on the F-35 $1.4 Trillion Gold-Plated Turkey; Obama's Criticism of Kleptocratic African Strongmen

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with questions arising after the recent rash of mass shootings about the loopholes and gaps in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that allowed a mentally ill Hitler-loving anti-abortion zealot to buy a gun at a pawnshop used in the cinema massacre in Lafayette, enabled a young racist with outstanding criminal charges to buy the automatic used to gun down worshippers at the AME Church in Charleston, and made it easy for the shooter in Chattanooga to purchase assault rifles over the Internet used to kill American servicemen. A former Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Dr. William Vizzard, Professor Emeritus and former Chair in the Division of Criminal Justice at California State University, Sacramento, joins us to discuss what can be done to shore up a broken system that is supposed to prevent felons and the mentally ill from getting hold of lethal firepower.

Part 2

Then we look into a leaked test report from a series of dogfight tests between the brand new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and a 30-year-old F-16 trainer at Edwards Flight Test Center that demonstrated that the performance of the F-35 is inferior to the current fighters it is designed to replace. Mandy Smithberger, Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight joins us to discuss Lockheed’s $1.4 trillion gold-plated turkey that is the world’s most expensive weapons system, and her article at the Center for Defense Information and pogo.org, “Leaked F-35 Report Confirms Serious Air Combat Deficiencies”.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Francis Njubi Nesbitt, a professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University who previously worked as a reporter and sub-editor for the Daily Nation in Nairobi, Kenya. He joins us to discuss his article at Foreign Policy in Focus, “Obama’s Last Chance in Africa” and President Obama’s address to the African Union in Ethiopia where he criticized kleptocratic African strongmen who cling to power indefinitely.