October 1 - America's First Ebola Patient Provokes Hysteria; A Regional Shift Could Make a Dirty Deal with Assad Possible; Playing Catch-Up with Republicans on Dark Money Makes Hypocrites of Democrats

Full Producer

Part 1

We begin with the first diagnosis of Ebola in the U.S. befalling a patient who was recently in Liberia and was sent home by a Dallas hospital only to return by ambulance two days later. Kevin Outterson, the co-director of the Health Law Program at Boston University and a founding member of the C.D.C’s working group on antimicrobial resistance, joins us to discuss how this case will be contained even if the panic about Ebola in the U.S. might not, particularly with politicians like Texas Governor Perry grandstanding about threats to schoolchildren. We also discuss how Republican budget austerity has impacted the N.I.H. and C.D.C. with budgets today for these medical first responders much lower than they were in 2010

Part 2

Then we examine the prospects for a deal to work with the detestable Assad regime to eliminate the even worse Islamic State, who just beheaded a number of Syrian and Kurdish prisoners, including some women fighting with the Kurdish pershmerga. An expert on Syria and the region, Asher Kaufmann, a professor of History and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, joins us to discuss whether Turkey and Jordan could be brought on board assuming the U.S. is open to such a deal, and what Israel’s attitude might be since they seem to have had a stable Modus Vivendi with the Assad regime prior to the civil war.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Thomas Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University who has an op-ed at The New York Times, “Are Liberals Funding Hypocrites?” We discuss his contention that by joining in the chase for dark money from anonymous billionaires to play catch-up to the Republicans, the Democrats are losing the moral high ground in getting money out of politics and, in effect are getting their money from the same people as the Republicans, which only serves to perpetuate the oligarchic control of our politics.