October 31 - Is Comey Politically Tone Deaf or Cynically Partisan?; The Patriarchy Strikes Back; For Decades South Korea's Leader Has Been Under the Spell of a Cult Leader

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the reverberations from the FBI Director’s letter that has shaken Washington and rattled the presidential race possibly slowing the momentum towards victory for Hillary Clinton and diminishing the chances that the Democrats will take the senate which will mean four more years of gridlock and no new appointments to the Supreme Court. Former White House Counsel and author of “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It”, John Dean, whose testimony helped lead to President Nixon’s resignation, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times “No Emailgate Is Not Worse Than Watergate” and the ludicrous hyperbole coming from Donald Trump’s absurd comparison of Nixon’s impeachable crimes to Hillary Clinton’s guilt by association because her top aide happens to have been married to a man who takes picture of his genitals while Donald Trump on the other hand, grabs women’s genitals. We also assess whether FBI Director James Comey is politically tone deaf or cynically partisan.

Part 2

Then we examine James Comey’s ties to Wall Street and Corporate America since he served as counsel to the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater and Lockheed Martin as well as serving on the board of international bank HSBC which has been massively fined for laundering drug money and helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Jeff Hauser, the Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., joins us to discuss why Senator Elizabeth Warren has been critical of Comey’s lack of interest in prosecuting white collar criminals.

Part 3

Then finally we look into an even more sensational political scandal than the one roiling Washington, and that is the revelations rocking South Korea that the country’s president has been for decades under the spell of a cult leader of the Church of Eternal Life, essentially outsourcing her presidency to a fortune-teller who has not only enriched herself by shaking down big conglomerates for some $70 million but has embezzled millions from the president’s accounts by buying cheap clothes for the president to wear at state dinners while pocketing the difference for designer wear. Sue Mi Terry, a Senior Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University who was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council and the Director of Japan, Korea and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council, joins us to discuss growing protests and street demonstrations in South Korea demanding President Park Geun-hye’s resignation.