Blogs

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

Today on Ring of Fire, legendary singer and songwriter Graham Nash will be here to give us his thoughts on the current state of American politics from the war in Iraq, to our economic meltdown. He’ll also give us the inside scoop on the release of his new CD box set, which chronicles his 40 years in the music business.

Eric Lotke from the Campaign for America’s Future will stop by to tell us how the Chamber is fighting to keep the economy in a recession by aggressively lobbying against regulatory reform, healthcare reform, and union organizing. If American workers want it, you’d better believe that the Chamber is fighting against it.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi will be joining us to talk about the financial industry’s takeover of the federal government, which all started when they given billions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money to stay solvent.

We’ll be taking a look at what labor unions are doing to fight Wall Street corruption and greed with Richard Trumka, the secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

When President Obama made the statement that America is not uniquely a Christian nation, there were no surprises about how the Christian community reacted.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

This week on Ring of Fire, Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson will be joining us to talk about the jihad occurring in the GOP – where the old party leaders are attempting to purge anyone who isn’t a hard line republican.

We’ll also be talking with investigative journalist Greg Palast who’ll give us an update on the lawsuit filed against oil giant Chevron for dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic sludge into the rainforests in Ecuador.

Hey everybody. I’m Farron Cousins, and this is The Raw Roundup on The Daily Left – Brought to you by Raw Story and GoLeft TV. Here are this week’s top stories.

After almost 8 years of claiming otherwise, former vice president Dick Cheney has finally admitted that there was no link between the terrorists who carried out the attacks on 9/11 and Iraq. Cheney made this admission during an appearance on Fox News on June 1st, 2009, where he said that there is not now, nor was there ever any collaboration between al-Qaeda and Iraq to carry out the terrorist attacks. However, he did vaguely hint that the two were working together, just not on the attacks against the United States. In the summer of 2004, America was informed that there was no link between Iraq and anyone involved in 9/11, but as recently as May 21st, 2009, Dick Cheney was still implying that the two had worked together. The panel investigating 9/11 had told the public on June 16th, 2004 that no connection between the two existed. Reports show that it wasn’t until after the US invasion of Iraq that coordinated groups of al-Qaeda began operating in the country.

The Republicans want us to think that the public has turned on President Obama, but the truth is that his approval ratings are still high, and that's coming from a public that is still feeling angry about the last 8 years.  Mike Papantonio appears on Fox's "Happy Hour" to talk about what the public really feels right now.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio: 

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

This week on Ring of Fire, we’ll examine some of the most egregious offenses from corporate America.

Author Antonia Juhasz will be joining us to talk about the true nature of Chevron, and how they’re destroying our planet and propping up brutal dictatorial regimes across the globe.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

Today on Ring of Fire, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura will be here to give us his thoughts on the Bush administration, including how he thinks we need to be handling the former officials that are responsible for allowing torture.

GQ correspondent Robert Draper will be joining us to tell us why history won’t be as kind to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the former administration official would like to believe.

Fox News is continuing to beat the drum about Karl Marx being right around the corner, forcing America into a Socialist society. Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire takes on Stuart Varney (guest host on Your World with Neil Cavuto) about the lack of truth behind these claims, and lays out how this is just another GOP talking point that isn't resonating very well with US citizens.

Jesse Ventura has been all over the airwaves recently talking about the paperback release of his best-selling book "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!", as well as his thoughts about the current state of our country. Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire was able to chat with the former Minnesota and get his thoughts on a variety of issues, including partisanship, torture, the media, patriotism, green energy, religion, and states' rights. "Don't Start The Revolution Without Me!" is now available in paperback from Skyhorse Publishing here - http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/details.php?TitleID=144.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

Today on Ring of Fire, we’ll take a look at the war on terror and talk about why closing down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay won’t be enough to fix America’s image in the Middle East with foreign policy expert John Feffer.

Comedian and cartoonist Matt Filipowicz will be here to help us run down some of the most absurd and unusual news stories of the past week.

What Attorney General Eric Holder inherited from Michael Mukasey and his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, was not a Justice Department that was slightly confused about where the law began and politics ended. He took over an institution where, at least in recent years, politics had no end. Longtime employees were let go for not being, as Gonzalez’s own staff put it, "loyal Bushies," and the loyal drones that were left in place used the agency to go after any Democratic politician or campaign donor that got in their way. Air America's Mike Papantonio talks about the immense task of cleaning up the department that now lies with Eric Holder with Dahlia Lithwick, contributing editor for Newsweek.

Today’s top story – The Supreme Court has ruled that a lawsuit against two former Bush Administration for torture cannot go forward. The suit was filed by a former detainee against former FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The detainee spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. The detainee rounded up in the weeks after 9/11 when the FBI and law enforcement were generally looking for people who might have conceivably had any terror connections, and as a result of that, a lot of Muslim men were put in holding cells in New York and the Justice Department has since said that many of them were mistreated. In his case, he argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race. The court said that there is a hole in the argument, as there is no evidence of a solid chain of command that authorized the mistreatment in these cases. But the one thing this case does accomplish is that it sets a very dangerous precedent for future torture cases. You can expect to see this case cited by every administration official who gets hauled before a court on torture charges.

Gay marriage is the ultimate wedge issue.  The right wing of this country has been using it for a decade to create fear and panic among their loyal followers.  This week, Bill O'Reilly went as far as to say that gay marriage will lead to people marrying turtles, dolphins, goats, basically any animal you can think of.  In this week's edition, we lay out the truth behind this issue, and put things into a better perspective.

This week’s Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio:

Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts Sunday nights at 8 pm Eastern

Author and Middle East expert Reza Aslan will be here to tell us why the US can’t win the war on terror – not because we don’t have the manpower or the firepower – but because we still don’t understand that we can’t win a war against an ideal.

We’ve also got Steve Koepp, editor of Fortune magazine, who’ll tell us about the history of financial scandals in the United States, and why these scandals have helped to create better rules to regulate our financial markets.