Hurdles For Health Care
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President Obama has called on Congress to finally pass health care reform by the end of March. Republicans are furious and fighting it every step of the way, but House Democrats could pose a bigger problem. The House has to pass the Senate version of the bill, but Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak says a dozen Democrats won’t vote for the bill because of language about abortion funding. What are the chances for health care reform? We ask Karen Tumulty of Time magazine.
A New Push To Regulate Wall Street
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New rules to limit the size of banks and an agency for consumer financial protection are the key elements being debated in Washington as Congress and the White House look for new momentum in the effort to overhaul rules for the finance industry. A year after President Obama took office, where are we on regulating Wall Street? We speak with Gretchen Morgenson, Business and Financial editor, and columnist at The New York Times.
High-Stakes Iraqi Elections
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More than 6,000 candidates are running for 325 seats in Iraq’s legislature. Leila Fadel of the Washington Post joins us from Baghdad.
Update From Earthquake-Stricken Chile
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The BBC’s Andy Gallacher reports from Concepcion, Chile, where food and water are finally getting to residents.
Ellsberg Looks Back, Beyond The Penatgon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg, 78, at a movie event in Sept. 2009 (AP)
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Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America” because Ellsberg was a Pentagon insider who turned against the war in Vietnam and knew the government’s lies about the run-up to the war. Ellsberg eventually released the “Pentagon Papers,” a top-secret study on the war, to The New York Times, which helped end the war and the Nixon presidency. He recalls the story in the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America.”
Music From The Show
- Calexico, “The Black Light”
- Vetiver, “You Maybe She”
- Stevie Wonder, “Superstition”
- Calexico & Red Wine, “Red Dust”
- The Cure, “A Forest”
- Soulfly, “Soulfly”
- Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues”
I agree that we should be out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we should have never gone in, but what would Mr. Ellsberg have the Afghanistani people do? We go in, destroy what little infrastructure these people had, and then we just leave? That’s what the Soviets did. Look what kind of blowback that created.
Posted by Jodi Smith, on March 5th, 2010 at 12:50 pmGood for us to leave, at least for now, but what about the people who have to live with the mess we leave behind. There is no good or right answer for this disaster, but I’m not happy with just leaving Afghanistan to it’s fate. There are real people there, they should be considered too.