Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (8/23/19)

Trump's Twitter War Becomes Reality, China Imposes New Tariffs Starting September 1

On this episode of The Critical Hour, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Dr. Jack Rasmus, professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California; Jim Kavanagh, political analyst and commentator and editor of The Polemicist; and Caleb Maupin, journalist and political analyst. 

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time. 

US President Donald Trump is raising the stakes in his trade war with China, tweeting Friday that he's increasing the tariffs scheduled to start next week from 10% to 15% on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. Trump's comments came on a volatile day in his trade war. China started things off by announcing tariffs on $75 billion of US goods Friday morning. Just as the market was starting to calm down, Trump made two tweets that further rattled investors. The first ordered American companies to find alternatives to doing business in China, and the second wondered who is the bigger enemy: Chinese President Xi Jinping or US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Trump also tweeted his justification for taking on China over trade, saying it is something that was long overdue.

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (8/9/19)

Democrats In Iowa: Second Tier Candidates Are Carrying The Day

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time. 

Democratic presidential candidates are traversing Iowa this week with lively summer bus tours, stopping with their families at the Iowa State Fair and eating fried butter and fried Oreos, and speaking at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox and the annual Democratic Wing Ding fundraiser. So, right now Real Clear Politics has Joe Biden up by nine points over Elizabeth Warren, followed by Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. Is there any sense of momentum on the ground that either confirms these numbers or provides a different perspective? Have the shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio, changed the focus of discussion for these candidates?

Week in Review Discussion on Loud & Clear (8/9/2019)

Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the massacres in El Paso and Dayton, the huge immigration raid that took place in Mississippi, the anniversary of the killing of Mike Brown and subsequent Rebellion in Ferguson, and the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[Related articles: The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise); Lawyers, Guns, and Twitter: Gun Battles and Class Struggle after San Bernardino; The Siege of Venezuela and The Travails of Empire]

Listen to "The week in review" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (4/26/2019)

On this episode of The Critical Hour, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Jon Jeter, author, two-time Pulitzer Prize, former Washington Post bureau chief and award-winning foreign correspondent; and Jim Kavanagh, political analyst and commentator and editor of The Polemicist.

The United States government is seeking to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange for one reason: to punish him for publishing true and embarrassing information about US crimes and intimidate every journalist in the world from doing so again. If the US government succeeds in doing this, it will strike a devastating blow to the fundamental elements of democracy throughout the world — the freedom of the press and the related ability of citizens to know what their governments are doing. 
[My related article: Avoiding Assange]

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (3/15/2019)

One Of New Zealand’s Darkest Days: White Supremacist Massacres 49 Inside 2 Mosques

It’s Friday; that means it is panel time!