December 26 – An Armed Coup Within the Tea Party; The “Day After” in Syria; Will Obama Cave on Hagel and Japan’s Seventh P.M. in Six Years

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Part 1	We begin with a bizarre attempted armed coup by the founder of the Tea Party organization Freedom Works Dick Army, in which he took back control only to later accept an eight million dollar payoff from a wealthy donor to go away. Kenneth Vogel, the chief investigative reporter for Politico joins us to discuss disarray inside the conservative movement since Obama’s reelection and Obama’s return to the White House from vacation in Hawaii to await a last-minute deal on the so-called fiscal cliff with only 5 days left before the U.S. hits the debt limit ceiling.
Part 2	Then we speak with a member of the Syrian opposition and of the “day-after” group of prominent Syrians planning to take over when Assad falls. Murhaf Jouejati, a professor of Middle East Studies at the National Defense University joins us to discuss the latest high-level defection from the regime and reports that Iran is planning a guerrilla war inside Syria to destabilize any future government.
Part 3	Then finally we discuss whether Obama will cave on the Hagel nomination and look into the once and future Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe who unveiled his new cabinet today and vowed to enact “bold” economic policies to reverse stagnation and deflation. Steve Clemons, the Washington Editor-at-Large for The Atlantic and the co-founder with Chalmers Johnson of the Japan Policy Research Institute joins us to discuss Senator Hagel's fate and the comeback of the former Japanese PM, the seventh premier in six years, who served for a year in 2006 only to be ousted ignominiously on the grounds of ill health.