January 16 – Should Democrats Negotiate With Liars?; Who Will Be Blamed For a Government Shutdown?; The Hypocrisy of Religious Freedom

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Full Program	LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM	–
Part 1	We begin with the looming possibility of a government shutdown on Friday and analyze who has leverage at the moment and which party will be blamed if Washington grinds to a halt. Democratic strategist Matt Angle, who directs the Texas Democratic Trust and the Lone Star Project, a Political Action Committee that aims to be an aggressive fact-checker on the Republican Party, joins us. We discuss what strategies the Senate Democrats might employ in the face of the outrageous lies from Trump and Senators Cotton and Perdue who trashed the truth-teller Senator Durbin. We will assess whether the Democrats can draw a line and say we are not talking to the White House or the Republicans until they stop lying because what is the point of negotiating with liars? And since the Democratic base will not sacrifice “dreamers” for wasting money on Trump’s wall, which he will not budge on, we look into whether, with the Democrats poised to tack back the House and possibly the Senate in November, using DACA as the issue upon which to shut down the government will hurt Democrats in Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia and other Red States.
Part 2	Then we examine further the showdown over DACA versus the wall and who gets blamed for shutting down the government and speak with Robert Shapiro, a professor and the former chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and author of “Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness”. He joins us to discuss the Democrat’s dilemma and the Republican lying, with The Washington Post counting over 2,000 lies Trump has told in his first year in office and the shameless lies Senators Cotton and Perdue are engaged in covering up for Trump.
Part 3	Then finally, with Trump proclaiming today January 16 Religious Freedom Day, we discuss the historical hypocrisy of celebrating the Religious Right’s idea of religious freedom and the absurdity of their claim that the founders wanted a “Christian Nation” when in fact Jefferson, Madison and other founders championed religious tolerance because they had witnessed the public beatings of Baptist preachers and still carried the memory of women branded as witches being burned at the stake. Frederick Clarkson, a Senior Fellow at Political Research Associates joins us to discuss how the theocratic bent of the Religious Right and their intolerance towards women’s rights and the LGBT community makes a mockery of religious freedom.