• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Mark Wolff of the Credit Union National Association.
• Rai Sue Sussman, attorney for Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson.

• "Brunch With Bernie"
• Credit Union or Bank...? - What's the difference and why should you care?
• Army prosecutes single mom for refusing to deploy and put her son in foster care.

• Pocket Full Of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield.
• Truth, Amos Lee.
• World Hold On, Bob Sinclar (video).
• You're the Voice, Heart (video).
• You can leave your hat on, Randy Newman.
• Tommy Can You Hear Me? The Who.
• Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Come On In, Brad Paisley (video).
• What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong.

We started out this hour with the story of Alexis Hutchinson, this woman who wanted to be a soldier, wanted to deploy, but she has this 10 month old son which has complicated things tremendously. And it brings out in starker view, I think, the whole issue of the war. And I want to take that a step further.

Philip Stephens in today's Financial Times. Now, keep in mind, the Financial Times is like this is the rich talking to the rich. This is the power elite talking to the power elite, world wide. The Financial Times is the world wide version of what the Wall Street Journal used to be in the United States before bought it and turned it into a right wing rag. It used to be basically where the very wealthy would kind of whisper to each other what's going on. And this is a major editorial, op ed, in today's ... Financial Times on their editorial page and the headline is "An unholy alliance at war with Obama's foreign policy". And I just, Philip Stephens so nailed this. I just want to share, I normally don't read on the air but I just want to share a couple of paragraphs, or a couple of sentences from this because it is so spot on...

"Dick Cheney and Osama bin Laden are as one." That's the first sentence of the article. Are as one. "The former US vice-president and the al-Qaeda leader agree that Barack Obama was too soft on the underpants bomber. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas day, should be in Guantánamo." These 2 guys agree, Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney. "There, hooded and shackled, he could have been subjected to what Mr Cheney likes to call "enhanced interrogation techniques"; torture in English." Now this is from the Financial Times"; an op ed in the Financial Times. ... Mr Cheney's splenetic outburst after the failed detonation over Detroit still awaits the public endorsement of Mr bin Laden; communications are difficult from the hide on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border to which he escaped from the Bush administration. But we can be sure", Philip Stephens writes, "we can be sure the al-Qaeda leader shares the view that Mr Abdulmutallab should have received harsher treatment."

"Few things have done more to draw recruits to the twisted ideology of violent jihad than images of detainees being tormented by their US captors. ... Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the rest count among Mr bin Laden's strategic successes. He could scarcely have hoped for a better" result. ... "The war in Iraq did more than any military adventure since the Vietnam war to drain American power and prestige. It was Mr Cheney and his chums who allowed the Taliban to return to Afghanistan and Mr bin Laden to escape. How did any of this make America safer?"

The Financial Times! It has become so obvious. Now, here's the question that I have to ask. Given that everybody in the world gets it that Dick Cheney and Osama bin Laden have the exact same goal, which is to destroy the sense of America as a nation that lives by the rule of law; a true small 'd' democracy, and turn us into a police state. Why is it that when Cheney or his daughter Liz go on TV shows, nobody ever confronts them about this? Why is it that David Gregory has never ever said to Dick Cheney or to Liz Cheney, 'why is it that you and Osama bin Laden are advocating the exact same thing?' That Osama bin Laden back in 1998 before 9/11 was talking about how he would attack America, that the American government would overreact, and that this would get America embroiled in a war that would drain us of our resources, break us and destroy our image around the world. He predicted this. And Bush and Cheney played right into his hands.

The reason I'm still optimistic is because, first of all, biology tells us that small 'd' democracy is the nature of all animals, so I think that eventually humans return to that. And I think frankly that that's what we're seeing. I think the last 7,000 years have been by and large an aberration in the history of the human race. If you look at the 150,000 years humans have been around, if you look at aboriginal and indigenous societies all around the world, by and large they all operate democratically, small 'd' democratically. And most are very egalitarian.

And we have gone from the American Revolution, bringing about the first democracy in the world, just 230 years and change years ago,, to now there being over 100 countries in the world, arguably, that are democratic small 'd' democratic. Democracy is in our genes. It is something that is irresistible, and while we're going to have to fight for it, and we're going to have to speak out loudly, ... I frankly think it's destiny. And you look at, read Peter Farb's book, "Man's Rise to Civilization" about first contact with native American societies; they screwed up the environment, they blew it badly, and then they got it right.