• Charles Bowden, journalist & bestselling author...his latest book is "Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields.
• Eamon Javers, White House Reporter for Politico, journalist/author of the new book "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy": The Secret World of Corporate Espionage.

• Why are right wing conservatives and Republicans encouraging domestic terrorism?
• How are globalization and the war on drugs destroying America and Mexico?
• Should Big Pharma be spying on government regulators?

• Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who.
• Chain of Fools, Aretha Franklin.
• Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• What Kind of Fool Am I, Rick Springfield.
• Beer in Mexico, Kenny Chesney.
• Everybody Plays the Fool, The Main Ingredient.
• I Got Mexico, Eddy Raven.
• You can leave your hat on, Randy Newman.
• White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane.
• The Fool on the Hill, Beatles.
• Democracy, Leonard Cohen.

...

On its Centennial, the Republican Party again calls to the minds of all Americans the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln: "The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere."

Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."

While jealously guarding the free institutions and preserving the principles upon which our Republic was founded and has flourished, the purpose of the Republican Party is to establish and maintain a peaceful world and build at home a dynamic prosperity in which every citizen fairly shares.

...

We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.

...

We favor loans at reasonable rates of interest to small businesses which have records of permanency but who are in temporary need and which are unable to obtain credit in commercial channels. We recommend an extension at the earliest opportunity of the Small Business Administration which is now scheduled to expire in mid 1957.

We also propose:

Additional technical research in problems of development and distribution for the benefit of small business;

Legislation to enable closer Federal scrutiny of mergers which have a significant or potential monopolistic connotations;

Procedural changes in the antitrust laws to facilitate their enforcement;

Simplification of wage reporting by employers for purposes of social security records and income tax withholding;

Continuance of the vigorous SEC policies which are providing maximum protection to the investor and maximum opportunity for the financing of small business without costly red tape.

...

Workers have benefited by the progress which has been made in carrying out the programs and principles set forth in the 1952 Republican platform. All workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.

Furthermore, the process of free collective bargaining has been strengthened by the insistence of this Administration that labor and management settle their differences at the bargaining table without the intervention of the Government. This policy has brought to our country an unprecedented period of labor-management peace and understanding.

We applaud the effective, unhindered, collective bargaining which brought an early end to the 1956 steel strike, in contrast to the six months' upheaval, Presidential seizure of the steel industry and ultimate Supreme Court intervention under the last Democrat Administration.

The Eisenhower Administration will continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will:

Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;

Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;

Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;

Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;

Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;

...

"This is Ronald Reagan speaking to you from Hollywood. You know me as a motion picture actor but tonight I'm just a citizen pretty concerned about the national election next month and more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple years ago.

I remember listening to the radio on election night in 1946. Joseph Martin, the Republican Speaker of the House, said very solemnly, and I quote, "We Republicans intend to work for a real increase in income for everybody by encouraging more production and lower prices without impairing wages or working conditions", unquote. Remember that promise: a real increase in income for everybody. But what actually happened?

The profits of corporations have doubled, while workers' wages have increased by only one-quarter. In other words, profits have gone up four times as much as wages, and the small increase workers did receive was more than eaten up by rising prices, which have also bored into their savings. For example, here is an Associate Press Dispatch I read the other day about Smith L. Carpenter, a craftsman in Union Springs, New York. It seems that Mr. Carpenter retired some years ago thinking he had enough money saved up that he could live out his last years without having to worry. But he didn’t figure on this Republican inflation, which ate up all of his savings, and so he's gone back to work. The reason this is news, is Mr. Carpenter is 91 years old.

Now, take as a contrast the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which reported a net profit of $210 million after taxes for the first half of 1948; an increase of 70% in one year. In other words, high prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits.

The Republican promises sounded pretty good in 1946, but what has happened since then, since the 80th Congress took over? Prices have climbed to the highest level in history, although the death of the OPA was supposed to bring prices down through "the natural process of free competition". Labor has been handcuffed with the vicious Taft-Hartley law. Social Security benefits have been snatched away from almost a million workers by the Gearhart bill. Fair employment practices, which had worked so well during war time, have been abandoned. Veterans' pleas for low cost homes have been ignored, and many people are still living in made-over chicken coops and garages.

Tax-reduction bills have been passed to benefit the higher-income brackets alone. The average worker saved only $1.73 a week. In the false name of economy, millions of children have been deprived of milk once provided through the federal school lunch program. This was the payoff of the Republicans' promises. And this is why we must have new faces in the Congress of the United States: Democratic faces.

This is why we must not only elect President Truman, but also men like Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Minnesota. Mayor Humphrey at 37 is one of the ablest men in public life. He's running against Joe Ball, who was a member of the Senate Labor Committee, helped write the Taft-Hartley law. The Republicans don't want to lose Ball, and are spending a small fortune on his campaign. They've even sent [Thomas] Dewey and [Earl] Warren to Minneapolis to speak for him. President Truman knows the value of a man like Hubert Humphrey in the Senate, and he has been in Minneapolis too, campaigning against Joe Ball. Mayor Humphrey and Ball are the symbols of the political battle going on in America today. While Ball is a banner carrier for Wall Street, Mayor Humphrey is fighting for all the principles advocated by President Truman; for adequate low cost housing, for civil rights, for prices people can afford to pay, and for a labor movement freed of the Taft-Hartley law. I take great pride in presenting my friend from Minneapolis, Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, candidate for United States Senator."

"Eisenhower knows how to deal with the Russians. He has met Europe's leaders, has got them working with us. Elect the number one man for the number one job of our time. November 4th vote for peace. Vote for Eisenhower."

There is only one real peace now, and that is peace for all time... Today we are competing for men's hearts, and minds, and trust all over the world. In such a competition, what we are at home and what we do at home is even more important than what we say abroad. Here again, my friends, we find constructive work for each of us. What each of us does, how each of us acts, has an influence on this question.

There can be no enduring peace for any nation while other nations suffer privation, oppression, and a sense of injustice and despair. In our modern world, it is madness to suppose that there could be an island of tranquillity and prosperity in a sea of wretchedness and frustration.

...

No one is more aware than I that it is the young who fight the wars, and it is the young who give up years of their lives to military training and service. It is not enough that their elders promise "Peace in our time"; it must be peace in their time too, and in their children's time; indeed, my friends, there is only one real peace now, and that is peace for all time.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.