How much money to buy the presidency? Bloomberg tries to find out

Published: Feb. 18, 2020, 11:06 p.m.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou is joined by Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter, a columnist for CounterPunch, a contributor to The Nation, Extra! and Salon.com, and at ThisCantBeHappening.net.

Nevada voters will caucus on Saturday in the first test of strength in the West for Democratic presidential candidates. The big question mark is whether a counting app, or counting tool as the DNC is now calling it, is going to work after failing so spectacularly in Iowa. In the meantime, Bernie Sanders has surged to a double-digit lead in national polls, followed by Mike Bloomberg. Joe Biden has dropped to third nationally. And Democrats will debate on Wednesday. It is the first debate for which Bloomberg qualifies.

Another day, another hit piece against Sputnik Radio in the mainstream corporate media. This time, CBS News decided to essentially repeat an earlier New York Times piece about Sputnik operating in Kansas City, MO. They even interviewed the same person as the New York Times, who repeated her ridiculous assertion that Sputnik was responsible for dividing the country on health care. Why does the media feel so threatened by Sputnik? Mindia Gavasheli, editor-in-chief of Sputnik News’ bureau in Washington, D.C., joins the show.

More than 2,000 former Justice Department officials have signed a letter urging Attorney General William Barr to resign, with one former prosecutor and friend of 40 years saying, “Everything he touches dies.” All of this is in response to the resignation of all the prosecutors involved in the Roger Stone case. They resigned because they say President Trump meddled in the sentencing and Barr did nothing to support them. John speaks with Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist at www.rall.com.

The US and the Taliban are preparing a peace deal that now appears imminent in Afghanistan. That peace deal seems to be moving forward, despite the fact that two more US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in recent days and that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s opponents are protesting the election results declared today showing Ghani scoring a narrow victory. Brian Terrell, a long time peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, joins the show.

Our friends David Paul, Adrienne Pine, Margaret Flowers, and Kevin Zeese were on trial last week on charges of “interfering with certain federal protective functions.” That’s because they were protecting the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington from the reactionary forces of presidential pretender Juan Guaido, who in turn was supported by the State Department. Well, on Friday, the judge in the case declared a mistrial. The jury was simply unable to come to a verdict. David Paul, a member of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective, joins John.

Today is Loud & Clear’s weekly series about the biggest economic news of the week. Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of “The Scourge of Neo-Liberalism: U.S. Policy from Reagan to Trump,” at www.jackrasmus.com, joins the show.

Tuesday’s regular segment is called Women & Society with Dr. Hannah Dickinson. This weekly segment is about the major issues, challenges, and struggles facing women in all aspects of society. Hannah Dickinson, an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and an organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly; Nathalie Hrizi, an educator, a political activist, and the editor of Breaking the Chains, a women’s magazine, which you can find at patreon.com/BreakChainsMag; and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell join the show.