Over the past eight years, acclaimed actor, documentarian and playwright Anna Deavere Smith has interviewed hundreds of people—doctors and patients, celebrities and regular folks, Americans and people from around the world—about their struggles with illness, pain, mortality and the healthcare system. She has distilled a sampling of their emotionally charged stories into her latest powerful solo show, Let Me Down Easy. [includes rush transcript]

As House Democrats prepare to vote on their version of a healthcare reform bill this weekend, a man who used to be the face of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida decided he’s had enough with the way the health insurance industry is impeding reform. Actor and comedian Andy Cobb used to promote Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. But now he’s broken with his former employer and is speaking out against the entire private health insurance industry that has strongly opposed any government-run health plan. [includes rush transcript]

In the worst mass killing at a military base in the nation’s history, thirteen people have been killed and another thirty wounded at Fort Hood, Texas. The suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had reportedly complained of being harassed for being a Muslim and had tried to leave the military. It was the second such attack in the past six months, following the May shooting deaths of five US soldiers at Camp Liberty in Iraq. We speak to Qaseem Uqdah of American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and independent journalist Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. [includes rush transcript]

There have been a number of recent developments around the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining, wherein coal companies remove the tops of mountains with explosives. Last week, the Obama administration indicated it will not immediately cancel Bush-era changes to a rule protecting streams from mountaintop removal mining. The move came as groups opposed to mountaintop removal mining organized nationwide sit-ins demanding EPA intervention to stop the blasting of Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, which Massey Energy began dynamiting last week. We host a debate between journalist and mountaintop removal critic Jeff Biggers and Carol Raulston of the National Mining Association. [includes rush transcript]

In a landmark case, twenty-three Americans, mostly CIA operatives, have been convicted in Italy for kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. They were all tried in absentia after the United States refused to hand them over. The convictions turn them into international fugitives who risk arrest abroad. The case marks the first time any American has been convicted for taking part in a so-called “extraordinary rendition.” We go to Rome to speak with the Italian prosecutor who brought the case, Armando Spataro, and get comment from international law and human rights attorney Scott Horton. [includes rush transcript]

With the Copenhagen climate summit just a month away, a new investigative series looks at how rural Brazilians are being displaced so their forest can be turned into carbon offsets for some of the world’s biggest polluters, including General Motors and Chevron. With deforestation amounting to a fifth of the world’s emissions, planting and preserving trees are seen as key elements to offset pollution. We speak to Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting. After traveling to Brazil, Schapiro writes, “People with some of the smallest carbon footprints on earth are being displaced by companies with some of the biggest.” [includes rush transcript]

An ABC News investigation has exposed how one of the country’s largest blueberry growers uses child labor on its fields. Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Company in South Haven, Michigan is at the center of this scandal. Wal-Mart and the Kroger supermarket chain were among Adkin’s high-profile customers that have now cut ties with the blueberry grower. We speak to ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross and Teresa Hendricks of Michigan Migrant Legal Aid. [includes rush transcript]

A five-month investigation by McClatchy Newspapers has revealed that Goldman Sachs made secret bets against the housing market while simultaneously selling off billions in soon-to-be worthless securities. In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. We speak to McClatchy reporter Greg Gordon. [includes rush transcript]

Republicans have won the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, while New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg survived a stunningly close race against William Thompson. Bloomberg spent an estimated $100 million, making this the most expensive race in history outside the presidency. Meanwhile, Maine voters repealed a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed. [includes rush transcript]

Tomorrow will mark one year since President Obama’s historic election as the nation’s first African American president. A new documentary tracks Obama’s seemingly improbable road to the White House with an unprecedented look at his campaign. Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams began following Obama in May 2006, eight months before he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Their film is as much a look at the campaign behind the scenes as it is at the grassroots movement of supporters that propelled Obama to victory. [includes rush transcript]

The House is expected to overwhelmingly vote today to condemn a UN inquiry that found Israel committed scores of war crimes in its three-week assault on the Gaza Strip. Headed by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, the inquiry also accused Hamas of war crimes and said both sides should investigate the allegations or face international prosecution. Over 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, a majority of them civilians. Nine Israelis were killed by Palestinians and another four by so-called friendly fire. The bipartisan, non-binding House measure calls the Goldstone inquiry “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.” The vote comes one day before the United Nations General Assembly is expected to take up the inquiry’s findings. [includes rush transcript]

On Monday, a federal court of appeals dismissed Canadian citizen Maher Arar’s case against US officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that victims of extraordinary rendition cannot sue Washington for torture suffered overseas, because Congress has not authorized such lawsuits. In 2002, Syrian-born Maher Arar was held in New York on his way back to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia. A subsequent Canadian public inquiry has shown Arar was held on erroneous advice from Canadian officials who accused him of ties to Islamic militants. US authorities then flew Arar to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year. Canadian authorities exonerated Arar in 2007, apologized for their role in his torture, and awarded him a multi-million-dollar settlement. [includes rush transcript]

Earlier this summer, Shon Meckfessel traveled with Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal from Damascus, Syria to Iraqi Kurdistan for a short vacation. Shon stayed behind at the hotel nursing a cold, while his three friends left for the hike. On the morning of July 31st, he set out to join them near a waterfall, when Shane telephoned him to say they had been detained. The three American hikers are now in Evin prison in Iran. Shon Meckfessel is sending a letter today to the Iranian president, urging him to release his friends and to consider that each of them has a “long and public record of contesting injustice in the world.” [includes rush transcript]

In a new article in The Atlantic, Shannon Brownlee examines how some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none. So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes? Shannon Brownlee is the author of the bestselling book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. [includes rush transcript]

Last month, when the a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the derivatives market, Robert Johnson was the only non-industry expert invited to speak. The former economist at the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Budget Committee was invited just sixteen hours before the hearing. His testimony was cut short after five minutes by Congresswoman Melissa Bean, and the committee has since refused to post online his full testimony along with the statements of the other panelists. Robert Johnson comes on Democracy Now! to explain what he tried to tell Congress. [includes rush transcript]

We speak to Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. On Thursday, Grijalva said he was deeply disappointed at the healthcare bill unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He has pledged to fight for a floor vote on including a robust public option in the bill. [includes rush transcript]

One of the leading political and legal bloggers in the country, Glenn Greenwald, joins us to talk about about the war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration’s use of state secrets, the healthcare debate, the renewed military commissions at Guantanamo, and the coverage of it all by the corporate media. Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney who writes for Salon.com and is the author of three books. [includes rush transcript]

The Honduran coup regime and representatives of the ousted President Manuel Zelaya reached an agreement late Thursday that would pave the way for Congress to restore Zelaya to office and allow him to serve out the remaining three months of his term. We go to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa to speak with Andrés Conteris, who has been holed up at the embassy since Zelaya took refuge there last month. [includes rush transcript]

With the US economy snapping a record streak of four straight quarterly declines and expanding 3.5 percent in the third quarter, many economists are claiming the nation’s worst recession since World War II may now be over. We speak to Jonathan Tasini, author of the new book The Audacity of Greed: Free Markets, Corporate Thieves, and the Looting of America. Tasini is challenging Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary for the 2010 US Senate special election in New York. [includes rush transcript]

Russia has seen an alarming rise in the murders of journalists and activists speaking out about government abuses in the embattled North Caucasus region. We speak to Elena Milashina, a Russian investigative journalist who has just won the 2009 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch. She was friends with both the activist and journalist Natalya Estemirova, who was killed in July, and the internationally renowned Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in October 2006. [includes rush transcript]

While much of the healthcare debate in Washington and the media has focused on the proposal to create a government-run insurance program, the legislation being considered includes many other provisions that could change how healthcare is delivered in this country. We host a roundtable with three guests who have been closely following the debate: Lois Uttley, co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need; Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of Health Initiatives at Community Service Society of New York; and Dr. Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. [includes rush transcript]

The healthcare debate on Capitol Hill is expected to intensify today with the unveiling of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare bill. The measure reportedly includes a government insurance option and an expansion of Medicaid but drops a proposal to include a public option that would establish reimbursement rates to providers based on Medicare rates. Meanwhile, in the Senate questions remain over whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has enough votes to pass the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill. [includes rush transcript]

Investigative reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine revealed last week that the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan has risen dramatically under President Obama. During his first nine-and-a-half months in office, Obama authorized at least forty-one CIA missile strikes in Pakistan—a rate of approximately one bombing a week. We speak to one of the most high-profile critics of the US drone program: Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Alston says the US government’s use of Predator drones may violate international law. [includes rush transcript]

The Local Community Radio Act of 2009 is on its way to a full House vote after sailing through the Energy and Commerce Committee with little opposition. The measure would repeal legislation which requires the FCC to protect full-power broadcasters from interference from Low Power FM stations being placed on third-adjacent channels. We speak to Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle, a co-sponsor of the bill; and Cory Fischer-Hoffman, campaign director of the Prometheus Radio Project. [includes rush transcript]

To talk more about Afghanistan, we are joined by Malalai Joya, one of Afghanistan’s leading democracy activists. In 2005, she became the youngest person ever elected to the Afghan parliament. She was suspended in 2007 for her denunciation of warlords and their cronies in government. She has just written her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out. [includes rush transcript]

At least six international United Nations workers were killed in Afghanistan today when a team of gunmen and bombers raided their private guest house in Kabul. About an hour later, a rocket struck the luxury Serena Hotel located near the presidential palace. The attacks come one day after eight US soldiers were killed, making October the deadliest month for the US in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. The New York Times meanwhile reports the debate in the White House is no longer over whether to send more troops, but over how many more will be needed. We go to Kabul to speak with investigative journalist Pratap Chatterjee. He was staying at the Serena Hotel last night when the hotel came under attack. [includes rush transcript]

As with suicides, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military now exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within is a documentary that focuses on the cases of three female service members victimized by rape and other forms of sexual assault. We air excerpts of the film and speak to filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux. [includes rush transcript]

Gregg and Jannett Keesling are the parents of Chancellor Keesling, a US soldier who took his own life on June 19th of this year. Chancellor was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. During his first deployment, he suffered mental health issues so severe he was placed on suicide watch. After getting back to the United States, Chancellor had turned down a bonus offer to return to Iraq in the hopes he wouldn’t be redeployed. But he was called back in May. One month later, he took his own life. Since Chancellor’s death, Gregg and Jannett Keesling have yet to receive a letter of condolence from President Obama. After making inquiries, they discovered that this was not because of an oversight. Instead, it’s because of a longstanding US policy to deny presidential condolence letters to the families of soldiers who take their own lives. [includes rush transcript]

A controversial death row case is unfolding in Texas today. Twenty-eight-year-old Reginald Blanton is set to be executed tonight for the 2000 killing of Carlos Garza. Blanton was convicted of breaking into Garza’s apartment and shooting him in the head. But Blanton has maintained his innocence, and his lawyers have said the case has been tainted by prosecutors’ attempt to exclude African Americans from the jury and by the initial mistakes of a court-appointed defense attorney. The scheduled execution comes as the Texas capital punishment system is under increasing scrutiny. [includes rush transcript]

In Honduras, the conflict between the coup regime and supporters of the ousted president Manuel Zelaya remains at a standstill. Talks broke down last week after the coup regime refused to drop its objection to Zelaya’s return to office. Zelaya has accused the regime of trying to drag out negotiations until the presidential elections it plans to hold next month. Zelaya’s supporters are boycotting the elections, and the international community has refused to recognize them. The Canadian journalist and Al Jazeera English correspondent Avi Lewis recently traveled to Honduras for a rare look at the grassroots movement against the coup regime. This is an excerpt of his report, which aired on the Al Jazeera English program Fault Lines. [includes rush transcript]

When the American Bankers Association scheduled their annual meeting in Chicago for this week, they probably weren’t expecting the reception they’ve received. Instead of a quiet convention in a downtown hotel, the ABA has been greeted by a parallel gathering of thousands of people in what organizers call the “Showdown in Chicago.” Spearheaded by the group National People’s Action, organizers have tried to bring together a cross-section of Americans affected by the financial meltdown, including homeowners, renters, farmers, workers and retirees. The Showdown kicked off Sunday when protesters entered the lobby of the hotel where the ABA delegates are gathering. [includes rush transcript]

In Baghdad, the death toll from Sunday’s synchronized suicide car bombings has risen to 155. More than 500 people were also injured. It was the deadliest bombing in Iraq in two years. The blasts targeted the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Works and the Baghdad provincial government. Dozens of civil servants were among the dead. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the site of the bombings and blamed al-Qaeda and former remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime. He said the attacks would not affect the political process or parliamentary elections due in January. US troops have been called in to help with the investigation. [includes rush transcript]

A federal judge has rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the private military contractor Blackwater who were seeking to dismiss five war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against the company and its owner, Erik Prince. We speak to award-winning investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. [includes rush transcript]

After months of deliberation, the Obama administration unveiled a new strategy for Sudan on Monday. The White House plans to offer the Sudanese government a mix of incentives and pressure to urge Khartoum to end the crisis in Darfur and implement the 2005 peace deal between the north and the south. We get analysis from Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani, author of Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. [includes rush transcript]

Seven weeks before the UN Copenhagen Climate Conference, the group 350.org is organizing an International Climate Action Day. More than 4,500 events are scheduled to take place in 170 nations. We speak to two of the major thinkers and writers tackling climate change: the writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben, co-founder and director of 350.org, and Australian scientist Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council and author of the international bestseller The Weather Makers. [includes rush transcript]

We speak to New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg about the latest in his investigative series “Toxic Waters,” which examines the worsening pollution in the nation’s water systems. Duhigg joined us last month to discuss how chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years, most without punishment. Since then he has written articles focusing on how coal-fired power plants and large farms are threatening the nation’s drinking water. [includes rush transcript]

Wired magazine has revealed the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency has invested in a software firm called Visible Technologies that specializes in monitoring social media sites, including blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Wired reporter Noah Shachtman writes, “America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates—even check out your book reviews on Amazon.” [includes rush transcript]

University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner says he’s lost his federal grant funding for being an outspoken critic of the oil industry. For years, Steiner has criticized what he considered irresponsible actions by the oil industry, beginning with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last week, a university lawyer rejected a claim to overturn a decision to pull Steiner’s $10,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. In its decision, a university lawyer wrote if a recipient of grant funding “uses his position and his time to, for example, advocate for or against a particular development project, the funding agency may have a legitimate concern.” [includes rush transcript]

According to the United Nations, 5,000 women around the world are murdered each year in the name of preserving their family honor and reputation. We speak to Rana Husseini, one of the world’s leading advocates against these so-called honor killings. In 1994, she was a young journalist with the Jordan Times and began uncovering dozens of stories of women killed by their own family members. Husseini has continued to investigate and speak out about this form of violence, whether in Jordan or other parts of the world. She’s just out with a book chronicling some of these stories, Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One Woman’s Heroic Fight Against an Unbelievable Crime. [includes rush transcript]

Amira Hass is a regular columnist with Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper and the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. On Tuesday, Hass was awarded the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour described Hass as “one of the greatest truth-seekers of them all.” Hass joins us to talk about covering the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Goldstone report on the Israeli assault on Gaza, and the need to understand the issue in the context of military occupation. [includes rush transcript]

As lawmakers hash out the final details of legislation to reform the nation’s healthcare system, one of the key questions is: How much will it all cost, and how will it affect the federal deficit? While $900 billion over ten years may sound like a hefty price tag, it is a mere fraction of this country’s spending on the military, which is expected to grow by at least $133.1 billion over the next decade. [includes rush transcript]

The Yes Men aren’t the only group accused of pulling off a hoax in the debate over climate change legislation. In August, the American Petroleum Institute—the oil industry’s top lobbying group—was found to have asked member oil companies to help recruit employees, retirees and contractors for anti-climate bill rallies around the country. Critics said the API was trying to fake a grassroots movement to give a false impression of widespread public opposition to tackling global warming. Our next guest, James Hoggan, has just published a new book on corporate efforts to mislead the public on human-driven climate change. It’s called Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. [includes rush transcript]

The business community got a shock on Monday when its leading advocacy group appeared to make a startling announcement. A statement purporting to come from the Chamber of Commerce said the group had dropped its opposition to congressional climate change legislation and would now even support taxing carbon emissions. The news wires quickly picked up the story, and within minutes it was being reported on the websites of outlets including the New York Times and Washington Post. It also made its way onto cable news, including the Fox Business Network. It was all a prank pulled off by the Yes Men. [includes rush transcript]

On Thursday, Sam Pullen was arrested at the Los Angeles offices of the insurance giant Blue Cross. He refused to give his information to police and vowed to remain in prison until Blue Cross agreed to hear demands that it stop denying doctor-recommended medical treatment to seriously ill patients. Despite his resistance, Pullen was finally ordered released from jail on Monday, against his will. In protesting Blue Shield, Sam Pullen was following in the footsteps of his late mother, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was a teenager. Leanna Bell staged a one-person sit-in in front of Blue Cross after the company denied her coverage for a bone marrow transplant. Blue Cross gave in, and the transplant helped extend her life for several years. [includes rush transcript]

Democrats say the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 has granted the insurance industry a captive market with no curbs on price fixing and other anti-competitive practices. Last week the Justice Department’s top antitrust regulator, Christine Varney, voiced support for a repeal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also backing a repeal, and New York Senator Charles Schumer has called for including it as part of the healthcare reform bill. The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the issue on Wednesday. [includes rush transcript]

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and eleven of his government ministers wore scuba gear and plunged nearly twenty feet into the Indian Ocean for a special cabinet session on Friday calling for concerted global action on climate change ahead of the Copenhagen conference. Maldives, the lowest-lying nation on earth, could be submerged by rising sea levels due to global warming. We air excerpts of a recent discussion between President Mohamed Nasheed and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. [includes rush transcript]

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it plans to enter into new agreements with sixty-seven state and local law enforcement agencies. These agreements expand the existing 287(g) program, which delegates some federal immigration enforcement authority to certain state and local agencies. The 287(g) program has come under intense criticism in recent months, with over 500 organizations, including the ACLU and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, calling on the government to end the program. Many of the agencies involved have been accused of racial profiling, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona is being investigated by the Justice Department. We host a debate between the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the Center for Immigration Studies. [includes rush transcript]

Iran’s president is accusing Pakistani agents of involvement in a suicide bombing in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan on Sunday that left at least forty-two people dead and injured dozens more. According to state media, one or more suicide bombers targeted a group of Revolutionary Guard leaders who had arranged to meet tribal leaders in the Sunni region close to the Pakistani border. Some other Iranian officials are pointing the finger of blame at the United States. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said “US action” contributed to the attack. [includes rush transcript]

Commemorations are being held in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland today to mark the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. We end today’s show with a reading of John Brown’s address to the court in Virginia that ordered his hanging. Actor Harris Yulin read his words as part of a larger reading of Howard Zinn’s classic work, A People’s History of the United States. Yulin was followed by James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglass. [includes rush transcript]

Luis Posada Carriles is accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all seventy-three people on board, and he has publicly admitted ties to a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997. In 2000, he was arrested in Panama City for plotting to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro would be speaking. Despite his record, Luis Posada Carriles is currently living freely in Miami. He is awaiting trial in Texas early next year on charges of immigration fraud and lying to authorities about his involvement in the hotel bombings. A new book by award-winning investigative journalist Ann Louise Bardach provides an insider’s view on the case against Posada. Bardach first interviewed Posada in 1998 for the New York Times in one of his only in-depth interviews. [includes rush transcript]

Saturday marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The poverty rate here in the United States has now risen to 13.2 percent, the highest level in eleven years. And around the world, two billion people, or a full third of humanity, are poor, living on less than $2 a day. One billion live in extreme poverty, earning less than $1 a day. The latest numbers from the United Nations indicate that over a billion people are also going hungry. Irene Khan argues that these harsh numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Poverty, the book argues, must be recognized as the world’s worst human rights crisis. [includes rush transcript]

Dubbed by the National Review as “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West” and the New York Times as “the Elvis of cultural theory,” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. [includes rush transcript]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 10,000 for the first time in a year, as JPMorgan Chase reported massive profits in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high. But on Main Street, foreclosures are also at record levels, and the official unemployment rate is expected to top ten percent. We speak to former bank regulator William Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. [includes rush transcript]

The UN World Food Program is calling the current global food crisis “a silent tsunami of hunger.” This week the WFP warned that more than 40 million people will have their food rations reduced or eliminated because of drastic aid cuts. We speak with award-winning Indian journalist, writer and activist Devinder Sharma. [includes rush transcript]

Award-winning journalist, writer and professor Mark Danner has just released a new collection of dispatches about Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the use of torture in the US war on terror. It’s called Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War. We speak to Danner about torture in the so-called war on terror and his career of chronicling US-backed human rights abuses abroad. [includes rush transcript]

The Senate Finance Committee has become the fifth and final congressional panel to approve legislation to reform the nation’s healthcare system, voting 14-to-9 to approve an $829 billion measure. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe was the only Republican to support the package, which omits a public option. Talks now move behind closed doors, where Senate leaders will craft final legislation. We get analysis from Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake. [includes rush transcript]

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Washington, DC on Sunday to continue the nationwide fight for equal protection for LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law. It’s been described as the largest demonstration for gay rights in the nation’s capital in over a decade. We speak with attorney and longtime gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid about the state of the gay rights movement and the Obama administration’s stance toward gay rights. [includes rush transcript]

In her new book, author Barbara Ehrenreich documents what she says is the destructive power of the positive thinking movement in the United States, from breast cancer to the workplace, to the economy, to politics as a whole. Ehrenreich opens the book by writing about her own experience with breast cancer culture after being diagnosed with the disease in 2000. She says in the prevailing positive thinking culture of America, breast cancer patients are urged to avoid feeling angry and instead find meaning and even uplift in the disease. She writes, “In the most extreme characterization, breast cancer is not a problem at all, not even an annoyance—it is a ‘gift,’ deserving of the most heartfelt gratitude.” [includes rush transcript]

President Obama has once again pledged to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which bars openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military. But many queer activists are frustrated with Obama for neither following through on previous vows nor offering a new timetable. We speak with West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran Lieutenant Dan Choi, who’s facing discharge from the military for revealing he is gay. He was among tens of thousands that marched in Washington, DC on Sunday for gay rights. [includes rush transcript]

In a Democracy Now! special, an hour of conversation and music with Cree Indian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. In the turbulent 1960s, she was just out of college but already famous for her beautiful voice and moving lyrics in songs like “Universal Soldier” and “Now that the Buffalo’s Gone.” Over the years, Buffy Sainte-Marie has worked with the American Indian Movement, but also with Sesame Street, and even Hollywood, winning an Academy Award for the song “Up Where We Belong” in 1982. She’s won international recognition for her music, has a PhD in fine arts, and began a foundation for American Indian Education that she remains closely involved with. We speak with the folk icon about her life, her music, censorship, and her singing and speaking out about the struggles of Native American peoples for the past four decades. She also performs live in the firehouse studio. [includes rush transcript]