Laura Flanders of GRITtv spoke with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka last week about jobs, Trumka’s union experience, and the future of the labor movement. Trumka is clearly aggravated about a lack of progress on jobs, saying that President Obama “is probably more pro-business than anybody in the past.” He also says “the worst thing this president could do” is replace Larry Summers with a CEO.

Michael talks about Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez and the “anonymous senior administration official” who trashed labor after they opposed the anti-labor Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. As Michael notes, labor has given $15.8 million to DSCC candidates since 2006, and DSCC chief Menendez says he nonetheless expects that financial support to continue.

After nearly two years with the wonderful FireDogLake crew, GRITtv has launched its brand-new website at http://grittv.org.

On MSNBC Laura Flanders calls for the media to get off Cheney’s talking points and get to the problems with Obama’s security plan.

Terry Jones, of Monty Python, on why he’s becoming an arms manufacturer. The forecast is good he says. Sales are up. And it doesn’t look like growth will slow any time soon. Think about it…by the time you finish watching this the United States will have spent an additional one million in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A chat about inside/outside electoral strategy and reality. This, and the full hour of GRITtv: Hillary and the RFK flap, Iraqi insurgency “Meeting Resistance”, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, and Stop The Clash of Civilizations from Avaaz.org

Iran, Al-Qaeda, Saddam’s “dead-enders”…you’d have a pretty muddled picture of who’s fighting in Iraq if you only read the headlines in American media. Molly Bingham and Steve Conors offer a very different picture in their new film Meeting Resistance.

Iraq War veteran Kris Goldsmith had the grim job of working as a photo-documentarian for US Military intelligence on the ground in Iraq. I talk with Kris about his experiences in Iraq, and the consequences of stop-loss back home.

Here is the full roundtable discussion on rolling back presidential powers. Do we expect the next resident of the White House to ditch the Patriot Act? Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and David Golove, Hiller Family Foundation Professor of Law at NYU School of Law discuss.

Women still face a military attitude that up to now has been “Because women aren’t allowed in combat, they can’t have PTSD. It must be depression or women’s issues like PMS.” This Memorial Day it’s worth noting that the US military is a whole lot keener to deploy women than it is to look after them when they’ve done their service. We discuss veterans’ issues in a GRITtv roundtable.