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This week on Uprising:

* Presidential Debate Offers No Critique of Capitalism
* State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Showdown Over the American Dream

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Presidential Debate Offers No Critique of Capitalism

The two major party candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney faced off against each other for the first time in this election season on Wednesday at the University of Denver in Colorado. The first presidential debate, moderated by PBS’s Jim Lehrer, excluded all other party candidates from the debate.

The candidates sparred over the economy with respect to taxes, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, financial regulations, domestic energy production, and the role of government. Commentators concluded that while Governor Romney appeared to be the better prepared of the two and President Obama appeared unsure of himself, Romney was worse than Obama when it came to sticking to facts. CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman all took issue with a number of claims made by Romney on Wednesday.

While it is still too soon to tell what impact the first Presidential debate will have on both major party candidate’s popularity, particularly in swing states like Ohio and Colorado, what is clear is how many issues did not come up in the debate: namely Romney’s taxes, his recent remarks about 47% of Americans, or his company Bain Capital’s role in outsourcing jobs. The fallibility of capitalism as an economic system was completely avoided by both candidates.

GUESTS: Our guests today are a roundtable of Uprising’s 2012 Election analysts: Roberto Lovato, Writer with New America Media, Co-Founder of Presente.org, Adele Stan, is the Washington bureau chief for AlterNet, and Eric Mann, host of Voices from the Frontline, and author of Playbook for Progressives

State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Showdown Over the American Dream

Arizona governor Jan Brewer announced this week that she intends to fight a federal ruling against part of her state’s controversial immigration law SB 1070. The ruling, made on September 5th, blocked the enforcement of that part of SB 1070 that would have made illegal the transportation or harboring of undocumented immigrants by citizens. Meanwhile, immigrant rights advocates have forcefully denounced the enforcement of the so-called Show-me-your-papers provision of the law which went into effect some weeks ago.

Since the introduction of SB 1070, Arizona has been seen nationally as the vanguard for the sort of anti-immigrant legislation that hard right conservatives have long dreamed of. Authored by Republican State Senator Russell Pearce and signed into law by Governor Brewer in 2010, the law has faced numerous legal challenges but has also spurred copy-cat laws in other many other states. Citing President Obama’s inability to enact “comprehensive immigration reform,” Arizona and other states have allowed for unprecedented power in the hands of local police to target undocumented immigrants.

The story of Arizona’s disturbing hostility to immigrants goes back to the history of its statehood. In his new book, Arizona-based journalist Jeff Biggers relates that history to his state’s current political climate in an effort to understand not only where the hostility originates, but what may be in store for the rest of the country – what he calls the Arizonification of America.

GUEST: Jeff Biggers, award winning author; his earlier books include the United States of Appalachia, In the Sierra Madre, and Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland. His latest book is called State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Showdown Over the American Dream

Visit www.jeffbiggers.com for more information.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” — Plato