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kes on politics. >>science and republicans do not mix. >>now it's your turn at the only online forum with a direct line to eliot spitzer. >>join the debate now. direct line to eliot spitzer. join debate now. >> disturbing new statistics released reveal in the first 155 days of this year, 154 active duty u.s. soldiers committed suicide. >> that's nearly one a day. as horrific as this number is it is made worse by the haunting residesation that more soldiers have taken their lives in this

year than lost them on the battlefield. the number of suesized represents an 18% increase over the same period last year. here to help explain it and understand these troubling statistics are john salts who served two tours and dr. stein zanakus with 28 years of active duty experience and a founder for the center of translational medicine. thank you both for your time. john, let me begin with you. make sense of this, why you have been there on the field of battle. what do you think explains this uptick, this surge this horrifying set of data? >> i was actually at a loss when i saw this article. we had done better. we are seeing more suicides, you know, since 2006 forward, mostly because of the. combat. >> what do you mean, the type of combat? >> there is no place to hide. last year, i was on a base got dumped 212 rockets a huge caliber of ammunition. if you thing i remember you are

safe and you are not, it's a problem. you go on a convoy about as long as it took me to get shot at. the type of combats you are facing, you never know when it appears. multiple tours. these carrot minds. then you have 1% serving. when you come back and you go out to the bar and meet some girls and ask if you killed somebody and your wife left you for another guy and your kid relationship with your children isn't strong any more because, you know they have a stronger relationship with their mother or their father for that matter there is a huge adjustment to this. >> all of the things jon laid out are troubling, difficult, we need to deal with. do they explain why this war is fundamentally different than what we faced in other wars vietnam where the reintig teggration back into civil society was very difficult for veterans? what do you make of this uptick in the trend? >> i think that the uptick is, itself, an indicator. incredible stress that the whole force has been under after 10

years of war and as we have seen before these problems come to light after the fighting stops. so that the army marines, the military redeploys, come back to garrison and no longer the kind of fighting frame of mind that they have been and these -- and these problems just come out. and particularly, now, when under the circumstances that mr. soltz explained, we are going to see i think in the next year unfortunately a lot more of this. >> do you think that people look at multiple doors, multiple years spent in iraq or afghanistan, do you think that is one of the links, one of the causative factors you can look at to enterintervene and stop this this? >> absolutely. i think we need to recognize most of these suicides and incidents occur in young people under 30. they have come in.

they have spent four or five, maybe more years. they have grown up in an environment of multiple deployments and during that time, a lot of these other issues of how they have families and close relationships and what they do with their kids their children, i mean that's not been something that they have been able to learn about. and they have now got to adjust to it. so that's really hard for them. >> is the military responding appropriately? is it perhaps what i am about to do is a bit unfair but there was one quote jarring, in which you were quoted today, from major general pittard: >> certainly not a sense of empathy, sympathy or an understanding this is a serious psychological problem where military and government need to

invest resources. is this typical or is the military -- >> he is the commander. first army division, in iraq prior to that, a company commander in the gulf war. he has a good reputation. he said something completely stupid. look, i can tell you i work two sides of this fence. i work in politics and a member of the reserve. there is nothing worse for your commander to have a suicide. we have classes and video on this. the general at the top is not close to the soldiers that have these problems. you know these ncos younger officers. nobody wants this. but the fact is that this is a product of the war. okay? so you want to keep sending people to war all the time you are never going to completely e raid indicate this issue. this is what this last thing says. to scare youerad indicate this issue. this is what this last thing says. to scare you. i came home six months ago. do you see anybody around you who served in iraq that i can go talk to? no. if you are on active duty, at least you have these piers who are in this relationships with you. guard and reservist we can't

reefer people. we are going to see more sued suicides. the military is aware of this. >> that's why our numbers are lower. it's impossible to completely stop. the question is: how can we improve it. general pitard does not respect other leaders -- represent others. >> dr. zinakus, what do you see? you were at a senior level in the military and your organization is higher arkansasayal, how is the organization responds to go this crisis? >> i don't think they have got a worked-out campaign plan. they understand it. it's described well, all of the factors that you have mentioned are recognized, but to have a campaign plan and a strategy that's going to come at it and particularly come at it in the next year as they go about reconstituting and resetting is just not there.

and understanding that the military, the army and the marines are going to be even under more stress. they are going to be downsizing and they have got already 20,000 people who are pending medical evaluations and medical retirements. now, mr. soltz said something that is a very good insight. there is a gap. understandably there is a gap between the young soldier and the sergeant and the bratallion commander, the brigad commander and the generals. there is a gap in mentality, a gap in age. it's a gap in experiences, and i think it is really important to recognize that these are young people, have very fluid lives, dynamic lives a lot going on with them and they are just struggling with incredible stresses that are added to and complicated by the multiple deployments. >> yeah. no question. this is an issue we will continue to focus on. it is a tragedy.

dr. john soltz, thank you for your insights on this tough issue. >> thank you for inviting it starts at $59 for the entire year for back up. put in code stephanie for your subscription. 18 minutes after the hour.

desk top, lab top, ipad. iphone. >> pleasant your hearts. >> the big one. >> stephanie: all i know, the little flower is there and it means go to meeting. i love go to meeting.

the new slogan should be "we own wall street." that's my view.

>> coming up, the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor but first, obama gift to cable news lefty liberal martin sheen visits with steven colbert. when it doesn't fit anywhere else, we put it in the viewfinder. >> the great thing about president obama and the candidate, mitt romney is theirthey are creating jobs for cable talk show hosts who sit around all day trying to figure out what obama said and what mit romney should have said. god bless both of them because we wouldn't have a show right now if it wasn't for mitt or obama. >> why can't the president say i misspoke

misspoke. >> i don't think he mis spoke. >> this isn't what a gaffe which i find to be laughable. this is what barack obama believes. he doesn't understand the economy. he doesn't understand the private sector. he wants the government to stimulate it. it hasn't worked. big debt. it just goes on and on. >> charlie sheen tiger woods, mel gibson experienced epic falls from gauging when their ominous undercarriages were exposed. barack obama exposed his under karen with those two quarts "doing fine". >> he said the private sect is doing fine. is he really that out of touch? >> while speaking from the hot tub of his luxury yacht. mitt romney in touch with the common man. >> i think we can exceptional again. i expect ifnet mitt romney becomes president. >> the romney campaign released a two and a half minute internet

admy greeting supporters. one thing it's criticized for is its lack of dye versety. >> this has to be deliberate. >> do you know how hard it is to compile three minutes of footage shot in america and not have any minority end up on camera? that takes a lot of skill. >> why are you such a lefty liberal? who inspired you? >> we are called to be a voice for the voiceless and be a presence for the marginal. so if you have the capabilities and, you know, you don't have to work full-time. you are required to be on the line and serve the common good. >> i should pepper spray you. >> martin sheen was president? >> stephanie: 49 minutes after the hour. "the stephanie miller show"." stephanie miller show." [ ♪ music ♪ ]

the airplanes are going to get from one part of the country to the other without any air traffic controllers. i mean this is ridiculous and mitt romney ought to know better. i stand with our public employees and cops and firefighters and their teachers?

>> the haves continue to move further and further away from the have-nots. the fabric is being frayed by the fact social mobility more myth than reality. progressively worse over the past 30 years with the top 1% of americans now collecting over 20% of the nation's income and the top 5% controlling an amazing 72% of the nation's wealth. timothy noah has written a new book the great divergentions diverge he knew and what we can doll with this problem.

he joins me now. you have studied this exhaustively. you collapse their research and distill it down. summarize for us what the factors are that have led to this growing crisis in our society. >> well, there are a couple of things. there is the 1% versus the 99%. and that really is driven by a number of factors you are quite familiar with. the fvensization of the economy, the reduction of regulation of wall street, investment banks becoming going from partnerships to compressions, those sorts of things. in addition, they absolute run away -- the runaway nature of ceo ceo pay, losing all accountability to shareholders. >> that's the 1% versus the 99%. you have more settle change and that is a growing divide between people who have college or

increasingly graduate degrees and people who don't, a skill-based gap and that's really attributable to two things, one is -- principalply to two things, i should say. one is the fall-off in high school graduation rates starting in the 1970s graduate graduation rates leveled off, skill demands copped to clime as they had throughout the 20th sent re and the other factor is the decline of unions. the fact that you know the number -- the percentage of people who belong to unions was -- approached 40% in the 1950s, now down to about 70% in the private sector. >> let's see. this being cable t.v., we normally ignore the more subtle argument and we will try to pretend we can deal with it. the education gap there is a skill divide in our nation. those who have unique skills in the top either because they can go to wall street where the pay is out of proportion and some

engineering capacity it that permits to get paid. those who don't have those skills fall into the wasteland where they are competing against a global labor force and we have no protection for wages and earnings. what can we do to overcome that? raise the minimum wage? educate more broadly? how do you confronts these divides? >> all they'vee three sound good to me. on education we need to universalize preschool education. everybody i know sent their three-year-old to pre-school. only about a quarter of all four years old go to school every day. research has shown that those early years are crucial for education so at the start of the 20th sent re we had a high school movement. now we need to do the same thing for preschool.

i would put government price controls, college tuition increases, which sounds very radical but president obama proposed something quite similar in the state of the union address. he put colleges and universities on notice that if they couldn't get these increases under control, the government would use leverage to make them do so. so those are two things you could do for education. in terms of labor, that's a more difficult task, but we need to find some way to repeal as much of the 1947 taft heartley law as is humanly possible. another interesting idea that's been put forth by the sent re foundation is to think about making the rights to organize a defined as a civil rights pass ledge slayings that would apply civil rights law to the right to organize. that way if somebody got fired for trying to join a union, he could actually sue his employer. >> right. fassing idea. i have not seen that tested in the courts. that would be an innovative approach to this. one of the historical points you

make in your book is that carl marx of all people, obviously a sent sent re ago said the industrial revolution would lead to incredible divide in income distribution. that didn't happen until about 1970, income, there was a convergence of income only back in the neep 70s we began to see this. historically, why did we survive the industrial revolution and recently global trade and other factors have moved us this other way? >> it's baffling. you are right right. throughout much of the 20th sent re we saw nmos becoming more equal during the depression and world war ii, you could say those were extra o circumstances but in the post war years. now we have a different kind of economy than we had then. we also had strong unions thinly then and, you know, labor has declined around the world but it's declined a lot steeper here in the united states, and that's because the government policy

has basically been anti-labor for at least a couple of decades and the 1947 law, the taft hartley law acted as kind of a slow-acting poison so that's had a profound impact. >> the role of lane has been diminished. unionization has failed and the percentage of the work force is union unionized is a shadow. all of that in the context of international trade that has made it harder for workers to compete against the onslaught of china, indonesia. and senior editor, author of the great diverge he knew timothy noah. we will continue the conversation an essential subject we must thingngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngngng he's certifiably insane! and just signs a deal for $100 million and people listen to that crap! i just can't believe it. 1-866-55-press. your latest on glenn beck.

let's talk about it. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. [ train whistle blows ] [ ball hitting paddle ] [ orbit girl ] don't let food hang around. yeah! [ orbit trumpet ] clean it up with orbit! [ orbit glint ] fabulous! for a good clean feeling. ♪ eat, drink, chew orbit! ♪

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>> yjp morgan chase is on the board examining his bank and the chairman doesn't see the problem. but first, let's head out west to the war room with jennifer granholm. what do you have tonight, governor? >> eliot i am obsessed with how the democrats can occupy the majority in congress especially with the republicans engaging in what many are calling economic sabotage. of course its purpose fully obstructed every bill designed to help the economy. we are going to talk to pundits and polsters and candidates tonight. we will look at the political technologies and applications to micro target voters in the

effort to take back congress. we will have a somering as smorgasbord. >> a our conversation is with you the viewer because we're independent. >>here's how you can connect with "viewpoint with eliot spitzer." >>questions, of course, need to be answered. >>we will not settle for the easy answers. >> lee boweling jer, former dean of the university of michigan law school and the current chairman of the new york federal reserve bank board says it is, quote, foolish to say that jamie diamond's having a seat on the new york fed board creates an appearance of a conflict of interest. as they say on saturday night live in a special segment dedicated to statements that are really out of touch, what have i -- what i have to say to lee

is: really? it is not foolish to see an appearance of conflict of interest here indeed in addition to the appearance of conflict of interest, there is an actual conflict of interest. die mopped should not be on the full board, if you will stop. here is why. the oar of the new york fed picked the current if thepresident. he is perhaps the most important regulator of bangs like morgan chase. that is a conflict pure and simple. he sets. on the board. >> that's a conflict fewer and simple. dymon is lobbying to relax rules. >> that's a conflict, pure and simple. j.p. morgan chase has received special loans from the fed such as when it acquired bear stearns. >> that's a conflict fewer and simple. dymond's bank is under regulatory examination. >> that's a conflict, pure and simple. we do not put the ceos of the air land and the national transportation safety board for a reason.

we do not put the ceos of pharmaceutical companies on the board of the fda for on reason. we should not put the ceos of banks on the board of the new york fed. lal edgier said the bank requires requires. first, the law should be changed. second, the law doesn't require that the bankers be the ceos of major entities and then the subject of regulatory examination by the fed. other bankers academics or retired are available. they would not have conflicts that jameie dymond brings with him. the entity hurt the most the new york fed. the board creates actual and perceived conflicts. for the sake of the fed

everybody's hatred on guy people to take away their rights. >> i'm not sure why you needed me on this program. you are making my arguments for me. >> cenk: mission accomplished. thank you for join us but i don't want to thank you for the hateful referendum that you're putting forward in washington that is hatred. that should be apparent. >> watch as a man who plays

>>(narrator) we are the trailblazers, the truth seekers. we are the idea no one wants to hear until it grabs you and won't let go. we push, we prod until the truth reveals itself. we are fearless, independent trendsetters, problem solvers, and above all, we are politically direct. the young turks with cenk uygur at 7, viewpoint with eliot spitzer at 8, the war room with jennifer granholm at 9, the gavin newsom show fridays at 11. and there's only one place you'll find us: weeknights on current tv. after the commercial. >> it is a combination of low self-esteem, low blood sugar and missing red wine with my -- and mixing red wine with my painkillers.

>> sitting in the oval office, president obama is picking individuals to target for death. droughns are dispatched pursuant to presidential order killing terrorists and those nearby. is this an act of war justified by law or an overreach of executive power with no congressional or judicial oversight? joining me to talk about his "new york times" op-ed, the legal fob between war and peace. thank you for your time professor. >> thank you for having me. >> first explain to us this fundamental distinction you set out in your opinioned and law enforcement and what follows from that in terms of presidential power. >> william, those constitutional

law and international law turn on the distinction between war and peace. the ledge the it macy need that distinction to work but it's been hard to figure out what the difference is. >> if this were deemed to be war, if we are at war with a nation, with a terrorist group, then generally the consensus would be, i gather it could have been a terrorist group against these vitas individuals. >> the united states has helped to create. i think the question becomes a pretty easy one, we are at war with those individuals, then targeting them looks like the kind of thing that's happened in war for a long time now. >> of course the did i say distinction you set out is: what is war? are we at war when we have this am orfus entity a terrorist entity. is war now so expansionive virtually any power can acrete to the president is the issue you frame for us. >> that's the danger. it's hard to know how to interpret the authridesation of the uses of military force that

congress en add in such a way as to not give the president this kind of daming russ power. >> as you point out in your op-eds. no judicial or congressional oversight. >> that's why the president picking the kill list as it's called struck many people as raising a funds mental issue about executive power. how do you think we will begin to define war contra where should we go with this? >> we are seeing developments on the ground that are beginning to provide solutions. ngos and the presses, shows like yours started to show line, illuminate the problem, inside the administration of protests by my lawyers in the state department justice department and pentagon to deal with these kind of things. we are starting to see the beginning of a legal system to handle this. it's all a brave new world. >> has taken us to a point that i think this is one of the moments where people stud up and said we have to think about this. when the president authorized a drone to kill a united states citizen who is overseas and the

fact that the president would kill a unites states citizen gave people pause. can you think of any historical an log to that where this had been do? >> in the civil war, you know, almost 300,000 con fred rat soldiers died and everyone was on the view of alabama lincoln and lincoln administration. there is a pretty good precedent for that lincoln administration. you point out in the article, what war meant back then was a bit more clear. you had soldiers on the field of battle shooting at each other and there was a clarity of what was defined by the process of war. war is something moreai amorphous, doesn't have these reggid boundary lines theed and the president's president's line is more elastic. >> one of the things i have encountered in doing research on this question is virtually every yenration has had a crisis distinguishing war from peace, a crisis of its own. we seem to have had our share in the last 10 years or so. it's not actually new to our

time. it's something lincoln dealt with. it's something that jefferson and washington dealt with. we had repeated experiences, trying to work out this kind of problem. the drones are just the latest. >> as you point out in the article, it really was one of those pieces i wanted to re-read because every time i read it, there were new questions emerging. at the end of the article, you make the point, we will not be the nation with drones very shortly. we may have a technological advantage, be in a unique position to deploy this form of armament but when others have it we will be more desirous of having a legal framework that interposes internationally about some boundaries of what can and cannot be done. >> more than 200 years we have used the law to engage the legitimacy of these kind of actions. we are going to lead the war on our side. >> that's why these developments are, i think trying to create a new legal regime. >> the other problem that emerges is to the extent war had been or historically had been

combat between nation states and acted rationally wanting legal framework, when you are dealing with terrorist organizations that don't accept that first principal, does it apply? are we going to be the only ones to abide by it? >> one of the things we have used for a long time now international law and domestic constitutional law to do, our allies and others that we are on the same page with them that we can be -- we can cooperate with them. so enter narm law and the u.s. laws don't have to just be about reciprocity with the enemy. they are about speaking the same language as liberal peoples around the world. >> but very quickly, we only have a couple of seconds left when a terrorist organization gets a drone it can deploy