tv The Five FOX News February 12, 2012 5:00am-6:00am EST
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>> trust no one, said the tv show, but can we live our lives that way? this year, these guys will spend 3.8 trillion dollars of our money. so we have to trust them? i'm reassured when he they say. >> we've already agreed to more than 2 trillion dollars in cuts and savings. >> john: great, but is it true? how would we know? have you gone through their piles of paper. turns out they want to spend more to solve global warming. >> this rollercoaster is going to crash and we're in the front skoor.
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>> john: celebrities are scared. children are scared. >> the ice is going to melt. and trees are going to fall down. >> john: will they? who should we trust? i want to trust my government, but some people say this was done by my own government, not by our enemies. some people don't believe this video. >> that's one small step for man. >> john: they say it was fake. so, who do you trust? that's our show tonight. ♪ and now, john stossel. >> john: i do want to trust my government, they have weapons and a monopoly on the legal right to use force. they get to spend trillions of our dollars. can we trust them? you'd think we could because so many people watch them. they lie to us, i think they'd get caught and voters punish them, but my first guests tonight say, no, i'm wrong.
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our political leaders mislead us all the time and don't get caught. so, first pollster and word analyst frank luntz says politicians rarely get caught because they learned to use words in tricky way, like what? >> it's not just words, it's also visuals. you notice how they stand with voters that look like crayola crayon box behind them, meant to show they've got the support of the american people or flags behind them indicates they're patriotic or look into the camera and read from a teleprompter. barack obama is the best at it better than any celebrity john mccain reads a teleprompter, stevie wonder reads better. >> john: i often read from a teleprompter. >> because they're somebody else's words. >> john: i write it it, and i put it on the teleprompter. i bet obama does some of that. >> and they want to you look
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you straight in the eye, say what you mean. and the most important attributes and politicians are saying things they don't know what they say talking over their heads or underneath them and so it doesn't connect. >> john: let's break down phrases you use. i notice president obama never talks about tax, revenue. >> constantly. they don't want to pay more it's okay for you, john stossel, but i don't want to pay more and okay everybody else. >> john: taxes i pay is revenue for westbound else. >> yes. >> john: he we don't have tax increases, revenue enhancements. exactly. they find a way to soften the negative or strengthen the positive. >> john: and i noticed urg the state of the union no more bailouts, no more handouts no more copouts. >> think about it it's appealing. when we tested for fox news,
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the entire of the speech, no more bailouts he gave a bailout to the bank. >> john: biggest in history. >> what do you call the stimulus over 800 billion dollars. >> john: what do you call student loans and most of his programs? >> no more copouts? he blames congress whenever anything goes wrong he blames congress so he's guilty of all of those. >> john: why do we ease up? you said it was the most liked tested phrase in your group. >> you said at the opening the word trust so important, it's not brand, it's not reputation, it's trust. it's hard to earn and ease toy lose, but if you have the you get elected again and again. republicans are no better. 2008 convention, i was on the floor, started the cheer, drill baby drill. when i say drilling for oil what visual comes to mind. >> john: a drill going into the earth. >> is it clean. >> john: not especially. >> and older viewers.
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>> john: wait a minute, it's a good thing, oil. >> to have black goo like jed clampett shooting at the ground. it's a phrase, it's negative and ugly and could be talking about exploring for energy, means the exactly the same thing? explore for energy, explore for energy, it's not as catchy. >> can't use it as a cheer, explore for energy, it doesn't roll off the tongue sometimes you don't do things for cheers, you do them because they're right. >> john: where did libertarians go wrong. >> that's easy, privatizing social security. if you privatize it, you're thinking wall street, financial executives. what they should be talking about is personalizing it. that means i-- >> personal savings account. >> correct. that's the right way to do it. >> john: ron paul talks about liberty. >> and he should be be talking about freedom. >> john: what's the difference. >> liberty is an ideology for most americans, freedom is day-to-day existence.
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we want to be free. >> john: freedom. >> that's a part of who you are. >> john: freedom is liberty, too. >> you support liberty, but liberty is ideological and freedom is personal. >> john: thank you, frank luntz. politicians can spin language, i get that. you'd think the numbers wouldn't lie when the politicians spend your money, how much they spent. wasn't it reassuring at the most recent state of the union when the president said. >> we've already agreed to more than 2 trillion dollars it cuts and savings. >> john: yippee they're finally cutting spending and now maybe america won't go broke. and analyst dan mitchell is here to analyze that. the president says they've agreed to 2 trillion dollars in cuts. that's wonderful. >> i'd be overjoyed because we have a budget of almost what, 4 trillion. if we're doing 2 trillion in cut we're cutting government in half. that sounds wonderful. here is the problem. john, what if i came to you and said i've been on a diet
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the last month and i've gained ten pounds, isn't that great? you'd say, wait a minute, what are you talk abouting, you say, no, i was going to gain 15 pounds and only gained 10 pounds and therefore i was successful. literally, no exaggeration, that's the way the federal government does the budget. remember you had the ryan budget and the groups saying the world is coming to an end, he's cutting 6 trillion dollars. and it's 4 trillion dollars how can you get 6. >> john: it was over ten years. >> under the ryan budget government spending was going to increase by an average of 2.8% a year, but because it wasn't going to grow at 5, 6, 7% a year that somehow magically becomes a budget cut. >> john: and people buy it and then the press buys it? we're supposed to be the skeptical watch dogs, but i read in the washington post about draconian cuts when
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they're a slowing rate of increase. >> the politicians know the gain and the special interests know the gains and they get to go back and say, from the bush and obama years when the budget was going up and sooner or later we are greece. >> john: the military for military spending. >> we wind up with bigger government every single here and the trend lines especially because of demographics, the trend lines is that we're going to be europe. we have ten, 15 years of advanced notice and what's frustrating, we're not taking advantage of that even as we see these other countries collapsing into social chaos and disarray. >> john: as you pointed out on your blog, we don't have to cut, we have to slow the government to maybe 2% and we
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could grow our way out of it. >> from the cato institute i actually do want to cut spending, but if all we're trying to do is balance a budget over ten years, sort of a minimal thing that politicians keep saying we should do, if we simply limit the growth of spending to 2% a year, which is about the projected rate of inflation, we'll have a balanced budget in 2022. that's all we have to do. instead the politicians are saying, oh, we'll have draconian and budget cuts if we have to balance the budget without tax increases. they want to take more money out of our pocket. they doesn't want to put government on a diet even if that diet allows spending to grow 2% a year. >> john: we have something called the cbo, the congressional budget office, and every bill, provide congress with objective nonpartisan analysis. what goes wrong there? >> they're governed by the rules congress gives them. so when the congressional
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budget office with that ryan budget last year, it was the congressional budget office said it would cut 6 trillion dollars that's because they're required to start with a baseline assumption of bigger and bigger government everyyear and if it doesn't grow as fast as the baseline, it becomes a cut and revenue side, joint committee on taxation, if you double tax rates they assume you're going to double tax revenues even though in the real world people aren't going to safe as much, tax avoidance, tax evasion, ap taxable income, but they operate with these blinders on and assume nobody changes their behavior. >> john: higher taxes won't effect behavior. tell us about the snooki tax. the indoor tanning tax part of obamacare and the politicians passed a law. >> john: and named snooki. >> from jersey shore. >> john: and she had a great tan.
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>> probably is not natural is the assumption, okay, we're going to tax these people we don't like them to do indoor tanning. what's happening the revenues aren't coming in anywhere near what the government projected and why? because the price went up, the demand went down. lastly, these cost estimates we get from politicians, president bush said the war in iraq would cost 50 to 60 billion dollars. actual cost 800 billion. when medicare was created 9 billion in 1990, turned out to cost 67 billion, many more now for part a. and how did it get away with this? >> they get away with it by low balling the number. >> john: and just forget? >> the idea, the government program we're going to give everybody who walks down the street a $100 check and we did a survey that everybody walked down the street. if they have a give away program i'm going to channing the pattern and walk down the
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street as well and they don't factor in the changes and behavior and this is very important. once the government creates a program what do politician does next year, expand it to do more votes and add a benefit to it and what's happened with medicare not just that they got the fundamental estimates wrong, they did. but once it was created, they figured out some new expansion and some benefit because they want the same credit for giving some people more stuff. >> john: using other people's money and one last one, hiring of airport security screeners for tsa would cost 100 million and it costs 700 million. and thank you, dan mitchell. and should we trust him. >> this rollercoaster is headed for a crash and we're in the front car.
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>> john: next, can you trust the media? [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar, on december 21st, polar shifts will reverse the earth's gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space, which would render retirement planning unnecessary. but say the sun rises on december 22nd and you still need to retire, td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. we'll even throw in up to $600 when you open a new account or roll over an old 401(k). so who's in control now, mayans?
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>> there are so many conflicts in life, republicans disagree with democrats, and business fights with its critics. where do you go to get the truth? the media of course. i'd like to believe you'd get the unvarnished truth, and no one better to explain than "bias", how the media distorts the news. the author bernie goldberg is no longer an insider, he works at fox and bernie, that box is 15 years old or so now and it was a huge best seller and you precede it had with this wall street journal column that i happened to see when i was on an airplane and i was working at abc at the time and i was just so frustrated with the suffocating bias and all of my colleagues acted we're not
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biased, we're telling the truth and i got so excited by your column, i screamed out loud and people were looking at me. but let me just describe to the audience, the title is networks need a reality check and you said the argument networks has liberal bias is so ballet tently true and a call for a flat tax and they called scheme and worse. and you described it written by your friend eric endberg, is he still your friend? >> no, no, as a matter of fact, after that piece came out, a whole bunch of my former friends stopped talking to me. it was the first piece written by a mainstream reporter about liberal bias while i was still a mainstream reporter. i don't think one has been written even since 1996 by a
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mainstream reporter. so, no, eric stopped talking to me. dan rather stopped talking to me and a whole bunch of other people stopped talking to me. >> john: that's what i noticed at abc, too, once i came out of the closet as a libertarian. i thought they'd argue, we'd have stimulating political discussion and that they would say why they disagreed, but they just go, oh, he's beneath talking to. >> yeah, what happened is, you have a whole bunch of people who think alike. it's group think. as a result of group think, the news that your colleagues at abc said we're just telling the truth, they were telling the truth filtered through a liberal prism and that's the problem with bias. not a conspiracy, but too many like-minded people making the decisions on what the audience and the readers get to read and see on tv.
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>> john: but what i don't get, these are supposed to be seekers of truth. why this silent treatment, like the peter jennings when he would see me in the hall at abc, he would just go oh and turn his head away, like i had embarrassed abc news. >> right. >> john: by my mere existence. why didn't they come to you and me and say, how can you believe this or why do you accuse us of liberal bias? and have a discussion? >> let me give you -- let me give you my personal experience with that. the day before that wall street journal came out talking about liberal bias in the mainstream media, dan-- this was in february of 1996. dan rather was in iowa for the caucus. i knew i had to call him. i worked for him on the evening news and i knew i had to call him and give mimm a heads up, so, i did. i said dan, there's going to be an article coming out that i wrote tomorrow in the wall
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street journal op-ed and you're not going to be happy with it and before i could say anything else, his exact words. bernie, we were friends yesterday, we're friends today and we're friends tomorrow, what did you write. i told him what i wrote and from that day in february of 1996 until this day february 2012 dan rather has spoke and total of zero words for me and here was one of his people. i wasn't a conservative idea log. i had never at 28 years at cbs news not once accused of bias, i'm not a screwball coming at him, who he could simply dismiss and that was the problem. and that might have been your pr problem, the problem with you also. we were legitimate journalists making this point. >> john: argue with us. >> not right wing activists? why don't they argue with us, why don't they just go oh, and
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look at us like we're some spill on the sidewalk we've done something disgusting? >> because they don't want to get into a discussion because some troops may come out that they don't want-- truths may come out that they don't want to deal with. >> john: what does the public do to get the truth? who do you trust and go to for media. >> the short answer go to more than one news source because if this source is going to filter it through this prism and this source is going to filter through at that prism. i know people have jobs and don't have all day to read newspapers, watch tv or go online, get your news and your opinions from more than one place if you can. >> john: i find i learn, we do our reporting often and see the claim from one side and we just go to the other side, what do you say about this and go back and forth and that's how we get to the truth, but you're right, people don't have the time or the interest in doing that. thank you, bernie goldberg, next-- >> thank you, john.
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>> john: nepotism. we all know that's evil. but then how can we keep electing kennedys and bushes and why do we trust these people? we talk about nepotism next. [ ma annncer ] wouldn't it be cool if you took the top down on a crossover? if there were buttons for this? wouldn't it be cool if your car could handle the kids. ♪ ...and the nurbgring? or wh if you built a car in tennessee that could change the world?
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>> nepotism, that's evil, right? unfair, favortism. family members get breaks others don't. i'd be less likely to trust on the job because of family connections. take a look at the list, all of these people won high political office and all of them are children of well-known politicians. we have the roosevelt dynasty, kennedy dynasty, bush dynasty, people talk about a romney dynasty or clinton dynasty.
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why do so many people vote for the kids of other politicians. isn't nepotism bad? no says the author of the book "in praise of nepotism" the author is adam bella, why should we praise nepotism. >> first of all, understand what we mean for nepotism. we as americans design nepotism in a very narrow way, we want it to mean just preferring a relative, but a relative is who is objectively incompetent and that's our very narrow definition of nepotism. >> john: no better, but they get the job because they're related and seems unfair. >> well, it can be unfair, but when i started to look into it, i found that nepotism is actually a beneficial practice. >> john: how? >> well, we can go back into human history and show that nepotism has a long record of accomplishments, first of all,
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part of our evolutionary process, we were hard wired, programmed to favor our relatives over other people and this was natural and necessary. >> john: because we knew which ones we could trust. >> that's right. >> john: what about the political dynasties, you could say that's a matter of trust, we assume it's smart people in the family. it could also be name recognition, or maybe the voters are dumb and think they're voting for the father. >> and fdr, franklin roosevelt got a lot of votes because people thought he was teddy. the thing about the families, we're ambivalent, mixed feelings about them because since our revolution we've felt about our society this should be-- >> we're not about the kings and queens. >> that's right we don't like aristocracy, we reserve highest praise for people who succeed and make it to the top on their own and yet, as you point out we continually reward the offspring of political families and there are good reasons, rational
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reasons for it. >> john: what? >> well, first of all, when you vote for somebody you're basically making a hiring decision. andrew cuomo, our current governor, andrew cuomo. >> john: mario quo me. >> and andrew cuomo served a long internship. he was his father's campaign manager, legislative aide, political aide and when he ran for governor of the state nobody said anything about nepotism. why? because in fairness we recognize that he had a long apprenticeship. >> john: and in fields like sports, where there's less bull and you have to perform, clearly we also see these patterns. eli manning just won the the super bowl, brother is peyton, father is archie. other be football stars. ken griffey, sr. and junior.
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muhammad ali and daughter layla. in the arts. drew bare more, charlie sheen, martin sheen. and ben stiller. this supports your arguments. you got your job because of the nepotism. your father is saul and won a nobel prize. >> as far as my history is concerned, i describe myself as a product of new nepotism. my father didn't do anything to help me get a job in publishing. that doesn't mean that his name didn't make a difference, that it helped me? it did. >> not only-- but what was really important my upbringing, my education, my interest in books, the many books that i've read and so, my employers when i was hired made a rational decision, they thought, well, this is a good hire. and what is the harm? if he doesn't work out, if he's a washout, we'll fire him.
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and that's the way it it works. >> john: thank you. adam bellow. coming up, global warming, who can you trust about that? are we all going to roast or drown? when we return we'll hear from someone people hate because of what he says about global warming. >> people got incredibly upset and they said that can't be true. this guy needs to be taken down. >> he's a traitor. laces? real? slip-on's the way to go. more people do that, security would be like -- there's no charge for the bag. thanks. i know a quiet little place where we can get some work done. there's a three-prong plug. i have club passes. [ male announcer ] now there's a mileage card that offers special perks on united, like a free checked bag, united club passes, and priority boarding. thanks. ♪ okay. what's your secret? ♪ [ male announcer ] the new united mileageplus explorer card. get it and you're in.
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♪ >> your challenge facing america is more urgent than battling climate change, the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. >> john: the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. well, the facts aren't all that clear to me. a lot of people trust president obama and others who worry about global warming and want government to act and my next guest wants that, too, a left wing environmentalists who says the world is warming and government should spend your money to pay people to research green energy. so one step at a time. the global is warming, i agree the globe is warming be, doesn't seem arguable, but government should pay people to fund some new form of green energy? >> let me just roll you back a little bit. first, we're spending lots and lots of money across the world on subsidizing inefficient
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green energy. that's stupid. we know-- >> it's so apparent that wind mills are not. >> john: and that's where the money is going, solar panels-- >> germany stopped because they've got so much and little out of it. if it's a problem and science says it's one of many problems, it's not the catastrophe that's been sold us, but it is a problem. what we should do, make sure that green energy is eventually cheaper than fossil fuel and if it is, everyone will change. because we've found cheaper green energy. >> john: so the private sector will research that. if there's a way to make it better, they will do it. why does the government have to use force to pick from me to fund the researchers. the funds, the same way in medical science, advances so far ahead.
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20 to 40 years from now we'll have cheap, green energy. we will have huge societal berths and not be able to reach them. >> john: woo might have huge societal-- >> absolutely, the same thing that we do for medical researchers. >> we have them doing stuff that hasn't had profits until decades go on. >> john: they won't pay for it because of that. >> for instance, solar panels are four times as expensive as fossil fuels. if you're a great guy that comes one an amazing idea at half that cost, you still can't, you know, sell solar panels, but getting that innovation, obviously, would be incredibly helpful to the world. so if you spend a tiny bit of money on research and development we can actually have a great development. >> john: when you say we spend and a tiny bit, well, it's probably billions of dollars, but tiny bit compared to what they waste on wind mills. >> absolutely.
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>> john: we need some bureaucrat working for president obama says, oh, i think this is a good idea, i'm going to fund this. why would we trust that. >> clearly we shouldn't trust the guys who paid 500 million dollars to solyndra, a he very, very bad idea. >> john: these are the guys in charge. >> what they did, a lot of politicians not just the democrats, but a lot of politicians like to fund big projects that look great and media opportunity. and what we should be doing, in medical research and other places, cheap researchers through the national science foundation grants, those are not very controversial and those are very, very cheap. instead of spending 500 million on solyndra, spend $500,000 on researchers looking at, for instance, whether solyndra's idea was good. >> john: you said we should research these things because global warming and many agree with you, is a real threat, man probably has a big effect. >> a problem not a threat. >> john: all right. so the alarm, the hysteria and
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my president seems to accept that alarmism, here is what he said to state governors. >> coast lines are shrinking, spreading drought and famine and storms growing stronger with each pass herb. >> john: sea levels are rising and coast lines are shrinking, that sounds terrified, but in truth worldwide over the last hundred years, six to eight inches increase, we adjust, isn't that, we adjust. >> that's what we should be focusing on. be smart about this. this is most lick an issue of adaptation, in the long run we'd also like to not, you know, keep the earth warming and keep the sea levels rising. and let's find it, but find it it cheap in investing research and development. >> john: and president obama talked about spreading famine. famine isn't spreading. in fact, people are finding
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new ways to grow more food. >> global warming means we'll produce more food in the u.s. where more warmth will actually be a good thing, but a problem in the third world, but we have to make sure we have adequate free trade otherwise the third world won't get to it. >> john: the president said storms stronger with each passing america season, it's not true. >> what we know we've seen increasing damages from hurricanes over the last tun years. >> john: because more people build on the edges of oceans. >> absolutely and much more expensive homes. if you actually adjust for that there's no tendency. global warming probably will do slightly more damage, but if you want to actually help people not being damaged, you should focus on adaptation in florida. for instance, stop subsidizing insurance which encourages people to build irresponsibly. >> john: we tend to spend more money on the people who shout
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the loudest. >> absolutely. we should be focusing on-- >> and for doing that thing, dedespise you, and thrown out of the club? >> and i think, this is the real problem about global warming and quite frankly a lot of other issues, that there's such a polarization in the conversation, it's either the end of the world or not happening at all, but what we need to find is a pragmatic middle. yes, global warming is real, it's not the end of the world. let's fix it, but fix it smartly. >> john: and part of warming might be a nice thing. fewer people die in warm spells than cold spells. >> i come from denmark, we're probably going to like the fact that temperatures rise, many places in the third world where it's already pretty darn warm are not going to like it so we should accept the fact we'll probably be well off by limiting the amount of 67 temperature rise. >> john: thank you, bjorn
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lomborg. >> john: next, conspiracy, i don't trust my government, but some people don't even believe that this was real. they say america faked the moon landing. conspiracy, when we return. your finances can't manage themselves. but that doesn't mean they won't try. bring all your finances together with the help of the one person who can. a certified financial planner professional. cfp. let's make plan.
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> >> hearing neil armstrong and buzz aldrin walking on the moon. it's exciting watching that and yet, today. 6% of americans think it was all done in a hollywood studio. faulked by our government in order to avoid the humiliation of losing to the soviet union in the space race. and that doesn't surprise me people come up to me in airports and say, how come you don't report how the government created crack to kill black people or aids to kill gays or there's a new world order or totalitarian world government. i say to them.
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why are you so convinced. if a new world order were happening, it would be a conspiracy of thousands of people all over the world, wouldn't it leak? wouldn't some of those people talk about it and we in the media put it on the front page, a big headline? don't you think the fact it's not on the front page mean it probably is not true? and they look at me and don't believe, i don't convince them. why are some people so eager to believe in conspiracy. michael shermer discusses that, believing from goats and gods from politics and conspiracy. so, michael, there's a plot for one world government? and people believe that? >> right, those are the-- yeah, they do. they actually think that there's an attempt at world domination, there's 12 people living in london shall the
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illuminati and basically with conspiracies, unlike claims that we check as skeptics that some of them are true. watergate was a conspiracy and attempted assassination and then successful assassination of lyincoln was a conspiracy. what criteria do we have? basically, the more people that have to be involved, the less likely it is to be true. the more xocomponents that come together and have to be adjusted perfectly, less likely to be true. and three people have to keep their mouth shuts and two of them are dead. said that years ago and watergate, the most powerful administration in the world and they couldn't break into a hotel successfully, and in any case and blabbed about it afterwards. >> john: and to date, many americans believe that
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september 11th was orchestrated by president bush as an excuse to wage war on iraq. >> but think about what would have to come together for this? we already know that the planes hit the buildings and seen the videos of it, not only did that happen, but they also believe that explosive devices were intentionally planted inside both world trade center buildings, two of the most secure in the world. somehow, conspirators got in there and months ahead of time planted bombs inside, in other words, once you start spinning tyou have hundreds and hundreds of elements that would have to come together and thousands of people that would have to coordinate this, not the one of them wants to go on your show to tell what they really saw and not one told their spouse or girlfriend, pillow talk, look what i did or do you know what i saw, not one? because this is what happens, we find out about conspiracies, people can't keep their mouth shut and yet, nothing like that happened with 9/11. 9/11 was done exactly how we think it was done, by al-qaeda and not by the bush administration. >> and yet, 16% of americans
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say it's very likely that federal officials had had a role in this, more say somewhat likely, only slightly more than half say not likely. some believe it's because they think the corporate media had been called that, the corporate media were implicit, were complicit in coverups. >> right, even if that were true, that somehow, let's say rupert murdoch ran the news, and we already know that there's hundreds of different media sources that somebody like a drudge. think of how drudge got his name, by being an alternative media. that somebody would be the next drudge by blowing open the biggest story of the century, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the bush administration and we have the proof and here it is. surely, somebody would do that. >> john: and i should say as someone worked in the corporate media abc and now for rupert, that the media can't control us.
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the people at aabc hated business and what anyone told them do do and rarely does anyone tell us to do anything, and we really do have a free press in america. >> that's right, we do. >> john: how could so many people think that was faked in a studio? >> well, in part. because it's such a fantastic, amazing feat that it seems like gosh, could they really have done that? if you think about it, in terms of technology at the time it would have been a better feat to film something like that and pull it off without all the engineers working the a nasa keeping track of the telemetry keeping track of the spacecraft headed to the moon. that would have had to have been coordinated by some sort of fantastic satellite telemetry and that wasn't possible at the time. why do people believe these things? in part, it's cognitive disdense, dewant to balance our view of the world the way
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it should be. assassination of jfk, has to be something big comparable to killing a president. lee harvey oswald, acting alone, a lone nut, nobody? that doesn't feel. >> princess di, a princess, what did she die of, speeding, drunk driving and seat belts. nothing more mundane. she's a princess and so it had to be a conspiracy, a murder plot, assassination, that feels bet tower most people. >> john: thank you, michael shermer, it may feel better, but it's not truements not true. >> john: and coming up i'll tell you why you should not trust me. ♪ oh! [ baby crying ] ♪ what started as a whisper ♪ every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. ♪ slowly turned to a scream ♪
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i'd like to say you could trust us here at the stossel show because we work hard to research the facts, get to the truth. but you can't trust us either. even the show title is wrong, correct grammar should be who can you trust. and who sounds pompous and at least on this show we try to be aware of our biases and i report how the human brain goes wrong and i know i have something that researchers call confirmation bias. i tend to believe things from people i like. or fit the way i see the world. my life experiences taught me to believe that when people like ron paul say something, it's probably true, usually true, but i know that's my confirmation bias, he so, because i know that-- i know about that i'm reluctant to take strong stands on things like abolishing the fed. i still want to do more research. confirmation bias means we're even more likely to notice
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things that fit our beliefs. when there's a full moon people tell you there's more crime, more babies are born, hospital emergency rooms get busy, sometimes, somehow, the full moon makes people crazy. lots of people believe it, but just not true. and studies show there is no difference when the moon is full. but we notice the full moon and if we've heard the myth about the moon and violence, then when we hear the sirens, we make that connection, we remember that. and that's confirmation bias. and it's powerful, ask cops and nurses in hospital emergency rooms, even they believe there's more action when the moon is full. and all of this is a round about way of getting to a more important issue. america is going broke, and job growth has stalled. what's to be done? politicians claim they can address those problems by managing our economy. democrats say the reason unemployment is now finally fallen is because of all the government spending.
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politicians tell us, our targeted investment planned by us, will rejuvenate the economy. and when the economy does recover, some voters will then remember those statements and say, oh, the politicians fix things. but that's confirmation bias and it's not true. the economies recover on their own when property is respected and people are left free. saying that we shouldn't trust the politicians to solve our problems is not saying that we can't solve our problems. what i finally learned is this, despite the strutting and arrogance of the political class, most of what they do makes our proms worse. private individuals solve problems best. government doesn't deliver, but markets do, and markets don't have confirmation bias. the markets aren't perfect, but they represent the wishes and insights of millions of people and they allow for a world in which free people are free to take risks and
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innovate. and that's a world where more people prosper. we need to retrain our brains and rethink who we can trust. that's our show, thank you for watching. good night. we want to protect the house. right. but... home security systems can be really expensive. to save money, we actually just adopted a rescue panther.
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i think i'm goin-... shhh! we find that we don't need to sleep that much. there's an easier way to save. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. droid razr by motorola. buy one for $199.99, get another one free. and back for a limited time, get twice the data for the same low price. verizon.
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when the doctor told me that i could smoke for the first wee.. i'm like...yeah, ok... little did i know that one week later i wasn't smoking. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. it reduces the urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. if you notice any of these stop taking chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of depression or other mental health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. don't take chantix if you've had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you develop these stop taking chantix and see your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, tell your doctor if you have new or worse symptoms. get medical help rightway if you have symptoms of a heart attack.
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