you know as we enter it we are the winner leaders winner and we're winner we enter the winner gates sometimes these things happen you heard it from every mainstream news network in america we are gate is taking over with an economic crisis and three wars underway that's what the junk that's making headlines. meanwhile isn't the financial crisis what congressman weiner wants to get us to be talking about anyway so as democrats and republicans battle it out the winner of that debate remains unclear battles within the parties themselves play out. a verdict is

handed down in the case of seven nato soldiers charged with war crimes is once again the case for those behind what some are calling a massacre let off the hook so why is this becoming the norm so many others have to pay. it's thursday june second four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out there watching our team. well it looks like we've reached that time of year again summertime with the news is simply slow it's not like the us is suffering from an economic downturn unseen since the great depression or even embroiled in at least three wars that can't be the case because if you turn off all of the mainstream media networks what you see is this an unimpressive crotch shot of a congressman is apparently the most important news in the world right now it makes

me extremely stressed out thank god i found this stress wiener because this is becoming ridiculous that whether i push the channel up or down new york congressman anthony weiner has invaded my life. well no matter where you turn he and his. joke are the top story democratic congressman anthony weiner has just finished speaking with n.b.c.'s luke russert about that lewd photograph that was posted from his twitter account and you would know if this is your underpants for many reporters and a host calling for reinforcements calling for someone to be held responsible for the biggest question here is if his account was attacked was hacked why is he not reported to law enforcement leaders case is dumb but if he was half that serious so the f.b.i. should be involved the network sent in their big guns to get to the bottom of it is

there a picture out there of you in your. world or words that you are worried about fox news took credit for originating this groundbreaking story but may surprise you most about the scandal is that it may have all originated right here on hannity according to m s n b c s lawrence o'donnell there's a perfectly good reason congressman weiner is keeping things they the longer you look at a picture especially the pixellated version the more you begin to understand why congressman weiner might not wrong to deny that that is a picture of him in fact the longer i look at it the more i don't want to deny that it might be a picture of me jealousy aside this is a hard hitting investigation no one is giving up on because you haven't answered a question about whether the photo is you or not you realize that now everybody thinks the photo is you and so where there's smoke there's fire there must be a real scandal here you must've been doing something creepy here. let me ask you

whether or not you want to answer that question and then let me ask what the answer to it is when you're named wiener it kind of goes with the territory. goes with the territory and you know no matter where you turned on congressman weiner and his. junk at the top story so we've brought in christine o'donnell is a professor at georgetown university to talk about this are you surprised about this that i mean everywhere you turn this is what you see well i'm not surprised i mean it's summer it's slow i mean we haven't gotten into the political primary season yet we do have an economic crisis here in europe we have food an energy crisis except our wars that's not important i mean we have our eye is that important because the tough stuff it's tough to explain you even see meltdowns within the democrats or republicans you know domestically over and you can and me and things aren't fitting into neat little boxes anymore so we strive to look at

stuff like this first was arnold now this. and before that charlie sheen. i mean what do you tell your students about this turn to who knows maybe one day be making decisions as executive producer and what to put on the news well i mean what's ironic is that the suppose a target of this crotch has conforte and issued a statement she's a journalism student as a matter of fact in washington now washington d.c. saying washington state let's let them share some of the economy some time. said look i never even saw this and that i know my name is being bandied about as the harlot of twitter and you know his his his is his mistress and you know we have a love child so i mean that shows you how it's it's how it's exploded and what's happened is that here here's where it becomes interesting it is a distraction from some serious things that are going on that we should be covering but the interesting thing is when you look at the carnival itself how it's playing out because really on one side you have arguably somebody who was arrogant. best an

idiot at most who may have taken a picture of his of his his. becker as we as my grandfather used to say and now at the same time you have a political narrative that's being generated through through fox through right wing news sites and blogs you know that vested interest distracting in a direct sense from the real news out there i mean there was a news it came out today with john mccain's one of his campaign chairman said that the republican field in two thousand and twelve is a mosaic of nonsense so how do you distract from that and from the problems up on the hill the republicans are having with their own members with the debt with the juicy story and i was at the root of it andrew breitbart i know that one one thing that i could the only thing i can perhaps use and it's defense is just recently we did see that scandal with the new york congressman almost nude photos on creating

wealth and he ended up stepping down because. it's interesting because we here at r.t. we just wonder how do americans really feel about this i mean does this story deserve the hype that it's been getting so we sent our two producer quincy garfield to hit the streets to find out the answers to that question. the past few days the news networks have been covering what's going on with this wiener gate scandal but to the mainstream networks care more about this than the people do you find out. don't really care much about it it seems like more of a distraction than anything. i think is important last year well it's been in newspapers and you know cable networks for about four days now. so i'm just wondering is it an important story to you know do you want to get to the bottom of it. having all the politicians somewhere so. unless we change the system it's not going to change anyway so you know whatever that doesn't really make a difference because refusal to deny that it's

a picture of i think it's probably like it's a story a lot of. buzz a room of the book isn't important to you to know whether or not he was the one who said. not really but i think there are far more pressing things in this world that could get a little bit more coverage like but tornadoes. the continued crisis in the middle east our country's fiscal situation i think it's pretty straightforward there's think twitter hackings all the time i just think it's not really a big deal i think it's in the news a certainty it's personal business does have anything to do with me so i don't i'm not interested in it really do you think if there are any other stories in the news that people should be focused on or do you think it's a big important story i think there's a bigger thing in the world in general then a congressman crotch on twitter. so many interesting points of the way that an outsider but i want to i want to go to one person who said you know everyone loves

a good political scandal is that true or does the media not it know everyone does love it i mean if this has been around since forever i mean you know god only knows what would have happened if we had twitter other social media and web sites where people found out about thomas jefferson and sally i mean you know or grover cleveland and you know he was a possibility maybe you could rate somebody and had a love child into two presidents the united states but i mean that was this is now we can take that focus that people would churn for political gain interest from the seriousness and the sell papers back then were pamphlets and to get eyes on a website or a ratings now you know now we have the technology to back that up and what is a small scandal or a non traverse you becomes a big one and you see we. think of another term the congressman's response is again i mean yes in this day and age not responding is

basically admission of guilt is that right is that fair now but you know if you were to come forward and say yeah maybe i did take a picture but i don't know i mean that's the narrative now i don't. no how it got on twitter and with the support of the post victim here i'm using words that somebody else can read tweet that i had said on r t a you know the word victim when she comes from she's come forward and said i'm going to solve this and you all are crazy and i don't think this came from the congressman that you know those play are for not each other and it became it becomes a bigger mystery it's more you know first day in the casey anthony trial in florida you know i mean another thing that the mainstream here certainly all over when it really doesn't relate it to anyone's life and if a little bit disgusting if you it is that i mean what about this issue that you were saying these other stories they're just not so some of these complex story like war and what's going on right now in yemen and syria and you know where is gadhafi been lately you know what about staying on top of these stories which

arguably do have kind of a bigger impact on everyone's life well it's first of all i mean for certain news outlets that have a political narrative that they want to get forward and i'm talking everything from from blogs and news sites to so far news they have a vested interest in keeping a story like this alive because it does distract from things that maybe they don't feel is very helpful to their narrative on the other hand you have some outlets who are basing playing off of that they don't want to seem unfair they also you know they want to present something that fills a twenty four hour cycle that will get ratings that will get you know guys on their news sites you know when they're called crisscrossing platforms from their from their new sites to their t.v. stations and we do want to rate it so we'd like that people like that despite what you hear on the street because there is a block of people whether it's for political reasons because they hate him because he's a liberal down democrat in a loud mouth or they just like a good scandal who will keep on that but yemen or greece you know about to default

you know all that stuff is too complicated it doesn't it's going to affect. their lives directly but they don't but this stuff is more of a. junk food but there's stuff that you know even inside the yes that's right no yeah yeah a lot of ways. that's going to affect them personally that's what is going to affect them personally even human grease the dollar you know chinese trade deficit this stuff doesn't affect them at all but they have to succeed on it because it's simple it's lascivious it's a game and one more thing it doesn't cost any money to show over and over again a picture does cost money to pay for a journalist to actually get in on the ground and there's no answers where things are happening as just my theory chris samaras as always thanks so much to you with a professor at georgetown university. now i want to talk about something that congressman wiener wants us to talk about anyway that is the debate over the debt ceiling flicking like it will be

a fiery one one reason it's dividing groups that are usually pretty loyal to one another republicans for example they've got their outspoken tea party members most of whom say no debt ceiling increase no way then you have speaker of the house john boehner and several other republicans who say you know what we've got to raise it in some capacity and let's make a deal sooner than later and there are other democrats most of whom also want to deal but they want to make sure certain programs remain untouched in this debate that's why the debt ceiling debate and the budget debate are locked hand in hand and for more on this topic earlier i spoke with joshua holland he's a senior writer at alter net and also has covered this topic extensively he wrote the book fifteen biggest lies about the economy and everything else the right doesn't want you to know about taxes jobs and corporate america and here's part of our conversation. well that's right paul ryan and the republicans are claiming that it will reduce the deficit by a one hundred sixty billion dollars per year over the next decade which is

significant and independent now if it's went in and kind of looked at their numbers and found first that they had made a so-called mathematical error that overstated the amount of interest savings that we would have two hundred thirty billion dollars which is quite significant and then what they did with a child did one point two trillion dollars in decreased war costs because of pre-planned troop withdrawals from afghanistan and iraq as being part of their budget so in other words these are things that were already baked into the cake that would have been the amount of deficit reduction under the obama plan under any plan because these things will happen anyway and they claim a bad there deficit reduction in the g.o.p. budget and when you add all of that up together was there one hundred sixty billion dollars per year becomes it's fifteen billion dollars per year which if you look at it seemingly large number but in the context of a three point seven trillion dollar budget it's essentially

a rounding error so they're overstating their tested reduction by tenfold a really significant amount well i want to go back to something you were just saying about the budget and sort of figuring in different cost of the war but i mean we did see earlier this year the people involved in the iraq war sort of draw down for the most part i mean shouldn't that they get some that factor in in terms of a lot less money that is going to be spent i mean a lot of it on the lower back. well sure we're spending one hundred seventy billion dollars this year in addition to the pentagon based budget to maintain troops in iraq and afghanistan and if you look at that break that down fifty billion dollars of that is for iraq this is significantly less than it was at the peak in two thousand and six. but and we'll be seeing a reduction in the. honest and as well again these things will happen no matter whose budget we we end up using no matter what budget plan we have that's about

strategic decisions to draw down troops levels that's not a result of the republicans cutting spending in their budget they're simply taken credit for these troop withdrawals that are already in the books and i should point out that congressman paul ryan the author of the g.o.p. budget plan has criticized the white house for using that kind of budgeting gimmick i want to pick your brain here now josh about you know how do you see this debate playing out i mean we just saw in that special election in new york when you talk about touching programs like medicare well you're politically doomed so who do you think is going to give in here and how much. well i think that the republican strategy is becoming pretty clear senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said that the other day that they would not raise the but the debt limit without changes to medicare and what that tells me is that he's not saying unspecified spending cuts

for example he's very specifically targeting changes to medicare and the republicans have gone and they a lot more than they can chew they thought that they would come in with their sweeping mandate to dismantle the social safety net if turned out to be very unpopular with the electorate we had a poll out this week that showed even a majority of republicans and conservatives oppose the medicare plan and they've taken a puzzling over that and they want to give themselves a way out so i think what they're doing right now the analogy has been made to holding the economy hostage is that they're saying we need to get a concession on medicare specifically so that we can go back to the voters and say this was all we really wanted and we got what we wanted and it didn't just mantle medicare as we know it so they're looking for political cover and the question is you know how how much the democrats want to give them that. the ultimate

you know the hostage is the economy and everybody seems to agree across the political spectrum that the consequences of defaulting on government debt would be absolutely catastrophic a financial crisis akin to the one that followed the housing meltdown and then a second very deep recession in a very short period of time so you know the democrats are certainly over a barrel they are ultimately the party in power and if they oversee a great recession it's going to be very tough for them at the polls of a same time they don't want to give up the medicare issue but let's look real briefly around the globe here i mean the u.s. of course not the only country with get anything done. i'd like portugal and greece to fall to pieces over that but you know other countries think more for example continuing to stand strong this i think that what's the difference here how does a country make it. you know how does that make or break a country i guess the question well there's there's a lot of different that's

a question with a lot on tact there's a lot of different factors. the u.s. has a rather unique position and that where the kind of reserve currency of the world we remain that way and we're also considered an island of stability in a sea of chaos so investors have flocked to a theoretical way that that debt hurts the regular khana me that investors lose confidence in the government's ability to pay it back they demand higher interest in order to take on more of the government's dad those higher interest rates then effect private businesses who are looking for money to finance and what we have not seen in any way shape or form is is that scenario taking place interest rates are still remain about that almost zero. and that's despite running very significant deficits in the last several years and i think that another way to look at that is if you look at germany for example germany is running up three percent out there and that's what rather modest and if interest rates other same as

ours the u.k. is running a deficit of about ten percent like we are but they've launched a painful austerity program have their interest rates change because of it you know they have also very very similar interest rates and we do. that was joshua holland senior writer and editor for alter net dot org also the author of the book fifteen biggest lies about the economy and everything else the right doesn't want you to know about taxes jobs and corporate america. switching gears now it was supposed to be a joyous day a wedding celebration instead it was a day marked by blood and by horror and by deaths of at least six people back in august of two thousand and seven and perhaps because it happened in afghanistan or be perhaps because those responsible for the deaths were nato troops but a judge a military court has found there was simply not enough evidence to convict them artes daniel bush has the story. civilians killed and nato soldiers go free

the same old story in afghanistan the threats and for a moment to be different polish soldiers put on trial for deaths including a pregnant woman and a child. on the sixteenth of august two thousand and seven water shows that were fired by polish troops in the city afghan villages. as a result six people were killed and three more severely wounded but the soldiers were cleared of all charges one of the accused told r.t. it's all been a big mistake we didn't see people. we were accidents in the south sudan was because of our and. it was damage small something very dark and it was also a problem where we multiple a grenade malfunctioned and missed its taliban target by five hundred meters claims a shit ski the prosecutors alleged it was revenge roadside bomb which killed

another polish soldier earlier in the day experts say it's unlikely anything could go so catastrophic only wrong and this is not logical the operator of the water could not make such a serious error with such a large distance the question is did they decide to fire themselves or did they receive his command from above but there is no doubt they were shooting at the village not the nearby hills the defendants all due to commanders ruled that the attack and three should be the one standing trial one to exclude from not those people should be accused maybe maybe anything. but activists while the conflict continues civilian deaths from nato bombing or inevitable i'm will only rise you know the longer the war. goes on the war situation is so the answer is i think quite simple to withdraw troops from afghanistan. beginning of any process of the

opposition of this country because the troops western troops doesn't bring some of his asian to afghanistan just the opposite as the tall goes up on both sides support for nato his mission plummets a majority in europe say opinion polls now think the conflicts going in the wrong direction. this was already unpopular in the e.u. there's the hundred billion euro of course service is being called. the source of our boys coming back in coffins is even worse leaving the civilians punished for the weakens the case sustain afghanistan even the afghan president's turning against nato after the latest fourteen civilians were killed how many because lloyd delivered his strongest words yet giving of warning and threatening war if it's happens again. it's a story most people have heard very little about but one that writer and researcher dave mark owen has been covering for years now they've joined us from vancouver

canada. and then this happened back in two thousand and seven the seven polish soldiers involved. you know as they faced twelve to twenty five years behind bars now it looks like they won't have to serve that time their defense team says simply this was a tragic accident not a deliberate crying talked about as i mean this is war after all and as we know accidents happen right. that's true. i think the facts in a case are still quite murky there's been conflicting reports since the very beginning of your original report that stated that the soldiers had a tax bill injures in revenge actually came from a report it was a person produced three days after the incident and it was done by the polish counterintelligence service their assessment suggested that this was done in revenge and when i read as we should mention for the first i think polish soldier

that was killed was killed either earlier that day or a couple days before here that same village is now you're talking about that's right there's also an american soldier that was killed at least particular soldiers knew quite well. and it suggested that in fact it was revenge for the dead american soldier either way. i believe it's still quite murky the case is still open to appeal as i understand poland. and it was dismissed or they were acquitted on grounds that the court said that they didn't have enough information for instance they didn't the court didn't even have precise information as far as the physical setting of the incident where the village was where the compound was where the civilians actually were which is slightly say i think four hundred meters from now held a village in question. these things were up in the air as far as the court was concerned and that's how i contributed to their their finding of the acquittal. i think

probably putting it in context i think it is tenants have a point when they say that it should be their commanders that were investigated now is it also a national. decision made by the investigators to not pursue the higher ups it's a nato procedure in this case or should have been proper nato procedure to mount a nato investigation. which i don't believe ever was done what how do you know how can this investigation not have been done i mean this is a case that's been going on for nearly four years now how could a nato investigation not of happened that's not the only murky thing and bought their supposedly audio recordings made by americans american troops who claim to overheard taliban soldiers. in the midst of this battle when the soldiers claim to been actually shooting a taliban supposedly the americans have

a report with recordings where the taliban are receiving this incoming fire but this apparently was never produced during the court case so it's a mystery as to whether or not this report actually exists or whether it was made up and i've even i was going to say some of the from the incident reports i know have been released on wiki leaks i mean what you keep you said time and time again in this interview the facts are murky the facts are murky which facts were allowed as evidence in the case and which facts were simply not even used to consider this i'm not able to follow terribly closely from canada what actually went on in the trial so i don't know fully but we know from very early on in the case that there was secret testimony given by some of the soldiers colleagues. as well as american who were involved the american. command of this unit in the past. and it seems like. since it's a military court that made this decision it seems that

a lot of their evidence won't be made public and i didn't mean that i want to connect the dots for a second i know the u.s. and nato forces are in afghanistan they say to bring freedom and democracy but recently we've heard from honey karzai the first democratically elected president of afghanistan who is asking the u.s. to stop conducting bombings on homes and yet it's a little clear that he doesn't really have power when he makes this request how does this work freedom and democracy a president that selected sort of through democracy and yet the u.s. sort of takes away the power. right this is the nature i think of an occupation really karzai has been making demands like this for a number of years now and on top of that it seems that there's a growing sentiment among afghans that they would just like the occupation to stop but beyond that also there is a growing consensus among observers western observers and everybody all the

conflicts that it's going nowhere that it's only going to get worse and what needs to happen is a settlement regional settlement involving pakistan involving russia and china involving central and central asian states. and some peace process that can be can be put in place to stop just cycle of killing it's now been going on for some thirty years day yes or no do you think this was a fair trial. i want to see from this distance i cannot tell i don't speak polish so i'm reliant only i'm. into english or french so i really don't have an opinion on that certainly as you mentioned this this may be appealed but as for now the soldiers this appear to be let off the hook they've markland writer activist and editor of stop war blog dot com thanks so much for joining us and if you grow.