and in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture as the new debt limit deadline approaches the g.o.p. lays out their demands to go along with raising the debt ceiling and you could leave or maybe you can't but more spending cuts aimed at the middle class meanwhile the capital was constant has a very striking resemblance to a scene from the one nine hundred thirty s. great depression details on how long the walkerville is planned to stay put and it seems the network that calls itself fair and balanced is actually low and

struggling at least in the ratings department so why spock's so-called news suddenly in the dumps going to be that america has finally seen through the right wing spin. you need to know this there are new twists in the ongoing debt limit debate a closed door meeting last week president obama set a drop dead date for a debt limit increase of july fourth in response where that one hundred republicans in the house of representatives wrote a letter to speaker john boehner instructing him on what he should be negotiating for other words is like a ransom letter the demands of this large minority of house republicans include seven hundred billion dollars in spending cuts targeting mostly working class families these fringe republicans also want statutory spending caps to hold federal

spending and no more than eighteen percent of g.d.p. currently federal spending accounts for about thirty eight percent of g.d.p. so we're talking drastic cuts and finally here's the kicker publicans want to pass a balanced budget amendment that handcuffs our government from spending in the future and. acquires a supermajority for any new tax increases a move that was of effectively in trying the bush tax cuts a new american law indefinitely as the letter reads the fast approaching debt ceiling vote gives us an opportunity to make a bold statement to the american people but what direction we want our country to go seems the direction republicans want to take us toward is the libertarian paradise of somalia so why is it that as the clock nears midnight to reach a deal on the debt limit republicans here are coming out with a new list of demands that sabotage any hopes of bipartisan negotiations could it be that they don't want the debt ceiling raised but they want the economy to tank to make president obama look bad in next year's elections after all isn't that

exactly what senate minority leader mitch mcconnell said he wanted to do after the midterm elections last year. but our top political priority over the next two years should be to president obama and term joining me now to talk more about this issue is john nichols washington correspondent with the nation magazine john welcome it's great to be with you to great to have you are the republicans trying to crash the economy some of them are some aren't look the republican party is probably the most divided political party we've seen in modern times you just saw it play out in remarkable ways on the votes on afghanistan in the patriot act where john boehner was scrambling to hold barack obama's butt out of the fire and so the fact all of his own and his own he was afraid the deficit is right resolution actually passed and so you have to understand this republican party is not a disciplined party they were very disciplined going into the two thousand and ten election now they're polling in a lot of different directions and surely yes i can guarantee you there's a group of republicans who would gladly get together and say anything we can do to

defeat barack obama anything and that includes stirring up economic trouble but we have to understand there are also republicans who are very you know true believers in their responsibility in their duties and so for bame one. not that i'd struggle to are but i would say olympia snow. is pretty snow susan collins yeah go ahead maybe even and maybe even john boehner and what about dick lugar you know i know that a couple of these guys behave like the adheres all through but in the house of representatives harder but here's the here's the deal and this is the important thing to john boehner this is a whole bunch i mean this guy's got to grow up he's got to be an adult and he has going to have to govern. he has a majority but he has the discipline and if you want to look for an example of how to do that look at nancy pelosi you know she disciplined a really tough majority ansi flosi though we're a seven hour seven day week so she works ten hour days and the cause that i'm

hearing in town and i don't think i'm talking out of school is that john boehner works a four or five hour day or six or seven at the most i'm really likes to show up in the evening at the clubs and got a couple of balls but a little bit famous for sitting out on the one of the decks of the capitol sunning it midday so you know this is a guy who has has not shown the personal discipline or the political discipline to be in the position he's in he's about to face one of those great tests and frankly i think he's a very great risk of failing if he does he's going to do his party a lot more damage than he doesn't sell well that's that's i guess that's the question if the republicans succeed in not passing the debt limit and moody downgrades our bonds and you know the chinese or other sister fleeing from them. it could be a real mess the flipside of that is this this packwood letter that you have brought to you here the from the office of management or the g.a.o. the general probability office saying this is back in eighty five bob was

in the senate and there was the same debate going he was the man to i mean if you're ever busy before he got in trouble yeah bob packwood was the main and he was in that position where he was. find it's like him or not he was the guy they basically deferred to on an awful lot of financial issues and so he goes to the g.a.o. and says you know if if we don't raise the debt ceiling can the government do some can and they choose to pay the treasuries so we don't default and just not pay whoever we decide not to pay like for example well i would say. now how about not paying any federal highway funds education funds etc to any states whose entire congressional delegation has voted not to raise the debt ceiling which is probably ten fifteen states question western states to be honest and oklahoma while mean let's you get you get this one you're going to understand what we're talking about here if the congress fails to act and they essentially defer to the executive

branch to act unfortunately they've done that on issues like war and peace they have not declared wars and they have a lot of barack obama to do if he chooses them dinner and renditions or tradition the list is on now it appears they are considering deferring to barack obama on the economy on the whole of this fiscal policy i mean i doubt very much that the end of the day they'll do that but frankly if they choose to my sense is that barack obama then will face his own test and that is because he choose to govern in the way that franklin roosevelt or lyndon johnson would have well the amazing thing is that this might open up that opportunity for i think frankly he had that opportunity the first six months of his presidency he did not use it and then the moment was gone the political capital was gone and it probably won't reappear until after he's reelected assuming he is or if this kind of crisis they argue about how there is a there's a historical reference point here

a gentleman named bill clinton when when they got into that shutdown the government moment bill clinton won that fight and it actually gave him quite a bit of space for a number of months i'm not going to suggest that he used it as well as as i would like him to use i pushed. after. the acid moments come and a president either seizes them or he becomes a kind of a second tier president not one of those great leaders but one of those ones that you know we kids have to memorize their names you know it's very interesting to consider how this is just very quickly the last minute you know what would happen if this list of demands is met the federal government basically becomes like the states that it's madness and in fact frankly it would be maybe the tipping point that would actually bring tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people a street on federal policy we've seen it in the states people have got incredibly charged up tomorrow national nurses united and other folks are going to be here in washington trying to put forward some of these issues in a big way my sense is that if these sorts of demands really went into play you

wouldn't have thousands you would have hundreds and thousands of those routes because the people do get it you know i think you're absolutely right john thanks brother to see if things are. ever in the history of the world as a nation cut its way to prosperity after world war two when our debt as a percentage of g.d.p. was far higher than it is today president harry truman and republican president dwight eisenhower used government spending to grow our economy out of debt republicans know this they know spending cuts will harm our economy yet here they are pushing for cuts anyway because as mitch mcconnell said making president obama one term president and not thanks in the economy is their number one priority. is jon stewart singlehandedly bringing down fox news in the recent nielsen ratings

the daily show averaged two point three million viewers and nineteen percent increase in the month of may alone a number that beats every single show on trucks except o'reilly but o'reilly's hold on the top may not last long either as viewership dropped nine percent last month. along with most of the other shows on fox especially glenn beck show that its ratings on a seventeen percent overall fox viewership is down ten percent said a photo news bubble for angry white guys with air france on guns gays in the war on christmas but now those same angry white viewers appear to be thinking about economic issues as they lose their jobs and homes and phone users only solution is tax cuts for billionaires like murdoch so even though the daily show is primarily a comedy shows jon stewart himself often points out more people are getting their news from comedy central than from fox so-called news it's a sad commentary on the state of american media and the battle for news dominance is between a right wing propaganda outlet and comedy channel here to offer his take on the issue and other issues of the day is the endgame or vice president and t.

boone pickens free market fellow at the business and media institute and apparently our in-house authority today i mean are good. thought of gladly not an expert but it was the horrifying press conference i also own always amazed when you go after fox like they're going to side with you one of one of the pick fox as the great sea or than you would typically do something that you're going to easily squash i don't you're going to harry you comparing it to a comedy show that's like comparing ed schultz to america's top model and you know everybody wants to get that you have got to go out there i have no problem with i have no problem with advocacy i mean i'm going to program right here you know where we're i'm advocating a position my problem is the word used in their name and i just think you know if an organization is going to represent us off as a news organization they should just do news and you know if you look at all the other networks some don't don't do the exact same thing they do the worst every knew how good their news programs are about news every organization the world has

you know that the news organizations news and commentary fox's news and commentary big deal you know there is no there is no difference but as far as a commentary on like the c.b.s. evening news the n.b.c. commentary and their. but a lot of the also going to be later shows through the weekend shows but there is a cause it is they're part of the c.b.s. news reports a.b.c. news reports this is you know these are products of news organizations they have news people running them christiane amanpour you know goes on this is not often history is she right if you watch that show oh well she goes on somebody else's show which she has runs it's the sunday show that the whole context is that it's a news talk you know the pinions and shouldn't shouldn't we be concerned about that shouldn't i mean there used to be a time i did news back in the seventy's in michigan and the station that i worked at if i this was you know back before reagan blew up the fairness doctrine and clinton side it's all occasions if i even talked to the sales people in that

station i would've been fired because i was news so now we have more free speech why is it that well it's not it's not free speech and this is so that it would read the news department could know because we knew that regardless of what might be happening to our advertisers in you know in the news we would report the news period and now you've got news where the company that owns the news you know the news divisions of course are now into the entertainment of the ends of the network and so they're instead of running news stories they're they're writing stories about the big movie that the parent corporation just you know has come out x. week and people go it's a free markets people get to choose this is what they want to watch and what they don't know what it's all yes and no i mean there's there's there's not that much real news out there it's mostly infotech it's well i mean agrees a lot of americans one in four to move america do we are in for things we thought it wasn't jefferson right that you know if we don't have a well informed electorate we're not going to have a functional democracy and isn't to a large extent that we have a dumbed down electorate not only heads but there's

a lot of people to blame for that i mean american public is partially to blame because they choose to watch what they want to watch you know you look at networks like n.p.r. p.b.s. they do a lot of the same thing and they've got opinion mixed in with their news as well there's there's no you know the. less just against fox and then there were crowing about the decline of ratings leaving the network so so people are going to start watching his show is he is this is he going to do a pull a pat robertson because he thought it was too weak or where there is no it is doing it oprah he's good at it he realizes he can go start his own network he's he's a celeb he's got he's he's a multimedia journalist news commentator whatever you would call it the blaze is his web site is doing dramatically well so you know he's just realize he can produce books he can go first as it was he didn't he didn't care about politics he was he was in it for the money you know he made thirty eight million bucks a year well he's not just in it for the money clearly he's not sort of going to

anybody who goes on television after what a lot of what i'm going to televangelist nobody who is a television talk about the road to serfdom is not just in it for the money i mean that's not a that's not a fun book you know the old let's let's you drive to work in public to read something they're not he's not going to pick the road surface which is kind of wonky economics and he gives drives it only two step but what he didn't get to the top of amazon dot com just by talking about well that's not that's i mean not somebody who's simply you know for the moment well i mean you could say the same thing about jon stewart every time he interviews an author there and they're both because just you know about him is what it is just it's certainly not what i mean he will put some people on his words as of the city's news you know the fact he goes out of his way to point out that it's not substance i thought isn't a lot of different you know and i just i can't tell you are we seen i mean with this anthony weiner spectacle to bring it back to when he said you want to come in to us everybody is kind of creeped out about it we have to run through a theory that. would that him and bill clinton and the whole thing i mean haven't

we gotten we moved into kind of a world of bread and circus it's you know what do we have the people who entertain and you don't have to worry about we haven't moved into a do that mere fact that you use something that's only a two thousand or twenty five hundred year. old reference we have just moved into it we just continued it i mean this is he is that really the best but is that the part of the roman empire we want to emulate you know collegial is saying if you give the people enough bread you provide them with a regular circus you know if it were in the morning human beings are human beings and they like to be entertained i mean that's why people watch the voice or what you know whatever of the watch on popular television they want to be entertained and so sometimes news is entertaining i'm just i'm just wondering what happened to the nation that tocqueville wrote about well i mean you're the average of the farmer and you knew more about european politics that would have been resolved through the information overload era and i mean that is a large part of the problem i mean your previous guest has written about this but

i've seen him speak about it you were an era where there's so much information where i think people just assume the default of the day stuff and think the full two you know of the classic. all politics is local before the fall to what matters to them so stuff that entertains and stuff that affects directly into their lives but a lot of this bigger stuff doesn't affect them though i think and i think i think you're close to something here it's it's odd that i'm not shouting it from its face pro-choice because we will i said i will tell of the sensitive but it will happen as jefferson repeatedly noted that without the public being fully informed about the issues of the day our democratic republic can't work great frankly now more than ever jefferson's words ring true. it's time for ideally pull your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question is fox news bubble for angry white men bursting your choices are yes the daily show is averaging one thousand percent increase viewership has dropped or no

once glenn beck leaves at the end of june fox will read it but i've got it's our production so let us know what you think will be open till tomorrow morning. after the break i'll tell you democrats in wisconsin are pitching ways to. fight back against a radical republican and. that's fine with twenty four seven live streaming news towns like you about the ongoing financial hurricane unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find. me to the. most in more aren't. just.

for. a tent city is springing up our own say capitol in madison wisconsin to protest governor walker's radical right wing budget plan wisconsinites is set up with they're calling walkerville a take on the hoovervilles from the great depression more than one hundred tents were pitched by nine pm on saturday night and some people plan to stay camped out through june twentieth for as long as it takes to roadblock governor scott walker's middle class and gender elsewhere scott walker's agenda is costing fellow

republicans their jobs or may as recall actions against republican state senators are slated to begin next month it was cancer of public and already has a dirty little schemed about the upcoming recall elections as a letter from a republican party chairman read we need to make sure democrat challengers face primaries to allow republicans time to mount a campaign as in they need to run fake democrats in local elections to disrupt real democrats from winning. so as the people of wisconsin are trying to throw republicans out of office of the recall elections wisconsin republicans are trying to undermine our electoral system so are there no limits to how low republicans will go to an out of power in that state or more on this i'm joined by mike pate sconce and democrats welcome mike thanks for having me great to have you with us first of all hoovervilles walkerville tell me what's going on with this story is this just you know some kids who are having a good time camping in the park or is this turning into a major movement it's turning into a major movement it really is sort of you know in addition to all the things that

are going on in wisconsin people just you know felt the need to speak out especially people you know in madison that don't have recall elections right in their district this is really a way that they can get involved to really make a statement that scott walker's budget is ruining the middle class in wisconsin is it hoovervilles back when herbert hoover was president of the great depression were made up of people who were homeless people who were unemployed and homeless and i'd hate you know it was a camp on the on the lawn of the white house or wherever i mean actually there were bills all over the country. and some of them were not done with enthusiasm and some of them literally were just kind of handmade sluggers that were referred to as who are bills is this if you know what's the make up of the people who are doing this but i think these are people who lives would be directly impacted by the serious severe budget cuts that scale walker is proposing or there are people who wouldn't be impacted but know people who are just care deeply about with their discounts and

values that are getting thrown out the window you know you still have a great hope we had a great public education system in this state and walker is proposing a billion dollar cut to education you know we're talking about not having our garbage picked up on a weekly basis anymore we're talking about you know laying off thousands of state workers eunice really is. a pivotal moment wisconsin history and he's doing all this so that he can pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires do have that right you know he's in the amount of the tax cuts about the same as a lot of it is the and he actually raise taxes on the working poor last week by eliminating the earned income tax credit so i mean it's really it's doing the same thing reagan did reagan raise taxes that working people love in times and cut taxes of rich people three times during his very similar well he's compared himself to ronald reagan most notably in a taped phone call that he got pranked with a david koch so i mean it's not abnormal to think that he has cut taxes for millionaires billionaires and corporations and raise taxes on the working poor and then propose a slew of cuts that go right after the poor and the working class the. the the

recall elections yes the six republican senators in wisconsin have been certified by the secretary of state out he recalls that the republican party tried to initiate against a number of democratic senators have not been certified what's the deal that's gone well the reason the recall elections against the republicans have not against our three democrats not yet been certified is because we have found and have hundreds of affidavits confirming thousands of fraudulently obtained signatures you know there is a signature of dead people in there and. one district they went to a native american reservation and said that the people that sign this form are signing a form for tribal rights some people told they were signing a form to recall governor walker people that are out now allied to the republican party hired these out of state you know fly by night operatives to come in and lecture theatre of signature gatherers many of whom had criminal records and some who even committed crimes in wisconsin sort of the holy grail of crimes someone stole a backpack at lambeau field which is not the way to ingratiate yourself the average

response and it's incredible and they really have so these six republicans who are who are up for recall i think these are live pictures behind us here. what are the odds of this happening then and i mean we we thought that with the state supreme court we were going to see i realize it's a nonpartisan race essentially the woman who was the reply democrat was going to win and at the last minute one of the very republican districts hey look at all these ballots we found just enough to flip the election to the republicans. are we going to see the same kind of stuff i am sure that the republicans are going to try their usual tricks and fraud and you mentioned you know the shenanigans they're pulling with putting democrats running republicans as democrats in these primaries to try to buy more time but you know we have recruited excellent candidates to run i think the republican party knows that if you election were held today they would lose the majority of their cell july twelfth they'd lose a majority and buying them an extra four weeks i think is just going to delay the inevitable which is the democrats are very likely to retake power in wisconsin

because of scott walker and paul ryan's radical agenda now. in california in oregon in actually in a number of states the damage that republican rule has done has been in grave you know things like requiring supermajorities from the legislature jackass in tax increases whether it by ballot initiative by prostitution amendment these are things that are not easily done you know. to what extent if these if i guess it's takes three of these senators being thrown out you have to what extent can the gammage that walker has done so far beyond don and to what extent can it not be undone by this election if there is going to be continued fallout from the things that scott walker is rammed through this legislature regardless whether you take back the legislature or not i think the most important thing that'll come with picking up at least three seats for wisconsin democrats is putting an immediate stop a check on this runaway abuse of power that we've seen scott walker and republicans

doing in wisconsin i think that's the most important thing and then we are going to have to go to work and win a few more elections recall governor walker which i believe is going to happen next year to really make you know roll. back from the awful draconian changes that scott walker has made in wisconsin there well and hopefully that will go viral and michigan and ohio and indiana and i think what happens in wisconsin is going to be a bellwether for republican policies every one of your lips to god's ears thanks so much thank you great having your wisdom while the pro-labor protests in wisconsin a bit affective in raising awareness of the republicans a radical austerity agenda protests in europe against the same sorts of policies are growing bigger and bigger over the weekend there was a major uprising in greece one of the nation's hardest hit by the banks global takedown of the financial system in two thousand and eight more than fifty thousand people gathered central athens to protest their government's austerity measures there transnational corporate tax dodgers their bankers who crashed the system and their corrupted politicians who are letting everyone get away with it untaxed

corporate earnings make up about thirty percent of jews reeses g.d.p. right now greek politicians facing massive budget cuts and deficits have turned their chainsaws on working class safety nets instead of corporate tax dodgers similarly here in the united states republicans are leading working class families dry with enormous budget cuts and trying to rise medicare at the same time they won't touch corporate tax dodgers other than to consider making their tax rates even lower and they want to throw bankers in jail so the only difference in greece in america seems is that there are pretty thousand people protesting outside congress today here in the united states. maybe it's time we start. crazy alert roadrage wise sardonic irony and the lack of american history knowledge where the only thing is to define sarah palin's recent bus trip up through the american north east coast reckless driving can be added to the list now journalists

following the bus tour report of the pale as road entourage routinely road traffic laws often speeding twenty miles an hour over the speed limit rarely stopping at red lights or bothering to signal their turns and pale as busking nearly killed a biker in philadelphia just barely missing him after one of its harrowing high speed turns let me guess sarah palin instructed her entourage to paid no attention to local police's gotcha traffic laws but i'm being told we've just received some behind the scenes footage from the bus let's take a look. this is much better. than. let's just hope there isn't a sequel to this pailin adventure we all remember how that one turned out. coming up the competition for summer jobs has got even tougher for teenagers they're now

battling for pay against people their parents or. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions completely through it through people had made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.