so for all intents and purposes peace and ron says banks are ok don is doing with a business in iraq oh absolutely in iraq in iraq and you know what tom what we do lotteries are becoming economic allies you know why should why should that concerns well it depends on what they do with it are going to shards on his way out do you think you know that you know that oversee is and the average iranian has no interest in having worked with the united states i think that's true i think most to radians are actually if not pro-american at least favorably disposed to america online was the country tehran was the biggest city in the middle east on nine eleven that had a candlelight vigil in support of us absolutely absolutely that's true and i don't and that you know that hasn't gone away if we drop bombs on them that will of course it wouldn't that hasn't a lot of it but what would you have to look at is you know we receive rethinks set up and you know right now you have the arab spring and of course syria is being usually affected by the arab spring and what is happening there so it is in our interest to make sure that as best we can if the arab spring succeeds in syria does

that mean that we have to have troops in iraq not necessarily but what it does mean is that each of these players they look at them at the world map kind of like a chess board and when they look at the chess board the world map they see all the different pieces that are there and what they say is oh gosh the americans are here the americans are over this way the americans are doing these other things when even now we're back to you know if canada invaded the united states you and i would be seriously p.o.d. and we have different political perspectives trip i think you know i think it's reasonable to suggest that yes they are looking at this like a chess board but the first thing that they're looking at is their internal politics and i don't believe that it's a coincidence that the way the two states in the arab spring that actually had an arab spring that actually overthrew their governments that actually are moving very quickly in democratic directions we never dropped a single bomb and we never put a single soldier in jail and the states were trying to shove democracy down their throats with hawk missiles or a total. missiles and and cruise missiles they're pushing back well it's

interesting because what would have happened if saddam hussein had stayed in power let's pretend for a moment the world is a little bit different operations right now he'd buy it by now if the iraqi spring was going on he probably would be out to perhaps but i think the key thing you know if we want actually the thing that we learned after we threw him out was that his hold on to our power was very tenuous that he was letting people think he had weapons that he didn't have because because he didn't have that power because he'd been basically taken out by all those years of sanctions well he had to it was very interesting he's writing a novel when you look at well that's that's always a good thing to do when you're a world leader and you know you know the other thing is i mean he had nothing to do he was writing on the i'm not a romance novel but here's the here's the deal with saddam hussein everybody believed you know it wouldn't matter what the political persuasion within the united states almost everybody believed that he had weapons of mass that well actually well i didn't believe it a lot of people didn't believe you didn't but you know that harry believed you know all these other people believed it and you know when you look at it after

a after an intensive p.r. campaign from of a from a highly politicized white house well that could be but the key thing to keep in mind doesn't you know this real well but everybody felt he was real it would keep in mind remember colin powell please everybody believed it was real because it worked well for the political narrative that george bush wanted to be a war president well back in one thousand nine hundred ninety told making her supports his biographer if he became president he was going to invade iraq because by being a war president he had enough political capital to privatise social security all that obviously didn't happen but he tried but you know here's you said deal with it with iraq the key thing here is that we have a chance to make iraq a closer ally at least to go for cooperation council states and ultimately the united states now this is very important because you've got to look at what iran is trying to do i you think you are going to try to is on his way out that may be the case what is the best way to do that to just back out and start. in schools and

hospitals is that of blowing people up but we are building schools and hospitals to on but also employ people though i mean if they gradients came in and said ok we're going to occupy a country by the way we'll build some schools hospitals you can have canadian health care so you should have the conservatives would be better appreciated for imposing culture and it's not a thirty second feel sure with a big thing to keep in mind here tom is that you know you have to be very careful with troop drawdowns troop drawdowns are very important and they're very necessary for our functioning and for the military's functioning the problem that you have is if you do it too soon and you do it too publicly against it you've got to no matter what you think of those games there are still gains and gains that you've got to bring those periods in both afghanistan and iraq will go away if you know if there will be a shakedown i mean we saw this in vietnam cambodia perhaps and what has to be here are appreciate that thank you so thank you so much for both of you but these wars and this misguided foreign policy in my opinion is a symptom of us going a little crazy back in two thousand starting with the republican party let me just share a we're there you go let me just share some thoughts on this with you if i may this

is you know war is hell and in fact let's go to that whole notion not only is war hell but. the notion of of of evil we historically in the united states you know maybe maybe maybe george w. bush in the republicans just for a moment let's let's just imagine that possibly they actually went to the dark side . historically. this five pointed star was ma'am it meant man it was a good as the good thing and if you flip it upside down the upside down five pointed star with a goat with his chin chin chin and his ears nose horns was the sign of satan worshipers of this. now you can see in the american flag our stars are right side up all across america you'll see symbols with five hundred stars the stars are right side up. the man stars around the year two thousand the republican party

changed their logo from the stars being right side up to the stars being upside down coincided with the coming on the scene of george w. bush and karl rove very strange i think they need an exorcism. but let's exercise appears the actions of the number one and the bush tax cuts number two and the bush wars and number three and the crazy notion that corporations are people that money is speech and that the rich can buy our nation if we did that we might bring the republican party back to sanity back to its dwight eisenhower roots back to the days when they actually could have an opposite opinion from the democrats but honestly broker solutions and situations and have reasonable conversations exorcisms for the republican party. or to.

our ship of state is headed toward another financial crisis iceberg and republicans are at the helm why because since the financial crisis of two thousand and eight little has been done to reform wall street of its bad behavior and what little has been done republicans are now trying to undo at the end of last week the republican controlled house appropriations committee passed legislation that cuts funding for the critical government watchdogs in charge of making sure the financial crisis of two thousand and eight doesn't happen again that includes cutting the consumer financial protection bureau the republicans are doing a lot in trying to do this and pledging to block anyone who president obama nominates to run that agency the republican bill also includes holding flat the funding for the securities and exchange commission even though that agency has a lot more responsibility under the wall street reform act. so it's back to

business as usual on wall street meanwhile canadian and european financial regulators are going gangbusters with new financial regulations cracking down on their banks to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past so why is it that we're not doing the same thing here in the united states when it comes to regulating banks toure's like the rest of the world is doing now is america exceptional here to answer this question is david sirota columnist and host of the david sirota radio show on am seven sixty colorado's progress dog as well as the author of numerous books including his most recent back to our future of the nineteen eighties explain the world we live in our culture our politics our everything david welcome. great to have you here with us republicans are slashing financial watchdog budgets how do they get away with it. well this is a longstanding part of republican ideology i mean they are throwing under the guise of cutting big government they are throwing everything that they defy specifically

with big government and of course nothing that actually is what we might conventionally government so it's important to put this into context there are republican party today is not interested in for instance cutting defense spending it's not interested in the medicare system for all it would end taxpayer subsidies ation of the private health insurance industry it is as you suggest interested in cutting the parts of government here and specifically its financial donors to not like like the consumer financial protection bureau the page swish the site of yet is to basically put all of this under the under the umbrella of we're on big government that's how they i guess get away with it so are the republicans i mean it's a fairly predictable thing if they if they succeed in doing this just like you know with the commodity futures modernization act and gramm leach bliley back in ninety nine two thousand ending glass steagall and basically opening up for the banks or is to just want to mock that if they if we repeat that or if we disable our

regulatory agencies we're going to see another crash or we're going to see another you know boom and bust in the in the banking industry in fact we're not in the middle right now. are the republicans doing this in your opinion because they want to pay off the bank stars and help them get rich and therefore the bankers will help them financially or are they doing this because there's actually some self-interest for them in crashing our economy as long as it happens before the elections of november twentieth well i think it's both i don't think you can separate if you're the i me be but the boom bust cycle that we the basically our financial architecture encourages as you've reported on aggressively sends in common sense net sense national well up the income ladder and that do you think disproportionately small number of people will campaign have a disproportionately more money than they've ever had part of that goes to fund political campaigns so in some ways self-interest is alive for republicans but the

more the boom bust cycle continues in the short term because it's in this election cycle of the more their financial donors have money to give and also the board to go out and make a dishonest public rhetorical argument saying that the economy is faltering because of president obama and and that's the kind of argument that historically voters actually listen to i mean you know they use the fact i think the last president to be elected with unemployment at or above the current level to be reelected was franklin roosevelt his second term and everybody understood the great depression was going on in herbert hoover caused and you know what are other nations doing with their banks that were not doing here in the u.s. what are the lessons that we should learn. well the key thing that has gone on in sweden for instance which the washington post just reported on is the rockstar economy it's great innovation job growth it's got

a balanced budget they put on some serious capital controls on their banks and not allowing their banks to lend our at the rates that our banks have been wending out is that to say they require a bigger capital reserve in a bank or for banking go a lend out they also demand better standards for look for better loans that are guaranteed by the taxpayers that's the exact opposite of what we've done here in the united states we've simply bailed out our banking system without any strings attached in britain you see a situation which if an american president proposed this he would be accused of being a total radical. deputy prime minister proposing taking big banks that were nationalized and worse we didn't nationalize our banks and. now he's proposing taking the banks that were nationalized by pretty and handing out shares of stock to every citizen in britain and by the way this is the sec risk is this in britain right you've got the conservative prime minister saying he might consider it and you've got the

liberal of the labor party saying that this is. a proposal of course again by american standards of by how dominated our today described by the corporatists wall street this would be a completely radical proposal but as sweden shows this is the way forward over the wall but it's only a way forward if you're interested in getting off of whom bust cycle that sends income up of i mean children matter which so far the republicans seem to have no interest in david thank you so much for being with us tonight thanks for having me banks there is have spent millions on lobbying in the last few years to make sure that wall street reforms aren't put into place and republicans like faithful lapdogs are making sure the banks toure's get what they want but as david pointed out in europe and canada publicly financed elections corporate money out of politics. we don't have the same problems we do so unless we adopt the same sort of alexion reforms here in america and we all better strap in and get ready for another massive taxpayer bailout next year when the banks crash again. coming up

i'll tell you the story of the five kings who rule america and how they've turned our nation into a corporatocracy that what we need to do to reclaim small d. democratic power. that drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to create through get through it if you may who can you trust no one who is you know view with noble machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sad when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

really good or bad on the very very early ugly look about a good ohio secretary of state john huston bucking his own party hosted went on the attack against the new voter id laws that republican lawmakers are pushing all around the country laws were part of voters to show a driver's license in polls which disproportionately qualifies poor elderly and college voters mostly done. threats from participating in the electoral process in a recent statement was that highlighted this disparity and said i would rather have

no bill than one with a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect fraud and excludes legally registered voters ballots. well said so it's nice to hear from republicans who still actually believes in democracy the bad rick perry theory on the glenn beck show yesterday the cowboy governor of texas is considering a run for the white house something there was asked by back if the government can create jobs and he had this response to what. can the government actually create jobs or. actually what a government can do you can create an environment where those jobs can be created government doesn't create any jobs but they can actually run jobs away ass so if the government doesn't create any jobs then who's employing the mailman around the country and the teachers and the police officers and the firefighters and the garbage man in the food safety inspectors in our troops in the military and should i keep going who is employed you governor looks like works properly rick perry's

first priority as president would be to fire all government workers just improve with the government can't create jobs and a very very ugly pat robertson televangelist is back on a crazy train this time responding to new york decision to legalize same sex marriage and show the seven hundred club robertson told a story of god destroying the city of sodom and argue that america because of our embrace of homosexuality is headed down the same road as sort of as in god will soon destroy us. will use the term sodomy that means sodom and what's it like well we're heading that way as a nation in the in history there's never been this civilization ever in history that has embraced homesick. well i think and turned away from traditional to the traditional marriage traditional channel regretting and. there isn't one

single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality so easily it was cool to have america will if history is any guide the same thing is going to happen to us we're all a slippery slope and. pat robertson makes harold camping you know the guy who got the apocalypse from the apocalypse wrong last month makes him look reasonable and that's a very very good. yesterday senator bernie sanders took to the floor of the senate to weigh in on the debt limit negotiations and sent a message to president obama take a look. in my view the president of united states needs to stand with a vast majority of the american people and say no to the republican leadership and

make it clear that enough is enough mr president now is the time the same way to the millions in the billions in this country at the largest corporations who in many ways have a how do so good that they must participate in deficit reduction that there must be shared sacrifice we need shared sacrifice support repealing the bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires on the table in the development limit negotiations that was senator sanders message unfortunately president obama didn't get the message the white house announced yesterday that it's taken repealing the bush tax cuts for the rich are off the table meaning the only stuff it's really still left on the table are closing a few loopholes and massive spending cuts that screw over working families in america so why is it that the president of the united states

a man who's been outspoken about his disgust for irresponsible tax cuts for the rich why is it that he refuses to put his money where his mouth is and make some demands just like the republicans is need a leader of the free world the most powerful man in america well actually no he's not barack obama may be the democratically elected president united states but he's not a king and today's america is ruled by king. of them to be exact and here they are the five right wing justices on the supreme court a black robe kings rule america. chief justice john roberts justice antonin scalia justice anthony kennedy justice clarence thomas and justice sam alito these five men none of whom are like that by the people have transformed our nation in a profound way from a constitutionally limited democratic republic that our founding fathers created

into a corporatocracy with the citizens united ruling last year as well as a slew of other pro corporate rulings that have become a norm for the roberts court the supreme court has ruled that money is a form of speech and thus can't be restricted in our elections so rich people and corporations those with the most money can now speak the loudest in our democracy and here's what's really important this was not a law debated and passed in any congress it wasn't signed by any president it was the decision of five members of the supreme court who are unaccountable to the american people and that's it in fact previous congresses and previous presidents have passed laws doing just the opposite providing corporations are meddling in our politics like it's own act passed in one thousand seven that explicitly says it shall be unlawful for any corporation to make

a money contribution in connection with any election to any political office that's pretty clear but not clear enough for the kings in the high court who shred of it's own act last year and opened the floodgates holding back corporate cash from our elections i thought president obama took the bush tax cuts off the table yesterday in debt limit negotiations because he knows that in this newly powerful corporatocracy created by the supreme court at the slightest offense against the super wealthy will lead to his demise as president political one. all it takes is one billionaire hedge fund manager or two billionaire brother or a bit well barron's mad that he raise their taxes there drop five hundred million bucks maybe a week's worth of their income to drop that into the twenty twelve elections and basically buy the white house for whoever they want and same is true the senate the house the president doesn't have true power it now does nor does any member of

congress its actually own the supreme court and five justices who are wholly owned by corporate interests thomas jefferson the author of the declaration of independence and the third president of the united states feared this exact thing happening but in the second year of jefferson's presidency in the fourteenth year of our constitutional nationhood the supreme court took for itself a power that is not granted to it in the constitution nowhere in the constitution does it say that the supreme court can strike down laws like campaign finance laws passed by congress and signed by the president nowhere in fact the year before the constitution was ratified in seven hundred eighty eight alexander hamilton reassured americans that he and the others who wrote the constitution never intended that the court would have such power you can read it yourself and federalist eighty one june twenty eighth this day seven hundred eighty eight two

hundred twenty three years ago today alexander hamilton wrote the power of construing the laws according to the spirit of the constitution will enable at court to mold them into whatever shape it may think proper especially as its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the review or correction of the legislative body this is unprecedented as it is dangerous he was saying that by the way in the context of this is the argument that's being made that the court would have that kind of power and we're not giving it that power as you read into federalist number. the court has never done that they have never molded or struck down a law passed by congress until eighteen zero three in that dreadful year our nation's fourth chief justice john marshall ruled in the eighteen zero three marbury vs madison case that the supreme court could unilaterally strike down laws passed by both chambers of the legislature and signed by the president this power of the

supreme court to rewrite the laws of the land is today known as judicial review and as i said it's nowhere in the constitution when the court did it and three then president thomas jefferson was horrified your letter to the wife of john adams saying the opinion which gives to the just judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the legislative and executive also in their spears would make the judiciary a despotic branch the spot like kings in another letter to his old friend spencer rowan and chief justice of the virginia supreme court patrick henry's uncle your nephew thomas jefferson wrote if this decision be sound that indeed is our constitution a complete suicide pact for the constitution on this hypothesis jefferson said is a mere thing of blacks in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape

into any form they please and today the roberts court has twisted and shaped our constitution into a corporate charter for rich c.e.o.'s to run amok in our electoral politics at jefferson known in eighteen zero three just how far the supreme court would go in shrine in corporate power in america he likely would have led a revolt against the court of himself. but in fact for the next thirty years we're actually a little more than thirty years the john marshall of the chief justice the court never again struck down the law so the issue of the court having too much power was that steam but now it's here in spades the greatest threat facing america today is too much power in the supreme court an institution that was supposed to be the third of three co-equal branches of government but has turned itself into a monarchy past presidents have tried to solve this problem we had jefferson or more recently franklin roosevelt when in one thousand nine hundred seventy tried to

increase the size of the court so he could add some progressive justices to counter the power of the five right wing justices who were blocking the new deal you know where the constitution of the say how many justices have to be on the court but jefferson failed franklin roosevelt failed and the supreme court's powers are still on checked as jefferson noted back in eighteen twenty one the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity the exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough that i know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves america does not belong to kings she belongs to the people it's time for congress and our president to step up and put the supreme court back on equal footing with the rest with the other two branches of government and to pass

a law endangered ishall review take that power away from the supreme court and restore the vision that our founding fathers ad of america a nation where five unelected guys in black robes couldn't make or kill the laws of the land. as the big picture first night for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom arvin dot com also check out our youtube pages if you do you tube dot com slash the big picture i t m you tube dot com slash and this entire show is available as a free video podcast on i tunes and don't forget democracy begins with you when you show up when you purchase a tag you're it will see the. wealthy

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