it's and purpose in space and ron says perhaps craig dunn is doing with a business in iraq oh absolutely iran iraq and you know what tom what we do on trees are becoming economic allies you know why should why should that concerns well it depends on what they do with that ahmadinejad's on his way out do you think you know that he will never see is and the average iranian has no interest in him or with united states i think that's true i think most to radians are actually if not pro-american at least favorably disposed to america when i was the country tehran was the biggest city in the middle east on nine eleven that had a candlelight vigil in support of absolutely absolutely that's true and i don't and that the you know that hasn't gone away if we drop bombs on them it will of course it would if it hasn't a lot of it would you have to look at is you know we're you see everything 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 you know our interest to make sure that it's 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 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 too and even now we're back to you know if canada invaded the united states you and i would be seriously p.o. did we have different political perspectives trip i think you know do you 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 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 into it and the states were trying to shove democracy down their throats with hawk missiles or tomahawk missiles. and cruise missiles are 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 to freedom party right now he'd buy it by now if the iraqi spring was going on he probably would be out perhaps but i think the key thing you know if we were 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 has he been basically taken out by all those years of sanctions well he had to it was very interesting is 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 there's my boy i mean he had nothing to do he was writing another romance novel but here's the here's the deal with saddam hussein everybody believed you know wouldn't matter what the political persuasion within the united states almost everybody believed that he had weapons of mass or no actually but i didn't believe it a lot of people didn't believe it but you know to harry believe me if 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 a from a highly politicized white house well that could be the key thing to keep in mind doesn't mean it's real well but everybody was real good keep in mind remember what colin powell played 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 mickey herskowitz his biographer that 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 well that obviously didn't happen but he tried but you know if you're so used to deal with it with iraq the key thing here is that we have a chance to make iraq a closer ally at least the gulf 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 you think you are going to drive is on its way out and that may be the case but isn't the best way to do that to just back out and start building schools . hospitals that are blowing people up but we are building schools and hospitals

tom but also people that i mean if they were eighty and came in and said ok we're going to occupy a country by the way we'll build some schools hospitals and you can have canadian health care so they should do the conservatives would be better for it it's for imposing culture and it would be only thirty second sure with that but the 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 for the military is 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 beans and games and you've got to bring those periods in both afghanistan and iraq will go away if you know there will be a shakedown i mean we saw this in vietnam cambodia for jobs and so it has to be careful i appreciate it thank you so the colonel thank you so much for dropping. these wars and this misguided foreign policy in my opinion is a symptom of us all 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 it in fact let's go to that whole notion not only his word hell but. the notion of of of evil we historically in the united states you know maybe maybe maybe george w. bush and 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 man it meant man it was a 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 and his horns was the sign of satan worshipers is that an extra now you can see in the american flag our stars are right side up all across america you'll see symbols with five point stars the stars are right side up the man's. but 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 of 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.

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 morning 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 bank stores 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 right is america exceptional here to answer this question is david serota columnist and host of the david sirota radio show him seven sixty colorado's progressive dark as well as the author of numerous books including his most recent back to our future how 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 we get away with it. well this is a longstanding part of republican ideology i mean they are throwing under the guise of cutting government they are throwing everything that they defied specifically

this big government and of course nothing that actually is what we might conventionally to the government so it's important to put this into context the republican party today is not interested in for instance cutting defense spending it's not interested in a medicare system for all it would end taxpayer subsidization of the private health insurance industry it is as you suggest interested in cutting the parts of government it and specifically its financial donors to not like what the consumer financial protection bureau the base wish the site of that is to basically put all of this under the under the umbrella of or 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 toure's 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 might be in the middle and 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 of two thousand and twelve i think it's both i don't think you can separate you that i may be but the boom bust cycle of that we the basically our financial architecture encourages as you've reported on aggressive. sens interim social net sense national wealth up the income ladder and that do you think disproportionately small number of people who fund political campaigns have disproportionately more money donated ever had part of that goes to fund political campaigns so in some ways self-interest is alive and perfectly for republicans but

the more the boom bust cycle continues in the short term context of this election cycle of the war there friday actual donors have money each of them and also the more they can go out and make a dishonest. rhetorical argument saying that the economy is psaltery because of president obama and that's the kind of argument the 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 in his second term and everybody understood the great depression was going on in herbert hoover paused and you know what are other nations doing with their bank stores 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 the washington post just reported on this the rockstar be economy it's a 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 out at the rates of at our banks and have been lending out is that to say require a bigger capital reserve in a bank before bank can go a lend out they also demand better standards for a lot for better loans that are guaranteed by the taxpayers that's the exact opposite of what we've done here in the united states recently bailed out our banking system without any strings attached in britain you see a situation which is an american president proposed this you be accused of being a total radical your deputy prime minister proposing taking the banks that were nationalized first we didn't nationalize our banks and creating a meltdown and 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 that in britain right you've got the conservative prime minister saying

he might consider it and you've got the liberal or labor party saying that this is . a proposal of course again by american standards or by how dominated our debate is for the corporate side wall street this would be a completely radical proposal but as we've been shows this is the way forward over the last hole but it's only a way forward if you're interested in getting off of the room bust cycle that says income of financial data 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 that the banks toure's get what they want but as david pointed out in europe and canada publicly financed elections keep corporate money out of politics . we don't have the same problems we do so let's leave it up the same sort of election 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 have turned our nation into a pro for talking about what we need to do to reclaim small d. democratic power. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it through to be made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery to see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning.

diver the good the bad and the very very early ugly put up the good ole iowa secretary of state john huston blocking his own party must have went on the attack against the new voter id laws that republican lawmakers are pushing all around the country the laws require voters to show a driver's license at the polls which disproportionately qualifies poor elderly and college voters mostly don't. that's participating in the electoral process in a recent statement to the highlighted this disparity and said i would rather have no bill than with

a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect fraud and excludes legally registered voters ballots from. well said sir it's nice to hear from a republican who still actually believes in democracy the bad rick perry theory of the glenn beck show yesterday the cowboy governor of texas is considering a run for the white house some from 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. they can actually run jobs that way yes 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 and our troops in the military and show i could go on who is employed you governor it's like rick perry's first priority as

president would be to fire all government workers just to prove that the government can't create jobs and a very very ugly pat robertson televangelist is back on the crazy train this time responding to new york's decision to legalize same sex marriage and show the seven hundred club robertson told a story of 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 but we use the term sodomy and it means sodom and what's it like well we're heading that way as a nation and in history there's never been this civilization ever in history that has embraced homo so. and turned away from traditional ability traditional marriage traditional china regarding and has arrived there isn't one single civilization

that has survived with oprah we have graced homosexuality so easily it was going to happen to america will if history is any guide the same thing's going to happen to us with all the 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. 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 the best majority of the american people and say no to the republican leadership and make it clear there is enough is enough mr

president now is the time to say to the millions in the billionaires in this country and to the largest corporations who in many ways have never had it 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 debt limit 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 off the table meaning the only stuff it's really still left on the table for 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 the leader of the free world 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. five of them to be exact and here they are a five right wing justices on the supreme court of whack road 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 were elected 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 forbidding corporations from meddling in our politics by its 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 and shred of the tillman act last year and open the floodgates holding back corporate cash from our elections that's why president obama took the bush tax cuts off the table yesterday in debt limit negotiations because he knows it in this newly powerful corporatocracy created by the supreme court but the slightest offense against the super wealthy will lead to his demise as president political. all it takes is one billionaire hedge fund manager or two billionaire brother oil there will barons mad that he raise their taxes airdrop five hundred million bucks maybe a week's worth of their income to drop that into the two thousand and 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 authority nowadays nor does any member of congress it's actually on 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 and 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 no where 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 a court would have such power you can read it yourself and federalist eighty one june twenty eighth this debate 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 if you really do federalism where you. the court has never done that they have never molded or struck down a law passed by congress until eighteen zero three and that dreadful year our nation's fourth chief justice john marshall ruled an eight hundred 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 in eight hundred three then president thomas jefferson was horrified they were 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 despotic like keynes 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

in any form they please and today the roberts court has twisted and shaped our waxy constitution into a corporate charter for rich c.e.o.'s to run amok in our electoral politics had jefferson known in one thousand nine hundred three just how far the supreme court would go and enshrining corporate power in america he likely would have led a revolt against the corded himself. but in fact for the next thirty years or actually a little more than thirty years the john marshall or the chief justice of the court never again struck down the law so the issue of the court having too much power was that stain and 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 be a jefferson or more recently franklin roosevelt when in one nine hundred thirty

seven he 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 nor the constitution to say how many justices have to be on the court but jefferson failed franklin roosevelt failed and the supreme court's powers are still unchecked as jefferson noted back in eighteen twenty one the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally they are responsible to the people in their elected capacity the exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough 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 would be other two branches of government and he 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. also check out our you tube pages that he did with you tube dot com slash the big picture r t m youtube dot com slash art 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 at the ok your it will see the.

more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. before asians are today.