you look like you see us crashing to the. ceiling. just like. in streaks the structure you just programs in greece which was economy. tensions of nuclear proportions a new international atomic energy agency report is going on bad blood between western powers and iran so will the drums of war soon be beating once again. and let the countdowns of the twenty twelve elections begin as president obama puts on his boxing gloves and gets ready to duke it out with his g.o.p. contenders but quote a bad economy and high unemployment numbers are going to punch and knock out his hopes for reelection well debates and president obama wasn't the first to struggle with a bad economy. the members. who

are. american. and with the u.s. declares its longest ever war pacing the war in afghanistan by decades only this one is within american communities so with record poverty rates in the us is this the war that simply cannot be won. poverty actually looks a lot like me. and could you sponsor one struggling financially if you saw them as an actual candidates might not be willing to face the grim economic reality that r t sure is also you know how the government is one of all its own poverty. it's monday november seventh five pm in washington d.c. and christine for zero watching our team all this week all eyes will be on iran as a detailed report on the country is expected. to be released by the u.n.

nuclear watchdog the international atomic energy agency the worsens of that report have already leaked out and show what many world leaders suspected which is that tehran is in fact working to develop their abilities to create atomic bombs iran says this is totally false though the report has still not yet been released chatter has already started about possible sanctions against iran by some in this country and others in israel say a military attack against iran may be needed to let iran know that the velour being these capabilities is just not acceptable but both russia and china say that is a very bad idea his russian foreign minister sergei lavrov. view on this issue is well known and it's will be a serious mistake with very grave consequences as we can see proof of that every day when we see how problems are being solved close to real beauty in iraq afghanistan or other countries in the region military interference only leads to a need to be rising gets. i want to talk about the implications of this report

what's in it and what it could mean for the future ivan eland is a senior fellow at the independent institute and is here with me and i mean on one hand this is nothing new people have been saying for years then even more than attacking them and talking about the fact that iran wants to develop its nuclear capabilities is this report a big deal even well i think it might be a little bit bigger deal than in the past because this report apparently says that they have the desire and capability to do it now they make the caviar they haven't necessarily started down that road they had made it is sitting so they could do what your panel has done because japan has taken it all the way up to actually building a nuclear weapon and they haven't done it they have shown they have the capability it sort of maybe that's what iran is trying to do maybe iran will never build a weapon so we don't know but i think what the foreign minister said there is absolutely correct there's no good military option here if you want to make sure

you get all the stuff you have to launch a ground invasion which would make the invasion of iraq look nice right i mean look easy runs a much bigger country the terrain of the people there were not in a good mood towards america setter you have a lot of a lot of problems and now of course they could attack by air israel or the united states could do that and that's the that's the fear i think but there's just no good option. they're putting this. facility inside this. you know the holy city of qom and i think that's what's generating these reports from the west i think you're right there is a certain amount of hype. you know related to this and the reason for that is this facility once they bury it in this mountain you can't get to it with even bunker busting weapons or it's very difficult and so. even if they don't do that it's very hard to hit all the targets because we don't know where they are i mean despite this report not being released there are certainly a wide of array of ideas of how. how different world leaders should respond in this

country there has already been talk as i mentioned of sanctions there are also leaders in israel who say military action is needed but i want to play something that was said over the weekend by g.o.p. presidential candidate ron paul i would see treat them differently and. threatening but who do you believe when you say treat them differently don't put sanctions on them so so what are we going to get persuaded not to pursue a nuclear weapon maybe being offering friendship to. all right so this is kind of a sweet idea you know let's put the past behind us and move forward together is this realistic well it probably isn't realistic because the world leaders won't do it but they think the same sins are necessary changes are going to have no effect on this because iran is in a rough neighborhood they have saudi arabia israel other countries that really don't like them there and therefore and of course they want to keep the u.s. out and everybody learned from the iraq war. and in the libyan case that if you

give up your nuclear weapons you know you're liable to get baited so that the united states or some other power so i think this is a vital interest to iran so they're not going to respond even to the sanctions but i think what we should do is the person that you had on your. film earlier lyndon johnson had to deal with this in china when mao and the chinese got nuclear weapons and now made direct threats to nuke the united states and of course lyndon johnson explored military options etc and of course they didn't take the chinese nuclear weapons probably for the same reasons that they didn't know where they were like iran so i think you can deter this we have thousands of nuclear warheads russia has thousands of nuclear warheads iran will have a few and they haven't even put them on a missile yet missile design takes a lot of technology etc so they've shown that they can design a warhead that will fit on a missile hitting the missile over here we've seen north korea had a lot of problems with that so we're not in the panic mode yeah it seems to me at

least from what i'm reading that israel is the country that is sort of making the strongest threats against what could be coming out of iran and i want to get your think though what about these claims to the u.n. officials are to the affairs of the united nations that it was actually foreign scientists who stepped in and share this knowledge there was or there was a headline in the washington post that basically said that it was these foreign officials that gave assistance to help iran you know come over at and get these capabilities. do you think about well there probably was some foreign help i mean the united states helped india get nuclear weapons and probably helped israel get nuclear weapons so people there are nuclear transfer that's a bad idea but and you want to try to limit that but the problem is you have free ranging people wake. from pakistan who is basically selling a lot of nuclear secrets etc so some people will sell secrets just to make money

other times intelligence agencies the iranian intelligence agencies out there looking for technology so that's a kind of a leaky says i mean this technology is proliferating it is technologies night in new anymore remember the first atomic bomb was blown off in one thousand forty five so we're going to have to expect some proliferation but i think you know we need to focus on containing it and if we can't contain we need to turn attack and there's no reason to say that iran's leaders are crazy in fact they've been very pragmatic and if there was ever a radical was mao tse tung and china at the time because it was a middle of cold cultural revolution etc so i think the iranians can be deterred from attacking certainly the united states on the other side of the world and probably from saudi and certainly from israel they have two hundred four two hundred to four hundred nuclear weapons are ready and they are very capable aircraft to deliver them so iran is not is not probably going to use these weapons

in an anger i mean we've been talking about sort of the reaction from different leaders around the world to this report and the parts of it that have been leaked but there are some i want to mention is there are some who would argue you know this was totally predictable these reactions you know that the u.s. and israel have been beating the drums of war against iran for a long time they want to feed the military contractors they want to keep this country in some sort of perpetual war that is a criticism that many are saying in response to this what about that notion does that have any validity well i think there are. pressures we saw that in libya we saw in the second iraq war etc we've seen it in the occupation long term occupation of afghanistan i think what's really driving this is the iranians are moving that facility into the mountain and once it goes in there can be very difficult to take it down and so i think that's why there's a lot of bluster i think that's probably why they're releasing this report but more pressure on iran to be able to give its weapons program but i don't see them doing

that so i think you're going to have to move to a a strategy of deterrence nobody's saying that right now but that's probably what you're going to have to do based on your research that the independents are based on history what are your predictions in terms of how the various countries respond once this report is released. well i think israel is going to be very strident and you're going to see bellicose statements i think the united states is probably less enthusiastic about that given the recent history of u.s. military endeavors and i think obama has always been a little bit reluctant to to attack iran iran is a totally different nut to crack in iraq or whatever you i mean like i say you have to invade on the grounds that if they get these weapons out of there are not weapons but facilities and i think. you know basically them even a lot of military people would say there are not many good military options except a full blown invasion i don't know anybody who's going to. you know advocate that now if israel does attack or the u.s.

does launch airstrikes i think you instantly turn the country into an anti-u.s. cauldron again now a lot of the people are fed up with the current regime and they're not happy especially you see the arab spring iran is a very weak position its ally syria is going government there there may be four fold over there which in iran the arab spring can't be encouraging to the iranian leaders so i think iran is susceptible to pressure whether they'll give up a nuclear weapon that was another matter or their nuclear program i should say and we need to be cautious here and what happened in iraq and we can't conclusively say that they have a nuclear program that's. for weapons but it looks like they might but even if they do military action is probably not useful and i want this will certainly be one of the hot topics i have a feeling for the upcoming presidential debate i think i would be independent and i

think anyone. and here in the united states it is now just one year to go the twenty twelve election takes place on november sixth which means president obama has about three hundred sixty four days to convince the american people who will make this country better than whoever he faces off against in the g.o.p. will it be mitt romney or mccain michele bachmann ron paul and i know who it is there are some some things to take into account first no american president since franklin roosevelt has ever won a second term in office and the unemployment rate on election day was higher than seven point two percent that was the unemployment rate in november of one nine hundred eighty four when ronald reagan won a second term he won by a landslide right now it is that nine percent though many say that number should be much higher so will this year be different or will the economy be president obama's biggest enemy correspondent liz wahl takes a deeper look at this important question facing the country. oh oh oh oh oh

oh oh oh oh oh the sun. just when. he campaigned under the promise of hope and change but one year until america lacks a president some ask where's the change obama promised he had a very shallow act to follow and he really is not very much obama's approval ratings hovering just over forty percent americans on happy due to the nation's dissimilar economic outlook recent data shows record poverty levels in the nation with over forty nine million people now living in poverty the middle class slammed by for closures and job losses unemployment doggedly stuck out over nine percent since world war two no one has been reelected to a second term if unemployment is above seven point two percent but some points away deadlocks congress and sure a nobel offering economic relief passes i really think he's doing the best job that he can do obama now scrambling to ditch his lame duck image issuing

a slew of executive orders a move which allows him to bypass congress congress won't act i will but is it too little too late some say his greatest hope may be his g.o.p. rivals this is such a cool state i mean come on live i mean. you know you gotta love it. if you don't have a job and you have not reached when you'll say you had an infiltrator from the democratic party that's giving them the wall like we got to cut back on the inside of you know social security is running rampant and we don't get we have to rein in medicare is out of control you're telling people listen is they're losing their homes jobs can't afford health care while a presidential incumbents are usually at a political advantage but one year to go until americans head to the polls obama faces an uphill battle with the dire state the economy is in now americans are disappointed and still hoping for that change they were promised back in two

thousand and eight and washington was wall party. all right so with one year to go the question on many voters' minds is has obama done enough in his first term or is it too little too late to help me answer those questions and many more earlier i spoke to erica payne founder of the agenda project and the on the cave reporter for human events i started off by asking specifically what would need to happen to give the president another shot well i think the president needs to sort of gather himself and reconsider his strategy what he's doing right now is he's pursuing a strategy where he needs to energize the base and sort of excite those sort of occupy sort of spirits but he's in danger of aggravating those wounds that he promised to heal and i think he's going he may win but he may win certain damage country that it's going to be even more difficult four years in

a second term air quality respond to that. well i mean the fact of matter is that countries are already damaged and it's damaged basically eight years of conservative and said anything that the president can do right now is to let everyone know the ways in which conservative policy brought the country that brink of collapse much tracks chance to shore it up and says this question i think that guys can work harder than i i think if you look at her public and you know that i definitely never say that it best reality has ever changed which is even beat. the world series we'll i mean certainly when president obama first came into office people argued that president bush certainly did a lot of harm to this country and a lot of even republicans would agree with that statement but here we are three years and sure that the economy be in a better place than it is well first of all i don't accept the premise that george

bush did a lot of damage to this country i think obama had a testicle opportunity though it was a new start and there were a lot of republicans a lot of very conservative people myself included who are hopeful that obama would sort of unite the country and we could mobilize together but he's just been so divison it's really it's really been shocking to a lot of people i think frankly when i talk to people on capitol hill they're almost hurts the way the obama administration has ignored them has dismissed them as sort of when they give a press conference they sort of pretend that they're reaching out but you know he literally goes months without talking to republican leaders. erica over the weekend some interesting predictions of the chances of the races came out this would be and i want to just put this up as this would be if romney ends up being the g.o.p. candidate if it was a romney obama election if there is

a zero percent growth in g.d.p. and twenty calls there is an eighty three percent chance that romney will win the election president obama has just a seventeen percent chance of keeping his job but if there is just a four percent growth and twenty twelve romney has a forty percent chance obama a sixty percent chance of winning the economy needs to grow just a little bit what do you think erick or do you think it will the i mean do you find growing and the great undertone story of this unemployment crisis and i and i just to be clear goal of president obama and many other people have done it and a lifelong progressive i definitely didn't say much on some of the issues that i care about from washington forms job creation but i but it is thank god you know one of the national story of this last three years at least had across the board a slope is steady. and the number of jobs that are rated now

is enough to make up for the fact that george bush lost that one hundred fifty thousand jobs last month office know that it is in the right direction and negative poll on those upward numbers are the public sector is. falling. they are being asked by my job because she. it's a plea to see that list is a security measure which is in the economy. you know i mean you're listening to situation here over there probably not yesterday but i've known people who lived in a way that wanted to party well it's crazy i mean you have to choose between austerity for people who rely on the government the interim government jobs or government programs or government contracts or austerity for contract for up for the taxpayers. you know the democrats the progressive the liberals whatever you want to call it they seem to have no problem with giving this huge

a steri program of higher taxes on taxpayers and so the tea party i think is just saying whoa i think we're paying enough right now if we use it as we saw four percent that would be useless american. parents are going to want. revenue. on taxpayers to make it any money to stop either more than two hundred fifty out. certainly more than a million dollars a year for you know because you know that the vast majority of those people are small business men we're talking about dry cleaners you're talking about farmers you're talking about people on hot dog stands who are going to be going to be saying that higher taxes let me step in for a second i think eric i might also be talking about some of the wealthiest corporations in america who you could call them job creators but in the last several months we've seen a lot of them let go a lot of their staff there are so many places in the tax system in this country that it seems that a lot of these places i know g.e. being one of them that they didn't have to pay any taxes this last post sort of

ridiculous i mean the tax code is a mess g.e. you know the corporate tax rate. is like let's say oh no i'm sure it was a thirty five percent say and somehow because of their deductions and their plans and loopholes in their this and their leases they're able to come in zero and get rebates we say you know lower that. get rid of the loopholes simplify it we're just saying make it revenue neutral don't take more money out of the private economy to feed this beast i think that's probably something erica might agree with you i want to move on i want to talk about the money in terms of campaign fund raising the bottom line is there is an overwhelming i don't want to majority of the time the person who raises the most money is the person who wins this is. a ridiculous percentage so the president obama's biggest donors back in two thousand and eight from goldman sachs microsoft google j.p. morgan chase and citi group i mean if i think if president obama asked the question

are you better off today than you were four years ago i think a lot of those companies they might say actually we are erick i want to ask you do you think president obama will get donations from those same huge companies this time around. many definitely but i mean you know perforation are it's not that they like to pretend and. you know and they're deeply hurt by the administration and marsha and i mentioned ashley guideline constantly talking about winning but in a real story corporations want to hedge their bets and they want god the ability to get him. out of the political aisle when they go and you say you're going to see is not my guy and president obama's campaign issue going into the republican nominee and it certainly will be a different kind of ballgame this time around with the citizens united case and the

fact that we may not know exactly who and how much is given to each candidate just taking with the money al gore two thousand a costly his campaign in history sure we have the numbers i think five point three billion dollars was spent by candidates political parties and interest groups on the congressional and presidential races well guess what the projected cost of the twenty twelve election is eight billion dollars they even gave a little bit higher is it possible i mean that president obama may need to raise even doubled this year which he raised the first time around what do you think that says that this will is the money that we're talking about first of all i think a billion dollars in political debate is healthy that's vibrant you don't you don't see these kind of numbers in cuba or china or other places i mean this is this is active free debate of the open you know the marketplace of ideas obama not only has a financial a fund raising machine but he also has air force one he also has the ability to

give out money all over the country to cut ribbons and bridges and schools and parks and then he can show you can fly in on the taxpayers' dime and give a speech and that's been but it's called you know official business but i would i would ask you to recall that nine hundred ninety two george bush the father. raised perk of a lot of money boatloads and boatloads of money and he had air force one and he had all the power of the presidency and yet clinton had. captured the spirit and he was able to beat bush despite that money and if obama loses the mandate of heaven the sort of spirit of the nation but it doesn't matter how much he spends erica i'm going to let you respond about how and at the last word well it only matters how much money you stand in a political campaign because you ultimately. knock on doors to get your voters. it's just big money isn't always the determining factor i was on the cheap and on

the jam but actually on the treadmill i actually. ran it was one of these where you could change the channel it was attacked and every single ad in the last month of the election campaign and there comes a point where your brain just sets up an excruciating to watch in the first place and there's nothing but. he gave up work that is a really good point thirdly with one year to go that is one thing we all have to look forward to whether we want there were not as all those campaign ads that will bombard us commercial break that all our favorite television shows founder of the agenda project america pain also reporter for human events we'll mccabe thanks so much so i want to dig a little deeper into the state of our economy with a look at what poverty actually needs it's then after all fifteen years since president lyndon johnson made this speech and a call to all americans to join the army in different kind of war. this administration very clear and now the fleurs version of the

war on poverty in america was and i. urge this congress and all americans. to join with me in that effort. that war on poverty speech made on january eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty four so how have things changed today and how well is the enemy in other words poverty really understood and when will today's president declare war on poverty not just declare it but send in reinforcements while to help me answer all those questions earlier i was joined by michael snyder the founder of the economic collapse blog dot com but the latest u.s. census data out i asked him in his view if president obama has done enough to deal with this new information about poverty take

a listen. well the obama administration seems to think that it was stock market assertion that everything is ok but the truth is that the order of the war they keep increasing is what we're all boasting the economy improving as you do that there are no explore first of all americans are living in extreme poverty that is the highest level ever recorded and then you just look at the regular poverty numbers last year two point six million more alert in flew over the poverty line though that was american born in poverty. and if you look at that in the for the long term trend i can you're trudeau's in one hour every minute of americans living in poverty today we're running out of every urban american living in poverty and i i know you wrote about this recently including a part that you wrote in one thousand fans about poverty that will absolutely astound you and i want to put up just a few of those these are some to statistics from last year according to u.s.

census data the percentage of very poor one in three hundred out of three hundred and sixty of the largest metropolitan areas and the poverty rate of children increased by twenty two percent with one of four children on food stamps also you wrote that the number of americans on food stamps in general has increased seventy four percent since two thousand and seven also something that important we talk about children we also should talk about the elderly one out of six elderly americans now lives below the federal poverty line and i'm wondering do you think the majority of americans understand how dire the situation is. i think we're still isolated today we all have our own jobs we all get on our cars and live our little lives right in the office and sometimes we don't realize how many people out there are really suffering but when you take a look at the bigger picture people really really are hurting when you've got twenty two percent of all children of the united states living in poverty that's

twice the level that we face in countries like france or the u.k. so that's very very disturbing but you've got the number americans the stance it increases every single month every single month almost set a brand new record today it's almost forty six million americans that are on food stamps and as you noted that some creep but seventy four percent since back in two thousand and seven so poverty is exploding but americans have become so inflated they might live in a wealthy community they might live in a where they're not exposed to this but it's expanding all the numbers show it would be able the number of american would bank and place where they can get food but more than forty per cent of its most recent economic downturn so it's for get this hope the american survey that or the work or they go they work their part time jobs they work they flip burgers they work at wal-mart but it's not enough that you know and only now a founder of the economic club want down comes michael.