welcome to the lower show get the real headlines with none from mercy me live in washington d.c. now tonight as everybody obsesses over black friday and what it means to retail sales and consumer confidence here in the u.s. we'll take a look what's going on in europe basically don't start celebrating too hard get business insiders you're wise and join us for that one and now the super committee has failed six hundred billion in cuts are supposed to be headed towards the pentagon while military officials and politicians complained about our navy vessels

and our expensive west weapons systems its military personnel that might be hit the hardest and weinstein will tell us all about the business board that's making the suggestions and tomorrow nasa will launch of the biggest baddest rover yet to study mars and search for signs of possible life and which i can will fill us in on why this rover outshines the rest and the threats to future missions we have all that and more of you tonight couldn't get us of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. it so today is a lack friday really bizarre and was sickening display of consumerism here in america where people line up even camped out to be the first to enter the largest corporate chains to get a small little discount in the past it's gotten so crazy that a man was trampled to death by the swarming crowds running into the store this year we saw numerous shooting incidents outside of stores and this year or last night i guess i should say we saw another horrifying development. black friday shopping off

to a painful start police say a woman to a competitive shopping to a dangerous level authorities say a woman waiting in line pepper sprayed other customers they're looking for a woman they say pepper sprayed shoppers to keep them away from the merchandise she wanted she was able to ward off those competitive shoppers and get exactly what you want a face full of pepper spray after what authorities say was part of a deliberate strategy to get a good deal on video games twenty people were injured. police are calling shoppers rage officials called the woman's behavior competitive shopping this video on you tube shows customers recovering just moments after the incident the woman paid for her items then ran out of the store deceptive hope a store security camera will help identify her. you know the thing that really gets me here because the mainstream media is just so nonchalant about the whole thing

that they can stand there regurgitate the statements of the police who have chosen to call this competitive shopping and see absolutely nothing wrong with that pepper spraying people in a store is not a game it's not a competition it's sick and it's wrong and it's a sure sign of the normalization of the use of these chemical agents has gone too far but sure the police would want to downplay it because that way they get to keep every spring peaceful protesters in the face and say see everybody does it the mainstream media on the other hand shows an outrage from crying out loud or at least you show a little tinge of concern don't just act like this is become a normal part of american culture and if you think it has the least asked why it is so ask why is the corporate culture has made us all slaves to the deals to the point were willing to her one another to get to that ask why it is why millions of americans can't afford food the millions more show no concern as long as they get the presence of a need for their families ask why it is the economy is so bad that people become desperate to get a few dollars off of their it's clearly expressing their fears but instead of

digging deeper looking at the bigger picture talking about wall street the european sovereign debt crisis and so many americans don't even know is going on i know will undoubtedly affect our economy on the mainstream media has just decided how to feel great covering black friday as if it's just a game another sporting event that he's played by play commentating and set of real logical questions that's of the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so everybody focuses on black friday what this major shopping day will reveal about consumer confidence and retail sales now forget europe is still struggling art germany's bond auction fell way short on greece credit rating has been downgraded to a junk status by moody's and german chancellor angela merkel's well as french president nicholas sarkozy and the newly sworn in tell you prime minister mario monti so the massive intervention. i'm going nowhere so just how

worried should we be about what's going on in europe before companies here start celebrating the beginning of a brand new holiday shopping season are disgusted with. their business insider thanks so much for being here nice to have in the studio for a change and before we get started talk about europe are you with me here that. i think a proper spray is crazier than you know hearing about shootings and what is going on with people where you at the moment actually planned it out in advance if that's the crazy part i mean it's one thing you know someone a gun goes off and a lot of guys obviously tragic but there are maniacs everywhere but someone actually planning on going to a store and being that it's some universe it's ok to spray people deface for video games this is wild and i do think there's this thing where maybe a couple months ago you never heard about pepper spray ever and now you can bring incidents all the time so it seems like. the bar for using pepper spray in this is getting pretty low and getting normalized like you know because obviously you've

seen police act out a lot because the occupy wall street protests and you know we saw those peaceful protesters at u.c. davis getting pepper sprayed right in the face and i think that those types of images and the out the words you know defending those types of actions really might start to tell people and twist their minds to thinking about ok and i mean. you know as you start to see this pattern it does kind of seem like there let's talk about what's going on and you're right because if moment you seems like everybody is really happy because sales have kicked up and everything that's supposed to happen on black friday is happening consumers are out there shopping but should europe still be a major concern i mean you know you're absolutely right you know we kind of had this economic scare in the middle of the summer and the data is looking better again but you're busy huge concern because there's no way that europe if the worst case scenario were to happen in europe and you know greece were to leave or italy were to default something like that that would close cause the global financial

crisis and there is no way that u.s. banks would not be afraid. already investors are punishing u.s. banks that are perceived to be exposed to europe so there is a very real crisis and this is the fact that there is no easy answer you know even in the u.s. we kind of have this we had our financial crisis. one legislature of it had to prove a bailout and then the fed basically had a blank check to do whatever it wanted in europe they have so many different governments that had to coordinate and the e.c.b. is much less inclined to help out it's a different institution than the fed is the political pressures are different so there is just no obvious answer and the fact of the matter is that the germans who kind of call the shots in europe still they're totally mistaken about what they think is going to always governments just need to reform and we need some treaty changes and punish countries that spend too much but we're way beyond that and if that's really the path that they figure is going to work and you know let's hope it's already is learning a lesson right now because they mentioned it's all gone auction was exactly what

they were expecting this was supposed to be the safe that right if you're talking about any of the economies in europe it was supposed to be so does that mean that. the very core of it is a game changer in europe if it were to happen the german yields started to rise that look like everyone else's then that might maybe alert lawmakers there in leadership that way this isn't about just a few southern european countries that can't get their act together this is a fundamental crisis of the euro which it absolutely is so in a way that's almost a positive development because perhaps nothing could move the germans off their perch until it really started affecting them what about what's going on with hungary i think so they just got downgraded to rating then i'm a bailout in two thousand and eight they said they don't want another one and you know a lot of people are saying that it's well it's not greece fault clearly they haven't met the changes that they're supposed to and their government is acting in a very erratic fashion but at the same time is this becoming a bit of collateral for what's happening on the grand scale lies that that the

ratings ages. caesar suddenly focusing on hungary well the funny thing about hungary is that. your first thought was like hungary who cares i mean you know country get in trouble all the time but then you start thinking about how hungary is connected to other countries you know like austrian banks and austria is a eurozone country and austrian banks have a lot of exposure to hungary and then you see the hungary and currency collapse and and you realize that a lot of home variants have mortgages that were taken out in europe you know a euro denominated mortgages suddenly they're in big trouble so it's not so much that hungary itself would have been a big problem accepted then it's exposed to the euro and that could lead to an austrian downgrade and you get into more trouble so it is just another one of these things that could go wrong and shows how fraught the global economy is it falls over and really the european central bank earlier said don't exactly have the incentives right now to get involved or i guess the willpower and the desire to but

what should they be doing. well i think of this point if the european central bank does anything short of this sort of a massive intervention buying of tons of italian dead greek spanish is going to be big trouble fact of the matter is what the e.c. is being asked to do is what central banks all around the world already do which is backstop governments and basically basically the fed funds the u.s. government which is why despite our high debt to g.d.p. we don't have these problems the euro or european countries don't have that backstop and if they don't get it soon there's going to be a big problem and i guess they're realizing that more and more every day right i want to go back to black friday occupy wall street for one quick second today they are planning something to boycott or occupy black friday. protesters here are planning boycotts they want people to see the sales of major retailers like you need to stop shopping as part of what's being called occupy black friday how does alterman says we could see protesters picketing big chain

stores or even occupying them. so we did see a little bit of picketing we saw a lot of people outside the macy's in new york but at the end of the day i mean people are also shopping right we've seen these videos of the stampedes and of the shootings and everyone going in to get the deals so what do you think that says about the occupy message because on one hand we understand you hate crony capitalism but when it starts going towards black friday do you think that seems misguided or not really was necessarily misguided in the sense that every year on black friday there been protests. buy nothing day before and now it has this occupy moniker i think because of the awareness that occupy wall street has brought to this general problems with the economy quality the fact that people are living on probably brings a little more resonance the message as you said it's going to have a big effect most people shopping and how do you think that you know our actions

are dictated on this one day by all of these massive companies and corporations that tell you hey we have a deal go shop and suddenly our profits go through the go through the roof and there's going to be with profitable specifically black friday usually draw people in with one hundred door busters. or one product is just insanely marg down and that's what everyone scrambling over that one product and then people you know maybe their idea is that the rise of the aisles you see the other right is no good does it all hotels you want to grabbing them because you've got nothing is going to be very kind of you want to take responsibility like no one's forced to be insane and you know wrestle over a video game so very good point our job thanks so much for joining us tonight and stick around for happy hour at the end of the show thanks. i still to come tonight george w. bush and tony blair found guilty of war crimes i'll tell you where and we told you about the cuts are headed for defense department but guess who's probably going to get worse it's veterans i'll tell you how one panel that's pushing for this move

and why. they don't believe the repine. but what a fantastic nobody seems to know. but never appropriate to face but what are the argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you understand it and then something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize that everything is. welcome to the big picture.

mr. last week we saw everybody feign surprise as the super committee failed to come to an agreement over how to find it one point two trillion dollars in deficit savings and that failure means that unless congressional warhawks get their way somehow overturn the rules that they themselves created there will be another six hundred billion dollars in cuts coming to defense and we've heard secretary of defense leon panetta and other military officials as well as g.o.p. presidential candidates go on about how these cuts will lead to doom and gloom for america the inability to protect our national security he were troops to send around the world he were fancy weapons systems and navy vessels look to have magic as it'll most likely be service members and their retirement plans to really take a hit especially a panel known as the defense business forgets their way joining me to discuss it

and weinstein national security reporter for mother jones and thanks so much for joining us tonight if you can first start by just telling us a little more about this business panel you know what it was created by it was created sure first thing you need to know about basically rumsfeld's revenge on all of us but it's business word is a small advisory panel that was started to believe it or not on september tenth two thousand and one arrived and said carry a gun on rumsfeld he wanted to make the military run more like a fortune five hundred business or the way he thought would be ideal to do that was to basically bring in most middle of experts notable conservatives. from a lot of defense contractors and you know you can be. the executive board of a couple big companies to come in and basically tell the military how to run things corporately with best practices straight out of business school and case. i will serve it's been around since two thousand and one how can most of us haven't really heard of it would you say that it doesn't have

a whole lot of sway over the military. well they've definitely they've definitely been following under the radar for a long time they've actually had a pretty significant amount of influence on the council are different ways that they have sought after expand the amount of m.b.a.'s for example that work in the defense apartment they also are tried to expand you know you've heard all about these koch brothers style and kind of insurgencies in some of these conservative states they try to do similar things with you know directors they've tried to boost executive pay while also making it easier to fire people on the lower end of the wrong and the thing is their big influence really started this summer when people started looking seriously for defense cuts and all of a sudden everybody started focusing on hey what about military pensions that all came out of a report in this defense business board issued in july that basically said we should productize and then turn them into four hundred one k. style investment plans we actually get sort of more detail on that as to what that would actually mean if you do privatized military pensions is that bad thing for

those people. well it's going to hit the hardest it's going to hit most of the people who are managing to you know sort of brave it out go through a several months all deployments overseas in these foreign wars that we've been fighting and stick it out for twenty years in uniform service where the people that we now know sort of give a livelihood for the rest of their lives and modest pay you're talking forty fifty sixty thousand dollars trying to sort of keep up with inflation but basically what these guys have come in and said is well let's sort of scale that back because it's a huge pension liability and we're going to take a little bit of soldiers and sir and their members pay aside and we're going to put in a retirement account for them when they can invest it we're talking about somebody who's making thirty thousand dollars. pulling out sixteen percent of their pay doesn't amount to a whole lot we crunched the numbers over at mother jones what we found was somebody who could retire right now under military rules and makes you know something like forty thousand dollars by the pension for

a man you know i'm sure they'd be looking at getting a lump sum that could last them maybe two or three years before they run out of money and probably run out of food under this new plan that they're talking about want curious to see you know what your position is on this because it's no lie that the pentagon is bloated right and there is a lot of waste going on there and there are areas that need cutting and maybe you know should it be said scaling back so you have fewer workers there instead of just having the same amount of workers and going for their pension. i learned there is no question that across the board in a deity there's lots of places to trim fat and in fact one of these places is in the pension area you know democrats and republicans alike have been looking at thompson reform and saying what is a smart way to do it. you know they're not talking about some of the things that i could be talking about like taking away some of the big ticket offense you know weapons programs and the nuclear budget which we've talked about here before but you know there is something that they can be doing here the question is whether or

not we want to take the advice of this panel that's basically you know the c.e.o. of bank of virginia. another guy from who work for a who's who of people on wall street involved in a boom errors in the boss from bear stearns to goldman sachs i'm sure those bolts do we really trust them to figure out how to you know implement these best practices in cost cutting measures in a way that's fair and. i think we've seen the house work out before now i think that that's a really good question but i don't want to for you then since this is a government created town created by donald rumsfeld are we paying these people or my taxpayer dollars are taxpayer dollars going towards their salaries anyway. it's an advisory panel which means they don't cool down a salary they do have a staff that is paid they do have a secretary and a couple of people that keep their records and you know sort of mundane pay liaisons with the with the american public but they themselves you know they're they're already getting six seven eight eight figure salaries from wherever their

day job is. the big thing here is why they still exist listen to the panel about how to chew your charter and run so certain two thousand want to extend we knew that every year including two thousand and ten the question is whether this group it has fundamentally conservative pro corporate point of view is really kind of matching up its rhetoric with right there obama administration wants clearly they've got something that the obama administration thinks is of value because they renewed them and they still exist so. you know it's interesting too i want to go to you know we've got a lot of coverage here on this show in terms of what secretary of defense leon panetta has been saying when he calls this a doomsday mechanism because trigger michael into a fact and there's so much concern over our safety in america that you never really hear about the fact that it's probably going to get better and it's probably going to hit and shins and you also didn't hear that at the latest g.o.p. debate at c.n.n. house which is focused on foreign policy here something and it romney had to say. this is talk about what they're cutting with the first three hundred fifty billion

not the next six hundred which is coming down the road the first three hundred fifty billion dollars they cut the stuff the f. twenty two the delayed aircraft carriers the stuff the days navy cruiser the system they said long range air force bombers are going to be built they're trying to cut our troops by fifty thousand the list goes on so clearly i guess romney did a little bit of his homework there but i mean you know it's not really surprising to me that they would be upset at these weapons systems are going away because the defense contractors line a lot of pockets but and i guess you shouldn't necessarily look at it so critically because why would republicans support unions and federal workers but this is the military they want the pentagon to continue growing unstuck. we're going to do better and i'm always a big fan of maintaining air superiority and superiority of the sea is the question is how much more hardware and how much more machinery do we really need to do it in fact there is there are a whole lot of navies or air forces that are out there next to us however if you

were really really interested in serving in other wars there's certain persian culture in the middle east as many of these presidential candidates on the g.o.p. side are kind of made their intentions clear in all we're used to dates that are saying then you might be interested in having a whole lot more hardware so that might be playing into their plans. if you're looking at a future g.o.p. new president who thinks that he needs more stuff in order to go into iran and then i suppose some of that's over look like a good investment and the service member would be the person that misses out. yeah and that's you know it's really unfortunate you know the service members are the ones that are missing out and it's too bad that not enough people know about this panel so such a good thing that you guys are reporting on it but if you had to guess are these six hundred billion dollars in cuts really going to go through you obviously have a lot of members of congress scrambling to make sure that the trigger effect somehow gets reversed but the president is promising to veto it and i don't really know what to believe. it's it's a great big mess right now it's hard to tell what's coming out of the capitol

that's that's really true and that's really like a way of talking about her is one way or another whether it comes through secrets secrets ration or whether it comes through some other set of cuts that congress somehow miraculously agrees on defense is going to see some serious realists like we read options and i think that everybody needs to be prepared for that and for one side or the other to say well you're being more on american because you want to help us fighter jet you know let's he would be and it would say let's take a look at the american service member of the soldiers sailors airmen and marine and see whether we're really doing right by down and i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you. well this week a mock tribunal in malaysia has found former president george w. bush and former prime minister tony blair guilty of war crimes the quality of you know which was formed at the request of formulation pm mohamed says the two leaders are guilty of crimes against peace referring to their invasion of iraq back in two thousand and three i'm home it was an outspoken critic of the iraq invasion calling

bush and blair child criminals and war criminals after one hundred three thousand iraqi civilians died and millions were displaced or fled the country altogether now to refresh your memory the bush administration wanted to invade the country after they said there were weapons of mass destruction found there although as we all know by now there weren't any w m d's so for invading a country on faulty and false pretenses a tribunal ruled that bush and blair's name should be included in a register of work and the statement they went on to say the evidence show that the drums of wars were being beaten long before the invasion and hughes in their own memoirs have admitted their own intention to invade iraq regardless of international law now bush's memoir decision points he admits the news of no w m d's was sickening overheat offended his decision to invade the country saying that he thinks that the iraqi people are better off without saddam hussein tony blair's book a journey gives a very similar viewpoint on the invasion saying i still believe that leaving saddam

in power was a bigger risk to our security and removing him and that terrible though and terrible though the aftermath was the reality of saddam and his sons in charge of iraq would at least arguably be much worse mark tribunal doesn't really carry any judicial weight in fact both of them and refused to attend the court's four day hearing not surprisingly however is an attempt to hold blair and bush responsible for their actions and something which has been tried in vain all over the world and not enough here president obama has decided not to prosecute former administration officials and has taken a line of looking forward and not back but there were some attempts by politicians while bush was still in awe. office to get him out representative dennis consented to lead a group of politicians who intended to bring bush to justice back in two thousand and eight the hearing held before the house judiciary committee thirty five articles of impeachment against both president bush and vice president cheney and among them were faulty reasoning for the iraq invasion extraordinary rendition and torture techniques look at which intelligence. were. right

but not you. were acted upon which intelligence was wrong and acted upon then go into who was it who helped shape the wrong intelligence and caused it to be acted upon and that and i think will lead to a chain of events that you know all terribly inevitably must lead to people with very high positions in his government. now in other countries like spain and switzerland has been much less of hesitation to hold the bush administration accountable for war crimes and february of two thousand and eleven bush had to cancel a trip to switzerland after threats of prosecution and in spain the court agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former bush administration officials want to drop that case under pressure from the obama administration as a wiki leaks cable revealed so on the malaysian tribunals decision what's necessary carry any legal weight i think is

a valid effort to hold bush responsible for his actions and let him know the world has not forgotten. now coming up next everyone's favorite social networking site making it even easier for law enforcement to get their hands on information about you could have details on that high school time award and it was eight years in the making the latest mars rover is finally going to start its journey to the red planet from the state with a space historian about the significance of this trip and if that might be the last . thing they're still police corruption is.

not a protest that nobody seems to know. but never a pepper sprayed the face quite hard they are going to get they're being overly dramatic. get up some version see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then a glimpse something else hears you some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.