white house. never say never was like the u.s. is willing to negotiate after all so as officials play nice with a once sworn enemy is the taliban now winning. good afternoon it is wednesday january fourth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching r t well there is no turning back now the madness has started for real now people are actually voting not just talking to pollsters and with those votes counted the results are in now romney in first place with thirty thousand fifteen votes work santorum just eight fewer votes and ron paul came in third with twenty six thousand two hundred and one thousand votes now in total about one hundred twenty two thousand people voted in last night's caucus the first

real test of the voters well hundred twenty two thousand people isn't that much though and when you think about iowa it's not only an extremely rural state it's also about ninety one percent white according to u.s. census information from two thousand and ten it's also traditionally conservative and extremely non representative of the rest of the country and yet it's the reason one candidate michele bachmann has already bought out of the race and according to the mainstream media it's crucial to setting the path of this campaign so let's talk about all of this tell me do this i've got conservative radio host t.j. mccormick in new york as well as the director of grassroots political consulting l.l.c. daniel ferrazzi here in our studio and guys let's start with iowa itself why not make our political system a little more fair so you know every four years there's a new order a new first primary vote a new second one and so on t.j. let me your thoughts. you know what i think it makes

a lot of sense to you know sort of look at that but it's it's tradition it's tradition you see the way these states all fight each other for that position as states pull in little last minute shenanigans and passing the different the machinations in their in their legislatures to to ensure that it's all goofy i had made and it's not very substantive at all but yeah would it be fair to you know rotate it sure but it's old school traditional american politics old school american politics daniel let's talk a little more about this you know critics of the system argue that constantly having iowa first encourages extremists like for example part robertson who did pretty well in one thousand nine hundred two and historically speaking doesn't often choose people who actually end up winning the nomination talk about this aspect of why iowa well i agree with t.j. talking about the tradition and health things or as far as the process is concerned

and i don't see it changing anytime soon but there are also other examples more legitimate point you had to dale's in with george w. bush in two thousand and eight with barack obama so on both sides there also has been that candidate who has won but traditionally i would does not pick the winner and interestingly enough the process i have a problem with the caucus process is one that when you have that lackluster motivation. not having it jeb bush paul ryan all the rest in here you just take a look at expenditure from two thousand and eight to right now mitt romney spent seven million on the year in no way amongst all the candidates five million was spent on the ground back in two thousand and eight and now you have a million and a half plus super pac expenditure from that one candidate alone this last time plus i can't wait to see what the analysis was of the street so literally in the caucus process if you don't have that huge motivation for that really strong candidate you

could make sure you pay the right people to get in that room and how do i know that it's or if that's just so shocking that money you can actually buy votes in florida right now. all right let's talk about what we saw last night i know one person certainly not pleased about the results was newt gingrich speaking of money here's a full page and he just took out in new hampshire is union leader in new hampshire of course the next day it's called the choice and says only a bold reagan conservative can defeat president obama of course in bold colors and that romney in black and white t.j. what's going on is this kind of the kind of campaigning that we're going to see from now on are they going to continue to be out he was thrown a little bit. of chorus of course of course they are and you know and it's it happens republicans hate that part of the primary process when they see their own tearing each other up democrats hate it when when they were in there in the primary process it's unnerving for the electorate to watch this thing because at the end we

don't want all this garbage out about our guy in terms of newt gingrich is interesting gingrich you know the it's going to take the reagan conservative who's going to beat barack obama i think the thing about newt gingrich that has gotten any momentum at all was the idea that when conservative republicans saw him in that first bunch of debates they all imagined that guy on the podium at a podium across from barack obama and literally vis orating him. drawing him in a debate now cooler minds which would have happened to minds have prevailed and now people are realizing newt gingrich is not going to get past that personal baggage he is not the most electable people are now starting to settle and they're going for the guy that will that has the best chance of beating him in terms of votes because also don't forget a lot of people don't always remember everything that they hear and see from a debate and his real briefly down i want to talk to you before the cameras turned on you and i were sort of talking about an interesting part of iowa with

a lot of people don't know that you can actually if you're iowa resident register on the evening of the iowa caucus no matter what party you're with is that correct as a democrat or independent vote republican for the evening and. see a lot of the after analysis to see i mean there's a lot of motivation for many in the democratic party if they wanted to get into influencing this to make sure that romney pulled off that victory in iowa and ironically two i'm not as convinced on the field being settled here he had seventy five percent of the republican electorate going against the presumptive nominee who spent multiple millions of dollars in two elections in order to secure victory in iowa i want to talk now about ron paul of course last night's results left a few people surprised a lot of people thought he would finish first or second but it also showed this is a candidate who is extremely well organized you know as usual you know when i was in covering the straw poll over the summer people drove from near and far just to

shake ron paul's hand and you still have that. ron paul thinks he can garner support from young people and that he draws excitement t.j. ron paul says he's taking his campaign all the way to the convention how does this feasibly have. well i guess he could take a bus to the convention as a non. but i look you're weak we could we could summarize ron paul in the first part of your. paragraph you just said ron paul is extreme leave it there leave off the l. y. and everything else ron paul is extreme he's even wondering how people in extreme. no use all clear to this people right here but you know like he's a guy with a lot of his libertarian stuff his his bring him home save money and the fed that resonates with a lot of regular people but you know when it comes down to national security let's forget it so what if iran has a nuclear weapon so what if iran has

a that alone would sink them before we even got out of the carolinas and let's talk a little bit danielle about something that happened with ron paul again we talked about his organization he had people that actually you know one of the tactics included getting his supporters not only to cast their votes for him but to stick around afterward to become a delicate delegate for the republican convention in august and apparently a bunch of them did is this kind of normal now he has some of the most motivated volunteers and apparatus nationwide out there he also ironically has the funds and the sustainability of that network and that movement to be a major factor in this election not saying that he'd secure the nomination but to be a major factor in this nominating process and in the election of itself because the caucus is not are non-binding so if he gets these delegates to go and show up at the convention and vote for him that could possibly there are

a lot of scenarios that could play out also we're watching you know another factor for him which will be interesting to see is when this selection gets down to south carolina now that rick perry decided to stay and we look just like we did back in zero weight when huckabee and fred thompson split the vote and it up with mccain as the nominee whereas if there were a little fewer people in that field you could have seen a rudy giuliani huckabee race in five seconds or less t.j. mccormick who wins new hampshire. hillary clinton now i think i think i think romney i think romney takes the day he's got is that's where his machinery is and has been for months that's where romney romney romney right we'll have to see and leave it at that conservative radio talk show host t.j. mccormick as well as the director of grassroots political consulting daniel for watching. the broken record since long before last night that mitt romney is the only candidate that's moderate enough that smart enough that can connect with the

largest number of people to actually have a shot at beating president obama in november but here's something you're not hearing about i mean you may know this but how much of you really thought about this mitt romney is a millionaire not a few million or ten million mitt romney and his wife are apparently worth more than two hundred fifty million dollars and despite attempts to you know fit in with real america flying southwest airlines hanging out in nascar pits and wearing gap jeans but romney is one of the wealthiest men to ever run for president certainly to have a shot at winning the nominee remember this this is romney's twelve million dollar ocean front property in san diego that he's in the process of expanding actually quadrupling in size but i'm not begrudging him just simply reminding you the american people who live in a country with a near nine percent unemployment rate when i ask you this is america ready for a multimillionaire to become president of the president obama or former president

bush didn't have money but romney is a little bit of a different ball game and it's not just personal wealth now is also a good time to talk about the role of money in politics overall and this process which let's face it folks is just beginning and an article called iowa was a meaningless side show begins rolling stones and that's how evie writes this congress marks the beginning of a long rigidly controlled carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things weed out dangerous minority opinions and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests and matt joins me now hey there matt let's talk about this how can mitt romney with all this wealth even begin or pretend to represent establishment interests. well he does represent establishment interests. or tends to represent the interests of ordinary people is another

question i think you know what he's going to really run on i think there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the way that government is run romney's going to come in and say i've been. sort of. a leading proponent of efficiency in my entire life my company being capital it's helped streamline corporations my entire life so i'm going to do the same thing to the federal government i don't know if that's how convincing that is but that's going to be the way he's going to try to appeal to ordinary people it's true and if he does become the nominee it's ideas like this president obama may press hard upon not to mention as you just said at romney's time at bain capital which of course the daily show so humorously it touched upon let me play this really quick matt. it into the previous the narrative about mitt romney being an out of touch multimillionaire and now a kid but throughout pictures like this one wrongly run the buyout capital

everything about romney tells the tale of a man who just call you and you old dad. so john oliver there of course painting that. romney as scary evil businessman but i want to put some real figures up just you know to remind people according to the two thousand and ten census data forty six point two million people americans live in poverty that's fifteen percent of the total population these are the highest poverty numbers since one thousand nine hundred three and currently as we see there the median household income is about forty nine point five thousand. so again i mean i think it's important just to show people you know this candidate who will probably become the nominee. you know what they're getting into here you know absolutely i mean mitt romney in a lot of ways. you could plausibly argue that use the architect of the modern american corporation. with his consulting firm they kind of pioneered this idea

companies should not necessarily be in the business of employing a whole lot of people and making products what they're really designed to do is create profits and drive profits upstairs to upper management and cut out its value extraneous employees as possible so you know the sort of modern movement we have in america where you don't have judge gannett companies like g.m. that employs that hundreds of thousands of people but the study of small companies that make enormous profits and drug goes to a very small group of senior executives that's mitt romney really the guy who pioneered that idea is he's behind a lot of the unemployment right now i know how you outlined in your piece how many hundreds of thousands of dollars candidates get from the wealthiest in this country goldman sachs taking more. citigroup etc and i think a lot of people would be surprised about this i know that you showed some stats from two thousand and eight when it comes to wall street donations it's not really

about which candidate they agree with most or which party even it's about the candidate they think will win and therefore have the power to make decisions i want to talk i want you to talk about this reality in two thousand and eight and how you think that this is affected what we've seen so far under the obama white house. well wall street historically donates generously to both parties. and it's usually close to a fifty fifty split although if you go back to the early ninety's the democrats have actually gotten slightly more money from wall street than the republicans have but what they typically do in an election season is they. had their bets they're essentially professional gamblers anyway and they decide who is more likely to win than the other and they donate accordingly i think last in the last election cycle in two thousand and eight the consensus on wall street was that obama was more or less a shoo in to defeat any republican candidate which is why you know they basically called him as a seventy three favorite which is what he got seven hundred thirty three million

dollars and john mccain got just over three hundred million dollars so they give to both parties but they had their bets if they think one guy's more likely to win the other than they're going to give more money that to that guy but it has nothing to do with ideology it's entirely about who is likely to be in there and who they're going to influence more but what do you think has been the impact of this giving obama got so much money from these corporations do you think that he's sort of acted in such a way that that makes it that should make us feel like he's kind of in payback mode over the last four years oh absolutely i think the most obvious. well first of all there was absolute continuity with george bush's bailout programs you know the same guy who was the architect of bush bailouts which is bailouts tim geithner was retained. by obama but more importantly there were no sweeping prosecutions you know one when f.d.r. came in after the after the great depression you know and one of the first things it is that when they dance he did stronger reforms in the end they cleaned up wall

street obama did exactly the opposite of that and his treasury secretary tim geithner has said openly that if they had pressed too many fraud prosecutions that it would have created quite a run in the bank in other words other. investors around the world would have fled the american markets because they would have been frightened off by all the corruption so i think they they intentionally did not press forward with with sweeping fraud prosecutions because they were protecting those markets and that's so wall street got what they what they paid for they got a guy who did not put them in jail and let's talk about the prospect the potential of even more people getting what they paid for and what we saw recently with citizens united the u.s. supreme court case that you know in a nutshell found that that corporations can be people and that money can be speech talk a little bit about you know how this might affect what we see in the next election . well. you're never going to completely eliminate. corporate

money in politics that matter what they did you know if they. had somehow reform campaign contributions in the opposite direction and made it harder for people to get money they still would have found a way i mean that's that's that's sort of the montreux of washington is whether it's soft money or hard money or political action committees or or democratic national campaign committees. the money is going to get there but the problem is the citizens united case made it incredibly easy for companies to give virtually unlimited sums of money to the two parties which which means that in the lex next election cycle. there's going to be basically no way for a small independently driven candidate to compete against a major party candidate matt final question for you just your predictions i mean money and politics is such a subject that seems to be pretty near and dear to your heart what is the one thing

that you think people really should know that americans should understand and that you think really really isn't quite out there yet we're getting this topic i think most americans don't understand that. most of the major kids' contributors in this country give to both candidates i think there's still. even the people who supported this is the no decision and there were a lot of people among the tea partiers who did that they did that because they believed that companies were practicing free speech by supporting one or the other candidate or one or the other policy what they didn't realize is that that's not exact that's not what goes on these companies give money to both sides because the purely because they hope to influence whoever wins so it's not an ideological search it's not an ideological contest it's just an attempt to influence the outcome of great wonderful reporting as always rolling stones at matt even joining us from new jersey thanks so much thank you and meanwhile president obama also looking ahead to november today he spoke about the economy and about his decision

to make a recess appointment richard cordray will head the consumer watchdog agency and i think it's safe to say that if the president gets a fight about that with republicans it's a fight he gladly have and it's no accident also he was in ohio a battleground state. because folks here in ohio and all across the country. i want you to know. your the reason why i ran for this office in the first place. you have money well we are still fighting for a while things are not quite expected to go as smoothly as they did for barack obama as they did four years ago where once he can clinch the nomination the fire and passion followed him everywhere he went are to correspond a marine important to look at one group of people in this country that seems to be growing people who once spent all their free time volunteering and campaigning for

obama who this year will not. three years ago one historic campaign turned us politics into a pop culture phenomenon. experience for the democratic candidate achieved unprecedented support international fame and a record breaking six hundred fifty million dollars in donations. thousands of new yorkers celebrated the victory clutching an enormous american flag hand sewn by obama supporters but the winds have changed and the very same democratic symbol waved in honor of the president elect in no way each straight from a straight has been donated to them lou find that became a phenomenon in two thousand and eleven there about twenty people holding out david mulford out organize the flag project after being inspired by obama rhetoric

a dream shattered by the subsequent years of politics as usual curly what's inspiring me is up is over to us like that that's the thing that's inspiring you know like that's why i brought the fight oh w. us and the thing that inspired me about it is the fact that it's a grassroots movement. that had a like a very clear and transparent process artist shepard fairey seems similarly just an chanted releasing an updated version of his iconic hope poster replacing obama with his now clear support for occupy wall street with an economy still in crisis wall street largely unregulated social programs slashed and over forty five million citizens on food stamps it all starts with you making a decision to get involved obama's familiar prose may not be enough to win back his familiar fan base he didn't produce what people wanted him to produce in two thousand and eight professor and author dr cornel west was one of obama's biggest

supporters i think you get the beers you get the newness is. the freshness taking part in more than one hundred campaign events but last april the prominent intellectual told r.t. that obama has failed he's the friendly face of the american empire abroad he's in the process actually of becoming very sadly a pawn of big finance and a puppet of big business and any politician here knows they're in trouble when the hollywood a listers start turning their backs are you happy with the way that obama has been running the country. you. know now and i think i really think you misinterpreted his. his mandate yet the approval ratings show voters are even more turned off with the alternatives leaving obama seemingly the lesser of two evils america's president clearly enters the twenty twelve race

amid a growing band of disillusioned democrats most will still back barack obama over his republican rivals arguably with heavy hearts in two thousand and eight he was the unassailable candidate of choice this time mr obama is likely to stay in my default arena. new york. and while volunteers abandon ship on the president obama the u.s. is now on board with negotiating with the taliban the ones hard line do or die front president george w. bush put up is softening and to the realistic need to end the war with afghanistan but as our correspondent lives while reports this new approach could actually be a major victory for the taliban. though sharing with the taliban something the u.s. under president bush vowed never to do some seem to believe that we shouldn't go with the terrorists and radicals. as if some ingenious argument. well

persuade them they have been wrong all along. we've heard this foolish delusion before when i said no negotiations i meant no negotiations but that's exactly what's happening today after more than a decade of trying to defeat the afghan fighters the u.s. has reportedly agreed to release high ranking taliban prisoners from guantanamo bay and an effort to start peace talks those sets of be released include mohamed fossil a former taliban deputy defense minister accused of commanding forces that kill thousands of shiite muslims as part of the deal the taliban will open a political office in qatar a safe haven for talks i think this this marks that point or there is a mission maybe not openly that we're not going to achieve that military overwhelming dominance tol'able. so with the us giving in to their demands going to be seen as

a victory for the taliban i think the idea of releasing these individuals without understanding what we're getting in return we being the united states i sat it's not really a good idea and i think it's almost an act of desperation so how does the average citizen feel about releasing the terrorist suspects be that high profile taliban to be. right so i would say that they need to be. detained should the u.s. be negotiating with taliban and i don't think so. and i well i mean they bombed our country and. they should pay for their for their sins so to speak i think they're everybody's come to the conclusion that valid taliban is there to stay so if we ever expects the ability in afghanistan they've got to be part of something the deal can be seen as one of the biggest breakthroughs in the ten year conflict in afghanistan but the fact that the u.s. is still trying to negotiate with the taliban shows that the u.s.

is far from declaring a victory and washington liz wahl r.t. . well that's going to do it for now i want to thank you for watching i'm christine and we will be back here in thirty minutes. tried to clean a ghost town. squandered money. on . what is now. more than sixty square kilometers or to move from the mistakes and those who are still surprisingly in line and fighting for jobs there so it's getting bad out here . but not saying hardly any birds squirrels you know.

ducks you know i don't know what's going on here. concrete monarchy. down the official ante up location. called touch from the. life on the go. video on demand. old costs and says feed now with the palm of your. question on the dot com.

good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm more in leicester here in washington d.c. and when all the fireworks have fizzled out over two thousand and eleven so what is in store for financial markets in two thousand and twelve we've already said goodbye to the old normal now maybe even the new normal are we living in the paranormal. activity radar. it's creepy and it's the forecast of bon titan bill gross of pimco the toll of too much paper and too little trust.