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tv   [untitled]    January 4, 2012 8:01pm-8:31pm EST

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ready to take a gamble on this high roller. girl . george w. bush might have meant no but the u.s. now is saying yes and pulling its finger off the trigger long enough to negotiate with the taliban so our american officials admitting that the afghanistan can't be won. it is wednesday january fourth eight pm in washington d.c. and christine freeze out there watching our t.v. well there's no turning back now the madness has begun for real now people are actually voting i'm just talking to pollsters and with those votes now counted the results are in probably think mitt romney won the iowa caucus caucuses with thirty thousand and fifteen votes rick santorum got just eight fewer advantage than him and ron paul came in third place with twenty six thousand two hundred one thousand
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votes now in total and i well last night about one hundred twenty two thousand people voted the first real test of the voters well in this country hundred twenty two thousand people isn't that much and when you think about iowa it's not only in extremely rural states it's also about ninety one percent white according to u.s. census data 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 ballot out of the race and according to the mainstream media iowa has been crucial to setting the path of the campaign always also talk about iowa's political weight earlier i spoke to conservative radio host t.j. mccormick and the director of grassroots political consulting l l c daniel ferrazzi i start off by asking t.j. why not make our political system more fair by changing the order of the primaries every four years. i think it makes
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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 then 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 you know i would 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 pat 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. talk about the tradition and things or as far as the process is concerned and i
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don't see it changing anytime soon but there are also other examples more legitimate when you had to dale's and with george w. bush you have 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 a jeb bush paul ryan all the rest and here you just take a look at expenditure from two thousand and eight to right now mitt romney spent seven million on the air in zero eight among all the candidates five million was spent on the ground back in two thousand and eight 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
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you could make sure you pay the right people to get in that room and oh did i know that it's so shocking that money 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 it newt gingrich speaking of money here's a full page ad he just took out in new hampshire is union leader 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 it is this kind of the kind of campaigning that we're going to see from now on are they going to continue to throw 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
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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 one conservative republican 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 destroying him in a debate now coraline's it 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 i with
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a lot of people don't know that you can actually if you're iowa residents register on the evening of the iowa caucus no matter what party you're with that right correct as a democrat or independent and vote republican for the evening and i'd like to see a lot of the after analysis to see i mean there is 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 to i 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 and i what i want to talk now about ron paul of course last night's results left a few people surprised that 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
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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 you we could we could summarize ron paul in the first part of your of your. love of the of the 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 wanting to sound a bit extreme. knowing is all according to this people right here and that was conservative radio host t.j. mccormick and director of grassroots political consulting daniel for watching. so how does the general public feel about that too close for comfort relationship between money and politics they are in washington after all but these are important
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things to think about when deciding who to vote for whatever your state's primary is so we decided to get a sense of what people are talking about so artes on adriano said i went out to the streets of d.c. and talked to some of those people who often know best about these things. and so are americans ready for millionaire mitt well as the race for the white house heats up so i decided to hitch a ride with a couple of d.c. insiders to get their point of view how long have you been here in d.c. oh i've been driving. in ninety eighty four eighty five president clinton. did bush you know andy did you know did you think americans would be ready to have mitt romney as a president i'd imagine let you know yeah people usually when in politics do you think that money plays a big part in politics here nancy it's. just a guess at the dos show you know they don't. know yet this one
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not just but do i mean mitt romney to win now but a lot of money is over just played over time you know the people who only vote don't go for rich people they don't have rich reporting married i always think. it was jolly don't like it but. you see what they do most of this research people contributing a lot. and yeah if i were a politician i wouldn't care whether it guys in my party or not if. right about he's proposed this right always good for the nation oh go for it well there you have it wilmet make it all the time will tell but one thing is for sure once you're here in the nation's capital sure to take a couple of tips from a cabbie after you give him yours from washington m.r. genocide oh artie. all right so let's talk about mitt romney it's been a broken record since long before last night that mitt romney is the only candidate
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that's moderate enough that smart enough that can connect with the largest number of people who 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 have you really thought about this that romney is a multimillionaire and a few million or ten million made romney and his wife are apparently worth more than two hundred fifty million dollars and despite attempts to fit in with real america you know you might have seen him flying southwest airlines or hanging out in the nascar pits wearing his gap jeans but romney is one of the wealthiest men to ever run for president let alone have a chance of winning the nomination this is mitt romney's twelve million dollar ocean front property and san diego and he's in the process of expanding it or actually shall i say quadrupling it in size but i'm not begrudging him he has a lot of money and i want to remind you of the american people who live in a country with a near nine percent unemployment rate when i ask you this do you think america's
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ready for a multimillionaire to become president of course not that obama or former president bush didn't have money but romney is a different ballgame altogether and it's not just personal wealth i want to also talk about the role of money in politics overall and this process which let's face it folks is just beginning now in an article called iowa the meaningless sideshow begins rolling stones and that's how you writes quote this congress marks the beginning of a long rigidly controlled and 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 we spoke with me a short while ago and to start off i asked him how will mitt romney play up his business experience in the election. you know what he's going to really run on i think there's a lot of this dissatisfaction out there with the way that government is run
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romney's going to come in and been. sort of. a leading proponent of efficiency in my entire life my company being capital itself streamline corp is 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 romney 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 in the previous big narrative about mitt romney being an out of touch multimillionaire and now a kid but through pictures like this one wrongly run the buyout capital everything about romney the trial of a man who just old dad. so john oliver there of course painting that.
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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 you is the architect of the modern american corporation. with his consulting firm they kind of pioneered this idea companies should certainly be in the business of employing a whole lot of people and making products what they're really designed to do is
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create profits and drive profits upstairs to upper management and cut out is when you 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 that you outlined in your piece how many hundreds of thousands of dollars candidates get from the wealthiest in this country goldman sachs taking more. can chase citigroup except 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
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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. 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 say one guy's more likely to win than
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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. that was rolling stones at matt taibbi. meanwhile president obama is also looking ahead to november today you spoke about the economy and about his decision to make a recess appointment richard cordray will have the consumer watchdog agency and i
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think it's safe to say that if the president gets a fight about it it's a fight he gladly have and it's no accident of course that he made this speech today in ohio ohio a battleground state thank you guys folks here in ohio and all the plants that come through. i want you to know. you're the reason why i ran for this office in the first place. you have money well we are still fighting for now a lot of people think things might not go quite as movie as they did for barack obama as they did four years ago where once he clinched the nomination the fire in the passion followed him everywhere he went well arcee correspondent kareen important takes a look at one group of people in this country that maybe growing people who the last time around spent all their free time volunteering and campaigning for obama this year have decided not to. three
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years ago one historic campaign turned u.s. politics into a pop culture phenomenon. 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 a way each straight from a show straight has been donated to them lou find that became a phenomenon in two thousand and eleven other about twenty people holding up david moffatt organize the flag project after being inspired by obama rhetoric a dream shattered by the subsequent years of politics as usual curly what's
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inspiring me is as a lot of us like that that's the thing that's inspiring you know like that's why i brought the fight so ws and the thing that inspired me about it is the fact that it's a grassroots movement that that had a like a very clear and transparent process artist shepard fairey seems similarly just in 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 nooses. the freshness taking part in more than one hundred campaign events but last april the prominent intellectual
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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. 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. now and i think i really think you misinterpreted his. his mandate yes 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
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the honest saleable candidate of choice this time mr obama is likely to stay in my default. new york. so much in gears now to something considered at one time the one thing that would never happen and never even be considered but now it appears it's happened that leaders from the united states are negotiating with the taliban the reason is in part the desire to end the war in afghanistan but what else is at stake here at r.j. correspondent as our correspondent liz wahl reports this new approach could actually be a major victory for those help them. as though she added with the taliban something the u.s. under president bush vowed never to do some seem to believe that we should go with the terrorists and radicals. as if some ingenious argument. well persuade them they have been wrong all along. worse we've heard this foolish
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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 set to 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 open like that we're not going to achieve that military overwhelming dominance of the taliban. so with the u.s. giving in to their demands to be seen as a victory for the taliban i think the idea of releasing these individuals without
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understanding what we're getting in return we being the united states i staff is 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 either out of high profile. to be. right so i would say that they need to be. detained should the u.s. be negotiating with taliban i don't think so. we're not 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 was 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. victory in washington liz wahl r.t.
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all right so this is not only something to think about the idea that the u.s. would negotiate with the taliban but is also important to think about the agenda the u.s. has with afghanistan and look at the fact that you know now the troops are gone from iraq and someday they'll be gone at least for the most part from afghanistan journalist and writer neal say just returned from afghanistan he spent some time watching as u.s. troops told some of the villagers there that they should get ready for this impending departure i spoke to him a little while ago and asked him about their responses and also about the taliban's role there today take a look while i was there most recently don't remember i would ask. citizens how they felt about the impending departure of nato forces and most of them told me that they were virgins certainly about it. they felt. almost without hesitation that as soon as nato forces left the taliban would be able to sleep back
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in because they didn't have much confidence that the afghan government would be able to handle things on their own so i think there's a lot of worry among afghan citizens about what will happen when those troops begin to leave when we talk about nato and the u.s. leaders negotiating with the taliban and to me at least on one hand it makes sense trying to be diplomatic and speak with your enemy as opposed to just trying to kill him but some say this as you know a total capitulation on the part of the u.s. government want to get your thoughts on that well i think capitulation is the wrong word because you know that serve a victory in the very traditional sense so we killed all of the enemy and now there's no one left to fight and really when was the last time that happened in any war western powers don't fight that way any longer and particularly in afghanistan where the taliban movement has shown an ability to sort of reform itself and grow back even after our so-called military victories you have to begin to work with
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a power like that in a different way and that's what the u.s. has really been doing for the last two years trying to find a way to talk with the taliban and reach a settlement that doesn't depend on total victory i mean i think that's an important point to bring up when you're not simply talking about winning and losing but afterall i mean when we think about who the taliban is what they stood for it's pretty significant that leaders would be you know talking to them i mean these are people who swore to continue to fight against the u.s. people who claimed responsibility and victory for the terrorist attacks of nine eleven. and they've even been known to terrorize their own people their women so i guess my question i mean is this a sign to the rest of the world that the u.s. is tolerant to that kind of behavior. absolutely not i think that's really kind of a big leap to make obviously those things are not conditions that we would allow to stand in the united states itself but really the u.s.
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hasn't been saying that it's been trying to turn afghanistan into sort of a miniature united states for a long time let's talk about some of the other sort of aspects of the deal afghan insurgents will open up sort of an embassy like office for peace negotiations in qatar and in return the u.s. is releasing or has released as several high ranking taliban officials so talk about these sort of aspects of the deal what will this office for peace negotiations actually be for why is it in qatar and what is all if mean i think one of the reasons that this office has been opened up is to give that to if we just say there are two sides that nato side and the taliban side a legitimate place to meet and talk about these ideas. you know the the united states and nato have been trying for a few years to reach out to the taliban but they've been in some cases fooled by
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people who posed as taliban intermediaries who work actually working for the tell about and then we've had cases where taliban. supposin taliban members came and actually were hiding suicide bombs in their clothing as we saw it the assassination of burned and burned the rubble dani back in september so i think that this office will give the legitimacy to the taliban government or to the taliban officials in any case. and that was journalist and writer we'll say and that's going to do it for now and to see my entire interview with neil or for more on any of the stories we covered today but r.t. dot com slash usa or check out our youtube page youtube dot com slash r t america you should also for sure follow me on twitter at christine frizz out coming up next the big picture with tom hartman just a half hour and we talked today a lot about the iowa caucus and tom hartman will take the discussion even further
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following a narrow romney victory tom asks dr robert jeffers if he will be starting a crusade against mormonism but that's going to do it for the news have a great night. sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't. like is a big.

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