holder and initials souza got on the topic of how fixing up the car industry has been a metaphor for fixing america's economic problems if asked me the ad was a straight up endorsement for the auto bailout but of course they have they took the time to bash obama by saying that the bailout was crap that hurts the taxpayers in the long run because they have to foot the bill and cetera et cetera and then we decided to have fun with that other metaphor that clint eastwood made the ad when he says it's have time in america. so let's stop with the blame game let's talk about moving forward let's talk about halftime in america that's what this this is about the obama was really looking to get in there any time a number you want which. and time in america as we know it i mean come on sean you're really going to make the sound apocalyptic does the us fall off the map of obama gets the votes in november or worse does that mean the doomsday is around the corner and is a strong word but because i can't say i'm really all that surprised fear mongering is a tried and true a political tactic no matter what the issue is and the president is no exception

take for example erick erickson a recent blog post the conservative wrote about his endorsement for the president saying we will be forced to hope for a deteriorating economy because while i will vote for romney and think he is vastly better than barack obama the fact is he has made no case for himself against barack obama except for that he can do a better job on the economy so erik's it is so anti obama that he's basically praying for the u.s. economy to completely crumble which will ensure that the president does doesn't come back for a second term kind of like that one time rush limbaugh said that he hoped this president would fail so here we go again conservative commentators want try to convince everybody that the world is going to end if obama returns i mean i knew the people said the world was going to end in two thousand and twelve but hell i don't know the mayans were aware of obama way back then and i should point out we've modified doomsday to happen on election day november third because that's when those g.o.p. mouthpieces think that it's all going to be game over on our clock at least you know i thought that the media personalities were all about being patriotic doing

with best for the country but openly saying that you hope the country change so that people will suffer so that you can have a republican back in the white house that proves that you care more about politics than you do about people and sean hannity's attempts to be cute and terrifying at the same time by giving his own football metaphor is saying that another term obama be game over for the us pretty lame in my book so for sean hannity doing is darn it is to scare the crap out of people he's tonight's tool time winner. our guide time for a happy hour going to be deceiving lauren lyster host of the capital account here on r.t. and jim hansen retired special operations master sergeant and military blogger a black by dot net hey guys i'm good thanks for having me on thanks for having me on your show to though we were just you know i wanted to make in the round. but

let's talk about i mean there's a lot of things you can get vending machines these days right you can even get like with the i phones or something we have like apple in the machine that likely will act on that thing but maybe you never expected this one take a look. you know it's worth university you can delegate more than snacks from a vending machine and the college is now making the morning after pill available through a vending machine the plan b. emergency contraception can be obtained through a machine in the health center each dose cost twenty five dollars and the university will not make money from the sales. what do you think is the time that we loosened up a little. that's brilliant that is way more valuable than i guarantee all of the other things combined that are in that vending machine of fritos and cheetos or whatever at least plan b. is something that actually value of the seventy two hours of the health center is closed they can never be for everything our offering that you could get pregnant just cause they don't open for an absolutely or the pharmacy you have to run in to see the vending machine i'm going to tell you this whole minefield and i'm just

going to say maybe if they sold sex toys in the vending machine they could avoid the need for they have no they're not. going to have protection when it happens you know there's going to free people this is going to cause want to get it over and i know it's sold and pharmacies you don't need a prescription you have to be over there going to be ordered like cigarette machines or whatever you mean how you can make sure that control well i mean they have bigger fish to fry than vending machine and just have a plan b. i guess that means any place to sell plan b. in a vending machine though it's college i think they should have a more proper i think they should roll them out more broadly and i think that building yeah the fact that you have them behind the counter and that you have to be over seventeen i think is completely ludicrous i think that this should be the future. ok i can at least disagree with that we can seventeen before you get by that i mean what are you twelve year old kids can then maybe a little control a modicum of control who gets to decide that you can't legislate morality parents

for the world you know and you know everything with it i doubt you know you are going to. be overwhelmed at work at pharmacies are here's another interesting thing for you guys we have debated what we think about legislating morality. think about twitter followers right if you work for a company and then you leave that company but you have like fifteen thousand twitter followers the you got during that time when you leave who do the twitter followers belong to we're seeing this happen in a certain case right now. well that's a move phone dog from his handle but kept the seventeen thousand followers he had built up while at the company now phone dog has filed a lawsuit in california saying cravats followers should belong to the site the company wants two dollars and fifty cents a month per follower for eight months that makes three hundred forty thousand dollars. i think that's b.s. the company owns the twitter followers it's completely b.s. i don't even get it you supposed to pay for the twitter followers the company will just lose all the twitter followers once that guy is not. who they're following

anyway fortunately you guys are both completely wrong there is such a thing as intellectual property the company paid him to generate these twitter followers on their dime it's the same as stealing an email list or a customer list and taking it to a direct competitor it's wrong i never thought i'd be opining on a tweet custody case but the bottom line is the company paid him to do that they own the followers and by taking that list and taking it to a rival he stole their intellectual property plain and simple i mean it was is the middle class that's going to the bottom good idea that is going to make you that isn't going to i think good point if that's his you know not his personal list and that was it was just i don't believe it's the company's twitter handle it was not his followers under the i mean that is you know there is nothing there i don't even think i have like a superior to number your peers or how that's a stretch right it's not like you have somebody contacts that in their private personal contact it's just their twitter name which is public ok but it's the same thing if you have a customer list and you take that to your direct competitor these are people they generate advertising revenue from those twitter followers and by taking them to

a direct competitor they cost his cost his company money it was stupid it wasn't probably. them that was going to if they do that through forty thousand dollars and that we discussed the i hope he does i did and you just go get those twitter followers again if he's insane or send tweeting just say i have a new twitter handle folks people are retarded well i mean. this is necessarily mean that a lot of the that's true but they're all right of ducks that are following it is hard it is very very funny word ahead so they're valuable that they used to be valuable where ok we have quite a problem in this country when even our dogs. are you getting fat and need to lose weight i mean there is actually a show out there i think a program to help dogs lose weight take a look. at joining us now is how do you see all the director of the doggie fact camp one of the first in the country you have changed the lives of hundreds of dogs have to meet

a couple of them right now first up i want to everybody to look at this before a shot of lucky and let's see lucky did i come on how long. that's ridiculous and that makes me hate people that the only one actually exists but so based on a new survey from nationwide half of all u.s. pets are dangerously overweight some forty one million dogs and forty seven million cats are so overweight or obese that there are high risk for diabetes arthritis some cancers and premature death this is not shock can't just do it to ourselves we've got to do to the well known fact that dogs and pets in their own little you are not an implant you have only made your smile i dismiss only fitting this completely follows everything we know about pets and their owners it's just so messed up but i think my parents dogs are overweight so. my dogs probably need a little well it is just an ill health it's a whole industry of people that can capitalize there's doggie diet pills there and

obviously hamps would really quickly let's john boehner speaker of the house we all know that he likes to tantalize. if you do win and you do become speaker you will probably have the deepest hand of any speaker in american history there's actually been a poll out in your state of ohio saying thirty percent of the voters think you spent too much time on it and twenty seven percent don't like it is this something you have to or they'd probably want there yesterday when i was probably my grown. man well all jokes aside the indoor tanning industry's political action committee has contributed five thousand dollars to speaker john major's campaign i like it they should you support them why wouldn't they support him he's their mental model that's not america right there a man with a fake tan and people paying money to congress to keep that industry go yeah i think politically agree are you guys thanks so much for joining me tonight that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in and make sure to come back tomorrow comedian tim young is going to be joining us for happy hour but in the meantime

don't forget to become a fan of the launch on facebook you can follow us on twitter if there's anything you ever miss it's all the you tube dot com slash you want to shell and coming up next. more news today violence is once again. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule today.

well for. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. president obama makes a huge turn in decides to accept super pac money after all is this a necessary evil or is the president making a huge mistake and what will the fallout be from this decision and how little fact the two thousand and twelve election also america's bridges and roads are collapsing all around us so isn't this an opportunity to put americans back to work and if so why are republicans letting it happen and what might twitter's new policy

have to do with a certain saudi prince that story coming up later. you need to know this president obama came to the real realization today that he can't win a gun fight carrying a knife a new in very very early national poll out this week shows president obama with a comfortable lead over mitt romney assuming he wins the nomination fifty one to forty five percent on top of that the president is creaming romney when it comes to campaign fund raising obama the d.n.c. have raised more than a hundred thirty nine million dollars so far romney just fifty seven million but as we've learned in the republican primary so far polls mean nothing they change week to week and also as we've learned not just in the republican primary but also in

the two thousand and ten election campaign fund raising isn't nearly as important as it used to be now that we live in the age of super pacs and then age when mitt romney can park is restore a future corporate super pac tank in iowa or florida and bombard newt gingrich with millions and millions of dollars worth of negative ads none of which romney had to actually sign his name to polls change pretty quickly after that and when it comes to super pacs the president is in the same league as romney and the republicans right wing super pacs like karl rove's american crossroads and crossroads g.p.s. raised fifty one million bucks last year and romney super pac raised thirty million bucks on the other hand priorities usa the super pac supporting president obama peltry nineteen million dollars. of course that might have something to do with president obama's unwillingness to embrace the whole super pac thing as he talked about it is that super bowl interview earlier this week. one of the words we have

obviously in the next campaign is that there are so many of these so-called super pacs these independent expenditures that are going to be out there there's going to be just a lot of money floating around and i must i guarantee a lot of bunch of that's going to be negative but it's not going to be enough just to say the other guy's a bomb you've got to explain to the american people what your plan is to make sure that there are good jobs at good wages and that this economy is growing over the long term and whoever wins that argument i think is going to be the next president but sometime between sunday and last night someone whispered in the president's ear you have to play dirty to win this year and in a reversal the obama reelection team announced that it would embrace super pacs in the two thousand and twelve election and is now encouraging donors to give to the pro bamma super pac priorities usa one of the founders of priorities usa former obama staffer bill burton broke down the reality of the situation saying quote as

has become evident in the past month the only enthusiasm the republican party is among oil company billionaires and investment bankers on wall street looking to defeat president obama we're committed to providing a balance to karl rove and the koch brothers who have pledged more than a half billion dollars to their effort and quote and the president's campaign manager jim messina echoed the sentiment saying quote with so much at stake we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and democrats unilaterally disarm. regardless there's a lot of people unhappy with this decision one being former senator russ feingold has been one of the most vocal critics of too much money in politics he said quote it is a demo pro choice the president president is wrong to embrace the corporate corrupt politics of citizens united and that's what you're doing when you start using consorting with super pacs so what might be the fallout from all this what does it

mean for the two thousand and twelve elections and what does this do to the effort the big effort to get money out of politics here to answer that question is lethal investigative reporter with republic report dot org lee welcome ace and thanks for having me nice nice to see you again so certainly this decision is going to anger a lot of people who want to get money out of politics you know you and me. but really what option does the president to have at this point now that this is the game it's the super pac game that we have to blame. well president obama kind of created the situation for himself in two thousand and ten he could have campaigned and made the disclose act the legislative fix for citizens united a priority to stump for it he could have issued an executive order last year in fact he could issue or issue it today that would mandate campaign disclosure from federal contractors he could have his f.c.c.

be mandating that publicly traded companies disclose their spending or at least inform their investors he could be doing a whole range of things even appointing a d.o.j. division to look into corrupt electioneering or beating up the f.e.c. and the sad reality is and what the most of the mainstream media isn't reporting is that president obama hasn't taken many of the steps that are actually on the table and available to him he's taken the easy way out and extend accepting and embracing unlimited corporate money so yeah as you just mentioned i mean he can do i guess in a number of things when it comes to disclosure and making sure that we at least know who is behind these super pacs and everything like that why do you think he's not doing that is he afraid of the retaliation i mean how much damage can people i mean you know this topic really really well how much damage can people like the koch brothers or the adult things you know giving tons of money to newt gingrich or you know someone like karl rove and the people he's got on his side how much damage

can these people do in an election now if they want to. well citizens united has completely changed the game i'm not only will the right from the big business alliance of the chamber of commerce to the koch brothers the folks you mentioned can they raise billions of dollars to defeat president obama they can spend that and adds they can use it and employee coercive situations with captive meetings that have big workplaces i mean there's a whole range of things. these interests can do but president obama by and bracing this citizens united for politics it's really dangerous because he's number one you can never really compete in terms of money with these guys and number two he's inviting a corruption scandal and you know i can predict here on air today that the super pacs will lead to massive scandals later this year and into the coming years now that president obama isn't bracing this type of secret money these multimillion

dollar checks maybe even hundreds of million dollars checks we have no idea he's blurring the line between himself and mitt romney so when these scandals and negatively calm it will hurt both president obama and a possible possible president romney so in just a minute we have left is this going to take a constitutional mean you mentioned the stuff you can do as a present executive orders and when it comes to disclosure but that's kind of around the edges so is this ultimately going to take a constitutional amendment to get rid of this. well i believe sunlight is the best disinfectant obviously and adelson doesn't mind if their name their name is in the news that they're going to donate a big check to newt gingrich but at target or walmart or even a goldman sachs they don't want to have their finger print fingerprints on their money so i think disclosure actually kills a lot of the problem that president obama is not doing that i think you're right a constitutional amendment is the only long term solution well said lee thanks a lot for coming on and took our public report dot org. thanks and i appreciate it

thanks a lot lee after mitt romney won florida by airing thirteen thousand mostly negative television ads funded mostly by super pacs it became pretty clear just how out of control our elections have become post citizens united and that's when tom gave his take on what democracy looks like when actual people aren't even running for office anymore. we no longer have candidates running for office we have interest groups promoting the candidates that they own running for office interest groups like wall street or big oil like the for profit health insurers that all have the power to buy our elections now thanks to the supreme court their citizens united decision it's a given that who really won in florida tonight let's look at the numbers i mean pretty straightforward stuff in the last republican presidential primary about forty eight

well exactly forty eight point seven million dollars was spent and at this point and six hundred sixty six thousand five hundred fifty seven ads have been run this year this year the candidates have only run thirty nine thousand four hundred twenty nine ads and a forty percent decrease in advertising and they've only spent thirteen point seven million dollars seventy two percent drop. so what's going on here seventy two percent drop in candidates by in ads i thought this was the year of massive negative advertising that the voters across the nation would be inundated dated would see ads well they are but the candidates themselves aren't the ones running the ads instead it's special interest groups in two thousand and eight for example special interest groups ran just seventeen hundred ads seven hundred sixty three specifically at this point the election for about one point one million dollars chump change nothing but this year thanks to citizens united those special interest groups have aired thirty thousand four hundred forty two ads that's

a sixteen percent increase sixteen hundred twenty six percent to be exact and they've spent fifteen point two million dollars doing it that's almost a twelve hundred eighty one percent increase so really what's going on here is the candidates are running any more special interest groups the super pacs they're the ones actually running for president american crossroads or americans for prosperity just these two come. super pacs have spent eight point eight million dollars on ads around the country and where they're getting their money from american crossroads top fund funders seven million bucks from texas homebuilder bob perry big real estate two million bucks in the c.e.o. of chief oil and gas trevor reese jones big oil a million dollars to the dixie rice agriculture big agribusiness and americans for prosperity according to media matters they've received over five million dollars in the koch brothers the richest of the rich people and the biggest of the big industries are the ones actually running this election in florida over thirteen

thousand television ads have been run on behalf of mitt romney gingrich's only aired two hundred and most of those romney ads were not paid for by romney or his campaign they came from a super pac called restore our future and guess who is the one of the top contributors to restore our future. surprise wall street billionaire hedge fund manager john paul's now romney isn't running for president wall street and the hedge fund managers who want to protect their capital gains tax loopholes are the ones really running for president so tonight mitt romney is going to give a big victory speech but the real winner the big one or wall street. after the break america's infrastructure is collapsing literally it's collapsing but congress continues to bulk out to filibuster or hold hostage the crucial infrastructure legislation by demanding stuff like oil pipelines it could be built

instead so is it about time to put politics aside for a moment and ensure the americans are secure when they're driving over roads and bridges this in time we boost our economic recovery to. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and since you told the truth. i'm a contestant i'm a total get of friends that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you see it's a place. you

know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly is think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcomes a big picture. in

the middle of a rush hour on august first two thousand and seven in a way and i thirty five mississippi river bridge in minnesota suddenly collapsed plunging one hundred cars into the river below thirteen people were killed more than one hundred forty injured. we learned afterward the vast bridge the i thirty five mississippi river bridge was given a quote structurally deficient rating by the federal government back in one thousand nine hundred seventeen years before the collapse but nothing was done and in two thousand and five two years before the collapse the bridge was again given

a structurally deficient rating for clear signs of cracking and fatigue prompting minnesota governor at the time tim plenty to call for the bridge to be replaced and not right away but in two thousand and twenty thirteen years after the bridge eventually fell into the river in two thousand and seven at the time of this bridge collapse there were seventy five thousand other bridges in america with the same structurally deficient rating as the i thirty five mississippi river bridge so this should have been a wake up call the right time to rebuild our nation's aging and increasingly more dangerous infrastructure not to mention shortly after that bridge collapse in minnesota our economy went into full meltdown and there's been no better proven stimulus to fight back a recession than massive infrastructure investments so all signs pointed to one conclusion time to rebuild our roads and bridges only that's not what happened

instead after the bridge collapse in two thousand and seven news that tens of thousands of other bridges in america could meet the same fate total public construction spending actually went down and even includes the brief uptick in two thousand and nine in two thousand and ten from president obama's stimulus act and three different times last month senate republicans filibustered the rebuild america act which would have diverted fifty billion dollars to rebuilding infrastructure despite that our economy is making some gains with you know more than two hundred forty thousand jobs created in january. there's jobs are mostly service sector jobs not construction jobs which raises the question can our economy really see a significant recovery without will the significant investment in our infrastructure and be on the economy for a moment isn't it just common sense to rebuild bridges of roads that are in danger of collapse especially in america the richest country on earth michael mandel joins me now.