the bank.

russia's foreign minister says the libyan scenario will foreign intervention or risk being repeated in syria as the case is being billed against the assad regime to justify external military action. russia's military predicts the west might decide on a strike against iran before summer is clouds gather over to ron following israel israel's accusations the islamic republic was behind monday's attacks on diplomatic personnel. and a fresh wave of downgrades sweeps across the struggling euro zone six nations get their debt ratings cut all while greece faces further battle over hurdles from the e.u. despite the latest harsh austerity plan. that austerity package and the outrage it caused at home all this on the table coming up in part one of the all of the show.

welcome to the show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can live out of washington d.c. now and i are going to host a monday panel talking about obama's budget see pac and the g.o.p. race matt welch and who are going to be joining us then a greece was burning this week at protests and riots broke out after the parliament approved a strict austerity package so at the end of this we have to wonder if it's even going to help and admiral william mcraven is now asking for more off already to move special ops forces faster and outside of the normal pentagon channels so is that what we need or will it only allow for less accountability we have all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has decided to miss.

all right so today the obama administration released a budget for fiscal year two thousand and thirteen that was a lot to discuss within this breakdown and we'll get to that during our panel after the break but the mainstream media are also talking about this today and looking at some of the details. president obama delivered his twenty thirteen budget plan to capitol hill and it's sure to fan well morally debate over your tax money and how the government wants to spend it the plan calls for spending three point eight trillion in twenty thirteen in projects this year's deficit at one point three trillion congressional republicans are already seizing on that number reminding voters the president promised to do doesn't either cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term he promises to reduce the deficit by four trillion dollars over the next ten years even before the budget was made public angry republicans said hey it looks like a stimulus plan three point eight trillion dollars spending plan that envisions about a nine hundred billion dollars deficit for fiscal two thousand and thirteen four

hundred seventy six billion dollars for infrastructure upgrades over the over a six year period three hundred fifty billion dollars for job creation thirty billion dollars to hire teachers police officers and firefighters his plan stross a very sharp distinctions between him and the republicans he calls for raising taxes on the rich and billions of dollars for roads energy and manufacturing paid for by savings from two wars. now i want to focus on here is that last little bit in the clips the money that will be saved from drawing down our two wars that we've heard this before by paul ryan last september the president's jobs plan and yet again in this new budget by all accounts u.s. troops are no longer in iraq although we know that there's still a massive state department presence and the pentagon is in fact still asking for about three billion dollars more next year in iraq why is a very important question and what i still haven't seen anybody in the mainstream media ask by the way that in afghanistan it does look like will at least see

a troop drawdown in the middle of two thousand and thirteen but how many troops exactly we don't know yet there's also continued spending and plans for permanent basing they're also deserving of harsh questioning and so let me just use this time right now to talk about an incredibly important report that's out there that's something that we should all reads. we should all examine before talking about any kind of numbers that we can properly critique that as our daily viewers out there should know last week we had the tenet colonel daniel davis on the program is an active army officer who just submitted a classified report to congress that's a pretty damning assessment of the dishonesty of our military leadership now just two days after johnny appeared here on the show and n.b.c. report claim that a pentagon investigation had been launched into his report but it was also an eighty six page unclassified report that lieutenant colonel davis had written to be released for public consumption and it's something of the pentagon had it cleared for release which let's face it isn't surprising but on friday evening rolling

stone contributing editor michael hastings posted that unclassified report on the internet for all to see how this version is eighty four pages long and all i can say that is well worth taking the time to read davis charges our military leadership with intentionally being dishonest with congress and the public about what they claim to be signs of success or progress or momentum in the war in afghanistan he shows that throughout the command of a number of different generals and even after the troop surge a number still show that violence casualties both military and civilian only increased so how can we say we have momentum or progress of even with more resources the violence is only going up and we document through various interviews with those on the ground the reality of training afghan security forces and how they're failing also the opposite of what the officials say to congress and to the press he takes a look at how it is that a surge in afghanistan was sold is a good idea because the surge in iraq under the command of general petraeus was on a broad level seen as

a smashing success but davis shows that what the real turning point in iraq was sunni population the insurgency have been fighting against our troops with al qaeda deciding that al-qaeda attacks on the local population have become so inhumane at the sunni insurgency decided that they were the greater foe better to work with the international coalition forces to give. them out to save their own country first but the feeling that we were an occupying force that never left sending troops to live closer amongst the population was never an ideal we didn't win them over they just chose to work with us so if people properly looked at the iraq surge they could have made a better assessment as to whether or not the surge was really the magic fix to afghanistan davis also documents the insane amount of lying and manipulation that takes place to get congress to keep finding new weapons systems and projects despite failed tests which they don't tell congress about despite reports from the government accountability office year in year out which show continual failures i have the military leadership in those in charge of these projects just claim that

the g.a.o. doesn't know what they're talking about and finally davis really calls on our leadership to be honest honest with congress honest with the american people because that's their duty i don't want to think that thousands of american men and women have lost their lives lost their lives for nothing that we have to properly assess what's happened in these wars we have to have congressional hearings where the military leadership is called out in their public statements that just don't seem to add up with the numbers that are coming in from the field it becomes a massive issue of credibility not only to our own country and our people but to our allies who begin to question if our military actually just doesn't have a grasp on international politics if they believe what they're say now some may dispute elements of davis' report some might claim that it has nothing new to offer but the point is that is a really interesting and powerful assessment and it deserves to be discussed debated at least brought up and that's the responsibility of our media a media that will continue to just list off numbers as provided in government

budgets without actually asking where that money is going and why and so that's something that davis also covers in his report has been said many times of for the our press is to attach to power because there are too dependent on the access and so they rarely do the real reporting that just might jeopardize that access. so do it for yourself and go read this report because i can tell you the mainstream media didn't even blink an eye when it came out because they have they do and they will continue to choose to miss it. so today we're trying something new on the show monday there's a lot of news over the weekend a lot to take in there was just announced this morning is that one is returning to work so we're going to call this our monday hangover because like that today we're going to look at some of the results for the republican presidential candidates over the weekend romney won the straw poll as well as maine where

a lot of people thought ron paul just might have a shot also the president rolled out his budget for fiscal year two thousand and thirteen this morning is the last annual budget of his term and it says a lot about the themes of his reelection campaign but they have it and what they'll continue to be so first let's gloss over some of those details the budget looks to cut the deficit by four trillion dollars over ten years the plan will project a one point three trillion dollars deficit for this current fiscal year slightly higher than two thousand and eleven and also project a nine hundred one billion dollars deficit minus a trillion for fiscal year two thousand and thirteen now that's going to be of the total spending of three point eight trillion in revenues of two point nine now some of the revenue raising ideas to raise one point five trillion over ten years is to end the bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest americans and employ the buffett rule also taxing dividends as ordinary income and eliminating some corporate tax breaks for oil and gas companies and the budget reaffirms cuts in discretionary spending by a trillion dollars over ten years and it reduces that discretionary spending from eight

point seven percent of g.d.p. in two thousand and eleven to only five percent in two thousand and twenty two there's also some new spending three hundred fifty billion for short term job creation programs boosting infrastructure spending modernizing schools and giving states and local governments more money to hire teachers and first responders now some call it populist the president frame. it's a is everybody playing by the same set of rules and republicans well naturally they have attacked it so what do we say about it joining me to discuss it is jake brewer chief strategy officer at fish and strategy dot com and matt welch of their chief of reason magazine and co-author of the declaration of independence how libertarian politics can fix what's wrong with america gentlemen thank you so much for joining me tonight thanks for having me here and a hangover you see all those figures i just had to write really hard to go back out from under. me let's start i guess if you want one word to describe this budget that the president unveiled today would it be fictitious. yeah i would use

a dream it is a dream that will not come to fruition ok so you call it a dream you call it fictitious but the republicans out there had another word for it let's take a look at a clip from way. this is a dishonest budget it claims multiple reductions in deficits aren't real and it's just the play disappointing. well it's possible to agree with jeff sessions. it doesn't feel very good particularly i know i mean he he includes long term cuts. in the deficit based on obamacare that do not pass anybody's smell test i mean it's oh we're going to have a doc fix someday so let's book those cuts even though we know now there's never going to be a doc that should never be political will for it and these types of things and as you mentioned the top you know you were always booking those savings from iraq and afghanistan and all these types of things so we shouldn't expect the president to be truthful i think the most important thing here is that it's you shouldn't expect the president to look at

a statement that he has no incentive to be truthful i think you probably are right in that we haven't had a budget in three years or almost three that is what matters it almost doesn't matter at all that he's put something out except that it is talking points and i think that is that is a fact that at this point i think both people on the right and left can agree towards the thing that's interesting is that people talk about you know throw the bums out what we really need to be talking about is the other code out there the regulations in the code out that we have right now that are governing our tax code our procurement laws and they mean that's where the spending is that does not come in the changes that we need in order to be fiscally responsible and get the stuff that we need to support the infrastructure of this country doesn't come from speeches and it doesn't come from budget proposals that are in the media were on autopilot basically right now i mean we haven't had a budget more than thousand days and so and didn't harry reid are to say to you that we're we're not get whatever the issue was about a budget it's a dream to have a meeting that we're going to and the further we get away from actual budgeting the further the president's proposed numbers depart from reality i mean his projected deficit from last year and the actual deficits were pretty different and that's

just going to keep going like that going forward we need i mean his first budget that he's proposed back in two thousand and nine was titled a new era of fiscal responsibility it almost makes you cringe with laughter at this point we actually need responsible governors people in the senate budget committee to produce a budget so that we can talk about this but we're not a campaign document and we're in this. sort of fantasyland ok well in that case then since it is a campaign document i'm pretty sure that most people can agree on that is at least a good one you know you say that people try and get paid all that much attention to some of the numbers that are out there but if you do look at polling i mean republicans are not budging at all on this issue of taxation but a lot of polls show that americans are totally cool with raising taxes on the wealthy or with applying the buffett rule so you know one of the lies is not a good point to make it's a popular budget i will say that yes on a strictly strategic level because this budget makes sense and if i were the president i do roughly the same thing probably exactly this yeah i mean it seems

very smart does it have any real impact in terms of our actual spending and actual programs that are going to benefit real americans very little and i think what will continue to happen it's frustrating for me is you can ask the question when did world war two end it we saw fifty two thousand troops in germany thirty eight thousand in japan we look at the wars in the spending coming down from those but it is all in theory as a thing that said well and now i guess some of those troops there they might be leaving here up but don't worry there is can be helping you know to the persian gulf and to other areas around there but three billion dollars to the pentagon also had a budget those released three billion dollars more for iraq even though the state department is going to have a massive presence there are to have sixteen thousand people right now why do we need three million more dollars in iraq if the war there is over we have i have a friend who works in the state department as described walking around in iraq and you like just trip every ten feet on another ten million dollars of u.s. spending that it's it's almost it's physically repulsive to watch it regardless of

your politics going into it there has been and goes to what how you top off the show there has been no institutional break on military spending in this country for at least fifteen years or you believe for fifty depending on how you want to measure things but certainly in the last fifteen no one has made a point of checking the stuff you could always say we need to support our troops we need to support our veterans. need to win the war against the evil guys and that has led to some of the most idiotic conversations possible and we're only trying to begin to have a conversation about this stuff but what happens what kind of pathologies do you breed in there if there's nobody who's having the intelligent conversation against this of course what happens is that people in invariably start writing their own blank checks and that's where we're at right now we have michael o'brien who's an author was on our show last week we were talking about this piece about the state department budget what they're trying to do in iraq and he was you know there's this new york times reporter originally said that oh no the salad bar at seven days was running low they had to ration each other. piece of the splenda they had

a shortage over it he basically told us that he got really fat when he was a rock because he was just fed so well well let's also but let's also remember that personnel are expensive and they should be if there's one thing that we should be paying money for it's benefits people who serve in the war like some people here name me you know there should we should be taking care of our own we can withdraw everybody back home we still got a lump it's like a pig going to. have a baby they're most expensive when they go to college when you have the baby right and the us has been in war after war for the last hundred years and the only thing we've been able to talk about even remotely intelligently is slowing in the rate of growth of spending it's not actual cuts we're talking about cutting is the pace at which we increase it's not actually going down and it cuts this this time around and got us to six hundred thirteen trillion or billion dollars but let's talk about the idea of cuts i want to show you something that the jack lew said yesterday. i

think there's pretty broad agreement that the time for a stereo today we need to be on a path where over the next several years we bring our deficit under control right now we have a recovery that's taking root and if we were to put in a staring measures right now it would take the economy in the wrong way. i have a feeling you disagree. but i mean but you know coming up next on the show we're going to talk about greece look what's happening in greece look what's happened in the u.k. is austerity what we need right now it's not working out so well there look you know as dreams addiction put it isn't going to start tomorrow you know we've been hearing this since the financial crisis and we're going to hear this for as long as we keep electing irresponsible people if you think that the debt and the deficit or important if you think that we're risking. flirting with catastrophe then this is not a responsible budget we have to cut spending spending has increased when obama took office two point nine trillion it's three point eight trillion the new budget proposal it keeps it at three point eight trillion in this fictitious world of

a budget but we have to cut government period and you have to do it from military spending you have to do it from medicare you have to do it from social security have to do it from the department of commerce which got the biggest boost of any department in this fake budget being smart is kind of where we have to go right now and being smart almost certainly means we have to spend less money we can't we can't be for a better tomorrow tomorrow as i think stephen called bears packers name right we're going to have to be a better tomorrow today and it's folks that are are being born now and folks just a little younger than us that are being that are going to be screwed by this budget all right so we're running out of time and there is nothing more things they want to add really quick too i just want to get your idea this is dividends tax. upping it a little bit making it tax like just like normal income i think that's probably a private popular idea right now what do you think it will be popular and has no chance of being passed whatsoever there's an argument on that i have and i have a keep moving on because i want more. ok not happening. but we saw this weekend to

as we saw mitt romney win see packin then we saw rick santorum come out and say no he was doing something wrong there same thing in maine we saw ron paul come out and attack mitt romney and say there is something a little sketchy what does that mean is that what it's come to where there are still you know starting to play thinkers and say everyone is cheating all the time we'll see packs of straw poll ron paul one of the last two or three years. actually really does. matter although it's interesting main this is because everyone's going to the cheaters that i'm not going to have any bit of momentum right now romney can't hold every time he gets a little lead something happens and he gets pulled back down and so he's looking for any little thing that he can do and of course he's going to go after the c pac straw poll just as the media goes we're talking about it now and that that's kind of what he needs we're heading toward towards a divided convention hopefully i mean if we're if we're all lucky and so they're going to scrabble for everyone what happens then i think you know it could yet be interesting santorum wins we get the gay and lesbian activists see what they really can do and also one of the hot to get it are getting so much for joining us on a monday. are we taking a break but coming up next

a greek parliament voted on strict austerity measures this weekend as tens of thousands of people in athens to the streets i should say things got ugly so discuss the ramifications after the break. this is not the politics but a culture. this could. on its own. cultures of resistance.

more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images and seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule today. well while u.s. lawmakers debate as to whether or not sterrett is the right path to take in greece the decision has been made in order to secure a second bailout of over at least one hundred thirty billion euros she calls about a hundred seventy one billion dollars the greek parliament this weekend passed a series of strict austerity measures that includes cutting the minimum wage laying off one hundred fifty thousand government workers over the next three years fifteen thousand of those to be immediate and a bond swap plan to reduce the debt greece owes to its private sector creditors by about one hundred billion euro so how do the public react in greece with massive

protests and riots more than forty buildings across athens were set on fire over the weekend protesters hurled rocks of the parliament building and police responded with tear gas and arrests and some feel of the greek economy is being gutted to appease the banks the question at the end of the day is will any of this even be enough could agree still effectively leave the eurozone entirely too many say might plunge the entire global economy back into recession joining me to discuss it is to me to feed us producer on capital account and from our studio in los angeles now a friend senior fellow at demos and author of her latest book black tuesday and i thank you both for joining me tonight dimitri i'm to start with you because i know this is also a personal for you you know being from greece having family is still there what's going on right now well it's in a depression so they say it's a fifth year of a recession because of the pressure that. businesses are losing customers are closing down money isn't circulating basically the country's in a liquidity crisis but they don't have anyone to bail them out so people are going

to be forced to sell more and more of what they own the car the country it's a it's a it's a mystical structure of the country it's spread it's a depression i don't know me how do you see this to you know is this something that's being completely imposed from the outside is this something you know that is appeasing the banks appeasing germany and not doing what's good for those inside to greece. well it's obviously it's not doing anything good for the population of greece you see that from the people taking the streets you see that from the fact that unemployment keeps going up the housing there keeps going down that i agree with dimitri and it has been a depression i think many countries in the world including us are in it in a variety of depression but in greece it is more acute because they've had such as an extraction of wealth because of having to bail out bondholders to bail out those that are backing derivatives contracts to bail out the largest european and u.s. institutions who have managed to convince the world that if greece falls the

entire financial economy they don't really care about the global population economy will somehow unravel and all hell will break loose and the reality is hell is breaking loose right now on the streets of greece and it's because none of these a sterile measures actually will help the economy grow enough to have enough money to pay back the debts that it's having to take in order to get itself bailed out for the bondholders and it's a circular problem because the more bailouts that greece is subject to and the more austerity measures that are connected to them the worse the economy of greece will continue to do which means it will be unable to pay back the bailouts this current bailout is really in most instances a way of paying back the last bailout that didn't work for the economy of greece now to be sure obviously greece is a bit of a different situation than the u.s. right and we have our own central bank we can essentially bail ourselves out if we need to but do you think that we would ever see something similar if strict

austerity measures were to come to the u.s. would we see people rioting on the streets in the sense we're good i mean i think there are differences but i think the common theme is that you have a class of all of that are getting wealthier and the masses that are getting poorer and that extraction is moving the wealth from the bottom to the top and the same mechanism of work in both. so you just you're just seeing the first symptoms in greece and greece has some of uniques problems that make that adjustment that worse but of course i think you can see there that do you think i'll think right so this is going to get greece where it needs to be before march right before they would default this time around so they can get this second loan but is that still by any means going to be enough to you i mean do you think some people out there would just say that greece should exit the euro is that bush gets to this to happen or will be because the government and the people in the government to where they need to be doesn't get the people where the people are in a depression the people who are pricing in a depression which is why they're not investing the money isn't circulating that's not going to change so i don't think that. the thing is i think that well i think

the question is the fall where they want to continue to use the euro not as a complete separate question entirely in my in my view and i don't see any reason why the euro you have a lot of contracts are going euro as i don't see why private institutions in greece should have to necessarily not continue to use that if the government to print money can print whatever but i think that the real of the day it's the debt they need to reach a bottom they need to get it to right in a bottom if they don't have a bottom no one's going to take the next episode investing and putting capital back in right now capital flowing out of the country it's been moving out you see them deposit flight you see them three contracts in greece every single month so that's not going to change until people say the worst is over and the war will be over until there's that big bang which is what everybody keeps saying if you are going to be going to treat they say we're waiting for the explosion now to i mean you know you bring that up there's something interesting that they had on credit write downs today because at the moment they're telling greece that you have to get two hundred twenty percent of your debt to g.d.p. ratio right but that's still it seems like this crazy number but they suggested

that well you know that's where italy is so if they tell greece that it's unsustainable for greece to be any higher than where italy is which is the most part considered too big to fail at this point then what does that say for italy which really would have massive global ramifications. i mean that process the. with all of this is that and greece is the most acute right now is that when you have capital flight like to me to is talking about and you have external bailouts that basically are plugging that hole in order to make good on the capital that invested and that is now leaving you are in a bottomless hole you're in a bottomless pit and you continue to go down because the cost of your debt continues to rise every time there's a possibility of not being able to repay it and so then you go into a bailout situation you have negotiations with your creditors and you reach some cider with a sort of a deal and that happens again because none of it's the nuff to do.