that's of it however according to the washington post the majority of charitable funds raised went to run the church itself as well as were given the santorum split of the insider friends before it folded in two thousand and seven the charity raised around two point five eight million dollars with only thirty nine percent of the money actually going to help the citizens of pennsylvania normally a charity would donate seventy five to eighty percent of its total funds to its designated cause at least all santorum continues to be proud of the work or lack there of the operation good neighbor did it appears he was actually more interested in creating a scheme to pad the wallets of his political friends and actually help the people of his home state and that he's very very.

so how do we know when today's republican party has jumped the shark when fox so called news is trying to pull the party to the left over the last few months diehard fox viewers have noticed a change of tone coming from the republican party's mouthpiece it might have something to do with fox chairman roger ailes saying back last fall on the heels of the tea party debt limit debacle that the network was in store for a course correction ailes saw the writing on the wall which was that the tea party was going to drag republicans into the political wilderness if they kept dictating the agenda so it was time for fox so-called news to sever ties and hope that the more moderate voices in the tea party would do the same. of course to the casual viewer this lurch to the not so far right is barely noticeable after all with fox and friends of riley hannity still throwing bombs of the president every day metaphorically it seems like things haven't changed a bit but to the tea party it's like

a dog whistle that only they can hear or see they notice the difference is a blogger on the prominent tea party website red state dot com put it something's happening at fox news more often these days i hear the language of the left and hearing their news programs conservative points of view are becoming more rare on fox and or are treated with scorn i have not made a lot of these events document these claims but as someone who is sensitive not only what to what is said but how it is said i know fox news is changing and as a political as a politico reporter reported yesterday across the conservative political action conference this year there were similar grumbles among conservative activists that the cable channel was no longer speaking for them as it once did with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterize the first two years of president barack obama's presidency lately fox has increasingly promoted straight news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and

debates of the republican primary season. so this apparently is actually happening fox so-called news is desperately trying to inject some moderation into the republican party maybe that's because they know history especially the history of the republican party is a history that over the last hundred years has seen radical forces rise up within it hijack the party or run it into the ground until more moderate voices finally stand up and take back their party this is happened over and over and over again we talked about this earlier in the week this is the cycle of republican waves of radicalism from teddy roosevelt in one thousand nine hundred what he was quite progressive actually the bottom of right wing radical reason and then warren harding was elected in one nine hundred twenty and saying that he was going to put more business and in government and less government and business it was a slogan he dropped the top income tax rate from seventy three percent on a twenty five percent deregulated the markets which led right to the crash of the

one nine hundred thirty s. and franklin roosevelt and the democrats actually got on or the republicans many republicans actually got on board with the new deal which is led to the right wing reactionary movement within the in the republican party the do nothing congress of one nine hundred forty six the radical republicans they passed taft hartly blow up the unions they blocked harry truman's attempt to have universal health care which you know that in two years just two years this was forty six the election of forty six election forty eight the republicans were kicked out of the house of representatives and they didn't come back until one thousand nine hundred six forty six years in the wilderness so this led to then moderate republicans like eisenhower and of course then the for crazies said we can't have this and so they came back with barry goldwater the right wing radicals saying no no we're not going to we're not going to go with that moderate eisenhower stuff and so you had goldwater goldwater blew up the election blew up the party brought back the

moderates nixon and ford and that. brought out the crazies reagan and with and you know which was polish by george george h.w. bush which was followed by a right wing crazy george w. bush and you'd think that the party would be going into a moderate phase but it got dragged out by the tea party this weird thing and it only lasted a couple of years from the radical going to the moderate to coming back to being the radicals and frankly it's because you know all this money can't was thrown into it by by the billionaires and the and the tea party so we'll see how this this whole tea party thing you know works out but it looked to me like it's going to get a little more moderate and so this is going to be these struggles in my opinion. for the republicans over the course of this year how do they root out the radical elements in their party the tea party before those radical elements crashed the economy again like they did in one nine hundred twenty nine or run congress so

poorly that they're banished from the majority in the house of representatives for forty six years like happened in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight or pick a radical as a presidential candidate like they did in sixty four woodbury got well water and get absolutely crazy so you know roger ailes the chairman over at fox so called news and a lot of the other republicans within that group they have a lot of sway in the republican party you could say that they've become the tail that is wagging the dog of the republican party so they may be able to succeed in promoting moderates if that's really what they're up to is let's go back to some moderate to the words when elections then again and ben mitt romney might be a part of that for that for that matter you know although he's having a tough time getting through the primary here but then again i'm not convinced that fox can silence the radicals within their own corporation. let alone the whole of the republican party is what the wait and see but in the meantime while the

republicans are doing some soul searching on this issue frankly i think it's time for democrats to be focusing on how progressive they were during the f.d.r. period and during the presidency of lyndon johnson which was in here someplace arguably and here when we had we actually had two very progressive presidents because as much as the cycles of the republican party showed crashing and burning when it gets super conservative those same cycles show that the democratic party is at its very best it's at its most successful when it's it most progressive people love the democrats when f.d.r. passos the security and right to unionize laws and built a modern middle class they freely elected four times or reelected three times like that in four times they so love the democrats when l.b.j.

cut poverty in half in this country in less than a generation with the great society they rethink from civil rights to medicare and medicaid so while the billionaires are busy trashing the republican party. we are so overdue for a return of franklin delano roosevelt's democratic party that it is just it's not even describable we really need to bring back progressives in the democratic party so here we get this whole republican cycle and this whole republican discussion about you know the republicans going to become more moderate and and it's time frankly as the republicans are cycling moderate it's time for the democratic party to become more progressive and i think that the bill clinton presidency is not is not so long for the way that f.d.r. is was because he wasn't that progressive he was a moderate democrat and so for republicans if they want to hold power they need to have moderates democrats if they want to take power if they want to get elected

they want to get things done if they want to accomplish things and if they want to have the long term love of the people then do things like creating social security or creating medicare do things or defending them standing up for them or let's build out something you know let's let's go to medicare party and bring everybody into the party or let's go to let you know let's let's say everybody gets a free college education this country like they do in the rest of the developed world. so that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our website so tom hartman drug free speech org you. can also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom harkin dot com and this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit thom hartmann dot com and download the audio podcast of our daily noon to three radio show and we have a free time our but i phone an i pad app in the app store. you could see it as feedback on twitter and others who are on facebook at tom underscore our win our

blogs message boards and telephone comment line at tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it suitable. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world

has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day.

welcome to the cell at the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to talk about the possibility of the white house making drastic reduction to the u.s. nuclear arsenal to buy the budget for twenty thirteen so far shows the exact opposite then there is some army psychiatrist downgrading p.t.s.d. diagnoses to save money we're going to talk about a very disturbing speech in which an investigation has now been launched and get this

a private prison operators offering to buy up state prisons all in exchange that they remain ninety percent full so we're going to talk about the dangers making criminal justice a for profit industry we'll have all that worth a night including it does of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. our yesterdays show we spoke to glenn greenwald about how the media seems to be beating the war drums on iran even louder than the government itself and today we saw more direct proof take a look. defiant iran taunting the west iran is calling it a major achievement and its nuclear program scientists have loaded nuclear fuel rods into the core of a research reactor tehran is fueling it centrifuges with nuclear fuel and that is stoking fears that the rogue state is indeed one step closer to an atomic bomb is this another step potentially on the road and road to potentially making nuclear

weapons it is certainly a step down the road towards a nuclear weapon escalating nuclear tensions with iran this morning president mahmoud ahmadinejad is shown supposedly loading nuclear fuel rods into the tehran research reactor but it is a huge source of pride for iran. but should it be a source of worry for the west rand has ballistic missiles with a range of about one thousand miles obviously putting israel well within reach this is a ron doubling down on moving down the path towards a nuclear weapon. so to hear that defiant iran taunting the west the rogue state one step closer doubling down on the path to an atomic bomb should be a source of worry for the west how many ballistic missiles do they have after watching news this morning and hearing all that can help them feel scared oh here you have the mainstream media playing fearmonger in chief actually taking over and expanding on what we normally hear from the warhawk pundits and lawmakers now they

just have their own reporters and anchors doing it but listen is there a lot to talk about in the developments of iran's nuclear program yes of course but is that mean that we automatically have to jump to conclusions about nuclear war ballistic missile strikes firstly i'd say no and just like we discussed yesterday perhaps the most frustrating and hypocritical thing about all of this is that it's always perceived as if iran is the concert aggressor and the west is just idly sitting by waving flags of peace this is a game being played by more than one side but if you're the media shouldn't you at least explore both sides explored all don't you at least owing to audiences to remind them that well there's the possibility that iran wants to remain defiant because it's being cornered in sanctions by u.s. military presence and has it surrounded by a covert war that's being waged against it in the form of drones flying over their sovereign airspace and their nuclear scientists being murdered to point out any of that doesn't mean we're coming to iran's defense quite the opposite it just shows that you have an ability to apply logic and analysis to your coverage but from what

we're seeing coming from the mainstream media it really doesn't seem that they're able to do that now does it now you know what else i haven't seen the mainstream media coverage is the fact that those in our military leadership have been doing nothing but urging caution in regards to beating these workshops heard it from general martin dempsey the head of the joint chiefs who said last month that a war with iran would quote be. really destabilize he said i personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring war as a first priority air force major general charles dunlop it said almost any use of force carries a great risk of unintended quantum consequences so many of those who serve and command in iraq have also given several similar warnings reminding everyone that engaging in a military conflict is a massive endeavor that involves danger risk the loss of life and it's not by any means something that we should rush into and so you think of the population which is war weary from iraq and afghanistan from ten years of constant war would be cautious as well but as we discussed with glenn yesterday a recent poll shows that more than fifty percent of respondents so they thought the

u.s. should use military force to prevent iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon that's despite the fact that our secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence have both said in recent weeks that there is no evidence that iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and so once again we have to return to the mainstream media and the role that they're playing in building this in fanning the flames and making conflicts seem inevitable and serious of all it's dangerous and yet somehow they want to help provoke more war to scare people enough that their eyes will be glued to the t.v. screens and chills will be running down their spines but a semblance of being calm collected responsible professional that's what they choose to miss. now since everyone is on the topic of nukes let's talk about where the u.s. is heading and their nuclear weapon drawdown officials are saying that the obama

administration is contemplating further cuts to the u.s. arsenal possibly by reducing the number of deployed long range nuclear weapons to as low as three to four hundred warheads and be about an eighty percent reduction from what the u.s. agreed to in the new start treaty with russia which limits both countries to one thousand five hundred fifty however if we look at the budget that the administration just released for twenty thirty even something doesn't really seem to quite add up not only is the budget more than last year's appropriation but it's twenty percent higher than ronald reagan's largest nuclear weapons budget at the height of the cold war and yes that is adjusted for inflation but is this a double game what can we really take away from all these reports here to discuss this with me is peter creil nonproliferation analyst at the arms control association peter thanks so much for joining us tonight for having me ok before we get into the obama administration's plans let me at least get a comment from you on what it is that we're seeing you know what do you think that we should take away from what iran is saying about having their own nuclear fuel rods well i think we've seen two three interesting things from iran today on the

one hand they announced all of these major nuclear accomplishments accomplishments they made today but at the same time they also delivered a letter to the catherine ashton calling for responding for a call for a new talks on the nuclear program so it seems that iran is certainly posturing they're trying to steal the world that look we're not going to bend to the west's will we've managed to have some serious accomplishments in our nuclear program but at the same time you know we're willing to talk and it's we're they're trying to say that they're coming from a position of strength even though they've come under the most serious sanctions that we've ever seen i mean do you think the people are going a little bit overboard with the nuclear talk when it comes to iran especially when we talk about the idea of iran having a nuclear weapon of hiding. you know hire enough high enough excuse me and rick uranium you know i think so i think there's a certainly a lot of her probably going on i think the iranians are engaged in a lot of hyperbole a lot of things that we've seen today are not very serious nuclear complements they don't seriously advance iran's program very far but at the same time you know

a lot of things that they're doing are very worrisome but they're not necessarily on the cusp of building nuclear weapons and i think that's one thing that we need to keep in perspective ok so now let's get into the obama administration and what these reports are saying that there might just be an even larger drawdown i mean how would something like that even have to go about happening right specially if we look at this budget they've been in now for twenty thirty and if we look at the way at the start treaty to be ratified there is a lot of congressional disapproval there so what would be the process if they wanted to bring it down to only three or four hundred warheads absolutely would what the administration is looking to do essentially is they're looking at what the options are for the role of u.s. nuclear weapons so it's not necessarily trying to decide on a on a number of drawing down there this process would squeeze kicked off a couple of years ago when the united states had concluded a nuclear posture review which is certainly done once every administration and that offers some broad guidance about what u.s. nuclear weapons are supposed to achieve what the doing now is looking at well what

are the specific missions that nuclear weapons are for and drawing from that how many nuclear weapons do we need to achieve those missions so it's not simply a matter of trying to ping one number another it's deciding on from from a range of options what can we live with what can we afford and how can we meet our goals while still meet the nuclear mission goals while still maintaining u.s. nuclear security now is that necessarily something that we're going to know about because we had just in town here on the show a couple weeks governor ploughshares fund has talked about how obama had this big decision coming up but it's not something that he makes public in terms of you know currently we have to be able to deploy to five different nuclear enemies or powers whatever you want to call them at the exact same time right this is all classified process. we're not going to know all the details at the end of the day in fact one of the things that we're going to be looking at is when the u.s. tries to engage in additional nuclear arms reductions with with with russia whatever is decided now is going to form the guidance for how low the u.s.

feels it can go in those negotiations so what we're seeing with the last round with the new start treaty the to the levels that the u.s. went down to work were divided by the bush administration policy guidance on nuclear weapons so what we're doing now is looking at where can the next round of cuts go have we actually really fulfilled our obligations with the new start treaty yet is that a done deal we're down to fifteen hundred or one thousand five hundred fifty it's still an ongoing process the there are different levels that we're looking at we're looking at both the level of nuclear warheads and also the the means to deliver them russia is down below in terms of the delivery systems that are looking at the u.s. is still going down a little bit further but also an important aspect of it is that this is a constant exchange we recently had in several inspections on both sides so that each country knows what exactly the other is doing so that there's no you know they're trying to eliminate room for miscalculation and things like that so it's an

ongoing process i would say if this process is already under way then explain to me why this twenty thirteen budget is so much higher than it was. adjusted for inflation but then it was at the peak of the cold war part of it like i said we're looking at a range of options and what the administration is doing is trying to plan for for what all of those options mean so i mean give us some options right in that case if you're telling me that we're still spending a ton of money on our nuclear arsenal i want to know what it's for well i think one important aspect is that as part of the agreement to get the new start treaty through the senate the administration agreed to to invest eighty billion dollars in do u.s. nuclear infrastructure with the idea that it's not a surly to build up nuclear weapons or to maintain at the same level but to. to modernize those systems to make sure that as we're drawing down the lower and lower numbers we can rely on what we have left ok but then are there some areas where you feel like there is some waste there is perhaps in this management we are part of a couple of weeks to go to new funding for the continuous building at los alamos where nobody could figure out exactly why less and less if they needed and less

they really wanted to start building new nukes there now i believe it's been taken out of this budget but it's not the only facility i'm sure you know there's certainly there is where we can we can get some cost cutting and also to tailor our nuclear arsenal to the threats that we're actually facing these days we don't face the same threats that we did during the cold war so we don't need to maintain thousands of nuclear weapons and you know the levels that we have on high alert status we're looking out decades into the future to build new systems including new submarines and new bombers and or deliver them but we're looking at a very different world decades in the future and i think that the role of nuclear weapons is actually going to be declining they're not where they are during the day they are where they are were during the cold war now and as we look at threats out in the future they're not we're not going to need the same level of. nuclear arsenal that we maintain now so instead of making those huge investments now and deciding on maintaining a huge stockpile well in the future let's take a good look at what our needs really going to be what can we live with and perhaps

you know invest in fewer of those systems and gauging a lot of cost cutting which the defense department need to do anyway and haven't lost all that also meets the president's pledge to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons all right so if you had to make a guess like you said this is going to be classified we're never going to know exactly what it is the president decides what's he going to go with do you think of this three to four hundred number is a good guess it's difficult to take a guess i think that i don't see it going in that direction i think what's what's reasonable is that we can go down to about one thousand nuclear weapons and i think that's it's a level that. should be you know politically acceptable it's a level that would meet our our needs and it was something that would still be able to meet. u.s. national security programs. i don't know what we need at least a thousand nuclear warheads for but you know i guess that's the game is played peter thank you so much for joining us tonight good to be with. our time for

a break and when we return the rest of drones or go after the president signed a bill that opens up the skies to domestic from within wants but why now it's quite common in this town has something to do with the benjamins and are responding too much money on treating the p.s.p. that's a what army psychiatrist trying to say is we're going to dive into his comments an investigation that's been launched but you're handsome with about. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the so. you can hear behind me loud explosions.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

last week we told you about a bill that went through congress that is aimed at helping the f.a.a. tell the surface this bill seeks to hasten the transition from outdated radar to g.p.s. based system for air traffic controllers would also seeks to hasten is that when you will see drug drones excuse me flying in the skies above you see the bill affirms that within years the drones will be sharing u.s. airspace with regional airplanes and orders the f.a.a. to come up with an integration plan to open up access to drones more broadly by two thousand and fifteen but some groups will be flying them much much earlier groups

like law enforcement and emergency responders will be allowed to fly on manned aerial vehicles within the next few months on the name of public safety of course now eventually the integration plan will extend to private sectors too so that t.v. stations other private companies all get their hands on their very own u.a. the isn't it comforting to know that eventually corporations all over the us will have many spying machines at their disposal because like all you need is a little cash to make it happen now so let's just say that this bill should have set off alarms for obama and those in congress if they cared at all about our civil liberties as we've been saying for months there are quite a few concerns raised by fast tracking domestic drone use here in the u.s. and it's hardly giger of the policy counsel at the center for democracy and technology explain to us there wasn't really an outcry when congress had its hands on this legislation. bipartisan effort and passed overwhelmingly in the republican controlled house and also in the democratic controlled senate there were no hearings the bill passed the house and three years later power.