a. lot. hello i'm tom arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture republican voters at the polls down south for another wrong round of primaries today only they aren't voting for an it's i'll tell you who they're really voting for and what that means for our democracy also sarah palin is back in the spotlight but it's been a rocky has few days for the gubernatorial with her recent media portrayals mean for palin haleigh and what is her future in politics and outstanding student loan

debt in america is around a trillion dollars so why is congress trying to add to it rather than trying to improve our intellectual infrastructure. you need to know those polls are closed down south as conservatives in alabama and mississippi voted today to a life of their republican nominee for president eighty four delegates are up for grabs in the two states plus caucuses are being held in hawaii and american samoa but all eyes are well on what's happening down south as polls in alabama and mississippi showed a dead heat between romney santorum and gingrich heading into the contest new gamers desperately needs a win in either of the two southern states to remain a credible candidate or to his own campaign spokesman and with a new public policy poll out this week showing a plurality of republicans believe that president obama is

a secret muslim the ridge may come out on top since he's never backed away from preying on people's fears and bigotry after all he did win south carolina back in january thanks to good old fashioned race bait as for rick santorum he needs to build off his win in kansas last weekend with winston. try to stop front runner mitt romney's slow march to the nomination romney has yet to win a state in the so-called bible belt this primary season proving the point that he can't quite get the racist and fundamentalist parts of the conservative base to rally behind it so with all three candidates standing to gain or lose a lot in tonight's race they're calling on their millionaire and billionaire super pac donors to put them over the top of all the t.v. campaign ads aired in mississippi and alabama over the last month more than five and a half thousand in total ninety one percent of them were paid for by corporate super pacs those bizarre corrupt entities created out of the supreme court citizens united decision back in two thousand and ten mitt romney's super pac restore our

future is responsible for the bulk of corporate election spending sixty five percent of all the ads in the two primary states in mississippi alone romney's super pac restore our future read one thousand five hundred forty eight ads compared to game bridges winning our future backpack which are just four hundred fifty four ads and santorum is red white and blue fund which here just three hundred spots were seen something unfold this primary season that has never before happened in american politics we don't have candidates running for office anymore we have super pacs or more specifically we have a handful of very rich people and corporations make up the bulk of super pac funding investing in certain candidates and expecting generous returns on their investments. this should worry us all here's the bigger picture in the two thousand and eight primary at this point in march but right now both the republican and democratic fields are wide open were two of these were too hard for primaries both

candidates spending a lot of money over thirty five million dollars as of march. over thirty five million dollars as of march. showing the description in january of two thousand and ten the supreme court dropped a bombshell citizens united no presidential election you know that year but suddenly congress got very expensive and libertarian tea parties and advocates of the interests of billionaires swept the field in two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven super pacs emerged even karl rove now has one so it's no longer candidates raising money and spending it instead it's the super pacs which is you know really the very definition of a special interest group rick santorum is a billionaire foster freeze so that sort of the koch brothers convention of billionaires that they should invest in republican politicians to get a good return on their investment look at the spending super pacs here and this is just so far this is just a march and invest they are for the past hundred years this would have been

a crime to look at the numbers it was illegal it should be a crime again we need to amend the constitution go to move to amend or or free speech for people who work for more information. so thanks to citizens united we're headed for a billion dollar election cycle or more as we've seen so far in the republican primary the guy with the most corporate super pac money mitt romney he's also the guy who's the front runner to win the republican nomination. so is this a good way to run a democracy wherever gets the most millionaires and billionaires to run negative ads on their behalf wins joining me now to give his take on this is conservative commentator and federal tax protector practitioner. david walker is thank you for having me on tom as always it's a pleasure welcome back why why do you hate democracy david why do you think that

this is a talker a c. is a good thing well first of all we live in a democratic republic. but what i was wrong with that. he said absolutely nothing this super pac issue has been a wonderful opportunity to level the field level the playing field you know for a very between foster the reason and. what's cambridge's guy sheldon adelson. tom you're conspicuously quiet on all the money that the unions are giving largely to the democratic party i think there is still some hard feelings over what was referred to as swift boating as i said this is an opportunity to level the playing field from a media that has been largely biased towards the left and thrown in wholeheartedly with the democratic party and this is a great opportunity to vet the candidates and i would remind your viewing audience

that the last go around the candidate and subsequently commander in chief was not adequately vetted and now look at all the time and effort and money that is being wasted on background checks and investigations so i hear saying the president has said it wasn't barack obama wasn't properly vetted and that's why we've had twenty four continuous months of positive job creation so that's nonsense tom i'm so many of your viewing audience right now are out of work sitting on the couch in their homes to spawn because various obligations refuse to pass legislation that would come back no no they have been filibustering this is these numbers are bogus and that is pains me to say that because first and foremost my loyalty is to the united states of america the country that way to say you were saying president obama wasn't vetted but let's let's get back to the original context the original debate

here discussion why is it a good thing. you say it's a good thing for america that shelly a little sun and foster free and other billionaires are able to own their own politician right foster freeze on rick santorum in their own leticia newt gingrich would not be in the race wasn't cradles and you have to acknowledge minutes now i will not acknowledge that because newt gingrich is still in the race and he is still in the game because he doesn't he's like ten million bucks it was a campaign. to five million dollars may he wouldn't be there with less if he is capable of raising the money let's not have sour grapes i'm just astounded to hear you say this david it's what you're saying essentially is that having our campaigns having our national campaign and for that matter our local and state campaigns having them basically up for sale to the highest bidder is a good thing what if the highest bidder is like some really fascinating person what if what if you know you know you're concerned about iran but if the ayatollah is in

iran all got together and created an american corporation it costs about two hundred bucks and funneled forty fifty million bucks into it or a billion dollars and that corporation created a super pac and all of a sudden you know you've got a candidate who's backed by iran i mean we know that this is happening with saudi money lead. now that would not work in our political system it may work in our bastions of higher learning where these various islamic entities have bought shares in our in call caving many of these as we go through others who know where their loyalty lies but never the less and less to put some trust in him better not a coward who's like one of the intros will represent the people let's fund our colleges well enough that they don't have to go begging to the koch brothers and the koch brothers say yes you can have this money get away if you hire the professions that we tell you to hire and only if you teach and ran let's let's go back to funding colleges well enough that they don't have to depend on billionaires and let's have presidential campaigns and congressional campaigns where the where

the candidates don't have to depend on billionaires i know this is on now thomas jefferson said i crossed in the people rather than the rich. what has such a minute are you saying that they are successful are not people and more of the whole argument that you're making that this was for many years illegal that doesn't hold water you got to remember some laws are just bad and they need to be changed the children actors on the books from nineteen zero seven when bill couldn't vote by your logic women still wouldn't vote and you're going to slave and i'm against that. but i salute you for that data but. there's still an act in one thousand seven was long after slavery was ended and it was just a decade before women got the vote so i don't see how that has any do it we're talking about the modern era here from one thousand zero stary decisis the. sam alito and and john roberts were appointed to the supreme court and in their

confirmation hearings they both said i'm not going to overturn a stablished law i mean a law that has been on the books and recognized by the supreme court since one nine hundred seventy look that upside down that blew it up that's that that is radical law making by the supreme court in order to allow corporations and billionaires to influence our elections it just seems our in our use of billionaires what the supreme court because i reject that yes i do and the vehicle through which they did it was the federalist society. ok we have to agree to disagree on that opinion on that point i respect your opinions but i do not agree with that one some well i think when you know when the heritage foundation is going hundreds of thousands of dollars to clarence thomas' wife and you've got other members of the right wing members of the supreme court coming out of the federalist society you had john roberts in the two thousand election going down to florida to teach george bush's lawyers argued before the united states oh wait a minute it's not making this a barry one sided argument you know these guys are these guys are hard core right

wingers and they get what's the problem in other words we have a right wing says do it or are your other mckay thing it would just be your way this is free discourse i'm suggesting we should do it like the kennedy nixon debates where the networks have to give them free time where they're not where billionaires can't participate beyond a couple thousand bucks just like you and me could and you know the average american if they were really passionate about politics good let's set a threshold like mccain feingold had it twenty two hundred dollars and say that's it oh please shelley adelson sargeant cancer newt gingrich into a national star. and we're not trying to turn him into a national star but he has got a message that is resonating with many people and if it was not he would be out of the race and don't count his king grinch out yet ok all right david selig thank you very much for being with us it's on thank you very much and thank you to your viewing audience appreciate it you're welcome well using corporate money is one way for conservatives to win an election they've been using another tactic for a much longer dog whistle politics i'll have more on that coming up after the break

. so. lucky. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i like to tell the truth. i confess i am a little get a sense that i love rap and hip hop is a pretty. cutter's kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without it's place.

look look look . 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 sorry welcome to the big picture .

and about the rest of the news sarah pailin is back in the spotlight right where she wants to be i was not quite getting the sort of attention that she really likes over the weekend h.b.o. premiere of their film game change documenting the two thousand and eight akane paling campaign for the white house take a look. i'm not sure how much she knows about foreign policy you can actually see

russia from land here in alaska i would have more than my fault i wasn't properly inside b.b. and some b.b. she's on the road to complete interviews for the challenge of what they were where . i am and now you're popping up to meet. someone to ask. the movie portrays paling as woefully unprepared to be vice president she even thought the queen runs the u.k. it also portrays paling as emotionally disturbed and on the brink of a mental breakdown balan's former top aide on the campaign nicole wallace so the movie was quote true enough to make me squirm and quote but aside from game change pailin is featured in another movie or a campaign commercial i should say paid for by the election the real action campaign for president obama it is.

the problem has never been i think i've seen in the conventional traditional way we would describe a man of valor and he is a profession as a community organizer what went into his thinking was this philosophy of radicalism he is bringing us back on to days that have you could hearken back to d.c. before the civil war what brought the law seems to want to do was go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income based on the color of skin and why are we allowing our country to move backwards. pale and call the ad heavily edited so one of these recent portrayals in the media mean for sarah palin and what role does she have in politics heading into the two

thousand and twelve election and did she throw that race baiting thing out on fox this week all on her own because that's who she is or did somebody the republican party or fox suggest that she go down that road here to answer this question from alaska is shannon more to the shannon moore show and more up north shannon walker back. now thanks for having me tom thanks for joining us first game change in your experiences with pale in alaska and talk to those who know her you think it's an accurate portrayal i do i definitely do i heard so many of the same things coming from people who were inside her campaign here on jon benet being one of them when asked if she was sane he said is a sociopath saying so i've been hearing these stories from people that worked with her here in alaska for a long time and i think it was really accurate in fact i think they probably left out some of the really crazy stuff because people would have believed it months

they would tear in and work with her in fact they threw in apparently the whole idea that her teleprompter and failed during that speech was something that her campaign put out to make her look good perhaps in anticipation of her not doing a good job. and it has become kind of a legend but there's apparently no truth to it but it made its way to the movie i was baffled by that. i just find it strange with a republican party that that teleprompters are bad but trans trans national probes are good or does it make sense to me i got it there's a theme running through the movie of pale and being obsessed with her poll numbers in alaska she had a ninety percent approval rating as governor how she viewed in alaska now and why did she care so much well she doesn't endorse anyone here i think they begged her not to i don't know exactly what her poll numbers are but i can tell you they're lower than i think barack obama's are. interesting and and at a recent

a recent obama ad given the pail and says are racist things every time she goes on fox news. will she provide more fodder for the democrats or enthusiasm for the republicans with this kind of race baiting talk. well you know she the one thing that came out of game change was that john mccain didn't really want her to do that the campaign didn't want her to do that but she's really really good at that and i called her a political fluff for a long time she's able to get a crowd really angry and focused on what these shouldn't be so i'm not sure how it's all going to run out but when i watched that that clip the other day from fox i really wasn't sure if she was confusing the civil rights movement with the civil war and that reminds and i'm still not convinced because you know the income disparity between but before the civil war was i own you two i don't own you anymore the civil rights rubric different from that so i actually as you can use

that you know yeah you're right at that i mean it's still a pretty despicable thing to say but that would make a lot of sense do you think that she promoted this this dog whistle statement or that she just like i mean did did this come out of her because this is sarah or do you think that somebody in the g.o.p. or. i guess which which has lost so so any out there is there is a piece to this that goes beyond that sarah palin may claim that or words were taken out of context in the most recent obama ad let's face it she's no stranger to playing on people's fears out on the campaign trail and republicans have a long history of doing exactly that plain dog whistle politics what do you do if you're a political party and your main agenda is to protect the interests of the rich and powerful that's pretty much all you're about making money for people who have a lot of money helping corporations and and biologic norrin the needs of working

people how do you win or even working against them how do you win an election. i do it because what you're going to find is that you know people can say well what about you know plutocrats this was a big challenge that the republicans had for a long long time and they dealt with it in two ways to eisenhower simply went to the middle he wrote you know famously in a brawl in a letter to his brother at the one hundred fifty four that you know should any party try to do away with social security or collective bargaining power party would never be seen from again or heard from again and he said i know there's a few millionaires an oil men down in texas the hunt brothers among them who believe that you can do this but their number is small and they are stupid and so what do eisenhower's on the other hand you had other republicans who thought that they could win elections by this second strategy you draw in rabid single interest voters who are willing to trade their vote for a little love their issue and are not so concerned about the larger issue you know

the whole thing for example people who hate gays rick perry. something in this country when gays can serve openly in the military when our kids can't openly celebrate christmas. or you pray on the fears of people who are obsessed with their phallic toys their guns you know it charleston well charlton heston's is the one that the n.r.a. out there you get people are you get all these viral e-mails going up all over the place i remember walking into a gun shop in michigan back right after the election right after president obama was elected the summer after the election and and the guy behind the counter he was like how you can only buy two boxes ammunition and literally after ammunition shells were empty. and i was at rye only two boxes he's like because obama is going to take our ammunition everybody knows that every stocking up. right here in the nation is i've got the e-mails i can prove it i mean this is this is people all

across this is rural michigan this is mason michigan so all across the country people were getting these viral e-mails about and obama hasn't taken any i mean in fact you know a lot of us would like him to do a little more gun control in the case people who think that the gun folks he you pander to the people who think it's important to control women who you know you have to to regulate birth control for them or deny them abortions people who are poorly impact here limbaugh went off on that. what does it say. about the college coed susan. who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex lives that make her image you're a slut right if you're a prostitute and then limbaugh continues and goes off at some length about how he wants to see the sex tapes if we're going to be paying for them to have sex he wants to see the sex tapes and then he also you know trashing one you can also go

out you can also reach out to people who are poorly educated and think that college educated people are feel wheat as rick santorum did. as obama wants that said he wants everybody in america to go to college what a snob or you can go after people who hate or fear african-americans this is the largest group in america of all these single issue groups that i've talked about today when l.b.j. signed the civil rights and voting rights acts recognizing sixty's bill moyers told us the story on our program that he was responsible for bringing papers and things to president johnson and johnson were often way in bed in the white house at night reading them and brought a group a bunch of papers in the president was laying there in bed reading them and he said you know i think that words the effect of you know i think we might have just given away the south for a generation. but it was the right thing to do nixon came up with what he called his southern strategy get the right racist voters reagan's first speech after his

nomination after the republican party nominated for president he was officially the candidate was in philadelphia mississippi his first speech ever heard of philadelphia mississippi odds are you have it in less your family or the civil rights movement because seven it's a town seven thousand people this is the place where cheney goodman and schwerner little murdered it was made in the movie mississippi burning reagan's speech said quote i believe in states' rights i believe we have the story of the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the constitution that federal establishment and reagan said he would quote restore to states and local governments the power of properly belongs to them and quote this is speaking in code just like when sarah palin says that obama wants to take us back to before the civil war before the civil rights movement when people were segregated by skin color except what she's telling white people is that barack obama wants to segregate out there is the president's campaign rightly points out there's no place in american politics for racism like this republicans and fox so-called news are so good at it that a floor ality of republican voters in alabama mississippi think he's

a muslim and only sixteen percent of republican voters in alabama mississippi know that he's a christian he's become the other as the result is very effective work by fox news the right wing talk show and that's the key to making racism work it's time for us to call out dog whistle politics since. crazy or bushy tailed and busy in the backyard we all know how hard squirrels will work to find food in our backyard but one little guy went the extra mile. a grey squirrel in hampshire england spent some tireless hours learning how to separate units movie out of glass and first the curious creatures sniffed around the glass trying to find a way to eat the peanut pleasure after some tiny grabbed the straw with his cause wroth a straw to his mouth and began drinking this would be just like any human would do so even manage to start drinking straight out of the glass because the straw just

wasn't doing the trick seen this one swirls affection for the maybe peanuts movies will become the latest garden eating it turns. he just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until the truth. i think sets in and i am in total get of friends that i love crap because he is sick and. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world with its place.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.