tv [untitled] March 26, 2012 10:30pm-11:00pm EDT
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today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and from what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in t.v. . is the state. speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.
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i let's talk about the revolving door favorite topic of ours here on the show because while every politician and especially presidential candidates on the left the wax poetic about how they're going to stop it just always seem to keep on spending and a roll call article part published earlier today shed light on just how it turns out that several obama administration officials have been poached by k. street lobbying firms in just the past few weeks it former commerce apartment executive left the public sector to lobby for yahoo and crowd in griffis kevin gryphus senior advisor to the chief of staff he's now a principal for the protest a group which is a very influential lobbying firm here in d.c. and if you are just following in the footsteps of other executive branch employees who recently quit the federal government to join the influence industry in the past few months former administration officials enjoyed p.r. consultants knickerbocker and burson mart seller and to lobby on behalf of facebook google and planned parenthood and group health cooperative and as we discussed
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a few weeks ago on the show because the other way to see for shady a former big k. street lobbyists he joined joe biden staff as an adviser i normally i kind of thing might not be such a big deal right hated citizens are used to seeing lobbyists corporate executive staffers and politicians all world through the revolving door but it becomes an issue when it threatens the obama administration's basic credibility especially during an election season as you know the president repeatedly boasted during the last campaign that his administration would limit its sense of k. street just take a look at candidate obama's campaign rhetoric in two thousand and eight. you can move. on my point is the will. of the american people. indeed when president obama
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first took off. has he issued an executive order that sorts of business to buttress limits on the lobbyist influence and order the pledge that double the time that former executive officials are allowed to lobby their old colleagues for one year to two and a forbids former obama administration officials from lobbying their former agencies for the entirety of his administration but as roll call pointed out the rules don't really do much to stop former administration officials from lobbying congress well the plagiarism press and public interest advocates has been derided and completely mocked by do you think insiders one lobbyist when asked by roll call about the pledge said when you need to get around it you get around it it's a joke and everyone knows it's a joke now one thing that obama administration officials who aspire to be lobbyist could do a you simply don't register as a lobbyist just a few weeks ago lobbying trade group wrote a letter to the president accusing his white house of publicly criticizing obvious on the one hand and on the other hand accepting a lobbyist masquerading as advisors in consultants there's also that little thing
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about the twenty percent rule in capitol hill that if you only lobby twenty percent of the time it enough to register turns out that that little rule is self in forest and so sense of self and force it's really just become a free for all of their of the white house also wrote a loophole into the pledge saying that it could waive a two year wait physically whenever it suited them but that shouldn't be surprised anyone either because from the start of his presidency barack obama has embraced officials aren't exactly k. street versions. newly installed treasury secretary timothy geithner appointed mark paterson this is a former top lobbyist for goldman sachs and his chief of staff and then last week there was a lot of buzz over william lynn he was appointed the number two position at the defense department william lynn also a former top lobbyist for raytheon which is a one of the five largest defense contractors so how is that changing what washington the war in how washington works well it's not a change. now to be fair voters didn't expect president obama to fully keep
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lobbyists day after all the reality is that many are extremely qualified to work in the public sector and so the point is not to every lobbyist out there is some evil villain it's just the hypocrisy of the extent to which president obama has embraced business as usual pretty astounding given his campaign rhetoric according to the website open secrets dot org the revolving door my end of spending more during the obama administration than it did during the george w. bush presidency five hundred and thirty eight officials went from the executive branch to the private sector or vice versa during bush's eight years in the white house and in a little more than three years three hundred and forty two obama officials have taken trips to that revolving door so obama might not just one up bush when it comes to the war on terror and civil liberties but looks like maybe the revolving door as well. well this weekend the reason rally took over the national mall here in washington d.c. billed as the largest gathering of
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a secular movement in world history national marpa national mall park service estimated over thirty thousand people were in attendance and despite the rain the participants waited for hours to see speakers like richard dawkins and savage so we have to ask what the largest gathering in history of atheists humanists secularists free thinkers skeptics whatever it is that you like to call them what does it really mean are we seeing a more open minded society or judging by the rhetoric that comes from g.o.p. candidates and legislation that's being brought up in states across the country as the tension between the religious and the not only growing joining me to discuss this is the lawrence krauss foundation professor of the school of earth and faith i feel ration and director of the origins project at arizona state university is also author of a universe from nothing why there is something rather than nothing lawrence i want to thank you for joining us tonight and you know you spoke at this rally over the weekend tell me what you think the reason for it was why did we see the largest gathering in history well i do think people are i've been of reason
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i've been concerned by the level at which religious rhetoric has begun to play a role in this campaign but more importantly that i think they want to make it clear and maybe these kind of things will begin to make it clear that there actually are other voting blocs in the country besides the right wing conservative christian goldie blox but there actually are significant number of people at least fourteen or fifteen percent of the public they claim to have no religious affiliation that's a lot of people and and those people tend not to vote as a block on certain issues like abortion or things like that but they do they are interested in fact in public policy based on reason instead of myth or superstition and that that level of rhetoric in the campaign i think is one of the reasons why it seems only to come out. to this event besides if i. it was fun. and i was there with their comedians and musicians and i had
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a lot of interesting talk about the atmosphere is wonderful in between before i talked on stage i walked around it was and was meeting with people and it was and there was a lot of enthusiasm about the notion and it's why would you need it it's kind of amazing that even need a rally to suggest that public policy should be based on reason and imperial evidence you shouldn't need that in in a vest of all possible worlds but what we make clear is we don't live in the best of all possible worlds right now i am and you have a lot of people there they constantly want to go back to you know the certain morals that neither of the founding i believe is grounded in and so i will say it is even worse than that they make claims that are just so obviously in it in opposite to the evidence of reality i mean ridiculous claims like the fact that the prenatal care or birth control or some encourage abortion or the claim that public policy should be based on the on the presumption that the united states is battling satan i mean that's kind of really worrisome when you think that that
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might be governing the policy of a potential candidate for president when i am with you there that i think it's pretty worrisome when it comes to the policies that certain campaign sniper into place but so what do you think that the breakdown is there should we grill you know as i was looking at an interview with richard dawkins the other day to you and he thought that we should really grill our presidential candidates about their certain personal beliefs and about certain things that you might see you know in the bible and see if you believe in that or should it stay private and then you have different beliefs they're supposed to come out into the public realm well richard nice talked about that and you may have been watching a conversation we've talked about in public as well as private and i think the point is if the religious beliefs were clearly private and didn't impact on behavior and in fact campaigns then maybe that would be the case but. it's not the case we live in a world where in fact the candidates have to have to trumpet their religious
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beliefs no matter how silly and in that case it seems to me it's open territory and absolutely you have to ask yourself the question about the character and well and rationalism in a good and skepticism of someone who is willing to believe that that you know if rick santorum is off scale so i don't think we have to discuss him he's clearly i'm not but. you might take mitt romney who see as a result but he's already you know he the mormon church is based on this ridiculous notion that this known con men had discovered gold and golden tablets under a tree and somehow translated them into seventeenth century english in one thousand century and and that and in fact as romney is there that you know jesus will come back and reign half the time in jerusalem and half the time in missouri i mean these are the. i do think since that candidate struck at their religion but that becomes fair game i mean if they trumpet it their sex lives i suppose that would be fair game to they don't and maybe that's
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a good reason to leave it alone but i will it's not an absence do you think atheists have to push for more because you mentioned that there is this voting bloc they don't necessarily has the unison but democratic politicians also all have to go out and prove that they are religious people we've seen the exact same thing happen with president obama i think there's only one member of congress that is openly atheist and so. is the atheist voting block going to have to become more vocal are they supposed to become like the conservative right and scaring their politicians i hope not scaring but the point is that there were it's obvious as richard has said the statistic lee it's clearly impossible that only one member of congress is you know doesn't have a religious beliefs but in the current climate you can't talk about that and people are in fact afraid and there's a good reason a recent psychological study of by psychologist in canada the united states looked at that voters' perceptions that for students and adults and in fact the group that is most distrusted. was atheists they were on par with rapists and that's kind of
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amazing because all the atheists are doing or are questioning religion i mean we should be we should be revering questioning in our society and our reviling in it so i think there are tons of people who are afraid to talk about this well if they're open rallies like this where people can see lots of people come out there and not only just one name for congress but former members of congress and some hollywood stars and and then maybe people will become less afraid about saying you know it's our question silly beliefs and in fact more importantly it's all right i took demand that silly beliefs don't impact on public policy arkansas how you keep it from going from questioning the least you think are silly to you really. showing content because that is one of the things that richard also said he was speaking this weekend well i think to some extent. you know ridicule is one of the ways to
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make something bring it up orton question out in public i mean comedians do it all the time satirist do it all the time and i think the amazing thing about ridiculing religion is it seems so shocking how dare we ridicule religion but in fact why does religion have a special place why is it no more subject to ridicule then science or politics and and i think what richard is suggesting and maybe it is necessary for some people it is is to consciousness raise is to suggest that you know nothing is above ridicule at some level and ridicule is a very effective form of stats are at some level and it just points out that beliefs or beliefs but there's nothing if you'll forgive the pun nothing is sacred when it comes to you so ideas i was things like why there are you know thirty thousand other people that agree with you on the island as we get more and thanks so much for joining us thanks again you take care. it's time for our last rating even turns out the passing discriminatory and illegal immigration laws can get
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pretty expensive sweetheart full time for one city out there because laws cost it every five million dollars and counting and i'm happy hour santorum cusses out a new york times reporter and drones delivering tacos could be coming to an airspace near you and. let's not forget that we in the park are usually right. i think. the one well. we have the government says they're usually get ready because of their freedom. looking they alone is still there the real headline that none of them are the
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problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters for those viewers and so that's why don't people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in t.v. . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then he lived something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.
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little. all right guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and tonight we're giving it to the farmers branch texas city council here last week the fifth u.s. circuit court of appeals ruled the farmers branch law regarding immigration housing regulations was unconstitutional and according to the associated press city officials and farmers branch say they will likely press on defending the law and you see farmers branch texas started on the path of immigration infamy in two thousand and six when they first tried to impose a law against renting to undocumented immigrants
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a law was repealed in two thousand and seven after the law was challenged in federal court by the a.c.l.u. and so in two thousand and eight the current version of the law was drafted and passed and the newer version attempts to require all renters to have a city license and the legal status of any other kid to be checked now that new less illegal law has been ensnared in legal battles of its own since it passed so far date the legal battles cost farmers branch taxpayers four point five million dollars and while the cost is staggering especially since it's the burden felt by the taxpayers of a single city farms granger is far from the only community taking economic hit for passing laws that many say are discriminatory and plain old unconstitutional thank you all remember arizona's controversial as ten seventy well that would cost over a million dollars to the state legal fees four hundred ninety million dollars and tourism revenue and that's after more than three million dollars were raised privately by a fund that governor jan brewer set up and south carolina there are great law
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because at least one point three million so i guess that farmers branch texas can feel better knowing that they aren't alone in the throwing money down the toilet club and time and time again we hear this argument as justification for why these laws are needed. they can't hurt. farmers branch the price tag the legislation is transferred to the citizens and last three years the city has had to cut salaries and benefits due to financial strain but just remember this legislation is for the citizens to save their jobs so what are a few benefits and flash salaries in the end right now this is what it's really all about is making sure that american jobs aren't really still and by and documented immigrants with i'll tell you i mean it's not like it's been proven that americans won't do the jobs that are left behind oh wait that's right it has by the millions of dollars worth of crops that rotted in georgia after they passed their
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controversial immigration law so today the bills game the city absolutely nothing it's cost taxpayers millions of dollars and been declared unconstitutional so you think of the farmers branch city council who would cut their losses right away with their tails between their legs right not so fast a member of the farmers branch legal team for this case however following to say about the ruling he said this opinion begs for further review really further review now what shocked me but that quote is from kris kobach and when he's not advising the farmers branch city council on the lawsuit he's working on legislation of a similar effect in arizona nebraska texas missouri pennsylvania and idaho the one that's still not a he also advises romney on immigration actually he's the master high and mastermind behind this reasoning over time people will find it less attractive to be here if they can't find work here some are for the self deportation. now it is not to sound like an immigration policy that every american get behind let's all
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make americas so miserable for anybody who looks like they shouldn't be here and they don't want to be here in man that really sounds like a country that i want to raise my kids in but back to the farmers branch it's obvious that they've fallen into callbacks self deportation trap keep the undocumented population from having a place to live and the leap i wonder if they knew that self supporting the community there was going to cost them almost five million dollars so are being a pawn in kovacs nationwide war on undocumented immigrants and wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money to defend legislation that is discriminatory unconstitutional the farmers branch city council is tonight's bull's-eye what are. our guides time for happy hour and joining me this evening r t producer jenny churchill and jim hansen retired special operations master sergeant and military blogger of black buy dot net hey guys. let's talk
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a little bit more than two arms he may claim to be a religious. man but he gets really angry so just to get as angry face me gets into it with the new york times reporter. you can use the worst republican to run against little rock obama on the issue of health care because he fashioned the blueprint i've been saying to every speech we're distorting our words. by c. and it's. more what you do with. so he's only they really like i believe you going to help out anything but can we replay the next clip as to how he doubled down on this to you but i think alike. if you haven't cursed out a new york times reporter during the course of a campaign you're not really a republican is the way i look at it. i mean you know this it was just sort of these harassing moments you know after after having to answer the question
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a few times and you know sort of comes back to the same old question the same old spin and i just said ok i've had enough of this. done you haven't cut out you know the real republican the family values party you have in downing it out of hiring i've almost got carpal tunnel syndrome from the number of b.s. flags i've had to throw in the new york times that makes him a red blooded american i don't really like santorum too much until this a little little. higher do i know i could get behind him but i believe that he has not he i think that he was absolutely correct in calling out the reporter i mean he was misquoting him and it was actually ridiculous i don't want to defend santorum i usually but i i think here he was justified now whether or not that goes along imagine is like trying to paint myself i mean if you're not a real republican if you haven't actually must find out i think that you have all got him driving whether they voted republican he quoted the poll have done in
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private that crude and i think that is display of emotions also might show that rick santorum might be too emotional to be on the refining compared to mitt romney have any race. and with you know. ok. let's move on to somebody who didn't make it he left the campaign trail through most of herman cain is still around out of emotion or maybe too so easy crazy. so basically he has a new being talking about the stimulus tax policy and just as weird as he put out. this is small business and in the current tax code. any question it's. probably the video is actually good polls from the u.k. it was put back on oh it's actually back up but i have some questions actually
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a little girl lonnie little girl you get any questions yes thank you i actually have many questions from that video i want to know was this a money inspired you know i'm a little confused we've got the evil rabbit flying through the catapults i'm a little lost i don't know whether or not it's a good thing that the rabbit was killed because the monkey i found it attacked and i have answers for that body part that was a cow coming over the castle wall yes the rabbit was on the ground and i think this was history the world remember where the king was having the presence of the king the poll when. he was taken out of the year and all kinds of references i'm assuming no one's going to say that small business is. crazy small business like a little child actually i hate small business. corporations and i said it was so i think that meaning was lost somewhere in the craziness yeah yeah that's so surprising but what you're saying the important points were lost in the crazy
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something recently came out of the pain i don't know really shocking. more than cigarettes. political ads yes. all right this one we don't have a clip for but this was this is pretty interesting i mean we talk about throwing you as we talk about domestic drone use all the time because it's coming soon they just the president signed this new f.a.a. bill and so i think that by two thousand and thirteen they have to have all of the new regulations in place. so it looks like taco drones are going to be coming your way one thought out. taco copter is a startup company which has a business model where you order your talk on your smartphone and also beam in your g.p.s. location information and basically you'll get your talk was delivered to you via a flying little mini robot they can't do it yet they're saving governments in their way because there aren't you know the rules for commercial use of drones yes but i
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can't help but feel like this is like a joint effort by all government entities to show the softer side of drones like oh you're against drones what if they bring you chop house is that going to change your mind and we're going to leave through that illegal immigrants while they're doing a double down there's got to be a way to know these you know to secure so they should illegal immigrants they steal the immigrants they bring you the tally immigration we profile the immigrants would be an. ideal jennie's a racist you are racist and there's really any way you want something like that but those years ago most of us up all right well i do not condone taco drones or any other country i think it kicks i don't i just don't really see it working i don't think it's really going to function but i guess i need kind of delivery of you know it's easier to crunch i guess i can wrap it up big so joining me tonight that's a pretty nice joe thank you for treating an admission for a record morrow and weissmann from the atlantic is going to be joining us to talk about why young people just aren't buying cars anymore or the auto industry is trying to do about it i mean time to forget become
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