welcome to the launch show or get the real headlines with none of the mersey going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at the announcement that afghanistan is going to cut its security forces by one third and that's after the nato mission ends in two thousand and fourteen but it's not the wrong time because in that case why did we spend all of that money and all that time training a larger force and it turns out of the treasury department is only used three

percent of the funds and a program created to help states with the hardest hit homeowners it's part of chart we have to ask why the banks got bailed out but struggling homeowners aren't a priority we have all of that and more fear night including those of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well today has been a day of days for the mainstream media and by that i mean we have seen an all out media firestorm erupt over a cognate made by a democratic strategist named hillary rosen. the push and pull over women's issues is only getting started conservative blogs pounce on a comment made by democratic strategist d.n.c. adviser and our friend hilary rosen. about romney's wife ellery rose and told our anderson cooper last night that ann romney mitt romney's wife had never worked

a day in her life and romney is the target and president obama's top advisers aren't too happy about it democratic strategist criticizes ann romney for being out of touch as working women the obama campaign itself immediately romney's wife has gotten pulled into a bit of a political skirmish and now she's speaking out she said i made a choice to stay home and raise five boys believe me it was hard work she said that ann romney quote never worked a day in her life so she can't advise her husband about issues that are facing women and the economy it's a mistake to attacking romney that romney is a is a very. admirable woman and has a lot of support she's the best thing that romney has going for him on the whole women's issues. all right i will give you a quick gist of this story in case you missed it but if you're watching the mainstream media all today any point would be close to impossible to actually missed it but so we've seen mitt romney use his wife to let's admit as

a lot more charisma than he does so we've seen try to use her as a tool to bridge that gigantic gender gap that he's facing and make claims that his wife is guide to women's problems and romney's take is that women care about the economy so this democratic strategist and hilary rosen said the ann romney knows nothing about the economy because she has never worked and instead raised her kids so the romney campaign tried to claim that rosen was related to the obama campaign which she's not and ended up in a massive back and forth with even the shell obama getting in there and commenting hilary rosen apologizing and the twitter sphere the blogs out there the t.v. pundits have all tried their hardest to turn this into a left versus. right scenario the truth is that's not the case hillary rosen by no means speaks for all liberals and it's laughable that c.n.n. even considers her a liberal considering that she used to head the r a n a and now does p.r. for corporations but the truth is that this is an issue that all women should be able to support each other on raising children being

a mom that is worth and it's not anyone's place to judge and call it less worthy but the even bigger truth here is that this is another mainstream media distraction technique in the real issue is something iran himself said when he was trying to prove that he cares and knows so much more about women than the president us calculus. i was disappointed in listening to the president as he's saying republicans are waging the war on women. the real war on women is being waged by the president still the comet ninety two point three percent of all the jobs lost during the obama years have been lost by women ninety two point three percent. that's seems like a crazy number right more than ninety two percent of jobs lost and amongst women well the thing is the number is right in a sense when the recession really began well president bush was still president about three point three million men lost their jobs and that's how recessions

typically work men are hit the hardest and they're head first they say areas like construction or manufacturing going down first and overall more women than women have lost their jobs in the last couple of years hence of being called a man session but if you look at the last twenty six months u.s. payrolls are shrunk by seven hundred forty thousand jobs out of those six hundred eighty three thousand belong to women and all that is according to the bureau of labor statistics and so this trend is in large part thanks to massive public sector job cuts in states across the u.s. about two thirds of the women laid off during those last twenty six months were all laid off from government jobs and we've also seen a lot of women laid off thanks to cuts in education but what's so ironic about it wolf is so plain misguided about this is that mitt romney is trying to call out president obama for women losing so many jobs well guess what mitt women have lost so many jobs because states that are facing budget shortfalls and now republican legislatures have chosen to cut those government jobs forty point five percent of

all state and local government losses have happened in states where republicans won control in two thousand and ten thirty one percent vanished in texas alone and of my whole thing with small government i don't preach small government and then turn around and blame the president but you say lights big government for the loss of so many women's drugs. but that's just mitt romney being complete hypocrite which the mainstream media decided to gloss over because a war of words between women just makes for better t.v. right they love the drama of issues the skit on the facts but the thing is they've been doing this for a long time and we've mentioned it many times here on the show month after month the media reports on jobs numbers private sector hiring and they just couldn't figure out why the private sector was hiring but the unemployment rate wasn't seeing drastic shifts and that's because hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs are being shed and so the difference is not being made up but surprise surprise right all of this was once again what the mainstream media chose to mix in

today's women centric t.v. debate. we've got a lot of news coming out about the war in afghanistan this week spoke about the agreement on night raids leave a lot of loopholes and now a new poll from a.b.c. in the washington post shows that for the first time a majority of republicans say that the war in afghanistan has not been worth fighting on top of that an all time low the only thirty percent of respondents said that they thought that this war was worth it but then it raises another question is the afghanistan defense minister general abdul rahim wardak said that an agreement had been reached in principle with the international coalition that afghan security forces would undergo a significant reduction from a peak of three hundred fifty two thousand to two hundred and thirty thousand and i would have been after the nato mission ends in two thousand and fourteen and just to put this into perspective for you according to some estimates out there it's cost six billion dollars annually to sustain and train the afghan national army and

police post twenty fourteen the price tag would still be about four billion but if the forces are going to be reduced after the nato mission ends after the troop withdrawal we have to ask if it was worth the money and the build up all along her discuss with me is michael o'brien former department of defense contractor and author of a million americans failure in iraq intervention to with raul in one thousand nine hundred twenty ten michael thanks for joining us tonight thanks for having us so what do you say right it's ten years of war here we've been spending a lot of money on building up the afghan security forces right the national army and the police and this is supposed to be kind of our exit strategy is that we can finally handed over control and everything will be ok in the country and now when we're supposed to be handing off the majority the responsibility to them then twenty fourteen they're going to be shrinking before so was what was it all for

that stretched sixty four thousand dollar question. and frankly it was it was a pipe dream. you know i you if you look back at our involvement in afghanistan after nine eleven i personally think it made sense for us to go over there that's where al qaida was holed out as the welcome guest of the taliban and you know it was ten eleven years ago with if things were going well things were going very well and we had special operators in that country really really kicking some some tale. the joker in the deck was the war in iraq and. all these forces were pulled out of afghanistan to support the war in iraq and of course we don't have a draft so we're fighting two wars at the same time we don't have the draft we don't have enough troops to do it so we reduce the forces in our forces in afghanistan and it should took just a couple years and it's sort of doing right down the drain and started going right back to world was before we ever showed up and then we you know we surge the surges

of thirty thirty three thousand soldiers that that's not a lot thirty thirty three thousand troops and when you think about it what's the percentage of them that are actual combat troops carrying. you know kerry or a rifle you know it's a fraction of them it's not all of them it's just it's just it's like probably one for one one party at most one third so it's not a lot of combat troops that are going over here and the war in afghanistan has not worked out very well or afghanistan is a very very backward country if they're living you know by. based on our standards in the stone age. and in the fact is that when we if we do play an employee reducing the troops for the third there is a report in today's news that we. are the head of the commander of our special forces for storing the riyadh war. believe his name is a play and so on really making this a war of special operators navy seals or until to force in one of the special

forces which really is the way to fight this war it's an unconventional war you need to fight in conventional but i'm curious about here and i mean i guess you could say that maybe thirty three thousand troops isn't all that large of a surge but still we have almost one hundred thousand troops there or you know there was at the peak on the ground in afghanistan that's still quite a massive force to be dedicating to something like this you know whether it whether you want to say that it's a lot or not but the problem is that the more troops we said to him there we didn't see things get better quite the opposite you only saw violence skyrocket you only saw more troop deaths and and so it shows you that numbers were not really really not part of the equation here they were not something that made the war effort more successful but what i want to ask you is that on one hand they want to make this more of a special ops smaller teams type of operation but what's happening right now is they're trying to agree on this strategic forces agreement right this is why we needed the agreement on night raids and they want to have this time before the nato meeting in may of this year what's going to be part of that agreement is that

afghanistan wants a ten year long commitment from the u.s. and that's not in a combat troop level right that's in terms of reconstruction it's in terms of a lot of money it's still training advising and assisting but do you think that we're going to see more room for for contractors if there is this kind of ten year commitment if there is still so much money being pumped into it will absolutely i mean fall of the money as the saying goes if karzai wants. troops out we want your money to stay that only you know if it's going to have to be spent so you know again the military industrial complex in the end will win the day on but i do have to say though that you know. if you want to fight a war conventional you have to fight it with overwhelming force and one hundred thousand troops in a country the size of afghanistan is not overwhelming force and you have to you know you're going to quarter of a million troops if you want to win that war fighting you conventionally and you

have to you know what happened in times of tension a war but it's a war that supposedly based on but honor insurgency and winning the hearts and minds in the other people or when i'm here are certainly you know slowing you up when you don't want war by building schools you want to work by killing the enemy counterinsurgency david david petraeus is b.b. is a flop it doesn't work you don't you don't you know we don't war by building schools and handing our current shit when it is like the only enemy come obvious now right and even if you look at the polling especially the last couple of months you really see public opinion start to shift and now it seems like the american public even republicans are done that they're over it they don't think that this war was worth fighting for the question is going to happen are the question is what's going to happen once we leave right let's say that this twenty fourteen it withdraw all goes as planned now you have president hamid karzai saying that he's toying with the idea of leaving office one year early because he doesn't want chaos to break out in two thousand and fourteen while withdrawal is going on and won election is

happening at the same time you have their forces being reduced by a third as are going to senator kay also going to israel but it's asking for of course it's true we were there were over you know in the taliban's on its way back what it you know al qaeda is is around you know whatever whatever conclusion anybody comes to and it's because we didn't you know we didn't wipe out the threat we slapped around a little bit but we didn't wipe out the threat and how do you wipe it out it takes a lot of force a lot of manpower and if you do it on conventionally which is what we were doing in the beginning before we went into iraq we were being pretty successful with the technology that we have we're fighting our wars now with rooms with drones and special operate. to call them in and intil from n.s.a. in the cia we can really accomplish a lot and then bring in conventional forces to really do the job the reason why the american people are fed up with it is for the same reasons they were fed up with vietnam we waffled we went down the middle of that we wouldn't you know we want

around and around but aren't doing it because they don't really know what we're accomplishing anymore i mean if the goal was to get rid of al qaeda and al qaeda is not in afghanistan anymore that the saying these days is that maybe there's a couple dozen of them who was also to get rid of the taliban to the taliban was al qaida so stover there and we got rid of them we wanted to get rid of the taliban regime we were that was what we were and that's what we were doing when we first went over it now and they were going to share it with the taliban exactly because i think if you can begin to see alabama though right i mean this is that is a civil very complicated issue that's part of afghanistan's history itself it before we go to you know i just want to ask you terms of how many cars i have saying that supposedly he might leave power i mean who would even take his place there any names the stand out for you the rock obama. iraq obama our all right mike i want to rock i want to thank you so much for joining us and i you bet. our

time for our first break but when we get back to tell you how government is on whistleblowers certainly for the death of journalism here in america. is it your understanding and the. other part of it and realize that everything. is a big. but

in the alone itself you know there's a real headline with none of the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and for 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 to t.v. . is the state english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. all right it's time for our show and tell on tonight's program earlier this week we spoke about political flip flops all the mainstream media was focusing on mitt romney we are minded you about the obama administration's flip flops specially when it comes to the war on terror so i wanted to know why you think of the president's team changed their views on those tough issues once they got into the white house had a pretty separate reason to send you to find out what you had to say. on the streets of d.c. to tell people in the nation's capital what our viewers had to say on twitter facebook and you tube and see which comments orderly and.

why do you think so many administration officials change your views once they get into power a mirror wrote in to say because politicians were corrupt before they had power we need someone who is incorruptible so you want to keep it really that they're all little corrupt so. if you want to keep their delete it must say the least i think everyone's corrupt but i definitely think that money will persuade i'm going to keep it. because there are some honest people in a well i mean a lot of people get into politics just for themselves and their egos but there are some people that are in it for their country shine said they are smiling faces that life through their teeth corporate money is more important to them than the respect of people if you want to keep it or delete it i don't need it. i don't know so if that's the case i feel that sometimes. the powers that be don't allow you to make the decision that you would make before you're an author saul coonan on facebook said they tell the people what they want to hear to get elected and you what their

largest campaign contributors tell them to do when they take office we the people are the votes but the corporations are the ones that hold politicians paychecks do you want to keep it or delete it oh i absolutely agree that i thought was my thoughts exactly but the question to me i think they get in trying to get into office is that first they need to get over and once there does seem like they are policies and things they talked about change. i think a lot of them are being. a lot of people who wrote in a lot of people that we talked to out here can both agree that politicians will say whatever they need to say to get elected but we did run into a few people who will beg to differ. all right thanks for your responses and here's our next question for you so earlier in the show we spoke about the controversy surrounding hilary rosen's comments about stay at home moms so we wondered if you thought that stay at home moms are looked down upon today or if it's just

a gender controversy was there anything on facebook twitter and you tube and you know as a response that just might make it harder. now you know that tarp the troubled asset relief program wasn't just about bailing out the big banks february of two thousand and ten the treasury department stablish an initiative called the hardest hit fund this was a seven point six billion dollars program aimed at helping families in states hit hardest by the housing market and where unemployment rates are the highest well turns out the only three per cent of that budget has been used in the last two years since the program's creation this is according to a new report by the special inspector general for the troubled asset relief program the report found that at the end of two thousand and eleven the hardest hit funded spent only twenty one two hundred seventeen point four million dollars out of the seven point six billion dollars budget provided and only thirty thousand six hundred forty homeowners have been helped so is this just another failure for yet another government program was aimed at helping homeowners hit by the financial

crisis joining me from our studio in los angeles is david day and blogger at firedoglake david i want to thank you for joining us tonight and first of all i mean you write about this all the time you and i have spoken about it and you know if you're if you pay attention and you read the news all the time that maybe the scenario is a little different but do you think that for average americans when they think of tarp they only think of bailing out the big banks they don't think of any programs are actually meant to help americans themselves. i do think they only think about bailing out the big banks that's traditionally what is seen as tarp and a lot of defenders of the program showed the fact that a lot of these banks have paid back their funds or there's less losses on the tarp than expected to prove that the postulate that tarp worked but in fact as christie were mero the special inspector general for tarp said today tarp was not just conceived as

a program to reward or you know help fund banks through their tough troubles. explicitly in side the language around tarp it was that a good chunk of the money needed to go to help homeowners and whether you're talking about the hardest hit fund or you're talking about hamp or any of the other programs that came through tarp all of them have been generally a failure well let's talk about this specific time here the hardest hit find when we find out only three percent of the entire budget more than seven billion dollars has been used in the last two here is one of the report attribute that you know by who do they blame it on and what did they blame it on. they largely blamed it on the treasury department and what they said is that treasury had if it did not provide the leadership or the planning to get these programs started and get the money out the door hardest hit fund was basically a kind of

a partnership with the states that were affected and qualified for the program so you know side think some people at treasury would would claim that it's the states for all. but the probably the best program of the bunch put out about sixteen percent of the money so far and that's in oregon so if your star pupil is getting a sixteen percent the problem is not the students it's a test. treasury had the ability to get the servicers and the government sponsored enterprises that fannie mae and freddie mac. to participate in the program certainly more of an ability to do that than the states which us have less bargaining power over these large banks and the huge e.s.c.'s and treasury just didn't do it i mean they had they allowed. states who are operating at a significant disadvantage to try to bargain with these banks and the g.s.t.

zoo at their discretion could decide to participate or not participate in the program and without much of a surprise they didn't have the treasury department fired back or trying to defend themselves and say that you know what you're only looking at the data from the very beginning of this program and if you look at the last couple of months we've seen a great increase and you know what do you think of their defense their. yes just phone with statistics i mean you're coming from such a low godam the idea that it's ramped up forty percent from the previous quarter will you have forty percent from zero. over the life of the program you're talking two years you have three percent of the funds getting disbursed even in these boom years or this boom time it's still a lower percentage than what was promised with this program and really this mirrors many of the other programs that have come out of tarp particularly ham i mean right

around the same time as you know the two year period. which is the home affordable modification program was also putting out maybe two percent in terms of the dispersement and the big problem here is that the money when you're talking about money that was your mark for the program the money goes in incentive payments to the banks to you know create these relief programs and forgive principal or or for bear or whatever it is for the homeowner the programs do not give money directly to the homeowner so they can help resolve their bear struggles with their mortgage payments and ultimately that's a problem because it puts it at completely at the discretion of the banks and so any time you design a program like that the public interest is going to get some sume by the interest to do sherry interest of these big banks and we've seen the consequences but what kind of message is that supposed to send to average americans to the taxpayers

right i mean obviously you can tell that the mood is still whine and angry especially if you look at wall street and a lot of taxpayers still feel that the system is incredibly unfair that everything is bailed out on their backs but then it looks like the treasury department made shared with nearly bailout the banks because we had to act fast because this was an emergency you know keep the economy from completely flying off a cliff and send us into another depression but homeowners are just kind of last last in line. you always hear in these homeowner programs that it's just takes time to get ramped up and we're having trouble getting the money out the door to the people who need it what you never hear is that it takes time and it's just trouble getting money out the door to the banks who need it you never hear anything like that coming out of these programs some how the money they get zero marks for banks has no problem. getting to the target whereas these these kind of jerry

rigged for grams so help homeowners there's always the way involved and difficult to design and things like that so i think i think the public should take a pretty clear message from. and you know i was talking about this many times before you know like you said the ham program is also a massive failure of interest seems like every program of the government tries to put forward it doesn't get it right even those trying for closure fraud settlement doesn't get it right at the end of the day of the banks that won out and this is one of the key elements you know when it comes to why our economy isn't recovery when it comes to what the housing bubble really did you know the environment that it created after this crash but you write a lot about how you think that the media affects the way that you know that this is covered or paid or maybe why it's not being solved you know what i have to say about that. well i do think that you know in some sense we get the housing policy

we deserve when we have members of the media who don't really know him or how mortgage works when they get reports like a recent one on a.b.c. excoriating fannie mae and freddie mac. from knowing the lawns out in front of properties that they own which is the only way they would get sold and the only way you would prevent blight which is against the law in many municipalities i think there's a huge lack of understanding about what is going on in an administration housing policy and that works to the detriment of homeowners ultimately because it's easily demagogued you have an administration that's still afraid of rick's intelli and what he did very early on. which was seen to be the rise of the tea party to create the rise of the tea party which was a.