the pentagon would really leave a man behind and we spoke with truthout straight to leopold about the outcry over possible white house leaks to the press could john brennan be the man behind the leaks we got all of that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. now i'm not sure how many days this nonsense has gone on for now but the mainstream media is really showing how useful it is useless it is lately with their coverage of the finger pointing he said she said obama versus romney lines on the economy. for six words the political part of the obama campaign is still trying to contain the damage gaffes aplenty romney by name now obama slip up and stays there a love that fades president obama's campaign doing damage control after republicans blasted comments that he made on private sector jobs for auto bhalla said the

economy was fine and mitt romney said we don't need more firemen policemen or teachers but republicans are calling his mccain moment the obama campaign though using that same strategy in its return volley once again attacking romney's massachusetts record just a few hours ago the obama campaign released its own web video going after mitt romney with trading fire over president barack obama's remarks that the private sector is doing fine new fallout from those comments from president obama new economy and are in criticism of his friday gaffe saying the private sector is doing fine while still struggling with it they are pushing charges that it's mitt romney who is more out of touch the republicans already have a web out the r. and c. put that out you know their head in the d.v.r. and they're making the thing that has like that you have to take it out of context the shelf life of a gaffe romney campaign turning the president's words against him in this new political ad these videos are trying to use the candidates remarks against them.

now the fact that this is what the cable networks like to call news these days is honestly embarrassing just think of a state of the country is in unemployment eight point two percent officially if you look at the u. six the real unemployment rate it's a fourteen point eight percent we have over forty nine million people that are living in poverty we have millions of people that are underwater in their homes and yet since the financial crash now much has changed on wall street because we have a congress that's to fact list to take the big banks on and let's face it they are often their biggest campaign donors we also completely ignore the lessons that we've learned from the great depression and so there is plenty to actually critique when it comes to the president's economic policies and the policies the mitt romney is proposing if for some godforsaken reason he actually becomes the next president and yet instead of looking at the facts and the figures and trying to explain to the american people why the economy is still faltering the mainstream media acts like finger pointing and name calling is the real scandal how many hours can you possibly spend playing clubs back to back asking who had the better response and

what it means for their campaign strategy how dumbed down is the conversation within the media become a we pick apart the phrasing of a speech instead of the actions the policies of the person who gave it and if you want to focus on rhetoric let's at least point out whether or not it makes sense in regards to economic data that's out there take what joseph stiglitz is warning about his latest book where he reaches some very depressing conclusions that america is no longer the land of opportunity that the american dream is a myth he says he points to statistics that show how increasing income inequality is leading to rapidly decreasing social mobility that if you're born rich or poor you're more likely to stay there then any other advanced economy now these are things that the news should be discussing but instead they all just play these clips that to back act as if they are the biggest issues of the day and then one day they'll wake up and will really be in trouble but again maybe they won't wake up because they're the mainstream media and they seem determined if not able to do anything but miss.

all right so it is monday and as usual we have a lot to talk about it will discuss the economy sequences warnings about the end of opportunity will talk a little tax policy and will continue to look at europe and the spanish bailout in particular so grab your pain pills because there might be a hangover panel is here to hash it all out. morning very. humanely tonight the disguise of anthony rand dad's zero director of economic research of economic research for the reason foundation and edward harrison founder of credit write downs dot com gentlemen thanks for joining me tonight i don't know how much you heard of my little rant there just now but i mean what's your take in terms of the obsession over this bomb a said something about the private sector and they call it a gaffe and then mitt romney said something about firefighters and they call it

a gaffe but then actually rather than discussing figures from the private sector how many firefighters and other public sector workers are losing their jobs they just talk about gaffes for hours and hours on end and it baffles me because it will that's the political social that we're you know it's actually one thing that i think is always fun is when the administration likes to throw job figures like oh we've created four point three million jobs as if every job that was in a body that was hired over the past three years is somehow attributable to the white house you know there's people losing their jobs in the executive exactly and that's the problem is that on the other side is you'll have you know the romney campaign this is going to say you know like every negative thing that's happened in the economy is all because of the obama administration as if to suggest that the white house has some magic wand or that it's using or is not using that's causing all this to happen it's a it's a game of politics that's completely devoid of actual economic analysis well actually ok on that note we have a clip so we were at providence rhode island for the net roots nation conference that the show over the week. and so we're going to air this whole interview

tomorrow but i just have a little clip i spoke with congressman keith ellison his representative from minnesota and obviously there was some politicking involved but it seems to me like like he believes what he says take a listen. to anything you're on the hill that you're not here to say the republicans are sabotaging the economy but a lot of people think that's the case but do you think that's the case yes i think i think they're doing that yeah i mean i think you know a one word answer is an answer right. i like one word answer is actually you know sometimes good sometimes not so good for t.v. but ok yes there's a lot of politics involved but is there a case to be made at all you think that the republicans are trying to sabotage the economy in terms of just blocking any kind of legislation through the politics i mean that's going to. basically it was inspected any two ever since the clinton days that you could go back to bork nomination and all of that it's been completely political it's been you know ever increasing in terms of how political it is and

part of that is because of the center the lack of a center you know all of the conservatives who you know the so-called blue dog democrats are really being driven out of the democratic party and they're becoming republicans all of the conservative democrat all of the you know the liberal republicans like chafee from rhode island they're leaving and people who would replace them are becoming democrats you have this sort of this political partisanship that's become ever increasing in terms of you know on the social issues but on the economic issues really you know i don't think that there's a huge amount of difference between the policies except for maybe tax cuts let's say that so in that sense if there aren't that many differences between their policies except for you know as he rightly pointed out tax cuts and as everyone asleep at the wheel i mean you know i brought up his latest book harry's talking about how america's new. longer the land of opportunity you don't have you don't

have this ability to necessarily have social mobility anymore if you compare us to a lot of other advanced economies out there we don't do so well and it's this idea that it's no longer about what it is that you do in your life and what you personally achieve but wherever you're born into rich or poor you're likely to stay there one of the things that sticker says is that we don't have a free market economy anymore and i i mean most of what was in professor siegel's book it's not anything new he's just sort of popularizing a lot of ideas i am going to be thinkers and then there's you know we've been rehashing this stuff a lot and so it's helpful to have stuff sort of boil down to i guess at a certain point a platform to talk about it one of the things that he says is that we don't really have a free market economy anymore or we never really did that i absolutely agree but the answer to that having free market economy is not to try and reallocate resources to try and fix this problem you need to look at some deeper problems as to why that's being caused it and i were talking before the show about how you know

housing does a huge problem of just how just personal debt which he can talk a little bit more about you want to talk about education for instance as we've poured a lot of money into education on the federal level the cost of getting you know a good education has gone up going to college is expensive so if you're poor we're driving people away from being able to get a quality education by spending a lot of money on it so is the answer to spend more money on a program like that to try and reallocate more resources probably not well we're not spending the money wisely right if we actually knew how to spend the money properly then that i don't think that many people would be saying that we should be spending money on it but so in that sense that we don't have a free market economy anymore crony capitalism is obviously a problem when what's your take here just on you know we're talking about this in our editorial meeting this morning and my boss was talking about how five years ago when he first moved here he didn't see a lot of ferrari's and a lot of fancy cars now if you live out in the suburbs in virginia or maryland suddenly you see a lot of these cars the cars under. live thousands of dollars where is the money

come coming from twenty five years ago i lived here in d.c. . d.c. was a government was basically. politics that was the only thing there was nothing else and you didn't see any. barely saw a mercedes maybe you saw the jaguar now you see them everywhere in friendship heights you have this whole sort of rodeo drive on. and really when you go to to rosalyn which used to be dominated by the u.s. department of state because they had something there now instead all you see of things like boeing mcdonnell douglas all of the lobbying type of activities all the people who are here only because of government here because they know that that's where they're going to get you know they're free to take their free lunch and that's where the money's coming that's where a lot of them is kind of all these counties in the country are the ones right around wash and you say they don't understand why the. american people are going to

start is it going to get to the point like the that says that where people live in gated communities with armed guards and you're just going to have this massive separation i mean i don't think that we're necessarily going there but you know one cannot particularly tell on some of these particular socially social issues i don't think though that it's impossible for somebody that's born in the ghetto of chicago to be to not grow up to be the president of united states or something like that a hospital i think that's likely had the probability right happening well and so and so the you know the question becomes is this because of crony capitalism is this because of rich companies that are keeping poor young children from being able to get good jobs or is this because there's dependency mentality in the united states that didn't exist in the one nine hundred forty so this is because we've grown up in a higher welfare state where people are more dependent on something like unemployment insurance which we've talked a lot about whether you know there's values or harms to it and so you have an america today that's different. the nine hundred forty started fifty started

sixty's when that mobility was was higher we're running out of times i just want to get one last thing and that's i mean if you want to talk about dependency maybe let's look at how everyone is so dependent on actions by the federal reserve right or by other central banks or these other institutions these days and so when it comes to spain and this bailout now is that supposed to make anyone feel better how is spain going to pay it back where is the money necessarily coming from what you know what are the possible other issues again that this brings up well in spain it's not going to work i mean it's already dead in a rival to the interest rates have gone up in spain and italy already and the problem in spain basically the exact same problem that we have here and i think that's where the social ills are coming from it's you know the debt the private sector debt household debt you know that huge property bubble their banks are insolvent as many banks in the united states have been sold and what's their answer their answer is to build these banks out to build the the bond holders of these

banks and to lump all this stuff into the taxpayer luckily in the united states we can print money and get out of it in spain they can't print money and so now they're going to their potential. and that's the that's the problem i'm sorry but were really tight on time today for having the show so i got to wrap it up but gentlemen thank you both for being here to talk to. come about the break we have you said i've read it and then i'll speak with michael hastings about the last p.o.w. of the afghanistan war why i consider that one of the most underreported stories of the time.

ok guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to our brilliant are engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you too because when you have somebody say i listen now it's and i our comments are all related to the show that we did it from the net roots nation conference in providence rhode island first bruce miller responded to my net roots miss on twitter and said at the alone a show alone at you were too hard on net roots two thousand and twelve about civil liberties sessions and was also a link associated this where our guest outlined a number of panels and spoke about everything from the drug war to raise to voter

rolls let me just repeat myself clarify a few things now first as you asked yes i was differentiating between civil liberties and civil rights although the two are obviously intimately connected and i was also pointing specifically to the policies of the president that are being ignored by liberals executive abuses that nobody else could get away with like throwing out due process and playing judge jury and executioner and these other panels and topics were all incredibly important we spoke about some of them with our other guests as well and so the congress deserves some credit for bringing them up but in my mind you have only one panel as i mentioned on civil liberties that go and tell pro two point zero panel well that is still a miss this president has carried out actions that should be completely unacceptable and in my mind served a whole lot more attention by the progressive's the put the event on. coming up now and our skis are next thing is found by susan they had this to say about our occupy comes to net roots segment on. and you too i'm sorry what's occupy providence was

outside the conference all weekend many net roots goers joined our march on saturday we might check the conference we were out panels and workshops so yes we were obviously aware that it was a panels and workshops because the two men whom we interviewed were on some of those panels and that's what we talked about but in regards to occupy being outside they did in fact show up on the street outside the convention center but after we had filmed our interview with matt although i still think their numbers were a little sparse there was a development in their presence and will follow five said this about how to be black race in america that our panel there that interview he said about the interview he said humor is a great way to get people's attention build a report with the people you're trying to reach build bridges between groups promote solidarity i would say i definitely think humor is a great tool to use to help address issues relating to issues between different ethnic groups and within such groups you know what i couldn't agree more comedy is always a great way to get people to open up and i think that often makes it easier to

approach sensitive topics also just makes it more fun gets the audience more engaged and more excited and we all see the successes of jon stewart and stephen stephen colbert and we definitely see them as an influence here on the show personally still trying to work on my comedic chops guys so please be patient and fortunately i just wasn't born with the gift of hilarity but that is if my rantings and i can always back with more as usual later in the week. three years ago private first class bowe bergdahl walked off a small combat outpost called mest lock on the order he was then taken prisoner by the taliban and all we've seen of him since have been a number of propaganda videos released by his captors he's the last p.o.w. from our wars in iraq and afghanistan and is reportedly at the center of a negotiation process which includes up to this point a failed attempt at a prisoner swap but why do we know so little about him all we don't know why bergdahl ultimately left the last e-mail that he sent to his parents three days before shows a man disillusioned by the war rolling stone's michael hastings obtained this email

and included the following lines he wrote of the future is too good to waste on lies and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong i've seen larry do their ideas and i am ashamed to even be american the horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive it is all revolting also wrote i'm sorry for everything here these people need help yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and they are stupid that they have no idea how to live so is a possibility the bergdahl is a desert of the flood the pentagon to be so tight lipped and to let politics get in the way of rescuing this american one province we caught up with michael hastings contributing editor for rolling stone to talk about bergdahl space and why he thinks it may be one of the most important get under covered stories of the war in afghanistan just a step back but i think this is the most significant and under covered story about the war in afghanistan from an american perspective story about the only prisoner

of war who's left in these two wars and their normal circumstances he would be a cost liberal everywhere but because of the nature of why he left and why he did and how he got captured he's been sort of buried the pentagon has attention sort of buried his case for right reasons ok so as to what drove. as to what drew. bergdahl to leave first you have to look at he was a twenty three year old kid who joined the army and he expected that he was going to go to afghanistan and help people and be involved this nation building in essentially humanitarian activity what he found when he got there was completely different he thought that he'd been sold a lie he thought that he was not being treated with respect by the superior officers there was a serious command problem within his unit in pack in afghanistan there was a serious break in a command one officer die another got fired three of his the people he respected

were kicked out and so that created this sort of perfect storm you have this sort of dissolute disillusionment happening. plus all these sort of horrible things you seeing it with war that drove the decision to leave but this is crazy to me i mean ok fine we don't know exactly what happened we just know that he walked off the base we know that he had asked a few people prior to that what he could take with them we knew that he sent this letter or this e-mail to his father but it's an american you know so so why should it matter suddenly is it going to be ok to have an american life you know be lost by this administration because it might embarrass them or look bad in regards to the war well that's that's the question right officially bowe bergdahl is still a member of good standing within the military and the white house to their credit has made this a priority in terms of negotiations of the taliban was was name was on the table to swap with five guantanamo bay detainees and that trade almost happened the reason

it didn't happen was because the taliban themselves actually pulled out of the negotiations so there has been an effort a good faith effort i think on the part of the white house to do this i'm not going to i wouldn't go so far to say that that's happened within the pentagon i think there's a lot he's much more contested in that community and within congress you have these hardline i mean when we make this point in the story you have these hardliners in congress who are as bad as the taliban i mean they they do not want need these negotiations. succeed and they want to extend this war as long as they can i think that's very real yeah they should know if you get the prisoner of war handed over and they can extend that he really can't say i lose an argument you know i think they lose an argument they lose their when they lose their gravy train and they lose but it to give them credit as actually having principles and sort of a moral view that's not just totally corrupt you know they believe that there are people within the pentagon who believe we should still be fighting in afghanistan for the next ten years they truly think that that's a good idea i disagree with them and i think you know bowe bergdahl clearly decided he disagreed with them but i think the point is that the question you asked about

why are people forgetting bowe bergdahl right and i think it's because of this this point because of the reasons of his capture if he was just had been have been kidnapped in sort of a firefight or something like that he could like you know his face would be on the backs of every but how much of that is you think the media just choosing to ignore it how much of that is the government trying to force people to sign non-disclosure agreement thank you. and you know what about his family why why is his family been so silent for the last three years first the government angle it was unprecedented the sort of wall of silence they tried to create over the bowe bergdahl case they made everybody in the in the brigade sign a non-disclosure agreement not to talk about bowe bergdahl and their and the rescue effort so you have that so that now the parents i think it's much more complicated for a lot of has to do with the emotional reasons as well they immediately knew why their son. when that that new sort of leaked out originally there was this horrible

backlash in the right wing media calling their son basically a traitor and i think the parents made the calculation that it was a very difficult conversation to have publicly they're going through this horrible trauma and they should just stay quiet and let the process work itself out hope will be rescue operation or something like that hopefully they'll be able to do some sort of trade there actually experienced up to the rescue operation i should make the. but they were hoping that eventually they could get him released in a way without having to go public that was three years ago and they kept on for three years and finally felt that they needed the needed you know that they're out of options you know and what else do you do like the tried everything else or felt they tried everything else so going public they felt was was one of their final options steve ing of this i mean obviously there is recently a lot of scandal in the media because of something that chris has said on m.s.n. b.c. where he questioned whether you should call every troop every member of the military

i think he said it around oriel day also a sensitive time but how do you think this story plays into that debate well i think i think the debate is saying every soldier is a hero is like saying every priest is a saint we all know it's not true but because of the of the place that the american military has within our culture it's very difficult to criticize the military in a way that's honest and even talk about the pentagon or the military or the army or the navy whatever honestly is very difficult because of all the sort of the cultural baggage from vietnam you can go back to because so few people served so so you know i think this story and if you look at what bowe bergdahl you mail set i mean he's not painting the army in a fighter picture you know he is is you know is bowe bergdahl a hero right i mean because he calls it by the way an army of liars back stabbers rules and bullies and that's just one line right so so i think you have this this

dynamic is that basically says you're only allowed to talk about soldiers in a certain way i think that's not a way that's necessarily reflective of reality paul fossil great world war two historian i'm going to paraphrase here said that the army of world war two wasn't just the greatest generation it was filled with a lot of thieves dirtbags drunks and maniacs as well but because our society has. little interaction with the sort of active duty military our instinct is to just. glorify them rather than sort of give them critical analysis against the my last point that is the war you and i are in providence rhode island right now rather than that risk nation conference you just wrapped up doing a panel about progressive foreign policy what is progressive foreign policy i didn't know there was a line and it seems to be this debate of it's either intervention or it's isolation but overall i feel like there is a lack of discussion about that here at the entire conference that out of fifty

years seventy panels and i'm blanking on the number i think is seventy panels there's only a few on foreign policy only one panel really focused on civil liberties and you're not even a progressive so what is it that you're doing here being one of the most critical voices when it comes to of the obama administration's foreign policy and drone strikes and what not will because i'm not a part i'm not partisan i mean i think it gets down to the fact that you know we saw this during the bush years all the progressives and the left and the democrats were kind of unified against the bush foreign policy for the region that supported the iraq war but for the most part they had unified against the bush foreign policy because it gave them a political advantage right and i thought it was at the time i actually believe that maybe there was some prince of behind and they really were anti-war and they really had to sort of view what we found was when president obama won their own guy . got into office and essentially continued the same pose the bush administration escalated the war in afghanistan to a scope that had a republican president to do would have been riots in the streets from liberals so i think it gets out an issue of partisan politics they don't want to i mean i think

most progressive have told themselves and i see this online not all there is a hardcore wing who who sort of stick by they say well we'd rather have been killing terrorists with drones than invading iraq or afghans and that's exactly in line here all the time that you know they were that's what they say here is a lot of people like to claim that they're nonpartisan here and that it is a progressive conference but i think he's really start to see the lines but are there the speakers i mean. people in the audience panel who i think were more in line with what i was saying and what other members of the panel was that michael thanks for joining us and. just ahead on the shelves the outcry over leaks more restrictions on the press from this thank you just to day's the leopold and the but.

still no show continues here in just a moment first a look at our top stories tens of thousands of opposition activists rally in central moscow with agendas ranging these are actually pictures there we go to the rally in moscow to tens of thousands ranging from the far left to nationalist extremists. violence intensifies across syria which you want observers point to have a spike in coordinated rebel attacks which government troops have to repeat how clashes leading to foreign powers increasingly hinting at intervention. and no room for refugees after promising to provide sanctuary israel begins arresting african migrants who fled violence in their homeland and planned to deport over

four thousand come. next is back to washington for the second part of the show. technology innovation. development. arts we have another interview for you tonight that we filmed while we were in providence rhode island for the net roots nation conference now since then attorney general eric holder is appointed to what lead prosecutors to investigate the leaking of classified information of the white house has been accused but while the raids now more damage with a response have more the freedom of the press. so the moment we see a scandal or rafting in washington d.c. over a lot of anger.