welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour yesterday we told you about president obama's new plans for a free trade policy plans that include exempting foreign companies from u.s. laws what impact will the new trade policy have on the people the president should really be worried about american workers also with new york city considering a ban on large sugary drinks many will likely turn to the diet sodas to quench their thirst the new research is out and it turns out sugar free drinks may be bad for your help to tell you why in tonight's geeky science and republicans in congress or on another which is time aiming to take out attorney general eric holder says really constructive use of republicans time is this wish another part of the master plan to sabotage president obama and crash the economy.

in the best of the rest of the news on last night's show we discussed a leaked document uncovered by public citizen which sheds light on the forthcoming trans-pacific partnership trade act that president obama is currently negotiating with eight pacific nations that document sparked a lot of controversy since it appears to give foreign transnational corporations unprecedented power to abuse american workers pollute the american environment and d. stabilize our financial markets as i reported yesterday under the agreement american companies would have to comply with american labor banking environmental regulations but curiously exempted from those laws and regulations are foreign corporations operating on american soil basically if this trade deal passes in its current form in american laws. would no longer apply to foreign business tycoons

want to open factories in the united states for more details on this memo and the implications it could have on our economy i'm joined by belinda st louis international campaign director with public citizens of global trade watch and linda walker thank you for having me did i characterize that accurately and yes unfortunately you did what we are seeing and in this leaked text that appeared yesterday on i was on citizens trade campaign website is is is the text that shows that foreign corporations will have unprecedented rights in the united states to be able to challenge our environmental protections our public health regulations the land the uses zoning laws before foreign tribune holes they can bypass domestic courts where as u.s. corporations and citizens have to go through u.s. domestic courts foreign corporations operating in the united states could go to these foreign tribunal's and debate demand cash compensation from u.s.

taxpayers if they don't like those laws we've seen this movie before the chapter eleven of nafta we spent twenty five years getting dolphin safe to a lot actual laws that you couldn't do long line long net dragging operations for tuna and a mexican corporation sued the united states and won under nafta you know under the chapter of title eleven more it's how is this and you know the coffin industry was sued by a canadian company and the. whole world what is it m b t a what. the. placement for what there is a lawsuit around that how is this different from the well in what this is is actually an extension of that same that same system with nafta that was the first time we started to see this very nefarious. extra judicial term bunol being used for sovereignty losing our sovereignty. and that was an agreement between mexico

canada and the united states so now you see so you see mexican and canadian corporations u.s. corporations doing this in the different countries as we expand this to more countries that means that more corporations that are in these pacific rim country is the transpacific partnership is what this this agreement is the deal that's being negotiated and means that corporations that are based in vietnam or in malaysia and they could be chinese subsidiaries of in those countries could could use this and so so we're seeing the same policy that president obama campaigned to change being pushed through this agreement and then even expanded there are certain pieces of this where foreign corporations could actually even challenge contracts for government procurement so they could have a contract to free it for our local tax dollars to be used and if they don't like the way that contract is being used they could they could sue certain types of

others types of land use laws that weren't actually covered under the nafta could be covered under this proposal so what we're seeing is actually an expansion as opposed to learning lessons from the past and actually changing and moving back and recovering our sovereignty to what extent is the leaking of this document indication that this is actually the direction they're going with or is this just a piece of the negotiation something somebody put on the table might have been leaked in order to make the president look bad or for that matter to make him look good in the eyes of some foreign corporation of what what is there a back story to tell them well what we've been we've been very concerned about the direction of this negotiation for a long time maybe mainly because it is a it's a negotiation happening completely behind closed doors there are six hundred corporate advisors who have access to the text who are helping to write the text whereas the public the media even members of congress don't have access to it and so we've been concerned about the. direction everything that we've been her hearing

is that it was going in the wrong direction so we see this leaked text and what we understand and it has been authenticated that it actually has many of the very worrying provisions have to have been agreed to and this senator sherrod brown came out yesterday and just blasted something here's a democrat. good progressive you know you know real raise for his wife in ohio and and he made the point that he didn't have access to this as a united states senator. whereas this has this has this leak and your disclosure as this crack this open is a possible that we can stop this thing before it goes off the well you know many will not have much believe that we can because we're starting to see members of congress are really standing up to this a senator wyden who is the chair of the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over our trade policy does not have access to this text and he wants to go to the corporations do but six hundred corporations do he introduce legislation blasting

the administration saying and he's supports these types of agreements typically but he is saying this is an unprecedented level of secrecy that he will not abide by where and we're seeing that across the political spectrum that there's a serious concern about that if this is an agreement that's supposed to be a twenty first century agreement. we need to make sure that it is in green that that actually serves the people in the public as opposed to just the six hundred corporate advisors who have access to it. melinda thank you for the great work that you're doing thank you and for ringing the alarm bell it's really important time to ditch the so-called free trade the whole concept of global free trade get back to protecting our domestic manufacturers like we used to do under every single president since george washington but we've forgotten that the last thirty years.

able to do so much for the. crazy allergic to bees and bogeys my producers andrew and sam know that golf golf is a sport that requires a great deal of concentration so even the smallest distraction can be a big problem well men out golfing on an illinois golf course monday afternoon had quite the distraction to contend with two naked women running around the course alicia binford and shelly lewis expose their new bodies to multiple golfers on the course and even ran on to some of the putting greens and straddled the whole flags a witness to the debauchery said that the women were actually naked straddle in the holds as the guys bought it on the green the two women were arrested and charged with public indecency and were taken to jail on one hundred dollars bond rumor has it after hearing the story tiger woods offered to pay both women's bails and my producers of book tickets to illinois.

there is the evidence this time to geek a fide sugary drinks are all the rage lately especially after new york city mike mair michael bloomberg introduced his plan to ban the sale of large sugar filled beverages in the city but hot sugary beverages contribute to obesity and diabetes diseases like diabetes it turns out the alternative diet or sugar free drinks may not be good for your health either according to a recent study by aaron greene and claire murphy at the university of california san diego and san diego state university sugar free drinks may make sweet detecting areas in the brain no to the tastes of real sugar which in turn causes you to over eat the brain can sense a difference between sugar and no calorie sugar free sweet as is but using brain imaging the researchers were able to show that the brain processes sweet flavors differently depending on if a person consumes diet or sugar free drinks regularly in fact according to this is

to susan's where there's a professor per day you know or do university one of the most important findings of the san diego study is that the brains of diet soda drinkers quote don't differentiate well between sucrose and saccharine. in the study green and murphy formed a group of twenty four healthy young adults who went through extensive brain imaging tests after group reported drinking sugar free beverages regularly usually at least once a day the other half of the group rarely if ever drank sugar free drinks during the brain scans of the group members the researchers pumps small amounts of either saccharin or sugar like sweeteners like splenda in random order and each of the members each member of the study group's mouths as the group members rated the tastes both halves of the groups rated each sweeter about equally pleasant but the brain regions that lit up while making that judgment differed remarkably based on who was regularly drinking diet drinks specific portions of the brain are

associated with pleasurable feedback or reward in response to a desirable sensation and compared to those who didn't drink diet soda or sugar free drinks regularly the diet soda drinkers quote demonstrate more widespread activation to both saccharin and sucrose that sugar in reward processing brain regions are the most prominent link seen was diminished activation of the caught a head area of the brain as a group members diet soda consumption quietened the cottage had area the brain is associated with food motivation and reward systems in the human body and decreased activation and decreased activity in this area has been linked to an elevated risk of obesity the san diego researchers say that these new revelations may help to explain an often observed relationship between high amounts of diet soda consumption and weight gain once the brain's sensors are tricked by surest way to the sensors can no longer provide a reliable gauge of energy consumption which makes you feel like you have to eat

more and in turn causes you to gain more weight so what's the bottom line here diet drinks not only won't help you diet them probably make you fat after the break. with an economy and. well republicans would rather go on a witch hunt to take out attorney general holder and get to work fixing our broken nation who will hold these people accountable when they succeed in crashing our economy and sabotaging president obama. of american power continue. things are. might actually be time for revolution. and it turns out that a program or drink at starbucks has a surprising. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then. some other part of it and realized everything. is a big issue. here is what i. love and they alone are so they'll get the real headline with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and 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. .

i'm laurin that's for. our first comments and i comes from kathy she had this take on our segment last night about why mitt romney and why it's a moral issue he's probably been doing this all his life logical wire moral issues well actually i'm not not so sure i. mitt romney lies with such

facility he does it so easily he does a so effortlessly he does it in a way that seems so truthful you know people believed him they elected him governor of massachusetts the. people got together and bain capital i think it's i think he's not a pathological i think he's a sociopath i think that eight has that easy ability it's not a world failing it's a it's a while biological feel the next coming of the night comes from stacy who had this take on our fascism segment on yesterday's show tom with the influx of money and the deep division that exists now they're already here fascism it was destined for us the minute nixon was elected. well nixon really did some serious damage to this country and now from lamar waldron's new book on watergate we know that richard nixon was probably our most corrupt president in the history the united states and

he established the game plan for every republican president since then of you know basically whine about what's going on and doing whatever it takes to become president morality or reality you know aside or were over the edge. i'm not sure that means that we're totally fascist i think that we're moving very quickly though in the direction of oligarchy and we need to stop this insane. concept that the supreme court has put forward that money is not property and speech and corporations are people my friend it's wrong our final comment of the night comes from landrieu posed on our tom harkin dot com message boards and had this take out a possible romney presidency and republican controlled congress tom a couple days ago you were talking about what a romney presidency would be like with a republican controlled house and senate had a valid point when you said they'll ditch alot of their austerity measures and run up the debt for the next president to clean up here's what i think will happen we

know the romney tax plan would give much greater cuts to the top tax bracket and in addition we're going to see corporations that don't want to pay minimum wage acquiring prison labor from private for profit prisons who are contracting their work out to them they keep their prisons fill with the profit motive and they make cheap labor even cheaper but what you've identified actually is not going to require a romney presidency it's already here this is something that goes back to the reagan presidency to the beginning of the big move to start privatizing prisons and it is just plain flat out wrong there are there are core functions that have to do with our commons in the united states and polices right up at the top of that that should never have been privatized we shouldn't be privatized our police or our fire we shouldn't be privatizing our boate that's a whole nother rant but but to put when we privatized that dimension of police powers that has to do with prisons now we have

a for profit private prison industry that spending millions of dollars lobbying to get harsher laws and longer sentences for you know it has nothing to do with reducing recidivism or keeping society safe it all has to do with the profit motive it's a corruption of democracy. just. there would be the good the bad of the very very flag ish asli ugly the good but alan governor lincoln chafee yesterday governor chafee signed a marijuana decriminalization bill into law well he's technically an independent he was always expected to sign the bill if it was passed by rhode island's assembly now adults in that state caught with an ounce or less of marijuana will face a one hundred fifty dollars civil five minors caught would face the fine and would have to complete a drug awareness program news service but allen now becomes the fifteenth state to

decriminalise position small amounts of marijuana with america's prisons bursting at their seams thanks in large part to america's failed war on drugs nixon's one it's time for all states to decriminalize marijuana and get washington to come up with a sensible drug policy. the bad fox anchor brian kilmeade on fox and friends this morning the news anchors had a segment about a us navy choir's recent inclusion of women kilmeade apparently wasn't all that happy about the band deciding to make that policy change and really isn't happy about women having any rights at all apparently take a listen to his reaction that even caused gretchen carlson to walk off the. women are everywhere we went and played golf and tennis now it's out of control now what . you know what she said you read the headline. just your average day at fox so-called news and very very oddly ron rosenberg and

crystal dynamics rosenberg and crystal dynamics of the creative team behind the new lara croft tomb raider game in the beginning the game croft is in a situation where she could be raped and the gamer will have to say. i asked about the rape scene rosenberg. that's good for character that helps and then it turns the fictional croft into a corner to animal it's a huge step at a revolution she's forced to either fight back or die and crystal dynamics executive director ron rosenthal said croft is the kind of character that quote you're going to want to protect so rosenberg as compared has compared women to animals and rosenthal thinks that rape is ok in the game because people will want to protect a woman combine these statements with the fact that children play this game and the whole thing becomes a very very. republicans

live in an alternative universe to universe where attorney general eric holder conspired with president obama to sell a bunch of guns to mexico in the hope that those guns would eventually make their way back to the united states kill americans and create a crisis that would give the obama administration justification to then start confiscating everyone's guns i know this sounds like a tinfoil hat conspiracy but it's how republicans in their alternate universe have spun this so-called fast and furious program run out of the justice department. but for those who don't watch fox news you don't know what fast and furious is here are the facts it was a program started by the bush administration and its purpose was simple though arguably misguided basically the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms a.t.f.

and explosives a.t.f. he sold guns across the border in mexico in hopes that they could then track those guns as they made their way up to mexico's biggest drug cartels so that they can then bust those big drug cartels plan didn't work out too well in december of two thousand and ten a border patrol agent named brian terry was killed in a firefight with suspected undocumented immigrants along the southern border in arizona and it was later discovered that one of the guns that killed the agent terry was traced back to the a.t.'s fast and furious gun running machine a month later the a.t.f. ended the fast and furious program and the republicans began their conspiracy theory which against attorney general eric holder here's republican congressman tim walberg throwing out his conspiracy theory at attorney general holder during a hearing in february that this thing was good has gone wrong which was set up to

go wrong and frankly i believe was set up to go wrong in order to deal with second amendment liberties of of law abiding citizens and pushing into a perception that it was the problem of the second amendment as opposed to law enforcement and more importantly mr attorney general the oversight of an agency of a department of individual leaders in that apartment that have not been held accountable . well with all due respect and i mean this with great respect the notion that this was an operation set up to do something to impinge upon the second amendment rights of my fellow citizens is absurd i was one of the seven times that the attorney general the united states has testified for republicans along with handing over thousands of documents on fast and furious to house republicans for them to review yet next week the republican chairman of the house government and oversight committee darrell ice has scheduled

a vote to hold attorney of the attorney general in contempt of congress it should be noted that back in two thousand and seven when democrats were trying to investigate the politically motivated firing of u.s. attorneys by bush's attorney general alberto gonzales darrell i see accused democrats of pursuing in his words a political witch hunt even though attorney general gonzales later resigned but now the democrats in the white house isis really quick to change his tune and the rest of his party is descending into this alternate universe as well where eric holder is guilty of some sort of crime trying to make us all lose our guns here to conservatism my show last night bringing up the attorney general and fast and furious virtually out of nowhere. the fundamental problem is that you said that they were doing something illegal they weren't doing anything illegal they were applauding the attorney general or violating holding the law well according to the attorney general in the fast and furious so i don't want to talk about you know

according to the attorney general well i mean obviously you know they don't necessarily mean it's and yes i know he's testified about a program of the george bush started and then you know. then you know he's not actually you know he is that he won't comply with the subpoena i think you live in an alternate universe. they do live in an alternate universe i mean again attorney general holder has handed over thousands of documents to comply with chairman darrell eyes this investigation the only documents he hasn't handed over are the ones that pertain to ongoing criminal investigations which are not subject to congressional subpoena and holder's which is even turning off other prominent republicans for the witch hunt against holder ices which are as politico reported last month speaker john boehner of ohio majority leader eric cantor of virginia and majority whip kevin mccarthy of california have decided to slow representative darrell ises drive to hold the attorney general in contempt some within house

g.o.p. leadership circles would like to abandon his plan for a committee and for a vote they fear negative political fallout from citing the u.s. attorney general with contempt of congress in an election year yet next week republicans are stuck in their delusion and led by their allies are going to vote to hold you know probability to hold attorney general holder in contempt of congress they'll do that rather than anything instructive to try to figure out what went wrong in the fast and furious program to begin with or better yet trying to figure out how to get americans back to work. it's well know the republicans plotted to commit treason on president obama's inauguration day when the likes of eric cantor or jon kyl a new gingrich came together at a fancy steak house here in washington d.c. invalid to sabotage the economy to ruin the president's first term voting no again and again and again to economic stimulus just one part of their plan the other is

to curio which ones he had against attorney general holder for treasury secretary geithner or president obama's so-called czars this isn't about justice this is about distractions sabotage and trees led by people like eric cantor and executed by people like. the only question is who will hold these people to a co when they succeed in crashing the economy and sentencing millions of americans to poverty and desperation hopefully it will be the voters. that's the big picture person right for more information on the stories we covered visit our websites and thom hartmann dot com or get our to dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links so thom hartmann dot com also check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins when you show up when you participate not a spectator sport get out there get active occupy something tag your pursuit.

of american power continue. things in our country. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drug or starbucks presence surprising him really here. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you. see some other part of it and realized everything. ok here's a big picture. here

which i. love and they alone are still you know get the real headlines with none of them or see the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and 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. .