let's not forget that we heard in a parked car the regime broke down the love. i think rock the bombing is beatable and one the oil. we never got the live shows they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get the other freedoms. but the ordinary would like her a little luck and they alone if ill will get the real headlines 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.

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

well today we'd like to take a little moment and wish a happy birthday to a very very special man what i like to say had a huge impact on our country i'm talking to you now during your two terms here in d.c. you left pretty lasting impression that we will remember for years to come so we want to take a minute thank you for your many contributions of your presidency so thanks george thanks for starting the war on terror and by that i don't mean trying to retaliate for nine eleven but for making this a global war on terror as if you can wage war against a tactic anyway i remember when you exclaimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in iraq actually not only did you say that but you also declared it when you addressed the country. and i said those words. you did you did and guess what you also said the war in iraq was over i mean if you really think that

was it that's. dangerous hypothetical question. but hey we want to harp on that major lie that you sold to the american people that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars thousands of lives possibly hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilian lives because there's just so much more to be thankful to you for right like your prison that you got down there in cuba the place the we all know is guantanamo bay ever since it opened in two thousand and two obviously there's been a lot of criticism a lot of outcry over the way the prisoners were treated there i mean why do you think that any of that was a good idea. it's hard for me to explain why that was the case take my word for it i would say good i was a good but i can't george you see here detention center wasn't just the home for these prisoners it became their home after they were transferred from other secret prisons you had all over the world where they were being tortured water boarded but

that's so dark i guess i really need to get back to thanking you so i guess thanks for attempting to make american smarter never no child left behind of course right how can we forget your efforts to make sure that every child in america is literate and that magically proficient by two thousand and fourteen really is the question they asked is our children learn. yes yes i think you're definitely right about that that exact phrase isn't asked very often but unfortunately the whole no child left behind thing isn't exactly working out in fact twenty sticks twenty six states already have a waiver for not having to meet those conditions there they're also ten more that are in the process of getting that waiver but hey just because you can revolutionize our education system doesn't mean that our kids are doomed. after the c. student. i say you too can be president of the united states. yeah right they could be

president just like you and they too could tackle the tough issues like the economy speaking of the economy actually that reminds me that i need to thank you for all those famous tax cuts that are named after you. i wish they weren't called the bush tax cuts. as they're called some other body's tax cuts they're probably less likely to be raised. ah come on now don't be too hard on yourself there george of course you should get credit for those gods after all you were the one that wanted to cut taxes on those who are making over two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and i mean yeah i know those cuts lead us to one point three trillion dollars deficit but at least the one percent have more cash rate part of our tax plan was to. was to help families be able to better afford. better for. life. their cuts are supposed to help everybody

not least everyone you knew but a once again you're turning this into a pity party and i have just got one more thing to thank you for which is the ever growing surveillance state that we live in today after all it's your john hancock on the patriot act which reduced restrictions on how law enforcement can monitor all of us all under the guise of fighting terrorism both here and abroad our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and the people and neither do we yeah i gotta say i agree sometimes in this war on terror it gets a little difficult to decipher who the enemy is and who we need to be saved from i mean hey the t.s.a. to get started really seems to be confused about that but anyway i guess of the biggest thing we need to thank you for other than the last obviously is being so absurdly conservative and crazy that well crazy has actually become the new norm

even now with a democrat in the white house we still live in a surveillance state that's only growing good most still open and america's going to be in iraq for a long time just in the form of contractors so i guess today on your birthday rest easy your legacy isn't going anywhere anytime soon. our guys now it's really diverse and i have told time award and like i said earlier it's going to louisiana state legislator who has demonstrated ignorance and bigotry of biblical proportions so valerie hodges championed a plan that's now signed into law and it's meant to grant vouchers allowing kids to attend religious schools on the taxpayers' dime and last week we told you about how there was one religious school out there such a receive a subsidy that teaches kids that the loch ness monster debunks charles darwin's theory of evolution how the curriculum states because nesi exists and is also

a dinosaur that somehow dinosaurs and humans have lived at the same time and therefore darwin was wrong i mean if you ask me that's pretty crazy it's bad enough the religious fundamentalists like hodges want public money to teach religious dogma but now we see at a taxpayers are going to fund the curricula of the teachers youngsters that nessie exists what's next we based on the state's unique take on logic it wouldn't be surprising to see louisiana fund a science class based on bigfoot right if they're passing off fiction as science why not in fact louisiana residents shouldn't be surprised if their children come home talking about a really interesting documentary that they saw at school. where their. job actually. yeah i'd say that it makes about as much sense to pass authorizing park as a documentary as it does to teach him it as fact or the movie even pass louisiana

strict education requirements you see in the actual story john hammond brought the dinosaurs back to life and humans and dinosaurs didn't initially live at the same time so spielberg my just offend some fundamentalist sensibilities there you're more likely to see other documentaries in the states science classes ones more like the loch ness monster story as interpreted by the south finest evolutionary biologists. is just a species. yeah that seems will have more in line with the live in louisiana legislature late years excuse me legislators view on science but seriously the whole lot ness monster story it goes to show why taxpayers shouldn't fund religious schools beyond the fact that i think it's a violation of the first amendment which brings us back to valerie hodges issue

with withdraw support of the voucher program because she thinks that it violates the constitution no it actually didn't violate the first amendment anough for her like it according to a report in the livingston parish news she mistakenly assumed that religious meant christian and so then she had a defcon one freak out when she found out that a muslim school for finding the she made the following pronouncement she said i actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of america's founding fathers religion which is christianity in public schools or private schools unfortunately that will not be limited to the founders religion we need to ensure that it does not open the door to find radical islamic schools there are thousand muslim schools that have sprung up recently i do not support using public funds for teaching islam anywhere here in the easy at it so basically hodges wants to teach the founding fathers. religion in public schools even though they kind of came up with this whole separation of church and state thing then she takes her

unconstitutional politics a step further and she wants to deny funding for islamic schools which she basically calls breeding grounds for terrorism so she wants the government to pick and choose a religion so what kind of person would make arguments like this you know that's right the guy who wants taxpayers to pay for schools that teach children about the loch ness monster in their biology class the kind of person who describes all islamic schools as a radical but has no problem with supporting some pretty radical christian school theories it's bad enough the hard just wants to crap all over the constitution with this program she then decides it decides to use the first amendment as her personal toilet paper twice in one fell swoop by only wanted the government to support the religions that she likes so for that valerie hodges wins tonight's tool time reward . our guys it is time for our last break to be bring that back we'll have this week's fireside friday we were discussing how one state is bringing transparency to

campaign finance and then we'll have a dose of happy hour for you. it's part of american power continuing. in your. mind at the time. that. you were very good. in libya. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then. some other part of it and realize that everything. is a big. story

when you. look in the aloneness so you'll get a 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 to t.v. .

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. to tonight's fireside fridays with your host cops. this week we saw one state of the nation take a big step that i think every other state should follow is he since the supreme court citizens united ruling the already very weak walls that we had to place any limits on campaign spending or completely broken down if you have all that money influence politics before well now you're in for. a whole new right along afraid that it's going to take a long time it's going to be a hard struggle to reform that sweeping change there's at least somewhere that we can start and that is transparency that's exactly what the state of rhode island has done passing their own version of what in congress was once the disclose act governor lincoln chafee signed the transparency in political spending act this week

and what it does is now require super pacs and other political groups in the states to report donors and expenditures more specifically the law forces any organization that spends more than a thousand dollars to support a specific candidate or spliff a specific political issue to disclose their donors and their expenditures out supplies within sixty days of an election or thirty days of a primary i find it kind of hard to see anybody could disagree with a step like this it doesn't place any limits on how much can be donated their spend it just creates transparency and openness it informs the public if we're going to be inundated with ads we should know who's paying for them and whose interests they serve the voters are going to be influence they should know who's trying to do the influencing so much for honest approach than we currently see and i wonder if in fact it might even make certain organs organizations rethink some of their spending if they worry that some of their donors want to remain in the shadows and choose not to put their face or their name where their money is now ideally we would have

already seen congress do this on a federal level but they're useless the disclose act was a flop thanks to republican opposition and it doesn't look like that's getting any better in fact mitch mcconnell just wrote an op ed attacking president obama for supporting the disclose act and he went as far as calling it un-american just listen to his ridiculous logic on this matter he wrote billed as reform the measure is an attempt to identify and punish political enemies or at the very least intimidate others from participating in the process as an effort that's already underway right because intimidation really have. it's out in the open and not behind the scenes right now it's the opposite transparency is how you root out corruption transparency is how you place everyone on equal footing transparency is what allows people to make informed decisions in our government and it seems especially republicans they don't want that and why would they write well the mainstream media has done

a horrible job of highlighting what's out there it is very easy to follow the money in some cases some news organizations and blogs actually do it and it's shown us for example why it is that congress is so feckless and reining in or showing any critique towards wall street because wall street banks are often their biggest donors and we know that thanks to rules that force that information to be disclosed so what mitch mcconnell actually wants is is un-american he wants for voters to be kept in the dark so maybe rhode island can at least serve as a blueprint for other states maybe we'll see some sweeping reform like this on a state by state level i think we all know how unlikely that is but the more examples that we have to hold in support of this argument the better so hats off to rhode island for at least taking this leap and now let's put pressure on congress every other state to do the same you know the line sunlight is the best disinfectant. your.

our guide it is time for a happy hour and joining me this evening alone a show senior producer jenny churchill and kevin glass managing editor at townhall . thanks for joining me guys the road map again let's just start with the good old john stossel tele so he decided to go out on the street dressed up as a homeless person on his show for a little scared and here is him talking about how he did it and why you should give to those people take a look. i made at a rate of about twenty four thousand dollars tax free i just did it for a couple hours but with one sign that said help i i really need help but one sign said i'll be honest with you i just want to be here i collected the same rate people just automatically give me shouldn't give to the street people you're really

supporting alcoholism and drug problems so you should. and this is makes me so angry on so many levels you shouldn't give to these street people first of all you have to ask why so many people are on the streets right now some of them who are mentally ill right because we've closed of any of our institutions and nobody's taking care of these people not to mention the fact i just find this this whole thing about how you can make like eighty thousand dollars a year if you panhandle to be ludicrous ok and i live here in d.c. you live here and you see you live here in d.c. there are a lot of homeless people in washington and it's really depressing and i don't see people just because they're used to giving quite the opposite everybody ignores them you know i don't see people as handing out money left and right that's right that's an interesting thought that i hadn't really thought about until you just said that that's so true and i was thinking about the other day when i was walking down the street someone asked me for money and i kind of just walked on by and i thought wow that's so crazy like three years ago i never would have done that i'm

like oh let me see if i have some change but you get desensitized i guess when you're around it all the time john stossel definitely made his point really intemperately to say the least but. there is something to be said there as to giving to panhandlers through on the street or giving to you know charitable organizations who have more of an infrastructure behind attacking the problem of homelessness on what you know a structural level you know so i see at my local churches every sunday morning there having. you know food being given out canned food drives things like that and soup kitchens and and to a certain extent you're should think how your time how your money is being what you're saying is that people are just not magically give too much anyway that we live in such a society right such a culture where we're so used to handouts which you know would that go against your argument about how i have wonderful charitable organizations i think it's really

disgusting that he can sit there and say these people make eighty thousand dollars a year when we're talking about people who clearly have issues whether or not they're just in a bad situation. they have mental health issues or they have drug issues he's people are struggling and i think it's ridiculous to act like you know they go home at the end of the day in their ivory tower and also i think it's really sad that fox news is taking a page from tyra banks remember when she dressed up in that fat person suit to know what it was like to be obese please john stossel. is trying to show the. homeless through you know a documentary we actually lived just you know. i released went out and you know it showed what it was like if you are overweight or obese and the kind of looks that you get right and the other kind of like discrimination that you face on a daily basis john stossel is now out there saying how rough it is for home boys doing the exact opposite and let's move on. this is my goodness i just

the stupidity of some people just is mind boggling but here's actually this is an actor who's talking about this story so i'll let him do some of the explaining first. needed to have a card you know right well actually saying that out loud make sure your inflection indicates it's a question because of this twitter account has plenty of cards for you that's right it retreats people who are posting pictures of their own car. who gets a new card and then decides i want to take a picture of it let me post it on the internet where everyone can see it with the digits this is the epitome of what is wrong with america today i mean everyone is so unbelievably stupid at this point where they think that their entire life needs to be broadcast on social media or they have no worth and because of that pit it is a vanity it's not vanity i don't think anyone thinks mood to i maybe it is maybe it's partially vanity but if you're vain about the fact that you have

a debit card i'm sorry but like ninety eight percent of the population. so i don't know it's just insane to know it's just desensitize people to their private information at this point you know i back in the ninety's you posted. just to see what it was like you know back in the ninety's you know my parents had two different cards that they would use they would have like a real card they would carry around and use in stores and they would have a card that they used on the internet that didn't have a huge credit limit because they didn't trust you know sending personal information online and now you've got to the point where people just don't care and they don't think and they think that you know posting a picture of their new debit card you know there was one that you know someone said i just got my new debit card in the mail here it is a picture with you know the numbers the name you know they didn't turn it around so you could see the security code you didn't really should have maybe they should just go that extra mile i mean cover mine i mean i'm very proud of your photos. have you seen those commercials that guy it's like identity lock or something and

he's like this is my social security number get identity lock you'll be as safe as me or you know who doesn't care you know if you know this year you know exactly i feel like that's what these people are doing but they're too stupid to understand that they need the security to save them. i don't know ari. i don't know why i keep calling them stupid it just makes me angry. really i just can't i don't know why i would ever pop in anyone's head but moving on. you know there's something that has been this is been repeated for how many years how many decades i know this is what we were taught in school when you had like a dare campaign and they did just say no to drugs and you hear people like mitt romney repeat those too. i think marijuana should not be legal in this country i believe it's a gateway drug to other drug violations the use of illegal drugs in this country is leading to terrible consequences a place like places like mexico and actually in our own country. so new

study in the august edition of the journal of school health finds at the gateway drug theory is accurate for some drugs but it's not marijuana it's actually alcohol yeah i mean no but i feel like this is you know there's a long time ago oh i don't know what's the drugs that every teenager can get ahold of that lowers your inhibitions and maybe makes you more open to doing other things like other drugs alcohol like it's common sense right it's a gateway drug in the sense that you know the number of people who have done alcohol have also done you know other drugs because the number of people who have tried alcohol is what one hundred percent in america ninety five percent i would say not a hundred but i've got to say it's probably up there with the correlation causation effect isn't there but the studies show that people who do do harder drugs usually did try marijuana first now that doesn't mean that marijuana is making them move on to harder drugs but it usually is at least you know a bridge drug between alcohol and cocaine or heroin or methamphetamine or whatever

but i don't you go from alcohol and cocaine but people definitely pride i think really will who have used marijuana have probably most definitely used alcohol and going back to your point the reason it's not alcohol is not seen as a gateway drug is because alcohol is not seen as a drug in this country even though it has the same effects all that syria where it's legal right i mean outpost twenty one so we've completely decriminalized alcohol and so you look at it as something that's it's very socially acceptable specially in this town every you know happy hour a culture runs deep i would say i just think it's not fair to say that just because a lot of people have done alcohol that. doesn't have the do we do alcohol no i don't you know not that i'm trying i'm sorry but you sound like my rings not your grandmother going i don't like george bush and so i thought if you're going to you've been. doing it what do you think about the fact that george w. is sixty six today that's incredible he looks great for sixty six it's

a good i'll give him that he spent his birthday in africa voluntary organizations so but he was for giving those kids handouts he was volunteering you saw there was a picture of him with a cape i kid you know that he's the student i have found. actually going to wrap up . right is a rough day very ready to get out of here thank you both for joining me tonight that is it for a night show thanks for tuning in and make sure you come back on monday we're going to trying out a new guest comedienne at maria alexander she's going to be on happy hour and in the meantime don't forget to like ilana show on facebook to follow us on twitter subscribe to our you tube channel and also don't forget that you can now check out everything on hulu as well we have next.

wealthy british style. sometimes. markets why not canada. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our you know our sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. there hasn't been anything good on t.v.

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