today in our t. t. minus six months left in president obama's first term his list of campaign promises remains of woefully incomplete will grade the president on his performance and one of the areas the president is struggling in the economy u.s. cities are toppling like dominos and finally for bankruptcy we'll show you what happens when a city takes on more debt than it can ever hope to pay off. plus while the u.s. military plugs one hole in the war on drugs five more leaks spring up it looks like the narcotics war is stretching all the way to africa so is the never ending cycle that's draining the u.s. of money and resources well question more. thursday july twenty sixth four pm here in washington d.c.

i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well campaign season is in full swing and president obama now has six months to fulfill his election promises and he made a lot of the for. reforming the health care system to getting the unemployment level below four percent to reversing the bush tax cuts to closing guantanamo a lot of them just didn't get just straight out did not happen so i mean in this divisive political climate obama's opponents are quick to pounce on him for promises unfulfilled much of it is highlighted in the book the amateur which takes an in-depth behind the scenes look at president obama and his administration it soared to the top of the new york times bestseller list and is also generating quite a bit of controversy the author of that book joins us now edward klein. edward welcome to the show so first want to ask you what grade you would give president obama now

that he's sixty six months left and his terror i think i give him a deal is and i think i'm being generous with the gee why do you say that a lot of people would be less generous than i would give him an f. influenced him out of three out of his job all right you have this new book it's called the am a chair refer him to president obama why give him that title why column an amateur . because you know i did two hundred interviews for this book i interviewed people both in and out of the administration i interviewed people who cover who the president in the white house the white house press corps republicans and democrats in congress and to a person they all said the same thing that this president is temperamentally unsuited for the job he loves to be out in front of large groups of ten twenty thirty thousand people but when it comes to dealing with congress and dealing with

extend it day to day basis he is clueless he doesn't have the executive skills to do the job and that's why i called him the mh are now ok i hear what you're saying but a lot of people point to the climate right now i mean we have one of the most divisive congress says i mean arguably that it's being dubbed one of the most divisive congress as a in u.s. history and president obama is placing the but he's not shy to place the blame on congress so what do you think about that don't they play into the bigger picture here. i don't buy into this. mainstream media myth that it's the congress who which has been obstructionist i think for instance of lyndon johnson in one thousand nine hundred sixty four he had a senate that was controlled by southern racist democratic chairman

committee chairman and despite that he was able to get the first major civil rights act passed through congress and how did he do it he did it because he was skilled in the use of political. talent he had the talent he understood the weak points in the strong points of these people and how to get them to come along and do what he wanted to do president obama doesn't have those talents irate at heart i want to play events clap from presidential candidate mitt romney we asked him the same question what grade he would give president obama here's his response. has president obama in your view done anything well. sure yes i appreciate for instance the decision he made to go after osama bin laden and to make sure he was it was executed what grade would you give president obama oh i have no question about that across the board cross the border even despite the

killing of osama bin laden rove when i look at what's happening in the middle east the arab spring has become the arab winter that's hardly a success and of course domestically it's hard to call what now thirty nine forty months of unemployment above eight percent they success when even he said by now he would be right there in the six percent range and by now it is not it's over a. very is giving president obama failing grade give him a little bit more credit than you did but you know what president obama is going to tallaght are you know he killed osama bin ladin that was a promise that he made he fulfilled that. so what do you think i mean doesn't he have some victories in there that he can kind of tout. well i wish i could point to something less but i can't i mean i agree with mitt romney that if you look at the middle east we have iran moving into iraq where we spent ten years

lost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and we've just left iraq to the not so tender mercies of iran syria is going down the tubes the iran it's getting closer and closer to a nuclear weapon the middle east is a mess and where we're not in the middle east using america's influence and power the way we should but that is true also in eastern europe where we removed our anti-ballistic missiles in the far east where china is wrists urgent they're in foreign affairs certainly this administration has been leading from behind if leading as it were at all domestically i think the recession speaks for itself eight point two percent unemployment millions and millions of people either out of work or can't find a job or it's just dropped out it's a really a very sad story and

a story that. the president has very hard time trying to support when he's running for reelection so rather than run on his record he's running by running down the other candidate but what about the fact that he will capture and you know he did careless out of enlightened something that the previous administration had vowed to dan wasn't able to accomplish. is that not a victory i think that's not going to get there but definitely a victory and we have to give him credit for that and i do. this. campaign to get osama bin laden was started under george w. bush and continued under president obama and i'm. i think any president in his shoes given the information that he had from the cia about the whereabouts of osama bin laden you know about a bad pakistan would have done what he did but that doesn't take away from the fact

that it was a successful raid and we did kill the most wanted man in the world and so yes that's a positive but that's one tries it of out of hundreds of negatives and what about has promise i say end of the war in iraq well he ended the war in iraq by. not doing what any sane president would have done which is to keep some of our troops there after we withdrew in order to maintain a presence and make sure that iran was not going to move in and become the leading foreign influence on iraq which it has since become so i don't think that was a success at all now your book average is coming out at a very convenient time i mean it's kind of the crunch time six months left until six months left and the president saying i mean what kind of feedback are you getting i have from the jail pain. i'm assuming it's making them pretty happy right

that the book has been number one on the new york times bestseller list for six weeks straight which i guess speaks for how successful it's been i am very gratified that so many people have found the book both informational and entertaining. obviously the democrats don't like the book as i expected they wouldn't but independents are buying this book the amateur republicans are buying it i've been asked to speak at many places i think it's important that this book is important because it does for iraq obama what the mainstream me here never did which was is to vet him thoroughly and carefully and explain why he's been so ineffective as president i would say it's no doubt that this book is successful you know atop the new era times best bestseller list but there is

a lot of controversy surrounding the bot many critics say that being details on our lot of them just simply aren't true what do you say about. well first of all they do say that and then they don't point to anything that they can prove is untrue as you know i had a three hour tape recorded interview with the reverend jeremiah wright. barack obama was former minister which i released to the press and no one had known nobody in the history media's picked it up the criticism of the book has been against me personally not about the facts in the book because the facts that are in country vertical i spoke to obama's position for twenty years i've spoken to his colleagues at the university of chicago law school i spoke to people in in his administration nobody has come forward and said you misquoted me i didn't say that the book is solid and i coming into it to question average

because i know you worked for the new york times and of course and you know abt up holding of eighty highest journalistic standards and a lot of it comes from where your sources are from and i think that is what is generating a lot of this controversy that i am your sources tend to be anonymous a i think your sources are being questioned what's your response to that after that actually so i'd say that well more than half of the sources in the book are actually on the record and named. including as i said his former physician his colleagues at the university of chicago medical school african-american business people and political figures who are all on the record the only people who are off the record are washington figures who have to continue to work with him in congress a lot of congresspeople were typically unwilling to go on the record could with their names but i have to tell you that you know i've been doing this for being an

image i've been a journalist for over fifty years and i've interviewed everyone from un indira gandhi in gold to my year to president reagan i'm very careful about my sourcing. and you can be sure that that when i say somebody said something they said it i would i do want to bring the. it's from a new york magazine this is what they found where they found fault and this particular lie quote no american politician had attempted to us or a sitting president of his own party since ted kennedy failed to unseat jimmy carter more than thirty years before pat buchanan down in mara pointed out attempted to un see george h.w. bush in one thousand nine hundred ninety two and that's on page a wide and so what do you think about about that that mistake that they pointed out i don't think it's a mistake because the fact of the matter is that ted kennedy. launched

a serious challenge president. carter. mr buchanan never succeeded in doing anything near that it's so it's it's so. it seems to me very accurate to say that no president has been challenged seriously since kennedy channel and should be toward iraq i do want to bring up one more thing the publisher of this fuck your publisher is conservative so is it fair to say that you leave in a conservative. the simple answer that question is yes. there we go straight up answer so did i mean did you get funding for the romney campaign or from a romney super pac by tad high certainly i wish i had gotten the funding from all these places unfortunately know i'm

a. writer of books and it occasionally freelance magazine articles and i know when funds be ever. my wife used to help me but now she's retired so i'm i'm funding myself and then my dog and my wife and that's that's where the funds come from they share they're very appreciative that they have it one last they some of the things that you disclose in the xbox not only best one but some of your other books in the past very shocking or what's maybe some of the most surprising things are shocking things that you reveal i think in the end that year when we're talking about now the book that i just brought out of the amateur barack obama at the white house the most surprising thing to me was major views with african-american leaders. i expected naturally it was naturally that they would be very favorably disposed to brock obama because he's

their the first black president of the united states but in fact i found that again and again and again african american leaders in chicago and in washington and in the congressional black caucus had very critical things to say about barack obama because under is administration. black unemployment has soared black youth unemployment is now at a horrific levels forty fifty percent crime is up more and more people are on welfare rolls in the in the african-american community and as far as they're concerned and these people are on the record saying this in my book iraq a bomb has not reached out to the african-american community and done anything for them and they're very disappointed and disillusioned with him. and very interesting thank you so much effort for coming on the show that was edward klein has a new york times best selling author. well so ahead on are putting up the for sale

sign one american city after another files for bankruptcy burdened debt from loan sharks of the banks coming up turn the page to discover what happens after chapter nine. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. pepper spray that just brings your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you buy

a lot of. dollars is of times stronger than any kind of you ever put you know. like anomic was in california have pushed city after city and so bankruptcy in the last few weeks three cities have filed for bankruptcy they are san bernadino bernadino california stockton california and mammoth lake oakland is now on the verge but they are holding off trying to fight goldman sachs and now there are more cities on the brink of bankruptcy so what exactly happens when cities file for bankruptcy to talk more about this is mccalla krauser she's a contributor for the next american city welcome there so i mean would you say this is a trend can we expect more cities across the u.s. to file. well i think that that's actually what

a lot of people are wondering their concern and that was my my city going to cast efforts to not anytime soon. and most experts are saying that's not what's going to happen basically half of states actually make it nearly impossible for cities to file for bankruptcy so harrisburg is included harrisburg recently we found that out i plan to have some for a lot of us filing for chapter nine and also basically a lot of cities know that filing for chapter nine is no way i'm going to wipe their slate clean at. different pension costs that city will. be taishan will definitely king fall so city is definitely where i'm from. and i mean that's the thing the cities they file for bankruptcy they're hoping that it will provide them this clean slate and give them some relief but i mean to what

extent is that true i mean it's definitely not this carol that they are hoping for yeah it's definitely not i mean. like california was out for bankruptcy three years ago. definitely a lot of money but they did have significant legal there be some apartments significant tenants and so it's been a struggle for a bill i hope and what you see now is that the residents were. showing the surprise by the severity of budget cuts and the beginning when to file for bankruptcy the communities are reaching out more and trying to get involved and. you know helping out with the service of. ok i want to talk more on the tell about the implications i mean when you file for bankruptcy bankruptcy yes in a way it is this kind of clean slate but you have this tarnished reputation the stigma associated with having filed for bankruptcy and then you get your credit

downgraded so i mean there is implications and drawbacks to that yes i mean. if there's a stick or. if you can figure for china for filing for chapter eleven cities similar to stick. your question earlier and i think there's a few things that filing for chapter nine is thing that. i think most experts do not agree with that. filing chapter and i think still very much the last resort for cities and that. cities are going to try to maintain their reputations and credit long as they possibly can before going protect nothing and i mean beyond you know the financial and the legal implications of filing for bankruptcy ultimately make hello what does it mean for the citizens there that live in these cities in terms of slashing public services cutting down on teachers and police officers i mean

what is the effect for the residents in these financially problematic cities. well basically i want to refer back to the law because one of the few examples of cities that have bought for bankruptcy in the past several years. in the last. at first. instance for shock to see ninety percent of their hair. cut. apart and were nearly have to grab for their r. and r. reasons for basically cut from the budget and in the wake of these drastic cuts. i think the community have started to realize or surprise which city services mean the most to them june occasion between citizens and the local government has been created to descend because i've been saying hey i need my grass cut every week

necessarily but i do want my state. but i guess the argument can be made that the city is already were strapped for cash and were already in the red and therefore would have had to make these cuts the public services anyway is. i mean. i guess basically. the severity of the budget cuts coming in the wake of i'm going for a top and mine are greater. and also the stigma attached to it all right then if not bankruptcy what then are the alternatives for these for these these cities in these towns that have turned to bank bankruptcy almost as a last ditch effort. well basically cities will try to cut as much as they can before for actually filing for chapter nine basically what when you he's city filing for chapter nine it's because they just actually don't have

enough money to meet their obligations it's kind of a simple matter stockton and sandberg and you know they just didn't have enough money to pay the people they need to pay so basically all that happens to these little try to you know place their budgets you're seeing it across the country. and it's affecting cities nationwide all right thanks so much for coming on the shell that was mccalla crowder she's a contributor for the next american city. thank you. well another campaign promise president obama made ending the wars abroad but it looks like the focus is now shifting away from the war on terror and toward the war on drugs and that war is expanding from latin america to africa africa is apparently the new hub for drug cartels the new york times reported that the u.s.

has begun shifting its focus on the region the chief of the d.a.'s europe asia and africa section went as far to say that africa is the new front tier in terms of antiterrorism and anti narcotics right now the american counter narcotics assistance for west africa totaled about fifty million dollars for the past two years according to the state department an amount that's only destined to increase and now the u.s. has reportedly started training an elite group of counter narcotics police and dawna this is all happening as gone i was going through a transition of power the country's president died unexpectedly on tuesday after complaining of chest pains a similar unit is also planned in nigeria the west africa cooperative see security initiative or reportedly use a training model that's similar to the programs used in central america and mexico in these fifteen african countries and another one of these elite training forces

is planned in kenya is hoped the officers can combat the latin american drug cartels that are allegedly using africa to smuggle cocaine to europe now all of this is happening as critics argue that the war on drugs isn't slowing down and it's just a downright failure they say that the answer narcotic initiative is costly and largely ineffective and is just an excuse for the u.s. to expand its military influence throughout the world to be fair the counter drug program has seen some breeze and success they made huge steps in ending the flow of narcotics passing through honduras but the commando style team of the. agents participated in at least three lethal lethal interjections interdiction operations alongside a squad of honduran police officers which has been hotly contested by the media now the reason for the urgency relates right back to the war on terror al-qaeda and similar groups are largely funded by the legal drug trade and small impoverished

nations are especially susceptible to their influence so in the end the war on terror remains with just a different name that's going to wrap it up for this show we're going to be right back here and a half hour but before then we are going to toss to lauren lyster who's going to give us a preview of what's to come today the capital account lauren what's going on hi there liz well earlier this morning mario draghi head of the european central bank made a statement that he was behind the euro and markets freaked out it was euphoria so we want to talk about what kind of world this is where you have to try and figure out the reaction to appall it titian or policymaker in your decisions it's not exactly market force the way you would traditionally think of it also speaking of what people are saying sandy weill the former c.e.o. and chairman of citigroup has said the big banks should be broken up the irony cannot be missed this is a man who at the helm of citigroup helped turned it into

a behemoth now he is obviously singing a different tune so we're going to talk about all of this and more as well as alternative investments to get out of this financial system that's so crazy we have jim rickards author of currency wars as my guest host today and rick rule natural resources guru as a guest from vancouver so you won't want to miss it right a lot going on there thanks lauren for that update that's all coming up next on the capital account but that is going to do it for the news for the very latest on the stories we covered today and a few that we didn't have time to get so you can check out our you tube channel you tube. dot com slash r t america or check out our website it's artsy dot com slash usa that's a find out what i'm doing when i am not reporting the news you can follow me on twitter at was wall will be right back here in a half hour with more news and in-depth interviews so keep it tuned right here.

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