canada. joint operations room today. tonight an r. t. a t. minus ninety days before the two thousand and twelve election and this is shaping up to be a possibly the most boring election in recent history so why are americans so disenchanted when it comes to the future of the country. and presidential candidates aren't the only ones gearing up for the election so is congress and all its gridlock the glory republicans are blaming democrats for a debt and economy democrats accusing their counterparts from blocking progress so get ready for an eventful few months because policy is being put on hold we'll show you how. and primaries in missouri are kicking off today for debate the economy jobs and the future of the u.s.

but no one wants to mention the burning of an islamic society of joplin for the second time in a month we'll show you how the muslim community there is being marginalized. it's tuesday august seventeenth pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching arts. election season is in full swing and we are ninety days away and counting until the general election now as a plays out we're seeing repeats of the same partisan talking points attack ads are the norm with one party criticizing the other but it seems what we aren't seeing are real proposals for changes and policy and americans are taking notice or at least just disillusioned by it all here is a recent poll from the pew research center as you can see there six in ten

americans say two thousand and twelve election has been too dull too long other words to describe the campaign including exhausting and annoying well this is a sharp contrast to the presidential candidate reality show that was playing out just five months ago who can forget these memorable moments that kept america glued to their t.v. screens i'm ready for the gotcha questions and they already started to come and when they ask me who's the president of you beki beki beki beki stan stan i'm going to say you know i don't know do you know and one thing i would say is when you take the nine nine nine plan and you turn it upside down i think the devil when the detail i think it's a catchy phrase in fact i thought it was the price of the pizza when i first read it i am. what about global warming there is no such thing as global warming we were the first permanent on the moon and it will be america

so for the next three months we'll see the announcement for the republican vice presidential candidate made at the republican and democratic national conventions debates and t.v. screens especially and battleground states cluttered with political ads are the correspondent christine was at the white house briefing today and has more. liz this is indeed the time when things really start to heat up as you know members of congress have now taken their long summer recess so when it comes to media attention and jobs by the candidates and of course money spent now is the time now of course a lot of that money is spent on each candidate trying to get his message to the masses and that often involves attacking his opponent now today's press briefing here at the white house a lot of discussion about an ad released by the romney campaign here's part of that out on july twelfth president obama quietly announced a plan to go well for reform by dropping work requirements under obama's plan you

wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job they just send you your welfare check and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare mitt romney will restore the work requirement because it works now this is a common tactic used by those who want to paint the president as too liberal someone who supports free handouts to lazy people courtesy of middle class taxpayers and is an argument that's been tested and does tend to fire up the conservative base and this isn't regards to some changes that were made last month in which the department of health and human services gave states the opportunity to apply for waivers for some of the rules of welfare to try to think outside the box in order to find new ways to get people who receive welfare off welfare and into a job now that again has been the goal of the new program it's obviously still too new to talk about the results the obama administration is saying as governor romney himself asked for more leeway and even broader welfare waivers a point obama spokesman jay carney hammered home today this advertisement is

categorically false and it is blatantly dishonest. this is ministrations policy will strengthen the program by giving states the opportunity to employ more effective ways to help people get off welfare and into a job under this policy governors must commit that their proposals will move at least twenty percent more people more people from welfare to work so again liz this is simply politics as usual we should also mention super pac for the obama campaign also released an ad today this one tying mitt romney and bain capital to the death of the steelworkers wife because they lost their health care and the beat goes on of course so for those of you at home who have been watching the olympics for the last week and a half enjoy them while they last because i things are going to change once they're over it's going to turn into a different kind of competition a two man competition one that could more resemble a boxing match so again with all this money flowing in for the next ninety days

this could get ugly reporting at the white house christine for our take well to discuss the lack of enthusiasm for the upcoming general election and more i was joined by brian dorothy's senior editor for reason magazine his also the author of the book you see there gun control on trial. i think the american people are kind of weird about major party politics they recognize you just said that obama didn't deliver what they wanted out of him even many republicans sense that mitt romney is going to deliver what they want out of him and yet they also are strangely afraid of ever grasping for any other options if you fold them generically you can get well over fifty percent of americans say they want an independent choice they want a third party choice but they never actually seen them well ever this year i think we have a better playing field for third party for work in than ever before for the theory we've been talking about that the economy has been in the tank for four years obama

has romney's delusions don't sound to most conservatives especially any more exciting than obama seems like a real me to thing and so there are other options out there for progressive democrats there's the green tea party for serious conservatives who actually want to see government shrink there is the libertarian party with gary johnson they are out there they're probably going to be on the ballot in nearly all of the states we just need to see if americans put their money where their mouth is on the boat or are you going along with that we present like presidential candidate ron paul and the very passionate loyal following that they always stick by hand you don't mention gary johnson. so but they are of course the alternative to the mainstream do you think that it is time now for a third party candidate yeah i mean in my judgment you know i come from the libertarian world it's always been and the american people do say that they want to

i would like to think that the economic situation the political situation it's so grim so many people right now that they will be willing to go third party but i also want to point out the other option that many americans hate that we don't talk about much which is the opposite of not voting at all which forty to fifty per se. americans do it almost every election year and i wouldn't be surprised to see that non-coding number this year as well with people just like any of the politicians it's all the problems i want so certainly we don't see the kind of passion behind either of these candidates that we've seen in the past do you think people are just sick of hearing the same all the same old divisive partisan talking points play out you know time and time again it's funny i think that to the extent that there is any passion from the democrats or republicans it is strictly a passion of hating the other guy it's not about oh gosh i love obama i think he's

going to be great we've had obama for four years we already know we've got to be great but you can still get the democratic base to go to god i think mitt romney needs richie's fire people are you referring to say the republicans they may not be excited about romney but they can go for a walk obama view the socialist or whatever so that sort of divisiveness is almost the only thing the major parties have if you actually want interesting ideas and if you think the lucian whether you're a super liberal democrat or a super conservative republican you really should consider looking third party because they're the ones with ideas that are both russian and actually might be effective in a way that i think obama and romney on the campaign for over proven they will buy and i would just say that the libertarian party is a growing party i mean obviously with ron paul we see it's almost become a he has a huge young following it's almost been seems like it's becoming cool to become liver darian the only see this as a growing party the libertarian ideas are definitely growing and ron paul has been

the key to that but for ron paul as they're running as a republican the republican party i think it's not been as welcoming of ron paul libertarian stance as they should so i think what you're going to see in november is the ron paul people who are almost fifty percent of the republican the left. right in the primaries are not going to be voting for mitt romney many of them are just going to sit it out they believe it's wrong call and no one but many of them are going to go to the libertarian party with gary johnson the former republican governor of new mexico as their standard bearer and i think you're going to november will tell the tale but i think you will see the libertarian party the best results it's probably nine hundred eighty what it actually got one point one percent and i think gary johnson has a possibility of doing about it and maybe even better if you can stretch to successfully sure all of those ron paul people say do you think that this is kind of a setting a precedent or an indicator of the way things are going and you know perhaps well

if we see the influence of the libertarian party have this time around that you know in two thousand and sixteen that maybe they could really pull it off yeah you know americans are i don't think we're ever going to vote for a third party in numbers enough to actually third party candidates office the way third party candidates succeed is by turning the major parties in their direction and i think is romney loses which you very well might for we and it is terrible on actually limiting government as the libertarians think it will be that that will leave an opening within the republican party for another ron paul like your very possibly his own son senator rand paul to take that libertarian energy into the republican party and win with it but the libertarian party still has to be there to sort of keep the republican party honest even if they can't win them by reminding them hey if you fail to satisfy the libertarian wing of your party they can come to

us and they will and you will lose and you know despite the. fact that not popularity or the lack of popularity a gap among both of the candidates what they do behind have behind them is money a lot of money and this this is the election of a record break. king campaign spending we're seeing the aftermath you know of citizens united allowing corporations the pump limited spending at the campaigns we see a graph there a lot of money pumped into two thousand and eight and that's just expected to rise and that's not even taking into account a lot of money that's being pumped then from independent organizations you know post citizens united so brian and how is that playing into everything you know i've never been one to think the american voter is sort of. by when you talk about money in politics all you're talking about is money spent to spread a message but the message has to sink in to some of the modeling that influence

their vote if you actually look at the correlation of money spent in voting money does not guarantee winning in the election all that matters is that the ideas get out there and especially internet age you don't need a twenty seven million dollar ad to get your message across to the american people are going to vote for what they believe not just to buy money. little be interesting to see how it all plays out hopefully gets more exciting because apparently a americans are finding it far boring the word that the whole here is brian thank you for coming on the show and i was brian doherty senior editor of reason magazine and while the political world fixate on polishing their campaign strategy is put on the back burner until the campaign dust settles is the work they were elected to do and that's creating policies and passing legislation that addresses the pressing issues facing the u.s. today the latest example of the cyber security act of two thousand and twelve had the full backing of the white house and appeared to have bipartisan support it's

referred to by lawmakers as critical to america's national security and appear to have struck a balance between cyber security and protecting people's privacy that bill is now on hold after complaints by the u.s. chamber of commerce and other lobbying groups corporate lobbying groups that is but that's not all legislation on student loans transportation corporate tax reform it isn't like anything will happen until the election is a done deal so as long as campaigning remains top priority what does that mean for the american people to discuss this joining me now is brad freedman investigative reporter for brad a blog dot com brad welcome so it seems it was already doing well thank you this seems like politics paralyzes policy or at least during an election year should not be offset. well know it's sort of bizarre this year is not only does it paralyze the election season but the election season has pretty

much been for the past two three maybe arguably even four years i mean this has been a strategy i'm sorry to say by the republicans to essentially break washington and then go out on the campaign trail and argue that washington is broken so hire us to go back and fix it we've never seen anything i don't think we have ever seen anything like this before and we here we have a clip of representative charles rangle talking exactly about that let's take a listen to what he had to say i think. we should be up to this that we should try to get people to understand that we paid to do a job and to be locked in concrete close to four years ago to be part of this made up their mind that they were going to destroy the president and not support any of his programs now with reaching the end that

a lot of things are supposed to happen before we conclude our business but you can bet your life to the president. not going to do anything this president would do would provide the jobs that the tax reform and this is going to wait until after the election. just not going to do anything except to make america in worse shape than we are economically and that is wrong and what do you think about that brad and the congressman there saying that the g.o.p. is putting politics before you know the well being of our country and just trying to block any progress whatsoever in hopes of not letting president obama get reelected. yeah well not letting him get reelected and of making the economy worse in every regard i'm glad to hear that someone in congress finally saying that frankly the democrats and obama should have been saying this for years they've

known that this is the strategy that's why all of these bills are being pushed back they may or may not be dealt with in the lame duck session after the election but this has been the strategy and it is working by the way for republicans they've had an unprecedented number of filibusters in the u.s. senate and the media the corporate media has gone along and sort of helped the republicans by going out every time the bill is blocked by a filibuster they'll say democrats failed to pass such and such bill no they didn't fail to pass the bill it was blocked it was not allowed to come up for a vote in the first place and so i don't think it's been made completely clear to the american people just how broken the system is currently in washington and exactly why it is broken we still have a media who sort of you know saying both sides do it the democrats and republicans they just can't get along they need to compromise no that's not the case very

clearly this is a strategy by the republicans and it has been for years why the media has a been out there reporting it that way. well i can't tell you well that we are kind of seeing the effects of this because in the past year there was one hundred fifty one law that were enacted but this number you know it includes relatively insignificant things like naming courthouses and other government buildings but other more pressing issues like immigration corporate tax reform those bells i mean they don't seem to get very far so brad what does this have to say about their priorities. well it has to say that there are currently the republicans want to win elections period end of story and they will say anything to do that you know that yes they've been passing all kinds of big government abortion bills that's what the republicans have been doing in the house while they're pretending against big they're against big government that's the sort of thing that they've been

they've been passing they are willing to watch this country go down the tubes they're willing to watch a you know record unemployment record heat spells and everything else drought and do absolutely nothing about it and they're just banking they're gambling that the republican the american people are going to be either dumb enough or misinformed enough to you know to go along with them and to blame this all on obama and on the democrats and to put republicans in place there's also one other thing that the republicans have done that i think is sort of box them into the corner they have been spending the last two or three years pretending that regulations are a bad thing so now if there's any bill that needs to be passed they're going to hear about it from their own republicans are going to hear about it from their own people their own constituents complaining about these bills i mean god forbid the republicans and of winning in november i don't know how it is they'll be able to

govern i don't know how you run a government you know without passing laws that include you know regulations and stuff and you know this is it meanwhile members of congress they are now taking a five week vacation this amid the gridlock and these pressing economic issues yes and i'm sad i mean it is really a time for them to take an extended break. well yeah this is what the you know this is what they do this is what they always do traditionally this is what they always do in a lesson it's also it's silly season it's going to be traditionally that's the case between now and a presidential election so it's not you know entirely surprising i think what is so surprising is sort of the unprecedented way in which this is happen the unprecedented number of bills that are going to have to be passed that are looking at deadlines but you know if you look back over the past two or three years pretty much nothing has passed in this congress unless there was an absolute deadline and

even in those cases we're talking about you know seconds before midnight you know when the debt ceiling is about to expire and things like that so nothing is going to happen until there is a deadline until lawmakers have figured out there is no other way to avoid taking action brad thank you so much for coming on the show really appreciate it that was brad friedman and that's a good reporter for brad blog dot com. well it's primary day in missouri republicans choosing of their candidate to go up against clairmont mccaskill and conservatives and right wingers are descending on the state in hopes of getting a tea party senator elect at not too long ago the community of joplin was picking up the pieces of the devastating tornadoes that ravaged the town and it appeared they came together to overcome the tragedy. this is a national tragedy and that means there will be

a national response and he also praised the community per cup and together they paused here at by forty one pm on sunday exactly one week after the storm. a week that witnessed countless acts of neighbor helping neighbor and strangers becoming friends they didn't even hear you say we're going to. but it appears the community is actually quite divided this after a second mosque was burned down so it seems a natural disaster brought people together but this latest mosque incident shows the community may actually be quite divided in islamophobia and other bigotry is alive and well and not in jail and this is not didn't just happen in joplin this is just days after the mass shooting of a sikh temple and wisconsin so what does this all have to say about bigotry and tolerance in america to discuss this and morning what national executive director for care joined me just a short while ago we have

a reasonable belief that this could have been that a good attack on the mosque given the history. on this mosque for them to destroy it underlies it in their name and eventually it was completely destroyed in the fire. and i'm talking about we are offering ten thousand dollars or any information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator of this . i know that the local enforcement and police are honest and in this again i think i would like them to take their due sign. to determine we just have good reason to believe that this has been a deliberate attempt to destroy the mosque. and so as you said this this is not the first time that something like this has happened do you fear that this is becoming a trend. well i hope not and i know that those who

perpetrate these acts are trying to make it a trend i think we collectively muslims christians you seek people of faith and people. should make it difficult for those people to achieve their goals. and the tragedy that happened over the weekend in milwaukee is just another reminder that hatred is blind and those who try to undermine the fabric of this beautiful society should not succeed so i feel that some of these individuals are trying to succeed in the attempt to destroy and jack our society. i think we should not let them succeed and in fact they are your voices and the overwhelming majority of people in our society are respectful believe in harmony and peace and tomorrow i'm traveling to a job. i'm going to meet with the leadership with the local officials along with our

team and the beautiful thing is a local church is offering to have a breakfast and host the community. whose mosque has been destroyed so you know despite this efforts by for some individuals the overwhelming feeling of the neighborhood of people who believe in tolerance all coming together. and that is very nice to hear i can imagine that this must be very shocking and difficult for the muslim community there to deal with this can you can you describe how it has affected the muslim community there what the muslim community that is very tiny very small about fifty thousand and eighteen to twenty some the frequent. so you can imagine this mosque in the center of their life. and that's that's everything they have it's their dream it's their future it's the place where they

get together they bring their children they bring their neighbors just one night before the incident happened they had an interface breaking of the fast in the mosque so that's now disappeared and definitely the community is devastated but the community is very hopeful that you know they will come out and. the community at large will stand by them and in that spirit you know we're going to force the poor to them but i hope that those who have been watching and those who know the perpetrators will do the right thing come out speak to the authority and get the information they have about this particular. alright and today as a big day for their very the primaries are underway do you think the politicians sometimes use the islam as a scapegoat or you know pro-trade has this kind of this bug me man. you know

sometimes unfortunately all humans. and especially a particular set of mindless politicians they're trying to scapegoat and they can muslims because they're failing in creating jobs they're failing in their duties to represent their constituencies and then to the issues that people care about. they go the easy way by scapegoating another minority like the muslim community they want to muslim sentiment hate speech on the right in the united states specially among the titian not all of them of course and i think the feeling their job and that's why they just want to distract the population by just you know getting involved in fear mongering good growth in american muslims because they see it like as an easy target appealing to ignorant people who do not know the muslim community or slam and judge others on the basis on the tides and news

events around the world. you know most of the time have nothing to do with and they can most enjoy themselves. and that was the heart of our national executive director for care. story now you probably won't see on the mainstream news a fifty four year old man who was considered mentally retarded was just x. acute in the state of texas this after the man stared execution was denied by the higher court just hours before he was scheduled to die marvin wilson was convicted back in one thousand nine hundred two for the murder of twenty one year old jerry williams since then his legal team has been fighting for his life arguing that he should be in eligible for the death penalty because of his low i.q. after all an i.q. of seventy is considered mental retardation and many people parallel the story of wilson to that of ronnie and thomas on back to back of mice and men prosecutors though disagree so he is manipulative. and deceitful and say that has criminal

career is proof enough of his competency the supreme court issued a ruling in two thousand and two outlawing the execution of the mentally impaired but left it to states to determine what constitutes mental impairment and whether executing them violates the eighth amendment wilson will be the seventh person executed in texas this year and at least nine other prisoners have execution day it's in the coming months. texas is the state that most often uses the death penalty the u.s. is one of the last remaining first world nations to see it as a solution we're going to have to leave it off there for more on the stories we covered you can check out our youtube channel youtube dot com slash artsy america you can also check out our website it is r t dot com slash u.s. air producers are busy working on stories that we don't always have time to get to on the air you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall.