i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. over the weekend mitt romney chose fellow one percenter paul ryan as his running mate so how is this pick a blatant giveaway to the corporate elite in america and business put ayn rand and her army of psychopaths closer than they've ever been before to stealing america's soul and wars are often fought by remote control in video games but with the rise of drones real life warfare is dominated by remote control to how long until our nation finally has a conversation about the consequences of never ending drone warfare.

and so the ticket is said corder billionaire mitt romney will be running for president with this guy multimillionaire paul ryan aka our nation's savior. well we've dedicated much of our lives to saving this country i don't think it's going to come from the seven turn republican congressman from wisconsin who in two thousand and eleven claimed the gavel as chairman of the powerful house budget committee you see what pains a lot of americans today is that there are too few differences between the two major parties in america but in picking paul ryan republicans about it a lot more daylight on the political spectrum between themselves and democrats. that's because as chairman of the house budget committee paul ryan wrote the most radical budget ever passed out of the representatives out of the house of

representatives in history it's a budget that would have been on thinkable just a few decades ago it's a budget that even newt joe mccarthy had a good idea gingrich called right wing social engineering and it's a budget that was written by and for the corporate elites in america the paul ryan vision of america is one in which the wealthy elite and transnational corporations receive trillions more in tax cuts even as their current tax obligations stand at historic lows at the same time merican is making less than thirty thousand bucks a year well they'll see their taxes go up it's a vision that doesn't provide guaranteed health insurance for the old the sick in the poor that ends medicare as we know it and slashes medicaid funding by third over the next ten years it's a vision that dismantle social safety nets condemning the fifty million americans who are in poverty right now to to kenzie in desperation it's a vision that eliminates federal student loan aid for one million young americans

at the same time it's a vision of a nation with an increasing military budget and war machine a vision that preserves tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for transnational oil corporations that are more profitable than ever before dumping more pollution in the skies than ever before and it's a vision that will ultimately cost our economy four million jobs over the next two years if an active. say what you want about the corporate takeover of both parties republicans and democrats it's all true say what you want about the democratic party leaving progresses behind to curry favor from wall street but budgeting is not a bloodless game it's not just numbers on a ledger under the paul ryan plan millions of more americans will be dealing with the pain of economic destruction absent lifelines they'll be dealing with the foreclosures the abuse the drug addiction the suicides they're not there you were surprised by this but in selecting paul ryan republicans have told the american

people that yes they hear them loud and clear they hear the protestations against cuts to medicare the demands for accountability on the part of corporate america and the pleadings for more economic equality and jobs with paul ryan republicans say yes we do hear you all of you and no we don't give a damn with paul ryan there is no place for the middle there is no place for progressives disenfranchised with the president's drone wars drug wars whistleblower wars and the embrace of austerity so simpson bowles plan there is no place for libertarians looking to break up the federal reserve cartel the bailouts and of course the drone wars and drug wars with paul ryan republicans confirmed what we all already knew they are the party of the corporate elite in america and they're pretty frickin proud of it too john nichols joins me now he's the washington correspondent at the nation magazine and author of the book uprising john welcome back to the show it's great to be with you so the president has a pretty uphill battle to climb this election that's always been known unemployment

above eight percent nobody's been reelected you know with unemployment that high so it seems like romney can just pick you know a milk toast candidate and try and hammer the president said he picks a guy who's gone on record has written legislation to end medicare as we know it are republicans going to be on the defensive now because of this. sure they are and i think that the one thing that's important to understand up front is that mitt romney was forced into this pick this was not where he wanted to go it happens that he really likes paul ryan personally they have a very good relationship but at the end of the day his strategists his advisers were saying look ryan's a third rail candidate he brings issues into play that are going to make it much harder to run this race problem for him was he had a horrible summer his campaign was really beginning to get a lot of pressure from the republican right and the extreme right within the party saying look we're dissatisfied we don't like the fact that your aides are talking

about romney care in a positive way we don't like that you're putting relatively moderate people in charge of some elements of your transition there was a lot of pushback in the last couple weeks the washington post the wall street journal i apologize the weekly standard newt gingrich stephen moore the former head of the club for growth all began to pressure the romney campaign to pick paul ryan and at the end of the day that's what he chose to do not to reach out to america but united space yet would what role do you think wisconsin may have played in this pick i mean he paul ryan's from wisconsin wisconsin has been you know this last the last two years the number one state to look out for electoral politics. right i mean i think that paul ryan is forged in battle as is scott walker wisconsin is a very closely divided state and the republican politicians from wisconsin have really been in the forefront of pushing an american austerity agenda a vision of deep cuts in public services but also deep cuts in taxes for

millionaires and billionaires it's an absolutely failed agenda one that that will cause as you suggested in the intro massive increases in unemployment in the united states and yet that agenda is very very popular with the republican base and what mitt romney chose to do is to run a base election now we have to ask ourselves why does he think that will work and the answer unfortunately is that they believe a massive financial advantage a lot of television advertising money spent on the campaign in combination with voter suppression efforts in swing states across the country will allow them to prevail just with their base vote it's a risky strategy but we should understand where it comes from yeah and with ryan on the ticket you can probably have another billion dollars in super pac money coming coming in you know the one you love this guy yeah they do in the one thing you hear from from pundits on the news and everything is that paul ryan whether you like his

policies or not he's he's bradys courageous he's bold he's willing to put things out there is willing to go after the second quarter quote sacrificial lambs how courageous is it to push for tax cuts for millionaires in america and to try and you know screw over poor people who don't have any lifelines is that really courageous. it's really shocking that that so often paul ryan's quote unquote brave and courageous policies line him up exactly with the largest campaign donors in america big banks big insurance companies wall street speculators the truth of the matter is he's not great he's not even a deficit hawk he voted for two unfunded wars he voted for the bank bailouts he voted for the auto industry bailout and he voted for medicare part d. a program that the congressional budget office referred to as a clear budget buster so the guy isn't even really serious about balancing budgets what he's serious about is getting into programs like social security medicare and

medicaid and restructuring them in a way that federal tax dollars flow into the accounts of wall street speculators and big insurance companies well said is about as courageous as someone who goes on a limb and picks team usa to win the gold the olympics or something john nichols thanks a lot i'm going to do pretty good yeah baby thank you no surprise. aside from policy which in ryan's case is as radical as it gets a lot of people tend to vote for people they like who they can identify with in which case paul ryan doesn't want people to know about a little incident he had last year with a very expensive bottle of wine here's an interview tom had around that time with a woman who called paul ryan doing what he enjoys most sipping pricey bottles of wine with billionaire hedge fund managers take a look. tell us what happened just give us the the the snapshot of what happened when you were there. well we were sitting at a table and after about i guess forty minutes or so congressman ryan came in with

two companions who we didn't recognize and one of the companions very loudly ordered a wine and he ordered it by number from the wine list so you know i kind of poked at my husband and said oh hand me the violets let's play with the order did you know it turns out it was a three hundred and fifty dollars bottle of wine and i think either the most or second most expensive bottle of wine on the menu at an expensive restaurant and. about ninety minutes later they ordered a second bottle of wine which you know came to seven hundred dollars total for the two bottles and i was just doing some calculations of well how much time would it take a two income earning couple earning minimum wage working full time to be able to buy that bottle of wine could they buy it in a week what salary would you have to make in order to be able to clear enough in a week just to be able to buy that bottle of you know those two bottles of seven

hundred dollars wine and when you look at it in the context of the fact that congressman ryan is the architect of a budget plan that will usher in some of the most draconian. budget cuts to america's most bona ripple citizens to our seniors to our low income families. and in terms of privatizing medicare and taking health care benefits away from low income families and reducing government subsidies for health care and many many other different kinds of budget cuts it struck me as really very ironic and beery hypocritical that they were sitting there enjoying that bottle of wine that is just stood up and walked over to their table to have a room or on the way i dropped by my sweet. dinner and paid and i walked over to their table and i that excuse me congressman ryan i was just

wondering how you can live with yourself drinking seven hundred dollars worth of the wine was called an issue though so i thought of it as she is so when you know a full time american working family couldn't even earn enough to buy that wine in one week and i just wanted to know how you can leave yourself while pursuing policies that will hurt those americans disproportionately and and he responded oh it's really he she had no idea how much the white car thought was clear his response was kind of he looked down and said it cost that much you know like you know what you he really had looked at the wine list it was somebody else at the table and that's made out to be i guess with facets that looked at the wine and did the ordering of the woman is it is this is this the guy who manages the twenty six billion dollar hedge fund yes it is is it. coming up everyone in washington knows paul ryan is

a huge fan of iran so might that explain his disdain for the poor and why the heck is iran so popular nowadays anyway. pepper spray that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything if you buy a lot of sort of these is thousands of times was stronger than any one of the ever put you know. you know 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 harpur welcome to the big picture.

into the only military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability . i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism.

mr. so one explanation for why paul ryan even the poor in the working class in his budget might have something to do with this woman in iran if you don't know who iran is then watch this you are out to destroy almost every out of this in the contemporary american way of life judeo christian religion modified government regulated capitalism by the majority will either abuse of said but use churches in the concept of. accurate criticism yet christ every important leader in man's history has told us that we should love one another why is this kind of love . it is immoral if it is placed by oneself and then if

a man as we go to a woman is weak then she is beyond he is beyond love he said he does not deserve it he said there are very few of us then in this world by your standards that are worthy of love unfortunately yes they are so that's she believe that selfishness was a virtue and that the strong the rich and the powerful should never be question asked to sacrifice for the greater good she was an atheist who rejected you their christian religion you would think she would be absolutely radioactive to any politician who cares about coming across as a compassionate man or woman of the people given that you think no politician would run around exulting in an especially not let him or herself be videotaped doing it right. good morning randi more than anyone else this fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism the morality of individuals so with all the rain really here today i think she would do

a great job in showing us just how wrong what government is doing it because it's that kind of thinking that kind of writing that is sorely needed right yep that's vice president candidate paul ryan begging for iran to be raised from the grave so what is going on here design ran explain a lot about not just paul ryan but the vision for the right for america gary weiss joins me now he's an investigative journalist and author of the book iran nation the hidden struggle for america's soul gary welcome back to the show my pleasure sam glad you're having me so i just mention the name of your book iran nation it's the struggle for america's soul what does picking paul ryan as a vice president nominee do to that struggle. well it advances the struggle tremendously which you have if you're a rander if you're part of the iran movement he's not exactly you know he wasn't a member of the inner circle of iran like alan greenspan was but he was he's

definitely strongly in favor of her position these try to put that toothpaste back into to try to walk back some of the statements that he's made that he is very very much and iran the acolyte there's just no question about that why do you think that is i'm wondering that because i mean she seems like she has a pretty radioactive philosophy is especially for american politics maybe maybe not maybe she fits right in nowadays with american politics it seems like but do you think it comes it's a result of. a decades long effort i mean she's achieved a lot more notoriety now than when she was alive and that's because there's been lots of money invested in think tanks we just we just had a movie come out it flopped but yet you know billionaires are coming in to finance a second movie is it now that it's you have political cover nowadays in america to be a fan because the substrate is already been laid. yeah i think you i think you have that i think that what you have is that of the cumulative effect of really years of

indoctrination and we have to remember that hundreds of thousands of her books are distributed to people in high schools by wealthy iran supporters you know she's always been a bestselling author of a bestselling author back to the forty's and you have sort of this accumulation of shall we say iran begin propaganda so that her her message has sort of become adopted by people in the tea party she's very popular among people in the tea party and yet she she favors you know she's basically the you know the advocate she's the mother courage of the one percent is the way i would put it you know she was in favor of advancing the one percent against the dastardly ninety nine percent and that's that's the philosophy that permeates her books and her as a is and it's not really all that unusual you think about it for someone like paul ryan a person who just lacks any empathy for the poor for a person like that to adopt their philosophy when you think about it it's really not that surprising yeah it's not just paul ryan i mean as you just mentioned here

we are here she was she's a defender of the one percent against the ninety nine percent today's political climate at least on the streets is the exact opposite and we have fifty million people in poverty you know the economy is in the tank lots of people are suffering you would think this would be the worst time of all times to start dabbling in her philosophy why is she winning at a time like this. it's yeah it's that you think would be the worst time if you look at the people on the streets but the people in the streets don't finance campaigns if you look at the people who are financing mitt romney's campaigns it's heavy with hedge fund manager ok and these guys are very much into iran you know there's iran you know look at me she she was a believer in the last a fair capitalism not just ordinary capitalism not capitalism versus communism or capitalism versus socialism if you believe in capitalism without any kind of regulation and that appeals to people on the street and the people on the street

are the ones who are backing mitt romney's candidacy it well you mentioned that it's you know the people donating money are fans of reasonably so i mean they're the ones who stand to benefit the most but a lot of young people nowadays seem to be gravitating towards iran to what is her appeal with young people. as you people see young people on various levels you know her book the fountainhead your two books two major novels the fountain head and atlas shrugged the fountain head was basically a book that talked of individual individuality and self-esteem so she appeals to young people who want to sort of separate from their parents it's not just the last say for capitalism the no government and narco capitalism that she advocates but but self esteem and standing up for yourself and that really appeals to be if you read your books i mean i read her books you know in preparation for me for this for writing iran and i think that you know there as i said that i thought might be sort

of you know interesting and beneficial to young people but it sort of larded over with a philosophy pillion atlas shrugged of selfishness of disregarding the rights of others and this is i think you know you have you know on the other hand sort of that is this is sort of like this this psychological aspect that appeals to be able but then you have the hard her main message which is narco capitalism yeah in the last thirty seconds assuming iran wins the struggle for america's soul what does it look like well you're talking about an america which does not in any way a resemble our our but you know our nation today we have they would have basically be no government except for courts the military and the police everything else goes by the boards no taxation it would be a world where that is ruled even more than it is today by the ultra rich the ancestral rich that's what you have there you go gary weiss thanks

a lot for coming on. thanks for having me. over the next few weeks the mainstream media will devote its coverage to profiling who exactly paul ryan is will be defined by his votes in congress his budget his associations his family his religion his wealth everything and some circles he's already being defined by is adoration of iran as we just talked about but one source the mainstream media will likely not check out to get a read on who paul ryan is is wiki leaks but my next guest did just that and it could anger a lot of the far right like libertarians and free marketeers who think they have an ally in the new v.p. candidate senator joins me now he's a freelance journalist and contributor to so long and truthout sam welcome to the show thanks for having me so what does wiki leaks tell us about the new republican v.p. well. you know throughout his time in congress paul ryan has been on a number of congressional delegations abroad they're called code elves and you know sort of diplomatic speak and one of them i noticed he when he was down in argentina

in two thousand and eight around the time of the financial crisis and of course in argentina they're really quite sensitive you know in recent years so financial crisis they had a horrible one you know at the start of last decade so anyway who's talking about the financial crisis in general and where to go from here and he sort of had praise for ben bernanke he for not relenting on. the quiddity he was you know dumping liquidity into the market through quantitative easing and the such and so basically this is very much at odds with what he has said in public before then and since then so it just sort of calls into question you know what his real thoughts are monitored basically pretending to be this laws if. not not really down with central banking so much critical of the way the fed acts but you know when he goes on these code else he will interpret it in private he you know sort of had you know kind of a few surprises for this and i think the reason why is he's

a smart guy and he knows that. you know withholding liquidity from the market will will cause it to wither and contract horribly so i mean it's not a surprise really he was for the bailouts you know the auto bailout the financial bailout so he's got these principles but only to the extent that they don't affect the bottom line i just really want to kind of define what laws a character nomics means nowadays in our comparator political system because you have you know tea party republicans and average republicans who talk about how you know free market is where the solution is everything like that and yet they continually to vote in favor of subsidies for oil companies voted for the bell and all that stuff i mean does it they want the government out of medicare and those are the sort of laws of economics you can really exist on either the left or the right anymore i mean you know it's it's really hard to say and a monetary policy is kind of like a different animal in general but you know just the way you see republicans scream

bloody murder over the defense cuts and sort of refer to defense spending as a source of jobs and employment for americans and all the sudden they're keynesians when it comes to defense spending so you know so we were able to kind of you were able to glean this information about paul ryan through work looking at wiki leaks what other stuff might be buried in the street these trove of documents still going through and writing you know what my conclusions are but you know we can get an insight on what his views are on human rights and foreign policy for example not a very big surprise that when it comes to free trade you know foreign policy only appears to be you know a fleeting concern to paul ryan something that becomes inconvenient when having to justify free trade policies to his constituency but otherwise he seems you know full speed ahead on free trade and it's you know we have this huge source now where do you expect can that's right people yeah there are two hundred fifty thousand cables that were you know in the cable gate finding and you know the fact is. if

people want to sit around and let the new york times and the guardian do all the digging i mean you know there's still going to be stuff that just won't come up and you know as as people rise throughout the ranks in politics there are going to be new revelations i mean you know these are recent documents ok thanks for coming on thank you. after the break drones have been the primary weapons in our nation's so-called war on terror for years now and they've become so paul popular they're even flying over american skies are the real consequences of america's addiction to these robotic killing machines.

in. iraq.

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine. years old i'm going to tell the truth. i confess i am a total get a friend that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you it's a place. look look look look look look look look .