first. billion dollar romana successfully fends off a multibillion dollar lawsuit by self exiled tycoon boris berezovsky he had claimed that intimidated him into selling shares in a russian oil company at a fraction of their value. the u.n. secretary general condemns the u.s. and israel for threatening to attack iran over its nuclear program this comes as a report by the u.n. nuclear watchdog says the country has doubled production capacity and one of its

underground facilities claims rejected by tehran. and mitt romney accepts the republican party nomination for the u.s. presidency promising to get tough with russia but critics say romney's frequent flip flopping on issues like abortion and health care has already inspired mistrust in his candidacy. next we head to our washington studio for the big picture with host tom hartman. a lot joe marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture up to this point mitt romney has been running a content free campaign but after his r. and c. speech last night it looks like he'll continue to do so but what else can we expect with just a bit more than two months to go until the election and what affect my voter suppression idea laws avalon and all that and more and tonight's big picture rubble

and later when mitt romney talks about bain he claims he built it on his own but in that i still eat steak i'll tell you what really happened to being on a romney in the dark side of bailouts and sellouts in the united states of america . it's friday are you ready there are all male joining me tonight for tonight's big picture rumble robinson deputy director of the paul revere project and contributor to human events the blaze the national review called williams attorney and progressive strategist and austin peterson director of production for freedom works great to have you all with us to see you all romney's big night. last night that the r. and c. and up to this point he's pretty much been very nonspecific about everything he's been talking in generalities and platitudes heroes may work but the center for

american progress pointed out he made no mention of financial reform you made no mention of climate change you made no mention of immigration he made no mention of afghanistan or syria no mention of social security no mission of veterans which is kind of odd for republicans and of course no mention of romney care is he going to continue a content free campaign like this where he then goes why should he what's the point of putting him in concert in their. and all you could do is alienate people say this is the time when all of the candidates have the big rush to the middle this is where you go for the moderate voters this is where you go and you talk about things that everybody troops and voters moderate voters you know i wouldn't go through with voters i mean i'm not running for office but i mean the sheeple is that what some people refer to them as but why in the world would romney ever want to give specifics because we saw what happened to his to his v.p. candidate when he gave specifics about how he would cut the budget romney probably plans to do something similar to cut the budget of the last thing you want to do is tell people you want to cut the budget because they'll freak out so it doesn't sound like a strategy that could work if they're good when they go why would you even pick

paul ryan as your v.p. candidate if you're not going to talk substantively about the issues and that's what he that's why he said he picked paul ryan because he want to have a real conversation about the real problems that are facing america so now here's your time to talk about the problems and you fail to do so you give all these wonderful flowery speeches and wonderful rhetoric but there's no substance there's no plan he has no plan because he is it possible that paul ryan was actually shoved down their throat by the koch brothers and a couple of other billionaires there but that's that's not possible at all i think mitt romney is a leader i don't think anyone shoving anything down his throat what i think is that this is nowhere is it written down that you are and the speech is supposed to be. talk about your specific economic goals late ounce of principles laid out some top marginal tax rates some with the r. and c. speeches for and he was specific he was specific about his faith he was specific about his family what matters to him and the reasons why he's going to be a better president barack obama there was

a reason that he never asked obama that well the fact i'm not barack obama that's why i went back you know everyone should i was asking is what are we going to see over the next two months until the election i know you are going to start seeing i mean i think we will see some specifics but i lost in that there are so there's definite strength in not putting specifics out there because that he wasn't a target and back obama knew that better than anyone else he was the most mysterious and least the final reason that we have a real hard problem in terms of almost. that he was going to dance he was going to close down guantanamo bay which he didn't do because the republicans refused to find out is not real is absolutely true because he couldn't find another place to keep all the very dangerous criminals that one of those that was blocked in the house of representatives by paul ryan and that other cobol of fourteen guys who met at the clock assume the evening of the inauguration and swore a blot oath to each other that they would do everything they could to block the obama administration robert draper's written a book about it and i'm on the road obama has been the neo-cons best friend he's been assassinating american citizens absolutely rock obama is the ultimate neo con

because he's been following the neo con platform he's assassinated american citizen without a very short story here i hate is devoid of substance which is why he picked the one person i never how the party that has a little bit of that unfortunately has stepped into it like kill the poor i don't like and why the rival cons are happy with a bronco obama reelection i mean a basically a mitt romney you know presidency when take you know would sort of be the devil you don't know why would we want to keep rock obama on hand if you want to keep the money flowing to wall street and if you want to keep the wars going overseas you could have got everything he wanted but i don't think it was right on the is the devil we don't know i think there's a lot we know about it is a very successful businessman and he actually sort of acts in america's company actually be america a lot of people we haven't i believe in america that doesn't mean that i was a loser no one in the white house who believes that america any time he didn't have the right policy in ninety nine hundred eighty nine bean was was broke romney had made some really bad decisions the company was so broke he took the company was so

broke they had to be bailed out by the f.b.i. see and they screwed the f.d.i.c our government they paid them thirty cents on the dollar and that's how banged got back on their feet with a government bailout. you're telling me this is the guy who's going to show us how to run the business brian there's tons of company still around but here that he helped streamline that he helped. us everyone everybody buy in school supplies are going to be going to staples about it all take risks with your they're going to tax dollars i mean we need to have risk the risk is already been taken the rest were taken to medicare and social security the risk we're taking when we leverage our future on these unsustainable entitlement programs that's the results are not as i want to i'm going to fix it those that's our investment program something that we pay into those we get the money back out and i'm not going to get social says no i'm paying in because you think it was just i just like you don't get it if tomorrow you walked out here and god forbid got hit by a bus and were disabled for the rest of your life you would be on social security starting the day after tomorrow i've yes and i'm right and social security is there

for the woman that full rock opener and so i still wouldn't vote for barack obama because i know that at the end of the day regardless of the check i'm getting from the government that the entire country is on an unsustainable path it's just mapi bad guys not ryan has said it was honored by we're going to cry lobbyists anything any any serious or only public testimony he has waited our. last hard on things and blame us three hundred filibusters it's never happened when it's true the united states the lame one was there but the democrats they're both they're both equally complicit in a scheme to ignore the actual problems you guys are talking about hillary can you roll with anything that's in their mission from day one they've refused to even blink across the aisle let alone wall when was the last time democrats introduced a budget we've entered two thousand and nine so who's two thousand but over a thousand days that you guys got a budget the budget and it would have gone look at i want to know one vote for either public unanimously no in the senate last year or the ninety seven zero one

vote it was broke obama's latest budget was going serious that was that was a procedural mess and again it was because because john boehner and it because barack obama thought he had to deal with judd. boehner and then eric cantor came along and said i'm going to do a power play and put the shift in the back of john boehner and all the sudden everything blows up i mean didn't produce the budget that called for more money than congress would ever have given him more money that he wanted more money every year is the money but always has been since george washington it's called what they should they do a lot of the people that actually says that in every single case broke obama asked for more money in a federal budget that he got every single time he wanted more money wouldn't you think reagan this is the biggest i mean all that was bringing into office the bus it was the budget deficit sorry but the national debt was one trillion when he left office it was two trillion dollars we saw he was really. it was great i'm going to write about it i want to look where we are as i hate how to grow it on to him as five trillion and now that the twenty five years ago twice as obama's twice as much

of the debt than bush did in eight years now yes sorry not even close that bush has added that to the budget we are looking at to bush's wars we're looking at bush's recession we're looking at lucia's tax and look at it actually because of the same coin and in fairness and what has been maintained as republicans in the house of representatives already represent is that maintaining our speaking of paul ryan let's turn to paul ryan's speech it was one of the many many half truths and misleading statements that paul ryan laid out in the speech for us. a lot of guys i went to high school with worked at that g.m. plant. right there at that plant candidate obama said i believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years. that's what he said in two thousand and eight. well as it turned out. that plant didn't last another year it was locked up and empty to this day. and that's how it is in so many towns. where the recovery that was promised is nowhere

in sight. so the recovery that obama was supposed to bring us didn't happen and that factory got closed down and i don't think anybody in the audience thought he was condemning george w. bush but take a look at this picture and we're going to put the picture. oh it's full. this is the last vehicle off the janesville assembly line and it's being donated to the . in the cube ok i donated to the united way of north rock county december twenty third two thousand and eight this was a plant that was closed during the presidency of george w. bush why is paul ryan talking about this it's an absolute joke because listen presidents do not create jobs ok governments do not create jobs why so this is why is the guy running for vice president up their line about you know i don't think he was lying at all he probably thought he was and want to hear he what he really think that all of us republicans in that audience thought that he was condemning

going to push you know i don't think at all ever said that but he presented two facts he said barack obama came here he stood here and he said this plan going to close down if i'm elected it will be here for one hundred years from now and then he said and then paul ryan said now that he had to do that there's fact fact one obama said he takes it back to its close now broken promise and now liberated dealing with it if dissonance it's caused by the failure of their great leader he didn't say that it's going to take that at this point he said that the role of government should to hear why it is same way that paul ryan implied that it was that follow this plant flight it was the workers here we don't want right and it is then you wait it that it was obvious there's a model that we're close or not that plant but obama with a q. and a that never said he was responsible democrats knowing that he was actually was responsible or trying to defend it i mean they're going to go because it was impossible for something that occurred before you with pride that. he was commander

in chief when the united states government assumed control of the largest audience auto manufacturer in the united states is what john case it was bragging about about hey you know i always back but instantly if you have a good joke it's a hell of a fallacy to think that a president or a governor or someone is really responsible for job creation the only thing the politicians can do about job creation is stay the. hell out of the way he says they do not create a job that he wants and it's going to create policy politicians can destroy jobs but they can't ok a train was on bail out detroit would not be where it is today now bill hayton it's all your way but you would be where it is right when you would have been there to. give it back i mean is it not up hill climb and it would not be there if it wasn't for the auto bailout you know it would not be that bad at first really they were all i mean just the other day well there's a lot of them they all backed absolutely was able to up and walk the land flight that later we have gone from what you have to have a bankruptcy i'm a clinician for example is what i want to stay focused on this is nobody's job because of the deceptiveness of paul ryan you know he he is claiming and mitt

romney repeated the same thing that obama raided medicare for seven hundred sixteen billion dollars to give to obamacare paul ryan in his own budget took that seven hundred sixteen million dollars and said this is crazy that we're giving this money to private corporations for insurance when we can simply pay the hospitals ourselves and cut them out of that in fact any i got to i've got to we've just got to queue here we've got to hold more coming up right after the break. wealthy british scientists it's time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into a report. on

the back of big picture rubble on our panel tonight as seen robinson deputy director of the paul revere project and contributor to human events the blaze in the national review called williams attorney and progressive strategist and austin peterson director of production for freedom works so let's get back to it the republican effort to rig the november election has got a couple of setbacks here on thursday a federal judge said that the texas law the texas voter suppression id law was on its face voters of. you know basically. this is a very weird law and expired gun license from another state was enough to get should end of vote but a social security card or a student id was not i mean this is i mean do you imagine sitting around going ok what's going to be legal id well what the republicans have gone zoe out so any of that this is this is just nuts anyhow the texans say they're going to take this is supreme court we'll see where this is but isn't this more isn't this just vote

rigging since i mean last year you had you know twenty three people who were accused of voter fraud twenty six people who died because their televisions fall on their heads this is a non-problem se i mean this has been this decision was championed as a victory for the deregulated our elections crowd but i think that actually set it back in a few key ways and one of them is that the court actually ruled that you know whether or not there are proven instances of voter fraud doesn't matter and so that's going to be a big thing going forward obviously it was voted present matter in the context of whether the war on uganda's is so interesting no no that ruling was very specific it those those issues don't matter in the context of the one nine hundred sixty five civil rights act and the fact that texas has been operating under a court order for years and years i forget one of those but it was to have left the voting rights act our voter rights act vulnerable to. i guess it's going to be what

you could argue that it made it what that it was what that is saying is that you know ok pass another law if you want to deal with this you know my i might have said that's not the point i mean the point is it was my question is what is of an acceptable form of identification to someone to go and vote i mean what really what is the problem with asking someone to show an i.d. if you go to register to vote you have to show an id to go to you know talk to anyone who has the perfect question to give you the let me give you i think we have a graphic that we can show up on the screen here. here we go this is the percentage of people adults right now who don't have a valid photo id ok among african-americans twenty five percent among asians twenty percent among latinos nineteen percent among college student age eighteen percent among seniors eighteen percent among poor people fifteen percent among whites eight percent that's interesting because i'm looking at this and going ok if we can say that you can vote with an i.d. we can bought a third of all those people who vote for the democrats say this i mean they say if you have a gun then you could vote and i bet

a higher percentage of blacks asians and latinos have guns than they have those voters are i do not but i just don't. know the brennan center of justice produce this graph so i mean i don't think very many republicans are looking at any place and taking strategy now you know they are they really don't know i don't think know what a public is they're taking strategy notes from this i think republicans are looking at this two or three four years ago the republicans were looking at this in one thousand nine hundred eighty one paul way rick was out there saying you know i don't want everybody to vote voted you know elections but i'm going to go to get all of those are beginning to look at the hispanic base as a conservative base because hispanics are naturally socially conservative and i actually see that their spending base is actually going to start shifting into the red category because the idea is they have the right but it prevents them from the ability to better i mean oh this is our conversation should be about race because one thing that the court ruled today is that race is not a proxy for poverty and that's the way the court i guess that the way the court ruled right is that but here's the problem with that rights act the voting rights act specifies race it doesn't specify in the law the law itself never said anything

about poverty or race these three liberal judges i mean one of them was a bush appointee but that doesn't mean he's not liberal or she's not a liberal but the bottom line is that they're making a comparison they are just they're trying to use poverty as a proxy for race and frankly i think people should be offended by that is actually sort of the what the ohio also had knocked out today too i mean this is there's still several voters really aren't they are sitting. the larger question i mean let's take us to the biggest frame with the statistics that we just saw a second ago on the graph and the and the fact the absolute fact the book. election fraud not election fraud voter fraud somebody showing up and pretending to be somebody else to vote is so rare in the united states that you are more likely to get hit by lightning over any ten year period than to have voter fraud happen anyone you have made. it is not anywhere you go and no one can say that because

there is going to syria a vacuum is a place that the tech that we don't know is very short as you know million dollars trying to find it and we found acorn his lawyers and the president right now and several more to fill you. and they've shown a broad had no nothing to do with voter with well with water fraud one of the progression of words i don't want to go silent i'm going to see what in your mind is an acceptable form of identification if i am i you do not need. to have to prove your case so there is no reason you should if your end of voter file you go you show what you say your name your there you go and well we want to stop someone from from going and registering a dead person voting and i'm going to vote first of all when you register to vote that registration is checked at that point in time they're not going to put you on the rolls if you're dead or if you're a ballot in that period to show that that's not the case and if you would if you want to look at the north dakota look at what they were felons who voted in that almost a thousand that they're not alleging that election came down to a very very close vote on a. fraudulent voter turnout election giving the democrats another seat in the house

which led to the passions obamacare is that waterfront is huge and it goes through which they were much larger the temporary about the integrity of our election will have and i agree with the integrity of want to put every one of the system rests on . exerciser so why should we not encourage that why should we not support end of it you know that have the ability to do what we have to look at what we should not only take innocent advice keep our there. you know i get everybody's argument why don't we take this a step farther and say like australia has. a fact a we have no you know and bush v gore they came right out and said there is no enumerated right to vote the united states in the constitution so a why don't we say that there actually is a right to vote and put that in the constitution or put it into law and be in australia you are required to vote they have ninety eight percent voter compliance because if you don't vote you get fined and the fine start going up exponentially and we don't want to replace voluntary ism with fascism so we don't want to have to

turn with the ready for you know you know exactly that i just you know anybody would want you to go and vote for somebody you know from both of your dictator is a fascist that's i mean i want to voting in a democracy is not necessarily a good thing i don't want people knowing that if it was a more people more people would go they're getting no where people are now you know i don't think they're going to take no for the more credit for getting a babysitter for their kids they're going out of their way to cast a vote was not high levels of play they are not developing if we have a very early voting which i know you guys are so afraid of that if we have early voting and people can vote at a time that's convenient for them and unions can and they don't have to get very very hard to leave unions will hold and you know i give him the paper they can fill it out and real or so small a process and we're obviously not going to go in on early and vote out i left by the way i didn't let's talk about citizens united republicans are fully embracing citizens united in their on their party platform this year in fact they say by name called citizens united said we need more of this basically said you know let's let's do away with all of the last vestiges of mccain feingold let's absolutely

create a country where. there was tell me forty five they've identified forty five people who account for forty seven percent of all the money that has been spent so far in this election cycle so you get this is this is this is the definition of a banana republic is this is how oligarchy swimming does and so you've got thirty six families in mexico who basically control eighty percent of the us it was there were six and. primary realities that i have with the republican party in. turning america into an oligarchy it's not just the republican party that would embrace turning america into a free republic where you can actually spend your money as you see fit like an oligarchy as if the republican we have an all gorky as a resort as a result of bipartisanship in the fascism that comes from both parties not because of the ideas of liberty we have an oligarchy in this country about because there he is where a small number of very wealthy oligarchs basically run not only the economy but the

government and that's a bipartisan consensus this is not a left right issue this is not a republican versus democrat issue that remember why is it that the republicans are putting it in their platform that they like it that way because i get to spend my money however i see fit we talked out of those and i heard that line and i will be and i hope to be your just as usual corp your one day out of free speech and i think what you saw i guess it was yesterday that barack obama was online doing his little chat thing trying to release a message very much under the radar as far as conservatives and fans of liberty are concerned and his message was that he supports a constitutional amendment that would essentially repeal free speech portions of the first amendment that's what he says he wants it and i mean overturning right to the president yesterday it was a constitutional amendment if you're saying you know if you're going about spending your own money i mean what i mean to say that money is the same thing as speech money is property you know what your son is a little more to a slave but this is not speech this is this is not really absolutely right it is

speech because i have absolutely it is because you know i see my money how well you know having a meeting. with me and i was choosing to go in and using a stablished and such as mcdonald's over a starbucks i'm choosing to do have my free speech rights to support. but i should not have had to do it if you have dollars in order to get my point across and that is the issue i have with them if people are stupid because what you're saying is that a millionaire can swindle the entire public just by spending the most amount of. so you're saying that all has the ability for your say to your entire voting base or a bunch of any is so you're satisfied as a man not in all cases especially not at the end of a campaign if donald trump spent a billion dollars trying to convince me that his hair is sexy yes he would fail just to have a democrat in israel spend i have billion dollar habits because we were on this and i have been trying to have a three way from donald trump's hair it's the worst plug disaster ever seen right but no amount of money last night i should operate it remember romney had to give a speech of his life last night unfortunately was overshadowed by clint eastwood. i

wondered about. when. the. right. what do you want me to tell romney. i can't tell him to do that you can't do that to himself. i think you're absolutely crazy right the empty chair is the wrong it's absolutely crazy here earlier on there was a discussion to bring on a ronald reagan a whole gram but the idea was nixed out of fear that it might actually overshadow mitt romney now in respect in retrospect the reagan hologram would have been the best thing that you. probably would salute. it was interesting he looked like the crazy old me and. my lawn guy that you know that i am i don't agree at all i think that the performance of clint eastwood give was the

single greatest piece of performance art that has ever been delivered perhaps since socrates apology that was just you remember that again just. to get your job did you know for really it for i was really him he's got he's got liberals choking on their tongues somebody over their feet trying to figure out oh no someone from hollywood one of our guys is criticizing barack obama and doing it you know the larry i see i got to. see robinson nicole williams off. peterson thank you all for bank much appreciate you coming up after the break. karl rove plans to spend as much as a half a billion dollars this election to defeat president obama and democrats what's motivating him what happens to america if he succeeds i was journalist and author craig unger in tonight's conversations with great minds.