welcome back to the big picture i'm starvin coming up in this half hour lost in all the coverage of the election season has been the continuing violence in afghanistan what is our government's exit strategy for afghanistan and how much more violence can we expect also as the d.n.c. gets under way what can we expect to hear from the speakers and how will that tone

differ from the r. and c. plus christine palosi democratic strategist and adviser daily take you know what is mitt ryan and mitt romney and paul ryan's worst fear americans standing up for the rights of the working class and that's exactly what's needed to save this country. and about the rest of the news are likely won't be too much talk of our nation's foreign wars over the next few days the d.n.c. i mean you know sure we might hear president obama and other programming democrats tout the death of osama bin laden the end of combat operations in iraq and the winding down of the war in afghanistan at least we are in regrets that last part of the afghanistan war things are as rosy as the administration might want to believe that's because there's been a major setback in the united states exit strategy in afghanistan following a series of what is known are as green on blue attacks or trained afghan soldiers

green or turning their guns on coalition forces blue the washington post is reporting that the united states has suspended the training of new afghan security forces in the last month forty five western soldiers mostly american soldiers have been killed in green on blue attacks top u.s. military commanders have put the brakes on training new afghan recruits until the vetting process for those. it's been at the very least reexamined now a key pillar in the u.s. exit strategy is training a large enough afghan security force to take over once the united states leaves but with green on blue attacks on the rise all over afghanistan it looks like it's getting harder and harder to cleanly end america's longest war robert greenwald joins me now he's movie producer and director activist founder and president of brave new films robert welcome thank you tom good to be with you as always and thanks for joining us and i should add the of the creator of rethink afghanistan

org as i recall is word is where all that is the reason. in film rethink afghanistan dot com actually and also short clips about the afghanistan war that we've talked about with you over the two or three years of you since the war was escalated and it's a tragedy tom it's truly a true tragedy doesn't the recent surge in green on blue violence suggest that there's a huge flaw in our current strategy. yes the strategy from day one if you could even articulate the strategy has been fundamentally flawed because it was based on a series of misconceptions and i tell you you go to afghanistan and you get off the plane and you do all you need to do is have your eyes open and your ears to tune and you see people hungry looking for jobs looking for health care dirt roads houses in shambles and you know that occupying invading is not going to help this

country and it's not going to make us safer and the entire strategy has been based on militarizing problems that are not solved by military solutions you start with that and then every premise makes it worse and worse and the exit strategy the notion that we're going to train an army of three hundred fifty thousand it's really actually building a militia if you will so already there is hostility within the country and then you have all of this pent up rage from the night rage night raids from the number of afghans who have been killed and you see the situation really exploding in front of our eyes what do you make of condi rice's speech of the hour and see it which was given by a lot of opponents mark's display calling for basically indefinite occupations of the middle east. well. the pundits have been so and so outrageously wrong on this war the notion that we should be invading more that more

people should be dying isn't really an obscene one tom and it gets my blood boiling to think about she one of the architects of this policy stands there and then the pundits who welcomed this war many who welcomed the iraq war many who go back even further and welcome the vietnam war how many times do they have to be wrong to us to for us to say stop anough is enough we don't want to hear from you anymore on these notion that we can do whatever we want around the country militarily what kind of coverage to think robert greenwald the afghan war might get over the next few days the d.n.c. . somewhere between zero and none. it's you that's what he wants to take responsibility for there are there are people over there now as you pointed out tom dying every single day can you imagine being the family or relatives or have someone over there who was killed in

a war that is making no sense that never made any sense and what that does to you inside a lot in a lost somebody close to you is terrible enough think about what that would mean if it's a loss for a war that's absolutely senseless and at the america's longest war george w. bush when the when the taliban offered him bin laden should have just said sure we'll take him anyhow at this point how do we end the war. as quickly as possible i mean i don't mean to be glib about it but i think you know there been all kinds of studies showing that the increase in hostilities in suicide attacks in deaths and i d's are directly related to the number of troops there the sooner you begin pulling troops out the sooner you take whatever resources possible and try to turn them towards education and job training and health care and homes the sooner we're able to do some of that the better now we often talk and you know politicians of

all stripes talk about a policy of hearts and minds but the truth is if you look at the military spending if you look at what will be almost a trillion dollars this or when you factor in everything the huge percentage of that is going to military it's not going to other solutions other possibilities of the ways that would benefit the country and make us more secure it's going to that narrow notion where there's bipartisan agreement that military military solutions will solve our problems yeah it's going to pay for the mansions that ring washington d.c. of families of the defense contractors who are getting fat and richer for this and all our other wars it's insane robert greenwald thanks so much for being with us tonight.

our first guys and i comes from calvin who posed them ta marvin facebook page he had this to say about the ongoing eurozone economic crisis how could these year old leaders be so blinded by deficit hawkishness that they can't see that it's destroying the economy and how can u.s. leaders be so equally blind that they continue to push for similar measures it's insane well i agree it's insane and if you fail in fact if you look around the world through hundreds of years of history actually you cannot find a single country that has ever cut its way to prosperity doesn't happen never has. and i mean there's a variety of ways countries do get to prosperity some are not so moral they involve war conquering enters the after but you know good old fashioned keynesian stimulus seems to be the thing that is the most effective way to grow an economy but for some reason people have been believing this stuff that came out of the came out of the chicago school of milton friedman and these guys back in the one nine hundred

sixty s. and fifty's and seventy's fifty's through the seventy's it was tried by augusta pinochet overtly tried kinsey kinsey in economics in chile privatized social security the whole bit and it was a disaster and this is by a military dictator who is killing his people in order to force these policies some of these policies were tried in some of the post soviet union countries and you know created disasters i mean it's just it is it doesn't work our final comment of the night comes from lynn all the way from south africa or second viewer from that country here's what lynn had to say i tom or to the receiver of this it was me actually i watch the big picture and hartman show every morning just before i go to work i live in shelly beach south africa i am fully a democrat of my soul although i am south african i just think obama has the answer so this is not a critique but an honest question tom what are you going to do if the republicans heaven forbid get in what will happen to you in your show as you're clearly a democrat well you know i'm mostly

a democrat i suppose but to have to take sides although i have voted green i voted for ralph nader in two thousand. but you know the point is with regard to what's going to happen to the show we will continue to tell the truth in fact i would say that if republicans take the white house or increase you know if god forbid they take the senate to that our voice people talking back to power people talking back to this the same policies of the right become even more important. so you know god forbid it happens if it does though i'm not i'm going to stay right here and keep telling the truth and keep exposing what's going on in our country and tragically they'll be a lot more of it to expose. frankly if president obama gets reelected so that's it for your take my take tonight if you like your comments and questions here on the segment of the big picture i would like a chance to get one of my books it's not. we want to know your to send us your

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awareness research most popular activity proved to be the breast fundraiser for adults over eighteen years old and over paid money to squeeze the breasts of japanese porn stars those wanting to cop a feel were limited to two breast squeezes per hand but they had the option to donate more money for more squeezes if they just couldn't get enough they were as of the larry flynt is already planning the american version of the event which he plans to call for us eight coming up republicans have been waging an endless war on labor for the past three decades how can we bring an end to all the republican labor hating it and rebuild organized labor and bolster the strength of the working class in america again i'll tell you and then i'd still take.

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for the. it was. and welcome back here now looking at live coverage of the d.n.c. floor we're going to continue our coverage of the democratic national convention by turning it over to christine palosi she's democratic strategist and author of the book campaign boot camp christine welcome. thank you so should be here thanks for joining us a lot of the pressure on democrats this week is to work around the republicans are you better off now than four years ago question how do you get democrats are going to approach the subject this week. well now that there are we better off the count care yes only better off ending military discrimination in the don't ask don't tell yes we are not wall street reform yes are we better off the greatest increase in

v.a. benefits in our nation's history yes are we better off with the jobs in saved or created and the five million jobs and twenty ninth street months of private sector job creation yes and are is is some of a lot better off no. and and that's that's going to be interesting how they handle it what sort of different messages will you hear coming out of the d.n.c. than you heard coming out of the r. and c. . well you just saw on wonderful has to be on a clinton led by house speaker and senior speaker again nancy pelosi i'm not just biased because she's my mom i'm biased in favor of talent quality and equality and when it was women kind of talked about women's rights women's health protection against violence women's jobs small business in child care it was a very diverse group of women not only get to have the stage at the convention but get to have the stage three hundred sixty five days

a year in making people's lives better in the democratic party you're going to see a lot of mention of veterans first of all our nominee is going to make the military and our nominee is going to think. nation's veterans our nominee is going to focus on the positive that the public sector and the private sector make working together so those of these differences between the parties that we think will give america a clear choice a lot of the excitement of support for obama in the two thousand and eight campaign came from the population of young adults do you think you feel that the youth vote young people are as heavily involved in this year's election cycle. i think they are there are three things going on what i'm sharing the screen with wonderful young candidate from massachusetts joe kennedy he's doing a terrific job and he's going to be an amazing candidate we have a lot more young people women and candidates of color running nothing ever before

that energizes young. we have a president who went out and we created more volunteers this year than ever before oh i have to stop looking at ted kennedy for a minute there. ok and three. we also know that the republicans are smart they know that a lot of young people and people of color voted for barack obama so they started with their voter suppression tactics to knock those people off the rolls or with choir and i.d. some states it's easier to buy a gun than it is to vote and that's just plain wrong so we're going to try to do whatever we can to read franchise those young people and sometimes just even the message that we want you to vote. is something that helps galvanize people to get out there and work that's right christine pelosi thanks so much for being with us tonight. my pleasure thanks for having me time.

it's the good the bad of the very very matter gnostic way oddly the good mike. hayden hayden the former bush administration n.s.a. head and cia director told the israeli newspaper audits that any attack by israel on the us on iran would only delay that country's nuclear weapons program and would in fact push that country to develop a nuclear bomb soon he said to the paper that an attack quote will only set the iranians back some time and actually push them to do that which is supposed to prevent getting nuclear weapons currently the obama administration is trying to use a diplomatic solution to resolve tension with iran the republican war ox in congress have repeatedly said that an attack on the country on that country of iran is america's only option maybe mr hayden's words will change their minds on holding . the bag arizona attorney general tom horne horne is on

a mission is the mission to stop the use of medical marijuana in arizona on thursday horn filed a suit with federal court. saying that possession distribution and called evasion of marijuana are all forbidden by federal law and therefore state authorization of these activities is preempted by federal law however according to the tenth amendment of the constitution powers not granted to the federal government and that are not prohibited by the constitution or left up to the states and the people arizona voters voted in favor of medical marijuana but it looks like orrin doesn't care about that it's clear that he's the latest crusader in nixon's failed war on drugs what we need are sensible drug laws not more people thrown into prisons just so private prison for peroration can make a buck and a very very ugly mark harris harris was a pennsylvania delegate at last week's republican national convention before the convention he went on vacation with his wife to disney world where he noticed that

an employee working at the epcot theme park was of mexican ancestry and he was so astonished that there was a mexican employee at disney world that he took to his blog to rant about it in a blog post harris wrote that he and his wife were both highly offended that a person from mexico was working at the america exhibit this latest anti immigrant rant comes from a conservative just days after two r. and c. attendees were thrown out for throwing peanuts at an african-american c.n.n. employee republicans claimed last week that they want to bring back american exceptionalism and apparently that exceptionalism is only for white americans and that is very very good. for thirty years republicans have been waging a war on labor

a war on working people and they've been incredibly successful but you know as workers now representing just a tenth of the workforce today they used to make up a third of our workforce a half century ago and this chart shows the consequences of this war on labor explain this in fact it's pretty pretty straightforward here union membership. you see union membership going down over time and as a in the sure of income of the top one percent that's the green line going up but as union membership has gone down so too have wages this is income middle class share of aggregate income have gone down so you know it's pretty obvious is that as union wage in a membership and wages of union membership has dropped from thirty percent down to it's below twenty percent fact it's below fifteen percent below ten percent now if you count just private union membership so if wages they've crashed so what has filled the gap because productivity which is not on this graph productivity has

continued going up. so as productivity goes up revenue goes up profit goes up where is that profit going it's going here to the top one percent they're the ones taking all the money that used to go to working people used to be the this was where working people were and you know the one percent was down here with their one percent so today in america this war on labor is picking up steam republican governors like scott walker of wisconsin john case in ohio chris christie in new jersey it all launched attacks on public sector workers trying to deny them collective bargaining rights problem republicans are closed even killing off the post office throwing a half million unionized postal workers out of a job kill the unions with the help of conservatives in hollywood teachers' unions are under attack as well tragically the united states is no place for organized labor anymore and as a result no place for a middle class either which brings us to labor day the reason why

a lot of us had monday off to republicans is no longer about passing legislation make it harder to unionize or cutting spending so the unionized public workers get laid off or endorse and smears against teachers' unions if done a lap now it's about rewriting the history of america ensuring that the next generation doesn't even know that the united states used to be a place where organized labor flourished that's what house majority leader eric cantor tweeted on monday on labor day in an insult to working people across our nation today we celebrate those who have taken a risk worked hard build a business and earn their own success now there was a cording to cantor labor day isn't for workers it's for business owners c.e.o.'s and executives never mind the fact that according to the department of labor labor day is actually dedicated to the social and economic achievements of american workers it constitutes a new year lee national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the

strength prosperity and well being of our country. eric cantor the republicans don't want you to think that we have a holiday in america for workers that would undermine their message that this nation was built on the backs of the one percent not the ninety nine percent of us workers but instead by the millionaires and billionaires so in their world view on labor day we shouldn't be honoring the bricklayer the teacher in the garbage man we should be honoring the koch brothers of lloyd blankfein and even mitt romney because after all what these guys need on top of their fortunes is a fiercely a national holiday as well the bigger picture here is this republican war on labor isn't just an attack on working americans it's an attack on the american dream itself is the american dream to become a billionaire to make as much money as you possibly can and screw everyone else is gordon gekko's greed is good the new mantra of the american dream republicans think so thought so since the reagan administration which is why they want to redefine

labor day is a day for the billionaires those guys who want to suck as much profit out of their workers as they can but that was not how most americans viewed the american dream most americans see it as a dream to just live a comfortable life to make enough money your job to have a home food on the table a car health care good education a vacation every now and then a decent retirement and maybe some money to pass along to your kids and what made that possible organized labor organized labor gave american workers a good paycheck and benefits organized labor middle class not only possible it made a middle class thrive sure it hurts the billionaires when unions were strong c.e.o.'s only made about forty times more than what their workers made today they make three hundred times or a thousand times in two thousand times with their workers to make us feel better does that make us better off. i don't think so organized labor didn't promise

everyone would be super rich like mitt romney it promised everyone that if you just worked hard keep your nose clean you can join a comfortable american life without organized labor that promise can't be kept and more and more americans today know it so it's time to wake up and stand up to this war on labor let's hope eric cantor and the republicans have jumped the shark with their attempts to redefine labor day this year the workers the ninety nine percent you and me built america and let's never forget it. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday september fourth two thousand and twelve if you missed anything i'd show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture for more information on any of the stories we've covered visit our websites to tom hartman dot com free speech that org. you can also check out our two youtube channel is there a link to thom hartmann dot com also tell our dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy is not

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