oh back to the big picture i'm tom marvin coming up in this half hour president obama takes the stage at the d.n.c. tonight to tell americans why he should be reelected so can progressive still rally around obama also there are new developments in the ongoing and crippling euro zone economic crisis we'll talk to economist max fraud wolf about what we can expect from europe in the days and weeks to come and paul ryan will tell you he hates obamacare and everything it's done to america but this isn't really new reports suggest otherwise last media tommy christopher's what's really going on. with us the rest of the news president obama set to take the stage one of his

biggest hurdles will be connecting with progressives around the nation who voted for him and are today somewhat disappointed that he hasn't been quite as progressive as he promised after all the bush tax cuts are still in place c.e.o.'s are doing better than ever working people are still in economic ruin most of bush's war policy is still in place including indefinite detention never ending drone strikes and yet no loss on top of that there's the n d a which is really isolated progressives who believe in civil liberties point is can progress is really still rally around the president despite his lack of truly progressive accomplishments let's ask one prominent progressive joining me now is tom hayden former california state senator author and activist welcome back to the program. to be here how are you i am great thank you very very much i hope you're well you've been a pariah progressive you've been beaten and arrested fighting for progressive causes are you voting for obama and why should other progresses if so.

yes i'm voting for obama. the he has to make his case and progressives. have a couple of months to to give it some thought it's going to be a very close election if you wins. let's be clear on what a progressive is. ninety four to nothing is the margin of support for obama in the black community seventy seventy five percent in the latino community probably most if not all of the l g b t community. white women majority. so when you talk about progressive says i think you need to talk about the the the most radical left of the spectrum that doesn't really. believe much in electoral politics at all.

and maybe third party advocates who. sort of have to believe that both parties are the same. and i think it will come down to turnout because he'll sweep the election if there's high turnout he'll lose the election if the turnout is mediocre one of the things that i've noticed on on our message boards over the last several elections we've had our message board up for the nine years that we've been doing a radio show is that when we come into an election particularly in the presidential elections these people suddenly join and start posting messages in critiques of articles like the one that you post on common dreams today who i believe are actually republican operatives. in themselves as disappointed progress is i mean all of a sudden they just literally explode out of the woodwork whereas typically the people who are the anarchists and you know to hell with the system and you know

it's twitter tweedledee the those folks typically they're very very small slice of even the commentators in you know commenters on progressive message boards. what what are your thoughts on that and on and on progressives who are saying you know it's not good enough for me so i'm just going to check out. well i'd say first of all don't read your message board secondly i hadn't thought that there were republican agents. they actually they actually have a program tom where they pay people to post on message boards you can you can you can work from home all day and they certainly i certainly get some deeply disturbed messages but look we have to. have a grip here. the reason let me give you just an example i'm still i'm talking from los angeles where we have a police department that was brutally out of control for many decades until it

was reformed. to a significant extent a few years ago by a court order not but not by the mayor not by the the the government downtown but by the justice department and it was reformed because there's a section of law that says. your behavior as a police department your misconduct. must not rise to a level of pattern and practice violating civil rights the that language pattern in practice i know was put into the law. under bill clinton when clinton was promoting a very big pro police expand police measure he had to get it through congress and reverend al sharpton among others got in his face and said

this is going to be really bad for the black community inner city communities and clinton put it in as a concession to sharpton so you've got a bad bill was a good amendment in it and because of that we were able to reform the los angeles police department the republicans did not want the federal government able to do that they campaign for local control of local police and what i'm telling you is that no matter how militant how radical how revolutionary i've ever been in my life or your viewers have ever been in their lives progress comes by the inches we gain ground by the inches. that's an excellent and brilliant point tom hayden thank you so much for coming on the program tonight making it absolutely. one day after the president speaks tonight new job numbers are due out on friday so whatever

obama says his words will be put in immediate context when we learn how many jobs were created or lost in august after all it's the economy stupid and one of the biggest headwinds to a robust economic recovery in america is the economic crisis in europe and europe or by the organization for economic cooperation and development warned that the german economy could sink into a recession during the second half of this year germany's is the biggest economy in the eurozone and has largely been spared from the debt crisis that is dragging other nations like greece portugal spain and italy into economic ruin but this report suggests it's just a matter of time before germany too starts to go under signaling that the eurozone crisis is reaching a new stage where even the strong survive news of germany's woes comes on the heels of a decision by the european central bank to buy bonds from struggling euro zone nations to ease the debt crisis so what can we expect come out of europe in the next few months that could have a serious effect on the u.s.

or worldwide economy max fraud wolf joins me now he is the an economist instructor of the new school university and senior analyst at green cross capital max welcome back thanks always a pleasure to join you thanks for having me thank you what do you make of this report predicting a german recession. i think it's sort of overdue we've seen germany's slowing a bit initially germany got a bit of advantage from the woes of the other major places you would do business and or invest in europe in part by having very cheap borrowing costs for the central government as everyone literally ran away from italian and greek and spanish bonds and into german bonds that being said germany is an export powerhouse part of the reason they've done well but it's also part of the reason their economy has huge risk exposure to the other economies of the world and we've seen germany slowing it's helped to make life more difficult for american exporters and the u.s. economy the slowdown in europe is clearly showing up in a real deceleration in china and it was only a matter of time before the beggar thy neighbor policies that many on the german

political spectrum have endorsed to come back and react back on their own economy the way those type of short sighted self focused policies tend to do both here in the u.s. and over there in europe isn't isn't there a piece of it to the a lot of germany's economy depends on exports and if the countries around them that they're exploiting to are crashing and nobody's buying then of course they're going to they're going to see their g.d.p. shrink. i mean absolutely germany has about a third the population of the united states at about twelve the population of china and every month they hang around in the two or three biggest countries in the world for exports they have a very successful industry putting heavy industry the car industry maybe the best known but lenses many other high value added high labor quality products and as their neighbors have got into trouble those neighbors are also their principal trading partners that's hurt them too and what we have here is a global deceleration and some accent led by the usually successful major export of

places like china and germany now this bond purchasing plan that was announced today by the european central bank by the e.c.b. if they are going to go in and actually if if the countries say that they will behave the way that the e.c.b. wants them to that they will buy the bonds of individual countries this is never been done before by the european central bank it's a little bit like the fed saying mississippi you're in trouble we will buy your bonds we will we will lend you money is it not it's very much like that i mean the other analogy you might use is the federal reserve the united states has bought over one point five trillion dollars worth of general obligation bonds of the u.s. government the housing industry here pushing two trillion dollars worth of those things and the e.c.b. and the europeans have taken a page from the fed's playbook so to what extent is the c b i mean this is they breaking new ground or is this proof the the euro in the euro zone is

a dumb idea. you know that it's proof it's a dumb idea i mean you have to be careful there's a lot of things that have gone wrong in the eurozone there are some questions around the currency that are real however you know there's been a big group of boys in the united states that have accurately predicted eight hundred of the last four crises in the euro zone that have kind of been licking their chops for an ideologically fueled failure there are a lot of serious problems what we're seeing is they're going to need to have expansionary monetary policy real intervention from their central bank to shore up the economy which is in terrible shape which is dragging down the global economy which is making life more difficult here in the u.s. they're turning to a fairly on the usual policy measure like we did but i'm not sure that this proves that you know their model is bad and our model is good but if the question. but why do we just have a minute left if if the if what they need is an expansionary monetary policy and the conditions that the e.c.b. put on buying the federal notes on loaning money to individual countries are

that they must go into a contractionary mode which is what i was reading in today's financial times is that shooting they should themselves in the foot absolutely they're asking for the same austerity to get another budget passed that we saw last year happen between the president the congress and that we're sure to see again next year the bottom line the sob story here is that the only way to discipline somebody in economic trouble is to break them to tough conditions so they can have a downturn cleanse themselves of inefficiency and be reborn like a phoenix the sat sad story here is that almost never works. brilliantly said max fraud well thank you so much for being with us and my pleasure. coming out yesterday democrats proved yet again that they really don't have much of a backbone when will democrats learn to stand up for their own beliefs and not cave to the pressures from the right.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big

picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that the americans call. the far left doesn't want the usa to defeat terrorism. terrorist cells neighborhood. hockey only and the christian. folk are going to hold. up in support of the congress because you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensational stick garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. record.

just like all of his republican colleagues paul ryan has relentlessly attacked obamacare following to repeal it should he and romney win in november however according to a letter ron wrote back in two thousand and ten it seems he may not hate obamacare as much as he says he does in fact he may have even benefited from it to talk more about these new revelations i want to bring in tommy christopher a white house reporter for media night eight tawny great to see it. thanks for having me thank you for joining us tell us about this latest republican hypocrisy yeah well the nation magazine reports reported that. paul ryan

actually requested funds obamacare funds in order to open a federally funded health clinic in his district and he was in two thousand and ten . you know all the while he's been saying that he wants to repeal every part of obamacare you know the replacement plan that he and mitt romney have there's nothing in there but about funding for these types health centers. you know it is hypocritical to out there i think it also shows a disconnect between you know how paul ryan sees his job you know he this happened before with the stimulus money if you recall and he tried to brush it off as you know constituent services and sort of compartmentalize it away from you know his big picture ideology and so i think what it shows is that paul ryan's ideology and the republicans ideology is at odds with the other part of their job which is helping their constituents you know ryan is happy to admit that you know the health center would help his constituents and the stimulus money would help his

constituents but apparently that's not really what their ideology is about so at the end of the day which wins i guess is the ideology right. well you know i think it's so i've been wondering about this because the ideology we have i guess puts butts in the seats if you will but you know even if mitt romney gets elected it's going to be tough to repeal all of obamacare and maybe mitt romney just doesn't know enough about health care to know that you can't keep popular provisions like the preexisting condition limitation or the the rules against rescission without having that individual mandate to make sure everybody's in the pool and so you know saying he's going to repeal obamacare is you know easy to do but then actually doing it might end up being harder than you thought but you know what happens republicans do this all the time they get credit for cutting spending and for not spending when that's not actually what they ever do yeah absolutely what do you think about the democrats caving into the pressure from the hard right and putting

god back into their official platform zero of me that drove me nuts you know it's like you know the thing that's a whole separate complicated issue but the god thing i mean what are they trying to say here like to hell with all the muslims in the party now with all the buddhists and people who you know there are a lot of people in this country and in our party but even in men who are not in our party who worship a god that goes by different name that doesn't go by a capital g. god and i had i also think that it's offensive to just say that you know our rights the rights that we that the government protects our god given because if they were god given then why were they god given you know two hundred years ago when you know when we kept black people as slaves when women couldn't vote when it was god then very well so i thought it was a terrible capitulation you know just embarrassing embarrassing i'm totally with you and it explicitly implies a monotheistic bronze age god rather than gods or order and it excludes atheists is

well it's on a quest for brilliant analysis thank you for joining us tonight thanks for having me tom. just. it's the good the bad of the very very soft and i actually oddly the good actor peter bourne born was the drug policy advisor to president jimmy carter in an interview with newsweek this week born to act president obama's current drug policy calling the administration's approach to marijuana totally insane elses of the federal government should be taking a hands off approach when it comes to marijuana policy in the states it's time lawmakers in washington d.c. listen to born instead of worrying about the real issues in stead like the economy and got to work creating sensible drug policies for. the bad conservative pundits

bill clinton stole the show last night at the d.n.c. and other high profile speaker last night was sandra flock and shortly after her speech numerous conservative pundits took to twitter to bash flock and coulter said sondre wants taxpayers to pay for her tanning appointment and dana loesch tweeted don't lecture conservative women about empowerment while demanding we pay for what goes on in your bedroom and finally michael berry chimed in saying someone was passing out free condoms tonight otherwise sandra what might be in trouble tomorrow and sort of say they care about women and respect their rights it's quite clear from this eight fest you know here at all and the very very ugly congressman steve king king said in a recent speech the government's new net nutritional standards for school lunch programs are the nanny state personified and that numerous parents have approached him saying that their kids are starving in school basically king wants to see junk foods and sure he drinks back at our public schools obviously he's unaware of the

seventeen percent of all children in america are obese and that instances of diabetes and other weight related health issues are exploding among our kids so despite the facts it appears congressman king doesn't want to help stop this childhood obesity epidemic in this country and that is very very. bill clinton's speech at the d.n.c. on wednesday night did more than just make the case for why president obama should get a second term and why republicans are bad for our nation the speech also overshadowed a very embarrassing moment for democrats earlier in the day when they compromised not only their party's principles but also the principles upon which this nation was founded you see on tuesday the official democratic party platform for two

thousand and twelve was adopted by the delegates and the vast right wing echo chamber was quick to pounce on a very slight change in the party's official platform from two thousand and eight the word god had been removed from the platform even though there was a long discourse about how important faith was now of course the republicans have made a deal with the religious far right now america this omission was tantamount to a mortal sin for the democrats their mission made sense after all democrats are the party of all faiths and of believers and nonbelievers the democratic party was founded by thomas jefferson who knew our nation was founded with a strict separation between church and state meaning government doesn't get involved in religion and those politicians in our government don't get involved in religion when their craft in their party's official platforms and sides when you insert god into a political platform a lot of questions get raised like which got to you're referring to the christian

god the jewish a law the nordic god for the flying spaghetti monster there's a reason why our founders fought so hard to get religion out of government and vice versa. republicans have forgotten this principle and unfortunately apparently so too have democrats because right after the platform was approved on tuesday president obama pushed for it to be changed and that the word god be inserted back into the platform this was strictly political president's team didn't want their convention overshadowed by republican criticisms that democrats are godless so on wednesday this happened as democrats went about amending their platform to include god take a look. all of those delegates in favor say aye was those delegates opposed say no. in the opinion of the chair two thirds of voted in the affirmative the motion is adopted and up glad it's been amended as shown on the

screen. the democrats bowing god so in trying to defend against a cynical partisan political attack democrats had republicans a perfect soundbite of the convention bogo hours bowing god which will likely be made into a campaign commercial and played endlessly until november mission not accomplished but moving beyond politics democrats blew an opportunity to take a stand for one of our nation's founding principles by omitting god from their platform from the get go our founding fathers made sure there was a separation between church and state referring to the issue twice in the constitution once of the first amendment and i get then again an article six which states that no religious test should ever be required for any office in the united states of america. thomas jefferson and james madison were perilously to undo the church's influence in government in seven hundred seventy nine jefferson author of

the virginia statute of religious freedom a law in virginia which ensure that the state would have no established religion whatsoever jefferson was so proud of that job of that work that he made sure to include on his tombstone that he was the author of the virginia statute for religious freedom over the fact that he was the third present in a state which doesn't appear on his tombstone james madison the father of our constitution which by the way does not contain the word god either wrote extensively on the issue of separating church and state as he said in eight hundred twenty two letters and alliance or coalition between government and religion cannot be too carefully guarded against every new and successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance religion and government will exist in greater purity without rather than with the

aid of government and medicines very first veto as president was against legislation that gave federal funds to an episcopal church to assist the poor and his veto statement madison wrote because the bill vests in the set incorporated church and authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same and authority which being all together support of flow as if the provision is to be the results of pious charity would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty in other words support for the poor is a public and civil duty a job for government which should not be doing it through churches. our founding fathers were very clear on this issue despite the recent historical attempts to rewrite the history by those on the right who try to argue that america was founded

as a christian nation it was it which brings us back to what happened on wednesday at the d.n.c. as i said democrats had an opportunity to stand up for one of our nation's founding principles and keep the word god out of their party platform but they squandered that opportunity and caved into the never ending political pressure coming from the far right of the religious crowd and so today jefferson and madison have to be rolling in their graves we must have a political party in america willing to stand up for our nation's secular founding and democrats have historically shown a willingness to be that political party they need to be that party again today especially at a time when religious discrimination against muslims sikhs and atheists is reaching a tipping point and tearing our nation apart so democrats find a backbone respect the intentions of our founding fathers and work to rebuild that wall that stands between our democratic government and the institutions of religion

across america it's not only the right thing to do it's the american thing to do. and that's the way it is tonight thursday september sixth two thousand and twelve and don't forget the moxie begins when you get out there get active tag your and. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all today. in his first t.v. interview since his inauguration. system i'm aware of the pussy riot case yes but

i'm not getting involved in any way. bloody near putin speaks exclusively to r.t. . they were young and high flying. their careers were on takeoff. that flight for them was one of many. and the last one. leaving the ice monarchy. wealthy british style decide it's time to buy time.