ok back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour just hours after the attack in benghazi last week pundits proclaimed that all the muslim or over was to blame for the tragedy not just a few islamic radicals but they didn't say or even address is why those who committed the attacks hate america in the first place and incidents daily take that romney's off the cuff comments caught on tape are the latest proof that he and paul ryan are consumed by the selfish needs society preached by iran how can we stop the

selfishness from taking over the white house and destroying our country. in the best of the rest of the news anti-american protests in the middle east began to wane over the weekend ending a deadly and tragic week in the region but all of the violence doesn't mean the mainstream media is done giving its take on why our embassies were stormed and why ambassador chris stevens and three other american diplomats or murder yesterday newsweek put the words what is already front and center on the cover of this week's edition of the magazine igniting a firestorm of reaction from the social media universe also yesterday imus said we see conservative pundit joe scarborough argued that every muslim in the world hates the united states but you know what they hate us yeah i talked intelligence people

all weekend they hate us because of their religion they hate us because of their culture and they hate us because of peer pressure if you gave every street vendor from street fender to prime minister in that region the chance to throw a rock at the u.s. embassy they would so this is the and those who are busy casting issue. i don't want all of islam like scarborough or instead busy asking why islamic radicals hate america so much even after an airstrike killed eight innocent afghan women this weekend joining me now to discuss more on what the media is missing is jeff cohen founder of the of the media watch group fair and an associate professor of journalism at ithaca college he's also the author of the book cable news confidential jeff welcome to the program or welcome back. thank you great to be with you jeff what do you see as the core causes of muslim rage against the united states to the extent that it exists and then i want to get into to what extent does that exist but first of all let's start with. i mean let's

face it the thousands and thousands of civilians have been killed in the so-called u.s. war on terror from iraq to afghanistan and we've propped up dictators we've tortured all sorts of people from the muslim world many of them are innocent . if there was a real debate in the mainstream media in our country about u.s. foreign policy the propping up of dictators the taking the oil the killing of civilians which is always buried when the u.s. military kills civilians in iraq in afghanistan if they just did with all these women and bachmann province it's always a footnote but if we had that kind of coverage then meet maybe people would understand that one of the reason is that you know that that the segment of muslims that hate us it might have more to do with these policy issues than the

fact that women in our country sometimes go to work or or women wear miniskirts and you know some of the debate in the mainstream media has become frankly absurd yeah it's become a caricature of itself in many ways why do you think the media refuses to address the real reasons why some members of the muslim world are so upset i think that there is an elite the elite media are embedded with the military and foreign policy establishment you know we had this incident over the weekend and lockman province where eight women collecting fire were firewood were killed and seven more are hospitalized all women collecting firewood it's happened repeatedly in afghanistan and it got covered big in england it's been covered around the world in our country it's a footnote and when it was covered in the new york times this recent killing of the civilians in the new york times the headline is karzai denounces coalition over air

strikes and the focus of the article isn't that we killed all these innocent civilians the focus of the article is the acrimony between the karzai government and the you know and his american benefactors how they don't yell you know what we need in this country is a full debate. in the media about the war on terror or about the fact that every time general mcchrystal admitted who used to run the afghan operation you kill one innocent civilian and you get ten enemies if we had media focusing on the actual practice of the war on terror or the civilian deaths the torture of innocent people that might give us a bigger clue to why they hate us then miniskirts on american women why why is it that the american media i mean it isn't that simple that there is that association with the military industrial complex that that the american media and if for example you're using the example of these eight afghan women who were killed last

week totally innocent women out you know gathering wood by a drone strike if if you know somebody from afghanistan to come to the united states and killed eight women who were you know at a shopping mall or walking down the street or whatever maybe in the united states it would be so green in headlines across the united states across the world i mean you know it's and an army to completely ignore this story. largely ignored and we we would have heard in this scenario you're giving we would have heard all about the people that were killed all of their families we never hear about the afghan families you know these women these families that will now be deprived of their mothers are and you know what when they went to the governor's this is lockman province in eastern afghanistan over the weekend they went to the governor's office their chance in death to america it's it's possible that these people didn't hate america prior to us killing them but i think what you have to understand it it's

not just general coziness between the elite media in our country and the military in the foreign policy establishment in the end at the beginning of the invasion of afghanistan memos were sent out by the bosses at c.n.n. to all of the anchors and the reporters to play down any civilian casualty and when those memos were leaked to the washington post walter isaacson who was the chair of c.n.n. was asked about these memos he'd written one of them and he said i think it would be perverts to focus too much on casualties or hardship in afghanistan thank you jeff where we're out of time but here is your point is so well made with the vet example jeff cohen thank you so much for joining us thank you. you know the news beyond the economy this presidential election will also be a debate over the social safety net in particular medicare and social security that

became obvious when mitt romney picked paul ryan as his vice presidential nominee paul ryan you know the guy who wrote the republican budget that ends medicare as we know it ryan has repeatedly to plan and defended his plans for voucher izing medicare on the campaign trail assuring republicans that this is a debate they want to have and a debate they will ultimately win but ryan's been a little less vocal about his plans to privatizing social security which was a major initiative by george w. . bush even though you ultimately failed when he tried it in two thousand and five back in two thousand and ten paul ryan wrote the republican's roadmap for america's future calling for social security to be handed off to wall street in the form of private retirement accounts president obama has been more than willing to hammer mitt romney and paul ryan over medicare he's been oddly quiet about social security and that maybe because he has his own skeletons in the closet when it comes to social security after all the president has thrown support behind the simpson bowles deficit reduction plans which call for cuts to social security so can

progressive's who are trying to defend social security at all costs trust the president or the democratic party for that matter not take a knife to it here and so that is nancy allman co-director of social security works and co-chair of the strengthen social security coalition and campaign she's also the author of the book the battle for social security from f.d.r.'s vision to bush's gamble ansi welcome thank you so much for having me you know that was a big gamble on george bush's part was well it's a double entendre because it would also be the gamble in the stock market oh yes two kinds of gamble and he lost back in the back in ninety nine he had told his biographer mickey herskowitz that if he became president he was going to war in iraq to get enough political capital to prioritize those security and he did it he tried and it didn't quite work so says let's talk about some some bowles simpson bowles everybody. crazy of the media when people talk about the simpson bowles commission recommendation there were no commission recommendations can you that was part of that a little bit there were co-chairs this was

a commission that was set up by president obama and if we had was it was actually eighteen i mean if they if they were but if they had received those kind of supermajority their proposal would have gone to congress what they proposed for social security was the overall budget deficit and of course we argued social security shouldn't be part of that because it doesn't add to the doubt but they they would have decimated social security and that's not hyperbolic to say that they really would have destroyed. over a number of you knows that is one of the reasons why jan schakowsky just basically she refused to vote for it the president and other leading democrats have very obliquely talked about praised the bowles simpson proposal after after the the whole larger suggestions imploded mr simpson mr bowles ok here's our unofficial suggestion that was that was that identical to the original proposal or was yes different so it was identical yes so when people talk

about some symbols they're actually talking about some symbols. and it's very destructive to social security and too many democrats have talked about it have it very fav now in the meantime the president has suggested just listed lifting the cap on people with income over two hundred fifty thousand dollars for social security and people who make over one hundred ten thousand dollars pay zero in social security taxes on that income isn't that a repudiation of simpson bowles and should that encourage us yet while he said that before during the election two thousand and eight it would be very popular with the american people poll after poll shows that but something happens when people get to washington and there is a kind of and in an effort to compromise you have. a candidate romney as you showed earlier on the show talking about social security is kind of a government handout it's not it's an earned benefit those benefits should not be cut the democrats should be strong about saying no cuts but president obama has not yet drawn that line in the sand and that's what we're looking for that's fast and

has this is an election year to yes and you would expect that he would particularly now that mitt romney is basically thrown i mean you know that forty seven percent half of them are senior citizens who are you know on the dole i guess that will be in the social security money that they paid in for twenty thirty forty years. why does no bomb pick that up that's that's an easy one well has vice president president president biden said said i flat out guarantee we're not going to cut social security and we cheer and we would like to hear the president say that. we want to make sure that's the president of this very like by gay marriage position could he be kind of leading the president is that you're hoping that's the case but immediately after that they again say oh we're not going to slash benefits and of course they don't you're not going to slash them at something i have them hold or so you'd like them slightly don't cut them at all we're facing a retirement income crisis we should be talking about increasing social security because it works so well and it does work so well nancy thank you so much for being with us thanks so much for having closure but. coming up mitt romney doesn't care

about forty seven percent of america and rest assured paul ryan feels the exact same way how can we restore america to the nation that our founding fathers envisioned a nation about the we society and not about the republicans. i'll tell you in tonight's daily.

both. of them. our first comment and i comes to mrs b.j. leave you post on the thom hartmann dot com message boards she had this take on oil companies and the tax breaks that they receive because the oil companies don't steal money either they don't even need the tax breaks they get why don't they voluntarily help the cash strapped schools since their future engineers are somewhere in those classes that used to be the social contract that we had in the united states we all knew you know people in business knew people in government

knew the average voters knew that the next generation of engineers and scientists and you know was a big deal and we put a lot of money into our schools and we supported our teachers and we supported our students there's a huge push back in one nine hundred fifty whatever fifty seven and there was one spot it went up and eisenhower just started throwing money at education kennedy continued that it was until the vietnam war that we actually saw money for education contract in and then of course after that the after the once the reagan administration came in and put bill bennett in charge of the education department a guy who had run for president on the on the on the platform of ending the education department that we've seen now thirty years of the destruction of our education system our final comment the night comes from di no don here's what they had to say on the national debt who's going to take a bullet for reducing the debt let's see tax reform eliminate the mortgage deduction middle class rich complain eliminate the health insurance write off for businesses employees and employers complain raise capital gains upper income tax

rates the rich complain they have the influence to fight it cut defense spending defense contractors claim loss of jobs cut government spending government employees complain about job loss cut in title months recipients complain initiate automatic cuts by sequester asian claims of recession so tell me who is white willing to bite the bullet. well first of all there are places in our government where we could cut and save money the biggest and most obvious is the defense department whose dudgeon has tripled since one thousand nine hundred ninety eight tripled so you know we're winding down our wars we could cut that but one of the things that you didn't mention is how about do a bill clinton did and raising taxes on rich people he raised just three percent i mean we're not even talking about undoing the reagan tax cuts reagan took it from seventy four percent down to twenty eight percent that's what i would like to see i'd like to see our top tax rate our top marginal tax rate back up to seventy four percent but you know obama just try to take it back up to thirty eight percent thirty nine percent like it was under clinton and that produced

a balanced budget let's talk about that. crazy alert with age comes experience and these two have a lot of it say hello to identical twins martine and louise foka at seventy years old they are the oldest prostitutes in amsterdam referred to as the oldest window girls in amsterdam the two have nearly a century of combined prostitution experience are no words they've been given their jollies for of their you're using wrong time into first starting the red light district decades ago they specialize in threesomes something that's fairly uncommon for that time and there was a huge hit with the men but we recently retired from being a window girl due to arthritis telling a british reporter that she could no longer do the sexual positions however martine is still going strong and enjoying the fame that comes with being the oldest sex

worker in amsterdam and she has no plans to retire and soon so next time you go to amsterdam and take a stroll through the famed red light district maybe you'll have a chance to meet the fockers it's. mitt romney tells a roomful of multi-millionaires that half of the nation forty seven percent to eight think of themselves as victims that they can't take responsibility for themselves and that his job as president isn't to worry about them i'm reminded of this woman. it was iran who popularized the idea that the weak and the poor are moochers takers who should be cared for this idea that mitt romney seems to be embracing her she was talking about it in one nine hundred fifty nine to mike

wallace. christ every important moral leader in man's history has taught us that we should love one another why in is this kind of love it you'll bind it borrow it is immoral it is our place about one and then if a man is weak or a woman is weak then she is beyond he is beyond love he said he does not deserve it he said needs bejan there are very few of us spent in this world by your standards and while worthy of love unfortunately guess they. that was fifty three years ago back when i enter and her philosophy of selfishness was considered the far right crazy french. people i william f. buckley said about the gaps she's nots today however iran is represented in absentia on the republican ticket today mitt romney subscribes to her philosophy both in closed door meetings with millionaires and billionaires and out the open on

the campaign trail as does romney's running mate paul ryan in iran more than anyone else this fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism the morality of individuals and so if we're here today i think she would do a great job in showing us just how wrong what government is doing is because it's that kind of thinking that kind of writing that is sorely needed right now. so the question is how in the last half century as iran's destructive philosophy migrated from the fringes to now being a core value in the republican party's presidential ticket the answer is pretty straightforward it's what john kenneth galbraith famously said about two generations ago the modern conservatives and gauged one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. iran's message attacking the poor

very seductive to rich people who want to believe that they got there on their own they know that if a government is focused on helping the poor focused on distributing wealth more evenly to everyone and that means less money for the top one percent a strong social safety net free healthcare free education housing assistance all those things require the government to spend money which means they have to collect taxes which means the wealthiest among us those who can afford it are going to pay more in taxes it's hollow our economy was organized in the days of abraham lincoln the first president to impose a progressive national income tax all the way through the one nine hundred eighty s. when america boomed in the middle class thrived but despite the good times the corporate elite are unhappy they saw a bigger and bigger share of the pie going to the middle class rather than to their own already fat swiss bank accounts not only that a comfortable middle class can get rowdy and demand even more from the elites like civil rights for all better working conditions peace instead of war to the

corporate elite that era of the sixty's to the eighty's that was a disaster so when a second rate novelist began talking about how the poor don't deserve care from the rest of us and that the rich should never be asked to sacrifice a penny for the well being of others romney's very rich buddies and their parents found exactly what they needed that's a period superior moral justification for selfishness the only thing they had to do was get the american people to buy into this fringe philosophy of selfishness and that's what they set about to do. first there were those who knew exactly what they were doing people like billionaire fred koch the koch brothers dead fred koch was tired of seeing his money distributed to the poor surround the same time iran was pushing her philosophy koch founded the john birch society it was an organization devoted to free markets and limited government code words for rolling back protections for the poor john birch society opposed any attempts to redistribute

wealth to working americans through higher taxes or social safety net programs and called things like social security and unemployment insurance forms of communism it opposed any sort of economic help by the government it opposed the civil rights act it opposed virtually everything in franklin roosevelt's new deal it worked to translate iran's rand's philosophy into legislation that would transform america and undo the new deal fred coax sons david and charles would carry this mantle forward with david even running for vice president of the united states on the libertarian ticket back in one nine hundred eighty they also went on to fund similar think tanks like the david koch foundation later renamed the cato institute also devoted to libertarian government and maybe societies where the poor and working class are left to fend for themselves in one nine hundred seventy one the u.s. chamber of commerce and corporate america got into the game that year lewis powell . it was paul supreme court justice wrote actually this is

a few months before he was appointed supreme court he wrote a memo to him his best friend next door neighbor the president of the u.s. chamber of commerce suggesting the businesses should start investing more money in political lobbying in college curricula and in media to push a pro corporate agenda powell likely had no idea how influential his memo would become and the damage to america it would cause but his her gene corporate america went to work funding think tanks buying up the media and hiring sympathetic college professors to teach the values of the corporate run so-called free market by the time i ran died in one thousand nine hundred two ironically on social security and be cared for with medicare for because of her lung cancer corporate elite had succeeded in injecting or her rationalization for selfishness into modern day conservatism and with ronald reagan in the white house it was time to start making things happen what followed were massive tax cuts for the rich deregulation for

corporations a tax on labor unions and the shredding of the social safety net reagan succeeded because he hid his agenda of attacking the poor and working class with patriotic rhetoric and promise to all americans a year ago one day be rich even though i knew full well that the corporate elites ideal economic system depended on a vast class of the working poor but his message was embraced by the corporate media and future presidents carried forward was bill clinton new gay marriage who ended welfare as we know it in one thousand nine hundred six and president george w. bush tried to push it even further telling his biographer in one thousand nine hundred nine that he planned to invade iraq if he became president to get enough political capital privatized social security to keep pillar of the new deal he succeeded in invading iraq but that privatizing social security although he did try in two thousand and five right after the election. which brings us to today and mitt

romney trying to finish the job that i and rand started to mitt romney is the culmination of this several decades long effort to remake america into a i and rand libertarian paradise he's pushing an economic theory that's been tried for thirty two years now and has been proven to only cause misery for ninety nine percent of americans on rich in the top one percent mitt romney didn't make a gaffe when he said his job isn't to worry about forty seven percent of americans he was simply speaking to a core value of today's republican party a value traced back to iran promoted by the coax legitimized by billions of dollars in funding for corporate think tanks and universities and executed by bought off politicians like paul ryan. but the fact that there's outrage in response to his comments proves that americans are waking up to the scam let's hope it continues

iran's superior moral justification for selfishness now carried as a banner by mitt romney and paul ryan must be called out and rejected whenever it's heard and wherever it's are it's the only way we can restore the we society our founders envisioned the works for all of we the people and not just the top one percent and that's the way it is the nights of temper eighteenth two thousand and twelve for more information check out our websites of thom hartmann dot com and free speech dot com and hulu dot com slash the big picture and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your seat of.

the so. that's.