creation so choose your life stream quality and enjoy your favorite. t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device. any time. you citizens are kept away from the from the voting booth by rules that are meant to keep away a certain segment of the population in less than a month americans head to the polls to elect a president who will everyone's vote be counted party looks at the double standards taking place around the country when it comes to denying voter rights in their right to cast ballots. and there are fireworks during last night's vice presidential debate between joe biden and paul ryan but when it comes to the topic of iran and nuclear weapons how far apart are these two parties and which party is

more likely to start another war in the middle east will question more. plus in god we trust is printed on our money here in the u.s. and politicians often tell that america was founded on christian values but it appears we're becoming a less christian nation a look at the growing number of people who are turning away from organized religion . it's friday october twelfth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching our. all right leading the news this hour we are t. minus twenty five days until the november election and the candidate who is leading the race depends on who you ask some polls put president obama ahead by a few points other shows mitt romney edging ahead and some indicate that the two men are virtually neck and neck now this has pundits declaring that this election could come down to a photo finish so this is further proof that each and every vote counts this year

now we've already seen some interesting tactics on the part of the democrats and republicans to change the voting system you could call it a way to level the playing field when it comes to voter fraud or a ploy to sway the election the problem is that each state sometimes each individual county has a different set of rules and while those double standards may not guarantee a winner they are sure creating a lot of confusion and possibly widening the margin for error r t correspondent ana stasia turkana tells us more. you elected me to tell you the truth honesty is the best policy while maybe not in u.s. elections two words define why people hate america double standard on everything this presidential election season these two words are back in full swing the basic definition of a double standard is a rule or principle unfairly applied in different ways to different people or

groups let's find out if this is relevant to the us election system respecting every single vote is key in a democracy yet voter suppression is alive and well in the us given the way that citizens are kept away from the from the voting booths by rules that are meant to keep away a certain segment of the population we have a lot of nerve frankly criticizing other countries for the way they run their democracy from questionable voter id regulations to shortened early voting time slots to gerrymandering were rigged drawing congressional district lines to favor certain parties laws affecting voters rights are passed left and right and vary state by state to have an eric holder this video shows how easy it is to attempt to steal attorney general eric holder's vote when an id is not required actually forgot might be in your current yet places the do ask for government issued photo id can affect over ten percent of americans that simply don't have one there is an

attempt to prevent large numbers of people from actually exercising the ballot election monitors usually serve the purpose of keeping track of and discrepancies and while the us likes to keep a close eye on the way elections are handled abroad we have the right to monitor other people's elections of course and if they don't do it then clearly they're cheating that's not democracy it's rigged it's a dictatorship what the hell the need for monitors at home is vastly undermined when you're looking at an election where the votes are counted in public. that's the kind of. election that it's possible to observe it really is virtually no opportunity for international observation but the same goes for domestic observers even the carter center which goes abroad and does the great we're monitoring elections brought refuses to monitor us elections on the ground don't meet basic standards of integrity when election ideals are not met elsewhere criticism

runs rampant elections in venezuela elections in iran elections in russia the press will go to town on any sign that the outcome was fixed you know regardless of whether the evidence is sound just go crazy and while nitpicking abroad is all the rage the elephant in the room remains unnoticed at home i promise you that the evidence that they use to scream and yell about the outcome in those countries is usually a whole lot weaker than the evidence of election theft in this country the good news not all of the hypocrisy goes unnoticed our policymakers and to a great extent our media and and trickle down to the american people have literally the literally think that the rest of the world is stupid that they don't see it that everybody naturally have to admit you know admire us that we're great and it's not the case well obvious flaws are met with a deaf ear year in and year out a flawed election process continues to be the first vote cast in the u.s.

and if the hitcher going to party in new york last night's vice presidential debate certainly did not disappoint viewers president obama released his attack dog of a paid job biden on representative paul ryan he laughed mocked and interrupted his way through the debate while adding context the president obama's campaign promises and despite all of the mudslinging that happened real substance came out of the discussion the moderator a.b.c. news reporter martha raddatz called iran the biggest national security threat the u.s. faces today. we've had it's war to iran i'd actually like to move to iran because there's really no bigger national security this country is facing joe biden said the u.s. is doing everything it can to prevent war with the country paul ryan said that the obama administration isn't doing enough when governor romney was asked about the said we've got to keep the sanctions when he said we're talking about doing more

what are you you're going to go to war is that what you want to do they want to prevent war. interesting things how they're going to prevent war how they're going to promote war of they say there's nothing more of that we that they say we should do than what we've already done and i was in a conference call with the with the president with him talking to bibi for well over an hour and. stark relief and detail of was going on this is a bunch of stuff but for all the substance there was one thing that never came out the elephant in the room other than paul ryan of course and considering joe biden's reputation we thought he would spill the beans he does have a few tongue slips here and there as paul ryan so adequately pointed out i think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way but joe biden watched his tongue to this day no official has ever confirmed that israel has nuclear capabilities the spite it being an open secret so joining me now to discuss this and help figure out which candidate is

more likely to get us into yet another war in the middle east is stephen soon professor of politics and middle east chair at the university of san francisco hey there steven thank you so much for joining me so we've got a lot of ground to cover let's start by talking about the vice presidential debate and the two men with their two very different opinions how do you think they handled the iran situation. unfortunately their opinions weren't all that different from the came to iran neither of them on trial and martha raddatz the moderators for cost or a statement. or random somehow the biggest national security threat the united states faces today i mean united states virtually surrounds iran with military bases and forces our military budget here in the united states is more than one hundred times that of iran. we have a vast nuclear arsenal there are not kept on going to ballistic missile submarine base those stick missiles. around us and have any nuclear weapons or missiles

capable of coming anywhere close to the united states so i was rather shocked at the assumption that they were debating about in the first place and when they did debate it was sort of who is being the most hardline who's being being the most hawkish and against speaking and in terms of not i said as if this is about nonproliferation was not about nonproliferation because it was we be talking about israel's nuclear arsenal pakistan's nuclear arsenal india's nuclear arsenal well i singling out iran and that's not to mention our own nuclear arsenal i'm sure you actually did make a really good point when talking about the fact that it was martha the moderator who is actually the one that was calling iran our big oil is our biggest and national security threat so let me ask you this is a ron our biggest national security threat or is it something else. well certainly i would see climate change and really environmental issues the most serious.

countries around the world a long long with a number of others the this is this obsession with the rand is is quite quite problematic on a number of levels first of all the iranians have communicated their willingness to support and help bring about a nuclear weapons free zone for the entire middle east that are supported in that not just by their allies syria but by. u.s. allies like jordan egypt saudi arabia and others. indeed nuclear weapons free zones already existed in latin america southeast asia central asia africa so the civic i talk to. you have some stuff listen he's going to place there isn't nuclear weapons reason why hasn't this on the table why is this why is this a threat of war against against iran's a horrific government but that's up to the people of iran to deal with it and i really see that the nuclear issue is more of the structure than anything else and

in terms of the political ad kind of the name calling and there wasn't really much that came out in terms of what paul ryan or a mitt romney administration would actually do do you think that a mitt romney as an ministration would do something different than what barack obama is doing right now which is imposing these crippling sanctions. well both sides support the crippling sanctions and both sides are open to the use of military course of the sanctions don't work i would guess that if you force me to choose i would say that obama mr sorry romney administration more likely go to war in large part because of. some of the prominent new conservatives who are so instrumental in the bush administration and going to war for iraq are among a rummy used closest advisers at the same time the u.s. military the pentagon the professionals the generals have also made it clear there really is not a military solution to the crisis with iraq indeed this is the one thing that

prevented the bush administration from one. original post to attack the country and he did bring up iraq i know that in foreign policy magazine it actually asked the question is iraq a proxy to iran we did go into iraq oh we want to take out saddam hussein but the blowback that you could say is happening right now in iraq is that saddam hussein was actually the number one opponent or one of the number one opponents of iran and they actually did a really good job keeping a ron in check in the middle east is this possibly one of the consequences of us going into war in their eyes somebody out of power maybe we lost a little bit of balance in the region. well there are a bunch around was virtually the only country that gained from the horror of iraq i found some ironic it was. that the debate took place ten years to the day that the democratic controlled senate

joining the of the republicans in the house in pushing through the of the resolution authorizing the use of force and biden played a central role as head of the senate foreign relations committee in making of bush's war a possible arms. concourses the house also supported the war resolution so i want to go. to bars posing for souness taking these extreme positions on. the record my voice i'm sorry for that matter the us constitution and i know that there's a lot going on right now in terms of the presidential debates i'm sure this is going to be on the table in the future stevens in say a professor of politics and the middle east chair at the university of san francisco thank you so much for joining us. now when barack obama ran for office he

promised to lead the most transparent administration in history but when it comes to his whistleblower policies the only thing that's transparent about the president is how much he values secrecy over openness his administration has charged more whistleblowers under the espionage act than every other president come bind but this week president obama as tempted to clean up his reputation as a security state hawk he issued a directive ordering national security agencies to protect whistleblowers the government accountability project a whistleblower advocacy group praised the white house for this actions legal director tom divvying said quote for the first time dia teligent community employees have free speech rights to challenge fraud. waste and abuse within agency channels he added however that the protections won't take effect until they're drafted by agency leaders that often retaliate against whistleblowers themselves now the vina also said the safeguards are no substitute for legislation and it

seems unlikely that congress will back up the president on this matter the directive lays out proposals that the house permanent select committee on intelligence from you removed from the whistleblower protection enhanced an act last month but for now it seems as if things may finally be heading in the right direction on the president's part. well it turns out the popular ninety's rock band r.e.m. isn't the only one losing their religion turns out the number of americans who say they have no religious affiliation whatsoever has swelled in recent years to one in five americans so why are people losing faith in religious institutions while laurie harkness of the resident dot net took the that question to the streets of new york city. a new pew poll indicated one in five americans has no religion and more and more

americans are becoming atheists is america losing its religion and if so why this week let's talk about that i think as we get smarter we realize all the religions are the same you look at each different book every book has a similar story. it's all the same we're on one planet there should be one war doesn't matter if you're in pakistan or new jersey well i think i see more people that maybe keep to themselves i mean you can be religious without going to a sanctuary or something along that line so i think the perception has probably changed a lot yeah it's interesting because a lot of people supposedly still believe in a god or some spiritual being but not necessarily of religion yes because this is two different things a religion is something that people create and god the something that we carry tone on my heart on our spirit maybe something like that so maybe we need to redefine

what our religions are to match our spirituality of course i just got baptized last year everybody has their own way of coming to their beliefs but for us it was just you know we're getting older and you know we're getting closer to those they say the pearly gates but on what we agree was was insurance you got baptized for insurance purposes god believe what you want to believe but don't force it on other people or use it for you know things that hurt other people is that what it is is that people see organized religion as something detrimental to other people well i'm speaking i guess for mostly myself here but yeah that's what makes sense to me yeah when you see wars being waged in the name of religion it makes you think yes information. that you're able to get in. and quickly is is pervasive. for the more information we have the less religious we become well the more the more you can sort of investigate things and the more you can develop your own ideas

think is the reason so it's less about religion per se and more about the institutionalized ideas well i think i think what it means is that you get to make up your own mind about your religion or whatever you decide religion to be the bottom line is american seem to be losing their faith in organized religion which might be less of a sign of their waning spirituality and more of an indication that it might be time to reorganize. so there's a lot of reasons why this could be happening and no matter what you believe religion does have tangible social political and economic impacts on the u.s. so to discuss the reasons why americans are losing their faith and the potential implications this country could face because of this i spoke earlier with david silverman president of american atheists. well it's more than a generational thing although the generation certainly has to do with that the

growth of secularism in america is really centered on the young people over thirty percent of the young people aren't affiliated with religion now what you were talking about before was that people are somewhat still religious even though they're calling themselves on affiliated that's partially true what we're also seeing in america is a rise in atheism and that is coming from two parts first of all people are becoming atheist more and more because they're studying religion and second because of the stigma against atheism is is being less and people are coming out as atheists so people who used to define themselves as religious but were really atheists are now having the courage to come out and call themselves non-religious people and we think that trend is going to continue because we think it's the natural progression of learning and the natural progression of conversation about religion and some critics might say that religion is antiquated thoughts about

abortion gay rights etc most people simply don't agree with that opinion so my question to you with them paul does religion have a place in the twenty first century. you know it does not religion hasn't had a place in for some time but now that we're looking at the twenty first century now that we know that there is i mean this is the twenty first century we know there's no invisible man in the sky we do know this now we know this just as well as we know that there is no santa claus and people are finally figuring this out they're learning they're talking they're hearing they're picking up their bibles and actually reading it which is something that they haven't done before and that makes atheists in and of itself as we move on into the rest of this century we're going to see a continued growth in the disaffiliate from organized religions because people are realizing that organized religion is totally useless but david i mean that peter

let's let's look at the a social impact that religion has i mean it does strengthen communities and bring them together to clean up parks and run soup kitchens friend sense so we can argue that no good comes from a lesson and also instill values in people that help guide their moral compass right. no i would say no to both of those questions it provides a medium for people to do good yes it does but without that medium people still do good if you look at secular democracies like norway sweden denmark there's plenty of good solid community and charity work going on there without the need for religion and as far as the application of moral codes no what religion does is it takes credit for a person's individual moral moral judgments i am a good person and another person might say they're a good person because god tells them to be a good person we're both good people religion simply takes the credit for you being a good person but most people are good without god. that certainly are penya near where the atheist and so tell me what has to offer for the u.s.

because religion they say has not only impact the thought the social lives of people that also impact the economics of the u.s. and there's been multiple studies saying that that religion does have a direct tangible effect on the economy expressionlessly in developing nations can talk about that all of it well sure religion has the effect because it's given the opportunity to have an effect it's not the only thing that has an effect and when you look at the way religion works in america i mean you mention mitt romney being the first mormon president potentially being the first mormon president the mormon church just spent twenty million dollars to stop other people from getting married they spent their own money to enforce their religious beliefs on non mormons we find this repugnant we find this disgusting and no this is not useful and yes it is immoral so what we're seeing here is mirliton taking credit for being for bringing

in good morals while totally disassociating itself from the responsibility that it has of letting people live their own lives people in america don't want religions telling them other people's religions telling them what they're more. those are will make our own moral decisions and that's what atheism brings to the table you're already making your own moral decisions with atheism you get to take credit for it and the responsibility and david levy talk about it if you think you did go ahead and bring up mitt romney let's talk about religion and politics president obama is a christian mitt romney is a mormon how does their religion affect their leadership ability and that's the big question that we would like to see answered we don't really care about what religion they profess i don't really care that mitt romney is a mormon i care that mitt romney has not spoken against the mormon church is disgusting infringement on public life in california i don't really care about the fact that president obama is a christian i do care about the fact that he has left the faith based initiatives

intact which funnel federal money to mostly christian churches what we care about is how they let their religion usurp their are authorities or usurp their allegiance rather to the constitution of the united states that's a problem it's not about being religious it's whether or not your religion takes a higher place in your mind to the country at large and david where we're out of time but i just want to ask you really quickly yes or no is there such a thing as separation between church and state these days. yes but not very much in america david cellarman president of the american atheists thank you so much for your opinions there. all right switching gears now it's october and you know what that means america's favorite pastime sport is in postseason here in d.c. metro cars are practically bleeding red with all the national fans sporting their favorite gear to root for their team the nats won last night by the way and are

heading into game five against the cardinals in just a few minutes now here in d.c. and around the nation sports teams are a point of pride but one reporter says that they can also be a drain on the city last week op ed blogger nielson news was approached by the washington post and asked to look into economic impacts that nationals the national stadium is having on the economy in d.c. now it turns out constructing the six hundred sixty seven million dollar national park might not have been a home run for the economy after all but his article was never printed in the washington post might be because of the advertising now the author says it's a topic nobody wants to discuss r.t. correspondent christine for south takes a deeper look. i was. if you build it they will cost. or so the legend.

four and a half years after opening its doors the new washington nationals baseball stadium has brought with it a stream of fans and this year the team that's made it to october it was a great football stadium but it wasn't a great baseball stadium and now the playoffs were here and it's awesome but has this sea of red brought the city out of the red in terms of paying for the stadium . at lizzie or executive director of the d.c. fiscal policy institute says not even close what we ended up with is a stadium that's about one of the most expensive stadiums ever built and one of the most heavily subsidized stadiums ever built where ninety seven percent of the expense is being paid for by the district all future repairs are being paid for by the district eight years ago his organization filed to have the owners of the team share in the expense of the stadium in general we think it makes sense for businesses to pay for their own facilities or at least

a share in the cost we were just looking for a balance as opposed to a plan where the city put up all the money and the team owner got all the game what happened instead it was a four hundred forty million dollars project that became a six hundred sixty seven million dollars project one that to this day just gets back about one third of its expenses the promise was not just for a new stadium and a new team but that the entire surrounding area would be transformed while four years later change has come that is undeniable but the debate rages on over how much and if the return on the investment has been worth it these things are still empty every time i come down here i've got to park by these buildings and they're empty or partially empty it's just when you build a ballpark like this. you can't anticipate that people will want to live next to it you have to build a ballpark based soley on what's going to happen in the basement where we park with water a lot of the rejuvenated areas with the rebuilding building condos houses building

shopping little shopping center things and i think it looks really good so we need to clean up down here the impact of sports stadiums on neighborhoods and taxpayers is the subject of the book field of schemes how the great stadium swindle turns public money into private profit co-author neil de moss was approached to write about this last week so the washington post outlook section last week and said would you like for an op ed talking about how you know the case for the fact that even though the nationals are a success on the field they are you know still a lot of benefit to sara leave the city he wrote this article which outlines various ways in which the stadium does not benefit the city they said that they had serious concerns about facts and i gave them documentation for my facts and he came back and said no that's ok we still want your story according to the washington post the decision not to run the piece had nothing to do with an dollars or whether or not an editor agreed with the author's opinion. what most would agree is that

the stadium has brought excitement to a city that went more than fifty years without a baseball team and nearly eighty years since the last playoff. packed house though still has not a race the questions about how much the taxpayers should have contributed to bring this team to town in washington christine for sound party. well that's going to do it for the news for tonight but be sure to tune in next week we've got a brand new wind up going on for you first up our team has been covering the occupy movement for quite a while now in gotten an emmy nod for our work covering the movement we were there in zuccotti park when protesters set up camp and we were there as the camp was torn down by police now while the movement fractured a smaller more loyal group continues to fight big banks and a seeing some success and standing up for the troubled homeowners.