i would like to do if you could you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct help us. to make you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america are you ready to join the movement and welcome they. want to harm in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. today the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the syrian crisis got even more likely than the assad

government said that it would sign on to the international chemical weapons ban and disclose its stockpile to the world can we count out a war in syria just yet also very ready you enjoy fecal matter in your pork chops because the new department of agriculture plan is going to make our already weak meat inspection system even weaker more on that later on in the show and the corporate takeover of our tax system has already begun with disastrous consequences right here in our nation's capital on explain more about that in that i'd still eat . you need to know this president obama has backed himself into a corner on syria and russia may have just given him a way out on monday the syrian government announced that it supports a russian designed plan to end its chemical weapons. over to international

authorities the white house at least for now has cautiously endorsed the proposal president obama told a.b.c. news last night that he would absolutely rethink a military strike on the assad regime if in fact the syrian government surrenders its chemical stockpiles. if. you will is control of his chemical weapons to international law are we back from the brink absolutely if in fact that happened. today the syrian government moved a step closer toward handing over its weapons of mass destruction by saying that it would reveal the location of its chemical arsenal and sign on to the international chemical weapons ban meanwhile president obama said today that he wants congressional leaders to delay any vote on a resolution authorizing a strike on the assad government to make room for a diplomatic solution to that crisis a potential diplomatic deal also got things moving over at the u.n.

as a new york times reported this morning administration officials have begun working with the american allies at the united nations to further explore the viability of the russian plan in which the international community would take control of the syrian weapons stockpile it's going to take a lot of negotiating to pass a resolution in the security council russian government for example wants the u.s. to scrap any strike plans before the assad government gives up its weapons but a u.n. agreement would still be the best possible outcome to the syrian crisis during an appearance in front of the house armed services committee earlier today secretary of state john kerry said that the russian plan and syria's apparent willingness to go along with it are the direct result of the administration's tough talk about strikes over the past few weeks. lot of people say that nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of a hanging. well it's the credible threat of force that has been on the table for

these last weeks that has for the first time brought this regime to even acknowledge that they have a chemical weapons arsenal. and it is the threat of this force and our determination to hold us accountable that is motivated others to even talk about a real and credible international action that might have an impact kerry's colorful paraphrase of bena franklin aside the back story at all the diplomatic wheeling and dealing is pretty interesting russian foreign minister sergey lavrov says that he had discussed the proposals with the americans before announcing it at a hastily arranged briefing on monday evening and that mr obama and mr putin discussed the idea privately on the sidelines of last week's summit of the group of twenty nations and mr lavrov discussed it with secretary of state john kerry the president himself told when i felt this during an interview with p.b.s. as news hour last night. and now we're hearing news that russia has a plan

a solution perhaps which would allow syria to take all of its weapons and put it under international control is that something that you've had any conversations at all with president putin about when you were in st petersburg last week i did have those conversations and to this is a continuation of conversations i've had with president putin for quite some time. so it now appears that the russian plan to get syria to handle hand over its chemical weapons has been in the works for a while and wasn't just a random proposal following john kerry's london speech and comment to a question areas president obama told reporters at a white house press conference last summer that any use of chemical weapons in syria's civil war would be a red line essentially backed himself into a corner and he told the rebels here's all you have to do to get my attention and now it looks like a deal that the president discussed last week in private conversation with president putin may be the best way to get out of to get out of going to war with

syria for more on this i'm joined now by michael ratner president emeritus of the center for constitutional rights michael welcome back to the program good to be with you again tom it's always great to see you michael i so value your opinions things are still sort of in flux with this russian plan but i'm curious your thoughts on this arc of the power of the previous week what's been what's been going on for the last few days well i've watched it in utter amazement here you have this giant united states obama's been bragging about the military basically i think suffering a defeat on its desire to use military force against syria and i think it's a real defeat i think obama started by believing he could just use it on his own on a weekend strike which we expected to a week ago he then saw that there was no support for that in the united states or around the world the british parliament said they wouldn't support it he was out there alone he then figured i got to do something i'll take it to congress and then looked like. he was going to go down to defeat in congress and it looked like he

was actually for the first time certainly since nine eleven the u.s. was going to suffer a defeat by its own congress regarding the use of military force and then as you pointed out comes along this proposal by the russians that syria has now accepted that looks like it's a lifeline a defeat that was going to happen to obama but of course it's a victory for both the people of syria who would have been bombed and killed for the people who wanted this settled by diplomacy and not war so it's a very very positive development you can't give obama a lot of credit he looks weak. it looks as if he didn't really know what he was planning or doing the russians on the other hand come out in a very very positive light regarding this as does assad in syria do you think it's possible michel that when president obama met with president putin he has now said that they discussed this very scenario that he said

a you know i've kind of painted myself in a corner here and i don't think either one of us want you know the u.s. strike in syria can you help me out. you know it's conceivable i don't think it was that frank of discussion but my guess is that as it was said there was some discussion about this obama knew he was in trouble on this over exaggeration of both what syria he alleged did as well as the use of incredible force rather than diplomacy so i don't know but one thing that was interesting to me is when senator kerry or our secretary of our secretary of state kerry just said well it was our use of force our threat of force that force the russians to do that and for syria to agree you know that's just not the case that's what they're going to assert that's what obama's going to assert to night in his speech but that's not what happened here in fact it looked like the opposite looked like the u.s. was not going to be able to strike because obama was never going to have the

authority the world was very upset by and so that is not what did it here that's pretty clear but of course that's what the u.s. is going to take credit for well and you know there's nothing wrong with that i mean george aiken counseled lyndon johnson back in the early or the mid sixty's to george aiken the republican congressman from vermont to just declare victory and come home and had lyndon johnson done that i think it would have been a much better world for a whole lot of people and a lot of other you know millions of people literally would still be alive right i agree with you on that tom the problem for me is the u.s. here for a couple of weeks now or more has been illegally threatening force without u.n. sanction and so yes sure let him take the credit but let's understand that this was an illegal claim of using force by the united states i think now there's still two problems out there that i see i mean one is whether the u.s. is going to nitpick what happens now with russia and syria and secondly is there is an effort within the u.n. particularly by the u.s.

and the french to build into a resolution the use of force if somehow the compliance isn't met with in the way that the u.s. or france deter. herman's we've seen that scenario before i think the russians won't allow that if there's a un resolution it should only deal at this point with what they want to do about chemical weapons and not build in a used to force that's not diplomacy that's just a trigger to foresee the way it'll work is that the un will have no force and the us congress will pass something that has force and the russians will gold and will and we and syria will go along with the un one and the and the the congressional one will just be some chest thumping. i think there's a good chance that scenario play out as well but of course let's say it again clearly without the un security council approving the use of force i don't care if our congress passes one hundred resolution saying you can bomb syria it's still flatly illegal it's

a war crime it's the crime of aggression let's just put that out there squarely and well and we should go back to it is a bit a whole varieties and you go back to reagan in grenada you can bill clinton in kosovo the house of representatives did not give him the vote he wanted and absolutely correct you need to make war by the united states you need two pieces of authority you need the united nations or self defense in this case not self defense but you need the united nations and you need our congress you need both of them in the wars you've mentioned grenada we didn't have both in kosovo we didn't have both so those wars were illegal and we certainly don't have them today with regard to syria what's we have just a minute left here mike what's what's your best guess on how this is going to play out over the next couple weeks you know my guess is the opposition has been so great to the bombing of syria that one way or another we're not going to see the bombing of syria at least in the near future on the other hand my view all along

has been that the chemical weapons allegation was a pretext because the us actually wants to weaken assad so that the forces of the quote free syria op. position that it is more interested in supporting. will not be decimated by the assad forces so my view a lot along has been this has been a pretext so instead i think there is still an effort by the us to want to do this and is not as is not come out publicly much in the united states but it's all over the papers in europe the us has been training syrians to go across the border into jordan by the hundreds and they have been infiltrating jordan to fight on behalf of the forces against assad so that's still going on the more we talk about the u.s. intervening the u.s. is intervening and not just the u.s. by the way we also have saudi arabia qatar and there's a whole variety of other countries that are participating but we're we're flat out of time michael rather thanks so much for being with us thanks for having me again tom. coming up it's eighteen sixteen all over again five western maryland counties

want to seen from their state but is this really the best solution to their problems. i would rather questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t.

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a million minutes from around russia we've got the future covered. joining me for tonight's big picture politics panel are marc harrold libertarian commentator and turnings zoe carpenter porter at the nation magazine's d.c. bureau and he newsom member of the national advisory council for the project twenty one black leadership network and let's get to it let's start with syria on monday syrian authorities yesterday they came out and said that they would go along with this russian program and really to call it the russian plan is almost a mistake i think because it was it was john kerry who proposed this in response to reporters' questions and and but any of the russians jumped out syrians went along now we discover that the president actually discussed this with president putin a week ago so maybe this isn't such

a you know maybe even the question was planted who knows i mean i just i was going to play out i'm just curious your thoughts each of your thoughts on start with you here your thoughts on what's going on here and how do you think this is going to play i think the administration really because of the unpopularity of the war and also because of the slippery slope argument even though they are willing to come out and to say it. is actively stated i think the administration really wants a way out if you will. the arm popularity of this war how many congress people have gotten an earful from their constituents isn't this isn't a left or right thing i think this is pretty brand mauls leading opposition in the senate absolutely and so. unless you were not i was going to say you know you've got real problems up you've got the c.b.c. and other staunch progressives that are also stating their opposition to this and no no model is shown that this would need type of resolution passed congress in the house so i think this is kind of where we where we are so in my apologies you know

i think that the administration's media blitz was kind of a colossal failure and i. so this is a way out of that i think it shows the arguments saying that a diplomatic solution was not possible are clearly wrong there are avenues and there is interest in an alternative solution. and now the question will be whether that momentum can can push this forward through the wide gulf between russia and the u.s. because there is a lot of historical distrust there and that will be a key somebody even if even if we can't even if we can't work something out with the russians do you think it's. conceivable that president obama would do a bill clinton did which he got a vote for striking serbia from the house hadn't voted yet he went ahead and started dropping the bombs the house voted they said no he just kept bombing and to this day nobody sambhu well the house actually came to a stalemate it was it was

a typo which is the last vote right but at that point the bombing campaign was already underway and i think it was a pretty different sure it was a pretty different scenario to this one which is where we haven't actually initiated strikes who would be unprecedented if there were a clear rejection of the authorization in congress but there could be a scenario where that authorization never actually comes to a full vote and it's been delayed now and so it's unclear what the process will be in congress postmark clinton had nato with russia and president obama is going to hang an out to dry here he's all alone there largely alone he's got the whole long france the socialists to say it was do something but it seems like you know i mean i think you have to get back to thinking about of the department of defense i think that's what it's for is to defend this country i think we're way too spread out i don't think we should go for this i don't think a lot of think there's a lot of widespread opposition to this but it's interesting politically when you look at it you know you have john mccain and of course his opponent was president

obama and you see that wherever you were with that i think one of the reasons a lot of people voted for the president was a different view. on foreign policy i don't think it's been deliberate there's john mccain there's the president together when we watched the foreign policy debate last year i think we all said well there's really no difference as far as this idea of the evidence are pretty clear it's not imminent i mean we're talking about when you have to when you're gaskin to delay a vote on whether you should go bomb someone there's not the type of imminence in my opinion that the war powers act really talks about and it's clear what has to happen there has to be a declaration of war it's very clear if there's not an immediate threat to this country and there squarely not an immediate threat to this country i think you're right just to kind of tie this up on the back story we have that kennedy. mark or curt ok great back back in one thousand nine hundred sixty two president kennedy was asked at a news conference out keep in mind kennedy won the one nine hundred sixty election by beating up nixon that nixon was vice president and he let cuba go communist that

was the big thing in the election and everybody was you know oh my god the communists and so for two years kennedy during kennedy's presidency nixon was beating him up because he hadn't yet stopped cuba from being communist and nixon was planning on running for president again which he did sixty eight and and so there was a certain amount of like chest thumping testosterone going around around all this whole thing about cuba and so somebody at a press conference asked kennedy what would you do if there were offensive weapons in cuba and he said you know we would have a very vigorous response and he said something that was fairly strong to that effect that then set nixon off and nixon sort of run around the country gone he's not going to do anything he's a wimp baiting going to happen he's soft on communism and two weeks later kennedy opens a formal press conference with this. if at any time the communist build up in cuba were to endanger or interfere with our security in any

way or become an offensive military base. nikken capacity for the soviet union then this country will do what it must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies. now there was just surely response to nixon and that led directly to the cuban missile crisis when the cuban missile crisis happened secretary of defense mcnamara came to kennedy and said these missiles don't really have any significance here they're irrelevant we've got missiles closer to russia and turkey this is no big deal but he had painted himself into a corner by making this red line statement here obama does the same thing a year ago just about the same it's actually a longer timescale of kennedy so i'm just you know we just have a few seconds here left on this topic but i'd just like to do in each one of you mark thoughts on the whole red line thing and how maybe president should be careful about doing i mean you have you back yourself into a corner obviously that ninety miles away from our coast is a little bit more of a defensive try again i just don't think there's any defensive aspect to what we're

doing what we would do in syria for this country so this isn't even a strong zone and i think i don't know the red line is particularly useful and i think that now will be interesting to see whether we try to fold in those. calls for intervention with the calls for diplomacy or whether we can separate them now and therein lies the danger of sound bites yeah yeah so well ok let's move on the u.s. is inching closer toward the debt ceiling the bipartisan policy center just issued a report saying that the federal government is going to hit our debt we're going to actually we hit our debt limit on may nineteenth and but you know they've been playing with numbers over the treasury department they've got all these we call them extraordinary measures and so sometime between october eighteenth the november fifth the so-called x. date is going to hit we're going to just play a flat out run out of money and if there's no deal by the x. state then the sky's going to fall and you know we almost reached this once before and it led to the downgrade but i have not been hearing you know the republicans

talking quite so a lot about this as they were say six months ago a year ago two years ago so what are your thoughts on where this is going to play out and have they kind of gone into hiding. what are they necessarily go. into hiding i think there are a lot of distractions or lots of other things going on i think that the party leadership is very much split from the portion of the base that wants to wrap up the defund obamacare push in with the debt ceiling and i think the party leadership really doesn't want that to be part of the debate i would say it's fairly divided and i think it's i think people are showing to wake up to the fact that it's a pretty silly argument that that money has already been approved it's been appropriated and. so refusing to raise the debt limit is kind of a ridiculous is suspended after you've already approved our but it doesn't make any logical solomon here that's the president's argument every time as that is they're raising the debt ceiling doesn't mean we're going to spend more money it means we're going to pay for the bills that congress has already authorized this

republican congress or you think's going to happen while the sum of good principles bad tactics i think that every time this whole argument about shutting down the government comes up the republicans from the cells on the wrong side of the aisle it's difficult position to take because i think we still need to have a very tough discussion about the explosion in spin how do we how do we pay for all these things but the problem is the p.r. battle in the g.o.p. continues to struggle with this p.r. battle that is we always choose to drop around defunding a law that's already passed we had we were supposed to have a referendum on obamacare in twenty twelve through an election and had a referendum although if this debate doesn't happen until after our first people was already be signing up for obamacare this is a you have to get to form the obama unfortunately this has turned into a referendum on obamacare we should have had that discussion in twenty twelve the republicans didn't make that clear so i'm with you mark yeah i think i think this time around the reason you're here and less about is everyone knows this is

a political football that gets tossed around as we come up to this deadline and looking at it from a place i certainly think we need to do something about spending i think debt ceiling to a lot of the public also there's this idea that if we if we reach the debt ceiling and we and we don't raise it then. somehow this will start to decrease our debt of course you can get me deep in the c.d.o. numbers and everything else and you know torture statistics long enough they'll tell you what you want to hear but i bet you doesn't work that way and i think the biggest thing now that we're hearing a little bit less about is one very much the distractions and two everyone knows for the most part there's going to be another c.r. it's not really going to hit here as you continuing resolution can do and this is a kick the can down i think both parties do and we've seen it for years and i think to some degree people are punch-drunk about this and you bring it up and they say at the eleventh hour they'll get this done and they probably will the western maryland initiative this is a group of conservatives in western maryland who are saying eastern maryland's too liberal we want to divide in northern colorado the. northern colorado people want to separate from the central colorado people in this guy you county in california

they want to secede from the rest of california they're up in northern california there's been talk about this in texas forever i mean this is just kind of an ongoing mean whether it's counties or states what's driving mark this is session this sentiment that we're going to go well that the country is very divided in even within states and one of the things that it's in some of the articles that were about this is it is interesting when you look at the fact that lower population states still have those two senators so to some degree those few those fewer people have more power but i think a lot of it is for years and years we've talked about disenfranchisement it's usually been along gender racial grounds there were ways that people wanted to disenfranchise people that didn't vote the way they wanted to and i think large segments of the country because it's divided into states but those states are divide along partisan lines they feel disenfranchised and they continually see their money being spent in ways they don't like because if you live in a place where you're in the minority your money is likely being spent in some way you don't agree with and this is a real always in this is a reaction to it i think so your thoughts on this is well i think if we're

concerned about a non representative political system there are lots of. issues that we should be concerned about like gerrymandering and voter id and things like that so it seems to me that while this debate may see interest. things about a rural urban divide which is very real i think in political terms and in material terms as well i'm not sure that secession would it would solve any of the grievances or that it's practical. and that is a very important discussion to have as we become more of an organized society we see it with that divide between rule number is going to be bigger and bigger and at the same time you'll also see taxes tax money being spent on redistribution it's policies so because of that. there will be a breaking point i don't know if this is the breaking you know you know here's an interesting thought if you took the five largest states floor and broke florida becomes two states you know my i mean everything else texas becomes two states california becomes three states new york becomes two states you would have each

state gets two senators you would have a permanent democratic majority in the u.s. maybe we should all be talking about this but it will be right back more politics than a lot of. london . the whole world is. the original one the one on the end. of the court that building at the end of the street another one a more transparent society gets the money or the public tears become we see military and state police forces mobilized against people who blend into the city who inhabit the city the more people trust electronic devices the more defenseless the. fear that it is a. hierarchy. one

of your cultural phenomena like. the face i think you. it was. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. the mission. couldn't take three. three. three. three. three. three blows video for your media projects. tom.

welcome back to inside politics panel joining me tonight are marc harrold zoe carpenter and huey news so let's get back to it yesterday the d.c. circuit court of appeals heard arguments in a case that has the potential to shape the future of the internet and the ways that we use it lawyers for the f.c.c. said that the f.c.c. is new controversy i don't know that neutrality regulations. they were being challenged by of arise so that this was before the st judge panel we don't have a huge ruling yet we just you know have the arguments the supporters say the net neutrality preserves an open internet everybody has access you don't have to pay you know whether you're selling something out if you're the new york times or if you're a little tiny blog same cost to send stuff out you know to pay to pull stuff in whether it's coming from the new york times or whether.