i think. the really. good you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy right call for us. to make you know i'm tom are in on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then walk a bit. more about the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour nelson mandela

fought for many things during his life and health care for all human beings regardless of growth or status as one of the issues he was most passionate about what needs to be done to make mandela's dream of universal health care a reality here in the united states and right now millions of americans are courageously fighting illnesses and diseases that may ultimately take their lives rather than wait around for doubt pain and suffering a tumbler that should these people have the option to end their lives or not. is. in the best the rest of the news today current and former leaders from across the globe gathered in johannesburg south africa for a memorial service honoring the life and legacy of nelson mandela and part of mandela's legacy that's been honored is his undying support for universe. health

care in fact banks to mandela the south african constitution reads everyone has the right to have access to health care services including reproductive health care the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights as john nichols points out in his latest piece for the nation and a hard for broader human rights in south africa and south africa and gaza to sion was ratified in one thousand nine hundred six he said that the new constitution obliges us to strive to improve the quality of life of the people in this sense our national consensus recognizes that there is nothing else that can justify the existence of government but to redress the centuries of unspeakable privations by striving to eliminate poverty illiteracy almost in this and disease is it obliges us to to promote the development of independent civil society structures all across the globe countries are beginning to listen to the wise words of mandela and

realizing that health care should be a universal right but here in the united states even as obamacare begins to show just how successful it can be republicans are arguing that universal health care is not the answer to america's health care problems we still believe in a system where only the wealthy have access to life saving treatments and medications while everyone else is forced to build up mountains of medical debts because of high insurance premiums and preexisting conditions so as a time republicans embrace the legacy of nelson mandela and help to make health care a right for all americans joining me now for more on that is john nichols washington correspondent for the nation magazine welcome back its endless adam thompson libertarian radio host and attorney in new york city welcome back. good to be back tom great to have both of you with us so first of all john just to recap i think i told the story told very well reality but. the bottom line in this

is that nelson mandela who we are honoring today and perhaps making even more of a hero that he himself would have wanted to be. is now being kind of reviewed for all the things that he really focused on in his life and there is no question that one of the things that was very very high on his list of priorities was this access to health care it was a big deal because in south africa there was a real division between a white minority that got health care and a great african-american population or african population apologize didn't get access now mendell that was a man of a certain unlike mitt and that enlightenment period was the world war two era he was a young man at that time and it is important to understand that his ideas about universal health care were founded in franklin roosevelt's four freedoms it was roosevelt who began to talk about access to health care as really needed right germany had

you know as a health care since the ninety's and other business scandinavian countries too but when roosevelt put those four freedoms forward in nine hundred forty one and then eleanor roosevelt came forward is the chair of the committee that developed the universal declaration of human rights this was a formative period in mandela's life and it is not coincidental that when the universal declaration of human rights was honored at its fiftieth anniversary it was nelson mandela who went and gave a great address to the united nations in which he broke at length about that right to health care so adam why would republicans suggest that we don't have a right to health care i don't understand it's. been on your show before tom when you asked me that exact exact same question i can't tell you why they would i think that in this day and age there should be a right of every person to have health care just as it's stated in the. clip that

you showed i think with the point in in our lifetime that everyone is entitled to care the fact that we don't have it in the united states the way should be like other civilized countries you go down the list japan started it in sixty one the economy wasn't thriving at the time once they put it into effect it took off and it worked it's been going on for years in england in france as you said before in germany canada it's successful everywhere that it's done and it's just satisfying a basic human right that everyone should have that no one should be left out everyone should get care when this sick how is that simple to me how is that a libertarian position. well again you have me on as a libertarian i don't think it's a libertarian position but i'm not a libertarian like i like i told you before i call it's issue as i see it point by point on health care it should be available to everyone it should be a right period yeah ok so john colin powell the former republican secretary of state. plotted european single payer health care system in an event last week how

long before people who identify themselves as conservatives or to the right of things start talking the way that adam just did well i think it may be a while we have a great wrestling match for the soul of the republican party at this point and i would not lie to people tell you it's got to get resolved even in the next cycle i think is going to take several election cycles and frankly. we will see what the voters tell the republican party about the viability of its ideas but this is something to understand why are republicans at least some conservative republican so virulently opposed to a universal health care plan i think one of the core reasons is because they know that when plans of this sort are implemented when they begin to really work then that issue is taken off the table much as adam is suggesting it doesn't become a conservative liberal issue anymore everybody's on. bored with it and what's

important understand is margaret thatcher the great hero of conservatives presided over england with a national health care plan she did not treat that plan well i'm not trying to try to she did never proposed to get rid of it ever and similar that if i could if i could joan only consider i could go on to say something i never proposed to get rid of if you had a my health care at all would like to go for it. i think an important point that a lot of people miss is if you listen to a lot of the rhetoric today from people that oppose a single payer plan universal care is that we can't afford it it won't work they give you all the different pitfalls but i just like to raise one point look at all the countries that have been doing it for decades and decades and decades did it fail there did they stop and say hey we're going bankrupt this isn't working we have to change the program you know of all the things that don't mean those countries that work the universal health program is the one that doesn't work maybe all the parts of their economy a failing of the trade deficits all those different things come into play but that

part of it is working so using net as a template we should implemented here it would certainly make the working you know the working class lives much easier if you have built into you know your spending of money health care taken out through taxes let's say can you imagine that you could make the same money but health care is paid to the taxes that we're already paying let's maybe cut back on what we're spending on producing four thousand million bombs that we don't need and cut back on military say to a degree i just put it towards health care put it towards education things that will really advance our culture had on the really make a difference i think the core reason. why so many republicans so many conservatives and virtually every libertarian i've ever been are so opposed to a national health care system of any kind is whether it's single payer or whether it's national health like in one house is that it demonstrates the government actually. can do some things well and the billionaires who fund the libertarian

party and in general i mean you know the big business if people don't trust government to be able to do things well if government steps back in pretty much any area it creates a vacuum into which business can step in you know basically make a buck off the commons so how do you how do you you know how do you respond to that to that argument that this is going to cause people to trust government. this some things that it's our right to trust government i'm all about maintaining individual rights trying to keep the government out of our lives as much as possible i'm against all the spying that's going on you know there's so many different they should attack the government on but education should be one of them health care shouldn't be one of them you need to implement those systems the best way you can and usually this to either the federal government or at the local level with the state level but it has to be done somehow no matter how it's done i'm

going to take the people who provide the less let me let me just suggest that that there is certainly a modified libertarian argument for this which is that if you can take the burden of paying for health care off the table then people can start to really focus on a small business focus on doing something that they might not be willing to do if they were afraid of losing their health protections with their employer or something like that so now it's are not classic libertarianism but the fact of the matter is that i do believe that you can give people freedom by giving them access to health care well that's the that was the essence in one thousand july of one nine hundred thirty six franklin roosevelt you know in the sense of this man is not a free man you're not free if you're hungry and i think it's your job well understood concept universally around the world it is one that fortunately in america has taken a little bit longer to take hold and libertarians would would say no that's not true that's not what freedom is freedom is you're motivated because you're starving

and that is why i suggested it was a modified their territory john adams thank you both a to the. great city thank you for coming up right now a judge in new mexico is considering a case that would make physician assisted suicide legal in that state those suffering from extreme illness who have little hope of recovery should know americans who are living through unbearable pain and suffering have the freedom to choose if and when they want to.

the. drama is the chance to be ignored. in the. stories others refuse to notice her. face is changing the world lights now a. full picture of today's events based on demand from around the globe and look to. the.

i mean on the left that's. when the obama said. mr miller never. heard that i was politically corrected i'm clark correcting conservatives according to a pew research center poll sixty three percent of conservatives believe that our nation and our culture are spirit of the rest of the world they believe wholeheartedly in the idea of american exceptionalism and think that america is the shining city on the hill for the rest of the world to admire that is c.j. world at alter net points out. america looks a lot more like a broken banana republic than a shining city on the hill. notes that a single u.s. not one single u.s. city is included in the world's top ten most livable cities and only one u.s. airport makes the list of the top one hundred in the world our infrastructure is literally crumbling to the ground and our transportation systems are stuck in the

twentieth century meanwhile student american high school students are ranked thirtieth in math the world when it comes to life expectancy and infant mortality in the us a picture is a much brighter finally as well and points out the only things america is leading the world in are the number of people in jail per capita and instances of adult onset diabetes the fact is you can just look at the crumbling electrical lines outside of your house and realize that america is very far. from being the most secure country. when it comes to conservatives and their strong belief in american exceptionalism it's a classic case of money isn't everything that it's why the politically correct. praise the lord lord him for a new hobby why not give very gentle knitting

a try you know that gentle needy still confused all that performance artist casey jenkins who uses badger movies as part of her show to explain. i'm spending twenty eight days. old that i've been sent that in my john every day. skein of the pain wound so that it will travel from the center and a chicken up inside me and i pull out the thread and then meet the performance wouldn't pay the performance if i were going a cutout my menstrual cycle on that bus that is when i meant straining and makes maybe a hell of a lot. of the will is what. kind of yank have it it's sort of slightly uncomfortable sometimes arousing some.

oh at least now you know how grandma makes those fancy holiday sweaters for free. it's the good the bad in the very very a stiff or a slip ugly the good the united states of america. united states of america thanks to a booming third quarter of the us a will surpass germany in overall solar panel installation for the first time in fifteen years nine hundred thirty megawatts nine hundred thirty million watts were installed across the country during just the third order of twenty thirteen the second best quarter in the history of the american solar industry as a whole and the best quarter ever for residential solar installations obviously the usa has a huge advantage over germany in terms of population considering how far ahead of

us the germans have been in pursuing clean technology until now this is an encouraging sign solar energy is the future it's about time the u.s. caught up its western help. the bad dave a game a michigan r. and c. official and former congressman is under fire today for comments he made at a republican party gathering about why it's ok for companies to deny gay people spouse will benefits again and said that gay people are likely to exploit the benefits system noting that during his time working at american airlines he saw gay people with aids repeatedly pretend that they were married so they could get healthcare you know because personal anecdotes are always dictate policy. again added to me it's a moral issue it's a biblical issue traditional marriage is word should be on it's been our platform. but also as a moral issue making sure that everyone has health care regardless of their sexual the fact that a game is so blinded by his bigotry that he can't see that he's bad enough but the

fact that he works on party strategy is an r.f.c. the staffer official seated scary. and a very very ugly mark jacobs as we explained speaker john boehner admitted the republican candidates were taking special classes on how to talk to female voters doesn't look like republican mark jacobs the republican candidate for senate in iowa took any of those classes and if he did he certainly didn't pay any attention when asked by w. . reporter dave price but the key to communicating with female voters was. talking to them at an emotional level seriously check it out. i think you have to connect with women on an emotional level and with a wife of twenty five years an eighteen year old daughter you have a lot of coaching on that but in practice all right. so i think it's safe to say the margins did not attend the seminar on how to not talk like a sexist republican course is always

a possibility jacob's did attend the seminar and talk in an emotional level is just what he learned about how to communicate with female voters either way is patronizing and frankly massaging is to get it to toward women is just fear there. is time for death with dignity in america just as scott adams adams the creator of the popular dilbert cartoon recently posted an open letter on his website discussing the prolong agony that his father was going through during his last days on this planet adams writes in part i hope my father dies soon and while i'm at it i might want you to die a painful death too i'm entirely serious on both counts he continues my father age

eighty six is on the final approach to the long dirt nap to use his own phrase his mind is ninety eight percent gone and all he has left is hours or possibly months of hideous unpleasantness in a hospital bed i'll spare you the details but it's as close to a living hell as you can get abs was on to say that if my dad were a cat he would have been put to we would have put him to sleep long ago and not once would we have looked back and thought to soon. i'd like to proactively end the suffering and let him go out with some dignity but my government says i can't make that decision neither can his doctors so for all practical purposes the government is torturing my father until you die is. adams is absolutely right by the nine human beings the right to end their lives with dignity and on their own terms and by prolonging the pain and suffering that they are enduring. we are effectively torturing them as adults points out we treat our pets and more respect and dignity

than we do human beings when it comes to death and then there are the financial implications of forcing people who are in terrible pain and who would prefer to end their lives with dignity to instead suffer through their last days of life in two thousand and eight medicare paid for a staggering fifty five billion dollars just to cover doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients lives to put that in perspective that's more than the two thousand and eight budgets were for the department of homeland security and the department of education. and according to some studies twenty to thirty percent of all the money spent in the last two months of a patient's life may have had no impact on their condition for many of these people the only thing that money did was prolong the time they were in pain but up to the to the wires in the machines that were keeping them alive. some people would choose that perhaps many and should absolutely be given that option it should not be

forced on everybody. there are some people who in the final days of their lives would prefer to gather their friends and family together tell them how much they love them and say good bye and then drink a doctor prescribe formula that will allow them to comfortably fall asleep and their lives. there's a growing movement underway to stop forcing people to endure unbearable pain at the end of life when they don't want to and to let americans decide when to end their lives on their own terms. right now physician a suicide physician assisted suicide the strict guidelines and restrictions is legal in four states oregon washington and montana and new mexico may become the latest state to let americans die with dignity this week a judge will be here in a case brought by a group of doctors and patients which would make physician assisted suicide legal in new mexico. it's one of the plaintiffs in the case who's uterine cancer is in

remission told local television that while she hopes her cancer never returns. saying i want to be able to have the choice to have some kind of control at the end a lot of the opposition towards physician assisted suicide and death with dignity laws comes from religious conservatives who argue that suicide is a mortal sin but interestingly enough death with dignity laws actually reduce suicides in or going to washington where passing their death with dignity laws and a lot of physicians and patients come on my radio show talking with them i learned that the percentage of people who actually killed themselves went down when they had access to a physician proof proof right a drug like. that's because just knowing that they had the option to end their own lives on their own terms help them to become less afraid of death and of dying in pain i had several people call my program so that they were terminal and they had

the physician prescribed medicine on the table next to their bed each one said that just knowing they had control over when they left this world caused them every day to say it could make it through one more day. and ultimately they die a natural death is very common experience of people in death with dignity states is why suicide rates actually drop when people know that they can generally leave whenever they want. death or dignity laws allow them to discuss their own deaths with friends and relatives in a way that puts them in control and is not illegal instead of the more common experience in america which is that terminally ill people will simply shoot themselves or slit their wrists or overdose with an inappropriate drug all in secrecy and shame leaving behind a mess for their loved ones. we owe it to our ship and scott adams his father and the millions of americans suffering with incurable diseases who will see the last days of their lives in the coming years to see that their last days on this planet

are not marked by pain and suffering. but by peace and serenity. they deserve to at least have the option to their lawyers and to go out with dignity when they believe the time is right. the end of war should be as comfortable and even sacred as we can make it. by giving dying people the option of one to end their lives we can bring a much needed measure of dignity and humanity in the process of god. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday december twenty third change and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active today your.

boss was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow

the break. alexander's family cry tears of joy at your great big brother that. rigor at a court of war zone. is a story many sort of movie is playing out in real life. the one. new policies you. pleasure to have you with us here on our t.v. today i roll researcher.

coming up on r t the n b a twenty four team is out on capitol hill lawmakers have been dragging their feet when it comes to funding the defense department but yesterday they announced an agreement so what's in the new n.b.a. and what's been left out details on that ahead and homelessness on the rise in new york the growing income inequality is forcing families out of their homes and as a result the big apple is seeing the most homeless children since the great depression more on these dire economic conditions coming up. and sheriff's deputies charged with abuse in los angeles county eighteen sheriff deputies are being accused of abuse and local prisons now it looks like the jailers might end up being jailed themselves and in-depth look at this case.