i think. a. lot of your take my take a live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call to it tonight zero four twenty one thirty four if you're outside the united states add a one before that number for the u.s. country code let's go to our first video comment of the night canyon in syracuse new york. it's on this is keegan at syracuse university our district system is absolutely broken shouldn't we move to a proportional system where every american is equally represented in their ideas if for example three percent of the country is green party shouldn't we have three percent green party representation in congress thanks. yes i think it's

a brilliant question kagan and you know most americans don't even know what proportional representation is but the fact of the matter is that you know our form of government was we were very early you know i mean it was like but wait someone seen hundreds the minutes of of the no seven hundred seven hundred eighty seven you know when the constitution was written and it really wasn't until as i recall eighteen fifty the maybe eight hundred sixty in the eight hundred fifty s. or eight hundred sixty s. . that anybody came up with the idea of proportional representation and so you know . the democracies that have been created since our civil war essentially have all gone with the john stuart mill was the guy who came up with the idea as i recall in his book on liberty and and in any case the countries that have come along since our civil war have said hey that you know just or i'm not a pretty good idea let's you know whatever put you know if the party gets three percent of the vote they get three percent of the seats of a party is twelve percent of the vote they get twelve percent the seats and you get

a whole bunch of different parties they get to form coalitions and and eventually come up with a governing majority and that's pretty much and that's why all these different countries have all these different political parties and why there's room for you know everything from a communist party to a to the you know to a hard core right wing party and not so much here in the united states we've got a two party system and madison realized that after read written the constitution he freaked out he wrote a warning to us about it federalist the number ten or number twelve his is screed about faction but he didn't know what to do because you know he died before john stuart mill was writing about. proportional representation there have the problem is there may be a way to do it legislatively i've seen some very creative suggestions over the years but really practically it's going to take a constitutional amendment to make this happen and nobody is seriously focusing on that i think first we have to focus on getting money out of politics so that then we can have these kind of conversations so that. back to go to move to amend dot

org and let's amend the constitution to strip money out of politics brett in indiana left us a message on our rant weiner's press. tom i think you should know something about our governor of indiana mike pants i think he deserves a little air time he has doubled down on marijuana laws in indiana going the other way for the rest of the country making one third of an album now a felony this might have something to do with opening a twenty four hundred bed private prison in new castle in the end in which governor pimps took a nice twenty five thousand dollar campaign contribution from a group called c g who runs these private prisons now we're going to be putting people one third of an ounce to i think this is very very ugly thank you tom. well mike pence started out as

a right wing talk show host back i debated him once at a talkers convention years ago and he came quite well prepared let me add. he's somebody you have to take quite seriously and i don't know the facts of whether he took a campaign contribution from the private prison industry but if that's the case it should be widely publicized in your state and whether it is or nah. you know that the private prison industry in every state is lobbying for tougher laws of all kinds you know they they need more customers we have more people in prison in the united states than any other country in the world both in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis and it's because of this kind of corruption it wasn't always this way but it is now and when you again we need to get money out of politics so that we can get capitalism out of the public out of out of the out of the commons frankly there should be no private prisons was like there should be no private

public schools and you know you've heard that rant before let's pick up our calls judy in upper darby pennsylvania a judy welcome to the program thanks hi i voted for obama caves are president i think they're time he starts acting like a prize for him and i could not ask for a proc. harsh i wanted a black harry truman. got it judy thank you for the call their. number one. i mean you know we have what we have and i think when the president does right we should congratulate him and when he does bad we should call him out i think this whole you know it all would never grow salute everything i think that's you know not all that productive or all that useful president obama though has a. he also has a unique challenge if you want to try to emulate harry truman. give them hell harry

you know harry truman would call out republicans by name. franklin roosevelt did two there were three three republicans that he used to use as a montra the last one was a guy named fish are the other two. but the problem is that i remember two years ago or so that president obama did that interview with as i recall it was c.b.s. news they played it in the evening and he said i'm so damn upset about he used the word damn. you know i mean like you know lyndon johnson would do this nobody think twice about it you know but but when the when obama did it drudge runs this headline obama goes street showing the darkened picture of our first african-american president so he has a unique situation when it comes to taking on. you know being playing political hardball on the other hand he has a big bully pulpit any could be speaking out a lot more on

a lot of really important issues that you know so i understand your sentiment i'm not sure that the strategy is to imitate harry truman i would like to see a little more lyndon johnson a little more behind the scenes arm twisting and a little more jack kennedy a little lot more out front saying here's what we want to aspire to although he has been doing a fair amount of that lately it's just the media doesn't cover it richard in los angeles hey richard what's up. it's not tom is it true that if the keystone pipeline is ok to give him the ok to build. it can be an oil company will be given and a domain to take away land from the american people yeah it's already happened it's already happened the throughout the southern leg was all taken by eminent domain the original the keystone northern leg was taken by eminent domain and if they do the keystone extra large the x.l. pipeline you know down the hook up to the southern line rather than to go over to

the midwestern refineries that will be taken by a so. is there a follow through follow up on that richard or or you're gone ok sorry kevin and pottstown pennsylvania eminent domain by the way is under the under the fifth amendment to fifth amendment gives the federal government or state or county governments for that matter gives government the power to take somebody as property as long as they're reimbursed the fair market value and the supreme court has ruled that used to be only for public purposes like building a courthouse or a school or a road now they can do it even to give it to a private corporation just so long as it is it satisfies the public good and that's there's a very large questions in my mind so keystone bible and without regard calvin and pasta on pennsylvania avenue on talk about unemployment. yeah i'm one of the one point six million people that are waiting for congress to sign the emergency unemployment benefit. you have my sympathy that that's that's going to be enough.

yes ministration i really lost my bedroom. my wife and i now live in a one bedroom apartment and you know with these kind of actions being taken by a congress more than likely to lose. because. they don't seem to care about the american people anymore. is their question and their have. just wondered you know my opinion that. and i don't see much coverage on the news about this either i don't know one point six million people isn't a lot of people are with you kevin thanks for the call. and near welcome to blow off some steam here and this is an issue that we've been talking about regularly i mean at least every other day the this this crisis of nearly two million people and soon going to be too many and that is going to be three million people and that is going to be four million people. as we go through the year and the next year i mean

this recession is not going to come to an end until the republicans stop obstructing any attempts by the president or the democrats to actually create jobs to put americans back to work we need to go back to the policies that we had right up until the one nine hundred fifty s. that the government is the employer of last resort these were this by the way was in the democratic political driven democratic party's platform from one thousand nine hundred eighty four to one thousand nine hundred eighty eight that the government should be the employer of last resort during times of economic crisis the democrats need to put it back in their platform and they need to be actually doing john and clean texas say john you want to talk about america's oil use. there are very very. noisy about the gas that is being prompted to there we have a nearby oil refinery and it just makes me very angry and then we breathe in that

air and not only does it so that if we don't have the back of we. were right there next to our oil well. you know it's a ridge or john thank you for the call thanks for watching the show is this is a real problem and this is the this is the logic behind or the ill logic behind the keystone x.l. pipeline is let's take this incredibly poisonous wall material i mean you know oil is bad enough but the two minutes coal essentially that you can grind into dust and mix with water and call this stuff tar sands oil slurry that you run down the pipes that they want to bring down from canada let's take this incredibly poisonous stuff . basically boil it and you know take out the high fractions the stuff that will will dissolve out of it under two hundred under heat which would be gasoline and diesel fuel and then all the tall yelling inapt hexane and all those things pull that stuff out take the crap that's left over it's called coke and pet coke and put

it in giant piles of poison and we'll keep the poison here and then we'll sell the gasoline in the diesel fuel to other countries through the panama canal and off to europe it's nuts it's turning america into the third world that's it for your take by take live thanks for all your calls we didn't get to your calls tonight tries back next week keep the video questions coming through easy just grab your phone or turn on your computer if you've got a camera on hold of you know point your own face and record a question or comment and then e-mail it to us your take my take at g. mail dot com. coming up a little bunsen big oil executives alike are saying that construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline is inevitable and sooner or later we will be using dirty toxic. in the interest tarzan's well is that true. or do we really still have a chance to walk construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline once and for all more on that internets filter.

i marinate join me. in that impartial and financial reporting commentary interview and much much. only on bombast and only on.

so sometimes you know it you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes as the firesign theater says everything you know. and go with it you're wrong. you're right. to think that you're if you don't. really mean you go is wrong despite being decades removed from the cold war mccarthyism and red scares communism is still a dirty word in american politics and society today as thanks in large part to a total lack of understanding that americans have when it comes to communism and that if people don't understand communism also don't understand the true nature of capitalism so if you think that only communist governments rely on violence whether capitalism is synonymous with individuality then everything you know is wrong

joining me now is jesse meyers a journalist and contributor to salon dot com in rolling stone magazine jesse welcome back. thanks for me back to your most recent piece for salon which was brilliant by the way is titled you why you're wrong about communism seven misperceptions about it and capitalism and i think frankly the misperceptions about capitalism are even more important than the misperceptions about communism but you know let's let's just touch on some of this stuff first of all what do you see as the most pernicious of the misperceptions about both communism and capitalism. well the main thing that i've been getting over the last month since the five economic reforms piece that i had in rolling stone is the simple invocation by right wingers of the name stalin or mao as though that performs some sort of like argumentative work when of course it doesn't because if you want to invoke human

rights atrocities that happened under communist governments then i'm afraid you've also got to account for the human rights atrocities that happen in our capitalist governments and nobody is prepared to do that and the thing that i found out with this piece the one in salon and comparing the two is that. you know people like me who are who are willing to acknowledge that there were horrors that happened under communist dictatorships the great chinese famine in the gulags and stuff like that we're willing to admit that where is the defenders of capitalism either ignore or deny the atrocities that happen in capitalism and you know when you confront them on it it's like total cognitive dissonance because we've been taught in this country frankly that capitalism is in every case and everywhere in the world libertarian righteous and that communism is the great evil and you know neither of those is really backed up by the history so what are the horrors of capital. well i mean there's so many you know that at the very beginning of industrial capitalism when britain really really had its first stirrings of the industrial revolution the

great commodity that was really fueling industrialism was textiles and who knows where cotton was coming from in the you know late seventy's hundreds and hundreds knows that capitalism therefore thrived on the atlantic slave trade not to mention the extermination of the indigenous population of this country the book by mike davis late victorian holocaust which talk about basically british imperialist starvation and. not just british but european imperialist starvation and slaughters in africa southeast asia latin america and then of course the various massacres and coups and you know horrors perpetrated by the us the cia and its allies its proxies all over the world. to defeat communism after the second world war including you know the movie that is now nominated for an oscar the documentary the act of killing which details how a million so-called communists in indonesia were killed their names supplied by the cia i mean these are things that you know good patriotic americans are never asked

to account for because we are simply told that like like i remember my third grade teacher telling me that communism and democracy were opposites and i can see now how ridiculous that is and we can see the terrible bankruptcy of intellectual understanding that education like that causes when when a release of bees like this is. from the right what are the components of communism . we should seriously have a conversation about integrating into the american body politic and economic. i would say that the two big things that i really want to struggle for over my lifetime that i consider basically approaches towards communism is de commodifying everything you know we see in the united states that everything including like caring for other people and. all of the things that we find essential to our lives our need to be priced in order to be exchanged in markets and i just don't think that that's true i mean i think that slots of things are inherently valuable and

ought to be treated that way and should shouldn't be treated like they're just commodities for exchange and then the other thing is work i mean the c.b. over came out saying that you know two or three million people are going to leave work because like they're not hostage to work anymore because they have health care that's a good thing in the more that we can free people from the tyranny not just a i mean libertarians have it right that governments can be tyrannical obviously that's true but the other thing that's tyrannical that libertarians one acknowledge is the tyranny of work you know we live in this democracy but we put ourselves in tyranny for eight hours a day they can fire you and if you don't have a job you're basically cut off from the means of your own subsistence so liberating people from that second tyranny of work and making sure that people can live a full life and produce culture and community without having. to work for a boss that's trying to work them harder and pay them less in order to get rich that that's really the essence i think of a socialist or if you prefer a communist vision do you think do you think one way to start moving in that direction is this movement that is the swiss are going to be voting on this in a few months. guaranteed minimum income there's

a variation of it actually going on in alaska with the permanent everybody man woman child baby everybody gets two thousand dollars a year yeah absolutely i can't see step forward from capital meaningful step forward from capitalism to a more liberal tory fulfilling economic system that doesn't include a universal basic income i think that's absolutely crucial i think it's best paired with a job guarantee for several reasons but basically it makes whereas right now what we have is in voluntarily unemployment millions of people who want a job and can't find them and involuntary employment where there's millions of people want to quit their job but can't because they need the pension or they need health care or whatever we want to move to a system that has voluntary employment and voluntary unemployment and i think that's really really crucial universe basic incomes will be necessary for that sort of emancipator transformation. thanks so much of the brilliant analysis. thanks to now everything you know about communism is right.

yesterday open the thirty day state department public comment window on the keystone x.l. pipeline and boy is the rhetoric starting to heat up. you know clayton williams the one nine hundred ninety republican gubernatorial candidate in texas once said about rape that quote as long as it's inevitable you might as well lie back and enjoy it. that was an incredibly insane and ignorant comment and it lost him the election to richards but twenty four years later people are essentially using that exact same insane rationale with regard to the keystone x.l. pipeline they're saying that as long as it's another hole where we should just lay

back except learn to love it they're also saying that america is going to be fossil fuel dependent far into the future and that the keystone pipeline will help lower gas prices in america and make us more energy independent but the keystone pipeline is not inevitable and america doesn't have to be a fossil fuel dependent nation and the oil from the keystone pipeline won't do anything to help gas prices in this country big oil supporters and pundits across the media have been saying that the use of tar sands oil from canada and the construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline are inevitable but that's simply not the case on monday's episode of big picture i spoke with susan casey lefkowitz director of the international program with the natural resources defense council about the state department's report on the keystone x.l. pipeline that was released last week i asked her about the report and if a mention that extracting tar sands oil from canada was inevitable here's what she had to say. what's actually in the report is a number of scenarios so it says under some scenarios keystone x.l.

might not be the main driver and under others it might be the main driver of tar sands expansion and less of climate emissions and when we look at reality of what we really know what we see is other pipelines aren't happening tar sands development is not inevitable there's a lot of opposition to it it's very expensive it's very dirty industry analysts anyway a slice of the use of tar sands oil is not inevitable we don't have to extract that toxic dirty dangerous stuff from under the ground. now what about the pro keystone talking point that our country is a fossil fuel dependent nation and that we're going to stay that way for a long time we should just accept well america is actually becoming less and less of a fossil fuel dependent nation literally every day the u.s. solar industry had its second largest quarter ever during the third quarter of twenty thirteen and residential solar power installations were up forty five percent in two thousand and thirteen over just the year before two thousand and

twelve in texas alone covering half a roof with solar panels is enough to generate all of the electricity used by an average family in the lone star state and thanks to the boom in solar panel use last year the u.s. outpaced germany in solar power installations for the first time in fifteen years but solar power isn't the only clean and green form of energy on the rise wind power is also gaining traction wind power are accounted for forty two percent of new energy generating capacity in two thousand and twelve making it the number one source of new energy capacity in that year two thousand and twelve in iowa alone wind power generated nearly twenty five percent of that state's energy in two thousand and twelve and in texas it accounted for nearly ten percent of energy energy generated statewide finally what about that argument from that oil of the from the keystone x.l. pipeline will help reduce gas prices across the nation and make us more energy independent. even trans canada has said that oil from the keystone x.l.

pipeline is not guaranteed to stay in the united states back in two thousand and twelve during a congressional hearing on the pipeline project alex poor bay the head of the trans canada's pipeline division was asked right upfront if he would support legislation requiring canadian tar sands oil and its by products to be sold only in the u.s. he replied no i can't do that. and numerous other studies have found that much of the oil transported through the keystone x.l. pipeline is actually going to be exported from the gulf of mexico after it's been refined we won't see a drop of that toxic dirty and dangerous tar sands oil unless of course we're forced to deal with the tar sands oil spill disaster meanwhile a report by consumer watchdog found that if the keystone x.l. pipeline is approved americans especially in the midwest will see higher gas prices adding up to an additional three to four billion dollars each year that's roughly twenty to forty to forty cents a gallon is an increase. on

a gallon of gas in the midwest and a few cents increase everywhere else. we fought hard to make our voices heard about the keystone x.l. pipeline over the past several months and finally our government is beginning to realize the grave affects that the keystone x.l. pipeline could have on our climate but our fight isn't over we can let those who think that the pipeline is inevitable or that america is going to be a fossil fuel dependent nation forever erase the progress that's been made most important we need it we need to make it clear to big oil the obama administration and their supporters that we are going to just lie back and enjoy the keystone x.l. pipeline and the toxic dirty and dangerous oil that it would be transporting is time to stop the environmental rape of america and our planet once and for all. that's the way it is to died thursday at the ori six twenty four to democracy begins when you get out there get active tag girls.

join me. in that impartial and financial reporting commentary interview and much much. only on the best and only. i'm. trying to. do and. it's all about money and i'm actually sick for politics right.

here in just two. days. so we leave the. motions for. all your party there's a bill. or shoes that no one is asking with to get that you deserve answers from. politics only mark. foley.

coming up on r t was so a convo powergrid under attack a former federal regulator claimed sniper shot up a power substation while the f.b.i. denies that it was an act of terror will have more details on that attack ahead and just one day until the start of the sochi olympics athletes representing nations from around the world are warming up before the events they begin a report from the resort city coming up. and the birth rate in the u.s. continues to drop are americans in a romantic recession we'll answer that later in the show. it's thursday february sixth eight pm in washington d.c. and i live near.