been notified and disciplinary actions should have been taken. >> all right. maxine pruitt, thank you so much for joining me on the ed show tonight. that's the ed show, i'm mike eric dyson in for ed schultz. the last word with lawrence o'donnell starts right now. the president talked about jobs, sarah palin talked about mitt romney and eric cantor, took a wide stance for millionaires and billionaires. >> i'm encouraging the congress to take it with jut most seriousness. >> the president loves to talk about millionaires, billionaires, and jet owners. >> the president tries to govern while congress refuses to work. >> the debt ceiling crisis over the last month, i think, has had an unnecessary negative impact on the economy. >> the shift from talking about debt ceiling. >> he's making a pivot. >> jobs, jobs, jobs. >> a mugging. you don't talk about what happened. >> you talk about the shiny

balls of. >> the washington players are already drawing lines in the sand about the next round of deficit reduction. >> now is not the time for us to be considering tax hikes. >> back to our regularly scheduled programming. >> this has been a mess. >> it's a bad deal but it's a done deal. >> this plan is 2 sacred cows strapped together by a time bomb. >> former senator alan simpson found a way to compromise, he joinme. >> smoking more than i believed in the weeds and trees. >> sarah palin jumps into the republican presidential campaign. >> our president, words, blah, blah, blah. it's all talk and no real action. being called terrorists, real domestic terrorists. appalling to have been called acting like terrorists. >> sarah palin is now really kicking mitt romney. >> bless his heart, he did this. >> is rick perry's religious revaproof he's not running for president?

>> is the country ready for another texan in the white house? >> calling on americans to pray and fast like jesus did. >> the shiny balls of millionaires, billionaires. >> good evening from new york. with the threat of a catastrophic debt default barry in the rearview mirror, today president obama moved on to the other ongoing manufactured congressional crisis. >> the faa routinely gets its authorities extended through congress. it's happened 20 times since 2007. this time congress has decided to play some politics with it, and as a consequence, they left town without getting this extension done. here's what this means,

thousands of faa workers being furloughed, including safety inspectors. it also means projects all across the country involving tens of thousands of construction workers being suspended because congress didn't get its work done, and that means folks who are on construction sites, doing work, bringing home a paycheck now potentially find themselves going home without one. >> the president said it would be easy for congress to put those 74,000 people back to work. >> all they have to do is do what they've done 20 times since 2007. >> but congress left town for the remainder of the summer, when they return in september they'll have about two months to make noise while a super committee of congress decides how to legislate another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. the prospects of that super committee reaching an agreement are bad and getting worse by the day. republican leaders already seem determined to appoint members of the super committee who will not

consider tax revenue increases under any circumstances. this afternoon, house majority leader eric cantor assured the tional review, the house is not going to support tax increases period. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell says the lesson from the debt ceiling brinksmanship is that it worked. i think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage. you might take a chance at shooting. most of us didn't think that. what we did learn is this, it's a hostage worth ransoming, and it foces the congress on something that must be done. meanwhile, the public's confidence in congress is at historic low. a cnn opinion research poll taken this week, just 14% said they approve of the job congress is doing while an overwhelming 84% disapprove.

joining me now is former republican senator from wyoming, alan simpson, the co-chairman of the president's national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. thank you very much for joining me tonight, senator. >> always a pleasure. you bet. >> senator, whato you make of the republican leadership in the congress saying that they won't even appoint any members of that super committee who will consider raising tax revenue in any way? >> it's very sad. on the commission, it took us three months just to establish trust. the 18 of us finally established that, and then did have a proposal, which was endorsed by five democrats, five republicans, one independent. that's 60%. that will get you anywhere in washington. it is -- watch the makeup of the super 12 and if they don't put a single member of the gang of six on there, you can know that it's just a structure that will

collapse in its own -- well, i have a word, but we won't use it. >> well, senator, that's why i said, and i think others are saying, that the prospects of that group being able to reach an agreement are not good because they are saying, the republican leadership is saying, they are not going to put on who they would risk end up in an agreement on taxes, and we have the grover norquist pledge, which we've talked about before. there are only, by our count, 13, only 13 republican members of the house and of the senate who have not signed it, and so there are six house republicans who haven't signed it, seven republican senators who haven't signed it, and it seems that they would, in a fair world, be the only ones eligible for membership on this super committee. >> well, i think you want to look what tom coburn did, and he had a beautiful piece today, but

he's got a lot of guts, because he went out there and got rid of $6 billion bucks worth of subsidies and grover norquist had the guts to call that a tax increase, and tom said, one of his great allies, grover would be irrelevant in two years, he can't miss, but he's a good guy with a very bad idea, and he went and gathered up all those signatures when they were strewing roses in the pathways out here. grover comes up sign this. why would anyone sign anything before they heard the debate, before they read the documents, before they did anything? but i'll tell you about grover, if he's more powerful than the president of the united states, when coburn nailed him, he said if you're calling that a tax increase when you take away $6 billion ethanol, that's ludicrous and also deceptive and when we're digging into those tax expenditures and grover and his happy warriors are trying to call that a tax increase, that's a damn lie and he knows it. i'll tell you one thing, only

thing grover can do to you, he can't kill you, can't burn your house, only thing he can do to you is beat you in reelection. if that means more to you than helping your country out of a terrible situation, you ought not be there. >> that seems to be where we are with some of the people in question. "the washington post," by the way, senator, to your and my dismay reports grover norquist one of the winners in the debt ceiling crisis. his pledge not to raise taxes or revenues remains intact as does his reputation as a do not cross member of the gop establishment. he has been crossed, though, this year, and you make a very good point that tom coburn crossed him and tom coburn got about 30 other republican senators to cross on that ethanol subsidy and vote against him.

so is that the kind of crack in the norquist armor that we can hope appears in that super committee? >> well, if grover norquist is more powerful than the president of the united states and the congress, he should run for president. grover norquist should be examined into. where does he get his money? i mean, it's time to now peel all the layers of the onion off of grover norquist. any time anybody else gets this quote famous and powerful, the president or whoever it is in the spotlight, you want to dig in. how does he get his money, where does he come from, how many people on the payroll, who is he, who is he slave to? somewhere that needs to come out soon. because when a guy is this powerful, you want to dig deep in the root. i'm not talking about salacious stuff and his personal life, i'm talking about where does he get his scratch and how does he

terrify people? does he walk up to a guy saying i'm going to defeat you? why would you be scared of anybody who says that? you must be a chicken if you fall from that crap. >> senator, i want to read from your op-ed piece in the "new york times" you co-wrote. we need new finance for the health care system and an ageing population, but it should come from reducing or eliminating tax breaks, not from higher rates. the tax code is riddled with annual tax breaks amounting to $1 trillion, most of which are just government spending in disguise. i want you to talk, senator, to democrats about this, because i think there are a lot of democrats out there, when they hear republicans talk about lowering rates, it sounds like oh, wait a minute, this is a give away. but the point you make that there are so many of these

expenditures within the tax code that you can end up, in effect, increasing my tax burden even with a lower rate if you take away some of the richer deductions and loopholes that i can enjoy. go ahead, senator. >> we were stunned. we were stunned. the commission was stunned to find there were over 180 of those things called tax expenditures. they are really tax earmarks, spending by another name, and they are used by about only 4% of the wealthiest people in the united states, the little guy has never heard of these, he takes a standard deduction. there are stuff in there that would burn a hole in my heart. go look at the 180 of those babies and almost have your finger down your throat. we were saying get rid of them and then do something all the conservatives have been shrieking about, broaden the base, lower the rates, get spending out of the code, we did.

we take the trillion bucks, we don't spend it on something else, that's the key. take it and give them zero to 70,000. give them 8%. pay 14 over 2010. pay 23 and lower the corporate rate to 26 from 36 and the territorial tax structure, you solve a lot of problems and you pick up a lot of scratch. >> that was a winning argument with both parties in the 1980s, senator. alan simpson, thank you very much for being with us tonight. >> it's a pleasure. with the first round of the debt fight now over, how much negotiating room does president obama have in the next round? arianna huff joins me to talk about what happens next. and later, sarah palin messes with mitt romney. ♪ ♪

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former baptist preacher and current host of "huckabee" on fox news, mike huckabee has

added a 9/11 profiteer to his resume. first, president obama is back home in chicago to celebrate his 50th birthday, raise reelection money and catch his breath before the next fight with republicans. arianna huffington from "the huffington post" is here. >> the president loves to talk about the shiny balls of millionaires, billionaires. whoa. right? get. out. exactly! really?! [ mom ] what? shut the front door. right?

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today president obama reiterated his plan to turn his focus back to jobs now that the manufactured debt crisis is over. >> i'm meeting with my cabinet here to make sure that even as they have been throughout these last several weeks, they are redoubling their efforts to focus on what matters most to the american people, and that is how are we going to put people back to work, how are we going to raise their wages, increase their security, how are we going to make sure that they recover fully as families and as communities from the worst recession we've had since the great depression. >> when congress gets back from its well-earned month-long recess, republicans pledge to use the debt ceiling negotiations as a template to extort more ransom from middle class americans while protecting the rich from paying any more taxes, and yet the obama

administration pretends to be optimistic that next time republicans will be reasonable and embrace a balanced approach on taxes. >> yet the president had to give up in this deal his call to extend the payroll tax cuts through next year. >> i'm confident that's going to happen. again, i've been part of the discussions, i think it's going to be very hard for republicans to prevent that from happening. it's going to be very hard for them to stand up and say they are going to try to block the extension of the tax cut. >> president obama's advisors are counting on his positioning as the most reasonable above the fray adult in the room to win over independents in the 2012 election but a new gallup poll shows 33% of independents approve of the deal. that's compared to 58% of democrats who approve and 26% of republicans who approve. joining me now is arianna huffington, president and editor in chief of the aol "the huffington post" media group. thanks for joining me tonight,

arianna. we all in our endeavors try to present optimistic views of what is to become. you at aol "the huffington post" will optimistically tell people how the business will look a year or two from now. there are certain situations it's hard to fake optimism. how should the president handle this after this situation where they took the debt ceiling hostage and they ran this crazy negotiation. he has to somehow suggest that there's an optimistic course here. >> i think he needs intense therapy to explain to himself, first of all, why he did what he did, because there's no rational explanation. there's no economic explanation, you know, economist after economist, most recently jpmorgan told its top clients that this deal is going to reduce the growth rate by over 1%, 1.5 maybe.

jpmorgan, lawrence summers have been going around doing show after show saying that 1% increase in the growth rate over the next five years would have had a much greater impact on the deficit, not on jobs, not on anything, but on the deficit. any of the cuts being projected right now, so it makes absolutely no economic sense. as you just pointed out, it makes no political sense for the president, because if this was all intended to convince the independents that he's the most responsible grownup in the room, they are more upset by the deal than democrats are and democrats are going to stay with him, they are not going to go anywhere. young voters are not going to come out in the large numbers they came out in '08. independents are not going to come out for him in the large numbers they came out in '08, so

it makes no political sense. it is disastrous for the country. i mean, the pain that's out there is really palpable with almost 25 million people unemployed or underemployed to have a horrible story in the "the huffington post" yesterday, and you and i have daughters and the idea that 245,000 students are now registered on a site called seeking arrangements, trying to find sugar daddies. >> i have heard about it. it's not a few thousand women, we're talking about an epidemic, kids graduating from college cannot pay for their college debt. over $3 trillion in college loans, more than credit card debt, so there's something horrific going on in this country and we cannot understand, i don't think anybody has really explained why the president did what he did. >> all right, let's do -- it's a difficult thought experiment. let's do the thought experiment that you actually could afford to be one of those contributors,

you somehow could come up to the money to contribute to the obama reelection campaign. >> not as expensive. >> you are at the high-dollar event at chicago and he takes you aside and says arianna, what should i do? >> i would say mr. president, first you understand what you've done. taking responsibility, like in aa, right? acknowledge that your life and the life of the country has become unmanageable and you need a fundamental course correction. i don't think anything is going to be pure rhetoric, and what is so sad is this man who moved the nation, he moved me, i think he moved you. >> he did. >> in '08. i remember the iowa primary, one of the most moving nights of my life and to hear him now, it's laughable. >> there he is in chicago right now addressing -- i don't know if it's the high dollar or low

dollar event. >> low dollar. >> take the jacket off, roll up the sleeves, probably a low dollar. herbie hancock stage of the speech, so arianna, going forward, how does he run -- how does he govern and run this reelection campaign at the same time? >> well, as you can see, running the reelection campaign is clearly the highest priority, because he's already had 37 fundraisers this year, and it's been an intense year. >> but it's not an unserious priority. he's trying to keep democratic control of supreme court nominations, all sorts of presidential things for the next four years going forward. that's not something people should think why is he spending time on reelection? >> absolutely not. it's a legitimate priority, but most important number going into 2012 is the unemployment number

and there's absolutely no prospect at the moment that would make us believe the unemployment number is going to be below 9%. now, that is really the greatest fear for the white house. and, of course, mitt romney again and again is talking about the failure of the president to produce jobs, and he doesn't have to tell us how he would have done it, he just has to point out to that failure and when the president again and again talks about -- i went through and looked since 2009 how many times he has said jobs priority number one, the sustained focus of this administration, the relentless focus of this administration, we are pivoting to jobs, nobody believes it anymore. >> uh-huh. arianna huffington of "the huffington post." thank you for two things, thank you for joining me tonight and thank you on the sunday shows for carrying the growth first argument, grow the economy before getting ahold of this deficit. thank you for both of those things, arianna. sarah palin blasts mitt romney while praising michele bachmann on the debt ceiling despite the fact that both

candidates share exactly the same view. plus, rick perry's religious mega-rally set for this weekend could turn out to be a bust. what does it tell us about his possible presidential campaign plans? [ thomas ] my sophomore year, i was pretty confused, didn't really know what i wanted to do. didn't like high school. and then i met my teacher, mr. mccooey, and that click happened. i would never have even thought about going into the engineering field

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still to come this hour, what we've all been waiting for, sarah palin jumps into the republican presidential campaign. and mike huckabee has started a new business, which

lands him in tonight's rewrite because technically his new business makes him a 9/11 profit fear. [ male announcer ] imagine all of your missed opportunities in one place. the winning horse you could have picked. ♪ that "old flame" you should have called. ♪ that leap of faith you never took. but there's one opportunity that's too good to miss. the lexus golden opportunity sales event, with exceptional values on the lexus is. but only until september 6th. see your lexus dealer.

inhe spotlight tonight, sarah palin jumps into the republican presidential campaign. no, not as a candidate. just as a troublemaker. if you're a republican candidate for president and sarah palin blesses your heart, look out. >> bless his heart, i have respect for mitt romney, but i do not have respect for what he has done through this debt increase debate. he did this, he waited until it was a done deal that we would increase the debt ceiling and more money would be spent, more money borrowed and then spent on bigger government, and then he came out and made a statement that he didn't like the deal after all. you can't differ an issue and

assumehat the problem is going to be, then, avoided. no. >> mitt romney, bless his heart, as they say in boston, thought he wasn't going to have to run against sarah palin, but now he's where no republican candidate wants to be, in a fight with palin, even though she's not going to be on the ballot, and palin has decided which candidate she wants to help. >> michele bachmann. she spoke out, and she cast her vote according to her principles. she stood true. >> palin knows michele bachmann can never be president and she also knows that michele bachmann can prevent romney from getting the nomination, and then there's romney's distant cousin, former utah governor jon huntsman, who is still having trouble getting attention. here he is in new hampshire today. >> who? >> jon huntsman. >> i heard about you this

morning as a matter of fact. >> i hope it was good. >> well -- it was just a sma tweet, if you will. >> okay. >> i do know there's competition between you and romney. >> we're all candidates, right? we're all candidates. >> joining me now, politico's ken vogel. ken, it's easy to figure out the only way sarah palin loses her position in politics permanently is a republican wins the presidency. the second bad thing that can happen to her is if there's a republican nominee that can overshadow here. she really doesn't want a republican to beat barack obama, that's bad for her business, isn't it? we've seen her try to stay at the center of the spotlight on quite a few occasions. you mention her kind words for michele bachmann, but let's not forget that when michele bachmann did her roll out in iowa, sarah palin was there

screening this documentary about her. ditto with mitt romney when he was up in new hampshire doing an event, sarah palin found a way for her bus tour to go through new hampshire at exactly the same time so she has a bit of a track record of stealing the spotlight from the candidates. i also think it's becoming increasingly clear that the window is closing on the potential for her to be a candidate, so it is intriguing to hear her say nice things about michele bachmann with who she has something as a rivalry and they would be competing for the same constituency, so she could, in fact, help michele bachmann certainly in iowa, and clearly she could hurt or perhaps intends to hurt mitt romney. >> she's definitely come out of the closet as an opponent of romney. the bus trip that got in romney's way, she could always pretend oh, gee, that's just coincidence, but there's no coincidence about i am going to

attack what mitt romney has done in relation to this whole debt ceiling thing and i'm going to praise what michele bachmann's done. what about huntsman and the other players in this thing trying to get attention in this world? huntsman everybody thought in the media anyway that he was going to get traction and move pretty quickly. he has a lot of establishment around him but doesn't seem to get traction going. >> he's having an extremely hard time and he made the joke about mitt romney in the clip that you played, but that's what he wants to be, the number alternative to mitt romney and there are a number of folks competing to that on sort of separate tracks, hip and tim pawlenty competing on this track where they are trying to be the mainstream establishment alternative to mitt romney, then michele bachmann on the right trying to be the conservative alternative and possibly rick perry, governor of texas waiting in the wings and mitt romney could find

himself answering more questions and engaging more. he really hasn't engaged. we had a story today where we talked about the mittness protection progr where he hasn't done a whole lot of events and at some point here shortly he's going to have to engage both with the voters and with his opponents. right now he's raising money, engaging ifundraisers and doing a good job of it, but the campaign starts in earnest labor day at the latest he's got to start engaging. >> we have declared on this show the mittness protection program to be the political phrase of the year so far, so congratulations to politico on that one. tim pawlenty has to be sitting there thinking when are they going to get to me? meaning it's great news for him sarah palin has come out and unloaded on mitt romney. he's just sitting there waiting to -- to surface as the -- as you put it, the kind of reasonable establishment candidate, he was the first one in, the first romney alternative in there. does he have an advantage because he was the first one in?

>> certainly in iowa and that's what he's betting on, investing a lot of money, resources, staff, in iowa, we have the ames straw poll coming up, that's a huge test for him. we look at some of these things and we have a tendency to wonder if we're inflating false milestones, but he is focussed on it and inflated it and if he does poorly it will be a problem for him going forward. >> ken vogel of politico. mike huckabee has decided to turn 9/11 into a cartoon. one he hopes you'll pay to see. that's in the rewrite. and bad news for rick perry's controversial p.r. stunt disguised as a prayer rally, not that many true believers are taking part. is it an omen for the presidenti campaign he might be planning? [ twig snaps ]

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the attack on the world trade center is one of the most fully-documented events in our history, hundreds and hundreds of cameras descended on lower manhattan that day in 2001, but mike huckabee thought it should be turned into a children's cartoon that he now wants you to buy. mike huckabee, 9/11 profiteer is in the rewrite next. and later, if texas governor rick perry is counting on a ground swell of support for a white house bid, he may want to consider how few people are planning to show up for a free event, a free event that he's holding this weekend. >> the president loves to talk about the shiny balls of millionaires, billionaires. the safety of onstar is now available for your car.

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what if we designed an electric motorcycle? what if we turned trash into surfboards? whatever your what if is, the new sprint biz 360 has custom solutions to make it happen, including mobile payment processing, instant hot spots, and 4g devices like the motorola photon. so let's all keep asking the big what ifs. sprint business specialists can help you find the answers. sprint. america's favorite 4g network. trouble hearing on the phone? visit sprintrelay.com. time for tonight's rewrite. mike huckabee's got to make a living, we all do. let's listen to mike explaining his latest hustle to the longest-running, out-right crazy person in broadcasting, pat robertson. >> former governor mike huckabee joins us now from little rock. mike, good to have you back on "the 700 club," welcome. >> thank you very much, pat, it's a delight to be here. i know you too are a student of

history and like me are frustrated so many kids don't have a clue about the real american history and how great a country we really have. >> what are you teaching in this series you're doing? >> well, one of the things we want to do is to show that american history is very positive, that this is a good country. so many kids today, 25% of high school seniors surveyed did not know who the first president was. less than 3% of high school students could answer even three out of ten questions on the citizenship test. we have really a history deficiency among young people, so the purpose of this is to take these animated videos, they are very watchable for kids, they are designed for kids, i think adults could learn something, but this is for 7-year-old kids, but we want them to understand who they are as americans. >> so what mike -- what mike wants you to do for your 7-year-old kids is go to

learnourhistory.com and plunk down $19.95 for a dvd that will teach your 7-year-old about 9/11, because, of course, there's no way you could trust a school or a book to do that. and here's what mike will teach your 7-year-old about 9/11. ♪ >> no! >> who would do something like ♪ >> no! >> who would do something like this? >> see, this is exactly, exactly why we need mike. there are way too many descriptions of criminal activity in the news and in

american history that do not, in the very first phrase about the criminals, include their religion. i'm sitting here right now with no idea what casey anthony's religion is. nobody has told me, and i've watched a lot of casey anthony stuff. when mike huckabee does his dvd for 7-year-olds on the casey anthony trial, every 7-year-old is going to know her religion as soon as they know her name. now, sure, mike could have called them middle eastern terrorists or saudian arabian terrorists, but he knows that it's their religion that made them terrorists, not where they're from. now, i haven't seen mike's christopher columbus dvd yet, but i'm sure it's entitled something like "how catholics discovered america." because religion makes people do good things too, not just bad

things like 9/11. all right, keep rolling mike's 9/11 for kids video. >> al qaeda is led by osama bin laden. >> death to the americans! >> wow, look at the police and firefighters. they are right into the middle of it. >> see, in show business you would find that the thing about casting is you try to get the best actor but the thing you're getting, only thing you can get, is the best actor who's available, so i guess the best actor mike could get to play a new york city kid in awe of fire trucks was a kid from arkansas. >> look at the police and firefighters. they are right into the middle of it. >> some of the passengers learned about the other hijacked planes and decided to fight back. >> that's our plan, bring down the taliban and al qaeda. >> again, casting is best

available actor. yeah, colin powell is from new york city and doesn't talk like that, but when you're casting for videos for 7-year-olds, the perfect colin powell isn't going to be easy to get, but one thing you do actually control in animated videos, completely control, is wardrobe. colin powell was a general and wore a uniform before, like long before, he became secretary of state where he actually kind of dressed, you know, basically like me. but nowhere in mike's sales pitch for these dvds does he make any claim of his historical accuracy in wardrobe, so i'm giving him a break on wardrobe. >> the u.s. and its allies broke apart from al qaeda and cut off his followers and his money.

>> i can hear you! and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. [ cheers and applause ] ♪ look, i try to be very understanding and yes, even forgiving about what some people have to do to make a living, i mean look what i'm doing, who am i to get all judgmental about how you make a buck, but i know some of you less forgiving types out there are looking at mike's dvd and thinking you're kidding me, former baptist pastor mike huckabee has become a 9/11 profiteer?

a former republican presidential candidate has become a 9/11 profiteer? no, no, no. rudy giuliani doesn't count, not in my book anyway because although he's made millions and millions of dollars in lecture fees all because of 9/11, the guy actually was mayor of new york city during 9/11 and that's a legitimate component of his memoirs as he presents them for sale in the lecture business, no matter how falsely he presents them. but this huckabee thing, yeah, strictly speaking, you know, if you want to be like, you know, a strict constructionist about 9/11 profiteering, mike huckabee is now a 9/11 profiteer. but i, for one, am going to go to bed tonight confident that we live in a country where the parents who actively seek educational supplements for their children are going to aim

a little higher than mike huckabee's dvds. and no matter how much former baptist pastor mike huckabee abjectly debases himself to sell his thoroughly stupid dvds, he can only become a 9/11 profiteer if the dvds actually make a profit. i'm betting we live in a country that's better than mike huckabee and won't deliver him a profit for what he's trying to push on 7-year-olds. [ male announcer ] before you take it on your road trip... we take it on ours. this summer put your family in an exceptionally engineered mercedes-benz now for an exceptional price during the summer event. but hurry, this offer ends august 31st.

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former democrat and current republican texas governor rick perry is deflecting criticism stemming from a prayer event he organized called "the response." the free event takes place this saturday at reliant stadium in houston which has a capacity of over 71,000 seats, 8,000 people have registered to attend so far. in a video address on the event's website, the man who's thinking of running for president admits that the nation's troubles are so severe that he, like me, is ill equip the to solve them himself. >> with the economy in trouble, people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need god's help. that's why i'm calling on americans to pray and fast like jesus did.

>> one of the event's primary sponsors is the american family association whose leadership has condemned pornography, abortion, homosexuality, and first amendment rights for muslims. they are classified as a hate group and televangelist john hagee will speak at the event. he also called catholicism "a godless theology of hate." perry invited the obama administration, texas legislature, and all 50 u.s. governors to attend the event. only one person accepted republican kansas governor, sam brownback, through his spokesman, though, now says the governor is on vacation this weekend and that it is "left to his discretion whether he'll actually make it to hang out

with people who think catholicism is a godless theology of hate." even governor perry is downplaying his role in his own event. he told reporters last week "i'm going to be there, i may be ushering for all i know." and i'm going to be here tomorrow night and i may be ushering for all i know. joining me now, executive director for americans united u state barry lynn, thanks for joining me tonight, reverend. >> nice to be here. >> reverend, you and the aclu of texas are running another event called the family faith and freedom event the night before governor perry's. if i could get to houston this weekend, why would i want to go to your event rather than one where i can hear that the religion i was baptized into, and which is the single-largest religion in the united states of america, catholicism, is a

godless theology of hate. i've never heard that case made before, where else am i going to hear it? >> not at our rally because this is a very inclusive event. we do have a very prominent african-american baptist pastor who's going to be speaking, i'm going to be speaking. we have a humanist speaking as well. we're trying to be inclusive. the big problem with this whole event is not merely the rancid icing that you've been talking about, the people he's associating with, but the fact a governor, a politician has decided he should initiate a prayer meeting a christian prayer meeting, in fact. i've been to texas many times, lawrence, as i'm sure you have. i've never noticed the dearth of preachers. he's got bad company he chose. folks from the american family association, one of whom recently said anders breivik, the mass killer in norway had the right analysis of the

western problem in europe, that's too many muslims. he, of course, said i don't think he should have shot anybody. you don't have to go into the dark recesses to find this stuff, it's promoted by the very organizations that are involved with this rally, so either he has the worst vetters in the world or he really doesn't care about the nature of decent discourse in america, because what you've just described and what i've just talked about is not the way serious people debate any issue at all. >> i wish we had more time to talk about it, reverend, i think when what it does she show, he has no idea what the politics of running for president are, he would get wiped out quickly on a national stage. >> if he doesn't fill half those seats on saturday it will be a political disaster you might say of biblical proportions.