goldwater, worried about taking on the popular moderate governor nelson rockefeller of new york. i've been spending a lot of time over the past years trying to figure out jack kennedy, what he was really like, what he was like to be with in a room. my big book comes out november 1st. those tapes of jacqueline kennedy confirm a lot of what i've discovered from her and others. it will be fascinating to sit and hear this woman who rarely spoke publicly give her take and share her memories of all we went through in this country together in those great days. that's "hardball" for now. "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" starts right now. the white house has just given us a copy o the president's american jobs act. and, of course, republicans have given us reasons why they don't like it. >> i told congress that i'll be sending them a bill called the american jobs act. >> business of selling his jobs plan.

>> well, here it is. >> the president reveals the details in his jobs bill. republicans reveal their opposition. >> a rose garden pitch for his jobs bill. >> it will be big. >> increasing calls for the panel to go even bigger. >> it's a grand bargain. >> imploring congress to pass it. >> the white house would like congress to pass this as it is. >> i object to the all or nothing message. >> eric cantor says he won't support the president's plan. >> some republicans do not want to see the president getting help. >> they're not crazy. >> open to considering some of the plans. >> no two people usual will ly agree on anything 100%. >> that would be very complicated. >> the white house is here to respond. >> we are very comfortable. >> and so are howard dean and thomas friedman. >> pass this jobs bill. pass this bill. let's pass this bill. >> pass this bill. pass this bill. >> pass this bill. >> let's do this. >> and ronald reagan's daughter doesn't think the republicans running for president really get ronald reagan.

>> you're asking a hypothetical question. >> there's only one candidate that's won anything in this race and it's me. >> this pretty boy or that pretty boy? >> oh, goodness. >> the reagan revolution. >> rick perry likes to portray himself as a straight talking cotton farmer's son. >> president reagan's daughter, patty davis, joins me. >> are you better off than you were four years ago? >> does any of the blame belong to you? >> yes, because for many years i was a democrat. oh, shut up. the american jobs act is now in the hands of congress. today in the rose garden, president obama unveiled his jobs bill, 155 pages of legislative language that detailed the broad proposals the president laid out last week in his nationally televised speech to congress in which he urged hem to pass president bill 17 times. today in the rose garden in ten minutes he urged congress to pass it 12 times.

the president has now provided real specificity for what kind of tax revenue increases he wants to help pay for his jobs bill. the president wants high income earners, corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers and oil companies to pay more in taxes in order to pay for the jobs bill. these are the same ideas the republicans balked at when the president proposed them during the debt ceiling negotiations. before he had even seen the bill, house majority leader eric cantor suggested president obama was making unreasonable demands. "for the president to say pass my bill, all or nothing, it's just not the way things are done anywhere in washington." no kidding. "on all or nothing. i think the country and this town may have had a little bit of a enough of that." but the most truthful republican response to the president's jobs plan came courtesy of an unnamed senior house republican aide who

was quoted in "politico" saying, "obama is on the ropes, why do we appear ready to hand him a win?" the president and the vice president saw that comment by the unnamed republican aide in "politico" and the president included a reference to it in his speech today. >> joe and i as we were walking out here were looking at one of the washington newspapers and it was quoting a republican aide saying, i don't know why we'd want to cooperate with obama right now, it's not good for our politics. it was very explicit. i mean, that's the attitude in this town. yeah, we've been through these things before, but i don't know why we've be for them right now. the fact of the matter is, the next election is 14 months away. and the notion that there are folks who would say we're not going to try to do what's right for the american people because we don't think it's convenient for our politics. we've been seeing that too much

around here. that's exactly what folks are tired of. >> joining me now, melody barnes, director of white house do domestic policy council. thanks for joining me tonight. >> it's a pleasure. thanks for having me. >> first to eric cantor's objection. has the president said this 155-page bill is take it or leave it, he will not accept any adjustments or negotiations on it? >> what the president has said and what the president has done, he's talked to business leaders. we've talked to economists. we've talked to the american people as we've gone all over the country to find the best ways to put millions of people back to work to save millions of jobs. we've put together ideas that have been supported by democrats and republicans in the past. as recently as just a few months ago this past december. we accumulated a bipartisan set of ideas. we put together a package to pay for those ideas so we can put people back to work. this is about getting our

economy going. this is about sending teachers back into the classroom and firefighters and cops back into our neighborhoods to keep our communities safe and our economy growing and getting stronger and stronger. that's what this is about. >> well, i'm going to take that answer to mean that the president is open to negotiations with the republican house of representatives on specific items in the bill in order to get it passed? >> well, you know, i'm not going to sit here and the day that we send a bill up start negotiating about the bill. the president has put together his ideas, a comprehensive set of ideas to get the job done. now he's saying to congress, let's move, let's act. i'm ready to go. i want to work with you. i've sent forward my ideas. it's now time for congress, the legislative branch of the government, to act on them. and we're prepared to work with you to get this done. we've also sent pay fors. we've done what we've done thus far in terms of putting ideas together, now it's time for congress to stand up and do its job. >> what makes you think the republicans will accept any of the tax revenue increase provisions in the bill?

were those part of the tax revenue increase provisions that john boehner is said to have tentatively been willing to accept in his negotiations with the white house earlier over the increase in the debt ceiling? >> well, we put together a set of pay fors that we believe can get the job done and can get things moving. we put together those things -- we've actually overachieved in putting this package together. the bill costs probably about $447 billion. we're going for more than that to make sure that the bill is paid for in addition to the work that we did working with congressman boehner, with speaker boehner and others just a few months ago when we passed the budget act. so we've done all of this to make sure that we've covered the cost of the bill and now congress can act on that, can tell us what they're looking for. we're also going to be putting out a plan in about a week that we're sending to the so-called supercommittee or the joint committee and that will contain additional ideas for deficit reduction.

they can move from there. they can act on that. what we wanted to do was pay for the bill as the president promised. not another penny will be added to the deficit by paying for this bill. >> in effect, there is an effective increase in the top income tax rate for individuals in here because what you've done is decreased the deductibility. you don't allow them full deductibility at their level, at the 35% level. you cut that down to 28%. so, for example, top-end earners with a full $1.1 million mortgage deduction, their actually tax deduction would go from around $50,000 a year down to around $40,000 a year. they would in effect be paying $10,000 more a year in taxation. is there any indication that the republicans will go along with what is in effect a revenue tax increase on the top income taxpayers? >> well, you're exactly right in your description of the limitation on itemized

deductions and on exemptions. we've also included carried interest to deal with the hedge fund manager issue that people have been talking about for a long time. and there are people across the aisle that say that something has to be done with that. oil and gas, the treatment of oil and gas industry. also corporate jets. so we've put together a package of several things to get this job done. again, this is part of a larger package that we're putting together and we're going to be sending to the supercommittee. the bottom line on this, and the president has said this, this is about shared sacrifice and this is about shared responsibility. we can't pay for everything that we want right now. so, and we can't afford everything that we want right now. we have to do what's necessary to pay for a package that's going to get americans back to work and i would expect that republicans and democrats in congress have been hearing from their constituents at home who are out of work and saying, please act, do the responsible

thing so that i can go back to work, so my child's teacher won't be laid off. so that construction workers are actually doing the jobs that are needed to take care of this country's infrastructure and so that they can pay their bills. so that we can put more money in the pockets of american workers. >> melody, i notice that the new caps on deductibility go into effect in 2013. and in the bill the bill presumes that the top income tax rates in 2013 will be 39.6 and 36. both of those rates, both of those top two rates are higher than the current top tax bracket. those are the clinton tax rates. are you presuming that we will raise the top two income tax rates by legislation or simply by letting the current bush rates expire? >> well, you know, i think the president has spoken to what his intentions are with regard to the bush tax cuts.

we are going to -- the president has also spoken to the fact that he intends to address tax reform issues. again, he's going to be putting out his plan next week. i don't want to get ahead of that, but the president has been very, very clear about what's necessary in a time of shared sacrifice and shared responsibility. >> melody barnes, director of white house domestic policy council. thank you for joining us tonight. >> great. thank you so much, larry. joining me now, howard dean, former dnc chairman and presidential candidate. he's now a contributor for cnbc. thanks for joining me tonight, governor. >> thanks, lawrence. >> well, now it gets hot. now the bill is out there. all 155 pages and the republicans can flip through and find what their little poison pill is that prevents them from moving the country in the direction of the president's jobs bill. what do you think the prospects are for the legislation now that we're seeing some of the details and some of the things the republicans i think obviously were going to jump on and now

have jumped on as getting in the way of progress here? >> i have to say i think the president's team has been rather bill rilliant in putting this one together. if the american jobs act -- that's a terrific name for it -- and he's paying for it by doing something 70% of americans believe this would be the right thing to do which is raise taxes on the people who got us into this mess in the first place. now the republicans are going to have to vote to -- if they want to kill this bill, they're going to have to vote to give all the people americans can't stand for money and in doing so they'll keep ordinary americans from getting jobs. it would be hard to devise a better bill than this to put the guys on the griddle. they're in big trouble. nobody trusts the republicans anyway. look at the numbers in congress. people are talking about the president's numbers. what about the republicans' in congress, numbers in the low 20s? from a political point of view, this is a pretty good deal.

now, the bill is pretty good. it may not be as much as people like paul krugman want, who i have a lot of respect for. i think it's a very practical bill that will get you where you need to go, maybe not as fast as some other people. it won't harm the deficit. that's important, too. i really believe unemployment is the number one issue. the deficit is important for the long-term future. i have to say, i'm pretty pleased. >> how can you force the republicans to vote in the house of representatives, anyway, if john boehner and if the chairmen don't even bring this thing to a vote? then you don't have that embarrassing tough vote of who are you going to vote with. >> that's the perfect thing. i have long thought, lawrence, the key to the president's re-election is to be harry truman. they talked about it on nbc news tonight. go out there and talk about the do-nothing republicans which they have done nothing. all they've done is obstruct for four years, or two years. so the president gets out to campaign against the do-nothing republicans, i think he gets re-elect re-elected. if you do nothing about jobs which is the number one job in

this country, whether you vote for it or not, you vote -- i mean, whether you vote against it or not and have the attack ads or not, it doesn't matter. the president of the united states is going to win or lose this election for all the democrats. if he's out there fighting -- people love a fighter and do not like what the republicans stand for and who they stand for. i think this is -- as long as the president can keep this going and get out there and fight between now and election day of 2012, i think we're going it to win this. i might add, i think we're going to pick up the house if he wins. >> when you look at this whole package, what would you grab? what would be the one thing you kept pushing? would it be the infrastructure, the rebuilding america provisions? >> it would be the infrastructure, but it's also the small business tax relief. most people like small bids businesses. now, small businesspeople are traditionally republican, tend to want less regulation and lower taxes and so on. it's like the farmers.

the farmers are a small part of the population but have support among the ordinary americans including urban people who like farmers. farmers are kind of the american dream people. and so are small business. so i think you ought to keep the small business tax cuts in there so you can tell people that the republicans aren't telling the truth which is not an uncommon situation when they talk about the president raising taxes. and taking away jobs. i think the infrastructure is critical because you have 2 million jobs there and i think that's absolutely critical. >> governor howard dean, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you for having me on. up next, thomas friedman on why america is at a crucial cross roads. and the devastating consequences if we refuse to take action. and why today's republican presidential candidates should not try to compare themselves to ronald reagan. that's in our exclusive interview tonight with ronald reagan reagan's daughter, patty davis. and later on, on the eve of a special congressional election

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coming up, as the united states struggles to turn back a 9.1% unemployment rate, thomas friedman's new book says there is a way back to greatness but we need to start making the tough decisions now. he will join me next. and later, republican south carolina governor nikki haley has done something that even she thinks is inappropriate to a little girl. so why does the governor refuse to apologize? that's in the rewrite.

it makes no sense for china to have better rail systems than us and singapore having better airports than us. and we just learned that china now has the faster supercomputer on earth. that used to be us. >> that used to be us. that was president obama last november, the day after democrats suffered deep losses on capitol hill in the midterm elections. since then, america's outlook on its economic future hasn't gotten better. the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows 22% of the country thinks the economy will get better in the next 12 months. 30% say it will get worse. 47% say it will stay about the same. that is no doubt why president obama is pushing his jobs plan

so hard. that push now including details on how to pay for the plan. today the white house proposed to end $467 billion in tax breaks over the next decade targeting oil and gas companies, hedge fund managers and people making more than $200,000 a year. the director of the white house office of management and budget, jack lou, told "the wall street journal" today "that is not a hard choice for most americans if the choice is creating economic growth and jobs or tolerating the results of many years of inequities in the tax code." but republicans are remembering their names are signed on grover norquist's anti-tax plan. this afternoon speaker john boehner's spokesman reacted to the white house's plan to pay for the bill saying "this tax increase on job creators is the kind of proposal both parties have opposed in the past. we remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear

to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit." joining me now is the co-author of "that used to be us,: how america fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back." "the new york times" columnist and three-time pulitzer prize winner, thomas friedman. thanks for joining me tonight, tom. >> lawrence, thanks for having me. great to be here. >> the infrastructure portion, at least, of the president's jobs plan seems to present us with a classic, "that used to be us" riddle. no one in our politics seems to be saying they're imposed opposed to building better schools, improving airports, rail systems. we can't seem to agree on how to pay for these things. is that the fundamental change? is that what changed us? we simply cannot agree as a country on how to pay for the big things we need to do to maintain our position on the world?

>> i think you're on a really key point that we've been making in the book, lawrence. and that's that we lost our ability to act collectively and all the big problems we face today dealing with the education challenge of the i.t. revolution in globalization, dealing with debt and deficits and dealing with the energy climate challenge, all of them require collective action. of the kind that won world war ii, that won the cold war. and what's fractured, what's so unsettling about america today is that at the moment it feels like we can't do anything together anymore. >> you tell the story, it's really kind of an amazing frame of a story about going to china and being in this giant convention center in a major chinese city and noticing it was built in a matter of months. i think it was something like eight, nine months. at the same time, you considered the broken escalators in the washington, d.c., metro system

that will not be fixed. there isn't even a schedule to fix them within, what, a year or so? >> you know, one of the points we try to make in this book is that china can do well and america can do well at the same time. economics is not war. but, you know, we will only do well if we take care of our problems right now. and we had a formula for success in this country, lawrence. it was always educate our people up to and beyond whatever the technology was, whether it was the cotton gin or the supercomputer, have the world's best infrastructure, attract the world's most energetic and entrepreneurial immigrants. have the best rules for capital investing and have the most, in this century, government-funded research. what we did was when we looked at all five of those today, the arrows is pointing down on all five. so we have a short-term problem. you've been talking about that tonight. in terms of the stimulus. how do we prevent ourselves from going into a deeper recession? we have a longer-term problem. the key is to dig out of this recession in a way that will also propel us, you know, in a way that can solve these

longer-term problems. >> that's one of the things i love about the book. you go to this question, it's something i've been talking about on this show for a while, there has to be the capacity to think short term and long term at the same time. to plan for both at the same time. there's a passage in your book where you say "common sense also says the right strategy now is neither to slash all discretionary government spending suddenly, nor to continue piling up debt to keep the economy stimulated, as if there are implications for that down the road. the right strategy is to have a strategy, a strategy for long-term american growth and nation building at home that will require us to cut spending, to raise taxes and to invest in the sources of our strength all in a coordinated way." that all in a coordinated way is what seems to be missing from every political discussion of this in washington.

>> you know, it's been fun watching your show up until now and seeing what the president's doing here. the question i've been asking myself is, as i watch the debate between the president and the republicans, is are we watching a negotiation or are we watching an election? you know, 18 months in advance? i'm from minneapolis, a suburb of minneapolis. i was just at my 40th high school reunion. just in talking to my friends from back home, lawrence, i'm interested in how you feel about this. i really sense that not only do people want a grand bargain that does deal with the long term deficit problem, does raise revenue and continues to invest in the sources of our strength. because i think people intoit, that's the right way to go. they want to see our leaders come together. the fact we've reached this level of division in washington, it really has a black cloud over the country. it's like kids of divorced parents, you know? and i don't know whether it's a 10% of gdp or 1%, but i tell

you, if somehow we could find our way through what's going to be a tough negotiation to this grand bargain right now, or even the outlines of it, then let the next election be about the future. boy, i tell you, i think the country would just really respond. >> thomas friedman, co-author of "that used to be us." thanks for your time tonight, tom. >> thanks for having me. each of the republican candidates wants you to think he or she is the next ronald reagan. president reagan's daughter, patti davis says they're not even close. she joins me next for an exclusive interview. and anthony weiner's internet scandal didn't just damage his own career. it has also damaged his party. the democrats are struggling, struggling to hold on to that seat in a special election tomorrow. the democratic candidate joins me.

dueling endorsements today. louisiana republican governor bobby jindal endorsed the front-runner for the republican nomination, rick perry. former minnesota governor tim pawlenty, a former presidential candidate, himself, and "the last word's" former favorite to win the nomination endorsed former massachusetts governor and former presidential campaign loser willard m. romney. but ronald reagan's daughter hasn't endorsed any of them. especially after watching the debate at her father's presidential library.

patti davis joins me in an exclusive interview to explain what the current republican presidential candidates don't seem to understand about her father. and nikki haley is in trouble for calling a reporter a little girl. that's in the rewrite. [ hayden ] what if there was a makeup that didn't just hide your breakouts... but actually made them go away. neutrogena skin clearing makeup has our proven blemish fighting formula so it clears your breakouts. now that's beautiful. neutrogena®.

i want you to know that i had a number of people on my staff search for a reason the public would find palatable to commute the sentence. technicality technicality. any evidence of racism? >> your staff spent the weekend looking for a way out? >> yeah. i'm a leader of the democracy. 74% of people support capital punishment. people have spoken. the courts have spoken.

>> jedd, would you like me to hear your confession? >> yes, please. bless me, father. >> that scene was inspired by ronald reagan. president reagan's daughter, patti davis, remembers the reagan version this way. "i remember the first time my father ordered an execution when he was governor. he and a minister went into a room, got down on their knees and prayed. the real shame of our time is that there doesn't seem to be anyone on the political horizon with that compassion in his or her heart." patti davis expressed her disappointments in the current republican presidential candidates in a piece for "time" last week entitled "looking for

ronald reagan and not finding him." in the piece she told the candidates, "you can invoke my father's name until your tongues fall out, but you will never be anywhere near his shadow." many analysts of last week's republican debate at the reagan library noted the actual governing policy choices made by ronald reagan would probably have been booed by some in the audience at the library because ronald reagan's governing decision as governor an president included tax increases when they made sense and assorted compromises with democrats that are forbidden by the new republican no-compromise orthodoxy. it fell to the president's daughter to make the most important distinction between president reagan and the republicans who went to his library in the hope of becoming president. patti davis wrote "the moment that would have broken my father's heart was the moment when applause broke out at the

mention of more than 200 executions ordered by rick perry in texas. it was stunning and brought tears to my eyes. this is what we've come to? that we applaud at executions?" joining me now in a "last word" exclusive, patti davis. >> thank you for having me. >> what is it like to watch that debate taking place in a building to honor your father where candidates seem to have no connection to him, especially when you got to that death penalty moment? >> you know, when i was writing it after the debate, i considered using the word blasphemy. it didn't seem like an out of the ballpark word. because people do come tibra wif reverence, a sorof worshipful attitude toward him which is fine. that's very flattering. but then to do something like that that would have been so deeply abhorrent to him, i obviously didn't use the word blasphemy.

it's an apt word to use for that. >> it's an apt word in a segment we introduced with a priest. >> yes. >> i think it makes sense because, you know, your father is in effect, in political terms, a deity in the party. he's earned that position with republicans. but republicans seem to -- the current republicans seem to be forgetting how he got there. >> well, i think they're also forgetting who he was and they're forgetting he wasn't this mean, vitriolic person. you know, i also said in that piece, it was like they were auditioning for a reality show, not to be -- not to hold the highest office in the land. and he didn't have that kind of meanness. and i think, you know, this crosses the political divide. we are looking for someone who doesn't want any part of that. well maybe not the people who applauded.

but actually i think even in their hearts they are, they probably just don't know it yet. you know, we just obviously marked the anniversary of 9/11 yesterday and i was thinking yesterday that on 9/11 my mother and i stood at my father's bedside. he was already bedridden by then. and we told him something terrible had happened in the world. something terrible had happened to america. and everyone missed him so much because he would be able to say something that would comfort us. and i really believed that the majority of people in this country are -- that's what they're looking for. they're looking for someone who, as my friend harry smith said about in describing my father, has shoulders big enough for us to cry on. i don't see anybody like that on the horizon. i don't see that in our president. and i at one time thought i did. i don't know what happened there. i don't see it. >> if you had some time with the republican candidates to kind of reeducate them about your

father, what would you tell them to pay attention to when they look back at him? >> i don't want to spend time with them. i don't like them. >> if you could e-mail them. say you had rick perry's e-mail address and he asked you, tell me. >> oh, no, how many swear words would i get to use? >> e-mail, as many as you want. >> i mean, they're just -- you can't imitate someone -- you can learn from someone like that, but i don't think they're out there trying to learn from him. you know, it's -- it's one thing to emulate someone and it's one thing to admire someone and try to live up to the standards that you see that they set, but that's not what i see here. i see people trying to twist and contort themselves into the shadow of someone else. that's not add miration admiration. that's an identity crisis. >> are they trying to get a cheap connection to this hero just by putting his name in a

sentence? >> i think so. i really do. do they really believe that they are him? maybe they to. it's interesting to wonder, this is so hypothetical, but it's interesting to wonder if he were still here and didn't have alzheimer's and was cognizant of everything, would they really dare to try that? >> we wish he was at that library that night. >> uh-huh. >> patti davis, thank you very, very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. coming up, the governor of south carolina, nikki haley, refers to a reporter as a, quote, little girl. that gets the governor tonight's rewrite. and it's been almost three months since new york congressman anthony weiner resigned over his twitter photo scandal. tomorrow is the special election for his congressional seat and the democrat, david weprin, is trailing, the democrat is trailing in a democratic district. he will join me coming up. let me tell you about a very important phone call i made. when i got my medicare card,

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coming up, south carolina governor nikki haley thought it was okay to belittle a newspaper reporter, a woman, just because haley didn't like what she had to say. that gets her in the rewrite. and tomorrow is the special election for anthony weiner's congressional seat and right now democrat david weprin is trailing in the district, a district that's been held by the democrats since 1923. david weprin will join me coming up. ♪ [ male announcer ] when a moment suddenly turns romantic, men with erectile dysfunction can be more confident in their ability to be ready with cialis for daily use. even if it doesn't happen every day, you can be ready anytime the moment's right, because you take a clinically proven low-dose tablet every day. [ man ] tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. don't take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure.

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time for tonight's rewrite. nikki haley, republican governor of south carolina and a rising star in the republican party, is in trouble. she did something inappropriate to a little girl and she got caught doing it. now she says she regrets it but still hasn't been able to bring herself to apologize either publicly or to the little girl. little girl's name is rene dudley and she is 25 years old. what haley did that haley now calls inappropriate is call rene dudley a little girl. because haley didn't like the article renee dudley wrote for charleston, south carolina's "daily post courier" under the headline, european vacation or legitimate business? in the fully researched meticulously reported piece, renee dudley revealed nikki

haley and her entourage spent at least, at least $127,000 on a trip to europe in june in search of, quote, jobs, jobs, jobs. the first place nikki haley decided to go to look for jobs for south carolinians was, of course, paris. a place that every republican knows is full of people who want to set up businesses in south carolina. perhaps the "let's go looking for jobs in paris" strategy explains why nikki haley's state has a higher unemployment rate than the national average, almost twofold percentage points above the national average. renee dudley's reporting details how nikki haley chose to stay in five-star hotels and run up a bar bill at the paris ritz, provoking the south carolina democratic party chairman, dick harputlian to be quoted in renee dudley's article as saying,

nikki haley was, quote, channeling marie antoinette. nicky kki haley said this when asked about renee dudley's article. >> god bless that little girl at the "post and courier." her job is to create conflict, my job is to create jobs. in the job i'm going to have jobs to show for it. >> calling her a little girl did not sit well with north carolinians. nikki haley had to put out a damage control statement that stopped short of an apology. "the story painted a grossly inaccurate picture and was unprofessionally done, but my little girl comment was inappropriate and i regret that. everyone can have a bad day. i'll forgive her bad story if she'll forgive my poor choice of words." nikki haley has yet to contest a single fact reported by renee dudley.

not one word, not one sentence. she has not disputed anything in renee dudley's original reporting. now, i for one am not horrified by her average daily hotel bill on the european trip or any of the expenses listed in renee dudley's report which as i said remains uncontested for accuracy. i actually think foreign travel by american government officials is a good thing. i especially think republicans need to learn more, a lot more, about france. a country they normally use as a punch line of their empty headed jingoistic jokes about the world we live in. and i'm an admitted socialist in a country where people like nikki haley are simply socialism condemners who constantly make socialistic choices and actually support socialistic programs.

government intervening in the marketplace is not a capitalist idea. government inserting itself into the marketplace in a heavy heavy-handed way through begging or special tax deals, trying to influence business decisions, private business decisions, to suit the government's current mood is a purely, purely socialistic idea. there is, at least, one republican in south carolina who understands this. south carolina republican state senator tom davis said this in renee dudley's article. "if you get the fundamental things right, solid education and health care, capital will come to the state." davis said "those are the functions of government, not creating jobs. it's a socialist state when the government's core function is to create jobs." well, at least he's half right. he's calling health care one of

the functions of government which is, of course, a purely socialistic idea about the functions of government. he doesn't seem to realize that. but he's right to say that making job creation government's core function is a socialist idea. it is one of the socialistic ideas that i'm happy to support if done modestly with the recognition that the real burden of job creation will always belong to the private sector. if you want to see how horrible government is at making job creation a core function, get yourself into cuba before the country opens itself to at least chinese-style capitalism. it would be too much for me to expect a republican rising star to admit her and her party's hypocrisy about socialism. and i guess it's too much for me to expect a 39-year-old professional woman who happens to be a governor to apologize to

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anthony weiner name is back in the news today. two reasons. first the "new york post" reports the former congressman and his wife who is six months pregnant now know hay they are expecting a son and secondly because this is the final day for campaigning for anthony weiner's congressional seat and for the first time in almost 100 years it is not a sure win for the democrat. when anthony weiner was forced to resign in june, after sending lewd photos like this one over

the internet, it seemed the seat for new york's ninth congressional district would surely go to a democrat since a republican hasn't held that seat since 1923. but a new sienna college poll of likely voters finds the democrat state assemblyman david weprin now trailing republican robert turner by 6 points, 50% to 44%. joining me now, democratic new york state assemblyman, david weprin. david, how did it come to this? is this anthony weiner's fault? is this barack obama's fault? who is now not popular in your district? is this the fault of your campaign not getting traction fast enough? what's happening here? >> well, first of all, the only poll that really counts is the poll tomorrow. on election day. and it's a special election. and, you know, all these polls don't really determine who's going to come out to vote and it is still a strong democratic district. we have tremendous get out the vote operation. we're going to have over a

thousand people in the field. we have every labor union behind us sending people. so i wouldn't write the obituary of the seat yet. i'm confident we're going to pull out a democratic victory tomorrow. >> no one is writing the obituary. we're wondering why it's so stuff. staten island is the only place in new york city that elects republican members of congress and so we haven't seen this before. you're running against a guy who has never held public office, who actually was one of the creators of the jer "the jerry springer show." it doesn't sound like somebody who a democrat would have trouble beating. >> it has been more conservative in recent years. barack obama when he ran for president got only 55% of the vote in the congressional district. this particular person ran against anthony weiner this past november, kind of got a head start in the district and got 40% of the vote. so he's still not clearing 50%

and we have other polls that show, you know, much closer and myself ahead as well. so, you know, again, i'm pretty confident we're getting our message out the last couple days which are not reflected in those polls. there's a clear difference between us. my opponent wants to cut the federal budget by 35%. he totally wants to eliminate the department of education, the department of agriculture. he calls epa officials wackos. you know, i'm clearly, you know, standing for preserving social security and medicare, creating jobs. i support, you know, the basic principles in the president's proposal on jobs. i'd like to see middle class tax cuts and small business tax cuts. i'd like to see millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share and i'd like to see corporate loopholes closed. my opponent actually has said in debates he never met a corporate loophole me didn't like. we're getting that message out. we actually have a commercial to