good monday afternoon to you. happy halloween monday, for that matter. i am dylan ratigan. and today's big story is a winter blast in the literal sense here at home and in the lethal sense for our soldiers overseas in afghanistan. here at home, the weekend snow hitting before halloween, leaving thousands of americans without power. we'll have more on that later in the show. but first up, the mortal winter fighting developing in afghanistan. unfortunately, more americans dying in our longest war, as afghanistan's toll on american life was raised to 1,828 this weekend. this when a suicide bomber killed 13, a majority of which were americans on saturday in kabul. supposedly the safest place to be in that country. now, due to the brutality of the winter itself in afghanistan, much of the fighting typically slows or stops, which leads us to wonder with american soldiers hunkering down, if you will, for another winter in afghanistan, how much are they once again

sitting ducks for more attacks like this? and two folks who certainly know better than i do, and probably you as well, nbc news chief foreign correspondent, richard engel, and medal of honor recipient, colonel jack jacobs, to give all of us some context. jack, let's start with you. you were explaining before you walked out here that the first rule when you sign up to be a soldier is don't go down an unsecured road. how does that sort of template for being in the military reconcile with the most recent events and the way we've been administering this war in general? >> well, very badly. you're not supposed to go down any road until it's been secured to the flanks and to the front. it doesn't matter whether you're going down a road in the middle of the desert or in an urban area, you can't go down a road unless you've secured it. but to do that, you need to move troops to the flanks. and we don't have the troops to do it. as a result, we've just decided that we're going to take the chance and have convoys go from "a" to "b" or buses in this case without any security, relying in

this case on local securities, that is the afghans. >> it seems, richard, that this is almost a policy decision. that we know there's a protocol for securing roads and we're making a deliberate decision to not marshal the necessary resources to do that and accepting implicit risks that events like this weekend are going to happen. is that an unfair characterization? >> i'm not trying to blame the soldiers for being attacked and for suffering losses. but look at the war and strategy. in iraq, there was a surge, because there was a problem in baghdad. and more than 30,000 troops were brought in and locked down baghdad. that was where the problem but roughly similarly-sized surge in afghanistan, but the troops were sent to where the problem e mot also in the west. not a lot of troops sent to kabul, because that wasn't where the problem was. so what happened is, the violence continued in those provinc

provinces, in the south and in the east, because the troops were sprinkled around, and the taliban moved to kabul. you were talking about the winter. yes, it's hard to fight in the winter, particularly in the mountains and in the east. but if you're talking about putting bombs in urban areas in kabul, it doesn't make that much -- >> that's an interesting so far interpretation, jack, to suggest that the surge effort created -- if i interpreted you correctly, it created an unanticipated or unplanned liability in kabul by virtue of the outreach to the outer province. >> if you need 100,000 or 200,000 troops and you're going to have a surge of 30,000, it isn't going to help you at all. as a matter of fact, it may make the situation even -- >> more sitting ducks? more targets? >> soldiers fight back. >> fair enough. >> but the problem was the south and the east, and you spread out these troops in those areas to deal with those very real problems. well, the enemy, the taliban, is going to find other places. >> they don't want to find our soldiers, soldiers and sailors and marines, they're going to take the path of least

resistance. in this case, in the middle of the city, where lots of -- >> so reconcile the sort of new story of the weekend, if you will, the latest anecdote in the -- i recognize that, right. >> kabul is -- >> so reconcile that with the emergence as kabul of a problem and the current american foreign policy, relative to withdrawal in afghanistan. >> you want another surge? you want a kabul surge? do you think getting one in the u.s. can sell a kabul surge? >> above my pay grade. >> that's what i'm saying, you, the people, want a kabul surge? >> so paycheck me the proposition. i would like to have security in afghanistan, i'm american foreign policy interests. what are my choices? >> okay, there was a surge in the south. there was a surge in the east. some other places as well. and i'm not saying this is -- i'm not advocating this policy. >> you're not advocating, you're saying, this would be a policy. >> the argument being, well, we need some extra troops to secure kabul now. >> nobody's endorsing this, this is what our choices are. >> i don't think this is a good

choice. >> would it also bring more security by rapid exit? >> remember when general shinseki was asked, how many troops do you need in order to secure iraq, that is, after the battle. he said about 250,000 troops. that's what you need in afghanistan. >> so your choice is go big at 250,000, or the other option, which is get out faster, of afghanistan. >> well, that is sort of what we're doing. they've put an end date, the end of 2014, and if you listen to nato, and nato says this is the time to talk about reconciliation and political deals, the taliban doesn't seem to be in the mood for a political deal. there was a reconciliation committee, the taliban killed the head of it. >> that's interesting diplomacy. you would explain to me that an actual withdrawal, an aggressive withdrawal, jack, could be executed in a matter of 9 to 12 months, let's say. >> if you came to me, i was the

commanding general and you're a politician and you said, listen, forget about the politics involved here. i know i'm going to catch all of this the -- >> just process. >> i want to get out. how fast can you do it without engaging the troops who were there while you're extracting, my guess, six to nine months, no problem. >> how do you reconcile that type of analysis with a political strategy that says we're withdrawaling and it will be done in a few years? >> well, if you withdrew six to nine months drawdown in afghanistan -- >> a liquidation, effectively? >> there would be a massive impact on the afghan government. and the coverment of karzai might have to go with us. >> to get with us, as a risk factor. >> and no one's advocating that either. >> maybe that's what america wants. it's been ten years. >> it depends what your objective is. >> let's say my objective is liquidation, no more american casualties. what liabilities am i creating for myself by pursuing that strategy? >> karzai's gone.

>> where am i with the taliban, where am i with pakistan? >> taliban takes over a few provinces, takes over the south. the north breaks away and you have a mini civil war between what was the northern alliance and it will bann. >> and how much of a risk is that to my interests as america? >> of you sitting in a shopping mall? not that you go to shopping mall, but the average american at home. >> the united states of america and its national foreign interests? >> probably zero. the only time it was a risk in the past was because al qaeda took advantage of the situation, burrowed itself in there, and then decided -- >> let's say there's three choices, just for purpose of our conversation. >> but the taliban has changed now. >> in what sense? >> the taliban has become much more international, has become more savvy. it's been working with al qaeda now for a decade. >> more sophisticated, more effective. >> the taliban of ten years ago, which was a provincial group that probably didn't even know where new york was, well, they know now.

>> now they've got e-mail addresses. if you were to look at the two options theoretically we just went through, which no one is advocating, rapid withdrawal, six to nine months, a whole pile of unknown liabilities, and chaos, potentially. you could have a surge strategy that says we are going to secure afghanistan, which obviously is not going to happen, but theoretically you could pursue a parallel with kabul, or you have what we are doing. >> well, you could do -- >> what we are doing is what? that's my question. >> what are we doing? we're biding time. >> we decided -- look, we've decided the objective is 2014, we're coming out. and to that end, and there's a political component to that. i don't want to run for office bailing out in the middle of bailing out of afghanistan. so i'm going to drag it out long enough to either -- >> shoring up a leaky dam until then. i don't know exactly what -- >> so in other words, you don't -- is there a strategic imperative?

obviously, the political imperative to avoid an afghan war withdrawal in an election year for any sitting president at this point would have a huge variance, regardless of who the president is. to the extent, though, strategicing strategicingstrategi strategically, what is the benefit of spending in these next couple of years? >> i think there's some benefit, but that's only if we're willing to do what we're doing now, not until 2014, but like general mcchrystal suggested, for another decade. that's how long, at minimum, it's going to take to get some of these areas so that they can take care of themselves. you're not willing to do that, you'll have to pick some other strategy. >> what is the objective? is the objective now protecting americans so they can go out and live their lives in the united states without a fear of an al qaeda attack? if that's the objective, you can probably do that with a very small number of troops. and if you don't care what happens to afghanistan. then that's -- you can do that,

i would think. with a small number. and drones do work for that kind of activity. >> okay. >> but if your objective is to create a better, more stable afghanistan that becomes a stabilizing force for pakistan -- >> iran. >> you're going to need to be there a long time and you're going to the need a lot of troops. >> not conventional troops, necessarily. certainly support troops and some conventional troops, but lots of special forces and lots of -- >> i've got to wrap this up, but what is your understanding of the clear policy objective of the state department today relative to afghanistan -- >> they want both. they want both. they want to have -- make it a counterterrorist -- make sure that afghanistan is never a counterterrorist haven and they want to make afghanistan a somewhat better society that is stable and sustainable for -- >> and you can do that, but you're going to need a lot of luck and you're going to have more american casualties. >> i mentioned when this conversation started that, a, i would wave my hand in front of your camera a lot.

did you see that? i didn't mention that. i did mention that i thought we would learn a lot in this conversation and i know that i did and i suspect the folks at home did as well. >> anytime i get to be on with colonel jack jacobs, it's a an honor for me. >> i liked when richard looked to you and said, yeah, what are we doing? you should take it on the road. jack jacobs and richard engel, can i promote your evening's activities? richard engel on the premiere of "rock center," which will be live from the eight floor here at saturd"saturday night live," 10:00 eastern. i'm sure brian is very excited about that, as well as you are. >> good show. a good piece on. >> what is it? >> we went into syria without the knowledge of the government and met the revolutionaries that are keeping this uprising alive. >> all right, "rock center," 10:00, richard engel. i saw on twitter, there are people called the engelettes. have you seen them? >> i've seen some of them in

person and definitely seen their tweets. >> do you have any jacobettes? >> not like mrs. jacob. >> no, i'm the jacobette. >> there you go. will want. thank you, guys. have a good afternoon. coming up, why no one should underestimate occupy wall street, especially as most american's savings and net worth continue to erode. plus, president obama sidestepping congress again with another "we can't wait" executive order. our mega panel up on all of the above after the break. and then, flash mob, zombie style. it was a day of the undead in dallas, texas. coming up, an acclaimed novelist takes on the walking dead with a literary twist. what makes scottrade your smartphone's most powerful trading app ? total access - to everything. from idea to research to trade. including financials, indicators and real-time streaming quotes. whether you check your investments every day or every minute, our app can take them from

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well, we do not need a poll to tell us, but new signs today of deep economic uncertainty, as only 17% of our fellow americans are saying that they believe their overall financial situation today is improved from 12 months ago. that is down from 27% who had the same self-observation in may of this year, compared to a year ago may. nearly a third report that their net worth is lower than it was a year ago, which may be a positive sign, which might suggest that two-thirds are higher. looking for silver linings. but look no further than your neighborhood occupation, ultimately, for proof of the dissatisfaction of the unfairness and perceived unfairness that has become so endemic in the culture of this country. the movement as the occupation protests is expected to grow. in fact, friend of this program and one of the most respected

names in american and global finance, pimco's chief executive, mohammad el-erian wrote a blog, where he says, "occupy wall street will likely gain momentum in the coming weeks, growing in size and scope." he says, "it will develop deeper roots and more branches and it will encourage similar protests in other western countries. indeed, the most sequential is not whether but how occupy wall street will morph." and to that end, our monday megapanel joins us. msnbc contributor, imogen lloyd webber, the "washington examiner's" tim carney, an occupier for a night himself, i believe, a few months back, and "the nation's" ari berman. i certainly agree with his assessment that this energy is present and that what happens to this energy is entirely unknown. it's tremendously threatening to democratic establishment, to republican establishment, to all

sorts of people, to the banks, obviously. what are your opinions to that question, ari? i want to get us rolling here. >> sure. dylan, we know there's this massive disconnect, right, between the public and washington. and as long as the economy stays bad and as long as neither party really talks about it and focuses on the huge jobless crisis, the instability in the society will continue to grow and the sentiment of occupy wall street will continue to grow. >> at the same time, it seems obvious that any protest movement has the opportunity to screw itself up in lots of different ways, and the more people and the more anger and frustration that is involved, the risk profile goes to how they can manage the natural frustration that comes with the protest. what do you want them to do? they're going to get upset. >> i remember going on msnbc during the tea party protests and it was all, you know, they find the one guy who has a sign that vaguely can be distilled as

racist, or zoom in on the gun and don't say that the guy carrying the gun is black, and say it's racist. but on the other hand, what i don't think any honest person can deny is that the sense of disenfranchisement, the sense of an economy that's broken is an accurate sense. and that's what's driving a lot of this. i disagree with almost everything that those people down at zuccotti park would propose, okay? uh but i agreed with a majority of what they said were the problems. the political class in a position to avoid all of those problems and say they aren't problems. >> you say they're in a great position to -- >> a great position to avoid the problems, to pretend. no, it's not a problem that the banks have too much influence. the economy isn't hurting in this way. we're already fixing that problem. we're addressing the student loan problem. guess what, don't worry about that. >> your thoughts? >> i thought what was very interesting, those protest movements have gone global very quickly. in a month.

>> it's stunning. >> that's extraordinary. also, don't forget this. i moved to america by choice. it's the most extraordinary nation. you saw 2.5% growth in the last quarter. we'd kill for that in the uk right now. and that's -- >> mind you, we drive it through financial extraction. >> if so many people are unhappy here in the united states, where the economy is worth $14 trillion a year, you next competitor is china at $5 trillion a year. hang on a minute, with these globalized protests, it's quite scary what could happen around the world. >> how so? what would you be afraid of? >> it's scary that it's happening here, first of all, when bear in mind you're by far the number one country in the world. >> where a country so wealthy would have this -- >> the 7 billionth person was born today. over half the world live on less than $2 a day. america is incredibly privileged, but it's unhappy. >> it's unhappy because of the obvious sense of injustice through platinum citizenship and multi -- basically, it's the breach of fairness in justice that i think glen greenwald talks about, which is the income inequality in this country, if you look historically, is quite

honestly, not terribly offens e offensive, and something we have celebrated. we say, oh, look at tim carney who invented the tim carney machine and it's so wonderful and i love tim carney machines. and now look at his big house, and that's tim carney's house, he invented the tim carney machine. but what we're not getting and what glen greenwald's point was and i think really the point of the occupation, and the reason why the richest country in the world is in the streets is because the very principles of fairness that this country was founded on are being so explicitly breached. i don't think people really comprehend how powerful the dynamics of behavioral economics are, where it doesn't matter how wealthy or poor you are. if you are getting screwed by the guy sitting next to you, there's a natural human response to that. >> and it certainly doesn't feel like we're number one right now, when you have 14 million people unemployed. you have the top 1% controlling

the income. and you're seeing a political class in washington that's fixate on all these other problems. they're talking about the debt, the deficit, talking about cutting social security, talking about cutting medicare, talking about cutting taxes and the wealthy. and they're not talking about -- >> or explosive growth. there's no talk of explosive growth. >> i have an almost philosophical approach to this pip spent the night down there and i -- talked to as many people as i could possibly talk to. and my sense was that there was idea of disenfranchisement. the idea that the people down there didn't feel the ability to shape the world around them. we are political animals. aristotle knew it -- >> people must be heard. >> but we don't have sort of the old-fashioned way was you had a limited government, you had a church group, you had a voluntary organization. these things have all roded for one reason or another. i blame government, but i also blame air-conditioning and boeing alone, et cetera. but they then look at this fact. we're disenfranchised. and then they say, and also, the

banks, the big energy companies, et cetera, are controlling the federal political system, so that's where we need to address it. i would want them to rebuild, you know, you know, a local town government, a local town meeting. instead, they're saying, we need to get control over the federal apparatus. so i think it's a faulty response to a very legitimate complaint. >> go ahead, imogen? >> i don't know. we shall see moving forward, but the politicians at the moment on some level seem to be ignoring occupy wall street. they don't know what to make of it. and they cannot afford to ignore it for that much longer. >> it's an interesting thing. two thing os cur to me. one, i think there are a lot of folk who is fall into tim carney's camp, where they may or may not agree with the individual requests or protestizations of a given protest. but they fully can observe and recognize the validity of the disenfranchisement that is being represented by the fact that people are protesting. at the same time, there seems to be this ego or this arrogance both in the republican establishment and in the democratic establishment, to

your point, imogen -- >> -- campaigning already. >> that we don't actually need to reconcile. the same way in 2008, there was a decision. we don't have to reconcile this bank situation, because people don't really understand it, so we're just going to print all this money and everything will be fine and everybody will relax. or we don't really have to reform health care. we don't have to deal with the health insurance monopolies, the drug companies and all the nonsense. we just have to give people more health care. and there's a point where that type of political decision making is really going to come confronted to this. do you have any sense of any political strand, ari, that you see, individual or collective, that could build a bridge to this disenfranchisement and use it in way, not as -- that's not advantageous for them, they're like, oh, well, how is senator so-and -- no, that can actually channel that energy into the political dialogue? >> that's why the lack of demands has been sort of brilliant. it's been hard to marginalize the movement when they're talking in these broad themes that people agree with. one issue, you've talked about it on this show, the money in politics issue, is something

that i think can bridge the gap between left and right. certainly there's a right/left alliance between tim and i about the power of government in washington. so they're going to disagree on specifics to some extent, but if they agree in broad terms, that opens up the political space for a conversation that we weren't even having. and solutions can emerge from that. >> and that seems to be probably the most potentially beneficial thing going back to mohammad el -erian's point. if a conversation opens up, at least we'll have mar interesting year. and i would be more optimistic for this country. we'll take a break. the mega panel stays. coming up, decisions, decisions. when i you or i may not have nearly as much control as we would like to think over the choices that we make. [ groans ] [ marge ] psst.

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well, we talk a lot on this show about the choices we make and how important choice is,

individual and collective choice, in order to have aligned interests when you're pursuing anything. whether it's our choices to align interests in leadership, in the way we provide health care for each other, our decisions on war, on spending, for that matter, our choices on our own morality. if you don't actually have the liberty and capacity to record and manifest your own intent, them what happens? and what if i told you that you aren't making most of your decisions? that everything from what you eat to who you vote for is being systemically designed to limit and even eliminate the true intentions of choice that are a prerequisite to aligned interests. and our next guest is a boston college law professor. he's here to tell us how the idea of unlimited opportunities has been twisted into a weapon of blame and manipulation, the dangers of a system structured around creating false choices as

opposed to real ones. joining the conversation, kent greenfield, along with the mega panel. kent's book, "the myth of choice: personal responsibility in a world of limits." professor, we love the idea of limit, we love the idea of choice. it is a great political vehicle, a great personal and individual vehicle for achievement. we seem to have more choice than anybody in the world. i've got 50 paint colors, 50 flavors of milk shake, 50 colors of car. what do you mean our choices are being systemically manipulated? >> we love to have it our way. that's the prototypical american slogan. but the reality for most americans, most of the time is their choices are much more limited, both politically, economically, socially, culturally. a couple examples. a couple weeks ago, herman cain said, look, if you're poored, you're unemployed, you should blame yourself. this essentially is the mantra of choice, of opportunity. we've got all this opportunity. it's that what that ends up meaning is that if you are poor, if you're unemployed, you should blame yourself. so it relieves the rest of us

from any obligation, from any shared responsibility to take care of our fellow citizens. >> if you were to look at -- you say systemically. what do you mean? what's the system? >> well, either people's situation their own failing, right? people are poor because of bad choices that they've made. and for some people who are poor, that's true. but some people who are poor or who are unemployed are there because of choices that other people have made. so if we look at poverty, unemployment, the occupy wall street movement as an example of individual failings rather than systemic failings, we would treat it differently. if it's systemic failings -- >> so as a result of making it in that framing, we relieve ourselves of responsibility to address the system in any way, shape, or form, whether it's big banks, whether it's the voting mechanism, whether it's anything -- >> exactly. >> that's quite frightening. a suitable topic for halloween, i think. when i saw your book title win

immediately thought, marketing. started with the madmen area and moving on. i was reading with children's advertising, this group, talked to the tune of $17 billion a year. that's up from $100 million in 1983. would you be for legislating against those very vulnerable groups, like children whochb learned to make a choice. >> like most law professors,ly say, it depends. but, of course, we know that marketers know us better than we know ourselves sometimes. and at heart, we -- part of our brain is still reptilian. so we are subject to certain urges and animalistic enticements, especially with kids. i think it's worthwhile to protect the most vulnerable among us from certain marketing tricks. >> tim, if you look at libertarian. if you look at what i would look at as the core conservative sort of framing, it is on -- tim is responsible for tim's life. dylan is responsible for dylan's life. imogen is responsible for imogen's life. and we, as sort of conservatives

in that regard, request a system of government that acknowledges that. interested -- >> and it seems like what part of your book is about is about dismantling the idea that there is a free market. you're challenging the notion that consumers and investors and employees get to freely choose what they want to choose. but the alternative, of course, is a privileged political class, being controlled by the special interests dylan is talking about every day. energy companies, drug companies, banks. other big businesses and these lobbyists. they're setting the rules. so in my mind, yes, if i'm an employee, i don't really get to call the shots entirely, but i do have some influence. but if i'm putting government in charge of setting more rules to try to give me more choice, often that just means giving government more power, which is giving more power to the special interests. >> depends what we mean by freedom. by freedom, you can do whatever you want, and government is the thing that we should be protected against, then we

should have as little government intrusion as possible. but if freedom means freedom from polluted air, freedom from discrimination, freedom from poverty, then by the very nature, we do need collective action, and usually that's by way of government. >> i don't think that's a coherent definition of freedom. you're talking about freedom from whatever you don't like. what if i want freedom from liberal ideas? >> which, by the way, he does! >> what ken is talking about is obviously -- constitution, right? if you had total freedom, in tim's mind, just total anarchy, right? >> but also you would get coercion from the market. i'm talking about roosevelt's four freedoms. freedom from want, freedom from fear, being among them. and the only way you can get freedom from want, freedom from fear is through more collective decision making. >> i think freedom from want and freedom from fear are utopian ideas. i think there will be scarcity in the world. and the question is whether you're going to put the freedom question on sort of what gets decided by some collective, what we ought to be free to do, or to

simply let people do what they want to do. >> but isn't there something that is sinister about appearing to do what you're describing, which is i'm going to let tim and imogen, you guys decide, but then i'm going to be doing all the things that you and i hate, which is the back end stuff with the politics and all the rest of it. so now i'm running this fantasy land where you guys are going, aren't i cute. and then, look at these two jack-a-doodles who think they're deciding things. that's what you're getting at, that there's the illusion of choice. >> there is the illusion of choice. if most americans can't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps because they don't have boots, there's no choice there. >> interesting and provocative, all the same. and perhaps one day tim carney will have that world he seeks that is free from liberal ideas. i don't know where that is. but we're almost with us, and we're -- >> it's not here on nbc. >> if you took the corporations out, right, took the government out, corporations would have more power, not less. that's why i don't understand what you're talking about.

>> the thing is, it's a peculiar disconnect. but i will announce that i did talk to a guy -- i talked to a commander on the u.s. space station, an astronaut, i guess a week or two ago, he says we'll be getting to mars in no time. maybe that can be your own planet. >> and ron paul can be president. >> pleasure to meet you, professor. thank you, guys. happy halloween to all four of you. if you are asking questions, we are trying to do everything we can to answer those questions. and today we're able to do that. a little help from the digital staff, we're sorting through the inbox to make it through the e-mails, not only about occupy wall street, but about the first amendment and free speech. more oil, investigating the fed, and of course, or own efforts to get money out with the 28th amendment to the constitution. click over to dylanratigan.com for all the feedback there and stay tuned for more updates on get money out this week. in the meantime, keep e-mails coming. so much for the passengers bill of rights.

meanwhile, something more mundane on the news front. a stranded plane for seven hours this weekend. no food, no bathrooms. and the pilot pleading for help. >> i've got a problem here on the airplane. i'm going to need cops on board. >> this weekend's freak fall snow turning into a halloween horror show. the latest as thousands in the northeast prepare to spend halloween night in the dark. my doctor told me calcium

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restored. making it worse, halloween trick or treating has been cancelled in some towns in the northeast because of safety concerns. no power, no lights, no candy on halloween. but the biggest horror story from this weekend's storm comes from the world of travel. close your eyes at home, imagine you're on a plane, you're in sunny florida, it's beautiful. just got to make it back to newark, new jersey. you run into some bad weather while you're on board that plane from sunny, florida. find yourself diverted to hartford, connecticut. worse things have happened. the planes land and then you just wait to get off and make arrangements. and then you wait some more and then a little bit more. in fact, you wait on that plane in hartford for seven hours, on the tarmac. you cannot get off of that plane. the supplies of food and water dwindle and the toilets ultimately back up. when you finally get off of that plane, there are no hotel rooms in hartford, and you have to sleep on a cot in the hartford air terminal. that sounds scary, right?

actually happened to some folks traveling this weekend on a jetblue flight. that flight and several others were held on the tarmac in hartford for hours. the airline, jetblue, offering this apology, if you can call it that. they say, "obviously, we would have preferred deplaning much sooner than we did. the airport experienced intermittent power outages, which made refueling and jetbridge deplaning difficult. we apologize to the customers impacted by this confluence of events." jetblue has refunded the tickets, but thanks to the new rules passed after a similar jetblue incident a few years back, the airline could actually face fines of 27,000 bucks for each passenger for leaving them on the plane for so long. so for the folks who spent seven hours on the tarmac this weekend, i don't think you'll ever see any of that money, but at least we might be able to find out whether jetblue pays the fine. what is halloween, after all, not just with scary plane stories, but with a few zom

bees. after the break, a harvard grad and a award-winning novelist sharing his own zombie nightmare. [ male announcer ] juice drink too watery? ♪ feel the power my young friend. mmm! [ male announcer ] for unsurpassed fruit and veggie nutrition... v8 v-fusion. could've had a v8. i refer to her as "that woman with the great gums." as jill's dentist, i know that her gums are a foundation of a healthy smile. jill knows that, too -- so she uses crest pro-health clinical gum protection toothpaste.

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>> ah! [ zombie growling ] >> oh, the zombie invasion is here! movies, tv, of course, our pop culture. now it's taken over the literary world. our next guest has written a book about a post-apocalyptic world where a plague has turned humans into zombies and a handful of humans plan to fight back. with us now, colson whitehead. what's the metaphor in all this zombie talk, not only in your book, but where do you think it is being represented artistically in this framing? >> i can't talk about the larger cultural currents. i can talk about my own sad, neurotic fixation, which goes back to childhood. you know, i had very permissive parents that allowed me to see "dawn of the dead" and stuff like that when i was a kid. and since then, for the last 30 years, i've had zombie dreams. so people have nightmares about

being late for an exam in the class they haven't gone to. i have zombies in my dreams. they're fast, they're slow. so i wanted to make a little art out of it and see where it took me. >> and where did it take you? >> well, i think, look, my take on the zombie is that everything you know about people is true. if you're paranoid and m misanthropic like me, you have a fear that everybody you know is actually a monster. so the zombie apocalypse come when your family, your neighbors, your siblings finally stop acting civilized and try to eat you, like they always wanted to. >> so it's that base fear that everyone you most trust and rely upon will be taken by some outside force, effectively? >> yes. it might be just be my pathetic orientation, but that's sort of how i interpret it. and that's my spin on it. >> and so what it sounds like, with the way you've set it up,

though, from a storytelling standpoint is for some sort of heroic last stand, if you will, against this zombie force. is that correct? >> well, the apocalypse is actually ending and they're trying to resettle manhattan, reboot society. so teams of civilian sweepers are going door to door, restaurant to restaurant in downtown, manhattan, getting rid of the remaining zombies that the army hasn't wiped out. they sort of linger like bad houseguests who won't leave. the main character, mark spitz, is one of these the guys just taking out the rubbish. >> and what is it about "zone one" that -- why is this happening in that particular neighborhood? and i have a personal interest, as i happen to live in zone one, and i'm hoping that this is all made up. >> sure. well, pretty much. you know, manhattan prized real estate, if you can reboot manhattan, you can reboot the rest of america. so it's a real prize. and so zone one is everything

below canal street. they've set up a wall, and once they sweep out zone one, they'll go to zone two, which is like you know canal to houston and reclaim the city, and basically reclaim civilization bit by bit. >> and if you were to define your zombies, because there's a lot of zombies, and i think you made a great point, that this is your zombie. this is your interpretation of it. we have lots of zombies in pop culture. obviously, we have "the walking dead here," we have "dawn of the dead," "28 days later," there's countless examples in modern and pop culture history. what would you say are the defining characteristics of your zombies this fine halloween? >> well, tonight there are going to be a lot of kids dressed up in zombie makeup, and they have their new generational accommodation with the zombie. i'm old school. you know, i'm 42, so mine are slow, they're not fast.

they're lumbering creatures. and for me, a group of mindless, shambling zombies, as you might find in rush hour or midtown, manhattan, that's the real -- that's scarier than two fast zom be bees coming at you. >> you like your zombies, slow, unpredictable, and with a lot of perseverance. >> yes. they're going to keep coming and they'll get you eventually. >> they're coming. i got it. okay, that's good and scary. i feel plenty scared going into this evening now. congratulations on the book. here it is. look, "zone one," colson whitehead. i'll assure my friends downtown that it's a novel and we needn't worry. but if you need any help in zone one some time, call me, maybe we can give you a hand if any zombies turn up. >> i'll bring my machete, you bring your shotgun. we're all good. >> a baseball bat, whatever we need. have a good one. colson whitehead, "zone one." coming up on "hardball," the

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welcome back. keli goff here with a rant on monday, in halloween orange. happy halloween to you. you see, my tie is the color of bars and tone. >> i love the festive tie. >> thank you. >> so while a lot of kids are preparing to stock up on some sweet treats tonight for halloween, president obama doled

out just what might be the best treat ever for those of us who might be a bit too old for halloween, but are still kids at heart. student loan relief. his proposal will allow those with $1.6 million will cap their debts of discretionary income. while this might help some, what concerns me is how little is being done to prevent the next generation from being thrown into the same shark-infested waters. . what do i mean? let me ask you a question. if an 18-year-old with no credit history and no job walked into a bank and requested a loan to buy a $100,000 condo, what would the loan officer probably say? well, after he finished laughing, i'm assuming, no. yet millions of 18-year-olds essentially do just that. takes of tens of thousands of dollars in debt to buy something that they cannot afford and will likely not be able to pay off in their lifetimes, an overpriced college degree. who's to blame? speaking of someone who's two costly degrees of my own, i acknowledge that adults have to

take responsibility for the financial choices that we make. just like a person who buys a house that they know they can't really afford, a person who takes out significant debt for a degree they are not sure they are going to use also bears responsibility. but similarly, if we hold predatory lenders accountable for targeting low-income people for mortgages they cannot afford, why are we not holding lenders accountable for targeting students for taking out loans they cannot afford and likely never will. how is a lender who signs an 18-year-old to $50,000 loan to pursue a degree in that subject really any different than a predatory lender who targets a low-income widow? i'm not suggesting that no one should be allowed to receive loans to pursue higher education. i am saying that we have to reform the system and put standards in place, so not just anyone can walk in and get a loan for any degree, just like not anyone can get a loan for a mansion. perhaps a start would be requiring colleges and universities to be up front about the job prospects of those who leave their institutions with degrees. think about it. if a potential student were to

go to the website of a college and see that only 1% of graduates are working in his or her chosen field, he might think twice before signing his financial future away for that degree. and you know what? if he pursues that degree anyway, then that's on him. at least he and his family will have made the decision with eyes wide open, something too many students trying to pursue the gateway to the american dream known as college are not being given the information to do right now. >> if you were to look at the economic incentives in the college marketplace, the student lending business, the incredible pursuit of prestige over learning in our academic environment, where we rank our colleges based on who raises the most money. if you look at "u.s. news & world report," it's a matter of who raises the most money. like our political system. doesn't matter whether you're doing anything on the college front. it matters whether you have the biggest endowment of any college in the world. and i'm interested as to how you reconcile your narrative, which i agree with, with the

university narrative? >> that's why transparency is the key. you brought up "u.s. news & world report." the endowment plays a role, but so does matching things like employment statistics for afterwards, especially for law rankings. they found that a lot of those law rankings employment data is rigged. someone could be waiting tables or bartending and have a law degree, and they'll still turn in the information that says, all of our graduates are employed, but they're not working as lawyers. >> so for you that first step is the shared visibility, beginning with aligning interests -- >> knowledge is power. and students don't have the knowledge. it's not being provided to them. >> what if students were to demand nor transparency from the universities? the students don't even get transparency in the audit of how the money is spent. >> that's right. that's a first start. and actually if you to loop21.com where the column is, i have links to the organizations that are doing work in trying to provide nor