39% of union families are voting for walker, that's what a survey said, do you believe that? >> i don't believe it. i saw a video that said he wanted to divide and conquer the state and sends shockwaves through private sector unions. i'm hearing from a lot more people in private sectors going to my website and a lot more private sector unions signing up because they see what will happen to them. that's the ed show. >> good to have you with us tonight. ezra klein next filling in for rachel maddow. >> thank you very much. thank you for sticking around the next hour. rachel has a well-deserved night off. it is common for republicans to laud reagan. what is not common is with hillary clinton and obama in 2008, they talked up the gipper.

>> i think reagan changed the trajectory of america in way that richard nixon did not. in a way bill clinton did not. he put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. >> reagan, the patron saint of american conservative was a transformational president according to barack obama, more successful than in the recently successful democratic president, bill clinton. when obama said that, the strategy was pretty clear. mr. obama was diminishing the impact of bill clinton and taking a shot at nominating another clinton and trying to appeal to moderates and liberals who wanted their own transformational leader. o praising reagan is part of what is a common trend now. happens a lot presidents controversial become unifying

icons in retrospect. the rallying around the retiree becomes selective forgetting. we forget who they were and forget about the things that divided them when they were in office. the nation's 39th president found himself seemingly out of nowhere in this presidential race just a month ago. >> you would have given the order, governor? >> even jimmy carter would have given that order. >> jimmy carter's reputation as a peace nick is undeserved. he presided over a military build-up with the soviet union and he himself served on a submarine, more service than mitt romney has offered the country. much is said about his instincts of foreign policy and taking the fight to his enemies and making the current president killing the most wanted man alive less successive.

so much hidden meaning, mr. romney has a democrat he compliments unabashedly on the campaign trail. >> predicate made efforts to reform welfare as we know it. predicate, remember, he said the era of big government was over. predicate was signaling to his party democrats should no longer govern by proposing a new program for every problem. president obama tucked away the clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas. >> clinton sounds like a good guy. mitt romney has been traveling the country in recent weeks singing his praises. what he seems to have forgot and maybe it slipped his mind about bill clinton is what republicans thought about bill clinton's program in the 1990s and specifically his economic plan. when bill clinton came into office he tried to pass a budget to reduce the deficit. you would have thought that's

what republicans wanted. here comes a democratic president and took an axe to the budget. he didn't get one republican vote. not one in the house or senate voted for his economic plan. they went even further than not voting for it. they actively predicted bill clinton's 1993 budget would spell doom for the nation. >> i believe this will lead to recession next year. this is the democrat regime's recession and each one will be held personally accountable. >> it will slow the economy and put people out of work, i've been saying the last week the people i feel the worst about this is the person feeling out a job application. it's an a tight job market now and only get tighter. >> the proof is in the pudding. we will come back next year, higher deficits and the economy, people won't go to work.

>> did you see newt gingrich's tie in that? did it slow things down? it did not. 23 million jobs were created. president clinton took the massive deficit in the '80s and '90s and turned it into sur pluses. what did they hate about his economic plan? it raised taxes. his 1993 budget created top tax brackets for the highest income earners, raised the gas tax and raised taxes all at once and it helped bill clinton close the deficit. this is an important principle of budgeting, taxes close deficits. what bill clinton believed in was responsible fiscal management. he also cut spending, crucial. and the deficit part of previous tax cuts, you had to be willing to increase tax, half the budget.

republicans warned that would tank the economy, cause a recession, wouldn't close the deficit and they were dead wrong. now, all these years later, they have forgotten those lessons. in the rush to make bill clinton the good democrat and barack obama the bad one they've forgotten everything they did and should have learned from it. since the clinton administration, republicans have taken us in the opposite direction. they decided to pass a round of tax cuts, bush 1 and 2 resulted in a massive increase and 202001 and 2011 had a big increase in the debt. and this chart which talking points memo made using the data from the nonpartisan budget office shows if the bush tax cuts are projected, it will add more than$5 trillion to the national credit card. 5 trillion. every republican i'm aware

favors extending those tax cuts. to put it in privilege, you could fill the program's budget hole for the next 75 years with less than half the bush tax cuts. less than half. if you want more evidence lower taxes lead to higher deficits. in 2009, they plummet and not coincidentally, that is exactly when deficits explod taxes and both led to higher deficits and with clinton we got a balanced budget and decade with extraordinary growth. when portman was asked on tuesday what caused the bush administration deficits, he didn't mention tax cuts, he said more was spent after 9/11 on the department of defense. tax cuts?

what tax cuts. mitt romney wants to spend more than a trillion on defense spending. that lesson hasn't been learned. bush's budget director of all people should know. this is not at this point for the republican party a matter of budgeting or economic evidence, a matter of taxes and dogma. republicans refuse to learn over recent history and predictions they were caught on tape making. you can be sure if barack obama makes sure to extend the tax cuts and raise taxes on rich and cutting spending, you can be sure republicans will look back and say, you know, that obama wasn't so bad he got the economy and importance of taxes, why can't we be more like him. now, a senior fellow at the

senior of budget and partisan policy and msnbc contributor, good to see you. >> good to see you, ezra. >> has romney returned to anything like clinton's policies? anything there? >> far from it. if anything, he proposed and quite explicitly, a return to the policies we society with the george w. bush part of the experiment. that's the experiment that works off the trickle down supply-side notions, the idea if you cut taxes sharply for those at the top of the scale, that will create enough growth and economic activity not only to offset your tax loss but uplift the lower class and middle income people. as you very carefully took us through just then, it doesn't work on either one of those counts. your tax charts show amazingly, when you cut tax rates, tax

revenues fall and you're stuck with big deficits. particularly importantly, i'd underscore this part of your introduction, the economy of the supply-side trickle down bush years was so different for broad middle class, low income people and economy of the clinton years and second half of the 1990s, there, you saw middle class incomes rising at the rate of economic growth and productivity for the first time in decades, poverty falling sharply, very different outcomes where the middle class face stagnant intersection. >> that was where you had poverty middle incomes decrease. say you want go the whole republican here to term a phrase, you want to balance a budget without touching revenues at all. keep them where the bush tax cuts left them, what sort of

cuts do you need to make? >> let's talk about revenues as a share of the economy, the best way to look at this. if you want to collect something like 18% of gdp and revenue, you'd have to cut spending, which is right now elevated, 24% or so, a great deal, 6% of gdp to get those even. but mitt romney wants to go below that. his tax cuts would take us down to revenue levels that were probably in the 15% range, actually about where we are now largely because of the recession. that would mean massive spending cuts. you also have to appreciate something you pointed out. he wants to significantly increase defense spending. that means you have to cut the heck out of social security, medicaid, medicare, everything else government does. the only thing you're really going to be able to keep up with is defense and interest on the debt.

we simply wouldn't recognize government and it would come nowhere near the ability to meet the challenges it faces whether it's retirement security, climate change, you name it. >> one of the arguments mitt romney makes is what bill clinton did so effectively is reformed welfare, a specific policy he pointed out. mitt romney said he will do a similar thing bill clinton did to welfare, medicaid, job assistance, training. specifically saying he will reform the entire welfare government and the only way to explain how to give cuts. i know budget department where you work studied this extensively. can you get savings by changing the welfare model? >> you can get significant savings from there and it's a terrible mistake. i happen to be a big fan of bill clinton and his legacy.

there's a couple of things, if you look back at them, have not gone well. when you do what bill clinton did to welfare, turn it over to the states, turn it into a block grant, give the states a fixed sum year after year and say, good luck, deal with it, even if we hit a recession. it works pretty well. it worked better than people thought it would when the economy was booming in the '90s. when we hit the recession and the great recession we're coming out of now, welfare performed terribly and really didn't provide a safety net at all. when you take the food stamps and training programs and all the other benefits in the safety net, you will lose their counter cyclicality. you will lose the ability to catch people when the economy stumbles. you might get savings but that's precisely the type of gutting of government we need if we're to have the kind of economy and society you and i and many viewers recognize as fair and youthful. >> it always seems remarkable to me after recession we need counter recyclical spending and the state seems unable to handle programs and want to go to

something the federal government has less flexibility to help in a recession. >> be careful of the block granting notion, the savings ar e-luce airy because the costs are steep. >> a former advisor to joe biden and msnbc contributor and budget wonk. >> so are you. next up, a challenge to the gridlock dysfunctional mess that is our congress. later, the best new thing in the world with extra geekiness. stick around. . have a good day, honey. i love you, ok. bye, mom. [ female announcer ] sam's mom is muddling through her allergies. what can she do? she can get answers at walgreens. with guidance and information to help her make informed choices for her allergy needs. like zyrtec -- with the strength of 24-hour zyrtec, you get relief from your worst allergy symptoms, indoors and out.

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this just in, the presumptive nominee stands up for what he believes in, sort of. the can't exactly say what that is. that story coming right up.

the staffer's name was mike manatos and after the election where johnson routed gold water, that memo is one of the most remarkably telling documents in a story washington became so broken. the subject was medicare. johnson planned to pass a bill after the election. manatos was gaming out how it might fare in the senate. after going over those who won in the election and who lost it. the bottom line, if all supporters are present and voting, we would win by a vote by 55-45. do you see what is so crazy about that? makes that one sentence remarkable. 55-45, 55 votes to pass

medicare, not 60. neither manatos or johnson were worried about the filibuster. this is the key fact about the senate one thing you need to understand before you can understand anything else about it. it was not always like this. you did not always need 60 votes for everything you did. this graph shows a number of cloture filings since 1915. it is a vote you need to break a filibuster. a good way to track how many there are. there are a lot more now than

before. there have been more filibusters during obama's time in office during the '50s, '60s, and '70s combined. during the time we created medicare and head start. is the not what any founder intended at all. they thought about it, the constitutional convention to require a two-thirds majority came up but rejected. alexander hamilton savaged the idea its real operation is to embarrass the administration to destroy the energy of government and substitute the pleasure of an insignificant turbulent or corrupt hunta to respectable decisions of majority.

and james madison was more temperament. in all cases where justice or the general good require acts to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. no longer majority rule. the power would be transferred to the minority. if they didn't in tend it, how did we get the filibuster? in 1806, by aaron burr, said it was complicated and redundant and to alleviate the previous question motion that the senators used to end the debate and move to the next topic and recommended axing it because it was hardly ever used. senators were gentlemen, they knew when to stop talking. that was the moment the estimate created the filibuster. nobody knew it at the time but three more decades before it was mounted and five decades after the ratification of the constitution. the filibuster was an rn intended consequence, mistake. they like to say george washington was a cooling saucer of democracy, when he said that, if he said that, there was no filibuster.

senators weren't elected directly by the people but chosen by the state legislatures because their term was six years long and only a third of them were up for re-election at any time. all that made them a body free from the passions of a quick majority. it is now in a freezer and road to accountability because they're no longer judging majority on what they did but if they're judging majority on what the minority allowed them to do or kept them from doing, that's not how washington is supposed to work and why the organization common cause has launched a lawsuit arguing the filibuster is unconstitutional. joining me now is minnesota congressman keith ellison. thank you for being here. >> pleased to be here. thank you. >> why did you sign onto the lawsuit challenging the filibuster. you are in the house of representatives, not the senate. what is your role here? >> i signed on because i wanted to see democracy work. when i voted on the disclose act

and the dream act, the majority will was frustrated by this ridiculous filibuster rule. these two items should be the law of the land but they're not because of the filibuster rule. they're literally kids walking around who would have benefitted from the dream act worried about their future because a minority was able to use trickeration to stymie the will of the majority. >> correct me if i am wrong, the disclose act reverses some of what the citizens of united did creating disclosure of the dream act that would have helped children of illegal immigrants go to school they went through the senate but got filibustered once they got there? >> that's right. by defeating the disclose act, the very groups i believe are behind these senators we now don't get to know who they are as they funnel massive sums of money.

we have private money, minority ruling the senate. we have compounded problems and let's start by getting rid of these crazy rules. >> they have the right to make their own rules. senators have over and over again not repealed the filibuster and not gone underneath it and ratified it different times. doesn't that say it is constitutional and the senate has chosen a filibuster and chosen to do so? >> i don't agree with that. it's not constitutional. it was contemplated and rejected. the fact they have fallen into a bad practice because it increases the power of each individual there doesn't mean it's constitutional. the fact of the matter is, too, i want to test whether it's constitutional but maybe this lawsuit will help the senate correct its own business something it has not been able to do short of a lawsuit which is why i joined this lawsuit and proud to be part of it. >> some senators have been trying to reform the filibuster. something really i thought remarkable happened about a week ago, after a set of attempted

filibusters by the republicans, majority leader harry reid, went to the floor of the senate and apologized to them and said i was wrong to fight your efforts to reform the filibuster. it has been abused and should be reformed. do you think that implies the majority reid and democrats in the senate will reform the filibuster and maybe the court case isn't necessary at this point? >> i think the court case is absolutely necessary. i don't trust them. if you don't put heat on them, they will not change it. i think there are a lot of great senators who want reform, you'd daly, harkin, many more than that. at the end of the day, they have not been able to move things forward even though several of them do want the change. i think a lawsuit, external force is what is needed in this situation, even if that's just to prod them to do the right thing, i don't think removing this lawsuit is going to do the trick. we need to have the lawsuit move forward and see this litigated

in court, if necessary. if they fix it, they can make everything move. >> the key difference between senate and house is proportionality. montana doesn't get as much as california does. but does for senators. 7 of 13 states representing 27% of the population could muster the majority of the senate to command action. today, using filibuster, 21% of the states muster 11% of the population can muster the votes to stop in the senate. i am a californian and are most disadvantaged by the current rules. doesn't that seem unfair, doesn't it seem like we've gone too far disadvantaging the large states? >> i think it's gone too far. when you look at the fact that each state no matter what their population has two senators, the fact we have crazy filibuster rules, you are compounding advantage on the minority in a

way the founders never imagined and runs contrary to the democratic spirit of our country. i think it is high time to bring this to a close. let the will of the people emerge. let's have some real democracy in the united states senate. they like to call themselves a great deliberative body. i think they strayed from that and i think there are members of the senate who would be pretty happy to be able to return to a real democracy in the senate. >> minutes democratic congressman, keith ellison, thank you for your time tonight. >> thanks. coming up, what the phrase character assassination means and what it does not mean at all. pulitzer prize winning columnist, gene robinson joins me on that. but first, one more thing, about another amazing white house letter that landed in our in box. the letter in question was

written by president ronald reagan one of the most crucial responsibilities a president has declaring and responding to federal disasters. fail to do it correctly and you risk turning a heck of a job into staying power. in 1994, he was asked to declare a federal disaster only with a twist. he was asking to reiterate something was a federal disaster area. 7th grader andy's mother declared his bedroom was a federal disaster area. at one point or another, who hasn't? and smith up on the implications, wrote a letter to request federal funds to herm clean up his room and the kind of huts spa that earned a reply from the president. we found it typed up in the book, "reagan, a life and

letters" he puts through a few procedural problems with his request but not why ultimately he turned him down. this administration says things that could be done better by people at the local level is volunteerism. your situation is a natural. i'm sure your mother was reasonable to declare your room a natural disaster and you can launch another volunteer program to g along with the more than 3,000 already under way in our nation. congratulations. give my best regards to your mother. any letter that is not a form letter is awesome. but a letter that defines his presidency and do it with grace and humor, that's even better. this week, new jersey

this week, new jersey governor chris christie released a video of himself as action man and not be outdone, democratic mayor cory booker. >> governor. >> you guys have any problems, a fire anywhere, people trapped? >> no. >> like a bad automobile accident you need me to help some folks? >> nothing like that. >> a cat in a tree? >> no. i think we're all set here. >> trooper what have we got here? >> mayor, thank you for coming. a two alarm fire on state street and a car broken down and a little girl lost her cat in a tree. >> governor, be as you were. i've got this. >> it is a parity and fun. it points to something real. governor christie's not very subtle wish to be the guy who

gets to say these words. >> i got this. >> tough guy, that chris christie. we found something he most certainly has not got that he doesn't even want. that story is coming up. ♪ surf's up everybody get your boards and your wetsuits ♪ free-credit-score-dot-com's gonna direct you ♪ ♪ to check your credit score before it gets too late ♪ ♪ and you end up strapped for cash ♪ ♪ patching your board with duct tape ♪ ♪ so hit free-credit-score-dot-com ♪ ♪ find out what credit's about ♪ ♪ or else you could be headed for a credit wipeout ♪

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by the time "the rachel maddow show" gathered for a meeting this afternoon, i thought we could dodge the jeremiah wright story. a political ad best record the defunct four blissful years jeremiah wright was add. and he said by the afternoon he rejected the ad and i thought we would be talking about something else which was fine, great even. i have more tax policy to tell you about. but then mitt romney said this. >> i want to make it very clear i repudiate that effort. i think it's the wrong course for a pac or a campaign. i've been disappointed independent the campaign to

date, which is focused on character assassination. character assassination. we can talk about a lot of things but the centerpiece of his campaign is quite clearly character assassination. his effort to look at my work at bain is to characterize me in a way that isn't accurate. our approach was to always try to make the enterprise more successful and the purpose of the president's ads are not to describe success and failure, to somehow suggest i'm not a good person or good guy. having the campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things i find offensive, among many others in the pac description that came in the "new york times." if that's accurate, why, obviously, that's something i repudiate. >> yes. yes, you heard all that correctly. that was mitt romney comparing a super pac pitch that seeks to quote explain how forces out of obama's control that shaped the man and made completely the wrong choice as president in these days as times by emphasizing reverend wright's inflammatory influence in his earlier years and said to inflame questions on his character and competency and

laid-off steel workers mitt romney actually did. these two things are not the same. what is literally a pitch to go after someone's character is an upside. the other is a criticism of someone's record, not just their record, the part they brag about all the time. mitt romney campaigns as a businessman, repeatedly claimed his knowledge of job creation. he gives the number of 100,000 or more jobs he created. knowledge of job creation and how the economy works are huge qualifications he has to be president, president obama doesn't have. he talks about it all the time. he criticizes the president's record, too, accusing him of

taking america to the brink, of no longer being a society based on free enterprise, which is a fairly significant criticism. record are fair game. if romney wants to say president obama has exaggerated his record, that's reasonable, even correct. if he wants to say the ad is unfair, that's reasonable. if he wants to say private equity has been misrepresented at times, that's probably right. it is not reasonable to call the argument romney's business record doesn't prepare him for the presidency or doesn't show level of concerns for livelihoods of american men and women character assassination. if we can't talk about romney's time at bain and doesn't want us to talk about his health care bill that was his signature achievement as governor but wants to appeal it now that obama passed it nationally, what are we going to talk about now? olympics? joining us, gene robinson a columnist from the "washington post," a colleague of mine. great to see you.

>> good to be here. >> is talking about bain character assassination? >> you were right, ezra, mitt romney does want us to talk about olympics and all olympics all the time unless we dig too deeply and find out something inconvenient about the saving of the olympics in which case i guess he wants us to talk about what a great guy he is. >> family man. >> it's not character assassination to talk about something a candidate actually did or did not do. if he wants to talk about what president obama has done as president or senator or state senator or community organizer or whatever, i think that's fine. his record is certainly fair game. few this renewed focus, albeit from a random consultancy firm trying to get an angry rich guy to give them millions of dollars, this renewed focus on jeremiah wright, obama's been in our living rooms four years, we know the guy pretty well. we may like him or not like him, people have pretty firm opinion,

is the not a new story. it was hard to see how this has any sort of relevance except being emotionally satisfying to a strain of the right that feels john mccain did the republican party a disservice by tamping down on that in 2008. am i missing the potency i give it credit for. not much more. the people who will not vote for president obama and opposed to him, some of those people might get a sort of warm and fuzzy feeling from this sort of attack campaign and maybe there are a few people scattered across this great land of ours who missed the whole jeremiah wright thing the first time around. there can't be many. i don't see where that would get the pro romney effort. the other thing, frankly, i don't see why anyone connected with the romney campaign would want to get into the business of talking about what -- an would then be put in the position of

defending some of the now abandoned doctrines of the mormon church. that's not a good idea for tat campaign? >> it's worth saying mitt romney's reticence to comment on jeremiah wright has not always been quite so overpowering and has talked about him before. i want to play you something else from this brief conversation mitt romney had with reporters today. one of them asked him about comments he made in february about wright. i will play the clip. it's a little bit odd. >> i'm actually going to -- i'm not familiar precisely exactly what i said but i stand by what i said whatever it was. >> number one, will use that all the time from now on, i have no idea what i said but i'm firmly committed to it and even surer today than it was then. did mitt romney complaining about the negative ads used against him give the obama campaign a sound bite that will launch a thousand more? >> he might well have. that is a sound bite that could be, if one wanted to do it, used

in a number of contexts, about a number of issues. i think that's been filed away already. my policy is to deny having said anything. unless you can produce the tape, didn't say it. >> i write a blog so people can always find it. mitt romney would only talk about his latest high profile endorsement as mitt romney's predecessors. he said this. >> florida is certainly a state i want to win, a state which george w. bush won. >> he said his name. that was a big step. was that an accident or are we seeing a willingness to embrace the previous republican president. >> the harry potter movies, every once in a while someone would say lord voldemort and everyone go, don't say that word. i doubt it will slip out again. i think the name will be retired

and go back to where it's been hidden away. clearly, he doesn't want to go around saying george w. bush all the time, because we know how popular that administration is. i don't think you will hear that repeated. >> eugene robinson, msnbc political analyst, pulitzer prize winning columnist for the "washington post" and someone up on harry potter mythology. republican governors who want to look tough by fighting the obama administration. heads-up, you may be about to play yourselves. next.

today we learned jpmorgan chase will check out the accounting loss of $2 billion. that money did go somewhere.

>> that's the way america works. some people experience a loss in this case because of a bad decision. by the way, there was someone who made a gain. the $2 billion jpmorgan lost, someone else gained. but that's just the way america works. ask the guy who wants to run america next. because of redistricting, two incumbent democratic congressmen are running against each other in new jersey. that is bill pascrell on the left and steve rothman on the right. this one is worth noting in particular because of an alien came down from mars and landed, it would think that politics in america is a swift race to the left. pascrell, rothman tout liberal views in debate.

because of redistricting, two incumbent democratic congressmen are running against each other in new jersey. that is bill pascrell on the left and steve rothman on the right. this one is worth noting in particular because of an alien came down from mars and landed, it would think that politics in america is a swift race to the left. pascrell, rothman tout liberal views in debate.

rothman to portray himself as more liberal than his opponent saying he supported same-sex marriage long before his opponent did and has an unvarnished record of supporting a woman's right to choose while his opponent voted to restrict late-term abortions. when clinton endorses pascrell, he reminded he helped write president obama's healthcare law. at least when you compare it to what's happening in the country with the conventional wisdom. there being a liberal is advantageous to your ambitions and supporting health care reform is a boom to your campaign. congressman rothman accused his opponent of supporting tax cuts for the wealthy. >> i'm steve rothman and i approved this message. >> who wants more tax cuts for the rich? mitt romney, chris christie, newt gingrich, and bill

pascrell. >> i liked some of their ideas. >> that clip of mr. pascrell, that clip right there at the end, that came from an interview the congressman did with chris matthews two years ago. what he was talking about there when he said he liked some republican ideas, he was talking about health reform. >> okay. give us some hope. is there going to be some kind of reform this year that's agreeable to both sides? will they do something on portability, on preexisting conditions. let's start with that? is it going to happen. >> yes. i really believe it can happen and i believe the president should try again to reach out to the other side. i know what he tried to do in the beginning. mr. boehner is the leader republican in the house, he chose the path of saying our party's not going to support any

of this. it puts the pressure on anybody on the other side who wants to think of ideas. republicans had great ideas. we had bipartisan meetings. i liked some of their ideas. >> but not all of new jersey pascrell. the law instructed states to set up health care. it's where you go to comparison shop to get pricing information, see the features of the plans what they cover, what they don't cover. it's also where regulators can protect you. they can kick out plans to misbehave. or that make -- they can make them be transparent about traps or coverage holes. now, states don't have to have these exchanges ready until 2014. but the department of health and human services has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to help set them up. that's millions of dollars directly to state governments. including the garden state. new jersey got about $9 million in grants for its health care exchange. which governor christie just vetoed. what happens to the $9 million in federal money? no one quite seems to know.

what we do know is this is a gamble for the republican candidate. of health care that the obama administration copied from the presidential nominee mitt romney. no ambitious republican can be seen helping obama care along, but the way the bill is written, if the states don't set up health exchanges, the feds do it for them. obama care makes it past the supreme court and gets implemented. christie has just signed new jersey's health care system over to that socialist government takeover guy. he's handed it to president obama. that's the irony here. in order for republican governors to take a consistent stand against big government health care, they have to step aside and let that big government come in and set up their health care systems rather than doing it themselves. in running to the right, they might end up handing their state's health insurance market over to the left.

sometimes the best new things in the world are also the geekiest. and robots, i am sold. today's best new moment of geek in the world today or b.n.m.o.g. is this. this is kathy. she suffered a stroke in 1997. and for the 15 years since then, she hasn't moved her limbs or speak. here's kathy moving a robotic arm to bring a battle to her lips so she can drink. they gave kathy a neuroface implant. they plugged a sensor into her skull. she was asked to imagine moving her arm. it took her neurons and transmitted that to a computer and then to the robot. now when she thinks i want to move my arm, the arm moves. mind controlled robots are way

cool. if you were to google mind controlled robots you would find a lot of examples of this. here's a man driving a car with his brain. look, ma, no hands. here's a guy moving robotic fingers with his mind. here's a guy making a robot move on the floor behind him by thinking at the internet. the technology is all similar, the reason kathy is a big deal is she's demonstrating for the first time is someone's brain is no longer connected to her body can use it to generate movement scientists in switzerland are also working on this idea. this is mark andre. he is partially paralyzed from the neck down. last month he was able to use his brain to send simple