his criminal defense funds. as you pointed out, this would be the biggest error ever on labor statistics. we're asking people to visit our website to see what the real story is. >> thanks for your time tonight. we'll obviously follow the story. that's the ed schultz show. rachel maddow show coming up. >> thank you. we have more. that was a great interview. we have more coming up on wisconsin in addition, president obama came out and said he was in favor of marriage rights for same sex couples. everybody knew when that happened it was a watershed moment for the civil rights issue and president obama's presidency. nobody knew what the practical impact of that announcement was going to be. coming up on this show tonight, we have new actually quite

shocking evidence what that announcement of president obama has done already. you do not get a 36.polling swing in a two month period on very many issues in this country. we just got that. details on that, pretty shocking, just ahead. one of the weird news cycle footnotes on the president's announcement to same sex marriage, it caused the "washington post" newspaper to hold their big scoop about the mitt romney gay bullying incident when he was in high school. it was ready to go on may 10th but they knew it would get a ton of attention. mitt romney viciously bullies gay teen and thought it would be too provocative to have that on the front page alongside historic step by obama on gay marriage. they posted the bullying story online as the obama story and did not put it in the paper until the following day.

like the obama announcement, the romney bullying story, we don't know what the practical impact will have, if any. it may have no practical impact. indellibly, it's one of the things voters know about mitt romney as a person. it's a hard thing to forget once you learn something about this and not a flatter thing. the 18-year-old mitt romney objected to the appearance of a quote soft-spoken new student one year behind romney perpetually teased for nonconformity and presumed sexuality. how the post reported it. he was walking around with bleached blond hair draped over one eye. romney wasn't having it. he can't look like that. that's wrong. he can't look like that an in sensed romney told a friend in the dorm. they found romney marching a

head with a posse shouting to cut the student's hair. they came upon the younger student, tackled him to the ground, the student, eyes filled with tears, screamed for help and mitt romney clipped his hair with scissors. the romney campaign initially denied the incident ever happened but then stopped denying it and laughed it off and said he didn't remember it. and even though he didn't remember it he was sure that kid was not gay. he apologize to anybody that remembered it and laughed and said it was a prank. character issues are the great unquantifyable in electorable politics. everybody thinks it's important and who knows if it is the sort of thing that will determine how people vote in november. you have to admit, even if you think it's not determinative, a story like this can't help. if you're running for president, you can't tell people to unlearn this but don't want to unlearn

it. casts the same political pal as mitt romney strapping the dog to the roof of the car. he once put the dog in a kennel on top of the station wagon and drove it from boston from boston to ontario. the dog got stick on top of the car. one of mr. romney's sons told how mitt romney pulled over, turned a hose on the sick dog and put the sick dog back in the kennel on top of the car and got back on the highway for more hours of highway speed driving. the pinning down the crying screaming student and cutting off his hair because you objected to it story and scrapping the dog to the roof of the car and heading on the highway story, these are not what the campaign for the presidency is about. if you are the mitt romney campaign, you know these stories are out there and really do not want to remind people about these stories. want to see the get to know the

human side of mitt romney video his campaign put out a couple days ago? nobody asked them to do this. they put this out there so you know what's on mitt romney's mind. >> my daughter-in-law, mary romney, craig's wife, is the her oldest son, parker. it was crazy hair day at his school today. he's 5 years old. she says in her note she used borden's elmer's glue and egg white to get his hair to do that. i sure hope it comes out. it's awful cute and my guess is he won at crazy hair day at school today. quite a kid and quite a mom. >> i sure hope it comes out. if it doesn't come out, you going to cut it off for him, sir? maybe you and some buddies. is the unforced. don't remind people about your school days concerning hair you disapprove of.

yes. is the a totally harmless video unless you happen to be the guy about whom the "washington post" two weeks ago put out a totally damning story about your character that has all the same touchstones. today, here was mitt romney at a campaign photo on school. he was helping a group of students with their assignment. what was their assignment? make a sentence with a litteration. what was his litteration challenge. does that work? >> can you see it? dogs what? dogs drive douglas dizzy. dogs and driving, seriously? i don't know why mitt romney doesn't get more credit for his gaffes, for being gaffe prone. the republican party is trying to create the impression joe biden is so gaffe prone he's a bad vice president.

mitt romney ought to get more credit for this. bringing up the combination of dogs and driving and his disapproval of non-normative school high styles when this is the character voters might have in their minds about him. these are not the most important things in the world, embarrassing unforced errors from a candidate who gets credit for being super disciplined and on message and not making unforced errors. sometimes i think that credit is not earned. this ought to be a sleepy time on the campaign trail, the republican campaign all wrapped up and nobody paying a lot of attention except say ron paul weather in minnesota and they have to pay attention to it. congress in session when they find the time. this ought to be a sleepy time in politics but it has not been. president obama has been ratcheting up a new gear everyday aggressively going after his opponent on the

economy and what he says are distortions of his record in president and mitt romney's time in business. >> since i've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. this other side, i don't know how they've been bam boozeling folks into thinking they are the responsible fiscally disciplined party. they run up these wild debts and then when we take over, we've got to clean it up and they point and say, look how irresponsible they are. look at the facts and look at the numbers. >> i've still got my day job so i'm working hard solving problems, but i've got to pay attention to what the other side is up to. and my opponent in this election, governor romney, he's

a patriotic american. he's raised a wonderful family. he should be proud of the great personal success he's had. no, he has been extraordinarily successful at the final firm that he helped put together. but i think he's drawn the wrong lessons from these experiences. he seems to believe that if ceos and wealthy investors like him are getting rich, the rest of us automatically do, too. >> governor romney says his private years in the -- 25 years in the private sector gives him a special understanding how the private sector looks. if that is true, why is he running around with the same bad ideas that caused our economy to collapse this last time out? [ applause ]

either he think this is a will lead to a different result this time or he's hoping you won't remember what happened the last time. i'm here to say, we were there. we remember. we're not going back. we're moving forward. that's why i'm running for president again. >> the romney strategy up to this point had been they want to talk about the economy, the economy, everyday the economy, that's how they were going to stick it to president obama. they assumed president obama would not want to talk about the economy, want to talk about other things. president obama seems very comfortable talking about the economy. he is the one bringing it up. because of that, mr. romney is now going to plan b, trying to change the subject. over the last two days, mitt romney is trying to change the subject to education. before these last couple of day, he has had some trouble communicating with voters on the stump on that issue.

>> was curious, if he elected, what you would do with regards to college tuition, making it's easier for me and my classmates regards to that. >> it would be popular for me to stands up and say i will give you government money to make sure to pay for your college. i will not promise you that. what i will tell you is shop around, get a good price. i do feel this. i feel if you're willing to serve your credit in the military, for instance, that's place, we're going to say, yeah, hey, we'll give you help. >> to be clear, neither mr. romney orny of his five sons served in the military. other than shopping around, looking for a good price, hoping you can find something cheaper, that has been the only concrete thing he has offered as a suggestion for somebody who can't afford clench because they were -- canned afford college because they were irresponsible enough to not be born to rich parents. he has not had a good line on it when he gets asked about it.

he has a whole new role on it where he talks about a litterration sentence about driving and dogs. when he was in philly, he was greeted by a welcoming committee led why that city's mayor, michael nutter and the district attorney. >> as governor, romney balanced the state budget as required by the state's constitution, unfortunately, he did it on the backs of the students. by his second year, mitt romney had already forced massachusetts schools to take the second largest cuts per pupil in the country. those cuts forced schools to lay off thousands of teachers, along with librarians and even police officers. not exactly a job, not exactly a record as a job creator. >> i showed up here this morning, these people were booing me because they thought i invited mitt romney.

>> we know what we is! >> let's get it straight! >> i did not invite mitt romney! >> let's get it straight. >> you have a right to be mad -- >> i used to live in west philadelphia. i know exactly what he's talking about. inside that philly school, mr. romney also faced some headwinds from some of the people his campaign set him up to meet with while the cameras were rolling. watch. >> a number of folks said, well, we need smaller classroom sizes. that will make the biggest difference. i said, let's compare the average classroom side from each school district with the performance of our students because we test our kids and see if there is a relationship. there was not. just getting smaller classrooms didn't seem to be the key. >> i can't think of any teacher in the whole time i've been teaching over 10 years -- 13

years, who would say that they would love -- more stuns would benefit >> of course. >> i can't think of a parent that would say, i would like my teacher to be in a room with a lot of kids and only one teacher. i'm kind of wondering where this research comes from. >> it's hard to imagine mr. romney is going to run for president on the basis of saying class size ought to be bigger. if you can put 20 kids in the classroom, why not 30 or 50? more efficient, marvelous. i don't think he will run on that. the obama campaign went right after the romney campaign on this today. as he's getting face to face confrontation from teachers as he's supposed to be rolling out his education ideas as the obama campaign goes after him it will be interesting to see if they stick on it as something they will run on and the idea bigger class sizes are cool. if they really do want to change the subject 0 education and want mitt romney to be running on this and what they tried to change it to this week, there are other big new heretofore

untried idea they're putting forward that has a contrast with what president obama has done, other proposals besides larger class sizes is this from his education white paper, he wants to repeal the change president obama made to student loans. they want to get rid of that. he wanted to repeal what president obama did. you want to know what he did to student loans? it sounds like a finicky little change, turns out to make a lot of sense and save a lot of money. if you're a person who had a lot of federally supported student loans, this will be very very familiar to you. for years, the government gave commercial banks guaranteed federal subsidies to make college loans to students. you think about the transaction of making a loan. you make a loan, when it gets paid back with interest, the bank makes money. they make the money they'd normally make off interest plus they get that guaranteed subsidy. on top of that, the government assumed most of the risk for the

loan those government didn't have to deal with the possibility the loan didn't get paid back. they were guaranteed. sweet deal for the banks, right? what are they there for? they're essentially getting guaranteed profits on these loans and no risk at all for the privilege of being the middleman on all our college loans with no service whatsoever without a layer of bureaucracy. why not cut out the middleman and let the taxpayer get the money since they're taking the chance anyway. and it was signed into law. from us getting the profits instead of the banks getting them. that savings of double grants for people who can't afford go to college. that's what mitt romney wants to repeal, his big idea, wants us to take the money going to college pell grants, take away that savings we've been making and get rid of the savings instead, put that money back into guaranteed profits for the

banks for providing us an unnecessary service and no risk to do so. that is his new idea and larger class sizes. romney's old playbook is talk about the economy whenever possible. now that president obama is eager to talk about the economy whenever possible, romney's new playbook this week is change the subject to education. his ideas to education as ruled out this week bigger class sizes and putting inexplicable for profit guaranteed profit wall street middlemen back in the middle of student loans for some reason. that's what he's trying to change the subject to. maybe we would be better off talking about dogs and driving. joining us now is the host of msnbc weekend morning show, author, chris hayes, "author of twilight of the elites." >> i have a sufficient normative haircut for you? >> and if you don't- >> you crack down on it big time.

>> this is not the main discussion. the republicans launched a mini campaign and floated it to see how much pickup they get joe biden is a bad vice president because he's unpredictable and gaffe prone. they didn't say he had done anything wrong but his reputation for saying things that sound unscripted. mitt romney with the crazy hair video and dogs and driving thing -- >> what's interesting because i was watching that, god, i haven't seen either of those two things and prepping for my show. the gaffe is in the eye of the beholder, the thing that gets blown up. >> you don't look for it if there isn't already a narrative about the guy being gaffe prone. the narrative about mitt romney is he's this oober robotic guy who would never say things off message. >> he said -- we're getting totally off message -- he said in his interview with mark halperin about his budget plans, god, no, we will not take a

trillion out of the budget in the first year, it would be massive. he took the keynesian framework in one sentence in the interview and no one said anything. it completely invalidates everything. >> i support the paul ryan budget to absolutely extract tens of billions of dollars -- to take a trillion out of the economy and if i do that, it will destroy the economy. >> he conceded the fundamental premise argued by everyone watching this unfold about austerity and stimulus and conceded with a one-line throw away line with mark halperin. >> it's the same thing with unemployment. earlier this month, mitt romney said having the unemployment rate to 8.1% was not something he was happy about. there'd be no cause for celebration until it was down to 4%. he said with mark halperin by the end of his first term he'd

like to have it by 6% which is what the cbo says our current policies are. it would be a failure for president obama to hit 4% -- huge gaffe. >> and for so many years we have been at that historically breaking every trend. >> since 2000. well -- >> breaking every trend. >> on this education policy, the election is not going to be decided on the education policy, we all know that. is it important putting wall street profit back into student loans is the republican proposal. >> it is. it's important for people to understand, the progress victory about getting rid of the middleman was a big one that happened at the same time as the affordable care act was buried because the affordable care act had just passed and everyone was talking about this. president clinton tried to do

that and failed, hard to get rid of the middlemen extracting rents between each other. this is the opposite of the free market. this entire thing is based on a subsidy of risk and debt the government is taking on. there's no principled ideological conservative argument to have a wall streeting bank in the middle of this constructive market. >> there for the purpose of collecting our money. >> exactly. no reason, bad policy and a victory. the fact they thought they could sneak this past and not get rapped for it is indicative of what they think people are not paying attention to. part of the romney strategy, we can propose policies good for the 1% and sound sim pa thetic to the plight of people and show web videos showing people unemployed and pull off this

bait and switch. it is strategically a choice by them to make their pivot to the middle after the primary. this is the issue. george w. bush did this very effectively. education made him a compassionate conservative and worked with ed kennedy in the child act. and i'm not a scary right winger. when you look at the substance of what they're proposing, scary right wing stuff. >> let's get back to a tax subsidized payday for wall street in education. chris hays, twilights of the elites. >> it is even more having fun with you tonight than getting drunk with you in that bar last night. sorry you couldn't get a blazer. >> sorry i couldn't get the blazer for jail. >> epic, actually. be right back.

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the thing about rights, you're not supposed to vote on them. that's why they're called rights. when you do put them up for a vote, the majority tends to vote against them. for marriage equality, it has been put up for vote 34 times in the last 15 years and lost 33 out of 34 times. the one time it didn't lose at the ballot box, arizona, it voted again two years later and it lost.

the state banned same sex marriage in the second vote. no isn't that union, none, that marriage rights have been upheld in a vote. minority rights do not farewell at the ballot box. something happened in maryland. they passed same sex marriage rights giving gay couples the legal right to get married starting january 1st of next year. before that can happen, opponents to the new law are expected to gather enough signatures to get a referendum put on the ballot in november. that's not good news if you support marriage equality because no state has ever said yes to same sex marriage. shortly before early march, ppp did a poll to see if people would vote for or against the marriage law if it does go to a referendum. the votes were pretty good. a majority of people in maryland supported the law. same sex marriage rights were ahead eight points. that was in march.

they just redid that same poll a few days ago, all of a sudden in maryland, wow, something has happened. same sex marriage rights are winning not by eight points in maryland, 20 points, a 12 point swing. what happened. here's what happened. one large and very influential voting block in the state of maryland that makes up nearly 30% of the population in that state over the course of the last two months went through a massive transformation on this issue. african-american voters in maryland a couple months ago in that first poll in march were against same sex marriage rights in their state by 17 points. now, they are for same sex marriage rights by 19 points. same poll. that is a 36 point swing in two months. nothing swings 36 points in two months in american public opinion. nothing. this just does not happen.

>> for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that i think same sex couples should be able to get married. >> when the president came out for marriage equality, everybody knew it was important and historic but nobody knew what it's practical effect would be. that's what was important, he made this pronouncement without political certainty what would happen as a result. that was a big deal. now, we starting to see the results. it's not counting up who agreed with him already and who disagreed and how this while change their opinion and likelihood to vote. he is changing people's minds. what this means for the country yet we do not know. in the state of maryland, we can count overtly how much of a quantitative difference that decision by the president has just made.

this doesn't always happen in new york, gene kelly and frank sinatra do not frequently get off a warship in the hudson and sing about what a wonderful town this is. they did it in 1949 and i new

york, we are still smitten but it hasn't happened since. once a year, something kind of like it does happen in new york city. it is hard not to be smitten every time. this year, it is happening right now. it is even better than it usually is. this year, we have added something to the mix. we added something to the mix we stole from the nazis. if stealing stuff from nazis doesn't make you happy, you need a vacation. what we stole from the nazis and why it is so awesome, coming up on the best new thing in the world today. stay with us.

in the 2010 elections that gave us republican house speaker john boehner instead of democratic house speaker nancy also, there was one chart more than any other that pretty much summed up what happened on election day and why. this is the 10 groups that spent the most money on that election that year. 6 of the 10 groups spent big-time on the right. they were led by the correspondent funded u.s. chamber of commerce, far and away the biggest spender that year. almost all the groups spending on behalf of republicans in 2010

were corporate funded groups like that. business groups. the only major spenders on be half of democrats that year were union, that was it and only made up 30 of the top 10 spenders. one by one individual campaign donations by normal humans are nice things. when you're talking big money in politics, the stuff that adds up really fast and makes a determinative difference, you either have to be a politically motivated billionaire or organization. big money in politics comes from corporations that disproportionately support republicans and unions that disproportionately support democrats. republican supporting corporations are dominant and the only ones supporting democrats are unions. if you are somehow able to get rid of unions to take them out of the mix, you are able to get rid of the democratic's party to compete. the only thing you have left is corporations spending hand over fist for republicans and they'll

win every election every time. over the last half a century, union membership has plummeted across the country, gone from 39% of salaries to 12% now. one place it is still going strong, most of the people in unions are public sector unions that work for state and local governments. private sector unions have taken a beating over the last few decades but public sector ones are still doing okay. republican legislatures across the country have all gotten religion at the same time about the importance of killing off public sector unions. the most high profile is republican governor scott walker of wisconsin with a stroke of a pen wiped out 50 years of union rights in the state of wisconsin. wisconsin was the first state of the country to recognize union rights for employees where they were born but scott walker got rid of them. he did not campaign on getting rid of those rights but once elected said he had to kill

union rights in wisconsin to save the state's budgets. when the unions said yes to all the financial concessions he asked for and he still wanted to kill them off, it became clear it wasn't about money, not about the budget. he wanted to get rid of union rights in order to get rid of unions all together. if you get rid of unions all together there is no one funding the other side. there is no one funding democrats when business funds republicans. you get rid of union rights and game the whole state so democrats cannot compete in the big money part of elections ever again. pull that off and wisconsin didn't just go all red in 2010, wisconsin will be all republican all red from here on out permanently. democrats will never recover. don't take my word for it, take his. >> any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions? >> oh, yeah. >> and become a right to work?

what can we do to help you? >> we're going to start in a couple weeks with our budget. the first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions because you divide and conquer. >> how did we become a completely red state? the first step is public employee unions and then divide and conquer. what scott walker calls it, divide and conquer. killing the union is the strategy for turning wisconsin red not just for now but generations to come in an irreparable way. is the about partisan politics, about destroying democrats chances of competing with republicans, about eliminating the only source for democrats that can compete with the republicans corporate support. not about some year's budget, not even about jobs. since he wiped away union rights in wisconsin, scott walker wrapped up the worst jobs record in the entire country. not about jobs or the budget. making wisconsin permanently republican. that is what this is about. republicans are trying this everywhere.

in ohio, they were able to do a recall not of the governor but the law stripping union rights. that law when it got put up for a recall got recalled by more than 20 points in november. in wisconsin, they're not recalling the law, going to recall the governor, a recall that happens in less than two weeks. about money and politics and how bad the corporate funded republican side wants the chance to run unopposed from here on out forever n. it will not surprise you to hear the scott walker side is outraising the democratic side more than 25-1 against the democrats. in this recall election that will essentially decide if democrats ever get to really compete with republicans in elections again. if i were the republicans, i'd spend 100-1. i'd spent 1,000-1 for a chance at that. are you kidding. that's the brass ring. so far their spending appears to be working even though the polls are very very close. the latest polling, this is important, shows all the

republican ad spendings has had an effect. 91% of republican voters in wisconsin say they are absolutely certain to vote on june 5th. only 83% of democrats and independents say the same thing. that's what advertising that kind of money does. this race in wisconsin is the most important race before the presidential election. june 5th. republicans think they have it in the bag. if they do, they are on their way to a permanent structural advantage over the democratic party for which there is no repair. there is no way to undo it. that will affect every race in every partisan election on every ballot from the race for dogcatcher on up to the race for president. republicans think they have it in the bag. it is less than two weeks to the vote in wisconsin. at this point, the democrats should be fighting for this like the existence of their party depends on it because it does. joining us now, wisconsin state senator. thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel, how are

you? >> i'm good. i'm fired up. we are less than two weeks away from the recall election in wisconsin. what can you tell us about what it looks like on the ground there from organization. from a distance all we can see is 25-1, republicans outspending democrats. what's it look like up close. >> let me tell you what that 25-1 gets you. two months ago, scott walker was 50% in the polls. 30 or $40 million later, scott walker is about 50% in the polling. the money isn't really doing a lot except what you pointed out exciting the republican base. the obama for america campaign, the national dnc has come in with money. everybody is coordinating together working really hard to get out the vote. we know as democrats the only way to beat the governor is get out the vote. we feel very good about what we have in place. i have been to rallies all over the state. to one in madison, north, south, east, west, all democrats

getting fired up, knows what's at stake here. >> in terms of the democratic party and how seriously they're taking this race. you have been at the heart from the beginning, tom barrett the democratic candidate from the beginning, everybody talking about this on tv is fully invested in this, are democrats around the country taking wisconsin as seriously as you can tell thick they should? do you feel supported -- scott walker on the right is a cause celebre for republicans coast-to-coast. >> it's more-or-less scott walker incorporated, where the money is coming. if you look at the amount of me on the governor has raised compared to the state of wisconsin where he's the governor opposed to the rest of the country, a lot of his money is coming from out of the state. as far as democrats are concerned, the dnc have given the party $1.4 million. although about 60 obama for american offices, another 30 or 40 offices in the state of wisconsin we're getting to 100

offices throughout the state to coordinate and get the vote out. i feel good about that. if democrats around the country want to help out, go to barrettforwisconsin.com and chip in. it bodes good or bad for the country depending what happens on june 5th. >> in any normal campaign, neb outspent 25-1 in a normal campaign loses the election. i hear what you're saying about getting out the vote effort and ramping up that's happened on this tight time frame you had after the primary. do you feel like your side has a hail mary? do you have a patented underdog plan to try to pull this out or is it just sticking to fundamentals this point and counting on your ground game? >> sticking to the fundamentals. we're honestly not that far behind. governor walker is at 50% in just about every poll you look at.

30 to $40 million ago he was at 50%. he hasn't moved. i have to believe governor walker has reached as high as he can and has nowhere to fall. tom barrett is at 48%. it gets down to the ground game, every single democrat who doesn't like what governor walker is doing in wisconsin on june 5th. we have plans in place to do that. you can't have a thought to yourself without it being a campaign message, june 5th, get out and vote. democrats will rally around that. we understand what governor walker has done to wisconsin and understand what governor walker intends to do to wisconsin if he finishes his term. it's that important. >> wisconsin senator jon erpenbach. thanks. >> the senator mentioned the website you can visit to donate to the tom barrett side of the election.

i should mention also if you would like to donate to the governor walker side of the election, it's scottwalker.com, in the interest of giving you the websites. best new thing in the world is coming up. )90[ female announcer ] thr kids are getting a dependable clean in the bathroom?

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waterloo, new york, as the city will tell you on its home page, it's the birthplace of memorial day. it used to be called decoration day. it was a day to decorate the graves of those killed in the war. after world war i, memorial days was expanded to honor all veterans. american civilians now are

finding that we need to honor the veterans of our post-9/11 wars, veterans who have returned from iraq and are just starting the process of winding down the war in afghanistan. there's been welcome home parades organizeded by civilians in houston, and tucson and fayetteville, north carolina, and in florida. in richmond, virginia, the parade snaked along a mild longroute to the city's world war i memorial. the parade ended at a resource village of state agencies and organizations offering vets things like career advice and services. house majority leader eric cantor was there. so was the mayor of richmond, dwight jones.

and on saturday, kansas city, missouri, people turned out for that city's welcome home parade. the mayor declared it welcome home heroes day. >> richmond, virginia, just the -- figuring out how they and their cities want to mark theend of the iraq war. this upcoming monday is not just a day off, it's the first memorial day since the end of the war. it's time to get going. to get your feet moving to the beat. it's time to start gellin' with dr. scholl's and feel the energy from your feet up.

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best new thing in the world. this is the u.s. coast guard cutter eagle. it's what they call tall ships. ginormous sailing ships. the coast guard cutter eagle normally lives at the coast guard academy in new york. this week it's in new york for fleet week. they parade their ships up the hudson river and all week long, if you happen to find yourself in a new york city bar, there's a pretty good chance you are going to end up buying a beer for a stranger who's wearing some really nice white pants. fleet week includes not just all the modern warships, but also 17 massive restored tall ships, these giant sailing vessels,

including the eagle which led the parade of warships into new york harbor this year. the eagle gets to do this because it's known as america's tall ship. even though it is america's tall ship, the eagle has not always been all that american. the ship used to be called the sayingal hors vessel. say that three times fast. the horst vessel was originally commissioned in nazi germany and named after a storm trooper who died in a street brawl. adolph f hitler was on hand or a -- the reason we have got the ship now is because after world war ii, we took her, as a war prize, renameded her the eagle and now she serves as an international good will ambassador for the united states. and as a giant mizzen masted