lets you connect up to 25 devices on one easy to manage plan. that means your smartphone, her blackberry, his laptop, mark's smartphone but i'm still on vacation. still on the plan. nice! so is his tablet, that guy's hotspot, the intern's tablet-- the intern gets a tablet? everyone's devices. his, hers-- oh, sorry. all easier to manage on the share everything plan for small business. connecting more so you can do more. that's powerful. verizon. get the blackberry z10 for $199.99. this morning my question is for the ladies. if there was a pill that would make you feel frisky tonight, would you take it? and my solidarity with the women of the fox news channel. plus, i've got a letter to a mayor who is no richard daley. >> but sequester is not symbolic, it is real. and real people are suffering.

good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry and we have a lot to get to on the program today, but first we want to get everyone up to date on the latest situation on the ground in oklahoma. because last night we all sat breathless watching video like this one coming in live, less than two weeks after a tornado destroyed so many homes and buildings and lives in moore, oklahoma. and then five new tornados hit the oklahoma city area and st. louis area, causing flash flooding and a new round of damage. this morning the details are still coming in, but already there are reports of five people dead and at least 70 injured due to the storm. for more, we go live to nbc news's janet shamlian on the ground in oklahoma city. janet, you were there last night as the tornados hit. tell us how people handled the danger and where you were. >> reporter: good morning to you, melissa.

yeah, we were here doing "nightly news with brian williams." the reason we were here because it was forecasted to be such a dangerous day. i headed to the airport with another nbc staffer after the broadcast and as soon as we got to the airport, the sirens sounded. the airport authorities herded everybody down into a tunnel that is half underground and connects the terminal to the parking lot and there we stayed for the next 90 minutes. many people in oklahoma city did the same. as we've seen from the pictures, a lot of folks did not. as you know, we had two fatalities at least on interstate 40. although there is damage in the surrounding area and they're assessing that this morning, this is shaping up to be a flood event. we've had flash flood warnings all night. it's a beautiful day behind me now, but i tell you, it turned like this within the last hour or two. it has just been coming down all night long after the tornados moved on. we have at least 6 inches of rain in some parts of this area, high roads -- i mean high water on roads and a lot of debris in

the roads, so today is going to be a day of assessing the damage here to a community that's suffering some emotional wounds as well, melissa, just having to go through this drill day after day as they have been doing here since shawnee, that was a week ago sunday. it's been very stressful for a lot of people who live in this community. back to you. >> janet, we're just so pleased that you are safe and obviously so sad for those who did in fact lose their lives in the storm last night. thank you to janet in oklahoma city. for a closer look at where the danger still lies this morning, i want to bring in nbc meteorologist bill karins, who is keeping a close eye on the situation. bill, is there any risk? if so, where is it now? >> there's a little bit of a risk today, but it's about a tenth of what we dealt with yesterday and last night. we just got the preliminary tornado tracks in for where the storms were last night and how they related to the oklahoma city area. we had almost three separate tornados it looked like. the big one they have seen the pictures of on tv was the one south of el reno heading in a

generally east direction. kind of an unusual storm track there. then it reformed just to the east side of yukon, dipped to the south of okc, in between oklahoma city and moore. there was another one out by tinker air force base but the strong one was south of el reno. the flash flooding overnight was devastating. it delayed first responders from getting to the scenes where there was destruction last night. 7 inches estimated of rain in and around downtown oklahoma city. in all we had 19 tornado reports. the st. louis area got hammered too along with springfield and joplin. a lot of damage by st. charles. now, this morning we're still dealing with heavy rain, flash flooding threat right around arkansas and little rock we had a strong thunderstorm but the tornado threat is much lower today. i'm expecting very few tornados and i don't think we'll see any strong violent tornados, but if you're in the areas of yellow including dallas, memphis, little rock, shreveport, nashville, louisville, lexington, all the way up through the state of ohio, you are at risk of strong storms today with damaging winds, hail, and of course lightning can be a

killer too. otherwise the east coast is fine and the west coast is fine, melissa. this was like a six-day tornado outbreak and it looks like it has finally come to an end. everyone in the midwest can finally try to enjoy their afternoon without worrying about tornados. >> bill, thank you so much. last night was just riveting and at least it wasn't any worse. >> it could have been. >> but last night it just -- it was really awful, so thank you so much. and from a natural disaster, i want to turn now to a man made one. sequester. now, please -- oak, don't turn the channel, stay with me because we are going to get beyond the obscure, super boring economic drivel inside the beltway speech. see, the sequester is real. and so are its effects. the sequester has been a drawn-out battle between the president and republicans over deficit reduction and the debt ceiling. i know, it still sounds boring but i'm telling you this is big stuff. why? because to understand what we are facing today, we've got to go back to august of 2011 when president obama signed the

budget control act to raise the debt ceiling. now, it was supposed to be temporary, but instead after nearly two years, the white house and congressional back and forth, sequester has now become the new normal. a new normal that cut federal spending by $85 billion. that translated to a 7.9% cut to defense spending, another 4.6% cut to other programs. but consumer confidence is high, housing is back, the dow is up, so sequester isn't really having much of an effect, right? well, think again. the budget for national parks, those things that people like to go to when the weather is nice, have been cut by more than $100 million. who cares about whether or not low income american indian kids want an education? because the sequester cut $60 million for american indian schools across the country. and if you're poor and you're in need of housing, sorry, because housing authorities have essentially stopped issuing rent vouchers because of the

sequester. that's only a few of the examples of people really feeling the very real impact of the sequester. and more importantly, this really is only the tip of the sequester iceberg. because the cuts of 2013 will have nothing on 2014. the sequester damage is allowed to continue, it will cut $92 billion from the 2014 budget and $35 billion in cuts allocated in 2012 will finally go into effect. these are no longer simply automatic indiscriminate cuts. next year when the sequester iceberg shows its true size, congress gets to choose which programs will be cut, including those covered by the kricritica departments of commerce, labor and health and human services. at the table carmen wong ulrick and daniel gross, author of "better, faster, stronger, the

myth of american decline and the rise of a new economy." good to have you both here. >> hello. >> i want to start with the big picture. we'll get to what people are feeling on the ground. but the "wall street journal" today, front page. what sequester? washington booms as a new guilded age takes root. are we really about to go into an iceberg or is everything just fine? >> it's guilded. the use of that word alone should really make you question what's going on here. the truth of the matter is this is definitely a recovery for the rich. let's just look at the housing market flat out. let's take that first. if home prices are going up and it's a supply and demand issue and unemployment remains pretty dismal, 12 million people unemployed, almost half of those long-term unemployed, incomes haven't budged, so who's buying the homes? where's the money coming from? a lot of this is three big banks pulled off the market their more

fo -- foreclosures. and then there's flippers. >> and it wasn't gymnastics for your 6-year-old? >> no, but i had to click on it because it sounded so crazy. when you start getting e-mails about flipping homes in california, something is going on, something is wrong. this is not about the majority of americans. >> dan, i know you've in part made the argument that when we get leaner, these things that we tend to think of as indicative of decline in our economy might in fact just be making us leaner, stronger. >> here's the thing. the sequester, $85 billion, it's easy to sort of overlook that on a macroeconomic level. why? because the economy -- we are a $16 trillion economy, growing at a 3% rate. adding 400 or $500 billion of new economic activity each year. the fact is there are 2 million more people working today than there were a yore ago at slightly higher waj eer wages. >> is it really there are higher

median wages, or we've got a bimodal distribution? >> average earnings are up about 2% year over year. median earnings, which is a little different than average, are sort of bumping along and slightly ticked upward in april. but the reality is there is a lot of activity going on in the private sector economy that wasn't happening a year, two, three years ago. i'm talking about auto production, housing starts, just generally people working, and that, i think, in the mind of a lot of economists and people who look at this very big picture of the economy, they look at that and say $85 billion in the sequester, we're sort of powering through that. >> let me ask about this, though. so it could be there are two different ways to think about this as a problem. one is that it is an absolute bad that makes things worse. the other is that it is a relative bad, that we are doing better but we could be doing even better, right? so if i have one cookie on my diet, it's not the end of my diet but i would have done

better if i hadn't had that one cookie. is that basically what the sequester is here? >> there's just danger and it's as you say where are you looking from? i'm looking at the point of view of the average american trying to earn a paycheck and trying to stretch that paycheck. if we see consumer confidence go up and spending more money but there's no more money coming in, some of this is also phantom money. we saw this before the housing bubble burst. when housing values go up, regular americans suddenly think that they have more money so they're going to spend more. there's confidence there. but is it real? let's not forget that equity in a home is vaporous, it's phantom, it's not real as people found out. but again there is very much the sensation with americans that, wow, the housing market is doing good so this is good. the economy is good, the stock market is doing good. if you own and you have invested well in the market, then you're doing pretty well, right? if you had a home and you're selling it today or while the market is doing well, then you're doing good. what about everyone else? >> when we come back that's exactly what i want to talk about. we're going to add a couple more voices to the table but i want to talk very specifically about

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the end of the 2013 fiscal year is looming large. exactly four months from today on october 1st, the next federal budget year begins, which may mean a second year of sequester cuts. why? because we don't seem to be able to get together. and the difference for the 2014 budget is the cuts will no longer be automatic. instead congress, you know that congress, you remember that congress, they're going to choose what agencies will face cuts. so if you think you haven't felt the effects of sequester yet? just wait, because the next round of cuts could directly affect all of us. back at the table, carmen wong ulrich and dan gross.

also joy reed and josh barrow, politics editor at "business insider." joy, i want to start with you. if you are directly impacted by this, if you are a child on an indigenous reservation, you have already been impacted. is it that we just sort of don't care because those are the most poor, most marginalized people or we really don't see the effects of sequester. >> or if you are a senior relying on meals on wheels. normally politics caters to senior citizens but not in that instance. the poor do not have a lobby. there is no money to be made in lobbying for the poor so they're always the first to feel the economics of any negative economic policy. on the other side you have this ideology on the right that believe in punitive policy

toward the lorwer income groups. they believe if you strip away the protection of government, these people will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be good christian americans and make it. it doesn't really work that way. the irony is that it chills economic recovery for everyone. who's shopping at walmart? it's thought rich people, it's people who have less money. who's going to the store every day as opposed to being able to buy a month's worth of food. buying food constantly. you're talking about lorin come people. so what they're doing is they're dampening the economic recovery pie constantly wanting to stick it to the poor. >> josh, when we look at the bar graph of who's impacted by the cbo breakdown, the defense department is at the top of that. so on the one hand it may be the most vulnerable who feel it most because they have the least discretionary income, but if you look at the 2013 sequester cuts, it's actually defense and then domestic discretionary. how big an impact will that have ultimately on those effects in the economy? >> it's a meaningful effect,

especially in parts of the country where the defense industry is big. >> virginia, maryland. >> exactly. and it was supposed to be so politically unpalatable it would never go into effect and they'd have to cut a deal. so it's not just poor people getting hit. there are a lot of people in washington on the republican side who would be perfectly happy to slash programs for the poor, but everything has something in the sequester for everybody to hate. it's per sifing because nobody can come up with something that they find more politically palatable. that said, the size of the sequester is about half a percent of gdp so it's a significant austerity measure but it's not enormous. you can compare it to bigger measures that we did on purpose. the expiration of the payroll tax cuts and expiration of part of the bush tax cuts. those are about twice as big as its sequester and we seem to be weathering this fiscal austerity much better than europe. >> and the deficit is coming down. this is the other thing the president is touting, you see that deficit is shrinking

dramatically. >> i tried to coin the term the golden age of deficit reduction. >> guilded age. >> never before have we had so much deficit reduction. it's coming in at 640. no one contemplated that magnitude. let's not forget the poor, giant corporations. federal government contracting is a major piece of business in this country, so you've had cisco systems come out and say our sales aren't going to be so great because of the sequester. ibm, ge, booze allen, these are people who in large measure subsist on defense department contracts. they're not getting them and to me it's sort of amazing. we're not surprised that the political system is not responsive to the poor. >> so that's part of what was -- >> we are surprised that it's not responsive to the rich. >> this is what is interesting about the "wall street journal" piece this morning. part of it's claim is that you end up with these folks who

started with those defense department contracts, who the initiation was in fact government spending, but now they're international. now they're global, and so they're simply more able to move beyond the boundaries of what's happening in any particular region. >> let's talk about global corporate taxes. >> appeleapple. >> what's the sequester discussion about? a lot is tied to deficit. so folks say i want to cut all of these programs for the poor. last time i was here for the senior scitizens. we don't want to pay taxes, corporate taxes on profits overseas. we want to keep our taxes though. at the same time they get taxed on funds outside the u.s., they could pay for these programs. we wouldn't have to be doing all this cutting. >> the other thing is that we're now finding out the interconnectedness of the economy. cut food stamps, cut kraft. who benefits from food stamps? people who sell stuff like macaroni and cheese.

so you do hurt corporate america because a lot of the profits of agribusiness, a lot of the profits of places like walmart are actually tied to the spending that goes right back into the economy. >> josh, you were talking about the political palatability of it. is that what it is? there's nothing more politically palatable or because people enjoy seeing deficits go down and are willing to say at least we've got one indicator that economically makes us feel strong and capable? >> there is bipartisan consensus in washington that people want deficit reduction. we saw this in the way the president negotiated at the beginning of the year. he was trying to come up with an alternative deficit package. no, obviously he'd like a package that shifted away from near term cuts in discretionary spending and toward entitlement reform and tax increases. republicans don't want any tax increases. what's in the sequester is more palatable to them than anything to raise taxes, even though half of it falls on defense. republicans would like to replace these cuts with cuts

that are heavier on domestic programs that hurt the poor more. obviously that's not palatable to democrats. it's not that anybody likes the sequester, it's that everybody likes the sequester better than the alternative plans. >> stay with us, because as we talk about this reality of sequester hitting home, i'm going to talk to someone who is behind the numbers. there are real people being impacted. woman: everyone in the nicu -- all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment.

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call us. we can show you how at&t solutions can help you do what you do... even better. ♪ we're going to have to put all of our stuff in storage and then live with my mom again. i'm 26, live with my mom again. >> i never thought i'd be getting help from the state, you know. >> i told myself i would never do that. i would never do that. >> food stamps, i'd nuf pever p that in my head. >> that was a scene from a documentary which aired on march, the same month the sequester cuts took effect.

we're seeing the sequester hit poor people particularly hard. some of the people affected will testify before congress next week in a hearing on the state of the american dream. joining me now from portland, oregon, is diedre, who will be testifying before the senate subcommittee on economic policy on wednesday. thank you for joining me. >> thank you. >> so you work for two on one which is a human services hotline, is that right? >> yes. >> tell me both from your own experiences and from what you've been hearing from your callers, what you're going to tell congress on wednesday. >> hmm, well, i would like to tell them first and foremost, i would like for them to understand that the sequester cuts hit people like myself, people who i classify as working poor. i would like them to know that i talk to a countless number of people on a daily basis who are calling me from work. they're struggling. they're trying very, very hard

to make ends meet. there has been an immediate impact from the sequester cuts from a two and one standpoint. >> when you hear people saying on a show like this the economy is getting better, things are improving, house values are up, does that resonate with what your experience is? >> not at all. not at all. >> what would it take for you to be feeling like we were in a better place economically? >> simply put, we need a living wage. we need to make enough money to live. just simply put. there's other things that we could do, but we definitely need to make a living wage. we definitely need to look at increasing the minimum wage. we definitely need to look at

the reality that -- >> diedre, one of the things that we've talked a lot about here on the mhp show is about childhood poverty and about the fact that there are 16 million american children living in poverty. either from your own experience or from the parents that you hear from, what do they tell you about the experiences that their kids are dealing with? >> it's really sad. i talk to homeless families daily. children who are involved in the backpack program, which is a program that schools sponsor so that kids can eat on the weekends. they're suffering. you have to think about kids who are actually homeless and they still have to go to school. you think about parents who have to deal with the situation. in fact i was just speaking with a lady the other day, she was actually five months pregnant

and living on the streets. she had been assaulted recently and we just didn't have the resources to give her some of the programs that existed before, they're just not in existence anymore. >> and i know many shelters don't actually accept pregnant women because they see it as an insurance liability problem. >> a risk, mm-hmm. and there were programs in existence, like the hotel voucher program. those programs just aren't in existence anymore. there's no more gas vouchers. there's almost no emergency funding for anything. sometimes we have a tendency to look at people and feel like they created this situation for themselves. in reality, we are -- i know i'm one step away from being in the same situation. i rely on public services. and those were affected in the sequester cuts. food stamps are going down. i talk to people on a daily

basis who no longer qualify for extensions as far as unemployment go. so they are like literally living without an income. >> diedre, i can sense your exasperation and i want to tell you how much i not only appreciate you joining us here on the mhp show but the fact you're going to testify in front of ou l of our lawmakers. thank you for doing that. >> thank you. we're going to talk about the politics next. is anybody going to lose their job because of the sequester? having a heart attack. i was in shape, fit. i did not see it coming. i take bayer aspirin. [ male announcer ] so be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. see your doctor and get checked out. before you begin an aspirin regimen. selena is looking for a change from fast food breakfast. a serving of breakfast like this walmart is less than a $1.50. really. if your family of four switches out breakfast just one time each week, you can save over $550 a year. sounds good. smells good. save on kraft breakfast.

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has rebounded. our deficits are shrinking at the fastest pace in 50 years. people's retirement savings are growing again. the rise of health care costs are slowing. the american auto industry is back. so we're seeing progress, and the economy is starting to pick up steam. the gears are starting to turn again and we're getting some traction. >> so all true. all of that is true. and yet right -- this has been your point, carmen, there are two economies it seems to be. >> half of americans don't have retirement savings. so that other half is not -- doesn't play any role in anything he's just talking about right there. maybe jobs, maybe the auto industry. but if half of americans don't have a retirement savings, what are we doing for them? and then if we have 15% on food stamps, so basically there's just a whole huge segment of this country that shops at walmart, that shops at costco that really is a heavy foundation for our economy that's being left behind.

i hope this is trickledown. i hope. but i don't know. >> but you know what the genius -- probably the most genius thing that wall street has done in the last 100 years is create the mutual fund and the 401(k). it allows corporation funds to strip away the pension, which used to be our parents' way of knowing they would retire. >> they privatized. >> exactly. and to psychologically connect middle class americans to wall street. to make people think wall street is up, i'm doing better. >> so how do you thread the needle. you're president of the united states, you've been re-elected but your party is going to stand in the 2014 midterms. on the one hand you have to say and it's honest we're making real progress. on the other hand, you don't want to sound all roses and glory when people are still suffering. is anyone other than regular people going to lose their jobs? is there any member of congress who is going to be held to account for our current economic circumstances? >> i think probably not. and the reason is that there's a lot of blame to go around on the sequester which is an idea that the president and republicans came up with jointly.

they will each blame each other for it. people who are inclined to vote republican will assume it's the president's fault and vice versa. so no, i think the economy will play a role in the 2014 elections and i think to the extent that it continues to pick up a little bit, that's advantageous to the democrats. but i don't think specifically the mess created by the sequester is going to play a big role because it's just really not clear who to blame for it. but i give the president a little bit more credit for focusing on the stock market and home prices because there are two aspects to this. one is when stock values go up an home prices go up people who own those things are better off. but the other is there's a reason home prices and stock prices are rising. that reflects expectations of greater economic growth, further higher corporate profits in the future because there will be more consumer demand. on the home prices, people are willing to invest again and it reflects pickup in the economy, more household formation. so those are things that affect everyone. >> i think government policy

stopped us from going into depression. it stopped the decline. it helped create the situation where we're adding jobs. almost 7 million private sector jobs. that's all to the good. the next thing that needs to happen is for those jobs to pay more and come with better benefits. >> we need -- jobs are good. now we need living wage jobs. >> that typically doesn't happen when unemployment is 7.5%. there's slack in the labor market, they're still beating the day lights out of labor. what needs to happen is a sense of self interest on the part of corporations that says unless we pay a little more, we're not going to see more economic growth and we may be willing to give up a little bit of our profit margin in the next year or so for the sake of having higher demand. this was henry ford's insight of a century ago and they all thought he was nuts. they have forgotten what he taught us. >> but part of what henry ford was, was more constrained

geographically. we actually expect corporations to behave on that fordist model. there's a notion about cutting taxes for corporations, but their profits are record profits. they figured out how to have those profits without making labor investments. and it's in part because henry ford couldn't build his model ts in some other place. >> and the global economy hassin sent viezed corporations to always reduce costs. the other thing is that ceos are no longer paid based on the pure profitability. they're paid on the stock price. so you have to maximize shareholder value. that is the prime directive of a ceo. and you do that by reducing labor costs. >> i think we let them off the hook by saying it's just a global economy. walmart is now a dysfunctional -- i don't want to say dying company. but their sales aren't going up. they employ 1.4 million people. they can't get someone in india to do those retail jobs. if they paid their people more, they set the standard. they're 9% of the retail

industry employment. if they put that benchmark up a little bit, then more people wor spending. >> but it happens because of organized labor, right? so it's not -- in other words, corporations figure this out because labor organizes and it says if you don't, then we'll strike. there has to be that counter. part of what walmart has been very clear about is their unwillingness to have their workers to have that organization. >> i don't think that's the only way to have that happen. i think you can just have a very strong labor market where there's a lot of demand to hire people and employees can demand high eer wages. you have to pay more to get good workers. i don't think we can depend on companies to create that. i think the government has to do that. i think the federal reserve has been trying very hard. the reason we haven't had big negative economic effects from the sequester is the fed came in and got very aggressive right at the time congress was imposing fiscal austerity. but i think if we had more stim lafb action on the fiscal or

monetary side, we could get a tighter labor market and get the growing wages. >> but we're not going to get that from this congress and this white house. >> unfortunately not. but we could get more action from the fed. but i don't think we can just said companies -- >> but i hate that we have to throw up our hands and say, well, our elected officials can do nothing. >> what you started with is that somebody has to lose their job in congress. >> to the point about the stock market, the problem is if you in any way cut profits a little bit so you can pay people more, the stock market will punish you. so it's way too closely tied to this weird valuation of oh, gosh, profits are cut. look what happened to apple. it will hit and so many people lose money. the danger is if anybody steps forth and does something like that, short term, they will be punished. a corporation has to think long term, ride it out and see it through to make it work. >> our theme for this morning, money, power and sex. we've done the money, the power and the sex are coming up.

but first before we get there, have you seen the cover of this week's "time" magazine? yeah, well, i say bull of a different kind. my letter to rahm is next. [ indistinct conversations ] [ pizza dodging man's mouth ] ♪ ♪ [ camera shutter clicks ] [ male announcer ] fight pepperoni heartburn and pepperoni breath fast with tums freshers.

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the photo of this week's "time" magazine cover guy is accompanied by a question that i can only assume is rhetorical because the answer to the question about chicago's mayor, why are people mad at him, should be readily apparent to anyone following recent headlines about 50 chicago schools slated to be closed. it's certainly obvious to my favorite mhp show guest from last weekend, 9-year-old ashon johnson who gave the mayor a piece of his mind when his elementary school was on the chopping block. the answer was no miystery to dave when he wrote the mayor of chicago is in the running for, quote, the most loathsome person

in american political life. it doesn't seem to be a question anyone else is really asking. so i wondered if maybe it might be on the mind of the man himself. in which case i'm happy to oblige and use my letter this week to tell them why they're mad. dear mayor rahm emanuel, it's me, melissa. mind if i call you rahm or maybe rahmbo, remember that was the name you earned for yourself back when you were the gladiator to president obama's olivia pope, the bad cop to his good one, the merlin to the president's king arthur. the guy "the new york times" once described as the leading practitioner of the dark arts of the capitol. back when you were the white house chief of staff you used your special magic to help the president advance his agenda. man, i mean i miss that guy, because this guy on the "time" cover of 2013? not so much. chicago bull? only if it's describing what you are full of because let's be honest, rahm, your reasons for

closing those 50 schools doesn't quite hold water. you've said reassigning students from closed schools to higher performing schools is intended to make sure every child can get a quality school with a quality education, but the university of chicago's consortium on chicago school research found no demonstrable improvement for students when their schools are closed. in fact in the short term the stress and anxiety of being displaced actually causes students to perform even worse academically. as for the need to close that billion dollar budget deficit? funny how that need is pressing only when it comes to schools in predominantly african-american and latino neighborhoods, and not when you're using taxpayer dollars to build a $100 million basketball arena for depaul university. meanwhile, your decision is forcing students to cross gang lines to travel to new schools in unfamiliar neighborhoods. mayor emanuel, the lives of children are too high a cost to pay for free education.

and students are not the only ones who suffer when a school is closed. it also robs a neighborhood of an institution that is often at the heart of the community, leaving in its wake an empty shell that's a magnet for blight and crime in areas that are already struggling with those burdens. mr. mayor, i really hope you start feeling like your old self again, that guy who was the president's pit bull, because the people of chicago need a mayor who's a fighter, but one who's fighting for them, not against them. sincere sincerely, melissa. ♪ [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room.

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this week we had the clearest sign yet of looming apocalyptic armageddon. the pew research center released a new study this week finding that women are the soul or primary bread winners in 40% of american households with children. take cover! no, seriously, if doesn't sound

like rapture producing finding to you, then you haven't been watching the fox business channel. and they're all man panel. >> we're watching society dissolve around us, juan, what do you think? >> you've seen the disintegration of marriage. something going terribly wrong in american society and it's hurting our children. >> and those are the children who survive. 54 million abortions since roe vrchlts wa v. wade. >> when you look at biology, the natural world, the roles of male and female in society. the male typically is the dominant role. >> this is a catastrophic issue and, sadly, no one on the left, right or center is dealing with the breakdown of family structure. we're losing a generation. bottom line, it could undermine our social order. >> okay. so here with me once again, our personal finance expert, carmen wong ulrich, josh bear oarrow,

reed and rushmeshen. i want to start with you, josh. what is wrong with you all? >> i can't answer for fox business. no, i think what i see actually, there is -- part of this story is totally fine. there actually are a couple of alarming undercurrents to this, one of which is over the last 30 years men have not been keeping up with economic shifts. you've had this job polarization where middle skill jobs are falling out. we have more high skill and low skill jobs and women have increased their educational attainment over the last 30 years. men haven't, so they have had decreased attachment to the workforce. more of them are working in low skill jobs. that's one of the reasons that you have more households with women as primary bread winners. so that i think is in part not a happy story because it's about men not keeping up. but i think this idea that the

biological frame that's been put on it is very odd. >> even less whether or not men are keeping up, the idea that i household isn't keeping up. that we now live in a country where to live a standard that my grandparents may have been able to do on one income, you simply must have two incomes. >> that's the most dangerous point. now we think dual income is natural and that's the way we should rule our lives. the problem is it's the most fragile position to be in. if you base your whole household off of two and you lose one -- >> and you could lose them from divorce, illness, accident, any of those vulnerabilities. >> but i love what you just said about men taking responsibility. what we just saw was no responsibility for the breakdown in american households, that men really haven't kept up. you have. but men in general have not kept up. but that's the trouble because we also see that in the households, the bread winning households too, women being overburdened by all the responsibility. >> at the same time, too, there's also that culture

component because it is fox so it is conservatism. i think my new slogan for the fox business network is fox business, woman have baby, make sandwich. that should be their slogan, right? and the thing is i believe that what we're seeing there is a lot of men reacting to the cultural shift of men not being dominant, period. and this idea that underlies conservati conservatism, with the consent of conservative women, which is what is required to make that work, you have to give men the dominant role in society such that women typically stay not as competitors in the workforce. and i think that since roe v. wade, the oidea that women have autonomy over their bodies and women are going into the workforce is really threatening to a lot of conservative men who don't want to compete with women in the workforce and who definitely don't want to work for women in the workforce. >> i thought that was all about good ole boy privilege, right? the fact that we are now the majority in the voting booth and we are the majority in college,

we are the majority in the labor force. and that is threatening to them. the thing that i think you raised that i wanted to bring up is how much single mothers are making. we should be focused on low income women, right? minority women and immigrant women who are still not able to have good-paying jobs and lift their families forward. that's the conversation we should be having. >> we were talking about the bimodal distribution around the economy in general and we saw that in this pew data. on the one hand you do have women with very good educations who are often married and working in upper income jobs. 83,000 plus. they're working largely often because they want to. they want to work these jobs because they're fulfilling and they're well paid. and then you have women, single moms, who are working at the $20,000 wage who very well may have a preference for staying home and providing for the emotional nurturing, care of their kids but have -- and those are two different sets of so-called choice sets women are facing. >> i'm sure those republican men

are not willing to put the resources in to make sure they can stay home and take care of their children. >> those women should work because there's a dual mind set among the right. women who are lorin come that are working because they have to, they need to be responsible. they're the ones who want to get public assistance, they better work for it. >> it's a public policy question. you cannot get what you need -- >> and having those babies, those 65 million babies. >> which you must have. >> that he brings up, they want you to have them. they don't want to have to support them or the parents. when we come back, there is so much more on this question of women changing roles at home but we're also going to talk about the other house. you know, the house of represent afternoo afternoo afternoons. we are talking about sex. we're going to the bedroom and whether or not a new drug can make you want to go to the bedroom more often. there is in fact more at the top of the hour. we went out and asked people a simple question:

how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed much is the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. ♪

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go to citi.com/simplicity to apply. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry and we are looking at the pew research center survey released this week that focused on women as bread winners and how very frightening that growing trend is for frightening, apparently, to the men of fox news. >> recognizing that having moms as the primary bread winner is bad for kids and reality shows us that's the clear. >> let's be clear. not everyone over there is quite so backward. the women of fox very quickly stepped up to school their male colleagues on the ways of the world. here is greta van susteren writing on her blog after the segment aired. have these men lost their minds? are these my colleagues? oh, brother. maybe i need to have a little chat with them. next thing they'll have a segment to discuss eliminating women's right to vote. having that chat on the air was

megan kelly, who yesterday called into lou dobbs and eric erickson to explain themselves. >> american psychological association, 2010 study. according to a review of 50 years of research, children whose mothers work are no more likely to have any problems than kids whose mothers stay at home. they studied 69 studies. over 59 years of research. your fact and your science, eric, is not supported by the american psychological association, the american academy of pediatrics, columbia university study, university of north carolina study. i mean why are we supposed to take your word for it? eric erickson's science instead of all of these experts. >> you are not going to see this often, but go, megan! which brings me to a point i really want to make about how important it is to have women in power. you see even if we have disagreement on ideological questions, women as bread winners but also as business leaders, as fox news hosts, as elected officials, women on the right, on the left, in the middle, they often try to fight

for things that men in all of these places have ignored for decades. it's not universal. you'll always have the margaret thatcher's and michele bachmann's who's politics are not particularly western centom. but women are more likely to ask questions like how do we make it possible for parents to both work and take care of the children. something that's ironic about the fox news men, really conservatives in general. they often espouse things like traditional family values and women staying at home with their children as essential to our social fabric but at the same time they fight tooth and nail against any policy that would allow women, especially poor women, to do just that. these are the same people that say parents on welfare, including single mothers of young children, must work. definitely not stay at home with their children. eric erickson is certainly not about to call for government subsidized government child care or offering parental sick leave. so let's talk about women in power and what it means for women and really for families as

a whole. back with me, carmen wong ulrich, josh barrow holding it down for the guys at the table. joy reed and rushma, who is the founder of girls who code and a candidate for new york city public advocate. so rushma, i wanted to ask you because you say you are running as a woman. >> absolutely. >> what does that mean? >> when i talk about my four pillars as i'm running for public advocate, one of them is women. we as a city will not be as strong as we can be unless we uplift women. it means put day care centers on site, it means increasing tax credits for child care which we have not done in over a decade. we can't make it possible for women to work and have children unless we change structures. the fla was passed 20 years ago. that's really amazing. i can say that as a female candidate. you couldn't say that a couple years ago.

it's uplifting. women get riled up. they are fired up after 2012. >> it was pretty extraordinary to see megan kelly there. i must say there are people on my network who sometimes say things i deeply disagree with and i just go on and do my show the next day. for her to actually take on the men on her network, that is incredibly courageous and she did it pretty darn well there. >> she did a great job. watching the women of fox rise up and stand for women is the most amazing and awesome thing in the world. i agree with you. go, megan. and hearing facts on fox threw me off a little bit. i mean it's true. the important thing that rushma said, it has to be not about women with nannies, because they're going to be okay. women with nannies have choices. >> it's about the nannies. >> exactly. and the women who need structural policy still from the government, which only the government can do, that make it possible for them to work but also have full lives. you know what, women do want to stay home with their kids who are not rich. there are women who want to make the choice and have the option

to have parental leave. >> or stay home for a year. it's not as though these are total life decisions. six weeks is barely enough time to feel human again, right? particularly after certain kinds of giving birth. but if you had six months, if you had a year, you might be fully ready to go back. and by the way, also men might be the ones who want to pick up that second year. >> to bring about the scientific side of all of this because i've seen way too many men use this scientific research shows and all of this, here's the thing. the real issue is that there are differences between groups that are just as equal as the differences within groups. now, that's a basic tenet of social science. i can find you a stupid male traitor who will lose out to a just had a baby fantastic female trader. when we have hedge fund managers and all these folks saying that this is scientifically based, i'm telling you that you can find stupid guys and you can find stupid ladies and great guys and great ladies. nothing to do with whether

there's a baby at your bosom, which they actually talk about. it has to do with the person. so if we can go to the table as a person, as opposed to just a woman, who they feel are somehow crippled by hormones or whatever, that we can have that ch chance to prove it. the fact that you have two women who worked for you and had a baby and left and got stupid, does not work for all of us. >> i think what's interesting though around what you're saying is women standing in for the whole group, we saw this with michele bachmann. michele bachmann making a choice to step down as a member of congress and not to run for re-election. look, i am no fan of michele bachmann's policies, but i have been consistently irritated with the kind of representation of her as vacant, as dumb, as incapable, as incompetent because it feels gendered. because the house is full of dumb men and we just don't represent them as somehow indicative of the entire gender in that way. >> well, i think -- i don't

think she was that often represented as vacant dumb. i see a contrast between her and sarah palin who i think absolutely did get that representation, in part because i think it's sort of true of sarah palin. but bachmann, it was always clear that she had something going on upstairs. she's a crazy person, but she -- >> she did the one thing that a member of congress has to do. that is she got re-elected over and over again, right? >> just barely. she won by one point in a district that mitt romney carried by 14 points in 2012. so she was -- she was clearly a weak candidate because she was so far out there. what i loved about that megan kelly interview with eric erickson was the way that she really went to the science on that. erickson did this thing you always see when someone is defending some sort of traditional gender role where they're saying it's not that it's my religious view or some internal bias, this is what the science says. >> same thing with gay marriage. they bring up animals. here's the thing. there is absolute evidence with

animals of mate arcies where the women rule and also of homosexuality. it's there. >> have you watched national go graphic? it's the lioness who hunts. >> can i also take a moment to pause to kind of marvel at watching a predominantly white conservative movement react in horror to a societal norm, something that has been a societal norm for the african-american for a really long time, which is that you did have a lot of women who had an easier time getting into the workforce than black men. black men have had a comparatively more difficult time breaking into high levels of corporate measure, getting higher education. so for african-american families having a woman in that role was actually nothing new. but watching it happen now i think in the larger society, there's a reaction of just horror because they're tying immediately that all these social pathologies are going to follow. you're going to have out of wedlock birth and poverty. >> this is some of the work i do with girls who code. i started a nonprofit to teach girls how to computer program. forever we've been telling girls

math and science is too hard for you, you're not going to be good at it. now you can make $83,000 as a website programmer. these are the middle class jobs. there's 1.4 million of them out there. less than 20% of women are going into them and let's not even talk about women of color. so i think it's really fighting against these systems and these structures that are set up against women and girls. that's what that panel was about. that's why you've got to have more women running for office. that's why we have to constantly educate -- >> and putting resources towards women and girls. >> more when we come back because i want to talk more about the fact that it is absolutely clear that a woman's place is in the house when we come back. [ male announcer ] need help keeping your digestive balance in sync? try align.

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we're going to continue our

discussion about women in power in just a moment but first we want to bring you the latest on the severe weather in the heartland. less than two weeks after a deadly twister tore through the city of moore, oklahoma, another round of tornados hit the oklahoma city area and the death toll connected to the storms now stands at nine. seven adults and two children. for more we go live to nbc's janet shamlian on the ground in oklahoma city. i'm sorry, janet. >> reporter: hi, melissa. yeah, in addition to that death toll rising as you just indicated, we hear there are hundreds of people that have been injured. some 90,000 in the metro oklahoma city area without power. power crews are out this morning, as are folks picking up debris. that's really two of the issues. but the major story here is that this is going to be a flooding concern. after the storms, the five tornados passed through this area last night, the rain continued until very early this morning. the entire region under a flood watch.

where we are is downtown right now and that phrase the chamber of commerce day, it fieleels li that. it's hard to believe what happened here last night, there's not a cloud in the sky. but there's cleanup taking place all over the city and there's high water, not here downtown but in a lot of outlying areas. in addition, the airport has reopened that was closed yesterday. in fact we were in the shelter underneath the airport as the tornados were coming through, so flights are starting to resume. but a number of events, including some sports competitions here, melissa, have been cancelled for the weekend and of course late afternoon today there is that potential threat once again that is really just too hard for people here to get their head around, that they could be facing the same thing all over again, though we must say chances today are highly diminished. >> the psychology of that kind of disaster is tough. thank you, janet. that was janet shamlian in oklahoma city. we've been talking about the pew research center survey showing that women are

increasingly the bread winners of u.s. households, but women in the u.s. house, as in congress, now that's a different story. women still make up only one-fifth of the senate and less than a fifth of the house and the 113th congress is in fact the record-breaking congress for women. one of the things i think that's been most interesting for me, rushma, is watching how the women of the 113th have in fact taken up issues that impact men and women, but particularly the sexual assault in the military. elizabeth warren and other women who have been right out there in front, barbara boxer and others saying we have to address this now. there are many men who have also been victimized by sexual assault, but it took women sitting there to get this finally moving forward. >> i think it goes back to what i'm saying. i think that many women who are in elected office see it as their responsibility to bring these issues forward. and it comes from a place i think of passion and interest. senator gillibrand has been out there on this issue as well. you're seeing with several

others very vocal on immigration, how it affects undocumented women. that's why we need more women in elected office because they will push these issues forward and raise these questions that quite frankly men haven't raised. >> i'm willing to make a claim for women in elected office even if they didn't. that there is a demographic value in a democracy to saying that the body into which you are born is not in and of itself a disqualification for office. so even if i disagreed with all of the women who were running or if they didn't bring up specific questions, that it still wouldn't matter. are we wanting feminists in office or does having all women, including the michele bachmann's of the world matter? >> we need all sorts of women because we are a full spectrum. so i don't want to just see r raging feminists. i want women who are the voice of other female americans.

it's way too easy to take down both extremes. we need a little bit more in the middle. >> and you've seen that there are fwhen power on the right too. you think about governor nikki ha hailey, the way they tried to stop her from being elected was through a sex scandal. was she a proper republican conservative woman. i do think it's important to have women on both sides of the aisle. as we saw with megan kelly, when it comes down to brass tax, women are women and they're going to defend their own honor. but it's also important where the women are. >> at least working women because i'm thinking sure i always buy that. but i do buy probably megan kelly in part was -- i take personally -- you know, wee all mothers who work. the idea that we are harming our children by working, like that goes to the gut of who we are. >> a happy mama is a good mama and i will not be happy if i'm sitting at homemaking sandwich. i would not be happy that's part of it. >> and it's okay if some women are. >> the full spectrum of what a woman is. i just want the opportunity to

do what makes me happy and that makes me a better parent to my child. >> you also have to have women in a position to make a difference. if you look at the house and the senate, the women in the house are there, but the women in the senate have power because you have more women who the democrats decided to put in leadership and you have women like dianne feinstein who's been very forth right on issues like guns and national security. you have kirsten gillibrand who led this fight about sexual assault in the military. these women are on prominent committees and are very important. if you look on the house side, the most powerful woman in the house is nancy pelosi, who is the minority leader, who john boehner can't pass lentgislatio without her. when she was speaker of the house, there was more legislation passed since its congress that passed medicare. >> there's also the point that if we look, for example, at our supreme court. that doesn't require voters to get on board. we've only had four women on the court in all of american history and three of them are sitting on the court right now. when we look at cabinet level positions, only 45 ever in american history, 45 women ever

in cabinet level positions. that doesn't require voters getting on board, that requires the men who are currently in leadership getting on board to put women there. >> and then even in countries where you have women as prime ministers often or other chief executives, they still end up filling their cabinets with men. margaret thatcher i believe had only one female cabinet minister in the first cabinet she put together. >> she was reagan. >> and also 1979. but i think the low representation of women in congress is a symptom of a broader problem of unrepresen d unrepresentedativness of congress. it's important to have a diversity of experience so people can relate. there's also a problem that the economy is much better in washington, d.c., than it is in the country as a whole so people get cloistered in this d.c. centric view. the economy looks quite good for

people in d.c., especially for affluent people in d.c. one thing we need to bring that diversity of experience is women in positions of power. but there are other measures that are harder to find on a demographic table that are ways to which -- >> can i add to that? i think it's important to note one-third of women who run say someone discouraged them from running. there used to be a time i think with female voters, well, i'm not going to vote for the women. you should vote for the women and i think that's changing. my donor base, my volunteer base, we will be led to victory because women voted for us. >> speaking of all the data, data show that when women are running in open seat races, they have just as much likelihood of winning as men, so the problem of not being able to win, it started out with all men and so the men are the incumbent so it's harder to win those seats. thank you for joining us both josh and rushma, carmen and joy are staying around because up next, we are going in.

medical orgasms, little sex pills, and what the hysteria is all about. send the kids out of the room for this one because we are talking lady loving next. when it came to our plants, we were so confused. how much is too much water? too little? until we got miracle-gro moisture control. it does what basic soils don't by absorbing more water, so it's there when plants need it. with the right soil, everyone grows with miracle-gro. to support strong bones. and the brand most recommended by... my doctor. my gynecologist. my pharmacist. citracal. citracal. [ female announcer ] you trust your doctor. doctors trust citracal.

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book. for the 30% of american women who experience emotional distress because of a loss of lust, these new drugs could for the first time give them the keys to their own sex drive and it would be a milestone in the medicalization of women's sexual desire, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, has historically been, figuratively and literally in the hands of men. it's no coincidence that the word "hysteria" which we understand today to mean a state of uncontrollable emotion is derived from hystra, the greek word for uterus, as early adds fourth century a.d., female hysteria was a mental illness. plato pronounced a sexually frustrated uterus that wandered throughout the body as nothing less than a threat to women's very sanity. hysteria could become the common catch-all diagnosis given to women who complained of all manner of symptoms, consistent with otherwise normal female

sexuality. everything from a lack of desire to too much time spent fantasizing about sex, to too much vaginal lubrication. that was all your hysteria just acting up. luckily for the women of yore suffering with these afflicti s afflictions, their physicians had just the thing. the cure for a bad case of hysteria was, wait for it, a good orgasm. a treatment that if unable to be properly administered by a woman's husband was readily available in the doctor's office. the orgasm cure, delivered by manual or battery-powered pelvic massage was commonly provided to women for a fee by their doctors. if this all sounds a bit medieval, consider this, the hysteria diagnosis didn't fall out of fashion in the u.s. until the 1950s. of course the history of pathologyizing women's sexual desire hasn't always been as benign as take two orgasms and call me in the morning.

as late as the 20th century in the united states, it was accepted medical practice to deny women's sexual agency by attempting to remove it altogether. masturbation was considered to be dangerous for women because it was believed to trigger what could cause hysteria. for decades, from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, clitoral circumcision was used as a treatment to prevent women from losing their minds by stopping them from pleasuring their bodies. and while the practice is brutal, historical artifact for american women, it remains a reality for girls and women in 28 countries around the world. in comparison, the possibilities of popping a pill to get things popping is a relatively small victory for women's sexual empowerment. but much like the culture shift that caused that other pill of the 1960s, even that small step for women could be a giant leap for womankind. so what's the holdup? that is next. ♪

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now where's the snooze button? so, if the two pills created to help women to manage their sexual desire clear the fda's approval hurdles, they wouldn't arrive in pharmacies until 2016. but these drugs have already shown more promise in previous farm -- farm logical attempts. getting women's mojo back with a viagra as their own isn't as simple as popping a little blue diamond. think about it. for men who wanted to get it back, viagra was the key to jump starting an automatic transmission. it's the matter of repairing the mechanics of one basic part. get that up and running and voila, you're ready to ride. for women, you're trying to kind the key to operate a manual transmission. there are a lot more moving parts for the ladies, and they

all have to be working together in sync, or else you are going nowhere, fast. joining me today to talk the pharmacology and the politics of women's sexual desire is dr. hilda hutchinson, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at columbia university and the author of "pleasure, a woman's guide to getting the sex you want, need and deserve." and jonathan metzel. still with me, although -- >> hey! >> joy reed and carmen wong ulrich. doctor, should we be excited about these new drug possibilities? >> well, yes, i think we should. you think about viagra, it was on the fast track. it got through the fda so fast. but when it comes to women's sexuality, we're a little more cautious. do we really want women walking down the street hitting on every

man that she happens to come in contact with? no, of course we don't want that. but there are many, many women in this country in great relationships, everything is wonderful, they love their husbands, they love sex when they have it. but something is not working up here so that they actually want to have sex, that they want to enjoy that with their partners. >> and so when you describe it as something not working up here, i wonder, jonathan, is it something biochemical that we ought to be addressing with a pill? or is this something that's not working up here, part of what's interesting about that "new york times" magazine article is apparently women want sex just fine as long as it's a new partner. the issue is they get bored. something we're not at all shocked about when we say men get bored. that's why the cover of every single magazine for women is how to keep him excited, what a man wants, right? he wants you naked with a

sandwich. so is there something that -- are we trying to solve a cultural issue with a pharmacological intervention? >> it's quite a bit more complicated than it seems, even from that article, which i thought was interesting. there's a long history of trying to medicalize women's desire and this goes back from psychoanalysis and the idea that women as the dark continent or what do women want. >> i thought that was africa? >> that too. there's a lot of continents going on there. and then everything from kind of popular lower like oh, let's just put some spanish fly in the water and everything will go from there to when milltown first came out, the first tranquilizing drug, people thought it was a drug to cure frigidity, women's marital having pain or not having sex with their husbands. more recently, pfizer has put billions of dollars into trying to kind of make this women's viagra. as you say, it's like there's a mechanical issue and there's a -- it turns out it's more

complicated for women. and so i would just say that history teaches us to be wary of drugs for women's desire. there's a long history of medicalizing things that are more cultural than they are biological. >> we've been talking about the kind of power issue associated with women as bread winners and all of that but i also wonder if there isn't a kind of fear. we don't want women walking down the street hitting on every man? why? why do we have a particular angst about that? >> here's my point. one, i think we're just tired. we're just tired so that's why. we're earning the money, we're working, we're cleaning, the guys try to keep up, please, with helping us out so that we can focus on you an enjoy it. but also too, i have to ask the doctors, how much of this is a culture component? i feel like american culture, we were talking about this, is like weird. it's this puritanical strange, especially the idea of marriage and being a mother but because in other cultures, i'll bring up latin culture for example as a

latina, there is no real conflict between being a mother and retaining your sexuality and being a wife and still being sexy. that's a very normal thing. i grew up with that with my mother so it's handed down. but is american culture a big part of what's going on up here? >> i certainly see a lot of women, and this is my specialty as a gynecologist, i see lots of women who feel guilty about wanting to have sex. they have been told -- >> about wanting to have it? >> about wanting it, about desiring it, because if you're a good girl, you don't desire it. >> right. >> and some parts of the country, you don't even enjoy it. >> i don't know. i guess i'm maybe more in carmen's camp on this. i have to suspect this pill was invented by a frustrated man. >> the book was written -- >> i mean the thing is, i don't know, i think in normal, ordinary life you don't need a pill. the cure for this is a vodka and a clean kitchen. >> the clean kitchen is not a

small point. >> but a mean helping you clean it. clean the kitchen and bring me a vodka. >> so i'm wondering in part if it is connected to the fact that when we are -- when we are power sharing in work and everything else and then we're doing the second shift, right, it is -- it can be hard to concentrate on intimacy if when you look up there's the pile of laundry right in the corner. so is this -- and that won't be solved, right? the pile of laundry won't be solved from the pill. >> yes, but there are some women, and i agree with you, for the majority of women if hub egeg y goes and cooks and cleans and puts baby to bed, you're taking your bubble bath and waiting for him, then, yeah, the sparks fly. but there is a small subset of women where all of that's happening. hubby is doing everything. he's perfect, he's gorgeous, he smells good, and he's technically very good. everything is wonderful.

but something is not clicking here. it's just not happening for them. and for those women, what do we do? >> jonathan? >> this is really fun, i'm just sitting here. no, i love joy's point, if there was a pill that would do the laundry, that would solve all the other problems. i think that's a terrific point. but there is an issue about how medicalization works, the medicalization of sex works. in that when viagra first came out, it was billed in exactly the same way. it was like a pill to cure relationships and they had older, elderly people dancing together and it's not, oh, it's not going to be this thing and it turned out in a five-year period all of a sudden they were marketing it as a club drug. so medicalization, it generally works this way. it starts off as let's fix relationships, which that "new york times" article was all about. over time as the market widens, it's like oh, we can combine it with red bull in a club and all

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i'm going to dream about that tiramisu. what a night, huh? but, um, can the test drive be over now? head back to the dealership? oh, yeah. [ male announcer ] it's practically yours. [ wife ] sorry. [ male announcer ] but we still need your signature. volkswagen sign then drive is back. and it's never been easier to get a passat. that's the power of german engineering. get $0 down, $0 due at signing, $0 deposit, and $0 first month's payment on any new volkswagen. visit vwdealer.com today. we're back and talking about the politics of women's sexual empowerment. it does feel to me like the question of whether or not there will be social sort of collective support for this depends a lot on the women that we are imagining taking it at the moment that we're thinking about it. so i like your point that there's this dichotomy in western culture between the madonna and the whore and if if you're married and a mother you're supposed to suppress those moments.

my bet is lots of married men would be excited about this drug for their wives and terrified about it for their teenage daughters, right? because we do fear certain kinds of women's sexual awakening and that sort of thing. >> well, it's very interesting because we tell teenage girls not to have sex and not to enthusiastthink about it and to suppress their sexuality. then when they get married, we tell them, you're supposed to all of a sudden be the whore in the bedroom and that doesn't always happen for women. sometimes you can't make that transition from being this good girl to being always ready for your husband in the bedroom. and that sometimes can cause problems in relationships and that's why we're looking for an easy fix. >> is this primarily a heterosexual problem? is this primarily a thing going on with wives and husbands or do we also see this in same-sex couples? if it is in same-sex couples, is it primarily with women in same-sex couples or do men

experience this long-term reduction of desire for one another over time. >> i see it in my lesbian couples as well. after a certain period of time of monogamy, they lose desire and it's called bed death, i think is the term that's used. >> but to your point about the whole kind of cultural how you're raised to be the good girl, i think that's a real issue. actually to be raised embracing your sexuality and knowing its power and also being able to enjoy it, i think is a really powerful thing for young girls to understand because in that way it is yours. you do own it. no one else does and, therefore, you will stand up for it and you will be a real part of the process, if i may say, that you're present, you're there and you can enjoy it. to me, my daughter is only 6, but yes, i fear it but i'm going to be completely realistic and assume that she's going to do it and i want her to know that it is her right to enjoy it. just don't get pregnant.

>> but look, that's actually part of -- i wonder if that's part of it. so when you say to be a young woman, not necessarily who uses her sexuality all the time but who has it and who has a sense of control over it, but connect that to the fact that young women are growing up in a rape culture where in fact they don't control their own sexuality, where they are constantly in circumstances that are predatory. there might also be a desire to suppress or cover sexuality in part for personal safety. >> and not only that, but i worry about, when you talk about this being a pharmacological answer to a social problem, we talked about that on the break, how do you get this drug? is it something that young people can get their hands on? could it be abused in the sense that it's given to girls or slipped to girls when they don't know it in order to enhance their sexuality? and then could it come up in terms of rape? if somebody was taking the drug. i worry about the abuse of it because, as you said, all of these drugs that start out as sort of a solution to a problem, there's always potential for abuse. i'm wondering about that too. >> i think that's a very real issue and certainly it -- you

know, especially given the way that this drug seems to be kind of coded. something like slip it to a woman in a bar or something like that, i do think that that's something i worry about. but the flip side is that very often -- i think we learn a lot in our culture about the debates we have about these drugs. far in excess of what the drugs actually do. i remember when prozac first came out, people were really worried and people really thought this was a drug that was going to restore men's virility and with viagra, using your terminology, there was a sense of oh, my god, it's going to change everything. men are going to be running out in the street and having sex with like sandwiches. >> no, no, no, they don't want the sandwich to have sex with. they want the sandwich at -- we'll talk later, jonathan. >> the point i'm trying to make is actually it sparks a cultural debate about issues that oftentimes is in excess of what the drugs actually do. i haven't seen evidence, at least this particular drug is going to be this huge radical

thing. instead i think it's going to be a piece of the puzzle about talking about sexuality, which is an important conversation to have. >> would you be ready to prescribe this to your patients, particularly the ones who come in concerned about lack of lust? >> i don't know that much about the medication at this point. it hasn't been approved. but if there were a medication for a specific group of women where everything else in their lives is wonderful, in their relationship, everything is great, they enjoy sex, it's just something missing up here, perhaps i would prescribe it. and to your point, it doesn't seem like the kind of medication where you slip it to a young girl and all of a sudden she's going to be like, you know, i've got to have sex, gotta have it, gotta have it. i don't think that's what would happen. i think it's something where you would be available and open to it, receptive to your partner. >> what i will say is until, until it is available, there are

always toys. there's toys, vodka and clean kitchens. thank you two and also to carmen and joy. you guys have been so fun. we are not done yet. up next, the woman who is saving young girls half a world away, one of our favorite foot soldiers. i know we're not supposed to play favorites, but we do. one of our favorite foot soldiers joins us when we come back. you know throughout history, folks have suffered from frequent heartburn. but getting heartburn and then treating day after day is a thing of the past. block the acid with prilosec otc, and don't get heartburn in the first place. [ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. humans. we are beautifully imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world. that's why liberty mutual insurance has your back, offering exclusive products like optional

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now it's time for foot soldiers we highlight ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create change, empower their communities. though we love all of our foot soldiers equally, we do become attached to some of them as part of the nerd land family, like katie miler of new jersey. we introduced you to her in december. the founder of the organization more than me, a nonprofit that helps girls get off the streets

and into schools in one of the poorest slums in the world, in liberia, west africa. these girls, often without access to education, entering a life of prostitution just to purchase clean drinking water. katie and her organization have changed lives of more than 100 girls in liberia. so much has happened to katie and her organization, more than me, since we named her our foot soldier in december, we wanted to bring katie in. good to see you. >> good to see you. i love all of your fans and your show. i feel like your family. >> we feel like you're family. we are incredibly excited about what's going on. tell us, what's happening with you all in liberia? >> we have up until this point, partnering with local schools. now launching our own more than me academy! >> that's incredible. >> you have our own building? >> yes, donated by the government of liberia, we're fixing it up should be ready to go. a big opening september 7th. which is actually my birthday.

we're doing a ribbon cutting. you have to come for that. we're getting curriculum ready. bringing over a bun. of fellows now. we have u.s. fellows. one is a liberian refugee, which is exciting. >> how many girls will the school serve? the current school has enough room for 240, we're hoping to have that many by the end of next year. we want to make sure the curriculum is set and adding them in at little at a time. >> you want to do it right. you want to do it well. >> we want a strong school, best school ever. >> help folks understand. public ep educatiducation is nor liberian girls. this is a completely free school? >> it is free. our families, they say schools are free in liberia, but it's not because they have to pay for shoes. our school is free. everything about it is free at this point. so our families make about $17 a month, some of them, on average.

they can't afford things like shoes or clothes or even things like drinking water. we provide lunch, water for them. >> the drinking water, i have to say, reading the stories that you, you had a conversation with my producer about, about what it takes for a young girl to get drinking water. and the fact that before she's 10 or 11, she might be in circumstances of having to trade sexual favors for clean water? >> that was a story of one of our girls i'm asked her how to she got into prostitution, she started 10 or 11, she didn't have water to drink. you know, even bath water, which is fascinating. it's interesting. but you know they want another way out. you know, they're so determined and motivated. this is not a black hole at all. if you give these girls an inch, they take a mile. they have huge dreams for their lives and we believe in them. >> your from new jersey. and this is liberia. many thousands of miles away. how -- why that? do you get resistance from

people who are like, you're not from here. you're going to leave after a while that sort of thing. >> we've been really blessed and lucky. i feel very supported by you know both the government there as far as the locals. it's been -- i don't feel that at all. i -- we work with the community. it's not like i'm here this white woman coming into africa. >> i will save you, right, yeah. >> it's not that vibe at all. and anyone who knows us or sees the project knows macintosh runs the program, he's a former child soldier. he shows us behind the scenes of what happens happening. >> you have needs, though. this is the moment when i wish i were oprah and donate the computers. you are fund-raising. you still have needs. >> yes. we need computers. we need a playground. we are looking for solar panels. we'll put a list on the blog. there are a lot of needs for the

school. we have a volunteerism program. we hope people will come and add value to the program and teach dance and computers or art classes. >> before we started, you invited me. i promise you, i make a promise now, i will be coming. i want to come. i want to meet your girls. >> whoo! >> thank you. >> i love you guys. thank you. this shows awesome, by the way. >> thank you. thank you to katie. and that is our show for today. thanks to you at home for watching. i'll see you tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. look ahead to president obama's upcoming meeting with the new president of china and the proposal of a chinese interest to buy up american ham. yes, we'll explain what export has to do with the world. a preview of "weekends with alex witt." >> controversy at irs. new dance video. why it might add to the irs troubles. the secret's out. a media member who met face to

face with attorney general eric holder and it's all on the record. new pictures from oklahoma. the tornadoes are gone, there are fears of flash floods that could be even more deadly. and the new athletic director at rutgers, hiring turned more controversy at the university. allegations against her might surprise you. i'll be right back. a lot of tech jobsusick ] ie available out there. i knew devry university would give me the skills that i needed to make one of those tech jobs mine. we teach cutting-edge engineering technology, computer information systems, networking and communications management -- the things that our students need to know in the world today. our country needs more college grads to help fill all the open technology jobs. to help meet that need, here at devry university, we're offering $4 million dollars in tech scholarships for qualified new students. learn more at devry.edu.

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