i can't believe your mom has a mom cave! today i have new campbell's chunky spicy chicken quesadilla soup. she gives me chunky before every game. i'm very souperstitious. haha, that's a good one! haha! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right. happy friday. all right. this is going to be kind of a fun show. one of those shows where something might go terrifically technically wrong. just warning you. today in our nation's capitol. it rained. dreary morning commute in the d.c. area today. because it was raining hard at times this morning, that meant the rainy morning commute around the beltway from virginia to maryland and the d.c. area, it went at a dreary, raining morning speed, but it was special. the day of the freedom trucker's protest ride, where they were going to bring washington to its

knees with a massive convoy style protest that was going to shut down the washington beltway. remember that movie, convoy, from 1978? i loved that movie. the fox news channel has been hyping the trucker protest all week. the organizer said they expected thousands of truckers to take part today. one radio host who was helping to hype the trucker protest in the conservative media said he thought if 3,000 truckers turned out, that would inspire a nationwide general strike of 100 million americans to quote get out on the street, get out on the roads and demand our legislature follow the constitution. that did not happen. just a few guys showed up and they have not yet inspired a general strike of 100 million americans. virginia state police spokesperson said today, quote, it was pretty much a nonevent. a maryland state highway administration said the same thing. their spokesperson told "the

washington post," nothing materialized. so, basically, a rainy day commute. maryland says there were a few accidents around college park, but that was because of the rain, not the truckers. that said, the truckers protest got so much hype, particularly in the conservative media, that i think a lot of people on local news felt like even though it didn't really turn out to be much of anything, it's been hyped so much they had to go cover it. they had to go at least cover the few guys who showed up. >> they started early this morning, they say they plan to go through the weekend here and what they are basically doing is just driving over the minimum speed limit so that they're not cited for impeding traffic. it's their way of demonstrating against the obama administration

and congress not because of the budget impasse, but for a variety of grievances. >> ain't nobody that wants anything violent to happen. everybody's talking about we need a revolution. we need a peaceful revolution. >> everybody knows about the crosby stills nash song. four dead in ohio. how about the four dead in benghazi. >> stay out of the our health care. let the doctors handle that. don't get into things they don't understand. >> so, you see they have a variety of issues they're upset about. mr. johnson was cited by maryland state police for going 39 miles per hour. virginia state police say they've had no issues since this morning. >> sherry, have you seen many more truckers for the cause this morning? >> well, allison and sarah, we have not seen a whole lot of those truckers coming through. we understand they're up around the beltway area, but given the numbers, they may be very easy to miss if you're out there.

no impact on traffic so far. >> the biggest issue out here has been people driving too fast for these slick conditions. >> so, the trucker protest did not turn out to be as exciting as the right was hoping. tomorrow, it's supposed to be more rain in the d.c. area. tomorrow's stunt is supposed to be glenn beck picking up trash. the former fox news host who now does a thing on the internet machine, he says he will pick up trash tomorrow at washington landmarks along with a tea party group. the press release says the only reason federal monuments are closed during the shutdown is because quote, the obama administration has petulantly tried to make the shutdown some political game. they believe that the shutdown of the government doesn't actually shut down things run by the federal government, except for the ones president obama feels petulant about. this is actually the press release from the event which was

sent out by the group freedom works. a little awkward for freedom works to be doing an event with glenn beck. rosy gray just reported on why in this moment of tea party glory with the government shutdown and the republicans hurdling the country towards default and hitting the debt ceiling that the tea party, no nothing politics, really bringing the country to its knees in a way they have long fantasized about. freedom works has been nowhere to be seen and turns out because freedom works is broke after being founded by the coch brothers. freedom works now is broke. they reportedly just had to take out a $1 million line of credit

to try to keep their thing together. $1 million is also the amount of money that freedom works has just given to glenn beck. so they can be paid corporate sponsors of his internet tv show. they're having to take a loan for a million dollars because they have done things like pay glenn beck a million dollars. but that does buy them the right to appear alongside glenn beck at the trash event tomorrow in the rain in washington, d.c. and you thought your shutdown week was going poorly. i mean, if freedom works really is in the kind of disarray it seems they are in, it might help to explain the confused messaging from them. tomorrow, the glenn beck trash event is essentially to say they are all for the shutdown. they're all for the shutdown. they're not against the shutdown at all. but they are outraged by the shutdown. it's confusing, right? it's a very confusing message. freedom works and glenn beck picking up trash is a confusing thing. it's not just them being confusing. as we head into the second

weekend of the government shutdown, the messages from other right wing groups who are even more central to this fight are getting more confusing as well. if there's one group that's been right out in front of the get rid of obama care at all costs caucus, that would have to be heritage action. the group that bought half a million dollars in ads against republicans to pressure them to take a hard line. to pressure them to shutdown the government as a way of trying to defund obama care and heritage action comes into this fight with a long history of advocating against raising the debt ceiling. they've called raising the debt ceiling just a nonstarter, something that shouldn't be discussed. they came into this saying absolutely, do not raise the debt ceiling. this is all about obama care for us. pour everything you have into the obama care fight and do not raise the debt ceiling.

but now, this week, heritage action has changed their minds. now, they've decided, please do raise the debt ceiling. they announced they're just fine with raising the debt ceiling because it's still all about obama care for them. so, this is heritage foundation. don't raise the debt ceiling, now, please do. but for them, it's all about obama care. next up in terms of influence, the club for growth. the grover norquist antitax conservative group, they had a change of heart. they used to be all about raising the debt ceiling, but their message has been do not raise the debt ceiling. this week though, the club for growth also announced look away if republicans do decide to raise the debt ceiling, so it's still not about obama care, but now, their new message, we want lots of nonobama care related things, but don't hit the debt ceiling on our account. that was how their message

changed this week. now, the coch brothers funded the americans for prosperity group. they want the government shut down. they do not want to raise the debt ceiling. they want none of that. so, for them, it is not particularly about obama care. it's not really about obama care for them. but they are definitely willing to hit the debt ceiling for all the other stuff they want. at least they have stayed the same. they're funded by the coch brothers. they've been funding basically all of the groups that have been demanding a government shutdown. they've spent over $2 hundred million in a year. on these groups that have been

pushing for a government shutdown over obama care. but this week, they changed their mind and decided actually, we do not want a government shutdown anymore. please do not shut down the government over obama care. they wrote a nice letter to the senate saying, we never meant that. they said, yes, we still sure hate obama care, but whatever made you think we want a government shutdown? just because we spent over $200 million trying to get that. in terms of the actual republicans inside congress, it's the freshman house republican, mark meadows from north carolina. he rallied republicans to demand the shutdown over obama care in the first place, so he is staying firm right now as of wanting the shutdown. he's the guy who asked for it in the first place. but now, he has an interesting change of heart because he still wants to shut down the

government, but for him, it was all about obama care, now, it's no longer about obama care. he said after he got the shutdown, that for him, it's no longer about obama care anymore. that seems to be where the house republican leadership is. they still want the shutdown. used to be about obama care, now, they say it's not. they're not even negotiating about that. they're still trying to figure out what it is about now. on the debt ceiling part of it though, john boehner's whole idea is that he didn't want to fight about the shutdown, he wanted to not raise the debt ceiling without a big ransom. so, he didn't care about obama care specifically. so it's not about obama care. he wanted to get something, but can't want to raise the debt ceiling. that's been pretty much his position all year.

now, in the second week of getting crushed in the polls and making no progress toward anything he wants, for john boehner, it is still not about obama care, but his new idea is well maybe for a few days let's raise the debt ceiling then you can give me some of what i want maybe? good plan? that brings us to the senate republican. who met today with president obama. they completely reject what the house republicans are saying. for them, it is not about obama care. they say we're never going to defend obama care. why are we fighting about that? but they don't want to raise the debt ceiling without some concessions. so, same goes for them for the government shutdown. the only way they want the government reopened and the debt ceiling raised is if they get their demands met. it's not about obama care for them. so, can you keep track of that? i mean, one by one, if you're

the kind of republican in congress, god bless you, who likes to or needs to take cues from right wing activist groups or even if you're just looking for cues from your colleagues in congress, it is hard to imagine what those cues are telling you to do. all those continue tra -- different ideas. if you're from the outside looking in at the right right now trying figure out what they want, this is our summary of their demands as best we can figure them. this is what they're saying they want. and this is just the mainstream stuff. this isn't going to the -- like the trucker who wants to drive around the beltway all weekend. this is not including michele bachmann, for example, who said this week in congress she is legislating to get america well positioned for the apocalypse because we have now

entered the end times. this is congressional leadership and the main conservative interest groups that republicans are listening to in washington. this is a collection of what they want. this is what they say is important to them. this is why the government is shutdown for 11 days and counting and why we are hurtling toward hitting the debt ceiling. because of this clear message. the big idea in republican politics for the past few years is the collapse of internal organization in that party, right? tv networks and talk radio guys and rich billionaires who are willing to spend on campaigns and activism, they can get republican members of congress to jump much more than their own ostensible party leadership can and because of that, there's no real leadership inside the party, right? no internal coherence to what they're doing and that makes for messages so mixed that it is sometimes a hilarious exercise

to try to figure out what they are saying. and it is hilarious. except for the fact this mess is what house republicans are trying to read right now as their instruction manual, their detailed instruction manual for reopening the federal government and avoiding a catastrophic disaster that would crash the world economy and destroy the dollar for a generation or more. they're looking for a way out of this mess by reading what this crowd is telling them to do. good luck to us all. female announcer: save up to 35%

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congestion, for the smog. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air. so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment.

damage to the gop brand. is that how you view it? have you been doing the right thing or do you think you've done damage to your party? >> the polling has varied and

i'll know that was heavily weighted with a lot of democrats, obama supporters and 20% of the people were government workers. if you look at the sample, 20% of the people they talked to were government employees. 20% of this country are not government employees. >> so, as opposed to the results. >> if you seek out liberal obama supporters and ask their views, that's not reflective of where the country is is. >> just ask president romney. the polls are skewed. ted cruz of texas, one of the architects of the shutdown, telling casey hunt today that the polls are skewed. specifically the new "wall street journal" nbc news poll is skewed and secretly, people actually love the government shutdown. you heard him say that the new nbc poll which says americans overwhelmingly blame republicans

for the shutdown and hate it, he says the poll cannot be trusted because 20% of the people polled were government employees and according to him, quote, 20% of this country are not government employees. actually, they are. about 20% of the country is employed by the government at some level like cops or firefighters or members of the military or teachers. they would turn up as government employees. 20% of the country which is why the poll has that sample size. but ted cruz does not believe it. the polls must be skewed. he's sure of it. joining us now is is john stanton. it's good to have you here tonight. thanks for being with us. so, unskewing the polls is back. i have to ask you if this is a widespread thing you are hearing from republican sources that they don't believe the polling. it must be on their side, even though it doesn't seem this way, or is this just a ted cruz. >> this is just ted cruz

frankly. republicans are mostly broken into two camps on this. one is they see the polls are doing badly. and you have other republicans who see the polls. they believe what they're doing is right and the polls be dammed. so there are few republicans that you're going to run into and believe the shutdown is doing any favors, other than ted cruz. >> john, we tried to map today what the most influential controversial interest groups are telling them to do, how to move ahead. i expected we would see them falling in line with the strategy that we might be able to map based upon the signals. turns out they're all saying completely, completely incoherent things if you try to mix them into one big message. does it matter they're getting a

lot of cross signals? >> no, they don't. for house republicans, particularly the core members that are driving this process, there is one thing and one thing only they care about. they want to get rid of it, defund it and all these other things are sort of extraneous to them. in fact, a number of them, like congressman paul brown said today, if there is a deal that does not include a delay or a defunding of obama care, he will not vote for it and there are a lot of these guys that feel this way. i think that the outside groups are finding themselves in the position in a lot of ways similar to what john boehner has. which is he's got these guys and they have these people now they have sort of created and helped bring along and they have become their own entity and it doesn't matter what the people that have helped them get their say.

>> it doesn't seem like the plan in either the house or senate right now is to actually move forward on anything that puts obama care out front. everything we're hearing in terms of what deal might be offered by the republicans, whether or not democrats are going to accept it is well passed focusing on obama care. does this mean those 50 or 60 house republicans are going to be left out in the cold no matter what happened? >> well, that's a great question. i think certainly in the senate, that's what the republicans in the senate would like to do. most have gotten well past the point, they want to try to do something. i think leadership in the house, they look at what's going on and they understand the damage they're doing to the party and the damage they're doing to the long-term prospects of repealing obama care or replacing it with something they feel is better. the problem i think is that leadership in the house understands that to a certain degree, the unity you're seeing

amongst the republican conference is based on the fact that leadership is doing what these folks want them to do and they understand that the moment they move away from that it is going to reopen this old wound that has been there for the last three years, putting themselves and the tea party and it's unclear to me whether or not they can pull that off, short of using a sort of smaller group of members to work with them to pass something that can get through senate into the white house. >> i have to say, i have to give you special props. we called you tonight, i know you were at a bar where a bondage convention was letting out. it's difficult to do the preinterview, so i want to thank you for soldiers through that. >> it was a little tough. you know, that's a tough thing to do. >> i love your life. i love your life. john stanton, thank you very much. seriously, true story. the old line used to be, democrats fall in love, republicans fall in line.

now, nobody cares what democrats are falling into, but republicans are definitely not falling in line. republicans are seemingly falling apart, which means everybody is getting their predictions wrong about what republicans are going to do next. we've got important details on that straight ahead, plus, eric sloser for the interview. an astonishing story that has nothing do with the shutdown but it might keep you up late tonight. hold on. it's all coming up. without the thinking that makes it real? what's a vision without the expertise to execute it... and the financing to make it grow? whatever your goal, it can change more than your business. it can change the future. that's why, at barclays, our ambition is to always realize yours.

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if implications of this are pretty frightening and of course it's interesting that this is the country from which our president hals. this is his lineage. we know his cousin was is a muslim communist. it's just amazing. i think he's the prime minister right now. >> the country from which our president hails is called the united states which does not have a prime minister named odinga. turns out to be important for understanding why the government shutdown did not get fixed today and why i think it is not likely to be fixed anytime soon.

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in 2007, minot air force base was supposed to load missiles without the nuclear warheads on them onto a b-52 bomber so they could be transferred to barksdale air force base in louisiana. the minot crew did not follow the correct procedures and it turns out they loaded the wrong

missiles onto that b-52. they accidentally loaded onto that plane, six missiles with live nuclear warheads on them. the b-52 pilots, clueless about what they were carrying, flew down to louisiana, landed at barksdale and left their six live nuclear missiles sitting unguarded on the tarmac in louisiana for nine hours, until somebody finally realized, oh, my stars, these are not what we think they are. that cost the secretary of the air force the and air force chief of staff their jobs. nuclear operations were suspended because it is a fireable offense. so minot temporarily lost their right to safeguard our nuclear weapons. when minot tried to earn it back, they failed. they got an unsatisfactory rating, which is not surprising considering the finding that quote, security personnel could not be bothered to stop playing

video games on their cell phones during the inspection. a couple of months later, a second failed. that happened five years ago. from minot to barksdale losing the nukes thing was bad enough. the aftermath was maybe worse since that did not seem to jolt the air force, then bob gates was plainly and vocally horrified. announced securing our -- commanders would be held to account. the obama administration would spend billions more on the weapons mission. bob gates said never again. this would never happen again. fast forward to this year. 2013. president obama is in his second term. breaking bad is over. alec baldwin is the newest msnbc host. more than five years have passed since the terrifying, world ending oops at minot air force base.

more than five years to fix it. and in march of this year, minot failed again. they earned three d kbrads. the commander said the united states was suffering from a rot in the nuclear weapons handling force. 17 officers were taken off launch control duty. in june, the commander in charge of training was relieved of his post. thanks, sir, we'll take it from here. in august, it was another air force base that handles nuclear weapons. in montana. that was their third inspection failure in the past five years. then last week, the military's number two guy in charge of nuclear weapons got fired after police found out he was using counterfeit poker chips at an indian casino. now, today, the number one guy

in charge of nuclear weapons got fired, too, and it was not for the same thing. we don't know what his firing is about, but we know what it's not about. nbc news has been told his firing was not about sexual impropriety or drug use or criminal conduct of any kind or gambling. whatever it was is said to be an incident of personal misbehavior that occurred several months ago. beyond that i cannot tell you because i don't know. but at this point, really, how are we supposed to feel? are we supposed to feel good the air force is watching over its commanders or should we be terrified that so many are failing inspections, losing weapons, committing crimes and doing things we don't understand but the military thinks are fireable offenses. should we be happy or terrified? is both an option?

joining us now for the interview is eric shlosser. the author of "command and control." thank you very much for being with us. i appreciate you being here. >> thanks for having me. >> when most people think about nuclear weapons and handling them, we imagine highly skilled people doing their job with a lot of focus. what did you discover in your book about the difference between the reality of that and the image? >> we go in phases in which there is very careful management of our arsenal, then we go through phases in which it's more lax. in my book, i write about the 1970s. there were real problems with illegal drug use about officers and enlisted men handling weapons. people smoking pot in launch control centers, using lsd and had a responsibility with nuclear weapons.

so this isn't a new problem. certainly in the last 15 years or so, the air force seems to have lost the plot when it comes to the management of its arsenal and they're clearly serving moral problems, but most important, problems with the management at the top. >> your book is fascinating to me and a real treasure in terms of deep research on this. one of the things i did not expect to find was your relative praise for the navy over the air force. you say that the navy's been better dealing with nuclear weapons handling than the air force. why is that? >> the navy has more nuclear warheads than the air force. they're on submarines and there may be problems but we just hasn't heard about them. but the culture of the navy started with the father of the nuclear submarines and for some reason, the air force and its culture seems to have just gone off the rails.

they had a much more gung ho culture during the cold war and now that there doesn't seem to be a point to these land-based missiles, there seems to be moral problems. these are only really useful for attacking russia or china and the head of the global strike command, the air force officer in charge of all of their nuclear weapons said recently there was a remote possibility of russia attacking us. he said the greatest concern he had was of an accident and i think he's right. these are the most dangerous weapons as well as the most powerful weapons we've built and if we're going to have them, we need to spare no expense in how we manage them. >> in terms of the way we've dealt with problems, we've seen secretary of the air force fired, multiple command level officers fired. several suspended at once. whole bases shame and stripped of their nuclear responsibilities.

that's before these last two commanders were just fired within the space of a week. even with all that accountability, the hits keep coming. why isn't that bringing about change? >> well i'm hoping the publicity will lead to a real debate. we have a national debate over nuclear weapons. all of our weapons systems are ageing. our missiles were supposed to be taken off duty in the 1980s. they're still on duty. our submarines are getting older. the b-52 bomber hasn't been built since the kennedy administration. i'm hoping we'll have a real national debate about why we have these weapons and part of that will be to ensure the people who manage them have the best training, the best morale, are compensated.

i think they have the most important job in our military, safeguarding the most powerful weapons. >> eric, i wrote about this topic a little bit at the end of the book i published last year. >> i read your book. you were right on the mark. >> thank you. well, damascus accident and the socket wrench, that's the central narrative point of your book is so mind bending and i knew it already, but reading it and the way you put it, it's a real treasure, so thank you for doing this. it's really important work. still to come, the premier of the new alec baldwin show which starts right at the top of the hour after this show. tonight is the first night, very exciting. also, important news about flying upside down through cloud banks. please stay with us. happy friday. lyrics: 'take on me...' ♪

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when human beings first began to fly, they strapped themselves on to the wings. give the propeller a crank, and away you go, flying for at least a second. for the next couple of decades as planes got faster and more sophisticated, the way in which pilots flew really stayed simple. spin propeller, take speed, know your engines. they all believed once you understood how to work the mechanics of your plane, you

just climbed in and flew, but in one important sense, they were wrong. it turns out that human beings have a particular problem with flying that we didn't know we had and the problem can be a big one. while flying in an airplane, if you can't see the horizon, we humans cannot necessarily tell if we are right side up on or a slant or upside down. our internal gyroscopes are not great at telling us that information. during world war ii, the military discovered that when pilots would fly into a fog or clouds, they sometimes would emerge on the other side flying upside down with no idea they had been upside down. scary, right? it's also instructive. a psychology instructor studied this and came up with a name for it. if you are the kind of person who could tell when you were flying upside down, then herman said you were field independent.

you're more likely to be able to find the shape on the left in these squared grid on the right. you are field independent. if you have a hard time finding the shape, then you are more likely field dependent and more likely to come zooming out of a cloud bank upside down. can you spot the shape on the left in the one on the right? you either see that shape or you don't. you either stay right side up or you don't. the very first pilots to realize our human weakness with this had trouble convincing other people. the man actually standing in this picture got sent to the looney bend twice with being so obsessed. nobody wanted to believe this was true, but eventually, the people who figured out it was true convinced everybody else an pilots fly with instruments now.

we understand that through no fault of their own pilots can be flying upside down or sideways and having no idea about it. so we take steps to overcome that human weakness. that is how it worked out in aviation. but in politics, we've still got people coming out of the cloud bank upside down and mystified about it with no way to get back to earth. why some conservative politicians think the shutdown is going great for republicans even as the rest of them see the disaster. that story is next. it's a growing trend in business: do more with less with less energy. hp is helping ups do just that. soon, the world's most intelligent servers, designed by hp, will give ups over twice the performance, using forty percent less energy. multiply that across over a thousand locations, and they'll provide the same benefit to the environment as over 60,000 trees. that's a trend we can all get behind.

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go to experian.com. this is the guy who started the government shutdown among the house republicans. >> you know, it's interesting when the more we find out, the more we realize how wrong the direction we're going. and so what we're going to do is take back our country, 2012 is the time that we're going to send mr. obama home to kenya or wherever it is, we're going to do it.

>> send him home to kenya. that is mark meadows, freshman republican from north carolina. he was elected last year and elected last year as a birther. 2012. long after most of the birth er movement had folded up their birth certifications and gone home. good mark meadows was still out there running campaigning openly in 2012 on birtherism. >> if the president is not a natural born citizen, then he does not control the military. so the question i have, if your congress, will you pursue some kind of an investigation to find out whether or not this guy is really a citizen and entitled to those authority? >> yes. you know, i see it as -- if we do our jobs from a grassroots

standpoint, we won't have to worry about it. you know what, we'll send him back home to kenya or wherever it is. >> like his promises on the campaign trail, congressman mark meadows has not seemed to spend much time investigating his secret birthplace in kenya. it was mark meadows that wrote that letter to john boehner last month demanding that he make funding the government contingent on obama care. mark meadows got 80 signatures in congress for that letter, and john boehner shut down the government by exactly the means that mark meadows demanded. and that is how we got to where we are now. and the fact that this started with a guy who was runnings as a birther in 2012, ought to have been more of a signal than it has been about this overall effort. and interestingly, it is the local papers and the country that have started to pick up on this aspect. in illinois, the paper in springfield tracked down their two local republican congressmen

who signed on to the mark meadows letter and asked those congressman, hey are you signed on for this guy for everything? are you birthers too? staffers for both of those congressmen immediately tried to distance their congressmen from meadows. at least on the birther front. they told the springfield paper, that the birther comments are obviously wrong and highly disrespectful to the president. the office of aaron shock said those comments are clearly disrespectful and congressman schock does not associate himself with those comments at all. so the congressmen do not agree with the birther part of the agenda with the guy they shutdown for. but it's more important than the beltway gives it credit for. that this is where our current national crisis sprung from. the failure to recognize that the shutdown really came from the fringe, from the side that was stillbirther in 2012 has led, i think, to a failure of

good predictions at a time when we need them. it's a historically important moment in american politics and we really have only very fuzzy ideas about what's going to happen next. this is the most mainstream story in the world. the federal government is shutdown for two weeks now. facing economic collapse, which is due on thursday. and so every american has a stake in this very big story. and every local newspaper and every anchor is trying to understand this crisis and predict where this is going to go. and to do that accurately, you have to know where this crisis is come from. and where this is coming from is not a mainstream place. the mainstream and rest of politics are playing with a different deck of cards from the guys who started this thing. i don't mean it in a derogatory way, in a descriptive way. they have a different set of values. they have a different sense of what is normal. a different sense of what counts as reasonable politics in america. and failing to appreciate that, means that we fail to develop

reasonable expectations for their behavior. so the gallup poll and the "the wall street journal" poll and cnn poll and all of this new polling scientifically polling americans showing that americans hate the shutdown and blame the republicans for it. you might expect that to cause the republicans to alter their behavior or rebut the presumptions behind the opinions in the polls. but instead the response from the drivers of the shutdown is, polls, those are skewed. we have our own poll. ted cruz did pay for his own poll to rebut the other real ones. and it shows that republicans are doing great. jim demint on the occasion week two of the shutdown that has infuriated the nation is still describing it as a temporary slowdown. things are going great. predicting their behavior can't be done accurately if they're

like people who are afraid by the poll numbers. they're not afraid by them. consider where these guys are coming from. look at the people they hear from. look at where ted cruz and jim demint are spending this weekend. they're both at at values voter summit this weekend. both ted cruz and jim demint sharing the schedule with birther luminaries like sandy rios who had this to say about the recent terror attack at that mall in kenya. >> the implications of this are pretty frightening and of course it's interesting that this is the country from which our president hails, this is his lineage. we know that his cousin, was -- is a muslim communist. it's just amazing. i think he's the prime minister right now. >> actually not the prime minister of kenya anymore. not a muslim. not a communist. and not the president's cousin.

cruz and demint are spending the weekend with rios and other peoples who tend to sound more reasonable like frank gaffney. >> on so many other issues involved in this, however where the president was born, there seems to have been, well, a lack of documentation to say the least, to put it, again charitably. what's going on with that? >> you want to know who's doing the session at that summit with demint and cruz this weekend? want to know? yeah. yeah. >> are you out of your mind? america. i ask you sincerely, are you out of your mind? i mean, i really sincerely thought this weekend, maybe it's time to move to canada. it's time to move to canada because these people are not screwing around. if you don't think they're going to scoop people up, they will. they've upped it now. now they're putting a bigger

fence around. now they're putting armed guards around it. this is the beginning of teaching the american people a lesson. don't you screw with us. >> he used to be on tv. he's now on the internet machine, but he will be hosting the afternoon session at the values voter summit tomorrow and then they can settle in for a breakout session with joseph ferra who makes a living selling birther bumper stickers. where's the real birth certificate? along with things like the real birth certificate book. he is also warning if it would come to this, because you have a secret muslim style gangster president who was quite frankly not even born but found under a rock in the serengeti. this is their -- this crisis is not a normal republican versus democrat fight. that can be understood through the previous lens of fights. if this was a normal fight, this would be resolved by now.

what happened is they really handed this one over to the fringe and it means that anybody who is operating under anything that we can learn from a previous political playbook is wrong. there's no way to make predictions about what happens now without understanding where this all started. now it's time to go to prison. msnbc takes you behind the walls of america's most notorious prisons into a world of chaos and danger. now the scenes you've never seen. "lockup: raw." >> for some inmates, a prison sentence means nothing left to lose. >> what the [ bleep ] it look like? >> if i'm ever put in general population i'm as good as dead. >> but sometimes life has other plans. >> it's either him or me at that point. >> this [ bleep ] was real. it was all there was.