>> from the state of the state to the state of the union. i'm krystal ball. president obama makes his first political trip of the year and today he sent the republicans a little postcard. >> how sweet. the college course you could die waiting to get into. how one professor is using the idea of death to bring new meaning to life. >> all of that plus the year in preview. i'm abby huntsman from the world stage to the world cup. what to expect in 2014 and i predict a krystal ball joke. chris christie is laying low today after his major state of the state address yesterday but investigations into his aides conduct continues. any officials necessary will be subpoenaed and discussions about whether to subpoena christie himself were premature. despite the controversy, christie's approval is strong at

55%. it is down double digits from a year ago. a slide that predates this particular story. and while nine out of ten new jersey voters say they have read about this traffic payback story, only 22% of them think christie personally ordered the traffic jam and 41% do believe christie was aware of what his aides were doing. as for christie's broader brand, four in ten voters say christie is a bully. while more view him as a leader. 51% say they think he's honest. let's take down christie's resilience with steve kornacki. i want to show you one thing. "the cycle" producers want to start with new data. this is your time reporting the story on msnbc off the charts. >> looks very scientific. >> you are leading the league. >> data operation continues to impress me. >> absolutely. >> you saw the numbers we just ran down in the state that could

change a lot more as more comes out and as more people testify. and yet from your view looking at this now, if all of the other investigatory steps don't dislodge some smoking gun, some greater piece of documentary evidence, has chris christie potentially weathered the worst of this politically? >> yeah, if nothing else comes out, sure. it's like simultaneously he's fine and simultaneously his political career could be finished. the story in a fundamental way is out of his control right now. you have the assembly that's looking into this. you have the state senate. that could produce on the surface, wow, you have two panels now. you have the state senate and state assembly looking at this double trouble for chris christie. for some very inside new jersey reasons that's maybe not the best situation and maybe not the best way to be pursuing. there are a lot of different agendas in a state senate where you have democrats who have been friendly and protective of chris christie. you talked to people in trenton. there's concern on the assembly side which is much more

aggressive in bringing all of this to light in the first place. the assemblyman who chairs the transportation committee will be chairing this special committee. he's the guy who has kept this alive. there's some concern among democrats in trenton who want this thing to really keep going and to really have as many subpoenas as possible. the senate could end up mucking this up. so that's one thing to look at going forward. >> we would not be making a multiday, multiweek story out of this if this guy were not presidential timber. we didn't make a big story out of big mcdonnell. this because he's presidential timber we have to dig it up. from a liberal blogger. imagine chris christie with the power of the nsa. politician who at the very least fostered the political culture that enkocourages people to abu

the power of the office and how this may help or hurt going into 2016? >> if more stuff comes out, the implications for this for chris christie not just 2016 but continuing as governor of new jersey could be significant. in terms of the whole question of chris christie as a bully and chris christie embodying the part of -- i have always -- it's been interesting to me going around the country after living in new jersey and covering new jersey, there are two very different views of the state that you hear from people. sometimes people look at it, like, you know, almost like admirab admirably. no pretense. that's what chris christie has profited from. he's gone around the state being that jersey guy telling crowds, hey, i'll tell you like i tell it to you in jersey. they love it and eat it up. the other jersey is the one they talk about.

where is jimmy hoffa's body buried. the development corruption and the bribes and where is the paper bag full of cash? that's the jersey this brings to mind. it's a question of chris christie is always going to be a jersey guy in the national viewer's mind. question is which jersey guy do they think of after this story. >> go back to what you were saying about christie's relationship with the democrats. you have been talking about how it's more complicated than just democrats versus republicans. you have the pro-christie democrats and anti-christie democrats and part of the reason that he has such a great national profile is because he has accomplished things with democrats in new jersey. do you think that this scandal has the potential to change that dynamic? are democrats going to be harder on him? will he have a harder time working with them from here on out? >> it depends. the composition of these committees specifically the state senate committee and how that state senate committee goes

about this work. i think it's going to be very telling. here's one thing that's very interesting to me as we look at who is on the committee. sorry to get too inside jersey. chris christie's big alliance in new jersey is with democratic power broker from south jersey. if you are south of route 195 in new jersey, all politics are run by this democratic power broker named george norcross and all of his allies have been friendly to him and very helpful with chris christie. south jersey is more republican friendly in terms of the electorate. it's an area where chris christie did extremely well last year. where the son of the former governor and current leader of state republicans say i want to win back the state senate. these are ripest targets. south jersey. he spent republican money trying to win back those seats. those are chris christie's allies. what happened the day after -- the week after the election last fall? the republicans did not take out any of those democrats who were aligned with chris christie. secondly, the democratic leader

from down there got very, very mad at tom for doing that and chris christie intervened and tried to oust tom, the republican leader of the state senate, for the crime of spending republican money against democrats. that's the kind of alliance we're talking about here. that's another protection we talk about here. >> culture of political retribution. >> it's like old times. steve is back. >> steve, you have done such a good job reporting on this. they booted me over to the flash cam. you really have done a phenomenal job. you make a number of good points. people are now taking a step back saying is he really the bipartisan leader that we thought he was? i want to ask you bigger question. where do you see this story sort of going from here? it seems like he has weathered the storm at least the first part of the storm and really there isn't anything linking him directly to what happened. so is it your sense -- you know new jersey inside and out. you've been talking to many players directly involved in this. is it your sense that more will

come out that affects the governor directly or could you see this maybe dying? >> the key here is more will come out. let me give you an example. what we have from the two batches of subpoena documents right now for instance. we have this e-mail that one of the port authority guys. on september 13th last year when the top guy of the port authority writes a memo saying we're breaking state and federal laws here among other concerns. he writes that e-mails. christie's guy at the port authority gets it. we know from the documents that have been subpoenaed that bill forwarded it with priority high to a woman who was at the time running the authority's unit. that puts her in chris christie's office and she is now chris christie's choice to be his next chief of staff. let's subpoena regina's documents and find out what happened when she got that e-mail from bill. who did she write to?

who did she send it to? did she forward it? there are links to the governor's office that are suggested by the documents we've gotten right now. look at bridgette kelly. we have an e-mail on the 13th of august saying time for traffic in ft. lee and david saying we got it and picking up in mid conversation. what came before that? subpoena the documents. we may find out what came before it. >> one thing you take away from the press conference we saw was that chris christie doesn't remember or think he has those e-mails lying around because unless they went to his counsel, they would be privileged under that logic, he obviously thinks he can weather this. the thing i want to ask you moving beyond these details is what kind of statement new jersey is for a little context. this is what in political science is called a strong governor state. one of seven states, 43 states choose the attorney general by popular vote. only seven, new jersey, alaska and a couple others are strong governor states where you don't have any other statewide elected officials. you don't have anyone who can really have a popular challenge to the governor and when it comes to the laws, we're talking about whether there will be

state investigations as we mentioned on the program before. he appoints the attorney general not only does he have a friend going in but former chief of staff. a close friend. how much of this organization of new jersey has an impact on all of the democrats who seem who want to work with him because they don't have a lot of other choices. >> new jersey is the most constitutionally powerful governorship in the country. he has more appointment power than any other governor in the country. he appoints the head of the authorities unit. she oversees chris christie's operations at this massive operation. billions of dollars in business every year. and chris christie gets to control all of that. the flip side is new jersey is sort of schizophrenic state in a way. it has the most powerful governor in the country who sort of is like a king. it also has the most powerful -- there's more money and more power at the local municipal level. the in between. the mayors and counsels.

that's because of development. when people talk about why is new jersey a corrupt state. it's because new jersey, especially north jersey has valuable land and all decisions made about that -- >> integral part of the ft. lee story. >> that's a long story but the lanes adjoin this $1 billion development project. it's also a 1 billion development project. ripple effect. who is architect. who is engineer. every one of these deals -- there is so much money at stake and decisions are made and you'll find in new jersey that sometimes this can be where there's nothing wrong with it. governor's office will have a hand in it and get money into the redevelopment projects and local officials make decisions too. there's so much corruption at that end too. >> that's part of what you were reporting on giving us context on that. i'm sorry to say as i understand this is the last time you're going to talk about new jersey on tv. >> i guess it's all over. >> is that confirmed?

no. i'm seeing breaking news. there will be more chris christie this weekend on "up." up next, the president's first big road trip of 2014 as we mentioned earlier. this one hurt chris christie. his idled e idle got in on it. ♪ man i got to take a leak but i can't i'm stuck in governor chris christie ft. lee's traffic jam ♪ . [announcer] a healthy dog is a playful dog. give him the calorie-smart nutrition of beneful healthy weight. with wholesome rice,real chicken,soy, and accents of vitamin rich veggies... plus a taste he loves. beneful healthy weight...from purina.

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the president just wrapped up his first big political trip of the new year. he traveled to north carolina. a manufacturing hub hit hard by the industry's decline. the state has lost almost half of its manufacturing jobs since the turn of the century. greater than the loss experienced by any other neighboring state. today marks a strategic return. >> this has to be a year of action. congress has to do its part, too, because restoring the american dream of opportunity for everyone who is willing to work for it is something that should unite the country and not divide the country. >> don't expect the president to wait for congress. officials are signaling to us that he'll use his pen and his phone and not any political pressure to get things done. nbc news senior political editor mark murray is in washington. all indication point to the shift of the administration

strategy in the new year. >> a shift from where we were a year ago when president obama went into his state of the union address in 2013. there were a couple big item legislative things he wanted to get done. gun control was one of them. immigration reform. gun control ended up getting filibustered. immigration legislation is over now in the house of representatives and no one knows really how that is going to turn out. now all of a sudden with big legislative items off of his agenda, he's going to turn to smaller things that can be done by administrative action. there's been a limited window for a second-term president. they need to get big ticket legislative items done the first year of the second term and now we're entering president obama's sixth year in office and it's so much harder to get congress to act even sometimes when your party is controlling the machinery of power. >> thanks, mark. we always appreciate it. >> bring it back now to the table. it's interesting. this whole idea i have a pen and

phone and i'll use it. this is something that was championed and now working alongside the obama administration and obviously helping them in terms of working throughout their channels without congress' help. it will be interesting to see how that plays out. more on this speech, this is something that obama focused on a year ago. beginning of the state of the union last year was focusing on the companies that had gains. ford, caterpillar and apple. and the idea that we really need a center for manufacturing in the united states and his whole thing was i want to boost that. what you see today is highlighting that he's at least going something on that. what i hope he focuses on more and i hope we hear this in the state of the union in two weeks, policies around manufacturing. you could have a manufacturing center but what really matters is the policies and regulations and taxes, expanding trade. that's where it really works in the real world and we have to make our focus if we want to be

competitive in the 21st century. lastly, interesting politics is playing a huge role in 2014. kay haggan, one of the leading democrats in north carolina, decided not to go to the speech today. she's in a heat the race. i'm sure republicans will hit her on this. i don't know this was the right decision. people know she's a democrat. people know that she's trying to balance this fine line between running for office in a very competitive field but also not being too close to the president. interesting. we're two weeks into the new year. you already see politics pretty heated up. >> i got to tell you, i agree with you on the kay hagan thing. embrace it. argue for it. talk about changes you would make but not run away with it. i think that doesn't work out for any democrats. i got to tell you, the president, he's not going to be able to get much done with this congress policy from a policy perspective unless he gets the house back in 2014.

it's a massive uphill battle for democrats. that much is true. i got to tell you, republicans are putting all their eggs in this anti-obamacare basket. i don't think it's a smart strategy. it might have worked in 2009, 2010, when the law was being debated and it was new, right? we are past that point. this thing is here. people are getting help and millions of people are getting health insurance through this law. it's too late to turn back. you have to run on something other than that. on the other hand, you have the president in this address today and in the state of the union and other addresses that he's been putting out really focusing on what can we do to actually directly help people. thinks like extending the unemployment benefits, which by the way i think republicans have handed him a huge hammer by blocking and things like raising the minimum wage, which is hugely popular. you will never believe who is now in support of the minimum wage. let's take a listen.

>> i'm willing to pay and i have means. i think americans in general would be willing to pay a few more cents for products to up it to ten bucks. only 6%. >> bill o'reilly. >> that doesn't surprise me that much. >> it surprises me hugely. this unemployment insurance thing is a massively important thing. i'm appalled at the way this is going. senate democrats knocking it down. house republicans saying they don't want to have any part of voting on it. 1.3 million people who are without benefits. 2.3 million children rely on adults who are not getting their benefits. these are not takers. these are not moochers. these are people who paid into a system and now need help, right, and are having a hard time getting jobs because there's a bias against people who have not been working. we have an economy where there's three folks for every job that's available. taking away benefits does not motivate them. they are motivated to find work. it misunderstands the economic

growth engine and really -- >> that's the bigger picture that neither side is focusing on is job growth. opportunity. no one is hammering that one home. >> it just gets to the idea of what kind of country are we? the kind of country that leave behind people who are in trouble, our own people in trouble or help them? >> i think the other piece of this for the legislative strategy is president has to figure out how to move the congress. you can't wait until the mid terms. it's fine they have a pen. >> and he has a phone. >> i heard about a phone. a pen and a phone. beyond trading and making deals which is one thing you can do when you have a congress that wants to get to a deal as krystal mentions, they have to find ways to do more pressure. before the state of the union have the president say let's have them working weekends.obst.

how do you take low approval ratings for congress and use it as a political weapon against them. they haven't found ways to do that enough. you have to force more votes. you have to make that happen. >> they have to play more golf. you know that. >> the president's approval rating isn't all that high either. so you can also make that point. >> we're out of time but i do want to say -- year before this and year before that. >> l is for lead. >> amen. >> up next, the findings of a new report on the benghazi terror attacks. what the senate is saying now about the political firestorm. stick with us. ♪ ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪ ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪ ♪ stacy's mom has got it goin' on ♪

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a bold new determination about the benghazi attacks. the senate intelligence committee says the deadly assault could have been prevented if u.s. officials had

heeded warnings about terrorist activity. the reports say analysts too quickly classified protests as the reason for the violence without proper intelligence to back up that assertion. four americans including ambassador chris stevens were killed in the attacks that fell on the anniversary of 9/11. >> bombings across iraq killed dozens of people that took place outside busy markets and outside of a funeral. the u.n. says the death toll in 2013 was the highest in six years. an explosive emergency near detroit right during the height of the morning rush. a huge warehouse fire sent flames shooting from this recycling factory. a number of explosions can be seen from our chopper shot. luckily no one was hurt. the cause is still under investigation. today marks five years since the miracle on the hudson.

survivors are gathered where it happened on manhattan's west side. >> they'll toast to life and take a boat ride out to where the plane landed. five years ago today flight 1549 splash landed in the river within minutes of departing laguardia airport. birds struck an engine. the plane lost power. captain sullenberger decided the hudson was their best option. we saw ferry workers coming to the rescue. all 150 passengers and five crew members survived. captain sully sullenberger said for all that went wrong in those first moments so much has gone right ever since. he said lives changed forever and for the better. he'll be here later today. we'll get a chance to talk with him and some of the crew members and passengers. as for the plane, it's in an aviation museum. it was towed to charlotte, north

carolina, in 2011. that's the latest from manhattan's west side. >> thank you. to this day can't ptain sully's actions are considered the best rescue in aviation history. an article for science magazine pacific standard asks why women aren't welcome on the internet. women face the vast majority of threats and harassment online. over 70% of people who reported harassment from 2000 to 2012 were women. you don't need a celebrity or prominent writer to face this wrath. women often find themselves subject to harsh and sexual harassment. many say women should ignore it or "grow a thicker skin" or just get off social media if they don't like what they find. is that right? our next guest argues that type of thinking misses the whole point.

amanda hess has written about technology and hollywood. welcome to you, amanda. tell us why that kind of advice, that kind of thinking is in your view off base? >> i think we have seen women being harassed offline for as long as we've been charting that phenomenon and we have laws to address that. laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and i see no reason why we shouldn't extend those same laws to a similar phenomenon that's happening on the internet. >> that's part of the problem here, right? you receive these threats online. i think this is a story that basically every woman with an online profile can relate to. you receive threats, do you call your local police, do you call the fbi? who has jurisdiction? what is the current legal structure equipped to deal with

these online threats? >> as a victim it's confusing to know what to do. on the one hand we have a lot of laws in place that could be applied to online threats. in my home state of california, it's a crime to threaten bodily harm against another person. there are also cyberstalking and cyberharassment laws in many states across the united states. what i found when i called 911 when i received my most sort of recent bout of threats, the police officer that came to my door didn't understand what twitter was, had no idea how to investigate such a crime. i'm not even sure knew that it was criminal. it's hard to know what to do when you're put in that situation. >> any woman on social media understands how real this is. if the law doesn't change, how do we tackle this? it's only worse as a society and parents. i have young sisters on social media. i worry about this all the time.

this is not just about growing a thicker skin. what else can we do to help them? >> it's a difficult question to answer. one thing is not to dismiss threats against women as something that's merely virtual. for me and for many women i have spoken with, it's clear that it becomes not just an emotional burden but an economic one. we have to spend time scrubbing the internet of our personal information, making sure we have security when we speak in public. and going through the court system and legal system that's probably not going to end up helping us but that gifts us a bit of peace of mind. one thing is to just not dismiss it out of hand. beyond that it's difficult. on one hand police officers don't have many resources to deal with this problem and platforms like twitter have resources but they don't have the power to really legitimately

address crimes against their users. >> not sure i agree on that last point about twitter's power or facebook's power. if you were in a real establishment, a restaurant, a bar, a woman is being harassed. the establishment would try to intervene and stop that harassment. these are virtual places but places. shouldn't we be looking to twitter and facebook to say, hey, why are you protecting these attacke ersattackers? shouldn't you make this world more amenable for your women users? >> i think that's exactly right. it's a complicated question. on twitter for example, after a public incident of many death threats made against a woman in the united kingdom, activist encouraged twitter to institute a report abuse button making it easier to report people who are harassing and threatening women. however, all that button does is flags a user as abusive, kicks

them off the service and then all they need to do is create a new sort of unanimous profile to come back and continuing harassing. anonymity can be helpful to women and others who need to make points made without being personally threatened. it's difficult to know exactly how these platforms should balance those different needs. >> i thought your article really handled that well because you speak to the cultural piece of this which is how we as a society deal with it and react and then corporate responsibility piece. the corporations make money off of what is free content. some of it is harassing or criminal content. i also want to mention we asked not only you but a lot of our viewers for questions and input for amanda. we continue this conversation online. an important conversation to have there. you can go to msnbc/the-cycle. discuss this with amanda and

post more questions and see the original article that we all wanted to flag. up next, expect the unexpected in 2014. bold predictions for the year ahead. ♪ [ laughs ]

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personalized home security and automation. get professionally monitored security for just $29.99 a month. with limited availability in select markets. ♪ ari says he doesn't comment on the future but when you have a krystal ball on your show you have to do that sometimes. our next guest has an ebook out. among the bold and fascinating forecasts is that the winner of this summer's world cup will be germany. i would argue that even if germany wins the final match, the real winner will be the host country, the emerging world power brazil to argue about this and other things. let's bring back rob cox. the first person in the book you talk about in terms of people who can surprise us with their

power in 2014 is the president of brazil. president about two years. brazil is a rising power. there are economic challenges. an extraordinary situation with the world cup this summer and the olympics in 2016. interesting moment for brazil on the world stage here to showcase how great they are. >> right. this exercise was a question of who has the lowest expectations to really surprise us with something positive this year. so we thought, okay, brazil. you look at the stock market. it's trading at a huge discount to all other emerging markets and developed markets. there is not a lot -- there are not high hopes that the building is going to be done by the time the world cup kicks off. there's a lot of concern about crowd management and violence. so we start with that premise. you also have a problem. you look at the world bank this week came out with world forecast for growth and actually they say that brazil will grow less than mexico and less than

the united states. so for an emerging market for one of the bricks, that's not great. but here's the opportunity of surprise. they pull off a fabulous world cup. they get everything done. they manage to keep, you know, social unrest at bay during the games and even if they can win, that would be another injection of confidence although our book as you will see says that germany is going to win. >> we all know toure is really good at predictions. we'll see how that goes. but something that i think is a good prediction and one i think we could agree on is china and u.s. dominating the world as it relates to the economy. you say u.s. and china setting the global pace. obviously u.s. accounts for a quarter of the economy. china accounts for a tenth of it, right? so how much does the world depend on this? >> very much so. so because the united states is 25% of global gdp and china is 10%, 35%, all of the growth is going to come from the united

states. this is the law of large numbers for the u.s. if you have 3%, 3.5%, that would be awesome growth for the u.s., but if you get 3% growth, you talk about 25% of global gdp growth will come from the u.s. and because we expect china to grow and so do its party leaders expect it to grow at 8%, that means 8% of that 10% equates to 25% of global gdp growth. that's 50% of all the world's new growth is going to come from these two countries, ours and china. it also is a reflection on the fact that japan, which is about the same size as china, is growing 1%, 1.5%, and so u.s. and china -- these are forecasts as you know. they can be wrong. >> we have krystal ball here luckily. and another piece of that is you predict that u.s. employers are going to bring more jobs back to the u.s. actually.

>> so this is a bunch of factors around this. i know we talked about this a lot. you have cheap natural gas. that's still bringing manufacturing back to this country. even with a little bit of a uptick in natural gas prices, they are a fifth of the price in south korea for example. electricity prices partly as a result are half of what they are in germany. energy costs and energy is a huge input in manufacturing and all sorts of other businesses. so you will see that trend. the other thing you have is productivity. this week the conference board said that labor and productivity and growth in emerging markets is growing 3.5% but it's going to stabilize which means it won't grow more. >> and we're not getting paid more. >> then there's that whole issue which is a whole other thing. >> can you predict that one? >> i think there will be a deal on that one. you mean on minimum wage? i think there will be a deal. >> i certainly hope so, rob. thank you so much. best of luck with the book.

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instructions to the funeral director when you died. do you want to be buried or cremated? do you like flowers or not flowers? the most popular class at a new jersey college, one with a three-year waiting list to get into is all about death. assignments include writing a good-bye letter to a loved one and tackling questions we just mentioned. students take field trips to the morgue, a cemetery and maximum security prison. amid all of the sadness, grief and death, students say the most important lessons that they learn are about life. joining us now, the professor behind the class, norma beau, a ph.d. in human health. the death class. a true story about life. thank you both for being with us. professor, i want to start with you. what inspired you to create this course? >> the course was already in place at the university. i took it over from someone who was retiring. i decided to revamp it to make

it more interactive and make it more relevant to the students. >> erica, you not only write about this class in the book but you made a deal with norma that you actually have to take the course and one of the first assignments is to write a letter to someone in your life that has died. let's take a look at some of the students talking about this. >> i lost my mother a month before i started my freshman year. i refuse to say good-bye to my mother. i wrote the letter as a i'll see you later. it was a very touching letter. i still remember it. >> the first time around i didn't read it. after going to some of the trips and meeting people in my class on a whole other level through those trips after she asked me a second time to read it, i finally did. i wasn't sure how i was going to feel after. i actually felt some sort of a release. >> such a tough thing to do. erica, you wrote to a good

friend of yours in your teenage years that died. what was that experience like? >> it was hard experience. i mean, i was a journalist for many years and not usually the kind of person who got involved in this story. norma said if i was going to write about her class to take the class so i wrote this good-bye letter to my friend who was killed when we were in high school by her abusive boyfriend and it was an experience that really helped me i think revisit and deal with covering death starting back then to now. >> professor, great classes always have great field trips and your field trips go the extra mile. you have students going to cemeteries, going to autopsies, going to the morgue. what do you want people to gain out of these sort of trips to the edges of life and death? >> that's really easy. i want the students to enjoy their life. i want them to treat their life as a precious gift. i don't want them to take any

moment for granted. i would really like them to see the different paths that we could end up on even and i just really want them to live their life and maximize their potential as best maximize thei potential as best they can. >> i have a question. in the book, you write about ernest who taught us about the value and denial of death, the way as a society we don't often want to deal directly that our lives are ending for social reasons, for comfort, for psychological reasons. what you refer to in the class is the fact that when we deal directly with death as an end point in our lives, we're pushed to think more deeply about what our lives mean and what parts of them important. could you both speak to that?

erica, first. >> now we're seeing a cultural shift. more people embracing death. there's death cafes and salons. bringing all these different aspects into the discussion about death can really help us understand and be less afraid of it. >> what do you think, norma? >> i think this culture is really in a denial about death. that's why we take it so hard when someone passes away. i think every loss we have in this life prepares us for those really big losses later in life. and i think the students are pretty courageous taking a course on death. once they face their mortality,

they're able to enjoy their life and enjoy living. >> erica writes a lot about what your students have gotten out of the class. what have you gotten from your students and teaching the class? >> i've been inspired by my students every single day of teaching this course. there are so many exceptional students. erica did such a beautiful job of weaving our stories together that's just amazing. it's just an amazing book. i'm so proud of it. i get so much inspiration and so much hope. it makes me excited for the future when i see these students working so hard and doing so well and being resilient and just sharing all their hopes and dreams. >> well, it's clear from the book the why you have profoundly impacted your students. thank you both. >> thank you. >> thank you. up next, can you bully your way to bipartisanship?

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without a doubt, we will cooperate with all appropriate inquiries to ensure that this breach of trust does not happen again. >> after a few lines about cooperating with investigations, chris christie went back to his usual script in his annual state of the state address yesterday. it is the script he used at the gop convention and it is the core of his national appeal to republicans. chris christie thinks he's a bipartisan bridge builder. >> no state in this country has

shown more bipartisan cooperation and governance than new jersey. we acted and we acted together. this is what we owe our citizens. let's choose to do it together. to be an example for the entire country. >> an example to the country? he's not kidding. many politics claim you could see christie's strategy for this scandal by watching his press conference last week. yes, he looked that way. yesterday actually revealed christie's deeper feelings about these very serious charges. he doesn't think they will stick. even more concerning, he doesn't think they require a change in his leadership. yesterday he addressed the legislature as if his aids dirty

tricks had no effect on his approach to governing. if you get cooperation from opponents with threats and payback and under partisan dure duress, that's partisan bullying. that's what christie's job yesterday was so telling. he still doesn't get it. you can't lie your way to a reputation for honesty and you can't shout your way to a reputation for calm and you can't use partisan dirty tricks to build a reputation for spirited bipartisanship. we're witnessing a man in total denial here singing the same happy tune after the music suddenly changed. we'll give the final word on

what he's offering america to christie. >> working together, to be an example for the entire country. >> governor, if you really still think your team's approach to politics is an example to the country, you still have a long way to go. it's time for "now" with alex wagner. the president's agenda strengthened the economy. the republican agenda stopped the president. it is wednesday, january 15th, and this is "now." >> hello, raleigh. >> his first trip outside the beltway this year. >> republican senators blocked a bill that would extend unemployment insurance. >> harry reid doesn't want to take tough votes on amendments. >> we do not consider this offer. >> congratulations on your

budget, congress. americans still hate you. >> the american people has stated the most important problem is the congress's inability to function. >> i'm supporting the president in his efforts. >> the president has a pen. we have legislative authority too. >> this has to be a year of action. if we work together, there's nothing we can't achieve. with washington e mersed in a heated dialogue about poverty and pursestrings, this afternoon president obama headed to north carolina to lay out the latest plank of his economic agenda, manufacturing. >> we have always been about research, innovation, and then commercializing that research and innovation so that everybody can benefit. we