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tv   The Cycle  MSNBC  June 2, 2014 12:00pm-1:01pm PDT

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some of you have heard this one. neither side is happy with president obama's plan. in the spin sometimes all you can do is knock on wood. that and other tidbits from inside obama's oval office. i'm your guy for the white house. we turn to politico's new special report. >> cycling out of control. a global food crisis and one journalist turned advocate. i'm abby huntsman. is the war on terror being fought at your dinner table? tune in to taure tv. i am going to raise the volume on hillary's odds of raising for president. crystal doubts the book will be a page turner but luke has finished it. so i'm just going to read between the lines. most of all, i'm proud of how much you wanted to help the
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afghan people. >> as part of this effort the united states is transferring five detainees from the prison in guantanamo bay. >> there was a question about his safety. we found an opportunity and took that opportunity. i will stand by that decision. >> there are legitimate questions about these individuals who are being released. these are the hardest of the hard core. these are the highest high risk people. >> we have now set a price. we will be holding hearings. this is not a partisan issue. it is just a matter of the law and breaking the law and not informing the congress according to the law. >> we did not have 30 days to wait. had we waited and lost him i don't think anybody would have forgiven the united states government. >> we in the united states do not leave our men and women in uniform behind. this should not have come to a surprise to members of congress that this was possible because we have been working to secure sergeant bergdahl's release for a long time. >> more questions than answers in the prisoner swap that freed
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bowe bergdahl. why was not congress told of the exchange ahead of timeline before the bin laden raid as the national act requires? did the white house break long standing policy and negotiate with terrorists? what assurances did qatar give the white house given the five taliban militants. there are questions surrounding actions five years ago that led to capture. bergdahl was never listed as a desserted. in fact he was promoted twice as prisoners of war but brothers in arms say he walked away willingly. the final e-mail was released explaining growing resentment saying the system is wrong. i'm ashamed to be an american and the title of u.s. soldier is just a lie of fools. three days later bergdahl was gone. at least six u.s. soldiers were killed in the search for him. neighbors in his hometown in idaho say they never gave up
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hope. >> you don't want your kids left out there especially when you know they are captured. >> it is going to be huge. the town is going to go to town. you know what i mean? it is going to be a big celebration. >> the sergeant is being treated under close watch at the regional medical center in germany. >> reporter: officials have been tight lipped about the overall condition of sergeant bergdahl's health. they have said he is in stable condition and continues to remain hospitalized as a result of that condition. more importantly they say they are focusing their attention on nutritional and dietary needs but they say all of this is important and the focus remains on getting him back into society in a healthy way. they have been extremely tight lipped into whether or not he communicated to anybody in the outside world.
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we understand military officials will want to learn about his whereabouts and other pieces of key information. >> let's bring in lieutenant colonel tony schaffer. he is former army intelligence and ran blackops in afghanistan. for the political impplications we have john stanton, washington bureau chief. we don't leave any man or woman behind. that is the promise we made to every soldier. i think that is a very important promise we make as a nation. in this situation a lot of extra stuff along with that. a soldier who may have grown disillusioned to what it meant to be an american and a soldier. somebody who we had to trade five people for and negotiate with terrorists with the enemy for. is the price in this situation too high for your taste? >> let me hit that in three parts. first, absolutely. we need to bring our guys back
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no matter what. with that said the price is pretty high. we essentially traded five four star generals for one sergeant private depending on your perspective. the other thing is as much as i think has been criticized of the president. i agree reconciliation is the only way to end the war there. you don't give away your five aces in one swoop. that is where i am really critical here. i think obviously we have to work our way through this. giving five for one is not a good odd. i think there will be a lot more questions about the circumstances of bergdahl's departure as well as what was going on behind the scenes and what is qatar going to do for us to secure these guys while we are in afghanistan conducting military operations. >> you don't have a problem on principle with the idea of the administration negotiating indirectly or directly with the taliban for release of prisoners but you think the five to one ratio was too much to give away.
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the administration says they were concerned that sergeant bergdahl's health was deteriorating and perhaps that is why they felt pressure to give up more than they wanted to. how much should concerns of their health have weighed into the decision? >> i'm not sure if the health issue is as much of a factor as they are saying it is. let me add there were at least two other options besides this option available to the president. i know that for a fact. so this was not the only option. other things could have been done. representative mike rogers talked about the some of the options. i can't say what they are. suffice it to say there are other things that could have been done to bring them home. >> you are talking military options? >> alternate negotiation options. pakistan controls a network. all of the information i have indicates he was being held in pakistan during 99.9% of the time he has been held. i think we should have been pushing harder for pakistanis to
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clean up their own backyard. >> i want to talk to you about what chairman told me earlier today on msnbc on "the daily run down" that they will have hearings about this on capitol hill. you are hearing this type of words the imperial presidency once again. president obama goes right past congress to do as he pleases. in this case an important matter of possibly national security. do you think this will feed into the summer of hearings about benghazi and open up another front for the house gop and senate gop to attack the obama administration? >> i think short of any of these five guys being involved directly on an attack on americans this is a solo issue. as part of the broader tapestry of criticism from the republicans against the administration based on sort of these sort of extra procedural ways they sort of deal with things everything from how they
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are implementing obamacare to the louis lerner issue that there is this imperial sense at the white house and it does fit for the republicans. >> and immigration until we trust the president. >> you know -- go ahead. >> it provides them some kind of a backup. in using that as a reason for not working with the administration on a lot of things which gives them cover for their own internal problems on issues like immigration. it does give them a good hand. >> john, it seems easy to be on the sidelines and say we don't negotiate with terrorists. our strategy should just be to kill off all of the bad guys. that is sort of the talking points we are hearing from the right wing. one that is not a reality and we have tried that for the past 13 years. look where that has gotten us. it seems like what we are hearing from the administration is they are hoping for the new chapter. we have new leadership coming in
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in afghanistan. karzai is going out. they are hoping maybe this will start a dialogue with the taliban. who knows where that will go? that is sort of the sense i am getting. is that your take? >> i think so. the taliban is a reality on the ground in afghanistan. they are not going to go anywhere. while they are listed as a terrorist organization they are in a sense a governmental organization, as well. there has been during the bush administration back door talks with them. during the obama administration there have been several efforts to try to find if not a piece but at least some kind of way to talk with them. the notion that we just don't talk to the taliban is, i think, a little far fetched. >> it is not realistic, either. >> we are now going to be debriefing sergeant bergdahl. what does that look like? >> first off, he has to have some down time. anytime you come out of a situation like this you are talking big-time decompression. this kid has been through hell.
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he has to be given time to recover. and then the debriefing starts. this is going to be a huge issue by the fact that we don't know the circumstance of his departure. two investigations will happen. article 156 investigation which is fact finding and potentially an article 32 investigation which is under the uniform code of military justice a criminal investigation. no one knows what will happen. that is something the chaining command has to decide fairly quickly. >> lieutenant colonel tony schaffer. up next the president takes on climate change in one of the most ambitious moves of his second term. i like the sound of that. it is monday, june 2. could be the most important day in obama's second term. weekdays are for rising to the challenge. they're the days to take care of business. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters.
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with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to meet your needs. every day of the week. centurylink® your link to what's next. how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. when we arrived at our hotel in new york, the porter was so incredibly careful careless with our bags. and the room they gave us, it was beautiful. a broom closet. but the best part, / worst part, was the shower. my wife drying herself with the
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it has been a jam packed 72 hours for president obama. he is leaving on a critical four-day trip to europe later tonight to meet with world leaders where you can bet tensions in ukraine will be discussed. this comes after eric shinseki's resignation at the v.a. and the controversy over the release of u.s. soldier bowe bergdahl over the weekend. just this morning the obama administration announced the most sweeping climate change plan to date. this proposal will cut existing power plants carbon emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. the level of cuts will vary by state. they will have a year to come up with a plan to comply with the new rules. predictably the republicans are already going crazy about this calling it a war on coal and
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another obama job killer. here to talk about the real consequences this plan has for our environment and political ramifications is ethan, head of policy analysis for bloomberg new energy finance and bomb deans w -- bob deans. bob, i want to start with you with the simple question of this new plan is audacious. it seems like a big deal. will it actually have a measurable impact on climate change? >> absolutely. this under scores the president's moral obligation to protect from the dangers of climate change. we are going to do something about it. this makes a big difference. power plants are responsible for 40% of our carbon foot print. and for the president to take meaningful steps to begin reducing that carbon is important. that is going to help the health of our children and make our country more prosperous.
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it is the right thing for the country. >> you just heard crystal say this is a big deal and bob said it is a big deal. matt iglesious says barring an unforeseen crisis of some time monday june 2 is likely to go down in history as the single most important day of barack obama's second term in office. he is talking about this right here. what is the legal basis for taking unilateral action here and not going through congress? >> the president went back to the clean air act from the 1970s which says that the administration has the right and the opportunity and the responsibility to regulate pollutants into the atmosphere. this administration and others before have said that co 2 is a kplutant. that is the basis being used here for the regulation. that is effectively how it is being done without the input of congress. >> a lot of democrats are upset
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about this especially in red states. one thing i want to ask you is for residents in a state like west virginia where 95% of energy comes from coal burning plants. i was there a few months ago covering the water crisis. for folks seeing this and thinking there is a chance my livelihood could be negatively impacted and a chance my heating and cooling bills can go up, what is your message to folks in west virginia and other states that are so reliant upon coal? >> there are 80,000 coal workers in this country and everyone of those jobs is important. those coal miners' jobs are important. 3.5 million americans get up and build wind turbines and solar panels and working to get homes, cars most efficient in the world. what we want to do in west virginia and kentucky and other coal states is connect the opportunity to the coal miners who find themselves in an
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industry in transition. we want to connect them to clean industry of the future. in west virginia wind turbines all over the place. one of the best in the country in the community college system there in west virginia. the d.o.e. and west virginia university are working together. that is the kind of progress we need to make and coal miners need to be a part of it. >> it is a problem here at home and effects the entire globe. there are many days yo aliterally cannot see outside your window. many people are still impacted if they spent a number of years living in beijing. it is incredibly disgusting some of the days. the concern that i have is that we will begin to act on this and the rest of the world will just stand by and watch. how likely is it that others will follow in our lead? >> i think it is important not to give ourselves too much credit. the reality is that over a year ago china began acknowledging
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that they have a major pollution problem and have made major announcements about how they plan to reduce their reliance on coalism what is driving that in china is a lot of same messaging talking about the health impacts of burning coal in communities. i think there is an interplay here where the president and this administration's efforts are going to be regarded on the international stage. china has all kinds of reasons to want to clean up its own power fleet that have nothing to do with the united states. >> question is will they? >> so far they have committed. when it comes to building renewables no country can match china in terms of the amount of capacity they have been adding in recent years. >> encouraging they may be moving in the right direction. thank you so much for helping us understand all of this. up next, he may look like the same president obama but friends, advisers and aides reveal the president has changed. a spin on an article that has
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everybody talking. our buddy with the week's weather. hopefully all is as beautiful as today. still running in the morning? yeah. getting your vegetables every day? when i can. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. two full servings of vegetables for only 50 delicious calories.
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the news cycle leads off with shiny new apple products. the tech giant introduced its new operating system. also unveiled changes to the operating system for macks. this is pretty cool. they will have the ability to make phone calls right from your desktop complete with caller i.d. >> back in a much simpler time we had alice, loyal house keeper for "the brady bunch". we are sad to announce that the actress ann b. davis passed away over the weekend. she was 88 years young and her memory will surely endure for generations to come. now, let's get over to the
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weather center. why are we not outside right now? it is gorgeous. >> great weekend. it was fantastic weather here in the northeast. unfortunately, busy in other parts of the country and the world. take a look at the tropics, keeping an eye on two areas of low pressure. one in the pacific and the other in the atlantic. the atlantic looks like it is having trouble getting organized. this is in the gulf of mexico. heavy rain and possible development if this system in the pacific. we are talking about extreme heat in the southwest. i know phoenix this time of year is normally hot. normally it is about 100 degrees. today it is about 110. excessive heat warnings in effect for phoenix, tucson, southern arizona and that trend will continue tomorrow, as well. pretty quiet tracking the cold front bringing rain across the great lakes and midwest. nothing severe as of yet. tomorrow is an active severe weather day.
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already we have the moderate risk for severe weather for portions of nebraska into northern missouri. iowa, the possibility for several tornadoes, dangerous hail and wind damage through tomorrow afternoon and evening. going to be keeping a very close eye on this part of the country tomorrow afternoon and evening. here in the northeast we have been enjoying the beautiful stretch of weather. it is coming to an end tomorrow starting late in the day in the northeast. the cold front is marching in. showers and storms. i think the worst part about it the humidity is coming back to the northeast. i think that is why everyone is loving the weather so much. it is dry and feels summary and good. get ready. the mugginess returns. we had our spring. now we are going to summer. >> always loved that. turning now to the ever stormy climate in d.c. president obama who entered the white house six years ago oozing confidence and swagger. obama used to seem like this. >> one thing has become clear. no matter the circumstances i am
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going to keep it cool. >> but now obama sometimes seems more like this. >> sir, ellen degeneres broke the record for most retweeted photo of all time. today we want to take it back with the photo. let's bring in kim kardashian, harry styles, a cat dressed like princess elsa from "frozen" and bat kid. >> that is because republicans have packed his first five years with headaches and obstruction. a new special report examines what they call the obama paradox which is the realization that obama can't get much done this political climate but feels liberated by that. much to spin on there. basically this guy has been about building consensus his entire life. that is how he has gotten successes from harvard law to becoming the president.
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then he gets to d.c. and finds out this attempt to build consensus is nearly impossible. you have another side that is trying to attack him and break him down at every cost. there is no era of governance. he has to do something different. now he feels liberated because he understands better the climate of d.c. so he can perhaps understand like now it is time. now he can understand maybe executive orders are the way to go. maybe small ball because government always moves slowly. he came in with the big idea. you can make small changes that have a lasting impact on the country. >> i read it as him saying i am pretty much over this. you can blame the republicans for a number of things. but i thought his handling of the v.a. was a perfect example of the mood that he is in. he was two steps behind, basically let the dust settle. his top adviser was the media. he should have stepped in much sooner. i read this article last night
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going to bed. my reaction was he has quite the life. they describe a trip he took to italy where he met with pope francis. he asked the ambassador to put a dinner together with some well-known italians to converse with and have a lovely evening with. he had an amazing time. the next morning they say it was such an escape for obama that the next morning he joked to aides that he was not so pleased to wake up to the reality of more mundane matters. the aides were briefing him for an interview about ukraine, health care, things that might matter. just last night i was talking about life and art, big interesting things and now back to the minuscule things on politics. >> one thing i would say is that this whole idea that he has run into this mammoth amount of obstruction, while it is true he has in his first two years, for a long time he had the senate and the house. he got through the health care
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bill which is a huge deal. he got through the house the cap in trade bill. you had dodd-frank. you had a missile defense agreement with russia. there is a lot of stuff that happened in the first two years that will have lasting impact. one thing to clarify. it took a long time for al franken. >> you had scott brown. there is a sizable chunk of time. here is what i would say. i think that president obama while a lot of people go up in arms and say if he had worked with congress more he would have gotten more done. it is not just republicans who say that. a lot of democrats say clinton would call and reach out. this guy does none of that. it is mundane favors like can be get an oval office tour. none of the guys feel love. they never want to take a bullet for the president. could he fix the world? could he do a highway bill?
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boehner says he wants to negotiate with him. i would say come to the rose garden every day. >> the problem has not been that john boehner hasn't wanted to negotiate. sometimes the president and john boehner have negotiated a deal. boehner takes it to his caucus and they are not on board. he has no one to negotiate with on that side. so even if he was greasing the wheels and doing these little things which they acknowledge he is trying to do more of i don't think it would have made a real substantive difference. i see things kind of the opposite way. six years in he has realized these people are not going to work with you. i wish it would have happened sooner. i think the fact that the president kept coming back to republicans trying to negotiate time and time again -- is what people love about this president is that he came in with such a belief that there were good people on the other side to work with. it has taken him this long because he is so
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constitutionally convinced that that is what exists, that it is shaking his whole world view. >> he should have been more civil with certain folks. you hear the stories that people are being unusually rude to him in various ways. >> i don't disagree with that. >> still president of the united states. up next the fortune 500. find out which company tops the list. hint, crystal loves this company. this is mike. his long race day starts with back pain... ...and a choice. take 4 advil in a day which is 2 aleve...
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the much anticipated fortune 500 list is out today. no surprise wal-mart is the biggest of them all. the retail giant retained the number one ranking. it is the tenth time wal-mart has been on top. the prestigious list is ranked by revenue generated in the prior year and is the bible for the nation's richest and most
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powerful companies. here to reveal the best of the best is lee gallagher. it is always so fun with the list comes out. the top ten list you have two car companies, gm and ford. i feel like we are talking about them almost every day on the show and not in a positive way. >> gm's recalls aside the company reported just this part quarter that the revenue was up seven percent. the real question with gm, a company so in the news when the fortune 500 comes out is where will it be next year? this is a newer problem. our revenue numbers are based on last year's revenue. and with ford, of course, ford has been in the middle of a pretty remarkable turn around ever since the financial crisis. this year it moved up two slots to number eight from ten. but if you look at the revenue up ten percent and profit up
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26%. so car sales in this country are actually doing okay. they are not doing what they did 20 years ago because of a lot of trends that have changed. but they are -- the turn around in particular at ford is pretty remarkable. >> incredible. >> let's talk about the top dog here, wal-mart. not my favorite company. so they have come under fire for their treatment of workers and put under pressure there. they are seeing store sales down a little bit. there are signs that they haven't been doing as well with the sort of typical wal-mart shopper not having recovered from the session. they are on top now. do you see signs that the dominance is shaken? >> they did have issues. notably with things that impact wal-mart are things like the payroll tax being restored and things like food stamps being cut. that really hits a company like wal-mart. we did see that.
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the revenue was up just 1.7%, i think, maybe less than it might have been otherwise. also, weather this year really impacted -- the weather that we had here in the northeast was unbelievable. retailers i think that retailers overuse weather as an excuse. this year i think they have legitimate beef. this is still a company -- its revenue, we are looking at the first company to be pushing towards half a trillion dollars. 476 billion. so funny when we do this list, you really lose perspective. when we think about $2 billion, you know you have had your nose in the 500 for too long. >> with all of that money you would think they could pay workers better. >> i would think that, too. let's talk about the number five company on the list, apple, another very cool company. sales as percentage of profit there, 21%. that is way higher than everybody else in the top ten
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which tells me that apple is far more reliant than everybody else on the average consumer coming in and buying products and re-buying the products. they are more reliant on seeming cool and staying cool than anybody else. should that make investors nervous? >> i think tim cook has shown. it has been how long -- he has been running the company for quite some time now and the performance is still up there. you make a good point. apple is always at the top when it comes to profitability of all of the 500. it has been number one in terms of profitability even though it is five for revenues. this year it is number three for profit. it actually reported a drop in its net profit for the first time in about a decade. this is a company that is also for the first time seeing it has competitive issues with smart phones. we saw that it just bought beats in terms of trying to stay
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current with what is happening in streaming music versus doing the download model which it pioneered so well. certainly a company like apple you always have to watch out for when is the track record going to stop. so but a big concern investors have had with apple is that it has been hording this cash. this year in the past 12 months we have seen it start to use some of the cash in form of stock buy backs and beats acquisition was a sizable one for the company. >> i was thumbing through this wonderful issue. you guys have a whole section about the top innovateers here in the united states. you saw some familiar names from amazon, larry page from google. one jumped out at me and that was beth comstock of the company that owned this network, general electric. we think of general electric as this old company. the efforts to change ge's image
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from a giant faceless corporation to an innovator in health care, product development and energy are paying off. how did she make ge a sexy startup incubaiter? >> ge is so large it is hard to get your hands around. it is really doing innovative things whether you look at eco manage nation. this is a company that has broken down into many different bits and pieces and is doing lots of other things and now is making this big acquisition of a french power company. it is a challenge for a company like that which is why i think it is all the more remarkable. >> she has been a member of our most powerful women kmupt for years. she is highly respected in the organization. just a really savvy marketer. >> energy companies are a new part of the top ten this year. >> energy and oil in particular
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has always been -- you really get scale when you talk about the oil companies. that is why exxon. and then you see companies like chevron and phillips and valero. there has always been a lot of money in oil. this list is about nothing if it is not about scale. oil is where you get the really big, big money. >> maybe next year you will make the list. >> tory's fracking company coming soon. >> maybe 501 this year. >> thank you so much. and up next can changing what you eat for dinner change the world? we will bite into that next. [ male announcer ] whether it takes 200,000 parts, ♪ 800,000 hours of supercomputing time, 3 million lines of code,
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40,000 sets of eyes, or a million sleepless nights. whether it's building the world's most advanced satellite, the space station, or the next leap in unmanned systems. at boeing, one thing never changes. our passion to make it real. ♪ jamie, you've got a little something on the back of your shoe, there. [alarm beeping] price tag. danger: price tag alert. oh, hey, guys. price tag alert. is this normal? well, progressive's a price tag free zone. we let you tell us what you want to pay, and we help you find options to fit your budget. where are they taking him? i don't know. this seems excessive! decontamination's in progress. i don't want to tell you guys your job, but... policies without the price tags. now, that's progressive.
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we have always been told that eating healthy makes our lives better. what if it can also make the world better. that is the idea of a book with a bold title "we the eaters". author argues if we get healthy produced food in the hands of the world's hungriest and overweight people we can find solutions for tough problems like rising health care costs, changing environment and even
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terrorism. co-founder of feed project and feed foundation finds us from san diego where i would love to host a tv show. anybody out there listening call me. ellen, i understand how if we ate better we could combat the health care costs. i understand the environmental impact because cows give off so much methane. how can me eating healthier fight terrorism? >> it does seem like quite a stretch. the way i got into food issues was through the issue of hunger. when you look at the world, the places around the world set with violence and terrorism are often the world's hungriest. even though we have great innovations to solving major world problems today we somehow haven't been able to find a way to feed still almost a billion people around the world who are hungry. i argue when you look at the
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history especially of the last 30 or 35 years where the rampant obesity crisis has co existed with hunger there is a deep link between the way we feed ourselves and food systems around the world and not able to feed the hungry and how that can breed violence and discontent and terrorism. >> i think you are right. it was spoken about all the time as long as we have people in poverty who don't have enough to eat we will have some level of terrorism. i want to talk about something chris rock talked about. people are starving all over the world and americans are saying don't eat red meat. chris rock says don't eat green meat. bite it. in this thing they were talking about, are you maybe imposing western standards on other folks who are often just happy to have enough to eat at all? >> well, actually, i argue that has been the problem is that when you look around the world and travel you notice more and more people are eating more and
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more like us. a report came out last week that now 2 billion people globely are struggling with overweight and obesity. actually, if we ate better and if we made our systems better it might somehow trickle around to be a healthier system for all eaters. i don't think the answer is for literally the entire globe to eat a more american diet. as we have seen that hasn't worked quite well here for us at home. i think developing more regional answers to food issues and more local solutions is what is going to solve all of the issues here and abroad. >> if you were to look at a group of obese people probably the first thing that does not come to mind is that you struggle with starvation or hunger. you touch on this in your book. you say when i was in uganda i saw an alarming number of people who were obese. you know, i have heard this more and more recently. how much of this has to do with
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the fact that these folks that can't afford the right nutrition end up eating crap, bags of chips that ultimately make them obese. but they aren't healthy. >> it is sadly exactly the same problem as we have here in america. i think it is still that mississippi is the state that is both the hungriest and the most overweight. often when we see people needing food banks they are presenting themselves as overweight but are malnourished. i noticed that maybe out in the country side where sadly farmers are struggling with hunger people are starting to get hev rr and heavier the closer into the cities you get and the more western the diet. it is the irony we have hunger and obesity co-existing. >> you talk about the fact that we have made poor policy choices particularly since the '80s that have led to this situation that we find ourselves in now.
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you talk specifically about high fructose corn syrup which has risen to 9.1 million tons high in a lot of ways symbolic of the terrible agricultural policy that we've had here in the u.s. overall. >> well, you know, we're so dominant on just a few crops. a few crops don't make a healthy diet, neither for us or the rest of the world. one thing i linked in bringing in the global picture is the same policies that led us to grow more and more of corn, soy and wheat here have pushed us to use food as food aid instead of agricultural aid. instead of sending help and teaching farmers how to grow their own food, they're sending more and more of that same corn overseas to help feed the hungry mouths. it's ironic that we've got this dominance of corn in our diet that then spills over into the diets of people we're trying to help. you know, it seems so simple but
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obviously there's so many layers of complexity. really as american consumers are becoming more knowledgeable and trying to eat less things like high fructose corn syrup, companies and, therefore, farmers have incentive to shift and grow other things. >> one thing that's always surprised me, especially because i used to be an addict to carbohydrates, which i cut out the carbs, the weight just dropped like that. we had always been told meat was the worst thing in the world for us. but i want to ask you about here right here in the united states. mrs. obama has championed nutritional reform all throughout school systems. she gets a lot of blowback on that. a lot from companies. what can be done in the u.s. to implement tougher standards and how can we export those to the rest of the world? >> i argue when you look at the level and complexity of the legislation that exists and the massive lobbying power of some of the biggest companies that want the legislation to stay exactly the same, it's really going to have to be something that mass consumer movement has
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a big role in. you know, if we, the eaters, as the book is called, decide, look, we don't want corn-based sugar in our diet anymore, that's a major signal to send throughout our economy and that's a major signal that then hopefully can lead to a little more political will for changes that will make people's diets healthier. actually it's completely happening. michelle obama, the first lady, is not operating in a vacuum here. more american eaters are realizing that not only do they want themselves to be healthier but certainly want their kids to be healthier. so what's awesome is she's been buoyed by public support and public interest, especially by parents, in saying why should my kid be going to school just to get pizza with a side of tater tots. we deserve better. >> i look at those supersize cokes and a bag of chips like i would cigarettes. ellen, thank you for being here. up next, tore reads into hillary's new book. who he says she really wrote it
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#benghazi isn't a real place where real people died horrible deaths, it's the alternate universe of endless conspiracy theorizing and propaganda that has sucked the entire right wing media into a paranoid vortex. >> benghazi is a rorschach that reveals much about who you are politically. the left has grown deeply frustrated with those who have endlessly politicized the story, but the issues raised by those who care about #benghazi cannot be easily dismissed because of the tragic deaths at the heart of all of this. and because those who care about
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#benghazi have an endless appetite to reask answered questions. so hillary clinton must go through the valley of #benghazi in order to become president. >> what difference at this point does it make? >> she continues that journey with a long detailed chapter on the real benghazi in her upcoming book "hard choices." in a leaked chapter on benghazi, she gives a detailed timeline trying to return the discussion to a parsing of facts and addresses the major complaints of #benghazi folks. she said the video was a factor in the attack and there was no stand down order and susan rice gave the information that we had at that time but these are things we discussed over and again. so who is hillary really talking to here? i would move that her true audience is the media. voters who care about #benghazi are already lost to her and voters who are already with her know benghazi is not critical to assessing what sort of president she could be. but some stories are stories because the media makes them stories and the continued media discussion about benghazi has made it into a significant
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political issue. so hillary here is speaking to media saying, hey, i'm completely comfortable with a detailed conversation about this because i know the facts are on my side and she's saying the discussion that we are having is not a legitimate one. this is the scandal industrial complex at work. this is the partisan propaganda machine chugging out noise. here's your real answers, let's move on. i will not be part of the political slugfest on the backs of dead americans. this chapter says hillary could be combative and ready to the fight of her life. she's fighting against those who as she says would exploit this tragedy as a political tool, minimizing the sacrifices of those who served. she's showing herself, i think, to be like a tough mama, the sort of female type that has broken the glass ceiling in so many major democracies. in order to become the first woman prime minister of great britain, margaret thatcher had to be the iron lady. decades before thatcher's rise,
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gol golda -- hillary is once again signaling that same sort of toughness, and that will be critical to get past the bias as women as leaders, it's helpful to have traits that cut across the stereotype. to have a toughness that blunts preconceptions about women. we knew she was tough in '08 but you can't be too tough if you want to shatter the glass ceiling. you can't be nice like me, krystal. it could be that the viciousness of the attacks on her help create the crewsible that proves she's ready. if she's roaring back and going to fox about it, that tells me one more thing. oh, yeah, she's running. "now with alex wagner" starts now. a major move to save the planet. it's monday, june 2nd, and this is "now." >> it is a wakeup call.
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the environmental protection agency has rolled out -- >> one of the toughest pollution standards in u.s. history. >> a sweeping proposal to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. >> it calls for a 30% cut from emissions by 2030. >> the science is clear, the risks are clear. >> it's expected to slow global warming but also reduce asthma and risk of heart attacks. >> we have a moral obligation to act on climate. >> what does it say that so many democrats are in fact running away from this idea? >> we'll see it play out in a big way in the midterm elections. >> this is a political gamble for democrats. >> this is the single worst blow to kentucky's economy in modern times. >> john boehner just released this statement. the president's plan is nuts. >> speaker boehner and mitch mcconnell should put their own plan on the table. >> critics claim that your energy bills will skyrocket. well, they're wrong. should i say that ag