and jay-z. i don't have a problem with you dressing up in black face. especially if you don't have the history. >> i think the rule is black face, don't do it, ever. >> elizabeth and dorian, that's our halloween. that's the candy we're stuffing in your basket tonight. that's all in for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> the rule is black face, colon, don't do it? >> that's right. >> i'm trademarking the bumper sticker right now. stealing it from you. >> happy halloween. >> you too. >> thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour. we begin with a serious question. is ebola the isis of biological agents? is it? it's just a question. nobody is saying ebola is the isis of biological agents. these folks are just posing the question. is it? as a newsperson, i have to say, this is one of the dumbest things that all of us newspeople do. we are just asking. you put something on your screen that is blatantly false and

usually super inflammatory, but then you excuse having to be accountable for it by putting a question mark on it, right? we're not saying. we're asking. so here, it's not like cnn is saying that ebola is the isis of biological agents because that would be an insane thing to say. they're just talking about that as an idea. you can't fact check that claim because they're not making it as a claim. don't you see the question mark? they're just asking. just like they're just asking here, is the department of justice really the department of jihad? they're not saying that, of course. don't misunderstand. it's just a question. our friends at fox really excel at this particular kind of journalism. who is the bigger threat? i mean, they're not suggesting, of course, that eric holder, the attorney general of the united states, is a bigger threat than iman al zawahiri, the current leader of al qaeda. they're not saying it. don't you see the question mark?

they're just asking. there is a question mark right there. no such thing as a stupid question, right? so gas prices are really low right now. they're the lowest they have been in years. by tomorrow, by saturday, they're expected to dip below $3 a gallon for the first time since 2010. when gas was really expensive, fox could not stop talking about how terrible that was that gas prices were so expensive and how president obama was to blame for those terrible high gas prices. gas prices high, it's terrible news. blame president obama. now, with the news that gas prices are falling, a place like fox is constitutionally incapable of saying president obama caused the low prices. even though they said he caused the high prices. so now they have decided instead that low gas prices -- since they -- well, how do you get around -- they have decided, okay, low gas prices are bad. bad maybe? bad, question mark?

cheap gas hurts economy, question mark. fox did that this week, we laughed and laughed and laughed that they did that. after we put it on tv and laughed at them publicly about it, fox got mad. >> rachel maddow took me on. and she got it wrong. she is the face of nbc news and she turned to the classic style of the left, demagoguery without facts. this time, i was the target, and this time as always, they, she, twisted the truth to fit her agenda. here's what ms. maddow did. it's an old trick. she took what we call a screen grab of this program and she showed it on hers. that's me on camera. and you see the graphic banner at the bottom which she circled? it asked the question, cheap gas hurts the economy, question mark. >> did you not see the question mark, you liberal demagogue? look, look at what they're like -- the little slogany thing for the segment.

how -- how do i -- it's like they took my face and put it through a corkscrew. anyway, they were very mad at me. and they went on to explain that they were just asking the question to debunk that question. turns out, fox admits, cheap gas does not hurt the economy. they debunked that claim. thank heavens. we have fox to now clear that up for everyone. so this is fun. but the news here is this. gas prices are way down. gas prices are lower than they have been in years, thanks to fox, we know that's good news for the economy. good news for both your family budget and good news for the economy overall. hooray, but it's definitely not the only piece of good news about the economy right now. the unemployment rate right now is below 6%. that's the first time since the recession that it has been that low. in terms of people putting in claims for unemployment benefits, that number is at a 14-year low right now. the economy is growing at 3.5%,

which is a robust growth rate. robust enough that the federal reserve at least is stopping doing the monetary stimulus they have been doing since the recession. the chairman of the fed, janet yellen, will be meeting with president obama on monday about that. they're able to stop the stimulus basically because they believe the economy has been coming back on its own enough that it doesn't need that booster shot anymore. i mean, all that stuff that i just listed. that's good news right now. gas prices down. unemployment rate, down. jobless benefits, way down. economic growth, way up. it's all going the right way right now. and both the dow jones industrial average and the s&p 500 today closed at record highs. a record for both of them today. the dow closed at 17,390 points today. the consumer sentiment index, which is a measure of how consumers feel about the economy, it seems like one of those touchy-feely sociology measures of the economy. it's one of the most important

predictors of future economic growth. it's how much confidence consumers have in the economy. that number is the highest it has been in more than seven years right now. and as if all of that were not enough, happy freaking halloween. the price of halloween candy is down. it's been stable for the past couple years, but this year's halloween candy is cheap. ha ha. add all that together and people are in a pretty good mood. and in politics, usually all of the economic indicators being up with an exclamation point except for the ones that are good when they're down, and those right now are down with an exclamation point, usually that means good things for the party in power. right? things are going well, don't change horses. that's been the easiest principal in political prognostication since political prognostication. remember, it's the economy, stupid? right, right. it's the economy, stupid. and the economic news right now is good. and so by the principles of how

economics meets politics 101, that good economic news should mean good news for the president and the president's party right now. at least theoretically. instead, though, nobody expects that. basically, in washington right now, there isn't even a debate about whether this is going to be a republican wave year election. the only debate right now is over how tall and how ginormous the republican tsunami wave is going to be. here's the thing, though. look at some of the actual data that's out there. four of the eight races that are going to determine which party controls the senate, four of those races are either tied in the most recent polling or all but tied. in colorado, mark udall, cory gardner are each getting 48% of the vote. in iowa, joni ernst and bruce braley are getting 45% of the vote. in georgia, michelle nunn and david perdue are getting 47% of the vote. in north carolina, democratic senator kay hagan is up over republican thom tillis but only

by one point which means that race is virtually tied right now as well. so we're four days out from the election and we've got a bunch of these tied races and a bunch of the key states across the country, and these are the races that are going to determine which party will control the senate. we have lots of tied races in important places. the economic fundamentals are good for the party in power, for the president's party right now. so the race by race results are tied, and the ones that are most consequential right now. the economic numbers are good. and now, look at this. this is the one other slice of data we get heading into an election that's usually a really good indicator of what's going to happen. in 2006, democrats had a really, really great midterm election year. they picked up five senate seats, got control of the senate. they picked up more than 30 seats in the house. they got control of the house. democrats just had a bang-up year in the midterm election in 2006. one of the ways you could tell in advance they were going to have a bang-up year in 2006 was of something called the generic

ballot. it doesn't ask people who they want to vote for specifically. it just asks people which party they want to win, which party they want to control congress. this is a thing that sometimes gets ignored because it doesn't have any affect on any one race. if you look at big picture, this is kind of a poll that tells you generally how voters are feeling heading into an election year. it's a pretty good measure on that actually. look at the generic ballot before election day in 2006 when democrats did so well. it was pretty easy to predict democrats were going to have a super year that year. up by 13, up by 20, up by 18. they were up in every poll in the two weeks before election day when voters got asked which party do you want to win? people said democrats, democrats, democrats, democrats, every poll. that wads 2006. and then in those elections, the democrats trounced the republicans. same deal in 2010, but the other direction. in the next midterm election in

2010, democrats, of course, got trounced. in all of the generic ballots, you could see that trouncing coming a mile away. in generic ballots leading up to the election in 2010, they were up by 15 points, by 13 points. people didn't care about who the candidate was. they just wanted republicans to win congress. republicans, republicans frk republicans. republicans. republicans every poll, and that's how people voted in 2010. republicans won big time. generic ballot polling actually tells you how things are going to go in the midterms. and now look at the generic polling for this year. in the last eight generic ballots before the election this year, it's democrat, republican, democrat, republican, democrat, republican. republicans up in four of the last eight. democrats up in four of the last eight. half and half. this is not how this usually looks before a midterm election, at least not before a midterm

election where you can predict very clearly what the results are going to be. usually, the generic ballot help said us see from a mile away what is going to happen. this year, it's clear as mud. question mark. which is kind of awesome to watch while it's happening, even if it makes people who are being very certain about their prognostication look a little out on thin ice. joining us is somebody who by law must always be on the show on halloween. it's a tradition. amy klobuchar is back with us on halloween for a third straight year. she's recently been out on the campaign trail, georgia, north carolina, new hampshire, to name a few. thank you so much for being here. happy halloween. >> well, thank you so much, rachel. happy halloween to you. we don't have a witch running in delaware, an actual witch this time, but i'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about. >> you are the chair of the joint economic committee. that's obviously your area of focus in the senate. you're also a total political

animal. can you explain to me what those sorts of two sides of you how come all of this good economic news hasn't meant more good political prognostication for your party, for the president and his party? >> well, i think first of all, you are right, and i will defend your honor on fox, if you like. in fact, the gas prices are at their lowest level in four years. unemployment is much better than the depths of the downturn. in fact in my state, unemployment is down to 4.1%. >> wow. >> we have a situation where we have had 55 straight months of job growth. and we still know that people are suffering out there, and a lot of work needs to be done, but the point is, there have been some pretty dramatic changes and a lot of these senators that are on the ballot from kay hagan in north carolina to jeanne shaheen in new hampshire, to mark udall in colorado, they worked very hard to get policies in place, whether it was the recovery act or wall street reform or all

kinds of things. and energy and a lot of work that was done to make this recovery happen. the recovery is about jobs and it's about our businesses and our workers. but some policies were put in place and some tough votes taken. so i do hope, and i think one of the reasons you see despite all of the noise and the $44 million spent against kay hagan in north carolina, you still see our candidates hanging in there and ahead in so many polls. and i just think part of this is in states where the candidates are very focused on talking about the economy, they're tending to do well, and i predict that this election is not going to be the kind of landslide you have some pundits talking about. i think you're going to see some surprise wins. i can't wait to see what happens in georgia. i was there yesterday with michelle nunn, and i have to tell you, she is running a grassroots campaign that paul wellstone would be proud of in terms of how she's getting the volunteers out there, door to

door, getting people out there that have never been involved in politics before. you can see that in those numbers. early voting -- >> yeah. >> i was going to interrupt you, one thing you said about both tactics and also the message, as these candidates are trying to make the case, and a lot of these places, as you say, tens of millions of dollars spent against them. a lot of democratic candidates widely outspent not just by the republican party, but by outside groups. is what you're saying when democrats are doing better than expected, it's because they have been very disciplined about keeping the message on the economy. democrats talking about the economy is working even though the rest of the pundit sphere talking about the election isn't focused on that? >> i think it's true and i think you have in kay's case, her opponent slashed education funding. and by a 24-pointmargin, the

voters in north carolina don't agree with that. when you're able to make that kind of contrast on the economy, it makes a difference. i would also add for people who are questioning enthusism in both georgia and north carolina, you have incredible numbers with 212,000 voters registered early in georgia, and north carolina outpacing early voting that you saw in the presidential year. so i just think that there's a lot going on here, as coming from the state, which you know, where al franken is doing incredibly well this time, but back in '08, won by 312 votes, rachel. i think people who claim they can predict when these polls are so close, i just don't think anyone can. i'll never forget the picture of heidi heitkamp in her election in north dakota where the next day she held up the headline from the local paper that predicted her defeat and she won that election. >> senator, i have to ask you, because we keep meeting on halloween. obviously, you and i both are bad at celebrating halloween

because we both keep going to work and being with one another on a satellite feed. is there some other holiday you do like freaking awesome that counteracts how poorly we both do halloween? >> like when i'm not working? yes, thanksgiving. i tend to actually make some food and decorate. but i was thinking, rachel, with two of these states, as you know, could go into run-offs, and so while we have always had these election halloweens together, the voters in those states might just say boo, the election is not over, and you and i could well be spending thanksgiving, christmas, new year's eve talking about these elections because it may not end. as you know, one run-off is december 6th and one is january 6th. >> wow. to new year's eve in new orleans if need be. senator amy klobuchar of minnesota, thank you for being here. good to see you. >> thank you. >> trick or treat. now i have to figure out what to do with all this candy which has been giving off this chocolate waft throughout this entire

segment. this has been very distracting. lots ahead tonight, including me cleaning up my desk before we move on. we'll be right back. faster than d-con. what will we do with all of these dead mice? tomcat presents dead mouse theatre. hey, ulfrik! hey, agnar! what's up with you? funny you ask. i'm actually here to pillage your town. [ villagers screaming ] but we went to summer camp together. summer camp is over. ♪ [ male announcer ] tomcat. [ cat meows ] [ male announcer ] engineered to kill. [ male announcer ] tomcat. [ cat meows ] [ male announcer ] evyou're using a brandn, that supports wildlife rescue efforts. because it's tough on grease, yet gentle. ♪ you by my side makes the little things so good ♪ be a part of the bigger picture. go to facebook.com/ dawnsaveswildlife.

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okay, we have lots ahead tonight. including why a school district in arizona is ripping pages out of a biology textbook. we also have jenny jar den here to talk about the spaceship that crashed in the mojave desert this afternoon. we also have another installment of our friday night experiment that is still in the research and development phase. still not sure about this one, but it's coming up. stay with us. ♪ there's confidence... then there's trusting your vehicle maintenance to

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textbooks? it's probably only been about five minutes, but the new one today is in arizona, gilbert, arizona, which is a suburb of phoenix out past tempe. a majority of the school board has decided to take offense with the textbook for honors biology. school board in gilbert voted this week to tear out part of campbell biology, concepts and connections. they object to a single paragraph in a section on the birds and the bees. >> schools teach a lot of things and the biology book for a gilbert public school's high school honors class has a section on contraception, and that section talks about abortion. >> you would expect a discussion of abortion maybe to show up in actual sex ed materials. that's why i didn't like abortion in a biology book that all it discusses is natural processes. there's nothing natural about abortion. >> last night by a vote of 3-2, the gilbert school board decided to nix the abortion section of the book, citing a recently

signed state law that said schools must give preference to child birth and adoption over abortion. >> that law passed a couple years ago. april 2012, she signed it on the same day that a bonkers abortion bill was signed. it banned most abortions after 20 weeks. arizona decided they would change the definition of when you become pregnant. arizona in its grace moved the definition of your pregnancy back two weeks. in arizona, your conception clock gets backtimed to start ticking before you ever even clicked on the guy's profile on tinder. hey, handsome -- uh-oh. jan brewer just pronounced you pregna pregnant. arizona passed that redefining pregnancy, pregnant at hello law, and this other law about abortion in textbooks in sort of an anti-abortion fit a couple

years ago. the textbook law says all schools must present child birth and adoption as preferred opt n options to elective abortion. so arizona passed both of those laws in 2012. governor brewer signed them on the same day. the 20-week ban got blocked by the courts, but the other one, the rip the pages out of the textbook one, that law remains in effect. and now they're using it. this new decision appears to be the first time the law has been used to take back information that students had previously been given as part of their education. in gilbert, the offending page explains that, quote, complete abstinence, avoiding intercourse, is the only totally effective method of birth control. they object to this? further down the page, it explains the morning-after bill followed by a discussion of a medication abortion. that procedure, and i quote, requires a doctor's prescription and several visits to a medical

facility. sounds almost as fun as complete abstinence when you think about it. despite that being the rather not too pushy text in this honors biology textbook, this summer a crusading religious group complained about that paragraph in the textbook. arizona board of ed and its lawyer looked into it and said this paragraph is not a problem. this textbook is not advocating abortion. the textbook is merely acknowledging that abortion is a thing that exists. but the crusading religious group showed up at the gilbert school board meeting on tuesday. so did three republican state senators who trouped over to this school board meeting to make sure something got done about that terrible honors biology textbook and sure enough, the gilbert board voted to get rid of that material. and it turns out that in their view, the fastest and most effective way to disappear those facts from honors biology is to rip them out of the textbook.

>> these textbooks are written prior to the state law, so the easiest, simplest, cheapest way to bring them into compliance with state law was just excise that section. it's only a page. >> excise it. like with scissors. hey, it's only a page. in the honors biology textbook. the local press says parents are already volunteering to help with tearing out the pages or marking over the offending paragraph like with a sharpie. it will be sort of like an old-fashioned corn husking. gather around. party in gilbert, arizona. dear honors biology students of gilbert, arizona, i now address your directly. you may soon find yourself holding a biology textbook with a hole where some true facts used to be. don't despare. we here at the rachel maddow show have preserved the part of your book that the crusading religious group and the republican senators and the conservative majority on your school board no longer wants to

allow you to see. we're going to keep it posted for you in perpetuity at arizonahonorsbiology.com. which we bought today so that we could post the page that they're cutting out of your textbook. you can get it there. arizonahonorsbiology.com. drive. it's more than the car. for lotus f1 team, the competitive edge is the cloud. powered by microsoft dynamics, azure, and office 365, the team can gain real time insights and instantly share information around the globe. when every millisecond counts, staying competitive begins with the cloud. this is the microsoft cloud. there it is... this is where i met your grandpa. right under this tree. ♪

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and a free 30-tablet trial. in the great state of virginia right off the eastern shore, you'll find a place called wallop's island. a the population is about 400 people. it's primarily used by nasa. on tuesday night, this 139-foot rocket was sent to launch for the international spacestation. on its way to deliver thousands of pounds of food and water and equipment up to the space station. but about 15 seconds after liftoff, something went wrong. the rocket exploded. you can see the explosion, huge fireball. this was an unmanned rocket. wasn't anybody onboard at the time. sort of miraculously, no injuries were reported at the scene, either, but it was a spectacular explosion in the literal sense of that word, and it happened just a few moments after launch. that rocket was built by a

private company contracted by nasa to go to the space station because nasa, we as a country, don't have a space shuttle program anymore. in order to get stuff into space, we contract the work out to private companies. but this is how that latest mission from a private company ended on tuesday night. so that happened three days ago. we now know since then that the explosion there was not a spontaneous thing. nasa apparently made the call to blow the rocket up on purpose just after launch because the rocket had apparently malfunctioned somehow shortly after takeoff. there were two safety officers tasked with overseeing the rocket launchers from a safety perspective. apparently, it was those safety officers who sent a kill signal to destroy the rocket on purpose and caused that explosion. it's still unclear what they saw, but it's reported now those safety officers sent a

deliberate signal to the flight termination system to disable the rocket, kill it, explode it before it got too far. so that was tuesday. and then today, it happened again with significantly more tragic consequences in human terms. here's what happened, about 9:20 a.m. local time, california's mojave desert, about 100 miles northeast of downtown l.a., a passenger spaceship developed for commercial space travel by virgin galactic took off for a test run. plane is called spaceship two for space tourism to ferry paying customers for a 90-minute ride into the edge of space. the aircraft is carried by a jet-powered mother ship, basically, a fancy plane called whiteknight two. they fly together until about 45,000, 50,000 feet, and then spaceship two is supposed to separate from the mother ship and use its rocket boosters to go its own way, to go up 62 miles off the skin of the earth

to bring people to the edge of space. and you can see here what appears to be the two of them flying together on flight radar. they're flying together, toward mojave. and then at 10:10 a.m. local time, less than an hour into the flight, spaceship two releases, they go their separate ways and mome wants later, spaceship two vanishes from the radar. spaceship two crashed today in the mojave desert. virgin galactic said the aircraft experienced a serious anomaly resulting in its loss. two pilots were aboard the craft at the time of the crash. california highway patrol reported one of the pilots was killed. his body was recovered at the wreckage of the plane. the other pilot suffered serious injuries afterparachuting away from the vehicle. >> when we have a mishap from the test community, we find the test community is very small. and we're human. and it hurts.

and our hearts, thoughts, prayers absolutely with the families of the victims. >> space is hard. and today was a tough day. we're going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it. >> the ntsb and faa are both sending investigation teams to try to figure out what happened in this accident. the ntsb team is set to get there tomorrow morning. but this is now the second accident in the space of less than a week involving a commercial aircraft set to travel into space. joining us now to try to understand the significance of this is jenny jardin who i turn to when i have questions at the intersection of tech and human. thank you for being here. >> great to be back, rachel. >> so commercial space travel is something that we have only been wrapping our heads around for

five or six years already. is this a bump in the road that we should see as not as important inflexz in the trajectory of that that we do as humans or is this something really significant? >> well, i mean, first, anytime we're talking about a loss of human life, it is an important inflection point. it's an important -- it's time to pause. right? but i think we have to look back and remember that every major advancement in human space flight has been preceded by failure. you think about what the odds of these two events happening in one week are, but look add the odds of any of these launches coming across successfully. think about all of the simultaneous pyrotechnic operations involved, the millions of lines of software code, all of the human hours involved in pulling something like this together, and even in the best case scenario when it goes off perfectly, the best you get at the end, as a friend at jpl said, is nominal.

you had a nominal launch. i spoke to one of the reporters from space flight now who was right there when this happened. and he described the feeling as a gunshot going off in a crowded room. i have been to space shuttle launches before. when they go off well, it's awesome. it's terrifying, and you can feel that force throughout your body. i can only imagine what that would be like to see the rocket crash to ground and feel that within your being. >> with all the fuel on that rocket set to get it so far out instead exploding in that huge crowd in front of all those people there to see it. obviously, we as a country celebrate our space program in a way that is so nonpartisan, so uncynical that it's almost like nothing else in american achievement. like maybe we talk about our achievements in world war ii

maybe. that's at the heart of what we think we can do. is there something fundamentally different with us doing it through companies as opposed to just through nasa. >> nasa has always contracted with private firms. there's lockheed martin, boeing. they have never made their own rockets. they were always contracting that out to private firms. until recently, nasa was making its own spaceships. the difference is how much nasa is up in their business. so in eras past, they might have been right there on the manufacturing floor, overseeing this, and there might have been a toiter connection between nasa and the private space firms that it contracts to. i think that what -- the two accidents that happened this week may -- well, they really have to invite a tighter focus on the safety standards and practices. and you know, we have to also be sure that we're clear about the fact when we're talking about virgin galactic, this is not a craft that's going into space. it's going to the edge of space, but this is carrying paying

passengers. and they were originally planning on launching that service in 2015. i don't see how that's possible now. >> literally thinking about doing this next year. the idea of the democratization of space travel is mind bending, but it seems like we're not there yet. >> so many things have to happen, right? the engineers, the pilots, everybody worked so hard to make that happen. but in the end, the outcome really is up to forces much greater than ourselves. >> humbling. jeni, great to see you. we'll be right back. stay with us. and now telcos using hp big data solutions are feeling the love, too. by offering things like on-the-spot data upgrades -- an idea that reduced overcharge complaints by 98%. no matter how fast your business needs to adapt, if hp big data solutions can keep wireless customers smiling, imagine what they can do for yours. make it matter. imagine what they can do for yours.

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this is an amazing story. here's how it's supposed to go. this is a flight path, typical flight path from a city in japan flying into beijing in china. this is how it's supposed to go when you fly between those two cities. now, here's how it actually went. this is what the flight tracker shows actually happened this week when a china eastern airlines jet was supposed to land in bejung, but it couldn't. there was so much smog, there wasn't enough aerial visibility for the pilots to land at beijing, so this jet with nearly 200 people onboard had to fly this crazy quilt pattern, flight path, looking for somebody else to land. for somewhere else to land. it was finally down to its last 30 minutes of fuel and the

pilots had to declare an emergency before one local airport finally let them set down before they ran out of gas. that happened this past weekend in the filthy, filthy skies over beijing, first reported a couple days ago. but this happened to about 60 commercial flights last week in beijing. the air quality level is at a level that they gently refer to as severely polluted. that led to a particulary disgusting marathon last week. they held it on a day where they named the air level as hazardous. they had 34 micrograms, that's 14 times higher than what the world health organization says is safe to breathe. on the day of the marathon, the people of the dalea newspaper said the air was not suitable for activities.

but 30,000 people still ran that day in the filth, or they tried to. the kenyan runner who led the marathon for the first 12 miles quit halfway through the race. ambulances sat at the finish line with water sprays and sponges for the competitors. why sponges? organizers advised athletes to wash off their skin after their skin was exposed to the air. associated press shot these amazing photos of what it was like this past week to run in air conditions that toxic and disgusting. lots of people ran wearing respirators which i thought, they have a cold. they're being so considerate. and then i realize, they're just trying to breathe. here's the thing, next week, it's not just the marathon or the poor plane trying to land and running out of airline fuel while it looks for a place to land. next week it's not just those. next week, the whole world is supposed to go to beijing. it's the apec summit next week.

world leaders from all over are going. john kerry is going there next weem, president obama is due to follow a few days later, and beijing has air quality so bad even the local government has had to call the air hazardous to breathe and severely polluted and airplane s can't land and runners have to get sponged off because their skin has touched the air. beijing apparently has a plan. according to reporting in the l.a. times, they're mounting an all-out effort to juice the air quality in time for all the world's presidents and prime ministers to get there next week. they're going to be shutting down 993 construction projects around beijing for the duration of the conference. in six cities and provinces surrounding beijing, they're shutting down their most polluting industries. some are having production cut. some are getting shut down for the duration of the conference. they're forcing half the private vehicles in the city off the road. i think they're doing it by

license plate number. half the cars in beijing will be taken off the road starting two days before the apec conference and during the height of the conference, they're going to give all school children and everybody who works for a public institution in beijing a six-day holiday. stay home. don't drive. don't start the car. don't plug anything in. just hold your breath and maybe the rest of the world won't notice that there is a real problem here.

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what's up with you? funny you ask. i'm actually here to pillage your town. [ villagers screaming ] but we went to summer camp together. summer camp is over. ♪ [ male announcer ] tomcat. [ cat meows ] [ male announcer ] engineered to kill. >> so i started out this week in san francisco, and then i went to denver. then i made a brief stop in the rachel maddow man cave, and now i'm back here in new york. at least i think i am. it's been sort of a confusing week. but hopefully you're not confused. hopefully you have been paying very close attention because it's that time again.

this has become my favorite new thing. there goes my pen. i'll get it later. kent jones is here to help with the logistics. >> toe to t >> tonight our contest assistant is jack. he's learning mandarin chinese and teaching it to his daughter. also he sings in, wait for it, in pickup bands. dude, yes. >> thank you. >> rarachel, here's jack. >> hi, jack, nice to meet you. >> rachel, i'm honored. >> what's a pickup band? >> it's kind of like pickup baseball but musicians. a bunch of musicians in a room you've never met before. you jam for a while. at the end of it you make a

band. you play shows together after 30 days you disband and do it all over again. >> i love you already and i love your life. so what we're going to do here is it's not very complicated idea, but i understand you wanted the questions to be difficult, and so we're taking no mercy here. if you get two or more of them right, you win a thing. what will jack win? >> jack will win this lovely cocktail shaker, not available in stores. >> and also very tiny. no danger. jack, we also need to bring in the disembodied voice of steve bennan, the guy who will determine whether or not you got a right answer. jack meet steve, steve meet jack. >> good evening, jack. >> steve, thank you. >> okay. ready for your first question? >> i'm more than ready. >> it comes from wednesday.

on wednesday, an independent candidate for governor in the state of maine elliott cutler held a press conference to announce that he is not dropping out of that governor's race, even though he now acknowledges that he cannot win that race. after that press conference on wednesday, who formally unendorsed elliott cutler and instead threw their support to the democrat in the race. it's multiple choice question. was it a, former republican senator olympia snowe, independent senator angus king, c, former first lady laura bush, or d, the portland press herald newspaper? >> that was balanced budget, senator angus king, independent of maine. >> did jack get that right? >> let's check the segment from wednesday's show. >> then this afternoon, his most important endorser, maine independent senator angus king, he unendorsed elliott cutler and

threw his support to the democrat. >> the correct answer is b and jack is 1 for 1. >> excellent. remember, you have to get two to get the prize. let's go to question two. the candidates in the massachusetts governor's race this week were asked at a debate, the question was, quote, when was the last time you cried. terrible question, but fascinating answer. the republican candidate charlie baker wept all over again while describing an encounter he said that he had during this campaign. afterwards, though, reporters tried to verify the story and report out the details of what he had described but nobody has been able to prove any of it, and now charlie baker has had to admit that maybe it didn't quite happen the way he said it did. so my question to you, jack, is what was the sad story that charlie baker told. a, was it story about a fisherman crying over the death of the fishing industry. b, was it a story about a

funeral for a beloved charlie baker family member. c, was it a story about seeing his childhood hero, meeting a childhood hero who had fallen on hard times or d, was it a story about his campaign bus running over a deer. >> a, a fisherman crying over the death of the fishing industry. >> let's check out last night's show. >> i said you're -- you're going to be fishermen. i was a fishermen, your grandfather was a fisherman. you're going to be a fisherman. and it ruined their lives. >> the correct answer is a, and jack was correct again. and note just for the record as of this evening, the "boston globe" still can't verify the existence of this fisherman. >> congratulations on that.

well done. it has been amazing to watch all the news an all the news reporters in massachusetts comb through all the fishing towns around new bedford trying to find a man enormous enough to meet charlie baker's description of what it meant to hug a mountain. one last question, jack. you ready? this is from tuesday's show. on tuesday, of course, we took the show on the road to denver, colorado. i visited an office on bennick street in denver, which housed several successful statewide democratic campaigns in the back. it's now a natural effort to try to maintain the democratic majority in the senate. they discovered something interesting. what kind of establishment is now using. the cory gardner campaign headquarters for his republican

campaign for senate. b, is it a downtown denver election office where voters can drop off early ballots. c is, it a child modeling agency? or d, is it a gym? >> c, child modeling agency. >> steve, do you have the answer for us? >> what they call their effort nationwide is the bennick street project because it was on bannock street here in denver, which is now home to a gym. >> that's the correct answer, a gym. >> that was the back story that we got from lynn bartels about the michael bennett campaign, that his campaign headquarters had turned into a child modeling agency. that's why they use their field headquarters, which is now a gym as the bannock street thing because of the creepy model

agency. so you remember the detail, you just put it in the wrong place. but kent jones, are we going to be putting swag in jack's trick or treat bag? >> high degree of difficulty, i say oh, yes, we are. here it is. >> you got two out of three right. you're getting a teeny, tiny little cocktail shaker. thanks so much for playing. it was really nice to meet you. >> dr. maddow it's been a honor of my life. >> i sincerely doubt that, but it's nice you said it anyway. if you think you have what it takes to survive the friday night news dump, go to madd maddowblog.com and you could win a cheap, tiny little metal thing. now it's time to meet your cell mates. >> due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised.