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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  March 26, 2015 9:00pm-10:01pm PDT

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love it less. i will say kudos to you chris for doing the entire segment with two important design elements, one was the really excellent music you had played. >> the delightful backtrack. >> the sound track playing while you were reaching in and making it real. but also the fact that that's the only news segment in the history of news segments where the word moist was the least gross word in the segment. >> i love the fact that the nonwoven acrylics industry has a lobby. >> and their lobbyist is really embarrassed about it. amazing stuff. chris. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. a lot going on in the news today. we have got a big show toonltd. three years ago tomorrow, on march 27th 201, jet blue flight took off from new york city heading west to las vegas. about three hours into the new
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york to las vegas flight things went very, very wrong this the cockpit of that plane. and it was not a mechanical problem. >> visually you could tell that he was agitated and acting pecuniary. very rapid head movements and hand movements. and mouth -- little bit of foaming at the mouth. was drink lots and lots of water. >> jet blew flight 191 was flying from new york to investigation when sources say the captain started erratically pushing buttons and flying thein plane. the copilot persuaded him to go to the rest room. when an offduty captain locked the door. the original captain lost control. >> he said ley say your prayers. >> it appeared he was trying to open the door. i wasn't going to let that happen. >> five quickly restrained him with seat belts as the cockpit
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declared a emergency. >> jet blew emergency, we are going to cede need authorities and medical to meet us at the airplane. >> the captain was talking about israel iraq and iran. >> you know they are going to take us down take us down. and then you know he said everybody, you know say the lord's prayer. say the lord's prayer. just say the lord's prayer. they are going to take us down. >> an aviation consultant captain john cox. >> this pilot was treated as any other passengers who is disruptive and who may be need to be restrained. >> the way they restrained the captain on that flight when he was going nuts is that they locked him out of the cockpit on that jet blue plane. the incident happened three years ago in march, 2012. it was long after the post 9/11 results went into effect mandating that the cockpit door be reinforced and bulletproof. the reason that flight landed safely three years ago the reason it was not crash landed
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somewhere is because passengers on that plane were able to grab tackle and ultimately tie up the pilot while he was having this scottic episode. and the only reason the passengers were able to get to him and do that is because the pilot either left the cockpit on his own nutty volition or possibly the copilot realized something was wrong with the pilot and tricked the pilot into leave the cockpit whereupon the lockable door of that cockpit many they could keep that apparently psychotic guy out and prevent him from getting back in to control the plane. that was march, 2012. last year in february february, 2014 it was ito i don't know anlines flight 702. the flight left the capital and headed for italy. once it was at cruising altitude the pilot left to use the rest room whereupon the copilot locked the pilot out. there were 202 people on board the flight. i don't know if the passengers
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know what was going on with their pilot locked out of the dock fit and trying to get back in. what the copilot did once he was in the cockpit alone behind that locked door is that he kept steering that plane toward europe but not toward italy. he flew that plane to switzerland instead and started circling the airport at geneva telling the air traffic controllers that he wanted political asylum and please would they promise to not send him back to ethiopia. the pilot on that plane never got back in the cockpit. the copilot who wanted asylum did safely land the plane. once the plane was on the tarmac apparently the copilot opened up the cockpit window and threw a rope out and tried to repel. but they caught him and all the passengers were safe. that was not a plane crash but had that pilot not been able to
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inpenetratiblebly been able to lock that cockpit door he would not have been able to pull off the hijacking because the pilot would have been able to stop him. the one that is strikingly similar to the flight that crashed this weekend in the french app al 7s the one that reads like a dress rehearsal to the one that happened this week was in 2013 in southern africa. there were 33 people on board this flight. the flight was going from mozambique to angola. clear weather. safe cruising alt altitude. two pilots one captain, one first officer. november 2013 in this incident the first officer, the copilot got up and went to the bathroom. once the copilot left the dock fit and the door closed and locked behind him the pilot apparently decided to
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deliberately crash that plane. the pilot put it into a steep dive over botts wanna. the plane crashed at high-speed and everybody on board the plane died. from that terrible wreckage that you see there in botts wanna they were able to recover the voice recorder from that flight two novembers ago. what the investigators heard on the cockpit voice recorder when they recovered it was the sound moments before that crash of somebody poundsing and pounding and pounding on that cockpit door trying to get back in. but it was unsuccessful. that cockpit door was impenetrable and the plane crashed and everybody died. post 9/11 safety standards, right? once that door locks, nobody is getting in. and that new standard locked cockpit doors reinforced electronically secured, bulletproof, force proof doors, that standard had been used on commercial erik since 9/11.
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it's been used basically as a weapon, both for good and for bad. you know that jet blue flight from new york to las vegas, the reinforced ok cockpit door was a very good thing there. that was the turning pilot in that pilot's psychotic break. he apparently was fine when he first got into the cockpit. something went wrong once he was in there. the copilot apparently reportedly noticed it was able to get that pilot out long enough to lock him out. that is how that flight was saved. the door was helpful there. in the ito i don't know an incident that locked door is how the pilot was able to hijack the thinking. over botts wanna, that was how the homicidal pilot was able to crash the plane. and now this week officials say it was the deliberate actions of the copilot that steered that airbus 320 into the mountainside and it was the locked impenetrable cockpit door that prevented the other pilot, prevented the captain of that
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erik from getting in and interrupting that plan and saving the plane. we were told last night that in the closing moments of the cockpit voice recording before the crash you could hear somebody knocking to be let into the cockpit, and then knocking more insistently, and then eventually trying to pound the door down to get into the cockpit. we were told that last night. what french investigators announced today is that in addition to that noise of the pilot trying to get back in in addition to that noise in the very last instant before the crash you could hear what sounded to be the passengers on that erik screaming as they realized what the consequence were of this drama at the front of the cabin, this drama they could undoubtedly see happening at the cockpit door as they realized what the consequences of that drama were going to be for their speeding plane as it steered into those mountains. planes do not crash often. over the last ten years,
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worldwide in terms of civilian airliners carrying 20 or more people the total number of fatal crashes worldwide has ranged between five and 15 per year. but when planes crash, not because of mechanical failure or weather or accidental pilot error of some kind -- when planes crash because a pilot has become a mass murderer there is no technological panacea, at least not one that we understand yet. i mean the double reinforced bulletproof doors put in place after 9/11 were obviously designed to stop a 9/11 style attack from ever happening again. they were designed to defeat a threat to the cockpit from hijackers coming forward through the door from the passenger compartment. citizens the doors were strengthed they have enabled threats to passengers planes because they enabled threats not
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from the passenger compartment but from the forward side of the cockpit door. before the post 9/11 standards, we still had flesh and blood malfunctions in the cockpit before. we still had pilots as the problem. we still had, you know pilot suicide, slash homicide. suicides, homicides that they could pull off even without a impenetrable door that they could lock themselves in n. 1982 the pilot cancelled the auto pilot and steered the plane into a steep degent. the japan airlines copilot was there on that flight was there in the cockpit trying to rescue the plane after it started diving but he couldn't pull thein plane up in time. that crash killed 24 people. in 1994 it was morocco. the pilot disconnected the auto pilot and steered that plane into the atlas mountains. there was a copilot on board
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that plane as well. she was apparently there in the cockpit as well. but she wunt wasn't enough to be able to stop that apparent deliberately cased crash and 44 deaths. in 1997 independent nearbia, it was silk air. the first officer believed to have left the flight deck when the pilot steered the 737 into a steep decent. there was no locked cockpit door preventing that first officer from getting back in to try to rescue that plane and the 104 people on board. but what the pilot had already done was enough. it was an irretrievable dive even though somebody else was there on the plane not trying to do the same thing and all 104 people died. the most famous one of these is the only apparent pilot induced mass murder that killed more people than the german wings flight this week. that was egypt air flight 990
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which took off from jfk in new york city en route in cairo on halloween night in 1999. 30 minutes into the flight, the pilot went to the bathroom the copilot shut down the engines. there was no locked cockpit door. the pilot had gone to the bathroom. came back into the cockpit. when he came back into the cockpit, the first officer, who had put the plane into this dive was saying i rely on god, i rely on god over and over and over again like a mantra. and the pilot you can here him on the cockpit voice recorder is screaming on the voice recorder what is.thatting, what is this? did you shut the engines? get away. and on the recorder you can hear this frantic fight between the pilot trying to rescue the plane and copilot apparently trying to crash it as the plane is approaching the sound barrier,
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faster than it ever should. and the copilot appears to be deliberately trying to crash the plane, i rely on god, i rely -- and the pilot is desperately trying to save the plane. and the two of them are the in the cockpit at the same time. it goes on and on. and the plane finally breaks up in the air just off unanimous tuktd and all 217 people on board die. over the last 20 years, 24 pilots are believed to have deliberately killed themselves while flying planes. and most of those are just pilots themselves or very small numbers of others in very small planes. but in large passenger erik pilots are some of the few people on earth to whom we give the opportunity that if they want to commit mass murder or if they want to carry out a lone wolf terrorist attack to a degree greater than almost anyone else on earth we give them the power to take huge nps
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numbers of people with them with very little effort on their part. and with what we now know about german wings flight 9525 and what this copilot apparently or at least allegedly deliberately did we will inevitably now search for some technological fix to try to stop this from ever happening again and maybe there will be one. but what caused this is in the first place is not a technological problem. it was failure of flesh and blood. it was not technologically caused but technologically enabled mass casualty human failure. ment savings. our experience is one reason 100% of our retirement funds beat their 10-year lipper averages. so wherever your long-term goals take you we can help you feel confident. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. call us or your advisor. t. rowe price.
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now with the xfinity tv go app, you can watch live tv anytime. it's never been easier with so many networks all in one place. get live tv whenever you want. the xfinity tv go app. now with live tv on the go. enjoy over wifi or on verizon wireless 4g lte. plus enjoy special savings when you purchase any new verizon wireless smartphone or tablet from comcast. visit comcast.com/wireless to learn more. lots still to come tonight including blue state news that you will not hear anywhere else, and we have richard engle joining us live. (mom) when our little girl was born we got a subaru. it's where she said her first word. (little girl) no! saw her first day of school. (little girl) bye bye!
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made a best friend forever. the back seat of my subaru is where she grew up. what? (announcer) the 2015 subaru forester (girl) what? (announcer) built to be there for your family. love. it's what makes a subaru a subaru. how do crest 3d white whitestrips compare to a whitening toothpaste? let's see. the paste didn't seem to do much for me. the whitestrips made a huge difference. that's not fair! crest whitestrips work below the enamel surface to whiten 25 times better than the leading whitening toothpaste. crest whitestrips. the way to whiten no american pilot flying an
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american passenger erik has ever succeedsed in a plot to commit suicide and kill all of his or her passengers by deliberately crashing the erik. that's not to say that some haven't tried unsuccessfully. that's also not to say that foreign pilots haven't been able to pull it off over american soil. and yes, flying by definition is a transnational global thing, planes and pilots cross national boundaries all day every day but no u.s. pilot has carried out a mass murder suicide with a u.s. plane in the way that french investigators say german wings flight 9525 was crashed a couple of days ago. should we take comfort in that u.s. record? is it luck or something else? would it have been harder to do what just happened in the french alps -- would it have been harder to do that here in the u.s. are there things we do in american aviation that would
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have helped prevent this or stop it while it was in progress? couple of things. compared with european carry years u.s. airlines do not conduct stricter psychological screening of pilots. pilots have to get a physical once or twice a year if they are over 40. at that evaluation there is no formal psych evaluation. lufthansa, the parent company of the airline that went down in france has similar standards. air maurnls -- not a solid difference. in the u.s. there are a few thousand air maishls marshals. some european countries have that, too. again, lufthansa is one of the companies that has been using air marshals since right after 9/11. but there are two areas in which the u.s. rules and the european rules diverge. and i'm interested in knowing
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whether or not they might have been materially significant here. the first one is about flight time. under relatively recent new u.s. rules approved by the faa less than two years ago this copilot suspected of crashing the flight wouldn't have been allowed to be a copilot in the u.s. because he didn't have enough experience. he had only 630 hours of flight time under his belt. the latest faa rule in the u.s. requires you to have at least 1500 hours of flight time in order to be a copilot. again he had 600 something. the old rule before it changed used to be that a copilot needed 250 hours. now it is 1500 hours. that means this copilot would have been qualified to have to be a copilot in the u.s. two years ago but not now.
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is that materially significant? no way to tell retrospectively. maybe if this young man was disturbed it would have been noticed in an earlier training flight, maybe, with hundreds more hours of training. we just don't note. there is one other area as well where u.s. rules are tougher than europe. it's the faa rule requiring that two people have to be in the cockpit at all times. in europe a pilot or a copilot can be alone in the cockpit if one of the other people in the cockpit has to leave for some reason, like to go to the bathroom. on american carriers if one pilot leaves the cockpit for any reason a flight attendsant or relief pilot has to go sit in there with the remaining pilot. would this crash in the french alps have been prevented if somebody else had been required to be in the cockpit with that copilot when he was trying to pull off whatever he was trying to pull off? again, obviously we will never
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know. but that is the sort of question that airlines and airline regulators are asking themselves today. now several european airlines today have announced they will start using that american rule the american rule of two for the cockpit, including lufthansa. joining us now is catherine higgins a former national trappings official. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> why does the u.s. have this rule of two for the cockpit? what's the reasoning behind it. >> this was one of the changes that was made after 9/11 that i don't think frankly many of us knew about. i didn't until last night when we had the conversation. it makes enormous sense and i believe it would have made a difference in this accident was again to try create another layer of safety. so if a pilot or copilot leaves the cockpit, the flight attendant goes in not as i was told, to baby-sit the pilot or the copilot but to be there when
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the pilot or copilot knocks on the door. the question is is it the pilot or the copilot who is left or is it somebody with other sben intent. ? there is a peep hole they can look through and confirm it is the person who is supposed to be in the cockpit so they can unlock the door. a simple human way to address a safety issue, but clearly it i believe would have been made a big difference in this accident. >> in terms of that locked door and the protocols around it we all watched airbus 320 training videos today trying to understand the override process and what sort of fail-saves there are and what way there might be around a pilot trying to keep people out when the good guys ought to be able to get in. when that change was made about reinforced cockpit doors and these electronic locking systems, was a bag bad actor pilot like this apparent incident, was that discussed as something there should be work around for or that might be a potentially negative consequence
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of making that door change? >> i am not really familiar with all the thought process that went into this. i think since the rules were made and since the doors have been strengthened and locked there has been a lot of discussion about whether this kind of scenario might happen. but i think at the time there was a rush to try and harden those doors to prevent another 9/11. since we really had no idea at the time whether something else might happen. and that change was made very, very quickly. so i think it was done with the best of intentions based on what we knew at the time what we could expect at the time. but, again, we -- there are unintended consequences. this is one of them. and as we look at coming out of this accident and think about okay what other changes might be made we need to be sure there aren't yet again unintended consequences. >> right. exactly. in terms of -- i was trying to make a point about how similar european rules and regulations are to the u.s. rooeg regulations. there are a few interesting
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divergent points and it's been interesting seeing so many european carriers including lufthansa saying they will align around the stricter safety rules such as the two people in the cockpit rule that the u.s. uses. i wonder why there isn't more align men between u.s. and global regulations. flights cross between jurisdictions. should there be more of a global regulatory approach to this? >> i think there should be one level of safety. we have essentially one level of safety in the manufacture and certification of erik. the major airline manufacturers all have to be certified and they have to meet the standards of the regulators in the united states. it's the faa. in other countries the french have a regulator as do other countries. they all have to meet that standard. it's accepted. as a result we have incredibley safe erik like the a320. we don't have the same level of
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safety in some of the other procedures. we have an international body called the international aviation certification organization but we don't -- they make -- provide guidelines. in some cases they provide rules. but i've learned that those rules aren't always enforced and aren't always implemented in the countries that have major air carriers. >> fascinating. we have essentially a global safety sfd in terms of the physical equipment but not in terms of either enforcement or the protocols. >> right n training or some of the other things we know are so important like this cockpit issue. >> that's fascinating. catherine higgins i didn't understand that at all before you just said it. thank you for helping us understand. lots more ahead, including hey, a new war. nbc's richard engle is going to join us live from the middle east. usiness you have to work hard, know your numbers, and stay focused. i was determined to create new york city's first self-serve frozen yogurt franchise. and now you have 42 locations. the more i put into my business the more i get out of it.
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the building had failed a meter inspection earlier in the day. most of the residents of these two buildings did milligram manage to evacuate safely before the buildings caught fire in the way they were. 12 people were injured in the initial explosion. three them injured critically. scary stuff in a packed urban environment today on a block that i happen to know and love. scary stuff. much more ahead. stay with us. when you ache and haven't slept... you're not you. tylenol® pm relieves pain and helps you fall fast asleep and stay asleep. we give you a better night.
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not in a good way, though. this is a political cartoon, look closely at this. that the u.s. military has just reportedly dropped from the air by the tens of thousands. they dropped 60,000 of these. and the sign up there in the left-hand corner of the car toorng it says isis recruiting office, with an arrow. and then there is this big line of recruits young dark haired guys lined up in a line. on the right side of the cartoon, that's a sign in ar aib abbic that says now serving number 60016789 this guy is all scared. he dropped the ticket in his hands, which said he is 6001. now that he is at the front front of the line and his number has called these guys these monsters are about to grab that guy from the front of the line and they are going to feed him head first into this meat grindser which says isis on the side of it. they are going to kill him in that meat grinder and turn him
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into a bloody pulp. not exactly subtle. but this bloody warning, don't join isis unless you want them to chew up in in their meat grindser this message has been dropped over the isis held city of raqqa in syria. basically their capital city in syria. isis's strongest stronghold in that country. this is apparently one way we are fighting against isis now. pretty high quality cartoon propaganda saying don't join isis. u.s. warplanes also participated today for a second day in air strikes against isis targets in the iraqi city of tikrit. we reported this last night, including the politicalcally awkward fact that the u.s. is bombing in tikrit in support of a three week old grounds operation against isis there that has been undertaken mostly eye shiite fighters led by
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iran's revolutionary guard. given our relationship with iran us fighting isis while van fighting isis that was awkward enough. but in the exact same battle that is more cognitive dis dissonance than the government is able to explain away. the iranian side insist has the shiite officers tend back in protest of the u.s. planes starting to bomb there. that's how the iranians are rorgt it. and then the u.s. is saying we made it a condition of our agreement to bomb there that the shiite militias would have to step back. they are saying we are leave in protest of you. and the u.s. is saying we told to you leave as a condition of us coming. water way it is just saving face. the militias may have paused for whatever reason on the ground while u.s. bombers took over
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part of that fight. but the fight is the same fight. bottom line is that in tikrit directly, the u.s. is helping iran and iran is helping us in the fight against isis. as oogie that as makes everybody feel. and just to make it all the more discomfortable while we are fighting with iran against isis in iraq we are also now supporting a whole new war against iranian interests in the nation of yemen. the houthi shiite rebels who have toppled the cities in yemen yemen, those rebels are supported by iran. saudi arabia started bombing those rebels in yemen. it is uncomfortable to say but saudi arabia usually likes the u.s. military to fight that country's battles for them. this time, thoerk it is the saudis, phil full force. 100 saudi planes. 100. 150,000 troops which is a huge
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number of troops. there has not been a full scale invasion by those troops. that's just what saudi says they have mobilized. but the saudis are vugt suggest after the bombing mission with 100 planes starting last night, after the bombing mission they are suggesting that the troops may move in. and it may not be just saudi troops moving in but it may also be egypt shan troops invading yellen as well. the saudis for what it's worth, they chose to announce the start this war in the united states. they have their ambassador in the united states announce the start this war in washington last night. that tells you something. the u.s. government has said so far that the u.s. is not directly participating in the bombing raids in yemen in the sense that it is not u.s. pilots dropping bombs alongside saudi pilots dropping bombs but the white house does say the u.s. is actively involved in the fight by providing intelligence and logistical support. so how big a war is this new
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war? how big will our involvement be? will the low profile, but pretty effective u.s. war against al qaeda that special forces have been waging in yemen for a decade somehow get restarted in yemen now that saudi arabia is helping. effectively if not officially this is a war against iran. how is this going to go? how big is it going to get? and how entrench ready we going to be in it? eke? joining us now is nbc news chief foreign correspond end richard engle. he reported a lot from yemen over the years. thanks for being here. >> it's good to be with you. yemen is one of the most interesting conflicts right now. and potentially the most explosive. this could escalate very quickly, especially when you have so many troops mobilized by saudi arabia. sabia has built a powerful
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coalition with -- saudi arabia has built a coalition with egypt primarily and you have the new leadership in egypt run by the military that very much wants to flex its muscles and egypt just recently announced that it wants to lead a new -- effectively, a pan arab army. so we are at a real inflection point in the middle east. and i think we could see a lot of changing and very volatile dynamics in yemen. could i go back to one thing you were talking about about iran? please, yeah. >> it's teally weirder than you were describing. it's even more convoluted than the convoluted strategy you were basically describing. the u.s. in iraq -- we'll just take iraq. the u.s. right now is helping this mission in tikrit which is being backed by the militias, and as you said they are potentially going to boycott that operation but the u.s. is backing the operation led by the militias. that's in iraq.
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in syria, the u.s. is fighting against iran and is an enemy of iran which supports hezbollah and supports the government ofas assad. but in syria the u.s. is also fighting with iran against isis. in iraq we are against iran -- sorry -- it's even confusing for me and i've done this for 20 years. in iraq we are fighting with iran n. syria we are fighting both with and against iran. and in yemen now we are backing saudi arabia and egypt and this other coalition which is taking a strong stance against iran. but we say we are not going to get deeply involved we are just going to kinds of assist with some intelligence while at the same time huge negotiations profoundly important negotiations are underway in switzerland with iran. >> richard, let me -- okay.
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>> so it's clear. it's clear. >> oh, yeah absolutely clear. >> i see a path in front of us that is oettle totally clear. >> let me ask you a really dumb question about that convoluted -- those convoe lutded facts of life. obviously the united states is the largest military on earth. everybody in the united states has been worried for 30 years we are stretched too thin involved in too many places but we are used to it. is iran stretched thin right now? i realize they have a military too. right now they are active in iraq active in syria, and pretty active in yemen and even more than that. plus they are iran and they have to worry about the militia they maintain in lebanon and all around. is iran stretched a little bit thin here? >> some people say no. many military analysts i've spoken to say they are not really stretched thin. they see this as a strategic conflict. it's not like they are fighting a war in afghanistan thousands and thousands of miles away in a
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mountainous land locked country that needs to be resupplied constantly with fuel brought in by contracting companies that have no bid contracts and costs that are limitless. iran has in many ways wantsed to draw the kingdom of saudi arabia into this proxy war. it has wanted iran to -- saudi arabia to get more involved in this fight. iran is trying to rearrange the map of the middle east right now. it is taking more territory and securing better alliances in iraq. it is taking more territory and securing alliances in syria. both places there it looks like it is winning. and it is spreading its influence very rapidly in yemen. so if you look at iran and the amount of its sphere of influence, to use that old cold war terminology, its sphere of influence is growing. and that's not necessarily stretching itself too thin by
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maintaining bases in iraq for a decade or until afghanistan for a decade in a modern militaryized fashion. >> richard, engle, nbc chief foreign correspond end. i feel like this is page 1 of a 300 page book that we need to understand this. >> there will be more pages to come. >> great to see you. up next blue state chutzpah and the misparticularcal but discrete hotness of citizen graphers. seriously. it's weird, but stay with us. rt. absorbs 2x more than you may need. no wonder more women prefer always discreet pads over poise. visit alwaysdiscreet.com for coupons and to learn more. denver international is one of the busiest airports in the country. we operate just like a city and that takes a lot of energy. we use natural gas throughout the airport - for heating the entire terminal generating electricity on-site and fueling hundreds of vehicles.
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the volkswagen passat handles like a dream. go ahead... step on it. yeah? yeah! that turbo engine packs a punch, right? oh yeah. pinch me. okay... and on passat models you can get a $1,000 volkswagen credit bonus. one more time. pinch me. it's not a dream. it's the volkswagen stop dreaming, start driving event. stop dreaming, do it again. and test-drive one today. hurry in and you can get 0% apr plus a $1000 volkswagen credit bonus on 2015 passat and jetta models. muppets are obviously perfect in every way. but for the most part they cannot flex their faces in complicated ways. that is not a problem, it just means one of the things they have gifted to us as a civilization is the muppet smile. which looks like this. see --
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do we have kermit doing the muppet smile? no, elmo, same thing. this is how mumts smile when they are happy. see? when i am particularly happy i also tend to do the mupt smichlt it just involves opening your mouth. that's how you can tell a mupt is happy. last week one american governor was so excited on camera. so excited to do something for her state, she did the muppet smile as well. watch. she is very happy and she is very happy at an occasion from her state. what everybody is happen about here, what caused kate brown to do the muppet smile, is making oregon the first state in the nation where everybody gets registered to vote automatically. the department of motor vehicles, they already know who is is a u.s. citizen, they know
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your age, your current address, whether you are registered to vote w. this new law oregon became the first state in the country where you automatically get registered to vote in the state whether or not you ask for it. you can opt out but if you don't opt out the state registers you by default. this new law is expected to add hundreds of thousands of people to the voters rolls in oregon. as of now, oregon is the only state in the country that is doing this. at least as of now. >> i challenge every other state in this nation to examine their policies and find ways to ensure that there are as few barriers as possible in the way of a citizen's right to vote. >> now, the first next state is answering oregon's challenge and say they too, want to move to a system where everybody is automatically registered to vote. the next state is -- california. california's new secretary of state now tells the sacramento
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bee, quote, if government knows who is here who is 18 who is a citizen, why go through the hoops. this was a big deal and they did it in oregon. hence the cake they had in the shape of the bill with everybody smiling. in oregon this new law is going to mean adding a few hundred thousand people to the voting rolls in oregon f. they do it in california, this same change wouldn't add a couple hundred thousand people to the roles. it would add something more like 7 million people to the voting rolls. wow. and so far it is just a proposal. but the secretary of state is behind it. and california is a blue state. and maybe we are starting to enter an era in which blue states innovate on small d democracy to get lots more people voting than the number of people who vote in the red states. maybe that has finally started. one thing to watch this the next couple of days is the news about red states going in the next direction. governor scott walker of
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wisconsin obviously running for president sent out this funds raising pitch asking people to send him money to celebrate the law that's going to go forward in his state that's expected to block about 300,000 people in wisconsin from voting because of a super strict voter id requirement. we are going to disenfranchise 300,000 eligible wisconsin voters. let's celebrate. sends me your money. that's one thing to watch in terms of how that goes over in his presidential campaign. he sent out that funds rising appeal. in ohio the legislature there is lightning fast passing a bill that would tell every college kid in the state who is legally allowed to vote in ohio if they go to school no matter where they are from originally, it would tell all those college students they cannot register to vote unless they also register their car in ohio and get a new ohio driver's license which happens to cost a ton of motor and which most out of state college kids never do.
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you want to vote you young probably democratic leaning voter, then pay up. democrats are rallying against this. they are calling on john casic to line item this veto. given his voting rates he will probably not veto it. while this student poll tax is heading to his desk where he has been this weeks is not in ohio. try new hampshire. presumably, john casic, too, is running for president on the basis of how he has cut down the number of voters in his swing state. red state govern oars will be testing the attractiveness of cutting back on voting as a lot of them who have done so in their states run for presidents. the other difference is this year there is a counterexample of how to handle voting rights from the blue states where the
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so a moment ago i mentioned the discrete and subtle and lovely hotness of stenographers. what we are talk about tonight is the combination of stenography and basketball. not two things you usually think of as going together. you are going to see how they fit together tonight and you are
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show called now here is a thing, so we do a thing on this show called now here is a thing, based on some things are just so amazing you need to see them. you may know there's a huge college basketball tournament going on right now. part of the joy of that tournament is that it's college, not the pros. so for the most part, you're getting watch these college kids perform on the biggest stage of their lives. that sometimes extends beyond the court. like say to the postgame press conferences where they come face-to-face with the crush of tv cameras and reporters. the moment you may have seen from one of these press conferences today was this admittedly amazing moment involving players from the university of wisconsin basketball team. watch. >> nigel, is there anything you would like to say to our stenographers to tip things off. >> synergy. >> do you have it? >> check out her --
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>> gosh, she's beautiful. [ laughter ] did you hear that? >> i heard that. >> all right. so we'll open it up to questions. >> little freeze frame. his teammates are like, dude. i have to say, i'm not convinced this was a hot mike accident by that young man, nigel hayes. it's being billed as basketball player embarrasses himself. to me it feels like a flawlessly executed pickup line, i don't know. either way, undoubtedly amazing. you probably saw that today. you know what? but this is better. you might have heard at the top of that clip, that same wisconsin player said the word syzygy. the wisconsin basketball team it turns south slightly obsessed with the stenographer who is responsible for transcribing the post game press conferences. after their win on friday night,
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those three wisconsin players you just saw made a special trip to track down the stenographer to figure out how stenography works and how she's managed to write down everything they've been saying at these press conferences. >> what if i press this button. >> oh, you typed a word! >> the wisconsin basketball teams have become obsessed with the stenographer to the point where they've begun doing things like this in their postgame press conferences. >> before i answer that question, i would like to say a few words. cattywampus, onomatopoeia, antidisestablishmentarianism. >> why did you start off saying those things? and then i have a follow up. >> well the wonderful young lady over there, i think her job title is a stenographer. yes, okay. and she does an amazing job of typing words, sometimes if words
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are not in her dictionary. maybe if i said soliloquy right now she might have to work hardtory type that word or that makes her job interesting. >> that fascination with messing with the stenography explains why syzygy was the greatest clip in college basketball in the last 4 hours. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow night. now time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> i like it he struggled more with the word stenography. or i've got it right here, cattywampus. thanks, rachel. today, vladamir putin demanded that iran cease military operations in yemen and german police removed material from the apartment of the co-pilot who crashed that german