some of the most popular have been the ford focus and toyota cory role la. the most popular being traded in are suvs and trucks. they will be off the road and not going used car lots. when you turn in a vehicle, it doesn't get an opportunity to go to a lot. it gets destroyed, which will help the people who own scrap businesses. >> all right. thanks for bringing us up to date. we're seeing positive economic times today. new figures show the number of new people filing for unemployment benefits fell last week. the labor department says initial claims dropped from 550,000 to the week ending august 1st. that's lower than analysts indicated. looking at the dow jones now, we're down 56 points on the day. let's go to cnbc's mary

thompson. what's moving investors today? >> investors are awaiting the big jobs number tomorrow. of course that being the july jobs report, when the unemployment rate expected to increase tonight. what we're seeing on wall street today is another day of declines. today, it appears that that positive data we received is being off set by concerns on earnings. in the telecom space, that's pretty week. we're also seeing a bit of a pullback in utilities and the financial sector. it's mixed today. we're seeing strength in what you might call the weaker financial stocks, like aig and citi and a pullback on bigger, well-known stocks, bigger banks,

showing weakness. again, today investors really awaiting on the jobs reports tomorrow. they are look for more information that would suggest a rally that we have seen off the march lows should continue and an important component would be a stronger than expected unemployment report. >> i appreciate the wrap-up. sonia soto, it's sort of a fore gone conclusion. when are we expecting this to happen? >> about 3:00 eastern time. it's a bit of an anticlimax. remember when she was first nominated late in the spring, there was all kinds of cry from opponents, primarily that wise latina remark. if you remember when this vacancy first became apparent,

her name was first floated among many proponents who liked not only her judicial philosophy, but her rags to riches tale. many were very much in her corner and stayed there, even throughout the attacks on that remark. other things that have come down the pipe, her ruling in the matter of the connecticut firefighters as well. what we're expecting is that every democrat who is present, there are 60, not all will be there, and nine republicans will be voting in favor, so she should get an approval in the mid-60s. many of the republicans --

retiring, republican senators who are not seeking another term are voting in favor. >> we're also hearing that robert byrd will be in the senate casting his vote. his spokesperson said they have never missed a nomination on a supreme court justice during his time in the senate and will not break that tradition today. you're leeing senator jeff sessions of alabama. we'll look into that. and mike, we will come back to you. >> sounds great. >> thanks. warren jeffs is refusing to eat solid foods in a hunger fast. doctors feel he may die, a feeding tube has been inserted. he is serving two life sentences and faces criminal charges

relating to alleged, underaged marriages. george sodini left investigators plenty of leads before he shot and killed three women in pittsburgh. in addition to his online diaries, he posted three videos of himself. >> my objective is to be real and learn to be emotional and to you know, be able to emotionally connect with people. when i'm 10 to 20 years older than she is, she has to feel good about this thing and the only way around that you know, is to work on this -- >> the other video is a walking tour of his home. nbc's brian moore is in bridgeville, pennsylvania, where the shootings happened. brian, it's interesting, when you're looking at the videos, you wonder if anybody came across them, is it now just in hindsight knowing what he

accomplished, going into the that health club, that it seems so off? >> reporter: looking back on it, it's really off. the perfect way to describe it. if you were looking at this without knowing what he was about to do, this was just a boring guy talking to a video camera, a very mundane life, kind of pathetic. a man looking at furniture and talking about how it might impress women who don't exist. we just found out there is yet another website. this is new information. wpxi uncovered a password protected website called crazy george.com. it's more of these boring ramblings about a guy with really sad love life trying to connect with women and it sort of lays the ground work. it apparently goes back to as late as 1999. he has a page devoted to his

dead cat, talking about how it is the best cat in the world. you can sort of track on the web, this man's decay, this downward spiral. it ends up in this diatribe in which he spells out step by step how he's going to commit the murders. >> i was looking at this website and you can see he's talking about religion. he spent a large chunk of his writing focused on his minister and the church he went to. i want to play another part of that youtube video just so the viewers can get a sense of i guess, the secret hopes of this man. >> chairs match, a woman would really be impressed. over here, there's reading material we're familiar with.

>> and you can see, how to date young women for guys over 35. body language secrets. are authorities putting together in terms of their investigation anything that might link anyone else to this, or is it just this one guy acting alone, end of story? >> reporter: i think it's pretty clear. this is the quintessential loner. this is a treasure-trove of information for the police officers, the investigators here, even though they have an open and shut case, they have to continue to put things together and come up with a timeline. make sure he didn't have anyone else helping him. it's also a treasure-trove of information for people like fbi profiler, clinton van zandt. >> thank you. coming up, the micro blogging website becomes a big time target of computer hackers. what does it mean to twitter and

facebook, too? california police tell an unruly baseball fan, you're out of here. his shocking story -- here it is. wait for it. ahead. plus, not ready for a fall. the frontman for aerosmith takes a tumble. we'll explain.

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their twitter tweets, twitter's had a massive outage. the cofounder says it was a denial of service attack. facebook says it's investigating complaints of lagging service,

features not working properly. it's been very, very irritating for me today. for me, i'm joined by john able who writes for wired.com. i just tried to pull up twitter and am getting a communication error. what is a denial of service attack? >> generically, it's when you ask the server to do something over and over. they can't do an infin amount. >> when the cofounder says they're defending against the attack, what's the status right now? how long does it take for them to overcome what the hackers have done? >> they have already. they've thwarted the attack in the sense the service is being restored. seems largely restored. there were a different kind of

attack. may take a while to figure out who did it. >> the official statement says in their problems they had today that no user information was at risk. if that's the case, then why am i still having trouble. i still can't get on twitter. >> everybody doesn't use the same computers to twitter. there are thousands of them. so in order for every part of the service to be restored to everybody in the world, all of these machines have to be back up and running. there's going to be areas and clients in places of the world where it's not going to be caught up yet. >> bigger picture here. is twitter a special target of these hackers because somebody hacked into my account last week, sent out a crazy message, got all kinds of attention. is it a great target for hackers? >> people are great targets. prominent people are always a

good source for some kind of alias attack type thing. twitter of course is the silicon valley darling right now. mainstream media loves it. >> is it safe? >> sure. you're not doing banking on there. you're just talk about things. >> if a denial of service can happen to twitter, what does that mean? >> twitter was stopped because the machines were being asked to do too much. no sensitive information that you can get from twitter except maybe impersonating you, which happened recently sadly, and others as well. so there's the sort of the reputation issue you have, but when you deny, you're not trying to get information out. >> is it me to feel so agitated, i feel like i'm -- >> the world stopped turning on

its axis there. >> i have tissues under here. >> people were writing to me immediately saying, so what are you going to do on your twitter vacay? >> thanks. is a poster of the president as the joker racist? it shows the president the dark knight version. he's got some dark eye shadow. no one seems to know who's hanging them up. have you been able to find out anything more? >> we still don't know who's done it. >> in your article on "the washington post," you say, let me just give the title. "obama as the joker, racial

fears, ugly face." explain. >> i go back to the original context in the batman films. they have been about urban fears and those fears code in many ways, black. they play into antiafrican-american stereo types. that's why i think they chose this villain as the president. >> we just put it up there. we saw george w. bush on "vanity fair" as the joker. why would this be racially motivated? >> for the obvious reason that george bush wasn't black. in this case, i think what they're doing is finding an image with undercurrents that weren't applied to bush. >> we're seeing a lot of these questions about whether some of the attacks against obama are really about the color of his skin. for instance, not just this joker poster, but also, the whole birther movement. do you think there's not enough

attention being paid to how many attacks are still about the color of our president's skin? >> i think we're going to be having two conversations about the president for a long time. a political conversation and a racial conversation, which we obviously haven't had because he's the first african-american president. it's difficult to separate those two conversations. there's a lot of sensitivity. i think absolutely. we need to continue looking at what are the legitimate political arguments and where racially coded arguments are coming in. being aware of how race is playing into imagery. >> thanks. a baseball fan gets out of hand at an oakland a's game and ends up on the ground. he was being unruly, he was in the wrong seat, and he wasn't cooperating. they're saying, come on. and there's a guy tazing him.

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backed by 35 years of research and low glycemic index science nutrisystem d works. satisfaction guaranteed or your money back! new! nutrisystem d. lose weight. live better. call or click today. so much for living on the edge. stephen tyler found out that's a dangerous place to be. he fell out of a concert stage. apparently, he was singing "love in an elevator," living it up while he was going down. tyler fell off. people helped him backstage, then reportedly off to the hospital. once we find out how he is, we'll pass it along. mark sanford has been living on the edge for quite some time.

he's just returned from vacation with his family after a big scandal. he told his staffers he was hiking in the appalachain trial while he was really visiting his mistrisz in argentina. joel, good to see you. we talked when the governor was missing and that was the story, that he was off hiking. when did you find out that was not the case? >> i found out the wednesday morning he came back. i got a call early that morning saying the governor was returning from argentina and found out later on in the day, the nature of that visit obviously. >> how frustrated was it for you, i mean, you build relationships with reporters, you were a reporter yourself. we chase after the truth. how frustrating is it to be in a position to learn that basically, you misinformed the press? >> well, it is frustrating, but

people who work with our office, not just on the press, but others who work with our office knew we were disseminating information that we believed to be true at the time. and to the governor's credit, he stepped forward and said, i misled my staff. i think there are a lot of people in political office who would be looking for a fall guy, someone to blame, and the governor i think did the right thing. and again, stood up and said, it's all me. it's not on anyone else. >> but is this whole incident, it seems like every week, there's a new revelation about how in love he was and the affair that was happening. is that why you left his office? >> i dispute that hypothesis. he thought it was important to lay everything out there. i think that we're through the storm now. i think that he has said pretty

much everything there is to say about it. i wasn't out looking for a job frankly. it was someone who approached me with an opportunity. frankly, when you're 16 months out of an administration, this is when you start to see people looking for their next step in life. it was an opportunity that would give me some flexibility in having my own business. >> we talked earlier this year and sanford and his presidential prospects in 2012. do you think that he still has a political future? >> well, i think his focus is on the next 16 months of his administration. i think that you know, in as much as there is, are 16 months left, he is going to continue focussing on the things he's always focused on. smaller government -- >> what about you? do you have a future in polit s politics? >> what about me? i don't know about that. >> what are you going to do? >> you know, probably work on

the public policy side. may do a little political work here and there, but more on the behind the scenes side. >> it's been a very busy summer for you. i wish you the best of luck in the future. thanks. >> thank you. wall street's awaiting tomorrow's unemployment numbers with bated breath. coming up, we get real about what the numbers mean for the millions of americans who have lost their jobs. plus, what the likely confirmation of sonia sotomayor means for the latina community. mr. evans? this is janice from onstar. i have received an automatic signal you've been in a front-end crash. do you need help? yeah. i'll contact emergency services and stay with you. you okay? yeah.

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worried about the back to school shopping season. how crucial is that for retailers? >> back to school's going to be very important this year. last year at this time, back to school got off to a rough start and what ended up happening is that retailers, in order to get people to buy their goods, had to cut 70, 80, even 90% on their merchandise. retailers are creating initial price points, the price you pay without a sale, and they're coming out with more incentives, the type of things you have one-time events, limited merchandise. they're hoping that's going to ramp up the consumer. but what we saw in july with chain store sales is wall street likes to call them, we saw a lot of declines. 59% of the retailers that came out today and reported actually missed expectations and as a group for july, same stores are

down 5%. >> i want to ask you about a big report we're expecting tomorrow. a lot of people worried about jobs. what are you expecting tomorrow? >> the numbers wall street are looking at, they're looking at a 275,000 job loss, unemployment going up to 9.7%. a lot of folks on the training floors are talking about the fact that we heard today from the white house, unemployment going above 10%. >> all right. we'll keep our eye on that. thank you. we talk about numbers and economic reports a lot, but every statistic, a family, worried about money. most of us know at least someone who's lost their job. my brother, nate, got laid off in may. he joins me from phoenix along with his neighbors who have lost their jobs. guys, good to see you. all right, so nate, let me begin

with you because yours is the story we know best. tell me when you got laid off. you're trying a new venture, but it's got to be frustrating and a little scary. >> i was laid off at the end of may. i was working for a national software company. i guess it's a little frightening to be laid off, but not all that bad. >> tom, what about you? what's your story? >> i've been laid off for about a month, my company closed their doors and moved up to their mother company up in minneapolis, minnesota. now wouldn't be a good time to move up there, leaving arizona to go to minnesota. just with the things going on in our life, but unemployment isn't something that i chose to do or want to do. i actually want to work. >> and what are you finding when you're looking for a job then? >> everywhere i go, you're

either overqualified, you know, people will look at you and want to give you $8 an hour for a job that you've been at for 27 plus years. >> and jerry, tell me about your situation. >> i was laid off back in february, so it's been over five months for me. i had been with the company, a large software company, for 19 and and a half years. it's been challenging. i'm more fortunate than most, that we were somewhat prepared for it financially, but it's been a real challenge and the market is tough. there's a lot of people looking for jobs out there. so all three of you are in a situation where you're getting paid severance. nate, in your case, you started this landscape company and are trying to make a go of that. at what point do the money issues start weighing on you?

nate, in your case, your son has autism, so health insurance is a big concern. can you still pay for health insurance, nate? >> i can. it just simply means kind of a change in your lifestyle in other areas. over the long-term, it's yet to be seen. one way or the other, we'll be okay. obviously, when you're with a larger employer, one of the great benefits of that is that most of them are willing to help out with your insurance costs. that's a big deal. what you trade in giving up that job and starting off on your own, you trade benefits like that, but also, there's a world of opportunity and the sky's the limit. health insurance is one of those things that i don't really have a long-term plan for right now, but the answer is yes. i can pay for it. >> all right. so here you guys are, three neighbors. all three laid off in a

relatively resent period of time. in arizona, the rate is pretty good. it's 8.7%, so compared to the national average, it looks like arizona's in pretty good shape. let me play what the president told elkhart, indiana, yesterday where the unemployment number has skyrocketed. >> our problem is not that there has just been jobs lost. we're also not creating the jobs of the feature and part of what this event here today was about, if we've got the best battery technology, if we're starting to produce a clean energy economy, we will create not just 100 or 200 jobs. we'll create hundreds of thousands of jobs. >> when you're looking at green technology, since all three of you have had a technical background, tom, do you think there is real hope in terms of investing in green technology

and you worked at a printed circuit board manufacturing job. can you apply that to green technology? >> absolutely not. no. that play for technology that i work on is the jobs that the president's talking about are all going overseas. everything's being outsourced, so we're going to create all these jobs for green energy and they're all going to be shipped away from the united states. we've fot to keep more of the jobs in the united states. >> and jerry, are you hearing anything from the president that gives you hope with your almost 20 years of experns, that you're going to go back to work in that field? >> i hope to go back to work in a similar field. certainly with green technology, there's a lot of business support systems that go into helping the companies function,

so you know, i'm optimistic i guess. i'm glad to see the investments in any technology. but i share tom's concern. we've got to keep the jobs here in the united states and stop sending them overseas. >> nate, come on, lay it on me. you and i have these conversations all the time. what do you really think about how the government tries to spark job creation? >> here we go. how much time do you have? >> not a lot, unlike you. >> i can only give you my perspective, since starting a small business that's more labor intensive such as a landscaping company, i find myself thinking about that. i see a lot of small business owners out there that have similar needs as what i have and for instance, if you have a large load of material to carry,

it's pretty tough to do that in an electric vehicle or a green car. a hybrid, whatever it is. in arizona, and i know we're not indicative of the entire country, we're a sea of pick-up trucks out here and that's because so many people out here run their own business and need that sort of horsepower to run their own business. there's a lot of that. there's construction. so i'm a little bit unsure of how a green technology will translate to industries such as that. >> all right. nate, i love you. jerry, tom, guys, i appreciate you all coming in and talking about your experiences. again, we get into these numbers, every number is a real person and my real person is nate brewer. look at him. isn't he handsome? show him again. and his neighbors. really handsome guys. i appreciate it. good luck to all three of you. we want to hear your ideas. we want to hear from you.

we're interested in what the politicians have to say, what the experts have to say. but in many cases when we're talking about americans struggling, the expert is you. twitter is down today, but that's a great way to get ahold of me and i hope you'll give me your ideas on these issues. is senate expected to vote on whether to confirm sonia sotomayor as the next supreme court justice of the united states. she would become a first hispanic on the court. let's go to hialeah. does the hispanic community see this as a monumental day? >> yes. they do. good afternoon. because it really has been in many ways, a galvanizing moment for the united states. the fact that a hispanic is

being considered for the highest court of the land makes everyone proud. there are a lot of differences in the hispanic community as there are everywhere, but i think most latinos look at her with pride because they see themselves reflected in her life story. i just spoke with janet. she was saying it has been something all hispanics have been able to get behind because of her life story. the question, how will she do in the court and the future, because she is going to be nominated. i think hispanics are saying, please make sure you make us all look good. >> do you think it will in any way dissuade people from voting for republicans who voted against sonia sotomayor's nomination? >> yeah, well, as you know on the national election farce is

presidency, hispanics slaughtered republicans. obama is president in no small part thanks to the hispanic vote. he got more hispanic votes than a democrat has gotten before. also quite frnkly, it's been surprising to see mccain come out against sotomayor. i think in the long-term, hispanics are going to be much more keen to see how ledge islators vote. it's an important vote. people are going to remember it, but really, hispanics care for the most part on issues that matter directly to them and they can feel, touch and smell them and immigration reform is probably the biggest one down the pipe. >> thank you. i look forward to talking to you about immigration in the future. >> it would be my privilege to do so. >> don't you love the way he

says contessa? up next, the role property taxes are playing on the foreclosure crisis. just how much will the estate of michael jackson make for those the pop star left behind? it's the economy on msnbc. you'll love it. your old mop will just have to get over it... [ engine rattles ] [ man ] love stinks! ♪ love stinks! ♪ yeah! yeah! [ female announcer ] new swiffer wet jet is redesigned. it cleans deep in corners. its solution penetrates layers of dirt and its absorbent pad locks it away to clean better than a mop. the newly redesigned swiffer wet jet. ♪ love stinks!

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get your free information kit and medicare guide. aarp medicare supplement insurance plans. call now. ♪ a new report predicts nearly half of u.s. homeowners will likely owe more than their properties are work. they say the percentages of so-called underwater loans could rise to about 25 million homes. another reason, counties and cities are likely to assess homes at their old values. so property taxes remain high for millions of americans facing forclosure. we'll talk to vera gibbons. how do you get out of that?

>> if your home was assessed during the peak yurs and you think your taxes are too high, why not appeal? 60% of the homes right now are assessed for more than they should be. 33% of people who appeal do win something back. you could save hundreds if not thousands of dollars on your tax bill. >> they could say your home's worth more. >> you have to look at the property card and show them, look, on this property card, it says i have three bedrooms, i only have two. >> and what about using sites like your local real estate website? >> i think you have to compare. you want to take a look at at least five comparable homes in terms of size, location, school district, and see what those values are. if your home is assessed for 10% higher than those, then you probably have a case. >> if you're going to fight your

assessment, do you have to hire a lawyer for that? >> some people do. some people at the hearing don't like to see you in there with the extras. they'd rather you go it alone and make your own case. you should go to a calm of hearings in advance and find out. >> i was talking to somebody other day who said their property taxes had increased. >> you have tens of thousands of people going to lose their homes. coming up, a warning on the drug in the center of the michael jackson death investigation. )%)%)%)%)%)%)%)%)%

how is this for crazy?

a warning came out about propofol just three days before michael jackson's death. some doctors and nurses were becoming addicted to it. authorities believe the drug may have played a role in jackson's death. executors of his estate are moving fast to cash in on his estate. they have set up dealing for a movie, tribute, could bring in tens of millions of dollars. courtney hazlett is in burbank following these details. what are you hearing about the estate, the money involved here? >> reporter: lots of money involved, about $60 million. aeg sold the footage to columbia pictures. the jackson estate will get 90% of the profit. that's an important number. like anything here, there are

tons of expenses to be paid out. a lot of the people behind the scenes here have yet to be paid. those are the folks who did the choreography, the costuming. all the real nuts and bolts of this organization. at the end of the day, it sounds like a lot of money, but we have to wait and see what the actual profit numbers are. >> so the talent and crew that would accompanied jackson to these concerts, they're not going to get to do it, so a lot of money at stake for them. columbia pictures paying aeg $60 million for the future length film, using the film of the footage of the rehearsals and all that. will that get passed on to the people who would have benefitted from going on tour? >> i've been speaking to these folks literally since the day after michael died and their concern is, we've got contracts,

are we going to get paid. aeg is going to pay out the actual contract for the people who worked. if you had a contract that said you would be paid thch money for this much time, that would be paid. where it gets tricky, are the people who came on board at the end and their contracts weren't completed yet. you've got dozens of people who did real work and are wondering if they're going to see their money. >> what's kathryn's -- >> on monday, that's going to be a big day because this agreement with aeg, several hundred pages long, she's going to be in the courtroom and that's where she's

going to have to heir any discrepancie discrepancies. >> thank you very much. great to see you. that wraps up this edition of that's the economy. david and tamron pick things up next. the vote on judge sotomayor is expected to begin any minute now. most likely she will be confirmed. plus, the very latest on the man behind the shooting in pennsylvania. we're hearing from him himself on the videos he posted online. why didn't anyone see any warning signs with this guy? ahead on msnbc. mr. evans? this is janice from onstar. i have received an automatic signal you've been in a front-end crash. do you need help? yeah. i'll contact emergency services and stay with you. you okay? yeah.

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good afternoon, i'm tamron hall. >> i'm david schuster, live in washington and this is an historic day on capitol hill. >> the senate about to begin voting on judge sonia sotomayor

to be the first ever hispanic justice on the high court. she's expected to be confirmed with nbc projecting that sotomayor will get at least 68 votes and that is justice samuel aelita. the rest of the party senators likely to oppose her in a vote that could have huge reprecussions for the gop. >> tamron, today's confirmation is expected to provide a much-needed political victory for president obama. he has taken a beating in recent weeks because of the high unemployment numbers and because of problems getting health care reform on track. a new poll shows his overall approval rating has dropped to 50%. that is the lowest level of the presidency. the same poll a month ago was at 57%. sotomayor will the third woman

ever on the court. in this hour, we'll look at how her voice and views will shape the court. it tapped a dramatic life story. she was born in the bronks. her father died when she was 9 years old. she attended princeton. it has all led up to this moment. for more on the likely impact on the races in 2010, let's go live to washington and bring in kelly o'donnell and mike viqueira, at the white house. kelly, first describe what we're looking at right now in the senate. >> good afternoon, tamron and david. i have just peeked in myself, going into the senate chamber and i can tell you it is unusual crowded, meaning the spectator seats are quite full. i'm told