is necessary. >> when they say up or down vote, they mean that republicans should stop filibustering health reform, let it pass or fail with an up or down majority vote. and everybody knows that's not going to happen. so democrats have a plan to get around that problem by getting the last remaining tweaks to the bill passed using reconciliation rules. that means those tweaks would pass with a simple majority in the senate and a bill would get to the president's desk. this is it. it's going to happen. it took them a year, but they have finally come around to recognizing that there are no republican votes for health reform, so they're going to pass health reform without republicans. it's done. it's going to happen. ambiguity over. everybody freak out! >> and it would be a political kamikaze mission for the democratic party if they jam this through after the american people have been saying, look,

we're trying to tell you in every way we know how, in elections and surveys and town hall meetings, we don't want this bill. it would really be the end of the united states senate as the protector of minority rights. >> senator lamar alexander talking about reconciliation as if it's the end of the world, warning of the apocalypse that will be brought down upon the senate if it is used now. it must be hard to argue with a straight face if you, yourself, have voted to use reconciliation over and over and over again like lamar alexander has, like in 2003 when lamar alexander voted for the bush tax cuts under reconciliation or the two times that lamar alexander voted for reconciliation bills in 2005 or the time he did so in 2007. the very same reconciliation rules which he now speaks so apocalyptically of. the google one, lamar alexander zero. joining lamar alexander in embarrassing himself on live television on this subject is republican senator and sunday

show more than regular john mccain. senator mccain's big, awkward liedown on the tracks to stop health reform came when he proposed changing senate rules so reconciliation couldn't be used for anything involving entitlements. so, for example, nothing that affected medicare could pass as part of health reform. >> entitlements should not be part of a reconciliation process, i.e., 51 votes. it's too important. >> today's john mccain should really talk to the guy who used to call himself john mccain about that because that other john mccain consistently votes to change entitlements through reconciliation votes. in 2005 the senate used reconciliation to pass the deficit reduction act by the slimmest of margins. the vice president at the time dick cheney was needed as the tie-breaking 51st vote. that bill among other things slashed spending for the entitlement known as medicaid. among those voting yes to change this entitlement, republican senator john mccain.

in 1989, the senate used reconciliation to pass the omnibus budget reconciliation act of 1989. that legislation among other things overhauled the doctor payment system for the entitlement known as medicare. among those voting yes to change this entitlement? republican senator john mccain. but now senator john mccain says entitlements should not be part of a reconciliation process. it's too important, he says. senator mccain now proposing to outlaw something that he has done repeatedly. john mccain once again taking a strong stance against his own beliefs. health reform is going to happen. health reform is going to happen. it has passed the house. it has passed the senate. they are going to bridge the gap between the two bills using reconciliation. republicans can do nothing about it. they lost this one. but in the meantime, this is what they're flailing about, it looks like. they are so desperate, for example, to stop democrats from

using reconciliation to pass health reform that they've taken to calling it the nuclear option, a scary sounding thing that has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation. in fact, the real nuclear option was a republican threat back in 2005 to take away the filibuster altogether. but since it sounds scary, why not call reconciliation the nuclear option and just hope the media repeats that weird, ham-handed lie for you? >> isn't it interesting, what used to be called the nuclear option is now kind of a warm and fuzzy phrase called reconciliation. >> that's right. >> completely different image. >> coming together. >> than the explosion of the nuclear option. >> no? no, no. completely not what the nuclear option is. why would that fox news anchor mistakenly believe that bogus republican talking point? perhaps because he's been watching a lot of fox news lately. >> republican lawmakers fear

that democrats will use the controversial nuclear option or reconciliation to pass health care with just 51 votes. >> reconciliation or the nuclear option requires only 51 votes to pass the bill on the senate side. >> the gop slamming the majority for threatening to use the nuclear option. the senate procedure called reconciliation. >> some democrats want to use reconciliation known as the nuclear option to push through a health care bill with 51 votes. >> so this may be the course, reconciliation, the nuclear option, we shall see. >> you know, they say that only -- they only push an agenda, they only sort of have opinions in their primetime hours. just those guys at night. it's amazing. nuclear option is a totally different thing than reconciliation. you guys could totally look it up. it is on the internet and everything. i checked today. we have now entered into conservative desperation mode. health reform is going to happen. we know how it's going to happen. it's only a matter of exactly when.

meanwhile, it's up to all of us to enjoy the pageant of frenetic partisan desperation. joining us now is the chairman of the democratic national committee tim kane, also the former governor of virginia. mr. chairman, thanks very much for joining us tonight. >> hey, very good to be with you, rachel. and in virginia we still believe in majority rule. i think most americans kind of understand that. >> well, we learned today that president obama is going to announce his way forward on health reform the day after tomorrow on wednesday. i know you are very plugged into this process. what can you tell us about the strategy moving forward? >> well, i want to let the president make the announcement but you're right. all the options are being considered and we are chuckling, rachel, just as you are at the republicans fighting so hard against the notion of majority rule in the senate. the reconciliation rule is every bit as much a rule of the senate as the filibuster rule is. they love the filibuster but don't want to allow the american public to have an up or down majority vote. about whether to reform insurance abuses.

i think you'll hear the president lay out a strategy where we've debated this, we've taken republican ideas into account in the bill that passed the senate. now is the time to act and the american public wants to see that washington can act. >> republicans are starting to shift now to say that after health reform passes, if they're not able to stop it, they will start immediately to campaign to repeal health reform. any take on that? >> i hope they do, rachel. i want them to campaign in favor of insurance company abuses that kick people off policies when they get sick. i want them to campaign and say they want to now reimpose more prescription drug costs on seniors. i want them to campaign and say it's wrong that parents are now able to keep their kids on their policies until they're 27. they need to kick them all off the policies now. they are fighting very hard against this because they're petrified it's going to pass. they know it's going to do good things for americans. they know that their record of obstruction trying to block health reform is going to go very hard for them come november.

your point at the top of the hour about reconciliation and how it's been used, it's been used over and over again. this majority rule principle is a rule of the senate that has been used often by republicans. it's been used repeatedly to reform the health care system. it's been used by republicans to pass bills with much greater fiscal impact -- the bush tax cuts -- than this health care plan. they love to use it except when they -- when they see us wanting to use it. but, again, majority rule is what americans understand. this bill has now passed both houses by a significant majority in the senate. time to fix it and make it happen. >> the reason that reconciliation is on the table right now, that these fixes between the two bills may pass by that process, is because republicans have pledged to filibuster not only this but everything -- the senate is essentially 100% filibustered body at this point. >> right. >> it's possible to work around that when you can using reconciliation. reconciliation is also a very awkward tool for doing all of the business of the united

states senate even though i believe it would work rather easily for what they're trying to do with health reform. what about the overall problem of how many filibusters there are? >> well, it is the case, rachel, as you point out, that the filibuster rule is in place for a certain, you know, kind of issue and the republicans are just running roughshod with it. they've used it to filibuster repeatedly noncontroversial matters and you know what they're trying to do when, if they can't succeed on the filibuster then they turn around and vote yes on the bill. they're trying to block the american public from being able to get up or down votes on critical matters and when the up or down votes are called then they suddenly put themselves in the yes column for things like the jobs bill that they passed last week. what are we going to do to keep them from being able to carry this strategy out? i've heard the senate talk about a couple of strategies. one of the simple ones is if you want to filibuster let's really make you filibuster. let's go back to the mr. smith goes to washington days where if you want to use that tool you got to stand on your feet and you got to look in the camera now and argue why it's good to

let insurance companies continue to kick people off policies for preexisting conditions and others. i think we've probably changed the rule and not made people stand on their feet and face the american public and explain what they're doing and i hope the senate might consider changing the filibuster rules at a minimum to make people, you know, be straight forward about what they're up to. >> i would be remiss in having you here if i didn't ask you about a couple electoral issues that we have learned about today. in arkansas today, incumbent democratic senator blanche lincoln learned that she is getting a primary challenge from the state's democratic lieutenant governor. we've also learned that harold ford will not be mounting a primary challenge against kirsten gillibrand in new york state. did the party at the national level weigh in on either of those decisions and will you? >> the answer is, we have not weighed in on either of the decisions of harold ford or lieutenant governor harter. in harold ford's case obviously a strong democrat. i think with a great future in the democratic party.

my sense is, you know, he went around and surveyed and found that while people felt strongly about him, senator gillibrand had a very, very dedicated group of supporters within the state party and, you know, i think he made the decision that discretion was the better part of valor in that instance, but i think he's going to continue to be a real strong voice within the democratic party. i just learned within the last couple hours about the situation in arkansas and haven't really dug into that one very much. i do know that today at the white house robert gibbs talked about the president's support for senator lincoln, that she's worked closely with him, and, you know, given that statement from the white house i'm sure we're going to be taking the same tack. but that's just one that i learned about shortly before i came on the show. >> prepare to hear from the left on blanche lincoln, mr. chairman. they've made their feelings about this one known in a lot of fund-raising already today. it's going to be a real hot topic within the party. >> i'm sure it will, rachel.

i just, you know -- one of the things i know having been a democrat in virginia is not every state is like every other and the definitions of left, right, and center, you know, kind of depend on who your electorate is. >> chairman tim kaine of the democratic national committee, thank you very much for your time tonight, sir. really appreciate it. >> glad to be with you. thanks. so last summer was kind of fun, wasn't it? all those seething town hall meetings with the shouting and the death panels and the people with guns and the signs comparing president obama to hitler? good times. those times are coming back apparently. details on that in a moment. and later, on the interview tonight i'll talk with harry markopolos, the man who tried to blow the whistle on bernie madoff. if the s.e.c. had listened when harry markopolos first approached them, $43 billion could have been saved. that's billion with a "b." please do stay with us. clear some snow? spread a little warmth? maxwell house gives you a full-flavored cup of coffee.

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magnitude 8.8 earthquake that shook chile on saturday was so powerful it may have changed the way the earth rotates on its axis and made the length of a day here on earth shorter. because the quake shifted hundreds of miles of rock, it actually changed the distribution of weight on the planet, which moves the axis around which the globe rotates. nasa geo physicist richard gross told bloomberg news today that according to his calculations the earth's axis likely shifted by three inches because of the quake and the length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 micro seconds. in chile the official death toll from the massive quake is now above 720. that number is expected to rise. almost 2 million people's homes have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. secretary of state hillary clinton is on a latin american trip right now due in chile tomorrow. she will bring with her 20 satellite phones and a technician to set them up. usaid is also mobilizing a field hospital, communication, support, and water purification systems at the request of the chilean government. if you would like to donate to relief efforts via your mobile phone here are a few options.

text the word chile to 25383 to donate $10 to habitat for humanity or send the word rebuild to 50555 to make a $10 donation to operation usa or you can text chile to 20222 to donate $10 to world vision. we will have more ways that you can help posted on our website at rachel.msnbc.com. we love getting our outback dirty. because it seems like the dirtier it gets, the more it shines. the subaru outback®. motor trend's 2010 sport/utility of the year®. ♪ ♪

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hey, remember all the shouting and the stalling and screaming that was last august? when suddenly health reform was a communist plot to kill your grandmother? when the idea of death panels was a thing the president of the united states had to debunk? well, the summer of 2009 might

be making a comeback because the highly organized, well funded groups responsible for much of the insanity of last august are apparently becoming reenergized by the fact that health reform really looks like it's going to pass now. "the washington post" reporting on anti-health reform interest groups newly dispatching lobbyists and launching new ad campaigns in a last ditch effort to fight reform. americans for prosperity, for example, tells "the post" it bought $250,000 in tv ads last week and is planning more anti-reform ads and rallies this month. the health insurance lobby group ahip says it is making a big effort to fight reform now and a conservative organization called 60 plus has announced a $500,000 ad campaign aimed at getting 18 conservative house democrats to vote against reform. in case you don't remember who all these groups are from last time around, here's a refresher. let's start with americans for prosperity. this group deserves lots of credit for the summer of the sweaty, screaming town hall meetings. they're the people who brought

you the anti-health reform tour bus with the giant, bloody hand print painted on the side. their contribution to the political discourse includes this guy who spoke at a rally they cosponsored in pueblo, colorado. >> if this new obama cure xrarm comes to fruition, when you reach 65 and every five years thereafter, you're going to have to have a counseling session with some federal air head. part of this process is called end of life counseling and part of the end of life counseling can be an end of life order. what does that mean? end of life. another word for that is death. order. what's another word for that? a sentence. now, you folks review with me a little bit as i recall stalin in the 1920s issued about 20

million end of life orders for his fellow russians. pol pot did it during the vietnam war. he issued about 2 million end of life orders. adolf hitler issued 6 million end of life orders. he called his program the final solution. i kind of wonder what we're going to call ours. >> the president of the group at whose event that man was speaking, americans for prosperity, was a guest on this show twice last year. after his organization initially called that video a fraud and denied that that speech was given at one of their events, here's what tim phillips, the head of americans for prosperity, told me on this show about that speech and that kind of rhetoric. >> having speakers at your events saying that obama care is like pol pot and the holocaust. >> i haven't said that. >> but your speakers have. >> a speaker at an event cosponsored by us. we do not control the podium. >> we do not control the podium. not we denounce that kind of

rhetoric. that's a bad idea. not it has no place at our events but we do not control the podium at the events that we sponsor. tim phillips also refused during the course of his appearances on this show to disclose who his funders are, but he did use this show as a platform from which to solicit more corporate funding for his organization. >> we're happy to take corporate money, so if there are more corporations watching tonight feel free to give to us. >> okay. >> if you're watching tonight and you want to give to us and you're a corporation we would love to have more corporate funding. >> more anonymous corporate money with which to fight against health reform please and with which to say president obama is hitler. also a little refresher on america's health insurance plans or ahip. this organization's motives are easy enough to identify. they are of course the health insurance lobby. as a reminder, their anti-reform greatest hits include encouraging insurance industry employees to attend town hall meetings to oppose reform back in august, even sending out

anti-public option august recess talking points for use at said town hall meetings. also in october of last year ahip threatened via a widely debunked study to raise health insurance rates astronomically if health reform did pass. by widely debunked i mean the firm that conducted the study backed away from its own findings saying ahip only wanted it to evaluate the parts of the health reform bill they didn't like. and of course since health reform still hasn't passed, everybody's premiums are totally holding steady or going down right now right? isn't life awesome without health reform? yeah. and then of course there is 60 plus, the organization that bills itself as the conservative alternative to the aarp. for its part, the aarp exposed 60 plus back in 2006 as a front group funded by the pharmaceutical industry to stop state level health reforms that would cut into the drug industry's bottom line. the primary objective of the 60 plus literature that i picked up at cpac seems to proudly embrace the group's ties to americans for prosperity.

they, them, the bloody hand print on the bus people. if the renewed efforts of these groups turn out to be anything like their last big anti-reform push, if march is anything like august, we are in for a long, nasty corporate funded month. except maybe this time the media will ask harder questions about who these folks are and who funds them. right? maybe? please? and we've been open 24 hours a day -- 7 days a week. and we've made a tremendous amount of progress. you know, safety and reliability is top priority. i mean i got a family, too. i got a mother, a grandmoth, kids, nd we all drive in tse cs. i am 100% confident in the product. male announcer ] we're grateful to technicians like ronny who are helpings provide you with fe and reliae vehicles. for mo information, please visit toyota.com. and all your little mile-pebbles ameriprise financial can help.

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who brought down bernie madoff? bernie madoff ran a fake business, a fake investment scheme. he told people he was shrewdly playing the market with their money earning them a solid, never-changing 12% annual rate of return. that meant you could double your money by investing with bernie in six years. sounds great, right? but in reality, bernie madoff wasn't trading or investing in anything. he was just taking people's money and using it to pay off other investors. it was a ponzi scheme, a $65 billion ponzi scheme that unraveled in december 2008, about a month after the presidential election. here's the thing, though. who brought bernie madoff down? who exposed him? who caught him and got him arrested? no one did. madoff turned himself in when his ponzi scheme collapsed on its own. ponzi schemes need a constant supply of new money to keep them going. when the economy had a stroke at the end of bush's second term, there wasn't enough new money around to keep the scheme going, plus some investors in the scheme found themselves in need of cash when the economy turned.

it was when they tried to take their money out of madoff's supposed funds that it all fell apart. the money wasn't there. in retrospect, the warning signs are like red neon on a dark night. even as bernie madoff was known to be managing billions of dollars and paying out 12% annually to all his investors, there were no signs anywhere in the market that he was actually trading anything with anyone in order to make anyone any money. if he were trading, what he said he was trading, there weren't in existence enough of those things to explain where all of his money and all of his market activity was going. as the market went up and down and bubbled and crashed, madoff's returns stayed supernaturally steady. the fake returns he generated about his supposed performance in the market showed him to be a batter with a .960 batting average year after year after year and nobody said, this is too good to be true. nobody caught him. $65 billion, a total 100% fraud

that went on for decades, and nobody caught him. he just blew up on his own. inspires confidence, right? why would anybody invest in the united states if this is the kind of policing that we do against theft, fraud, even the most basic con artists' schemes that have been around for generations? the interview tonight is with a man who figured out madoff's scheme ten years ago, who went to the s.e.c. five separate times with the evidence of what mr. madoff was doing only to be ignored by the people who were supposed to be watching our backs. he is harry markopolos the madoff whistleblower. his book "no one would listen" is out today. thanks very much for being here. >> good to be here. >> is that right that nobody got him? it just blew up of its own accord, right? >> natural causes. >> you were working in the financial industry in 2000. your own firm asked you essentially to try to compete with the returns that bernie madoff was giving. when you looked at what he was doing, what was the tipoff to you that something was done. >> the chart that went up at a 45-degree angle without variation. markets go up and down.

he only went up. >> so that was not exactly high level math. it was just, this is too good to be true. >> impossible. clearly impossible. >> i can understand how individual investors, individual families could get hoodwinked by the sorts of false statements, false paperwork he put out. the other things that madoff did to make himself seem legit, but how did wall street firms get hooked? i mean, funds investing billions of dollars with him and never checked his math. they were never suspicious the way you were. >> i'd say the wall street -- the big firms on wall street knew something was wrong and walked away. it was all the other firms around the globe that rushed in especially the europeans. the europeans came in in large numbers. they were probably more europeans in here, i suspect, than americans actually. >> so in terms of the people who did versus didn't get involved with madoff obviously somebody is offering a 12% return year after year you'd think everybody would put their money with them. but you think that some firms

did due diligence, realized that madoff was not legit and stayed away. but still they didn't blow the whistle. they didn't tell anybody? >> when you live in a glass house you don't throw stones and self-regulation doesn't work and i think this case proved it. hundreds if not thousands of people knew and no one reported it to the s.e.c. except my team and maybe two or three other whistle blowers. that was it. >> weren't those other firms though also competing with madoff? wouldn't they have had a reason to try to get him out of the market? >> i'm sure all of them lost business to madoff. i know all the firms in boston lost customers to madoff because how can you compete against somebody with perfect returns? >> still, there is the issue of the incentive. you don't want to be seen as somebody who is a snitch if you're also getting away with stuff that you don't want to get caught for but you would think if he is controlling tens of billions of dollars you'd think that a firm like goldman sachs or somebody else would want him off the table. >> i wanted him off the table. you would think that the other firms did. but i guess i was the only one that thought like that. >> it does seem damning that madoff got audited every year. this isn't one of the things i thought about before i read your

book. and you describe him as sort of shopping around for auditors, right? >> that was his largest feeder fund. fairfield greenwich used three different countries for three different years. a glaring red flag. they cloeld about $7.5 billion they sent into the madoff complex. glaring red flag. >> they're shopping around for auditors that are going to give them a clean bill of health but indeed they find name brand auditors who give them a clean bill of health just like enron did, tyco, all of these firms that collapsed under fraud did. >> the securities they were auditing never existed. all they had to do was make a phone call and find out who did madoff buy these securities from. no one ever made those calls apparently. >> in terms of what we look to the financial industry and wall street and the big accounting firms for, we expect that they're small "c" conservative, that they're doing due diligence, they're following the math, they're making sure that everything checks out. their incentive to not do it is just because it's easier to get paid for not doing the work? >> it seems like a lot of people

got paid a lot of money and no one did the proper work. no one asked any questions of madoff. no one did any due diligence questions on a normal checklist. i don't know how he got away with it. it wasn't only the accounting firms. it was big banks, custodian banks, it was third-party plan administrators clearing the trades and saying madoff, sure, these trades are legit. this is how we keep his performance. there were no trades, though. what were the plan administrators doing? i still don't know. >> as you document they were getting paid giant fees -- they were getting giant fees from bernie madoff to keep shoveling money to him without asking questions. >> everybody got paid a lot of money. he paid over 90% of the total fees in the scheme to the people that weren't asking questions of those feeder funds. >> yeah. and the people who were asking questions like you got ignored. you sort of tried unsuccessfully to be the madoff whistleblower in time. what you've ended up being is the s.e.c. whistleblower. right? i mean, you are exposing how badly we need good regulators on wall street, what a joke it is

to have self-regulation but also how lame our current regulators are. how seriously do you feel those concerns are being taken now? >> none. no one has been fired at any of the banking regulators for ignoring the banking crisis before it was happening. before it unfolded. the s.e.c.? no one has been held accountable. no one has been fired. people only get promoted at these agencies and that's the tragedy. >> are we doing anything any better now than we were when you were being ignored by the s.e.c. for eight years? >> yes. the s.e.c. is turning itself around as quickly as they can. it's reorganized itself. it's taking ponzi schemes seriously. they moved them to the top of the priority list from the bottom and are going after them aggressively. they are sending people for training but they have the wrong staff. they have way too many lawyers. they don't have enough people that understand finance. >> you're a quantitative guy, a numbers guy, math guy. those folks are not generally involved in the regulatory agencies? is that what you're saying? >> but they need to be brought onboard, compensated correctly, and incentivized.

>> you are a full-time fraud investigator now. >> full-time. >> it doesn't work -- one of the things that's interesting about your personal story here is doing that doesn't work as a career unless there are cops who you can turn in the robbers to. right? it's one thing to expose the fraud and put together the case but if nobody responds once you bring it to the authorities' attention you're not getting anywhere as a fraud investigator. have you ever thought about instead of doing what you're doing going to work for the government to show them how it's done? >> i do indirectly. i do give my cases to state attorney generals who do act on them. jerry brown has one of my cases. his pension fund in california, millions of his pensioners have been defrauded by a bank state street in a foreign currency fraud and i turned that one in. he is acting on it. i'm hoping other people will act similarly. tens of billions in pension assets are being stolen. i think the states do act. the federal government, the s.e.c. needs to wake up, smell the coffee. >> the book will probably help at least if it does its job. harry markopolos, thank you for everything you tried to do and for what you're still trying to

do and thanks for making time to taus talk to us. >> great being here. >> good luck. thank you. okay. what would you call a senator giving a one-finger salute to a reporter shortly after voting against extending unemployment benefits? i would call it something like painfully apt symbolism. you can decide for yourself. that story and the video, next. please stick around. if you're o, you can get... your 90-day prescription supply from a place... you already trust to keep you staying well. walgreens. you'll have the confidence of knowing your walgreens... pharmacist has personally checked your medications. and you'll be in control of how and when you pick them up. so you can relax and enjoy all your benefits. cheese! walgreens. there's a way to stay well. the sparkly flakes. the honey-baked bunches! the magic's in the mix. my favorite part? eating it. honey bunches of oats.

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we have a super cool moment of geek for you tonight. everything you've ever wanted to know about pluto the planet. ex-planet. ex-planet. ex. it's ex. sorry. it's been a very rough transition for me. the man who kicked pluto out of the solar system astro physicist dr. neil degrasse tyson will join us in a moment. first a couple holy mackerel stories in today's news. as you know the united states senate is where policy goes to die. it's like a roach motel. things go in but they never come out. republicans have made it a policy to filibuster absolutely everything in the senate. miraculously, though, senate republicans decided to join with democrats to extend unemployment benefits. but before hell had a chance to

freeze over, before a single icicle formed senator bunning decided that was too reasonable. he put a one-man kibosh on the jobless aid bill personally stopping unemployment benefits to 400,000 people who would otherwise be getting them. and there will be more. the longer bunning holds out. bunning's action also forced the furlough of 2,000 department of transportation workers. he brought millions of dollars worth of highway and bridge projects to a screeching halt. he cut medicare reimbursements to doctors by more than 20% and he even threatened the tv signals of 500,000 people living in rural areas who receive broadcast channels through a special government deal with satellite tv companies. and even though furloughed federal transportation workers and doctors who treat senior citizens on medicare and americans who will lose their local tv signals and their unemployment benefits have reasons to be peeved with senator bunning, it is senator bunning who is angry. he's angry about all the media attention he's getting for doing this and he's angry about his right to ride alone in a very special elevator.

>> excuse me. this is a senator-only elevator. >> can i come on the elevator? >> no you may not. >> can you tell us why you're blocking this vote? >> i already did explain it. >> well, what is the issue? are you concerned about the people who are unemployed? >> excuse me. i've got to go to the floor. >> senator, can you just explain why you're holding this up? i'm sure you have an explanation. >> excuse me. >> okay. are you concerned about those that are going to lose their benefits? >> later when an abc news producer tried again to talk with senator bunning, he flipped him the gesture involving a finger that is not the thumb, not the forefinger, not the ring finger or the pinkie finger. senator bunning's gesture was returned today in a more metaphorical way by senate majority leader harry reid who was reportedly planning to get around senator bunning by reintroduing this matter in a way that bunning procedurally cannot derail. stay tuned on that one. next up one of the most conservative democrats in the senate arkansas's blanche lincoln is up for re-election

this year. it's a prospect which has led her to be even more ostentatiously conservative than usual recently, a tried and true conserv-a-dem strategy since they believe their only competition is with republicans and they never have to worry about an angry base in their own party. blanche lincoln took that assumption to the breaking point and beyond this past year when she crusaded against the public option in health reform despite polls showing how much arkansans liked it. after a lifetime of earning it, blanche lincoln now has a democratic primary challenger. as we discussed with democratic party chairman tim kaine at the top of the hour the challenger is arkansas lieutenant governor bill halter. mr. halter announced this morning that he would challenge lincoln in the democratic primary. he will be running as the progressive alternative to the senator as evidenced by his record and by a totally unscientific skin deep analysis of these two democrats' websites. they're like inverted red/blue versions of each other. look at that. i know that's a superficial

analysis. but come on. wow. senator lincoln does have a $5 million war chest, but lieutenant governor halter has a pickup truck, seriously -- it already appeared in his materials. and liberal groups are already helping with the money thing. as of about an hour ago act blue had raised more than $100,000 for mr. halter and moveon.org had raised about $430,000 for him. that's more than 80% of its stated fund-raising goal for a lieutenant governor halter for the week. lieutenant governor halter will be a guest on this show on wednesday and senator lincoln is welcome on this show any time. we have asked about a million times. she has never been interested in being a guest on this program. senator lincoln, we would love to have you. really. it's not a trap. come on. come on. these tomatoes, they're bye bye. hunt's flash steams their tomatoes and that keeps in that backyard garden fresh taste. guys, dishes. isn't it time to take a fresh look at your tomatoes?

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working together is a thing of beauty. ( inhales deeply ) you have to be in sync every step of the way. like the incredible scent of gain detergent... and fabric softener. ( inhales deeply ) the key... is staying focused. ahhh! magnifico! carlos. the incredible matching scents... of gain detergents and fabric softeners. sniff sniff hooray! love him or just like him very much, the man who officially kicked pluto out of the solar system will be right here next. he's dr. neil degrasse tyson.

pluto's really puny, right? but so is mercury. >> pluto is a lot punier. 1/20 the mass. of mercury. >> less than the mass of the moon. >> touchdown right there. >> that's from neil degrasse

tyson's new pbs nova documentary "the pluto files." dr. tyson is the guy who killed pluto. that is, it was dr. tyson and his team at the hayden planetarium at new york city who decided ten years ago to not call pluto a planet anymore and instead classify it as part of a distant asteroid belt. instead of remembering the planets by memorizing my very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas mercury veinous earth mars jupiter saturn uranus neptune pluto. you instead have to memorize my very excellent mother just served us nachos. no more pizza. no more pluto. for being the first physicist to reclassify pluto he got hate mail from third graders who wanted to know what he had done with the planet they loved and who no one admits was the inspiration for the name of mickey's dog. turns out americans are weirdly intensely in love with pluto. it's sort of america's planet. it was the only planet discovered by an american. that was clyde tombaugh.

80 years ago, he made his own telescopes on the family farm. in the pluto files dr. tyson goes to a barbershop in the hometown of dr. tombaugh in streeter, illinois and finds out what he means to the town today. we're very proud of. very proud of him, what he did. >> and so you learned about him in high school? in elementary school? >> third grade, maybe. so his name comes up. and you learn he is a local guy. >> a streiter boy makes good. in third grade, wow. >> so you feel some pride? >> oh, you bet. always do. always here, that guy discovered pluto. >> walt disney named a dog after him. >> there you go. >> that's true. >> so how do you feel about pluto, dr. tyson? >> joining us now is the man who dared to move pluto, and then get a straight razor shave in

streiter, illinois. thank you for being here. >> happy to be here. >> i want to start with the basics. what is a planet? [ laughter ] is there is an agreed upon definition for what a planet is? >> at this moment there is a voted upon definition that doesn't have full agreement by the entire community. but planet is big enough to be round. >> okay. >> and strong enough, if you will, to have completely -- almost completely cleared its orbit of other debris that could change its mass over time. so in other words, the big eight -- well, there is the big four, jupiter, saturn, and neptune. and pluto, puny compared with these eight. so pluto is mixed with a whole group of other icy bodies in the outer solar system. the belt of comets. comets. the belt of icy bodies.

it hasn't cleared that operator. there is much more mass of other stuff out there than pluto itself. in all the other eight, they basically cleared their orbit. definition of planet have, you cleared your orbit? if it's a yes, you put a check there. are you big enough to be round? you've got eight planets. if you're little, then if you're rocky, the rocks define what shape you are. so you could be craggy, you could look like a idaho potato. but above a certain size, it's a beautiful fact of physics that above a certain size, the gravity forces your physical dimensions to take the shape of a sphere. >> also true with people. i'm sorry. all right. >> go around asking people if they're planets or not? >> no, i don't at all. but the thing about pluto that is fascinating is people do get upset about it. >> americans primarily. they get intense, intensely emotional. >> but i didn't know before watching your documentary that pluto was discovered by an

american. and so that doesn't explain why i had this emotional feeling. >> exactly. so in my sort of casual statistics, about 10% of americans who felt strongly about pluto knew that an american had discovered it. so the source had to be some other -- had to be some other force acting on these emotions. >> do you know what it is? >> well, not initially. i mean, i scratched my head, and i looked around. i sniffed around. and i said wait a minute, there is this dog we all know, mickey's dog that has the same tenure in the hearts and minds of americans. why? because it was first sketched the same year, coincidentally, that pluto the cosmic object was discovered. >> wow. >> so 80 years they've been in the hearts and minds of americans. and when you first learn about the planets? first, second, third grade. when are you watching cartoons? first, second, third grade. and i think that link stays with us even if only subliminally throughout our entire lives. >> i also think pluto is an underdog, not related to the dog part of that.

but we think oh, it's the puny guy. we're americans. we like the underguy. >> that's okay too. if there is someone who is not favored to win a contest and they win you cheer them even harder and you're rooting for them. pluto was certainly the underdog, the puniest of the planets. now in its new zone, it's the largest of the icy bodies. it's the king of the comets. i think it's happier there. it's totally happier there. >> that was the exact same construction used to make the nerd guy cool in "16 candles." he got to be king of the nerds instead of the lowest. when you met with the family of the man who discovered pluto, were they mad at you? >> i was worried about it. his widow, who is almost 100 and his sons and nieces and nephews, they all gathered on his home in new mexico to greet me as i came in. i was kind of worried. as a new yorker, i was ready for hey, what did you do with our planet? i was ready for some confrontational encounters. but they were so nice. again, as a new yorker, this is suspiciously nice.

they got something cooking in the back. no, but they were genuinely nice. and i think they appreciated that there was this attention given to clyde tombaugh. forget pluto. the fact is i came to learn of him, learn about him as an american hero. he was a farm boy from streiter, illinois. some guy in the barbershop, he has a mural of him down main street. there is a stained glass window in a church in new mexico that has his life on it. and he came out of a farm. and he was looking up while everyone said till the soils. he built his own telescopes. he had a relationship with the universe that ended up becoming realized as a professional astronomer. that's an american story, and not enough people know it. >> and that makes them i bet feel a lot better. >> just to make them nice with me. they were genuinely nice, nice people. >> dr. neil degrasse tyson,

thank you so much. i really appreciate your time, and thank you for making this cool documentary. >> i'm happy. thanks for thinking about it. thank you. >> neil degrasse tyson is the director of the hayden planetary yum. the pluto files were inspired by dr. tyson's book of the same title. it's going to air tomorrow pbs at 8:00 eastern. coming up, keith addresses his experience about life panels and his experience with them. we'll be right back. stay with us. for-barbers business. and the this-won't- hurt-a-bit business. because we don't just work here. we live here. these are our families. and our neighbors. and by changing lives we're in more than the energy business we're in the human energy business. chevron.

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conservative texas republican primary voters like parodies of abba's dancing queen. that was an attack ad against kay bailey hutchison. she might have been doing better had she pulled the trigger on her devastating ad which of course is set to gimme gimme gimme. until then you can e-mail us rachel at msnbc.com. "hardball" is next. good night. 216 votes. that's what it's all about. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. leading off tonight. reality bites. democratic leaders are charging ahead on health care reform and what does speaker pelosi say to house democrats who could lose their seats in november if they vote for it?