balloons are still here "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." we asked you what you're doing at this top of the show. alex has answe. >> arlene says >> have a 3-year-old and 1-year-old. i feel for you. what's next? >> i'm up 72 straight hours after surgery to replace two plates in my risk after an accident on a bicycle. painkillers take me away. >> if you're up 72 straight hours, those are not painkillers, that's something else. some people did it in their 20s and aren't proud of it anymore. that's just the truth. ""mornin "morng j"morning joe" starts th morning. >> the whole time colbert spoke, they only laughed at one thing really. >> i trust following my testimony, both sides will work together on this issue in the best interest of the american people, as you always do.

>> that's what they laughed at in the room. see, it's funny because it's sad. >> pretty good. it's true, though. >> it is. >> good morning, everybody. 6:00 on the east coast. welcome to "morning joe." mike barnicle is here and he's already made some trouble. i've been here 30 seconds. >> i'm trying to have a calming effect. >> no. just stop. also, we have with us, thank god, publisher and owner of the "daily news." mort zuckerman, great to have you here. a good show today. >> looking great. >> a handsome boy, isn't he? >> great. >> strapping. >> did i miss something? >> no. >> big show today.

colin powell will be with us, and alma powell will be with us at the 8:00 hour. >> general powell and his wife, alma. >> part of education nation. they will talk about something specifically near and dear to their hearts an organization they have been working on for years and a goal in life to make a difference. what's so funny? >> it's been a great week. i'm happy. glad to see you happy. willie. >> no, it hasn't, actually. broadcasting has been great. >> i'm playing this game under protest until i get a new chair. >> also, we have dockmentarian and baseball historian, ken burns on the show tonight. >> did you see that? it's fabulous. >> i will do the news and pretend you all aren't here. >> let's go to the news. >> why would you say that?

>> that's awful. >> what have we done? >> you want me to tell everyone what you said before the show started? >> please. >> i don't think you do. i think you just need to be quiet. >> you're making the little one nervous. >> for the first time since the publication of bob woodward's new book, "obama wars," biden speaking out about his clashes on afghanistan policy. and the last word, lawrence asked him what afghanistan would look like today if the administration had adopted biden's strategy of fewer troops. >> barack obama's president of the united states. i told him i would give him my unvarnished opinion and back it up with the facts as i saw them. the president had the most thorough going review. the american people should read bob woodward's book, because at the end of the book, they will see a president who was a

leader, a president who approached problems in an analytical way and made sound decisions everyone signed on to including joe biden. >> the vice president also addressed the part of woodward's book where biden reportedly called special envoy richard holbrooke, "the most egotistical bastard i've ever met." >> it will not shock you in a discussion, people may or may not have talked about dick's ego just like they talk about my being too loquacious. what they didn't do, didn't say what the end of that sentence was. i told the president he's the best man for the job. he should have the job. this is one of the moto talented diplomats for 30 years, he's been my friend for 35 years. i think he is the right guy for the job and so richard knows that. >> we have to do that. that's what i -- joe biden has just given america a gift. >> what is that? >> any time a bad quote comes

out -- >> this -- >> you just say -- you didn't hear the end of the sentence. you can say, i really think that such-and-such is the worst bast remarks d on the face of the earth, i hate him, i hate him, i hate him, oh, but you didn't do the rest of the sentence but he just may well be the "best damn" person i've ever met. >> i refuse to even conduct a conversation about those two points. the one about biden being loquacious or holbrook having a huge ego because both of those points are true and they're not breaking news. it's silly. if that's interesting in the book -- >> no. i'm actually more interested, mike barnicle in afghanistan. >> that is interesting. >> that we were talking about before, joe biden. >> think about the boy we met over the weekend and go from there. >> we gave a speech at a college and coming back and saw a 20-year-old kid -- >> boy.

>> big guy, just crying his eyes out in the airport. turned, was embarrassed, in uniform, walked over to the window where we were sitting and just sat there, just tears streaming and -- >> he was going away for 6 1/2 months. >> for the third time to afghanistan. it was just so heartbreaking. we all understand, that's part of war, that's part of what these guys signed up for, but he knows -- >> he didn't know what he was signing up for. >> why are we sending him a third time? he would understand why he was going in 2001, even in 2004. 2005. but now? he knows he's going over there. there's really no -- no end game. it's heartbreaking. >> i finished reading the book, i finished reading bob's book last evening and the extent to which pakistan is completely, as

far as we're concerned, unreachable almost, in terms of trying to get them to help us more, to get them to stop lying to us about their intelligence services and the intelligence network in pakistan, their relationship with the taliban, to read it is frightening. because to read it, to read the truth of it in bob's book, is to ask yourself, why are we doing this? why are we doing this? >> asking why we're still there or why barack obama tripled the number of troops. >> i think if there is an issue that is still legitimate, it is the basic strategy that was decided upon and adopted, that is it's still a very contentious judgment on their part, the difference between counter insurgency and -- which is, you know, really, you're trying to pacify the population. >> right. >> and that requires a huge commitment of troops. >> it's counter-terrorism, where

you kill terrorists versus counter insurgency where you basically rebuild the country. we can't do that in afghanistan. >> not in afghanistan. that is the problem. you justice the decision because every major terrorist attack on the west came out offing of. you want to find one way to do something. >> not anymore. there are 50 al qaeda members there. >> between 60 and 100. >> and this business of invading countries because they're hotbeds of terrorism, i guess we have to go into iran, yemen, all these other places lieberman and lindsey and mccain want us to invade but we can't. >> i supported the original decision. as you get into it, it's just not possible, not pragmatic, not feasible, the sad part. >> the human face, you talked to the boy. i say boy, because as we walked away, i realized the kid's two years younger than joey. >> what i saw was the most hurt,

alienated, disrespondent confused look on a young man's face, who felt like he was walking back through the gates of hell again, completely alone. >> he told me that. >> you reach a point, i would imagine at the age of 20, 21, his third redeployment? >> yeah. >> you reach a point internally, mental, i'm not coming back this time. i've cheated the thing twice. >> cheated death. >> yeah. >> i've got in a way with it. >> that's what he looked like. >> i'm not coming back. >> he was calling his mom and calling his sister and calling people. you could tell he thought he was calling people for the last time. so, yeah, it was awful. it was awful. >> we'll talk about it more. we're trying to stay in tough with his sister and him. in last night's interview, on "the last word" the vice president also revised comments he made earlier that day that the democratic party's base

should quote stop whining, speaking at a fund-raiser yesterday for three congressional candidates, biden said democrats should remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. last night, biden dialed back on that criticism. >> there's some on the democratic base, not the core of it, that are angry because we didn't get every single thing they want. it's time to buck up here, understand we can make things better, continue to move forward and but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for, in terms of the initiatives we put forward. >> biden also gave his take on the republican party. and sarah palin. >> this is not even your father's republican party. these folks don't want to talk, these folks don't want to enter into a compromise, these folks don't want to come up with practical solutions. i know what they're against.

what i don't know is what they're for. >> what do you have to teach democrats about how to stop the palin, no relation by the way on o'donnell, the palin o'donnell phenomenon? >> take them both very seriously. treat them with respect. debate their ideas and don't get diverted by all these silly things that they may or may not have said that have nothing to do with policy. this is a wake-up call to democrats. we have to show up and we have to make our case and focus on the differences, not their personalities. >> he's good. >> i think he's been great on every point he's been asked about. incredibly focused and honest about it. >> the stop whining comment, that was up at manchester, new hampshire yesterday and the state senator from manchester will tell you all the democrats on the national scene, the vice president is the one that gets

to the core with party regulars. they like what he says and like hearing him. they liked it yesterday. stop whining. >> he's a likable guy. joe biden is very likable at a point right now, you look at the poll numbers, barack obama is not as likable as he once was. yet obama is going out campaigning for candidates right now across the country. >> clinton -- >> a lot of democrats don't want him in their districts, that's how unpopular he is. >> president clinton went to stump for richard blumenthal in connecticut over the weekend. >> yeah. >> interesting, he's going for -- he's really -- i'll ask you, they must be sending him out because perhaps he has more of a draw. >> if i were a democrat running in any part of the country, i'd like bill clinton rather than barack obama. barack obama is in a strange place with american people. they don't get him. he seems emotionally detached. we've all said that around the

table but now starting to show up in polls. bill clinton seems so engaged and seems to understand, as he did in 1992, you're talking about manchester, new hampshire. bill clinton's campaign really came alive in 1992, he was campaigning up in new hampshire, was talking to a group of people that had been left behind by a changing economy, where in 2010, we have an economy changing again, puttering along and bill clinton seems to get it to voters more than barack obama. >> he connects. >> he does connect. >> obama does not connect. >> obama seems ackley aloof to more and more voters, in a way bill clinton doesn't. >> there was something in his radio address this week that struck me, about the economy and how he was addressing the camera even, we can talk more about, we can pull up. i will say this. while i think obama has time to evolve, there is a sense of a disconnect here that clinton

fills. having said that, i do feel his legacy still could be education, for this president. it could be a big one. >> there's no doubt. i brought it up yesterday, bill clinton evolved as a leader. if you look at barack obama's approval ratings right now, they're higher than ronald reagan's was at this point, they're higher than bill clinton's was at this point. the question is, does barack obama know how to adjust, the way bill clinton did. >> and reagan -- when reagan's popularity was very low at this point, it's because he supported paul volcker to raise interest rates dramatically and break the back of inflation. in the second half of his term, when interest rates began to ease, he had something to come back with. that is not the case today with obama. >> you mentioned bill clinton in new hampshire in 1992. i was there the day you're referring to, in dunckin donuts

getting a fritter. >> no more of those. >> one woman began to tell him an economic tale of woe. she had lost her job and he went over and hugged her and started talking to her, things are going to get better. it struck me last week, the first questioner to president obama said, you know, i'm exhausted from having to defend you, you could have seen bill clinton leaving the the podium and walking over and hugging her. there's a distance between the president and the public. hates to do with his personality, early in the presidency, two years. >> it's early. >> he's also uncomfortable with the theater of politics in a way bill clinton wasn't, ronald reagan wasn't. you have to actually do things to let people know you care and connect. words sometimes just aren't enough. that's something again, we always have to remember, he in effect is a state senator who jumped straight to being

president of the united states because he was in the u.s. senate even his closest democratic allies said he wasn't there, he was running the second he got there. he has a steep learning curve but has two more years to figure this out. >> i have seen lesser men evolve. i haven't lost hope on this level. >> is she talking about us? >> no. >> did you hear about the segue? >> stop it, please stop it. >> we can't do that. >> up next, an exclusive look inside the political playbooks, sources say raumhm emanuel coul make his decision early on a mayoral run. >> and later, was sarah palin boo'd on last night's "dancing with the stars"? i'm not sure. here's dominica davis. stop it. with a check on the forecast. take it away. >> at the airports, we're looking at no delays, good news.

another rain day for the east coast. we will see scattered showers and thunderstorms and some heavy downpours. the rain gear needed once again. there's a look at today's forecast. rain up and down the i-95 corridor. temperatures on the mild side. it will feel a little bit muggy out there. you are watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks. recently, sharp made a major leap forward

in the science of color with quattron. by adding a fourth color -- yellow... yellow. banana. ...to the standard rgb color system, quattron produces more colors... banana! ...and makes images brighter. banana! banana! when seen in 3d -- whoa! whoa! aah! quattron makes tv so realistic... whoa! ...you won't believe your eyes. [ male announcer ] aquos quattron 3d from sharp. [ engineer laughs ] you have to see it, to see it. let's raise a glass to cookies just out of the oven. to the morning bowl of cereal. and to lactaid® milk. easy to digest and with all the calcium and vitamin d of regular milk. [ female announcer ] lactaid®. the original lactose-free milk. lord of the carry-on. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted. and you rent from national.

because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i deserve this. [ male announcer ] you do, business pro. you do. go national. go like a pro.

when her daughter, bristol, received her weekly criticism from the judge, you really see that momma grizzly she's always

talking about. ♪ >> for me, it had very little to commend it, i'm afraid. >> it was graceful! >> how did she do, willie? bristol? >> it happened too late for this reporter, for the early edition. reports are she did much better. >> really? momma grizzly was there. >> momma grizzly was there. there was some booing. >> she wasn't booed. >> no. >> let the viewers decide. >> the "new york times," the c.i.a. intensifies drone campaign within pakistan in attempts to cripple in afghanistan. and the national spotlight,

perry eyes, as he perhaps to deliver an anti-washington message. and rival airtran, southwest airlines plans to buy it for $1.2 billion. it could combine two of the nation's biggest discount carriers. and authors feel the pinch in the age of e-books. the digital revolution redefines the model of the book industry. texting bans may add risk to roads. comparing the risk of collision and insurance claims in four states before and after they enacted laws while texting and driving. the survey says crash rates rose in three states after bans were enacted. >> you know why that is? >> they're hiding it? >> they're hiding it from the cops. >> we have to --

>> let it go. >> with us now, white house correspondent from "politico," mike has a look at the morning playbook. hi, mike. >> you know what i'm hiding? >> what is that? >> i'm hiding the upcoming paperback, next week with the introduction of one mika brzezinski. >> i felt compelled. i was angry at the moment. >> nobody told me this. >> don't tell joe. >> it's a surprise? >> yes, you are, actually. hello. >> hey, mike. let's talk about rahm emanuel. he could be out by the end of this week, as early as friday, some are saying? is that what you're hearing and if so, who are the likely front runners to take his spot? >> the president had said he would go after the mid-terms. turns out the president, a, wants to get this drama over and, b, rahm needs to get

started, and we will hear as soon as friday. the president will stay inside, inside his comfort zone looking for a successor. pete rouse and valerie jarrett and tom donilon is someone close to him a long time. when you look at names a permanent successor, they are people inside, tom donilon, deputy chief of staff, ron klain, the chief of staff to vice president biden and pete rouse, who could get the job for good. this shows the president is not going to go for sacrificial lamplamp -

-- lambs, not going to go saying he gets it. the change to his team will be judicious but add up. we expect the national security advisor, general jones to go before the end of the year, a slow motion makeover. >> and outside possibilities, tom daschle, john podesta, leon panetta. are these long shots at this point? >> the president would go this way if he needed a surrogate, needed somebody a news figure on their own rather than someone more a manager. right now, looks like they want somebody who can slightly restructure the west wing, get it running well. david plouffe will come back in before axelrod moves to chicago next spring. >> a lot of turnover at the white house. >> i sure hope they get somebody like tom daschle. i was against the rahm choice from the beginning for a lot of reasons. also, he's a house guy. you need a senate guy running that white house. you really do. the house is run like a -- it's

a totalitarian regime. whether republicans or democrats in charge, make rules, you can ram anything through the house. it always breaks down in the senate and daschle understands that. he's also not from chicago. he's a red state guy, a democrat progressive. >> a wonderful man. >> in a red state. >> regardless of who they call chief of staff, they need somebody like tom daschle in there. >> they need a grown-up. >> coming up next, colin and alma powell join us on what they say needs to be done to stop the dropout crisis. next, a monday matchup on two unbeaten rivals, the monsters of the midway an devon heather able to hold off the packers and stay undefeated. j ae

to hold off the packers and stay undefeated. [ female announcer ] stay once...

stay twice... earn a free night!

two separate stays at comfort inn or any of these choice hotels can earn you a free night -- only when you book at choicehotels.com. can earn you a free night -- i but i justve my 5 employcan't afford it.ance, i have diabetes. i didn't miss a premium payment for 10 years. and i'm worried if i lose my job, i won't be able to afford insurance. when i graduated from college, i lost my health insurance. the minute i got sick, i lost my insurance. not anymore. not anymore. not anymore. america's healthcare reforms change lives for the better. to find out how it can help you, visit us at americasfairhealthcare.org it's not just fair, it's the law.

you drive your segue -

segue -- segway in the rain. >> 31 past the hour. a quick look at the news. stop it! president obama kicks off a -- a three state cross-country trip this morning in an effort to generate voter enthusiasm ahead of the november mid-term elections. the president's tour starts in new mexico. stop. okay. >> he's going to hold a small backyard event to sell his party's plans to fix the economy and heads to the university of wisconsin and madison, courting young voters. tomorrow, he holds another backyard talk with local families in des moines, iowa. north korea's kim jong-il made his youngest son, kim jong um, a four star general that he's getting ready to succeed the ailing leader. the promotion of the 28-year-old

kim jong un came at a party to elect its top leadership and also to appoint other family members to take the communist dynasty into a third generation. >> let's do it. >> jimmy carter was there. >> jimmy carter was there helping with the transition. >> nuclear weapons. in good shape. >> self appointed envoy. >> secret weapons. vaporizing the west. >> let's do some sports in honor of james earl carter. how about monday night football? undefeated rivals, packers and bears, to the fourth quarter. packers up 10-7 and make the mistake of punting to devin hester, something nobody does anymore and here's what happens.

hester bolts to the outside, finds a hole, jumps over the kicker to score. later, two minutes left. game tied at 17, packers driving hopefully to win the game, aaron rodgers dumps it off to james jones an he's stripped. check out the replay. ryan eurlacher drops the hammer. and the final seconds of the game, bears win 20-17 off that turnover, they remain undefeated now. how about the chicago bears 3-0. the big right arm of jay cutler. sad news from the world of football. hall of fame quarterback kicker passed away yesterday. he played football for an incredible 26 seasons, longer than anyone has done that. he signed with chicago an as rookie in 1949 and retired in

1976, at the age of 49. >> amazing. >> at the time of retirement he held the all time nfl pro scoring record, 2,000 points. george played for colts and oilers and best remembered for his nine years with raiders. he was 83 years old. at age 48, this was not a gimmick, they weren't trotting him out to sell tickets. he was actually a good player at the age of 48. >> i remember i'd be watching monday night football with my dad and darrell im mwould be ou there zipping passes and saying, put in blanda and he was 46, 47 and he would go out there and move the raiders. >> came from a great cornerback part of this country, outside pittsburgh where he came from, joe montana came from, dan marino and two or three others.

>> he said he actually saw the face of god when he met bear bryant, and said, this must be what god looks like. >> mark halpern is feeling emotional. he's in iowa. but he wrote in. >> he wrote in a statement, a big blanda fan. a statement. i don't want to get all good old days on everyone but george blanda was an american classic, the likes we don't have anymore. he played and scored more points than anyone. a wylie quarterback, steely towed and most of all a showman. i feel sad for all of today's football fans who never got to watch him work his magic. >> there are no george blandas out there now. what's the average football career? >> three years. played 26. >> had that steel toe, leaned right in. >> one last great quote from

lamarr, owner of the chiefs, watching george blanda at the end of his career, wow, this blanda guy is good. his father played a few years ago. angtly t actually the same guy that played 26 years before. >> i think it's good. >> baseball looking to clench its frontcourt straight nlest crown, already had the champagne on ice. and towering solo home run. 1-0, that's all they needed because roy halladay was dealing. he is striking out adam dunn, a complete game, his 21st win of the season, the best in baseball. phillies win 8-0 and clench the nl east title? . braves won last night, padres lost. braves up a half game. >> fantastic.

bobbie cox' last year. i want him to play so bad. >> get him in the playoffs. >> red sox won. >> red sox won? >> that's wonderful. why didn't you bring that up, willie? that's so great. i love them. >> we are not eliminated. >> we can win the rest, the yankees lose the rest. >> up next, bill o'reilly returned the favor last night, going to visit jon stewart on his show. he was met with rose petals. what happened when the conversation turned to glenn beck.

it's work through the grime and the muck, month. tow and pull without getting stuck month. sweat every day to make an honest buck...month. and if you're gonna try and do this in anything other than a chevy... well, good luck...month. great deals on the complete family of chevy trucks all backed for a hundred thousand miles. it's truck month. now, during truck month, get 0% apr financing on all trucks and full-size suvs like this 2011 silverado. see your local chevrolet dealer. one month, five years after you do retire? ♪ client comes in and they have a box. and inside that box is their financial life. people wake up and realize i better start doing something. we open up that box. we organize it. and we make decisions. we really are here to help you. they look back and think, "wow. i never thought i could do this." but we've actually done it. [ male announcer ] visit ameriprise.com and put a confident retirement more within reach.

i wanted to come on the glen beck program with my book and they wouldn't -- they wouldn't have us. >> they don't know who you are. >> i know. we called. >> i told beck, have stewart. he's pretty funny once in a while. >> he said no go.

>> he doesn't know who you are. >> i would love to have a conversation with him. >> with glenn beck? >> about an hour. >> no. he's in a sealed room. >> is he like the bubble boy in fox news. >> they let him out for one hour and does tv and nobody can see him. he's like elvis and howard hughes. >> that's funny. 41 past the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." we have chosen one from the wind gust post this morning, when all else fails, hate washington. he says, disappointed that congress and the public did not cheer every progressive initiative. modern liberalism has become a search for explanations that do not involve concessions. for the obama team, that explanation is washington. the babylon of the potomac. thus they avoid the need for reflection and readjustment, at least for a time. >> it's so true. michael gerson has nailed it.

before barack obama got elected, mort, it was all george w. bush's fault. they will fix washington. they got there, they don't know how to washington. they just don't. it's washington's fault. this will be one of the funniest terms. liberals, like e.j., loved the filibuster when republicans were in charge of the senate. they've been railing against the filibuster as a threat to democracy for the past two years. you watch if republicans take over the senate in january, they will go back to loving the filibuster again and saying so without the slightest hint of irony in their voices. >> it's strange. i think the congressional leadership worked for the democrats, it's the white house that didn't work for the democrats. now, the whole thing is becoming unraveled. you have never seen such a drop, for as large, in terms of support, as large and as quick as happened for the executive branch, not so much for the congress.

>> they really have to g get -- they need to get people there in. they have a good group of people in the white house but they need an old washington hand that knows how it works. they don't have that in the white house right now. it would be like starting a wall street firm with a bunch of people that, you know, worked commodities in chicago and now they were trying to do derivatives on wall street. >> we see a transition happening. we see a lot of people either weeding out or leaving and we'll see what happens. >> speaking of a transition. >> oh. >> this is exciting. >> joining us now as part of our -- >> who do we have? >> go, go! >> education nation series, david neal, the senior technology leader for research in motion, the company behind the blackberry smart phones. yesterday, his company unveiled the new blackberry playbook, a 7 inch tablet to compete with the apple ipad. david joins us on the set. thanks for coming in. >> we're very excited about this. we love competition on "morning

joe" and love the fact we might be able to use this product without having to deal with at&t. >> is that possible? >> the product is designed to work with your blackberry. it's a wifi tablet. it will actually pair with your blackberry. >> if i have verizon. >> a plus. >> if i have verizon, i can use this tablet with verizon through my blackberry. >> when it actually works through the blackberry, exactly right. >> that's exciting. are we the only ones at the table here who would see that as a huge marketing sell? the situation with at&t is frustrating. they have great products, but i'm sorry -- >> they're paper weights when they come to phones. talk about -- i know you didn't come on to -- >> sorry. >> that's all over the place. let's talk about the tablet. how's that going to compare to the ipad? >> i think you will be very excited when you see it coming

out. i would like to point out, you notice we position it as the professional tablet. >> right. >> it's because we believe that you want to do all the things you would like to do in a portable computing environment. it's not about restricting. i also want to talk about this as well, you know. >> what is that? >> this is the new torch. >> the new torch? >> i love this. >> this is the product actually, we gave out to the delegates for the education nation. >> let me stop just for one second. this sounds like a commercial. it is not. we called him on to talk about education nation. but our audience loves hearing about ipads, iphones, torch, the new blackberry. this is -- this is right up our audience's alley. tell us about this. >> we released this just a few weeks ago. it's the latest blackberry. notice, it's actually touch and

it's got a quert ta keyboard. >> that's good for me because i have a touchscreen. >> the beauty is it has the best of both. one thing we do really well is key passed. >> right. what i want to talk about is why we brought it here to education nation. this is all about taking a paper los angel less initiative. we have an app we produced for education nation. do it that way? >> yeah. get behind him, so we can see the screen. thank you, t.j. for making me say it out loud. you're a great director. i'm sorry. >> the education nation map is actually operating on the blackberry. if you recall yesterday, we had the rainstorm and things got very, very risky for a while there. >> right. >> because the schedule, et cetera was actually done virtually, we could actually update that on the fly so the delegates could see the shift in the sessions.

you have the schedules, et cetera all actually on here. when the schedule actually changed, we were able to update that realtime. so the whole point here, give you some example how you can use this as a center for interaction. >> that center stayed alive in the midst of this rainstorm. a beautiful event we had outside was washed away to an extent in the middle of the morning and everyone rushed inside and that was able to stay held together. >> obviously, the spectacular actions of the nbc guys to keep the whole thing going. >> it was amazing. >> how do you team up technology? how do you think technology teams up with education? >> in many ways, i think quality education is about quality of interaction. you think back, usually the subjects you did best with are teachers you loved most are the ones you could contact easiest. interaction is what we do, the center of everything that has

made blackberry, think about it, voice, e-mail, blackberry messenger, about once every second somebody adds blackberry messenger. millions of people. the notion is about using this with collaboration, your homework, contact with the teachers, scheduling, internet access, the whole shooting match. but smaller than the palm of your hand. >> my son is in college. two of my sons are in college, actually. it surprises me. they like e-mail their professors. my professors had like restraining orders on me. you saw them in class and you never saw them again. if you like saw them at a restaurant out, it was like strange. >> they closed the door on him. >> technology is going to be a force multiplier in terms of public education. >> we have to use it instead of being afraid of it. >> there are already schools in new york, you can get the best

teachers in history spread through a different number of schools. >> thank you, david, very much. >> michigan governor jennifer granholm will be on set. what do you have? >> i have fake controversy. was sarah palin boo'd last night. >> do you have a primetime cable show? >> was she booed on "dancing with the stars"? we'll investigate. it contains ts naturally found in healthy skin. skin absorbs it better and it lasts for 24 hours. later gator. lubriderm. your moisture matched. i love my grandma. i love you grandma. grandma just makes me happy. ♪ to know, know, know you grandma is the bestest. the total package. grandpa's cooooooooool. way cool. ♪ grandpa spoils me rotten. ♪ to know, know, know you

♪ is to love... some people call us frick and frack. we do finger painting. this is how grandpa and i roll. ♪ and i do [ pins fall ] grandma's my best friend. my best friend ever. my best friend ever. ♪ [ laughing ] [ boy laughs ] ♪ to know, know, know you after this we're gonna get ice cream. can we go get some ice cream? yeah. ♪ and i do ♪ and i do ♪ and i do you want to and i do replant a forest? maybe you want to rebuild homes for those in need? or, maybe you want to help improve our schools? whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com.

take charge of making a difference. words alone aren't enough. our job is to listen and find ways to help workers who lost their jobs to the spill. i'm iris cross. we'll keep restoring the jobs, tourist beaches, and businesses impacted by the spill. we've paid over $400 million in claims and set up a $20 billion independently-run claims fund. i was born in new orleans. my family still lives here. i'm gonna be here until we make this right. [ man ] i thought our family business would always be boots. until one day, my daughter showed me a designer handbag. and like that,

we had a new side to our business. [ male announcer ] when the martinez family saw an opportunity, the hartford was there. protecting their employees and property, and helping them prepare for the future. nice boots. nice bag. [ male announcer ] see how the hartford helps businesses at achievewhatsahead.com.

news you can't use. mort, we're on tv. i could be talking about gary daniels. >> gary daniels. >> i love gary danielson. >> gary danielson is great. >> i looked forward to that 4:30 game every week. >> even though he has to deal with vern. >> i don't understand what's going on but he is adorable. >> i have a soft spot. >> i have a soft spot for him as well. i love him even though tim te w tebow -- >> tim tebow hasn't been doing much. >> i am rooting for him. i can't believe i'm rooting for him. spend five minutes with him -- >> change your life. >> forever. >> you do you feel different today? do you feel something building? the countdown clock right here. look right there. 329 hours until you can purchase "american freak show."

the new book. >> yes! >> what are you reading? >> "american freak show." >> the good news is you can pre-order it now so the countdown clock is endless. >> "american freak show." >> we don't want to jump out too early but 329 hours isn't as much as it sounds. >> i have to say, i'm a bit offended by this product placement. you notice when i had my book, i flew under the radar for a couple weeks. and five pulitzer prize winners. >> willie, can't you pre-order it right now. if i wanted a few copies, i can go online and buy it. >> if you wanted multiple, do several separate clicks. >> my mom has already read "american freak show." can i buy her another copy? >> that's right, joe, you can. last night, dan"dancing wit the stars", as mike continues to read this masterpiece. bristol palin was great last night.

finished in the top three. >> was she really? she's getting better? >> great comeback. >> her mother was in the front row, proud momma watching her daughter. here's the fake controversy i was talking about. >> i love fake controversy. >> you enjoying that? >> jimmy carter. >> i'm removing you today. >> bristol palin -- >> she did great. >> jennifer grey from the "dirty dancing" movie was great and got lower scores and there was some booing for jennifer grey but sarah palin was being introduced right after and some say they were booing introduction of sarah palin. >> extraneous booing. >> if you don't want to see them meet the same shock that ended david hasselhoff's ballroom dreams, support them now. there's booing in the ballroom. we don't know why. >> why is there booing? >> i don't know.

you know what to do. support them right now with your votes. tom. >> thank you, brooke. i'm here with guest ballroom commentator, sarah palin, who joins us from election. >> -- from alaska. >> there's cheers. >> you watch tonight, on certain cable news shows, this -- >> no. >> serious. you just watch. >> no one will boo. >> fake controversy at its best. >> my staff and i have studied the tape, they were not booing her. sarah palin interviewed after the booing by tom bergeron. >> i know usually you're very bashful about giving your opinion. how do you think the show is going? >> amazing, so exciting and great to see courage and joy and ex-hub reason. -database exhuberance. the judges are often. you won't chew out the refs before a hockey game. they're doing great. all right? >> your favorite can'tser so far?

>> my goodness, they're all amazing. they are, bristol is not up yet. bristol the pistol. that's who we're rooting for. >> bristol the pistol did great, 22 out of 30 this week. michael bolton is in a world of trouble. he got a 12 out of 30. >> hasselhoff and now michael bolton. >> "the situation" -- >> "the situation" -- >> is that genuine laughter for "american freak show". >> it's great stuff. i'm laughing and i haven't even read it. >> order now and you can laugh later. ken burns, colin powell and his wife, alma on "morning joe." [ technician ] are you busy? management just sent over these new technical manuals. they need you to translate them into portuguese.

by tomorrow. [ male announcer ] ducati knows it's better for xerox to manage their global publications. so they can focus on building amazing bikes. with xerox, you're ready for real business. everyday i eat your soups, i save a lot of money.

that's great. so, your rich and hearty soups have made me, rich and hearty. that's funny. i'm hearty because of your juicy steak, your potatoes... you're really, rich and happy. [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. [ man ] if it was simply about money, every bank loan would be a guarantee of success. at ge capital, loaning money is the start of the relationship, not the end. i work with polaris every day. at ge capital, we succeed only when they do. whoo! awesome! yes! we've got to get you out of the office more often. ♪ my turn to drive. ♪

i wasn't the only completely humorous sea spaniard humiliat d humiliated. >> they call in colbert as the first guy. >> i think it's an insult that they are conducting congress in this fashion. >> they have time to bring a comedian to washington d.c. and don't have time to eliminate the uncertainty by extending the current tax rates. >> think it was an embarrassment for mr. colbert more than the house. >> of course, colbert is more embarrassed than the house of representatives. colbert still has dignity and integrity left to lose! >> back to "morning joe." >> i can't believe they're all

acting shocked steven colbert did a comedy bit when he testified. what did they think he was going to do? >> he worked in upstate new york. >> for a day on the show. >> joining us now, the governor of michigan, jennifer granholm on the set with us. nice to have you with us. >> thank you, mika and for the conversation this morning. >> it's exciting how things are going in michigan. you know, we're going to adopt the entire state. >> i know you said that. >> detroit, specifically. >> we need to more than ever because it's been a rough, rough year. >> the lions -- >> we need a little bit of "morning joe"'s balm for the cold. come to detroit. >> does carl levin ever watch football? >> we asked him the morning after the lions, the guy was clueless. i might as well have talk talked -- he represents michigan! we asked him about the game, he

sat there, blank look. >> it's true. maybe he didn't hear us. >> i don't think he's a lions fan. >> anyway, we want to have you come. i was just saying, perfect time would be when the volt comes off the assembly line, first mass produced electronic vehicle >> that will be in the spring. >> no. in november. >> that's not winter. >> we could be there. >> it won't be like yesterday in new york, when you guys were on -- >> i'm writing this down. this is actually very exciting. the volt. we need to go out there. >> we could do a piece on the sports and piece on the volt and education. robert bob, the emergency financial manager of the detroit public school system here on meet the press yesterday, you know, he has taken -- he is doing a huge amount of reforms

you're talking about here. detroit public schools have had the worst test scores in the nation. he has closed down 59 schools, 51 new principals he's put in, just in the peace two years. he's only been there not even for two years. he's taken on massive change, negotiated a new teacher contract. that contract relies upon student progress as part of the evaluation system. >> that's exciting. >> yeah. there's a lot going on, huge upheaval. a lot of unpopular moves. >> sounds like he's not been fired. >> it wears on you. it's certainly been a lot of unpopular things when you have to close schools. >> michael bloomberg was talking about, while we're having this education conversation, talking about tenure yesterday. let's listen. >> the truth is, not every single one of them deserves a lifetime job. there is no business in america

that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions. that's exactly unfortunately what happens in our school systems across the country. it is wrong, it must stop and in new york city, i promise you, it will stop. >> mike, it's this education nation week. i'm so glad jeff zucker and nbc universal have pushing this the way they have. >> great to be a part of it. >> it's great to be part of it. we have seen this debate framed with the teachers and town hall meeting and our town hall meeting sunday night and the conversation has continued. you actually see most americans don't want teachers to automatically get tenure after three years. they want kids' results in the classrooms to be tied to teachers' professions. >> i understand that and buy

into that. my mother was a teacher. the thing that bothers me about that whole tenor, the conversation governing, you just got to it. detroit. pupil performance. you grade the teacher and pupil performance. when you look at school systems like detroit and other large cities, you have an enormous population of very poor kids sometimes without a family, never mind a single parent family, the school is often the safest place they'll ever be, the only place they'll get a meal during the course of the day. how do you bridge that grap in ter -- that gap in terms of grading the teacher? >> you don't put 100%. it's on progress, not just what is the performance of this school vis-a-vis a rich district, how are you moving the kids? if you look at what's happening in the harlem zone, as long as you have an entire system focused on getting this child to

succeed. we have put these family resource centers inside schools, where we have human services agency, which requires the parent to come into the school, we have a school clinic, so that the kids get health care as well. we have to do a lot more of that which is what jeffrey canada is trying to do. if you raise the bar on expectations, the school system will organize itself to jump over that higher bar. several years ago, this is what happened with "race to the top," they asked all the states to put high standards in place across the board. several years ago, michigan did that because that was what we were focused on, doubling the number of college graduates in michigan. we raised the bar at every single grade level. 2007 was the year the high school starts took effect. since 2005, when we started raising the bar k through 12 -- k through 8, we have seen math and reading scores increase

every single grade. dropout rate has gone from 15% to 11%, just in two years we have every high schooler taking a college prep curriculum no matter where they live, in detroit, west bloomfield, all taking the same college prep curriculum. as a result of that, we have seen test scores increase, act scores up, 70% taking advanced placement classes. college enrollment is up. community college enrollment has increased by 35%. >> the way you grade this is, i'm hearing a lot of people saying, it's not fair, teachers unions say, there's no way to measure it. the way you measure, as any governor said, progress, you get a kid in fifth grade had housesy teachers first to fourth grade, you won't get docked because your kid isn't doing well across the hall, you look at his progress from the beginning of that year to the end of that

year. up until we went to harlem, i keep talking about zucker, he pushed us and made us go to harlem, i believed the lie. i believed the lie that the education establishment had been pushing off on americans for a very long time that some of these poor teachers couldn't turn students around in very difficult areas, whether talking about harlem or inner city detroit. what we saw up there is, it bears repeating, kids coming into some of these schools in fifth grade, with first grade proficiency in math, science, reading, graduating three years later from this middle school in eighth grade, the entire class being 100% proficient in science, math, english. outscoring kids from the richest whitest suburbs in scarsdale, new york. so this lie, and it is a lie, that some kids are never going to be able to succeed because

they're from a poor neighborhood in detroit or harlem, that's just a cop-out for the education establishment. >> didn't you also find, and don't you find, governor, in the state of michigan, inschool districts like this, within detroit or within harlem, the schools we have been up to, the best teachers, the best teachers want to teach in the most challenging situations? >> they do. governor, i'm sure you will agree. it's an entire culture. what's working in new york city, you have a culture that starts with michael bloomberg who says, there's just no substitution for victory. that filters down to public charter schools and filtering to public schools. you need leadership. >> top to bottom? >> you need leadership in politics and classroom. >> that's right. when you do this right and have an evaluation system that evaluates not just the teacher but the principal and the superintendent and everybody has

a component of their evaluation based upon the progress of the child, the whole system will organize around that. instead of the system being organized around how long you've been there, the system being organized around, is this child succeeding? not the inputs but outputs, what's the data to show this child is succeeding. tests are a blunt instrument. we recognize that. give us another way of objectively evaluating whether this child succeeds. tests are one component of that. not the whole bottle of wax but bottom line, the system has to be measured whether this child succeed, output, not the inputs. >> let's turn a corner here. we have a new quinnipiac poll, mike. connecticut voters are making this blumenthal race much, much closer than any of us expected. >> it was just released this morning, the quinnipiac poll. it shows this, republican

candidate, linda mcmahon closing the gap on democrat dick blumenthal. blumenthal leads by just three percentage points, within the margin. >> mika, you've known richard blumenthal for 20 years. this is a surprise, isn't it? >> it is. i would say he is popular in connecticut and known in connecticut as solid and trustworthy and having taken on everything from health care to other issues of consumers getting screwed on certain issues, this guy has been on the front lines of it, for decades. well-known, not fabulous on television. in connecticut, i could see how he could totally take this raceway. >> it's slipping away. in connecticut. do you remember about a month ago, a friend telling me about linda mcmahon, went to an appearance and he was shocked in that she didn't come off as a

wild eye'd zeal lot. dick blumenthablumenthal's prob biggest problem might be he happens to be in office. this is a year where the rage of the elector raate is aimed at anyone on the ballot. >> bill clinton being called in, at a hool in new haven over the weekend stumping for dick blumenthal, a sign this election for him is in jeopardy. >> governor, it is tough out there for incumbents and really tough for democratic incumbents. >> all i can say is i'm glad i'm not running. i'm serious. >> seriously, though, timing is everything. i had friends, republican friends in '06 asked me to run. i was like, don't do it, you will get killed. i had a democratic friend say, i want it, i'm so inspired by

barack obama i will run in '10. i said, don't do it. timing is everything. >> you got to be an outsider in this year, no doubt about it. >> fascinating conversation. coming up, more, joe biden tells the democrats to stop whining. >> are democrats whining right now? >> i think everybody's whining. >> okay. all right. we'll get the morning's headlines out of the white house with savannah guthrie and architect of "no child left behind" representative george miller joins us. what else needs to be done to save america's failing school system. first, a check on the forecast. dominica. >> good morning. rain up and down the southeast in new england, heavy downpours on tap today. no airport delays so far but i think we will start to see that as we head through the rest of the afternoon. also, could see some thunderstorms. you're watching "morning joe," brewed by starbucks.

wall street is getting back on its feet. but the financial landscape is still full of uncertainty. in times like these, you need an experienced partner to look out for you. heads up!

and after 300 years we have gotten pretty good at that. lord of the carry-on. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted. and you rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i deserve this. [ male announcer ] you do, business pro. you do. go national. go like a pro.

there's some on the democratic base, not the core of it, that are angry because we didn't get every single thing they want. it's time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, condition to move forward, but not yield the playing field to those folks against everything we stand for, in terms of the initiatives we put forward. >> speaking of whining -- >> god, look who's here. >> not on the set.

>> savannah guthrie and george miller, two of the biggest whiners in washington. >> such a diva. >> sorry ahead to put you next to him. >> i don't want him to talk behind my back. >> joining us now, savannah guthrie and democratic congressman, george miller. >> george got here on time. george may be a whiner but he got here on time. >> i was locked out. >> chairman of the house commission on labor. >> we worked together. >> do i even need to ask. >> like the odd couple, get a southern guy and -- >> very successful team. >> and marxist from the west coast, they fight together to stop oil -- are we still paying oil companies to drill where they want to drill. >> we asked it several times to stop in the house but it has not become law.

>> have never seen a harsher reaction us to actually passing a ban on royalty relating. and the whole system came crashing down on our heads for about two seconds. wow. explain royalty relief. i have a tv show now, i don't know if you knew that. i'm sorry, chris, people need to know this! seriously, chris, did you know, i guess his dad works for big oil or something, did you know you as a taxpayer pay for bp to drill in the gulf coast? through your tax dollars, called royalty relief. >> did not. >> to go in places george they would drill anyway. >> to drill anyway, the most valuable finds in the world, they would kill to go there. we give them royalty relief for the honor of having them drill. >> taxpayer subsidies. that is outrageous. now, bill dellaheim, how do we

get by without him? >> he stopped paying his rent so i guess he is leaving. he had to tug and pull every month to beg and get the checks out of chuck schumer. this is tough. they have been on rent strike four or five years now. >> dellaheim has. can you imagine living with dellaheim? >> not pretty. >> would be the odd couple, probably the messy one. >> he said he came home one night and saw you guys on the couch because there was a mouse in the apartment. >> yeah, right. >> let's talk about education nation. you have been a leader on the hill in education nation some time. did you see the film? >> i have not seen the tifilm. >> it's a remarkable film. gut wrenching. how do we turn the corner on education? >> you turn the corner when the nation decides these are the most important institutions in

our country and the community decide these are the most important economic assets in their neighborhood and state. we're not there. we're on cruise control. we assume the top 20% of the kids will make the economy go and everybody else gets a ride. those days are gone. >> we've seen it in harlem, other parts of the country succeeding. how do we get the bottom 20% into the game. we have to compete globally. we can't do it if we -- >> we take the best of what we learned over the last ten years, no child left behind gave visibility and accountability to the system. it wasn't pretty when we got visibility because you had almost half of the kids really not performing very well at all. now, we have learned from charter school movements and magnet schools, a whole range of things out there. >> what's the big ideas we have learned, for instance in harlem, what have we learned? >> you learn to provide

discipline for children, first class teacher and extended hours. to bring that together with the support of the community. this idea we will fix this school from the outside doesn't work. where you see it work in the most difficult neighborhoods all across this country, you see where the parents and neighborhoods and local businesses bought into the idea this school is the salvation of our neighborhoods and our kids. then you can do it. we have charter schools that perform better than public schools and public schools perform better than charter schools. let's stop the them and us and let's figure out what works and borrow from one another. >> in new york city, charter schools do remarkably well. a stanford study shows public charter schools do much better than public schools improving as well. get outside of new york, they did a study coast-to-coast, charter schools aren't doing any better than run of the mill

public schools. we have to figure out what's working in new york and the west coast coast. what's exciting, as divisive sif as politics has gotten, this is one issue where barack obama and arne duncan can work with republicans on the hill and democrats on the hill, we are moving towards a consensus. >> you could actually have bipartisan agreement, particularly if the president is taking his own sacred cows in his party, sometimes the teacher's union in the past have opposed to the extent the president can say, look, i'm going against my core constituencies. >> barack obama is. >> it gives him something substantive to stand on as they try to really make changes here, in the formulation, the power of the purse. the federal government can't tell the states how to run their schools, can't tell them the

curriculum to be but if they dangle federal money over it, you start to see the reforms and that's the notion behind race to the top. >> it has made a big difference in a lot of states. new york expanded the number of charters. in california, they made changes but it didn't quite work. >> their heart wasn't quite in it. >> that's a good way of putting it. we are seeing some changes. and talk about changes at the white house. rahm, gone? >> all but gon. >> as you know, i've been a big supporter of rahm since '08, i really haven't. is it possible we get somebody like tom daschle. >> he's on the list and somebody people speculate about. i would be surprised if it was tom daschle. i think it will be somebody from inside. what passes for outsider in

obama world is leon panetta, somebody the hill likes very much, not sure somebody the president will turn to. >> panetta loves washington. i loveallry and loveallry --ove and axelrod. they don't know how washington runs and it would be like getting a commodities trader from chicago coming in to run goldman sachs. >> the hill loves panetta. unclear whether panetta would want to go for another tour of duty although if the president asks, one tends to step up. the president is looking at this very much not just one staff decision, one at a time but chess board and moving puzzle pieces. decent likelihood you will have a new national security advisor. an if they elevate someone who

is chief of staff, there are all these moving pieces. >> george, can you explain how important it is you have somebody in the white house that understands how washington works? >> fundamental. we have run into a number of glitches because of absence of knowledge and understanding how the congress and house and senate and various leaderships work together. how people in fact can work with some republican leaderships. if that's missed and not timely, it doesn't work. >> r rahm knew washington and phil knew washington. >> i don't want to kick rahm around. i don't think rahm knew washington the way tom daschle knew washington or chris dodd. but get somebody around 30 years. lawrence o'donnell. lawrence was predicting what would happen in the health care bill every step of the way. he worked for morny h nynihan i.

you've seen somebody like me come in in '94 and everybody sets their hair on fire. it goes this way, comes back that way. we have to work with the republicans because we disagree with them. at some point the tide will turn again. >> this is what you do, the art of legislation. people would be very surprised to know we have been having bipartisan meetings these last two years with lamarr alexander, tom harkin and myself and john kline and the secretary of education and all through august to put together a bipartisan response to the rewrite of the education law. this has been ongoing and everybody has been kept in the game here. tremendous transportati tremendous progress has been made over the life of this legislation and ready to go next year. most people think that is

impossible, it's possible and takes a lot of knowledge. >> a lot of people come in angry, but you have to stay there and after a while, you figure out we're all in the same boat, a small boat. >> a very small boat, especially if everybody is arguing in the boat. >> gets real small. >> is nancy going to be speaker? >>. no question. >> you pretty confident? >> yeah. >> good. >> thank you so much. >> my gosh, that is a great book. >> representative george miller, thank you as well. let us know the next time you're in new york. great to have you here. >> if there is anything you need me to do, let me know. >> pass a bill in the house this week. >> i reach out to you and you're hateful in return and propping up mika. >> you said you set your hair on

fire. i was going to set you on fire. it's okay. >> my gosh. >> coming up at the top of the hour, conversation on education continues with colin and alma powell. next, by popular demand, roger has a recap of the matchups. [ female announcer ] it can creep up on you. dry skin. that's why there's lubriderm® daily moisture. it contains the same nutrients naturally found in healthy skin. skin absorbs it better and it lasts for 24 hours. later gator. lubriderm. your moisture matched.

♪ [ upbeat instrumental ] [ rattling ] [ gasps ] [ rattling ] [ laughing ] [ announcer ] close enough just isn't good enough. - if your car is in an accident, - [ laughing continues ] make sure it's repaired with the right replacement parts. take the scary out of life with travelers. call or click now for an agent or quote.

you struggle to control your blood sugar. you exercise and eat right, but your blood sugar may still be high, and you need extra help. ask your doctor about onglyza, a once daily medicine used with diet and exercise to control high blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. adding onglyza to your current oral medicine may help reduce after meal blood sugar spikes and may help reduce high morning blood sugar. [ male announcer ] onglyza should not be used to treat type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. tell your doctor if you have a history or risk of diabetic ketoacidosis. onglyza has not been studied with insulin. using onglyza with medicines such as sulfonylureas may cause low blood sugar. some symptoms of low blood sugar are shaking,

sweating and rapid heartbeat. call your doctor if you have an allergic reaction like rash, hives or swelling of the face, mouth or throat. ask your doctor if you also take a tzd as swelling in the hands, feet or ankles may worsen. blood tests will check for kidney problems. you may need a lower dose of onglyza if your kidneys are not working well or if you take certain medicines. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor about adding onglyza. extra help. extra control. you may be eligible to pay $10 a month with the onglyza value card program.

delaware republican senate candidate, christine o'donnell claims she dabbled in witchcraft. she thinks scientists have developed mice with human brains and says evolution is a myth, asking why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans. if your loved one sounds like this, please schedule an appointment with us now. you may have a gas leak, a message from eastern shore gas company serving delaware's gas needs. >> i think that was letterman.

>> that was dave. oh, my god. >> cohost of the espn.com's off the ball, roger bennett. >> roger, an amazing week. none of the big four won for the first time since -- 1920. >> world cup hangover. >> let's start with the big shocker, man city. >> the russian game against the new money, battering teams right and center. is that a tear in your eye? >> they lose 1-nil and winning the goal for argentinian. i can't stand manchester city and he's like a manic lab bradoodle. how confident was he he was going to scar. he lifted up his shirt, say

happy birthday to his mother. and she needs a love me kick because his older brother has just been put away for armed robbery. happy birthday. >> let's move on. >> the evil empire loses or draws. >> it used to be the win games before the took the pitch. not anymore. the wanderers, a few teams are afraid of them. they have wayne rooney, a world star caught in a prost institutiprost -- -- prostitution scandal. >> it happens. >> and that was michael, the most depressed man in sport. >> and speaking of depressed, liverpool. you claim that the guy i love -- >> uncle roy. >> uncle roy stands in front of

the mirror every day, who's the governor? they think he doesn't know his name. what's my name. >> he's looking into his own mirror trying to breathe confidence into his own persona. it's not working. >> what's he asking? >> i'm the governor. he has lost the team and respect. i don't know if they will show the goal. did you see the goal? >> i saw the goal. it was horrible. >> is that him? >> liverpool, actually -- this is their only -- >> it's like trying to hit a home run off an intentional one. >> what happened was the guy touched the ball, it was a free kick, the guy touched the ball for sunder land and it's live. the goalkeeper doesn't go after it. >> my wife plays some soccer and

we were watching this and looked up, that's truly disgusting. it's a shame for the football club and everyone that supports -- >> your team can't even win a match. >> weir goi're going to get to n in a second. >> we have a slight problem, a striker rehabbing from injury by locking himself in a factory and become one of the most obese men in new york. >> let's go to this team. i fell in love with the fans two years ago, standing up, singing songs. this team is on fire, losers turning it around. >> they're still losers. they're playing arsenal here. >> still losers. >> i love "smurf the movie" as much as the next man. but they have a spaniard so bad in goal, you see this, if he

were english, he'd be starting for the english national team. they were boo'd off by their own fans. the big four were hopeless. a sense of parody. if you had mike barnicle and pat buchanan playing up front, we'd make a couple of points. >> the worst team right now, your team -- you bleed blue, this has to be depressing? >> i do. i say to myself, do you ever read the tortoise and the hare? >> sure. i read that to myself every night, we will come back, too good to go down. >> the tortoise locked himself in a pie factory. >> one of the greatest sports reports of all time. armed robbery, prostitution ring, who's the governor. >> i want to say congratulations to the women's professional

soccer league this week and next week, chelsea's arsenal. >> and that is sophie's choice. >> who's the governor? i am the governor. >> when we come back, colin powell.

ever wu ew a retirement expert? let's meet some. retirement's a journey and, we know the territory. we're chartered retirement planning counselors at td ameritrade. we're trained. we're seasoned. experienced. we'll help you with rollovers. consolidating old accounts. opening new ones. guiding you through paperwork. we're like retirement co-pilots. call us soon. when you're ready, we're here. time for fresh thinking. time for td ameritrade.

rodallega. welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now, the international best selling author, his body of work has sold, can you believe this, mike? more than 100 million copies. >> yes, i can. today's "new york times," full page ad for ken's latest book. is there no end to your greed? continually trying to pile on to us poor guys that try to write for a living and you do it, bang. >> i will take that as a compliment. i'm not sure it is meant dollars an a compliment.

>> it's called "fall of giants." god have you here. tell us about the book and trilogy. >> after my last book, i wanted to write another big sweeping story because people like "fall of the giants" so much. i didn't want to go back to the middle ages. three years in the middle ages was enough. i thought of the 20th century, the most violent in the history of the human race. it's an our story. i lived through half of it. my parents and grandparents lived through the rest of it and most of my raiders lived through some and we can connected. i have picture of my grandfather world war i, grinning teenager. why not write that and explain as well as what i always try to do, give people a good time, explain some things most of us don't understand. why did we have world war 1?

most people don't know why we had that war. i think with books, you have to give some people a great story and soak on top. >> what happens to your family and your friends while you're working this book? while you're writing this book. yo you clearly become the book as you write it. >> i'm not like that because i started in newspaper. i'm not the kind of writer who has to hideaway and have silence and darkness. i started writing in a big newsroom with people answering the phone and shouting. on a newspaper, you never say, would everybody please be quiet the next half hour because i'm trying to write. it makes very little difference to my family. sometimes, when a new person comes to work for us, my wife says, if you see him walking around the house and he stares at you as if he hates you, take

no notice, he's just thinking about his book. >> assembling and entire century in a book, you do it in such an interesting way, where you weave real history with fictional characters, how do you bring it to life? >> it takes a lot of research. as an author of novels, you're looking for telling little details all the time, bring the past to life. after i've written the first draft, i have it checked, this applies to thrillers as well. police officers sometimes or scientists. in the case of "fall of giants," it was checked by eight historians. seems extravagant, doesn't it? we decided he needed an expert on the russian history and revolution and world war i. that's what i do to make sure i haven't made any foolish

mistakes. >> not that you need any help in selling books, but what happens when oprah decides to hold up your book? what happens? >> you open the champagne, that's what you do. oprah has done for the pillars of the earth, which was the book of mine she selected. it's been great for the book business. she's brought people. we're always trying bring people who aren't already readers into our net and make them become readers. oprah did that wonderfully well. listen, we love oprah. >> absolutely, absolutely, we love oprah. >> let me get your take on this, a piece on e books in the "wall street journal" this morning. how has that changed for your business? good or bad for authors? too soon to tell? >> too soon to tell. basically, we like anything that might widen our audience. if there is an a group of young

high-tech people who would rather read and e-book than a printed book, we say, great, that's a group of people we can bring into the net. it will alter the economics of the business a little bit. we're not quite sure how. one of the problems, you don't go into a bookstore to buy an e-book usually. a lot of us go in to buy a book because it's a pleasure. you like to walk around and buy books you didn't intend to buy because you didn't know they existed. that's a great pleasure. people who buy, h e-books, we dt want to turn technology backward, that's a dump idea. we have to find ways to get them to browse electronically. >> with due respect, i suspect you released your book two weeks ahead of my book out of fear,

because you knew my book was coming down the pike. >> what was the name of your book? >> american freak show." >> he breathed a huge sigh of relief when i told him there was some space between his book and your book. >> he heard the footsteps. >> thank you very much. the book is "fall of giants," sure to be another huge best-seller. >> thank you. >> we will huddle up around the water cooler to watch bill o'reilly on the john daly show. colin and alma powell coming up at the top of the hour, in a special interview, "education nation." [ indistinct conversations ] ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] at&t and blackberry have teamed up to keep your business moving. introducing the blackberry torch. at&t. rethink possible.

today, fifteen million men and women won't have the opportunity to go to work. businesses shuttered. twenty nine hundred families will have their homes foreclosed by nightfall. this afternoon six thousand men and women will be married, each of their children to be born with a thirty thousand dollar share of the runaway national debt. our government is now taking over the choices we once made in life. there's mourning in america. under the leadership of president obama

our country is fading and weaker and worse off. his policies were a grand experiment, policies that failed. this november, let's choose a smaller, more caring government, one that remembers us. hi, a number two please? would you like that to hurt now, or later? uh, what? sir, it's a simple question, do you want heartburn pain now or later? [ male announcer ] these heartburn medicines make you choose between hurting now, or later. pepcid® complete doesn't. it starts to neutralize acid in seconds and keeps it under control all day or all night. sometimes you gotta make compromises, man. [ male announcer ] no you don't, man. pepcid® complete works now and works later. sadly, no. oh. but i did pick up your dry cleaning and had your shoes shined. well, i made you a reservation at the sushi place around the corner. well, in that case, i better get back to these invoices...

which i'll do right after making your favorite pancakes. you know what? i'm going to tidy up your side of the office. i can't hear you because i'm also making you a smoothie. [ male announcer ] marriott hotels & resorts knows it's better for xerox to automate their global invoice process so they can focus on serving their customers. with xerox, you're ready for real business. welcome back to "morning joe." joe and mika getting settled in as part of "education nation" to interview colin and alma powell together. that's coming up in about five minutes here on "morning joe." mike barnacle and i are left behind in the studio. what do you want to do? >> let's play cards for a while. >> we've already been doing that for 20 minutes. >> some toast. >> let's check out bill o'reilly last night on "the daily show." last week jon stewart went to

his show. mr. o'reilly going on "the daily show." he was greeted with rose petals. and mr. stewart made a very kind invitation asking bill o'reilly if he'd like to join him on the upcoming rally to restore sanity. >> can i tell you why i want you to come? >> no. >> i want to see if it works. i want to see if the rally to restore america -- >> you don't want me to come because if i come, there will be a big crowd and you won't get any credit. >> i appreciate that. >> don't you piggyback on me or beck. you do it on your own. you are in real deep now, stewart. if six people show up, believe me i'll be all over you. you'll be on vacation for a month. >> if your out there, not for me not for america, but to make him eat his words. >> oh, yeah, there you go. >> o'reilly and stewart last night. also last night, dancing with the stars mike barnacle is our chief dancing with the stars correspondent. he was telling me earlier

bristol palin put on a heck of a performance in front of her own mom. >> her mom was there. there was some, well, there was some controversy. some people said sarah palin was booed when she was introduced. we've looked at the tape. they were booing the scores for the previous contestant. sarah palin went back to alaska in the week leading up to the dance and they took a look back. >> how does she do that? how does she do that? that -- >> shimmy. i was so extremely proud of you and to think you are up there in front of 23, 23 million people. and you have all this energy and confidence, bristol. it was -- i couldn't have been prouder. >> there you go. bristol palin came in third place. most improved dancer. >> but the hass is gone. >> colin and alma powell right here at the top of the hour on

"morning joe."

and it's the top of the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." it's "education nation" here at nbc universal. our week-long conversation on how to improve education in

america. and one of the most critical issues we're facing is the nation's high school dropout rates. the statistics are alarming. a child drops out of school every 11 seconds. think about that. a quarter of u.s. students do not graduate from high school at all. and the class of 2009 dropouts will cost the united states $335 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity. and joining us now to discuss this crisis and two people who have been taking it on, general colin powell and his wife alma powell. welcome to you both. thank you for being here. >> great to be here. >> you guys -- this has obviously been a very exciting week. not only for us, but for the entire education community. but you all have been fighting this fight for a very long time. where are we in 2010? >> we in 2010, are making great strides to alleviate the problem. at america's promise, this has been a concern of ours for a

very long time. two years ago, we did a public announcement of these dire statistics that you have been quoting all this time. everybody said, wow, we didn't know that. people forget. 25 years ago, we had a report called a nation at risk that told us all of this and we groaned about it a little bit and nothing happened. >> are we going to do that again? how do we not fall back into that trap? >> we won't let you. we are going forward. >> that's the attitude right there. >> we will not let you. >> she's tough. >> you have five promises. >> we have five promises at america's promise. >> we salute her when she talks. >> i'm standing up. sit up straight, joe. >> we at america's promise say that all children need five basic things in their lives. a caring adult, healthy start, safe places to learn and grow after school, a marketable skill

through an effect of education and an opportunity to give back. two years ago we announced we were conducting 100 dropout sumitz across the nation. we did those in all 50 states and in the 50 cities that have the biggest problem. getting people together to talk about the problem. we announced in march that we were going to the next phase of this program and that's called grad nation because, yes, we talk about an education nation, but more importantly, we have to be a grad nation because without high school graduation, we don't have much of a future. and it affects the future of this country. we had high school graduates used to be able to go out and work on the farm. drop out of school go work in the automobile plants go work in the steel factories. those jobs don't exist anymore. so that we have to think about where we are as a nation right now and what our needs are and

start to educate our children to fill those needs and to ensure the future of this country. you talked about how much it cost. we can't sustain that kind of money. most high school dropouts you can almost know they're going to prison. >> right. >> where it costs more than sending them to school. >> exactly. >> so general, how do we break this psyche snell davis guggenheim talked about dropout factories in "waiting for superman" and you see those dropout factories feed, unfortunately, students and should be going into the workforce, into prison. >> exactly right. but i want to step back a little bit. we've been talking about all the problems for the last several days. but while 25% of all our kid are dropping out of high school and 50% of our minority kid, well, 50% of our minority kid are finishing high school and 75% of all of our kids are finishing high school and they are filling the greatest universities in the

world. they are filling our community colleges. they are filling our for-profit colleges that had exploded in size in recent years. so a lot of good things going on. but the problem is exactly as you just touched on it. it's the dropout factories. the whole education system is not broken, but there are roughly 2,000 schools in america that are broken. and they are in communities that tend to be broken. what you find happening in a community is over time if you lose the jobs in the center of the community and if the middle class starts to leave and when the jobs leave and the middle class leaves, then the educational system starts to fall apart. and as one of my friends, a good friend of mine in minneapolis says, you create a noel the middle of the doughnut. in that hole you find all sorts of terrible problems start to emerge, whether it's drugs, high percentage of minority students in schools that are lower performing. so we have to focus really on these 2,000 dropout factories as they have been called. >> and that's just the dropout factories. you all are taking a whole list

of -- which reminds me of what the head of the l.a. urban league said. if i kid can't walk to school without being afraid that he or she is going to get mugged, he's not going to be doing well in the classroom. >> exactly. i would make this point. that is that education is not just something that happens in school. education begins the first moment that an infant recognizes that its mother's voice is its mother's voice. and from that mother, that child will learn how to speak the mother's language within a year. and then in the next year you have to teach that child the alphabet. how to tell time. how to tell colors. all the basic skills. how to be still. how to mind your adults. >> focus. >> ever heard -- when you heard -- >> i'm sorry. mind your adults, joe. that's what we've got to teach our kids. >> i think she's talking about me being still. it's far too late for me. but for -- >> but children need to grow up in those early years with a

sense of structure. >> we used to believe, and i'm sure you all read these studies. i know i did growing up. that if you didn't get a kid by the time he or she was 10, and then to get moved back to 5 or 6 that they would be lost. now we know, like you are saying, it starts in the cradle. that makes our responsibilities as a nation so much greater. >> it makes it greater because if that child does not show up at kindergarten with these basic skills and understanding of how to get along with other kid and the ability to listen, silt and mind the adults, the teachers, then that kid will start to fall behind. you know who the first one it is to realize that the child is falling behind? the child himself. because by the second or third grade, he or she notices, gee, i can't do as much as these other kids can. and by time of the fourth grade, they start to act it out. >> so he talks about the -- the general talks about how kids need to stay still and they need to focus and they need to mind the teachers. and i think that was the

greatest shock when we went up to the harlem village academy and we were telling the story yesterday to the panel. i have -- i was in congress for four terms and probably spoke to 1,000 different classrooms. i have never seen a classroom better behaved, more focused. they were required to keep eye contact, to keep their chin up. they, in fact, they did not allow them to go into classrooms for a week and a half until they learned these basic things. in football it starts with blocking and tackling. here it starts with these basics that the general just talked about. >> that's what we do in the army. >> don't let them sleep. >> the army is a great example. we bring young kids in. we cut their hair off. we put them all in the same uniform. >> strip them of everything. >> including their mothers and fathers and all the other people who have spoiled them for the first 18 years of their life. and then we give them a new

mommy and a daddy called a drill sergeant. and he starts screaming at them. and they detest him until about the eighth week and then a transformation takes place when all they want to do is please him. >> right. >> they gain his respect and he gains their respect. it's the same way you teach kids. >> alma? >> and you all have been talking about teachers for a long time. and poor teachers, poor teachers, poor teachers. tlair lot of very good teachers. and we do not treat our teachers well enough. think about it. teachers are probably the most important people in our society. without a teacher, we would have nobody else. >> so on both of these points and, joe, you've talked about this on the show for a great deal of time. we have a cycle now with this dropout rate. we have families having children that are not families. that are single moms or single dads trying to get by. or not doing a great job. we need to address that as well

because ultimately what our country faces, joe, and you've talked about this beautifully is a moral crisis. a moral issue with what we need to do for our kids. but what we're talking about here, what deborah kenny does, what you and you are talking about in terms of what we need to do for these children is provide some of the services that are not there at home. >> and the moral issue is that i think it's immoral for us to leave these kids behind. sosay they're just from a bad neighborhood. they're from a bad family. >> we have a responsibility to those children. but we know that no one entity can take care of all of these needs. it takes all of us. the old saying, it takes a village. it takes a village. it takes a community. and we encouraged that at america's promise. this is what we encourage. we encourage communities to 4 come together with all their resources to meet those five promises. we run a competition for the 100 best communities for children in

the united states. we just announced this year's winners last week. and in their application, they have to show how they are using all of the assets of the community to build a structure around the children in that community. and they involve the young people in the decisions. and we have groups that go in and help the children in many of the communities. they provide resources. so we know that it takes every single one of us. we all have a responsibility for this. >> this is absolutely true. and it is -- there are other aspects we don't sometimes realize. we are becoming more and more a minority nation. and one more generation, generation and a half, the minorities of america will constitute the majority. and if we're not educating that generation now, we're going to have youngsters -- the end of this generation who are not ready to take over the leadership's positions that will be theirs. so we're not doing this just because it's the morally right

thing to do, which it is. we're doing this because it is essential to the well-being of our future. the well-being of our country. economically, our position in the world, our place in the world. we're the ones who have to do this because this minority population is going to be the majority population in the country. >> this week, i've talked about several times how it's a moral issue for us to help these kids, whether you are talking about the south bronx or brooklyn or south central l.a. or harlem. and i've had several people say, well, it's also a national security issue. >> yes. >> explain that. >> it is a national security issue. for example, 70% of the youngsters in the cohort that the military recruits from cannot get in. 70% of those 17 to 24-year-old kids will not be accepted into the army because they don't have a high school education or even with a high school education, they can't pass our basic entry level exam. or their health is not good. or they are obese. or they have a jail record, a

criminal record. >> they changed recruiting standards. >> the standards have gotten a lot different from the days of the draft. so we are essentially looking at 30% of the population in that group that is eligible for coming into the military service. the army just announced they are changing the entire physical fitness program. >> it's amazing. >> because they have to compensate for what didn't happen in school. no recess. you got to study tests. we don't do recess, we don't do art or music like we used to. that's a shame. i still remember my days in the south bronx and wasn't a great student, but even now, 60 years later, i can remember listening to rovell's bolero on a record player or watching lantern slides, almost lantern slides going across where i saw these great works of art. it didn't really make my grades any better, but it introduced me to a broader world than the world i was living in in the south bronx. and so we have got to get back into that kind of education of our youngsters and we have got

to help our teachers. you can't just put it all on the teachers. we send kids into school who are not ready to be in school, who haven't mastered these basic things that you need to have, then we're asking our teachers to be truant officers and that's not fair. >> and alma, for what we look at, what we face today, this country, this president, this education secretary, this event, "education nation" and everything else that is happening right now that your husband talks about, this is the moment is it not, for us? >> this is the moment. we are so proud of what nbc is doing with bringing all of this information to the public. we can go out and talk about it all the time but you have the broad, broad field that catches people's attention. and we have to keep this issue before the public. i like to say, yes, we talked about this for 50 years ago. we've addressed these problems before. but we have a.d.d. >> yes. >> we look at things for a

little while. we forget all about it. so you have to keep raising the profile again saying it's still here. it's still bad. we're getting better. but it's not good enough. it's never going to be good enough because that keeps us working hard. >> too often change comes through crisis. why is it that americans don't realize we are in a state of crisis right now. >> americans have so many things to worry about right now. they don't know where to start worrying. we've got a poor economy. we've got bad schools. nobody has a job. the weather is changing and we don't know what's going on. stink bugs are invagd, bed bugs are coming out. what we are going to do? >> thank you. alma, seriously, i'm going home and -- >> the other reason is that a lot of americans, most americans don't see the problem. >> no. >> they live now the the suburbs.

they are out in the outer edges of the doughnut. so their schools are fine. their kid are fine. or if they have the means to do so as the president said the other day, you send your kid to a private school and you don't have to see this problem. >> it's like afghanistan in the same way. there are people who have absolutely no impact by this incredible investment and sacrifice that our country is going through. >> it is actually like afghanistan. we were -- we gave a speech this past weekend and there's a 20-year-old kid going back to afghanistan. i think for his third time. he was on the phone crying. everybody else in the airport just streaming past going to starbucks -- >> on their blackberry. >> this kid was calling his mom, calling his sister, calling everybody and just tears -- we just sat there thinking he's so isolated. it's not like vietnam where even in vietnam, you know, a lot of the country was invested in that war. it's just like that guy is connected with kids in the south bronx right now in south central

l.a. it's like two americans. >> but it's gone on so long that we have had to let that slide past. and that's why people aren't paying attention anymore. oh, yeah, that's still there. >> part of the good news is that people are stepping forward. we have harlem's children and there are lots of -- >> the story of newark. >> minneapolis. i know lots of communities that i visited. we have also, i think, been able to mobilize a good part of the business community to realize it's their future that's at risk as well. and so we've been able to get great companies. i don't want to list them all but state farm is a great sponsor. yesterday, target announced they were putting another $500 million into literacy education. and you can see the ads all over new york city already. so more and more companies are stepping forward realizing it's in their interest. if we can get the whole business community mobilized if we can get everybody who has got an office below 59th street to leave that office and go above 110th street or over the

tri-borough bridge, into queens and brooklyn and adopt a school or build a boys and girls club. a lot of this is going on. when we started america's promise 13 years ago, there were 1500 boys and girls clubs. now over 4,000 -- close to 4,500. there's an an enormous growth in these kinds of facilities. but we need more of them. after school programs, stay-in-school programs, longer school years. all of these things necessary to give our kid a sense of tribal belonging to put them in the presence of successful adults who care about them. otherwise, they are going to go on the street and find unsuccessful adults that don't give a darn about them. >> how do we organize this on a national scale because target, it's great that target is giving money. it's great that state farm, facebook, they are helping in different ways. and that is critical. but do we need -- >> that's what we're trying to do. >> that's what we do at america's promise. >> or organizing it all. >> the alliance has over 400

partners. all of us working towards the same goal of cutting in half the high school dropout rate. we work with the mayors of the country, the governors, the chamber of commerce is a partner of ours, and we have these meetings. gallup is a partner of ours, and they poll young people to see what their needs are and what they are thinking. and they bring it back to these people. the first day we announced that we -- this partnership with gl up, there were six state superintendents there. gallup had already been into their communities and they were having meetings around in various places to say this is what we found out. and then we come together periodically to talk about, all right, this is what you found out. this is what we found out. we bring cities together and people from the -- talk about best practices. have you tried this? this is how we are working. this worked out well. and always we keep the young people's voice in it because they are the ones that it affects the most. and they can give us their feeling. we were having a retreat about

what we need to focus on and one of the sessions was ready for the real world. and everybody is in there talking about it, all of us just like people in this room, what young people need. there was a young man sitting there. who was from new york. he is a single father. takes care of his little baby. and he said, wait a minute. whose world are you talking about? your world and my world are two different things. and so we have to look at what their world is. and hear their voice. and this is what we're doing at america's promise. we have a movement. and it is moving along so rapidly, gathering people as we go that it is very exciting. and this weekend's talk really shows what the whole nation needs, and gives us something to rally around. >> so general, how does washington help? >> well, i think the last two presidents, president bush and president obama have done a

tremendous amount of good work with respect to the no child left behind and what is now happening under the leadership, arne duncan. it goes back. every president that i've worked for has had the same approach to education, knowing how to do more. but i think the whole country is understanding this and we're getting mobilized. but there's one person we need to spend a little more time talking about. and that's starting to put the heat on our kids. we have to start telling our kids that we have expectations from you. you will not drop out. the school in denver i saw a little story on television about this young man who was graduating from high school. it's a charter school run by -- it's a parochial school. all 71 graduates were going on to college. and they were interviewing the valedictorian. hispanic kid. usual story. and the interviewer said to him, well, why were you successful? how did you make it? and he looked at the camera and he said i was never, ever, ever given the opportunity to fail. they kept him in play. no matter what he might have

done to slip out, he got slapped back into play by parents, by aunts, by uncles, by coaches, by ministers. you have to keep the kids in play. i was kept in play by an immigrant family. she was kept in play by two parents who were both educators. with expectations and a sense of shame if you disappoint the family. the interviewer also asked this young man, you know, well how does this affect your family. he said i'm the first one in my family to graduate from high school. and then he paused and with a little emotion in his face he said, i have changed the history of my family. and that is deeply moving, and that's what we have to do. we have to change the history of these families. so it's a history of success. it's a history of achievement. and all of us have to help a community come together again. and help our kids. we have to do something about the number of kids who are being born out of partnership. there's no partnership there. too many grandmothers are

raising children. whole generations. andy in the movie, is being raised by his grandmother. he doesn't know who his mother is and his father died of drugs. we have to come in and substitute. >> if the general and his wife alma, who is the star of this show today, i'll tell you is not inspiration enough, everyone should go see the movie "waiting for superman." it's a movie that really does frame this issue and it will pull you in. and as you said, everybody needs to take responsibility for this in any way they can. >> everybody does, also, the general touched on something very important. we were asked to write down who our favorite teachers were. and a lot of people at nbc did that, put it up on a wall. and i asked people who their favorite teacher was. and it was never a teacher that let them cut class. it was never a teacher that expected a little less. for me, i had a teacher that -- the teacher that pushed me the hardest. the dean in college that told me

i was a loser. that i better go back home and start studying because i was going to drop out and be a complete failure and don't shame me and your parents. that story is retold time and time again. >> i had one of those. >> you talk about the drill sergeant. well, that's the thing at these schools that work. they -- it comes down to expectations. >> expectations. >> we expect greatness from you. you better not let us down. >> if you think, well, we can't worry about that one over there. he's never going to make it anyway, he won't, because you don't expect him to. and they have kids have a way of living up to what you expect of them. i heard one of my children say one day, the worst punishment we could have was to hear one of my parents say i'm disappointed in you. they never wanted to hear that. and that's what we have to have in all of our children.

and it doesn't take a whole lot. it takes commitment and caring and being there. so that kids know somebody has got my back. and then i can go forward. >> we need to wrap this up. we want to thank you all for being with us. before we came out, our producer had said let's talk education. and then the last five minutes talk to the general about whether it's afghanistan or the economy or what's happening. there is no other issue more important. there is no other issue i'd rather talk to you about than this issue. that's right, chris. we threw our ep right under the bus. but seriously, this is a remarkable time when it comes. we have an opportunity to transform this country in a way we haven't in such a long time, general. >> nbc is committed to this and hundreds of organizations across the country are committed to this. so the movie is terrific. and it focuses our attention.

but there ain't no superman coming. we are superman. we better do it. supermen and superwomen. >> there's one quotation that i like to leave people with when i talked about what children need and where we need to go. i am told that the massi people when they greet each other, their greeting is, and how are the children. this we need to say every day. and how are the children? >> all right. >> alma powell, general powell. >> thank you. >> great to see you as always. >> thank you so much for being here.

maybe you want school kids to have more exposure to the arts. maybe you want to provide meals for the needy. or maybe you want to help when the unexpected happens. whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer, or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. in the science of color with quattron. by adding a fourth color -- yellow... yellow. banana. ...to the standard rgb color system, quattron produces more colors... banana! ...and makes images brighter. banana! banana! when seen in 3d -- whoa! whoa! aah! quattron makes tv so realistic... whoa! ...you won't believe your eyes. [ male announcer ] aquos quattron 3d from sharp. [ engineer laughs ] you have to see it, to see it.

lord of the carry-on. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted. and you rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i deserve this. [ male announcer ] you do, business pro. you do. go national. go like a pro. [ male announcer ] you do, business pro. you do. i but i justve my 5 employcan't afford it.ance, i have diabetes. i didn't miss a premium payment for 10 years. and i'm worried if i lose my job, i won't be able to afford insurance. when i graduated from college, i lost my health insurance. the minute i got sick, i lost my insurance. not anymore. not anymore. not anymore. america's healthcare reforms change lives for the better. to find out how it can help you, visit us at americasfairhealthcare.org it's not just fair, it's the law.

♪ [ animals calling ] ♪ [ pop ]

[ man ] ♪ well, we get along ♪ yeah, we really do - ♪ and there's nothing wrong - [ bird squawks ] ♪ with what i feel for you ♪ i could hang around till the leaves are brown and the summer's gone ♪ [ announcer ] when you're not worried about potential dangers, the world can be a far less threatening place. take the scary out of life with travelers insurance... and see the world in a different light.

everyday i eat your soups, i save a lot of money. that's great. so, your rich and hearty soups have made me, rich and hearty. that's funny. i'm hearty because of your juicy steak, your potatoes... you're really, rich and happy. [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup.

today, fifteen million men and women won't have the opportunity to go to work. businesses shuttered. twenty nine hundred families will have their homes foreclosed by nightfall. this afternoon six thousand men and women will be married, each of their children to be born with a thirty thousand dollar share of the runaway national debt. our government is now taking over the choices we once made in life. there's mourning in america. under the leadership of president obama our country is fading and weaker and worse off. his policies were a grand experiment, policies that failed. this november, let's choose a smaller,

more caring government, one that remembers us. welcome back to "morning joe." another rainy day here in new york city. let's get a look at business with cnbc's erin burnett.

she's down somewhere at the new york stock exchange. >> it's pretty foggy. weird weather going on around the country. >> i know. >> we're still trying to get through with this great september. a couple of key things. the latest read on consumer sentiment. and the 20 biggest markets in the united states. we're going to find out whether housing prices are going up or down. this is the case-shiller data. even though this will be for the month of july, so it's a little backward looking it gets a lot of focus on wall street. it can be market moving. >> that's the case-shiller data? >> yeah. it's got -- you can actually trade based on that index. it's the best read of the 20 biggest markets we've got. >> i found through the years and i knew that. i was just slowing it down because i know about the case-shiller data. there's some more data, though, that i'm curious. how is wall street going to react to willie geist's "american freak show"? i'm thinking the market is going to skyrocket when this baby -- >> there's the countdown clock. >> you'll have to come down here and ring the bell.

>> 327 hours until its release in two weeks. the market has time to correct itself. >> i think the market will probably adjust. and it will be self-correcting by the time it hits the newsstands, right? >> she has no idea what we're talking about. >> the new book coming out. you just said case-shiller and it took me to freak show. how is the market going to do. >> so we're going to open higher. we'll see whether it will hold. the other thing getting a whole lot of focus. this consumer sentiment data. consumers often say they don't feel so good. they sometimes spend money even when they're sad. the big talk will be what they are spending their money on. that's the ipad type things. 32 to pick from this christmas season, joe. and the blackberry playbook is one of them. everyone is taking a look at it today. >> what about the fact that the segway stock is going to go off a cliff. >> i've avoided stepping in that one and i'm going to continue to do so. >> "american freak show" coming

up in 300 hours. up next filmmaker ken burns. an update of his classic baseball documentary. you won't look at america's pastime the same way. >> i was so angry at the 0-3 start to the playoffs against the yankees. i was humiliated. i was embarrassed. i was thanking god for caller i.d. all the calls from area code 212 on the cell phone. trust me. trust me. ya i like that. trust me. bankers are known to be a little bit in love with themselves. are we going up? we can get the next one. i'd like to get your advice on hedging - risk... exposure. what makes us different? for 300 years we've chosen to focus on our clients. what a novel idea.

we need directions to go to... pearblossom highway? it's just outside of lancaster. sure, i can download directions for you now. we got it. thank you very much! check it out. i can like, see everything that's going on with the car. here's the gas level. i can check on the oil. i can unlock it from anywhere. i've received a signal there was a crash. some guy just cut me off. i'll get an ambulance to you right away. safely connecting you in ways you never thought possible. onstar. live on.

[ monkey cheeps ] [ male announcer ] a bath becomes even more pleasurable when you know that your water is being heated in an environmentally- conscious way while saving you hundreds of dollars on your water-heating energy bill. the geospring water heater from ge with advanced hybrid technology. heating the water in your home any other way is just going to seem primitive. [ monkey cheeps ] ♪ maryland residents can save up to $780 while funds last.

i always used to say when the baseball season was over, it's time to put the storm windows on. so it became time to put the storm windows on in a split second after an incredible game. and the crowd was going berserk

in yankee stadium and my son collin, who was then 20, tapped me on the shoulder and said, dad, you better take care of tim. and i looked down at this 11-year-old child, one of the loves of my life, and he had tears the size of hubcaps streaming down his cheek. and i started crying. and i hugged him. and, you know, in my heart of hearts i was thinking, what have i done? what have i done? >> that's great. >> that was our own mike barnacle on the latest installment of "ken burns remarkable documentary special "baseball." the tenth inning. it premieres tonight on pbs. with us now, filmmaker ken burns. in washington, d.c., because we were concerned, mika, because

kim is a red sox fan, i'm a red sox fan and mike is, of course, red sox fan for so long. we felt badly for willie. so we wanted to get somebody to help break it down the middle. she, of course, also featured. doris, you're going to bring objectivity to this. >> without a question. >> without a question. so, kim, this is just received remarkable receptions everywhere. >> we have been around the country throwing out the first pitch at baseball games, sharing it with people. and this is one of the few places left in our uncivil society where you can have a conversation. where the tribal loyalties, yankees and red sox, don't result in people dying. they just result in really good conversations at a bar or really good conversations around a table. where else could keith olbermann and george will exist, co-exist,

without fisticuffs about baseball which they both love and both contribute to mightily in this update. >> why did your first documentary connect the way it did? >> you know, when you tell a story about football, you say joe montana threw a pass to jerry rice and we won. you tell a story about basketball. he inbounded it to michael jordan and hit the three-pointer and won. my dad or my grandpa used to take me to the game. or i just took my kid timmy to the seventh game of the 2003 alcs. and he was crying tears the size of hubcaps. we're connected. this game has connected with all the generations of america. and it is a game that's so different than any other game. everything else runs up and down the field and the ball or the puck scores. in this game, the person scores. the defense always has the ball. the fields are regular. there's no clock. it's about loss as much as it is about winning.

you can only bring your best player up once every nine times at-bat. and for these and 1,000 other reasons which by noon we might be done itemizing the top ones, it's the greatest game ever invented. so it insinuates ourselves. i can't remember a time -- my earliest memories, those film strips of 3 or 4 years old, there's a glove on my left hand. i mean, this game is so wonderful. and it allows for the kind of reflection and contemplation. something happens in football. it's in the sports section. something happens in baseball that shows how it's related to society. it's front page of the paper. >> and as mike says, it's always said baseball is like life. doris, you talk about early memories. i remember the first time i saw the documentary. you talked about the connection between your father and yourself. the baseball part. now when i run into you at fenway, i am there with kate and my kids. it's generation after generation

after generation engaging in this same ritual. >> i think that's what's so powerful about it. i have often said that my own love of history came from those days when i was only 6 years old and my father taught me that mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games so i could record for him the history of that afternoon's then brooklyn. >> dodger game. my youngest son joey, who is the most irrational of all my children was in the army and could not be there. the great thing about this film. i can sit with him and watch us win the world series. i don't have to worry because i know we're going to win. so there will be all sorts of great pleasure just in the knowledge. but those unforgettable moments. big papi hitting those line after line of home runs. i know. it's just the best sport in the world. >> there it was. the difference. we just showed the stoenl base,

willie gifrkts that made all the difference in game four of the american league -- >> i'm glad you had that moment. >> the great thing, willie is that just before the start of game four, they have the news reel cameras trained on kevin millar during practice. they're down 3-0. everybody is in despair. he said now don't count the sox out. tonight we've got this person. the next night this. and then they get schill and it's game seven and anything can happen. millar called it. he's the guy who draws the walk in the bottom of the ninth inning. they substitute roberts for him. roberts had already been told by mory wills he's going to have to steal a base when everybody else knows it. he goes on the first pitch and -- >> i'd rather not relive it. if you want to go through every play by play, that's fine. this is cruel. >> i've been telling my yankee fans this. as the maker of the original series ihad to edit the '46 series when the cardinals put the williams shift on. he was too proud to go to the other field. i had to do '67 when the

impossible dream team came one short. when carlton fisk's thing didn't work. '78, the one-game playoff. '86 with the ball going underneath buckner's legs and 2003, the day before i got married watching aaron bleeping boon's home run and you can't live through one three-game collapse? i feel so sorry for you. >> we don't want to have this conversation. as i've told mike. i think secretly red sox fans wish they hadn't won that series because your whole thing is you had to suffer. now you are the bluejays and the marlins. you are just another team with two world series. >> what people ought to understand is that it's on two nights. the documentary is on two nights. tonight and tomorrow night. and it's about much more than just the red sox/yankees, doris, as you've seen it. we've seen it. it's about the steroid era in baseball.

it's about the rise of dominican ball players. but most of all, i think, it's about the thread that baseball provides in american life and in an american culture. and someone sent me a quotation yesterday from fdr during the height of the depression when he said i'm paraphrasing. thank god we have baseball because baseball, at least it's played every day and it's the only sport that puts a smile on people's faces. >> i sometimes think that if i'm in an old age home at least i'll have 162 games to watch something to keep my days. the horrible spart between now and spring training. for us now red sox seemingly out. >> speaking of steroids, obviously, baseball took an ugly turn over the past 15 years or so. here's chris rock from the documentary talking about steroids. >> people get upset. who in the whole country wouldn't take a pill to make

more money at their job. you would. hey, there's a pill and you're going to get paid like steven spielberg, you would take the pill. you just would. >> ken? >> wow. >> can i go on record and say i'm not paid like steven spielberg, and i haven't taken the pill. you know, i don't want to excuse the steroid stuff. it was quantitatively and qualitatively more than anything we've ever done. but it does reflect as baseball always has from its very beginnings our own larger society, whether it's about immigration or race or the tensions between labor and management. and we lived in the '90s in an unregulated environment. due to congressional -- lack of oversight, lots of steroids flooded the markets where kids were able to take them, not just ball players. in the middle of the 1998 home run chase, steve willstein discovered andro, a steroid in mark mcgwire's open locker.

instead of saying, wait a second, we sort of killed the messenger and went on. and when i say we, it was the fans and the media as well as the players and major league baseball. and so we were all sort of culpable in an age when we take pills to go to sleep and sdo better in the bedroom and give pills to our kids to do better in the classroom. it's not to excuse. rather than make the barry bonds and roger clemens' the poster boys, the evil representative. let's understand the way in which they are very human and it does nothing to make these players who we, for the last decades have turned into gods and superman. it does nothing to make them human. in fact, i think it makes the game better and more interesting. and the good news is, that we're on the back side of the steroid scandal. and it's going to be that blip that moves along and we're just going to have to tell a story about it just like we have to tell a story about the 1919 world series. >> interesting way to look at it. >> there's a pill that makes you better in the bedroom? >> stay away from that one. >> doris, the other knock besides -- of the modern era,

besides steroids is there are have and have notes in baseball. the yankees being the worst of those culprits accused of buying their titles and all the rest of it. if you look at recent history. the cincinnati reds. the rays contending again. the padres. texas. the atlanta braves. baseball, doris is actually pretty healthy. >> yeah. >> the wild card was incredible invention. if it hadn't been for the wild card, i think baseball would never be where it is right now. what you need is to have every kid wake up in every spring and every city with the hope, maybe we'll get there in the end. even if they don't. at least they have to wake up. and it does seem like it somehow miraculously. yankees are always there. lots of other teams are there as well. it's really become a really healthy sport in these last couple of decades. even with the steroid scandal in the middle of it all. >> she's absolutely right. the yankees wake up on third base and think they've hit a triple because of the amount of money they have. but, you know, it takes not just

money. it takes leadership. as george steinbrenner found out for most of his tenure as the yankee owner. it takes a little more than backing up the dump truck and dumping cash into this game. takes leadership. the ability to spot talent. the ability to nurture that talent. the ability to manage those men and look at terry francona who has lost a roster and a half. manager of the year. they're still five, six games out. that's remarkable. >> ken burns, thank you. doris, thank you as well. >> thank you so much. >> the tenth inning premieres tonight and tomorrow at 8:00 eastern time on pbs. >> how exciting. ken, thank you for being here. >> thank you so much. introducing our quattron quadpixel technology. it adds yellow to the standard rgb color system, for colors never before seen on tv. notice the lifelike color on this yellow seahorse, oh sorry, yellow-ish seahorse on your tv with three color technology. observe this stunning blue sea,

in your mind that is. well, you get the picture. actually, you don't. [ male announcer ] quattron from sharp. you have to see it, to see it. [ man ] i thought our family business would always be boots. until one day, my daughter showed me a designer handbag. and like that, we had a new side to our business. [ male announcer ] when the martinez family saw an opportunity, the hartford was there. protecting their employees and property, and helping them prepare for the future. nice boots. nice bag. [ male announcer ] see how the hartford helps businesses at achievewhatsahead.com. you want to [ male announcer ] see how threplant a forest?businesses

maybe you want to rebuild homes for those in need? or, maybe you want to help improve our schools? whatever you want to do, members project from american express can help you take the first step. vote, volunteer or donate for the causes you believe in at membersproject.com. take charge of making a difference. i but i justve my 5 employcan't afford it.ance, i have diabetes. i didn't miss a premium payment for 10 years. and i'm worried if i lose my job, i won't be able to afford insurance. when i graduated from college, i lost my health insurance. the minute i got sick, i lost my insurance. not anymore. not anymore. not anymore. america's healthcare reforms change lives for the better. to find out how it can help you, visit us at americasfairhealthcare.org it's not just fair, it's the law.

to save me a boatload of money on my mortgage -- that would be awesome! [sarcastically] sure. like that will happen. don't just think about it. spend 10 minutes at lendingtree and save up to $272 a month.

tomorrow we'll have michael bloomberg. he recently spoke out about automatic ten-year for teachers. we'll ask him if he's getting any pushback. and "the washington post's" bob woodward. author of the new book "obama wars." he'll take us behind the white house's discussion on the war in afghanistan. up next, what if anything, did we learn today?

anywhere along the east coast it's going to be wet and likely delays from boston down to washington. that's where we're looking at scattered showers and possibly some thunderstorms. atlanta, 77. plenty of sunshine there. minneapolis, 65. it's sunny skies in denver. 92 and plenty of sunshine. sovereign of the security line. you never take an upgrade for granted. and you rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i deserve this. [ male announcer ] you do, business pro. you do. go national. go like a pro. let's raise a glass to cookies just out of the oven. to the morning bowl of cereal. and to lactaid® milk. easy to digest and with all the calcium and vitamin d of regular milk.

[ female announcer ] lactaid®. the original lactose-free milk. and vitamin d of regular milk. words alone aren't enough. my job is to listen to the needs and frustrations of the shrimpers and fishermen, hotel or restaurant workers who lost their jobs to the spill. i'm iris cross. bp has taken full responsibility for the clean up in the gulf and that includes keeping you informed. our job is to listen and find ways to help. that means working with communities. restoring the jobs, tourist beaches, and businesses impacted by the spill. we've paid over $400 million in claims and set up a $20 billion independently-run claims fund to cover lost income until people impacted can get back to work.

and our efforts aren't coming at tax-payer expense. i know people are wondering-- now that the well is capped, is bp gonna meet its commitments? i was born in new orleans. my family still lives here. i'm gonna be here until we make this right.

willie, what a learned today, is this show, it's the official show of the bochston r sox. >> i learned as a yankee fan it's a david versus goliath story. >> i learned when people say bad things, they are really talking about themselves, not about you. >> exactly. mike? >> don't let mike speak. >> what did you like? >> i learned willie may never get over dave roberts. >> it was hard to watch. >> mika,