she's okay, before you cringe. this is in brazil. oh! how could she be okay? minor injuries only in brazil. how? she's okay, thank god. we wouldn't have showed it to you if she wasn't. time for one quick e-mail, alex. >> randy, i'm waiting in line at borders to buy "american freak show." the crowd is getting restless. but the police are doing well with crowd control. >> my hats off to the cops in win wood. it's worth the chaos. i promise. "morning joe" starts right now. halladay is one strike away. the 0-2, a bouncer. ruiz, in time! roy halladay has thrown a no-hitter.

welcome to "morning joe." it's thursday, october 2nd. mike barnicle, something very special happened last night in major league baseball. >> i think you can make a case, joe, for that being one of the two or three greatest pitching performances of all time. to throw a no-hitter in a situation like that, first game of the play-offs, his first play-off appearance. roy halladay after suffering for 12 years in toronto, he threw 104 pitches last night, 78 of those 104 were for strikes. >> it's unbelievable, mike. as you pointed out last night to your millions of twitter followers, this has only happened twice in the 120-year history of major league baseball. >> 1956. >> he actually pitched a perfect game. >> dale mitchell was the last batter for the brooklyn dodgers at that time plate. jocko con lynn was the umpire. i don't want to date myself.

i watched that game, joe and mika, on a tv set that was set up in the window of a furniture store on main street in pittsburgh. we didn't have a tv. >> guess what? nothing more exciting. that's far more exciting than watching on an 80-foot big screen tv. willie geist, it happens so rarely, so rarely. and this guy, as mike said, for people that don't follow major league baseball, 104 pitches. >> he's been great for 13 years. baseball people knew. but outside of baseball they didn't recognize him because he's lost up in toronto. he also came one batter away from a perfect game -- >> which would have been his second of the season. he walked one guy in the fifth inning on a 3-2 pitch. that was his only mistake of the night. >> only two guys have had two no-hit ners the history of baseball. i guess nolan ryan in 73 did it twice. now roy halladay. your new york yankees harold

ford junior last night. >> that's the real story. >> i went to bed last night thinking they lost 3-0 and woke up this morning -- it looks like texeira did it for them. >> when he hit the home run, i didn't realize it was a home run because the announcer didn't know it was a home run. it had everybody in the stadium not been silent, i wouldn't have known right away it was a home run. what a game. >> willie geist, ain't nothing like the "new york post," ain't nothing like it anywhere. the best tex ever. speaking of "new york post" news, willie, you'll know this. richard johnson is leaving for the west coast. >> a lot of shakeup in the media world t press world. that's been his baby for a very long time. >> he scared a lot of people for a quarter century. now he's going to l.a., going to

be doing it. in washington, howie kurtz is going over to "the daily beast." >> is that right? >> yeah. >> i didn't see that. congrats to him. >> the rumors are thick that dina brown and "the daily beast" are in some negotiations to merge with "newsweek." >> mika, i feel badly because we excluded you from this talk of baseball. who do you think is going to win the world series this year? >> i have no clue. maybe the phillies because they're scrappy. >> close enough. that's as good enough as any. >> their crowds are scrappy and tough. don't mess around with the phillies' crowd. >> do you think the liverpool sale will go through? >> i do. i'm hoping to go to liverpool. >> mike barnicle, quickly, before we go to news, we know

these guys but you know them a hell of a lot better. this new england sports group that is going over and in the process of buying liverpool which for people who don't know, one of the great sports brands on the planet. >> new england sports ventures which is the parent company that owns the boston red sox, buying liverpool from the current owners tom hicks, the bankrupt owner of the texas rangers. he lost the texas rangers. now he's complaining that the cash on the table for the liverpool soccer club isn't enough. he needs the money i think to make a car payment. so that deal will go through. >> he's going to lose $200 million. our good friend joe jann that got me hooked on liverpool, for people that don't know, this is an amazing sports group that gets it done. the sox hadn't won in 80 years or so. they come in and two years later they win the world series. >> for americans, soccer is so

huge worldwide. we sometimes look at roy halladay, pre occupies us and everything. but soccer is a global sport. >> as chris just said in my ear, soccer is almost as much as "more davids than goliath." >> i know these are big stories in the world of sports. but i will say there's a story i want to get to in news. that's what the mayor is doing as it pertains to soda. i love him. i love him. >> 6:06 and i'm already tired. >> i want to make sure we get to it, chris. it would probably not be a good thing for you if we didn't. let's get to the news now. president obama is asking democrats to lose their glass half empty mentality. at a private dinner last night in new jersey, about 50 people shelled out just over $30,000 each, raising $1 million for the

democratic national committee. speaking to the guests, obama warned that the democrats can't start sulking and sitting back, but need to do everything to make sure their supporters turn out to vote in the midterm elections. meanwhile on the late show with david letterman last night, david axelrod admitted democrats would take a hit in november but speculated it would not be severe. >> we're going to lose some seats. i don't think that's news. we won 55 house seats in the last couple of elections. they were extraordinary elections. and the majority party always loses seats in the midterm. but the question is, how much that will move. and my sense is that this is different than past elections because the republican party is not trading high. their stock is not trading high. so it's not like people are saying, boy i can't wait until the republicans get in there. >> it's very interesting, mika. david axelrod last night also talked about the possibility of

a compromise for the islamic center at ground zero. >> oh, my gosh. >> which i think we'll see the white house starting to move towards the compromise deal that could get us beyond that. let's go back to the original barack obama statement here. do you think the democrats have a glass half echl ity mentality? >> i think there's a lot of concern, a lot of angst. at the end of the day, if democrats go to the polls, close a little bit of this enthusiasm gap, coupled with the fact that the pledge to america, some of the other excitement republicans had going for themselves seem to be receding, i think axelrod is right. i still think we'll see some losses, but i don't see it being as big as the house. the senate concerns me a little more than the house did just a few weeks ago. >> mike, the president has to be frustrated. talk about glasses being half empty by the fact that there are progressives who i think most people believe pulled this

president too far left are now saying give us more, give us more or we won't come out and vote. the president is in trouble right now. you look at every poll because he's pled independents. they say and in repeated polls they think the president went too far left but they want more or they're not going to help him this fall. >> usually we're frustrated in describing how the president must feel. he is nowhere near as frustrated as the average american is out there today. you can take issue by issue, and this administration has accomplished a lot. take health care which is what they focused on for the first 18, 19 months of their administration. health care reform, in quotes, passes. people have seen no effect of that bill's passage on their daily lives yet. there's a lot of good things in it that will help people down the road. no doubt about that. they've seen no effect of that. more and more americans are walking around wondering, i almost lost my house. i might lose my job. my children are growing up in a

country that increasingly i do not recognize. what's going on? that's the level of frustration that's larger than the president's frustration. >> we may reflect it in some of the polls. new cnn-time poll sheds light on races across the country. nevada, sharron angle is leading senate majority leader harry reid by two points. >> wow. look at these numbers. >> 42 to 40. >> harry reid, the majority leader of the united states senate at 40%. scott, this other guy, he's a tea party guy, right? >> yeah. hear you have tea party people and sharron angle, the moderate voice out there. harry reid is just running -- chris, you were out in vegas. >> there's the none of the above. >> 10%, right? >> yeah. >> that's beating the third

place guy. >> chris, you said you were out there and harry reid was just running one commercial after another commercial after another commercial. sharron angle is radical, crazy, extremely -- >> extremely dangerous. >> harry reid is sitting at 40% out there. this has got to be one of the most unpopular majority leaders in modern history. mike, can you think of a parallel? >> no. i don't think majority leader has anything to do with it. i think the fact that harry reid in his own home state is distinctly unpopular, not because he's not a good guy. i don't know him. but because he's an incumbent and because people -- again, the level of frustration among the electorate. you guys are in washington, and i'm walking around in grocery stores, going to gas stations and everything. all you hear is people's unrest. it's physical now. it comes right out of them when they're talking about washington and everybody in washington. that's where harry reid is.

>> even if democrats don't lose the majority, we talked about it on this show and you said it, the way president bauchl is going to have to govern will be very different. even if he's re-elected, pelosi and reid will have a different group of democrats with a different mindset and different kind of loyalty and fidelity to the white house. jobs, housing and -- health care there has been an effect. there are a lot of medium-sized business owners who have heard from their accountants about the increases they'll face next year and the following year. they're making adjustments now that impacts their employees and others around them. >> what did you talk about for eight or nine months while the debate was going on? you talk about that they haven't addressed the cost factor. that is now becoming apparent to small business owners. >> and the president was saying, and it was counterintuitive, we're going to put 31 million more people on the health insurance rolls and save money.

they can sit there and talk all they wanted to. it didn't make any sense. i want to go back to las vegas though, because harry reid, it may be an issue of all politics is personal. chris goes out to vegas and hands out tracks. if you died tonight, heaven or hell? he went out to the hard rocca seen know this past weekend and he said and it's always packed. went there this past friday night. he came back with three boxes of track stuff. it's half empty, nobody is there. "new york times" had a front page story talking about 14% unemployment. you know what immediately went in my mind? remember willie, and i know you were shocked and stunned and deeply saddened when the president said this, remember when he started saying don't go to vegas, don't go to vegas. i bet you, harry reid has a lot of problems, i bet that's his

biggest problem. >> i spoke to an event planner, organizer for some event i was doing. he literally says he saw pal bly the difference from before and after those statements. he plans a lot of events in vegas. >> when the president said don't go to vegas, corporations immediately cut it. >> it didn't help. if you're a person struggling or worried about your job or lost money in the stock market or your house, vegas is probably the last place you're going to go to roll the dice. the most troubling part of this conversation is that chris lick when he goes to vagegas, he sit in his room and watches political ads. a couple more polls and then we'll do the bloomberg story. in missouri the senate race there, republican roy blunt is ahead of robin carnahan by 13 points, 53% to 40%. in connecticut, mcmahon trailing

bloom that 41% to 54%. that's interesting. >> here we have these two races. keep that up for a second. we had blunt in the midwest. midwest is bleeding badly for democrats from wisconsin down to -- through ohio, pennsylvania, west virginia, down to missouri. but the northeast and the west coast seem to be slis phiing behind democratic candidates. >> let's look at new york. the race for the senate. democrat kir stint gillibrand leads girardi 55% to 41% t. race for governor of new york has democrat andrew cuomo up by 14 points over republican carl paladino. >> mika, we'd love to get to that bloomberg story. >> we'd love to. >> looks like we're out of time. you know me, the one thing i'm crazy about. ask anybody here, i'm crazy

about getting the breaks on time. >> right. also, what i want you all to do. >> i'm obsessive about it. >> i want you to look at this story and apply it to your personal life and apply it to your economy, your financial situation, apply it to our country's economy. >> we have weather and the commercial break coming up. we'll have a couple cokes and doughnuts. maybe when we come back -- >> i'm kind of scared to do that. if i do this, i'm going to get killed during the break. >> it's true. >> what's your story? >> in an effort to fight obesity new york governor paterson and michael bloomberg are looking to ban residents from using food stamps to buy soda and other sugary drinks. i think it's terrific. i think it's bold. we'll talk about it again at 6:30. if you guys try this again, we'll talk about it at 7:00 as well. we're going to actually debate it. >> i feel better now. >> i think it's very brave what they're doing. i think our country needs more

people who will make decisions like this that are difficult and more popular and fall on deaf ears. a stunning new report reveals what the white house didn't want the public to know about the oil spill in the gulf. also just a couple of regular guys talking politics. not so fast. politico has the dirty details behind the making of this new political ad in the west virginia senate race. first, here is broadway bill karins to exaggerate the issues, to make up stories about impending doom and tell us what bad things are going to happen this week. a couple days ago, i think it was going yesterday, rain coming into new york. seriously, 80 and sunny. >> and my train he told me to take to washington so i could get to that little thing i was doing, it was late. but the plane -- >> i get blamed for the late train right now. >> the plane he told me not to take. >> right on time. i'm here to help everyone

out. as far as the forecast goes today, syracuse to albany, the only areas you'll get a little wet as you walk out the door. the storm system that plagued new england is finally going to leave. we have a great fall forecast heading your way. today is the transition day. we'll see a lot of sunshine. it's going to be breezy, temperatures upper 60s to low 70 z. as we head into friday, look at this. pure sunshine, upper 60s to low 70s everywhere. even as we go through the weekend, look at washington, d.c. how perfect is this? saturday and sunday, 75 to near 80 degrees. by the way, the rest of the country looks absolutely gorgeous from atlanta to dallas. enjoy what's going to be a great weather pattern right into a nice fall weekend. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks.

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did you see this? talk about a blooper. yesterday president obama is giving a fairly significant speech, and the presidential seal which identifies him as the president and it goes with him everywhere, right there on the front of the podium, it fell off, came loose. i heard somebody gasp. but when they got to looking around, do you know what they found behind the presidential seal? his birth certificate. >> all right. time to take a look at the morning papers at 22 past the hour. "the new york times," front page photo shows the explosion after gunmen attacked nato oil tankers wednesday. the obama administration has offered multiple apologies to pakistan for a helicopter strike that left three soldiers dead last week. >> the "usa today," the number of voters who cast early ballots in this year's primary elections

increased 50% over the 2006 midterm. that may be a good bit of information for democrats. a trend that is reshaping political campaigns. >> "st. petersburg times," rubio in cross hairs during senate debate. the republican got the front-runner treatment in a come pattive senate debate last night with both rivals attacking him as a right wing extremist out of step with florida voters. >> i heard that was a wash actually last night. i didn't see it, which would help marco, right? >> yeah. if it was a wash, yeah. >> "wall street journal," at&t is about -- i've got friends at at&t. >> this is interesting. >> i take no great pleasure in this fact because i really have people that i love that work there, but, god, the service is so horrific whether you're in new england, whether you're in new york city, whether you're in alabama. wherever you are, there are too

many people jamming up their broadband. these contracts need to go out. at&t is about to lose it for the iphone. the word is verizon may get it. we've got six different accounts in our family with at&t because of all the devices. but the guy from blackberry was here last week. and he gave us that -- what's that thing called again? >> the torch. >> the torch. i looked at it. it is an amazing device. and i was going to get it. it's at&t. so it's a paper weight. >> one of the challenges, when people talk about the regulatory uncertainty in washington coming out of fcc, some of that has got to be changed. we talked about this. for them to be able to build out the next generation of broadband and expand bandwidth. you have to provide certainty so they can make some of these huge investments. i feel bad for these guys because they've come up with all these great devices.

they're the distributor of it. >> i can't use my e phone -- i can use it for everything else, but i can't use it in new york. >> i watch him exploding when he's trying to talk to his family. >> like when i'm on the phone with my son in tuscaloosa. >> or your wife four blocks from here. >> my wife four blocks ago, it drops. my dad in the hospital, it drops. somebody on a business deal, it drops. it always drops. so as much as i love the device, i put it down and go back to my verizon blackberry. >> i have verizon. you can tell when you're talking to someone on an iphone in new york city. about 30 seconds after the conversation begins, you end up going, hello, hello, hello. >> you talk for two minutes and realize they haven't been there for the two minutes. do you know who has been there for two minutes and we haven't realized it?

jim vandehei. >> you know his pickup truck almost ran over our limousine the other night, in my white stretch limousine with purple interior. >> i don't live like the purdy. i think i did hit the mirror a little bit. >> and then kept going. >> we're going to arianna huffington's -- in the white limo, there's this long stretch. >> i think your champagne in the jacuzzi in the back might have spilled. >> it jing ld and spilled all over my smoking jacket. >> must have been awful. >> chris was jarred, actually had to -- he was in his bathing suit and had to put on his shirt. >> please, guys, seriously. >> jim, let's talk about this hillary clinton rumor. it's been a lot of fun to talk about for the last couple days. we want to dig in to see if there's anything to it.

james carville may have cut to the heart of it when he told politico and he said this before, running for president is like having sex. out don't do it once and form get about it. it has a high, high recidivism rate. >> indeed. >> does hillary clinton still have her eye on the white house one way or another? >> i think you have a distinction both for woodward and our story. it's the people around clinton talking. i don't think she's talking about it at all. ben smith, one of our reporters is very plugged into that world. he said all their talk is about 2016. they have very little interest and they think she has very little interest in being vp but is very, very serious about looking at 2016 and it keeps her organization together. mark penn did a poll for the hill where there happened to be a question about hillary versus obama in it. there was this whole world that would love to get a clinton in

the white house. this has to be a serious irritant in the white house, whether bill clinton or someone saying they need a clinton style change of leadership in the white house and all this talk about hillary i think irritates the obamas. >> bob woodward brought up the 2012, but was tnt first person. where is that coming from? >> the people around hillary. i think especially people in the government that think, hey, that seems like a logical place for her to go, a logical move for obama to make. it's more likely she would become defense secretary next year than getting on the ticket with obama. >> i want to ask you about this ad in the west virginia senate race causing embarrassment, i understand, for republicans. let's take a look and we'll ask you about it. >> obama is messing things up. >> spending money we don't have. stimulus, obama-care. >> and joe manchin supported it all. >> he's not bad when he's with obama. washington joe does whatever obama wants. >> we better keep joe manchin

here in west virginia. >> away from washington. >> the only way we can stop obama. >> whots wrong with that ad? >> i got this last night from a democrat. we got a copy of the casting call for this ad that republicans filled out. this was not filmed in west virginia, it was filmed in philadelphia where they were asking for, quote, unquote, hickey-looking blue collar people. i have a feeling this is going to become an issue in the race. >> stop it. how stupid. is there more, jim? >> the whole script of what exactly what they're looking for, democrats have been trying to paint him as being out of touch. most people don't realize that most of these commercials are make believe, actors, not people that are actually in the state or district. once you actually bust them with it --

>> here is more. they put this in print. clothing suggestion, dick keys type jacket with t-shirt underneath. john deere hats, not brand new, beat-up-looking trucker hats. >> that's my weekend wear. >> yeah, we saw, with that truck that scratched up my white stretch limo. >> i drive a pickup, so i kind of like that, jim. >> wearing hickey hats. >> basically off broadway actors from new york who came to a casting call in philly. jim vandehei, thank you so much. up next, is a white house compromise on the table for the proposed islamic center near ground zero? also, think about this one guys, who is more powerful, nancy pelosi or lady gaga? forbes magazine reveals the world's most powerful women. i think you know where we're going with this. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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the rock in new york city. "the new york times" reports that democrats are working to remind voters of their stance on social issues like abortion, to increase their chances of winning next month's elections. according to "the times" dems are trying to attract moderate republicans and independents by pointing out that should republicans win in large numbers a conservative social agenda will be implemented. the report points to one contentious commercial in new york that shows women in a police lineup who, according to the voiceover would be turned into criminals if paladino beats cuomo in the race for governor. >> mike barnicle, this is ill-advised. >> at a time in this country's history when so many people are on edge about daily domestic issues like therapy homes, their jobs, what used to be called pensions, the disappearance of their 401(k)s, the children's public school system, that is so far out of whack to be focusing

on -- it's a legitimate issue, no doubt about it. that's not on people's minds. >> but to say that women would be arrested if andrew cuomo loses? >> i'm for andrew cuomo. this is ill-advised. anyone who thinks this is foremost on voters' mind should be removed from the top levels of campaigns. >> why are your democrats doing snit. >> i don't think all democrats are doing it. i hope they will ignore this, talk about dealing with rising costs with everything from gas to health care. if we don't focus on that, the numbers will get back to where they were a few weeks ago. >> i guess this plays on "the new york times" report from last sunday saying they're going to try to make this race an ugly race about social issues and tax liens and divorce proceedings. i guess this is a followup to it, right? "the new york times" is reporting they're going to try

to distract. >> that is the plan, and this is part of it. i think this could literally put us back where we were six weeks ago where those numbers begin to creep up where republicans are making even greater gains than they have already. >> who is going to believe that can carl paladino is governor of new york that women will be subject to arrest? who would believe that? >> it's a sleazy ad. it reminds me of that lazio ad about the ground zero cultural center. >> in fairness, carl paladino is pro life. i believe he's against the issue of choice even in the case of rape or incest. having said that, i don't believe this should be the focus of the campaign. >> but even if that's the case, he's not going to be controlling the supreme court. women are not going to be lined up and arrested in new york state.

>> that's a pretty draconian way to make the message. >> it's a lie as well. it's a lot of different things going wrong and turning people off. >> it is sad. politico is reporting that white house senior advisor david axelrod supports a compromise on the proposed islamic center. speaking at a new york ymca with nobel lawyer yet ellie gisele, he reports that he doesn't think people are as tolerant. he expressed support to turn the project into an interfaith center for jews, christians and muslims. >> what do you think about that? >> i always thought it would be shoub where it should be. i agree with the mayor on this and the president. >> this sounds like a compromise, mike. >> i think in this proposed building, not a mosque, if on the first floor when you walk in

the door, they had a replica or whatever you want to call it of the vietnam memorial with the names of all of the people who were killed in the world trade center that day of all faiths from all countries, i think something like that would go a long way toward mid mit gatigat nervous energy surrounding this. >> going to sports now. all right. >> those quick naps are great, aren't they? >> phillies ace roy halladay making his first postseason ap pines, taking the mound. he helped his own cause at the plate, an rbi single in the bottom of the second. phillies jump to a 4-0 lead. that's all they needed behind the right arm of roy halladay. let's jump ahead to the ninth inning, halladay has one walk only, one base runner, no hits.

here with one hit he gets cairo to pop out. second no hitter in postseason history since 1956. 0-2 hit. the catcher, carlos ruiz makes a nice play from his knees, 104 pitches. first pitcher since nolan ryan in '73 to pitch two no-hitters in one season. he pitched a perfect game back in may. the other one, of course, yankees don larson, 1956 world series. he threw a perfect game against the brooklyn dodgers. >> mike barnicle missed his plane -- >> i was at logan airport last night taking the 7:00 shuttle to new york city watching the halladay game on my ipad. it was such a great game. i missed the 7:00 --

>> good call. >> yankees in the late game taking on the twins while the celebration was going on in philly. twins jump to a 3-0 lead n. the sixth the yankees rallied. granderson had a huge second half. hits a shot off the scoreboard in right field at the new target field. scores robinson cano and jorge posada. in the bottom of the inning, cc sabathia, a little shaky, walks in the tieing run with the bases loaded. he did get out of the jam, still not happy with himself. the game tied at 4. top of the seventh inning, mark texeira comes through, a touring shot to right field, the kind that just sneaks in. >> struggling, a huge win. >> they needed the win behind cc sabathia because they can't count on their other pitching.

>> texeira is huge. >> huge. early game yesterday, rangers taking on the rays in the top of the third, the rays' ace david price struggled a little bit. giving up a home run to nelson cruz. rays losing at home in game one to the rangers, 5-1 was the score. >> obviously the 14 people that were there by the seventh inning very disappointed. here is the lineup today. yankees and twins at 6:00, the braves and giants start their series tonight. >> the braves have a chance. do it for bobby. up next. did the government hide information on just how bad the gulf oil spill was? it's a big story making front page news this morning. >> do you know what else is a big story? this soda tax thing they're talking about in new york. mika, i promise we'll talk about it next. >> really? >> i promise.

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a new government report is blasting the obama administration's response to the bp oil spill, blaming them for misrepresenting the amount and fate of oil in the gulf of mexico. nbc news white house correspondent savannah guthrie has more on the many missteps alleged by the investigation. >> reporter: for months, tens of thousands of barlts of crude oil dumped tint gulf. now a draft report from a commission appointed by president obama is sharply critical of this administration for consistently underestimating how much oil was spilling into the gulf and overestimating how quickly the oil disappeared once the leak was stopped. by doing so, the report concludes the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully

candid with the american people about the scope of the problem. among the findings, the government took initial estimates about the rate of the oil leak on bp's word alone without supporting documentation. and used crude methodology to determine how much was leaking and was overly casual about the numbers, while estimates from private scientists were significantly higher and used more clear and rigorous analysis. >> there's no doubt in my mind the original numbers were significantly lower than what the flow was. from what i've seen, i don't see the government was intentionally trying to low-ball the oil spill estimates. >> reporter: the report says when some government scientists sought to publicize their long-term worst case figures, they were blocked by the white house office of management and budget. but the white house says worst case data was publicly available there and points to examples of top officials in early may being quite candid about how bad it could be.

>> the worst case scenario is you could have 100,000 barrels armor flowing out. >> reporter: they reported the vast majority of oil had disappeared by early august. >> our scientists have done an initial assessment. more than 3/4 of the oil is gone. >> reporter: but the report says the administration misused the data to come to an overly sweeping conclusion. >> mike barnicle -- that was savannah guthrie reporting. >> saying they were not competent or candid. >> during the first five or six week period, we had carol brown on several times. >> it seemed like a mad scramble. >> is that fair to say? does anyone here disagree? we definitely had a lot of back and forth and a lot of questions and concerns. this just raises new ones. >> and also the report says they

took bp's word for it too much. which you also heard those complaints. >> we definitely heard that. >> this is just preliminary. it could get worse, could get better. this is a huge story. no doubt about it chris tlrks's a much bigger story. >> you should not mock this. >> we're not. >> in an effort to fight obesity. >> excuse me? chris is telling me we're going to go to black if i don't finish quickly. and i would just warn you that at this point, i might go over. new york governor david paterson and mayor michael bloomberg are looking to ban residents from using food stamps to buy soda and other sugary drinks. they plan to announce today they're asking the federal government to add the drinks to a list of items off limits like alcohol and cigarettes. >> 30 to black. >> about 1.7 million of new york's city more than 8 million

residents is on food stamps. there's been a study showing in poorer neighborhoods more children are obese. it's an epidemic. >> don't go to black, chris. >> in "the new york times" by the new york city health commissioner, they point out over the past 30 years consumption of sugary beverages in the u.s. has more than doubled in parallel with the rise in obesity to the point where nearly 1/6 of an average teenager's calories now come from these drinks. the mayor pointing out -- don't interrupt me. the mayor pointing out on this show that obesity is the one health care crisis that is not getting better in this country. it's only getting worse. i would suggest you all read about this and embrace it. >> harold was reading the story before and he said it's racist. >> i said it's maybe unconstitutional, not racist. it's a class issue. >> i'm putting words in your

mouth. >> do you think food stamps should pay for cigarettes and alcohol and things that make you sick and die? >> i'm with you. i don't think you should do this to poor people. >> somebody else at the table come up with a better idea. >> harold wants to know why you hate poor people? >> recesses. i drank all this stuff growing up. "news you can't use" straight ahead. like we can't use that. [ female announcer ] where are people with moderate to severe

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is. time for news you can't use. mike barnicle is making me laugh. >> this is funny. willie's book. >> you can pre order right now, "american freak show" by willie geist. >> what was your favorite part, joe? >> beginning to end. it changed my life. seriously, that's like me telling you what was my favorite part -- what was the movie about jesus? >> like asking what's my favorite part of "passion of the christ." don't you say i never saw that movie. how can i do three months of that -- how can we do three months of that on "scarborough country" if i never saw the movie? >> right. that would be wrong. atheist person, what's your take? crazy christian lady, what's

your take? rabbi, what's your take? i think christine o'donnell was actually in those passion of the christ segments. that book, it changed my life. >> did it? i know you mean that. i appreciate it. 113 hours left now. harold has ordered like 30 copies. he's a good man. let's get to the forbes most powerful women list. top three, michelle obama -- not a huge surprise there -- kraft foods ceo irene rosen felt. oprah winfrey, number three. here is where it gets interesting. lady gaga is four spots ahead of nancy pelosi. >> that's depressing and stupid. >> and nine spots ahead of sarah palin who comes in at number 16 of the world's most powerful women. >> that's depressing and stupid for other reasons. how do you put lady gaga ahead of nancy pelosi. >> cultural influence, i guess. stirring it up a little bit.

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the seal dropping off the podium. what happened there and who got fired? >> actually that does come under my purview as senior adviser, so i've been giving this a lot of thought. we've been here almost two years, 500 speeches probably. never happened before.

i can only think of one thing. >> what's that? >> witchcraft. >> exactly. >> that worked. top of the hour. welcome back to "morning joe." joining us on the set along with mike barnicle, willie geist and joe scarborough and me -- >> this is big. >> i'm only being nice because i like your wife who i saw on monday. she's amazing. >> you don't like mike? >> you started to ask the question and we all got nervous. >> she was seething with disgust. >> stop that. >> i think she might have been. i'm not sure. look who is here joining us on the senate. former governor of vermont, dr. howard dean. only a doctor when he wants to be though. >> exactly. >> not when chris is having a brain aneurysm though. no, he's got to go. >> chris has a brain aneurysm and we give a speech together talking about the future. he's like what's going on? chris just had a brain aneurysm

and he was like, that's too bad. see you. no problem. >> i could have fixed it right there on the spot. get the guys to bring up some cutlery from the kitchen. >> he's just fine. >> let me ask you, barnicle is going to vermont this weekend. are the leaves changing? i want to take my kids up there. >> absolutely. >> where do i go? >> at this point you probably go from burlington on down. the northeast has probably hit their peak. it's great. >> south of burlington the leaves are still changing? >> absolutely. >> go to woodstock, stay at the woodstock inn. it is i think the single most beautiful state in the country. >> woodstock, that's like the movie holiday inn, if you can get your family there over christmas, it's wonderful. >> it's wonderful. >> i'm going to go back and send a bill to the vermont tourism people after this. this is terrific. >> i want to actually -- i think

chris has found the ad put together by carl paladino. we do have that. >> against paladino. >> against paladino. >> let's do a little background of this. two weeks ago "the new york times" has the lead story that the democratic consultants are saying we want to avoid the economy, we want to void obama's record. so we're going to make this is a very negative race. he said they're going to look at tax liens, divorce filings, social issues. and then "the times" follows up this morning with a story saying they're going to start hammering hard, instead of on jobs, on abortion. this is the first ad of its kind in the new york race. >> carl paladino has one word when it comes to a woman's right to choose. no. cnn asked him, what if she's been raped? what if it was incest?

if carl paladino had his way, abortion would be a crime and women would be treated like criminals. this is what carl paladino wants. do you? >> mike barnicle. >> i cannot believe what i just saw. >> it's so out of place in terms of people's concerns i would think, people are afraid of losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing a future for their children because of their concern over public school education. they're not concerned over losing a woman's right to choose. i don't think that's in danger of being lost. i think they're concerned with losing the other things. >> i tell you why it's a great ad -- first of all, it's incredibly move en. you were visibly shaken by that ad by women. >> i think she was actually disgusted by it. >> were you? i was shocked. a very moving ad. those women did a great job

acting in distress. >> the whole thing. >> here is why it's a powerful ad. in vermont where democrats are running against an anti-choice guy, no rape, no incest, no exceptions. what it does is color the candidate's character. people are not going to vote on this issue. they do get uncomfortable with people out of the mainstream. this is an out of the main stream position on the east coast and the west coast. i think it's an effective ad. would ntd spaend whole lot of time and money doing that. that's a devastating ad if you're thinking, if you're mad at the establish mtd and thinking of voting for somebody like carl paladino, especially for women that puts an issue right in your lap that's concerning. >> that's fascinating, because around the table we were comparing it to the rick lazio ad on the ground zero cultural center which we thought he used a divisive issue. we made the same complaint about that.

also, that ad is just not accurate. if carl paladino wins, those women aren't going to jail. nobody is going to jail in new york state. there is a privacy right, not only the constitution, but in new york state. that would never happen. same with vermont. >> most people that talk about no exceptions and all this kind of stuff, they're just talking like that to their base. all ads are like that. both sides run ads that are partly true. >> you think democrats should run these types of ads? >> i don't think you ought to spend a lot of money on them. they are effective if you choose to do that. i prefer not to use that kind of campaign sale. >> what do you think about nationalizing the election by taking a crazy statement o'donnell says in delaware, a crazy statement sharron angle might have said in nevada, a crazy statement somebody else may have said somewhere else, is that the democrats' best hope, just to say i don't care who the republican is running in your race, look at the party they'll be working with in washington.

>> this is the white house strategy. i think it makes some sense. the republicans want to make this a referendum on obama. we know what the numbers show on that. they win. what the democrats want to do is make it a choice between the two people that are running in which case we have a much better chance. we have better candidates, i don't mean because democrats are better than republicans. as you know, republicans make better candidates than people who are challengers. they know how to do it. if they're in good, they've done great constituent work for republicans and democrats in their constituency. somebody like john hall, i think, is going to win. i think he's going to win because he's done two years of really good constituency work, not because he's a democrat in a more republican district. that's not a good thing this year. >> let me ask you what went wrong. barack obama comes in with a 7% approval rating. two years later democrats are having to distract, as they said in this "new york times" article from obama's record and obviously from the economy. what is so offensive to

independent voters? of democratist strategists who say we can't let them vote on the obama agenda? what's gone wrong where they have to distract from obama's record? >> the biggest thing obama has no control over, and i actually think he's done a good job on and gets no credit at all is the economy. i believe the stimulus has av verted even more catastrophic problems. >> couldn't you have made that argument? why haven't they made that argument? >> why aren't they selling it? >> it's a hard argument to make. if i hadn't done this, you'd be in even worse shape. that's kind of a hard sell. but i think it's true which gets us to the next problem. the problem is this is an incredibly emotional time. people are very upset about the economy. they're confused. the health care bill was -- i think a lot comes back to the health care bill, not what's in the health care bill, but how it

was done. it was an insider thing. he did have transparency, but the problem is every deal that was made with pharmaceuticals, tom daschle's book came out and did an interview and said they gave up on the public option in july, traded it for $150 billion in hospital money over a ten-year period. i know a lot of republicans and independents that voted for barack obama. they didn't vote for barack obama because they liked the democratic platform. they voted for him because they believed he was going to clean up the mess in washington. that did not happen. >> mike, that was actually my first op ed in politico. i knew a lot of republicans in iowa, a lot of republicans in new hampshire that voted for obama because they actually bought into the hope and change idea. and as the governor says, when you're taking on health care reform and in the end you strike a deal with big pharma and with the big hospitals and the insurance companies end up in a better position than they were before because you've got a

mandate now but no public option to keep the prices down, people are -- this is business as usual. >> yeah. the health care reform bill extended out over 15 months, it's really interesting to look at it now as people get ready to vote again because you can sense it out in the electorate that health care is going to be terrific. the reform is going to end up probably being great for us and the country and eventually great for the economy. right now people are thinking health care, obama, that's what he wanted, not what we needed. they needed jobs. they needed to focus on the economy looking at the situation now. they figure they did health care for 14, 15 months to the exclusion of what was important to me. that's just i think what people are thinking. >> when you're a leader -- >> there's actual people now like tom perriello who pull themselves even by running on health care. there's a switch going on. democrats are starting to run on health care because they understand people understand it's a good thing. it's the way it was done was not

helpful, especially stringing it out -- if george bush wanted this bill, it would have been on his desk by july 31st. >> that's true. why is that? george w. bush -- let's put this up for viewers so they won't attack you for loveing george w. bush. >> i haven't been attacked for that yet. >> george w. bush got the surge through when 80% of americans according to a poll was against it and had nancy pelosi as speaker and harry reid as majority leader. bush still got what he wanted with a minority. and yet obama had this remark fbl majority and couldn't get this through. why? >> two reasons. the first is if you want reform, you can't have all insiders working on your senior staff who the system has worked for them. they're not interested in reform. that's problem number one. problem two is barack obama was elected by people under 35. more people voted under 35 in this election than were over 65. i've never seen that before in

my career in politics. they really do want bipartisanship. i think the president did, too. when he got to washington, he ran into a lot of people over 35 who didn't want a lot to do with bipartisanship. i think he did everything he could to get bipartisanship. why they filibuster, they filibustered stuff they knew they had to pass eventually just to prevent him from getting a victory. republicans are incredibly successful in opposition because they don't, they don't care what passes, what has to be killed. they're incredibly focused, well disciplined and on message. i think they really made it hard on a guy who was just coming in, felt somewhat idealistic himself about what to bring to mayor canned wasn't able to do it. >> i disagree 100%, but that's not -- people can see my extended remarks later on. >> all right. >> we have some polls that are

out. these things, they're fascinating because it's showing this country is breaking down regionally. democrats are gaining on the east coast and the west coast. republicans are sweeping in the south and the midwest. >> let's take a look at nevada first. this is the new cnn poll in nevada. republican sharron angle leading senate majority leader harry reid by two points, 42 to 40, well within the margin of error. also the tea party-backed candidate, scott ashjian 7%. 10% polled none of the above. >> why is harry reid so unpopular in his home state? >> the truth is that lately, and i don't quite understand this, lately over the last ten years or so, that in the senate they have -- both sides have gone after the majority leader on the other side. harry reid hammered mcconnell, put in millions of dollars to try to upset mcconnell. they didn't get close but made

mcconnell's life miserable. before that, the republicans went after daschle. horrible ads in the race against daschle. now that republicans are returning the favor. i don't know why they do this. it seems to be just another partisan breakdown in the snatd which i think has become really essentially a dysfunctional organization. the house passed 400 bills that didn't even get taken up in the senate. missouri senate race, republican roy blunt ahead of democrat robin carnahan by 13 points. >> this was a close race. another midwest state from wisconsin through ohio, pennsylvania, down to missouri. the midwest appears to be breaking republican. but on the east coast, the east coast seems to be breaking democratic. >> in connecticut, republican linda mcmahon trailing democrat blumenthal, 54 to 41%. in new york, kirsten gillibrand

leads joseph degirardi 55 to 41%. we started this by talking about carl paladino and the commercial put together by an independent group. the race for governor of new york has democrat andrew cuomo up by 14 points over paladino. >> can i ask a question about the ad? does andrew cuomo know that they're going to go ahead with that ad? >> you can't know directly. they can't be on the phone and call. i can tell you that if you don't want something to get up there, a third party can say, layoff. in this case maybe this group wanted to get a little bit of publicity and fund-raising. >> and funds raising which that will help the fund-raising. but that's attached to a bigger story which is "the new york times" saying abortion and other social issues are going to be up front. >> yeah, at a time when i'm not sure everybody cares about that. >> i don't think you want to make that up front.

you can get that message out there. you've got to focus on jobs and the economy or you don't win. i agree with that. up next, chuck todd has this morning's developing headlines out of the white house. the director of "waiting for superman," davis guggenheim will be on the show. what "time" magazine discovered on his 24-day cross-country journey. first bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> good morning, mika. if you live in new england, good news for you finally. today is your transition day. you'll be rewarded for an upcoming period of weather right into the weekend. still one last batch of rain left over, precisely more or less from syracuse into albany, new york. it's going to rain from albany down to kingston probably for another two hours or more. this will slowly shift over to massachusetts. just showers left over, upstate new york, western mass into the berkshires. d.c. today, that's a nice day.

as i mentioned, the forecast around the rest of the country has been perfect all week. finally that's arriving in new england. look at today. gorgeous weather for the 6:00 start time for the yankee-minnesota game outdoors. 73. can't beat that. dallas very nice. nice in atlanta. on friday, the whole country is in for a great stretch of weather with the exception of the pacific northwest. that's when the next storm system moves onshore. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. ♪ where'd you learn to do that so well. ♪ ♪ where'd you learn to do that so well. ♪

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if she puts her name in the hat, and that's totally up to her, there are a number of others there as well, any one of which make a far better presidential candidate than what we've got right now in the oval

office. her decision to roughen is hers alone. it's not our decision as to whether she runs. she's done phenomenal things for this country, elevated the debate, critical to our race. let me tell you also we know what qualified means, don't we? we know we have a constitutional requirement for somebody that's going to run for president. of course she's qualified. >> that is joe miller giving perhaps -- and i say perhaps -- the most tepid endorsement of anybody in their qualifications to be president of the united states. >> look at the constitution. >> look at the constitution. was she born here? has she committed a fill any? i got no evidence. >> never mind. >> i'm just saying. how tep id was that mike barnicle? i don't think that's going to make him happy? >> she's not going to waste her time working really hard on facebook. >> all morning, all morning.

>> i can't do that. you can. i should just remember the difference between men and women is that i could -- you can make fun of that. i cannot. >> all morning, all morning on it. >> that was awfully insensitive of this guy, joe miller if she's working all morning on the facebook post. i'm sorry. let's go to chuck todd at the white house. >> nbc news chief white house correspondent -- >> seriously, though. >> i don't support that type of joking at all. >> i'm sorry. chuck todd, you're the co-host of the da"the daily rundown." >> the bp report not great for the white house. savannah guthrie saying the white house was either not contents or not candidate was the report. >> and the white house firing back and saying the report is extremely pre limb narp and among other things they're pushing back on this. >> chuck, what's your say?

>> reporter: what was interesting yesterday is they put out this statement reminding folks of some things that ken salazar said within the first week. look, we went through this with this administration during the spill itself when they were making one set of projections on what the quors worst case scenario could be and scientists were saying another. that's what this report is saying, like hey, guys, you weren't being candid. you were telling your scientists not to put out certain aspects of this report or not to look at it in the bigger scheme of things. and so what this preliminary report is showing is that, hey, it seems that the private scientific community may have been right all along, but worse is that maybe you were not allowing this information to come out of the government scientific community. that's what's so frustrating,

when you're in the middle of this story, we were all sitting there dinging them, why are they saying this and you guys keep saying this? it always turns out to be you're underestimating the spill, whether it was the flow rate at the time or all of this. so now the presidential commission -- the one thing the white house has on their side on this one is, hey, we appointed this commission. we're putting ourselves through this in their own investigation. >> ha is the right thing to do. but gn, they come back saying either were not competent or not candid. as you said, the scientists were right all along. there's another damning part of this preliminary report. this report seems to echo what a lot of environmental critics said of the white house the first five weeks or so of this bp crisis and that is they took the oil company's word for it way too often. >> well, yes, and i think the problem was at the time they had no other choice.

i think one of the things we learned during this oil spill is we didn't have -- the government didn't have its own independent way to verify certain things, whether the only folks that had the technology were the oil drillers. >> you say they had no other choice, chuck. but yet the scientific community was complaining from the beginning, as you said. they certainly could have been far more skeptical of bp's estimates, could they not? >> exactly. that's what we -- that's what i think a lot of us never understood at the time. on one hand they would take bp's word for something. in the next moment they would hit them on something else. it always felt as if they were having this tension internally of the facts on the ground, the picture we were seeing every day and the pr problem they were having with bp. >> chuck, obviously those of us in new york city insulated from

the realities of the outside world according to chuck todd, some people have forgotten about this. we're cycling through the headlines in my hometown of pensacola, florida. it's a screaming headline of the news journal, government slipped on spill estimate. "st. petersburg times." also oil estimates squelched. as nbc news political director, what is the impact in the swing state of florida of this misstep for the obama administration and democrats running this fall? >> it's not just florida. i would say overall. what it is, it only adds to the distrust in government right now. that's what it adds to. here are you getting the straight word from the government on various issues and on this case, here is a commission ironically, amential appointed commission saying, hey, you weren't getting the

straight story. we didn't give you the facts on this. and so guess what? when you have distrust in government, who is that bad for? the party in power. so it's not just the impact in florida. i think it's the impact -- it only adds to this distrust. throw in the competency thing. there's one of two issues here, incompetency or covering up or trying to gloss over or refine what the truth was here. neither was is a good thing. >> governor dean, we can also talk about the competence factor and talk about florida. this also has an impact on progressives who thought they were too cozy with bp from the beginning, who they're trying to gin up right now and get out and vote in the midterm elections. do you think there's any impact? >> i don't. i'll defend the white house a little bit on this. my guess is the left hand didn't know what the right hand was

doing. i don't think the white house will get big points in the election cycle. but they will get big points for letting this commission out. >> can you imagine nixon or george bush letting a report like this out four weeks before the election. i don't think it goes to the president's competency at all. was there confusion inside the department of interior and so forth? yeah. they may not have handled it in the best pr way. i don't think it will go away in florida and alabama. i agree with that. >> in those areas especially it will be remembered, getting e-mails refuting point by point from the white house. we're trying to get someone high up on the phone because we want to hear the other side if there is one. >> i want to say again, though, the biggest mistake we find politicians making is not the blunder, but how they respond to the blunder. that is always the thing that takes you down.

chuck todd, i am impressed by the fact that the white house appointed this commission and they're going to come out and they're going to get hammered but this is -- i think this is the smartest political way to do it and it's the right thing to do. >> reporter: it's the only way to build confidence back in government is to exposure warts when you make mistakes. that's why these things do matter. >> you have your "back in business" show. >> we do. instead of covering the economy every day with statistics, doing the simple thing of how do you find a job in this economy, how do you find a job if you're over 40. how do you find the income if you're over 50 and you're -- more practical coverage. >> is the jobs report out today or tomorrow? >> it's tomorrow. >> a lot of people very nervous about that. >> a lot of estimates, a lot of

folks say it's probably going to tick up the unemployment rate. >> that will be the last one before the election. >> chuck, thank you very much. up next, an exclusive first look at the cover of "time" magazine. managing editor rick stengel next on "morning joe." ♪ [ indistinct shouting ] ♪ another day ♪ another dollar ♪ daylight comes [ dogs barking ] ♪ i'm on my way ♪ another day ♪ another dollar ♪ working my whole life away ♪ another day ♪ another dollar

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i'm watching the yankees in minnesota. did you see what happened? it's kind of like a blooper. they're up there in minnesota playing the baseball game and a confused brett favre runs out onto the field and throws an interception. all right. 34 past the hour boys. joining us now time managing editor rick stengel here to reveal the latest issue of "time" magazine. you didn't bring your beer can holder. >> i'm free from it. >> congratulations. >> doing my exercises even while talking to you. >> what's on the cover this week? >> what is on the cover is an american journey. joe klein's trip across the country, took a month in a couple different rental cars, 12 different states, talked to americans who are feeling

anxious and upset about what's going on. lots of pundits sit in washington and read the polls. joe klein went out there in a rental car with his ipod and talked hundreds. >> what did he find? what was the takeaway. >>? his big idea is americans are less optimistic about the future than any time in his whole career. they feel more disenchanted more alienated from washington than any time he's ever seen in his career. >> why? >> he feels they're connecting the dots about what happened over not just the last few years, but the last 25 years that the banks have -- they screwed people with takeovers in the '70s and '80s and exported jobs. they screwed people a few years ago with derivatives and all kinds of financial products. people are connecting the dots on that. there's a guy who said we've elected year after year as presidents people who run against washington and then don't change washington. it was really -- it was really

illuminating, long quotes from regular americans, really, really smart people who feel that things are not going their way. >> is he finding that people care -- i don't know how you put it in this article -- but about our global reputation. and how we compare. that's a debate we've had on this show about whether it matters. >> he got 30 times more questions about china than iraq or afghanistan. people were much more concerned about how competitive the u.s. was versus china, how much we're investing in education versus how much they are. how much they're investing in int infrastructu infrastructure. as far as afghanistan is concerned, people are against it. they've made a decision about it. they feel people aren't listening. >> american people are so much smarter than politicians. you guys get people to start thinking about china as opposed to iraq and afghanistan.

that's smart future thinking about ordinary american people. that says a lot about the country. >> that is for sure. >> in fact, that say is something about the world. folks like us as well as guys in washington aren't listening to them. >> yesterday doug brinkley was on, president historian. he said too many have the schlessinger view of the pendulum swing. brinkley and i believe it's like this, the american people are always here. when they go too far to the right, they get knocked back. when they go too far to the left, they get knocked back. >> last year i said relax, the american people are always smarter. and intuitivity glet it right more than washington every time. >> the pendulum is in washington.

the schlessinger theory is the way that larger public purpose, more inward focus. that is a reflection of what's going on in washington and how they're reacting to people. >> what i'm saying is americans don't swing ideologically far left and far light. >> they remain in the middle. look, i've known joe for many, many years. you could have saved yourself a lot of money on rental cars and motel rooms by sending joe or anyone else to a sixth, seventh, junior high school parent-teacher night, any public school in this country, and you would see people sitting there aghast, afraid, anxious about what is going to happen to their child down the road. they come home from seventh grade. he's the best math student in the class. he can't add six plus six, can't write an english sentence with a noun, verb, object and period at the end. they see the papers and see

china is building high-speed rail to connect the entire country. we have something new york to washington, it will be terrific in 2040. they know. people instinctively know that there's something going on here. people give them the finger in traffic. you're over 55 years of age, you can't get a job. it's never coming back. they know there's something very troubling going on. >> how come you're not running for office man. >> i know barnicle. >> i should be writing about this. >> you should be. also in "time" magazine this week, the new ad for msnbc's campaign debuts. >> yes, "lean forward." it's really interesting. i like that slogan, lean forward. we're all going to lean forward. >> as opposed to leaning right. anyway, let me ask you what else is in the magazine. >> we have fareed zack car yeah.

he says how, in fact, counterproductive it might be to get the chinese to re-evaluate the currency, that our problems with china go a lot deeper than just changing the currency. >> this looks like an amazing issue. thank you very much, rick stengel, the new issue of "time" magazine, an american journey. want to get rich even in this recession? become a government employee. the lavish salaries and some public servants are still raking them in. that's next on "morning joe." for those of us who have lactose intolerance,

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look at the beautiful shot of the sun coming up over the capitol, the nation's capitol.

welcome back to "morning joe." 44 past the hour. after a year of belt-tightening, state and local governments still face huge budget shortfalls. as nbc's george lewis reports, many government workers are still getting rich at the expense of taxpayers. >> he is perhaps the poster boy for public servants with hefty paycheck. robert rizzo, former city manager of bell, california, had been earning $800,000 a year. now he's in jail as part of a huge public corruption case. since the arrestless of rizzo and four members of the city council, communities all over the country are looking at the pay of their public officials. >> i think it is surprising that at the time when these cities and local and state governments are crying poor that the people in many of the top positions are being paid very, very well. >> when the msnbc.com website invited the public to send in examples of super sized government paychecks, over 1,000 people responded with tips that

the site then verified. in phoenix, police chief jack harris retired three years ago receiving a one-time payment of $562,000 and an annual pension of $90,000. then the city rehired him as public safety manager at a base salary of $193,000 a year. in las vegas, a place well known for its high rollers, some of the city's firefighters make between $181,000 and $500,000 a year. the mayor is demanding pay cuts, but hasn't gotten very far. >> now we have a budget, but the budget is a disastrous one as far as i'm concerned. in los angeles "the l.a. times" published list, at least $250,000 a year. this at a time when state and local governments can ill afford lavish salaries. >> states have seen a collapse in revenues unprecedented. they've never seen a decline in

revenues as large as what they're facing now. states and cities are also facing angry taxpayer backlashes over how the money is being spent. george lewis, nbc news, los angeles. >> all right. when we come back, the director of waiting for superman, davis guggenheim is standing by in the green room. we'll be right back. trust me. trust me. ya i like that. trust me.

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my kids to have better than what i had. >> i'm just so afraid for him. i cry for him sometimes because i know he can easily be influenced to do things he shouldn't do. >> next year anthony's class will move up to junior high. most will go to john phillips souza which "the washington post" called an academic sinkhole. if anthony goes to souza, odds are he'll enter high school three to five grade levels behind. >> that's the movie that created all the buzz and got the conversation -- took it to a new level i think it's safe to say. the new film waiting for superman , a troubling look at the state of schools. two weeks ago we showed that film to a live audience during our education nation town hall and there wasn't a dry eye left

in the house. of course, we had that pretty colorful special right after. >> willie was laughing, but it was because -- >> i thought it was a rahm con. >> he had his iphone on. >> everybody else was crying. with us now. the director of that film davis guggenheim. >> we wanted to get you on two weeks later to talk about a remarkable transformation that's happened in the debate the past two weeks because of this film. what hatched? >> the great thing it's moving from the president and governors seeing it today kitchen table. and so i've been in minneapolis and seattle and baltimore. i'm meeting mayors and superintendents but also families that are saying this is really important. so the idea of the movie is going out and people are learning about these families and are being moved by these parents who are fighting for their kids. it's very exciting. >> what's the next step? >> we opened in the big cities. we were in ten last week.

now we're in 25. the idea is to get people to see this movie so they can fight for the kids. i mean, people were fighting for the adults all the time -- the unions and political parties. but no one is fighting for the kids with the same kind of muscle. that's what the movie is about. >> any words of reconciliation from the unions since this has come out? >> i think randy deserves more credit than she's been getting. the deals she negotiated in new haven. there's a deal pending in baltimore, in d.c. she could be -- >> describe who she is. >> randy weingarten head of the fta. the fta is in the big cities. she's getting a lot of heat on this because she's in the movie. but actually she is actually doing things that no one imagined doing. on your show, i'm going to look at tenure. they're talking about merit pay. these are firewalls you could never penetrate. >> american federation of

teachers has always been like that even though they're a union and do the things unions do to make sure they're taken care of, they're willing to do a lot of innovation. al was the biggest personality in that. randy is very much in that mode. they came up with an incredible contract in washington which was a bitter nasty ugly fight for three years but they got a huge raise and gave up a lot of stuff like fenures and things in the movie that you find to be obstruction. >> the point is the teachers unions are doing their job. they're fighting for the teachers. who's fighting for the kids? that's what the movie is about. families are going. they're buying a ticket. that ticket gets them a coupon for donors they can give to another teacher like your son who is in new orleans. they say going to this movie is voting like "an inconvenient truth" about. >> randy weingarten comes off as the villain in the movie.

but she came out on the special and sat next to you, michele lee and others on the front line of this issue who are completely against her. >> she's at the table. the movie is bringing people to the table. >> she has two constituencies. one is the kid and i think they do have the kids and the other is the members. the other thing just to defend the union for a second. i understand the obstructions and bureaucracy and people whose jobs are preserved that aren't good teachers and all of that. but the fact is we wouldn't have professional teachers in this country because they were making the equivalent of minimum wage and they were on their own. it was a women's profession when women couldn't get other jobs in this system and they were treated like dirt. that's not good for education either. >> i agree with some of what you said but i can't allow it to go unchallenged to say they consider their constituency to be the kids because they don't.

as shranker said he said when are you going to talk about kids he said when they pay union dues. that has been the attitude. >> that was a smart ass remark, though, in fairness. >> it's a window. i'm not knocking them for it because if i'm a ceo my job is to make shareholders money. if i'm the head of the teachers union the job is to protect teachers jobs. but the next question is like you said, davis, who is protecting the kids. >> who is bringing the muscle to the negotiating table. >> tfa. it's true. it works. >> one of the things a lot of people ask me now that they've seen the movie, what happened to some of these kids. some people said to me, wow, i don't want to give too much away -- >> please don't. >> daisy. hopefully maybe this movie helped some of the kids who perhaps didn't get what they want in the movie, they became

more visible. do we though what happens down the road? >> that's why people are enjoying the movie and finding so moving because they link on to the kids. they love daisy who wants to be a doctor and her dad drives a truck or anthony who says i want to make my grandmother proud. i want to do better and want my kids to do better than what i have. people are finding the movie moving and are inspired by these people. the trick is you have to say go to the movie, buy a ticket, get involved but also imagine a daisy in your own neighborhood because the kids in our movie we're going to be with them long term but who is going to take care of the other daisys and other anthonys. >> how is daisy doing right now? >> doing good. i'm going to see her on monday. she's doing good. >> the film is "waiting for superman" now playing in select cities. go see it. it's amazing. bring your kids, talk about it and hopefully be inspired by it. you will be. howard dean, great to see you as

well. >> davis, congratulations and most importantly thank you. >> thanks for having me. you guys have been a clear and strong voice on this issue. >> and it will continue. did john mccain sacrifice his principles and reputation to - i mean, is that -- can you guys not tease something better than that? could it be like a why did?] whd >> in "vanity fair." ve yes 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.

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one strike away. the 0-2. a bouncer. ruiz. in time! roy halliday has thrown a no-hitter! >> mike barnacle, tell us what we're looking at. >> roy halladay suffered for 12 years up in toronto, premier right-handed pitcher in baseball. last night for the second time in history of world series baseball threw a no-hitter. cincinnati reds. >> this is one as mike said earlier one of the most dominating pitching performances you've ever seen. >> if you go in the statistics it's unbelievable. percentage of first-pitch strikes. masterful performance, one batter away from a perfect game. remember he had a perfect game back in may of this year. he walked one hitter in the

fifth in a 3-2 count. other than that he was perfect down to the last batter. >> also, your yankees came back. and, boy, i went to bed. th were down 3-0. >> so did i. >> i thought, okay. this is going to be an ugly fall. >> sabathia doesn't have it. he's our ace. it will be a long series. back he came with the help of granderson, who struggled in new york but had a great second half and mark telle eteixeira. >> the yankees have stumbled into the playoffs. they've had a horrible last month. their pitchers some of the worst in baseball over the past month but they came through. how many times did you see this happen? wakes up in october. >> i can see people sitting in the seats in the brand new ballpark in minneapolis and bloomington, a suburb of minneapolis. they can have the same face they

wear in bloomington and minneapolis today as we wore for 86 years in boston, massachusetts, until 2004. the yankees come back. they are a team made for the playoffs, made for the world series. mark teixeira an absolute monster. makes everyone better around him. >> teixeira is a monster but have you ever seen a pitch in a clutch situation as bad as the pitch teixeira got right here out over the plate. why didn't they just put a "t" there and say could we get up higher. look at this. this is a meat pitch! >> letter-high fastball. >> that is a pitch you will never see halladay throw. okay. let's go from baseball to really, really hard ball. >> oh, it's skewing. the man who never was. the article in "vanity fair."

here with us national editor for "vanity fair." he writes about senator john mccain. this is the article the man who never was in the latest issue. he writes this. it's hard to see how mccain can reclaim his reputation even if he does keep his seat. it is now his protege senator lichbdzy graham south carolina and mike brown surprise republican upstart from massachusetts who seem destined to play the kind of mediating role that mccain could have played had he so chosen and it goes downhill from there. >> todd, the title suggests that these questions being asked by the media, what ever happened to our pet republican, our maverick john mccain. you're suggesting that mccain never really was the maverick. he was just a ruthless, calculating politician that did what it took to win. >> and that's putting it lightly after reading your article. >> well, i mean, i think he -- i don't think the article is

intended to be as harsh as you seem to think it is, mika. >> i don't know if you intended it to be but it became there. >> i think, joe, it's fair to ask did the media that fell in love with john mccain fundamentally misunderstand about him. did we misunderstand what some of his opposition to george w. bush's policies was. i think in part for distaste for president bush just as for president obama is rooted in intense personal distaste for president obama. i think he thinks he's not qualified to be president and he should be president instead. i think over time -- you know from having served in congress that he was much more reliably conservative on most issues than most people gave him credit for because on a few things like campaign finance or initial opposition to the bush tax cuts he was so far off the reservation it made him seem more liberal than he was. >> you also talk about the fact for john mccain, he's the type

of poll it tition that always needed an enemy. whether it was communists or after that whether it was -- you go through the list. you have a long list -- >> he's the kind of person who has always defined himself as opposition to some authority or enemy whether to the teachers at naval academy, his captors in vietnam, pork barrel spending by people in congress, undisciplined use of campaign finance. so i think he's always loved the fight. and his friend john weaver, former adviser said he never saw a bar fight he could walk away from. i do think he loves mixing it up which is part of why even though it was sort of an indignity to defend the seat against j.d. hayworth, i think he like mixing it up with him because he thought he had the better argument. >> there was always a disconnect between the public john mccain that everybody loved and the private john mccain who all of his fellow members of the arizona delegation just said that he was a rough, tough,

angry profane bitter man. that was their words, not mine. very thin-skinned. >> i'd like to talk to todd about that one particular word you used, joe, anger. i have always sensed in covering senator mccain, todd, there's an anger to him sometimes on the surface. we've seen that. but always it lurks beneath the surface and it's almost always directed at people or issues or things that he thinks have achieved notoriety, electoral success or whatever. and it's in an undeserved manner that they've achieved it and he's angry at them, angry at george w. bush, angry at barack obama, angry at the establishment whether it's republican or democrat because he feels their achievements are undeserved compared to his life. >> i think that's fair, mike. i think there's a coiled kind of anger under him at all times that kind of motivates him. the stories that his senate colleagues would tell about

private behavior or occasionally behavior in committee or hearings with him, the truth is that they really don't like him and they never have. the thing that i think was so appealing about john mccain to so many people, so many people in the media, is that everyone loves a rebel. we all wish we had a rebellious streak. we all wish we could light the stink bomb on the teacher's porch or do the prank. there was kind of a walter mitty aspect to john mccain who lived out in his real life the fantasies we have of kinds of being a bad boy. >> what do we see happen? as he fights to keep this seat, which defines who he is, does he lose exactly what it is that he has been trying to be or at least trying to tell america that defines him in terms of what he is? >> i think in some ways, the question i could not resolve to my own satisfaction is what he wants to come back to the senate to do. his claim to greatness has always been that he was willing to tell both parties

inconvenient truths and shine the light on issues everyone else wanted to avoid. he spent the last year becoming a completely conventional cookie-cutter politician. i don't think you can put that toothpaste back in the tube even if you wanted to. >> the most stunning development he went from this guy that teamed up with teddy kennedy on immigration reform to having commercials where he -- just build the dang fence. >> complete the fence. >> dang to build -- i mean, it is just so out of character. >> it was a cringe-worthy moment for all of us to watch. here's part of the ad. we're going to watch this. you touched on it briefly. love to hear more about the kind of off again/on again romance with the press over the years. we hear the stories during the presidential campaign sitting in the back of the straight talk express. the national media loved him. then when we got to the general election they kind of turned on him a little bit. how has he used the press to his

advantage and how has he been frustrated with it? >> he used to refer to the press as his base. i think he feels quite hostile to the press now. there's an article in the "new yorker" this week by ryan liza who quotes something that when she called him the new senate he stopped talking to her. he. >> >> he's got a legitimate beef there. >> i'm not saying that -- leave aside that question. i'm just saying that he feels very disappointed in a lot of his friends here at nbc as near as i can tell based on reporting i have done. he feels betrayed and somehow everyone fell in love with barack obama and wrote him off. i think he thinks the media showed its true colors, which is -- >> of course. >> -- liberal sympathizer. >> you know what republicans always said, conservatives always said -- because mccain

would always go out and what he loved to do is trash other republicans and get the great headlines in "the new york time times", the great editorials and we always sat back and said, wait, wait until the day after the primary is over and he's running against a democrat for pre president. he will be deboned in a week. we said that for a decade. the second it happened he got deboned. i'm surprised he didn't see it coming. >> he didn't see it coming and we are in the media equal opportunity sadists. we kill people of both parties. todd, i'm interested in your reaction or answer if you can answer it to this question. let's say you're sitting up there in portsmouth, new hampshire, and you fell in love with john mccain in the fall of 1999 and supported him in the spring of 2000 and you followed him ever since then and someone -- that person in

portsmouth, new hampshire, asks you today, having written this about john mccain, who is he today, what's your answer? >> well, i think in some ways people don't change their personalities after adulthood. so i think you really have to look back at the roots of john mccain's fundamental personality and have to conclude at some level he's always been this same guy. i quote his old press sectoree cla -- secretary torie clarke. he said his favorite animal was a rat. it eats well. that's what he's done the past year. he lived off the land and done what it took. he himself said he always did what it took to win. that is politics. the problem for him he's always held himself to such impossibly high standards. i asked him four years ago should we judge you by the high standards you set or the run-of-the-mill standards by every politician. he said i hope you'll hold me to no standard, ha ha. but the point is he outlined his

own code of honor and he's the one who violated that very code. >> you look at him. when reagan was popular, he was a reagan republican. >> don't hold back. >> when it was time to run against george w. bush, he became -- he was building up to be the moderate alternative to bush in 2000. and when it was time to be conservative, he was a conservative in 2008. and when it's time to become a really conservative guy in 2010, he became that person. it's a moving target. who is he? he's who he needs to be to win. >> rough. >> todd, you have an interesting part of the piece where you talk about mccain's genuine kind of deep-seated hostility to president obama, a hostility they didn't have for the previous democrat president bill clinton. what's the difference there? >> i think bill clinton didn't beat john mccain. i mean, i think john mccain does not like to lose. he told a college graduation audience last spring, you know, you think i'm probably going to tell you don't be afraid of failing. no, i'm going to tell you

failing stinks. it's terrible. you should be afraid. you just can't be undone by it. i think john mccain gets up in the morning and looks at president obama and he can't believe that this punk beat him. i think he thinks by virtue of what he's done in his life, for his country, in the senate, the fights he's fought, the achievements he's had, i think he thinks barack obama came out of the woodwork and suddenly became this history-making force and it really bothers him. >> todd purdum, thank you so much. coming up -- >> that remind me actually of another war veteran, bob dole within the closing days of '96 and he just kept looking at the polls and he just kept saying -- he's like, i can't believe this guy is beating me, talking about bill clinton. it just -- he couldn't get his arms around that fact that a guy like clinton could be a beat war hero like dole. and apparently --

>> george h.w. bush looking at those poll numbers as they slid into november of '92. >> pretty shocking. coming up -- >> but george w. bush -- >> a great man. >> a great man. >> he is a great man. >> far, far different from john mccain. polar opposites. >> that's true. coming up, they are just a couple of regular guys talking politics. not so fast. politico has the details behind the making of this new ad in the west virginia senate race. it's a good one. also david axelrod goes on letterman and offers a few thoughts on the republican front runners in 2012. first bill karins with a quick check on the forecast. >> airports are looking just fine today. this is one of the most tranquil weather patterns we're going to see in a long time across the country. if you have any travel through the weekend i don't think the weather will cause you any issues. in new york city one little last shower riding through manhattan and brooklyn.

this rain out of here in a hurry and dry the rest of the day. the if you're heading up to hudson valley, they will get showers but that's it. forecast improves throughout the day in all of new england. you'll love the forecast this upcoming weekend. all that gorgeous weather out there in the great lakes, ohio valley, that will move to the east coast this weekend and much of the country is going to remain really nice. the exception is the pacific northwest with showers heading into friday. [ female announcer ] where are people with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis going? they're discovering simponi®, the first self-injectable r.a. medicine you take just once a month. taken with methotrexate, simponi® helps relieve the pain, stiffness and swelling of r.a. with one dose once a month.

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jeb bush, is he in or out? >> i've heard the name. people don't feel he's going to go. you're right, the trump thing was -- >> it's silly. >> because it requires a big ego to run for president. >> mike huckabee. >> one of the names you're rolling off all work for fox news. if they all run for president there's going to be a lot of openings over there. if you know anybody -- >> mitt romney. >> i always thought if he stuck to who he was he would be a far more formidable candidate. >> everybody's favorite sarah palin. >> i have a soft spot for her because i was at the vice presidential debate and she winked at me. >> he's good. >> boom, boom, boom. >> working the crowd.

>> i commend him for his humor skills and also his weight loss. >> has he lost a lot of weight? >> tons. he looks great. don't breathe deeply in my air with a sigh of disgust, chris. >> probably no soda. with us jim. you captured our imaginations last time. >> america's imagination. >> we want to show this ad in the west virginia senate race causing a little embarrassment for republicans. >> obama's messing things up. >> spending money we don't have. stimulus, obama care. >> and joe manchin supported it all. >> not bad as governor but with obama. >> turns into washington joe. we better keep joe manchin right here in west virginia. >> away from washington. >> it's the only way we're going to stop obama. >> the national republican

senatorial committee is responsible for the content of this ad. >> the best part is you have real honest-to-goodness virginians, guys that work hard with the flannel shirts. i love it. >> not elites. >> we've got some information -- >> you can tell they were on the real deal. >> we got some information the old-fashioned way. the democrats leaked this to embarrass the republicans in this case because they got their hands on the casting call for that commercial. turns out it was shot in philadelphia and they had asked for actors who have a hickey look to them including the jeans and hats and scuffed up clothing. democrats have been trying to make the argument that the republican in that race is out of touch with west virginia. i think you're going to be seeing a lot of this today. >> they're from philadelphia, west virginia? >> philadelphia, west virginia. i think it would be the other philadelphia. >> philadelphia, mississippi.

>> the exact word on the casting call was -- the exact words were we're going to for a hicky blue collar look put in print. unwise. >> i wish i would have seen that. >> you might have got -- >> yeah. >> we could have worn our own clothes. >> you guys can roll off the set and be stars in a commercial. >> would have done better than those two guys. another topic you guys are looking at at politico, white house counting on a bigger asset programs than the president himself on the campaign trail. >> everyone has been talking about hillary as the possible veep. the current is the one the white house used the most on the campaign trail. 18 different candidates he visited in 23 different cities and raised millions of dollars. he can do something obama can't. he can go into virtually any district and not be a liability for candidates. in north carolina and south carolina and nebraska. he's been out to -- he's been to

arkansas to campaign for blanche lincoln. obama is not popular enough in those areas and probably seen as too liberal and doesn't connect in some of those districts. they're using biden. he's one of the few that can go into any different region of the country and be a pretty big help to a lot of democratic candidates. >> you see what carville has to say? >> i did. i've heard him use this line before. carville talking about the hillary clinton vice president rumor says running for president is like having sex. you don't do it once and forget about it. it has a high, high recidivism rate suggesting programs hillary would run again. >> i don't -- that's what all the talk is. what we're hearing from ben smith and others who talk to people in the clinton world is that the focus is not on veep. it's definitely 2016 and the people around her think very much so that she would run and be very viable given that she's been able to repair any damage she had to her image from the last campaign especially among democrats. if you look at recent polling

her favorables are much better than obama's and much better than most republicans out there thinking of running. i think that's where the focus in clinton land is. >> hillary clinton saying yesterday this is all hog wash, this is nonsense. i love my job. >> it probably is hog wash and none sense but fun. >> thanks so much. new weekly jobs numbers dew out any minute now. waiting all week for this. [ wind howling ]

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he's talked about the fact that you're not pro-life unless you want to repeal roe versus wade, overturn roe versus wade so you wouldn't have that choice anymore. as the congressman knows i'm pro-life but also pro woman. marco, i think that's extremist. wanting to punish teachers, women and seniors by raising the age of eligibility. you haven't been drinking the kool-aid, my friend. you've been drinking too much tea and it's wrong. >> i think it's fun to listen to the governor attack me for positions which he held six months ago when he was trying to be the biggest conservative in the world and win a primary. the second thing is that the governor talks about leadership when he was the governor or has been the governor of the state

of florida. virtually everything is worse off today than four years ago when you took over. >> florida senate debate. back to "morning joe." >> pretty good. >> what do you think, mike? >> charlie crist is so slick, so sophisticated and skillful at tv but given marco rubio's demeanor and the way he looks and speaks within i don't know that you can hang that crazy tag on him and make it stick. >> i think what rubio did as painting crist as a cynical politician saying anything to any audience to be elected is a tough label people believe. >> and especially this year it will be tough to get around it. >> yes. leave it there. >> he needs a game-changer. charlie needs a game-changer from everything i read. i didn't see the debate. last night was not a game-changer. let's go to wall street right now and the numbers just came in.

erin, these are the weekly numbers which will give us a good idea what the monthly numbers are tomorrow which have huge political implications because they're the last before the election. >> here are the numbers for the week. drop in new jobless claims. down 11,000. the estimate had been an increase. the trend the past few weeks has been that way, a little better than expected and a total level of claims of 445,000 which again is below that 450 now line but nowhere near to be job creation but you might get private sector job creation tomorrow. >> let's talk about the political number, because sometimes unfortunately, this number is dee taxed from reality. >> yep. >> but any guess on what the actual unemployment rate is going to be? 9.5, 9.7?

what are we looking at? >> interesting tomorrow this morning goldman sachs came out with a report -- by the way they're among the most bearish in terms of their view for the overall economy. they're sort of like it will be terrible or bad. but their jobless report they think it will be 9.7 and could tick up as high as 10%. here's the problem. you're not going to see that -- when the situation starts to get better as we talked about that number is going to go up because as people start to come back into the labor force giving up looking for the job they're going to start counting as unemployed again. right now a lot of people aren't counted who would like to have jobs. as they come back in because the market improves that rate is going to tick up. >> it is such a bizarre number because if the economy has gotten worse over the past couple of months there are going to be some people that say, i give up, i'm not going to look for jobs. >> and the rate goes down. >> that makes the rate go down. if people think, i can get a job and go out and start looking but can't find them, then the number

goes up. >> you only count if you've been looking the past 30 days so that's the strange thing. here's the good news we've got and this is important. about 112 million are service related jobs. the data we've gotten later on services is better than expected including retail. retail is an indication of whether americans are spending. we have good news on that today, guys, really good news. victoria's secret better than expected. all the teen retailers and other retailers, gap, limited better than expected. >> can i interrupt right here because as willie has always said, as goes victoria's secret so goes america or at least so goes willie. hopeful news. >> patrol the stores weekly just to keep my finger on the pulse. >> he tries to keep his finger on the pulse of the economy, erin, and you helped him one more time. >> here's the thing. 80% of the retailers that have come out with their numbers this

morning have done better than expected and the retail stocks are going to go back. better than expected aren't sales are down less than people thought. sales are up. before we go because politically this is important. yesterday i started hearing this number 2014 and it's really important. here's why. first off, the ceo of ge energy came on the show and he said i don't think we're going to see electricity in america at the level of use from 2007 at the peak until 2014 which means seven years of loss. electricity is obviously linked to economic activity. then i started asking around. it turns out ceo of abercrombie and kent, high ends travel company says he doesn't think we'll see travel pricing back to 2007 levels until guess what year, 2014. and then holiday sales forecast came out and i asked experts and they said not back to the level of 2007 until 2014. they could be wrong but we're honing in on the seven years'

lost time until after the next presidential cycle. >> you say abercrombie and kent say that? >> yes. >> i love their cargo pants. on the front page of "wall street journal" -- thank you for stepping into that one -- apple readies verizon iphone. do you have an iphone? >> yes, i do. here it is. >> it doesn't work in new york. it's a beautiful paper weight and i love the apps. >> pretty much what i use it for paper weight. >> so verizon getting an iphone. this is going to be more big news for apple because there are going to be a lot of people that throw away their at&t phone. big news, right? >> it's big news and by the way it's good news for verizon potentially. obviously good for apple because you'll get more coming in. kramer is saying he thinks the stock could go to $300 and good for qualcomm who make the chips. this at&t phone may stink in new york but people who travel globally are going to get a better experience on at&t than they will on a verizon cdma phone. >> that's interesting.

>> that's good to know. >> yes, it is. >> i love my iphone. >> go to paris and call me. >> i'll call you from paris. because i need -- hey, honey, i -- liverpool. and we need a liverpool story for tomorrow. >> there will never be a liverpool story. you want to know why? >> why's is that? >> because all my e-mail blew up next to them. >> thank you very much. up next, he runs one of the biggest global media organizations in the world. [ female announcer ] you use the healing power of touch every day.

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hotel. hold on, hold on. what is the problem here? >> he put my stuff in jell-o again. that's real professional. this is the third time and wasn't funny the first time. >> what is that? that is there. >> slow down, you move too fast.

all part of the job. what's going on? >> put my stapler in the jell-o again. wasn't problem the first time. >> how do you know it's me? >> it's always you. can't you discipline him? >> oh, kinky! >> oh, my gosh, i think i have a new show that i love. before there was nbc's "the office" there was the uk version. one of the many u.s. spinoffs taken from the british broadcasting corporation. bbc general mark thompson runs one of the biggest media corporations broadcasting each week globally in 32 languages and he speaks every single one. mark thompson joins us now. welcome to "morning joe." >> it just keeps expanding. >> lovely, yeah. >> how do you keep your arms around that globally. >> >> i mean fortunately i don't speak the languages. we have people that do speak the languages. and we've got a tradition going back to 1930s of broadcasting to

the world. what's happened though, i think a few things have happened. one the barriers to entry to many of the countries are lower than they used to be. secondly there's a hunger for international reporting and some of our traditional rivals around the world just haven't -- particularly newspapers around the world haven't got the resources to invest in these national reporting. for example in this country, in the united states, on website and radio broadcasts by national public radio, we're kind of bigger here in journalism than before. >> greater ipod app, by the way. a great ipad app. it seems so foreign to us that the main news source in a western democracy would be run -- owned by the government. how do you balance that? we obviously saw during the iraq war, the bbc was extraordinarily

tough on blair's government. >> we have a tradition since our two countries went two ways in broadcasting in the 1970s and it was set up as a university or public library than commercial company. we have a really strong tradition of independence from government. and people in the uk and around the world trust the bbc because they've seen over the years we are independent. our model has been copied around the world particularly in europe and germany and france. you'd see similar broadcasters. but it's true none of the public broadcasters around the world have got that kind of global reach. >> is it fair to say bbc politically is progressive? >> i don't believe it is. >> how many people running the bbc -- i would ask it of you because i would ask it of an american network -- how many people running the bbc think about david cameron? >> quite a few. david cameron's government there are four or five of my former colleagues of the bbc are now government ministers. >> it's more diverse than

american media. >> you know what's interesting about the bbc is they rebroadcast a bbc hour in the morning in boston on public broadcasting station. the reach and the breadth of the correspondents makes you think about what we used to do so well here in this country is that we can no longer afford to do. many news-gathering net works -- >> i run the bbc's operation in tiananmen square and when the u.s. networks arrived to cover the big story it was like running an american carrier group arriving in town. people, resources, no expense spared. it's very different now. the agencies reuters and a.p. are out there but very few people have got that kind of global reach. and the other thing that we can do partly because we have these language services, we're there for the long term. i was in kabul a few months ago, we've been in kabul and afghanistan for decades broadcasting in english but also

in all the afghan languages. we're going to be there decades after the troops have left. >> do you find that your audiences -- because something people have run into here that run television networks -- international stories don't always capture the imagination. we go for the quick daily story here, political fights, things like that. how do you take a longer view and respect your audience enough to cover those stories that maybe won't be as popular? >> that's a big debate in the uk just as it is here. internationally people come to us for international news but domestically in the united kingdom there's always a debate how much home news and how much international news but the bbc tradition is pretty serious news. people come to us for a pretty serious news agenda. and that seems to work. our network news shows in the uk, their audiences are pretty stable. that news is a similar audience that it got ten years ago with a similar agenda with much more

international news. the uk is a smaller country. it's involved in european politi politics. we're fighting two wars at the moment. there's a powerful argument for international news right now. but we find it works. by and large, my view as a journalist is powerful, international stories. they did an amazing story about the toxic sludge in hungary. the miners in south america. there's no reason why you can't make international news absolutely compelling for an audience. >> there's no doubt about it. no doubt about it. i was talking to one of the top political leaders of the past 20 years and asked him what he watched. we were both lamenting the fact there's not a lot of straight, good, hard news to watch at night. the bbc and named some other foreign news agencies. it's something that right now in america we just don't have. >> i've heard my father say that he and his friends watch the bbc. >> when you look at americans and what we watch for news, what

we consume for news, to some extent we are illiterate about the rest of the world. if you tune in the bbc -- africa d , that's a huge story. china a huge sor story on the m of americans. >> you're so great. >> why are you so great and how did you learn 32 languages? that's amazing. >> a fellow liverpool fan. >> i want to go to liverpool. >> let me tell you good things are coming to ayou. >> they better come soon. >> the calvary is coming. thank you very much. can democrats once again turn to howard dean's 50-state strategy to stay in power? really save you 15% or more on car insurance? did the little piggy cry wee wee wee all the way home?

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we've got the contributing writer for "the nation," r.e. berman the author of "hurting dongies: the fight to rebuild the democratic party and reshape american politics." thank you for being with us. i was just saying to howard dean if washington, d.c. was a meritocracy he would still run the democratic party because he did a great job. >> as you know washington has a strange way of penalizing success and rewarding failure in some ways and i think the interesting thing is i talked in

the book that the grassroots political movement that came about through the obama campaign was in many ways sparked by howard dean in his campaign. the 50-state strategy that he started when he was chair to the democratic national committee that was drastically expanded by barack obama and became the 50-state campaign. >> so why didn't he get a seat at the table? >> you may remember he had a rather drawn-out fight with rahm emanuel in 2006 when dean was chair of the dnc and rahm was running the democratic congressional campaign committee and rahm didn't think much of dean's strategy. so when dean after the election -- when rahm became chief of staff, he didn't want dean around or an alternate power base in the white house and he didn't think much -- this is the broader point. he didn't think much of the grassroots political operation that came up and then was for obama. he wanted to run a very conventional inside the beltway white house. so dean wasn't important as part

of that strategy. >> fascinating. howard dean. you're reading the book. >> oddly enough i have it right open here. john fowler south carolina former dnc chair. here's a quote. asking dean -- this is after the rahm/carville flap that created howard's exit. asking dean to step down after last week, the election, equivalent to asking eisenhower to resign after the normandy invasion. >> yeah. >> what a dumb move. >> in retrospect yeah. >> the interesting thing is they tried to get rid of him in 2006. a lot of the clinton people tried to get rid of him even after the 50-state strategy proved successful. they weren't able to. finally they said obama vindicated dean and there is a scene that he tells grant park your 50-state strategy laid the groundwork for my campaign. there seemed to be some realization in the obama world that what dean was doing was real. >> howard dean helped democrats

take control of the house in 2006, yet the clinton people wanted to kill him. he helps set the stage for barack obama winning in '08, a fellow progressive. yet the obama people want to kill him. seriously? what am i missing here? >> i think there's a great quote which is basically howard dean is a profit witho is a prophet without honor in his own land. there are legitimate reasons why people disagree with howard dean. his legacy i think should be more secure. the interesting thing is republicans have now studied what he's doing and now have a 50 state strategy. the tea party is mobilizing out in the street. their slow began take back america, that was the dean's campaign slow began. it has different connotations now. but they have used -- the republicans have used the dean/obama playbook. >> the republicans have to figure out how the tea party

fits within the framework of their party, who leads it, how much of a party it's going to be within the republican party. what do the democrats do about all the bloggers and the websites that seem to propel that party so much? >> the interesting thing is -- joe, you can speak to this too. the right figures how to harness the movements than the left. they work with them and give them a sense of ownership. the problem with the obama white house you had to have a mix and the grassroots movement and the conventional washington players and you had to do both. the problem i think with the obama white house too much washington, too many insiders and not enough ownership of the base of the grassroots activists. no one is saying put bloggers in charge of the white house. i'm not arguing that. but i think grassroot activists. there was a push in poll between the online and the top brass and the genius of david plouffe was

to figure out how to do both, the old and new politics. >> real quick before we go. if the midterms go the way they're expected to go republicans making big gains what do democrats learn about mistakes the last two to four years? >> i think they're going to have to learn that you can't take the base for granted. you can't take your grassroots activists for grantsed. you can't just do inside the beltway politics. you have to do both. the enthusiasm of the obama people can still be there. when the people say where is the left tea party. it was the obama campaign. >> ari berman, thank you very much. the book is "herding donkeys." [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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time to talk about what we've learned. >> i learned exciting huge monumental history in baseball last night as the yankees win the first game ever at target field in minnesota. >> mike barn accou. >> other than roy halladay is the best pitcher in the last 50 years willey's new book. >> changed my life just like "the passion of the christ" which i am going to see when it comes out in dvd. >> you can preorder willie's book now. >> david axelrod texted