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tv   The Dylan Ratigan Show  MSNBC  November 9, 2010 4:00pm-5:00pm EST

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welcome. one of the mosglittering examples of the government's unwillingness to attack the foreclosure problem. the failure to modify mortgages may be causing families to lose loans that they were up to speed on. the home affordable modification program. the main goal is to lower payment levels. helps the pension managers who own the mortgage and helps the homeowner for obvious reasons. don't think of this as a good will measure by the servicing banks. one of the few things they were required to participate in. here's the catch. the banks were under no obligation to make any of these modifications permanent, so while the homeowners found themselves in foreclosure, the payments went back to where they
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were before the modification. from long beach to boston as we speak, hundreds of thousands of homeowners are fighting back even suing banks they say gave them a raw deal. one p person who may be considering such a lawsuit is davidson calfie. we welcome both of you to the program. if you could, walk us through the past year and a half in your experience in brief with the modification program? >> sure. i received information about this program that i thought was interesting because i had a 7% apr and they said they can lower my monthly payment by 500 bucks and bring the apr down to 3%. i thought that was a great deal. so i asked, well, you know, how do we do this. they went through the application over the phone to see if i would qualify and they said i did based on my findings, that was part of the program.
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and then they said, well, we're going to send you an application and it's good news. i was all excited. i was telling everybody. apply for the modification program. they sent me the packet in the mail that said i could pay the lower amount. because during the recession is tough and to fill out everything that you had. all the documents, make sure that numbers matched what you said over the phone. i mailed that back. called and said, let's close this. they said, well, you know, be patient, they said. every time i called, be patient. so, and to pay the lower amount. >> stop there. your told over the phone that your financials qualify as long as you can provide the documents to back up what you said on the phone and you're told to start
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paying the new lower payment even though you haven't officially been approved for the modification. >> correct. they called it a trial payment plan. >> so, you're now paying the lower number on the expectation the modification will be taking effect and you've been told verbally, it will take effect based on your financials. what happens next? >> i call them to say when they closed and they said, we need updated bank statements because it is to be two weeks. they kept stringing me alone for 13 months when they finally denied me? you know, wouldn't go into -- there's two different computer systems, you have to modification system and then the regular mortgage payment. that's the problem is they don't talk to each other.
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so my trial payments that i was paying did not -- it wasn't the monthly payment that they were looking for, so the difference between the trial payment and the regular payment kept building up and i kept getting documents that said i was delinquent. i said, i'm not, i'm part of this trial program. they would say, don't worry about it. i said, well, i am worried about it. >> the bank? >> the bank. >> so that takes me to the end game. so, 13 months on after a bank telling you don't worry about the fact that one computer says you're delinquent and the other says you're not, where does it end? >> they denied the modification, not because of financial reasons, but because they said -- >> did they then say you owed
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all the back money? >> that's correct. eight grand and then back to regular payments. >> right. >> and to make matters worse, it affected my credit. that said i'm 90 days past due, so even if i wanted to refinance, i can't. >> got it. your credit was destroyed in the context of now suddenly not although you were led to believe there was no delinquency, you're marked down in the credit system and house which you were up to speed on before the program began now is a house you're di length on and there's the modification. that's a good understanding, right? >> to make matters worse or what not is thery said, okay, the government plan didn't work for you. you can apply for the traditi traditional modification
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program. they denied me for that modification program because i said -- they said i had a negative balance. >> so the first pass made it impossible for a refi and took away your capacity to qualify for a traditional modification. the bait and switch as you see it from this first undertaking that soiled your ability. shannon, what legal recourse is there for somebody in davidson's case and how many david's sons are in the country? >> this is a very typical story, dylan, what's happening to hundreds of thousands of borrows across the united states. this isn't an issue with one particular bank, but an issue we're hearing about with many of the major banks in the country. the story about losing documentation and failing to honor promises to permanently
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modify loans is a story that we hear dozens and dozens of times a day. tens of hundreds of times over the course of a month. >> so, what is is legal recourse for any of these people? >> right now, our law firm has several class action lawsuits which in terms of your question about resource fill-in, there may be other actions that a borrower might be able to take short of filing a lawsuit. we have several class action lawsuits pending against some of the major banks. >> i understand that. i guess what i'm getting at, i'm putting myself in davidson's shoes. i'm going back and forth playing document games with whoever the bank or servicing bank is. bank of america, wells fargo, jp et cetera. i get to the end of the process
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and find out not only am i not going to get the modification, i have completely screwed myself in my ability to come up with another alternative. if i was in davidson's case, i would be irate and i don't blame you for hiring a lawyer, so i don't want to overly judge anything here, but based on what you're saying, it sounds horrendous. what is the legal breach of the government that would protect him? >> the legal recourse is yet to be scene. for the part of the federal government, the federal government should be pressing servicers to comply with their promises and to properly implement the loan modification programs for which they received
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the bailout money. in terms of legal recourse, there are many cases pending out there. both individual and class action pending and these are borrowers who exhausted all of their individual remedies. they kept proper documentation of what they sent to the banks. they sought out assistance from housing counsellors and were allowed to seek the distance of an attorney. >> i guess what's unclear to me is whether there's any laws to protect these people or whether the basic fact that the financial institutions provide 40% of the funding means that the government works for the banks to strip the property right of the american people and whether we have any legal recourse. i guess these lawsuits will help us to identify where -- and they'll just decide who lives
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where, who pays what, who has a job and who doesn't based on what pays off the government. a pleasure. thank you for sharing your story with us. we turn our attention to some other activities on the housing front as you may recall, yesterday, we discussed some ways to fight back against a corrupt government. the most obvious being the yutlization of the political process. others look for the markets, bond markets and currency markets to call bs on the government and its money printing or civil disobedience like abandoning your under water home. in the case of our next guest, a hunger strike. a baltimore woman struggling to save her home has taken up residence at the maryland state
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capital -- at the expense of the american people. lauren rimer is a woman with a cause and she's got to act fast because the bank could take back her home just in time for the holidays. why, lauren, do you even feel the need to move to an unconventional view as the one that you've taken up here? >> well, you know, i've been as your other guests have been fighting this process for a long time, i bought a home four years ago with a payment that i could afford and it was by state tax assessment that went up over 55% over a two-year period that made my payment at a rate i am now unable to pay. so, i went to the servicing organization of my loan and said, you know, i can no longer afford this after going to the tax assessment office and them
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not doing anything. i said i can't afford to pay my mortgage. i want to see if maybe we can renegotiate the terms of my mortgage. i was told i didn't qualify for any sort of refinancing or renegotiating of the terms of the mortgage. i went one of the housing councillor services and that i had i didn't qualify i think because i wasn't fauqualified b freddie mac. it was fixed for 30 years. i knew i could make my payment at the rate that i had. >> i guess what's interesting to me is the decision not to hire a lawyer, not to differ to the political process and think that the incoming gop is going to save you or that the democrats would save you. obviously, you don't feel that there's anybody here to save you
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or i presume you wouldn't have initiated a hunger strike. >> i do have a lawyer. i hired a lawyer towards the end of the process when i felt i couldn't figure out this process anymore and how to knanavigate . i was an attorney, he was working with my servicing company and with the community of housing and development, which owns my loan. the state of maryland owns my loan. i got the loan with a bank and it was transferred to the state and i was pleased when i found this out, surely this isn't a large, profit hungry bank. my attorney was working with him. it was on election day. i went and cast my vote and taped across my door was the foreclosure notice saying that in 45 days, the house would go to auction and that's when i said, i have 45 days left. i tried to do this on my own.
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i hired an attorney. he's not getting anywhere and obviously, i have to take some radical action. at that point, it became, i might not be able to save my home, but there are so many others in this country going through the same thing in worse situations, people that have children, people that don't have anywhere to go. you know, i have places i can go and i don't have a family, but i really wanted to call attention to it and particularly to get public dialogue going and help people understand our representatives work for us and we should be demanding from them that they are demanding from the federal government to oversee this process. they threw a lot of money at the banks and i'm not sure what they're doing to ensure that the banks are moving forward on helping people stay in their homes. >> thank you for sharing your story with us. lauren rymer. coming up, reopening the
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book on the bush era. the era of the creation of the bubble and the extraction that we're just discussing even if the seeds of it were sewn in the clinton administration -- the former president's memoir sparking comparisons to its successor. both bush and obama, the e-team ready to roll right after this. [ woman ] you know, as a mom, i worry about my son playing football. which is why i'm really excited. because toyota developed this software that can simulate head injuries and helps make people safer. then they shared this technology with researchers at wake forest to help reduce head injuries on the football field. so, you know, i can feel a bit better about my son playing football. [ male announcer ] how would you use toyota technology to make a better world? learn how to share your ideas
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the election cycle never stops. bye bye 2010. look out, 2012. the presidential elections of course more or less upon us, all the more reason to keep our e-team coming at you every tuesday. you know them, love them, maybe hate them. think a-team, but better. at least a few letters on. our lefty democratic strategist, karen finney, washington lobbiest, jimmy williams and john harris. a pleasure to have all four of you. the it's big story today. president bush unapologetic on everything from war to bailouts in his first interview since leaving office. >> let's talk about water boarding. we believe america's going to be attacked again. all kinds of intelligence coming in.
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i said, are the techniques legal and a legal team says, yes, they are. >> was dick cheney pushing you to go to war with iraq? >> it didn't matter whether he was or not. i am the guy who makes the decisions as to when we move. >> you knew then what you know now -- >> that's right. >> you would still go to war in iraq. >> i first of all didn't have that luxury. i will say, definitely the world is better off without saddam hussein in power. >> if you were president again though and t.a.r.p. came up, you would do the same thing? >> absolutely given the same circumstances. >> before we get into the policy difference, one thing when you see the former president like that, that strikes you as a stylistic differences, the pure communication, the bluntness versus the professorism, prof sor yal ism.
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alex, how do you compare and contrast the style? >> well, president bush was a very plain speaker and the greatest moments of his presidency were when he was standing in the rubble on 9/11 and spoke from the heart. that's something that president obama really doesn't do. he doesn't speak from the heart. he speaks from telepromters. his style of speaking is not one that is direct. it's very loiterly. he tries to confuse what he means. instead of being plain spoken like bush was, you ask why people really liked him and a lot of americans were waking up this morning having watched the special last night saying, i kind of miss him. >> those are the best talking points i've seen the rnc put out. i'm glad you're on the e-mail list. the fact i had to wake up this morning and really have to sort of process and stomach the theory that george bush is back, it's like the worst nightmare
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that god could have created for me, but here he is. he's wants to privatize social security. he didn't apologize for putting us into debt, for bankrupting us, but he does like t.a.r.p. >> before we get into policy, it's clear bush has a certain stylistic appeal that either papers over the problems in his policies that obama stylistically does not appear to have. >> ironically, bush's kind of twangy style, kennybunkport, came from a very wealthy family. the guy speaks from the heart. but the guy is also a bit of an intellectual. remember that by the time bush left, we were saying, what would it be like to have a president that actually read books. >> i want to get john harris in
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here. everybody's going to have their opinion about style, what really matters obviously is the effectiveness of the incumbent leader, in this case, it is barack obama. is there anything -- is there anything he could learn stylistically from w. or anybody else in style of communication that may help him? >> my sense is that many on the left wish that barack obama had a touch, only a touch, of bush's rhetorical style. the sort of emphatic servitude. the unyielding single sentence absolute clarity. there are some, during bush's presidency, found that attractive. i don't think there's many on the left that wish obama was stylistically like bush. they like that certainty. that unyielding rhetoric.
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>> i think everybody likes that at least they knew where bush stood on the issues. even last night, you might not agree for his decisions, he doesn't apologize for making them. >> absolutely. a couple of wars. few trillion dollars in money given away. >> dylan, i -- >> i think it's good to be able to admit when you're wrong. >> didn't colbert sum it up perfectly? how does the president stack up on policy? you could argue easily for our country when your facing corruption, lack of jobs, extraction of capital from our country and a corrupt policymaking body in which politicians are selected by small monopoly groups who secretly fund them based on six different contributing entityties. president bush, with all that said was certainly a man of
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action, although perhaps wreck. >> alana: he charged into two wars, leaving thousands dead, but he knew what he was doing. he embraced torture, which again, if it wasn't for the moral high ground this country pretends to have wouldn't be an issue, but we pretend to have it. th then bailed out banks with no strings attached. you can compare that to president obama's lack of action as we see it. troops still on the ground in iraq and afghanistan, albeit smaller in iraq. gitmo still open. last we checked and even the president's so-called reforms failed to address the actual problems of the employer-based health care systems and under barack obama, the too big to fail banks got bigger and more powerful, not the other way
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around. then the biggest one and the one i look at most directly, is there money coming in to our country and are we creating jobs that solve our problems? no. unemployment at nearly 10% on the government number, really it's around 17 or 18%. and george w. bush not much better. in fact, over the duration of his presidency, while a lot of jobs were created in the housing bubble. they were lost by the time it was over. >> i remember when bush started, we had 4% unemployment. about 6.8 at the end of his term. you know, bush did inherit kind of a dream of any president in terms of you had a surplus. you had a much stronger global economy that you were dealing with. we were in pretty good shape in terms of our relationships around the world. he that had luxury of saying, gee, what will i do with all this money. well, i'm going to get into a couple of wars, give big tax
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breaks. now, we're having the same conversation about trying to give tax breaks and cut the deficit. >> there's a policy debate and then there's a leadership style, jimmy, which is bush, i'm doing this, i will always believe on wednesday, whatever i believed on monday no matter what happens on tuesday. so you could throw katrina out, do whatever. we're at war, i don't care. and then you've got barack obama who's attempting problem solving but at the very least is ineffective as a leader. >> when first of all, you left out a major piece of legislation that bush did pass. no child left behind. the single worst piece of legislation that could have been put on the american people, teachers, students and parents. >> i thought you did a good job. >> t.a.r.p. was necessary. we needed it. i don't think any teacher needed to be told teach your kids -- >> no strings attached?
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>> you asked me about their leadership styles. i think what we have currently in this debate is a thing between two extremes. i'm a lobbyist, okay? during the bush administration, lobbiests could walk in the white house and do what they needed too. energy bill. they were there 24/7. under this administration, i can't walk into the building. >> is that because they don't like you? >> that is possible. but that's okay because i like what i do, so that's fine. listen, that's the problem. when you have extremes on both ends. lobbiests writing every aspect of a bill versus the current situation we have, which is zero input from people who know what they're talking about. we know what our industries are. we know who the players are. those are our members, our clients. to cut them out of the picture, the president -- >> just the white house because the congress didn't do that. >> correct. the first thing that the
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president did and i said this the other day. the first thing the president did on wednesday after the elections when he admitted to the shell aking, some of the first words out of his mouth, lobbiests and special interests, he bashed them again. i'm thinking to myself, but that's not why the democrats lost. >> i want to go to john here. what are you thinking, john? >> i'm not really sure i agree with you. democrats really clobbered on tuesday not because many people thought what you apparently think, which is that obama and the democrats were too cautious. republicans were totally energized and in a rage against obama because they think he's effective for policies they strongly dislike. >> generally went with republicans did so not because they thought he was jimmy carter and couldn't get anything done.
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>> they didn't exactly -- we can agree that the results of the election show it's not the people running towards republicanism and embracing those policies. >> i've run out of time. i don't want to have an election conversation. both parties are bought by six industries that are extracting our country and i find the lefty righty conversation a distraction. >> you were making a point about obama being ineffective. i don't think you can say he's ineffectual. take that point, talk to you next time. john, i heard you. i accept your point. he has been effective, i just don't think that what he's done has been beneficial to anybody
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but his own party. but your point is made. a pleasure to have all of you here and alex, john, thank you, both. jim, karen, thank you. up next, the white house meetings on transparency. of course, those were held behind closed doors and no one was allowed to know what they were discussing. wasn't barack obama the president that was going to give us google for government, turn o lights on in washington, earmark transparency, campaign finance reform? no? i guess not. tomorrow, ron wall out of texas. the former presidential candidate joining us to discuss the fed, tea party and what it's like to have a son in the senate. ♪ [ ted ] for years, i was just a brewer. until one of the guys brought in some fresh bread that he'd made from our pale ale. and from that first bite, i knew my business would never be the same. [ male announcer ] when businesses see an opportunity to grow, the hartford is there. protecting their property and helping them plan their employees' retirement.
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we're back with a secret transparency at the obama white house. joe biden holding meetings of the transparency board today, but this is as close as you'll get to seeing it because the
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meeting was behind closed doors. let us repeat, the meeting was held in secret. in other secret news, the president's so-called ethics czar was shipped off to the czech republic to serve there. taking his place, bob bauer. still ahead, republicans making lots of promises about reforming washington, but will they follow through? a live interview with jason chavez. plus, better living through twinkies. bankers are known to be a little bit in love with themselves. are we going up? we can get the next one. i'd like to get your advice on hedging -
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transparency, darrell issa hoping to have seven hearings a week for the next 40 weeks. will this produce much needed indictments and arrests or lead to political obstructionism? we're joined by jason chaffetz, quite possibly one of the lawmakers mr. issa will be ta l tapping. when you look down the list, bank bailouts, stimulus oversighting, country wide's vip program, fannie, freddie, earmarks and grants from my eyes, the ones that are costing us the most jobs are the bank bouts and fannie, freddie and the housing collapse because we have this money tied up in what may be a fraudulent structure. how much of a difference do you think there will be between each
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investigation and will there be a priorization? >> there's so much. you look at that long, long list of things to do. there's no shortage of material. yeah, we got to put first things first. absolutely, i think we want to get all of those. there's no reason to ignore any of those. >> but at the same time with the obvious issue being joblessness in this country, and the lack of investment in this country, lending's off a cliff, investment is limited at best. it would seem that the financial system is the place in which investment or lack there of happens or doesn't depending on whether it has incentives to do it or not. >> absolutely. what's going on with the banking and financial services, we have the new regulatory agency. we have 25 cents out of every dollar in this country is spent by the federal government. so we need good government. we need openness and
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transparency. >> if you were to look at -- somebody looking from the outside, whether it's the -- forget the media. american voter who's trying to evaluate whether the republican investigations into everything from fannie, freddie to earmarks and stimulus spending the genuinely looking to resolve problems and move on, or is basically just political gainsmanship versus the democrats. how should the gop be judged? >> i think it should be a high bar. the public should be looking closely at what we're doing. we're not on to some witch hunt. we don't want to be going fishing. when you say look at country wide, you're going to sigh the friends of angelo program that we've been talking about, that
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net is going to capture both republicans and democrats and that's part o the test. do we stand tall on principle and hold our own party to the same high standards. we need good government. i think that's the test. >> and to that end, how far back do you think is appropriate because the one thing that's not on this list would be a torture investigation. >> it may be on the list as well. i'm not afraid of going after the bush administration. i wasn't brought here by the establishment. when i ran in 2008, i'm just a freshman here. george w. bush, orrin hatch and bob bennett, they campaigned against me. i don't mind going back and looking at them. i don't have any hesitation. >> keep us posted. we appreciate you giving us a slice of the afternoon. jason chaffetz. ahead, casting a critical eye towards history.
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we'll talk b about it with the man who wrote the book not only on the former president, but the secrets covered up by him and his family. what if someone could guarantee me the best deal on my refinance loan, or pay me $1,000? that would be nice, not getting swindled. um...where are we? don't just think about it. put lendingtree to the test. get the best deal, or $1,000. [scraping] [piano keys banging] [scraping] [horns honking] with deposits in your engine, it can feel like something's holding your car back. let me guess, 16. [laughing] yeeah. that's why there's castrol gtx... with our most powerful deposit fighting ingredient ever. castrol gtx exceeds the toughest new industry standard.
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and it's like, girlfriend... if you're gonna go with sanjay, what's the problem? i'm okay with it. [in hindi] [crowd cheering] if you're really serious about entertainment... conan, you're on. [whispering] conan. every detail counts. [crowd cheering] but these days you need more than the book. you need website development, 1-on-1 marketing advice, search-engine marketing, and direct mail. yellowbook's got all of that. yellowbook360's got a whole spectrum of tools. tools that are going to spark some real connections.
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visit yellowbook360.com and go beyond yellow. he says to our teenage kid, here's a fetus. >> it's impossible not to draw parallels between the moment you said this was a little brother or sister and your views on life and when it begins. >> former president bush talking about how his mother showed him
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a fetus in a jar that she had miscarried, perhaps the most startling thing in his new book and prompting a new look at his legacy and the bush family dynasty. our next guest has written one of the most controversial books and insists his story is the most accurate. >> i spent five years investigating what he really did, who he really is and the real story of how he became president. you won't find any of it in his book, but you'll find all of it in mine. >> we're joined by russ baker, the book, "family of secrets." let's cut do it. bush argues that he found faith in order to become a better person and quit drinking. you say there was another reason why. >> yeah. i spent a lot of time with a man who was the bush family's adviser on the religious vote
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and he explained to me in great detail and showed me the memos where he was telling them basically, you're not going to win the white house if you cannot embrace this rapidly growing fundamentalist block in this country and he was talking about the need to show that you were a part of them. that you were with them. the father, george h.w. bush couldn't pull it off. the son said, i can do this. >> i can do it if it means i get to be president. his activities prior to politics largely covered up by his political father. doesn't every politician try to cover up whatever they can? >> i suppose so, but it was much, much bigger here. we never heard the end of that story, but five years of research, 500 interview, i can assert that bush did not finish his military service. he skipped out. the father, you can see.
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the father was covering it up. this dental exam, got him to go back, show up on a base. the media bought that. that's proof he was serving in the military. he wasn't. just went in and got a military exam. i interviewed the military people and they said anybody could walk in with a bomber jacket and we'd look at their teeth. >> let's get to the real nitty-gritty of the presidency now. bush arguing that 9/11 was the catalyst for war in iraq. >> not so. interviewing an insider, a very well-known texas journalist, ghost writer, wrote books with many famous people, mickey had a contract with bush in 1999 when he was running for president. they sat down to a number sessions. he was having trouble getting bush to commit to anything. asked what he was going to do as president. he said, you ought to talk to
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karl rove about that. mickey felt, i got to get some stuff from the horse's mouth. in an unguarded moment, bush said, if i get elected president, i'm going to invade iraq and succeed. i'm going to take that guy out. >> which goes to making up for your father, so to speak in this instance. >> not quite. mickey asked why he wanted to do that. he said he had become convinced watching various presidents that you could not have a successful presidency without a war. that you basically needed to be seen as commander in chief and that that was going to do it. >> that being a bad ass war hero was the best way to get your numbers up. >> that's what he told him. >> tell that to the dead iraqi civilians. unbelievable. katrina. you argue that katrina and that the response to katrina specifically the inadequate or
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incompetent response from fema was by no means an accident. >> i don't think they deliberately screwed that up. i think what they were doing, i interviewed a lot of people who worked at fema for many years. they basically explained to me that when bush came in, they wanted to gut all of these domestic actsies and outsource all the functions to their contributors. they brought in a couple of these guys i described in "family of secrets." michael brown was brought in. the real story of michael brown oond how unqualified he was has never been told. >> the book, "family of secrets." the author, russ baker. if you want to read "decision points," you might want to check this out. a pleasure. nice to see you. coming up on "hardball," chris matthews talks about bush's version of history with joe
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wilson, the man at the center of the iraq md controversy, but first, the twinkie diet. we'll talk to the professor who lost 20 pounds after eating junk food for two months straight. we're back after this. [ female announcer ] humana and walmart are teaming up
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to bring you a low-price medicare prescription drug plan that has the lowest national premium in the country of only $14.80 per month. so you can focus on the things that really matter. go to walmart.com for details.
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the twinkie diet, most of us think that a healthy, nutritionous diet is key to losing weight, but might not be the case. a professor lost 27 pounds,
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lowered his body mass index and his so-called bad cholesterol on a diet consisting mainly of twinkies and other snack foods. professor, how does this work? >> by taking in fewer calories than i expend. >> the argument is whether or not the cal l ree comes from organic, free range or most vacuous sugary carb in the world, a calorie is a calorie? >> basically. it's a class project. we get into those more specific issues outside of calories as you mentioned. >> and so before we get to the issues beyond calories, at the very least, you would argue that the key to weight loss is reducing calories. >> yeah, exactly.
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various ways to do that. low calorie, low fat. a variety of ways to do that. this happens to be one in which i select eed foods that tend toe on the list of foods that people are recommended not to eat just to illustrate that it may not necessarily be the source of the fuel that's important, but just less fuel in general. >> did you go beyond that and is your argument that the nature of the fuel, the type of fuel you use is not only of limited relevance when it comes to weight loss, but when it comes to nutrition or is that a different conversation? >> i think those are both wrapped into this issue. one of the other aspects is this is ten weeks. it's short to look at that latter point of nutrition, but from a weight loss perspective, i think evidence not just from this class experience, but from
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data of journals support the issues of just caloric restriction. the latter issue, the nutrition food issue, we're touching the tip of the iceberg and need more information to tee up whether we can get nutrition food from quote, unquote, a junk source. >> beyond that, what is your view or what research have you conducted on the very simple as pekt of how much food a human needs to consume to survive? >> that extended to other issues because we've had patients in some of the work i did previous to kansas state at the university of arkansas medical school in which we had patients on weight loss programs and some had to consume as many as 900 k cals per day.
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is the value of weight loss worth it in those scenarios. >> at the end of the day, the only thing that's proven in this in your view is that a calorie's a calorie, whether you get it from cabbage or a twinkie, fair? >> fair. i think the other kipd of ten-week approach to this shows that weight loss does lead to improvements of cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, the long-term effects are unknown. >> what's your next experiment? >> i'm entering a weight maintenance phase for thanksgiving, but so, you know, one of the issues that at least from a sign perspective, we get people to lose weight. people are pretty set that we can make people lose weight. but how do we keep them at the new weight and that's what the next three weeks we'll do a little twist on

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