date for war in afghanistan. a war for the objective remains unclear. three years later than when he originally said. why escalating this is not the answer. also, ben bernanke with a blunt dare i say unprecedented direct attack on china and it's unfair policies that are destroying american jobs. all that plus the vast right wing conspiracy to keep bristol palin on "dancing with the stars." show starts right now. the afghan end game continues to change. today, president obama in portugal selling his new afghan war plan to european allies. >> forward to working with our

nato partners as we move towards a new phase. a transition that begins in 2011 with afghan forces taking the lead for security across afghanistan by 2014. >> the four-year phased drawdown aimed to end combat operations. how you doing. nice to see you. how are you? plans to end combat operations by 2014. that of course based on conditions on the ground. any way. but with all the talk of getting out, the fight actually ramping up. for the first time in the nine-year war, the u.s. now sending armored tanks into battle with the taliban. they are powered by jet engines, armed with guns, capable of destroying a house. meantime from the sky, warplanes dropping a record number of bombs last month. special forces increasing six fold in the past year. we're blowing the crap out of that place ch overall, the number of u.s. forces in

afghanistan tripling since president obama took office. surge and get out. sounds like president bush's strategy in iraq i suppose, but will it work and more importantly, what's the point? how do you define success in a conflict that's lasted longer than vietnam, twice as long as world war ii and has left thousands of civilians dead with no clear impact on homeland security which continues to be neglected? blow up a country far away. joining us now, drex tor of the afghan study group, former marine who resigned and with him, anthony schafer, communications director for advanced defense studies. it's a pleasure of the you. tony, i'll begin with you. what is this plan? >> well, i think that the bottom line there is not plan.

it's kind of a feeling of where we should go. let's be blunt. there's afghan governance across the country. the idea is trying make sure we replace the existing shadow government with one controlled by the karzai regime and the problem is this. we're kicking ass over there. we do it well. but the problem is unlike iraq, you had for example, the sunni awakening where local groups rose up and started taking responsibility for their own defense. this is not what we're seeing here and no do i think we will. >> how is a military imperative on the ground that has gone beyond the length of the vietnam war, twice as long as world war ii, matt, helping preserve american security, which i

thought was the point of these wars? >> exactly. that's why we went there in 2001 and we are right to do so. next month is month 110. that's the same amount of time is soviets were engaged there. if we carry out at this pace, if we keep with these combat operations until 2014, we're looking at a cost of 2500 american dead or coalition dead. probably 25,000 more wounded. half a trillion dollars just for the operations, not for the long-term care of our veterans and as you said earlier, to get us what? the last al-qaeda attack against us was a lady who dropped off two parcels at fedex. that's how al-qaeda exists and operates and so many of us are very unclear on how this strategy is going to make us

safe and not going to be a huge waste of resources. >> these tanks are truly bad ass. engine power. i can blow something to smi smitherines a mile out. but what do you see as the issue of bringing these tanks to afghanistan and why would you bring them? >> i would like to be a lot more blunt than i can here. >> it's basic cable. >> it's ill advised and this is why. those are offensive weapons. anyone who has studied war for a day or two, those are for breaking things, to go take territory and hold it. the taliban use motorcycles for their primary means of convey answer, resupply. an m 1 is a great weapon. they're still going of the a hard time shooting them from a

mile away. in this environment, they will be static for the most part. in my book, there's a great scene where i come over this ridge going to kandahar and below me between kabul and me is this two-mile, tank graveyard of dead, soviet armor. my fear is this. we continue to do things like the soviets, it's like we're reading out of their playbook and now, for the first time in nine years, we're introducing armor. >> you say 90% of the territory, the tanks can't function and the fact that the existence of the tanks makes for easy marks for the those not taliban looking for american targets, no? >> and that and plus it gives impression that we're there for the long haul, we're occupiers. >> matt, i want to read you a couple of different things here. one is a comment from general stanley mcchrystal in the

"rolling stone" article and we presume he has a reasonable expertise -- so basically saying listen, some day, hear what he said. i want to match that with the following fact according to international council on security and development and

this is where it really floored me. what are we fighting for? 92% of afghan men in taliban strongholds are not aware of the 9/11 attacks. in other words, we ahave tanks n their country. we have navy seals in this country. we are killing people in that country and the individuals we are in direct engagement with at least claim of the not a clue as to why the american soldiers are there in the first place which would seem to make it easy for the propaganda of the u.s. as an occupying invading force for no reason. 92% don't know about 9/11, matt? >> we are not fighting al-qaeda in afghanistan. there is almost no al-qaeda in afghanistan. we are fighting taliban and taliban's a misnomer because when we say that, we are talking about a huge collection, a very

wide collection of mainly groups that have local issues, local grieve enss. people who are upset about being occupied, people upset about being governored by an unrepresented government. maybe we've put their rivals into power. so yes, almost nothing -- there is almost no reason why our troops are dying today as you can reality to 9/11 in afghanistan. >> if i could add to that quickly, this is what al-qaeda wants. they want to bog us down and bleed us. this is their game plan. we are unfortunately playing right into it at this point in time. >> and back to what we were talking about, the tanks. when i was in anbar, we had tanks. one time, we got hit hard and the tanks came to our rescue.

we love tankers. however, it wasn't the tanks that turned things around. if we had sent 200 more and didn't do the political efforts, didn't talk to the insurgency, that this has got nothing to do with al-qaeda in iraq. if we didn't do those things, we'd still have 32,000 troops in anbar, over 150,000 troops in iraq. that's the issue here. we're sending more tanks to afghanistan and i hope they keep our marines safe and make our marines win more battles, but if we want of the an end to this thing, have a settlement, we have to reach out and talk to the insurgency. >> your analysis is so welcome and so important. i know you were on a train new york today and got sidetracked by a domestic transportation, so

we really appreciate your a dapation to the events of the day. dinn dinner's on me. send me the bill. tony schafer and matt hoh, thanks, guys. we'll talk to you soon. coming up, tough talk on china. the fed chairman, ben bernanke, singling out china's unfair economic policies as a major drag on the recovery of the entire planet is china trying to preserve the social stability of its agricultural central command and sort of capitalist communist country at the expense of our unemployment markets, at the expense of investment in our country and are we prepared to engage them on that level? how real is it and what can we do about it? we're on it after this. t added to over 40 campbell's condensed soups. t added

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ben firing back. while we continue to escalate america's longest war, it is impossible to ignore the battle with our housing and jobs market. today, ben bernanke defending the decision to fire up the magic money machine and print off another $600 billion. >> economic trajectory, the united states runs the risk of seeing millions unemployed for many years. as a society, we should find that unacceptable. >> mr. bernanke hinting of the

failures of other parts of our government and fighting the job wars that he says has left his agency with little to not choice of printing more money. this covers up the fraud happening in our housing and banking markets that is passed down to the pensions, teachers and cops. it makes it okay. we risk not only 10% unemployment, it could be 20 in real life. and while a small few continue to hang on to a record amount of capital, they are not investing it in our country's problems, but either hoarding it or taking it to places like china where there's a better return. but the fed chairman saying the u.s. cannot go it alone. here's where the speech took a rather bizarre time.

for the first time in such a high profile manner, bernanke essentially called out china by name accusing them of just one of several emerging countries aggressively holding down currency while neighbors like india work toward building a stronger economic global marketplace. encouraging comments when it comes to the issue of china preserving its power by rigging its currency and trade practices to export the unemployment that would be in their country to ours, they figure woor rich enough to handle it and disrupt the social disturbances. i want to bring in a man who knows a lot about china and how the money printing is creating risks. a true capitalist in the sense

of being responsible for the money that he manages in looking to allocate it in a way that creates value or protects the capital. how relevant is china's trade and currency policies in your mind to the unemployment problem in this country? >> tendent ir trkendent irk tre. does china suppress is currency? yes. by their actions, they have outsourced their monetary policy to none other than ben bernanke because they paid to the dollar, thus they're stuck with bernanke's policies, but for him to stand up in public and suggest that the problems that we face in this country are a function of the chinese suppressing their currency is nonsense. as we've discussed many times, the problems we face are a direct consequence of the irresponsible policies of first

alan greenspan and now, ben bernanke. now they're trying print money again and to blame unemployment on china is just not accurate. the problem is the federal reserve and the guys that run the place. >> connect the dots for us. people can see where okay, if china's allowing low cost labor, paying its currency, it makes since that caterpillar would want to go to china. also, their trade policies. how are the federal reserve policies creating job losses in this could be tri as you see it? >> well, you have to take a step back, but let's go back to the equity bubble. because of the equity bubble and the fed printing too much money and causing misallocations of capital and then people started to believe that they didn't need to save, right? there was going to be a free lunch. everybody was going to get rich

in the stock market. when that burst and people sobering up, gee, i have to take responsibility for myself, the fed's bailout attempt for the stock bubble got real estate going and thanks to the regulators not doing their jobs, we had this epic housing bubble. people were able to live beyond their means and not really have to face the fact that we've got a big problem in this country because of the budget deficits and people needed to save. it was the belief that we can speculate our way to prosperity and borrow a way through our homes that caused the country to lose sight of the fact that hey, this is a global competition for jobs and a lot of the outsourcing that went on in the '90s no one cared about because of stock bubble. the bubbles made us kind of lazy. we didn't pay much attention.

now we've woken up and a lot of jobs have been shipped off to asia. it's not the currency. china's being undercut by vietnam and other places. a lot of people thought why should we take a job like that. we can make money over here doing nothing and the housing bubble created restaurants and party planners and dog walkers. >> if you were to look at bernanke's decision to point to the china trade policies, what would you have him do? what would you have the fed chairman do today? forget how we got here and how bad it is. we know there's a major accounting fraud issues in our housing system. we know that there are underwriting standards where we're selling loans to pension funds that aren't what they appear to be. we know we've got underwriting and accounting issues and these distracting issues. what would you have the men in ben bernanke's chair do? >> a few years ago, he said,

milton friedman, you are right. the fed caused the depression, which is wrong. we don't do it again. he should say, the fed has been an engine of disaster with this money printing we've been doing. we're not going to do it. we're going to form a sound group. we're going to talk to the chinese and try to figure out a way to go back to something like the gold standard and he's going of the to admit his mistakes and the chinese, who are locked at the hip with us because we're running their money policy, can figure out a regime that doesn't cause these imbalances. >> so until we get back to an environment with -- it says if everybody wants money, it should get more expensive and if nobody wants it, it should get cheaper. the bridge would seem to need to necessitate major debt

restructuring, cancellation, rewriting. i don't know whether it's china debt, housing debt, u.s. government debt, corporate debt, personal debt, you can't get to that new blue dollar currency environment you're references without major debt restructuring, sno no? >> basically, we'd have to stop pretending. we could stop friending the chinese aren't suppressing their currency, that our debts are manageable and say, how are we going to create a more stable environment going forward? some of the debt's only going to get paid at 80 cents. and we'll means test social security and have tort reform, meaningful health care reform. in that crisis where the currency problem em balances and central bank instability is

settled, then we can fix other issues and go back to what we used to be as a country. >> your bottom line is as long as the price of money is set by the government as opposed to the market, the way we use the money will always be wrong. fair? >> most likely we're going to have these people looking in the mirror trying to solve the problem with more money printing, but the next reaction we're going of the going to make 2008 look like a picnic. >> we are lucky to know you and lucky you're willing to come in front of the camera and share your insights and handsome face. thank you, bill. talk to you soon. up next, how your hobbies may soon be used to price your life insurance without you knowing about it. investing, investing, no one person has all the answers. so td ameritrade doesn't give me just one person.

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we're back getting your feedback via the twitter. couple of tweets on the new afghan war exit strategy -- i encourage the faith. i just question why we're there in the first place considering our objective in launching the war's national security in our own country. any way. gracie --

that's what i was told, too. now we're beyond vietnam, twice world war ii and sending tanks, which is useless in 90% of the country, but are bad ass. if you've got something to share, logon and tweet us your thoughts. if you are looking for signs of how bad this nation's mortgage mess is, look no further than florida although california and nevada will gif you a run for your money, but one of the most disturbing facets of this crisis is what now known as the rocket docket. a court system tasked with working through the huge backlog of foreclosure cases. this was churning through cases at breakneck speed with basically false witnesses, computers indicting people if you will and costing them their home. one judge saying his goal was to move through 25 cases in one

hour. the paperwork supplied to the rocket docket was often questionable and as i said, frequently computer generated. in the end, homes are lost, 65,000 of them to be exact, in just three months time. this is not subprime. this is not willy-nilly, no records, this is unemployed people hurt by the extraction in this country who are being told that they are have an opportunity to modify, only to find they are being foreclosed upon. the most recent news, the proceedings had been moved to open court. one lawyer who knows the system too wall, jim is one of the lawyers working around the clock to help people fight this. if you were to look at the technicalities and thresholds for let's say a murder or rape case, is it -- the people that are accused of murder or other violent crimes that get off on

technicalities, how does the technical aspects and failures, how do those stack up against the technical failures we see people walk on murder with every day? >> we wouldn't put up with this in criminal court. i started as a prosecutor cuter here in this area. let's say you've got a criminal case where the prosecutor is presenting a shooting and the jury leads forward, the star witness walks in and the state attorney says did you see him shoot. the witness says, i reviewed the evidence and ballistics reports and i'm who are to say that after reading everything, that guy shot the victim. we wouldn't put up with that in control court. now, let's substitute that witness with two pieces of paper, an affidavit and p put the affidavit on the witness

chair. that's how we take homes in this country. now, let's take that and instead of somebody signing the affidavit who has read the file, reviewed the ballistics report in the criminal case, instead, that is signed by somebody who hasn't read the file, who can't even access the ballistics report, who can't read the witness interviews because they're kept in another part of the file by another company in a safe he doesn't have access to. the problem is the attention has been focused on the courts because that's where we do this work. in reality, the courts especi especially in florida, are the only ones, our supreme courted developed the program as a way to give the borrowers finally a chance to force that communication with the servicer who's been ignoring their application for months. that's all court created.

if it wasn't for the judicial system looking at these documents in the case of the florida supreme court, inventing this entire program because none of the other branches of government could do it, then folks in florida would be a lot worse off. >> exacerbating matters worse if i once correctly is the fact there are modification programs. i'll play the homeowner. i want to modify my mortgage. i'm not going to be able to make these payments and had a guest on a couple of weeks ago. i filed for the modification plan. there's another system at the same time that's a foreclosure processing system that doesn't know i have either filed for the modification or have been accepted, so i'm thinking everything's hunky dori and then all of a sudden, the other computer system, the foreclosure system will come in and sweep my

house out from underneath me when i think i'm dealing with it and the systems are not in communication. is that correct? >> that's crystal clear. typically referred to as dual track and what ends up happening to make your example, is even worse. when the homeowner's is in communication with the servicer, when they miss that first payment because they're being told to so they can apply -- >> they're instructed to not pay one month. they're told, don't pay this month. >> they're told not to pay for three months because it's three months that puts you into default under the terms of your note mortgage. but during those three months, they're credit reporting on you negatively, so you get a couple of things. a hit to your credit report. served by a sheriff with your foreclosure papers and your loan

modification paperwork is lost. one of the things that the attorney's general are looking at, which is a good idea although they need to involve the consumer protection agency, to end that dual track system. that has to stop. if a homeowner if good faith has sent financial paperwork to a servicer and the servicer has looked at that and it appears those folks would fit under one of these programs, if foreclosure track has to stop. it shouldn't even start. there should be no credit reporting. there should be no movement into court or nonjudicial foreclosure where they don't even get to go to court. >> last question. >> it has to end. >> clearly and thank you for bringing it to our attention. i'm good at being repet ty and annoying on things that are unjust. very quickly, is there a legal recourse? a legal consortium?

the government is not helping in a legal way. that people can go to to get the benefit of the things that you know many homeowners surely don't. >> we have class actions that have been started around the country through the national consumer law center. primarily focusing on this hamp disconnect where you're in a worse position. the second thing most folks need to know is to contact their local legal services group. the lawyers have been doing to heavy lifting on this for years. the new hardest hit money for example that isn't allowed to go to legal aid groups for litigation purposes, that needs to change immediately because it's the legal aid groups doing most of the heavy lifting. >> thank you so much for sharing what you're doing with us in public and educating me and everybody else that is so intently focused on the outrage

and really the unfairness that this is in this country and the violation of the core property rights that is the basic principle of capitalism and what this country was founded on. coming up here, democrats suddenly coming down with the surprising attack of courage. is that what's going on? are they developing a political backbone or does it just look like it? we'll mix it up after this.

back to mix it up. democrats finally in fighting mood in a new call to scrap is tsa. first democrats growing a backbone or appear to. harry reid and nancy pelosi both defying republicans saying they will call votes on extending tax breaks for the middle class, not the rich. john boehner vowing to quote do everything he can to stop it, but it is a tactical mistake on the democrats' part that ensures tax cuts for everybody will pass. meantime, president obama also may be getting tough on a nuclear arms treaty with russia, daring them to vote against what

he says is a matter of national security. joining us to mix it up, jane ha hampshire and patricia murphy. jane, what's going on? >> i think everybody would like to raise it to a million dollars then december 1st, unemployment runs out. let's extend unemployment insurance and move it up to a million dollars. the president, the senate and house would like to. it would force the republicans to go along. they'll have no trouble opposing the $250,000 limit, right? they'll say does it include small businesses, but nobody wants to leave. we are we are leaderless right now. >> patricia, you agree we're leaderless? >> i agree we're leaderless, but not that everybody wants of the tax cuts just for people -- >> under a million. >> right. many republicans in the senate don't feel that way and a good half dozen democrats in the senate don't feel they want to

have it above $250,000 cht there are not the votes in the senate. there's no way to make sure that those tax cuts are kept under $250,000 only. they're going of the to find a compromise. it's very delicate balancing act. i'm not sure the best way to go, but progressives are pushi ininm to keep it at 250 k. >> i don't care if you put it at 250, a million, make it so there's no taxes, you can tax everything as long as the incentive in this country when you create money, which tax cuts do, for that money to be hoarded or taken out of the country, whether it's money printing from the fed, tax cuts from the president or a gift from your

grandmother, what is is insanity of arguing tax code, arguing money printing when no one is addressing the lack of incentive to invest in this country and incredible incentive to take money out. does it strike you as insane that we're having this conversation, the entire structure is to draw money into financial speculation, out of trade and vuls, we are not getting new business, new innovations and jobs. >> i find it insane that people are are talking about cutting social security and then giving away tax breaks to people who make over a million dollars a year, right and -- >> whatever you do is take the money out of the country, it doesn't matter how you create is money. >> if you are increasing the deficit and say we have a deficit problem, cut social security, it doesn't make sense. >> can i just add, spending has

to be a port of this. americans don't trust the federal government to spend their money properly right now. they're going of the to deal with spending, too. >> but the physical reality is with $70 trillion in liableties if we don't start to drive economic activity in our coun country, there's no amount of spending cuts that's going to get you out of this whole. i'm not saying it's the government's job, but the government protecting, extracting industries because they get campaign catch from them seems to be a problem. speaking of the problem, the insanity over airline security. some on the right are calling for the tsa to be scrapped in favor of private security guards. images of patdowns inspiring

lots of jokes and youtube parodies. ♪ ♪ but could this silly debate achieve something positive by forcing the government to entertain a more israeli-type plan which actually works to protect us from explosives on our planes as opposed to a phenomenally expensive piece of machinery good at detecting weed and guns and not much else. you were sharing with me how stimulus money is being spent to rapid scan, lots of naked pictures, good for a saturday night, but doesn't actually do anything. what's the back story as to why

we're spending stimulus to do this. >> basically, you've got joe biden and joe lieberman out there saying this is necessary for our national security. but the only people it's necessary for are contractors. tsa wanted to buy these machines and congress said no. they're inefficient, ineffective and invasive. the tsa wanted to go around congress and had gotten stimulus money, so after the christmas bomber last year, in 2009, they said, oh, we have of the these machines because it would help with the christmas bomber. but it doesn't. they spent $25 million of stimulus money. create one job. one job. and then they've got 173 million total they're going to buy. that are on the way and nobody wants to go through them. that's when they start this groapathon to punish them. >> and michael chertoff --

>> been saying, oh, we have of the these things. rapid scan is one of his clients. >> he's advocating government money spent with the people who do the naked picture without telling people he works for the naked picture people -- >> dylan? i think that most americans, if your choice is to be flown into a building or touch somebody where you don't want to be touched, i'm going with the pat down. >> if that was the choice, i'm with you, but you talk to the people who have been dealing with explosives more than anybody this country has, namely the israelis, there is nothing about naked pictures that's preventing people from blowing up your plane. it will product you from guns and weed. i'm more afraid of plastic explosives than weed. >> i think guns are a problem. >> i'm with you on the guns, but do you need to take a naked

picture on a saturday night? there appear to be far cheaper, more effective ways to keep from getting blown up and the fear mongering may be profitable, but i don't know if it's keeping anybody safe. coming up on "hardball," michael smerconish talking to senator sherrod brown about why some democratic lawmakers are attacking the president, but first, toure joins us for the rant on bristol palin. its dual-action formula delivers extra strength pain relief, plus it fights fatigue. so get up and get going with new bayer am, the morning pain reliever. holy sci-fi. steve. no, i know. it's great, right? but, dude, i've been thinking like, this is such a great opportunity for us to write at least an hour to two every single day. you can see this? of course i can see you. but, steve, i'm thinking-- it's like you're standing-- it's like you're standing right there. it's like i'm touching you. yeah.

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toure's rant this week about

"dancing with the stars." >> this week when brandy, who got a perfect score, was ousted in favor of a neo fight hoofr named bristol palin, who's now in the finals despite low scores, because shockers, "dancing with the stars" isn't fair. the figurative explosion took literal form when a detroit man shot his tv in disgust after bristol beat brandy. i hope he knows they weren't actually inside his set. that's a high-tech version of cutting off your nose to spite your face. what would the gop have to gain? could sarah palin's millions of fans be texting in votes? sure they are, but it's not breaking news that dancing with celebrities with a popularity context masquerading as a dance

competition. in her new book, sarah palin lays more pavement for her coming presidential campaign by attacking the obamas on racial grounds. she scoffs at michelle obama for saying in 2008 that for the first time in my adult lifetime, i am really proud of my country. palin says -- they've already failed, but more, they show a simplistic understanding of american history, which has always been complex for african-americans. we are the only americans who didn't come willingly. we still feel the weight of racism every time there's a new atrocity -- or on and on and on. i'm sure most african-americans

appreciate the opportunities this country gives us but we were exactly certain what michelle obama was talking about this that speech and not at home. history can make it hard to feel at peace with this country and when sarah palin or cindy mccain brag about their uncomplicated pride in america with their white privilege card, we just laugh. we know that whether or not there's a coordinated conspiracy, things ain't never been fundamentally just unless you're on a dance reality show. >> do you think there's a disadvantage to that, as people try to pander to america, this sort of idealized whatever it is, that is working or not? >> i'm not sure if it's working or not because i'm sure there's americans who want to believe that and americans who know it's not true. she's still playing to her base,

but her base is small. is she going to be able to leverage that into serious republican