to tampa to the sweltering convention hall of next september, all the while anticipating this hobbsian choice between a candidate who puts them to sleep and one that gives them nightmares? has it achieved a duty of death? life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that stresses and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. newt gingrich, donald trump, let me say no more. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "politics nation" with ashe pasch sta al sharpton starts right now. poverty is not a reality show. newt meets the donald at the trump tower. and wait until you hear how these 1 percenters plan to help

poor kids. it's unbelievable. block the vote, republicans launch a full-scale attack on voting rights across the country. but the countering attack is gaining momentum. no surrender, president obama steps up the fight for the middle class. hey, republicans, does it seem you're starting to sweat? >> how can you fight tooth and nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest americans and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million americans who really need the help? >> welcome to "politics nation." i'm al sharpton. people across america are demanding that newt gingrich apologize for the insulting way he spoke about poor children in this nation by saying they and their parents don't know what it's like to work. but instead of reaching out to the poor, newt met with a

billionaire. this afternoon, newt and donald trump met at the trump tower here in manhattan. newt asked trump of all people for help in addressing poverty. >> i've asked him to take one of the poorer schools in new york and basically offer at least ten apprenti apprenticeships to kids from the school to get them into the world of work. >> i thought it was a great idea. we call it an apprenticeship. we're going to be picking ten young wonderful children and we're going to make them apprenti and have a little fun with it. >> that's your solution to 15 million kids living in poverty? today newt also said there are a few people in housing projects, very few, that he claims work at all.

>> talking about the importance of work, particularly as it relates to people who are in areas where there are public housing, et cetera, where there are relatively few people who go to work. if you look at the largest urban housing projects, you'll find areas who have remarkably little work experience. >> late last week, newt suggested poor kids had two career paths -- become a janitor or become a pimp or prostitute. >> what if they cleaned out the bathrooms and what if they mopped the floors? what if they were learning to work, learning to earn money? they didn't have to become a pimp or a prostitute or a drug dealer. >> it's become his path to the nomination. >> it is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children -- first of all in child laws which are truly stupid. most of these schools ought to

get rid of the unionized janitors. have one master janitors and have local students take care of the schools. >> gop voters could have punished newt for saying something so outrageous. instead, they've come to like him more, not less. his average poll rating has shot up 5% since he said poor kids could be janitors. let me say friday night when i address this had issue, i got a lot of you on tweet that were saying i got emotional. i got emotional because many of us have struggled to talk about what is going on with working poor people in this country and to try to give hope to those kids who like me came out of that poverty to know we can make it and be something. for someone seeking the presidency to try to dash those hopes and to try and stereotype a whole section of this country whose jobs have been outsourced,

who's been laid off, who get up and work every day and sometimes go to two or three jobs is unpardonable. you're not running for an emmy, newt, you're running for the president. this is not a reality show. it's about reality. joining me is dana milbank and "new york times" columnist charles blow. he wrote on article called "newt's war on poor children." thank you both for being with me. charles is one of my favorite columnists. i read his articles every saturday morning. but you were off the chain, as they say, this saturday. what is newt saying -- is this what the base of the gop want to hear? >> i don't know if it's what they want. but they do respond so this sort of demonization of the poor. you can only take him at what he

says. you can't say, what he meant was -- i can only analyze what the man says. and he's saying that these very poor kids don't have anyone around them who works. that is not true. >> hold one minute. you wrote accurately, 3 out of 4 people living below the poverty line have a job. this is in your column. >> absolutely. >> i quoted some data on friday night. but i was glad that you put it in "the new york times" on saturday because most -- not most, but a lot of people don't understand that people that are poor are not necessarily people that don't work. >> absolutely. and what newt was saying was they don't have a habit of getting up and going to work on monday and staying all day. that's probably true because they have a habit of getting up at night and working all night and working on the weekends because a 9:00 to 5:00 monday to friday is actually a luxury for

mihm who are actually working job that is don't pay enough to get you out of poverty. so everything about that comment was degrading because a lot of it was absolutely false. and even if you say -- if you look at the absolute poorest kids in the absolute poorest areas -- we looked at areas where 30% of the households are poor or more, even among that group, a third work and in the poorest areas, 66% of kids in that area live with a parent who works. so even if the parent that you're living with is not working, you see people constantly coming and going back and forth to work. this idea that nobody in these neighborhoods is working is just outrageous. >> what i said on friday night, if newt came to any urban center, come to new york, chicago, wherever, go to a housing project early in the morning, you see floods of people rushing to the subways or to the public transportation to go to work.

what is he talking about, young kids in those areas don't understand a work ethic? but, dana, the politics of this is that newt is going up in the polls, which is even more alarming to me. >> yeah, reverend, i suspect one may not be related to the other. >> i hope not. >> take a step back here. it's not just newt going back to 1995, 1996 and the welfare debate. he's going back to the guilded age. donald trump and newt gingrich are members of the same country club here. and now they're getting together and talking about, we're going to repeal the child labor laws here and have child january tors. as the father of a 7-year-old trying to get her to clean her room, i suggest to you the idea of a child janitor program is not going to go anywhere. but newt gingrich has a way of spouting out whatever is in his

pr professorial mind at the moment. when you get this kind of spotlight over and over again, the public is gradually going to see that the guy is a little bit erratic once you see him all the time. >> let me say this, though. he's not alone. it seems like the whole cast of republican candidates -- and i say cast since they're going into the reality show business now -- have declared a war on the poor. look at this. >> continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work. >> accountability in welfare and accountability in unemployment benefits is going to be a prime thing that we focus on in this election. i so want drug testing. i so want it. >> we have been putting so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry and said, you don't want the jobs that are available. >> if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself.

>> and those are not all candidates other than -- well, even the last one is no longer a candidate. but this is like what we're hearing, charles. and the thing that bothers me. as you know, president obama had newt gingrich and i go out with education secretary duncan in '09 visiting schools. newt knows better because we went to inner city schools. he saw kids that absolutely were striving for educational excellence and came from families, some with single parents who worked every day. he knows better. they're feeding into this kind of welfare -- as dana said, 1994-1995 politics and that is what is so disturbing. >> this is why i don't mind taking him to the woodshed, is because newt knows better. newt know that is child labor laws are meant to protect children from being exploited, not to prevent them from working.

in new york state, if you're 14 years old, you can get a job. but they want to make sure you're healthy, that you don't work so many hours that that you can't do your homework. he knows better. he's basically playing to a stereotype. that is wrong and he knows it. sometimes he spouts off. but he's had this before him -- three or four days, come back at it several times. has yet to apologize, has yet to make it right. so he should be taken to the woodshed on this. >> and he showed his repentance that he wanted to show himself to be accounble by going to donald trump, that's how you really straighten out your position on poverty. but, dana, he's managed to do one thing. if you think president obama did something getting newt and i together for a minute, he got whoopi and elisabeth hasselbeck

together today. look at this. >> i've been as offended as i've been for a long time. to paint all children who are not lucky enough to be wealthy as potential pimps and prostitutes, you're talking about dignity -- you didn't give them any dignity when you made this statement. >> that won't work. it's distant. there's no heart in it. i don't understand how he could even defend those statements again. >> i couldn't believe it, dana. elisabeth and whoopi and rev al on the same page. >> it's not as good as seeing you and newt together there in the white house driveway. but i'll give you that -- it's a close second. the politics here can be dangerous, not in the republican primary. but when you go for the independent centrist voters, they're okay with you picking on people living on welfare. but it's different when you're

talking about kids and going after unemployment insurance available to 15 million americans. it's different when you go after medicare which tens of millions of americans are relying on. these aren't classic welfare programs. these are broadly accepted programs and talking about our children. >> dana milbank, charles blow, thanks for coming in. thank you both for your time. ahead, the fight to keep money in the pockets of 160 million americans continues. but republicans are fighting against it. plus, nancy pelosi says she might spill the secrets of newt. we're talking about thousands of pages of secrets. and we're exposing the gop effort to suppress minority votes in our special series "block the vote" starting tonight. you're watching "politics nation" on msnbc.

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as we've been reporting, the republican campaign is reaching a fever pitch. but behind the scenes, there's a quieter campaign. republicans don't talk much about it. it is there, it is widespread and it is a real threat to the democrats' chances in the

election. i'm talking about the full-on gop effort to change voting laws that could have a dramatic effect next year. 25 voter suppression laws have passed in 14 states this year alone. they're aimed at everything havestringing early voting periods and passing photo id requirements to restricting voter registration. it's a full-court press to restrict voting, which is a fundamental civil right. republicans justify these laws by hopping on about voter fraud. but a five-year study by the bush justice department found only 86 cases of fraud out of more than 3 million votes cast. that's 0.00003%. an imaginary problem with a very threatening solution. joining me now, two champions

for voters everywhere, ben jealous, president of the naacp. they're out with a new report today, "blocking the vote, why the struggle to secure voting rights for people of color continues in the eve of the 2012 let me ask you th elections." and george gresham, president of united states health care workers east. he marched for me with jobs for justice in october. we talked about that issue there, he did in his speech. and we're all coming together this saturday. friday we were talking about the the 25 cities. saturday, we're all in one city, new york, marching from the brothers helping to finance this to the united nations. thanks to both of you for joining me tonight. >> thank you. >> george, this is a civil right. whether you're a democrat, republican. the reason that the labor and civil rights groups along with

you and sciu and all of us are all coming together is because this really undermines the voting rights movement in this country. >> absolutely. what's happening right now in this country, it seems that the powers that they want to take away what we've worked years and years for. i grew up in the south and in segregation and watched the civil rights movement achieve what working people need together. and just when we came together in 2008, working people all around the country, to vote for hope, to stand up for something for working people, they're changing the rules now and they're bringing it back to the bad old days, talking about voter fraud. the only fraud is the idea that there is voter fraud as a way to suppress the vote in the country. >> ben, one of the things they're using is photo id. in the report, the naacp and the legal defense fund has come out

with, you outline many of those areas. i was in florida over the weekend. they are stopping sunday voting in states like florida where you had soul to the poles and you've come out in the report in photo id, african-americans, 25%, latino americans, 16%, white americans, 8%. this is skewed in a way that directly affects minorities at a higher impact, which really will flip a lot of those districts. >> that are's. and as you said, it's really a series of attacks going on across the country. the state of wisconsin, we know fully one-half of blacks and fully one-half latinos in wisconsin do not have a valid driver's license or id, one where the address matches up with where they vote. that's quite simply because -- two things, one, if you're too poor to have a car, you tend not to have a driver's license in the first place.

secondly, if you rent and you move frequently and there's a whole group of renters in this country who move like every six months, when you show up to vote, you may live one place but your id still has some other place on it. then you go down to the state of texas, in texas, they say, look, you can vote with your gun license but you can't vote with your student id. when you look into -- ground zero for student voting rights in texas has often been out at prairie view. this is a black college where there have been wars fought in that town trying to make it possible for black students to get to the polling place. there's all sorts of battles over the years, very much targeted at disenfranchising students and especially black students. then you shift over to georgia that has this law that says if you don't have a zawahixeroxed

attached -- >> a xeroxed copy -- this is crazy. the stuff they're saying doesn't make sense. >> you and i have been involved in voter registration our entire lives. we've been throw countless voter registration drives. never once have we been able to push one of those off while pushing a xerox machine down the street. they have said, look, we're not going to register voters in florida so long as these rules stay in place. >> let me say this, you and i -- ben and i all of our lives have been in voter registration. but you and i have been in the trenches for these legal battles. karl rove has made no bones

about that there's a political strategy to this. and i think people need to understand that. let me show you -- karl rove openly wrote about targeting black voter turnout in "the wall street journal," an op ed he wrote -- why obama is likely to lose in 2012. he writes, even a small drop in the share of black voters would wipe out his winning margin in north carolina. if you look at the states that ben is talking about and that we all are raising and you bring down a percentage just based on voter id or any of the other things, you wipe out the margin of victory in some critical states for the democrats. >> absolutely. what they can't deal with is they can't win with the issues. they know that working people in this country are starting to get fed up when you see the 99% movement, when you see working people of all stripes standing up together in 2008. there was something that many of us thought that we would never see, that people stood up for hope, that people in this country said, despite the fact

of color, we're going to go for people that work for us, that we can afford no longer to be stuck on the issue of race. we need to be stuck on the issue of class, of working class. so they can't beat us with the issues. so now they change the games. they changed the game. they changed the rules. but i can tell you right now, all they're doing in this country is waking up working people. they're not going to get away with it. we're going to arm our people to make sure that they have what it takes to get votes. but we need the public to stand up. we need the public to stand up and say, we're not going back to those old days again. we're not going back to the days when people were stopped from voting in the south, whether there was poll tax or whether there were education tests that people had to do. similar things are happening now. they're just trying to do it in a different, more intelligent way. and under the disguise that they're trying to protect working people. that's as phony as when you have a right to work state that makes

it hard for people to organize and saying you're doing it for working people. it's a sham. >> ben, we have to go, but we're doing house call or office call, we're going to deliver room service to the cope brothers on saturday. >> they can text stand to 62227, or go to stand4freedom.org. >> friday, we're in 25 cities. we've been talking about it. and then saturday, we're all coming together with the naacp, sciu, all of us, from the coke brothers to the u.n. ben, george, thanks to both of you for your time. >> thank you for having us. >> this week, we'll continue to focus on the issue of the effort to suppress the vote. ahead, president obama won't stop fighting for the middle class.

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erupting. nearly four weeks from the iowa caucus, he's blowing away the competition. a new nbc poll has newt leading willard, romney, in iowa by eight points. another has newt trouncing willard in iowa by nine points. newt is the frontrunner. and like all the frontrunners before him, he paid a visit to the king-maker today. right here in new york city, today, the latest candidate to praise the birther king, donald trump, as a true american icon. >> this is a country which elected a peanut faermer to the presidency, an actor who made two movies with a chimpanzee to the presidency. donald trump is a great showman and also a great businessman. >> trump is back in the spotlight moderating a gop

debate this morning. but has created a serious family feud within the party. >> what the heck are the republican candidates doing showing up at a debate with a guy who says, i may run for president next year as an din. the chairman ought to say, we strongly discourage any candidate to be involved in a debate like that. >> karl rove gave us george bush and george bush crashed and burned. the republicans, they have to get rid of the karl roves and they need fresh blood because karl rove is going to lead them into doom. >> just one more drama in the never-ending reality show that is the gop race. joining me now, nia malika henderson and casey hunt.

thanks to both of you for being here tonight. >> thank you. >> casey, newt is surging. why do you really think he's catching on? >> i think it's something that you've seen throughout this entire primary process. you've seen people get excited about michele bachmann. then you saw people get excited about one after the other of these republican alternatives. they're just searching for somebody who isn't mitt romney. what makes newt different is that he has a national identity. people know who he is, from back in 1994 when he was the speaker of the house. we're going to have to see whether or not that means he has more staying power than those who have risen and fallen before him. >> nia, if you look at the die graph of newt's surge, from february, he was at 10.6, then down to 10.1. then up to 11.3. then down to 8.

then down to 7.3. july, 5. august, 4.8. september, 4.5. then october, he shoots back up to 9.2. november, 11. and in december, 26. you talk about a roller-coaster ride, he's been on it. but if you compare that to willard, his poll has been very obvious, flat. he's barely moved at all. he's stayed from 18.9 in february to 20.4 here. willard just can't get the majority of his party to come behind him, it appears. >> no, it's true. he can't even get close to the majority of his party to give him any love, to give him any attention in these polls. i think one of the things about newt is he's had really great timing. we're a couple of weeks ahead of the iowa caucuses and he is surging at the right time. obviously we've got to look to

see what sort of ground game he has there in some of these early states, iowa, new hampshire and south carolina. apparently it's not so great as of yet, the campaign is having to catch up with his surge. i know there's some talk in the gingrich campaign that they'll actually merge some operations, some ground game with the cain campaign. again, the cain campaign, also not very well-structured in some of these early states. hard to see how that helps. what's going to be interesting to watch is how romney confronts gingrich, whether or not he comes out strong against him. he's been using this career politician tag against him, hard to see how that's going to be effective given that mitt romney himself hasn't had a job for a number of years, unless you count running for president as a job. >> now, casey, if you look at e.j. deon, he wrote this weekend

that the tea party has turned the republican party into a reality show. quote, a party that lived by the tea crowd in 2010 is being severely hobbled by it now. is this the problem that the tea party has driven the gop party so far to the right that you've got to play way to the right of willard and way to the right of a lot of the moderate republicans and the established republicans like karl rove to try and win the nomination and you may not be able to get back? >> well, i think that you've seen a recognition on the part of some of these candidates on the right that for whatever reason, donald trump really tapped into some element of anger on the right. and something that he's saying in his bombastic reality, apprentice show type of way resonated with a piece of that republican electorate. whether clips of gingrich calling him an american icon are going to come back to haunt him

were he to become the gop nominee, it's distinctly possible that could end up being used against him. we'll have to see how it all shakes out. >> i'll be honest with you, i thought it was a funny when you call a guy an american icon but you compare him to presidents that were peanut farmers and one that acted with chimpanzees. i didn't know if he was building trump up or tearing him down. he's saying that newt is a career politician. but if you look at willard's resume, he looks like a career politician. '94, ran for united states senate. 2002, elected massachusetts.gov. 2004, formed the first pac. 2006, chair of the republican governors association. 2007 launched his campaign. 2011 launched his second campaign. that's not exactly a resume of

an outsider. >> right, exactly. this is something that the democratic national committee is trying to highlight. one of the things those dates highlight also is he hasn't been a very successful career politician. he's only won one race in his life, the race for senate there in 2002. but this is obviously -- he's trying to tag newt gingrich as an establish. figure. newt gingrich, very well known in washington, very well known in the beltway. was here in washington for 20 years. and so that's what he's trying to do, trying to tap into this fervor among especially tea party folks as someone who's different. but the problem is mitt romney seems like he was built to be a politician. so it's a very hard argument for him to make when on his resume are so many races for government positions. >> now, i've got to ask you about this, casey, nancy pelosi reported -- it was reported today -- told some people that

she has maybe a little dirt to spill on newt. she told them, quote, one of these days we'll have a conversation about newt gingrich, i know a lot of about him. i served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. 1,000 pages of his stuff, that's a little eyebrow raising, don't you think, casey? >> well, that's the danger that newt faces. when you have a record as long as his, you can run on it and say, i've balanced the budget. but on the flip side, newt didn't exactly leave the house of representatives in washington with a parade of fans and followers. there's a lot that he's left behind that is probably not going to reflect favorably on him. >> but newt didn't respond

professorial to that. listen to what he said. >> i want to thank speaker pelosi for what i regard as an early christmas suggest. she's going to use information she came up with. i would hope charges would be filed against her the second he does it. i would hope the house would immediately con deem her if he uses any material that she gathered while she was on the ethics committee. that would be a total violation. >> he seemed a little disturbed. >> yeah, he's a little disturbed. two things. this actually helps newt gingrich because he's, of course, had those commercials where he was sitting on the couch with nancy pelosi. so any way he can seem to be in kind of a combat with her is actually good for him. but in some ways, i think he does have a point, this idea that nancy pelosi is going to leak information on newt gingrich, i think the democratic national committee and folks -- democrats in the house probably

aren't very satisfied with the way she's talking about this and threatening, really, to release this information gathered in her role on this ethics investigation. so i think in some ways, he's got a point here. and i'm sure that in some ways over the next couple of days, you're going to see democrats walk away from this idea that nancy pelosi is going to be leaking information on newt gingrich. >> well, four weeks to iowa, we'll be watching. don't be too hard on newt for sitting on the couch with nancy pelosi. al gore had all of us doing that with opposites. i sat on that couch with pat robertson. we argued about who was going to walk on the water first. thank you both for your time tonight. ahead, president obama puts the republicans on the ropes, ramping up his fight to protect the middle class. and the latest right wing attack against the muppets, no joke. stay with us.

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payroll tax cut and keep money in the pockets of 160 million americans. >> how could it be that the only time there's a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle class families? how can you fight tooth and nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest americans and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million americans who really need the help? it doesn't make sense. >> it doesn't make sense. and the american people know it. this summer, congress's job approval rating stood at 20%. but look at how that number has plummeted as republicans have blocked each portion of the president's jobs bill. they said "no" to teachers and firefighters. they said "no" to infrastructure jobs. they said "no" to payroll tax cut. their approval rating has dropped 11 points since june. president obama knows that

fighting for fairness is the right move. when will republicans come around? joining me now, former congress alan grayson, democrat from florida, now running again for office. congressman, thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> are republicans now seeing what happens when you ignore the will of the people? >> not yet, but i'm pretty sure they will. it is interesting that you have to shame them into doing something that they ought to be willing to do themselves. but it seems that they have no shame. let's think about this. this payroll tax for people who work, the millions and millions of people in this country who actually earn a living, not through derivatives or anything like that, but people who actually work. those people are going to have to face a tax increase because of the republicans -- >> let's explain that, alan. people need to understand, when we talk in these terms, what it means that an average american worker, if they do not extend the payroll tax cut, what does it mean to me sitting at home

watching? >> it means that every worker in this country suddenly has 2% less in their paycheck every single week. >> so the republicans -- >> if you make $500 a week, you're making $490 a week thanks to the republicans. >> so the republicans fighting to protect the tax cuts of the rich are saying to the average middle class american, you're getting less 2% because i'm playing partisan politics with the president? >> that's right. but it's worse than that. the people who get the tax cut are people who need the money and people who spend the money. they're not like the wealthy who you give them a tax cut and they put knit their pockets. these are ordinary working americans who then spend their money. they spend their money on their rent and the landlord spends that money on a haircut and then the hairdresser spends that money at a restaurant and the money goes around and around and revives the american economy. that's what actually happens. >> let me show you what the

president said when he dealt with the bush tax cuts as opposed to this -- let me show you president obama today. >> some republicans who have pushed back against the idea of extending this payroll tax cut have said that we've got to pay for these tax cuts. and i just point out that they haven't always felt that way. over the last decade, they didn't feel the need to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, which is one of the reasons that we face such large deficits. >> so, congressman, not only are they for the first time not supporting a tax cut, now they even want to say, how are we going to pay for this tax cut when we gave the richest americans tax cuts? we went into wars in iraq and other places, we never heard the republicans say, how are we going to pay for these things? but when it comes to main-street americans getting a tax cut, now we have to have all of these things in place. interesting. >> yeah, and we're still paying for the tax cuts for the rich.

in fact, if you simply ended the bush tax breaks for the rich, that alone by itself would be almost enough to pay for this entire bill for tax breaks for the middle class. >> what do you feel will be the result of the president? he is out there now really not holding back, as you saw the language today. he's going tomorrow back on the road where teddy roosevelt spoke. do you think the president and those groups that are out there now can generate enough public opinion that will back the republicans down? >> listen, the only basic question in publics that matters is, whose side are you on? and right now, america is watching and sees that the president is on the side of the middle class, the people in this country who actually work, and that the republicans are on the other side. they're on the side of the multinational corporations, they're on the side of the 1%, they're on the side of the filthy rich. that's becoming more and more

obvious every single day. >> what also is very interesting is etch when senator mcconnell, the republican leader in the senate, came forward with his payroll tax cut plan, 26 republicans voted against their own leader. 26 republicans said no to him. these people are just outright saying, it's our way or the highway to the average american and the president. >> yes, it won't be long before you see more rats trying to leave that sinking ship called the right wing tea party republican party. >> well, congressman, i think we've got to keep on fighting for the average american and we've got to keep informing them what the fight is all about. thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you for having me. ahead, the conservative plan to take down the muppets. hey, tough guys, why don't you pick on someone your own size. that's next. [ male announcer ] cranberry juice? wake up!

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there's a new right wing conspiracy coming to a theater near you. that's right, parents, listen up. movies are turning your kids into a democrat. "new york post" says "happy feet 2" is called, quote, kiddie karl marx. conservative websites are also hitting "cars 2" for attacking the oil industry. and "monsters versus aliens" for standing against torture. now, fox business is calling out the muppets for, get this, being anti-business.

>> give the anti-corporate message. >> is liberal hollywood using class warfare to brainwash our kids? >> yeah, absolutely. >> thanks for tipping us off, conservatives. but with so many holiday movies playing right now, i need to warn parents about other film that is might indoctrinate kids. be careful of "it's a wonderful life." george bailey helping people become homeowners is anti-capitalist. "trading places" is one big kiss to the 99%. and watch out for "home alone." kevin doesn't work hard enough to protect his house from those robbers. he should have taken lessons from his school janitor, right, newt? my mother always told me, desperate people will do desperate things. they're getting