virginia right now where he is expected to react to these new numbers. let's start out with nbc's mike viqueira and also with ron insa insana, cnbc senior analyst. so, ron, let's start with the widespread job creation across the various sectors of this economy. when we say widespread, various, let's get specific about it. what sectors? >> well, actually, manufacturing continued to add jobs, services, obviously retail services added jobs. government jobs down 6,000. that's been the case for quite a number of months now, thomas, where government employment has come down, both the federal and state, even local level. so that's a headwind that this employment environment has had to overcome and it's done have we well. three months in a row with more than 200,000 jobs created. if you look at the household survey, there were 400,000 jobs created which includes the self-employed. the broadest measure of unemployment went from 15.1% to 14.9% so that's good news as well. >> let's talk about the reaction to the news about greece

appearing to be closing in on the debt deal. we've heard this so many times before. how can people expect this to be different and have confidence? >> well, they got nearly 85% of the private creditors to go along with the deal which means they can force the remaining 15% or so to take the haircut, if you will, on the debt that's owed them. that allows for the european union to give them second round of bailout money that divert that is debt default. the market has been rallying on that for a couple days. the labor market figures, wile they're not prompting a huge rally, today is the third anniversary of the low in the stock market during the depths of the crisis. the s&p has doubled. the dow has doubled. the nasdaq has more than doubled. so the market has been anticipating this improvement in the economy all along, and today it's showing, you know, continued appreciation of where we are relative to where we could have been. >> let's show the markets, if we can. green arrows across the board but as ron is saying really slow

going. as we're hovering around that psychological mark of 13,000. >>. >> i'm not going to get hung up on 13,000. when you look at the stock markets a valuations, they are reasonable. when you look at the economic data that we've gotten, they're supportive and corporate profits have been helpful. i think the economy is in a pretty good spot now, and maybe not everyone agrees, but i think it's a lot stronger and will continue to get stronger relative to expectations over the next several months. >> as we're watching president obama at andrews air force base going on to air force one for that talk in virginia. with the president just leaving as we're seeing, mike viqueira is standing by at the white house for us. mike, why so important to take a message to the battleground state of virginia today? >> reporter: this is a pattern that we see from the white house not only this week but on these jobs fridays, the first friday of every month, in this case the second friday of the month because february was so short. the president often schedules these events at manufacturing

plants and as ron reported, manufacturing is one of the bright spots in the economy. we can expect the president to do what he has done for the past several months now as the unemployment rate continues to decline. the white house telling us accentuating the positive, it's gone down 0.8% since last august. almost half a million jobs in the manufacturing sector have been created over the course of the last two years. 24 straight months of private sector growth as well. the president is going down to a rolls royce factory and this is something that he did the other day in north carolina. emphasizing foreign investment into manufacturing. as for the politics of this, the president obviously the first democrat to win virginia since 1964 and lbj and they have reaction from republican leaders in congress on today's numbers. led me read you john boehner. he says today's report provides some encouragement for millions of families and small businesses who continue to struggle in this economy. but unemployment remains far too high. and as for eric cantor, his number two there in the house of

representatives, he says, while the economy is slowly adding new jobs, job growth must be stronger in order for the millions of unemployed to get back to work and they're also touting that jobs bill that the president backed, passed the house of representatives with plenty of room to spare. thomas? >> mike viqueira at the white house. thank you. again, that programming note, the president scheduled to speak at prince george, virginia, 12:30 p.m. eastern time. we will bring you those live remarks right here on msnbc. today's positive jobs report obviously good news for president obama's campaign for a second term. joining me today, today's power panel, julianna goldman, white house correspondent for bloomberg news. former clinton white house staffer david goodfriend, around former rnc communications director doug high. it's great to have you here. i want to do a quick lightning round to get your responses to our first question, which is what does today's jobs report really mean and what happens to president obama and his hopes for another term if the economic momentum were to slow? julianna i want to start with you. >> thomas, more than 200,000

jobs a month, this is a good number for the president, but this is the kind of numbers that the president needs to have just to keep the unemployment rate hovering around 8 thr%. in november of 2012, that's not a great number for the president. he needs to show the trends are going in the right direction but this adds momentum to that. there are a lot ever unknowns out there, europe, iran, gas prices, and we're just reminded of the fact that tomorrow is the one-year anniversary since the earthquake in japan. >> david, republicans like house speaker boehner, cantor, they're saying this is nothing really to cheer about. listen to mitt romney slamming the president's record. take a look. >> don't forget, by the way, that this president, how many months ago was it? 37 months ago, told us if he could borrow $787 billion, almost $1 trillion, he would keep unemployment below 8%. it has not been below 8% since.

this president has not succeeded. this president has failed, and that's the reason we're going to get rid of him in 2012. >> so let's talk about that, david. is it enough that the economy is improving and is it enough that the president doesn't have it below 8%? >> my former boss, bill clinton, used to say elections are about tomorrow, they're not about yesterday, they're not even about today. they're about what people perceive to be in their future. and if they see brightness in the future, as reagan showed with morning in america, they're going to be voting for the person who portrayed that picture. mitt romney and the republicans seem to be stuck on this america's in decline narrative, and people don't like that. meanwhile, unemployment is ticking down, productivity is picking up. we see the gdp starting to grow in ways it hasn't in months. and that is future-oriented positivity that's going to help the president. think of the perception of tomorrow and how that plays into an election. >> doug, as the economy appears

to be getting better, doesn't it make it tougher for republicans to hammer president obama on this issue if it is making that momentum toward recovery, do they look like they're hoping for america to fail if they continue to hammer the president on it? >> i think it's very tough for anyone when you pump your gas like i did last night and pay $3.89 and we know it's higher in a lot of places in the country. that's one of the real unknowns that julianna was talking about. energy is really going to be a key issue for the president, and we saw today steve rattner earlier this morning, former obama aide, said on "morning joe" that there's no energy policy from the united states. anything americans purchase comes from a truck. that means they will pay for because of gas prices. that's a real question mark for the economy moving forward in november. >> let's move to the gop primary. mitt romney calling his bid in the south an away game and he tried to relate to the down home folks in mississippi. >> this guy i see every day time after time after time, and this

is a guy from mississippi, and his name is garrett jackson. come over here garrett. four years at ole miss. and so he is now turning me into an unofficial southerner and i'm learning to say y'all and i like grits and things are -- strange things are happening to me. >> david, is he having a hard time making it believable, that he's enjoying the process of maybe eating grits and trying to like them? >> that clip was something out of a bad "saturday night live" skit. i mean, this guy cannot look personable to save his life, and i'm reminded frankly of other candidates who tried to adopt a southern accent and only sounded weird. it's like michael dukakis getting in a tank. to use a southern saying, that dog won't hunt. >> doug this, new alabama state university poll show that is rick santorum leading with

likely republican voters in alabama, but his lead over romney is within this margin of error. so what does the poll actually mean for the santorum campaign and the romney campaign respectively? >> well, for santorum, you know, it's another last best hope for santorum. for romney, it demonstrates he's got more work to do the south. i'm a proud north carolina tar heel. they're going to beat maryland in the acc tournament in about an hour -- >> you have a lot of nerve. >> i don't like grits. i don't tend to say y'all, for me with mitt romney that's not a big issue. for romney, focus on jobs and the economy, and with gas prices where they are, that's going to be a key issue for him. juneau i'm from maryland. you can't come here and throw the terps under the bus like that. >> i'm a maryland native, too. >> let's get him. he has a lot of nerve. newt gingrich predicting his victory in mississippi. let's take a listen to what he said and get your thoughts on the other side. >> i think we could win a victory of extraordinary proportions.

this is without any question the most important primary that mississippi has had for the presidency. mississippi matters. >> all right. so gingrich leading santorum in this delegate count. is he still a viable candidate and able -- can he pull it off basically a few wins on tuesday? i give the last word to my fellow marylander, julianna. >> thomas, for newt gingrich i'm not sure whether or not he can win or pull it off in mississippi is really the answer to his campaign, whether he could be viable going forward against rick santorum and staying in it and the money raised, having enough to compete to make it to the primary, to make it to the convention is something he's really going to have to answer for himself. >> julianna goldman, david goodfriend, doug "tar heel" high. thank you. i appreciate it. both sides of the aisle are creating bipartisanship for the whopping passage of the house jobs act. the republican-led house passed the obama-backed bill by a vote 390-23. the jobs act is meant to spur small business growth. now a senate bill that would have allowed congress to begin

construction on part of the keystone pipeline, that wasn't so lucky. it went down by a vote of 56-42. president obama rejected transcanada's application for the keystone pipeline earlier this year. the unemployment rate might be showing signs of improvement, but gas prices, as we've been talking about, they are causing a lot of pain at the pump. republicans blame the president, but exxon's ceo tells us the real reason. plus mitt romney is still stuck in a battle for this republican nomination. why he's got to be ready to face-off against president obama. i'm going to ask my colleague chris hayes coming up. [ shapiro ] at legalzoom, you can take care of virtually all your important legal matters in just minutes. now it's quicker and easier for you to start your business... protect your family... and launch your dreams.

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the president's people have put together a 17-minute infomercial. they're calling it a doumary. i don't think so. it's an infomercial. and the person who produced it,

he said, boy, it was really hard putting this together. he was interviewed last night. he said because i couldn't find any faults with the president. i'll tell you, i got a long list of people for that producer to talk to. >> so fired up mitt romney coming out swinging against the president at a campaign event this morning in mississippi. he took aim at the white house's documentary on the president's first term. swiped at the morning's job report and blamed the commander in chief for the soaring gas prices across the country. joining me is chris hayes host of "up with chris hayes." as you watch all of that, obviously as we talk about the 17-minute white house documentary on president obama's first term, isn't it just expected mitt romney is going to come out and take a few swipes at that. it's not going to be something he's going say go watch it. >> of course. i think lawrence o'donnell was making the point last night that i thought was a good one. they have the luxury of essentially just running positive things because the republican race is so undetermined and because there's not a perception that they have

a particularly strong candidate to field. and so this time that they have now into the spring and who knows maybe the summer until they have a nominee is time for them to do things like have a 17-minute glossily lit documentary about the president. >> is it the jv game? >> it's not the varsity game yet. >> jobs added, more positive economic news we get. we have green arrows across the board at least for the markets today. not surging growth but right around 13,000. what happens though if something does change the tail winds of the economy and it shifts things and especially where you go play in the wheel house, the strong suit of the businessman mitt romney? >> rim not has constructed the rationale of the candidacy around his business sxernexperi. if the economy appears to be fixed, that undercuts it.

the situation between israel and iran and any global turmoil that might result from a strike there which would genuinely send oil prices through the roof and the shock of higher oil price would say have extremely negative consequences. on economic growth and hiring and there would be a cascading effect. the other is europe. they keep putting band aids on gaping wounds. they keep trying austerity in different parts of the eurozone to fix the problem. it doesn't look like they've come up -- they haven't bitten the bullet and done things on the scale they need to do to actually solve the problem and so in these one-month, two-month, three-month increments we will keep coming up against deadlines and bubbling up crises and one may be too much tohandle. >> gas prices, the fingers go across on who is to blame. >> i think people should remember the single biggest issue that dominated the campaign in 2008 was gas prices. obama was saying if you inflate your tires you'll get better miles per gallon.

which is true. that was the drill baby drill chant. the financial crisis happened and it knocked gas prices off the agenda. there's going to be a sort of i think an inclination to obsess over gas prices for the next few months but i don't see it as being a determining factor in the fall. >> mitt coming out strong against the president on the documentary. rick santorum backtracking a little bit about some of the comments he made, specifically the snob comment directed toward the president after he got chastised by his wife. take a listen to this. >> the snob comment did not go over very well. she reminded me, you know, it's snobbish. you can say it was a snobbish thing to say but don't call him a snob, and i said, you know, i made a mistake. >> so do you think, chris, we're going to see a softer side of rick santorum, especially if he can channel the influence of his wife, karen, and bring up the fact when we talk at night, she's telling me you're making a mistake. >> i think the incentives among the republican field in terms of how he has to beat mitt romney

all push him to be -- to channel anger at the president, to channel fear and anger as rush limbaugh said in the statement yesterday. so i don't think there's much incentive for him in the primary battle to, quote, show a softer side. i think that snob comment was so revealing because he backed himself into this ideological dead end. really, you really think someone who wants people to go to college is a snob in i think there was a lot of backlash against that but he's following the kind of path that's been laid out against him in trying to attack mitt romney. >> and then he admits his mom was born in the '20s and she went to college. >> he also has two different degrees. who are we kidding? >> chris hayes, thanks. and you can catch chris on "up with chris hayes" saturday and sunday mornings 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. the death of disco. it happened years ago, but, unfortunately, one of disco-'s most well-known voices just passed away. jimmy ellis from the tamps, bitter known as the baritone

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mr. sharma knew the defendant. ravi is charged with 15 counts, including bias intimidation and invase of privacy. nearly one year after that historic earthquake and tsunami in japan, the search continues for bodies. it was last march 11th when a 9.0 magnitude quake rocked the asian island triggering that massive tsunami. 16,000 people died. nearly 3300 people still missing. the tsunami also triggered a meltdown at the fukushima nuclear plant, the world's worst nuclear crisis since chernobyl. and the viral video aimed at stopping the reign of ugandan rebel said to turn children in soldiers. >> it's hard to look back on some parts of human history because when we heard about injustice, we cared, but we didn't know what to do.

too often we did nothing. but if we're going to change that, we have to start somewhere. so we're starting here with joseph kony. >> so the goal of stop kony 2012 is to make the elusive leader so famous he's brought to justice. sents from tim tebow to taylor swift are supporting that action. this morning on the "today" show the director of the video explained why he believes it's caught fire online. >> i think it's because it's a human story. we're all human beings, and for some reason we forgot about our humanity because of politics and because of all of these things that we are talking about. it's paralyzed us and we forgot, we're humans first. >> the obama administration has sent 100 u.s. military advisers to uganda to help forces there track down kony. at least 31 anti-government activists are dead in syria today. this after dozens of tankses fired mortar shells in rebel-controlled territories

around that country. one bystander says tanks even fired their canons at house. rebels are reporting four high-ranking offices have defected president assad's government in the last three days bringing the total number that have switched sides to seven. i'm joined by richard engel. it's good to have you here. as we talk about the fact that here we are more than a year after the arab spring uprisings, the middle east is still brimming with the conflict and we look at what's happening now in syria. the recent violence that's taking place that's going back and forth and where arab nations, they're launching another peace mission into that area. what are the chances that that's actually going to work? >> probably zero right now. the government doesn't seem to be in the mood for a peace mission. there is an envoy, kofi annan, who talks about hang bilateral negotiations. the opposition is rejecting that. there's no indication that the assad regime wants to cooperate, and the assad regime still feels

it has diplomatic immunity from china and russia. so right now the actions being determined on the ground in places -- in cities around syria, not at any serious diplomatic efforts. >> when we talk about iran, richard, a close ally of syria and the government there, it's being urged by the u.n. to allow nuclear inspectors into a restricted military complex. israel has reportedly asked for the u.s. bunker buster bombs that could possibly improve its ability to attack iran. how do you think this is going to -- >> that is the question. >> because we get to this whole thing where everybody wants to talk about diplomacy, but everybody seems to be heading more towards force. >> i wouldn't say everyone. i think there's a real split in this, and we saw the obama administration come out clearly on the side of diplomacy a few days ago saying that the window is still open for talks, but that the window is not open forever. and you have certain elements in

israel, particularly the prime minister, saying that the window is very short and that israel and other countries need to be prepared for military action. it's an open debate, and the iranians themselves are trying to to find a space within this. they've had their own military tests. they are now at least talking about being more cooperative with nuclear inspectors. so, frankly, you have a lot of competing voices. >> what if israel forces everybody's hand? >> by actually -- >> by actually showing force? >> well, it's almost anybody's guess what's going to happen. i was just talking with an iranian analyst about this, and the consensus was that iran would have to respond with something. iran would not just sit there like syria did when syria was attacked by israel to destroy its fledgling nuclear program. syria initially tried to deny it ever happened and then did nothing, and iran probably

couldn't do that. that was perceived as being weak. how far it goes is almost anyone's guess. will hezbollah get deeply involved? probably. does this send oil prices spiking throughout the world? absolutely. >> nbc chief foreign correspondent richard engel. nice to see you this morning. thank you. still fighting for minority voters rights. the reverend al sharpton leading a marge from selma to montgomery, alabama. 47 years, that's right, 47 years after the original mnarch that paved the way for the 1965 voting rights act. plus, celebrating women around the world, and i had a run-in with actress angelina jolie. i'll tell you all about it coming up. no, no it's her dad. the general's your soul mate? dude what? no, no, no. he's, he's on my back about providing for his little girl. hey don't worry. e-trade's got a totally new investing dashboard. everything is on one page, your investments, quotes, research... it's like the buffet last night. whatever helps you understand man. i'm watching you.

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don't like obama care and want to get rid of it. >> so a fired up mitt romney swings blow after blow at president obama during a campaign stop this morning in mississippi. mississippi being one of two southern states voting next tuesday. nbc romney campaign embed garrett haake joins us this morning. he's traveling through mississippi as we speak. garrett, romney called out someone named garrett on the trail. i thought he was calling out to you, but it turned out to be somebody else. he's getting his mojo back or what out there? >> yeah, thomas, that seems to be the case. what you're seeing here is kind of a return to this front-runner campaign. no more talk about rick santorum or newt gingrich or anybody else not named barack obama. he's really been hitting him hard, as some of the clips you just played showed. the campaign knows romney is a bit of an underdog. he alled alabama an away game, but they're very well organized. the basic plan down here is pick

up as many delegates as they can, keep the margins narrow, and get out of here without spending too much money. to your point about the other garrett he mentioned, romney has been playing a lot to the south. his body man is a guy named garrett from ole miss who has been teaching romney to say y'all and how to eat grits. i tried to ask him some questions about the job reports and he wouldn't answer. i tried to ask him about eating grits and he wouldn't even either. between me and the other garrett, we'll try to get something. >> eye want yi want you to call when you do. i appreciate it. tuesday's primaries in mississippi and alabama. civil rights activists have spent this week matching from selma to montgomery. this being 47 years after martin joouter king led a similar march. the focus is on voting rights and the laws which prevent people from getting to the polls. >> why all of a sudden are we changing the i.d. laws now if

there's been no problem of voter fraud with i.d.s? so then why all of a sudden are we changing the identification needed unless there was some breakout or widespread i.d. counterfeiting goi on? that's not been the case. >> reverend al there appearing earlier on "jansing & co." jeff johnson is a contributor to msnbc and executive editor of politico 365.com. and judith brown diannis is with a gal action group committed to racial justice. nice to have you both here. jeff, i wants to start with you. the march ends at the alabama state capitol in about two hours. explain to us what happens then? >> there's going to be a number of speakers. right now behind me you have the historic snik singers who are part of this civil rights tradition. adjacent to me is the historic dexter avenue baptist church where martin luther king, jr.

was actually pastor. i'm looking down the street at the marchers who are getting ready to come. you will be hearing from reverend al sharpton, of course, as well as other simple rights leaders. and what's great, i think, is we're seeing both young and old here. i talked to a 10-year-old girl who said this is her 20th march she's been at with her father. so you see even right now young people walking with their parents. this is going to be an opportunity for, i think, not just reverend al and others to talk about the voting rights laws that are being enacted all over the state, but how they want people to be enacted not just here in alabama but in some of the over 23 states that are pushing some of this negative legislation. >> judith, that brings me to you because you work to provide equal protection for all, for all at the voting booth. so why is this year's march so important and explain to all of us what's happening this year in this election year that people really need to pay attention to. >> this is an important monarch because it's really underscoring

what has been happening. we have seen over the past year the most significant roll back of voting rights that we have seen in more than a century. and it's really come in the way of these voter i.d. law that is really are restricting voting, and what it's doing is it's creating barriers to participation for voters, and we're really concerned about it because it didn't just happen in 2011, but in 2012 we have seen more than 23 states take up these restrictive laws. >> so, jeff, as we talk about who has come out for this, there are a lot of people, yourself included, who are there for this march who weren't even in the picture, even a glint in your parents' eye this original march back in '65 to montgomery. what's inspired so many young people to get involved and want to be there this year? >> well, i think you know as well as i do that 2008 was a huge election year for young people. they were actively involved, and i think what young people are seeing as well as other communities are seeing is that their right to vote is being challenged. you have students right now who are in states where they're

being told that their state i.d. from a public state institution is not good enough to show up and vote. so i think they're realizing how they're being affected in way that is are relevant to them as well as the historical pieces that i think judith talked about that we saw from 1965 until now about protecting the right to vote. >> judith, the kinds of positive pressure that can be applied in states like alabama where voter i.d. laws are in effect and making this negative impact, what can they be? >> sure. well, first of all, there are a number of lawsuits, for example, advancement project has a lawsuit in wisconsin challenging the law there that we know will impact about 78% of african-american males do not have i.d. ages 18 to 24. in pennsylvania, for example, there's legislation that just passed the senate, and it needs to be stopped on the house side because we know that these i.d. laws will create significant barriers for those who turned out in record numbers in 2008. and so really people can get

involved, and they can say no to these barriers because we all need to participate in our democracy. that's what makes us a rich country. that's what makes our country different from others, and so people can get involved by stopping the legislation, by making sure they debunk the myths that everyone does not have an identification. people need to understand that, and we need to make sure that we're pushing progressive laws. >> all right. i want to thank both of you. jeff, real quickly because i have to go. what do you want to say? >> no, i think it's important to say that one of the real messages here is that the i.d. law that is have been pushed, there isn't real justification for them to be there. there's no real picture of the amount of fraud that those on the right are claiming there is for those laws to exist in the first place and in cash-strapped states, you're putting additional financial burden on states for law that is don't make sense. >> jeff johnson in montgomery, alabama, judith brown of the

advancement project, thanks to both of you this morning. joining me to sound off about voter i.d. laws and the fight for equality in this election year is msnbc's melissa harris perry. her new show, melissa harris perry airs weekends. she's a professor at tulane and a columnist. you're shaking your head. let's talk about the impact of the things that are going on around this country to try to roll back the advancements that we saw in the 1960s with the civil rights movement and the negative impact it's having as we move forward in our political process. >> i want to make it a longer history than just since the 1960s. i want to go back to our founding and say sort of the american trajectory has been to increase the number of people who are part of voting, to move to initially universal male suffrage, then including women, then including people of color who had been included constitutionally before that but then actually bringing down the barriers in 1965, and then ultimately also allowing young

people who are serving in the military to be able to vote. so we've thought of sort of the american trajectory of being about more people voting, more people having a voice. what's so appalling and disconcerting here is the idea that we would now at this moment in history start constricting this vote. >> from voting rights to women's rights, we've seen this record-setting year over anti-choice laws, 92 laws, 92 passed in 24 states. that's a huge jump from what we saw passed in 2010. when 1 in 5 americans, and we're talking about all americans, poverty and gas prices keep climbing, the unemployment rate is still above 8% even though we have a new february positive number out. why the focus on the right on women's health issues. is it a distraction? >> it is a distraction. it's very similar to the voting restriction laws. in both cases you basically have legislative solutions to thing for which there is no problem. so we've seen, for example, a decline in the number of unwanted pregnancies.

we've seen a decline in the use of abortion in post-first tri master. a decline in teenage pregnancy. to enter into women's reproductive rights when we don't have a problem is similar to entering into the voter rights when we don't have a voter problem. we hear from the right government should be small. i think this is a reasonable position, ideological position, that government should leave as much freedom as possible. so to say government intervene when there actually aren't problems but not intervene when there are, that's when we know something political and not policy oriented is afoot. >> i want to tell everybody you can tune in and watch melissa harris-perry saturday and sunday mornings starting at 10:00 person on msnbc. a strong female voice. speaking of which, last night he had the great prif edvilege to

attend the women in the world. it was a fantastic night. that summit hosted extraordinary women leaders, advocates and celebrities from around the world all raising their voice to draw much-needed attention to the concerns of our international community. also gave me a chance to meet angelina jolie. i had to show it to you. united nations goodwill ambassador. she gave a wonderful speech. also the global youth aids ambassador star of "smash" debra messing. democratic leader nancy pelosi, many more joining the discussion which continues through tomorrow and our own andrea mitchell on at 1:00 p.m. eastern is listed in "newsweek" as one of the 150 fearless women. it sounded like the chocobeast. the what? half man, half beast. he'll stop at nothing to sink his fangs into people who steal other people's chocolate temptations.

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regular demand at $3.87 -- $3 6 $3.76. what has been driving up gas prices and might they hit $5 a gallon? here is what the ceo and chairman of the world's largest oil company told matt lauer in a "today" show exclusive. >> what drove these prices up is entirely the crude oil price. supply/demand is fine. what's led to this, oshl conc n obviously concerns about the rhetoric of the closing of the straits of hormuz and the conflict was iran. >> a lot of people are talking about $5 a gallon coming up in the summer driving months. is that just a headline or is it a realistic number? >> as i look at just the supply/demand fundamentals, i would not expect to see prices reach that level. >> gas prices are a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail. the candidates are all blaming higher gas prices on president

obama's energy policies and gingrich is promising $2.50 a gallon gas. joining me now is environmental advocate, author and rolling stone contributor jeff goodall. he wrote an article in the upcoming issue entitled the fracing bubble. jeff, you also wrote an article entitled why obama is wrong about natural gas. so explain why, why is he wrong about natural gas? >> well, i just -- connected with gas prices, i mean, there is no real connection between natural gas and gas prices in america. we use natural gas for power generation, industrial purposes >> to heat our homes, and boosting supply of natural gas in the u.s. by hydraulic drilling and fracking are a subject that people have heard about, is not going to do anything for our gas prices in america. >> so all the gop candidates are saying we need to embrace fracking because it will create jobs, but there are safety

concerns that go with this. what are they? >> well, it's not only safety concerns there's environmental concerns. there's concerns about water pollution and contamination of drinking wells. it has not been study much, it's a new technology. it's booming and they are doing a lot of drilling without really understanding the consequences of what this could be. and there's economic conseque e consequencconsequenc consequences in the sense that natural gas is cheap right now because the drilling boom is going on but it's not clear how real the cheap gas is, and how sustainable the wells really are and there's a lot of public policy questions about what happens if we start to invest a lot of money in public infrastructure and all of a sudden the prices skyrocket again. >> you wrote that fracking, is about producing cheap energy the same way the mortgage crisis was about helping realize the dreams of middle class home owners. where is fracking in terms of

modern day, and is it going to be that we wi watch explode to come back to bite us in the butt down the line. ? >> it's something that we to not know. that is part of the problem right now. s that booming technology without much oversight, there's no federal regulatory oversight on the fracking operations, they are saall operated by the individual state. there's questions about the fracking fluids, and the chemicals that they inject with the water under ground, what is inhe chemicals? do they leak into the water tables? things like that, there's the question about the methane and natural gas that is coming out, they have been found in the wells, drinking wells around the sites. i don't think that we will stop the hydraulic fracking and drilling, but we can make it a safer a er environmentally soun.

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it's the sound of silence time for "the poly sidebar," hear that? not even a cricket? that is what rush limbaugh's listeners heard during a commercial. mitt romney may be a red sox fan, but he is more like the yankees, hes has a big payroll and lots of wins and here is how much the wins cost him. $55 million spent for 3.2 million votes. that is $17.14 per vote. and santorum spent about $5

million and gingrich spent $9 for each of his votes and ron paul spent the most, a whopping $31.55 per vote. but he is not going anywhere. he is asking for money, saying the race is far from over. and president obama will be going to ohio next week, but noity to talk about the economy, jobs or other white house initiatives, he is going for a first rounds game in the ncaa tournament. the trip is part of an official state visit. threw have it. that will wrap it up for me this week "now" is coming your way next. hi, alex. >> thanks thomas. tgif, my friend. the nation's job picture we are seeing signs of recovery, but is it fast enough for re-election. the president will be talking

about job creation in the next hour and talking? white house economic council director gene spurling talks about what his boss does next to keep the news positive. and guess which former massachusetts republican governor is not talking about the report? hint he likes grits. answers to all of that and "what just happened?" when we come back. what do you get when you combine the home depot with this weekend? the cure for cabin fever. because with get-it-done savings on everything we need... ...we can turn this weekend into a fresh floor... ...or an updated bathroom... ...or a brand-new look. so let's hit those orange aisles, and make today the day, we make a big difference - no matter how big our budget. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. lay down a better floor for less. new pergo xp laminate, starts at $2.74 per square foot.

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