tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC March 10, 2012 6:00am-7:00am EST
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rve your business. one of the problems we have on this show is that i cannot persuade any republican elected officials of any stature or republican candidates for office of any stature to come on this program. virginia governor bob mcdonnell said out loud last month he would come on the program, he said that to laura ingraham a conservative talk radio host, he said it live on the air, it was on tape. >> see if you can get little rachel to set that up for me? >> i will send her a note for sure. >> i thought you meant it! awesome. will governor mcdonnell come on the show? no he will not. even when they say they will come on the show, republicans will not come on the show. and so, our aforementioned great news is that we have an actual republican who has agreed to come on this show, next week. yay! it's a conservative republican
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united states senator, james mountain inhofe of oklahoma will be on this program on tuesday. hurray! senator inhofe has a new "i don't believe in global warming" book out. i'm not finished with it yet but i will be by next week. in publicizing the book, mr. inhofe has been talking up one of his main arguments for how we can be sure there is no global warning. his argument is genesis 8:22. while the earth remains, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. genesis 8:22. god is taking care of it, so we do not have to worry. mr. inhofe elaborated this argument to a christian radio show this week saying, quote, my point is, god's still up there, the arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what he is doing is to me outrageous. we could not screw the earth up even if we wanted to, only god
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can do something that's that big a deal. you know what the ohio department of natural resources said today? they said apparently we can cause earthquakes. and we have been, in ohio. quote, since march 2011, the youngstown, ohio area has experienced 12 low magnitude seismic events. ranging from 2.1 to 4.0. 12 earthquakes in youngstown, ohio. it's not exactly san francisco, not earthquake territory. all 12 of these earthquakes were clustered less than a mile around this. this is the north star one well. a class two deep injection well used for oil and gas fluid waste disposal. remember the night of the michigan republican primary when rick santorum pulled the rock out of his pocket and started banging on the podium? >> this is oil.
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oil. out of rock. shale. it leaches oil. >> the way you get oil out of rock like that is that you shoot water in a whole bunch of chemicals in the ground to crack open the rock to crack open the shale to get oil and gas out of it. pump enormous amount of fluid in the ground, but what do you do with all of that fluid that is now waste water once you're done? quoting from the associated press, municipal water treatment plants aren't designed to remove some of the contaminants found in the waste water including radioactive elements. so what do the oil and gas out of rock people do with this water then? they drive it to youngstown, ohio and shoot it into the ground there. it's called a deep injection well. they drill down 9,000 feet into the rock underneath youngstown, ohio and dump their radioactive and toxic water down there. what could possibly go wrong? when youngstown started shimmying, they decided to look
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into what was going on. they didn't exactly hurry. it did take 11 earthquakes before they decided to look into it. but they did look into it and their report is out today. the report says there is a, quote, compelling argument that the youngstown earthquakes were, quote, induced. induced by man, specifically by the toxic radioactive waste water being injectioned into ohio's bedrock. later in the show we'll talk with ezra klein about the new economic data that came out today, good jobs numbers, 1.2 million jobs created over the last six months. as the economy picks up, it's still not good but going in the right direction, and has been for some time now, as the economy picks up the republican candidates for president and republicans in congress have seen their obama tanked the economy talking point go a little bit wobbly and in its place they have increasingly focused on -- well, sometimes on
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birth control. but then they get back to economic issues, they focused on the one economic issue they really think they, republicans, have the upper hand. and that is gas prices. energy, this year's drill baby drill, right? you have rick santorum pulling that shale rock out of his pocket and banging it on the podium. newt gingrich configuring his campaign to be about gas prices. he waggles his little gas can everywhere he goes now. do you remember when bob dole endorsed mitt romney and complained he didn't like newt, because when he was speaker he would carry an empty bucket that was supposed to be some sort of symbolic thing nobody understood and it was just weird. newt gingrich is doing it again. it's now a gas bucket. that is the whole focus of the newt gingrich campaign now. mitt romney also on the same 2012 version of the drill baby drill thing, yesterday mr. romney was in pascagoula, mississippi, talking about how president obama is against drilling for oil. factually, that is not true.
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here's oil production under president obama, compared to george w. bush. you can't say this is an anti-oil production president. but those are only the facts and politics are only very rarely about the facts. and republicans finding themselves in an economic environment that is disturbingly positive have decided they can count on high gas prices as their economic argument, making president obama look bad and making them, by extension, look good. there is a flip side to being the drill baby drill guys. when the result of the drilling is that you are creating man-made earthquakes in youngstown, ohio, youngstown, ohio, is not psycheded about that. in the united states senate this week, republicans forced a vote again on the keystone tar sands oil pipeline trying to force president obama to build that pipeline even though he's made clear it's not going to happen at least anytime soon. the republicans think that's a slam dunk, home run, perfect
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political issue for them. america loves tar sands. america wants tar sands. you know what? turns out america has already got some tar sands. >> there is another i'll cleanup under way in this country tonight, in michigan following a leak in a pipeline, it is calling attention to an environmental danger we don't often think about, the 200,000 miles of oil pipelines that crisscross this country. >> good evening, brian, from the banks of the kalamazoo river outside battle creek. there's a thick coating of oil here. the boom stretches over to the other side and you can smell it, brian, oil is in the air. this is where they're skimming. the oil is coming up, it's coming in the skimmers, and they are bringing it in on shore here. what is happening now, brian is that they say they are going to be here approximately for the next month so they can clean this up and get it back to the recreational use that it was
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but. but as i said, it's going to take a month along here, they have ten of these locations up and down the river. >> it's going to take a month. that was nbc coverage of america first ever major tar sands oil spill two summers ago in july of 2010. you heard the reporter saying that the oil company thought it would take a whole month to clean up that spill. but because that was not just normal oil, because that was tar sands oil, because that was the kind of oil that would be in the keystone pipeline it did not take a month to clean that up. it did not take a year to clean that up. it has so far taken 20 month to try to contain and clean up that spill and it is not over yet in michigan. kevin tibbles could see some of the oil on the surface of water, the problem with the kind of oil spill there, that would run through keystone is most of it doesn't sit on the surface where it can be boomed up and scooped up. this oil sinks. on the occasion of the keystone vote this week, mother jones and
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this canadian paper on the screen have been writing about the kalamazoo river spill, explaining tar sand oil is thick and heavy, and has to be diluted with a noxious chemical cocktail so it can flow in the pipe. when spilled, the dilutant evaporates. into the nearby atmosphere. marshall, michigan residents reported nausea, my grans and burning in eyes and throat. meanwhile, the tary oil separates from the dilutant and it sinks to the bottom. the oil sinks. how do you get oil out of a river once it's sunk to the bottom of the riverbed? nobody has any idea until there was this big spill all over the kalamazoo river. the technique they have come up with to clean it there is what they call agitating the river bed, shaking the bed of the river bit by bit to try to bring the oil to the surface to try to collect them there. i'm sure that's great for the river.
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so far, it's been ten times as expensive per gallon as a normal oil spill to clean up and still not cleaned 20 months later and people who live there are mad. >> at the time of the spell my children were at a daycare center, within a mile of the creek in the kalamazoo river. my son had throwing up, my daughter developed a very strange rash on her body. headaches, nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, we had a burning sensation in our throat. burning in our eyes, the 40-mile span is still closed to this day. there is a no contact order to this day. if we tried to put our hands in this river right now you'd get in trouble. it looks beautiful, but it is not. we just hope people will learn from it, before you continue to run tar sands through pipelines or propose new pipelines, be better prepared, and study it. just hold off until you know just what you're dealing with. >> hold off until you know just what you're dealing with.
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but remember, the republican keystone vote this week in the senate was to rush the approval of keystone. don't bother studying it anymore, just go ahead with it! 11 democratic senators voted for that but it still failed in the senate. republicans think this is a great issue for them. they think in an election year this is one they can count on. i think it is more complicated than that. joining us is melissa harris-perry, not afraid of complicated things. she is the host of melissa harris-perry, you can catch it saturdays and sundays from 10:00 to noon. thank you for being here. >> absolutely. >> good economic news, gas prices are still high. does the republican party right now have a coherent argument on energy that is resonating with people? >> it's interesting how you ended that, around a woman standing there saying let's wait until we know. but i think exactly what the republican party is banking on here is that it is extremely
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complicated. and it's complicated in two ways. one, for ordinary people who live near where these gas issues and these oil issues and these energy issues survive, these are economic and environmental issues. i live on the gulf coast, i live in new orleans, the fact is when the bp oil spill was happening it was both a question of livelihood around oil, and also about the reality of oil spilling right there in our backyards. youngstown, ohio, where you were just talking about frac'ing, part of what has brought youngstown back is a new company that makes the thin steel rods that does what? frac. it's great for and awful for them. and i think that is part of what the gop is relying on here. the idea that environmental issues are biblical, way out in, some future moment and that the pocket issues are today. >> the environmental issues are liberal clap trap, anything anybody is complaining about in terms of environmental impact
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of things that also have economic impact, if you look at anything other than the economic impact you should be doubt. would you might not be telling the truth, you are part of an economic conspiracy. i feel the global warming movement has formed every discussion about energy, with any environmental impact it's made the ascertaining of that as an impact of a policy to be a suspect thing. >> and part of it is that there's a great deal of simply untruth about the economic impact of these polluters. right? whether it's polluters that are polluting air or whether it's those who are creating frac'ing earthquakes in youngstown, ohio, the idea that they're bringing tons and tons of jobs and they're going to put everybody to work tends to -- the environmental impact tends to be underestimated and the economic impact tends to be overestimated. >> it was interesting.
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one of the democratic amendments on the keystone vote this week was to say if you think this it is is a huge jobs issue, which is how republicans talked about it let's amend the scope of the project you build with it u.s. steal and workers rejected by the republicans. >> right, exactly. and to say that, okay, if we're going to make it have economic impact, here are the ways it can. i love that tonight it was you quoting from the bible. i take over your show and end up doing god segments and your staff is like is this okay? >> i'm good with god. >> right, right, right. but i love that in part. if we were to spend time in that book we would see there is another narrative about the responsibility of human beings vis-a-vis the earth, the notion that the earth takes care of itself, we have economic questions, we have political ones but i thinks there also a set of ethical questions about how we treat our neighbors, how we worry about being stewards of this thing that is the earth. and i think that part of what progressives have
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to do is make bigger arguments that are values-based exactly. >> is there a reason they are not using the phrase drill baby drill? is it patented by sarah palin? >> this is a primary, i do think that stories like bp, bp was the thing that silenced drill baby drill, it was drill baby drill until it was gushing out and no one could stop it and then it felt more like, maybe we'll pause on drill, baby, drill. they haven't brought it back, but give it time there is yet a convention and speeches to be made. >> let me ask you, on a totally different matter, how are you looking doing your show? >> i love it. no, i absolutely love it. >> the kindest, most generous. >> i absolutely love it. >> are you working harder than you ever thought you'd have to work? >> it is way harder than i thought i thought i knew how hard it was but it's harder than that. but the thing about it being hard, your executive producer said to me we have to remember what an incredible privilege it
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is that we have the opportunity in interesting political times to help set the agenda about what we should be talking about and how we should be talking about it. even when i get a little tired i remember that is a huge, huge and incredible gift to have this opportunity. >> and i have to say it makes me -- it makes me proud to work at msnbc, not only hosting the show but doing it with the agenda you are. i meant what i said about the complexity. the way you have since we started talking in radio you're not afraid of not only the other side of the argument, not afraid of nuance and complexity that deepens your understanding and sharpens it. i think you are great at this. >> thank you. we're going to talk about the 15th anniversary of the notorious b.i.g. being killed. i don't know if that's complex, but -- >> that is called complexity.
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melissa harris-perry, thank you. melissa harris-perry, weekend mornings, saturday and sunday, at 10:00 eastern. this weekend the seemingly endless republican presidential nominating contest takes a detour to guam. and how nervous is the supposedly inevitable mitt romney campaign? they sent someone to guam because you know what they say, as goes guam -- that's next. are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule. the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news.
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mitt romney went to michigan and said in michigan, i like cars. >> i love cars. i grew up totally in love with cars. it used to be in the '50s and '60s if you showed me one square foot of any part of a car, i could tell you what brand it was, the model and so forth. i love cars. i love american cars. >> mitt romney went to tennessee, and told tennessee i like davy crockett. >> this place always has a special feeling in my heart. because when i grew up, i was thinking about davy crockett. all right? >> and in mitt romney's most reductive cliche tour of the american states, now he's telling voters in the deep south that he likes grits. >> it's turning me into an unofficial southerner. i'm starting to say y'all and i like grits. >> that wasn't a one off thing i can't believe i said that.
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he's still saying it. >> good to be with you. i got started right this morning with a biscuit and cheesy grits, i tell you, delicious. >> shortly after that, at that same event, there was this. >> look at that, look at that little guy, got him. it wasn't really a cockroach, i promise. >> mitt romney stomping to death an irish setter on the came pain trail today. sorry, cockroach. a reporter went and looked at the thing that he killed in the middle of his campaign event and found out that it was a cockroach even though he said it wasn't a cockroach. before mitt romney gets to reap the benefit at the polls of how much he has convinced the deep south that he loves grits, he will first have to come up with a love for keloguen. before alabama and mississippi vote on tuesday, tomorrow it's guam, where i learned that their
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tourism website brags about the island delicacy of chicken keloguen. mitt romney has yet to try to convince the people of guam that he's a huge fan, always has been but at this point why would we think that this is out of the question? in addition to guam the virgin islands will be caucusing a tomorrow and northern marianas islands. right there in the middle, there is kansas, in kind of odd company, these are are all the places that have their caucus tomorrow. mitt romney is the only candidate with a surrogate in the northern marianas islands. that is matt romney, one of mr. romney's sons. his wife and some friends there. the only people in kansas are rick santorum and ron paul. newt gingrich and mitt romney
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have pretty much left kansas alone. now, are the northern marianas islands going to decide who is the republican party nominee? well, you know, could do. in a race this weird it's at least worth watching. nobody knows what will make the difference. there is something weirder that is worth watching that starts tomorrow. it's not getting as much attention because it pertains to the one of these kids is not the only sidebar story of the republican 2012 presidential field which is the ron paul campaign. ron paul who has won zero states including zero caucus states, mr. paul's campaign had earlier talked about having a caucus state strategy, that is where they were going to win but when they started losing the caucus states, too, they have since started talking about having a delegate strategy. the ron paul campaign's delegate strategy is that even in states they don't win the popular vote or even in states they don't do well in the popular vote they think they can still maybe ultimately win the state for ron paul anyway and do that by packing the delegate process at the state level.
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you might remember ron paul's advisor who came on our show a couple weeks ago said in the ron paul campaign's mind, they think that they won iowa. not mitt romney, who the iowa republicans said that night had won iowa and not rick santorum who the iowa republicans said two weeks later had won iowa, the ron paul campaign who we think of as coming in third in iowa, the ron paul campaign said in the end they will have won iowa. because they will get the majority of delegates out of the iowa process. essentially through strategy of gaming the delegate process. the process of picking delegates in iowa starts tomorrow. it goes on for a while but it starts tomorrow. same with wyoming. this is the ron paul campaign's reason for living. this is how they not only justify staying in the race, having won nothing, this is how they actually think they can win even though it look like they have won nothing. so, not getting as much attention as the caucuses of guam, riveting the nation, but
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the iowa and wyoming processes start tomorrow and those really are totally worth watching. we'll be right back. jobs on track, at&t provided a mobile solution that lets everyone from field workers to accounting, initiate, bill, and track work in real time. you can't live under a dome in minnesota, that's why there's guys like me. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ i toog nyguil bud i'm stild stubbed up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesn't un-stuff your nose. really? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus liquid gels fights your worst cold symptoms, plus it relieves your stuffy nose. [ deep breath ] thank you! that's the cold truth! the sleep number bed. the magic of this bed is that you're sleeping on something that conforms to your individual shape. wow! that feels really good. it's hugging my body.
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who produced the d block tonight. this is c, d is next. that's our view of our news meeting spot from her desk. in the distance that is nasineen produced the b block. the one we just did about what's coming up this weekend in the 2012 race. and this, this is the important part, this is on the big white board you saw on the wall there. this is the white board on which we plan the show every day. i have horrible handwriting, but you can so there on the left side organizational structure, a, b, c, d, e, f. each of the segments in the show. i think we can zoom in. there is the block on the primaries and caucuses. guam, marianas islands, wyoming, iowa. this is rebecca's d block, coming up next. looks like econ, name is ezra as in ezra klein. on the overall plan we're showing the overall show i'm supposed to be doing now in the
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c block is labelled as ts. you see in the c block? ts means tease. i'm supposed to to tell you what is coming up in the last segment of the show tonight before we go to prison. that is what i'm supposed to be doing now but i can't do it. because if i tell you what we are doing in the last segment of the show, you will think i'm lying. you will think i'm doing those wacky friday bait and switch things, you will think i'm baiting and switching you but i am not. the best way i can come up with to prove to you that we really are doing this is that it is the plan. it is what's coming up. it's on the board. you know it really is coming. oddly compelling creepy crime. today in oddly compelling creepy crime is what's up at the end of the show. you would not believe me if i didn't show you it's in the plan. there it is in the plan. tah-dah. stay tuned. [ laura ] maine is known for its lighthouses, rocky shore,
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my dad and grandfather spent their whole careers here. [ charlie ] we're the heartbeat of this place, the people on the line. we take pride in what we do. when that refrigerator ships out the door, it's us that work out here. [ michael ] we're on the forefront of revitalizing manufacturing. we're proving that it can be done here, and it can be done well. [ ilona ] i came to ge after the plant i was working at closed after 33 years. ge's giving me the chance to start back over. [ cindy ] there's construction workers everywhere. so what does that mean? it means work. it means work for more people. [ brian ] there's a bright future here, and there's a chance to get on the ground floor of something big,
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something that will bring us back. not only this company, but this country. ♪ not only this company, but this country. this one's for all us lawnsmiths. grass gurus. doers. here's to more saturdays in the sun. and budgets better spent. here's to turning rookies - into experts, and shoppers into savers. here's to picking up. trading up. mixing it up. to well-earned muddy boots. and a lot more - spring per dollar. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. show the yard who's boss, with this cordless black and decker trimmer, just $84.97. no wonder republicans want to talk about birth control. did you see the good news on the economy today? here it is in "the washington post" website, u.s. adds 227,000
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jobs. "new york times" home page, u.s. extends run of strong job growth another month. "wall street journal," job gains build momentum. cnn, right up top, new jobs report more hiring but jobless rate unchanged. msnbc, employers create more than 200,000 jobs for third straight month. today's job report headlines every where showing the economy added more than 200,000 jobs last month for the third month in a row. front page headline news all over the internet today, except for the fox news home page. it's not even a sidebar story today. jobs report? what jobs report? we have a huge story about the "titanic." and hey, bill maher, what a jerk, right? who new jobs numbers. dylan byers noticed fox news burying the news. he posted the screen grabs, he did the same thing last month when again all the news websites were leading with front page
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headlines about the startlingly good jobs news from january but fox news put the job growths news off to the side in a teeny font above their story on why hollywood is a sex predators paradise. for folks whose professional identities are caught up in criticizing president obama on his handling of the economy, evidence the economy is getting better, that jobs are being created, well it may be good news but it's unwelcome good news. good news for country, bad news for anti-obama conservative politics. by this evening the folks at fox news found a solution they are no longer pretending the good jobs report doesn't exist. they are claiming it's secretly bad. see the headline. jobless stats disputed. as economy starts to recover. try as fox might to convince you otherwise, this really is good news for the country. the economy added 227,000 jobs last month. that is more than economists expected. and turns out we added more jobs
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than we thought last month in january and in the month before that in december, too. the number of long-term unemployed people dropped, part of why the unemployment rate didn't go down from 8.3% even as jobs were added because almost 500,000 people who weren't even looking for work anymore, started to look again. that's all good news, right? unless you're mitt romney. >> governor, any comment on the new jobs numbers this morning? >> good to see you, thank you. hi there, how are you doing? good, good to see you. >> anything on the new jobs report? >> we appreciate your help, i tell you. hi, guys, how are you? good to see you. >> governor romney, any thoughts on the new jobs report today? governor romney, how were the grits? >> that was garrett trying to get mitt romney to say anything about the jobs report or barring
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that, maybe he would talk about grits? mitt romney appearing to take the fox news approach from this morning, just pretend this good economic news does not exist. remember how mitt romney used to talk about the economy in the early days of his campaign. he would appear in front of shuttered factories or depressed economic locations and talk down the economy, talk about how bad the economy was but more importantly, how much worse the recession had gotten under president obama. >> when he took office, the economy was in recession and he made it worse. >> he didn't create the recession, but he made it worse. and longer. >> he did not cause this recession, but he made it worse. >> during the obama administration, unemployment has gone from a peak of 10% in october of 2009, to 8.3% now. this is what has happened to jobs during the obama presidency. the red columns are the end of the bush administration, the blue columns are the obama administration. our economy has been adding jobs month after month after month. december, january, february,
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that three month stretch, the best three-month stretch for job creation in the past six years. president obama did not make the recession worse. and mitt romney knows that. >> how can you continue to say things are worse when they really aren't worse? >> i didn't say things were worse. >> i didn't say things were worse except all those times that you said things are worse. >> he made it worse. >> he made it worse and longer. >> he made it worse. >> trying to pretend he never said that in the first place, mitt romney has stopped specifically claiming that president obama made the recession worse. but he has found a way to imply it. listen to this, from mr. romney's speech in boston on super tuesday. >> you know, when he was campaigning, president obama said he would create jobs, but for 36 straight months unemployment has been above 8%. my friend, the truth is, 8% unemployment is not the best america can do. >> this is important. mitt romney is already saying 8%
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unemployment is terrible and it's president obama's fault. unemployment is not 8%. unemployment has gone from 10% down to 8.3% in the obama presidency. it's plain to everybody the economy is getting better. so what is mitt romney doing by saying 8% is not good enough? we haven't reached 8%. he is telegraphing that he knows the economy will get better he is saying that would be awful, too. he sees the economy getting better, so he's trying to make the case that the continued improved economy of the future is already bad news. joining us is ezra klein, keeper of the wonk book blog for the "washington post" and msnbc policy analyst. ezra, thank you very much for being here. >> good evening. >> was there secret suspect bad news in the jobs numbers or was this actually good news? >> these job numbers are interesting. you keep going further and further down in them and i do that because i'm a boring person and the news inside keeps being good.
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usually you sort of dig deep and find something bad in there, either employment participation went down, remember an unemployed person in the jobs numbers doesn't mean somebody who doesn't have work but somebody who doesn't have work and is looking for one. sometimes you'll see the number go down but it's because workers are discouraged. seasonal employment, that looked like jobs that he would go away in december and see more unemployment in january but we didn't. the best part something people don't pay enough attention to is revisions. we get these numbers, this is a preliminary job number we're talking about for february. it is not going to be the final job number. but what we've seen for january and february -- sorry, december and january, they went way up. we added another 60,000 jobs in those two months above and beyond what we thought. so it's really remarkable report we had these for a couple months, every surprise pretty much is on the upside. >> the revision numbers that
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you're talking about are interesting because those are the sorts of things that inspire politico conspiracy theorizing. it turns out the old numbers were fake and there's new numbers, they're better, worse, whatever they are. they always do get revised. what do the revisions really mean? it seems to me like what they mean is we are having -- you are likely to be in a recovery phrase in a positive economic phase when the numbers get revised upward. but should they be seen as something that's politically changed? >> they are not politically changed. the bureau of labor statistics protects these things like fort knox gold, even the obama administration doesn't know about them like yesterday. it just doesn't happen. let's talk about revisions because it's actually interesting. when mitt romney says 8%, there is something else going on than what we talked about in the opening here. 8% was the unemployment number that the obama administration in
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december of 2008, before they came into office, said unemployment wouldn't get to if we pass a stimulus. this was the bernstein-roemer paper. we had preliminary gdp numbers for the fourth quarter 2008 and it said the economy was shrinking at 3.8%. that's bad, not unbelievably bad but it's bad. they thought, look, it's 3.8%, we get the stimulus you run the numbers we can keep unemployment down to 8%. when we got the revised numbers six months a year later, the economy in the fourth quarter of '08 shrunk at almost 9%. unemployment went way above 9, up to 10, as folks know. these revisions early in the recession were terrible. it was a much, much worse recession than we knew at the time. mitt romney takes full advantage of that. but we're seeing the flip side not to the same degree but as all the revisions tend to be bad early on as you begin to recover, as models haven't picked that up yet, they are
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tending to be good now. you're seeing it happen in the other but insofar as revisions are political, they haven't benefitted from them. >> what do you make as a wonky guy, ezra, what do you make from people in other venues on the right that any indicators, any economic indicators that show things getting better, particularly employment numbers that show things getting better are suspect because they come from the government and now you're saying they lock them up like fort knox and you don't see them as politically charged, what do you make of that charge from the right that we shouldn't trust the statistics? >> the main one you see what folks say is what the numbers don't do is count the actual unemployed. they say they don't have the full unemployed because the labor forces change and there is something to this. we should say this up front. these numbers don't count all the folks who stopped looking for work. but i am, as you say a wonky
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guy, i went back and in the bureau of labor stats and looked at every one of these indicators, because they have all sorts, right? they have one that is unemployed plus discouraged, plus part time, even though they don't want to be part time, it's called u-6, the real misery measure in the economy. every one of these indicators looks the exact same. now they are at different levels because you count more and more people in unemployment including par time work as you again to get higher numbers, they have the same shape, going up and up, and over the last six months going down and down and down. and so for all the statistical juking folks are doing, the numbers are getting better. the economy is getting better. and in theent, this is going to be true for the obama administration if things turn south you can't trick the american people about the economy. if things are getting better they feel it because they have jobs, personal disposable income is going up, family members who got laid off found work again. in the end that is what matters, you can't press release your way out of the bad economy or a good one.
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>> ezra klein of "the washington post" wonk book, msnbc policy analyst, thank you, appreciate it. >> thank you. this show does not report most crimes especially ones that don't relate to politics, politicians, big national news stories. however, tonight, there is a compelling reason to deviate from the norm. oddly compelling and creepy and crimey and it's friday. if crime were all this oddly compelling and creepy, we might actually be a crime show. stay tuned. pt her. no! but, i'm about to change that. ♪ every little baby wants 50% more cash... ♪ phhht! fine, you try. [ strings breaking, wood splintering ] ha ha. [ male announcer ] the capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. ♪ what's in your wallet? ♪ what's in your...your... bayer aspirin... ohh, no no no. i'm not having a heart attack, it's my head.
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today an oddly compelling creepy crime. i promise it is compelling, oddly. that's still ahead. who needs a little help saving. for adding "& sons." for the dreamer, planning an early escape. for the mother of the bride. for whoever you are, for whatever you're trying to achieve, pnc has technology, guidance, and over 150 years of experience to help you get there. ♪
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today in oddly compelling creepy crime, two cases of things being removed from places they shouldn't be and one creepy crime mystery finally solved. we begin in ireland. a country known for its rolling green hills, its delicious whiskey and churches. like this one, christchurch cathedral in dublin. it's a national landmark. one of the oldest buildings. it is the victim after creepy, strange and frankly perplexing crime that seems to have no profit motive. somebody stole that church's relic. and that church's relic is the preserved heart of st. lawrence o'toole, the patron st. of dublin. the preserved heart, yes, his actual physical heart, was housed in this wooden heart-shaped box for centuries. it was kept in a metal cage on the wall of the church. this weekend somebody busted through two of the metal bars in
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that cage and stole st. lawrence o'toole's 900-year-old heart. police are reporteredly focusing on two suspects who were in the church on saturday when the heart was stolen. the stolen heart has no resale value to speak of. like some artwork, it is too famous to sell. as for the extra boost it would give you in your relationship with the here after, you should know that churches considers the theft sacrileges. they make a point of it every chance they get. >> it seems contradictory that someone would steal a relic from a church because in my understanding, that's desecration and it is violation of a church. >> here is the weirder part of the story though. st. lawrence o'toole's 900-year-old heart in a box is the latest relic to be stolen from an irish church. in past couple of months, people have stolen wood fragments believed to be splinters from the cross on
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which jesus was crucified and according to "the new york times," also a box that usually houses the jaw bone of st. bridget, the patron st. of ireland. thankfully at the time of the robbery, st. bridgette's jaw had been removed from the box for cleaning so the thieves ended up with the box but no jawbone. but still, these thefts, the heart, the cross splinters, the attempt on the jaw bone, they don't make any sense, first of all. what are you going to do with a thousand-year-old body part. second, even though they are all sort of similar crimes and we file them in the same section of our news memory, right? the people who solve crimes like this say it is key to keep in mind that even though some crimes seem connected they very well not be, and that might be important to solving them. just ask the coroner's office in british columbia where there is more oddly compelling creepy crime news. over the last five years, nine human feet, all still wearing shoes, washed up on the shores of british columbia in canada and in washington state. five years, nine feet,
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belonging to seven different humans. the feet were always inside shoes, shoes with rubber soles. it's the same body part, the same container for body part. it seems like the feet had to be connected to each other somehow. this people say it was the handy work of a known serial killer who admitted to killing 49 people. another theory is the feet belonged to to victims of the indian ocean tsunami who killed 250,000 people in 2004. after foot number four was found investigators thought the feet had come from four men who died in an airplane crash. that theory fell apart with the discovery of foot number five in this nine-foot saga. after foot number five was found there was even a hoax foot, an animal foot, animal remains stuffed into a running shoe. the mystery was so gripping, so strange, so inexplicable that the seattle weekly ran a cover story about it, speculating
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about where on this little blue planet all of these feet were coming from? the headline for the cover story, where the feet have no name. we even tried figure it out on this show with some particularly vile props. feet were from men and women. they were in different brands of sneakers. the sneakers were all different sizes. the only thing they had in common is the general area in which they were found. this week british columbia coroner's office said they have solved the five-year mystery. they positively identified seven of the feet belonging to five people, they say. the coroner's office officially ruled those feet to have separated by natural causes from people who killed themselves by flinging themselves into the frazier river or who ended up in the frazier river dead but by accident. as for why only the feet were found and not the rest of the people, you can thank the running show industry for that. apparently shoes soar well made these days that they protect your body part that's in the shoe even after death, even submerged in water while the
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rest of you disappears because it is not protected. mystery solved. you may now cancel your google news alert for shoe foot found. but on this day of oddly compelling creepy crime news, one more. this is la port county jail in la port, indiana. la port county jail is losing prisoners. one prisoner identified him himself as another prisoner. having thus tricked a corrections officer, he was accidentally set free. a couple weeks after that another prisoner was allowed to walk out of the la port county jail because he had the same last name as the guy who actually had served his time and was supposed to get out. and this week the south bend tribune reports a third person was erroneously mistakenly released from jail. the mistake wasn't even caught until police turned up at the prison to pick up this guy only to be told the guy was missing. missing from prison? the first two prisoners who were accidentally released were found immediately. but the third guy, still out there.
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prison officials blame mistakes on overcrowding. but unless these prisoners were literally like squeezed out of the jail like lime juice from a lime wedge, i'm not sure this overcrowding business is a very good excuse for losing prisoners. oddly compelling and creepy crimes can make for good creepy tv segments on friday nights, but honestly they are not great public relations if you are, say, hoping to be the vice presidential nominee in indiana. maybe governor ultrasound isn't looking so bad after all. have they lost any prisoners in virginia? we'll be right back. journey was made to explore the real world. it has under-seat storage to bring everything, available seating for up to seven people to take everyone, and the grip of available all-wheel drive to go everywhere. think of it as a search engine helping you browse the real world.
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