>> this issue is not a, quote, distraction. >> amen, brother. ♪ i'm going to add it up ♪ add it up, add it up ♪ add it up, add it up ♪ you've got to add it up ♪ add it up, add it up >> we start with mitt romney who is on a three-day cyclone of fund raising in the black tie northeast. i guess you could call it a business school reunion for a fund-raisi fund-raisie fund-raiser. he is locked away in the grand hyatt in new york raising stashes of cash from a roomful of what he might call job creators. he's also staying away from a story you just can't stay away from. >> debate is on about whether mitt romney's time at bain capital is a qualification for the oval office. >> isn't this whole issue of bain capital bringing in question what is private equity? >> how does the president answer that question about private equity? >> i was stunned, i was

listening to this in my car driving my kids to and from piano lessons. >> indeed. now, perhaps some of the people at today's fund-raiser have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in their career. we don't wish to disparage them, but what we do know is mitt romney has not. >> his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. he's not going out there touting his experience in massachusetts. and when you're president as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. >> indeed. romney and his allies when they are talking would prefer that the discussion focus on anything other than mitt romney's time at bain. today they're more interested in making themselves appear to be the party that understands the concerns of the middle class.

>> i always loved watching the kids play basketball. i still do. even though things have changed. it's funny, they can't find jobs to get their career started, and i can't afford to retire. and now we're all living together again. >> yes, this ad is from the cornfields of karl rove and it is painful to watch. i mean, can we take a look again at the gray in the actress' hair? i swear that's spray on christmas tree tinsel. compare that with one from the president's super pac. it's the story of a woman who lost her health care and her benefits when bain took over the company she worked for. >> i had about 2 1/2 years to go. i was suddenly 60 years old. i had no health care, and that's scary. when mitt romney did that, he made me sick. >> the disparity between those

two ads may help explain this number in the new "washington post" poll. 48% of people believe the president understands the economic problems people in this country are having compared to just 40% for romney. let's get right to our panel now. chris tcrystal ball is a democratic strategist and jonathan capehart is an msnbc contributor. and david jones, a political analyst and the author of "showdown." welcome to all of you. david, when the president spoke last night he offered a critique not of private equity or the financial services sector, but instead he implied mitt romney has been intentionally rewriting his work at bain under the guise of job creation when it's nothing of the kind. now, you and i know that mitt romney is a gymnast when it comes to his policy positions. is it also now fair to call him a magician who invents a history of job creation out of thin air?

>> maybe there's something up his sleeve and it's not a record of job creation. but i thought the president s w showed why he is president with those few minutes of remarks yesterday. he upped the game. he said, listen, if you're president of this country, it's about you're president for economic winners and economic losers. it's not about maximizing profit. it's not about making money for investors. it's about building communities that make sense in the long term for the economic overall good of the country. not everything that creates jobs or creates profits in the short-term might be good for everyone or good in the long run. so he right away, you know, overstepped mitt romney from this parochial view of i created "x" number of jobs which may or may not be true. being president is far greater than that, and did he it better than cory booker certainly did,

and then any other surrogate -- >> he did it better than you've ever done either, david. >> and i think he tooked cory booker mess and used it to great advantage. i think raised this debate which has been brewing for a couple months now. >> absolutely. you're absolutely right. crystal, the romney campaign will ride any one on bain so long as it's not mitt romney. so it's cory booker, steve ratner, but he cannot be ridden. i am assuming mitt romney's position on bain will be i can't remember what i did, but i stand by what i did whatever that was. >> he's happy to take credit for any successes, but as soon as you start to talk about any of the failures, any of the things that went wrong, oh, that's off limits. we're not allowed to talk about that, right? and the president is exactly on point here. i think to what david just said, not only did he up the ante, not only did he really focus in on what the problem is and why this is so important, but he did it

in a very measured way that didn't seem nasty. you know, it made sense to people. it was logical. >> he made the point that i am not disparaging private equity, i'm not writing off a whole sector of the economy, i'm not attacking people who work in these sectors. >> right. >> i'm actually saying that people are as or more important than profit. >> that's exactly right, and if you're going to be president, you're going to be president of everyone, and if you're running for president on your record at bain, that's fair game. and there's three things here. i mean, first of all, there's the actual model like what bain did. for example, laying off an entire workforce and then forcing them to reapply for their own jobs at lower wages. then there's the piece of his economic plan where it just got scored today, 13 million people would be kicked off food stamps if mitt romney's budgetary plans were put into effect. so you're laying people off and then you're cutting the safety net, and all the while bain and

mitt romney are lobbying for 15% tax rates on the profits that they're earning. so this is not, as the president put it, it's not a side issue. it's core. it's central to what this campaign absolutely should be about. >> absolutely. john, i just want to go back to the woman's hair in the karl rove ad because i want -- >> the central issue. >> i want to ask you, john, do you think david corn is using the same hairdresser? >> you take that up with david. >> okay. >> i won't tell my secrets. >> i'm glad you won't, david. >> there she is. honestly, john, give me a considered view. is he using the same hairdresser and is this spray on tinsel from a christmas tree? >> i have no comment but i would like to say something about romney adding onto something what crystal said and something the president said in chicago yesterday. mitt romney is running on bain but he won't talk about his

record as governor of massachusetts. >> he cannot. >> which is much more comparable to president of the united states. >> it's a public service position. >> chief exec at this of -- executive of a state. someone mo who has had to make tough decisions and also had more than a few failures in terms of creating jobs and meeting balanced -- >> can i tell yu he can't talk about his position as governor? as you know, he was 47th in states for job creation. but also in manufacturing, in 2002 when he was elected, there were 338,000 manufacturing jobs. according to federal data when he left office, there was a drop of 12%. >> and then there's that awkward fact of romney care. >> there's that. and then you call him a gymnast -- >> or a magician. >> when it comes to talking about the number of jobs at bain, and then i talk about his ideological promiscuity in terms of what he stands for. so, you know, i think the president's right. i think we're all right here

that if mitt romney is going to run on his record as, you know, chief of bain capital and what they did, then he has to be accountable for the good and the bad. as crystal says he doesn't exactly seem to want to talk about the bad. >> go ahead, david. >> there's a basic shape to this race and i think the recent polls that have come out bear this out in that voters tend to like the president. they believe that he feels empathy and is more attune to their desires and needs and their hardships than is mitt romney. most polls up until the most recent one, romney had an edge when you ask who would do better in terms of handling the economy, and he always had like a five to eight-point percentage edge. that's dropped a little bit. >> that was before we understood what private equity does. >> but my point is here is i think voters look at these two men and they are disappointed that barack obama hasn't brought back even more economic good news and that they hope -- they

like the idea of mitt romney more than the actual man mitt romney. and so the degree to which he gets bogged down in details about bain and what he actually did rather than just sort of come across as a general mr. fix it business guy who knows how to create jobs, it's very damaging to his case, and that's why he uses bain but can't get into it himself. it's a very -- i think it's a big dilemma for his campaign. even though the president kind of backed into it this week because of cory booker's remarks, it shows this is a fight -- like everything in this race, it's a 50/50 fight who is going to win the fight over the bain narrative. >> on david's point, the president speaks about the economy and joe biden was out today, the vice president, speaking. i just want you to hear what he said and respond to these remarks. listen to this. >> to quote president obama, so if your main argument -- this is quoting the president. he said this yesterday. he said if your main argument for how to grow the economy is,

quote, i know how to make a lot of money for investors, then you're missing the point of the job of president. [ applause ] >> crystal, you just defined the three points of how they've basically deconstructed bain but that's brilliant, isn't it ? >> it's brilliant. they clearly have vice president biden back on message. >> that's good. he's not in front of his skis. >> it's kind of shocking that romney hasn't gotten control of this message and learned from some of his mistakes in the past because this bain capital argument is pretty much his undoing from the 1994 senate race and then newt gingrich really very effectively used this argument and rode to a win in south carolina. so it's not like he hasn't seen this before, and, in fact, specifically in '94 part of his undoing was he claimed to have created a specific number of jobs, and everybody picked apart at that and said, no, you

didn't. and it bogged him down in the details and that's exactly what's happening here as well. when people are asking will the bain ads, will the bain attacks work? i think we already have proof positive that, yes, they will. >> indeed, crystal, jonathan, david, please stay with us. next, is this really what jesus would do? a catholic cardinal can't come to a compromise, and the poor may lose out. stay with us.

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now to the latest fight over women's health care and religious employers suing the obama administration over mandated birth control access. the nation's catholic bishops say it's an unprecedented

affront to religious liberty and cardinal timothy dolan says the church may even have to limit services as a result. >> if these mandates click in, we're going to find ourselves faced with a terribly difficult decision as to whether or not we can continue to operate. as part of our religion, it's part of our faith that we feed the hungry, that we educate the kids, that we take care of the sick. we'd have to give it up because we're unable to fit the description and the definition of a church given by, guess who? the federal government. >> yes, you heard that right. they'll have to end all charity work rather than allow women access to birth control. and the cardinal went on to say this. >> we don't want this fight. my lord, we just want to be left alone to do the work that we feel jesus asked us to do. >> really? left alone? you mean without that $2.9 billion a year from the federal government?

well, raps that could be arranged for you, sir. crystal ball, jonathan capehart, and david corn are all still with me. crystal, help me understand the cardinal's position here. he'd rather allow a noncatholic nurse at a catholic hospital to have access to birth control and if that were to happen, the church then walks away from all of its charitable works to the poor. >> right. >> how does that work? >> so it sounds like basically he would rather make sure they can deny women access to birth control than continue their work with the poor, which is just an unbelievable position, and keep in mind, the president initially -- you know, the rule came out from hhs, from the department of health and human services, and there was a bit of a backlash. even in that initial firestorm 60% of the country backed the president and said wick should have access -- >> nevertheless the president created a promise.

-- a compromise. >> here is the compromise, you don't str to pay for birth control. you just have to offer it. you're not being forced to take birth control. you're not being forced to pay for birth control. you're just offering the option to women. what could be wrong with that? and the fact of the matter is if you look at -- remember the blunt amendment that was proposed in the senate that mitt romney was against and then he was for. that is what they want. if you are a religious person and you are an employer you can deny any element of the health care law -- >> for any moral reason. >> for any reason. that's where they actually -- that's what they want. so there's no satisfying them on this issue, and clearly they've decided to use this threat as an attempt to essentially bully the president and the administration into getting their way. >> but, john, where is compromise? the president has already compromised on this issue. >> clearly they're not interested in compromise. they're interested in maintaining and safeguarding what they view as their beliefs, their teachings, and, you know,

for a group of people who constantly, you know, talk about religious freedom, it's always their freedom to practice their religion as they see it, and anyone else who wants to practice their beliefs and their religion, well, sorry, you're out of luck. if you don't fit in our box, you know, we don't care. >> your freedoms are not respected. >> religious freedom apparently goes one way. >> david, catholic charities as you know received $2.9 billion from the government in 2010. that's about 62% of its annual revenue. so they don't seem to bristle at the hand of government when it comes to money, do they? >> no. in fact, the u.s. catholic bishops council got more money under obama than it did during the bush years. so this war on religion has been very good for the catholic bishops at least in terms of federal largesse. it strikes me as just not very christian, if i can say so, to

get out there and say we will not be providing services if you force us to do these things or if there's a mandate. i mean, because nevertheless, even if you are forced to do something that you don't want to do or you have a theological objection to, why would you then take that out on the poor? the government is not withholding these hundreds of millions of dollars, these billions of dollars, you will still end up with that money but you're not going to distribute it? i guess you have the choice of doing what people often say they want to do when you say you want to be left alone, to not accept any federal funds, go off and do everything on your own and see how that works out for you. >> here is what's really horrible about the threat from the cardinal. it's not like we are in the riperip e -- richest of times. it's not like the people who are suffering today is a subset of a minority of the american population. >> the poverty rates for this country are at their highest in 52 years. >> and catholic charities has

done a great job historically. let's be fair about this. >> but the point i'm trying to make is this threat at a time when so many people are hurting is a really chilling threat, that you would have a cardinal say such a thing at a time when people are depending on him, depending on catholic charities generally speaking for assistance. >> let's hope -- >> would jesus take his fish and a loaf and go home? >> i don't think so. let's hope they don't either. we obviously acknowledge the work that the catholic church does and it's appreciated as all of you have said. >> absolutely. >> crystal, john, david, fantastic. thank you all. next. hawaii five no. sheriff joe tries to make another splash as a birther. stay with us. ♪ ♪ i can do anything ♪ i can do anything today

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arizona has been reliably republican for years but all the polling suggests this coming november the state may well be in play, and this might explain the worst outbreak of panic and paranoia since the salem witch hunt trials. first, republican secretary of state ken bennett also co-share of mitt romney's arizona campaign, has announced that the president may be excluded from the state's ballot. bennett is demanding that hawaiian officials verify the authenticity of the president's birth certificate. oh, yes, that old chestnut again. in response, hawaiian officials wearied by this lunacy have asked bennett to verify that he has the authority to make such a demand. meantime, the state's other misanthro misanthrope, sheriff joe arpaio has decided to ignore authorities and dispatched his cold case posse direct to hawaii. assisted by one actual deputy

paid for by local taxes, the team is also dedicated to cracking the case of the birth certificate. now, aside from the fact that he's supposed to be a law enforcement official as opposed to a circus act, sheriff joe doesn't care about the criticism. it's one deputy, so what, arpaio says, adding that the taxpayer expense will be reimbursed, but at least this deluded and deranged i mbecile is asking th right question, so what indeed? because while everybody already knows that the president is, in fact, an american, ken bennett and sheriff joe have achieved one remarkable feat. they've made governor jan brewer seem positively dignified. stay with us. the day's top lines are coming up. instead i got heartburn. [ horse neighs ] hold up partner. prilosec isn't for fast relief. try alka-seltzer. it kills heartburn fast. yeehaw!

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wright. here are today's top lines. stay classy san diego. >> most of you have probably relived those 32 minutes again and again. >> issue one, two, and three is the economy. four, five, and six is national security. seven, eight, and nine is the president's failed record. >> you'll meet people who like to disagree. >> a community organizer like barack obama though has absolutely no idea. >> yes, you will encounter obstacles along the way. >> what obama said about taking drugs, they wouldn't be allowed to run for president. >> no no matter how tough times get, you will always be tougher. >> the launch of the falcon nine rocket. >> first prominent face on the moon and it will be american. >> hey, america, did you miss my hot breath in your ear? >> pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company. if i had to choose between private equity and socialism, i would pick private equity. >> i think cory booker is an outstanding mayor. >> kind of things mitt romney is advocating that are going to

further bankrupt our city. >> if my house was on fire, i would hope he was by next door name. >> day one president romney immediately approves the keystone pipeline. day two mitt romney is reminded by his wife ann that he lost to president obama by a landslide. >> if your main argument is i knew how to make a lot of money for investors, then you're missing what this job is about. >> amen, brother. >> john mccain made a terrible, terrible mistake. he was too nice. he didn't want to get into reverend wright. >> republicans don't seem as willing to fight the same way. >> why repudiate people that will fight, you know, fire with fire? >> they seem to have the fighting instinct of mr. snuf l will you have gus. >> joining us live from washington is writer and social activist mar ya dyson and joe

williams of politico. good afternoon. joe, watching that interview with sarah palin and sean hannity, they really seem frustrated. it's almost as if one of them wilbur ast facial blood vessel unless mitt romney will start screaming jeremiah wright. >> this is something they have had pent up since 2008, particularly sarah palin in her unsuccessful bid to be vice president. certainly this is a nuclear weapon strategy and the trigger finger is always itchy when you have something you think is the ah-ha moment. any attempt to launch this would go up like a north korean missile, it would land flat. it's a ridiculous premise to try to convince people that this president who they have been living with for three years had a controversial affiliation with a poster who happened to be black, and, by the way, the president is black, too. >> and yet she persists in telling us that's what she wants to do.

marsha, mitt romney has repudiated attacks on the reverend wright uch to the chagrin of people like sean hannity. but will he repudiate the attackers? listen to this. >> sean, good to be with you again. thanks, sean, good to be with you. hi, sean. good to be with you. >> thanks, sean. thank you. good to be with you. >> if mr. romney is going to repudiate this tactic he's used almost every night on that show, doesn't he have to repudiate the people who used the tactic or does he say he loves the sinner and ignores the sin? >> i think you're exactly right. after all, for him to repudiate this, at least he's saying something. remember, he was shunning questions last week in florida and he had to repudiate this. at least he's saying something. i think what they're very wrong in trying to use reverend wright. >> thanks, sean, good to be with you again. >> it also talks about religion, and you don't want to kind of

walk that mormon thread there. i think that sarah palin and hannity, when you get them together, they're tnt, they're dynamite in a sort of way, but they're explosive language and the ways in which they try to pose the president as a three-year -- in all three-and-a-half years in office as be a empty vessel is crazy. sarah palin said she wanted somebody as a teammate for romney who understood the constitution, who will fight tooth and nail for the republicans and put their family lives on the line. i think she really wants the president because romney won't tell us what he's done, can't tell us where he's been and can only repudiate things that people have said that he maybe wants to say and can't say. and go after and befriend folks after he says he repudiated what they say. i think it's quite confusing myself. >> joe, do you expect to see mitt romney repudiating donald trump for making again the scurrilous attacks about the reverent wright? >> of course not because donald trump has the one thing that

mitt romney and he can relate to, which is money, vast amounts of it. >> no, he has two things, joe. he has a personality as well. >> is that -- well, that's in the eye of the beholder, i guess. >> indeed, it is. >> but certainly they are peas in a pod in a way because they have both been very fond of and made their reputations through the private equity system, and, again, mitt romney is unable to say what they're saying and mitt romney himself tried to bring wright back into the debate in an interview with the aforementioned sean hannity. this is surrogacy that's only repudiated on the sidelines in that mitt romney can't get his hands dirty about this. he know that is the american people, what they don't want to do is vote for an evert racist. they will vote for a covert one, but an overt one they won't go for. it has the potential to do more harm and damage than good especially if it makes him vulnerable to questions and comments about mormonism. >> marcis, joe, this is

absolutely right. this is covert style, using coded language intentionally night after night in this most basically brutal manner. >> absolutely. even when hannity talked about black liberation theology, he doesn't understand that came out of latin america to try to oppose the injustices that were institutionalized within the catholic church. and for african-americans who it is historically known fact that we suffered under the leg ga si of slavery. that monument with dr. king's face on it. when you have deep morals like the african-american community, you've got to try to find ways to wrestle with your religion. i think they go down the wrong route, don't use race, don't use religion because you're going to lose it on this one because your morals are at stake yourself, the gop. >> indeed.

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with trading losses at jpmorgan chase now topping $2 billion and climbing, the senate banking committee today held a hearing to explore even tougher regulations on the banking industry. new jersey democrat robbed mendez questions officials about the fact there is still nothing in place to prevent a still nor dire crisis. >> what's to stop them from losing $10 billion the next time or even worse to stop a less

capitalized bank from taking losses so large that could bring it down? i mean, that's the whole effort that we tried to move here in the senate. >> congressman elijah cummings is a democrat from maryland and he joins us live from baltimore. good afternoon, sir. >> good afternoon, martin. >> i hate to bury your genuine efforts under a mountain of cynicism, but despite the worst financial crash in 50 years, much of it as you know caused by fraud, we have not seen a single executive of a major wall street bank convicted of a crime, and given the power of wall street lobbyists, is there really any chance of further regulation? >> you know, i think it's going to be very difficult, but you would think with jpmorgan losing $2 billion and climbing towards $3 billion if not more, we would be more anxious to address these regulations, but, again, i think basically they have been numerous lobbyists who have been

sent to capitol hill to weaken the regulations coming as a part of the volcker rule under dodd fra dodd/frank. even jamie dimon, he initially said this was one of the worst things we could do, that is the volcker rule, and after this $2 billion to $3 billion loss, he said, well, you know, maybe we ought to have the volcker rule but it still needs to be watered down. the fact is that, martin, this is more like the canary in the cave. clearly we can see another financial fiasco happen in our country and we ought to be doing everything we can to prevent that. >> indeed. so you'd like to bring someone like jamie dimon before you, wouldn't you? >> definitely. i want to bring jamie dimon and the executives at jpmorgan who have been dismissed, and i want to understand exactly how this happened so that we can make sure that it doesn't happen again and we also need to know the full extent, all the

ramificationsconnected with what has happened here. i don't want to just push this under the rug because the m.a.s.h. people a american people are depending on us, shareholders are depending on us. it's our watch. it's already happened to us once and we're going to suffer from the results of that for a long time and continue to suffer from it, and now we must do everything in our power to put together a very strict volcker rule and make sure that we learn everything that we can to make sure that we don't let this happen again. >> and yet astonishing as this may seem, sir, mitt romney says what we need is much less regulation, not more. in fact, repealing the dodd/frank legislation is one of the pillars of his campaign. take a listen to this. >> how about the idea of something like dodd/frank which make it is harder for banks to give loans. there's a lot of no coming from this audience. dodd/frank made it harder for community banks.

did dodd/frank get banks to renegotiate. do we need dodd/frank? we do not and i will get rid of it if i am president of the united states. >> what's your reaction to it? >> that's a very sad commentary. when i think about all of my quae constituents who have lost money. when i think about shareholders all over this country who have lost big time and then i remember all the testimony we had where people actually did a lot of things that i consider fraudulent and wrong on wall street, let me tell you something, i think mr. romney is absolutely wrong, and he needs to rethink this. he really does. we cannot afford to go through what we've been going through for the last several years, that this president has tried to deal with. keep in mind the republicans after the 2010 election, the first thing they wanted to do was to repeal dodd/frank, and they wanted, of course, to repeal the health care law. and we cannot go back to that.

we're better than that. >> and yet the fact remains, sir, that dodd/frank has barely been inl pose mposed. >> that's exactly right, and they have done everything they can to make sure it's not properly funded. they tried to take as much money as they possibly could, that is the republicans, to make sure that it is not as effective as it should be. it's a shame. it really is. >> that's one word to use, sir, but others would say it's absolutely appalling. congressman elijah cummings from maryland. thank you for joining us, sir. >> thank you, martin. when we come back, mitt romney and the billionaire energy adviser. a conflict of interest? stay with us. [ woman ] my boyfriend and i were going on vacation, so i used my citi thank you card to pick up some accessories. a new belt. some nylons. and what girl wouldn't need new shoes? we talked about getting a diamond. but with all the thank you points i've been earning...

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is it possible to buy a position on mitt romney's team of advisers simply by donating large sums of cash to a

pro-romney super pac? it may be coincidence but just one month after being named romney's top energy adviser, this man, harold hamm wrote a check to the super pac restore our future. michael isikoff is following the story and he joins us live from washington. mike, who is this man, and is this the and is this the quid pro quo that it appears to be? >> well, harold hamm is chairman and ceo of a company called continental resources that owns much of the oil shell formation below north dakota and montana. in fact, he was profiled in a businessweek story just last january under the title "the man who bought north dakota." his company, continental resources, has made a killing on the boom in oil production from oil shale in that state.

and he's also been sharply critical of president obama's energy policy, says he's investing way too much in unproven technologies like solar and windmills instead of promoting more domestic oil production. he's also very critical of the president giving tax breaks. here's what we know. in march he popped up -- romney made a campaign stop in north dakota, fargo, and announced that mr. hamm would be the chairman of something called his energy advisory group to advise him on setting an energy policy. and then we just discovered this week that about that time, about a month later, mr. hamm donates this $985,000 to the romney super pac. and this is -- you know, we've all become a bit jaded by these

large six and seven-figure donations. do the super pacs raise questions about access the donors might get to the candidates? here we have something of a wrinkle where one of the mega donors is actually explicitly setting policy for the candidate. he's the chairman of this energy advisory group. >> nothing more than a coincidence, michael. nothing more than a coincidence. >> of course, what the romney campaign said was the super pac is an independent entity and, therefore, they can't answer questions. >> mike, i want you to take a listen to romney responding to rick santorum's complaints about super pac ads during the south carolina primary debate. take a listen. >> i did not have a super pac run an ad against you. as you know, that is something which is completely out of the control of candidates. one of the things i decry in the current financial system that gets behind campaigns. >> are we really expected to suspend our disbelief when mitt

romney has said he has no contact, no power over super pacs when his energy adviser tosses in almost $1 million a month after coming on board the campaign? >> there was a very interesting firing of the supreme court a few days ago by senator john mccain and senator shelby whitehouse asking them to revisit that decision pointing out the many ways in which super pacs and the president's campaigns overlap, how consultants go from one to the other, and so i think this whole idea of -- that these are independent groups is being challenged again and again, and, you know, every time we look at the new super pac reports, we find now examples that raise questions along these lines. >> indeed. please keep doing so, mike. nbc news national investment correspondent michael ikikoff. we'll be right back. i'm freaking out man.

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we're getting new details from a frightening incident in the skies today during a transatlantic flight when a passenger claimed to have explosives sewn into her body. the us airways plane was on its way from paris to charlotte, north carolina when the disruption took place. the plane did make a safe landing in bangor, maine. luke is following the story for us from capitol hill. luke, you spoke, i believe, with homeland security? what did they say? >> we had a flight that left paris to charlotte, north carolina. over the atlantic ocean, a woman handed a note to a flight attendant saying she had an explosive surgically implemented in her body. upon receiving the note, some

passengers and flight attendants overheard this. they subdued her. two doctors were summoned and the woman was examined to see if there were any surgical scars to see if the account could be believed. they did a check on the woman, they found no scars. they said if there was something implanted in her, there would have to be some scar of some magnitude. just to be safe, the plane landed in bangor, maine. it was said the woman was probably unstable. just recently, the chairman of the senate house committee said, quote, the courageous efforts of the individuals on this flight and the front lines of our national security were quick to prevent another major tragedy. kind of a scary moment. an odd moment. this woman is a french citizen from camaroon. we don't know how old she is but certainly nothing you see every day on a flight, martin. >> we've seen during the case of richard reed, the shoe bomber, he used a device outside the body there, but there have been reports in news media over the

past two years of this -- of various terrorist groups considering some kind of explosive is actually within the body. i guess that's why they had to react like this, because this is not as farcical as it sounds, is it? >> nor, not at all. it is certainly possible having explosives implemented in the skin. the fact they found no scars led them to believe that was not the case. dogs can travel like this, so it's definitely something to be a ware of, martin. >> i assume all the passengers had disembarked off the aircraft in the wrong place? >> all is good and they're all headed back to charlotte. >> thank you, luke. thank you so much for watching. dylan ratigan is here to take us into the next hour. dylan, how are you? >> i'm good. a and yourself? >> very good. >> should we just get at it?

i have to get to work, martin. >> you do that. >> the show starts now. >> thank you. >> well, good afternoon to you. i'm dylan ratigan. today's story, deal and no deal. nato made a deal, although reluctant reluctantly, to remain in afghanistan for two years, and the additional ten months in support. difficult with the impasse between neighboring pakistan who said no deal. supply our troops for two more years? going to have to pay them more money for that. where does that leave us with the other nato countries, the only nation extending support, and yet our regime remains stressed, and