anti-abortion bill doesn't help the national gop brand. it's time to listen to the women right in front of you, the women in your families, at your office, and in your party. it's time to take us seriously because at the end of the day, we could all use a few more female friends and i'm pretty sure hillary clinton will have some she will be calling to hang out in 2016. that does it for "the cycle." martin, it's all yours. >> it's thursday, november 7th, and woe is the burden of chris christie. may the blood-letting begin. >> that's a pretty huge ego. >> we need moderates like chris clibs christie. >> stop annoying me. >> shows shown a way of womening in new jersey. >> there's only one group to blame, the house majority and

their speaker. >> he said it's because there's not enough compromise. >> shame on congress. >> i think it is terrific that he's brash and outspoken. >> maybe the folks in washington, d.c., should tune in th their tvs right now. >> it's been a great working relationship. >> president obama called chris christie to congratulate him and he got crap for that. >> it's all about chris christie. >> way, hawing, look -- hey, washington, look at me. >> how about christie spending one day campaigning for ken cuccinelli. >> look at the knives coming out. >> it's okay, chris. a very good afternoon to you, and if you needed any further evidence that chris christie is now the anointed establishment front-runner for the 2016 republican presidential

nomination, then look no further than the knives that are out against mr. christie from his so-called republican friends. that's the real clue beyond the launch of the ready for christie political action committee, complete with brand new website. it's the key indicator, much more than "time" magazine's incredibly subtle cover, the elephant in the room. yes, christie barely had time to bask in the glow of his 22-point re-election victory in the new jersey governor's race before the pesky presidential chatter reached a deafening pitch. >> that means i'm continuing to do my job well. if i'm doing my yob well, that is good for the people here. i don't see it has a burden. you have to have a huge ego. it's such a burden for you to be speculating about me being the leader of the free world. oh, stop. that's a pretty huge ego. it's complimentary, it's flattering, and i have no problem with it. >> sure. he and his incredible humility

have no problem with it. as for the rabid right wing media, not so much. >> you have got so many people in the media celebrating the christie win as the road to the future for the republican party. what does that tell you? you know what? for one, i'm tired of the media picking our candidate for us, and they're trying to do it here. >> he's wrong in terms of the conservative base on immigration, on guns, on the economy, on green technology being the future. how does he win in a red state? >> gee, with endorsements like that, how can he lose? it appears dear mr. sean hannity is still seeing red over the hug that broke a thousand romney supporters' hearts. >> i didn't hear him call president obama a liar on health care and that bothers me. he's giving him a big bear hug a week before the election with romney last week. >> disgraceful! he came into the direct physical

contact with the president! and he won't even call him a liar. it's enough to make senator ted cruz wonder if christie has the cojones to play with the big boys in washington. >> i think it's terrific he's brash and outspoken and that he won his race. i think we need more leaders in washington with the courage to stand for principle, and in particular obama care is not working. >> you have got to hand it to him. that man can take a line and ride it like a rodeo cowboy, and it's clear christie's sins are adding up. hugging the president, not calling him a liar, expanding medicaid in his state, and don't four get christie had the nerve to wrack up 51% of the latino vote. but don't go thinking he's the great hope of the hispanic gop. please, don't. marco rubio implores you. >> it's important to remember every race is particular to the state it's run in, so there are factors in new jersey that i think are individual to that race.

governor christie has certainly shown a way of winning in new jersey and states like new jersey. >> got that, jersey boy? don't make him say it again. let's get right to our panel. here in new york is msnbc contributor joy reid who is the managing editor of thegrio.com and also my stand in, and in washington msnbc political analyst david corn of "mother jo jones" magazine. >> a republican wins a 22-point election in a blue state and conservatives act like a baby seal, he needs to be clubbed for their coats. what's happened? >> i think it's clear chris christie cannotgate rig get rig he asks to see the president's birth certificate. he got that obama on him. oh, my god, he touched him. the thing about chris christie is he is a master of self-marketing. he spent $25 million to do gauzy commercials about how awesome he was after sandy. and he spent another $25 million to make sure that cory booker

wasn't even in the state when he did his re-election. that's really great for padding your margin of victory and making the really desperate republican establishment feel like you might be the guy to save them from the tea party. so up to now he's done everything right in terms of getting establishment support. the problem is the base of the republican party is really sick of the establishment of their own party, and they really don't like the guy who seems to be teacher's pet, and right now chris christie is teacher's pet and media's pet. >> he is. david, we know rand paul called christie the "m" word, a moderate, but salon posted a piece on its website, dear everyone, chris christie is conservative. he vetoed a minimum wage hike. he vetoed legislation designed to eliminate the gender wage gap. he killed a new jersey version of the dream act and cut funding for women's health services, including eliminating funding for planned parenthood. david, this isn't christie the moderate as opposed to

cuccinelli the extremist. this is the dinosaur versus the desembleer. a man who is kuning in the way he plays his conservatism. >> i thought it was mothra versus godzilla. christie is conservative. on almost every issue he's been conservative except one. he has been willing to work with barack obama when it has helped him and new jersey. that's the one thing he's not conservative on. you know, he did accept the medicaid expansion as part of obama care without setting up an exchange, but by and large on the issues when it comes to bashing teachers unions, on the budget cuts and all that -- remember the speech he gave at the tampa convention for the republicans last year. look at all the conservative things i have done in new jersey while people still think i'm a moderate. the bottom line is not that he's not conservative enough.

it's that he has obama cooties and the whole political science experiment we're going to see in the next year or two on the republican side is whether anybody can get rid of the obama cooties once they have them. >> so, joy, what does mr. christie need to do? does he need to become divorced in some formal way from the president of the united states? does he need to say offensive things? does he need tro perhaps introduce a few racist gibes or introduce the idea of birtherism? you laugh, but isn't that necessary? >> chris christie who was able to win in large part because he could push off the tox republican brand, 57% of the voters in the exit polls said they do not like the republican party but they separate him from it. he's going to be head of the republican governors association. he's clearly going to run for president. when he has to go to iowa, he will have to do a few things to gain credibility. look what marco rubio had to morph himself into.

he had to turn against sonia sotomayor and against the dream act and every other form of immigration reform. he tried to softly jump toward immigration reform and got shellacked. she's now on the sidelines just wishing he could be chris christie's friend. if he doesn't want to be marco rubio, he's going to have to not an apostate ever again. he has to go way to the right just goet the base on his side. >> there is way out for chris christie? he hopes for a circular firing squad with cruz, rubio, rand paul, they all can sort of divide up the base. he gets through to new hampshire, and he's ready-made as a republican in the primary in places like pennsylvania, ohio, you know, california, maybe even florida. i mean, in the right -- given the right set of circumstances, coming across as a brash guy who can sort of still tout conservative credentials, he's

not out of the picture. now, i think in a one-to-one race with a tea party guy, anybody probably loses given where the base of the party is, but there may be a way to thread a needle. i know when we're talking about chris christie, threading a needle is not the image that comes to mind. there may be a way to do this and still keep his appeal to a more general election electorate in some of those midwestern -- >> don't i dare mention -- >> i wouldn't dare. i was going to say what david just said, that was the rudy giuliani strategy. he got one delegate. >> okay. but here is a question, on a day where we've seen the house refuse to take up what the senate has passed in relation to not discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation or identity, do you think someone like chris christie would support that kind of legislation? >> given his history on gay rights in new jersey, the answer would probably be no because he was against -- >> this is the test. >> exactly.

and he has set himself very far to the right on gay rights issues. because he has what david calls the obama cooties, he can only afford to be an apostate on so many issues. he can't really go left on too many things. he can't do gay rights as well as i don't know what other options are out there for republicans at this point, but he has to try to stay as far to the right as he can. >> david -- go ahead quickly. >> the interesting thing about him is he will not be running an ideological campaign. you watched his speech the other night, it's not ideological. it's like i'm a tough guy, i can make things happen -- >> it's about governance, it's not about politics. >> it was, indeed, some of the methodology rudy giuliani tried to use and failed. it will put him at the wrong spot with some of the members of the base of his party, but he will be in that way at least refreshing in the sense he won't be part of the kamikaze club.

>> if he runs on governance, the risk in doing that is then reporters will stop being in awe of him and thinking he's awesome and start looking at his record. if you run on governance people are going to look careful as what you did as governor. >> sandy job is not over. he laid down a big chip the other night. he said my job mere here is to h this mission. >> we will be talking in a moment about the great ken cuccinelli. >> have fun. >> joy reid and david corn, thank you both. coming up, what good is a budget if paul ryan will not budge? perhaps the world economy should go all in on twitter. hungry for the best?

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yes, the twitter ipo, up big, over 70% on its first day. just like the quarterly gdp numbers today, everything is going gangbusters, well, on the surface at least. dig down into the great economic number we saw today, the gdp report, and we find that people actually pulled back on their spending in the last quarter. look closer and you will see that the sequestration cuts have taken an enormous chunk out of this economy. with the white house today estimating that the shutdown and debt ceiling fight cost up to 120,000 private sector jobs in the first two weeks of the quarter, it becomes obvious the politics of shutdown and

irresponsible cuts are jeopardizing an economy that is still struggling towards recovery. joining us now is democratic congressman chris van hollen of maryland, ranking member of the house budget committee. good afternoon, sir. >> good afternoon, martin. >> the budget process that you've been arguing for for several months came to a crashing halt even as it started with congressman paul ryan saying he will not budge on tax cuts, and yet fitch last month said the reason it may downgrade the u.s. is because people won't budge on the budget process. so how do you negotiate with a man who states his uncompromising position from the absolute beginning? >> well, martin, you're absolutely right. look, the good news was after eight months we finally got our republican colleagues to the negotiating table. the bad news is that the first thing they did was start taking things off the negotiating

table. as you said, the sequester, which are these very deep, immediate cuts in important investments, are hurting the economy. the nonpartisan congressional budget office has told us that we will have 800,000 fewer jobs in this country this time next year if we keep that in place. so what we've said is let's replace it. we can achieve the same amount of long-term deficit reduction with much smarter cuts over a long period of time, but also the elimination of a lot of these tax breaks, including tax breaks that encourage american companies to ship american jobs overseas. so you can both raise revenue to replace the sequester, which is killing jobs, and reduce the incentive, the tax incentives, for many american companies to ship jobs overseas. you would think that would be a w win/win, but our republican colleagues don't want to talk about it. >> is paul ryan as ideologically fixed on the economy as ken cuccinelli is on social issues?

aren't they cut from exactly the same uncompromising cloth that is preventing any kind of progress in terms of governance here? >> well, martin, certainly the republican ryan budget in the house is a purely ideological document. it's an inflexible, uncompromising partisan document. so the question is whether as we go into these negotiations our republican house colleagues, including paul ryan will show the kind of willingness to compromise that the american people want to see, and what the american people have said is that they want long term deficit checkpoints. they're willing to make some targeted cuts for the long term but it's really hard to stay with a straight face that deficit reduction is the most important thing and then turn around and refuse to close a single loophole. >> of course. >> a single loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit. >> he can do it with a straight

face. lest anyone think that democrats have not compromised, let me show you and show all our viewers where we are in terms of deficit reduction. including the current sequestration cuts, we will have cut $4 trillion, that's trillion with a "t," through 2023. what's more, only about $1 in $5, 20% of savings, have come from revenue increases. everything else spending cuts. and i suppose, you know, mr. ryan will only be happy when that first number is zero in five, is that right? >> well, look, you're absolutely right, martin. if you look at the progress waef made over the last several years on deficit reduction. it's overwhelmingly come from cuts that will be made in the next ten years. cuts that are already in place. very little has come from revenue. that was when we allowed finally the tax breaks for folks at the very high end of the income

scale to lapse last january. that brought in a little bit of revenue, but you still have these huge tax breaks for millionaires as well as for corporate special interests that we should use to reduce the long-term deficit, because if you don't ask them to put in one more penny from closing these tax breaks, it just means that everybody else in the country gets hit that much harder. we should be focused on job creation, as you said. the government shutdown and the threats not to pay our bills have already cost the economy dearly. they have already resulted in 120,000 fewer jobs in october, $24 billion in lost economic activity. so instead of the politics of shut down, which we've seen from our republican colleagues, we should finally get to growing the economy, reducing the deficit in a sensible way, which means closing some of these tax breaks that have no economic benefit for anybody other than

some of these special interests. >> sure. finally and briefly, are we going to make any progress, sir? >> well, it really depends on the answer to the question you're posing here. are republicans ultimately willing to make some compromises for the greater good of the country or are they going to hold out to try to protect the special interest tax breaks which only benefit a very few at the expense of everybody else? we have said, the democrats have said, we want to focus on job creation. we want to increase our investment in important priorities. we want to reduce the deficit, absolutely, in a balanced way. we're willing to make more cuts but for goodness sakes, republicans have got to ask, you know, some of these very special interests to take a little less in terms of their tax breaks if they really care about long-term economic growth and the deficit. >> congressman chris van hollen. thanks for joining us. >> a quick programming note, don't miss chuck todd's exclusive interview with the president airing tonight on

"politic nation" right here on msnbc. >> there's been a footnote frenzy going on. i can't always quote everything perfect. [ male announcer ] need help keeping your digestive balance in sync? try align. it's the number one ge recommended probiotic that helps maintain digestive balance. ♪ stay in the groove with align. but it doesn't usually work that way with health care. with unitedhealthcare, i get information on quality rated doctors, treatment options and cost estimates,

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frenzy, he has been awarded by a new writing gig. he's joining an outfit that invented a chuck of hagel speech to the friends of hamas and pushed every birth fiction they could find regarding the president. we are pleased to add senator paul to our lineup of fearless original thought leaders. fearless, maybe. original, well, we now know the written word speaks for itself. we should note that buzz feed today found just the latest example of a rand paul cut and paste, this time from a number of scholarly articles right into his 2012 book. we're sorry to say we have now lost count. stay with us. a special screw the cuch edition of "top lines" is coming up. but first governor-elect terry

mcauliffe checks out his new digs. no doubt, it will need a thorough cleaning. >> you've been great. >> it's quite a place. a lot of history. >> let's go eat.

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from losers without grace to winners without glory. here are today's "top lines." that's what friends are for. >> losing speeches by definition should be graceful. >> we said this race was a referendum on obama care and although i lofs. >> respectful and brief. >> this race came down to the wire because of obama care. >> nobody tunes in to listen to the loser. >> loser. you're a loser. >> if you send a message to the

president obama -- >> you're a loser. >> so, yeah, ken cuccinelli lost. >> we're losing! >> the republicans have decided they are not sweating it. >> obama care actually could have been the reason that cuccinelli had a late surge. >> they are not worried. >> he sought to make this election a referendum on the bosched rollout of obama care. >> the working class americans. >> we won the latino vote. >> blacks and hispanics, that's our party. >> he's wrong in terms of the conservative base on immigration. >> find another republican in america. >> on guns, on the economy. >> who has won the latino vote recently. >> a lot of cuccinelli supporters a little bitter. >> the establishment seemed to abandon cuccinelli. >> i tell you it's a shame what happened to ken cuccinelli. >> the establishment let cuccinelli down. >> he was betrayed. >> he's trashing rand. >> we need moderates like chris

christie. >> he's trashing cruz. >> but i didn't hear him call president obama a liar. he seems to be at war, like the establishment, against conservative tea party members. >> to win the latino vote in this state. >> as we saw with chris christie's convention speech, it's all about chris christie. >> friends like you, who needs friends. >> let's get right to our panel. joining us now is maria teresa kumar who is president of voter latino. msnbc contributor jimmy williams, and dana milbank, who is a political columne esist fo "the washington post." dana, you have to help me. i don't understand the right wing reaction to this election. they're attacking chris christie who won his election but the cuch who lost is now being elevated into a martyr for what? his crusade against the affo affordable care act? >> well, they want to figure out a way to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. >> exactly. >> look, i think there is an

element within the party, the republican party, the tea party, that would rather have some sort of a heroic defeat, a heroic failure, than an actual victory. there's a path to salvation staring them in the face and that's chris christie, by far and away the candidate most likely to have a victory in 2016. and he's the last guy they want to see get through a republican primary. so i think this is -- it's sort of the purity test gone mad here and the idea is we'd rather go down in flames and be pure about it than actually win an election. >> jimmy, it hasn't even been a full 48 hours since the cuch slumped to defeat and "the daily caller" reports he's being urged by conservatives to run for the u.s. senate next year against democratic incumbent, mark warner. what do you think of that? >> fe doesn't like losing by two points to terry mcauliffe, he probably shouldn't run against

mark warner. i think that's not a smart thing to do considering his poll numbers. this is the problem with the republicans right now. they have this harry potter moment, which is the people that are only magical families as opposed to the half breed families or the mug bloods. that's what's happening right now. the tea party people are the pure conservatives, and here they are attacking someone who is pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay rights, et cetera, et cetera, and they think he's bad? he just won new jersey by 30 points? that guy is not bad, he's won. that's absurd. but i'm never going to be a democrat that's going to get in the middle of a gop bottle rocket fight. i think that's fantastic. >> maria teresa, the wacko birds aren't merely angry at governor christie because he won his election. they also say, and this is his words, thatsaar sabotaged

cuccinelli by not campaigning for him. take a listen to this. >> if he had not held a special election for the senate seat to replace frank lautenberg and last night the vote had been between steve lone gan and cory booker, lonigan would have bon but his ego got in the way. >> were it not for christie's big ego, mcauliffe would have been defeated by the tea party. what evidence is there? >> that's never never land. the reason he held a different election date for cory booker was because he was afraid of his own candidacy. you would have the democratic base come out and he would -- his governorship itself would be contested highly by buono. let's take a step back. i think what we're really seeing right now is a fraction not only within the tea party movement but the tea party media movement. if you look at a quiet election that took place in alabama with

the candidate who was a pro business guy that got heavily funded by the business community and was supported by senator flake and mitch mcconnell, they actually started -- they used it as a test case to see what could happen if big business starts putting forth candidates and actually basically breaking down the republican tea party machine. and that's one of the reasons why mcauliffe won in virginia, because he reached out to the business community and said, hey, you know, i'm actually very pragmatic democrat and i can reach across the aisle. that's one of the reasons governor christie also won in new jersey is he wasn't so polarizing. what i suspect is we're going to see a lot more republicans and the business machine coming in and start bringing in and elevating their own candidates against tea party members. >> dana, do you think that republicans might have been happier if chris christie had actually lost? >> yes. >> well, yes, i think the short

answer is yes. >> they would have -- hang on, dana. we have to repeat what you just said. you believe that they would have been happier if christie had lost. >> well, because it's all about purity, and it's about proving an ideology can work. that's what's going on in virginia. they're saying because cuccinelli lost by 2.5 percentage points, it's the fault of the establishment for not doing more to help him. if they merely had an establishment candidate there, it wouldn't have been a close race in the first place. the republicans would have cruised to an easy victory. they're looking for the more difficult answer and there seems to be some masochistic pleasure in this adversity. >> yisn't that what ted cruz ha been arguing in exactly the same way but hopelessly, and that is what he's looking for is people of purity and principle to stand up while mr. cuccinelli did so

and he didn't do so well. >> that's right. but also ted cruz is now backtracking every so slightly on that when he walks into the mansfield room in the u.s. capitol last weekend to his caucus and says to his own colleagues, republican senators, i'm not going to campaign against you even know your former colleague jim demint is going to run ads against you. now even ted cruz is getting wishy washing when it comes to purity. joe scarborough lakes it say, if republicans want to win, they better put up candidates who can win races instead of using races. >> thank you so much all of you. coming up, what if the gop numbers guy, paul ryan, had his way with the global economy? a worst case scenario survival guide is straight ahead. avo: the volkswagen "sign then drive"

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i know halloween is long past, but imagine a world in which paul ryan, the gop's budget guru, got his way, and austerity with its massive indiscriminate cuts affecting mainly the poor was the dominant economic principle since the financial collapse five years ago, because that is what is causing the pains you see right across europe where today investors were spooked when the head of the european central bank, their ben bernanke, said he would lower rates. the reason? in a word, deflation. here to explain and bring that home to us is jared bernstein, senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities. jared, can you give us a short explanation for deflation because it's something that has frightened economists here in the u.s. immediately after the

financial collapse and it's certainly frightening people in europe today. >> well, it should. it's quite a frightening phenomena although it doesn't sound that bad when you say it this way. deflation means declining prices. some people might think that sounds pretty good. that means i'll have to pay less for stuff. from a macroeconomic perspective, from the perspective of the overall economy, growth, jobs, gdp, deflation is a symptom that your economy is growing too slowly. exhibit one would be europe where recession has been the norm for the past couple wers. >> couple of years, jared. we're talking about five years. we're talking about a continent that has employed virtually the ryan budget word for word. >> right. >> we have seen repeat double dip, in some cases triple dip recessions, and now the fear of deflation. >> that's my point. that, in fact, europe was hit by the same downturn we were in the

late 2000s, but because they embraced these austerity measures, many countries in the eurozone in general went back into recession where they've been for the past couple of years. now they're looking at the threat of deflation. and by the way, to be very clear with our listeners, what austerity means is that as your economy, particularly your private sector, is weakening, instead of trying to replace some of that lost demand with government spending, you go the other way. you actually decrease your government support of the economy while the private sector is still weak. the fear is that that will somehow lift growth. the evidence is the opposite. >> now, jared, you have got a column out today online for "the new york times." the gist of it suggests that we're now seeing the effects of prolonged political dysfunction in our economy's very potential. in your words, congress ised a minute steering austere fiscal policy that is perfectly analogous to medieval leeching.

could you explain that to us? >> very much so. medieval leeching was an idea that was supposed to make you better, but made you worse. let's be very clear, martin. if you go back to 2009 when the budget deficit was 10% of gdp, in 2013 it was 4%. that decline, that 6 percentage point decline, is the largest decline in the budget deficit over four years going all the way back to 1950. we are simply not supporting our economy enough either. we're doing our own version of european austerity. what i wrote about today in "the times" was the extent to which that's not just a temporary problem. it's causing lasting damage on the potential of the economy to grow in the future. >> absolutely. jared bernstein, as ever, thank you for educating us on deflation. >> my pleasure. >> still ahead, standing up to stand your ground. but will florida lawmakers voting this afternoon agree? stay with us.

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it's almost two years since the florida teenager armed with only a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea was confronted, shot, and killed while walking home to watch a basketball game. and now after the outrage and the sadness, after a trial in which the killer was acquitted of murder charge, after the thoughtful commentary of everyone from the child's family to the president of the united states, one thing is crystal clear. nothing has changed. as we speak, florida's republican controlled legislature is actually hearing testimony about its controversial stand your ground law. a law which makes it legal to use deadly force with no responsibility to retreat if you feel your life is in danger. while it's uncommon for the

legislature to put much effort into a measure that's unlikely to pass anyway. they were forced to take it up after the dream defenders held a 31-day sit in at the florida capital demanding they reconsider the law. while today's hearing may yet prove to have an act of futility, something needs to change when innocent people throughout the country continue to be killed by armed and legally protected citizens. for more now, i'm joined by trayvon martin's family attorney, daryl parks, who is live from florida, and msnbc contributor professor james peterson. mr. parks, stand your ground was not used as a defense in the george zimmerman trial, but jurors have since said that it was discussed as part of their deliberation. if this law had not been on the books, do you feel that the incident in which trayvon martin lost his life would have been

different? >> i certainly think it would have been different for many reasons. martin, stand your ground law was actually throughout the trayvon martin case. as you may know, when the case first started as george zimmerman was going through the process, he continued to say that there's a strong potential we may put forth a stand your ground defense. ultimately they decided not to, but you saw them putting it in there. however, even at the very beginning, when the police chief refused to investigate and arrest george zimmerman, that was part of the stand your ground. and then lastly in the jury instructions, we saw that george zimmerman had the right to stand your ground. the jurors made it very clear that they were confused about this law, and that's the main problem with the law. the law is very confusing to people and in this application. it's a law that needs changing. however, it probably won't happen today in front of this group. this group has a reform bill before them, a repeal bill, and

that may not go. however, there's another bill that reform it is in the state of florida. i think we're having a flat form where people are discussing it, and you're starting to see some of the dynamics here. this is not about gun rights. i'm a concealed gun carrier and, you know, it's not about that. this is about a very urban state that has to deal with the issues that it's a very urban complex with a lot of different people. and we should not make it a situation where there are people who, you know, are allowed to take advantage. just today down in tampa bay there was a group of people who were trying to get a parking spot at a walmart and they end up brandishing a gun and it made the front page of "the tampa bay time times." >> florida is far from the only place the stand your ground laws are leading to the death of innocent people. in detroit this weekend a 19-year-old african-american

woman named renisha mcbride was looking for help after a car accident, knocked on the door of a house, and was shot in the head and killed. her aunt bernita spinks asked this question. you see a young black lady on your porch and you shoot? and we should make the point that stand your ground laws apply in that state. >> they absolutely do. in fact, because this maybe took pla place, the house is your castle doctrine may apply. it's important we understand that there are women also who are victims of these same kinds of crimes. it's important to acknowledge publicly the work that attorney parks and attorney crump have been doing around these issues is very powerful and very, very important. i hope they continue to do it. i think at the end of the day there's too much subjectivity in the stand your ground law and in

those policies. what that means is our system, our entire criminal justice system, is contaminated by racial bias. so for the system to be biased is one thing, but then for the system to endorse that kind of bias in our society is why this ends up being so dangerous. when people make decisions around safety and security and their home and their person, those decisions are informed by race. not everyone is racist. just all those decisions often times are informed by race and, unfortunately, we're seeing awful consequences as a result of this. we have to continue the fight, and i sympathize with the dream defenders who are there right now and they're saying the lobbyists are in there, the money is in that room right now. it's unfortunate we won't have a revolutionary outcome for today's particular legislative process, but i hope we continue to fight because at the end of the day stand your ground when you just look at the data, the consequences are dire, particularly based upon those from certain racial backgrounds. >> indeed. mr. parks, there does seem to be

a racial discrepancy in the application of stand your ground defenses, and yet we heard senator ted cruz say he thought the law actually benefited african-americans. >> it's absurd. >> in florida the data show that african-american defendants have availed themselves of the stand your ground defense more frequently than have anglo defendants. >> mr. parks, your brief response to that. >> well, i think that the one thing that's come out even here today in this hearing justifiable homicides have gone up 200% in our state. what we have to stop is the mentality of people who want to result to guns at every instance. that mentality is very hard to be in an urban situation. >> mr. parks and professor james peterson, thank you so much for joining us. we'll be right back.

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