harold ford, thank you for being here. >> thank you. lots of fun. gary ross coming over from london. >> kelly, good stuff. i felt like coming back from vacation it would be becky but you guys made it all work. make sure you join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" begins right now. >>> good morning and welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm melissa lee along with jim cramer and brian sullivan. big news from ap people about what it plans to do with its cash hoard. they are going to set a dividend of $2.65 per share. they offered a buyback program commencing in the company's fiscal 2013 which begins on september 30th of this year. apple holding a conference call shortly. in terms of the premarket action, very roller coaster ride. we have seen in premarket action apple shares go as high as 608, so

santorum and gingrich, which has happened across the country, will benefit romney this evening. >> harold ford, jr., nbc political analyst, harold, thank you very much, we'll look forward to the poll closings. >> nanthanks for having me. >> harold ford is getting to the point we have been hinting at, gingrich and santorum may see they have a path forward, they may imagine themselves as nominees but as long as both of them are imagining themselves as potential nominees, neither can be a nominee. one of them has to get out in order for one to win. >> they are both looking at the same math that says it may be that no one has all the delegates locked up going in the convention. what that means you're put at risk for everything. if mitt romney has a misstep, if he has a rough day on something, you can easily start a movement we have to dump this guy, he can't be the one. but the big news i heard from harold was the notion that mitt romney is going to win tennessee, which he said with some confidence. if that happens, that is mitt romney winning a southern state and that is defying a lot of predicti

we have jon meacham and harold ford jr.is christie is having problems dealing with unions. you hear from this from a lot of governors, democrat and republican, but you actually have had a very good working relationship with unions in your state and you've been able to strike some pretty good deals and have a great success rate because of it. >> well, we're working hard, and frankly, it started well before i became governor. we went out and went to probably a hundred schools and talked to teachers. and we recognized that the only chance of success was to create a partnership, not to have this as a wedge issue. so it's a partnership with teachers, with their union, with parents, with the disability community, with the business community. and let's focus on what it's really going to take to help these kids achieve their potential. and so far, we've been working very well together. >> and governor of connecticut has long been one of the better states as far as k-12 education, but a lot of challenges in your state, just like the

i heard harold ford talking about this. we should be watching tennessee results a lot. >> chuck todd, thank you very much. we will be back with you. david gregory is the moderator of "meet the press" david let me ask you to weigh in on the last point chuck was making about tennessee being too early to call, oklahoma being too early to call, that is not a definitive characterization of the race, it means we'll know more soon and tell you then, but is that in fact good news for mitt romney that this hasn't been called for one of the other candidates already? >> i think it is, because if you think about what romney has to do tonight it's not only try to begin to close the door here, can he lock up the nomination and i think as we have been talking about ohio is being key to doing that can he expand the base of support not just geographically but within the coalition he will need to unite the party? lower income primary voters, more culturally conservative, classify themselves as very conservative, can he get those voters. expa

harold ford.one moment because we have been i think rightly critical of paul ryan's budget this morning talking about specific cuts in programs for veterans, programs for children and programs for poor families. can you give me a sense on social security and medicare and medicaid for my friend, joe scarborough's sake, give me a sense of what democrats in the house, how that proposal will address those three specific areas in terms of slowing down spending over the next 10 years. >> well, harold, in the area of social security, our budget is similar to the current republican budget, which is we believe that issue has to be dealt with on a bipartisan basis. so our current budget preserves social security intact. i agree that we need to do something along the lines that ronald reagan and tip o'neill did. we need to get together to handle that issue. with respect to medicare, there are some reforms in the president's plan. the difference between that approach and the approach that ryan takes is what w

we also have msnbc political analysts harold ford jr.first, let's start with afghanistan. a united states army sergeant is being detained after american officials say he went on a nighttime massacre over the weekend, killing 16 afghan civilians as they slept in their homes. a coalition spokesman says the rogue shooter abandoned his host at a military base and walked to a nearby village. there, he allegedly opened fire inside three separate homes, killing as many as nine children. five other civilians were reported injured. president obama, who was attending his daughter's basketball game in maryland personally called afghan president hamid karzai. in a statement, he offered his condolences with the victims' families and said the incident does not represent the u.s. military. but afghan president hamid karzai is demanding answers from the u.s. government, saying, quote, this is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven. we're going to talk to our panel and start with nbc chief pentagon correspon

>> this comes from the end of that conversation in that interview with chris christie where harold ford i were asked, is there a similarity between the two? and i said, yes. because overall, both communities are struggling for equal dignity and respect and also equal protection under the law. so in the piece that i have on washingtonpost.com, it shows flat out where the similarities are. why the struggles are the same. one, blacks and gays have been targeted for who they are. just in 1998 we had the dragging death of james bird in texas by white supremacists. five months later, october 1998, matth matthew shepard was targeted because he was gay and left on a fence in wyoming. where african-americans have been denied is well documented in american history. but gays and lesbians, up and down the board, are being denied equal protection under the law. particularly as we started out this segment, when it comes to marriage equality. >> let's talk about that. the new poll shows this huge change in voter opinion with more people supporting gay marriage than ever before in the u.s. 49% to 40%.

>> i learned that harold ford is a champion of big oil. what did you learn, jose? >> i learned two things. my daughter lost her front tooth fairy and the tooth fairy's been giving a lot more money than i thought recently. that's what i learned. >> now ask willie, if it's way too early, what time is it? >> if it's way too early, what time is it? >> good job, my man, cole. it's "morning joe." >>> four days to go before super tuesday. mitt romney, not even campaigning in a super tuesday state. why? he's learned from past mistakes. he's focused on washington's standard caucuses, even though no delegates are awarded. will romney's "whatever it takes" strategy pay off tomorrow and on tuesday? >>> and so much for that time. michigan officials award mitt romney another dealegate. >>> and super tuesday won't just be about the presidential primaries, it's also the first round of congressional primaries. and redistricting that has left house members fighting with colleagues from their own party to keep their seats. it's win or go home time for some very familiar faces. it's f

i heard harold ford talking about this.ld be watching tennessee results a lot. >> chuck todd, thank you very much. we will be back with you. david gregory is the moderator of "meet the press" david let me ask you to weigh in on the last point chuck was making about tennessee being too early to call, oklahoma being too early to call, that is not a definitive characterization of the race, it means we'll know more soon and tell you then, but is that in fact good news for mitt romney that this hasn't been called for one of the other candidates already? >> i think it is, because if you think about what romney has to do tonight it's not only try to begin to close the door here, can he lock up the nomination and i think as we have been talking about ohio is being key to doing that can he expand the base of support not just geographically but within the coalition he will need to unite the party? lower income primary voters, more culturally conservative, classify themselves as very conservative, can he get those voters. expand suppo

the democrat in question is representative, or former representative harold ford jr., democrat of tennessee. he's come flat out in a "wall street journal" article today, an says reverse course, mr. president, build the pipeline, speed up the drilling permit process, and above all stop beating up on oil. that's what he's saying and that is putting a great deal of pressure, along with other democrats on the president. now, martha at $108 a barrel, that's what oil has just gone back up to, it's possible that that is a high enough price to trigger an immediate response from the president, which would be, open up the spigots on the strategic petroleum reserve. he talked about doing that last week and the price dropped to a buck and a half. it is possible that will come back on to the front burner given the pressure the president is under. martha: we want to show you sort of -- what the president has said on this issue, in terms of not having a lot of control over gas prices, from basically late february to mid march on this. take a lock a look at this. >> while there are no silver bullets, short

. >> harold ford among the democrats who said you got to build a pipeline.ton says embrace the pipeline. and, you know, if a pipeline is built within the boundaries of the united states, the president doesn't have to approve it. it's just when it crosses -- >> state department has to. >> absolutely. my wife and i were talking, you know, the kids are all in college. >> silent treatment is over? >> we were talking yesterday about the keystone pipeline and my wife said, you know, because they're not -- >> i'm not kidding. >> my wife said because they haven't built it from canada, she said you know how we're getting the oil? i said truck? she said, yeah. on trucks. so how safe is on trucks or train vs. a pipeline? >> in my house when we start -- when we're alone and the lights are dim, we talk about the gdp and she is just crazy! >> my house, my husband -- oh, wait. >> listen, we can call you up and talk pipeline with you. >> probably -- >> maybe not! >> that wouldn't go over good. >> she might record it. >> we got headlines. >> ok. here's a fox news alert and t