joan walsh is editor and chief of salon and willie brown is the former great speaker of the california assembly and former mayor of san francisco most recently. i wanted to start with joe walsh. you wrote an interesting blog about your experience watching the former vice president liz cheney talking about this the other day. your view what's going on for this push to claim that the president of the united states is not american. >> i think it is despicable, dirty politics, chris. i was shocked watching liz cheney. he shown own that clip you just showed and was asked to separate herself from them and refused. she went on to say the problem is people are uncomfortable with the president who doesn't seem comfortable defending our country overseas. she went on and on about it. i never have seen our friend james carville speechless. and he was. and then he got back in the game and said she and other people are using this lunatic fringe. they are playing to it the most dirty, disgusting elements of american politics for their own reason because they are trying to de la jit mize the president

jeffrey toobin with me, as well, susan, former congresswoman from new york, and willie brown the formermayor of san francisco joining us also. mayor brown, let me start with you. what did you think of secretary powell's comment. should professor gates have handled the situation differently as the secretary was suggesting there? >> i think if you ask skip gates he would tell you today he should've handled it differently. after all, whenever a policeman confronts you on the street, you better know that policeman is the judge, the jury, and the executer and with your superior knowledge you probably shouldn't annoy him too much. you ought to be very careful, you don't have to be submissive, but you certainly can't humiliate him verbally or otherwise. i think skip gates would prefer, frankly, to reflect upon himself in that way. he's probably more critical of himself than powell is critical of him. >> dylan, we also heard powell talk about being a target himself of racial profiling and the reality is african-american men still have to deal with this every day of their lives in some form or f

the bottom line is you have got to read willie brown in "grease san francisco chronicle."is --çó "the san francisco chronicle." shida steps ahead of everybody strategically, does not fit any cookie cutter mold -- she steps ahead of everybody strategically. but also, as governor, she has been distracted with over half of $1 million in ethics charges. ñrnone of them are true. she is having to spend most of her time defending herself. cxdat the same time, let's say t she does have a future political aspirations. as a republican or as anyb[ì(lc+ çó opponents -- all of her supposed opponents do not have day jobs. let's look at the republicans, the ones that we think are out there. huckabee, romney, we hear christ, but he has a day job. sanford is gone. he is probably thinking michael jackson and the sotomayor stuff. but she has got to come down to the lower 48. these guys can do it anytime they want. she can overcome this quitting business, depending on what she does between now and then. greta: up next, president obama dropped a really bad concept about the economy. it may ask