it's a great thing. i think people have responded incredibly well. >> fresno county school superintendent larry powell. you're sacrificing for the youth of your community, and what a great american and unselfishness. i say often on my radio show that we've been mr. powell. do republicans care about victims of natural disasters? 8% said yes, 92% said no. the last word with lawrence o'donnell starts right now. we'll see you back to compare dick cheney to darth vader, he does it himself. >> been called skillful, dynamic, you've been called controversial and divisive.

>> you left out darth vader. >> dick cheney relishes his ties with the dark side. >> not to get caught up with popular methods of interrogation. >> he's never once accepted responsibility or regret. >> totally unincomebered. >> critics have already called it a rewrite of history. >> pulling the strings behind the scenes. >> president obama is still working to fix eight years of republican mistakes. >> the worst economic crisis since the great depression. >> key pieces of the president's jobs plan are still being debated. >> we have to create more jobs, and we have to do it faster. >> does he go big, does he go tactical? >> he's got to go big. >> you try working with eric

cantor. >> while the president is working to create jobs, the republican candidates were working to destroy them. >> you won't have stimulus programs. >> i will slice billions of dollars. >> i'm a person. >> here's a line today. >> career politicians got us into this mess. >> career politicians. >> inconsequential. >> the only other guy in this gop field that's not a career politician is herman cain. >> inconsequential. >> he believes in evolution. >> that's the way we do it in texas. good evening from los angeles, former vice president dick cheney's memoir "in my time" went on sale today. in the book cheney expresses no

regrets for the actions the bush administration took, including authorizes the use of waterboarding. cheney writes the program was safe, legal, and effective. it provided us intention that enabled us to prevent attacks and save american lives. cheney did an interview with "the today show" this morning, matt lauer used the perfect frame for the waterboarding question. >> if an american citizen were to be taken into captivity into iran, for example, and the government looked at that person and said we think you're a spy for the u.s. and here to carry out a covert operation, would it be okay for the iranian government to waterboard that american citizen? >> well, we probably would object to it. >> on the grounds that it's torture? >> on the grounds we have obligations to our citizens and we do everything we can to protect our citizens. >> matt lauer continued to press the point and cheney was incapable of answering the

question if waterboarding is not torture, is it okay for other countries to do it? >> so why was it okay for us to use what most people would say was torture against terror suspects? >> remember, first of all, these were not american citizens. we were not dealing with the american citizens in the enhanced interrogation program. it was people who were a handful, two or three that got waterboarded. third, we had good reason to believe we could get information from them and they knew more than anybody else. >> if iranian government said we have reason to believe you're a spy, would you object or say they did what they had to do to get the information they needed at the time? >> well, i think we would object because we wouldn't expect an american citizen to be operating that way. >> on the bush administration's decision to invade iraq, cheney writes, "when we looked around the world in those first months

after 9/11, there was no place more likely to be a nexus between terrorism and wmd capability than sudan hussein's iraq, even taking into account some of the intelligence we received was wrong, that assessment still holds true. the security of our nation and of our friends and allies required that we act and so we did." joining me now, former chief of staff to secretary of state colin powell and current professor of government at william and mary, colonel wilkerson. thanks for joining me tonight. that seems like a redefined threshold of why we invaded iraq, because as cheney says, it was more likely to be a nexus of terrorism and a dictator capable of doing something with weapons of mass destruction. that is not the way he talked ramping up to that invasion.

>> that's not the reason at all either. the reason it was a little hanging fruit. we went to the pentagon before donald rumsfeld cut us off, we being the planning staff at state. i led the effort, and we talked with the pentagon on a number of items, and we talked about what would become the axis of evil. we all agreed, the pentagon agreed, state agreed, i think the entire bureaucracy agreed north korea was the number one threat, and iran was a close second in terms of terrorism. iraq came in third or fourth, third if you're going to count the axis of evil being three, so it was low-hanging fruit. we'd seen the first gulf war, we knew the onslaught in iraq would be short and sweet and we'd win, but we didn't think about the aftermath, obviously. cheney is putting forth a preposterous position with regard to iraq. >> let's listen to what cheney had to say when matt lauer asked whether the iraq war was worth billions of dollars in tax money

and the lives of 4,477 american soldiers. >> given the fact it severely damaged our reputation around the world and there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, you still think it's worth it? >> oh, sure. i don't think that it damaged our reputation around the world. i just don't believe that. i think critics here at home would argue that, but, in fact, i think it was sound policy that dealt with a very serious problem and that eliminated saddam hussein from the kind of problem he presented. what would have happened this week if moammar gadhafi had still been in power with a nuclear weapon in libya? would he have fled? i doubt it. >> what did i just hear there, how did he just slide from saddam hussein to gadhafi without anything in between there, suggesting what, saddam

hussein, if he stayed in power was going to have a nuclear weapon and hand it to gadhafi and gadhafi could use it last week? >> favorite cheney tactic, his philosophy, you pick the questions, i pick the answers. his answers are the type that appeal to the cheerleaders that he has in this country amongst the neoconservatives and others who disturbingly, in my mind, continue to show they are in favor of torture and anything that will protect their security. we're no longer, at least in part, a nation of patrick henrys who say give me liberty or give me death. there's a lot of people that say protect my life at any cost, including my civil liberties and torturing other people to do so. >> you can ask him a question and he will say words after the question, but that doesn't mean you're getting an answer. >> absolutely. >> let's listen to what matt lauer asked cheney about a portion of his book in which he

criticized your former boss, former secretary of state colin powell. >> one of your most pointed criticisms about him is this, "time and again i heard that he was opposed to the war in iraq, indeed i continue to hear it today, but never once in any meeting did i hear him voice objection." i think you now know colin powell insists he told the president about his objections to the war in iraq and in his memoir, president bush specifically says he knew about colin powell's reservations, so why are you barking up this tree? >> well, i wrote the events as i participated in them. the fact of the matter is, if you look, for example, at my comments about general powell, i've got three chapters on my time as secretary of defense, basically all very positive on general powell, but a balanced account also required me to put down what my opinion was, and that's what i've done.

>> now, when historians write books, they are always aware of what other historians have written before them. i think the first book that entered our history is bob woodwards where he has a lengthy and detailed account, as you know, colin powell's meeting with the president that cheney was not president for in which colin powell made all the points about why you want to be very careful about going into iraq and maybe choose not to do it, and here's cheney pretending that that sort of thing never happened. >> and also, the fact is it worked. we learned valuable, valuable information from the process and kept the country safe for over seven years. >> sorry. go ahead with your response. >> i was going to say dick cheney didn't go to new york and give the presentation on the 5 of february, 2003, colin powell did.

if powell was opponent to the wars, cheney says in his book, or didn't express his opposition to the war or was someone undermining the president's position outside the government, he certainly didn't show it when he went to new york and gave his presentation on 5 of february, 2003. we essentially presented in key areas some false information. we didn't know it was false, we've been vowed safe that information by the dci, george tenet and his deputy, john mclaughlin, but nonetheless we presented false information with regard to wmd. >> on secretary of state powell's presentation at the united nations in february, cheney actually writes, "when it turned out that much of what ap mass destruction was wrong, i think embarrassment caused him and those around him to lash out at others. scooter libby seemed to be a particular target of their ire,

they excoriated the material he and the national security staff provided while at the same time boasting they had thrown it in the garbage. as it happened, much of what they discarded focussed on saddam's ties to terror and human rights violations, charges that would stand the test of time." he's talking about you there, colonel, what do you make of that? >> let me give you the facts there. on the very first day colin powell handed me the script from vice president cheney's office, it was all about wmd, nothing about human rights, nothing about terrorism. the terrorism portion was to come later from phil mudd at cia, george tenants man, and the human rights portion came from the state department. we threw out libby's and hannah's script because george tenet and i agreed it was bull, and we went straight to the october 2002 national

intelligence estimate, and from that point on, that became the basis of our presentation. unfortunately, it was wrong in key areas also, but we threw the script out in the beginning and didn't mad mouth anybody about it. we simply went to work. >> cheney has not given up on insisting there was, indeed, a connection between al qaeda and saddam hussein. in the book he says, "the terrorism experts would make their judgments about a connection between saddam hussein and al qaeda, but to satisfy the regional analysts, a higher-up at the agency would intone saddam had no authority, connection, or control. the phrase turned out to be handy for administration critics, because it seemed to say saddam had no responsibility for terrorism while we were asserting he did. we had the facts on our side, he harbored terrorists and he

sponsored them." what's your reaction to that, colonel? >> well, unfortunately, the vice president sticks to that even to this day as you pointed out, and he was saying it during the time. i've since discovered in the summer of 2002, some of the enhanced interrogation was being used not to gain information about a possible another terrorist attack on the united states but to confirm these very ties between baghdad and al qaeda, and the reason the secretary of state did not throw the entire portion on terrorist contacts out of his script for the 5 of february presentation is once he decided to do that and told me he was going to do that, about an hour or so later george tenet shows up with a bomb shell they just interrogated a high-level al qaeda operative that revealed contacts. so we put it back in. only later did we learn that information was gained through

torture and was recanted by the individual that was tortured and the d.i.a. issued a dissent within a week or two of the we were never shown a dissent or told the high-level operative had recanted or that it was done outside the united states, particularly egypt. >> let's hope nobody makes the mistake of putting the cheney book on the history shelf of our libraries. >> i think it will go on the crime section. >> colonel lawrence wilkerson, thank you very much for your invaluable perspective tonight. >> thanks for having me, lawrence. coming up, we'll examine dick cheney's version of the dramatic night when members of the bush administration rushed to the bedside of john ashcroft to get him to renew the terrorist program. later, arianna huffington will join us. coming up, vice president woman: day care can be expensive. so to save some money,

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coming up, vice president dick cheney tries to rewrite history about his domestic surveillance program and why the fight at john ashcroft's bedside became a turning point in the relationship between cheney and the president. and later, as the obama administration considers how big of a job's plan to unveil next week, seems the president maybe gave us some hints today. [ artis brown ] america is facing some tough challenges right now. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that's a huge breakthrough. that's good for our country's energy security

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you this passage from the cheney book, cheney writes, "the president called the attorney general who was in george washington university hospital in washington, d.c., and explained that the program was going to lapse without department of justice approval. the attorney general said that he would sign the documents and the president asked andy card and al gonzalez to take the package to him. card and gonzalez drove to the hospital and went into the room where they found department attorney general comey already present. it became immediately clear that ashcroft had changed his mind. he said that he would not sign the documents, he also indicated that because of his health issues, he had delegated all the responsibilities of his office to deputy attorney general comey. card and gonzalez departed with the unsigned documents in hand." bart, that is the cheney book

account of what happened in what became a defining moment in the bush presidency. what do you make of that? you've studied every step of that, of this, and everything that happened that night. >> well, i wrote two chapters on this in my book. there has been a voluminous inspector general's report about this event and bush's own account in his memoir of the hospital visit, and none of it supports almost any of that account. i can't imagine what cheney's basis for saying either of the two biggest things in that passage. one is that ashcroft agreed on the phone that he would sign the document and the other is that gonzalez, card, and cheney, for that matter, were surprised to discover that ashcroft had seeded his powers to the deputy attorney general and jim comey was acting attorney general. those are the two big elements

about that scene, which is that the white house tried to circumvent the lawful attorney general and take advantage of a sick man. now, according to the fbi security details contemporary notes of the phone call, janet ashcroft, the wife, would not put him on the phone with bush, he was too sick to talk. he was slipping in and out of consciousness. >> in your writing, you described the phone call where it's actually the president, and i believe andy card, are actually on the line trying to get to the attorney general, and the attorney general, he's under morphine and sedated in a hospital bed, and the attorney general's wife, with hearing the president's voice, hearing him on the line, refuses them to allow them to talk to him. >> that's correct, and that's what the contemporary notes say. now, bush says in his memoirs he did talk to ashcroft, but all he

says is that he told ashcroft he was going to be sending andy card and gonzalez over with some important papers. to believe cheney's account of it, you would have to believe the president of the united states talked about a code word classified intelligence program on an open telephone line that ashcroft was conscious and coherent, and that he changed his mind twice within a period of minutes, because as he lay in his bed, he had already a week before decided he was not going to sign this document. allegedly now he tells the president he will, and as soon as the president's men arrived, he says no i won't. there's no evidence whatsoever to support that account. >> you've read the whole book. is this characteristic of the book? because what i'm getting here is when cheney, when he comes to a scene that's already been dealt with by others in other books and with all sorts of other supporting information, that

cheney will find the weakling, the weak character, the person who got in our way who didn't let us do this the right way, the way us real men of the bush administration wanted to do it, and in this instance, it happens to be ashcroft who's playing that role for him. >> i actually think in this case he's pinning it on comey, because he has comey essentially misleading fbi director bob mueller into opposing this thing. what cheney cares about most of all is his view of the world, his believes, his idea that the world's a dangerous place, that hard men have to do ruthless things to protect us even if we don't understand the threats ourselves, and so when he gets down to the facts of important cases, they are not always right, because the facts have to serve as narrative. >> bart gellman, thank you very much for reading the book for us and for joining us tonight. >> thank you. coming up, no matter what the president chooses to do on

jobs, a fight with republicans in congress is inevitable. and in the rewrite, why rudy giuliani is the single biggest fraud in american politics. david "honeyboy" edwards, finally, there's a choice for my patients with an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, or afib, that's not caused by a heart valve problem. today we have pradaxa to reduce the risk of a stroke caused by a clot. in a clinical trial, pradaxa 150 mg reduced

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96. "the new york times" reports his first real exposure to the blues was in 1929 when the famous bluesman tommy johnson came to pick cotton at wildwood plantation near where edwards grew up. edwards wrote in his autobiography they'd pick cotton throughout the day and at night sit around and play the guitars. david was elected to the blues hall of fame in 1996, named a national heritage fellow in 2002, won a grammy for his last album in 2008, and a lifetime achievement grammy last year. failing health from a weakened heart forced him to cancel shows beginning in may of this year. david titled his autobiography "the world don't owe me nothing." ♪

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in tonight's spotlight, the debate inside the obama white house about how big the president should go with his job's plan. the president will outline his proposals for job creation in a major speech next week, but "the washington post" reported today it remained unclear if the president was looking for narrower ideas with a realistic chance with passing the republican-led house or more sweeping stimulus proposals that would excite his liberal base and draw contrasts with the gop. the president himself hinted

today that he may actually be ready for a fight with the republicans. in a speech to the american he he on, the president took aim. >> we're still digging out from the worst economic crisis since the first depression, and even though we've taken steps in the right direction, we have a lot more to do. our economy has to grow faster, we have to create more jobs, and we have to do it faster, and most of all, we've got to break the gridlock in washington that's been preventing us from taking the action we need to get this country moving. [ cheers and applause ] that's why next week i'll be speaking to the nation about a plan to create jobs and reduce our deficit, a plan that i want to see passed by congress. we've got to get this done. >> the president had more to say

about republican resistance in a radio interview on the tom joyner show. >> these folks so far have not been, you know, very responsive to public opinion, which is why they are very unpopular right now. but they are speaking only to a narrow segment of the population, their base. we've just got to keep on putting the pressure on them. my attitude is my job is to present the best plans possible, congress needs to act. if congress does not act, then i'm going to be going on the road and talking to folks and this next election, you know, very well may end up being a referendum on, you know, who's vision of america is better. >> the president also pointed out that simply passing the proposals already being considered in congress could create between half a million and a million jobs and grow the economy by at least 1%. joining me now is "the

washington post" columnist e.j. dionne. thanks for joining me tonight, e.j. >> good to be with you. >> e.j., i am one of those who have to laugh when i read lines in places like "the washington post" or anywhere else that suggest that there is some area where the republicans might be reasonable and reach some agreement with the president, that there's some target of compromise for the president to aim at. do you think he should be aiming at this theoretical space where the republicans might be able to agree with him, or should he be going for the best policy? >> you know, my award for the best cheeky headline of the day goes to the fire dog lake website, "obama unsure on whether to propose jobs ideas that can't pass or jobs ideas that can't pass." the point being if he proposes something really big, the republicans will reject it, but if he proposes something small tailors to them, they are

probably going to reject it too, and so i don't see any reason why he shouldn't go out there and be bold, and there are a lot of reasons why he should be bold. in the first place, look at what the republicans have done so far. if you approach someone in the schoolyard in a nice way and he knocks you down and approach you a second way and he knocks you down and approach him a third time and he knocks you down, unless you're gentle, you don't do that a fourth time, so i think a tougher position might get him something, but the other thing is the country wants to know what he wants to do. they want the president to look strong and to be strong, so i think he ends up better on the politics, but he also might get a better deal in the long run if he just lays out what he wants

to do and goes big. >> he's not easy to read ahead of time in these situations, but on tom joyner's show, it sounded like he's talking the way you would advise him to talk. he's saying my attitude is my job is to present the best plans possible. congress needs to act, and then he says this may end up being a referendum, meaning i may offer the best plan possible, it may not get anywhere, then we will take that to the polls in november. if you go by what he said on the tom joyner show, it sounds like he's ready for a fight. >> it does sound that way, and i hope that's right. i think there are two sides to him, the conflict avoid side, he would like everybody to get along, but then there's a competitive side, and i think what's happened to him in the

course of this year and facing an election next year possibly against somebody like rick perry who does stand for just about everything he doesn't and is against everything he's for, i think that competitive instinct comes out, and i think the obama folks have to think about something. they are obsessed with the political center and mathematically i agree with them, you need moderates and independents. the middle of the road voters are not just concerned with ideology or exactly how the numbers add up on these plans, they also care a lot about strength in leadership and i think that is something that didn't come across to people over the last couple of months, and this is his opportunity finally to get a handle on that aspect of people's views of their president. >> e.j., the voters you're talking about tend to be middle class, we're going to be talking with arianna huffington later about how politicians tend to ignore the middle class. is there something the president should be saying in the job's speech next week that addresses specifically middle class worries about job insecurity? >> i think there are a couple of things. one is if democrats don't take the payroll tax cut to the republicans, they ought to find another line of work.

by the republicans' own standards, if you let a tax cut expire, that's a tax increase. this is going to be a tax increase on tens of millions of people. they ought to be able to win that fight. the other place where i'd like to see more focus is on the long-term unemployed. there are a lot of middle class people who have been out of work for a long time, and even when the economy comes back, they are still going to have a devilish time to find a job, and so i hope he does something in that area and talks to them. >> e.j., you, in a recent column, mentioned it's not just liberals who are looking for big movement on the economy but that it's actually big bankers, big industrialists, people who need more stable economies in which to get their giant corporations moving in one direction or the other. is that something that's going to somehow create some kind of pressure on republicans to come to the table? >> again, i hope so, and i think it's something that if obama puts something on the table, he can call them out or call them in as allies. i've been so struck on your sister network, cnbc, of how many conservative business guys say look, people need more money in their pockets if we're going

to have the economy move, and the government can put some money in people's pockets. they can get money in circulation again. if you have state governments laying off all these people, those are folks who can't buy things, who can't buy services, so they believe that stimulus works. the numbers show that stimulus works, and they are going to be far better advocates for it than liberals like me, so i hope they are out there doing it. >> so we may see some more warren buffet pals joining his calls that suggests that democrats have pretty good ideas. >> i think that even people who can't stand warren buffet's ideas, god bless him, would like the government to do more to get this economy moving. >> "the washington post" columnist e.j. dionne, thank you so much for joining me tonight. >> great to be with you. coming up, what should the president do to support the

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what's your policy? time for tonight's rewrite. rudy giuliani is back. he told the associated press in an article published today that he's seriously eyeing another run for the presidential nomination despite the spectacular failure last time. he's critical of barack obama, saying the democrat has made a faltering economy even worse. of course, it remains impossible for rudy giuliani to speak to a reporter or the public without mentioning 9/11. the ap article quotes him as saying we handled everything, giuliani says now, but this was so far beyond what we'd contemplated. well, it certainly was beyond anything rudy giuliani contemplated, which is why

giuliani made the worst tactical decision in the history of the city of new york. it was at giuliani's insistence that the response was located by giuliani at the world trade center. giuliani was advised by the professionals in his administration that the emergency command and control center should be located in brooklyn instead of at an obvious terrorism target. but the mayor insisted that it be located within walking distance of city hall, which, of course, meant it would within walking distance for the city hall press corp., so moving their cameras to keep giuliani's face on camera during any crisis would be so much the easier. then, the highest ranking uniformed officer in the new

york city police department was shocked at giuliani's decision. i've never seen in my life walking distance as some kind of a standard for crisis management. he said later, i guess you had to be there in 1993 to know how strongly we felt it was the wrong place. wayne barrett reported that the police commissioner at the time told rudy giuliani, you can't put it in ground zero. police commissioner called it ground zero then because the world trade center had already been bombed by al qaeda. giuliani's ego-driven decision based on his craving for media attention during any possible crisis meant that when they needed it most, on 9/11, the command center was useless because rudy giuliani had decided to locate it at ground zero.

that giuliani decision cost lives, which is why the international association of firefighters vehemently opposed his candidacy for the president in 2008. the firefighters association reports that 121 firefighters in the north tower didn't get out on 9/11 because they didn't hear evacuation orders. they didn't hear those orders, because rudy giuliani learned absolutely nothing from the first deadly attack on the world trade center. firefighters' radios failed to work back then when they responded to the bombing of the world trade center, and they failed to work again, years later, on 9/11.

even if the inadequate fire department radios worked on 9/11, they were not connectible in any way to the police department radios or police department communication of any kind, even though the city had obtained additional radio frequencies from the federal government in 1995, specifically to make that kind of communication possible. mayor giuliani's failure to do anything about the primitive fire department radios meant that on 9/11 fire chiefs had no idea that police helicopters were predicting the collapse of both towers long before they fell. the 9/11 commission concluded that the "technical failure of fdny radios was a contributing

factor of the many firefighter fatalities in the north tower." despite the painful truth of these details, which showed rudy giuliani to have been an ego-driven incompetent in dealing with the threat of terrorism in new york city. as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, most of the media will continue to portray him as one of the heros of 9/11. know this, there is no more fraudulent public image in our politics than rudy giuliani, hero of 9/11. [ grandma ] why do relationships matter? [ grandpa ] relationships are the basis of everything. [ grandma ] relationships are life... if you don't have that thing that fills your heart

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the single biggest voting block in american politics is, obviously, the middle class. so why do our politicians ignore them? joining me now, arianna huffington, editor in chief of "the huffington post" and author of the best selling book "third world america, how our politicians are abandoning the middle class and betraying the american dream." thank you for joining us. >> thank you, lawrence. >> your book came out a year ago, and i'm just wondering how have politicians change, if in any way, their approach to the middle class since this book came out and you've been dealing with these issues?

>> well, actually lawrence, things are worse off. unemployment is a little lower, it's 9.1 as opposed to 9.6 when the book came out in hardback, but the numbers of unemployed and underemployed are higher, about 25 million people are now unemployed and underemployed, but beyond the numbers is the fact that this has been a wasted year when it comes to saving the middle class. not only have we done almost nothing, we've taken measures that are going to make it much harder to turn things around, and we've done things like extending the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, that are detrimental, and above all, the whole conversation has changed, so instead of focusing on jobs, over the last two years we've actually seen a decrease in the amount of time we've spent discussing the jobs crisis and the skyrocketing increase in the amount of time we spent discussing the deficit crisis. >> arianna, how does our politics miss them, i mean

there's nothing bigger and more obvious to go to as a rich source of votes than the middle class. why would our politicians choose not to address them? >> well, i think what has happened is that republicans at the moment, under the influence of the tea party, have decided the biggest crisis we're facing is the deficit, period. it doesn't matter how much data you produce that contradicts the decision, doesn't matter how many economies, including republican economies, come out and contradict that claim. that is the position, and unfortunately, democrats, starting with the president, have gone along with conceding the principle and then basically negotiating about the detail, trying to mitigate the damage to the middle class, but having already considered that the most important crisis we're facing is the deficit, and, you know, when you look how we acted around

hurricane irene, you see what is possible. you know, the president really has this speech written for when he gives his jobs speech after labor day. he can let his speech writer take a vacation and just give the same speech that he gave around hurricane irene about the fact that we are going to be there for you in your time of need. we're going to act effectively and quickly, all the things that were not done around jobs are the things he took credit for when it came to dealing with the hurricane. >> arianna, do we end up intentionally or not in our politics addressing to the middle class by appealing them on issues like let's get the pro-choice voters or let's get the anti-abortion voters or let's get the anti-immigration voters, let's go after them, but they aren't actually, as politicians, going in to address the real economic conditions and the real life issues of the middle class. >> yes, and what is staggering

is that this is an area where what is right for the country, intersects with what is good for the politicians self-interest, what is good for the reelection prospects. after all, the greatest vulnerability for the president is the unemployment rate, and the impact this is having on the middle class, and beyond unemployment, of course, is foreclosures. it's the way that middle class families have been affected by the ongoing housing crisis, which once again, is not really part of the national conversation the way it should be. >> yeah, it seems like we never came out with the real national plan to address what happened in the housing crisis, so even if you are still employed, your insecurity level can be astronomically high under a