that s why you see things like we want a higher minimum wage. that s not a great response but it is a response to a real economic problem. they re feeling the pinch. the middle class is getting hurt by this. and we don t have as many jobs as we had before the recession. we might look at november and say this is great. we re nowhere close to where we need to be. even at this pace, we re more than a year from being at 6%. that s if all the discouraged workers don t come back will. the american people don t seem to have the most confidence in the country. look at this recent cnn poll. how thing are going in the country today. well, 41%. badly, 59%. what makes it look is when you look at the trend, thing are going badly in the country. september was 53%. april, 50%. increasingly people think things are going badly. i know that s a complex question. not just about the economy and jobs. but that s really what it is
to happen if america supports them. the problem he says is that while he favors a tactical military strike, it isn t going to provide the training, the arms that they need to fight al qaeda. so weirdly enough, there s almost no one who supports the president purely on the grounds which he is asking congress to support him on. and assad is trying to play at the nagging concerns that americans have about what we re being told and what we re not being told by the president. and you ve got this modern opposition in the middle that has nothing, you know. and they re really squeezed between assad and these al qaeda forces at the moment and whether they re ever going to get the help they kneneed is a big question. complex question for the congress. it is. judy, thank you very much. see you later. so coming up, switching gears here for a moment, dennis rodman is spending time with his favorite dictator over the
september 11th. obviously. i was surprised, frankly, it appeared that he was surprised by the question, denis mcdonough. and i can t imagine, richard fowler, why he would be surprised by the question. and there s a feeling that, you know, pursuing this is annoying, that it shouldn t be brought up and we should all be quiet and let the administration take cabe of it. if we all wake up tomorrow morning and they found these guys and brought them in everybody will be happy that they were pursuing it. the feeling i think that up sets people is they don t think that s the case, they think it s been dropped, richard. i think the reason why the chief of staff was surprised had less to do with the question and more to do with the fact that he s reaching from conservatives on the hill that they re willing to make this big witch hunt about it, going to have all of these hearings and do anything possible to bring this president down on this one particular issue. i think the president and
that, but i want to actually stick to the main question here which is, why would denis mcdonough be pieced that by question? it s a very legitimate question, richard. i think what the chief of staff was trying to say is clearly that this president has shown before that he will track down every lead until he gets his man. we saw that when he went after osama bin laden, when he went after a lot of top al qaeda officials, drone attacks or cia covert operations. this president has been a president that follows down every lead. i have 100% trust in this president and our fbi to get to the bottom of this and solve what happened in benghazi and bring those individuals to justi justice. it doesn t make any sense. the guy responsible is being interviewed by the new york times. why can t we just have a member of our cia dress up like a western reporter and osama bin laden was interviewed by barbara walters. the president went after him and when the president got him, that s the point.
dump chemical weapons would be a, quote, important step, doug. this does provide, potentially, an out for a very, you know, intransent in congress and people on the issue and gives you time. have to verify that this is actually done. it provides a lot of convenience in many ways. it does. now, the real issue is, of course, verification on something like this. but it is a way out. dan is absolutely right. there appears to be two tracks doi going in washington which leads you who is making the decisions and b who is in control. bottom line, no reason the military option has to be taken off the table to pursue the diplomatic option as secretary clinton suggested. it just is a question of coming up with a credible system of verifying what the syrians may well undertake and what the russians floated. just putting this all together, you know, john kerry kind of went to this idea of, oh, it would never happen