Page 38 - Cross Currents News Today

>> casey hunt, the president is taking a lot of heat from some democrats about putting chained cpi as a possibility within a larger agreement that would include revenues. is there any word from the white house that they may start to contemplate having dinners with democratic members of congress to keep them from going too far on that issue and keep the discussion going? >> there are some democrats who have expressed an interest in having -- hearing more from the white house on that. but you have...

You know this court so well. do you think that hes out of line? or do you think he may be on to something? >> well, i think -- i dont think the court is going to look at this as a b achinary decisio. depending on whether they breakdown on these procedural jurisdictional cases, both equal protection arguments but states rights arguments about the states role in defining marriage by congress through doma overrode so some of the justices might be more to the cross-currents in these cases. i think i...

Ever happened in the history of the federal government and all this? if it is as bad as everybody is saying it is, where is the urgency of meetings, where are the plans, wheres this? its been a weird way its been all rhetoric and no action. >> because it is not in fact as bad as hitting up against the debt limit and it is not as bad as what will come later in the month when the resolution that finances the federal government runs out and we might have an actual government shutdown. it is not the...

Economy is crawling along and needs more help from the government at least for now. >> its good to see you back. >> nice to see you. >> glad to see you again. >> thanks, coming up now, steve moore, a senior economics writer for the wall street journal. want your thoughts on this, steve. on the one hand youve got the payroll tax hikes that everybody suffers who pays taxes and youve got the gas prices that everybody is suffering from and got this unemployment rate, so on. on the other hand, weve b...

Im act which encouraged. howard is right, demographics are changing politics and as they change on immigration, they will change on climate and a number of areas i think the american people will demand senators and congressman find common ground a lot more effectively. were beginning to see that in the first three weeks of this session. >> let me say also senator and governor dean, the demographics will also change the debt debate. as steve rattner said, were stealing from the next generation. i...

Power outages. >> they found out, the co-op, that theyre related to you. >> lets not even disclose that publicly. >> youre just trying to tie a hurricane into your own problems. >> its called subterfuge. >> lets talk quickly about the election. there were a flurry of polls out this weekend. we had an ohio poll that showed it split. thats one of the first ones. we dont know if thats an outlier or if thats the future, if thats momentum. a virginia poll, "washington post" poll showed that the presi...

That looks like a ballot test and look at nevada. 50% approve of his job, 46% disapprove. you got to -- you get this feeling that we could just go with job approval rating. wherever the president is at 49 or 50 he probably carries that state and wherever hes below 49 itll be a total recount state if its sitting at 48 or if its lower than that hell end up losing it. >> it may very well be that and we also see his right direction of the nation numbers have picked up but then ben mitt romney used t...

Away from the moderate muslim brotherhood, which is part of the problem. there is this residual belief that there are americans still at war with islam and those who want to burn the koran. theres still this gulf of misunderstanding between what arabs actually believe the united states feels about the role of islam in the middle east and what actually is taking place. there are so many cross currents its almost impossible to put your finger on one or two things. the bottom line however, is that ...

Potential war in syria and also whats happening with iran. it does bear noting this morning that there are thousands of cross-currents in the middle east, thousands of cross-currents even in egypt. and it bears noting that mohamed morsi actually went to tehran and counseled them on syria, talking about the need to pressure the assad government to step down. >> so lets reveal the cover of "time" magazine. bobby gauche, you wrote the cover story. looking at many different facets of this, the arab ...

As an attempt at political boldness or aggression or whether this was something screwed up. whether this was a product of n inexperience day. what do you think? >> a couple of cross currents here. first of all, it came right after laura ingraham, rush limbaugh and others had criticized him for being too weak and not being aggressive enough. so i think they were looking for an opportunity. they certainly had to be defensive for having failed to mention afghanistan in their convention speech and t...