who s behind the string of disturbing pranks today, thursday, october 11th, 2012. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning. welcome to today on a thursday morning. i m savannah gurthrie. and i m matt lauer. the news out of colorado seems to be upsetting. police have yet to say if the body they found is that of 10-year-old jessica ridgeway. more on that story coming up. but we ll start this morning with politics. it s a big day in the presidential race. all eyes on danville, kentucky, for the vice presidential debate. paul ryan is looking to build on the romney s campaign momentum from last week s presidential debate while joe biden will try and slow it. straight ahead, our political team of david gregory and chuck todd weighs on what to expect. and we ll break down the results of our new presidential polls in the all-important battleground states of florida, ohio, and virginia. or as chuck calls them flova. also today, an investigation tied to
median means the middle point of any group. their worth is down much more than 39%. median income fell 8% from 2007 to 2010. and the value of american home equity has fallen 32% in three years. grim doesn t even begin to cover t. truth is that the awful economy is not entirely barack obama s fault. the recession began under president bush. however, this is big. mr. obama continues to believe that massive federal spending will turn the economy around. but there are no facts to back that up. things are stagnating and even getting worse in some places. thus, undecided voters must decide whether the president deserves to be reelected based once again on hope. or whether mitt romney wants to allow the private sector it drive the economy should be given a chance. to me, undecided voters will break for romney in the face of a very bad economic picture. now, i could be wrong. recently the factor has been very accurate in assessing the state of the union. last big mistake i made was h
to filibuster. are you a religious guy? i am. i am a methodist. i was a presbyterian before i got married. jane was a democrat when we got married. i was a republican, of course. so it s a pretty good trade for me. she became a republican, i became a methodist. she was a methodist. how about that. you can see his full interview with senator portman at foxnews.com/special report. budget committee machairman pau ryan. it is 48 after the top of the hour. she is not winning any mother of the year awards. up next the mom accused of bringing her very young daughter into the tanning booth. does it sound familiar to you? your mom coddles your brother? he can do nothing wrong? is it normal or not? dr. ablo is here. first let s check in with steve doocy to catch up on fox
or less, and finally, we will be reaching out to you again for another hearing because this issue has to rise in its visibility and not add or diminish. thank you. [applause] talking to reporters today senate minority leader mitch mcconnell proposed changes to medicare for being considered as part of an agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling. he also discussed the recent house special election in new york and a resolution on libya the congress might consider next week. this is 20 minutes. good morning everyone. a good place to start looking back at this is what have we done to move us into the direction of doing something about debt and deficits. we know there s a co-chairman of the president deficit-reduction commission said this is the most predictable crisis in american history. we know that admiral mullen has called it the biggest national security threat or debt, not some military adversaries. so what have we done to advance and to try to begin to do what we all k
risk we have seen democrats do this back in 1982, privatizing social security, cutting social security, that sort of thing. this is not a hard one to either attack/demagogue, depending on your perspective. i think it was probably a bad time for him to do it. reading from one of recur recent columns since this was first proposed, you wrote most voters want to see the federal budget balanced and spending cuts. sure, apple pie and all that. but they don t want social security, medicare or medicaid touched. and, oh, yes, they don t want taxes increased. house republicans are not just pushing the envelope, they re soaking it with lighter fluid and waving a match at it. you think that the bottom line politically for all of the praise for paul ryan, for coming out and at least tackling stuff that nobody else wanted to deal with is there is going to be a conflagration politically from it? i think there is a huge learning curve here for the american people. a lot of people seem to think