0 i'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "the situation room." thanks for watching. brook baldwin picks up our coverage right now. wolf, thank you. i'm brook baldwin. top of the hour, one day closer to the first of october. one day closer to a possible government shutdown, and now something approaching really civil war has broken out among conservatives about who hates obama care the most and who is most willing to shut the government down to keep it from working. here's an idea for you as far as what we have been seeing when we talk about disdain for obama care. this is an ad out today from a self-describing libertarian outreach group. take a listen. >> okay. so those folks don't like obama care much. no doubt about that. neither does house speaker john boehner. today, here he was. he announced he has scheduled yet another vote to try to quote/unquote defund the law. >> law is a train wreck. and it's going to raise costs. it's destroying american jobs and it must go. >> so that is speaker boehner. clearly, he doesn't like obama care. neither does republican ted cruz of texas. you see him there today. he has led the senate's push to defund obama care. but now you've got these house republicans suggesting that cruz's disdain for the health care law doesn't run deeply enough. i want you to take a look at this tweet. this is from our colleague, our chief congressional correspondent dana bash. this is what she got from a house republican leadership aid. wendy davis has more balls than ted cruz does. huh? suffice to say, that unnamed leadership aid isn't impressed with cruz's commitment to the anti-obama care fight. by the way, cruz just said he will do anything, anything, to try to shut down obama care. bottom line here, government shutdown looming, and to avoid it, you will eventually need some republicans working with some democrats. right now, the republicans are not working among themselves. so a lot of threads here. here to help us try to sort them out is chris. national correspondent for the national journal. so chris, nice to see you. boy, oh, boy. first, you have congress, right? we covered this some time ago. congress passes a law, in this case, obama care. then some of its members turn around and essentially try to sabotage it. again, i repeat, it's a law. certainly not the way that the founding fathers maybe drew this thing up. >> that's right, brooke. you're absolutely correct when you say it's a civil war here, because even though we just saw john boehner get up and say that this is a terrible law, it's unworkable and they need to take another shot at getting rid of it, this was not a fight he wanted to pick in the context of the fiscal showdown that we had. this is not a fight that house republican elders believe that they can win. now, the conservatives have pushed them into tying the defunding of obama care to the continuing funding of the government and to the debt limit and raising that so the government doesn't default on the bills it's already racked up. but all of washington understands that this is not something that the senate democrats are going to allow or frankly that president obama wants to see. so they're playing a losing hand here. >> but when you listen to the vit rheeal, to the words, and usually, harsh words used among republican. you know, quite a few have said that taking on obama care by threatening a shutdown is idiotic. one word. how can two sides, chris, within the same party view things so differe differently? >> that's been the story of this house that is controlled by republicans. you have a more -- it's a very conservative body all the way around, but you have conservatives, a handful of 24 to 30 conservatives who are just rib-rocked and believe that shutting down the government would be a good thing if it gets you rid of obama care. this is what house speaker boehner has to balance. he needs 217 votes. he needs republicans to get onboard, and he needs to show them he is serious about enacting their agenda. and by and large, the very, very conservative members of the house have been able to dictate the agenda and house speaker boehner has been unable to control them or to corral them into a more moderate, workable stance. >> believe it was my colleague dana bash who said he had to go before everyone, kicking and screaming, to talk about defunding obama care. chris, thank you so much. >> amid the threat of a government shutdown, i want to take a look at the big board. it's down just a tick, 42 points down right now. two hours to go in the trading day. this is one day after the new record high we saw on wall street. in other news here, three days after a shooting rampage, the washington navy yard getting back to routine operations today. and as workers there try to get back to normal life, more strange details are coming about about this gunman who terrorized these people. investigators found that 34-year-old aaron alexis had etched some phrases into his shotgun. phrases such as, quote, better off this way, and my elf weapon. authorities believe alexis entered the compound with his remington 870 disassembled and surveillance video shows alexis going into the bathroom and then walking out with a shotgun. also new, the fbi revealedads soon as he left the bathroom, he started shooting at random and he went floor to floor to floor. at some point, alexis reached the cubicle of a man by the name of john weaver who hid and later heard his coworker get shot. >> the reason that he did not see me was because he was so intent on shooting her. and i spoke with her this morning, and she told me the reason that was was because she was looking him dead in the eye when he shot her. >> so this is a coworker who was released last night and she's doing okay? >> she's doing very well. i mean, we spoke with each other this morning. and i was just -- just so glad that she was alive and that nothing else happened to her, and that she got out. and then when he shot her, she told me that the force of the blast was so strong, it drove her into the ground, and now she has a black eye. and bits of her scalp are scattered all over her cubicle. >> two other survivors hit with gunfire. a civilian and a police officer are still in the hospital, listed in fair condition. investigators think the officer's scott williams, is the one who shot alexis. >> and now to a quote from the pope from pope francis. i am a sinner, he says. this is how the pope describes himself in a 12,000-word interview just released a couple hours ago in 16 countries, granted pope francis is a jesuit. his interviewers were a jesuit priest and he was able to approve the interview, but still, what the pope reveals, according to religious observers we have been in contact with, this is one of the most honest profiles ever given by the leader of the catholic church. i want to go to father edward beck, and father beck, i think one of our belief blog correspondents put it best, talking about this. this is very unpope like behavior for a pope to sit for an interview like this. >> well, indeed. not only to sit for it but then to say what he said. not only does he put himself in the context of sinners, but he says the primary mission of the church is to heal the wounded, heal the sinner. he compared the church, he said it should be like a field hospital on a battlefield. and so by putting it in that context, he's saying that is your job. love and mercy. not condemnation, not judgment. love and mercy. and so of course this is embraced widely, this kind of message, by people who have felt so alienated from the church. >> speaking of folks who have felt alienated. let me read a quote when he talks about gays. a person once asked me in a provocative manner if i approved of homosehomosexuality. i said, tell me, when god looks at a gay person, does he indorse this person with love or condemn them? we must always consider the person. here we enter the mystery of the human being. what does he mean by that? it seems to me that is quite a different tone than we have heard from pontiffs past. >> you know what is remarkable about it, brooke? he's saying you cannot look at people as categories of sin. you have to take people where they are. he says over and over again in this interview, start from experience. don't theologize in the evans and tell everyone this is what you have to conform to. learn about their lives and say this is the church teaching. what does it mean for you? he's taking a individualistic approach talking about experience rather than coming down on somebody. by the way, he said the church, interestingly, the infallible church is not the pope of a hierarchy, it's all of the people together, that's who is infalliable. it's a different tone from the top down kind of language. >> a stunning interview. father beck, thank you. i know a lot of you want to read this. go to our belief blog. it's cnn.com/belief. many, many headlines made there. and now to this. in colorado, an eerie moment of music in a flood-ruined home. ♪ ♪ ♪ it's beautiful, isn't it? tears for fears. mad world. that's the name of the song, mad world. look at this, the mud, the muck. this colorado man who lost nearly everything went home, sat down at his piano, and played this haunting song. his peon oh, one of the few items not completely ruined by the flooding, the mudslide. this is mark. he is playing his piano. i tell you this video has gone viral. a moment of solace in the face of disaster. mark is joining me now from boulder, colorado. mark, i have to tell you, i saw the video this morning and i have not been able to get your piano playing out of my head. it's really buv. it gave me the chills. can you take me back to the moment where you're going back to your home and assessing anything and the decision to sit down and play music? >> well, you know, the home was just overtaken. and pretty much the destruction was hard to comprehend. so we had been moving about ten hours straight at that time. and had just been in reaction mode. and it was just sitting there. and it seemed like the right time. it was kind of a combination of exhaustion and just kind of wanting a little bit of a break from a little bit of the cay aus surrounding all of us. >> why this song, why "mad world." ? >> well, one, i can play it. another is, you know, it seemed to capture its whimsical, it's beautiful. it's sad. and it touches you in a lot of ways. i think that that's a pretty good explanation of this whole event because this is nature and nature is beautiful in a lot of ways. it's also incredibly destructive and sad, and people are suffering right now. and it's -- it's very appropriate, just given what people are going through right now. >> you live in beautiful boulder. but as you mentioned, people are suffering. how are you? how is your home? where are you living right now? >> we're doing relatively well. our room mates and i are doing really well comparatively. there are a lot of people in the state who are still struggling who may not be able to see their homes for over a month or who have lost loved ones so that's why it's great to raise awareness about it. people should be donating to red cross. there's a lot of people suffering worse off than us that could use the assistance. >> go to cnn.com/impact. we have all the information, as mark mentioned, the red cross. mark, keep playing. thank you so much, mark, for joining me. >> thanks. >> i should tell you that vice president joe biden and his wife jill will be going to colorado monday to tour the flood devastated areas. colorado's recent floods could cost homeowners to up $900 million in damages, expenses, and the thing is a lot of the homeowners, in fact, most of them, do not have flood insurance. nearly 18,000 homes have been damaged in colorado. coming up, it is safe to say senator john mccain not a fan of vladimir putin. the republican senator writing an op-ed in response to putin's letter to americans, and mccain doesn't hold back. that's next. plus, the vid yei'm about to show you, it's called crazy toledo cop. and what it shows is a police officer threatening, getting physical with a family, during a traffic stop. you will hear and see why it has so many people furious. woman: everyone in the nicu -- all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment. i wouldn't trade him for the world. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we're owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. if you're caring for a child with special needs, our innovative special care program offers strategies that can help. to help protect your eye health as you age... would you take it? 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