Guests: Cliff Schecter, Ana Marie Cox, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Lt. Martin
Fullam, Denis Hughes, Evan Spiridellis, Gregg Spiridellis
LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, HOST: Senator John McCain was one of the original sponsors of the DREAM Act. This weekend, he voted no. McCain once appeared to support repealing “don‘t ask, don‘t tell.” This weekend, he voted no.
Joe Klein of “TIME” magazine who knows him well explains why with one word, “bitter.”
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC HOST: I‘m curious about John McCain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn‘t seem like the kind of McCain that we‘ve seen in some years past.
O‘DONNELL (voice-over): The original maverick has left the Senate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The original mavericks.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He hasn‘t been a maverick. He‘s been a side kick.
O‘DONNELL: Senator John McCain, once famous for bipartisan compromise, even in his concession speech on election night—
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN ®, ARIZONA: Find the necessary compromises.
O‘DONNELL: -- is now working the Republican Party line, blocking, obstructing, and contradicting John McCain.
MADDOW: John McCain, for example, against the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans. John McCain, on the other hand, totally for those very same tax cuts.
O‘DONNELL: On the DREAM Act.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We‘ve been fasting outside of John McCain‘s office here in Phoenix for the past 19 days. We were outside of his office watching C-Span online.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was the sound of a dream dying.
O‘DONNELL: After famously saying he‘d support repeal of “don‘t ask, don‘t tell”—
MCCAIN: We ought to consider seriously changing it.
O‘DONNELL: -- he becomes its loudest opponent.
LADY GAGA, POP SINGER: Oppose John McCain‘s shameless filibuster.
O‘DONNELL: And finds a way to blame gays and lesbians for wounded soldiers.
MCCAIN: We are doing great damage, harm the battle effectiveness which is so vital to the support, to the survival of our young men and women in military.
MEGHAN MCCAIN, SEN. MCCAIN‘S DAUGHTER: I think my father will filibuster, probably. I think that this will probably pass.
O‘DONNELL: And the former maverick has even surprised his colleagues by openly turning the Senate floor into a game.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For those not understanding what just happened, did we just win?
MCCAIN: We stood up and said, enough. Stop.
O‘DONNELL: In the final days of the 111th Congress, Democrats are still looking for bipartisan success.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Still hope for the 9/11 health bill.
MITCHELL: Now, the goal is to ratify START nuclear arms treaty.
JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: With John McCain, there are substantive criticisms.
O‘DONNELL: But will have to bypass McCain.
MCCAIN: Next January 5th, we will all love one another and kumbayah, I don‘t think so. Are we stricken with amnesia? What is going on here?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O‘DONNELL: Good evening from Los Angeles. I‘m Lawrence O‘Donnell.
President Obama is expected to sign the repeal of “don‘t ask, don‘t tell” into law on Wednesday, which passed the Senate on Saturday by a vote of 65 to 31 voting “nay.” In fact, leading the opposition, despite an endorsement of repeal by Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs chair, Mike Mullen, was former self-proclaimed maverick, Senator John McCain, who found no need for facts in his argument.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCAIN: I don‘t think that it won‘t be at great cost. Harm the battle effectiveness, which is so vital to the support, to the survival of our young men and women in the military.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: In 2006, McCain said that he would seriously consider the repeal of the ban on openly gay members of the military if their leadership recommended it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCAIN: The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, “Senator, we ought to change the policy,” then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it, because those leaders of the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: It wasn‘t the first time McCain has turned on McCain. There was John McCain in 1989 dragged in front of the Senate Ethics Committee for his part in the Keating Five fund-raising scandal—who then became John McCain the hero of campaign finance reform—who this year became the John McCain strangely at peace with the Supreme Court‘s decision to remove limits on political advertising.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCAIN: The Supreme Court has spoken. I respect their decision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Again and again on immigration, on the Bush tax cuts, on climate change, the importance of bipartisanship, even on whether he‘s a maverick or not, McCain has turned on himself and left the rest of us to wonder, what‘s up with John McCain?
Joining me now are: Cliff Schecter, author of “The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don‘t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn‘t”; and Ana Marie Cox, Washington correspondent for “GQ” magazine.
So, Cliff, who is the real John McCain? Or should I say, is there a real John McCain or has he always just been a politician who makes convenient self-serving choices?
CLIFF SCHECTER, AUTHOR, “THE REAL MCCAIN”: Well, thanks for having me here, Lawrence. Yes, that‘s what he‘s been. Basically, he‘s been someone, and I tried to argue in my book “The Real McCain” in 2008 that he‘s someone who really often made decisions and legislated based on anger and vindictiveness.
I mean, lately, if you see him walking around, he‘s so angry, he‘s so bitter, I sometimes feel like, you know, he‘s doing performance art for what an aneurysm looks like. You know, he‘s so over the top.
And so, I look at it—you know, when I brought my book I look back to what happened in 2000 when everybody was giving him credit for being a moderate. And the truth was he was so angry at the Bush team for beating him that he purposely went and disagreed on taxes and Patient‘s Bill of Rights and the environment and things—you know, in the past, they agreed with him upon.
And you‘re looking at the same thing here. I kind of warned in my book that if he lost Obama, he was going to become sort of a nasty, angry man because he didn‘t believe Obama was a guy better than him, that should have been in the same room as him. And so, you just see that playing out all the time. And so, I think, that‘s your answer to who the real McCain is. He‘s somebody much more motivated sadly by this vindictiveness and anger than someone by the greater angels which many people thought.
O‘DONNELL: Anna Marie, let‘s consider his maverick history. Last April, he said, “I never considered myself a maverick. I considered myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”
And here‘s how he described himself on the campaign trail in 2008.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCAIN: What maverick really means, what this team of maverick really means is we understand who we work for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Ana Marie, is he not hip to the whole videotape thing? Like we actually have this stuff and we can play it and we can put it right beside the statement --
(CROSSTALK)
ANNA MARIE COX, GQ MAGAZINE: The pictures on the TV, there are these little people inside there. Who put me inside the little machine?
I don‘t want to make fun of him too much. I‘m probably more sympathetic to him than Cliff is. But the operative word is probably “bitter” more than amnesiac. I think he tends to remember the slides that are done to him. And I think that—you know, he‘s never changed his mind on issue when it comes to things like climate change, and until recently, immigration, and on some things like normalization of relationships with Vietnam. He‘s never changed his mind on an issue because people have confronted him directly on it.
He‘s always changed his mind over time in kind of a drip, drip kind of way because people around him have influenced him. The kind of people who can make those arguments to him have sort of disappeared. And so, now, when he‘s confronted with direct arguments and confronted by the same people who we used to think of as allies or at least co-mavericks, or at least people that he could across the aisle to join, I think he just digs his heels in deeper, and that‘s where you get things like his behavior on “don‘t ask, don‘t tell,” and on the DREAM Act, and, in fact, on the START Treaty, which you have covered and he hasn‘t voted on yet, he‘s really behaving in an un-McCain-like, or at least un-McCain that we thought we knew kind of way.
O‘DONNELL: Cliff, Joe Klein has really turned on John McCain. Joe Klein is a very close student of politicians, their character. He gets up close, he writes close, gets in deep.
And he has said in his most recent piece on McCain, he‘s called him a flagrantly cynical and cowardly politician. And Joe also says, “I used to know a different John McCain, the guy who proposed comprehensive immigration reform with Ted Kennedy.”
Was there really—it seems like what I‘m hearing from you, Cliff, is, no, no, you didn‘t know a different John McCain. He was fooling you.
SCHECTER: Yes. I mean, with all respect to Joe Klein, I think he‘s -
the way he looks at him now is entirely correct. He‘s bitter. But he wasn‘t a different John McCain. He just was in a different phase. He seems to go through these different phases.
People need to remember, and I‘ll jump off what Ana Marie was saying, which is, you know, sometimes you don‘t notice he switches over time. But when he‘s in a battle, it‘s a crusade. It‘s a fight to the end and it‘s personal. And so, if he‘s standing on the same side—let‘s say it‘s campaign finance reform or immigration, he‘s busy calling the other side unspeakable names, and saying how stupid they are and questioning their, you know, their very morality.
And so, when he suddenly makes it to the other side, it‘s not like he‘s a guy that sort of was, you know, in the middle and thought something somewhat. He seems to always have to be on that side, always have to be in a fight in leading against somebody. And that‘s where the anger and bitterness comes out.
And so, I think when—you know, what Joe is talking about is back in the early 2000s when he seems like he was working well, you know, co-sponsored Patient Bill of Rights with, you know, John Edwards and Ted Kennedy, co-sponsored, I think to close the gun show loophole with Joe Lieberman, he was doing a lot of that kind of stuff. But there were ulterior motives. I mean, he was trying to jab at President Bush. Until he decided he may want to run for president again, that behavior didn‘t change.
O‘DONNELL: And Ana Marie, wasn‘t there historically an ulterior motive to his campaign finance reform crusade since this was a senator who -- as a senator, first came to national attention in the biggest fundraising scandal of his day, the Keating Five scandal. He was in front of the ethics committee, had to defend himself on that. And then he does an immediate turn out of that into—gee, what cause am I going to champion now? Ah, campaign finance reform.
Wasn‘t that all about just cleaning his hands from the scandal he was in?
COX: Let‘s say—let‘s say ulterior motives are not always a bad thing. I mean, I think that it was a correct thing to do to like become a champion—a campaign finance champion after the Keating—after the Keating Five scandal.
I mean, look—I mean, I don‘t think—I think some of the things we‘re talking about, some of the changes of heart he‘s had haven‘t necessarily been for the wrong reasons. I think the thing that problem here with McCain, is that, and I guess I just have a slightly more sympathetic view than Cliff is, but I think that he does—he does fight from the gut. Sometimes, he happens to land on the right side of things or the side you and I may agree with.
And whatever side he‘s on, though, he doesn‘t really digs in his heels. And there‘s no such thing as a passive sort of, you know, partisan on his part. I mean, I think that—
SCHECTER: Exactly.
COX: -- when it comes to like “don‘t ask, don‘t tell,” when he went for years saying he would take the word of the leadership in the military on this. I interviewed him on my radio show in 2009, he said just the same thing. In fact, in 2009, he said he would be probably further ahead than Obama would be on the very same subject in terms of the doing the research.
When it comes right down to it, he has to be the leader on it. When he hasn‘t made up his mind, he‘ll go to wherever his latest thought was. And on “don‘t ask, don‘t tell,” it was against repeal.
O‘DONNELL: Cliff Schecter and Ana Marie Cox, thank you very much for your insights tonight.
SCHECTER: Thanks so much, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: President Obama is—President Obama is slowly chalking up one legislative win after another in the lame duck session of Congress.
Up next: Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich tells us if the president has compromised too much.
And later, is help finally on the way for the first responder heroes of September 11th? After a Republican filibuster stopped the bill, Democrats think they might still find a way of passing health care assistance for the rescue workers.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Coming up: President Obama and liberal Democrats—what do they think about what the president that has done during the lame duck session of Congress? Congressman Dennis Kucinich joins us.
And my report on your kindness and generosity to MSNBC‘s joint effort with UNICEF to help students in Africa. How many desks have you donated to our kids in need of desks program? Already more than I could ever have hoped.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Going into this lame duck session, it looked as if President Obama would be fighting an uphill battle with just about everyone, with no end in sight. Republicans had a list of demands and the incoming speaker of the House refused to use the word “compromise.” Then two things happened. Congress passed both the president‘s tax deal with Republicans and the repeal of “don‘t ask, don‘t tell.”
Some liberals felt abandoned by the president in his tax compromise with Republicans. So, where did that leave Congress‘s most clear and consistent liberal voice?
Joining me now: Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Congressman, how did you vote on the Obama tax compromise and why?
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: I voted for it. But I didn‘t vote for it because it was a, quote, “tax compromise.” Unemployment is very high in my district in Cleveland. And I couldn‘t go back to my district and look at all these people who are trying to survive, not get more tax breaks so they can put more money away, but living paycheck to paycheck before they lost their jobs. And then once having lost their jobs, they live on unemployment compensation.
How can you tell people, well, you know, the rich are getting richer with this deal but, you know, we‘ll take care of your problem later on after we fight that battle? No, I had to vote to make sure that people struggling to survive had a means to survive for the next year and more.
O‘DONNELL: There were a lot of out complaints out of your caucus, as you know. You were in the room with them.
KUCINICH: You could say that.
O‘DONNELL: And publicly members saying that Obama got a bad deal, Obama‘s a bad negotiator, he‘s weak, he could have hung in there and gotten a better deal. Do you see in retrospect a route to a better deal that could have been—that you could have been led to a better deal either through congressional leadership or the president?
KUCINICH: I don‘t know. I have to tell you, since I wasn‘t part of those negotiations, it‘s tough for me to be able to give you an insight. I will tell you this, though—that there are so many moving pieces that were in this particular deal, somebody obviously thought that the concerns of people like myself would have to be addressed by dealing with the unemployment compensation, then how do you balance that against return to the Bush tax cuts.
You know, this calculus that resulted in shaping this was calculated, I think, on the fact that there‘s a Republican majority that will be governing from the House of Representatives in 2011 that the Senate remains a tempestuous place to do business.
And I think the president probably thought that was the best he could get.
Now, we should not discount that the president‘s style was to try to build consensus. The public at times looks for something a little bit more feisty. But what we have is a president who, I think, sincerely believes this the best deal he could get, even though there are those who believe that that feel it maybe could have been negotiated in a different way.
O‘DONNELL: Now, in the passage of “don‘t ask, don‘t tell” in the Senate, I think there‘s an important lesson in the politics of governing, which in my view includes the very simple fact that the most important vote is the next vote, is what‘s coming up next and who is going to be with you next.
Joe Lieberman, who voted against—voted with the Republicans on the tax vote in the Senate and has been driving liberals crazy for years now was the champion and the leader in the Senate of getting “don‘t ask, don‘t tell” repealed. Is there a lesson in that for the way Democrats should regard each other when they disagree, meaning is one disagreement on one vote worth attacking a Democrat and trying to bring them down in their re-election campaign, or do you wait it out and see the full record that senator or congressman turns in?
KUCINICH: You—this discussion that you‘re starting here is very important because if I learned anything from this last vote, it‘s to have compassion for my fellow members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who took positions on both sides of the issue. And we have to be careful in judging each other based on a single vote. And this is a very difficult vote, the one the—that combined all these tax elements plus unemployment compensation. And on “don‘t ask, don‘t tell,” it is noteworthy that Senator Lieberman led the way in the Senate.
I think we always—we have to be very careful about labels in Washington. Just when you think you have someone labeled, something will come up that will cause you to think again. I think what‘s called for is an overall assessment based on somebody‘s career, not just a single vote. Although—although some of us, you know, a single vote can make our career, there‘s no question about it.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman, as you know, there was tremendous disappointment in Barack Obama for going along with this deal on extending the top tax brackets, the Bush rates. There was an op-ed piece in “The Washington Post” by Michael Lerner, who said that the real way to save the Obama presidency is to challenge him in a 2012 Democratic primary to keep him honest in effect to Democratic Party ideals.
One of the candidates that this op-ed piece suggests as a possible primary challenger to Barack Obama is Dennis Kucinich. You‘ve been in the last two Democratic presidential primary runs.
Do you agree with this concept that the incumbent Democratic president should be challenged in the primary in order to get him closer to Democratic ideals? And is it something you should consider?
KUCINICH: Well, Rabbi Lerner is someone who ought to be respected for his insights. I‘m not a candidate nor will I be.
I think that we have to be very careful, though, about keeping the debate going about the underlying issues of the tremendous acceleration of wealth upward in our society, about the role that war that continues to play in our daily lives, when it‘s so obvious that the manifest reasons for the war were based on falsehoods or continue to be based on misperceptions of the ability to conquer Afghanistan. We have to look at issues like trade, and how is it that Americans end up being suckers of the world in the name of free trade. We have to look at the role of our monetary system.
These are things we can inject and project into a debate without waiting for a presidential campaign. So, I expect to be involved in the debate, but not as a candidate.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the liberal voice of the House of Representatives—thank you very much for making news tonight and announcing your nonpresidential candidacy here on THE LAST WORD.
(LAUGHTER)
KUCINICH: Good to see you.
O‘DONNELL: Thank you, Congressman.
Coming up: Haley Barbour says his recollection of segregation is that it wasn‘t all that bad. He gets tonight‘s “Rewrite.”
And up next: our effort on THE LAST WORD to get school kids up off the floor in Malawi and onto chairs and desks. It‘s called KIND, Kids In Need of Desks. And the response from our viewing audience has been more than kind. Much more.
And update—next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Last Thursday night on this program, I announced this show‘s unique partnership with UNICEF to create the KIND Fund, Kids In Need of Desks.
You can go to our blog, lastwordesk.MSNBC.com to see my report of my trip to Malawi that led to this effort to get desks and chairs in classrooms where almost all children now sit on the floor. Often dirt floors all day.
Last Thursday was also Larry King‘s last show, which not surprisingly depressed the ratings of this network at 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. So, the appeal I made for your help in supplying school desks to African children was received by an unusually small audience for this show, but you‘d never know that by the overwhelming response.
I went to Malawi. And with the cash in my pocket was able to buy 30 desks to furnish one classroom. I was hoping that by sharing my experience with you, we could raise maybe $50,000 to buy more desks. Then I figure I would quietly continue my pet project of personally buying more desks, all of which are made in Malawi and therefore help economic development as well as education.
By the close of business Friday, less than 18 hours after our announcement, UNICEF had processed hundreds of thousands of dollars in your contributions. As of tonight, you have contributed over $600,000 to Kids In Need of Desks. That‘s 12,000 desks, which will seat at least 25,000 students, maybe a couple of hundred thousand students over the full life of those desks. That is enough desks to cover two of the four districts in Malawi that we have targeted for our initial delivery of desks.
You can continue to contribute at our Web site lastworddesks.MSNBC.com. You can get a desk as a last-minute Christmas present for friends who already have everything or at least have enough. UNICEF will send your gift recipient an email saying that a desk has been purchased in his or her name. A desk costs 48 dollars. It is designed to seat two children. So for only 24 dollars, you can get one child off the floor. But at the schools I visited in Malawi, three students easily fit at one of those desks.
I can never thank you enough for this moving demonstration of your generosity. And some of you have seen in my report the children of Malawi and how they will be more than grateful for your kindness.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: In the Spotlight tonight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has told the Democratic senators from New York that after the START Treaty vote the Senate will hold a vote on the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. The bill will provide care to workers who developed health issues stemming from the World Trade Center rescue and recovery effort.
Jon Stewart dedicated Thursday‘s “Daily Show” to criticizing Senate Republicans who filibustered the 7.4 billion dollar bill earlier this month because it was too expensive, and Democrats had yet to agree to extend the Bush tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. Stewart also attacked Senator Kyl‘s assertion that considering legislation around Christmas is disrespectful to Christians.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JON STEWART, “THE DAILY SHOW”: So basically what he‘s saying is I can‘t stay here and work between Christmas and New Year‘s. That would be disrespecting Christians and his family. Do you have any thoughts on that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It just goes to show the disconnect between those we elect to represent us and those that get out there and do the work. I‘m here to say that you won‘t find a single New York City firefighter who considers it a sign of disrespect to work in a New York City firehouse on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Since then, New York Senators Schumer and Gillibrand have reached out to Senate Republicans in hopes of getting the bill passed before Christmas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: I believe that we have more than enough votes that we need to pass this legislation. We have worked extremely close with a number of our Republican colleagues and have made a series of changes to the bill to accommodate their support.
We have reduced the size of the legislation. We‘ve reduced the cost by more than one billion dollars, from 7.4 billion to 6.2 billion dollars. And this will not diminish the health care that we‘re able to provide for these heroes.
We‘ve also changed the way we‘ll pay for this bill. Let me note that unlike a lot of things in Washington, this bill is fully paid for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: One of the beneficiaries of the 9/11 First Responders Bill will be the fire department of New York‘s Lieutenant Martin Fullam. For weeks, he sifted through the Ground Zero toxic debris in search of survivors of the attack. He soon developed a rare auto-immune disease that only effects one in 100,000 people. Six of the 8,000 first responders have developed the disease.
Joining me now, New York firefighter Lieutenant Martin Fullam. Also the president of the New York State AFL-CIO, Denis Hughes. Lieutenant Fullam, talk us through what this bill is about. Why is it that the New York City Fire Department has not been able, through its own normal health plan, to provide you with everything you need?
LT. MARTIN FULLAM, 9/11 FIRST RESPONDER: OK. First of all, thank you for having me here tonight. What the bill is going to provide for us—it‘s not just firefighters, but if you remember, it‘s also for police officers, for the people in the trains who worked down at that site, as well as even civilians and people who lived south of 14th street. The bill is going to be able to pay our medical bills, which is—it‘s our biggest expense.
For me, it‘s a tremendous amount of money. My first six weeks in the hospital, when I got six in 2005 for the first time, my bill was 320,000 dollars for six weeks in the hospital.
And as far as the New York City Fire Department, they see this as, you know, a national issue not a local issue. That‘s why they are looking for the federal government to pay for it. And all my bills are paid through other sources in the New York City Fire Department. Right now, I have Medicare. I have GHI. We have some money from the American Red Cross.
Every year, we have a fund that gets renewed through the federal government to help pay our bills. But we have no set way of paying my medical bills. I personally need this to live to pay my bills, pay my medical expenses, as well as other people. Our care is quite extensive. And the illnesses are far ranging, from lung diseases to cancers.
It‘s very serious. It effects at least 100,000 people.
O‘DONNELL: Dennis, that was my next question. How many people does it affect. Six billion dollars is a lot of money. When you talk about 8,000 first responders, it turns out it‘s a much larger group than that.
Dennis, let‘s listen to Senator Kyl on Fox News Sunday, who said that the bill is a lot of money. And he is, quote, skeptical about the bill.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JON KYL ®, ARIZONA: It‘s one thing to make an emotional appeal to say we need to care for somebody who did something good. It‘s another to do it in a sensible way. That‘s all we‘re asking for. You bring it up in a lame duck session, with no opportunity to amend it, and you‘re probably going to make bad legislation.
All of this could have been done earlier, I might add.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Denis, can you address Senator Kyl‘s concerns?
DENIS HUGHES, NEW YORK ACLU: Yes, I can.
O‘DONNELL: Exactly how this bill would work, how it was developed.
This bill was not developed in December of 2010.
HUGHES: You know, we‘ve been trying to get this passed for about seven years now, since it started in the House. I want to point out to the senator that it started with in the Senate, conversations with Hillary Clinton in about 2007, 2006, 2007. There‘s been 22 hearings -- 22 hearings in the Senate.
There‘s been ample changes in the bill was—that anyone could have participated in. But the bill has shrunk in size, at Senator Gillibrand said. It had—we looked at it from many different ways. We changed the way it is paid for, so that it would be more acceptable to the Senate.
So I really don‘t understand the senator‘s—I guess he just wasn‘t paying attention through most of this.
I also want to say that we want his vote, because all Americans benefit from taking care of those who were injured, like my friend Marty Fullam, on September 11th, dealing with that tragedy.
O‘DONNELL: Lieutenant Fullam, do you encounter any doubt among these Republicans and others that maybe some of these illnesses are not related to that? Maybe some of these illnesses were going to occur anyway? Is that part of what‘s going on here?
FULLAM: I could imagine there are illnesses that—it‘s such a large group of people. But I know as far as the New York City Fire Department is concerned, all our time is documented. Our illnesses are all documented. Anything—anybody wants to come and scrutinize it is more than welcome to. They can take to I guess Doctor Pizzant (ph) from the New York City Fire Department, who oversees all this.
But I think the numbers would show otherwise, you know, statistics.
HUGHES: If I can, there‘s 22 classifications, I believe, of direct respiratory and esophageal problems that are set up. There‘s ways of verifying exactly who was there, what the effects were. We went out of our way to make sure that it did take care of those who needed the help directly.
There are safeguards on this bill that, if they read it through, they would understand that this is a very, very serious attempt at trying to make sure that compensation only goes to those who need it. You have to remember, this has taken seven years to put in place. It‘s not something that we‘ve done over the weekend.
I want to say this, if I can really quickly, time is our enemy here. After the START Treaty, it goes to the full Senate. It passes. I have assurance from Senator Schumer and Gillibrand that it will, because they worked this very hard. Then it has to go back to the House. If the House leaves before it‘s done in the Senate, or other technical roadblocks are put in place, we could lose this.
Time is really our enemy. And we have to get it done before the end of the session.
O‘DONNELL: Lieutenant Fullam, I know you‘re not healthy enough to do this. If you could go down to Washington and chase a senator in the hallway on the way to a vote, and had a few seconds to get a word in, if you could talk to a Republican opponent of this bill, what would be the one thing you would want to say?
FULLAM: I would just say, we need your help. It‘s a matter of pride that the United States pays for this and helps us out. We were there when they needed us. We never questioned it. And we never will, as far as New York City Fire Department is concerned. We had two occupied buildings that day that were in trouble. We weren‘t going to leave them, and we weren‘t going to leave the people, the citizens of New York, the citizens of the United States.
And to us, it‘s a matter of pride that our government pays for this.
It was a national attack. OK.
O‘DONNELL: Thank you both for your time, Lieutenant Martin Fullam, formerly of the New York City Fire Department, and Denis Hughes of the AFL-CIO. Thank you both.
HUGHES: Thank you, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: In tonight‘s Rewrite, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is a late entry in the contest for stupidest, most career killing statement of the year.
Looking back at 2010, jib-jab style. You might have seen the video, but we‘ll talk to the creators.
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O‘DONNELL: Time for tonight‘s Rewrite. Many breathtakingly incompetent political pundits have considered Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour to be a front-runner for the Republican party‘s presidential nomination in 2012. Accordingly, Governor Barbour was featured in a lengthy profile for the conservative magazine “The Weekly Standard,” where in one interview he managed to kill all hope of a presidential bid.
The problem, answers the governor gave when asked about growing up in Mississippi during segregation. In particular, Governor Barbour praised the actions of the pro segregation group the White Citizens Council. Quote, “you heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north, they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from, it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City, they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. We didn‘t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
The governor‘s pathetic attempt to rewrite Mississippi history is most authoritatively corrected by Professor Neil McMillen of the University of Southern Mississippi, who took on the subject of the Citizens Council in Yazoo City in his book “the Citizens‘ council, Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction.”
“Predictably, the boycott, as an instrument of repression found most effective employment in a cotton center such as Yazoo City, Mississippi, the self-styled gateway to the delta. The local Citizens‘ Council there was one of the state‘s oldest and largest.”
Professor McMillen goes on to describe how the Citizens Council there used tactics like taking out an ad in the “Yazoo City Herald,” naming the names of anyone who dared to sign an NAACP desegregation petition.
Then there‘s this, a newsletter from the Citizens Council from August of 1956. It was obtained from the University of Tennessee by “Talking Points Memo.” It includes a political cartoon featuring a black crows chirping for some white birds to mix. Both white birds have the looks of horror on their faces.
But in his “Weekly Standard” interview, Governor Barbour commented on the civil rights battle in his hometown of Yazoo City, saying, “I just don‘t remember it as being that bad.”
Not that bad. Governor, when you were a teenager and right through your college years, dozens of people were murdered in your state. Murdered by police, murdered by Klansmen, murdered by police who were also Klansmen. For what? For trying to end segregation, the thing you remember as not that bad.
If you are foolish enough to run for president, you will spend your short, hopeless, primary campaign trying to Rewrite that statement. And tonight you will get no Rewrite help from me.
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O‘DONNELL: Banks collapsing, the threat of a nuclear Iran, huge deficits, a crisis on the Korean peninsula, the BP oil spill and gridlock on Capitol Hill; those are just a few of the things that went wrong this year. The Obama administration is hoping we forget some of these things. The guys at Jib-Jab.com are helping us remember.
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O‘DONNELL: Joining me now, the guys behind all the Jib-Jab magic, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis. Greg, do you think the president really wants a cigarette that bad? Is that what it all comes down to?
GREGG SPIRIDELLIS, JIBJAB.COM: I think so, yeah. If I had that year I would want a cigarette and I don‘t smoke. My guess is, yes, he wants a cigarette.
O‘DONNELL: Evan, you have two minutes—you used two minutes to summarize the entire year. It must be tough. There must have been ideas, some darlings that you really wanted to have in there that you couldn‘t squeeze into the two minutes. If you had two minutes and 30 seconds, what other items would you have seen in there that you would have loved to squeeze in.
EVAN SPIRIDELLIS, JIBJAB.COM: That‘s a great question. I think the real question was once we decided to look at the year from Obama‘s point of view, we lost all of the pop culture references. We lost everything that didn‘t have to do with American politics. And that‘s always disappointing.
But giving it Obama and Joe Biden‘s POV really helped us out, I think.
O‘DONNELL: And speaking of Joe Biden, he‘s the only one who gets an actual quoted line in the whole piece. He gets the line of the year, isn‘t it? Big something deal, that was an easy one to pick, was not it?
G. SPIRIDELLIS: Absolutely. That was kind of the launching off point that gave us lots of opportunities for Joe to weigh in on things with a little bit of a foul mouth that he didn‘t really weigh in on with a foul mouth during the course of the year, but we thought was kind of funny.
O‘DONNELL: On Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell, I noticed you guys glided by that. You have to produce this before this week. So you couldn‘t tell exactly what the outcome was going to be on Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell. So is that the kind of thing that you sweat about a lot when you‘re trying to put this thing together? You‘re going to make a reference to something you don‘t know what the outcome is yet?
E. SPIRIDELLIS: Absolutely. I think we just got lucky on that one. We picked stories to put in this thing that kind of—that we feel are important enough. That one really popped right before the release. Wikileaks as well was another one that we put in because it happened earlier in the year. But then about two weeks ago, it really exploded as a story.
So, you know, for us for comedy‘s sake, we got kind of lucky.
O‘DONNELL: Why do you limit it to two minutes? What are the time limitations you have to consider in putting one of these together?
G. SPIRIDELLIS: Well, typically it‘s dealing with Internet attention spans. We found—we‘ve been doing this now 11 years. We started Jib-Jab in ‘99. It just seems like two minutes is the sweet spot to get in, tell the jokes and get out with people still wanting more.
We try not to overstay our welcome. Two minutes gets multiple views.
Longer, they have had enough.
O‘DONNELL: Two minutes is also the sweet spot for having the entire thing played here on THE LAST WORD.
G. SPIRIDELLIS: That‘s why we did it.
O‘DONNELL: Thank you both for your time tonight. Thank you both.
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O‘DONNELL: That‘s THE LAST WORD from Los Angeles. You can follow the show on our webpage, TheLastWord.MSNBC.com. Once you‘re there, you can find all the information you need to donate to the Kind Fund, Kids In Need of Desks. Desks for schoolchildren in Africa. “COUNTDOWN” is up next.
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