now lawmakers are trying to change that. it s our 10:30 talker. we start this hour with the weather. we are all hoping for a break from this oppressive heat. well, sorry, not today. i hate to see all that red on these maps we re about to show you, but those are the heat warnings. and as you can see, it is going to be pretty bad today. the record triple-digit temperatures are being blamed for at least five deaths. and don t forget about the 350,000 people still without power after storms tore through the atlantic states last week. it has been a week with no power and no air conditioning, but in many of those places, cooling centers have opened up to help try to cool people down. now to afghanistan and a commitment from the united states. secretary of state hillary clinton spelled out the partnership that will take the two countries beyond the planned troop withdrawal in 2014. afghanistan is now designated a major non-nato ally. that means the u.s. will keep up defense, s
just to get the economy back on track, but to really rebuild the middle class in this country, and that s what the president s focused on, and that s what you ll hear him talking about on the campaign trail. jen, i know your time is short. thank you for spending some time with us here while you re traveling with the president. thank you! great. my pleasure! absolutely. we will be back with more from our panel now that we ve heard from the president, from his campaign, and we ll also be talking about some of the news govern romney has made recently in talking about health care. stay with us. i m a marathon runner,
american workers build better products than anybody else. so as long as we re competing on a fair playing field instead of an unfair playing field, we ll do just fine, but we re going to make sure that competition is fair. that s what i believe. that s part of our vision for america. but that s not all that it takes to rebuild this economy. i m running to make sure that america once again leads the world in educating our kids and trainingç our workers. our tuition tax credit has saved millions of families thousands of dollars each, and now i want to extend it. we won the fight in congress to stop congress from letting student loans double. [ cheers and applause ] and now we re working with colleges and universities to start bringing tuition costs down. i want our schools to hire and
that was president obama just wrapping up remarks in ohio, hosting the first town hall on his betting on america bus tour. i m ari melver in for alex wagner today. co-host of the cycle is steve core knackie, nbc political analyst richard wolffe, patricia murphy of citizen jane politics and contributor to the daily beast and radio host, kurt anderson. great to have you all with us today. richard wolffe, first, what did we hear from the president in those remarks and were you surprised that he seems to have moved well beyond his victory in health care? well, look, first of all, what we heard is a guy who is good at campaigning, who enjoys campaigning, who thrives in it. he s outside washington, he s got rid of the suit and he s feeding off the crowds and the crowd s energy there. you know, what we expected was that he would set up this contrast between his position on the auto industry and
what s going on in this election is bigger than just a choice between two candidates or between two parties. it s about two fundamentally different visions of where we go as a country. see, i believe in an america where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, you can make it if you try. we ve never been a country that we ve never been a country looking for handouts. we re a nation of strivers and risk-takers and çentrepreneurs worke workers. but what we ask for is that hard work pays off, that