frank, we need a prediction from you about sunday. who is going to win? the germans or argentina? before this tournament started, i predicted argentina. and i wish i had the courage of my convictions. i do. you know, as a man, i ve got to stand by my prediction and say argentina will prevail because they have the greatest player in the world and extremely well-composed defense but you look at the way the germans played against brazil, i mean, it seems like this world cup has been a spectacular world cup. lots of goals. but the one thing that it was missing was a transcendent team that would be remembered for all-time. the way germany played against brazil, they seemed to have finally emerged as that transcendent team. but you re sticking by argentina? yeah, i got to. i got to stand by my convictions, man. i got two words for you. two words for you. occtane. it s going to be ugly. thank you, frank.
testosterone free zone but they get things done when they get together so that is something positive. by and large, is this congress better than it was 25 years ago, 30 years ago? not even close. it s not even close. i guess the biggest problem is a lot of the really qualified people, a lot of people we would want running our congress just refuse to go through the meat grinder any more, don t they? it s hard to get people to run but it s remarkable how many people still do want to run. and how many good people do get in. and, look. i am positive, as you know. i m became a pollyanna. i do think that most of the people there are there because they want to serve by their own lights and you can agree or disagree with them, but they are not bad people. they are just not really understanding what it takes for the country to operate and this notion that getting together is evil is a real problem. yes, absolutely. that is a real problem. frank, we brought you on
to deal with the crisis exploded on the senate floor. they are calling this a border security bill. it is just short of an all-out war tonight. the conflict is intensifying. israeli is striking by air. but gauza is paying a price. the threat to life in israeli is leading to a loss of life in gaza. hamas is undeterred. three long-range rockets were launched the site of the israeli. we told hamas to stop this rocket fire and now we are reacting. welcome back to morning joe. harold ford jr. and mike barnicle and jeremy peters are still with us. joining us from washington senior analyst cokie roberts and editor of the new public frank barr.
today to talk about, the editor of the new republic to talk about the world cup viewed by gazillions of people. for those of us who have been trying to get americans to be excited about soccer for a long time, yesterday was a huge, huge setback. i love the dutch. it was one of the most boring matches. it was a death march to the penalty kicks, wasn t it? to genuinely appreciate this game, you have to be able to appreciate the matches like this which are mind numbing on the surface but interesting subplots at the end. frank, you re boring me with your description of this boring match. like cokie, i m a pollyanna and trying to put a good gloss on that abysmal performance yesterday which was a genuine
don t do that. how are you? i apologize. good morning. make it the excuse that it was the baby. exactly. you have a picture for me? all right. we also have former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst steve rattner. you had trouble waking up this morning? i woke up too early this morning. oh, it was me? everybody has a different problem this morning. i could not wake up! in washington the new york times reporter jeremy peters who is always perfect and never has trouble waking up. i barely made it myself, actually. oh, really? there we go. we have got a lot to cover this morning. we have got all of our ducks in a row and joe is with us. we start with this new report actually on the front page of the new york times, new report says chinese hackers targeted a u.s. government data bank that stores personal information of thousands of americans applying for top security secret clearance. the information loojed to the office of personnel man