Shouldve known better were saying that it would not matter if we failed to meet our obligations. I think that changed the discussion, as you see today, being able to fairly easily extend the debt limit. But i remain frustrated a lot of days that things that should be easy, that everybody can agree on are hard to do because of the super power of minorities here. Some already have said that you may have higher aspirations. Forget it. This is as high as it goes. 58 years old. When i decided to do this i thought, ok, do you know how much energy you have for this . And where do you go from here and what is the goal . Conrad did something that every day he would get to the office and he would write down what you hope to accomplish. And what is great about what kent did, if he did not write past the farm bill or talk to so and so today. He wrote, fix the debt. It was always the big things. Improve education in america. For me, this is a place where you can participate in that discussion in a
Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a democrat from north dakota. I want to begin with one of your campaign ads. You describe your mom as a janitor, your dad as someone who never finished high school and you are one of seven. What was that like . We did not think it was all that rare. Back then, a lot of people in the world war ii generation did not finish high school, who had to help out on the farm. An eighth grade education was considered the most you could ascribe to. For us, it was not odd. Our dad was always a Community Leader and so we never thought about education as being what you learned in school. Education was what you did and how you learned in real life. My dad was a Community Leader and my mom was the protector of the underadvantaged. The worst thing you could commit from my mother was to pick on another kid. When i was born, my mother had 4 kids and the oldest was 2 and they had no twins. We came in rapid succession. By the time my mom was done, my brother, my youngest brother, joe
The push for privatization of social security. That is the blueprint. That is not an agenda i can support. Nor the code7 Many Americans have ever been to. How would you describe yourself . It is stunningly beautiful. People who believe there is not anything they cannot accomplish. I say that is the biggest difference that i see. Here, if you tell somebody an idea and you think you can work, they will say, that is a good idea but that cannot happen. I do not think that will happen. In north dakota, if you have a good idea and a lot of enthusiasm behind it, it seems manageable. We can get it done. You are sitting at the coffee table with democrats and republicans, Green Bay Packers fans, lutherans and catholics, they may not agree on the issues of the day, but they figure out how to get the Christmas Lights up at christmas and the roof on the fire hall, and how to solve problems that people at the very heart of it depend on everyday. That is north dakota. A couple of pictures in this roo
Something that i think is an issue for journalists and citizens for the next 20 years, which is theres been a distinction in law and more generally between metadata and content, so some people have a thought that if government has access to your phone calls, thats really troubling. If they have access to metadata, meaning what numbers are calling what numbers, thats a completely different problem. We in the review group are uneasy with that distinction. That if the government has access to knowledge about whom you are calling and when and where, meaning the numbers, and it can figure out who those people are, thats a privacy problem. And that needs to be that distinction between metadata and data needs to be rethought. Certainly for policy purposes, the idea that government has, you know, your metadata, it can tell a ton about you. Whether its going to be used illicitly or, you know, to target people on the basis of illegitimate grounds, probably thats a risk and not a high one under c
Host do you think that argument is going over well with voters out there . Guest i dont really think it is. We have the highest place of unemployment in the country and the highest foreclosure rate in the country. President obama has not been good for nevada. All these statistics show that we are worse off now than we were four years ago. It is time to put somebody else in there. That is why you see the polls narrowing the closer we get to the election. Host we are taking your calls in this segment. This is former state Party Chairman dan burdish. Give us a call. We still have that line set up for nevada residents. Will go right now to joe in richmond, indiana, on the republican line. Caller thank you very much. Id appreciate you taking our calls i appreciate you taking our calls. Nevada definitely has a need as far as support and things like this. I truly feel president obama has had four years which we hear a lot of rhetoric but the truth is in the fruits of the person. We need to de