it s grown to all-time high with 47 million recipients in tess. ryan argued his cuts would be only a hig minor change. with our reforms food stamps would have brown by 250% in the last ten years instead of 270% like they did grow. of course, repealing obamacare is unlikely to get through the senate. but ryan s move could focus attention on the criticism and the skepticism about the plan. recent polls show more than half of people asked want to repeal all or part of obamacare. bret? bret: jim, thank you. wall street came off a record record by hitting another record. record high close today. dow finished ahead 50 to end up at just more than 14,447. the s&p 500 gaped five. th s&p 500 gained five. nasdaq up 8-1/2. thursday, president obama will meet with the non-profit organizing group. which has come under fire for
we reported the other night that when the folks at organizing for action put out their very first e-mail solicitation on a policy issue, they picked gun reform as the issue. they urged those millions of voters on their contact list to call their member of congress immediately, and to tell their member of congress to back the president s proposal on gun reform. and this call your congressman right now e-mail went out at 4:26 p.m. on a friday afternoon, on a friday afternoon specifically when neither the house nor the senate was in session. hello? hello? anybody there? if a voice mail falls in the empty capitol, maybe the light on the phone still blinks, at least? yeah. so that happened on friday. an inauspicious beginning for the president s mighty, mighty new political operation, for them launching their big grassroots push for gun reform, which is otherwise seen through traditional means as being something that is almost impossible to get. that was friday. today, look at this. if you
this hour. but he ll be in illinois for a fund-raiser. two neighboring states. but not putting foot on the soil. what s your reaction? i think obama for america, his organizing group has been stepping up and helping organize people in wisconsin. as much as people on the left want obama in the state, people on the the right want them here more. he wants to make the fight about obama. this is a wisconsin fight. it s about what scott walker has done to divide the state. how far he has gone to go after the middle class. that s what is at stake here, are those issues. there s a lot of hey being made about that. when you say obama for america is stepping up, do you mean they weren t showing much presence prior to this? do you think their arrival on the scene now is enough? they ve been here throughout the state. they ve had their offices open for the last few months.
basis show the violence is restricted to security forces but protests are all over the country. is there any organization to the protests at this point breaking out in cities across syria top to bottom and the objective is clearly stated but is there an organizing structure you ve been exiled because of your participation in protests and your journalism but is there an organizing group that can orchestrate this and stand up against the existing leadership? this is a self-organizing movement. in the beginning it whaphazard. there were those that decided to come inspire by the examples in tunisia and egypt to come and do something along the same lines and through social networks and through facebook and twitter and they asked for our advice and we ve provided such an expertise
antics fatigue. i mean, this guy whether you liked him or not he was loud and in charge. he was someone at times the face of this party and at times the joke of the party. at the same time republicans had a heck of a nice election as a party. ironic that the person who was in charge of the organizing group and funding group after a sweeping election result on some superficial level is not worthy of being considered for the job. i think it was hard for michael steele to point to any particular thing that he did to make that wave happen for them. it was a lot of other circumstances going on. one of probably the most important function of the rnc chair is fund-raising and he was continuing to alienate donors. i think that was a big, big part of the decision to go in a different direction. who is the leader of the republican party? does anybody know? who do you think it is? you see boehner more than anybody else. i think that s probably right.