and the post office. let's go out front. i'm erin burnett. out front tonight we're live from washington as ee get ready for the big debate tomorrow night. there's a super failure tonight. such failure that the leaders of the super committee didn't even face the press. they issued a statement. which read in part, "despite our inability to bridge the committee's significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation's fiscal crisis must be addressed." they didn't say by someone else. but they kind of did. they agreed on one thing that they who had the mandate to do a deal with a simple majority would all kick the can down the road. even though we are in a crisis. that is pretty audacious. super committee, you had the power as they say, if not you then who? if not now, then when? >> they were told to cut 2.6% of the budget over ten years. they couldn't do it. the president did approach a camera to say he would veto what sdwrom had suggested which was to halt the automatic spending cuts. >> i will veto any effort to get rid of the automatic spending cuts, dee mess particular and defense spending. while the credit rating agency standard & poor's so long as the automatic cuts stay in place, the bond investor says that's luck that will run out. bill gross of pim coe telling me that cowardly lions need to find courage or give their franchise to the market wizards. unlike a lot of people, we were hoping against hope that the dmit ee would succeed. because quite simply, the pain of cuts now would be better than the pain later. it's going to be like losing a finger versus having both your legs cut off. well, until the last minute this afternoon, i thought the elected leaders in washington would ultimately do the best thing for their country and make a deal. john kerry saw this coming. listen to what he seed on "meet the press" on sunday. >> there is a real threat that not only will there be a downgrade but the market on monday will look again at washington and say you guys can't get the job done and just the political confusion and gridlock is enough to say to the world, america can't get its act together. >> he was right. but he didn't do anything about it. today's markets just a taste of the long-term consequences that the partisanship and bickering in washington. u.s. stocks fell as you can see, 249 points, 2.1%. i say just a taste. when the day of reckoning comes and that day may not be immediate, we may get a sense that nothing in washington matters. but that's not true. it does matter. when the day soms, our retirements will be smaller. interest rates will be much higher. experts say 18-plus percent. america's standard of living will be lower. so instead of listening to 12 super committee members blaming each other, the nation needs to hold them to account. everyone in this country needs to fight back and do exactly what howard behl said in the movie network. >> we need to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, i'm as mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore. i'm not going to take it anymore. >> i'm mad as held and i'm going to take it anymore. >> i'm not going to take it anymore! >> i am mad as hell. peter someone said to me, if there had been the surprise of a deal that we could have seen a true market surge, what do you think? >> probably. because the market last week got a taste that there was unlikely to be one. today was a strange market day because yes, the stock market was down 250 points but the u.s. treasury market, which is the ultimate arbiter of the creditworthiness rallied. u.s. government borrowing, the cost went down today. so yes, someone -- it was european issues and problems and concerns that actually bailed out the u.s. treasury market today in the face of what should have been a sharp sell n-off in treasuries and rise in interest rates. x plain how this happens. fail, fail, fail and still borrowing costs in the united states dropped. if that's the case why should we worry about washington ever getting the fiscal house of the united states in order. >> right now that is fair. again, the u.s. treasury market is benefiting from the problems in europe. industries around the world want cash and equivalent. that's dollars and treasuries. the demand for the note was the greatest in 20 years. scratch your head in light of what happened and wondering why is there this demand? that is problems outside of the u.s. be sure this is coming back to us when europe is somewhat calm and our politicians are not going to be off the hook as a result. >> we'll come back and it will bite, and it will bite badly. appreciate your taking the time. let's go to david gergen. and john avalon, contributor and columnist for newsweek and the daily beast. thanks to both of you. you were here on friday. we were all angry and upset and hopeful that thereby a breakthrough. but there wasn't. >> no. this is a profile in cower did he say, this is a new low for this government and people should be furious. they put party over country and now we're going to have a lot of trouble ahead. they had the power to do something about it. the fact that they put out a statement saying hoping we can deal with the fiscal crisis and shouldn't pass this to the next generation, that's incredibly insincere, pathetic and folks should be furious and mad as hell. all that rhetoric about deficit and debt, they put tax cut theology over dealing with that. i'm just furious. >> daft gergen, i'm furious too. in the deafening silence that was today and max baucus said maybe there's a last minute idea and all we got was a statement. they didn't even come to the cameras and a lot of them it appeared had gone home. then we get 15 statements from all kinds of people coming into the e-mail of blame game. it is shocking. >> erin, it's hard to capture in words just how angry the american people are going to be. i think most people look at this and say, those folks in washington have gone nuts. they're out of their minds the way they're conducting things. this is -- nobody can be quite sure as we just heard what's going to happen in the marketplace. but this is a reckless gamble. coming in the midst of all the problems in the euro zone, to throw this on top of it, is going to increase nervousness in the markets. there's no question about that. we know it will haunt you. look at the kind of interest rates now. france and spain and italy have are paying. they've risen dramatically because of the deficit problems. you're going to find consumers in this country, their optimism was rising a bit. it will go back down. fewer shoppers in the stores. the bigger question is where do we go from here? what can you do? i do think that the way people have to show disgust is through voting. maybe there are -- maybe the sen centrists can get a petition going saying i'm going to vote against you unless you cut the deficits before the 2012 elections. >> jon avalon what do you think about that? we're going to talk about a recall effort in the state of wisconsin. people coming forward and saying what they think in a more vocal way. it is -- because this is shocking. and by the way, we have to remember, you had, what, 130, 140 members of congress come out and sign a piece of paper saying they wanted spending cuts and revenue increases on the table. that includes democrats and republicans in congress. >> that's exactly right. we had that gang of 150 telling them to be bold, go for 4 trillion d. at the end of the day they couldn't deal with what they had. it is for us to straighten our civic backbone and call it out. you've seen the strategists tell people, you know, what, if it fails it's okay. we can run as the saviors of social security and medicaid because we didn't agree to put forward any reform. they can be i had logically pure. they upheld their pledge to never raise taxes. to thirds of the people were okay with raising taxes on the wealthy, significantly cutting spending and a growing number were willing to deal with the entitlement reform. this is a lost opportunity. the only way to get their attention is to vote them out of office. >> david gergen, will this be put off until the election or do you think the president will be forced to use his veto when it comes to the automatic spending cuts, which we should make clear don't take place until after the election either? >> it does seem to me, erin, i'm trying to figure this out. the president has a couple of things to get done before the end of the year. extending the payroll tax cut, that's important for the economy. he does want to extend unemployment benefits. that's important for a lot of people who are hurting out there. he has to somehow get this organized. he's been extremely passive this this. he put out a proposal and left town and sort of like, did he still have his hand on the tiller. it does seem to me that when the congress comes back after thanksgiving, he does need to call the leadership and say, we've got to come up with action to get some things done before the election. i do not think it's permissible to wait for the election to sort some of these things out. it's in the president's and frankly, their interest to get some kind of action going before the elections, not just simply leave this until november a year from now. >> all right. thanks very much to both of you. i'm sorry, it was such a depressing conversation. hopefully it will motivate people, right? i'm not going to take it anymore. that's how we all feel. 30,000 protesters taking to the streets of madison, wisconsin. why? they want the recall of their governor. scott walker is with us next. the nypd arrests a terror suspect allegedly going to attack veterans and the police. actor hugh grant testifies in a phone hacking story saying, well, the press was bullying citizens. we'll be back. 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>> well, i don't think they'll be successful in that regard. i think there's a likelihood that they'll get the signatures. if they pay 10,000 people and activists to get an average of one a day for the next 60 daze that would be enough. that's still just a number reflective of 25% of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election. a year ago, the majority of the people in the state elected me ultimately to do what i have done and that is to balance the budget, to do it without raising taxes. to still protect core programs. we added a billion dollars more in medicaid to protect needy families and seniors and children. we put more money back in the classroom. all those are things that unlike the people in washington, we kept our promises and i think the ma sdwrort of the people in the state still want us to move forward and get the state back on track. >> now, obviously, some of the democrats on the other side of the aisle would take issue with it. you cut $1.6 billion to education. did you make the right choices when you made the decision on where to cut? do you have any regrets in saying hey, wait i did too much here? >> unlike nearly every state, democrat and republican governors cut budgets and education. the other states gave the local government no other option. in our case, many of our schools have been the same or better than they were before because we gave them the tools not only to have a healthcare and a pension contribution, one that i might add that matching your pension and paying 12.6% of premium for health insurance is still less than what the average taxpayer pays. even things like opening the market to compete for health insurance coverage, those have saved hundreds of thousands to in some cases millions of dollars when it came to healthcare. we gave them the tools to put more money in the classroom to hire and fire based on merit and pay paced on performance. so the best and the brightest in the classrooms and our local government across the state. we did what other states wish they could have done. illinois has raised taxes, multibillion dollar deficit and had to pursue layoffs of public employees and shutting down facilities because they didn't make the changes and reap forms we did in wisconsin. >> do you think there's anything good that unions do for society? >> there's anything what? >> anything good that unions do for society. >> oh, i think private sector unions without a doubt. private sector unions are a partner in economic development. the difference was that the government level, you was a local official for eight years prior to being governor. i saw repeatedly times it when we had tough budget, we try to make reasonable concessions them. at one point asking for one week a month for a 35-hour workweek to avoid 400 or 500 layoffs. they said for get it. lay them off. we made changes, saw what was happening in december before i took office. they wanted to ram through a contract that would lock in the higher benefits and ultimately higher taxes. we said no, we've got to respect the taxpayers in our state and respect the economy. that's what we did. >> all right. governor walker, we're going to be watching this very closely. ground zero for the future of our country there. thanks for taking the time to be with us. >> thank you. my pleasure. new york city police say that is exactly the kind of damage that could have happened if al qaeda sympathizer, jose pimentel was not stopped. but he was arrested sunday an hour before police say he was finishing his first bomb. his goal was to attack u.s. military service members, the police and the post office. he is now facing multiple terrorism-related charges. pimentel is american. that's a profile that's been the case in many recent terror attack attempts. michael bloomberg, the mayor of new york city said the motivation came from overseas. >> the suspect was a so-called lone wolf, motivated by his own resentment of the presence of american troops in iraq and afghanistan, as well as inspired by al qaeda propaganda. >> joining me now is cnn national security contributor fran freg owes townsend. we know the terrorism unit had the man under surveillance for about two years, but he was in touch with other radicals before he was killed. what do you think is going to happen here? >> i mean, you know, it will be interesting to see how did they kroo this informant, erin. why did it go on for two years? what was the turning point? we heard that the killing of al awlaki in a drone strike sent this guy, pimentel over the edge and change it from apparitional to operational. it's interesting, he took inspiration overseas and the he looked at the internet and the inspire magazine to get the materials. he was going to target u.s. military personnel returning from overseas. why wasn't the fbi involved and where were the feds in all had? >> let me ask you this. when this show went on the air, i interviewed leon panetta. he said his biggest fear, fran, that it woke him up in the middle of the night, worrying about a lone wolf and blowing themselves up in a public place, a subway or something like that. homegrown terrorism. are you concerned that we just keep seeing more and more american citizens as a perpetrators? >> they're very give to detect. one of the things you see, that's why i say how did they use the informant to get into this guy? we're seeing in the pimentel case, awlaki who is dead, his ideology lives on. he had sermons that are audiotapes, there is materials on the internet. even when you kill them, their inspiration, ability to recruit americans and inspire them remains. this threat isn't going away. we have to still be able to get into -- we have to watch the organizations and the website and try to trace back to the individual who may be inspired and want to be affiliated with that. >> all right. fran, thank you so much for being with us. >> you're welcome. when we return, a new poll has newt gingrich leading. that's right, the leader now, the newt. so does that hurt him come spog the gop debate tomorrow? >>. actor hugh grant testifying about a phone hacking scandal. you'll hear from hugh in a couple of moments. pakistan's problem with athletes foot. it's a story you can't resist. out front next. ♪ bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum ♪ ♪ [ imitates guitar noise ] ♪ [ vocalizing up-tempo heavy metal song ] ♪ [ vocalizing continues ] ♪ [ all singing ] the redesigned, 8-passenger pilot. smarter thinking. from honda. the sleep number bed. with the sleep number bed, it's not about soft or firm. it's about support where you find it most comfortable. the magic of this bed is that you're sleeping on something that conforms to your individual shape. on a traditional mattress, there is no adjustment. you get what you're buying that day. with our bed, you change the setting to something you like. this way, if you change your mind once you get home you can adjust it. at our ultimate sleep number event, queen sleep number mattresses now start at just $599. but only through monday. wow! that feels really good. it's hugging my body. you can adjust it to whatever your needs are. if i'm in pain one day, in less than a minute i can get more support. your body changes over time. the bed can adapt with you. not only does it work for you today, but it's going to work for you 20 years from now. so whatever you feel like, the slee