lives and american blood is on the line. until he steps up to secure our border we cannot move forward with any kind of immigration plan. martha: very strong words this morning. good morning, everybody, i'll martha maccallum. bill: nice -- rick: nice to be with you, i'm rick forgrum. this comes after a shootout that happened between police -- between police and armed suspects near the border of el paso, texas, and sent bullets flying into city hall. martha: unbelievable when you look at these pictures. joining us now is karl rove, a fox news contributor. good morning, good to have you with us today, sir, welcome. >> thank you, happy fourth or fifth. martha: we're still celebrating as we know you are, too. tell me about your reaction as a texan to this story when you see bullet holes in city hall in el paso over the border from mexico. >> yeah, pretty remarkable. look, as the border has gotten somewhat more secure, it's gotten paradoxically more dangerous, because these drug gangs are fighting for access. it used to be pretty easy to get across the border, you could hire a coyote in the mid 1990s for $150, now it's upwards of $2500 to get you across the border illegally and it's mostly being run by drug cartels who want to get the drugs north and money and guns south and are running people across the border as well and they're now fighting each other, literally, within yards of the u.s.-mexico border. martha: you've got people on that border and now we hear from the attorney general, gregg abbott, saying that he thinks the president doesn't get it, you know, and clearly, the president has access to a lot of information, the administration keeps coming out and saying you know what, things actually are better than they've been in a long time, according to the numbers and statistics we look at but that's not what people seem to feel. >> paradoxically the tougher the border gets to cross the more dangerous it gets, particularly at the weak points of the border, like el paso. there is a reason why people are suspicious of president obama. when he was in the united states senate and comprehensive immigration reform was being discussed he consistently voted against measures to strengthen the border, for example, he voted against an amendment proposed by john cornyn from texas that said if you were a felon or member of one of these violent central american or mexican gangs you could not become a u.s. citizen or participate in the guest worker program. president obama voted against that. there were a number of measures like that. there are a number of reasons people pay attention to this dubious attitude to border system and the attorney general is the latest. martha: it's shocking when you put it into those terms and it raises political questions. what does the president hope to gain by being -- by looking the other way and by ignoring the situation that a lot of people believe is so pressing? what is he gaining politically? >> well, look, this has not been on his radar for the first 17 months of the administration. in the state of the union address he devoted 38 words out of nearly 8000 words in the state of the union address to comprehensive immigration reform, he's not held comprehensive meetings, he's not working on a bill, hasn't proposed a bill and we get 120 days before an legs and the president raises it and it's clearly after the white house announces they are concerned about the dropoff in political support and they're concerned about the potential turnout among young people, african-americans and hispanics, and this is clearly designed for politics and politics only. those of us who are advocates of comprehensive immigration reform can be critical of the president for having failed to lay a foundation for this, and then turning around and using it for raw politics a few months before an election and that's wrong. it's not going to result in a comprehensive bill and it's going to simply inflame passions on both sides of the issues and not put us closer to getting an answer. martha: no doubt greg cab abbott wants this to be politically advantageous for him, he feels this is the right side of the issue for him to be on. is there any suggestion of a lawsuit coming to the federal government similar to the one we're probably going to see this week going against arizona and their immigration law they've put in place because the border protection act many feel is violated by the government's inaction? >> first of all, full disclosure, i'm a personal friend of greg abbott's, i did a fund-raiser for him recently, he's the prohibitive favorite this fall. i believe he's doing this because he feels very strongly about the border issue and believes the president is playing politics with it when he shouldn't be but look, this issue of the arizona law, why is the president objecting to the arizona law? it is a very tightly drawn, narrowly drawn law, which is going to in my opinion result in very few additional people being bought who would otherwise not be caught by the normal means we come across illegal aliens. the federal standard for inquiring about citizenship is much less rigorous than the standard required by the arizona law which only allows you to do it in the process of a lawful detention stop or arrest for another issue, and if a reasonable suspicion exists that somebody is not a u.s. citizen. the federal standard is the powers of the observation of the federal agent involved, and the circumstances. it's not a tough standard at all. martha: right. indeed. karl, stick around. we have a lot more to talk about you about and it's good to have you with us on this hole day, fifth of july morning. there are new fears, and this is what karl will talk about in a morning that, we could be heading into a recession, there's talk of double-dip and that has lawmakers saying what we need is an influx of more stimulus dollars. what do you think about that, is that the right course. karl is going to join us on that. we're also going to talk about joe biden, very interesting moving moves for joe biden lately. we'll get that as well. >> looking forward to it. first is it hot enough for you? get ready to hear that a lot over the next few days, especially if you live in the greater eastern part of the united states, because we could see a heat wave and we're talking temperatures near 100 degrees, all week long, in places like washington, d.c., new jersey, and new york. and near the 90-degree mark for a lot of other areas as well. martha: we're getting real summer here this year. i don't mind it one bit. there are new hopes this morning for plugging the oil leak in the gulf, oil skimmers, working overtime this holiday weekend, testing out this vessel, we told but it last week, it's called a whale, it's a taiwanese vessel, they're hoping this supertanker will be a game changer in this whole disaster. not all experts are quid, though. >> phil keating is live in grand isle, louisiana with more on this. >> reporter: it was supposed to be a two-day weekend with the coast guard supervising the a whale, the 10,000 story tall ship that will be a skimming vessel that can process and clean 400, to 500,000 -- 5000 barrels a day of oily water, contain the oil on ship and pump the cleansed sea water back into the gulf. however, the issue, there is a low pressure system that has been hovering around the deepwater horizon site this, of course comes after last week's hurricane alex, then tropical storm alex. it's been rough seas for seven straight days, making skimming very challenging. so the actual testing of the ship has yet to produce any finality. no conclusions yet whether or not it's truly successful. but if you look off the shore here in the gulf of mexico, from where we are, you can see half a dozen off shore oil drilling rigs. these are all shallow platforms, however, the obama administration, in light of the disaster on april 20th, imposed a six-month moratorium on new oil drilling. that has, of course, idled 33 deepwater rigs. however, here in louisiana, off shore oil rig training does continue. >> this oil rig, known as mr. charlie, retired about 25 years ago, but thousands of roughnecks looking to make a living off shore have continued to climb on board for certified training. >> when you leave here, you've got rigging, confined space describe, fall protection, hazmat, 40-hour hazmat, you also have water survival, so a lot of things that make you desirable because they know you've lived on a rig. >> most are lured by the 50 grand or better they can make per year in the gulf. >> earning potential is pretty good, and for hard workers, the career ladder progresses pretty fast. >> with the government moratorium on deep water drilling in question the only jobs grads might find are cleaning up the crude gushing from bp's blown-out well head. >> that's one of the reasons i'm here, because of the exxon valdez spill, 20 years later, i am pretty sure i have a job for the next 20 years. >> and bp just releasing its current ongoing cost. the tally here, a very expensive tally for dealing with, cleaning up, and paying off people that have been impacted by the deep water horizon oil spill. right now it stands at $3.2 billion. that is an increase of half a billion dollars from this point last week. rick. rick: rick feeing live in grande aisle, thank you very much -- keating live in grande aisle. we want to know what you think. many are on your smartphones or laptops while watching "america's newsroom". log on to foxnews.com, take our unscientific poll, click on you decide, would you cancel your gulf vacation. eighteen thousand votes are in, 40 percent say no, there are plenty of ways to enjoy a vacation without hurting tourism, 39 percent yes, they won't put their families in harm's way, 21 percent of you are not so sure. go on and vote. martha: well, inexperienced air traffic controllers are now being blamed for a near collision in the sky over our nation's capitol, internal faa documents say a united airlines jet was within 15 seconds of hitting a business jet last monday. an on board warning system ordered the pilots to take evasive action but the ntsb says if the air traffic controllers had done the job properly that warning system probably would never have needed to be triggered in this situation. near collisions have been on the rise in the region as new controllers are training to replace a generation of retirees. that's unnerving. >> a scary story, it really is. here's another scary story, at jfk airport in new york city, things are back to normal but late last night a bomb scare forced police to shut down a terminal there. police say it was all because of a force alarm, blaming an anom nous phone call and unintended bag -- unattended bag. passengers had to stand outside for two hours until they got things under control. martha: that must have been a happy scene, right? the battle over whether we need more stimulus money, this is heating up, folks, to prevent a double-dip recession in this country and the growing role of vice president joe byen, what it might mean for hillary clinton. karl rove joins us on that topic in two minutes. >> michael steele's afghanistan comment getting him into trouble, the republican national committee chairman, some are calling for him to step down over his comments over afghanistan. we'll talk about that straight ahead. >> what chairman needs to -- chairman steele needs to apologize to our military, all the men and women fighting in afghanistan. this is america's war, it's not obama's war, he needs to refocus on electing candidates who can stop this rampage of spending and debt in washington. >> welcome back. an air ambulance crash in texas, killing the patient, his wife, and three others. and now federal aviation investigators are looking into this crash, the twin engine cessna, it had just taken off from a west texas airport, when it went down in an open field, shortly after midnight. local safety officials say it appears the pilot was trying to make an emergency landing at the time of the crash. the 78-year-old patient, his wife, two nurse us and the pilot, all killed. what a tragedy. martha: sad story. and here is the economic story of the day. the question about whether or not this recovery is slipping away from us. we've got some dismal numbers we've seen in the past few days from the housing market, also on the jobs front in terms of real job creation. it is definitely lacking out there, and a lot of this comes as the stimulus funding is running out in many cases. some say crank it up, we need to put more stimulus spending out there in order to rev the economy. back with me again is karl rove, former adviser to george w. bush and fox news contributor, of course. this is the ongoing battle across the country and also from a lot of reports within the west wing over whether or not politically this president can try to push further stimulus into this environment. what do you think? >> well, martha, we've got two issues here. first of all this was a badly designed stimulus bill. you mentioned the stimulus funding is running out. the cost of the stimulus bill is $862 billion over the first ten years, over the next years -- next ten years after its passage. as of yesterday, $415 billion of that has been spent, that is to say more than half this money has yet to be spent, in fact more money will be spent between 2011 and 2019 than they spent last year when we tied to stimulate the economy. when you stimulate the economy you're supposed to give it a jolt and this put this spending into all kind of government programs and spending efforts. it wasn't designed to be stimulative. the second issue is it's been so pitful in its results it's cost roughly $700,000 for every job created since last december, and we have lost nearly 3 million jobs since the bill was designed, that there's a lot of resistance in congress to repeat the same mistake again, that is to say, pass a spending bill that's not going to have a big impact, which is why the democrats have been unable to round up the votes to pass what's called stimulus two, a second stimulus measure. martha: it's hard to imagine why you need a stimulus two, when you accurately point out, half of it hasn't been spent yet and there is a possibility we could look at that money and say let's spend that money in a better, more efficient, more stimulative way, perhaps, in tax cuts and the like. i do want to you look at a couple of polls and get your thoughts on this, because this shows the political environment in which senators and congressmen and women have to think about this. so far, what impact has the stimulus plan had on the economy, 29 percent say it's helped, 43 percent say it has hurt, and 24 percent say it's had no impact. and let's look at one other, so i just want to get your thoughts on both of these and make sure we show these to the folks at home, what's a better way to create jobs, 69 percent say cutting taxes, 15 percent, increase government spending, 16 percent, not sure. i'm not sure anyone wants to vote for a stimulus package in that environment, karl. >> absolutely not. look, this bill was so badly designed that much of what the administration claims is a tax cut is in reality a welfare payment, and this was -- the administration outsourced the writing on this to capitol hill, the chairman of the house appropriations committee, david obey and he didn't pass a still lous bill, he wrote a bill that consisted of spending ideas that had languished in his bottom drawer the last 20 years, so the american people turned against this bill, they had high expectations for it, particularly when the president sold it as having an immediate effect, going for shovel-ready projects, creating 90 percent of the jobs in the private sector and generating 3 1/2 million new jobs by the end of 2010 and none of that has come to pass. martha: before i let you go, some inside baseball kind of politics in terms of joe biden. it's been very fascinating over the past couple of weeks and there have been stories written about this that joe biden has been increasingly big role with the president in terms of having his ear on foreign policy issues and we all remember joe biden saying at one point he was offered the secretary of state job but he decided to take the vice president's job instead. why does this leave hillary clinton who is in georgia today while the vice president is in iraq? >> there's always a tension between the white house foreign policy apparatus and the national security council, and the state department. there's always' a tension in the modern era. it's unusual, though, to have this kind of open sort -- sort of an open play for power, if you will, on the part of biden versus the secretary of state, vice president, secretary of state. personally, i hope secretary of state hillary clinton wins out if there is truly a battle because since his election to the united states senate in the early '70s, joe biden has been on the wrong end of virtually every foreign policy dispute since then. i'm not a fan at all of his views. he's ended up being on the wrong side of virtually every policy dispute in an international front since the early '70s and frankly hillary clinton has turned out to be a quite able and effective secretary of state. martha: interesting. all right, well see who wins that. karl, happy fourth of july, thanks, take care. >> you bet. rick: coming up, controversy brewing over a flag pole this fourth of july weekend, why this veteran is asked to take down the american flag that hangs outside his home. martha: it is prime conditions for great white sharks this summer. you want to know why? we'll tell you when we come back. rick: wait until you hear this story, a disabled veteran showing love for his country proudby flying an american flag outside his home, asked to take the flag down because is violates a neighborhood code. kaitlin pratt from waga has the story. >> i believe in our country, our troops. >> reporter: john hanson has lived in woodstock summer chase subdivision for a decade, the disabled army veteran and former law enforcement officer has flown an american flag outside his summer point drive home since moving in. a month ago hanson says he replaced this wooden post for a more prominent role for the stars and stripes but the 16-foot tall structure isn't flying well with the homeowners association. >> according to their rules, it's because of i'm install ing a permanent fixure without prior approval of a homeowner's association, even though there was a post there already. >> hanson says there is nothing in the hoa covenant that mentions the flag pole. >> i thought since it was a replacement, that i wouldn't have to do it, but i had to turn in a form to get approval. >> he says that request was denied and hanson received notice he has to pay up. >> fines have been levied against you totaling $300 through this date of this letter. additional funds continue ate a rate of $25 per day, per violation. >> fox tried to talk with the home association president and property management company that helps run summer chase. our calls weren't returned. >> either remove it or pay the fees. >> hanson says he's not paying those fees and is willing to take his flag pole fight to court. >> mr. hanson is taking his story to cyberspace, he's posted a video on youtube to try to drum up support and funds for that legal fight. in the newsroom, kaitlin pratt, fox five news. rick: thank you to kaitlin for that report. martha: rnc michael steele is under fire from his own party over comments about afghanistan. can mr. steele leave the gop in the face of opposition like this? listen. >> i want to separate myself from that statement and the good news is michael steele is backtrack sog fast he's going to be in kabul, fighting here pretty soon. i want to let my -- i