could he ever leave the democratic party and could republicans ask him to do that. he said yes. senator mcconnell has done that but he said he could never leave the party because the stances on obamacare care and taxes as well. you have to be worried that he s not a republican but maybe he s an independent that caucuses with the republicans if the progressives get too nasty with him. so i think joe biden is saying that makes a lot of since. it makes sense that that s how the president operates. let s get a deal, lower the temperature. got out of control because of white house staff and miscommunicate case and that s where we are now. neil: i have italian relatives that do that. gets out of hand and we a poll guys and move on and have some food. see what happens. if we don t chat again, merry christmas. merry christmas, neil. thanks. neil: bob cusack following these developments.
two leaders has been helpful, and if you know history, you know that great nations can stumble into armed conflict, and they can misunderstand and miscommunicate, and that is my great concern here. do you have any concern with the fawning coverage that the north korean the sister of kim jong-un is getting, and the fact maybe she is managing to score a propaganda coup here, not just with people in this country, but with people around the world, including the south koreans? i find the overture is interesting. it s an interesting dynamic in this whole issue, and you re correct. she has captured a lot of attention. who knows? we ll have to see. again, my concern is that we not stumble into something that is not necessary. eye on the bigger picture.
the situation room . we begin with the state of unemployment in america, just three months before election day. both democrats and republicans have something to seize on in the newest jobs report. employers say they added 163,000 jobs to the u.s. economy in july. that s better than economists expected, and something for the obama camp to hang its hat on. but the romney camp is pointing to this figure, the overall unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 8.3%, because american households report losing 195,000 jobs. we want to bring in our white house correspondent, dan lothian. so sounds like kind of a wash, politically, dan. it does. and what the president is trying to do is highlight the positive, as you pointed out. yes, the unemployment rate did tick up to 8.3%, but what they re focused on is the fact that jobs were created, more jobs than expected. the experts out there, economists had expected that some 95,000 jobs would have been created last month, but as you pointe
well, the minor have set up a process for a family liaison and i wouldn t want to ventura guess as to what communication has or has not happened. the last thing you want to do is miscommunicate is communicate misinformation, so i m sure they re going through a very deliberate, detailed process before they share any information. if you harken back to 2006 and the misinformation that unfortunately was shared with the family members and the public at that time, what we want to prevent is an industry, and everyone involved, is to have a situation like that arise again. martha: understood. and as you say, our prayers and our thoughts are with all these families. this is a great american industry, and it has experienced a great tragedy today. thank you very much, bruce wattsman, for being with us today, thank you, sir. thank you. bill: husbands and fares and brothers, losing their lives in this horrific west virginia mine blast, and today, the families and friends are holding out hope
is still in question. and we don t want to make a mistake and miscommunicate. we think it s more important to take our time and get it right. you have what has been described by many mining experts as a poor safety record at this particular mine. have you compromised the safety of your miners? no. absolutely not. we work very hard to make our mines safe. we have a team in place that works on violations and issues. we have got a couple of former msha guys on our payroll that work solely on violations and issues and we work close whether i msha and the state making our mines as safe as we can make them. is massey energy culpable in any way in this tragedy. i don t know what happened. i know if the management doesn t know what happened, i assume something very unnatural occurred or somebody made a mistake. but i, at this point, have no idea. senator rockefeller described you to me a few minutes ago as a