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Parker Spitzer

The War in Afghanistan; Interview With Jimmie Johnson

Aired November 23, 2010 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KATHLEEN PARKER, CO-HOST, PARKER-SPITZER: Good evening. I'm Kathleen Parker.

ELIOT SPITZER, CO-HOST, PARKER-SPITZER: I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program.

Coming up five-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson joins us in a bit. He'll talk about his relationship with the man who discovered him, legendary driver Jeff Gordon and a teammate no less.

PARKER: That sounds fascinating.

And poor Nancy Pelosi will soon lose you more than just her speaker title. She'll soon have to say good-bye to the perks that came with it. And we'll have those details later.

SPITZER: But first the absolute mess in Afghanistan, Kathleen. It just keeps getting worse and worse every day. When you think it has hit rock bottom, it hasn't.

Today the headlines we've been negotiating with an imposter believing we were negotiating with the number two person in the Taliban. And that was the reason we thought we were making progress. Just boggles the mind.

But let's step back for a minute. This is our partner there, is Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

PARKER: Yeah, I remember his name. Yeah, Hamid. My good buddy.

SPITZER: He's been taking money from Iran. His brother, they say, is a drug lord. They say that he is psychotic. So what are we doing right over there? And why are we risking American lives?

PARKER: As far as the imposter is concerned, Mullah Mansour, I have a hard time keeping a straight face. Because even though it's horrible, I mean, we look like-we look-by the way for the record. We were not negotiating with this person, the number two, the faux Taliban leader. Number two in control. But he was talking to NATO officials. He was -- he did talk to Afghan officials. And he did even meet with President Karzai. We've handed over bags of money apparently and he's a fake. He's a fraud. It's almost to the point where it's absurd. It's comical. But it is also horrible.

SPITZER: It's demoralizing because American troops are being risked to try to buttress a government led by President Karzai that is so corrupt, top to bottom, that does not represent our interests, what we think should be going on in Afghanistan. And, of course, there is a DOD, Department of Defense report that will be issued momentarily, which has a very, very negative take certainly on where the Afghan public is in terms of what the likely outcome is of this compact.

PARKER: The Defense Department report says the Afghan people have already sort of resigned themselves to the idea that the Taliban will prevail. And, of course, the Taliban has all of history to wait. They are patient. We want answers and resolutions yesterday. And they will wait us out.

SPITZER: So for more on this let's go into "The Arena".

PARKER: Joining us now to talk about the mess in Afghanistan. And, yes, it is a mess, from Washington Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. And here in the studio, we have James Traub of "The New York Times."

SPITZER: Senator, let me begin with you. It seems to be going from bad to worse. We're negotiating with an imposter, which is almost incomprehensible to believe. The report that is about to be issued by the Defense Department says the Afghan public believes a Taliban victory is inevitable, despite the surge and everything we've done. Karzai is taking bags of cash from anybody who shows up at the front door of his mansion. How do we make sense of this? And how do we send American soldiers to fight and risk their lives in the context of such absolute hysteria and craziness?

SEN. RON WYDEN, (D) OREGON: Eliot, obviously the news is very, very alarming. There's no other way to characterize it. And the fact of the matter is the Taliban clearly think that they can still win this thing. When you look at what they've been up to, they're making it clear that they'll run an imposter into all of this. They're keeping all their options open at this point because they still think they can win this.

And to me, what this highlights is we ought to start talking about how you can move from what really amounts to a counterinsurgency strategy to one that really isolates a counter-terror approach. Because you just can't have the American people looking at these headlines and saying we're just going to go along indefinitely.

SPITZER: You know, look, I think if the White House were to revisit -- and we've all now read in Woodward's book about the lengthy process of figuring out what the Afghan policy should be. You believe every day -- at least I do -- that Joe Biden, Vice President Biden was right about circumscribing both what the objective was and how to approach it militarily. And this nation building that we are undertaking just seems to have been an abject failure. I just grieve for the resources, the personnel we're dedicating to this and the lives at risk.

WYDEN: It's heartbreaking. I just yesterday saw another one of our courageous wounded warriors, the family from Oregon. There is no way that the American people looking at the accounts day by day -- the Taliban clearly playing every conceivable game in hopes that they can have a victory. The massive corruption by the Karzai government. Clearly their family up to their eyeballs in these corrupt activities.

The American people are going to ask for a more sharply defined end game. And I often get asked, do I think Afghanistan is going to be another Vietnam. I'm concerned the American people think Afghanistan is just going to be another Afghanistan. You cannot dictate a military solution there.

JAMES TRAUB, WRITER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah. I think what the senator is especially right about is when you fight this so-called counter insurgency war, you cannot want to have victory more than the people on whose behalf you're fighting this war. And so when we're trying to create better governments, more legitimate government, which is the premise, which is if you can create a government people care about, whether in Vietnam or in Afghanistan, then you can change the momentum. Ordinary citizens will go with the government instead of the insurgency.

But if the government is irredeemable; if the government is corrupt, if people don't believe in the state, you can't make people feel other than the way they do. So I think that's right. So it shows that the long-term war that we're trying to fight is almost certainly not going to work.

Now, having said that, though, it's I think important that people recognize, there are real stakes here. It's easy to say, look, the Taliban, they just want to have their own local control in Afghanistan. They don't endanger us. And there's just a few Al Qaeda guys. But the truth is there is a genuine danger that if and when we do withdraw from a lot of territory in Afghanistan, that will become a platform for people who do want to do us harm.

So it means when we talk about withdrawal. It does not mean going down anything like zero. Joe Biden's option as you said, Eliot, was not get out. Joe Biden's option was have a sizable presence, don't have this big surge. Focus on counterterrorism issues. I would add there are places in Afghanistan where the nation-building effort has worked, and will continue to work. But not in the most contested areas, which are virtually under Taliban control right now.

PARKER: How do we measure success when the people have already accepted an end result that contradicts our mission?

TRAUB: Well, I'm not sure what it means to say the people have accepted. You read different polls about the Afghan people all the time. The question is what's the reality they see on the ground? So I want to say something on behalf of Obama 's plan. What Obama is saying now is we're going to stay four more years. That's not July of 2011. That's four more years.

So the hope is this will say not only to the Afghan people, but to the Taliban we're not just going away. Now, I do think what that might yield is whatever political negotiations there are with the Taliban, maybe that will yield a better outcome if we can stay there and degrade them over time. SPITZER: James, I hate to say this. The negotiations with the Taliban have been with an imposter. We're not negotiating them as far as we know. At least not through those channels we thought we thought.

Senator, let me ask you this, to bring this back to domestic politics, which of course is necessary to have the support for foreign effort of this magnitude. When the White House now sits down with United States senators, and says we're going to be there another four years, and yet presents this report about the lack of progress. In fact, arguably the fact we're going in the wrong direction in terms of both the military and the emotional state of the Afghan public, is it being met with serious questions about what is the mission, and how do you possibly get funding for this. And we've got to ends this somehow?

WYDEN: Eliot, I will tell you, and of course, the Senate is out of session right now. I think it is going to be a very, very tough sell for the administration. You have to remember on the last big vote with respect to funding, much of the Democratic leadership in the United States Senate sought to break with the administration.

Now, that was before the extensive documentation of the additional problems of corruption with the Karzai government. That was before we saw the evidence of the imposter. That was before we saw the Afghan people voicing such extraordinary skepticism about how this is going to turn out. I think this is going to be a very, very difficult sell for the Obama administration in the United States Senate.

SPITZER: In the past couple of weeks we've been reading very affirmative reports, some cited to General Petraeus, in fact, saying look how much progress we're making, real negotiations. How do you get to the point where you're negotiating with an imposter?

WYDEN: The imposter account just takes your breath away. I mean, to have that happen now at a time when clearly the Taliban is what this challenge is all about, you're not even sure who is involved here. I mean clearly this is going to undermine the confidence of the American people. And you've got to see very quickly steps taken so that the people who send us to the United States Senate today have some confidence that we are actually advancing their interests in a very dangerous part of the world. And the morning headlines don't suggest that.

SPITZER: As you said, it takes your breath away when you think that our foreign policy was being handled in negotiations with somebody who is just off the street, taking our money. We don't know how much money yet. Somebody does, I guess. This is just-boggles the mind and is horrifying that American lives are being lost for this purpose.

WYDEN: When the Senate comes back in the lame-duck session, you're going to be keying up the big issues, particularly on national security and domestic economics. If the Obama administration doesn't have a way then to sort this out, I think it is going to continue to erode support for the administration's policy in the Senate.

SPITZER: Can we actually -- I hate to do this to you and surprise you perhaps. Can we move geographically just a little bit to another hot spot right now? It seems what's going on between North and South Korea has certainly unsettled the financial markets. We have the potential for war breaking out. What do you make of that, Senator? What have you have been told? Is this a contained minor conflict, or is this something that is brewing and increasing in scope?

WYDEN: Clearly, I serve on the Intelligence Committee, I'm going to have some briefings right away on this. I think obviously you can literally go around the world. This is too fresh to shoot from the hip on that one.

PARKER: All right, Senator Ron Wyden and James Traub, thank you both for being with us.

SPITZER: Still to come the fastest man in the world, Jimmie Johnson. He walked away from a head-on crash with barely a scratch. Let's see how he does on PARKER-SPITZER. Don't go away

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: Welcome back to PARKER-SPITZER:

Kathleen, I'm a huge NASCAR fan, but you don't have to watch a single race to realize what an incredible driver Jimmie Johnson is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PARKER: That's because Sunday Jimmie Johnson won his fifth consecutive Sprint Cup Series putting him in a very elite club. Only NASCAR hall of famers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have won more than five titles. But Johnson even got there faster. It took him the fewest races to win all five championships.

SPITZER: Not only that, Johnson's victory is historic. Let me put it in context of other sports. His team is now one of just four teams in American professional sports to have won five or more titles consecutively. The Boston Celtics won eight NBA titles in a row, starting in 1959. New York Yankees claimed five World Series from 1949 to '53 and the Montreal Canadians took the Stanley Cup five times from 1956 to 1960.

PARKER: Jimmie Johnson joins us now to talk about his victory and what's next.

Thanks so much for being here.

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NASCAR CHAMPION RACER: That's an awesome intro. I like to hear all that stuff.

PARKER: Yeah, Your whole life in a nutshell.

SPITZER: We're fans. That's why. JOHNSON: Amazing.

PARKER: Five years ago you were the guy saying, "Almost got there, just this close."

JOHNSON: Yeah.

PARKER: What's the different? What happened to push you over the line?

JOHNSON: Well, in 2004 and 2005 we came up short. '04 was only by eight points and that one really stung.

SPITZER: Eight points means the difference between first and third place, in one race.

JOHNSON: Actually, the rules changed that year. It was between first and second. I finished second and there's a 10 point spread from first to second. If I would have passed that final car it would have been a different story.

Coming up short, it hurts. It stings. There's no doubt about it. In '05 we didn't have the pace but still had a chance to win the championship. And we started falling apart as a team. And Mr. Hendrick, my car owner, sat us down, my crew chief and I, and helped us get our act together. And really helped us mature in a short period of time. In 2006 we came back as a stronger team and started this great roll.

SPITZER: You know, put this in context. When you show up on the track with a car it's the product of how many people working over those engines using high tech stuff? This is more than people usually imagine, when they just see cars going at high speeds. This is technology, a lot of money. What's involved getting that car on the track?

JOHNSON: Without a doubt. NASCAR is very focused on a simple car so that technology and expenses don't get too high. And we have a good product on the track. But the things that they can't control is what we do at the race shops and tools that we use. We have over a million square feet under roof. There's 520 employees at Hendrick Motorsports, a variety of different departments. We essentially build anything and everything that we can. There are some parts that have to be from the manufacturer and for us they're Chevrolet parts. Anything we can build, and make, use as a tool to understand the aero- balance of the car, the mechanical grip of the car, the engines, we have more stuff to play with than you could ever imagine.

SPITZER: And you are testing these cars in wind tunnels, you are designing this with every computer. I mean, this is high-tech stuff.

JOHNSON: It is. What made it more high tech in recent times is that they have limited if not completely done away with our ability to go to the racetrack and practice outside of a race weekend. And we can't run telemetry on the cars on the race weekends. It brings the human element in on a race weekend, and what I feel, and how I verbalize things to the crew. But we need to learn, and we need data somehow. So we go to these machines at the shop. And we have, as you mentioned, a wind tunnel, we have these seven post rigs, and we have these machines that simulate on track activity that are extremely advanced.

PARKER: I've got to ask you as a--I'm a mother. Eliot is a father. And you're now recently a father. You have a four-month-old daughter, named Guinevere (ph)?

JOHNSON: Yes, Genevieve.

PARKER: Genevieve.

JOHNSON: Yes.

PARKER: So, I have to ask you has having a daughter changed the way you feel about racing? It has got to make you a bit more nervous now that you see what really counts in life, right? It's not just winning.

JOHNSON: It's not just winning. There's no doubt that her being born has completely changed my life. I think that it's made me a better person, a better man. In the car when I put my helmet on and go to work at least for now it's been easy to separate the two. And I go to work and do my job. But when I get out of that car life is so different. It is my speed. My wife and I are having so much fun with it, and look forward to expanding our family in the future.

SPITZER: I just-what you say, put on your helmet and go to work. This is not what most of us would think of as ordinary work.

PARKER: That's what I do.

SPITZER: Yes, maybe. Let's show a clip of what going to work means for Jimmie Johnson. Watch this in amazement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: Yeah. My brakes failed, too. This is in 2000. My brakes failed and that wall caught me at the end and kind of rattled me. My work does have some risks.

PARKER: Did you just jump right out of that car? What happened?

JOHNSON: It took me a little while to get out. I was dazed. When I climbed out, the fans were going nuts that I was all right, and jumping up and down. So, I got out was kind of celebrating the fact I wasn't injured, and jumped on the roof of my Saturn (ph).

SPITZER: You were going how fast when you hit that retaining wall?

That track, we were probably, 150-160 at the end of the straight. You can see the breaks fail, right there, as the nose pops up. Then I'm looking for somewhere to slow the car down and I turned right --

PARKER: Into a wall. That helps. That will slow it down.

JOHNSON: It did. Maybe a little faster than I wanted.

SPITZER: What are you thinking? Did you have anything going through your mind at that moment?

JOHNSON: A lot. It doesn't look like a long distance but most accidents something happens really fast, boom, you hit the wall, it's over, it's done. There it seemed like 20 minutes before I actually stopped the car. And I had a long time to think about what was going on. The car was airborne, you see at the end of the clip there. As I'm going into the wall I thought it was a concrete wall. And in the back of my mind I thought I was in big trouble. I essentially went limp and just fell into my restraints, and it was one of the best things I could have done. It kind of helped prevent whiplash, to that effect.

SPITZER: One of the amazing things, is that because of some very tragic accidents, particularly, Dale Earnhardt's a number of years back, the cars are much safer now than they ever used to be.

JOHNSON: Yes. They are. And that accident was before-

SPITZER: That was pre-season (ph).

JOHNSON: Before the Hanz (ph) device, but what is there, is the safe walls-safer walls. The white foam barrier absorbed the impact. That crash, along with some others, where there were great outcomes from the softer walls led to the development of the soft walls. Unfortunately, I think we lost five drivers in about 16 months. That led to some other safety innovations inside the cockpit of the car.

PARKER: Help me understand something please. I want to know what makes a person want to do this. You started-I read somewhere-you started racing motorcycles at age five, is that right?

JOHNSON: Yes, it is right.

PARKER: You obviously have a thing for speed. What is it really that compels you to want to do this?

JOHNSON: I grew up in Southern California. And motorcycles and motocross racing was big. My grandparents owned a motorcycle shop and I just grew up around bikes. A lot of areas to ride from the local deserts, local motocross tracks, and I just grew up around them.

My dreams were to race motocross. I did as an amateur, got injured a lot, and fortunately found my way into four-wheeled racing with that steel roll cage around me. And things progressed from there. But my path was far different than a lot of drivers' past, especially NASCAR. Typically drivers come from the South and grow up in cars, and on the asphalt. And I came from two wheels, on the dirt, and made it all the way to NASCAR.

SPITZER: When you're doing superspeedway, Talladega, one of the big tracks you're going close to 200 miles an hour. How far are you from the car in front of you?

JOHNSON: In certain situations you're actually pushing that car.

SPITZER: So you are bumper-to-bumper?

JOHNSON: Yes, nose to tail, you can actually pick up five or six miles an hour as you get nose to nose and there's a technique to lock bumpers essentially that reduces the aero drag on those two vehicles, and you can check out on the field and pull away.

SPITZER: So when you're on the track you are going 200 miles an hour, bumper to bumper. After the race you have to drive home. Is that a tough transition?

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: I don't think so. I've had my wife upset with me a few times with how close I-

SPITZER: Have you ever gotten a ticket?

JOHNSON: I have not had a ticket.

PARKER: Are you telling me you ride bumpers?

JOHNSON: Yes. I am that jerk on the road that you're like get off my bumper. But my comfort margin is--

SPITZER: Drafting on the interstate.

JOHNSON: Yeah. That's me, sorry.

SPITZER: Jeff Gordon, who has actually an equity interest in your car and is a partner of yours, at Hendrick Motorsports? Did he discover you? How did this happen?

JOHNSON: The one that I would say that did the championing of my journey to Hendrick Motorsports would be Rick's late son Ricky Hendrick.

Ricky and I were close friends. Racing against each other in the lower divisions. And Mr. Hendrick knew about me. Jeff knew about me, but I had never Jeff or Rick in person. I was in a tough situation actually when I was driving that ALLTEL car that was in that clip. My team and sponsor faced financial troubles. The opportunities I had involved leaving Chevrolet who brought me so far along, and the team that brought me to that point.

Jeff had to make a tough decision to leave Ford and go to Chevy and to go to Mr. Hendrick. I thought he had the answer. I saw him one day in the garage area, and I asked for a few minutes of time. He gave me a few minutes of time. I explained my situation. In the end he said you're not going to believe this, but we're thinking about starting a fourth team, and your name was the name that was brought up in the meeting. I didn't even know Jeff. It was the wildest thing I've ever experienced. PARKER: Car racing is obviously a grueling thing to do. You've got to be concentrated all the time, right?

JOHNSON: Yes.

PARKER: But you also must have to be in good physical shape. Do you train to be a driver? Is there a physical training program that's associated with what you do?

JOHNSON: Yeah, absolutely. It's a big part of my week. There's three to four days of cardio and three days at the gym, five to six days of core training that I go through. There's some drivers that don't do much and drivers that do a lot. I find it helps structure my week and keeps me focused on the right things, on top of the physical aspects that are required being in the car.

Our shortest race I think is three and a half hours in length. Our longest race is five and a half. It's over 100 degrees every single time you're in that race car regardless of the outside temperatures. So there's a physical strain, the heat side, and then also mental side that you have to be tough.

SPITZER: You don't have A/C? You are not listening to music and with the A/C going?

JOHNSON: They're nice enough to give me a fan blowing into my helmet for some air conditioning.

PARKER: Do you ever find your mind wandering and you go, oh, my gosh.

JOHNSON: No, no. Maybe under caution, or sometimes when you crash out early and your car is damaged and you are just riding around, you kind of wander.

PARKER: Three and a half hours is a long time to stay focused.

JOHNSON: Honestly, it goes so fast when you're there, in the competitive environment.

SPITZER: Help me out in something. During the pit stops, under green, you guys change four tires, fill up your gas tank, 12 or 13 seconds, right? When you go home, you have a flat tire at home, how long does it take you to change it? You don't do it in 12 seconds at home.

PARKER: However long it takes to call Triple A.

JOHNSON: Months. No, at one point in time, my crew relied on me working on the cars before my cup career. Today they won't even let me touch a wrench. I have no business working on the cars.

SPITZER: You do in the ads, though.

JOHNSON: Well, of course, that's my sponsor. That's around the house, that's a different story. Although my wife would argue that point.

(LAUGHTER)

SPITZER: Probably rightly so. You already have a name for your effort next year to get number six, right? Your dad gave you a name?

JOHNSON: My dad, on television, over the weekend mentioned that we got this five and next year working on the six pack.

SPITZER: Working on the six pack, all right.

JOHNSON: So, we're working on the six pack.

SPITZER: In context of your staying in shape, now, one last question, then --

JOHNSON: I think he meant more of the six pack of beer.

SPITZER: The six pack, all right.

JOHNSON: That's a good twist on it.

SPITZER: For you he meant the six pack down here. You have a charity you're working with, they are trying to raise money. Tell us quickly about it.

JOHNSON: Yes, the Jimmie Johnson Foundation has been around I think five years now. We've been really focused in the areas where I grew up, and where my wife grew up so it would go San Diego, Oklahoma and where we live in North Carolina. We're primarily focused on children, but have been involved in a variety of community projects. And just trying to use the notoriety from being a racetrack driver to raise money and do good.

SPITZER: We'll put all that information on our blogs so folks who are fans or yours can go to it. Can we real quick put up that picture? Show folks that I am a real fan. The winners' circle, that is Jimmie Johnson over on the right. And that is me standing next to him, that was after you have won the Charlotte race.

JOHNSON: You have to explain more, you have family.

SPITZER: Much more important, off on the left there, is my brother-in-law, Jim Walt (ph), who is one of the -- on your team and I've known for 25 years. He's been working for Mr. Hendrick.

JOHNSON: One of our smart guys.

SPITZER: Helps build those engines and design them. Double engineer, mechanical and electrical engineering, so this is a sophisticated, sophisticated sport. This is not just people looking at an engine.

JOHNSON: Very true.

SPITZER: All right. NASCAR Champion Jimmie Johnson. Great for being here.

PARKER: Thanks so much for being here.

JOHNSON: Absolutely.

PARKER: Coming up reviews for Sarah Palin's latest book. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think what it does, Eliot, it confirms people's suspicion that this is an inside game. Wall Street is supposed to be there to serve the rest of us, to serve big businesses and small businesses, capital raising, capital allocation. What this suggests is that actually it is about enriching the insiders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPITZER: Just when you thought you couldn't take Wall Street, here's a whole new reason, insider trading.

Monday, the Feds raided three hedge fund offices, investigation allegation of insider trading. But just what is it? Simply put, it's when someone is using information that they were supposed to keep secret and they get an unfair advantage in the stock market. That's what insider trading is and that's rigging the game. But this case seems to go even deeper, takes it to a whole new level. A system-wide deeply engrained pattern that works the advantage of insiders and to the exclusion of everyone else.

Joining me now to talk about what appears to be ongoing criminality, this massive criminality on Wall Street, John Cassidy, who is the business reporter for "The New Yorker" magazine, author of "How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities." And in an article in this week's "New Yorker," Cassidy asks the powerful and critical question does Wall Street do anything useful? In fact, does it do more harm than good?

John, thank you for joining us.

JOHN CASSIDY, AUTHOR, "WHAT GOOD IS WALL STREET": Thanks for inviting me on Eliot.

SPITZER: You know right in the midst now, we see search warrants executed, hedge funds at the vortex of FBI investigations.

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: Is Wall Street just continuously corrupt, ugly and -- what's wrong with those guys?

CASSIDY: Well, we're going to find out. Right? It's still just an investigation. But it looks like they've been exchanging information not in the old-fashioned insider dealing way about coming takeovers, but inside information about coming earnings announcements. And it's, as they say, it's not the old investment bankers. It's the hedge funds are at the center of this.

SPITZER: All right. So they've gotten one degree smarter in how to cheat the rest of us. That's what we're supposed to conclude here. These guys are still gaming the system if -- and you're right. It's an investigation. Nobody has been proven guilty yet. No charges yet.

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: But insider trading, which is the abuse of private information, basically stealing information so they win when we lose.

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: If you believe what people are saying, it's rampant all over the place on Wall Street.

CASSIDY: Well, they certainly if you just look at the takeover announcements and how the prices react before them, there does seem to be inside information. I think what's important about this case is it's a big, big case. It looks like dozens of people are going to be involved. They've only been into three firms so far but from all the leaks that have taken place, looks like they're going after Goldman Sachs, if they've actually got the evidence.

SPITZER: Has there been an investigation recently which hasn't involved Goldman Sachs? I mean, are we supposed to believe Taibbi's imagery. Now, they are just the giant squid sucking blood from the rest of us.

CASSIDY: I mean, I feel a bit sorry for Goldman because they've got dragged into everything but it does seem in this case, one of their deals is at the center of the investigation. That doesn't mean that they're necessarily guilty of anything. Again, it's just an investigation.

SPITZER: What is Wall Street supposed to do?

CASSIDY: Right. Well, Wall Street, the reason it exists is to raise money for corporations and to raise money for businesses. And it still does some of that. We saw last week the big GM IPO.

SPITZER: Right. IPO being an initial public offering where they raise capital --

CASSIDY: They raised $20 billion for General Motors, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, I think. Good luck to them. You know, that's what we want them to do. But that's only a very smart part of Wall Street's business these days. I went and looked to the accounts and if you look at a firm like Goldman Sachs, for example, about 70 percent of their revenue comes from trading. That's buying, selling stocks, buying, selling all sorts of securities, derivatives, commodities, foreign exchange. It's got very little to do with actually raising money for General Motors. SPITZER: Wait a minute. Something is wrong here. Didn't we just save these banks? Am I forgetting recent history? I thought it was only about a year ago they were bust.

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: Our tax dollars went to them so they could get their bonuses --

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: -- because God forbid an investment banker go without a bonus in any year. So what's happened? Why are they back to this so quickly?

CASSIDY: Well, a lot of the money they're making is indirectly from the taxpayer. We basically gave them this guarantee. We bailed them out, and then the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to zero. Any trader in the world can make a lot of money when interest rates are zero because you borrow money for nothing. You're pocketing treasury bonds at three percent and, you know, you grow three percent in return.

SPITZER: For all the money we gave these firms --

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: -- why didn't we get equity back?

CASSIDY: Well, that's the big question.

SPITZER: Why didn't we get bonuses back?

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: Why didn't we demand that they control their improper procedure?

CASSIDY: Right.

SPITZER: What did we get back?

CASSIDY: Well, I can only -- I mean, I was, you know -- it's easy as a journalist to say that I was demanding that at the time. Lots of people were. All I can tell you is what the people in Washington say, Tim Geithner, people like that.

SPITZER: Did it make any sense to you?

CASSIDY: Well, they say look, the world was crashing down. We couldn't afford to put our foot on their throats. We had to, you know, we had to rescue them. That was job one. And if we didn't get a good enough deal, well, at least we prevented a depression.

SPITZER: I heard the same things. We all heard the same things. Let me be very clear. It is rubbish. They should have negotiated. They don't know how to negotiate it. It's clear in everything they do. That is why the banks are ruling the roost once again and we as taxpayers and middle class are being taken advantage again. It's simply crazy and it has been an abhorrent, abhorrent period in government policy. And I think it's an abomination.

CASSIDY: Now, you're right. Obama would say he did the best he could because, you know, he didn't have support in Congress. I think if he had rallied the people at large there was enough sort of anger about this, that he could have actually --

SPITZER: He didn't need Congress. They had the money. The banks were desperate. They approved Goldman Sachs's transformation from an investment bank to a bank holding company overnight because they were sitting there saying please, give me the money. All you had to say was here are the rules, guys. Yes or no? Bankruptcies are played by our rules. They would have needed to say yes.

CASSIDY: You're right. You're right. That's when they should have been tough in fall of 2008 when they were desperate.

SPITZER: That's right.

Do you think that Wall Street 10 years from now will look the way it does now or will it be fundamentally different?

CASSIDY: I mean, having already covered it for 25 years, I'm a bit pessimistic, Eliot. I don't think Wall Street can reform itself. And what you get -- you get cycles of regulation. Things will be OK for a couple of years I would imagine because the regulators are keen to show they weren't as soft as they were in the past. But I think inevitably in the end it will go back to how it was.

SPITZER: Oh, my goodness. On that happy note, happy Thanksgiving to everybody.

Jack Cassidy, thank you for your insights. We can only hope things get better. We need a capital markets that functions with integrity, does what it's supposed to do, not because, you know, that Wall Street bankers made it. John, thank you for being with us.

Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATHLEEN PARKER, HOST: You could be sincere with your audience and engage at $250,000 a hit which is what Sarah Palin is making per episode to make what is essentially a political infomercial.

ANDREW JENKS, CREATOR/STAR, MTV'S "WORLD OF JENKS": Yes. I'm talking about -- I'm talking about maybe 20 years, 10, 20 years from now when it's more than just --

SPITZER: From what you said sounds to me like you as the host of a TV show plan to get into politics.

All right. (END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KATHLEEN PARKER, HOST: Welcome to "Our Political Party" where we invite cool people to join us because we're already cool. Let's meet tonight's guests. We have Andrew Jenks. He's a documentary filmmaker. He just finished a season of MTV's "World of Jenks" in which he hung out at a Texas high school. Robert Zimmerman is a Democratic strategist. He dresses better than Ralph Lauren himself.

SPITZER: Oh, my, he's better than I do but he just has that presence.

And we've got Kerry Picket who blogs for "The Washington Times," and Errol Louis who has the inside scoop on all things New York political as the host of NY1's "Inside City Hall." Welcome to all of you.

PARKER: OK, I've got to look at this because this is complicated. Ratings plummeted 40 percent for the second episode of Sarah Palin's reality show. And her book "America by Heart" is out today. And here's an excerpt. She turns even the Arizona immigration law into a media conspiracy. Quote, "If you relied on MSNBC for your news," which, of course, none of us would, "suddenly Arizona and by extension all of red state America had become the equivalent of Nazi Germany." So what are your predictions for this literary effort?

ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: What is with the obsession of the right wing and Nazis and Hitler? First you have Sarah Palin writing that --

(CROSSTALK)

Rand Paul pointed out today, he said that Obama came to power the same way Hitler came to power. Eva Braun wasn't this into Hitler. I mean, let's face it. They're going to take the Republican mask off the elephant and put it on a German Shepherd.

KERRY PICKET, WASHINGTON TIMES BLOGGER: Ed Schultz, I like to talk about Chris Matthews, actually compared the Tea Party to a Brown shirts during this entire election. So let's not --

ZIMMERMAN: But they're not leaders of my party.

PICKET: Nonetheless, though, she's actually referencing MSNBC. I'm talking MSNBC commentators, so let's not talk about it's a conspiracy theory because it's actually true.

PARKER: Can we all just join hands and forswear Nazis and say retire Nazism.

SPITZER: Sarah Palin's use of metaphor really is over the line and it is the case. I'm with Robert on this, the looseness of language. And some of it is on the other side of the aisle as well, of course. But the looseness of language that has been pervasive in the critique of our president has been offensive. It has been wrong. It has been counter factual. It has been damaging to the country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But Eliot --

(CROSSTALK)

PICKET: But, Eliot, the same thing happened to George W. Bush.

SPITZER: No, not the same way.

PICKET: Oh, absolutely.

SPITZER: No.

PICKET: You go over to Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, they were putting out swastikas. They were doing the whole --

SPITZER: We always knew where he was born. We always knew where he was born. Nobody contested that.

PARKER: Errol, I want to know your --

PICKET: You're talking about the LaRouche Democrats who are actually out there with the Obama Hitler signs.

SPITZER: No.

ERROL LOUIS, JOURNALIST AND COMMENTATOR: The rating plunge doesn't surprise me because, you know, there's a certain amount of stick here. And so, you know, you see her in the frontier wilderness. You see her fire the gun and you pretty much get it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

LOUIS: You see her attack the lame stream media and you've got Sarah Palin kind of where she is right now. And if you want to do that every week, you either have to be a dedicated fan who wants to watch it like a soap opera and just see it play out over and over and over again or you just turn the channel. So, I mean, the question though is does she build on this. Does she ever get outside that little core of people who just can't get enough of this stuff.

PARKER: Right.

LOUIS: Get enough of her confusing reality with media, you know, sort of which is ultimately what this is. MSNBC didn't drive that debate in Arizona by any means and no media did. There's a genuine problem there and if she ever wants to get back to solving genuine problems the way she tried to do as a governor, you know, she might have a future in politics.

ANDREW JENKS, CREATOR/STAR, MTV'S "WORLD OF JENKS": The same thing though happened with most shows. I mean, it happened with Conan O'Brien's show. I mean, he had what? Five million people I don't remember, but by the third day of it airing, it was 50 percent down. So that's kind of a typical to happen in television when you have a popular personality at the forefront of it. What I found interesting is that, you know, in terms of future generations entering the world of politics and what's important, I think transparency is becoming that much more vital especially in terms of politicians and what they do and what they think and even what their family is like. And something like having a television show, although at certain points certainly feels and seems fairly inane, I think speaks to a larger issue which is that of being engaged with your audience and being what seems to be or hopefully is sincere with your audience and having a television show in some respects could do that.

PARKER: I have to say you could be sincere with your audience and engage at $250,000 a hit which is what Sarah Palin is making per episode to make what is essentially a political infomercial. Let's face it.

JENKS: Yes. I'm talking about -- I'm talking about maybe 20 years, 10, 20 years from now when it's more than just --

SPITZER: From what you just said sounds to me like you as the host of a TV show plan to get into politics.

All right. Let's switch over from Alaska thankfully to not so thankfully Afghanistan. What is going on here? Karzai takes bags of cash from anybody who shows up. He obviously has psychological -- obviously, he's reported to have deep psychological problems. We've been negotiating with an impostor pretending to be the number two guy in the Taliban. I mean, this is just -- it's a bad, bad TV show.

JENKS: It's there stimulus program. It's their Afghanistan program.

SPITZER: If there weren't American lives on the line --

PARKER: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

ZIMMERMAN: It is very serious. It's not just a bad Peter Sellers movie. It's reality here. I think what's really intriguing -- what's important to know besides the fact we were duped by this impostor, think of all the people and we know who they are. They're not impostors and they still dupe us. Remember Ahmed Chalabi, who the Bush administration on the right who they were holding up as sort of the future of Iraq. Now we find out he was taking orders from Iran. And, of course, the president of the Iraqi government is walking literally hand in hand with the Iranian government.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

ZIMMERMAN: So I'm not just worried just about the imposters. Do we have to negotiate and find ways to dialogue with the Taliban? I'm worried about the ones who we know they are and they're still duping us.

PICKET: But you know, here's the thing. You have an administration now that actually campaigned on we're going to be pulling all of our troops out and so on and so forth. But the only way you're actually going to win a war is if you go in and say we're going to win. And that's it. But unfortunately, when you end up campaigning on this idea that we're going to pull out, frankly --

ZIMMERMAN: Are you suggesting that we should resume our combat operations in Iraq?

PICKET: Come on, Bob, frankly, you're going to end up having this whole idea of simply being closed and actually making mistakes so this whole entire Obama administration is actually doing on this whole Afghanistan operation.

LOUIS: There is a disastrous mismatch, I would agree with you, between the political rhetoric and what's happening on the ground. But this is, you know, the book "The March of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman, we've done this over and over and over again is that, you know, you say -- we say the counterinsurgency is the strategy. We've got to win hearts and minds. Then you see a poll, another one of these appalling statistics. Most people in Afghanistan have no idea what happened on September 11th or that their country had anything to do with it or that they're supposed to be, you know, be cultivated their hearts and minds. And yet, there's more and more, you know, war material going in there. More and more military operations.

ZIMMERMAN: Look at the foreign policy danger though. We know from our own intelligence data that a good part of the Taliban, certainly over 70 percent according to the State Department are economic Taliban. They can be negotiated with. They can be bought. And I would hate to see this situation which is it's tragic what conspired. I'd hate to see it discourage us from trying to find a way to diffuse the Taliban which I think is critical.

SPITZER: What Errol said is so important though that the domestic situation if this is a war for hearts and minds, the DOD, the Department of Defense report is about to come out basically saying the Afghan population has given up and has concluded that the Taliban is going to win. Now, you're right. That doesn't mean we throw in the towel but it means we need to figure out some mechanism --

ZIMMERMAN: Absolutely.

SPITZER: -- and figure out what is our objective, what is the proportional use of force to get there. Right now, we seem to be grasping without a clear statement of what we hope to get out of it, how we're going to get from here to there, and the risk to our soldiers and our budget just keeps expanding and it's just hard to make sense out of it.

PARKER: All right. We have to take a quick break but we'll be back with more of our party in just a few minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PARKER: Back now with "Our Political Party." We've got time for just one more question. The other day, Oprah on her show had one of her great favorite things giveaways and everyone in her audience got an iPad, Uggs, a Josh Groban CD and a new VW Beetle. So if you were in her audience --

JENKS: I'll take a car.

PARKER: Yes. The car.

SPITZER: Not the bug, it's a car worth a lot of money.

PARKER: Yes.

SPITZER: OK.

SPITZER: If you were in her audience, what hat would you like to have in your own goody bag?

PICKET: Well, this was sort of tough to figure out but whatever is in my goody bag and I take to the airport, I don't want anybody touching my goody bag, OK?

PARKER: All right.

(LAUGHTER)

JENKS: I was going to -- I think the important part to point out here is that they get -- the audience members get taxed on this.

PARKER: Yes.

JENKS: So when you see them crying and they're so upset, you know, so happy about the car, they're really just upset because of those taxes.

PARKER: Yes.

JENKS: They have to pay that much taxes on those cars.

ZIMMERMAN: That's a notion. In my goody bag, I want Oprah's wallet. I mean, come on.

That's exactly right.

PARKER: Errol?

LOUIS: To tell you the truth, I actually -- it may sound hokey but I'd like to have a year's worth of health care, of top flight health care and hopefully I wouldn't need it and I could give it to someone else. I just heard from a lot of people lately who are in real bad circumstances. This reform hasn't kicked in anywhere near yet and I'd love to just be able to have something like this and say you know what, from Oprah to me to you, and give it to somebody.

SPITZER: That's fascinating. You could for what they're spending on -- I don't know what they pay for these cars. They could actually provide that health care for a lot of people.

LOUIS: Absolutely. Exactly.

PARKER: I feel a little silly now that you've gone to, you know, giving away health care because all I have is this swizzle.

LOUIS: We didn't want anybody here --

(CROSSTALK)

SPITZER: This is just the opposite. We didn't want you to go home empty handed. And so, you know, from health care and a Beetle and a car, wow. This is --

PARKER: Tax free.

SPITZER: Good enough. We need to file a 1099 under the new health care. I shouldn't even joke about that, you know.

PARKER: All right.

SPITZER: I believe in that health care. I really do. All right.

PARKER: Andrew Jenks, Robert Zimmerman, Kerry Picket and Errol Louis, thank you so much for being with us. And everybody have a happy Thanksgiving.

JENKS: You as well.

ZIMMERMAN: A good holiday.

SPITZER: We'll be right back with some closing thoughts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Hello, I'm Joe Johns. More of "PARKER SPITZER" in a moment. First, the latest.

Part of a jawbone with a tooth attached found on Aruban beach is not Natalee Holloway's. The announcement came today after the bone was found earlier this month. Investigators say dental records rule out the possibility it's Natalee. In a statement for an attorney of Natalee's mother, Beth Holloway, says, quote, "Beth accepts the forensic conclusions, is emotionally exhausted from the inexplicably long wait and deeply disappointed in the time and manner in which she learned of the results. Apparently, Aruban prosecutors were no more sensitive to media concerns than the painful vigil of a mother."

Health officials are bracing for things to get a lot worse in Haiti's cholera epidemic. The Pan American Health Organization said today it plans to treat 400,000 cholera cases within the next year and that it expects half those cases will happen in the next three months. Health officials say they need more of everything to try to treat the outbreak. More doctors, nurses, treatment centers, even more toilets. As of today, more than 1,400 people have died from the cholera epidemic.

Tonight on "360," drug companies paying doctors big bucks to promote their products. That's the latest.

Now back to "PARKER SPITZER."

PARKER: In closing, a post script. Tomorrow is one of the busiest travel days of the year so be patient. Check your dignity with your luggage and don't be surprised if you have find yourself sitting next to the future speaker of the House.

SPITZER: John Boehner has announced he will fly commercial back and forth to his home base in Ohio. In his new role since he has security guards, he gets to skip the body scan and the pat-down. Still, quite a change from the previous speaker. Nancy Pelosi always opted for an Air Force jet to fly her home to San Francisco.

PARKER: Of course, to be fair, Eliot, Nancy Pelosi predecessor, Dennis Hastert, also flew Air Force jets and a speaker is second in line to the presidency after the vice president, Nancy Pelosi was entitled to the same security. But she's giving up her Air Force perk once she becomes minority leader and she too will be flying commercial.

SPITZER: Something tells me it won't be coach but it does make you wonder, Kathleen, what happens if Boehner and Pelosi end up sitting next to each other on the same flight. Who gets the window seat? Who gets the aisle? Who gets the extra pretzels?

PARKER: Oh, well, Eliot, that's what compromise is all about.

SPITZER: Thanks for being with us. "LARRY KING LIVE" starts right now.