hey, look at that, the democratic bill actually passed. it passed the senate by a vote of 51-48. vice president joe biden was even on hand to gavel the bill through, marking the historic occasion of the senate kind of working. so this was really a remarkable turn of events. the senate was functional today. it went as it was supposed to go. both sides put up their plans and in the end, one side prevailed. in this case, it was the democrats. the only thing, as there's a little catch i need to tell you about. the reason the republicans allowed that vote today, the reason they didn't filibuster like they usually do, is because there is a rule in the constitution which says if any bill relating to taxes must originate in the house, it has to begin in the house. it cannot begin in the senate. this bill did not originate in the house. and that is why mcconnell didn't filibuster. he said, quote, the only reason we won't block it today, the bill, is that we know it doesn't

pass constitutional muster and won't become law. what today's votes are all about is showing the people who sent us here where we stand. okay. so if you thought even for a minute that the senate was actually doing something today, well, poppycock. there's mcconnell to remind you it was all just posturing. thank you, mitch mcconnell. meanwhile, what was happening in the house today? >> i would ask the gentleman from virginia if he would be willing -- or let me rephrase that -- he would not object to a unanimous consent in the house to correct what was clearly a typographical error made by non-partisan professional staff at the office. >> madam chairman, this member will reserve the right to object at the appropriate time. >> reclaiming my time -- >> gentleman from california. >> nothing could be more insincere than to pick on professional staff on a typographical error. >> well, you just saw house democrats and house republicans

fighting over whether a typo, a typo in a bill could be fixed or not. i wish i was kidding. i am not kidding. so that was congress today. the senate voted on a pair of totally meaningless bills. the house fought about a typo. if any of this comes as a surprise to you, you probably have not been paying close attention. baup this is not just a bad congress, or eve an pretty bad congress. i think the case can, should, and probably must be made that this is one of the worst congresses we have ever had in this country. and i know people say stuff like that all the time. it just sounds like hyperbole, but i think we can prove it. we've got the numbers here. i think there's convincing evidence that this particular congress, the 112th congress is one of the worst of all-time. let us begin with just the simplest measure of how much congress is getting done. congressional productivity. it is the number of laws they

have passed, public laws they have passed. this graph shows the number of public laws passed by every congress dating back to the 80th congress in 1947. that was a congress harry truman called the do-nothing congress. as you can see, it varies every year but it's generally in the many hundreds. ready for this congress? yeah. that's it. that tiny little bar over there on the right. the one with the arrow. now, to be fair, there are still five months left in this but at this race, the 112th congress is set to be the do-less than the do-nothing congress. that sort of ineptitude led the 112 congress to become the single most despised congress in the eyes of the public. put together with handy graph showing this particular congress is less popular than -- the irs, the airline industry, lawyers. less popular than richard nixon during watergate than the banks

in the oil and gas industry, than bp during the gulf oil spill, than paris hilton. this congress is less popular than communism and huk oh chavez. the only thing less popular than congress, fidel castro, and he's not even much less popular. on top of being historically inept and historically unpopular, there's also the matter of this congress doing real measurable damage to this country. do you remember the debt ceiling debacle last year when republicans took the country to the brink of default for the very first time? that wasn't just an ugly political fight. that had real world consequences. this is what monthly job growth looked like last year. looked a little uneven there in the middle. it drops very far. after starting the year off pretty strong, job growth essentially fell off a cliff beginning in may, which is right around the time speaking john boehner kicked off the debt ceiling fight. as congress debated whether they were going to pay their bills, hiring slows. then the next month, hiring

picked up again immediately. here's how the debt ceiling fight affected consumer confidence in the economy. these are gallup numbers. you see the big drop in 2011? that was the debt ceiling fight and it is a huge drop. so by having this useless petulant fight over the department ceiling, the effectively slowed down job growth and, oh, yeah, can you remember? we as a country lost our aaa credit rating for the first time in our history. we just learned, by the way, the debt ceiling fight has so far cost taxpayers $1.3 million in extra borrowing costs, also. thank you, 112th congress for that, too. this congress has been so incompetent it can barely even keep the lights on in its own building. i mean that literally. every year, congress has to pass 12 annual appropriation bills to keep the government funded. that has to happen by october 1st. as you can see, some sections of

congress are more successful of doing that than others. the average gets three bills passed on time. i said this congress was bad, i didn't say others were good. could we show how the 112th congress did last year? huh. that is not a graphics mistake. that is a zero. this congress passed exactly zero appropriations bills on time last year. great. now, one particular department of the federal government got it the worst, after democrats and republicanens failed to reach a compromise last year, the federal aviation administration shut down. in the middle of a weak economy, 4,000 faa workers and 70,000 airport construction workers were furloughed from their jobs. they were out of pay and out of work until congress finally managed to get its act together. this is not normal. this is not how it's supposed to work. this congress has not only been historically unproductive, it has taken steps that have directly harmed the country. that have directly harmed our

economic recovery. and it's not just people like me who think this. it is the most credentialed experts on the manner. thomas mann and norman orenstein have been explaining for four decades, and earlier this year, they came to this joint conclusion. doing this more than four decades and earlier came to this joint conclusion. quote -- we have been studying washington politics and congress for more than 40 years and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. joining me now, the aforementioned most credentialed experts on the matter, norm orenstein, resident scholar of the institute and tom mann, senior fellow in government studies at the brookings institution, also the co-authors of "it's even worse than it looks," how the american constitutional system collided with political extremism. the book does something that i think is fairly courageous given you have built up bipartisan credibility.

you say that what has gone wrong with this congress in large part is that one of the two parties has become extreme. the republicans are dropped off the cliff and have seen compromise as anathema. is that a correct analysis of your thesis? >> it is, and you're right. it would have been easier to say everybody does it, a plague on both their houses, but that's not the reality now. we know it gnaw just because we kind of see it or we have some anecdotes that would express it. in many ways, some of the republican leaders have provided the evidence directly for us. in particular, mitch mcconnell who often has strange bursts of damaging candor. >> mitch mcconnell the senate minority leader. of course, not only said the very famous, my number one goal is to make barack obama a one-term president, but basically made it clear after the mid-term elections, of course we weren't going to cooperate with the democrats.

if these things looked bipartisan at all, they would have benefitted from them. so there was an obvious strategy to block, to make any vick tribs look ugly, and we also know now, dave obi, the former chairman of the appropriations committee, when they started to do a stimulus bill called in his ranking republican member, jerry lewis, and said, we want to work with you. go to your members, let us know what things you like, what things you don't like. lewis laughed and said i have orders from on high. we're not going to cooperate. there are smoking guns all over the place. >> tom, i look at what's happening here and i agree with you guys. i think the republican party has become very extreme. but i also see a large historic trend towards polarization. the parties getting further apart from each other. one thing you say is there's a mismatch between polarized parties and the rules of in particular the senate but congress more generally. and so when i look at this, it seems to be the first thing to do is to get rid of what we call on this show the tarantino, but which in the broader world is

known as the filibuster. is that wrong? am i barking up the wrong tree? >> there's no question we have a mismatch. our parties are now parliamentary style. idealogically polarized, internally unified and vehemently oppositional. now, listen, if mitch mcconnell or john boehner led the opposition party in a parliament and were as aggressive and anti-negotiation as they have been, who cares? the majority puts its program into place and is held accountable, but in this system, a minority party can frustrate the majority, and the key to that is the senate filibuster, which as you have written, is an accidental element of senate procedure. it occurred early in the 19th century when the motion to -- on the previous question was left out of the rules.

but that fill la buster, which was used selectively, carefully, and in full public view for many decades has now become a routine 60-vote hurdle that allows a minority that can muster 41 votes over the long haul to frustrate any effort of that majority party. if they were willing to deal, if the filibuster requirement set up the incentives to find some agreement between the two parties, it would be okay, but they decided on day one they were not going to negotiate on anything. it would be obama's economy and we wouldn't have our fingerprints on it. >> what worries me about that is we spent a fair amount of time in this segment explaining a weird quirk of procedure. most americans are normal human

beings and don't spend their time paying attention to congress. i worry about the breakdown of accountability in the elections when voters blame the majority for essentially outcomes that are dictated by minority obstruction. if you had no filibuster, you would have much more stimulus, a different health care bill. the broad mass of voters get angry because congress isn't working and they blame the majority, but it tends to work often because of the minority. >> one of the troubling things here, ezra, you could go back to the 1994 mid-term elections when a similar process of obstruction took place with the newt gingrich led republicans against bill clinton. it worked like a charm in 1994, obstruction worked even more like a charm in 2010. what republicans learned in both cases is, if you get people frustrated enough, they just vote the ins out and the outs in. and now we're in a situation with divided government where people are even angrier, where you have a congress that is in much worse repute even than the last one. where are voters to turn?

figuring out who to hold accountable is fuddy now, and it's perhaps the biggest problem with have given the way the parties are operating. they not only gridlock and do great damage as you say, and it really is damage to the country, the fabric of the economy, but they leave voters with little opportunity to figure out who general winly is -- genuinely is to blame, and, frankly, the press corps is an unindicted co-conspirator to that. >> i cop guilty to that. norm and tom mann, co-authors of" it's even worse than it looks" which is terrific. thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> republican presidential candidate mitt romney has a bone to pick with president obama's foreign policy. at least he says he does. in fact, he says it all the time. it's just not clear exactly what that bone is. that is next. and kim jung un of north korea has take an bride? that's not the best new thing in the world today. that distinction belongs to the

reporting of lil' kim's announcement by a reporter loved and revered by the "rachel maddow show." stay tuned. in one word, how

banks feel about president obama? hint. that word would not be grateful. that story plus tonight's bit of television daring do, the ezra klein challenge, is coming up.

mitt romney wanted to be the republican presidential nominee in the 2008 election. and he failed. he got close, but he didn't win the nomination. senator john mccain did. then mccain, of course, lost to now president barack obama. that was the bad news for mitt romney and the republicans. the good news is there was a lot for mitt romney to learn from the '08 campaign from mccain and his own example. for example, do not pick an untested, unvetted shoot for the stars running mate. it will not end well for you. another lesson was a little less obvious and a little more personal. one mitt romney needed to learn

the hard way. even if the election doesn't seem like it's all about foreign policy, you have to at least appear like you know what the heck you're talking about. you're asking to be the commander in chief, not the haircut in chief. so do not confuse all the bad guys, all the people who don't like america, and each other, and roll them into one big ball of evil. >> this is about hezbollah and hamas and al qaeda. this is a worldwide jihadist effort to try to cause the collapse of all moderate islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. >> it's not that. half of those people hate the other half. that's not true. a couple days after revealing that, he single-handedly manufactured an even bigger embarrassment. what is the one thing you know about the war in iraq? what is the one thing every single reputable foreign

policy expert agrees on? what is the big agreed upon fact? when the united states invaded in 2003, saddam hussein did not not, not have weapons of mass destruction. >> am i the only one thinking in all of the build-up to the war, those weapons of mass destruction got moved? it's possible. >> it's entirely possible. >> what he said there was that the wmds got moved to syria, and no, they did not. it's not even remotely possible that saddam had wmds at the time. even president bush agreed it wasn't remotely possible. that is just -- well, it's a little embarrassing. so now it's 2012 and he's got a shot at presidency all over again and he basically gets a do-over. few people remember that he didn't know the bad guys. that they didn't have wmds. he's got a chance to prove himself a serious foreign policy guy who should be elected president of a country that is still at war even today. we may not act like a country at war, but we are at war and mitt

romney wants to be the guy in charge of that war. now, for my entire lifetime, there has been a singular republican playbook that has been incredibly successful against democrats, and it goes like this -- republicans are hawkish and tough and uncompromising on security. they will protect you. whereas democrats are weak and they enjoy funny kinds of sailing and all of the flip-flopping. it would be foolish for any republican to see the foreign policy national security advance to democrats. so this year, romney in a close election needed to get it right. we're on the economy, sure, but don't give up the whole national security thing. the problem is mitt romney is running against the president who finally killed osama bin laden and ended the really, really unpopular war in iraq and who amped up the drone war like it or not, that has killed almost every guy to hold the title al qaeda's number three. what does romney say about al qaeda to differentiate himself from the president, how does he come across tougher than president obama?

well, yesterday romney spoke to the vet trins of foreign wars. the topics were the military and national security and external threats, et cetera. not once in his speech did he mention the phrase al qaeda. not once. go ahead, we have linked the transcript on our blog. go there, hit control f, and type in al qaeda. you get nothing. in anticipation of that speech, romney campaign put out this fact sheet. the candidates foreign policy -- there were lots and lots of bullet points, but not any mentions of al qaeda. control f al qaeda, butkus. as we speak, mitt romney is on a foreign tour. his own campaign is pushing it as a big deal and a chance for the candidate to display his foreign policy global bona fides. yes, there is something missing from this map, though. i mean it makes sense why romney would go to lornden for the olympics. it's a key part of this biography, and israel is a key ally, and poland, fine, you don't forget poland in the words of george w. bush, but how do

you go on a big presidential trip as a presidential candidate and not going to afghanistan? how do you not go to where we're still at war? in an interview today with brian williams, he turned down the chance, but if you compare his foreign policy and obama's foreign policy, you see that while mitt is good at using the tough sounding words that have worked so well for republicans for a generation, he's less good at actually differentiating himself from the president. joining us now is spencer ackman, national security writer, a friend of mine, and somebody who has actually dug deep into the foothills of romney's foreign policy. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> so you wrote a great piece today, and the title was the five thinks we learned about how mitt could run the world.

number one is he seems to run the world when it comes to afghanistan, egypt, and iran a lot like obama is running the world. >> a lot like if romney hired obama's aides but they had nothing but bad things to say about themselves. you get a lot of rhetoric about how this is failed policy, an overly politicized policy, but i'm going to do the same thing. >> they don't have functional disagreements, but they have sort of big rhetorical agreements. romney says obama has been apologizing for america, and a broad point he makes is that the difference between him and obama is resolve, it is will. he'll have the resolve and there's nothing we can't do if we put our backs into it. that reminds me of early term george w. bush. it was about how much america wanted it. i mean, the realists in romney's camp, the people who are chastened by the bush administration, they have to be reeling from that. >> if you want to look to the guy whose words and actions match up and have been more consistent, that's obama. it's not romney. it's obama who in 2007 said he

was going to have an all-out effort to kill osama bin laden with or without pakistan. it was obama who said he was going to increase troop levels in pakistan. it was obama who said he was going to end the iraq war. when you look at romney then, sometimes now, sometimes last tuesday, sometimes next wednesday. it's a little bit different. you've got an actually more hawkish romney on iran than you do this time around. all of a sudden now russia is the biggest foe until this new speech at the vfw in which iran poses the bigger danger. it's more difficult to get a sense of where that resolve actually plays out, and i tell up, ezra, i wanted to walk out on his speech so badly. romney denied me the facts, figures and numbers. >> it's hard to do it. on arondeau, he said now iran is the single biggest threat.

obama has done a major virus attack on iran to bring down some of the nuclear reactors. he has been a participant in multiple rounds of sanctions. how different was what romney opposed to do in iran than what obama was going to do in iraq? >> it's a lot more bellicose. it's very contemperature of what obama did by saying at the beginning of his presidency he was going to talk to iran without preconditions. on the level of substance, very different. romney didn't rule out negotiating with iran. he just simply said that zero enrichment of uranium was the goal. didn't clarify whether that was the beginning of talks or the end point to them, but didn't immediately say the bombs are going to drop in five minutes. similarly, he's really against russia. he's against obama moving closer to russia. however, if he backs away from that position, russia has every incentive as it did before the obama administration's drift toward russia to go back to helping iran and frustrating international consensus on iran.

it's hard to see how that knits together for romney and his advisers kind of play that away rather than deal with it head on. >> spencer ackman, national security writer for wire.com's danger room. i'm sorry you were denied the opportunity to walk out today. maximum information, minimum elapsed time. the wonkiest two minutes in television are coming up next.

you've probably heard the name sanford weill or sandy weill. he's to wall street bankers say what jerry seinfeld is to sitcoms. if you don't pay much attention, he's the one you have probably heard of. he used to run citibank. he got really, really, really rich doing it. today on cnbc, he said that the united states government should break up the big banks. you know, the big banks like citi which he ran. imagine jerry seinfeld saying there should be no more primetime sitcoms or tony bennett saying no more crooning? that's what sandy said today. that leads us into the ezra klein challenge where i try to explain complicated stuff especially in the economy that seems at first chance a little mystifying. tonight, what the heck they're talking about when they talk about breaking up the big banks. everyone says it. weill says it, everyone hears it, but it doesn't often get explained. what is breaking up the big

banks? how would they do it, and why would we want to? may i have my two minutes please? okay, there it is. ready. set. you have heard of all of the big banks. jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, these names are big. and it means they have as assets a really big percentage of our gross domestic product. trillions and trillions of dolls. but what we're worried about here isn't just that they're big. it is that they are too big. that they are too big to fail, to be precise. when say a bank is too big to fail, it has so much money and so many debts to other banks and investors that its failure could bring down other parts of the financial system as well. that is what happened when lehman and aig began to go down. when they went down, they owed so much money to everyone else, the very fact of their failure made other banks fail. banks that were fine the day before. were not fine the day after. here's the thing. the banks are even bigger today than they were then, before the crisis. this graph from bloomberg

"business week" tells the story. in '06, the five biggest banks had $6 trillion in assets. today, they have $8.5 trillion. that's more than half what the entire u.s. economy produces in a single year. so when folks say they want to break up the big banks, it's because they believe a series of smaller banks would be able to fail without threatening everyone else. now, there are a couple of different ways we could actually go about doing that. the government could tax the hell out of any bank that is bigger than we wanted it to be. no bank would want to pay such a tax, so it would not allow itself to be so big, but then we would have a bunch of smaller banks. the problem there is that even smaller banks can be too interconnected to fail. they could have so many trading partners and so many debts the leverage, the financial system can't handle their fall. and then, of course, there's global banks that could be luge and go down. in other words, breaking up the banks that are called too big to fail may or may not solve the problem because it's not the too big part, it's the fail part. the challenge is how to keep any of them from failing at all, at least in a way that hurts them.

hurts us. three seconds left. and coming up next on the show, the man in charge of overseeing the money in the banks in '08 has a lot to say about how we're trying to prevent fail. how we're failing at preventing fail, and i'll ask him to explain wall street that loved barack obama in '08 doesn't seem to like him this time around even though the president has left them alone to get incredibly rich all again. the neil barofsky challenge is coming next. [ female announcer ] so how long have you been living flake-free with head & shoulders? since before jeans were this skinny... since us three got a haircut. since my first twenty-ninth birthday.

[ female announcer ] head & shoulders. live flake free.

what do gun enthusiasts and wahl wall street executives have in common? for starters, there's not anything intrinsically or fundamentally wrong with what they do. america is based on the freedom to be a super rich banker guy if that's what you want to do or to collect fire arms if that's what you're into, but in both cases, with wall street guy it's and gun lovers, the rest of the about country would really appreciate it if they would avoid being too risky with their hobby. because if they can both do horrible, terrible damage if they're not careful. also in terms of their relationship with the government, they would both rather not be bothered. like at all.

ask them how's it going and you're likely to get a big "what's it to you?" there may not be a pair of groups more certain that everybody is out the get them. probably their most significant commonality is that gun owners and wall streeters are both in super duper unadulterated hate with barack obama. why? it's kind of a good question, actually. gun lovers hated bo in 2008, too. they were totally sure he was going to take away their dpuns as soon as he took office. but if you look at his record, president obama has done negative one thing to roll back gun rights. he signed a law allowing people to bring guns into national parks and wildlife refuges. but the gun lobby still hates and fears him and then hates him some more. as for wall street, they did not hate barack obama back in 2008. in fact, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, wall street loved barack obama. goldman sachs was obama's second largest contributor in 2008.

jpmorgan chase was his sixth largest contributor, and citigroup was his seventh largest contributor. not so this time around. this time, totally bailing on obama. goldman sachs is mitt romney's biggest contributor. jpmorgan chase is his second largest contradicter and citigroup his sixth largest contributor. so it seems something has changed between 2008 and today. the bankers aren't just hating the president out of some reflexive paranoia of the gun lobby. these guys used to like barack obama. they gave him tons of money in the last election. if you think there's an easy explanation, you would be wrong. not only is there not a consensus that president obama has been an enemy of wall street, there's an argument made in some corners he's much too friendly to the finance industry. joining us is neil barofsky who is a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of new york and is author of a new

book "bailout: an inside account about washington abandoned main street while rescuing watt street." he's now a senior fellow at nyu school of law. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> please tell me if i have this wrong. you don't seem to have been super happy with how the bailout was conducted. reading the book, you don't seem like a huge fan of it. >> no. in almost every critical juncture when it came to meaningful choices in conducting the bailout, this administration and the prior administration, no real material difference between the two, consistently chose the interests of the wall street banks over that of homeowners. over that of the broader economy, and you know, we saw that time and time again, really from the day that i got there. >> and so the broad critique you make in your book when you bring up here is that there were a bunch of moments when there was a choice of what to do with the t.a.r.p. funds. they could have gone in a direction that was either more punitive to the banks or put

much more strict regulations on them, asked more of them, and they didn't. you could argue it was because their top contributors were bankers if you want to be cynical about it, but the bankers hate him now. they don't at all feel they got a sweet deal out of the administration. they feel dodd-frank was intensely punitive to them, that they have been aggressive in demeaning the role of the financial industry in american life. in the presidential rhetoric. so what is the reason for this gap between what you see as the substance of the choices made on the bailout and how the bankers feel about the bailout and the financial regulations and the obama administration? >> first, there's no question that the president and his treasury secretary defended the status quo of too big to fail. there were opportunities in regulatory reform that compelled breaking up the banks, almost this cartel of financial institutions that helped drive us to the financial crisis, and they beat that back at every

opportunity. but you ask a fair question. so why are they not supporting him now? i think that the premise here is based on looking at it and trying to find a degree of humanity that doesn't exist in these institutions. suggesting that they should be grateful for what they received. you know, president obama famously said, i'm the one thing standing between you and the pitch forks is what he said to the 13 of the top bankers. but look, time and time again, the banks had proven that the faith that this administration and prior administration put in them was not justified. you know, during t.a.r.p., that level of deference the program was supposed to help restore lending and put lifeblood into the economy, so they didn't put in conditions. they told me repeatedly, we don't need fraud protections bought the banks wouldn't embarrass themselves. they would never risk their reputations. then when forming the housing policies under t.a.r.p., there was this trusting the banks by giving them control over the program and not getting rid of conflicts of interest which they used to shake down homeowners. squeeze out savings and throw

them on the foreclosure scrap heap. and now, now we're saying, well, gee, isn't it surprising that they're not grateful? of course they're not grateful. they're interested in two things. they want to back a winner and they think right or wrong that romney is the horse to back. more importantly, romney is offering them a better deal potentially from their perspective than obama is. even dodd-frank, even though it protected them and put them in a situation where they continue to have this incredible advantage due to their size and being too big to fail did have some good restrictions in it. the consumer protection bureau is a very positive thing. and they hate anything that could possibly eat into their profits and their ability to exploit their size and power, and mitt romney is offering a repeal of dodd-frank. so dodd-frank was helpful in preserving the status quo, but better to have nothing, go back to the go-go days of 2006 and 2007 when they can print money off the backs of american homeowners, and it's really hard

to underestimate how thin-skinned bankers are. >> we'll have to continue, i fear, this conversation another time. we have to run to a commercial. neil barofsky, author of the new book "bailout" thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. thanks for having me. you know how this is called the great recession, not the depression, not quite yet? well, now we're really getting ready to relive another defining event of the 1930s. tom jones style. lie explain next.

you know that old joke, and i'm not saying it's a good joke, about how greenland and iceland should switch names because iceland is actually green and greenland is actually frozen -- oh at least greenland is mostly frozen a lot? tonight, i must give you the unsettling news that now in our scary hot summer, greenland is suddenly not so reliably frozen. nasa took this picture of greenland's ice sheet from space recently. the ice sheet typically melts some in the warmer months.

the white part is what remained frozen whb the nasa satellite went by on july 8th. it's about 40% of the typical whole. four days later, another nasa image has the ice sheet all but gone. 3% frozen. almost all of it had melted. it had all melted in four days. scientists think the ice sheet has already begun freezing again. this kind of thing has happened before, way back in the 1800s. so maybe it's okay that greenland melted this month. or maybe we're headed for some very weird times. your hot world is coming up next. what the... ♪ are you seein' this? ♪ ♪ uh-huh... uh-huh... uh-huh... ♪ ♪ it kinda makes me miss the days when we ♪ ♪ used to rock the microphone ♪ back when our credit score couldn't get us a micro-loan ♪ ♪ so light it up! ♪ even better than we did before ♪ ♪ yeah prep yourself america we're back for more ♪ ♪ our look is slacker chic and our sound is hardcore ♪ ♪ and we're here to drop a rhyme about free-credit-score ♪ ♪ i'm singing free-credit-score-dot-com ♪ ♪ dot-com

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i don't know where you live, but there is a good chance that it is really hot outside right now, and, in fact, it has been really hot outside for a long time. you could look at this at a local phenomena. a 24 person was killed this summer in st. louis. 107 today. 16th straight day of triple digits. that is just st. louis. on a national scale, across the country we have broken more than 40,000 records for day lhighs this year and it's only july. so far the hottest year on record. it comes after a string of very hot years, after last year's heat, nasa reported that nine of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. along with the heat this summer, we have witnessed a frightening drought. this drought comes from the national climactic data center.

everywhere you see the dark purple, that's extreme drought. red is severe, which is not as bad but is bad. gold stands for moderate drought. a third of all american counties have been declared disaster areas. the rain will come back surely. right now our nation is drying up. american farmers have not faced this drought for a half century or more. farmers are pulling their corn early. they're rushing cattle to market they're not rushing cattle to market, because there's nothing for them to eat. in the short run, it means hamburgers cost less but that's temporary. the stuff we make out of beef and corn and soybeans will become more expensive. so will milk, eggs and chicken. food inflation is particularly hard on folk whose don't have much to spend. the agriculture except pledging to help farmers. the ag secretary cannot do

enough. in the middle of this, food inflation, we don't need our do-nothing, do-less-than nothing congress that cannot pass a farm bill. one of the most routine chores of being in congress. politico looked back at 50 years of congress and could not fine a farm bill stymied like this one. more evidence that this is one of the worst congress' ever. i'm not lying about that. unless congress acts the current farm bill ends september 30th, in time for the harvest fairs. as difficult as the drought is, affirmers, and the heat it is worse for another sector of the economy. energy. depending on politics you might find good news on pressure of fracking. you need a ton of water to blast the natural gas out of rock. guess you would not find it good news in a blackout. the power plants keeping the lights on in much of the country need water to function. no water, no light. more expensive ethanol, more

expensive gasoline, a nisckel o so a gallon. maybe not just one drought in historic record-cut years. weather and climate change. a lot we think has to do with la nina, cyclical cooling of the ocean and weather patterns. what we do know is that our planet has been getting warmer. that is why this nasa map of global temperatures starts with a lot of blue in the 1800s and ends up covered in yellow and red. yellow and red, temperatures higher than average. that is just about everywhere. what we also know, as the planet gets warmer we can confidentially predict more extreme weather events like drought. so this, this drought, this is a preview. what's will happen a lot if temperatures don't come back down. my colleague hosted this the other kay showing a condition in mid-century with moderate ambitions of greenhouse gases. purple, red, orange and yellow.

you see all of colors? that's a drought. projected drought. it is worse than we are seeing now. it is worse than what we saw during the depression era dust bowl. so here's what we know. climate change is not meaning the earth gets hotter. it means the climate gets weirder. it means more droughts and more fires. it means more famines and more floods. and here's something else we know. human beings are contributing to climate change. americans are contributing most of all. human beings and americans could also be putting the brakes on climate change. to do so, it calls for departmental action. right now our terrible congress cannot pass a bill. >> information is power, and it's our job to make sure that people have the information so authority doesn't run over.

the best new thing in the world today arises out of an international mystery that has been solved. specifically, the mystery of who

this woman, seen with north korea's new dear leader, kim jon un, is. she was first spotted in photographs released by the north korean government earlier this month at kim jong-un's side, watching a concert featuring costumed disney characters, presumably unlicensed disney characters. today, she was outed as kim jong-un's wife. it happened during a state television broadcast. we found out that her name is reesel chu, but that's about all the state-run media revealed. however, south korean media says there's a north korean singer named reesel chu, so maybe the same person. i don't know. do you think that is the same person? but the solution of who is the lady, the mystery is not the best new thing in the world today. neither is the fact that the mystery lady is not the one person they thought she might be. a different singer whom i mention because she is known for singing a song called "excellent

horse-like lady" which is the most excellent song title in the world. though even that is not the best new thing in the world today. no, the best new thing in the world today comes from andrea mitchell, who is, of course, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for nbc news and the host of her own show on msnbc every day at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. this is how msnbc's andrea mitchell reported the news at the top of our show this afternoon. >> sorry, ladies, he's off the market. north korea's most eligible bachelor, kim jung-un has gotten hitched. >> andrea mitchell is a hard news kind of lady. she has covered every kind of world news and leader there is. she has heads of state on speed dial. she can boil things down to their essence and report the most important truth about them instantly and she is awesome. and when andrea mitchell cuts to the case, let's agree, sorry, ladies, he is off the market is the best new thing in the world today. that does it for us tonight don't forget, you can check out my work at wonkblog.com or follow me on twitter @ezraklein or on facebook at

facebook.com/ezraklein. twitter.com. up next, "first look." early warning? authorities in colorado uncover what could be key evidence in the investigation into last week's theater massacre. cinema chaos. nerves are rattled after two brawls break out at a pennsylvania movie theater. and high dive. an austrian daredevil takes a plunge from 18 miles above the earth's surface. good morning, everyone. i'm lynn berry. those stories and more straight ahead. this is "first look" on msnbc. and we're going to begin this morning with a possible explanation. new information has surfaced about the suspected gunman in last week's colorado theater shooting that claimed 12 lives.

law enforcement officials say james holmes mailed a package to the school he attended containing detailed writings about killing people. nbc's jed gray has details. >> reporter: federal agents tell nbc news james holmes told them where to find key in evidence the case. the former neuroscience graduate student apparently told investigators about a package he had sent to the university of colorado's medical campus in aurora. police found that package on monday unopened in the school's mail room. inside they discovered what's described as handwritten details about killing people. as the investigation continues, so does the mourning here. >> i'm overwhelmed by the tragedy of all of this and the senselessness of all of it. i mean, good people taken. >> reporter: people like 51-year-old gordon cowden, the oldest victim of the massacre took his two teenage daughters to the movie. they su