crowd of 60,000 people in london's hyde park, here's how london mayor boris johnson addressed the crowd. >> there are some people coming here from around the world who don't get known about all the preparations we've done to get london ready in the last seven years. i hear there's a guy called mitt romney who wants to know whether we're ready. he wants to know whether we're ready. are we ready? are we ready? yes, we are! >> i hear there's a guy called mitt romney. it wasn't just mitt romney's comments about the preparedness of the city of london that got him into trouble today. it was a series of gaffes he committed overseas. after meeting with prime minister david cameron, romney then met privately with england's opposition david miliband. the only problem with that, the whole ed miliband part of it.

"during a meeting with mr. miliband at westminster, he made another gaffe as he didn't know who the labor party chief was and instead addressed him as mr. leader." so that was strike two. a little earlier in the day as romney was addressing the british press corps, romney let out this little doozy. >> i appreciate the insights and perspectives of the leaders of the government here and opposition here as well as the head of mi6. >> mi6, you say? mi6 is like britain's cia, more so, what james bond belongs to in the books, and thing about mi6 is you don't talk about mi6. here's how that was reported. "for american readership, this is not like bragging, the british take on the national secret intelligence service comes with an extra heavy dollop of the whole secret thing.

the existence of the mi6 wasn't officially acknowledged until 1994. so yeah, whoops. there was an entire mean created on twitter today under the hash tag "romney shambles." here's how it was summed up from white hall, "serious dismay in whitehall at romney debut. worse than sarah palin. total car crash. two of the kinder verdicts." so this was not a good day to be mitt romney. but you know, as bad as a reaction was to mr. romney's comments about the olympics during that interview with nbc last night, i think there's one answer he gave that's been lost in all the coverage, in the long run in this election is going to matter much, much more. did he happen to see this part? >> let's talk about domestic -- the economy, before we wrap things up. the major planks of your job plan, lower taxes, both corporate and marginal rates,

and reduce regulation. explain how that would be different from what george w. bush tried to push through. >> let me describe, actually, five things necessary to get this economy going. one, take advantage of our energy resources. particularly, natural gas, but also coal, oil, nuclear, renewables. that's number one. number two, trade. i want to dramatically increase trade and particularly with latin america. number three, take action to get america on track to have a balanced budget. now, those three things, by the way, are things which we have not been doing over the last three years, which are essential to getting this economy going again. number four, we've got to show better training and education opportunities for our current workers and coming workers. and finally, what i call restoring economic freedom. that means keep our taxes as low as possible, have regulations modern and up-to-date. get health care costs down. these things will restore economic freedom.

>> so how is it that different from what george w. bush tried to push through? it is not. it is not different from what george w. bush tried to push through. lower taxes, fewer regulations, more domestic energy production, promises of deficit reduction that are overwhelmed by increased defense spending and tax revenues and panting rhetoric about economic freedom pretty much defined the bush administration's economic policy. and how did that economic policy work out? it was a disaster. this graph is by david leanhart of "the new york times." it looks at five-year growth periods since 1955. the two periods that span the bush years, '01 to '05 and '06 to 2010, they come in dead last. the jobs picture wasn't any better. this graph from the center for american progress compares job growth under bush's business cycle with job growth under the preceding cycles and gives bush a handicap.

doesn't count '08 when the financial crisis and recession began, but even when the handicap, the bush years performed poorly. see that on the right, they are the small bars. note the graph again. it ends before the financial crisis. a financial crisis that is at least partially attributed to the let the banks do whatever they want. they would never crash the financial system, would they? attitude toward bank regulation that dominated in the bush, and to be fair, the clinton years. once you add that in, bush has the worst record since herbert hoover. every single record. poverty, un-insurance, new firm creation, participation in the labor force, every one goes in the wrong direction, and yet romney can't explain how his policies differ. one of my frustrations with campaign coverage is there's a tendency to look at real failings, bstantiative def defixficiencies in ideas as political problems. this gets talked about as a

messaging issue. romney needs a better answer to the question of, how do you differ from george w. bush? it is not a messaging problem. romney doesn't need a better answer, he needs policies that are actually different, that actually take the lessons of the last decade into account. as new york magazine's jonathan chait writes, romney's answer quote, indicates a larger problem. republicans have not internalized the degree to which bush's policies truly failed to produce strong economic growth. they blamed him and rogued the crash was a bad thing, but conservative rhetoric almost uniformly failed to acknowledge that even pre-crash growth, before the crash, growth under bush was absolutely miserable. it almost -- it also almost uniformly fails to acknowledge that we live in a world today completely reshaped by the 2008 financial crisis. these last few years have been extraordinary economic years. we have been through and in some

ways are still trapped in a once in a many generation economic storm, and nothing in romney's agenda is responsive to that fact. that is what amazes me. there is no new thinking here, nothing a republican in 2007 or 2005 or 1999 or 1991 couldn't have proposed. romney's like a doctor looking at a patient with acute pneumonia and prescribing as he always does during physicals, diet and exercise. might be good advice, probably is even, but we need more than that right now. the one exception here is romney's pledge to roll back the dodd-frank wall street reform law, which is to return policy to something more like what it was before the financial crisis. it's like the opposite of new thinking. in this case, the obama campaign is actually a telling contrast. think back to obama's 2008 campaign. what did he run on? well, getting out of iraq, that was a big part of it, but his big domestic ideas were long term, a health care plan, middle

class tax cut, a plan to cap carbon emissions, immigration reform, and he promised all of it would be paid for because in an expansionary period, we had to get deficits down. we couldn't keep running deficits while we were growing, right? but by the time he entered office, the economy had begun to collapse, and this is really the key part here. his policies changed. it's not that he didn't support the other stuff or that he didn't try to pass it. in fact, he did pass health care reform, but his first initiative was a massive deficit finance stimulus bill. by the way, before he got into office, he helped pass the second t.a.r.p. bailout bill, too. the biggest idea is the american jobs act, which combines big, but temporary, tax cuts for workers and small or expanding businesses with aid in an huge but temporary effort to rebuild our nation's infrastructure and extension of unemployment benefits. whether you agree with these policies or hate them, think they are exactly the wrong thing for the economy, they are, if

nothing else, clearly connected to the current state of the economy. they are ideas to get people back to work now. to get money in people's pockets now. to reward businesses for hiring new workers now. no democrat was running around the country talking up state and local aid or vastly expanding unemployment benefits in 2007 or 2004 or 1999. but the same simply cannot be said for mitt romney's plan. and that's because, to the great misfortune of the country right now, which needs a good economic debate, the republican party's economic policy thinking is, at the moment, in shambles. joining us n, jared bernstein, former chief economic adviser to vice president biden, and msnbc contributor. jared, good to see you as always. >> great to see you and great to listen to you. >> tell me if i have it wrong. you're a smart guy. you know how to read this stuff. you've read all of the plans many times. you know the obama administration's policies well. are -- and the bush administration's, for that matter. are there major differences

between the bush agenda and philosophy and what mitt romney's proposed here? >> no, if anything, governor romney doubles down. on many of the measures you mentioned. it was interesting, you said one thing that's different is rep l repealing dodd-frank. that's deregulation, right, that's the hair of the dog that bit you, and the amnesia that's setting in vis-a-vis financial markets, by the way, actually, i was struck by sandy weill saying all that stuff that he was partially responsible for, it didn't work, so even some people in the banking sector, greenspan recognized it, so this deregulatory trickle down agenda, i thought it was germaine for you to go through the outcomes, the poverty, it's doubling down, ezra. >> the thing i think is important, there's a false equivalence, oh, we need new

economic thinking, and one thing that i think has impressed me about, particularly, the clinton area of vets around barack obama, is that in the '90s, what they did, and you were part of these debates, they wanted to balance the budget when a lot of progressives were saying you need to invest, and they were big on deregulation and they have executed, basically, a 180 flip. they are not saying you don't need to balance the budget eventually or cut the deficit eventually, but for now, you need to do more deficit finance stimulus in the short term. at least implement dodd-frank, because we live in a different economic moment. am i misreading that? >> it's exactly right. this whole kind of notion that's embedded in our thinking that somehow republicans are fiscally responsible and democrats aren't has been completely flipped on its head by the dynamic you just mentioned. when the economy is growing, the gdp is rising, unemployment's falling, you're moving towards full employment, you want your deficit to come down, as it did under clinton and as it did not

decidedly do under bush. there we have what are called structural budget deficits, the kind that grow when she should be shrinking when the economy is expanding. and at a time like this, you actually want your deficits to be large enough to support the economy, given the private sector ongoing weakness. when that private sector comes back online, that's when you want things to go back to normal. if you actually look at what mitt romney's proposing again, you're just looking at budget deficits as far as the eye can see. >> that is, to me, the single most annoying part about our economic debate right now. i think if you ask mitt romney what is different, and kind of said this to brian williams, he is going to cut the debt, he's going to cut the deficit, he's going to cut spending. i've looked at his plan and run the numbers on it or read the people that do run the numbers on it. i see trillions in tax cuts and about a trillion in new defense spending, at least. at least 4% of gdp, which is much higher than where we are now. and he has gestures towards spending cuts but nothing near

the size of what he's promised to spend or stop taxing, so it doesn't balance the budget. if you believe austerity, it is not austerity. >> exactly. and that's the ruse. when you look at mitt romney, what he's doing in his budget, he's taking defense off the table, taking social security off the table, and i'm cutting taxes $5 trillion over bush, over ten years. that's the doubling down. the only way you do that is if you cut government to a point that is theoretically impossible, so the arithmetic stands on its head. what sounds fiscally responsible is fiscally deeply irresponsible. >> jared bernstein, msnbc contributor, senior fellow at center on budget and policy priorities. as always, thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you, ezra. what does it say about a candidate that's based his campaign on things hiopponent has not said? profilers in misleadership next. plus, the ezra klein challenge number five, the

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nah. [ dennis' voice ] i bet he's got an allstate agent. they can save you up to 30% more by bundling your policies. well his dog's stupid. [ dennis' voice ] poodles are one of the world's smartest breeds. are you in good hands? president obama made a campaign fundraising tour through california early this week, and while he was there, he talked about how awesome his party's economic policies are and how crappy republican economic policies are, like you do. >> i'll cut out government spending that's not working that we can't afford, but i'm also going to ask, anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were

paying under bill clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history, and everybody did well. just like we've tried their plan, we've tried our plan, and it worked. that's the difference. that's the choice in this election. that's why i'm running for a second term. >> that's what you say when you're a democrat running for president. you say, hey, remember when the economy was great under president clinton? that's what we want to get back to, and remember the george w. bush administration kind of flushed it down the toilet? those are the same policies mitt romney seems into. for those of you keeping track at home, it's standard barack obama for president stuff, it's what he always says, what he said about john mccain in '08, the bush administration was tanking the economy and what he's been saying about mitt romney. all election season long. but the republicans have come up with a new counterattack.

here's how it goes. they have posted to their youtube their own version of president obama's standard remarks from monday night, and spoiler alert, the rnc version of the obama argument is missing some words. here's what the republicans posted and shopped around to the media. >> just like we've tried their plan, we've tried our plan, and it worked. that's the difference. that's the choice in this election. that's why i'm running for a second term. >> so the video is captioned "president obama tells a fundraiser in oakland, california, that his plan for the economy worked." so they left out the part of the speech that made it clear when he said our plan, he meant the clinton-era plan. so it sounds like the president is saying the economy is totally fixed and perfect now. it's not what he said. it wouldn't be true, either. there's an argument to be made the president's economic policies have been successful. we'd be in worse shape right now

if not for t.a.r.p. and the stimulus, and we can have that argument another day. that's not, however, the argument he was making monday night. and that's important, because what happened there is the republican party just grabbed a tiny snippet of the speech and presented it in a way that completely changed the meaning of the words, which is kind of becoming a thing this election year. remember this great moment in creative editing for the mitt romney campaign? >> if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose. >> now, did obama really say he'd lose if he kept talking about the economy? no. no, he did not. >> senator mccain's campaign actually said, and i quote "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." >> there's also this bit of creative reimagining on mitt romney's part last fall. >> sometimes i just don't think that president obama understands america. now, i say that because this

week or was it last week he said that americans are lazy. i don't think that describes america. >> so did president obama really say the people he's hoping to vote for him are lazy? survey says, nope. >> we've been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. we've taken for granted people are going to want to come here and we aren't out there hungry, selling america, and trying to attract new businesses into america. >> so he did say the word lazy, which in retrospect probably wishes he hadn't, but he wasn't talking about americans, he was talking about policy makers, washington, america probably thinks washington has been lazy. he was talking essentially about himself and the town he's in. saying more or less the opposite of what mitt romney accused him of having said. the first time this happened you could imagine this was a fluke, second time, perhaps a coincidence, at this point, looks like creative editing is a core strategy in the republican campaign this cycle.

steve benen who writes for the maddowblog, show producer, msnbc contributor, all-around terrific guy. thank you for being here. >> thank you, ezra, it's good to be here. >> look, politics ain't bean bag, like they say. not like the obama campaign has nench been ungenerous with romney's words. adical leftist w kinds of crazy foreign ideas, republicans and the romney campaign would simply take the president's comments, things he actually said, things he actually did, present it to the public, and the american mainstream would recoil in horror at this radical president, but the fact they aren't doing that, suggests they're not particularly

satisfied with the way the facts are presented where they can use the facts to their advantage, so they feel this tactic is the only real avenue left for them. >> this is something that struck me about the campaign. it seems the obama campaign has been trying to get more and more specific. the most recent ad, president obama looking at a screen and saying mitt romney's tax plan works this way. it cuts taxes on the wealthy most of all, cuts taxes on everybody, no way to pay for it. well, the romney campaign has been trying to say -- they can't say barack obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, because that's popular, so they have to say he's animated by a radical economic theory in which he doesn't believe successful people deserve what they have. >> right, and that's -- >> isn't that the direction it's going in? >> i think that's right. i think ultimately when push comes to shove, there's ample polling data that shows what the president is proposing is popular. you mentioned taxes, there's overwhelming evidence that americans think asking the very

wealthy to pay a little more on income over $250,000 is actually pretty popular. romney can't and republican critics this general can't simply run against that because they don't want to be on the wrong side of public opinion, so as a result they have to come up with some kind of fanciful notion of the president's radical ideology that doesn't really exist, but the facts don't cut their way, so they feel they have no choice but to go in that direction. >> i was trying to think about when i watch this stuff, who is it meant for, and i have a tough time finding effect after these gaffe or ad campaigns when you talk about these swing voters who in july of 2012 do not know who they support. seems you're dealing with people who almost by definition are not folks you can easily convince through attack ads and gaffes and things that make up the political minutia we deal with every day because if it did work on them, they'd already be convinced, wouldn't they? >> i think that is right, a lot of this is going to be considered noise, come october, early november, the notion that

this one quote or another that romney has taken out of context, will that still be the major story of the day? probably not. it defines candidates early on and probably why the romney campaign has been so aggressive. but ultimately, i think the state of the economy, the state of world affairs come late fall will have a lot more of an impact how people will vote than daily nonsense that kind of drives the political discussion at this point. >> steve benen, writer for the maddowblog, show producer, and msnbc producer that doesn't believe in nonsense. thank you for joining us on tv tonight. >> thank you, ezra. some say there is a limit how wacky a person can be on primetime television. i say that's probably true. but still, the ezra klein challenge where we test that is next. [ male announcer ] for making cupcakes

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tonight's ezra klein challenge is the hardest one yet. i mean, i've got -- this is going to be tough. all right, here's why. the most important thing that happened in the economy today was this incredibly, insanely confusing sentenced flashed in bloomberg terminals in every hedgefund and investment bank across the globe. draghi: yields disrupting policy transmission are in ecb remit. this is a sentence, one sentence, or fragment, that caused a huge stock market rally. it's a sentence that could mean the eurozone is going to survive, and it is a sentence

that when i first saw it, i understood three words, "draghi," "are," and "in." i understand it now, and in two minutes, you're going to understand it too. all right, do we have a clock? okay. go. let's begin at the beginning here. draghi is mario draghi, the guy who runs the european central bank, europe's ben bernanke, and as much as the crisis there is anybody's fault, it is his fault and that of his predecessors. they are the ones that control how much money is available. now, the simplest way to understand the euro crisis is greece, spain, portugal, italy, and ireland, are having trouble borrowing money. if they can't borrow money, they collapse. if they collapse, the eurozone collapses, if the eurozone goes down, the world economy is going to get hurt very badly. mario draghi and the central bank can solve the problem. you see, they can print money, as much of it as they want, and lend it to the struggling countries. spain needs money or we all go under.

here, spain, here's money. but they've been saying this is against the rules for them, they can't lend money like that, and even if they could, they wouldn't because inflation is scary, but that crazy sentence there, that's them saying they might begin bending the rules, which is exactly what the market's been waiting for them to do. if you translate yields disrupting policy transmission are in ecb remit in normal english, it would say something like the eurozone collapsing to the point we can no longer do our jobs is something we have the power to intervene in, and it scares us even more than inflation does. the only catch here, we don't know how much draghi iwilling to do. that is a very good sentence for the global economy, but a good sentence won't save the eurozone, only good policy from the european central bank will do that of the all right, did i? i did. 24 seconds left to go.

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scare and strongarm and shamelessly stick to its guns, sorry, sorry, and ultimately get what it wants. but it was not always this way. in 1969, then-president richard nixon, a republican, as you may remember, told the late journalist william sapphire that guns were "an abomination." he wanted to make handguns illegal. years later, he joined ronald reagan, also, a republican, in support of the brady bill, which the nra spriedantly opposed. george h.w. bush, republican, made it illegal to import assault weapons. there was a time in modern history where you could be a national political figure, a national republican, and be in favor of gun control. today, that is about as common as a unicorn riding a dodo bird with the transit of venus floating by in the background. today, even most democrats stay out of the nra's way. why pick a fight you're just going to lose? obama's mostly taken that advice, he hasn't picked that fight.

in fact, if you calculate the number of new gun control policies he's advocated in his first term, you come up with one, and that is a negative one, by the way. under obama, there's been not one new piece of control legislation passed on the national level, but there has been an expansion of gun rights. as of 2010, your national parks are now armed. it is now legal to carry loaded weapons into yellowstone, yosemite, arcadia, and the grand tetons. the obama administration has overseen an expansion, not contraction of gun rights. even in the wake of the shooting in colorado that left 12 dead and dozens wounded, even then the president indicated no reassessment of gun laws was necessary. that is until yesterday. the president was in new orleans speaking to the national urban league when he said something in a normal world would be so rational, so mundane as to not warrant a mention, but in this not-normal world, it is shocking.

>> hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage, but i also believe a lot of gun owners agree that ak-47s should be in the hands of soldiers, not criminals. >> criminals shouldn't have guns. maybe the ak-47 isn't necessary for civilian life. these aren't shocking ideas, but they're part of a political pattern i have noticed lately. a pattern of the administration shirking its one-time ameliorest impulses. the obama administration's approach to hot-button issues was to back off. obama was already an african-american president with an unusual name and unusually international background and an ambitious policy agenda. better let at least some sleeping dogs lie. take gay marriage, for example. on gay marriage, there was a belief in the administration that if the president endorsed the idea that gay people should be allowed to marry, it would do much more harm than good, so keep the opposition calm and just let the underlying

demographics turn in your favor. then this year something changed, and as you know, the president did come out in favor of gay marriage. on the immigration issue, this is what deportations looked like under the bush administration. for the most part, they kept going up. when obama came into office, there were many who hoped the trend would reverse. instead, the opposite happened. president obama became the deportation president. he deported more people than any other president ever. history was made, whether you like it or not, is up to you. the administration thought that by ramping up deportations, it would gain enough political capital to get what it really wanted, comprehensive immigration reform, or maybe just the dream act. the administration was wrong, it didn't get what it wanted. congress, including a whole lot of republicans who used to support it, voted down the dream act and never came anything close on anything bigger. this year obama has changed course. and acted on his own. he announced the united states would no longer expel kids from the country who'd come here

through no fault of their own, so that's three. that's a pattern. immigration, gay marriage, guns. my suspicion is that the obama administration found the old strategy wasn't working. they were hiding on these issues, but the people they were hoping to reassure hated in fear of them anyway. the nra, for instance, has a website called gun ban obama, where they say "obama could be the most anti-gun president in american history." how do they deal with the fact he hasn't proposed any actual anti-gun legislation? that's easy. they say "he refuses to speak honestly about where he stands. in fact, obama hides behind carefully chosen words and vague support for sportsmen and gun rights to sidestep and camouflage the truth. he pretends to be on our side." meanwhile, obama supporters were frustrated their president seemed to be hiding behind carefully chosen words and vague statements on the issue, so the obama administration found it wasn't making anyone very happy.

folks on the right saw a liberty-crushing madman, folks on the left saw, well, it didn't quite look like change it could believe in. so the obama administration has changed course. better to stand with your friends than with no one at all. joining us now is neera tanden, the president of the president influential center for american progress. she also used to work in the obama administration as an adviser to the secretary of health and human services. neera, thank you so much for being here. >> great to be with you, ezra. >> first, you're a better political mind than me. do you see this trend, do you see sort of a change here in the way they are treating what many call cultural issues? >> throughout his history, the president has always believed in the politics of conviction, and he's believed that when you talk to his people honestly about issues, you gain political points. even when they are not totally popular, and now we're in a time where we're not trying to pass legislation particularly in the house, everything is literally ground to a halt, so he has the ability to actually talk honestly about these issues. and truthfully, after a

situation after aurora, for him to not mention it at all, raised questions with people, and, you know, he took this from the perspective that it was very much common sense and cited gun owners themselves, which i think was a smart move. >> and when -- when you sort of step back, i kind of hate to do the cynical washington thing, it's all about changing turnout patterns and who will actually come to the polls, but you sort of say the politics convention, but three years we weren't here and one thing that's been striking about the issues he's chosen here and particularly true on immigration and gay marriage is that they poll much better among younger americans, so i do sort of wonder if they are looking at the polls who is excited to vote and who isn't. saying in a moment where we can't pass anything new through congress, the thing we have to excite people with is conviction. it is showing people we're on their side. >> i do think the challenge here is congress, and it's truthfully been congress on both sides, democrats and republicans, and i do think in the beginning of the administration the president had

a lot of legislation before congress and he made a conscious decision that passing health care was an important thing and other things would go to the side and that was, in my view, the right thing to do. that would be transformative legislation when fully implemented, so i don't think this should be seen as politics or trying to appease one, i it can't be the case that there's something as a political loser and a political winner. it really is one or the other. and i think in this case the president was smart to say, look, this is a common sense measure, gun owners agree with me. it might be politically difficult thing to do, but a lot of these people are going to vote against me anyway, and i'm going to tell it like it is, and otherwise people are going to think of me as a normal politician, and that hurts him more than anything else. >> you guys have an event coming up or recently happened on the nra and as whether or not they are as politically influential. so tell me, are they as politically influential as people think they are? >> no. we had an event -- we did a poll with frank luntz, republican

pollster with mayors against gun violence, and he found in the poll -- he actually polled nra members, and nra members overwhelmingly believe we should have background checks, criminals shouldn't just be able to buy guns, people that have histories of mental health challenges shouldn't be able to purchase guns. what was really heartening is the president recognized that it's really gun members, people who have guns, nra members, believe in common sense measures, and i think that really helps show the extreme of the other side. >> neera tanden, thank you so much for being here tonight. >> great to be with you, as always. they say in the middle of disaster is opportunity, right? well, guess what, we are in the middle of a disaster, the worst in 50 years, but we have a once in a generation chance to do something heroic. that is next. who have used andr, there's big news.

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first, a brief correction. last night on the show we showed you a pair of satellite images taken by nasa of greenland this month, four days apart. we mistakenly said the images showed the ice sheet melt that was almost gone. that was incorrect. the surface of the ice sheet melted, the rest, of course, is still frozen. what we got right is these pictures are very scary. and so is this picture.

a passenger jet in washington, d.c. this month with its wheels stuck in the overheated har mack softened pavement. chocolate chip cookies are supposed to be gooey. runways are not supposed to be gooey. pavement has buckled all over the place. in oklahoma, illinois, texas, it's a mess. taking the train instead, yeah, sure, instead a track has gone kinky from the heat, and last summer when flooding threatens a nuclear power plant in that hot year, this year, a power plant in illinois had to get special permission to keep running because extreme heat had driven up temperatures in the cooling pond. last month, the freakout derecho storm took down trees and power lines from ohio to new jersey. tonight, we have more severe

weather from the midwest to northeast where it looks like ghostbusters outside with reports of tornadoes and power outages and general anxiety. we have no way of telling whether we're looking at weird temperature which is temporary or what we're seeing is genuine cliempt change happening around us. what we know is human behavior is affecting the climate. we're seeing a preview of a climate change future where the weather will not just be hotter but stranger with droughts and floods and more bits of our infrastructure not working quite right anymore. the "new york times" today considered the many examples of infrastructure fail this summer. along with some efforts to improve infrastructure so we're ready so we don't get as many busted freeways and lines going down. that costs money, and this congress has been reluctant to spend on infrastructure, especially but not only republicans who keep calling for

austerity. this drives me crazy. the global economy is horrible, unemployment is high. we have lots of people sitting out of work when they could be productively in the labor force building things. and amidst all the gloom, we have one huge advantage, one economy changing opportunity, and we have it because we're america, because everyone wants to invest in us, because we are the gold standard of gold standard investments. we can do a tip to tail overhaul of our roads and bridges and power systems and for less money than we will ever be able to do it for again. we can do it in a way that helps the economy now and in the future. the way the government borrows money is through bonds. we sell bonds, we call them treasuries. the loans last for different amounts of time, five years and ten years and so on. people loan the government money and the interest is yield. you loan the government $1,000 for five years, say, and at the end of the time, the government

pays you back the $1,000 plus the yield. if the yield is 10%, the government pays you back $1,100, there about. this is a document the treasury department keeps. it's called the real yield curb. that's accounted for inflation. you see all the minus signs? they mean people are lending us money once you count for inflation at negative interest. they're paying us to hold on to their money safely because we're america and the world is scary and we are not scary. they're loaning us that $1,000 for that five years knowing they'll get less than that back. this is an awesome deal. if a corporation got this deal, they would be jumping for joil. if bain capital could borrow at this rates, they would buy everything. but they can't, only america can. we can take the money and use it to rebuild our infrastructure which would help put our economy in the long run and put people back to work now. that makes the debt much less

painful and it is helpful. the time for investing in our infrastructure is now, right now. doing anything less isn't just missing an opportunity. it is financial mismanagement on an epic scale. [ kate ] many women may not be properly absorbing the calcium they take because they don't take it with food. switch to citracal maximum plus d. it's the only calcium supplement that can be taken with or without food. that's why my doctor recommends citracal maximum. it's all about absorption.

has a facebook page these days. but where's the relationship status?

well, esurance is now in a relationship...with allstate. and it looks pretty serious. esurance. click or call. i'm so glad you're home. >> hi, daddy. >> back in the spring, the first brigade combat team from the minnesota national guard's 34th infantry division returned home to minnesota from a year-long deployment to iraq and kuwait. minnesota's red bulls played a

key role in the end of the iraq war. and now they're all back home in the u.s. and this weekend, they and other veterans of the wars in iraq and afghanistan will get a great big much deserved public thank you from the people of minnesota. thanks to a fund-raising and organizing effort from a grass roots group in minneapolis and st. paul, the parade is set for this saturday, july 28th, starting at 11:00 a.m., making minneapolis and st. paul the latest in an ever-growing list of american cities hosting welcome home parades. it began in st. louis in january. since then, there have been welcome home parades in houston, tucson, melbourne, florida, richmond, virginia, kansas city, and portsmouth, new hampshire. and now the twin cities in minnesota. this latest parade was originally supposed to happen in april, but you remember the red bulls, they weren't all home

yet, and their friends and family and military reached out to see if they could wait, so they did. tomorrow, vintage war planes will fly over head as veterans of the wars and their families march through downtown minneapolis. there will be face painting for the kids and mascots from local hockey and baseball teams and music and for the veterans themselves, a resources area. a whole bunch of organizations gathered in one place to help hook veterans up with information and services like applying for tax credits, filing a claim with the v.a. or finding a job. so this weekend, minnesota, it is welcome home to iraq veterans and all post-9/11 veterans are getting a well deserved thank you. if you're in town, maybe you'll stop by and join in. that does it for us. you can check out my work at wonkblog.com or follow me at twitter or on facebook, facebook.com/ez facebook.com/ezraklein. now it's time for "the last

word" with after a day in london, the british press is actually saying mitt romney is worse than sarah palin. >> mitt romney. >> romney has practically started an international incident. >> the unique relationship that exists between our nations. >> mitt romney is traveling abroad. >> g.o.p. presidential hopeful mitt romney is in london. >> i'm not exactly sure why romney is doing this. >> on the first leg of a week-long foreign tour. >> so you share excitement about the games? >> let's talk more about romney's interview with brian williams. >> this is the biggest story in england right now. >> do they look ready to your experienced eyes? >> there are a few things that are disconcerting. he just stepped in it. >> he wants to know why we aren't ready. are we ready? are we ready? >> of course it's easier if you hold the olympic games in the middle of nowhere. >> ouch.

>> we wants to know whether we're ready. >> i don't know if any olympics that's ever been able to be run without any mistakes. >> listen, if my wife were in the olympics, the olympics, i think i would show a little more enthusiasm. >> i will not be watching the event. >> they have different ideas. >> what mitt romney stands for is this -- in america, you are not promised equal -- >> you define your narrative or it gets defined for you. >> more americans trust mitt romney. >> while he's in these foreign countries, he plans to visit his money. >> to visit his money. he misses it. >> so that will be good. say hello. >> is it possible that he's looking for a country to buy. >> if you don't run chris christie, romney will be the nominee and he will win. team obama must be high fiving each other as mitt romney's trip to london descends into a full blown romney