shambles. that's not me talking, that's the editor of "the sun" one of rupert murdoch's british tabloids. the editor of "the daily mail" tweets, serious dismay at romney's debut. worse than sarah palin, total car crash. two of the kinder verdicts. hash tag romney shambles. that same editor later tweeted, another verdict from one romney meeting, apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humor or sincerity. hash tag romney shambles mitt hits the fan. the "london times" tweets, we're the special relationship, the easy peasy bit of u.s. foreign relations. how will he deal with china? a correspondent for "the telegraph" writes, mitt romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive.

and lucy jones of "the telegraph" writes, mitt romney is wazzock. there's one thing romney could learn while he's in britain this week -- some manners. so what did mitt romney do to be called worse than sarah palin? first he said the london olympics might have some serious problems. >> you know, it's hard to know just how well it will turn out. there were a few things that were disconcerting. stories about the private security firm not having enough people. supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials. that obviously is not something which is encouraging. >> here is what one fox news romney supporter thought of that answer. >> what romney answered in that question is unbelievable. it's beyond human understanding. it's incomprehensible. i'm out of adjectives. all romney has to do is say nothing.

it's like a guy in a 100 meter dash, all he has to do is finish. he doesn't have to win instead he tackles the guy in the lane next to him and ends up disqualified. i don't get it. >> here's how david cameron responded. >> we are holding an olympic games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities in the world. of course it's easier if you hold an olympic games in the middle of nowhere. >> you see, in the united kingdom, utah where romney ran the olympic games is considered the middle of nowhere. and here's the response from the always entertaining mayor of london, and 60,000 people he happened to be chatting with in hyde park. >> 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? [ applause ] >> are you ready? yes, we are!

>> and then there was the small problem of mitt romney not having every name ready when he needed them. >> as the leader, i look forward to our conversations this morning. >> the daily mail again tweeted another romney triumph as he forgets ed millivan's name. mitt romney then showed he has much to learn about the very basics of conducting foreign policy. >> i appreciated the insights and perspectives of the leaders of the government here and opposition here as well as the head of mi-6. >> mi-6 is the british government's secret intelligence agency. mitt romney was not supposed to tell anyone he met with the head of mi-6.

"the guardian" writes, this isn't like just bragging that you just met david petraeus. the british take on the national secret intelligence service comes with a extra heavy dollup of the whole secret thing. the very existence of mi-6 was not officially acknowledged until 1994. james chapman's take on that one? romney blunders again. do we have a new dubya on our hands? joining me now, krystal ball, co-host of msnbc's "the cycle" and howard dean, former vermont governor and former dnc chairman. charles krauthhammer is out of adjectives. do any come to mind for you as to how this tour is going for mitt romney? >> this is bad. it is pretty unusual. i am a little surprised they didn't take a trip to switzerland and cayman islands while they're at it. first of all, insulting the british prime minister is really bad.

when the prime minister thinks it's necessary to call out the candidate who's running for president of the united states, this is not a good thing. i wish i could be more charitable, sort of. but this is pretty bad. i haven't seen a bad trip like this for a long time. and i have to say, george w. bush never did anything like this. >> worse than dubya you're saying? >> i can't imagine george w. bush doing this. i can't imagine that. he had some sophistication about foreign affairs. this is shocking to me. >> krystal, this is one of those days where i have to say i appreciate the spirit of the british press. they are willing to step right up there and say what they mean. >> yeah. and you grabbed some amazing material. when i was prepping for this segment, i could have gone on for hours because there were so many fantastic tweets and quotes and headlines and so much material to work with.

but honestly for mitt romney, there were essentially twooals for this trip, right? to sort of run around looking vaguely presidential and to sort of slyly remind people of his own olympic success. and in one day he's managed to kill both of those things by insulting everyone and looking the opposite of presidential. looking like he can't even handle, you know, the relationship that should have been the easiest, going to the olympics, going to our friends. it really is an incredible thing. it also reminded me when he was offered the kicks from the local bakery and he didn't know in that moment to suggest that they came from the local 7-eleven. it is that same kind of a deal. you don't go into someone else's house and insult them and criticize them. i feel like he was trying to get an "a" and show he had done his homework with what's going on

with the olympics because that's something he knows about and really didn't have any sense that this would be a bad place to go with this answer. >> howard dean, i find the sarah palin comparison that the british media is making appropriate. and it started to occur to me when i was listening to his answers, i began to think, that sounds a lot like sarah palin, we made some fun. he would string together words that technically are sentences but have absolutely no meaning. and if sarah palin -- when sarah palin was doing that, pretty much everyone called her on that. mitt romney seems to be getting away with exactly the same thing. it seems to me there's some kind of double standard going on here because he's a well-dressed man. >> well, i'm going to defend romney slightly on that one. i don't think you can compare -- i mean, romney is fairly sophisticated guy who has significant amount of accomplishment in his life. i don't think he can be compared with sarah palin.

but his performance is pretty appalling. when you -- i don't know anybody who goes to meet the leader of the opposition and can't remember his name. i have no yet seen a candidate for the united states and goes in and insults probably our closest ally in the world. it's not a big deal because this is about olympics and it's not about, you know, plotting to invade iraq, but it's not very reassuring. i think romney's problem is not that he's not well informed. i think -- and he's certainly not -- doesn't lack substance. his problem is he wants to be president so badly that all he does is get briefed and he doesn't appear to have an original thought. i think he does. but he doesn't appear to have one. and this is a very bad start. >> and lawrence, i think to your point -- >> go ahead. >> to your point about the sarah palin comparison, there's so many times he's asked a direct question he doesn't even come

close to answering it. he's, you know, he's not addressing the substance of the question at all. i think that's when he gets into his word salad territory where you go where is he going with this? i think it's an intentional attempt to be vague and not put forward anything of substance. and that way i think there is an appropriate sarah palin comparison. >> howard dean and krystal ball, thank you for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. >> coming up, a million voters in pennsylvania think they'll be able to vote on november 6. they're wrong. the new voter i.d. law will not accept their i.d.s as valid i.d.s and they don't know it. we discuss voter suppression. and in "the rewrite" tonight, rush limbaugh talks about drumsticks in a way that makes you wonder with rush, when is a

drumstick just a drumstick? if your worst nightmare is hearing rush limbaugh use the word penis repeatedly, you're going to need the mute button for tonight's "rewrite." don't go over 2000... 1200 calories a day. carbs are bad. carbs are good. the story keeps changing. so i'm not listening... to anyone but myself. i know better nutrition when i see it: great grains. great grains cereal starts whole and stays whole. see the seam? more processed flakes look nothing like natural grains. you can't argue with nutrition you can see. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself. for multi grain flakes that are an excellent source of fiber try great grains banana nut crunch and cranberry almond crunch. every communications provider is different but centurylink is committed to being a different kind of communications company. ♪ we link people and fortune 500 companies nationwide and around the world. and we will continue to free you to do more and focus on what matters.

>> is chris christie not so secretly preparing to become the front runner the next republican nomination when mitt romney loses to president obama? the answer is, of course, yes. that's coming up. and in "the rewrite" tonight, you will have to cover the children's ears because you will hear rush limbaugh talk about masturbation and socialism. and it's going to be much more masturbation than socialism. a lot more. this is new york state. we built the first railway, the first trade route to the west,

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there's one man standing at the wheel as we careen towards the fiscal cliff and that's john boehner. he can either pass this bill which delivers certainty to middle class taxpayers and, by the way, is a tremendous step towards addressing sequestration, or he can step on the gas, head towards that fiscal cliff and strap the american people, just like a dog we know, to the top of his car. >> and today, john boehner responded to senator thelma with this lie. >> it was the president who came up with the sequester because he didn't want the debt limit to get in the way of his campaign. >> the so-called sequester, a package of automatic spending

cuts, half of them in defense spending was something the president was forced to get to get the bat crap crazy republicans to force an increase in the debt ceiling and save this country and the world from economic disaster. here's what the president said a year ago. listen carefully. see if you hear him asking for a sequester. >> the only bottom line i have is we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election. >> and here is what john boehner was saying a year ago. >> the house can only pass a debt limit bill that includes spending cuts larger than the hike in the debt limit. >> in the end, to raise the debt ceiling, john boehner attached to it automatic spending cuts that he stupidly believed congress would be able to avoid by somehow miraculously coming

together on an agreement about how to finance government in america. here is what john boehner's democratic counterpart in the house of representatives said today. >> we can avoid the sequester if we just come together at the table in a balanced and fair way. >> and here's what the white house had to say about avoiding the boehner spending cuts that boehner now fears. >> the president himself has said there's no reason why these cuts should happen and congress eight ought to be able to come together and agree on a balanced approach that reduces the deficit and keeps our military strong. right now, as i noted earlier in answer to ed, congressional republicans are trying to get out of what they agreed to because they would rather protect tax cuts for some of the wealthiest americans than make tough choices needed to reduce the deficit. even if it risks big cuts in our military. >> joining me now is robert reich, former labor secretary

under president clinton, now professor of economics at the university of california berkeley. bob, i didn't foresee this. coming. i have to say, when this sequester deal was being written into the debt ceiling, i did not expect us to be here today watching it play out this way. democrats hanging tough, willing to live with go off the cliff with that deal made on the debt ceiling believing, correctly, i think, if they do that, they will have much more power to be negotiating a package after that than before that. >> well, lawrence, i think the democrats are getting tough. democrats are learning some of the power plays the republicans have been using all along and democrats are getting a whiff of the fact that republicans really don't want that fiscal cliff. they don't want cuts in military spending and they certainly don't want an end to the bush tax cuts for the very rich. so knowing that, i think we're going to finally get a deal. but we're probably not going to

get a deal until after the first of the year. >> yeah. i mean, what i'm hearing from democratic senators is it's going to be impossible. they have to go off the cliff so that then every single tax proposal they will be talking about, democrat or republican, will be a tax cut. and without that leverage, they don't see now how they can get anything. >> exactly. there's not going to be anything -- well, obviously, everybody knew there was not going to be any progress on any of this this summer. there was some people who thought maybe the congress that got back together after the election might do something, but now it looks like nothing is going to happen even then. the democrats are going to hold out and they're going to use a lot of bargaining leverage that they now have. >> the democrats gave the republicans the opportunity yesterday in the senate there was the opportunity to vote for basically a continuation of the current tax rates for all, except the top tax brackets.

that amounts to a cut in tax law except for the top brackets. the republicans did not vote for that. and dick durbin made this comment about that vote. >> how many times have we heard the republican's speech about uncertainty? uncertainty? well, there will be some certainty if speaker boehner will call this bill on the floor of the house because it will pass. >> and now that bill is being stuck in the house. john boehner not taking it up, as dick durbin said. if you want tax certainty, you can pass that bill tomorrow and we will have it. >> again, lawrence, the interesting thing here is that democrats are now beginning to understand that framing this issue so the public understand it is 90% of winning the game. and the issue is not, do you extend the tax cuts for everybody or for some people. that's the way the republicans like to frame it.

the real issue is do you extend the bush tax cuts for everyone up until the first $250,000 of their incomes? or do you extend the tax cuts for earnings above $250,000. in other words, what the democrats are proposing and the president is proposing is everybody, rich, middle class, everybody gets a tax cut, an extension of the bush tax cut, up until $250,000. >> up to $250,001, it will be the clinton tax rates. it's not that big a deal. why aren't republicans putting up a fuss? >> robert reich, we're one day closer to going off the cliff. thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. with friends like chris christie, mitt romney does not need republican enemies. is chris christie really hoping mitt romney loses? of course he is. and in the rewrite tonight, rush

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>> in tonight's episode of "friends like chris" once again chris christie gives a politically incorrect answer. this time to the question, are you interested in running for

president in 2016? christie answered that question yesterday with the standard party line. i hope there's no reason for me to have to run in 2016 because i hope governor romney will be running for a second term. now it would have been better if christie said he wasn't just hoping not to have to run in 2016 but he knew he wouldn't be running because president romney would definitely be safely on his way to re-election. but then christie went a step too far. if there's an opening for a republican in washington, we'll certainly think about it. i don't think i'd back away from it. with friends like chris. and it's our intern jessica ferrer's last day.

and following the tradition and as a last day intern, jessica now gets to tell you what's coming up in the show. go jessica. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, what voters in pennsylvania don't know about the new voter id laws. a million people may not be able to vote. and if you've been looking for the instruction book on how to be a woman. you're in luck. it's been written and the author is here. catlin moran joins lawrence. that's coming up.

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>> i'm going to miss this one. i don't have any idea. somebody stole my pocketbook and i have never been able to get them back. every time i sent, they never told me why or nothing. i think it stinks, that's what i do. i think it's really absolutely -- i think it's the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard of. >> viviet applewhite is 93 years old. if republican lawmakers in pennsylvania have their way, those who voted for the first time in 1960 won't be able to vote in november.

in the spotlight tonight, pennsylvania's voter id show down. ms. applewhite is the lead plaintiff in the american civil liberty union's lawsuit against the commonwealth's new law barring anyone without a valid photo i.d. from voting in elections. the state trial started this week, but a new aclu study finds that 1 million pennsylvania voters may be ineligible to vote in november. and unlike ms. applewhite, some of these voters don't even know they're ineligible. the report finds that 34% of pennsylvania registered voters don't know the new law even exists. while 98% registered voters think they have a valid i.d., 12% of them do not have i.d.s that are considered valid under the law. that 12% is almost a million pennsylvania voters who will be denied the right to vote when

they saw up on november 6. but how can we expect voters to know what counts as proper i.d. when the man who signed this into law does not know. >> there are other forms of i.d. i don't know where people get the data as to how many people don't have because the other forms of i.d. could be student i.d., we've been working with nursing homes to get people new i.d. it could be military i.d. two or three other forms. right now, i don't have it here in front of me. >> joining me an opinion writer for the new york times and kelly wilkinson, an intern here for "the last word" who attends college in pennsylvania. let's take a look at the list of photo i.d.s that that are acceptable and valid. federal issue photo i.d.

pen driver's license, passport, u.s. military i.d. goth employee, college photo i.d. photo i.d. issued by a pennsylvania care facility. and kelly, you have a college photo i.d. in pennsylvania but you recently discovered it wasn't going to be good enough. tell us about that. >> when i first heard about the voter suppression laws, i looked on the votespa website and i realized even though i do have a college i.d., i don't have an expiration date on my i.d., as you can see on the screen. therefore, i'm not able to vote. however, the law does allow for colleges to issue stickers that have the expiration on the sticker in order to put that on to the i.d. so i will be eligible to vote in november. >> mara, you've been to pennsylvania androte on this extensively.

there's just so many ways people are going to be turned away from the polls. it seems like we may discover new ones on election day we haven't found out. >> absolutely. what's interesting about the report you cited in your intro is what we've been hearing a lot about are the numbers of people who don't have a valid i.d. who know that. and they will presumably take steps before the election. but many think they're in compliance with the law when in fact they're not. maybe their i.d. is expired or expiring, they went won't realize until they get to the polls they are not eligible to vote. at that point, there's very little time to actually do something about it. they can cast a provisional ballot, it won't be counted unless they show up with valid i.d. within six days. two of those days happen to fall on a weekend. a lot of people won't realize there's a problem until election day. >> charles, we just saw the governor of pennsylvania unable to say what a valid i.d. would be. what would be acceptable. but that to me is not an accident.

this seems to me to be an intentional move toward suppression and designed to suppress the vote that they want to suppress there. >> i think not just there, lawrence. i think you have to broad this out and look at it as a national picture. you have at least 19 laws, 14, 15 states these cover most of the electoral votes that will be counted in this presidential election. when we look at the people who are least likely to have these sorts of valid voter state-issued i.d.s across the country, they're more likely to be young people, minorities, poor people. these are all constituencies that democrats generally win and barack obama won substantially. and what you have to look back as the history of this country

for almost 200 years, we have been making steps towards increasing the voter pool in america. and for about a century, we have had driver's licenses. for half a century, we've had states putting photos on driver's licenses. not until 2006 did any state anywhere require that a driver's license or a state issued photo i.d. be present to vote. we're not looking back at all those other elections saying these were fraudulent. what is the difference? what has changed? in the last two years, we had this raft of voter suppression laws meant to suppress the votes of these very same constituencies. minorities, young people, poor people. people who vote democratic. and the only thing that has changed is that we see that

barack obama is in the white house and he won those votes. we see this democratic change happening in america. we see that young people are getting more and more socially liberal as, you know, every decade and people are scared about that. and now they're putting in place restrictions that have never existed in the entire history of our democracy. >> mara, what is the timetable for the lawsuit? >> we're looking at about 7 to 10 days. but this will likely not be the final word. whatever the outcome of this case is in pennsylvania, it will most likely be appealed. and we're seeing that's really part of a pattern when it comes to other states that have done this already. when you're talking about south carolina and texas, the department of justice denied them preclearance. they're now appealing to a federal district course about that. in indiana, that case went to the supreme court in 2008 and the supreme court ruled that law was constitutional and the state did have a legitimate reason to want to improve the electoral process. so ultimately this will be

decided by the courts. >> mara, charles and kelly wilkinson's debut on "the panel." thank you all for joining us tonight. >> thank you. coming up, rush limbaugh is back in "the rewrite" tonight. he talked about socialism today on his show in as strange a way as he has ever talked about anything. publicly anyway. rush limbaugh told us more about himself than he intended to and you'll hear it all in "the rewrite." perience the largest, most efficient line of luxury hybrids on the road, including the all-new esh. ♪ while many automakers are just beginning to dabble with the idea of hybrid technology... ♪ ...it's already ingrained in our dna. during the golden opportunity sales event, get great values on some of our newest models. this is the pursuit of perfection.

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so anyway, i've been to a lot of places. you know, i've helped a lot of people save a lot of money. but today...( sfx: loud noise of large metal object hitting the ground) things have been a little strange. (sfx: sound of piano smashing) roadrunner: meep meep. meep meep?

(sfx: loud thud sound) what a strange place. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. >> rush limbaugh at the limbaugh institute for advanced conservative studies. >> so began the third hour of today's radio seminar at the limbaugh institute for advanced conservative studies, which i happened upon by merry chance simply because my local ford dealership quickly performed a minor repair on my fusion hyid just in time for me to get back behind the wheel and hear this -- >> this is from the "orlando sentinel" 36-year-old jacksonville, florida, man is accused of performing a sex act on himself while driving south

on i-95. dawn, you may not want to hear this. i don't know how you can avoid it. >> of course, the only way for dawn to avoid it is for rush to stop talking about it, but as the dean of the limbaugh institute for advanced conservative study, rush decided it was time for some advanced conservative study of sex while driving. >> he denied performing the sex act. he said another driver who reported him to authorities misunderstood what he was doing while driving. he said he was using drumsticks to hit his steering wheel. he is a drummer. he told deputies he commutes from jacksonville to daytona beach. he frequently simulates playing the drums while driving by hitting the steering wheel with the drumsticks. so what happened was a woman from flagler beach called

authorities at 8:00 wednesday morning and said a driver later identified as this guy was performing a sex act on himself while driving a chevrolet astrovan. >> i know what you're thinking. why has professor limbaugh decided to include solo sex while driving in an advanced conservative studies seminar? there is a clue in what he just said. a one-word clue about where he's going with this. and i'm sure some of his more advanced students caught it. but as usual, rush is way ahead of most of his students. notice the technique he uses to bring the slower students like me along with him. he slows it down and asks questions. >> dawn, a question. if you were driving i-95 and you saw a guy you thought was performing a sex act, would you call 911? would you call the authorities?

you don't think you would notice? now stop and think -- >> rush, who a moment ago acknowledged that dawn may not want to hear this is now forcing dawn to stop and think about it. >> now stop and think. this guy claims he's playing the drums. he has the drumsticks on the steering wheel. she thinks she's watching a sex act. you're driving along i-95 next door a guy or a woman, whatever, you think performing a sex act. would you call 911? brian, would you call 911? i wouldn't call 911. it would never occur to me. >> you know how in some college courses the lecture becomes more about the teacher than about the subject. that happens with rush. a lot. okay, rush, you got me. you're driving along i-95.

you see a guy, as you put it, performing a sex act. we now know you wouldn't call 911. we now know that would never occur to you. and now what we want to know more than anything else, because this is where you've led us is what would occur to you? that's what you owe us as a storyteller and a life teacher at the limbaugh institute for advanced conservative studies. what would occur to you? would you try to get a better look at what the guy was doing with his drumstick? would you signal him to pull over at the next roadside rest area? would you follow him home? well, i could go on and on. that's where rush led us. that's what we wanted to know but that's not what we got. instead we got another lesson in advanced conservative studies about the auto bailout.

that's right. this is a chevrolet astro van we're talking about and we know who makes chevrolets, general motors. and you know who saved general motors from going out of business, president barack obama did. and you know how bad it is for america that president obama saved general motors from going out of business. >> and chevrolet astrovan. oh, have you seen the general motors news? general motors is now -- it's a mess. it's lost more money than what we paid to bail them out now. classic. classic. and you hated -- nobody wants to see general motors decay like this. they did not save them. obama did not save anything. he will not save anything. anyway, back to the drumstick guy here. >> see?

yet another example of context is everything. rush wasn't just talking about a guy accused of masturbating while driving. rush was using that colorful story to teach a story about socialism, the auto bailout. he was rewriting a masturbation story into a socialism story. i would like to see some lefty college professor try that. that's why rush gets the big bucks. now, it's true rush sounds eager to get back to the drumsticks guy, but that's just because he knows the attention span of the students at the limbaugh institute for advanced conservative studies. rush figures they can take approximately one sentence about general motors and the auto baitout for every ten sentences about masturbating in chevrolet astro vans while driving. and so he went back to the drumstick guy and smoothly changed from the economics of

the auto bailout to psychology and the profound psychological question that rush has obviously spent mush of his life contemplating -- when is a drumstick just a drumstick. >> anyway, back to the drumstick guy here? just sit tight here. i'm going to explain how you drive a car by playing drumsticks on the steering wheel. the woman said she was driving alongside the chevrolet astro van. she called the authorities. she gave the authorities the guy's tag number and she followed him until the authorities pulled him over. when a valucia county deputy approached the astro van, he spontaneously explained he was hitting drumsticks against his steering wheel as he drove.

he invited the deputy to search the astro van. the deputy did and found two sets of wooden drumsticks between the two front seats. they were a natural wood color and they closely resembled his own skin color said the report. the deputy reinterviewed the woman and asked if it was possible that she confused his drumming for a sex act. she was adamant she had a clear view of his penis. she stated it was not possible she mistook the drumstick for his penis. she said she wanted to pursue criminal charges. she completed a sworn written statement detailing what she saw. >> now rush's last few sentences in which he got to say the word penis in repeatedly on the radio, they're actually taken word for word from the newspaper account right through the last sentence he just spoke.

that was the last sentence of the article. but rush wasn't finished. he was all caught up in his excitement about drumsticks and wrapped up this particular lesson in advances conservative studies as he so often does by telling us much more about himself than he realized. >> i've seen drumsticks and i've seen a penis and believe me, i know the difference, particularly when i'm looking at them in an astro van driving on i-95. >> well, all right then. i guess the next time you see rush patrolling i-95, trying to look into the cockpits of astro vans, now you'll know what he's looking for. ♪ [ male announcer ] introducing new dentyne split to fit pack. it splits in to two smaller, sleeker packs

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on a day that exposed mitt romney's disconnect with the united kingdom, president obama's reelection team looks to expose romney's disconnect with another group -- women. >> i never felt this way before, but it's a scary time to be a woman. mitt romney is just so out of touch. >> mitt romney opposes insurance coverage for contraception and he supports overturning roe versus wade. romney backed a bill that outlawed all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. >> there's so much to do, we need to attack our problems, not a woman's choice. >> i'm barack obama, and i approve this message. >> president obama currently

leads mitt romney's 51% to 39% among women voters. joining me now is catlin moran, author of "how to be a woman." with mitt romney in london today, i've got to ask you about the london reaction to his comments there. the british press is, i think, rougher generally on politicians than our press. but it's standard. he got a kind of standard treatment. >> i just read about what he did and i'm already ready to kick mitt romney physically if he were here, i'm willing to do that. first he moaned about the olympics, then he forgot the name of the leader of the opposition. he gave away that he had talked to mi-6. he just seems to have gone native in british really, really early. all we've done is bitch around the olympics for the last two years. and my brother who is from

cambridge university, when he was approached by mi-6 as a potential recruit, contacted me on twitter and said he just asked me. they asked me to be a spy. so mitt has gone all brit. >> what about gender peculiars in the u.k. do politicians try to appeal specifically to the female vote? >> they tried it by kind of being handsome which they do need to do more in the thinky-thinky area, i think. what's noticeable in british politics is what's normal when they're formulating policy is in the interests and concerns of men. then once they formulate the policy they'll take it to a women's group and say do you have any kind of add-on details that you would like to add for the ladies. you get a round of beer for the men and said would any of the ladies like a single white wine.

it needs to be changed from the bottom up, really. >> but they don't have differences on so-called women issues do they between the parties? >> no, not really. there's been a couple of attempts to access women to abortion. there couldn't be a more fundamental policy to women than reproductive rights. it's been amazing and terrifying as a british woman to see what's happening with american women with it looking like access to abortion would be denied. i thought every woman in the country who had an abortion should put down tools and strike on that day so they wouldn't change legislation. that would be incredibly symbolic because america would grind to a halt because abortion is so widespread and it would be very symbolic. if you remove women's rights to determine when they want to be parents, their grinds would grind to a halt. >> caitlin moran gets tonight's last words. thanks.

>> how tragedy unites. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start with the aftershock. after midnight tonight, we get through a week of this attack inside our country that killed 12 and wounded dozens more. so what's it done to us? what has this event stirred in this country? made us different from the people who watch this program, say, just a week ago. i want to know. i want to hear again the many separate human actions that night that tell us what kind of a country we are and where we are headed. i want to hear not just about the villain and the victims, but also the heroes. the impulsive good guys that night. the ones who showed what hemingway described as courage, grace under fire, and under pressure. i want to know how aurora is going to affect this country.

us. today brought the announcement that denver, colorado, just miles from the tragedy, will host the first presidential debate this autumn. this all but guarantees that the two presidential candidates, president obama and mitt romney, will be asked about the tragedy. what should they say? let's ask governor ed rendell of pennsylvania what obama should say. and what rick thinks romney should say. it will be interesting. to start with, let's hear their personal stories following a tragedy like aurora. look at how heartbreaking they are and tell us a lot about the spirit of community and caring in this country. here are a few including one relayed by the president himself. let's listen. >> i kind of poked my head up at that point and realized, oh, my gosh. nobody is in here. it's just us. there were a few other heads. here and there people i could see leaving the theater, but really the theater was empty. it felt like so, that's when i got out and yeah. i thought, i kept thinking. oh, my gos