i'm s.e. cupp. 3:00 in new york. 2:00 p.m. in st. louis the 11th hour for todd akin. the embattled republican up against a frustrated party leadership and important deadline to drop out. >> todd akins a dark storm cloud for the gop but it's not sunshine and puppies for the democrats. a new ebook claims inside the president's re-election campaign, there is drama in obama land. >> i'm krystal ball. the romney team trying to take the conversation back to tax cuts and the budget. do they want to go there? >> i'm steve kornacki, one of least understood was most important pieces of legislation in history. the story behind the stimulus. >> plus a break from politics to take you inside the multibillion dollar worldwi wide web of dati on august 21st.

todd akin has just three hours to drop out of the missouri senate race, or else the republicans will face a much more difficult road in they try to replace him later. but akin shows no signs of throwing in the towel. here he was an hour or so ago. >> i want to make things absolutely clear, and that is, we're going to continue with this race for the u.s. senate. we've go given it a lot of thought and the first thing we felt we had to do was we had offended some people and we tried to respond to that and let people know that we didn't mean anybody or to take in any way, rape, anything less than very, very seriously. >> did you get all of that? around the same time, presumptive republican nominee mitt romney condemned akin's comments about legitimate relationship but stopped short of telling him to drop out. >> his comments about rape were deeply offensive. and i can't defend what he said.

i can't defend him. >> other outspoken conservatives have been more adamant including mitch mcconnell who called on akin to step aside, saying in this case, sorry is not sufficient. mr. mcconnell is the tip of the political iceberg. >> i wouldn't say anything that dumb, as he has. but if it was me, and i had an opportunity to let someone else run to actually give ourselves a better chance tomp winning, i would step aside. >> you stay in this race, this becomes the defining issue of the race and there is a time line now in play here that this could then put the entire state of missouri this senate seat, and even the top of the ticket, in jeopardy in missouri. >> i mean, does he want to cost the republicans the chance of winning back the senate because of these offensive and factually incorrect statements that he made? >> add to that list, republican

senators john mccain, olympia snowe and kelly ayotte releasing statements urging akin to call it quits. should he stay or should he go in tons of questions to put through the spin cycle. steve, you say he stays? >> i get why republicans want him out. i don't get why he would want to plae along with them. >> embarrassment? public shame? >> also -- >> there's plenty of reasons. >> 50% chance if he ends up staying in the race he ends up a united states senator. >> you think he can win? >> absolutely. at end of the day, missouri is a republican-friendly state where there's a strong desire in poll after poll among vote to get rid of claireccaskill. think back 2010, it cost them a winnable senate races, sharon engel, ken buck in colorado. >> o'donnell. >> that's different because it's delaware. i'm talking about swing states. look in 2010 the marriagen in

colorado for all of ken buck's problems less than a point. for all of sharon engels problems in nevada, less than five points. missouri is a republican friendly state than colorado and nevada. the desire of vote to get rid of claire mccaskill, if you're todd akin you say i go do the apology now, i get self-discipline, that's a big if, but until the election day, and republicans now sort of trying to push me out, think of karl rove's people, get to end of october, you may need missouri to win back the senate, they're back there with money. >> explain how he deals with the media market in missouri where claire mccaskill, will if she's smart play every single one of the clips we played as well as remind everyone that mitt romney, karl rove, rin rance pr denounced this guy. what do you do about that? >> that's the thing that's so

interesting to me. right now, a poll yesterday, right now the guy's sitting on a 24% favorability rating. 24%. dismal. he's still up on claire mccaskill skill by 1%. they have taken a risk. if they decided to stay in, more damaging than the actual comments will be all of the litany of republican loomnaries coming out and saying this guy's terrible, he needs to get out of the race. that's going to be very devastating for him and hard to overcome. but mitt romney is likely to win missouri and win it handily. >> regardless. >> as the great brilliant steve kornacki has pointed out -- did i know him. >> i met him. fantastic. people are much more reluctant to split their tickets than they ever have been in the past. partisan divisions have hardened. >> they have. >> you see that in the poll where he has the 24% approval rating and is still winning.

they just don't want to vote for claire mccaskill because they don't want to vote for obama. i agree with steve. he stays in and it could be a united states senator. >> let me ask you about the risk. crystal said it's been a risk for republicans. i understand the point. did they have an option of backing him in do they have an option of saying, i'm going to defend this guy? they have to come out and say, no, we don't agree with that. >> no elected official has defended him but we've seen some people in the pro-life far right defending this concept. one of the things that was surprising to me in researching this this is not an original idea. >> be specific. >> this idea of this concept of legitimate rape of women being able to defend themselves against pregnancy in rape context. this is -- >> the self-aborting -- >> yes. >> is a concept? >> it's not a new idea. >> it's been around. >> a doctor pushing this idea for at least 15 years.

this is not a new idea in the pro-life camp. which partly gets to be at what joe scarborough said about some of the things that we get from the gop. run joe scarborough. >> i'm just tired of it of being the stupid party. i'm tired of us being stupid and having stupid people saying stupid things and scaring off independent voters and swing voters. >> i mean, i think that's exactly right. we see some of that. i also saw nate silver, the pollster, an interesting tweet that made me laugh. is it possible to win a senate race with 0% of women's vote? asking for a friend. hostile towards women's issues as well as issues for black people, hispanics. >> how do you -- >> i mean, how do you have a national party -- >> the fact that -- >> -- that is pushing women away? >> every major republican figure distanced themselves from the

statements, does not do anything to assuage you from saying the gop will attack women, the gop is hostile to women. >> but, well, no, they're still a pro-life party. they're saying women, you don't get to choose what you do with your body. that's still a major -- >> we're still pro-right, pro-life. >> here's the problem. let me just -- >> toure was tansanswering. >> if i can get in there. they're condemning the langua. is anyone telling me where he has to leave the house where he sits on the science committee? no. every policy he's advocated for which is a logical outgrowth of his view which i do not think most republicans hold but all of his policy positions are broadly supported within the republican party. it's not like although his comments are fringe, it's not like his ideology and his policy positions are fringe. they're central in the

republican movement and that's the problem for the republican party, is that paul ryan has also co-sponsored personhood. he signed on to the forcible rape language and that's the bigger issue here. >> i'm going to get into forcible rape. steve, i explained this -- i understand if they came to this pentagon where he is with 50% of the conservative vote in missouri. he won just over 200,000 votes, which amounts to 3.3% of the population of the state because it was a contested primary. so what's his calculus here? >> that's story of primaries in general. a landslide winner in a primary will have 5% of the population of the state, and illustrating the power that sort of social conservatives, just conservatives in the tea party movement, disproportionate. they're the ones that vote. it's how you got share ng engel, christine o'donnell, winning the primary.

but what the republicans end up counting on it's the political thrivelism takes hold. democrats vote for democrats, republicans vote for republicans and in missouri if you're todd akin you're saying this is a republican state. >> and mccaskill's unpopular. >> next, what's going on inside the obama campaign? axlerod v. cutter, what the president thinks of mitt. glenn thrush has the inside scoop on "o'bama's last stand" as we roll on for tuesday, august 21st. but that doesn't mean we should be penalized for it. that's why liberty mutual insurance policies come standard with accident forgiveness, if you qualify. learn more at libertymutual.com.

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governor romney said if you want to be successful if you between go to college or start a business, you can just, and i'm quoting here, borrow money if you have to from your parents. shop around, borrow more money from your parents. >> that's president obama in the belt weather state of ohio, hammering romney on jobs, education and the dying american dream. the president's re-election bid filled with internal battles raging within obama land. politico senior white house reporter glenn thrush takes us inside the 2012 campaign, "o'bama's last stand." known as no drama obama. but thrush says in 2012 the campaign is haunted by personal rivalries, disagreements and a pl major change in tonight. stephanie cutter versus david

axelrod. ax in this corner, senior political strategist accusing the deputy campaign manager in that corner of stealing his tv appearances. bam! cutter resented actle rod's implication, elbowing him out of the way. thrush said the negativity hung over hq for weeks. next, biden versus the west wing. the president wants him to stay on as his running mate but some inside obamaland want him out. they point to biden forcing obama to jump the gun on gay marriage and how the president felt ambushed when biden brought the new york archbishop into the oval. obama was annoyed with biden for putting him in an uncomfortable spot. the campaign team disagreed. obama versus romney. one long time obama adviser told there rush obama has a level of

disdain for romney he never had for mccain who obama respected for an honorable man and war hero. that doesn't hold for romney. he was no goddamned war hero. does the president's disdain for romney make it into a character attack and small ball as opposed to the big-mined campaign in '08 which the subtext we respect senator mccain. >> before we start, can i get that in the form of the power point presentation? >> done. >> particularly the cutter/ax thing. was there any blood on their faces? i think like the background, i mean, let's face it, none of the republicans who went against mitt romney in 2008 left loving him all that much to begin with, rudy giuliani, chief among them. he really has a way of alienating people he goes up against. but you knowing obama has more

serious reasons not to like romney. first he had to sit by for six months beating around the head and neck by the other candidates, obama a competitive demon hates. and he also just thinks this guy's a shape shifter and isn't really fit to run the country. and he's told people, according to my reporting, that his biggest fear is that the republicans run the table, todd akin not withstand, and that in a couple of years you have 7-2 supreme court. >> you said shape shifter. right now on true blood we have people in obama masks hunting down shifters and killing them. but that's not what you meant, i'm assuming. >> no. >> but in general, is this unusual? i mean don't we have this sort of bickering and sort of back stabbing going on in a campaign? feel like opposi'08 was unusual was kumbaya but normally this thing happens. >> i covered the '08 hillary

campaign, which is like dropping pork chop in a river of piranhas every single day. >> that's an event. >> compared to them, this is nothing. look, you know, i'm sure the same stuff is going on in the romney campaign. i would challenge my colleagues to do the same level of reporting. i think the difference this time is that the type of campaign the president has to run in 2012 xaered to 2008 is vastly different, it's created an additional layer of tensions. and as some of the clinton veterans working for obama have said re-elections in general stink, and this one stinks a little bit more. >> i want to get to the biden stuff a bit. coming up on the democratic convention. when you have an incumbent president seeking re-election there's always this sort of subtext to the convention where the vice president you know, sort of looking ahead to four years late, george bush in 1984 and al gore in 1996, you didn't have it with dick cheney.

might be -- biden on the tick net 2008 and people thought he had no interest in being president. looks like he has more interest than people realized. what kind of role is he playing at convention? and what do you think about his thinking in terms of '16? >> all of us went into this thinking joe biden was very much in the rear view mirror in terms of political aspirations. this is a guy who has had dreams for a really long time. he's a youthful -- how old now? 64. he's a youthful guy with pay lot of ambition and a good staff and all of those things add up to some level of interest. if he's not seriously considering in running in 2016, he also cares very much about having an impact inside the obama white house and really being his own man, despite his reputation as a team player. that has added to some of the dissidents. and there have been times when west wing aides particularly plouffe, doubted whether or not

biden was playing it completely straight for the president. despite the recent gaffes, biden is on a shorter leash and there have been fewer conflicts in recent weeks, but still it's an issue. >> i want to ask you about and quote your political -- politico piece about the book where you say president obama had made vocal dissatisfaction with decisions made by his campaign team. its messaging. his vice president, joe biden and what obama feared was clumsy coordination between his west wing and re-election headquarters in chicago. that seems to indict every cog in the wheel. i'm wondering if you think obama, if you can get into the psychology here, obama's a delegator that perhaps delegated too much, or is he a micromanager who is maybe never going to be happy with the way things ended up. >> i think he's a delegate wore micromanages too much. >> okay. explain how that works. >> you know, i think he's a guy,

you know, maybe like i am as a parent, which is -- >> love this. >> -- wait where this is going, right? no. i mean he's a guy who claims to want to hire these people, get the best people he can, let them do that thing and as he's watching it -- >> changes his mind. >> changes his mind, wants to grab it himself. there was a seen, axlerod and cutter went up to the massachusetts state house in early may, did this awful event and were heckled by these -- the romney staffers chanted axlefraud. i was told that the president did not like this. this is a guy if he's going to throw a punch, you know, he doesn't want to look like an idiot doing it. >> glenn, quickly, a lot of this is great fodder for people like us and the beltway charting classes, so to speak. if there was one thing you could tell voters from your book, what would it be? >> well, what i would say is the

sense that i had going into the book was that the president really had some sort of a internal struggle from 2008 and what he had to do to get elected into 2012. to my surprise in interviewing two dozen former and current staffers, people in his orbit i didn't get that sense. he understands this is the kind of campaign he has to run. moreover, there's a little bit of revisionist history going on where by folks in obama's circle saying in 2008 we weren't playing paddy cake with mclean or clinton. the thing that surprised me the extent he's all in on the project. >> words of mitt romney, politics ain't beanbag, right? >> that's right. >> glenn thrush, thank you. interesting to see owen ebook can impact the campaign. first campaign we've had ebooks coming out during the campaign. see that level of reporting impacting what goes on the

ballots. matt miller in the guest spot, friend of the show. find out who he's calling a drawbridge republican. i love that term! i am going to become facebook friends with our babysitter. no. these work, right? no. all right. mom! look what i found in the shed! no! no! no! ♪ ew! were you guys just making out in here? what? no! is it okay if i quit my job and start a blog? no. really? cold cuts from a package? yes. [ male announcer ] in a world filled with "no," it's nice to finally say "yes." new oscar mayer selects deli meat. the tastes you love and no artificial preservatives. it's yes food.

there's no question that the conversation around the republican party has been hijacked by todd akin and as the convention approaches gop leaders are trying to shift the focus back towards the issue at hand, taxes, jobs, deficit. topics that matt miller has been covering for "the washington post." he joins us in guest spot today. welcome, matt. >> good to be with you. >> toure wants to kick this off. >> love the piece in "the washington post" about drawbridge republicans, love that term. rich guys who are working for

rich guys. can you unpack the term a little bit? do you think they lack an empathy gene? >> well the question is, as i thought about it, we've had wealthy candidates before but once you got paul ryan on the ticket, you had the reporting come out his net worth thanks to his wife and his trusts inhair reinces around $7 million, we never had two wealthy folks on the top whose priority is to cut taxes from low levels people at the top while raising them on everyone else and cutting programs that serve the poor or programs that help people rise, like aid for college that the president was talking about today. and i think that's kind of unprecedented. it is interesting, the psychology of this because you know, mitt romney back in massachusetts, actually passed a universal health care plan. what is it running the gauntlet of a republican primary, seeking that nomination, that has turned someone who used to have reasonable views into someone who is basically just pulling up

the drawbridge? that's my whole point. and it's very different than conservatives in other places, like england. >> matt, i want to unpack that a little bit. you're making the argument that romney and ryan's personal wealth make their economic proposals problematic. and i want to just sort of get around that for a minute. for one, i mean, plenty of middle class republicans without trust funds over the past 50 years have made the same economic arguments and for another, plenty of democratic economic policies have benefited the wealthy, manyi implemented n this senate. really what is personal wealth have to do with their economic policies? >> i think it's very different this time-you've had rich candidate but was they've felt like they ought to have as part of their agenda at least pretend to be doing something for the middle class and others who

didn't have their advantages. so john mccain, obviously, wealthy, thanks to his wife's major inheritance. he was very brave in trying to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants a few years ago. george w. bush in 2000 ran consciously as a compassionate conservative and had education initiatives, no child left behind, it lent credibility to that. i think that with what romney and ryan are doing today, is unique and unprecedented in that sense because all they've done, i mean i've read all of their plans i know implications of their budget plans and you see them slap together bullet points to put out a plan for the middle class that's repackaging energy policy or fracking or assertions they'll raise after tax income or take-home income, they're not serious about upward mobility, education, about the kind of things that would give ordinary americans a chance to get ahead, and i think that does make them drawbridge republican. >> why would they do that?

why -- >> i -- you tell me. you tell me. can you defend that people so well off when the top has gained so much and the last few decades why is their highest priority cutting taxes on the top. >> i would argue it's their highest priority. obviously -- >> centerpiece of the plan. a massive tax cut that benefits the top. >> i just -- >> the only way to make the books even come close to squaring is to raise taxes on those who aren't at the top, that's not what they're doing in the uk. david cameron, right, conservative, also an heir, he put off cutting their top marginal tack rate from 50% though he pledged that during the campaign because he said if we're going through a difficult time people who have the biggest shoulders, the broadest shoulder, should bear the greater burden. he thinks society needs to be led in a way perceived is fair and is fair.

i don't think you can say that about romney and ryan and what their actual agenda is. as people look more closely at it, they'll be shocked. >> as i remind you, democrats plan to cut taxes for the top 1%. in addition to extending the bush tax cuts extending major cuts in the state tax, patching alternative minimum tax -- >> i don't agree with that. that was a deal they were forced to do because of republicans who high jakd the country over the debt ceiling. i didn't agree with that. >> let me ask you about paul ryan. you've been writing a lot about him since he burst on the scene with his budget plan. he's described as serious, truth telling, and a fiscal hawk. i know you take some issues with those characterizations. >> yeah, i think it's like this is very orwellian. each of those words is false and so i'm very happy to be the kind of senior paul ryan analyst for the cycle here in the isolation

booth. the biggest thing that drive me crazy, he's called quote up quote fiscal conversatiservativ the path to prosperity i pulled out my calculator, did the numbers and it didn't balance the budget until 2060s and racked up $62 trillion in debt. what kind of fiscal conservative has a 50-year plan to balance the budget? his later plans have shrunk the debt, so he's adding $14 trillion in his most recent plan. the big lie, the reason he's not what anyone would call courageous in my definition, somebody who tells their political base something they don't want to hear. paul ryan's courageous when it comes to telling democratic constituents things they have to give up the truth that he wasn't tell and romney won't tell you cannot double the number of seniors on social security and medicare to do things to slow the growth of the programs, which i support, you can't double the number of people on

those programs and not have taxes rise, as boomers age. republicans will not acknowledge this core truth that totally disqualifies paul ryan as a courageous leader, in my view. >> but you do agree with ryan's attempt to slow the growth of medicare, yes? >> i do. >> all right. >> what i do, i urge democrats to demagogue responsibly on that, attack him for using trims in medicare's growth to cut taxes for the top. that's dead wrong. but acknowledge that from the progressive point of view, if we don't slow the growth of medicare the right way, we won't have money in ten years to invest in poor children. >> matt, thanks for being with us. next, it's called one of the deepest books of the year. a page-turning riveting chronicle of one of the most important issues of our time no matter what your politics. what is it? find out after this. so you brushed with colgate total and you didn't.

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taxes, medicare, job, buzz words we're hear in campaign. one term we're not hearing much of is stimulus. $800 billion piece of legislation, more than three years later bogged down with unemployment north of 8% and tens of millions of americans struggling. our next guest, journalist and author argues the stimulus is the new new deal, the name of the book, explores the hidden story of change in the obama era. a senior national correspondent for "time" magazine and joinses now. mike i want to ask you about the comparison to the new deal because it's so interesting to me. when you think back to the new deal, think of big things, think of the hoover dam. think of the civilian conservation corps, hundreds of thousand of people working for the government and suddenly having jobs. there's a legacy that all of the decades late we're can still

think about it. what is it that will take way from the stimulus? what a generation now will people say that was the legacy of the obama stimulus. >> obama didn't need to create big government because fdr already did, right? but there are -- what they have in common that is their legacy will be changed. the recovery act was really the purist distillation of what obama meant by that change we can believe in, that he talked about so much during the campaign. clean energy, health information technology, education reform, and really trying to change the direction of the american economy with the largest middle class tax cuts since reagan, the largest infrastructure investment since iceisenhower. people didn't pay attention to what his actual policy agenda but was during 2008 campaign because they were interested in his race and his pastor and the ads about him and paris hilton and his agenda wasn't all that

different than the classic democratic agenda reversing the bush era and investing in the future. but within the first month in office, you know before his aides figured out where the bathroom was, here it is, it's change. it's a major down payment on his agenda. >> talk about the long-term change. in the short term the design of the stimulus was to rescue us from the financial meltdown. and i think that we can look back on it now and say, the stimulus wasn't big enough. hard to believe but at that price tag it did not fill the hole that was in the economy. didn't come close to filling the hole. you get into the politics of it in the book, how shocking the price tag was to congress and the political world. and you know, how difficult that sort of counterintuitive sales pitch the economy's collapsing, people tightening belts time for government to loosen its belt. most people don't understand that. jack put the idea, there should be a trigger in the stimulus if more money's needed more money

automatically kicks in and you don't have to go through the process of selling it to the country. there wasn't a trigger put in so there would be more stimulus? >> if there had been a trigger we would have a smaller stimulus with a larger trigger in case things didn't work out. one thing i spoke to everybody who is involved in the negotiations, and there was just absolutely no appetite in congress for a dollar more than $800 billion. you know, a $50 billion stimulus hadn't gotten through the senate a few months earlier. the liberals, 387 liber economis calling for $3 billion stimulus. by the time the bill roll around, half a dozen democrats said absolutely not, not one penny more than $800 billion. i think obama realized that bills that don't pass congress don't make change. >> michael, you talk about an agency, the only one created by

the stimulus, and use it as an example of the sort of things that happened within the stimulus bill that the american public wasn't aware of. a quote, you say the stimulus was only partly about stimulus. it was about metamorphosis, arpae-e amounted to just .5% of the recovery act. a new manhattan project in a rounding error but it's emblematic of the law's assault on the status quo. what do you mean. >> arpa-e a new take on the famous pentagon agency that invented the internet in the gps and the m-16 rifle. set up to dot same kind of cutting edge, out of the box research but about clean energy and try to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. they're coming up with incredibly new advances in solar manufacturing and air-conditioning, electric vehicle batteries, it's really amazing what goes on there. it's like the kind of agency

that q. from the bond movies would want to work there. it's just an example of you know you've got homelessness prevention programs which had never been tried before and taken 1.2 million people who might have ended up on the streets and have instead provided them with housing. that's why homelessness has decreased during the great recession. things like wind and solar and energy efficiency and electric vehicle batteries advance biofuels, these are what obama was talking about when he meant change. it doesn't add up into the numbering of jobs when the economy was losing 800,000 jobs the month before he took office. but this is the sort of thing that will be remembered years from now. >> michael, you maim all of the successes from the stimulus. we know that politics is all about pr and marketing your ideas. the gop drove the narrative on the stimulus. is it really that obama's pr messaging around this was not sufficient to explain to america what they wanted to do and what

they accomplished? >> look, i get this question a lot, and i do try to remain people that you know the black guy whose middle name was hussein and got himself elected president probably didn't become a political idiot january 20, 2009. he had a very tough case to make, you know, at a time in the fourth quarter of 2008 gdp dropped 9%. that's like losing the economy of canada in a year. after the stimulus passed the next quarter the i biggest improvement in 30 years but it was still bad. that was a fundamental problem. i describe in the book this real republican plot to essentially destroy obama before he took office. it's the first real reporting where they describe, you know they were going to say no no matter what he did. democrats had a tough time selling this thing. and the media wasn't interested in looking at when republicans talked about you know levitating trains to disney land and you

know condoms and all of the stuff that wasn't in the bill, the immediamedia was not say, hs isn't true, it's not what they do in washington these days. >> michael grunwald. the science of computer love. what not to do when online dating. [ female announcer ] did you know the average person smiles more than 50 times a day? so brighten your smile a healthy way with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it's the only rinse that makes your teeth two shades whiter and two times stronger. ♪ listerine® whitening... power to your mouth.

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>> you ready to rock the profile? >> all right. yellow haired female likes waffles and news. >> sexy well-read blond loves the sweeter things in life. >> much bet. >> hobbies. organizing my agenda. >> wait. that doesn't sound fun. jamming on my planner. >> the online profile now considered the gateway to the modern day romance, list stats, likes and dislikes and you have been matched. 20 year ago it was an uncharted flurtation frontier but now the second-most common way to fine a partner, just behind meeting through a friend. the booming multibillion industry will launch nearly a quarter of all new relationships. but before you embark on the new high-tech matchmaking journey, we've got managing editor of scientific american with tips

and traps to avoid in this month's cover story. how to find love in the digital world. thanks for being with us. so, what do we need to know before we go and fill out our online profile? >> i guess the most important thing is that the way that we make decisions in the online dating environment is completely different from the way that we would decide on a potential partner in like a bar or at a party. so, basically when you're online you have all of these choices. so many profiles that you can look at and you click through and check them out for the best potential match. but the reality is that that's not actually a good way to decide on a partner. >> what is a good way to decide? it is counterintuitive. i think about my own husband. if i was to read his online profile i'm not sure i would have chosen him. >> i can't believe you're saying that on the air! >> it works very well in real life. how good are we at picking from a list online? what would work for us in the real world? >> one of the funny things about

that is that online people tend to contact a handful of people, disproportionately more often than everybody else. we all think that we like these generic people who are just you know i guess beautiful and really relatable. i don't know maybe they say they like going to the movies and it's common stuff. to the movies and it's common stuff, so we end up contacting these handleful of people more than anybody else. they are barraged in you know, contacts and e-mails and don't really know what to do. they're overwhelmed and not responding. you're thinking wait, why aren't these people writing back and you're not reaching out to the more realistic choices. it's more like opening your mind. it's more like a list of attributes, that's basically what we're doing online. >> talk about the sorts of

things people look to when judging people online. you talk about income and hair color versus say humor and rapport when you meet somebody in a bar. so it's a different reason to connect. >> the good side is that it's exposed you to all these people that you would never otherwise contact. it's important to note this is a huge innovation and great thipg and opens up these horizons. but the important thing is that in reality, you need to meet these people. we have all had that experience where you know within a few seconds, oh, this is never going to happen. you just have to get to that first meeting as soon as possible. set up a time to have a date or coffee within a month or weeks and it's been shown those are the most likely relationships to get off the ground, are ones where you meet in person as quickly as you can.

>> this is my suspicion with online dating. you have the opportunity to edit and polish and put only out there what you want and you've perfected it and taken your time. you don't have that ability when you're face to face with someone answering questions on the fly. you have that opportunity to only put out there what you've picked and chosen. seems to me, meeting face to face is more honest, but brutal. >> also there's these nonverbal cues you pick up. it's been shown the best predictors of when a relationship will work out are things like how you handle adversity. how are the two of you going to work through that. something else that was kind of funny, how you handle sharing good news. are you happy for your partner or cringing inside. it's not something you're going to find out on the first date or chatting up someone at the bar, but comes out with a little

sustained interaction in person and you're never going to see that in a pro file. >> probably not typically put in. >> things like pacing and how you have a sense of humor. or even just eye contact. do they freak you out or really evasive and you don't trust them? >> funny. thank you so much. and next, s.e.'s take on the akin ryan connection. [ mrs. hutchison ] friday night has always been all fun and games here at the hutchison household. but one dark stormy evening... she needed a good meal and a good family. so we gave her purina cat chow complete. it's the best because it has something for all of our cats! and after a couple of weeks she was part of the family. we're so lucky that lucy picked us. [ female announcer ] purina cat chow complete. and for a delicious way to help maintain a healthy weight, try new purina cat chow healthy weight.

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the national review, what do all these folks have in common? no, they aren't all inductees in hells national halls of do gooders. they are scores of republicans in groups that came out immediately to denounce todd akin's bizarre comments about rape on sunday. many of us in fact have called for his ouster, but this being an election year, the condemnations haven't stopped the left wing dream machine from whipping up new hallucinations comparing akin to romney and the whole of the conservative movement from the beginning of time. that paul ryan cosponsored a bill once with akin has become the new toy for the left. ryan's cosponsored many bills. his budget. that connect is more tenuous. at the crux of it and get used to this phrase, is the issue of

forcible rape. the left will tell you ryan and akin tried to redefine rape. why? because they hate women, presumably. forcible rape is a legal term. you can find it on the fbi's website. forcible rape program is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will attempts to commit rape by threat of force, however statutory rape without other offenses. the fbi uses forcible because it's different and so did ryan and akin in their legislature to prohibit federal taxpayer money from paying for abortions. you can oppose the bill on grounds you think all abortions should be funded by taxpayers. if the fbi makes the distinction between kinds of rape, paul ryan

is unapologetic. that much is true. but the assertion that he thinks some rape is okay because his proximity to todd akin is true and disgusting. welcome to the 2012 campaign. >> i don't believe ron wyden cosponsored the paul ryan budget. he worked with him a little bit and didn't sponsor the plan. the words he used, working paper. i don't think it had anything to do with the paul ryan budget. >> he absolutely did. he worked on the budget with paul ryan and by all accounts, reasonable for some of the ruling in it. >> well have to check that one. >> martin, it's all yours. >> thanks so all of you and good afternoon. it's tuesday, august 21st and here's what's happening.