Lawrence again joined msnbc's Martin Bashir this afternoon to discuss Mitt Romney's big speech tonight. At the time, Romney was on-stage doing a walk-through to get used to the room.

As for how Romney will do this evening, Lawrence told Martin he wondered last night if "Mitt Romney can rise to the Paul Ryan level... I'd be very surprised if he can do it, tonight."

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Actor-Director Clint Eastwood will be speaking at the RNC

NBC News has learned the "mystery speaker" at tonight at the RNC in Tampa is none other than Oscar-nominated actor and Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood. NBC's Luke Russert reports one thing that helped tip them off was the RNC band rehearsing the theme to Dirty Harry.

One interesting thing to note ahead of Eastwood's appearance on the RNC stage is he's on record completely disagreeing with the RNC on a major social issue: marriage equality.

Under the section called "Preserving and Protecting Traditional Marriage," the RNC's platform states in part:

It has been proven by both experience and endless social science studies that traditional marriage is best for children... The success of marriage directly impacts the economic well-being of individuals. Furthermore, the future of marriage affects freedom... We recognize and honor the courageous efforts of those who bear the many burdens of parenting alone, even as we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard... We embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity.

Eastwood, on the other hand, said this to GQ magazine in September of last year (emphasis added):

"I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War. And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And libertarians had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let's spend a little more time leaving everybody alone. These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don't give a f--k about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of."

So... there's one thing he probably won't talk about during his remarks tonight.

ht JoeMyGod

For the second day in a row, the first guest on Martin Bashir's eponymous msnbc program was one Lawrence O'Donnell. And for the second day in a row, the lead interview of that broadcast featured the two politically sharp minds trading spot-on analysis of the RNC laced with plenty of sarcasm. Several chuckles could be heard across The Last Word newsroom.

Today, Martin and Lawrence discussed the aftermath of last night's RNC keynote speech by Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ). Things started off with some talk about "love."

The pair also previewed tonight's speeches from former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and presumptive vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Lawrence also gave his thoughts on the closed-door process of the convention speechwriters.

"These people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can possibly find in every one of these speeches... I know these speechwriters are insensitive. I know the way they work. They do not have the same sensitivity level that others speechwriters do."

Click the video to see the whole conversation.

Romney campaign surrogate and former New Hampshire governor John Sununu just doesn't understand all this talk about a fracture within the Republican Party. Talking to BuzzFeed about Ron Paul's frustrated supporters, Sununu said,  "I think they're going to vote the right way in November."

This, of course, ignores the fracas caused yesterday when some of Maine's Ron Paul-supporting delegates were escorted out of the convention hall's balcony after shouting "Seat Maine now!" and other slogans. RNC rules kept these particular delegates from sitting on the convention floor. They were instead relegated to that balcony where they staged their vocal protest.

In the video above, delegates supporting Ron Paul can be heard saying, "Shame on them!" and "This convention is a farce!" Things then got really testy in the arena's hallway with each side shouting their candidate's name over the other.

John Sununu's inability to acknowledge this Ron Paul insurgency within the GOP's ranks is interesting when you realize he's one of the guys behind the scenes making these rules that keep these Ron Paul-supporting delegates from being seated on the floor. BuzzFeed explains:

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Sununu: Move along people, nothing to see here

None of this fazed Sununu, who in his capacity as Rules Committee chairman has been the bane of the Paul delegates' experience at the convention...

"Politics is the art of putting people together," Sununu said. "You try to get everybody involved, sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don't."

"I feel that in the long run, there's enough dissatisfaction with President Obama that you'll find that the party truly is unified," Sununu said. "That it's going to leave Tampa as a strong party, and although you may always find one or two people who disagree, I think everyone's going to come together to defeat President Obama in November."

Maine's national committeewoman Ashley Ryan, a supporter of Rep. Paul, told BuzzFeed that Sununu was "very saracastic" and "demeaning" 

Responding to the riff, one RNC delegate from Colorado told the Associated Press, "If you're trying to win a presidential campaign and put on a show, you shouldn't poke a sharp stick in the eye of conservative activists. That's what happened."

Oh burn.

A familiar face popped up as a guest on today's edition of Martin Bashir's eponymous msnbc broadcast. Lawrence joined Martin live from the RNC in Tampa, and the two began their conversation discussing whether tonight's speech by New Jersey's "pugnacious" (to use Martin's description) governor Chris Christie could possibly overshadow Mitt Romney's own speech.

Lawrence told Martin that was absolutely what Gov. Christie hoped to do. He continued saying:

"(Christie) wants to run for president four years from now after Mitt Romney loses, and the Republican nomination's wide open. Christie is the best public speaker that the Republicans have when he is on his game, when he's not busy insulting someone in the audience. But remember Martin, the Romney campaign controls - word-for-word - the text and the length of this speech tonight... and they have to deliberately find little ways to tone down his performance so that he won't just overwhelm and make people forget Romney's coming later in the week."

The two also discussed Christie's parallel with Machiavelli's Prince, and their diverging opinions on the British Royal Family among many other things. The conversation is well worth your time, as is Lawrence's appearance earlier on msnbc's Now with Alex Wagner. You can see that clip by clicking here.

While stumping in his native Michigan today, Mitt Romney cracked a birth certificate joke. He told a crowd in the town of Commerce that he was born in a nearby hospital. Romney then added, "No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate, they know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

WhiteHouse.gov

Today on msnbc's PoliticsNation, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post told Rev. Al Sharpton, "If you just look at this as a political matter, it does him no good. If he wanted to be a birther, he should have done that back in the primary... I think that's why you see his campaign running from this. This goes in the gaffe category... His brain was not working when he did this."

Ultimately, reactions from political pundits have ranged from outrage to "meh." As Dave Weigel points out today in a post for Slate, the whole "birther" notion is so ridiculous to 99.99984579% of the country** that the President has often made jokes about it, himself.

You can buy an overpriced coffee mug from Team Obama's website with the President's birth certificate on it. The President's longform birth certificate is even posted to the White House website, as is President Obama's correspondence with Hawaii state officials showing his request to release said birth certificate.

So what do you think? Was Romney's joke a big deal or is the whole thing being overblown?

**I totally made up that statistic

MSNBC's own Rachel Maddow trekked over to Broadway from 30 Rock yesterday to sit down and talk politics with David Letterman. The Late Show host had several questions about the controversy surrounding Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments... and things even got biblical. Sort of.

Letterman also got political with last night's Top Ten List... the subject? "Top ten signs your congressman is an idiot."

In today's edition of "Off the Cliff" news, both President Obama and Mitt Romney laid out their respective economic visions in dueling stump speeches this afternoon. Their talk of America's economic future could not come at a more appropriate time.

A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office details exactly what going off the fiscal cliff would mean. Spoiler alert: recession!! (If you need a refresher on what going off the cliff entails, please to read this.)

The report states if we went off the cliff and stayed off the cliff, "Such fiscal tightening will lead to economic conditions in 2013 that will probably be considered a recession."

If you really want to go crazy with all 89 wonktastic pages of the report, it can be found in its entirety here. But what the CBO's analysis seeks to do is lay out the different sets of probable consequences of going off the cliff versus what the report calls "an alternative fiscal scenario." What's the difference?

I leave that to wonkier folk than myself. From the Wall Street Journal:

The CBO painted two starkly difference scenarios for next year, depending on what path lawmakers decide to take.

Under current law, the Bush-era tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, raising tax rates on more than 100 million Americans.

These tax increases, combined with roughly $100 billion in planned spending cuts on military and other government programs, would reduce projected deficits from $1.13 trillion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 to $641 billion for the year that ends Sept. 30, 2013.

That would reduce the deficit from roughly 7.3% of the nation's gross domestic product to roughly 4.0% of GDP, the CBO said, the largest one-year reduction since 1969...

If Congress were to postpone the tax increases and spending cuts, the deficit would shrink just slightly in the next fiscal year, to $1.037 trillion, or 6.5% of GDP.

If nothing changes (as in we go off and stay off the cliff), the CBO states "real GDP (will decline) by 0.5 percent between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the fourth quarter of 2013 and the unemployment rate (will rise) to about 9 percent in the second half of calendar year 2013."

That's bad.

Under the CBO's "alternate fiscal scenario" as explained above the CBO report explains, "The economy would be stronger in 2013: Real GDP would grow by 1.7 percent between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the fourth quarter of 2013, and the unemployment rate would be about 8 percent by the end of 2013, CBO projects."

That's better.

What will make the difference? Yeah, the CBO answered that question in its report, too. Buried in there is a big fat one sentence economic truth bomb. 

"Whether lawmakers allow scheduled policy changes to take effect or alter them will play a crucial role in determining the path of the federal budget over the next decade and the outlook for the economy."

And boom goes the dynamite.

Oh... and if the Off the Cliff movement needs a theme song (and what good movement doesn't?), I suggest this:

Talking Points Memo

Screengrab of Akin's website

Rep. Todd Akin's is far from dropping out of the Missouri Senate race. Despite pressure from the Republican establishment, including Mitt Romney, Akin asked conservative voters to support him and his pro-life stances with a picture of a fetus on his official-real-we-checked-it-out-for-serious campaign website. It also misspelled the word "you're."

The image and spelling mistakes have been scrubbed from the site as of this afternoon. Hats off to Talking Points Memo for taking the screengrab while it lasted. 

AP Photo/Jim Mone

An adviser to Ohio's Republican governor and county Republican party chairman is facing a lot of controversy for remarks he made about early voting in that state. Doug Preisse is the head of the Franklin County Republican Party which includes the city of Columbus. He's a close ally and political adviser to Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich. He also worked with Newt Gingrich's failed presidential campaign.

FranklinCountyGOP.org

Franklin Co. Ohio GOP Chairman Doug Preisse

Preisse is also the guy who said this about early voting in Ohio in an email to The Columbus Dispatch:

“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bulls**t. Quote me!”

And quote Preisse the Dispatch did. Preisse had a vote on the issue of Ohio's early voting, and he decided against weekend early voting. Last week Ohio's Secretary of State decided against any weekend voting, but did tell the state's 88 election boards they were to keep hours until 7p.m. on weekdays during the final two weeks before election day.

Preisse also told BuzzFeed:

Democrats "are trying to say that I had somehow consciously constrained hours for that purpose," Preisse said. "No, I am saying the opposite, that I am asking the question, and I am indeed questioning how far this process of democratic, small ‘d’, democratic voting process should be contorted to favor a political operation. I don’t think we should go overboard in doing that."

Ohio's Democratic party has responded. Their chairman, Chris Redfern, told BuzzFeed, "Doug Preisse is carrying his friend John Kasich's water. Doug Preisse cannot walk back his racially charged comments directed at African-American Ohioans because it is what he believes."

Redfern also told The Columbus Dispatch that the actions of his state's attorney general are "borderline criminal."

Louis Vuitton/Annie Leibovitz

Ads featuring Olympian leaked online before Aug. 16th release

The agent for history's most decorated Olympian Michael Phelps says his client is not as risk of losing his Olympic medals from this summer's London Games after photos for a new Louis Vuitton ad campaign leaked early. Athletes were barred from plugging goods for companies that are not Olympic sponsors from July 18 until August 15.

These ads for luxury designer Louis Vuitton leaked online before their August 16 release date while the games were still ongoing. The wording of the International Olympic Committee rule was laid out by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Rule 40 states ”a competitor or a team may lose the benefit of any ranking obtained in relation to other events at the Olympic Games at which he or it was disqualified or excluded; in such case the medals and diplomas won by him or it shall be returned to the IOC.” In other words, Phelps could theoretically be stripped of his medals from London.

The Washington Post has the response Phelps' agent gave to the speculation that his client could lose his medals for this:

“He didn’t violate Rule 40, it’s as simple as that,” Carlisle said in a telephone interview. “All that matters is whether the athlete permitted that use. That’s all he can control. In this case, Michael did not authorize that use. The images hadn’t even been reviewed, much less approved. It’s as simple as that. An athlete can’t control unauthorized uses any more than you can guarantee someone isn’t going to break into your house.”

Louis Vuitton/Annie Leibovitz

When Jimmy Fallon breaks out his anchorman glasses for an edition of his fake news program, "Night News Now," it's always fun for those of us in the media. On Friday's Late Night, he was joined on "Night News Now" but a new consumer reporter: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). In addition to sharing the fact she loves Mario Kart 64, we also learned which is her favorite rolled up fruit snack.