Thirty Pictures of President Obama's Rain Soaked Speech in Virginia

At a stop today in Glen Allen, Virginia, Obama's campaign rally was threatened by heavy rain storms, but the President and his supporters braved the downpour — providing an awesome photo opportunity for the Obama campaign.
posted Jul 14, 2012 6:50pm EDT

http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/30-pictures-of-president-obamas-rain-soaked-c#HTWF2

George H W Bush 'Who the Hell is Grover Norquist'

By WILLIAM BERGSTROM | 7/13/12 10:44 AM EDT

George H.W. Bush doesn’t know who this Grover Norquist guy thinks he is, pushing politicians to sign an anti-tax pledge.

“The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like,” the former president, who broke his own campaign pledge not to raise taxes, said in an interview with Parade magazine. “The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. It’s — who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?”

Referencing her famous advice to Sarah Palin (“I think she’s very happy in Alaska – and I hope she’ll stay there.”), Barbara Bush said of Norquist, “I think he ought to go back to Alaska,” then laughed and added, “Don’t quote me!”

The couple also commented on President Bush’s friendship with Bill Clinton.

“He knows a lot about everything. He’s a very knowledgeable, bright man. He sat out here one time, and we talked about every possible [subject] — one after another,” Bush said.

“I think he thinks of George as the father he never had,” the former first lady said. “Truthfully. I mean that as a compliment. He’s been very thoughtful about calling and he’s a good fellow.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78478.html

Daily Show,'Colbert Report' Cease Streaming online Due to Viacom vs Direct TV Battle

The battle between DirecTV and Viacom has just claimed a big casualty: Online streaming episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

Viacom and DirecTV have been publicly battling over DirecTV's reluctance to pay the fees Viacom demands to carry their 26 channels. On Tuesday evening, the satellite provider dropped Viacom channels, including Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV, from their lineup.

DirecTV has noted to customers that although they are losing Comedy Central on DirecTV, anyone can easily watch popular shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" on the Internet, where videos found on official Comedy Central websites are embeddable so they can be played on other sites (such as The Huffington Post).

But Viacom continued to play hardball. As of Thursday, full episodes of the shows have been removed from the official "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" websites, although individual clips of the episodes are still available.

The move is likely to upset viewers who do not subscribe to DirecTV, but who will still be unable to watch full episodes of their favorite shows due to the two corporations' feud. Presumably, the suspension will not be permanent, and episodes will resume streaming online when DirecTV and Viacom reach an agreement to reinstate Viacom programming.

Both "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are on hiatus this week, but their official websites are running ads encouraging fans to call DirecTV to voice support of Viacom shows.

http://tinyurl.com/7naoule

Voter ID: The GOP's Last Gasp

From Mother Jones
By Kevin Drum| Fri Jul. 13, 2012 3:00 AM PD

Voter ID Laws Are the Last Gasp of a Fading GOP Strategy

I wrote about the long-standing hope of Democrats that demographic changes are working in their favor and will soon create a durable national Dem majority. There are several moving parts to this theory, but the two big ones are (a) young people are trending Democratic, and (b) the Dem-leaning nonwhite population is getting bigger and bigger. As far as I know, Republicans don't really deny that these things are happening. After all, the trend in the youth vote jumps out in every poll, and the growing nonwhite share of the population is regularly front-page news. George Bush and Karl Rove, who desperately wanted to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in 2006 in order to stanch the flow of Hispanic votes into the Democratic column, knew perfectly well how important this was.

So what's the Republican response to all this? They have two options:

Start to move leftward on social issues, especially gay marriage, in order to win back their share of the youth vote; tone down the anti-immigration rhetoric from the tea partiers; and stop tolerating casual racism among their core supporters.

or

Double down on the demographic groups who already support them. This is basically the South, angry white men, the rich, and the elderly.

Eventually, they might be forced to adopt Option 1, but for now they seem to have abandoned the idea of pushing back against their base (as Democrats eventually did in the late '80s), and instead have gone all in on Option 2. There are two elements to this. The first is to push ever harder for higher turnout among the Fox News set. That was pretty successful in 2010,when the "enthusiasm gap" powered a Republican landslide that year. But there's only so far that can go"

For All of It Go To Source:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/voter-id-laws-are-last-gasp-fading-gop-strategy

Three Reasons why Romney's Quit Date Matters

Reid: Romney ‘Couldn’t Be Confirmed As Dog Catcher’ By The Senate

SAHIL KAPUR JULY 12, 2012, 12:52 PM 2857
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Thursday that new revelations about Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital mean he’d have trouble gaining Senate approval for pretty much any job.

“He not only couldn’t be confirmed as a cabinet secretary, he couldn’t be confirmed as dog catcher,” Reid told reporters at a Capitol press briefing, in response to a question from TPM. “Because a dog catcher, you’re at least going to want to look at his income tax returns.”

“The long report that we have in the Boston Globe today indicates that, as one of his own employees said, it doesn’t make sense,” Reid continued. “He said he left Bain to go to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and stopped any association with Bain. But his SEC filings indicated that he was Chief Executive Officer, sole stockholder, and ran the corporation for at least 3 more years. And that’s why people who say there’s been advertisements where businesses were closed, people laid off - and he says oh I wasn’t there, I left in 1999. As his own operative said, it doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t.”

Source and More

http://tinyurl.com/8yrobag

SEC said "Romney was the Controlling Person of Bain Capital in 2001

SEC Rule 405 of definition of "Controlling"

Public Filings Disagree on Romney's Role at Bain Capital in 1999

Mitt Romney Stayed at Bain 3 Yrs Longer than He Stated-Boston Globe

Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated
Firm’s 2002 filings identify him as CEO, though he said he left in 1999
By Callum Borchers and Christopher Rowland | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT | GLOBE STAFF JULY 12, 2012

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”


Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

Source

http://tinyurl.com/blbqjtc

Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing
—By David Corn | Wed Jul. 11, 2012 8:10 PM PDT

Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

This previously unreported deal runs counter to Romney's tough talk on the campaign trail regarding China. "We will not let China continue to steal jobs from the United States of America," Romney declared in February. But with this investment, Romney sought to make money off a foreign company that banked on American firms outsourcing manufacturing overseas.

Source

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/bain-capital-mitt-romney-outsourcing-china-global-tech