• “Mistake”: The Boston Globe is now saying it made a ‘mistake’ failing to credit Mother Jones and TPM for originally reporting the story about SEC documents showing that Mitt Romney remained in charge at Bain through 2002.
• Romney at Bain 3 years longer than he stated
• The fact-checking columns [which Romney relies on to claim that Obama is lying about the activities at Bain] base their conclusions on Romney’s claim that he left Bain in 1999. Obama’s ads are misleading, both say, because they hold Romney accountable for things Bain did after 1999. The revelation that Romney was actively managing Bain renders both those judgments moot. “In fact, if the Obama campaign were correct, Romney would be guilty of a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999.”
• It would appear that Romney either lied to the SEC on disclosure forms there, or lied on separate federal disclosure forms. The Romney campaign has so far rebutted this by saying that SEC forms are idiosyncratic, and that he could have both left Bain in 1999 and still had to sign forms saying he remained the CEO for three years thereafter. Adding to the confusion is that Romney testified before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission in 2002, during his race for governor, that he took a “leave of absence” from Bain in 1999, not a full departure.
• You’re CEO, you’re responsible. End of story. …To say that you were CEO, owner, Chairman of the Board and all the rest and yet had no responsibility for anything that happened just amounts to elaborate buck-passing.
• Boston Globe refuses Romney demand to “correct” Bain story – The problem is that, as the Globe notes in their subsequent letter to the Romney campaign, the Globe can’t correct a story that quotes federal and state documents that Romney wrote himself.
• Mitt Romney’s repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain after 1999 is false, according to Romney’s own testimony in June 2002, in which he admitted to sitting on the board of the Lifelike Co., a doll maker that was a Bain investment during the period.
• Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing
• Sorry, Mitt Romney, You Can’t Be Chairman, CEO, And President Of A Company And Not Be Responsible For What It Does. Either he is responsible for Bain, or he is responsible for lying to the SEC. Pick one.
• Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said her message to Romney was: “If the SEC filings aren’t accurate, prove it. … Prove it by releasing your tax returns.” The Romney camp demanded an apology from Obama for Cutter’s remarks.
• Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. “[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth,” he said. Romney’s sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor.
Other right wing asshattery:
• Endorsement from hell: Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Republican fundraisers Thursday night that Mitt Romney is the “only” man who can make the right decisions in unexpected foreign policy crises. Romney raised more than $4 million with Cheney. Oklahoma City oil magnate Harold Hamm, frequently mentioned in Romney’s standard campaign speech as an inspiring rags-to-riches example of American entrepreneurship, also attended.
• Breitbart idiots post a pic before Biden shows up at NAACP and claims that Biden spoke to a room full of empty seats.
• Getting annoyed at uniforms made in China is understandable. Denigrating people in berets is another matter entirely. In Fox’ eagerness to take – yet another – swipe at the French, they also managed to take a swipe at the US military, among many others. The right-wingnuts are in a frenzy because of the off-shoring of sports apparel. However, the Olympic Committee is privately funded. The decision to manufacture the uniforms in China was made solely by the Ralph Lauren Company for purely financial reasons. The Committee could have required sponsors to source all Olympic manufacturing in the U.S., but that would be the sort of “regulation” that conservatives adamantly oppose.
• Senate Republicans made good on their threat to filibuster a Democratic small-business tax cut bill today, ensuring the bill fell seven votes short of what it needed to move forward.
Canada:
• In a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Dick Fadden says the spy agency was “extremely pleased” to see the surveillance bill come before Parliament, considering it “vital” to protecting national security. Has offered to help tweak the legislation to make it more palatable to a wary public.
• American and British criticism of Canada’s long and often bloody military efforts in Afghanistan has a ring of revisionism that ignores key facts, experts say. In particular, they say, the notion that blithely optimistic Canadians were reluctant to ask for outside help as they struggled alone in Kandahar province, which had been abandoned by the Americans in favour of Iraq, is ludicrous. “The war (in Afghanistan) isn’t exactly going well, so people look around and try to fix blame wherever they can,” said Canadian military historian, Jack Granatstein. “The Americans and Brits are good at this historically.”
Fear, Inc:
• Amid concerns of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz during a potential crisis, the U.S. Navy is beginning to develop and release a set of underwater drones to find and destroy sea mines present in the Persian Gulf, according to U.S. officials.
• Police officials declined to identify the officer who allegedly said he would shoot the First Lady and then used his phone to retrieve a picture of the firearm he said he would use. Police officials immediately reassigned the officer to other duties, the police officials said.
• The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel has reopened after a bomb threat phoned in to Canadian authorities led to the closing of the international crossing for several hours Thursday afternoon.
• The Palestinians’ efforts to launch an international probe into the 2004 death of ex-leader Yasser Arafat face serious obstacles, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. The United States has put pressure on the Palestinian leadership not to seek such an investigation because it can lead to some negative consequences on the Middle East peace process, which has been stalled since 2010, according to the official.
• Australian scientists have found that two different vaccines used to control an infectious disease in chickens can recombine to create new lethal virus strains. “We suspect that this sort of event could potentially happen in other animal species as well and with other viruses in addition to infectious laryngotracheitis virus,” Co-researcher Professor Glenn Browning says.
F.D.Brightly
About that Bain thing. Lying, lying and more lying. [Shorter Question Everything]
• “Mistake”: The Boston Globe is now saying it made a ‘mistake’ failing to credit Mother Jones and TPM for originally reporting the story about SEC documents showing that Mitt Romney remained in charge at Bain through 2002.
• Romney at Bain 3 years longer than he stated
• The fact-checking columns [which Romney relies on to claim that Obama is lying about the activities at Bain] base their conclusions on Romney’s claim that he left Bain in 1999. Obama’s ads are misleading, both say, because they hold Romney accountable for things Bain did after 1999. The revelation that Romney was actively managing Bain renders both those judgments moot. “In fact, if the Obama campaign were correct, Romney would be guilty of a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999.”
• It would appear that Romney either lied to the SEC on disclosure forms there, or lied on separate federal disclosure forms. The Romney campaign has so far rebutted this by saying that SEC forms are idiosyncratic, and that he could have both left Bain in 1999 and still had to sign forms saying he remained the CEO for three years thereafter. Adding to the confusion is that Romney testified before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission in 2002, during his race for governor, that he took a “leave of absence” from Bain in 1999, not a full departure.
• You’re CEO, you’re responsible. End of story. …To say that you were CEO, owner, Chairman of the Board and all the rest and yet had no responsibility for anything that happened just amounts to elaborate buck-passing.
• Boston Globe refuses Romney demand to “correct” Bain story – The problem is that, as the Globe notes in their subsequent letter to the Romney campaign, the Globe can’t correct a story that quotes federal and state documents that Romney wrote himself.
• Mitt Romney’s repeated claim that he played no part in executive decision-making related to Bain after 1999 is false, according to Romney’s own testimony in June 2002, in which he admitted to sitting on the board of the Lifelike Co., a doll maker that was a Bain investment during the period.
• Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing
• Sorry, Mitt Romney, You Can’t Be Chairman, CEO, And President Of A Company And Not Be Responsible For What It Does. Either he is responsible for Bain, or he is responsible for lying to the SEC. Pick one.
• Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said her message to Romney was: “If the SEC filings aren’t accurate, prove it. … Prove it by releasing your tax returns.” The Romney camp demanded an apology from Obama for Cutter’s remarks.
• Romney has consistently insisted that he was too busy organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics to take part in Bain business between 1999 and that event. But in the testimony, which was provided to The Huffington Post, Romney noted that he regularly traveled back to Massachusetts. “[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth,” he said. Romney’s sworn testimony was given as part of a hearing to determine whether he had sufficient residency status in Massachusetts to run for governor.
Other right wing asshattery:
• Endorsement from hell: Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Republican fundraisers Thursday night that Mitt Romney is the “only” man who can make the right decisions in unexpected foreign policy crises. Romney raised more than $4 million with Cheney. Oklahoma City oil magnate Harold Hamm, frequently mentioned in Romney’s standard campaign speech as an inspiring rags-to-riches example of American entrepreneurship, also attended.
• Breitbart idiots post a pic before Biden shows up at NAACP and claims that Biden spoke to a room full of empty seats.
• Getting annoyed at uniforms made in China is understandable. Denigrating people in berets is another matter entirely. In Fox’ eagerness to take – yet another – swipe at the French, they also managed to take a swipe at the US military, among many others. The right-wingnuts are in a frenzy because of the off-shoring of sports apparel. However, the Olympic Committee is privately funded. The decision to manufacture the uniforms in China was made solely by the Ralph Lauren Company for purely financial reasons. The Committee could have required sponsors to source all Olympic manufacturing in the U.S., but that would be the sort of “regulation” that conservatives adamantly oppose.
• Senate Republicans made good on their threat to filibuster a Democratic small-business tax cut bill today, ensuring the bill fell seven votes short of what it needed to move forward.
Canada:
• In a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Dick Fadden says the spy agency was “extremely pleased” to see the surveillance bill come before Parliament, considering it “vital” to protecting national security. Has offered to help tweak the legislation to make it more palatable to a wary public.
• American and British criticism of Canada’s long and often bloody military efforts in Afghanistan has a ring of revisionism that ignores key facts, experts say. In particular, they say, the notion that blithely optimistic Canadians were reluctant to ask for outside help as they struggled alone in Kandahar province, which had been abandoned by the Americans in favour of Iraq, is ludicrous. “The war (in Afghanistan) isn’t exactly going well, so people look around and try to fix blame wherever they can,” said Canadian military historian, Jack Granatstein. “The Americans and Brits are good at this historically.”
Fear, Inc:
• Amid concerns of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz during a potential crisis, the U.S. Navy is beginning to develop and release a set of underwater drones to find and destroy sea mines present in the Persian Gulf, according to U.S. officials.
• Police officials declined to identify the officer who allegedly said he would shoot the First Lady and then used his phone to retrieve a picture of the firearm he said he would use. Police officials immediately reassigned the officer to other duties, the police officials said.
• The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel has reopened after a bomb threat phoned in to Canadian authorities led to the closing of the international crossing for several hours Thursday afternoon.
• The Palestinians’ efforts to launch an international probe into the 2004 death of ex-leader Yasser Arafat face serious obstacles, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. The United States has put pressure on the Palestinian leadership not to seek such an investigation because it can lead to some negative consequences on the Middle East peace process, which has been stalled since 2010, according to the official.
• Australian scientists have found that two different vaccines used to control an infectious disease in chickens can recombine to create new lethal virus strains. “We suspect that this sort of event could potentially happen in other animal species as well and with other viruses in addition to infectious laryngotracheitis virus,” Co-researcher Professor Glenn Browning says.