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    The Deeper Bain

    TPM Reader JL thinks it's only the tip of the iceberg ...

    I am of course delighted to see Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain coming into focus. But I think the focus on jobs, as potent as it is, may distract from an even more problematic aspect of the private equity business. And I think the Obama campaign, or the DNC, or the Dem Super PACs, or all three would be wise to focus on it. Maybe not now, but eventually. Yes, it's important, perhaps critical to put the lie to the image of Mitt Romney as a job creator. But perhaps more important is the idea that Mitt has spent his career playing with other people's money.

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    Josh Marshall

    Ahhh Fox News

    Fox reporter toasts the awesomeness of Dixville Notch, NH: "No Hanging chads, we didn't see any black panthers with baseball bats. These were good, American folks..."

    Watch.

    Josh Marshall

    The Video

    So have you seen the actual Mitt "I like being able to fire people" line? If not, here it is.

    Josh Marshall

    Nails It

    James Fallows really nails it on Romney's "I like being able to fire people" line. Yes, he wasn't talking about employees. And it's been taken out of context. But anyone who's ever had to fire someone knows it's about as unpleasant and hard as you can imagine. The word itself is charged enough it's a bit hard to imagine putting 'like' in front of it. And that's why it's sticking.

    Josh Marshall

    Club for Growth Explodes on Newt

    The Club for Growth, custodian of the gods of cutthroat laissez-faire capitalism, blasts Newt Gingrich for attacking Romney's private equity awesomeness.

    Josh Marshall

    Pile On!

    Everybody piles on Mitt for stumbling into saying he likes firing people. (Of course, he didn't really mean that. But we seem to be far past that at this point.)

    Josh Marshall

    'Pious Baloney'

    Newt dinged Mitt in Sunday's debate for repeatedly claiming that he had never envisioned, sought or pursued a career in politics. Newt has a point on this one. As Benjy Sarlin and Evan McMorris-Santoro reports, Mitt's #humblebrag on this score is a key part of his new and improved bio for the 2012 race.

    David Kurtz
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    Muckraker Jillian Rayfield

    California Man Gets Five Years For Planned Parenthood Firebombing And Mosque Vandalism

    A California man was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic and vandalizing a mosque. Donny Eugene Mower was ordered to serve five years, with three years of supervised release, as well as pay $26,000 in restitution. Mower pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of malicious damage to property by means of fire or an explosive, one misdemeanor count of damaging religious property, and one misdemeanor count of damaging the property of a...
    TPM2012 Evan McMorris-Santoro

    Fox News Pundit Hails NH Town's Lack Of 'Black Panthers'

    Political reporters went live early Tuesday morning to catch the balloting in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. The eccentric political ritual of watching a handful of Granite Staters cast the first presidential primary ballots of the cycle (in this case 9 people voted) is a time-honored part of any presidential election. To one Fox News Radio reporter brought on to analyze the moment by Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday, the vote was also a moment to reflect on what makes Dixville so magical.
    TPM2012 David Taintor

    Colbert Defends Santorum's 'Blah People' Line

    Since Rick Santorum's photo finish in Iowa, Republican voters are finally starting to listen to him bring the "true, hot and heavy and strictly missionary," Stephen Colbert said Monday. Like this line: Santorum a little more than a week ago said he doesn't want to make "bla- people's" lives better by giving them someone else's money. Hmm, what was that? Santorum is "pretty confident" he didn't say black. He says he started to say a word and then "blah" came out.
    TPM2012 David Taintor

    Jon Stewart: Romney Answered GOP's 'eHarmony' Ad And Now Rivals Hate Him

    What's with the Republican presidential candidates piling on Mitt Romney? Jon Stewart wondered on Monday. Sure, he's super rich and often appears out of touch: he likes "being able to fire people" and has told voters he's "unemployed," too. But according to Stewart, Romney is everything Republicans could ask for. "You're mad at Mitt Romney?" Stewart said. "It's like Mitt Romney answered the Republicans' eHarmony ad, and now you're saying it's unfair?" And how do guys like Mitt Romney come to be, by...
    IdeaLab Carl Franzen

    Apple Didn't Win CES 2012, Microsoft Lost

    LAS VEGAS -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave what the company has said will be its final keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday night. And much like the T.S. Eliot poem, it ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Ballmer, with the aid of Ryan Seacrest, showed off the new Windows 8 operating system, which Microsoft hopes will make a big splash when it launches for public beta in February. "The feature attraction of tonight's keynote is Metro Style," Ballmer told Seacrest, referring...
    TPM2012 Evan McMorris-Santoro

    The South Carolina District That Could Seal Romney's Fate

    COLUMBIA, SC -- If this state is the last stand for the candidates who are not Mitt Romney, then South Carolina's third Congressional District is the Alamo. Watch what happens in the third, which covers South Carolina's upper northwest. If Mitt Romney wins that district -- which South Carolina observers call the state's most socially-conservative -- the battle is over, and Romney will win South Carolina. In short, if they can't stop Romney in the third, they probably can't stop him.
    TPM2012 Pema Levy

    Today On The Trail: January 10, 2012

    Today is the 'first in the nation' primary in New Hampshire. TPM will have live coverage of the election Tuesday evening. Here are the 10 things you need to know. CBS News national poll shows Romney beating Obama: In a new national CBS News poll of potential match-ups between the Republican candidates with President Obama, Romney is the only candidate to beat Obama 47-45. Ron Paul loses to the president 46-45, and Rick Santorum isn't far behind, losing 47-43. CBS said that voters were generally sticking...
    TPM2012 Kyle Leighton

    For New Hampshire's Independent Voters, Romney Is The Poor Man's Huntsman

    Tuesday's New Hampshire presidential primary may end up being former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's biggest coup, should the current frontrunner go on to win the Republican nomination -- but not because his lead was ever in doubt. Watch an hour of cable news over the last week and you'll assuredly hear two common refrains about the presidential primary process -- the Iowa caucuses winnow the field of candidates in a given party, after which the Granite State's political charge is to pick the nominee. ...
    Muckraker Nick R. Martin

    How The Feds Brought Down Arizona's Suspected White Supremacist 'Serial' Bombing Brothers

    In a small trailer park in Catoosa, Okla., in 2005, an aging white supremacist made a startling claim to a woman he had met only earlier that day. He told her he was a serial bomber. According to federal court records, Dennis Mahon, was thumbing through an album of old pictures for the woman, showing off his Ku Klux Klan robe and other artifacts of his life when he began to tick off a list of places he claimed to have bombed since the early 1980s. There was an abortion clinic, a Jewish community...
    TPMDC Sahil Kapur

    Why The 2012 Election May Be The GOP's Only Chance To Repeal Health Care Reform

    Before she dropped out of the GOP presidential race, Michele Bachmann waxed apocalyptic about how 2012 is the Republican Party's only chance to repeal the health reform law. "We cannot afford to have a candidate who fails to understand the complexity of Obamacare or the urgency of its repeal," the Minnesota congresswoman said in an often-repeated line. "Because, we have only have one chance for repeal, and that's 2012." There's truth to this statement: if Republicans fail to capture the presidency this...
    TPM2012 Benjy Sarlin

    Democrats Unleash Bain Assault On Mitt Romney -- With The Help Of Newt Gingrich

    BOSTON, MA -- It wasn't meant to be this way. For months Democrats had planned to wait until Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination and then they would unleash their secret weapon. Well, not-so-secret weapon, really: it's something that most observers say cost Romney his campaign against Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994, and has bedeviled him in every campaign since. The weapon is one short and unfortunately homophonic word: Bain. As in Bain Capital, the corporate management firm Romney helped to found and made...
    TPM2012 Eric Kleefeld

    Richard Lugar, Long Unchallenged, Faces Tea Party Insurgent In Reelection Fight

    The war between the establishment wing of the GOP and the insurgent Tea Party isn't over yet. And this May, another battle is approaching, with six-term Sen. Dick Lugar facing a primary challenge from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Lugar was first elected to the Senate in 1976, defeating a Democratic incumbent. Before that, he had been Mayor of Indianapolis from 1968-1976, and only narrowly lost a Senate race in the Democratic wave year of 1974. He has not had a tough re-election fight since 1982,two...
    IdeaLab Carl Franzen

    CES 2012: Samsung Wows With App Controlled Washing Machine, TVs

    LAS VEGAS -- Smartphones, what smartphones? Samsung, the world's smartphone king by shipment numbers, unveiled a bevvy of new products during its presser at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday. But only of those was a new smartphone -- the tablet-like Galaxy Note -- and that was officially premiered at a separate AT&T event. That didn't stop Samsung from wowing its crowd of assembled reporters and observers online with new motion and voice-controlled 3D TV sets and a washing...
    TPM2012 Pema Levy

    Newt Goes Ballistic On Pretty Much Everyone

    This fall, Newt Gingrich would make the same closing argument at every debate: "everybody on this stage," he liked to say, would be better than Barack Obama. Slowly, however, that narrative has been replaced with a desire to take down every one of his opponents, even if it damages Republican chances next November. When Newt rocketed to the top of the polls in December, he had little money or organization to sustain his momentum against a barrage of negative ads from pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our...
    TPM2012 Michael Lester

    Day In 100 Seconds: This Diner Ain't Beanbag

    This weekend's debates did two things: first of all they cemented pundits' impressions of Mitt Romney as the GOP frontrunner; and second, Mitt Romney gave us the immortal phrase, "Politics ain't beanbag." Now the candidates are flooding New Hampshire, and apparently if you're a candidate courting voters, or a hungry TV reporter keen for a story, there's only one place in the state to see and be seen...
    TPMDC Eric Kleefeld

    Indiana Dems End Legislative Boycott -- For Now

    Democrats in the Indiana legislature have ended their walkout of the state House, which was tying up a bill that would hinder labor unions. But they're not promising that they won't do it again. The Indianapolis Star reports that Republican leaders now hope to hold two key votes: One on Thursday, on changes to the bill that were made in a special joint House/Senate committee last week, and a final vote on passage on Friday. But state House Minority Leader Pat Bauer (D) is still not declaring defeat:
    Muckraker Ryan J. Reilly

    Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments In Texas Redistricting Case

    The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday in a case that could have big legal consequences in Texas this election year as well as portend an uncertain future for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The justices seemed to struggle with how to handle a case focusing on Texas redistricting given the tight time constrains and the need to implement some map for the 2012 election. At issue is whether a panel of federal judges in San Antonio had gone too far when they drew up interim redistricting maps...
    TPMDC Brian Beutler

    Hill Dems Celebrate As White House Chief Of Staff Is Replaced

    It's well known in Washington that outgoing White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley had a dysfunctional relationship with Capitol Hill -- particularly with Democrats there. And early signs suggest the new Chief of Staff -- Jack Lew, who has run the Office of Management and Budget for over a year -- will by comparison receive a warm welcome. "Folks up here will view Lew as a big improvement," says one highly placed Democratic Hill aide. "It's hard to see Lew making the same mistakes his predecessor did...
    TPM2012 Benjy Sarlin

    Newt Goes Full 'Occupy Wall Street' Against Romney

    MANCHESTER, NH -- "You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?" Who said it -- Elizabeth Warren? Dennis Kucinich? Noam Chomsky? Not quite, that was Newt Gingrich talking to reporters at an energy company in Manchester on Monday about his new effort to paint Mitt Romney as a greedy one-percenter who finds "clever legal ways" to go about "looting a company" while screwing...
    TPMDC Brian Beutler

    Hmmm... Santorum's Healthcare Pitch Sounds An Awful Lot Like Obamacare For The Elderly

    Ever since Republicans in Congress voted overwhelmingly for Paul Ryan's budget, the GOP has expected its leading Presidential candidates to back a similar Medicare privatization scheme. Most of them have followed suit. Rick Santorum is trying to have it both ways. During Sunday morning's NBC debate, the come-from-behind winner of the Iowa caucuses talked about his Medicare pitch to voters.
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