Find Your Fucking Polling Place is a website designed to help you find your, er, fucking polling place!
Side note: I accidentally typed in my wrong address. Got this amusing message:
What the fuck is this?
We couldn’t find your fucking address. Did you enter your full street address? It needs to be “Your Fucking Street, Your Fucking Town, CA 12345
Fantastic!
This is raw via Google Translate, but the gist of this is quite clear.
Jesse Frederik writes in Volkskrant:
The tax loopholes of Mitt Romney also run through the Netherlands. The private equity fund Bain Capital, which presidential candidate participates, via the Dutch would route some 80 million euros in dividends have dodged.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney benefiting from the private equity fund Bain Capital from an advantageous tax route that runs through the Netherlands. Netherlands for the American Bain, which Romney was established as a link in his extensive international web of trusts and holding companies.
Through its investment in 2004 acquired Irish pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott via the Netherlands to run, know Bain dividends and capital gains to avoid. Since the shares in the Netherlands are housed, was approximately $ 389 million (303 million) in dividends Bain and sold for over $ 334 million (260 million euros) in shares.
This shows by Follow the Money for the Volkskrant examined filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Romneys tax returns, the U.S. tech blog Gawker revealed confidential documents from Bain, and data from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce.
According to tax Jos Peters, who advise large private equity firms occurs, Bain with the Dutch route about 80 million dividend managed to dodge. “Bain also saves a lot of Irish capital gains tax if the shares are sold,” said Peters. Bain nor the Romney campaign has responded to repeated requests for a comprehensive response.
While Romney Bain in 1999 as an active investor left, he was there as part of his severance scheme still participate. So he invested in 2004 with his wife Ann Romney also competed in the Bain Capital Fund VIII. This in the Cayman Islands based fund has a significant interest in Warner Chilcott. Of the 37.5 million shares that Warner Chilcott Bain in September 2010 in its possession, there are 25.7 million in the Bain Capital Fund VIII.
Romney, in his’ public financial disclosure report “that his shares in the Bain Capital Fund VIII ‘over a million’ worth. From the tax returns of Romney and his wife that the couple in 2010 and 2011, more than $ 2.05 million in dividends from the fund received. Their shares rose in the same period by more than $ 5.5 million in value.
Romney receives a significant portion of the proceeds from the Bain Capital Fund VIII in the form of shares. On March 10, 2011 Romney donated 19,799 shares of Warner Chilcott (with a market value of approximately $ 450,000) to a non-profit association of his son, The Tyler Foundation. This avoided Romney taxation in the United States. Gifts of shares to designated non-profit organizations are excluded from capital gains tax. Moreover, the gift tax deductible.
Since 2010, Bain Capital has its shares in Warner Chilcott housed in a Dutch private company. From the beginning, there are significant benefits to Bain Capital occurred. Warner Chilcott paid from August 2010 389 million dollars in dividends. Bain sold in these years for more than $ 334 million equity Warner Chilcott.
By making use of the so-called participation exemption in the Netherlands and Luxembourg do Bain dividends and capital gains to avoid the proceeds of his shares safely bring in tax haven Cayman Islands. The participation exemption means that the profit from a shareholding of more than 5 percent is not taxed in the Netherlands. Netherlands is partly why an attractive location for holding companies of multinationals and financial funds. “We are world champions participation exemption ‘, says Jos Peters, tax specialist at Merlyn.
In the United States, Mitt Romney for months under fire from the media and his political opponents of the Democratic Party on the limited amount of his tax payments. The criticism forced Romney in September about the tax paid by him to reveal. It was already known that he benefits from tax ingenious shortcuts through the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Luxembourg.
Netherlands came in that list not yet. Wrongly, it turns out. Netherlands came rather as attractive tax junction in the news around include the shortcut tax of U.S. coffee chain Starbucks, which in England was great indignation.
Spread far and wide, won’t you?
Currently zooming up the charts at reddit/r/politics
Via FiveThirtyEight
If the 2012 election went on for even one more day than scheduled, I seriously think that I would just spontaneously burst into flames. Wednesday can’t come fast enough. I’m sure many of you reading this feel the same way. Probably the vast majority of Americans, but not just Americans, are sick of hearing about it.
So it looks like Obama is going to win in a squeaker. All everyone has to do now is vote.
Me? I keep getting asked “Why haven’t you written any of your political rants lately?” Like I say, I’m bored to death of the whole election topic, but in brief, if Obama wins a second term, I would certainly prefer that. However, if by whatever kind of electoral chicanery Mitt Romney would “win,” well, I think Oliver Stone put it very succinctly to Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings:
“I guess if I was another kind of personality, I would say I’d vote for Romney because it’ll wreck it faster. And you know, we’re going to go down, but it’s going to be faster, and maybe that’s better. Maybe we should just bankrupt the whole fucking thing.”
I’m a fairly dyed in the wool Marxist, myself, and so I tend to see history and current events through that sort of lens. Even the worst news is still (kinda) good news when you look at things that way…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to vote for Obama. I’m one of those kinds of people who would spend ten hours waiting in line to vote, too—and I will very happily be casting a ballot for my congresswoman here in Los Angeles, Rep. Karen Bass—but I am largely indifferent to him. Obama could have taken on the banks, he didn’t. His record on civil liberties is not great, but he’s got one thing that sees the Democrat ticket topper get my vote every time:
He’s not a fucking Republican.
Nuff said.
The best video of the campaign? Gotta be in the top five, for sure.
They should have released this one on Halloween. Frightening
If you haven’t seen the clip of Mitt Romney getting into a heated discussion with the conservative talk radio guy (Jan Mikelson of WHO-Iowa) who dared to ask him about the whole Jesus will rule the Earth from Missouri belief of Mormonism, give it a whirl.
The guy is TOTALLY on his side, and explicitly tells him so, but Romney will have NONE of it! Hilarity ensues. Then in the final minute you get to hear exactly how he’s going to deal with a woman’s right to choose.
President Obama to fist Donald Trump if re-elected??? And Mitt Romney wants to shoot women in the head??? Really? Well only according to this comedy mash-up by Cassetteboy, a duo who are best known for their cut-and-paste comedy edits of politicians, royalty and the media. Here Cassetteboy takes comic aim at the US Presidential Elections, remixing the recent televised debates.
Because massive privatization, environmental and financial deregulation, and the destruction of what little social safety net we have is cool if we can smoke weed
As we endure this seemingly never-ending and completely grueling election season, one of the most iniquitous injustices pervading the public discourse is the undemocratic nature of the two-party system. Beyond the obvious advantage of the wealthy in electoral politics, so institutionalized are these major parties that they can’t possible represent the needs and values of such a diverse electorate! There must be a better way!
Enter Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. He’s the man’s man’s candidate, assuming of course, all ‘men’s men’ are my Uncle Levi, who runs a chop shop in Georgia, the walls of which are adorned with similar posters, albeit generally featuring I-Roc Zs.
The poster, created by a fan and shared on Johnson’s facebook page, has been received with quite the controversy, both in support and condemnation. Here are some highlights:
“If we get an ad for the ladies, may we please opt for an intelligent, respectful, attractive, mature gentlemen in stylish clothes reading the contribution[sic? Constitution?], or labeling our GMOs, in lieu of a mostly naked guy on a sandless beach?”
“Oh come on and enlighten up folks. It got my vote.”
“Stop hating yall…sex sells! GJ for prez 2012.”
“How does Gary feel about GMOs? I have not heard him speak on the issue. Anyone know?”
“As a libertarian, he stands for small government. This means saying no to crony capitalism, which gives monopolies to the Monsantos of the world. Without those monopolies, and having a free market returned, corporations like those lose their power and, real organic foods will once again make a comeback to the mainstream and make short work of Monsanto and its domination over US food supply.”
“I am much more offended by corporate whores than pretty girls.”
Regardless of your opinion on the ad, it sends a clear message: Gary Johnson isn’t like those sexist, Republican prudes! And Gary Johnson believes women should make their own choices about their bodies! And those values inform his policies! From his website:
Life is precious and must be protected. A woman should be allowed to make her own decisions during pregnancy until the point of viability of a fetus.
And there you have it! Clear as day! No room for patriarchy in that language! I mean, unless you’re trying to abort a “viable” fetus, you have complete body autonomy! Because they’re the party of Liberty. And if we can just get government out of the way, we can be free to pursue a future where we’re rewarded for initial advantages and natural strengths!
Capitalism: it owns your titties. And will try to sell you “better” ones.
I feel your pain, little mama. I so totally feel your pain…
Via BuzzFeed
Fact checkers? Who needs ‘em? Or at least that’s the way the Romney campaign felt back in August. But a whopper of a claim in Romney’s newest TV and radio ads in the battleground state of Ohio—that Chrysler is planning to move Ohio’s Jeep manufacturing operations to China—is getting a whole lot more scrutiny than they probably expected…
What a seriously undignified thing for a Presidential candidate to get called out on for brazenly lying about, but it’s especially shameless when it’s the son of a legendarily principled auto executive who is the one doing the lying. As TPM’s Benjy Sarlin writes, Romney’s campaign is going off the fact checking rails:
The latest is an unannounced radio spot, audio of which was posted by Greg Sargent on Tuesday (Romney’s astonishingly dishonest Jeep-to-China radio ad). The spot asks whether Obama rescued the auto industry for “Ohio — or China?”
“Now comes word that Chrysler plans to start making Jeeps in — you guessed it — China,” the ad’s narrator says. “What happened to the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio — the same hard-working men and women who were told that Obama’s auto bailout would help them?”
The radio spot is a supercharged version of an earlier television ad, also unannounced, that drew unusually widespread condemnation in the local and national press for tying a planned expansion of Jeep operations in China to the fate of Jeep workers in Ohio. And that ad jumped off similar statements Romney made earlier while campaigning in Ohio.
Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, has publicly condemned Romney’s claims as false, writing on its website that they have “no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China” and that any expansion in Asia is to serve Asian markets. In fact, they are adding over 1,000 jobs to their Toledo factory as part of a $500 million investment in upgrading its capacity.
Chrysler’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, has personally swatted down Romney’s false claim, according to the LA Times:
“Jeep is one of our truly global brands with uniquely American roots. This will never change. So much so that we committed that the iconic Wrangler nameplate, currently produced in our Toledo, Ohio plant, will never see full production outside the United States. Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand.”
GM spokesman Greg Martin told the Detroit Free Press:
“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days, No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”
Joe Biden brought it up—as did Bill Clinton—at a rally in Youngstown, calling the Romney claim “bizarre” and adding that he will “say anything, absolutely anything, to win.”
“This guy … pirouettes more than a ballerina. Ladies and gentlemen, have they no shame? … It’s an absolutely, patently false assertion.”
Romney left himself wide open on this one and now the fallout for Mittens is that Ohio voters are getting to understand what a fucking liar he is. The Obama campaign has already released an ad to counter Romney’s falsehoods. Not one of their better ones, but it doesn’t really take “clever” to bludgeon Romney on this matter. He’s given them plenty of rope with which to hang him. Romney’s getting hammered on this and it’s his own fault for being such a lying liar.
Who needs fact checkers when there is AN ENTIRE WORLD of fact checkers with access to this nutty newfangled thing called Google??? Mitt Romney. That’s who needs fact checkers!
Mitt Romney—The Candidate Who You Hope Is Lying (Slate)
All False statements involving Mitt Romney (Politifact)
Romney The Liar blog
“I want the Republican Party to know…”
Some pissed-off olds drop the knowledge on you. And swear a lot.
Produced by Michael Moore w/ Daron Murphy & David Ambrose of ART NOT WAR. Written by Michael Moore & Jonathan Schwarz. Directed by Laura Dawn.
Please share this far and wide. Via MoveOn.