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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Gingrich angrily denies he sought open marriage (AP)
CHARLESTON, S.C. ? Presidential contender Newt Gingrich on Thursday angrily denied that he asked his second wife for an "open marriage" that would allow him to have a mistress as she claims in an interview broadcast two days before the South Carolina primary.
"Let me be quite clear. The story is false," Gingrich said at a debate, without elaborating.
At the same time, his campaign released his tax returns, showing that he paid more than $994,000 in federal taxes on more $3.1 million in income in 2010.
It was a day of ups and downs for Gingrich, who picked up the endorsement for former rival Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The former House speaker is working to consolidate the support of conservatives behind his candidacy with polls showing him rising in his bid to overtake Republican front-runner Mitt Romney.
"Newt is not perfect but who among us is," Perry said as he bowed out of the race, seeking to provide Gingrich with some political cover in a state filled with evangelicals likely to cringe at Gingrich's two divorces and acknowledged infidelity.
Gingrich's ex-wife threatened to throw his campaign off course.
In excerpts the network released earlier in the day, Marianne Gingrich told ABC News for a "Nightline" segment that when she discovered Gingrich was having an affair with Callista Bisek, a congressional staffer, he asked his wife to share him.
"And I just stared at him, and he said, `Callista doesn't care what I do,'" Marianne Gingrich told ABC News. "He wanted an open marriage, and I refused."
She confirmed to The Associated Press that the former speaker had asked her for an open marriage, but she refused his request. She declined to comment further. The full segment aired Thursday night some 90 minutes after the debate.
At the debate, Gingrich forcefully denied his ex-wife's charges and castigated debate moderator ? CNN's John King ? for raising the issue at the start of the two-hour event.
"I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office," Gingrich said. "And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that."
As he stood on stage in Charleston, his campaign released his 2010 income tax returns, which showed he paid roughly 31.6 percent of his adjusted income in taxes, giving about 2 percent to charity. Gingrich criticized rival Romney ? who is worth more than $250 million ? this week for saying he paid only 15 percent.
Gingrich gave $81,133 in cash or checks to charities, about 2.6 percent of his income. That is considerably less than the average of $259,692 that households earning at least $2 million a year gave to charities in 2009, according to research from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Personal financial disclosure forms filed last summer show Gingrich is worth more than $6.5 million. He reported at least $500,000 in assets from Gingrich Productions, his media company that produces books and films.
Two days before the pivotal South Carolina primary, Gingrich's political and private life were clashing just as new polls showed him rising as he looks to overtake Romney in the third state to weigh in on the presidential race. Gingrich has seen his crowds grow in recent days after a strong performance in a debate Monday.
It was unclear how the new revelations from Marianne Gingrich would play in a state where religious and socially conservative voters hold sway. The interview's mere existence shined a spotlight on a part of Gingrich's past that could turn off Republican voters in a state filled with religious and cultural conservatives who may cringe at his two divorces and acknowledged marital infidelities.
Marianne Gingrich has said Gingrich proposed to her before the divorce from his first wife was final in 1981; they were married six months later. Her marriage to Gingrich ended in divorce in 2000, and Gingrich has admitted he'd already taken up with Bisek, the former congressional aide who would become his third wife. The speaker who pilloried President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky was himself having an affair at the time.
A Gingrich spokesman suggested, as Gingrich's daughters had a day earlier, that Marianne Gingrich's comments may be suspect given the emotional toll divorce takes on everyone involved.
"Divorces are very tough and people have very different recollections of how things happen," R.C. Hammond said Thursday.
Equally uncertain was whether Gingrich would get a boost from Perry's endorsement, given that the Texas governor had little support in the state, and get conservative voters to coalesce behind his candidacy. Complicating Gingrich's effort is another conservative, Rick Santorum, who threatens to siphon his support.
A CNN/Time South Carolina poll released Wednesday showed Gingrich in second place with support from 23 percent of likely primary voters, having gained 5 percentage points in the past two weeks. Romney led in the poll with 33 percent, but he had slipped some since the last survey. Santorum was third, narrowly ahead of Texas Rep. Ron Paul and well ahead of Perry.
Regardless of the South Carolina outcome, Gingrich was making plans to compete in Florida's primary on Jan. 31.
Confidence exuded from Gingrich, who rose in Iowa only to be knocked off course after sustaining $3 million in attack ads from an outside group that supports Romney. Gingrich posted dismal showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
By the time the race turned to South Carolina, he was back on course ? and criticizing Romney as a social moderate who is timid about attacking the nation's economic troubles.
___
Ray Henry in Atlanta and Jack Gillum in Washington contributed to this report.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Gingrich wins South Carolina GOP primary
By Michael O'Brien, msnbc.com
?
Updated 8:46 p.m. ET
Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina Republican primary, capping off a remarkable comeback for his presidential bid that reshapes the trajectory of the battle for the GOP nomination.
Based on exit polls and early returns, NBC News projects Gingrich as the winner of the primary, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will finish second.
The results mark the end of a tumultuous week in politics that saw Gingrich erase and then overcome the lead Romney had in the Palmetto State following his victory in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary. Gingrich came on strong in the closing days of the campaign, looking to rally under his banner the many conservatives unwilling to get behind Romney, who had sought to posture himself as the eventual nominee.
The results upset the conventional wisdom in the race, which had set expectations for Romney to score a knockout blow against his competitors with a win in the Palmetto State. Gingrich?s victory reshapes the race, at a minimum extending the primary contest through the Jan. 31 primary in Florida, which appears set to feature a pitched battle between Romney and Gingrich.
VIEW full South Carolina primary results
"We're now three contests into a long primary season ... We've still got a long way to go, and a lot of work to do," Romney said in remarks shortly after 8 p.m., in which he previewed the line of attacks he'll use against Gingrich in Florida.
Gingrich, Romney said, had joined President Obama in launching a "frontal assault on free enterprise," referencing the ex-speaker's attack on Romney's record at Bain Capital.
"Those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against us tomorrow," Romney said. "If Republican leaders want to join this president in demonizing success...then they're not going to be fit to be our nominee."
After finishing second in the South Carolina primary, Mitt Romney says the race is "getting even more interesting," and tells the crowd, "there is so much worth fighting."
Gingrich's performance in South Carolina was driven in thanks to late deciders, who broke decisively in his direction in the last few days of the campaign. That stretch saw two debate performances by Gingrich, on Monday and Thursday nights. Almost two-thirds of voters said the debates were an important factor in their decision, and Gingrich won about half of them.
More broadly, core elements of the GOP base in South Carolina ? conservatives, Tea Party supporters and evangelical Christians ? broke for Gingrich. And the former speaker even edged Romney in two important constituencies for the former Massachusetts governor: voters who said electability in November was their most important concern in a nominee, and voters who said the economy was their top issue.
?The South Carolina results underscore Romney?s lingering inability to overcome skepticism from conservatives about electing him as their standard-bearer against Obama this fall.
RELATED: Conservatives, evangelical Christians rebuff Romney in South Carolina
Gingrich had erased Romney?s lead by abandoning his previous pledge to wage a ?relentlessly positive? campaign. The former speaker eventually embraced a strategy of drawing strong contrasts with Romney and benefited from the negative advertising run on his behalf by a super PAC ? a practice Gingrich loudly denounced in Iowa, where he saw his poll numbers collapse amid attacks by a pro-Romney super PAC.
?I hope to win S.C.? Gingrich said Friday night in Orangeburg, ?God willing we'll win, and tomorrow night will be very interesting and then Florida will be even more interesting and I'm sure you'll want to come with us.?
His victory provides, if nothing else, a symbolic imprimatur; the winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the nomination in each Republican primary since the contest?s inception in 1980.
Voters headed to the polls in stormy conditions throughout most of the Palmetto State that could hold down turnout in some areas. County election officials reported light turnout in some areas, and heavier than expected voter rolls in other areas.
The South Carolina results capped one of the most tumultuous weeks in the presidential campaign thus far, a week that saw the veneer of inevitability the Romney campaign had built for itself erode by the end.
Recertified results in the Iowa caucuses found that he had actually lost the contest by a handful of votes to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. And Romney has fought to withstand some of the most intense scrutiny he?s faced during the campaign; critics have assailed his private equity career and demanded Romney release his tax returns ? demands which only reached a fever pitch after Romney estimated he pays an effective rate of 15 percent of his income in taxes.
Moreover, Romney?s performance in South Carolina will speak volumes about his fractious relationship with movement conservatives. He?s struggled at times to break through a ceiling on his support from those voters, who are skeptical of Romney?s past conversion on abortion rights and his embrace of authorship of a health care law as governor that closely resembles Obama?s 2010 reform law.
Romney had largely stuck to message in South Carolina, where he?s campaigned since winning Jan. 10?s New Hampshire primary, by keeping his focus on Obama and posturing himself more as a presumptive nominee.
But in an acknowledgement of Gingrich?s late push, the Romney campaign has also revived the attacks on the former speaker they used to great effect in Iowa to tamp down Gingrich?s December surge.
?Let's have him describe his relationships in Washington,? Romney said Saturday in Greenville, turning up the heat on Gingrich and highlighting the ex-speaker?s work on behalf of troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac. ?If people think Washington is the answer, if people think someone who spent the great majority of their life in Washington, I'll be surprised."
Romney?s campaign appears poised to make that argument even more sharply in Florida. They circulated a ?flashback? video on Saturday reminding voters of the ethics investigation Gingrich had faced during his speakership.
Nonetheless, the fact that Gingrich has arrived at the precipice of political resurrection ? again ? this cycle is itself remarkable.
Political observers had questioned when, not if, he would drop out after suffering missteps at the outset of his campaign that led to the defection of virtually all of his top staff last June. But Gingrich stuck with it and climbed to the top of the polls in Iowa, only to see his numbers implode again after weathering attacks from super PACs and Texas Rep. Ron Paul?s campaign.
In South Carolina, the former speaker has been aided by a variety of factors contributing to his potential comeback. He?s scored major points with voters with a couple of strong debate performances this week, particularly by way of launching acerbic attacks on the media. His angry refusal to answer allegations made by an ex-wife topped headlines coming out of a debate on Thursday ? the same day that saw Texas Gov. Rick Perry drop his own campaign and endorse Gingrich.
GOP candidate Rick Santorum talks about the state of the race and reaffirms that he wants to be the voice for those people in America that don't have one in government
The winnowed field (Jon Huntsman also ended his campaign and endorsed Romney), only reduced the number of candidates threatening to divide the anti-Romney vote in South Carolina.
Santorum, crowned the winner of the Iowa caucuses upon further review of the vote totals, had doggedly criticized both Romney and Gingrich in hopes of rallying conservatives behind his unflashy, if consistent, record.
"Three states, three winners -- what a great country," he said in remarks Saturday evening, vowing to continue his campaign through Florida and subsequent nominating contests.
The Romney campaign is hoping that contest, which awards all of the delegates to its winner, features a primary closed to registered Republicans in a large swing state, will be its firewall. It?s a more expensive campaign to wage because of its multiple, expensive media markets, and is seen as a test of organizational strength.
Romney?s advantage there is one of the reasons the Paul campaign, which is polling third in South Carolina, at 16 percent, in a NBC News-Marist poll earlier this week, has elected to skip the next battle in Florida in favor of focusing on caucuses.
NBC?s Garrett Haake, Alex Moe and Andrew Rafferty contributed.
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Sonnen vs. Bisping is for title shot, but Chael says Silva will never fight him
Dana White released his first video blog for the card on FX today. One interesting scene includes the UFC president dealing with the withdrawal of Mark Munoz from the UFC on Fox 2 card. White is getting ready to release news of the new Chael Sonnen-Michael Bising fight and says the winner will get a title shot against the currently sidelined UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva.
White must know something Sonnen doesn't because the outspoken contender sounds pretty sure he'll never face Silva.
"I'm not going to fight Anderson either way. They can say whatever they want. Anderson is never going to do that fight," Sonnen told "The MMA Insiders" show last week on Las Vegas' ESPN1100/98.9 FM. "I hope he's healthy and has a good life, but I'm not buying into this mythical world that Anderson is going to some day sign a contract to fight me."
During today's UFC on Fox 2 conference call, Sonnen reiterated his theory and said Silva turned down the fight to their boss' face.
"He even said no to (UFC executive) Lorenzo Fertitta's face. Face-to-face, not over the phone ? Lorenzo brought him out, sat him down, and said, 'This is the fight we want.' And Anderson said no," said Sonnen.
Sonnen knows management isn't pleased and questions the severity of Silva's back and shoulder injuries.
"They're not happy about it. The message to Anderson was this ' Chael is the opponent for you. You can fight him or you can't fight nobody. He elected to fight nobody,'" said Sonnen. "Dan Henderson said it perfectly, if the right opponent comes up, all of Anderson's injuries will go away."
Silva's next opponent will be known next Saturday night. A date and location is completely up in the air until Silva announces when he can officially return.
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Friday, January 20, 2012
Rwanda arrests four top military officers
By msnbc.com staff and news services
KIGALI, Rwanda -- Rwanda's military has put under house?arrest four top military officers over allegations of business dealings?in the?mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, a statement from an army spokesman said on Wednesday.
Three generals and one colonel were suspended during an investigation for?"indiscipline," according to the statement, reported by the Associated Press and the?BBC.
One of the suspects under investigation is Brig. Gen. Richard Rutatina, who is?head of military intelligence and an adviser to Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
A BBC reporter in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, said the arrest came as a shock considering the rank of the officers.
Also reported held were Lt. Gen. Fred Ibingira, chief of staff of the reserves force,?Gen. Wilson Gumisiriza, division commander, and Col. Dan Munyuza, external intelligence chief.
Rwanda's army, which has invaded Congo twice,?has?denied in the past looting?the country's mineral wealth.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/18/10182827-rwanda-arrests-four-top-military-officers
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North Korea credits new leader with nuke testing (AP)
PYONGYANG, North Korea ? North Korea on Friday credited new leader Kim Jong Un with spearheading past nuclear testing, as it adds to a growing personality cult that portrays the young son of late leader Kim Jong Il as a confident military commander.
Kim Jong Un's youth ? he's believed to be in his late 20s ? and quick rise have spurred questions in foreign capitals about his readiness for leadership. But North Korea has dismissed such worries in recent days, saying Kim Jong Un worked closely with his father on military and economic matters.
The North's official Uriminzokkiri website said Friday that Kim "frightened" the country's enemies by commanding nuclear testing in the past. North Korea tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009, but the website didn't specify which tests Kim oversaw.
Uriminzokkiri described Kim Jong Un as "fully equipped" with the qualities of an extraordinary general, even during his years at Kim Il Sung Military University. The website also repeated the North's claim that he was involved in satellite launching but didn't elaborate.
North Korea's linking of Kim Jong Un to past nuclear testing comes as it pushes for the resumption of long-stalled six-nation aid-for-nuclear disarmament talks that also include China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Washington and its allies want the North to first show it is serious about previous disarmament commitments.
North Korea last week questioned Washington's generosity and sincerity, but suggested it remains open to suspending its uranium enrichment program if it can get the food aid it wants.
Kim Jong Un took over after his father and longtime ruler Kim Jong Il died in mid-December and has quickly been given many of the country's most important titles.
He was introduced as heir only in September 2010. Before that he had been kept out of the public eye for most of his life. He was quickly promoted to four-star general and named a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Some of North Korea's neighbors and Washington have expressed worry about whether he can lead a nation of 24 million with a nuclear program as well as chronic trouble feeding all its people.
Kim Jong Il had 20 years of training under his own father, Kim Il Sung, before taking over. Even after his father's 1994 death, Kim Jong Il observed a three-year mourning period before formally assuming leadership.
A senior official told The Associated Press recently that Kim Jong Un spent years working closely with his late father and helped him make key policy decisions on economic and military affairs.
North Korea has also made it clear that Kim Jong Un will continue Kim Jong Il's "songun," or military-first, policy, and a steady stream of reports and images from state media has sought to show him as a fearless military commander who is comfortable with leadership.
North Korea also reported Friday that Kim Jong Un inspected two more military units.
Earlier this month, North Korea's state-run broadcaster aired a documentary that showed Kim Jong Un observing an April 2009 launch of a long-range rocket. It was the first indication of his involvement in the launch.
The documentary quoted Kim as threatening to wage war against any nation attempting to intercept the rocket, which North Korea claimed was carrying a communications satellite but the United States, South Korea and Japan said was really a test of its long-range missile technology.
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Thursday, January 19, 2012
LG's Magic Remote is powered by Nuance
It was Monday morning at CES when LG unveiled its Magic Remote: a television zapper that recognized Wii-style motion control and voice recognition -- stripping out the fiddly array of buttons that most TiVo users are familiar with. Nuance, of Dragon Dictation fame, got all excited and lifted the lid on which company's voice recognition technology was powering the unit (hint: it's Nuance). Thanks to the handy press release after the break, we've learnt that if you bellow "Lady Gaga" into the unit, it'll return materials related to Ms Germanotta herself -- although if you've seen Jack Donaghy's voice-activated TV from 30 Rock, you might not be too convinced that you can kiss goodbye to buttons just yet.
Continue reading LG's Magic Remote is powered by Nuance
LG's Magic Remote is powered by Nuance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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