NBC's Shawna Thomas

Cookies from Bethel Bakery in Pennsylvania, provided by the Obama campaign.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. -- Oh, it’s campaign season all right, and nothing is safe from the back-and-forth of the presidential election, not even the cookies at a presidential event.

While on the bus, en route to Carnegie Mellon University here for the president’s final event of his two-day bus tour, the traveling White House press received an email stating, “Waiting for you in the file in Pittsburgh. Cookies from Bethel Bakery of Bethel Park, PA.”

And just like that, Cookiegate was resurrected.

Back in April, before the Pennsylvania primary, when Romney held an event in Bethel Park, PA, he sat down at a picnic table with a tray of the aforementioned cookies in front of him and without taking a bite said, “I’m not sure about these cookies…They don’t look like you made them. Did you make those cookies? You didn’t, did you? No, no. They came from the local 7-Eleven, bakery, or whatever.”

He was making small talk, but local fans of the bakery took to the Internet to express their annoyance. The owner of the bakery went on MSNBC and said he was “shocked and dumbfounded” by the candidate’s comments. (But not so shocked and dumbfounded that he didn’t use the incident to run a special and sell more cookies.)

Almost instantly, the awkward situation was turned into a Democratic talking point about Romney being out-of-touch and a web video featuring Cookie Monster.

And, as promised, waiting for the press in the room where they write their stories and charge their phones was a variety platter of Bethel Bakery cookies bought by the Obama campaign (pictured above at right).

A short, buttery distraction from the far more serious topic of the day: the country’s stagnant employment numbers.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the number of Democrats saying they won't attend the Democratic National Convention, including Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). Both are from right-leaning states.

But unlike Democrats, who deny that politics are playing a role in their decision, former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman (R-UT) says he'll be skipping the Republican convention in Tampa because of the party's politics and policy positions.

Huntsman, who served as governor of Utah before becoming President Obama's ambassador to China, is widely regarded as a moderate and railed against the party's narrow focus.

"I have had several requests asking about my attendance at this year's Republican National Convention, which I have attended virtually every time since 1984, where I was a Reagan delegate," Huntsman said in a statement. "I will not be attending this year's convention, nor any Republican Convention in the future, until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States. A future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits. I encourage a return to the party we have been in the past, from Lincoln right on through to Reagan, that was always willing to put our country before politics."

Huntsman has, however, endorsed Mitt Romney.

The Salt Lake Tribune first reported the news.

POLAND, Ohio -- It took President Obama about 10 minutes before addressing today's sluggish jobs report, showing just 80,000 jobs created and the unemployment rate unchanged at 8.2 percent.

But he said the economy overall is heading "in the right direction." He blamed any sluggishness not on his policies, but on a "stalemate in Washington." 

"[B]usinesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months," the president said, "including 500,000 new manufacturing jobs. That’s a step in the right direction. That’s a step in the right direction. But we can’t be satisfied, because our goal was never to just keep on working to get back where we were back in 2007, and I want to get back to a time when middle-class families and those working to get to the middle class have some basic security. That’s our goal.”

He also derided Mitt Romney and Republicans once again for wanting to try policies, the president charged, that have already been tried and failed.

WOLFEBORO, N.H. -- Mitt Romney called a rare press conference this morning to respond to June's tepid jobs report, calling the unchanged unemployment rate "unacceptably high," and repeatedly referring to the numbers as a "kick in the gut."

In the hastily-called press conference, Romney's first in more than a month, the presumptive GOP nominee conceded that some factors in the slow pace of jobs growth may be out of President Obama's control, but said also that the president had failed at taking advantage of opportunities to improve the labor market that he could influence. 

"In any jobs figures, there are going to be factors that come and go that you can't control, but the things you can control you want to get right," Romney told reporters gathered in a hardware store here. "In the case of President Obama, this is not a monthly statistic or even a yearly statistic. We've looked at now almost four years of policies that have not gotten America working again."

Romney also responded broadly to critics who say his own economic proposals have not been specific enough by referring the questioner back to his 59-point economic plan, released last fall, and by deflecting the question back towards the president, whom Romney claimed had not offered sufficient new proposals to spur growth himself.

"I don't say much to critics," Romney said. "I have put out 59 steps for how I would get the economy going, and I don't think I have seen any from the president that show what he's planning on doing. I laid out my 59 steps. Take a look at them, I think you'll find them very specific."

Romney continued. Referring to the president's campaign bus tour through the Rust Belt, which began yesterday, he said, "How do you go across Pennsyvlania and Ohio and not talk about being serious about creating jobs through manufacturing policies that make America more attractive for investment and growth?"

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt responded in a statement.

“The President brought us back from the brink of another Depression but he doesn’t believe our work is done -- he’s got a plan to restore the middle class and create a million jobs now that Mitt Romney opposes and Republican leaders have blocked," LaBolt's statement read in part. "Mitt Romney says he has a better path, but over the past decade we saw where that took us -- to the slowest job growth since World War II, the collapse of our financial system and the deterioration of the middle class."

Romney has spent the past week here in Wolfeboro vacationing with his family, and has been spotted riding a jet ski and boating around the lake with a bevy of grandchildren in tow. Today, with his eldest son Tagg waiting in the wings, he also responded to charges that by criticizing the president's frequent golf outings and occasional vacations he was acting hypocritically to vacation now. Romney deftly turned the answer back toward the economy.

"You know, I'm delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family," he said. "I think all Americas appreciate the memories they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope more Americans are able to take vacations, and if I'm president of the United States I'm going to work very hard to make sure we have good jobs for all Americans who want good jobs and as part of a good job the capacity to take a vacation now and then with their loved ones."

NBC News confirms that Kevin Madden, Mitt Romney’s 2008 spokesman, will assume a more prominent role in the campaign going forward.

Madden served as an informal adviser through the GOP primaries before officially joining the campaign in a more behind-the-scenes advisory role.

The news comes after a Washington Post report intimated that changes were coming. CBS first reported the news of Madden's expanded role this morning.

We wrote in First Thoughts this morning:

*** Romney continues to try and quell the right: With news out today that Romney is considering a foreign-policy push this summer with a trip to Europe and his $100 million month (joint with the RNC and Victory Fund), it seems the Romney folks are trying to leak some stuff out to calm down the Bill Kristols and Paul Gigots of the world. By the way, none of the changes noted in this piece seem to be real big changes but just the type of nuggets that will calm the nervous nellies down. By the way, the power of Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul owner of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News, who started this tempest with just a Tweet, is notable here. Not only does the Aussie control those conservative media outlets, he also apparently wields enough influence that the Romney campaign felt it needed to make some adjustments. What’s makes it even more incredible is, as the New York Times reports, Romney and Murdoch aren’t even close. Murdoch got close to the Clintons and the Bushes. But he could never get close to Obama, because he bet on the Clintons, and now, he’s not really close to Romney, either.

Another weak jobs report – just 80,000 jobs added, unemployment stuck at 8.2%. It takes the pressure off Romney after what’s been a rough couple of weeks … Romney considering foreign-policy push and Romney/RNC/Victory Fund rake in $100 million for June… All these leaks look like a Romney still trying to quell the right’s critics. … Obama made most stops for him this campaign yesterday in Ohio with five. He makes three more today – two in Ohio and one in Pittsburgh. … In Cincinnati NBC affiliate interview, Obama accuses Romney of not standing firm on principle and caving to the right, dismissed the tax vs. penalty argument, and believes the states will implement Medicaid expansion – eventually. … And what exactly is in the water in the Illinois congressional delegation?

*** Stalled – another disappointing jobs report: Despite things appearing to break the president’s way in the past couple of weeks – from immigration to health care, we’re reminded this morning what this election is all about – the economy, with yet another mediocre-to-bad jobs report. The economy added just 80,000 jobs in June and unemployment remained unchanged at 8.2%. It’s the third straight month of weak hiring. We noted yesterday that despite all of the problems Romney’s had over the past couple of weeks that today would reset that conversation if it was a poor jobs report. No one’s happier about this report than the Romney campaign, because it takes the pressure off, which is a delicate irony since the GOP can’t be seen as rooting for bad news. By the way, here’s a pretty good way to gauge the political reaction to the four remaining jobs reports of this campaign: any number under 100,000 will benefit Romney, between 100,000 and 150,000 is a push, and over 150,000 will benefit Obama. The president’s expected to address the jobs report at 10:40 am ET during a stop in Poland, OH.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP - Getty Images

People walk past a sign leading to a job center in Rosemead, east of downtown of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley in this May 24, 2012 file photo in California.

*** Romney continues to try and quell the right: With news out today that Romney is considering a foreign-policy push this summer with a trip to Europe and his $100 million month (joint with the RNC and Victory Fund), it seems the Romney folks are trying to leak some stuff out to calm down the Bill Kristols and Paul Gigots of the world. By the way, none of the changes noted in this piece seem to be real big changes but just the type of nuggets that will calm the nervous nellies down. By the way, the power of Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul owner of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox News, who started this tempest with just a Tweet, is notable here. Not only does the Aussie control those conservative media outlets, he also apparently wields enough influence that the Romney campaign felt it needed to make some adjustments. What’s makes it even more incredible is, as the New York Times reports, Romney and Murdoch aren’t even close. Murdoch got close to the Clintons and the Bushes. But he could never get close to Obama, because he bet on the Clintons, and now, he’s not really close to Romney, either.

*** Obama to Romney: ‘Your principles matter’: Back in October, Obama adviser David Plouffe said on Meet the Press of Romney: "He has no core." The president seemed to echo that yesterday in an interview with NBC Cincinnati affiliate, hitting Romney for changing his position on the mandate and caving to political pressure from the right. "On the health care bill, Mr. Romney was one of the biggest promoters of the individual mandate," Obama will say in the interview to air this morning. "That's exactly what's included as part of my health care plan...And the fact that a whole bunch of Republicans in Washington suddenly said, this is a tax -- for six years he said it wasn't, and now he has suddenly reversed himself. So the question becomes, are you doing that because of politics? Are you abandoning a principle that you fought for, for six years simply because you're getting pressure for two days from Rush Limbaugh or some critics in Washington?...One of the things that you learn as President is that what you say matters and your principles matter. And sometimes, you've got to fight for things that you believe in and you can't just switch on a dime." So the president went to the “flip-flopper” charge the first chance he got. A reminder, by the way, that it could be the most potent thing against Romney and why Romney’s folks are ALWAYS more sensitive to it than even the ideological issues.

*** Obama dismisses talk of tax vs. penalty…: Obama also weighed into the tax vs. penalty fray – and he took the opportunity to hit Romney: “This was the same kind of approach that was taken in Massachusetts - when Governor Romney implemented his plan. Less than 1% of the people have been impacted in Massachusetts, and it's estimated that less than 1% of the people throughout the U.S. will be impacted by this so-called individual mandate, so whether you call it a tax, a penalty, a mandate, whatever you call it, what it is - is if you can afford to buy health insurance, don't dump those costs on somebody else.”

*** …And bets states implement Medicaid: And he talked about states with conservative governors threatening to refuse Medicaid funds that could help the poorest get on the rolls. Obama’s betting that eventually politics “fades away” and it’s implemented. “What's going to happen,” the president said, “and we saw this when Medicare first started, a lot of times politics gets in the way of common sense and so there are a lot of Republican governors who feel pressure from Rush Limbaugh and members of Congress not to implement and so they think it's bad politics. Over time, though, when they start seeing that more and more people in states that do implement are getting a better deal on their health insurance, costs are going down, fewer people are uninsured, over time, what happens is the politics fades away and this thing gets implemented.”

*** Most Obama campaign stops in a day this cycle: Some of us watching the campaign have wondered just when it will kick into high gear. Most of what we’ve seen from both campaigns since the end of the GOP primary is fundraising mixed in with an event or two a day – not town halls and multiple stops in at local bars, diners, soda shops. But yesterday, President Obama made five stops in Ohio – the most he’s made this cycle, his campaign confirms. The most non-fundraising stops Romney has made in a day recently since the end of the primary was three on his bus tour weeks ago. And don’t miss the beer drinking at some of the unplanned stops…

*** POTUS will talk about jobs report later this morning: Today, Obama makes two more stops in Ohio – Boardman at 9:35 am ET and an elementary school in Poland at 10:40 am ET, where he will talk about the jobs report. He then heads to Pittsburgh for an event at Carnegie Mellon University at 12:50 pm ET. There, at one of the top engineering schools in the country, Obama will press this case, per the campaign – “Like other industrial Midwest states, Pennsylvania is benefitting from President Obama's vision of an economy built to last, where hard work pays, responsibility is rewarded and everyone plays by the same rules.” Obama won Mahoning County in Northeastern, Ohio, where Boardman and Poland are, 62-36%, in 2008. He won Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is, 57-42%.

*** What’s in the Illinois water? What’s going on with the bizarre, bipartisan behavior in the Chicago-area Illinois delegation? Joe Walsh had a strange interview yesterday trying to walk back from comments he made implying Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee, wasn’t a true hero. The fact is this wasn’t the first weird rant we’ve seen out of Walsh. It’s becoming clearer by the day that he has accidental “wave” members written all over him. All he’s doing is cementing his future. If you’re the NRCC and House Speaker Boehner, you hope you hold control with this guy going away. And then there’s the strange case of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. His office yesterday said he’s out on leave for “exhaustion” and checked himself into an in-patient treatment facility. All of this comes as there’s lots of speculation that an indictment could come down any day in addition to personal problems in his marriage and an ongoing investigation into his role in the Blagojevich problems. He’s been missing for days, unaccounted for. Now he’s accounted for, sort of, as his office hasn’t said where Jackson has checked himself into or exactly why.

Countdown to GOP convention: 52 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 59 days
Countdown to Election Day: 123 days

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*** Friday’s “Daily Rundown” line-up: Moody’s Mark Zandi and Obama Admin. CEA Chair Alan Krueger on the job numbers… Latest on the bizarre behavior in the Illinois delegation… Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) on President Obama’s stop in Pittsburgh today… More 2012 headlines with National Review’s Robert Costa, The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut and The Grio’s Perry Bacon.

*** Friday’s “Jansing & Co.” line-up: Richard Lui anchors. Publisher & businessman Mort Zuckerman; fmr OMB Director Doug  Holtz-Eakin; The Chicago Tribune’s Lynn Sweet; the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein; Salon.com’s Dave Weigel; GOP Strategist Rich Galen; Georgetown Univ. Professor Michael Eric Dyson; and entrepreneur Philip Greene.

*** Friday’s “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” line-up: Thomas Roberts breaks down the June jobs report with CNBC Contributor Ron Insana, Former Biden Economic Advisor Jared Bernstein, Democratic Strategist Karen Finney, and the National Review’s Chris Frates.   He’ll also have the VP Power Rankings with the hosts of MSNBC’s The Cycle – S.E. Cupp, Krystal Ball, Toure and Steve Kornacki.

*** Friday’s “NOW with Alex Wagner” line-up: TIME Deputy DC Bureau Chief Michael Crowley, Real Clear Politics’ Erin McPike, The Daily Beast’s Patricia Murphy, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, and CNBC’s Tyler Mathisen

*** Friday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” line-up: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, The Economist’s Greg Ip, Republican strategist Kevin Madden, Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, NBC’s Amna Nawez, National Journal’s Major Garrett and USA Today’s Susan Page.

*** Friday’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall” line-up: Craig Melvin anchors. Newsweek’s Zachary Karabell, John Harwood, Chicago Sun Time’s Lynn Sweet, NBC Latino Republican strat Danny Vargas, and Democratic strat Jimmy Williams.

*** Saturday’s “Melissa Harris-Perry”: Michael Eric Dyson, author and MSNBC contributor;  Dan Dicker, CNBC Contributor, author of “Oil’s Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy”; Zephyr Teachout, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University; Steven Mufson, Energy Reporter for The Washington Post; William “Pete” Welch, Baltimore Councilman, District 9; Tristan Taormino, feminist author, sex educator and film director.

*** This weekend’s Office Politics with Alex Witt: NBCLatino.com’s Chris Pena. discussing this week’s launch of the English language Latino website.

*** Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.); Former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Penn.); Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Chair of Religion at the University of Pennsylvania; Ari Melber, MSNBC contributor, correspondent for The Nation; Kyrsten Sinema, running for Congress, former Democratic member of the Arizona State Legislature; Jeff Wiltse, Associate Professor of History at Univ. of Montana and author of “Contested Waters”

“Economists are slashing their already tepid growth forecasts. The unemployment rate seems stuck at around 8 percent. It is a tense time for the American economy. It is also the time that some experts believe the country’s undecided voters are beginning to cement their presidential picks,” Annie Lowrey and John Harwood write in the New York Times. “That is why many political scientists and consultants consider Friday’s jobs report and the ones immediately following it to be so important — perhaps more so than those of the previous three years.”

The Times on Obama’s trip to Ohio: “President Obama, betting that the glimmers of a resurgence in the Rust Belt could lift him to victory in the fall, set off Thursday on a two-day bus tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania, promoting himself as a defender of American manufacturing jobs and taking aim at those he said could steal those jobs away. … It was a day of sweaty handshakes and fast-melting ice cream cones, as Mr. Obama’s armored black bus snaked across northern Ohio, its hulking profile blurry in the shimmering heat waves. In one-on-one encounters at a farm market and a diner, and in a speech at an ice cream social, Mr. Obama sought to sharpen his message on the economy, etching the differences between him and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.”

And: “The tour gives Mr. Obama the chance to make an argument that however weak the job market is nationally, the outlook for battleground states like Ohio is brightening. With the release of another potentially poor employment number on Friday, that argument could allow him to weather the ebbs and flows of a fragile economy.”

Politico’s Martin reports that the Romney campaign is considering a foreign-policy push this summer with a trip to Europe, coinciding with the Olympics. It would start out in Reno, NV, at the VFW’s Convention, then Romney would make a major speech in Great Britain, then move to Israel, Germany, and Poland. Romney was always thought to likely at least make a trip to the Olympics to highlight his role in saving the 2002 Salt Lake Games. (A horse he owns will also compete in dressage.) He’ll skip Afghanistan, because “his team fears, he’d pressed to say more about his plans for the country.” The trip is reminiscent of what candidate Obama did in 2008, trying to burnish his credentials and help Americans see him as president.

“Romney’s June haul easily trumps his previous fundraising best. He pulled in $77 million in May, outdoing Obama for the first time this campaign,” the Washington Post writes. Obama holds the record for single-month haul with $193 million in September 2008.

“Mitt Romney is planning to fortify his communications and messaging team by adding seasoned operatives, advisers close to the campaign said Thursday, after withering criticism from prominent conservative voices that his insular team has fumbled recent opportunities,” the Washington Post’s Rucker reports. It started with a Murdoch tweet criticizing the professionalism of Romney’s staff, then a brutal editorial from the influential Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“Mr. Murdoch has never been particularly impressed with Mr. Romney, friends and associates of both men say,” the New York Times writes. “The two times Mr. Romney visited the editorial board of The Journal, Mr. Murdoch did not work very hard to conceal his lack of excitement. ‘There was zero enthusiasm, no engagement,’ said one Journal staff member who was at the most recent meeting in December. … Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up simply: They do not have much of one.”

The Washington Post: “Mitt Romney is planning to fortify his communications and messaging team by adding seasoned operatives, advisers close to the campaign said Thursday, after withering criticism from prominent conservative voices that his insular team has fumbled recent opportunities. Romney’s advisers insisted that he would keep his inner circle intact amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate and his campaign. The tempest began with a weekend tweet from media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and burst Thursday onto the pages of his newspaper the Wall Street Journal, as its conservative editorial board opined that Romney’s advisers were “slowly squandering an historic opportunity” to beat President Obama.”

Super Saturday… “In the first of a series of massive volunteer mobilization efforts, the campaign and the Republican Party will undertake ‘Super Saturday,’ a day when GOP volunteers call and canvass hundreds of thousands of swing-state voters, just as they will before Nov. 6,” USA Today writes. “The goal is not just to know which voters are on board with Romney, but to test the presidential campaign's ability to turn out the vote — something the GOP struggled with in 2008. ‘It's a way for us to stress-test the network,’ said Rick Wiley, political director for the RNC, which is running the voter contact effort jointly with the Romney campaign. The results will be tracked in real time through software applications that allow volunteers to enter information into their cellphones on the voter's doorstep. Information from phone calls is also recorded. A "dashboard" allows Wiley and campaign staff to monitor results as they happen.”

The New York Times points out that there were plenty of times Romney called his Massachusetts mandate a tax: “As the Massachusetts governor and then as a presidential candidate, Mr. Romney spent the next six years describing in a variety of different ways the possible punishments for ignoring the Massachusetts mandate: as ‘free-rider surcharges,’ ‘tax penalties,’ ‘tax incentives’ and sometimes just as ‘penalties.’ But regardless of the terms he used, his intentions were clear: Massachusetts residents who chose not to buy health insurance would see their state income taxes go up.”

Politico’s Martin reports that the Romney campaign is considering a foreign-policy push this summer with a trip to Europe, coinciding with the Olympics. It would start out in Reno, NV, at the VFW’s Convention, then Romney would make a major speech in Great Britain, then move to Israel, Germany, and Poland. Romney was always thought to likely at least make a trip to the Olympics to highlight his role in saving the 2002 Salt Lake Games. (A horse he owns will also compete in dressage.) He’ll skip Afghanistan, because “his team fears, he’d pressed to say more about his plans for the country.” The trip is reminiscent of what candidate Obama did in 2008, trying to burnish his credentials and help Americans see him as president.

“Romney’s June haul easily trumps his previous fundraising best. He pulled in $77 million in May, outdoing Obama for the first time this campaign,” the Washington Post writes. Obama holds the record for single-month haul with $193 million in September 2008.

“Mitt Romney is planning to fortify his communications and messaging team by adding seasoned operatives, advisers close to the campaign said Thursday, after withering criticism from prominent conservative voices that his insular team has fumbled recent opportunities,” the Washington Post’s Rucker reports. It started with a Murdoch tweet criticizing the professionalism of Romney’s staff, then a brutal editorial from the influential Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“Mr. Murdoch has never been particularly impressed with Mr. Romney, friends and associates of both men say,” the New York Times writes. “The two times Mr. Romney visited the editorial board of The Journal, Mr. Murdoch did not work very hard to conceal his lack of excitement. ‘There was zero enthusiasm, no engagement,’ said one Journal staff member who was at the most recent meeting in December. … Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up simply: They do not have much of one.”

The Washington Post: “Mitt Romney is planning to fortify his communications and messaging team by adding seasoned operatives, advisers close to the campaign said Thursday, after withering criticism from prominent conservative voices that his insular team has fumbled recent opportunities. Romney’s advisers insisted that he would keep his inner circle intact amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate and his campaign. The tempest began with a weekend tweet from media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and burst Thursday onto the pages of his newspaper the Wall Street Journal, as its conservative editorial board opined that Romney’s advisers were “slowly squandering an historic opportunity” to beat President Obama.”

Super Saturday… “In the first of a series of massive volunteer mobilization efforts, the campaign and the Republican Party will undertake ‘Super Saturday,’ a day when GOP volunteers call and canvass hundreds of thousands of swing-state voters, just as they will before Nov. 6,” USA Today writes. “The goal is not just to know which voters are on board with Romney, but to test the presidential campaign's ability to turn out the vote — something the GOP struggled with in 2008. ‘It's a way for us to stress-test the network,’ said Rick Wiley, political director for the RNC, which is running the voter contact effort jointly with the Romney campaign. The results will be tracked in real time through software applications that allow volunteers to enter information into their cellphones on the voter's doorstep. Information from phone calls is also recorded. A "dashboard" allows Wiley and campaign staff to monitor results as they happen.”

The New York Times points out that there were plenty of times Romney called his Massachusetts mandate a tax: “As the Massachusetts governor and then as a presidential candidate, Mr. Romney spent the next six years describing in a variety of different ways the possible punishments for ignoring the Massachusetts mandate: as ‘free-rider surcharges,’ ‘tax penalties,’ ‘tax incentives’ and sometimes just as ‘penalties.’ But regardless of the terms he used, his intentions were clear: Massachusetts residents who chose not to buy health insurance would see their state income taxes go up.”

NEW YORK: “Representative Charles B. Rangel’s narrow lead over his main primary challenger, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, widened slightly on Thursday as the New York City Board of Elections began counting absentee and affidavit ballots from last week’s five-way Democratic primary in the state’s 13th Congressional District,” the New York Times notes, adding, “Mr. Rangel led by nearly 1,900 votes on election night, but it turned out later that many districts had not been counted. The city’s Board of Elections released updated numbers over the weekend, and Mr. Rangel’s lead dropped to 802 votes. By Thursday night, his lead had risen to 945 votes, and the board said it would continue counting on Friday.”

“Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s office says the Democratic Chicago congressman is struggling with ‘physical and emotional ailments’ worse than previously known,” the Washington Post reports. “Jackson, 47, has been treated for what his office last week called ‘exhaustion.’ Now, his office says, things have deteriorated, though a statement declined to say specifically what was ailing Jackson, the son of the civil rights figure and former presidential candidate of the same name. … Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Jackson’s Chicago colleague, told The Post’s Ed O’Keefe recently that he thought the ups and downs of congressional life merely got to Jackson.”

House Speaker John Boehner on the jobs reports, per NBC’s Frank Thorp: "Today's report shows the private sector clearly isn't 'doing fine' and that President Obama's policies have failed. … The president needs to stop betting on his failed policies and start working with Republicans to remove government obstacles to job creation.”

And from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: "Today's jobs report is more than disappointing with just 80,000 jobs created in the month of June. This crawling pace is not enough to get the millions of Americans who are unemployed back to work or provide long-term growth. We've seen month after month of dismal jobs numbers, college graduates unable to find employment and small business hiring stalled. The President has had three years to get the economy going again, but he has not. His policies have not worked, and we can't afford to keep going down the same path.

WOLFEBORO, NH -- Mitt Romney's campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the Romney Victory Fund raised more than $100 million in June, the campaign confirmed to NBC News.

That fundraising milestone is likely to best President Obama's total cash haul (for his campaign, the DNC, and competing victory fund) for the second straight month. The campaigns have until July 20 to file June's fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission.

Last month, Romney's fundraising was buoyed by his single-best fundraising day of between $6 million and $8 million in Michigan, and by a three-day swing through Texas that netted the presumptive GOP nominee $15 million. Big-ticket events in Washington DC and in the New York City area also helped fill campaign coffers.

In May, which was Romney's first full month fundraising as the GOPs' presumptive nominee, his combined total was $76.8 million, compared with Team Obama's $60 million haul.

But when totals for just the campaigns were tallied for May -- where donations are limited to just $5,000 per person for both the primaries and general election -- Obama outraised Romney, $39 million to $23 million.

Obama campaign officials had predicted Romney would outraise them in June -- and possibly for the election cycle -- when his campaign and party funds were lumped in with pro-Republican Super PACs. Today, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt accused the Romney campaign of releasing their fundraising totals today to divert attention from a string of negative stories bedeviling Romney this week.

“Mitt Romney is trying to distract from a week when he took contradictory positions on the freeloader penalty in the Affordable Care Act and we learned more about his offshored finances in Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands," he said in a statement. "Americans are less concerned about how much money he raised to get himself elected and more interested in what he would do after repealing health reform, which he has refused to share, and why he won’t disclose the necessary tax returns that prove whether or not he paid any U.S. taxes on his shell corporation in Bermuda.”

Romney spent significant time and effort in fundraising in June, limiting public campaign events to focus on criss-crossing the country to build the warchest necessary to hire more staff and buy airtime in swing state television markets. 

His July will begin in much the same way, when Romney returns to the campaign trail from his New Hampshire vacation on Sunday with a series of fundraisers in the Hamptons, on New York's Long Island. On Monday, he'll attend a fundraiser at a bundler's home in Aspen, Colorado, and on Thursday he'll be joined at a Wyoming fundraiser by former Vice President Dick Cheney. 

Penalty-vs.-tax episode exposes Romney’s fatal flaw: Conservatives simply don’t trust him… Romney’s verbal gymnastics… Will tomorrow finally allow Romney to change the subject to the economy after three weeks when it hasn’t been the dominant issue?... Obama embarks on two-day bus tour, hitting areas he easily won in ’08… The tour’s name, “Betting on America,” touches on three messages: 1) auto bailout, 2) outsourcing vs. insourcing, and 3) Romney’s offshore accounts… And this week’s 10 hottest advertising markets.

*** Romney’s fatal flaw: So just two days after Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom referred to the federal health-care mandate as a penalty and after the campaign issued a press release also calling it an “unconstitutional penalty,” why did Mitt Romney reverse course yesterday and say it’s a tax? Look no further than today’s scathing Wall Street Journal editorial, which blasted the Romney camp for calling it a penalty. “In a stroke, the Romney campaign contradicted Republicans throughout the country who had used the Chief Justice's opinion to declare accurately that Mr. Obama had raised taxes on the middle class.” More: “Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we've said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters.” This penalty-vs.-tax episode highlights what many conservatives see as Romney’s fundamental flaw: They simply don’t trust him, especially when it comes to health care. That’s why we’re seeing conservative handwringing over Romney -- from the WSJ, the WSJ’s owner and leading conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Jack Welch -- even though the race is so close.

*** The John Kerry vacationing comparison: By the way, the WSJ editorial also went down the John Kerry-comparison road and even took a shot at Romney for the jet ski photo-op. “[T]he Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo.” In short: It was a brutal takedown. And conservatives now have their “told you so” moment if Romney loses.

*** And Romney’s verbal gymnastics: When you think about it, Romney never had to truly deal with his fatal flaw on health care. Yes, he gave that health-care PowerPoint speech in Michigan in May 2011. And, yes, he was asked questions about the issue during the 20-odd GOP debates in which he participated. But he never REALLY had to reconcile his health-care law with President Obama’s -- with a campaign team capable of going toe to toe with him -- until last week’s Supreme Court decision. As for his explanation in calling the mandate a tax, his verbal gymnastics would have impressed even the Russian judges. First, he technically didn’t disagree with Fehrnstrom’s original take; he simply conceded that the Supreme Court called it a tax. “Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it’s a tax,” he said. And then he painfully tried to explain why the federal mandate is a tax, but Romney’s state mandate is a penalty. “Actually the chief justice in his opinion made it very clear that at the state level, states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional.” 

*** Will tomorrow allow him to change the subject? Perhaps no one is looking forward more to tomorrow’s jobs report than Romney -- as simply a way to change the subject. If you think about it, the past three weeks or so have been dominated by issues other than the economy and not-so-coincidentally, it coincides with Romney’s roughest poll patch of the general since the primaries. The president’s immigration announcement. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law. And the Supreme Court’s decision on health care. All of these issues have put Romney on the defensive, and all of them have exposed some of his flaws as a candidate. Tomorrow has the potential to get him back on the subject he wants this election to be about: the economy.

*** On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again: Obama today begins his two-day “Betting on America” bus tour through two battleground states – toss-up Ohio and Lean-Dem Pennsylvania. He starts with remarks at 11:40 am ET in Maumee, OH (just outside of Toledo), and he won that county with 65% of the vote in ’08. He then speaks in Sandusky, OH at 3:40 pm ET, and he got 56% of the vote in that county four years ago. And he concludes the day with a speech in Parma, OH (outside of Cleveland), and he won that county with a whopping 69% of the vote. Meanwhile, the Romney camp, per NBC’s Andrew Rafferty, is dispatching two potential VP picks -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- to bracket the president on his bus tour.

*** What “Betting on America” means: The theme of this two-day bus tour touches on three subjects. First, it allows him to highlight the auto bailout in the Industrial Midwest (and on the heels of the big jump in sales). Second, it gives him the opportunity to highlight that Washington Post article (which the Romney camp disputes) noting that Romney’s Bain Capital invested in firms that outsourced work to China and India – a powerful charge in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And third, it’s a not-so-subtle inference to the fact that Romney doesn’t even keep much of his money in the United States. After all, this bus tour comes after Vanity Fair wrote about Romney’s complicated offshore accounts in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and after the AP focused on one of these Bermuda accounts. “Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney's state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning — suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign.” Remember, political slogans are only picked if they both highlight a pro and a con, and this “betting on America” is a triple entendre.

*** Obama admin. to file WTO complaint against China: And just as Obama is in Ohio today to highlight the auto bailout, his administration “will file an unfair trade complaint today against China's new duties on some American-made cars and sport utility vehicles, including the Toledo-made Jeep Wrangler,” the Toledo Blade writes. “A senior administration official told The Blade Wednesday the United States will file the case with the World Trade Organization in Geneva, accusing China of putting illegal duties on $3.3 billion worth of U.S.-made auto imports.” The paper adds that Obama is expected to discuss this move during his speech in Maumee at 11:40 am ET.

*** This week’s 10 hottest advertising markets: As we mentioned earlier this week (but not in First Thoughts), here is our weekly look at the 10 hottest advertising markets for the week (in terms of advertising points from 7/2 to 7/8). Three of the markets are in Colorado, including No. 1 Colorado Springs; two are in Florida; two are in Virginia; and another two are in Ohio. AFP is the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and Priorities is the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action. By the way, this is the first week since the general election began when one of American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS, or the pro-Romney Restore Our Future were on the air.

1. Colorado Springs, CO (Obama 950, Romney 900, AFP 250, Priorities 200)
2. Orlando, FL (Romney 985, Obama 700, AFP 150, Priorities 150)
3. Tampa, FL (Romney 950, Obama 580, AFP 215, Priorities 200)
4. Richmond, VA (Obama 775, Romney 690, Priorities 250, AFP 200)
5. Roanoke, VA (Obama 830, Romney 720, AFP 350)
6. Reno, NV (Obama 850, Romney 715, AFP 150)
7. Grand Junction, CO (Obama 775, Romney 550, AFP 350)
8. Denver, CO (Obama 750, Romney 650, Priorities 40, AFP 125)
9. Columbus, OH (Obama 660, Romney 530, Priorities 360, AFP 100)
10. Cleveland, OH (Obama 765, Romney 580, AFP 125, Priorities 125)

Countdown to GOP convention: 53 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 60 days
Countdown to Election Day: 124 days

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*** Thursday’s “Daily Rundown” line-up: Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter on the president’s bus trip… Politico’s Jonathan Martin and The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza on the reaction to Romney’s “tax” turn… More 2012 headlines with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, Roll Call/The Rothenberg Report’s Nathan Gonzales and The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard.

*** Thursday’s “Jansing & Co.” line-up: MSNBC’s Chris Jansing interviews Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), the Washington Post’s EJ Dionne, TheGrio.com’s Perry Bacon, Politico’s Jonathan Allen, GOP Strategist Joe Watkins, Dem Strategist Chris Kofinis, the Washington Post’s Manuel Roig Franzia, and the Franklin Institute’s Derrick Pitts.

*** Thursday’s “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” line-up: MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts talks with Obama Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, RNC Press Secretary Kirsten Kukowski, MSNBC Host Melissa Harris Perry, MSNBC Contributor Jimmy Williams, Republican Strategist J.P. Freire, Politico’s Juana Summers, and Newsweek/Daily Beast’s Zachary Karabell.

*** Thursday’s “NOW with Alex Wagner” line-up: Filling in for Alex Wagner, The Nation’s Ari Melber interviews the Daily Beast’s Patricia Murphy, MSNBC Political Analyst Richard Wolffe, Radio Host Kurt Andersen, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki, and Ohio State University Law Professor Peter Shane.

*** Thursday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” line-up: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviews the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and David Ignatius; NBC’s Chuck Todd and Kate Snow; Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT); Middle East expert Vali Nasr; “Granito” documentary director Pamela Yates, and Olympian and Wish of a Lifetime founder Jeremy Bloom with Dorothy Flood, whose senior wish was granted.

*** Thursday’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall” line-up: MSNBC’s Tamron Hall interviews Michael Smerconish, the Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut and Time’s Michael Crowley.

“The top ‘super PACs’ supporting Republicans in the fall elections have raised more than three times as much money as super PACs aligned with Democrats, $158 million to $47 million, a [Boston] Globe analysis shows. Here’s a graphic showing the biggest donors.

A Civitas poll has Romney up 50-45% in North Carolina.

“Most Americans now say they would like to see the critics of the health care law stop trying to block its implementation and move onto other national problems, a poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation on Monday found following last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding the overhaul,” the Boston Globe writes.

Political Wire: “Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) vetoed Republican bills that would have ‘required a photo ID for absentee voting, restricted voter registration drives and mandated a ballot box affirmation of citizenship,’ the Detroit News reports.”

Crossing the line? AP: “Justice Antonin Scalia ended his 26th year on the Supreme Court with a string of losses in the term's biggest cases and criticism that he crossed a line from judging to politics. Scalia's willingness to do battle with those on the other side of an issue long has made him a magnet for critics. But some of his recent remarks stood out in the eyes of court observers.” More: “Ten lawyers who appear regularly before the Supreme Court, including two former Scalia law clerks, were interviewed for this story and said they too had taken note of Scalia's recent comments. But mindful that they might appear before the high court or be in a position to submit legal briefs, they all declined to be identified by name.”

And: “Summarizing his views in court, Scalia commented on President Barack Obama's recent announcement changing the deportation rules for some children of illegal immigrants. And in his written opinion, he referenced anti-free black laws of slave states as a precedent for state action on immigration. Both drew critical notice.”

Take a look at the health-care oral arguments from Day 2, which we wrote about, and you can see some tense exchanges between Scalia and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, including Scalia sarcastically calling Verrilli’s argument for the taxing authority of Congress “extraordinary” and dismissing his argument as “blah, blah, blah.” That’s in addition to his “broccoli” and health club comments.

Bloomberg previews Obama’s two-day bus tour: “President Barack Obama hops on a bus in Ohio today to start a two-day campaign tour labeled ‘Betting on America’ to draw a contrast with Republican Mitt Romney, a former private-equity executive who invested overseas. Polls show that linking Romney to the outsourcing of U.S. jobs when he was at Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, which he co- founded, is an effective approach with voters in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Obama will end the trip.”

Said Stu Rothenberg: "If the election’s about Romney and Bain, then the president’s going to win.” “For Romney, it has to be about Obama: Obama and jobs, Obama and leadership, Obama and the economy, and Obama and health-care."

Reuters: “Buoyed by a victory over healthcare reform but stung by poor economic data, President Barack Obama will try to rev up his re-election campaign on Thursday with a bus tour designed to appeal to struggling blue-collar workers in key battleground states.”

Los Angeles Times: "After a month in which some prominent Democrats openly questioned President Obama's campaign strategy, the mood at the White House has risen, with strategists believing their efforts to define Mitt Romney as a corporate outsourcing specialist are proving a success with swing voters.” Hat tip: Political Wire.

Now it’s a tax? “Mitt Romney Wednesday reversed the position staked out by his own campaign just two days before and said the penalty levied against Americans who do not buy health insurance under President Obama’s health care overhaul is ‘a tax,’” the Boston Globe writes. Romney told CBS: “The majority of the court said it is a tax, therefore it is a tax. The majority has spoken. There is no way around that.”

And get this… “During a parade in Wolfeboro, NH, Romney was told by someone in the crowd that the health care penalty was a tax. ‘I agree,’ Romney replied.”

Newsweek/Daily Beast’s Tomasky: “After some tap dancing, Mitt Romney now says the individual mandate is a tax. Democrats should call his bluff and agree—it'll hurt Mitt far more than Obama.”

GOP 12: “Hogan Gidley, a former adviser for Rick Santorum's erstwhile presidential bid, tells Talking Points Memo that his boss tried to warn voters about Mitt Romney's difficulty with prosecuting the case against ObamaCare.” He said, “It’s a problem, I’m not going to lie.... Here we are a couple months into the general and you’re going, ‘Hey wait a minute, that Rick Santorum was right'."

CBN’s David Brody: “It makes you wonder if Rick Santorum was on to something when he said it would be a mistake to nominate Romney because it makes arguing the healthcare issue extremely difficult. You think President Obama will be ready with a few good one-liners for the fall debates? You betcha.”

Romney’s attempts to “clarify” or wiggle out of his position on the mandate reminds that back in October, George Will called Romney “the pretzel candidate.” Will hit him for “twists” on ethanol, TARP, and collective bargaining. Will wrote, “A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one.” And he called him “a recidivist reviser of his principles.” Will concluded: “Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?”

Bermuda Shorts: AP: “For nearly 15 years, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's financial portfolio has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose. Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney's state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning - suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign. The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney's ethics filings, and he has never been cited for failing to disclose information about his money. But Romney's limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed, according to experts in private equity, tax and campaign finance law.”

The Obama campaign, in pushing the story, said it “raises serious questions about whether Mitt Romney established a Bermuda corporation to avoid U.S. taxes and attempted to hide it from the public.” And it put out a web video entitled, “Do you have an offshore bank account?”

“President Obama’s re-election campaign pounced on recent reports about Mitt Romney’s offshore holdings as new details emerged about a Bermuda-based company that was omitted from multiple financial disclosure reports,” the New York Daily News writes.

And it dings him for his home in New Hampshire: “Mitt Romney’s week-long vacation at his opulent lakehouse has reinforced the common line of attack that he’s out of touch with the common voter — a controversy President Obama may be trying to avoid. … Yet whether he’s on a jet ski or not, Romney’s wealth — estimated at more than $250 million — made more uncomfortable headlines for him on Tuesday. The fortune, mostly made at Bain Capital, is largely held in a complex and opaque offshore network, including a Swiss bank account and in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, according to a Vanity Fair report. Also, his campaign must now distance itself from the CEO of Barclays, who stepped down from the British bank Tuesday amid an interest-rate fixing scandal.”

The Romney campaign for its part is hitting Obama for “broken promises.” “With no record to run on, no rationale for re-election, and no positive message – President Obama is on the defensive, trying to win back the support of skeptical voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where he has failed to follow through on his promises on health care, unemployment, and spending,” the campaign writes in a morning email.

And it links to several not-so-positive headlines for the president as he makes his way through Ohio:

Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Democrats And Republicans See Challenges For President Barack Obama In Key Mahoning Valley”
Toledo Blade, “Obama Trip Recalls to GOP Biden Visit Four Years Earlier”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sen. Portman Op-Ed: “Obama's Policies Are Stifling The Recovery”
Toledo Blade, “GOP Governors In Maumee Before Obama Visit”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Romney Campaign To Rival Obama Bus Tour Through Ohio With Bobby Jindal And Tim Pawlenty.”

There’s also the Akron Beacon Journal front page: “High jobless rate expected for years.”
And the Cleveland Plain Dealer front page: “Romney’s Mahoning Valley opportunity.”
The Youngstown Vindicator: “Romney campaign to stop in Valley; GOP hopeful wants to stay a step ahead of Obama’s bus tour.”

Of course, on the other hand:

Sandusky Register flag on the background of an American flag and the president’s face: “Welcome, President Obama. Obama visits Sandusky today; public access limited.”
The Toledo Blade (with a smiling Obama): “China to face accusation of unfair trade. Complaint to world body affects Toledo-made SUVs.”
The Ravenna Record-Courier: “Aurora man wins contest, has lunch with Obama.”
The Dayton Daily News front page: “IT job demand brings six-figure salaries.”
Hamilton Journal News: “Demand for IT jobs boosting salaries.”

“Marching in the parade with [Romney in New Hampshire] was Kelly Ayotte, a senator from New Hampshire who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice,” the Boston Globe writes. “Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, another mentioned candidate, was not with Romney. He will be in New Hampshire on Saturday to attend a fund-raiser, said Tommy Schultz, a Romney spokesman.”

Two other possible veeps -- Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal -- will be following the Obama bus – attacking and rapid responding.

“One of the richest Members of Congress is on the short list to be Mitt Romney’s running mate,” Roll Call writes. “So is one of the poorest. Of the four lawmakers the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is said to be considering, Sen. Rob Portman is by far the wealthiest, recently filed personal financial disclosure forms show… On the other hand, Sen. Marco Rubio, a vice presidential hopeful, is likely among the least wealthy Members of the Senate with a net worth of negative $400,000.”

CNBC’s Joe Kernan endorsed Chris Christie for veep.