Thom details the President's recent speech on strengthening our country's gun control laws. Also discussed: Chicago's efforts to overturn Citizens United, where we are 500 days since the Fukushima Nuclear disaster and in tonight's "Daily Take" Thom discusses Romney's recent trip abroad begging for money from banks directly involved with the LIBOR scandal.

Barclays Bank executives have already coughed up more than a million dollars in donations to the Romney campaign - which has really ticked off British members of Parliament who are investigating LIBOR crimes. As the British newspaper The Telegraph reports: "11 MPs last week demanded the bank and its directors stop working to bolster Mr. Romney's election campaign and concentrate on repairing confidence in the banking system." But of course if Romney gets on a plane - flies all the way across the Atlantic Ocean - and comes to party in London's financial district - what else are Barclay's banksters supposed to?? Especially since Romney is their meal ticket. Romney is the guy who's going to repeal Dodd Frank financial regulations - free Wall Street once again to gamble, manipulate, and defraud the rest of us. So Barclays - and the rest of the scandal-ridden banks - aren't really "contributing" to Mitt Romney - they're INVESTING in Mitt Romney. What Mitt Romney is doing goes way beyond his campaign racist Anglo-Saxon remarks. It goes beyond Mitt's shady Swiss bank accounts. It goes beyond his years at Bain off-shoring American jobs. All of which are important - but holding a fundraiser on foreign soil with banksters who work for a foreign corporation and are currently under investigation for what could be the biggest financial crime in the history of the world - THAT takes the cake. This should end the Romney campaign for good. But it won't. And the reason it won't is because ...

The Good! *Hospitals in Colorado* Three of the five hospitals where victims of the Colorado shooting massacre are being treated announced today that they will be limiting or eliminating the victims' hospital costs. The Bad! *Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)* Inhofe sent a letter to the Department of Defense on Tuesday asking why soldiers were allowed to march in uniform at San Diego's Pride Parade. In the letter, he argues that it was a violation of a DOD Directive that says service members "shall not march or ride in a partisan political parade." and the Very Very Ugly! *Missouri State. Rep John McCaherty (R)* Just days after the tragedy in Colorado - McCaherty announced he is holding a fundraiser - and will be raffling off an AR-15 at the event. That is the same type of assault weapon used by the shooter in Aurora.

Remember when you were a little kid - and your parents put a nightlight in your room because you were afraid of the dark - or thought there were monsters in the closet? Well - it turns out those nightlight might have been doing more harm than good.

Karl Grossman, Investigative Reporter / Professor of journalism at the State University of New York. 500 days have now passed since the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan began. And one thing's clear - it's still an extremely dangerous situation. A Japanese newspaper is reporting that plant operators still face a number of hurdles before they can decommission the plant and officially close the book on the crisis - and it could take decades. One of those hurdles include trying to determine why 8 million becquerels of radioactive cesium still continues to pour out of reactor number 2 every single hour. And, plant operators still have no clue how they're going to remove massive pools of highly radioactive spent fuel from the roofs of the reactors. As the newspaper reports, "Not only will that work be unprecedented, but the work will also have to be done in an environment of high radiation levels." Oh, and then there's the situation with reactor 4, which could collapse at any moment, triggering a worldwide nuclear disaster worse than Chernobyl. There are also reports of civilians moving back into ghost cities near Fukushima. Let's hope nuclear regulators in America are paying attention.

When you go to the beach - you expect to spend a few hours laying on the sand - soaking up rays - or maybe playing around in the ocean. But you don't expect to have a flock of seagulls who have just been fed laxatives visit.

Mike Papantonio, Attorney, Host, Ring of Fire Radio joins Thom Hartmann. One week after the Colorado massacre, the President Obama urged common-sense gun controls like full criminal background checks for gun purchasers and new measures to ensure the mentally ill can't buy guns. The President also hinted that he'd support a ban on assault rifles. President Obama sounded more like Senator Obama, who had a much tougher stance on gun control, supporting a ban on all semi-automatic weapons as a state senator, and as a US Senator voting down legislation to protect gun manufacturers and sellers from lawsuits when someone is killed using their products. Despite the conspiracy theories coming from the NRA and other gun interest groups, gun rights in America have expanded under President Obama. Thanks to President Obama - people can carry concealed guns into national parks - and also carry guns on Amtrak trains. Not one time has the President tried to restrain the Second Amendment Amendment. In fact - The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence - a group that gives politicians grades on gun control issues - gave President Obama an "F" after his first year in office - as he's completely failed to pass any gun control whatsoever. But are we about to see a turning point after yet another high-profile shooting massacre in America? Is it time to re-think the role of the Second Amendment in America - back when it was drafted, it was pretty difficult to load and shoot a gun. Today we have ...

Dinah Abrahamson, RNC delegate (R-NE) joins Thom Hartmann. Thanks to the new Pennsylvania voter suppression ID law - almost half the city of Philadelphia may not be able to vote in November. Are Republicans afraid that they can't win the Keystone State without blocking one of our most fundamental rights? It's time to fight for a federal right to vote in America - and put an end to this partisan attack on Democratic voters that the Koch Brother's ALEC organization is pushing nationwide.

Yesterday - Senate Republicans dropped their filibuster and allowed an up or down vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for 98% of Americans. In a vote of 51 to 48 - with not a single Republican supporting the measure - Democrats extended the Bush tax cuts for all Americans making less than $250000 a year. Another bill - proposed by Republicans - to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans was defeated. Thus, the burden shifts to House Republicans - who plan to vote in the coming weeks on legislation to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans as well - a move the Senate has just rejected - and a move that President Obama has promised to veto. So now, the only viable option to prevent tax hikes on ALL Americans at the end of the year is the Senate's bill, which calls on the Romney super-rich in America to pay their fair share in taxes again. Time to call your Member of Congress if they're a Republican, and tell him or her to not hold middle class tax cuts hostage.

Dr. Tom Palley, AFL-CIO & Author, From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics, joins Thom Hartmann. Austerity has taken out Greece - Spain and Italy - and now it's trying to destroy the United Kingdom's economy too. How can Americans prevent the great economy destroyer known as austerity from coming across the pond? Plus - the man who invented "too big to fail" recants on CNBC.

Thom talks with journalist Tim Pool about the uprisings in Anaheim. Tonight's "Lone Liberal Rumble" panel discusses the Romney camp's dog-whistling strategy, the GOP jobs plan that doesn't create any jobs and if Gary Johnson will decide November's election. In tonight's "Daily Take" Thom looks at the history of the Koch family's destructive influence on our nation.

Multigenerational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is rare, but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us. A billionaire family - the Kochs - have gone from influencing my father's generation, to my generation, to my kids' generation - and very few Americans realize it. Daddy Koch - Fred - made his first millions palling around with Joe Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. As the fascists rose to power in Europe in the 1930s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who invented the word "fascist," meaning essentially the takeover of democratic governments by big business interests. Mussolini went so far as to dissolve the Italian parliament, and replace elected politicians with representatives of each district's largest corporations. Fred Koch and Mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies, the communists. So after Mussolini, along with his ally Hitler, lost World War II against America, Fred Koch brought the anti-communist pro-business-running-goverment - what some would call "facist" - torch to America big time, helping start the John Birch Society.

Tim Pool, OWS Journalist joins Thom Hartmann. For the fourth night in a row - protests broke out in the streets of Anaheim last night - and community members clashed with police. What provoked last night's violence - and were police in the wrong for shooting civilians with rubber bullets? We've now seen civil unrest touch several major cities across America - from New York to Oakland to now Anaheim - all signs that our system of vulture capitalism, free-trade Reaganomics, and Republican Austerity are pushing our nation to the brink. Dangerous times may be ahead

The Good! *Anheuser-Busch* At the company's Fairfield, California plant - nearly half of the electricity used is generated by biogas, wind and solar power on site. The plant also has a process for recovering the steam that heats the boilers in the brew house - and turning it into energy. The Bad! *Big Oil* A new report is out detailing just how wealthy the Big Five Oil corporations are. According to the report - in 2011 - the oil giants earned $261000 thousand dollars per minute - more than 96 percent of American households make each year. and the Very Very Ugly! *Family Research Council* A leaked strategy memo is detail the anti-homosexual Conservative hate group's future spending plans. According to the memo - the FRC plans go on the offense - by "advancing the Christian worldview as America's only hope."

NASA scientists were left stunned after analyzing data showing that Greenland's ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate. Three independent satellites confirmed that over four days, the amount of ice melting in Greenland jumped from 40% to 97% - showed by this chart - the image on the left is from july 8 and the image on right is from July 12th. As one NASA scientist wrote in a press release, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it due to a data error?" Unfortunately, it's very much real - and in 30 years of observations, never has this much ice melted away from Greenland so fast. Of course - oil industry funded scientists will tell us everything is just fine - and it's just a really hot summer. Meanwhile, they're the ones most likely looking for mountaintop real estate - away from soon-to-be rising oceans.