Finally, polling sage Mark Blumenthal at the Huffington Post looks at the latest presidential polls and says that little has changed, with Obama maintaining a very narrow lead over Romney:

Obama has maintained roughly the same one- to two-point lead for most of the past year, except for a brief period in the heat of the Republican primaries in February when he led by a slightly larger margin. As the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, "a pair of tepid jobs reports, landmark Supreme Court decisions on health-care and immigration laws, and an unprecedented barrage of negative ads" in recent weeks have had virtually no impact on the national horse race numbers.

Blumenthal has a note of warning: when the pollsters shift from surveying registered voters to screening for "likely voters," closer to the election, "the shift will likely boost Romney slightly".

It's going to be close – but we knew that already.

The Guardian's people's panel is looking at unemployment among the black community – and wants to hear from those affected by the 14.4% jobless rate among African Americans:

As part of our people's panel, we are asking for your experiences as an African American looking for work. Has race impacted your search, and do you feel empowered to address any problems? Where have you found support, if any? Will the economy and unemployment affect your decision on whether to vote and whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential elections? Finally, if you are an employer, how does race affect your hiring decisions?

The Obama campaign hits Mitt Romney in a new ad, this time on his tax plans.

Note the carefully used footage of a beachfront mansion over "tax breaks for millionaires" as part of Romney's plan.

Mitt Romney is on Fox News – yes, first the NAACP, then Fox News, it's a day of ground-breaking steps – and the intern-like Neil Cavuto aks him about his vice presidential choice.

I could tell you, jokes Mitt, but "I would have to come after you with my Men in Black flashlight and erase you." At least I think it's a joke.

As luck would have it you can read all about Mitt Romney's vice presidential choices right here.

Hmm. An auction of 10-year US Treasuries held today saw $21bn sold at a yield of 1.459%. That's the lowest yield ever, according to the FT:

Investors accepted the lowest yields ever for 10-year paper in a US Treasury auction shortly before the release of Federal Reserve minutes showing a bias towards more monetary easing. The scale of demand at the auction suggests investors expect US interest rates to remain low for several years.

If the best place to park your money earns 1.46% interest over 10 years, then ... the alternatives must be pretty bad.

Some news from Mississippi: a federal judge has continued to block Mississippi's new abortion law, one which places restrictions on doctors willing to perform terminations at the state's only clinic.

There we go – the exercise in futility known as the healthcare reform repeal bill in the House of Representatives has been passed, by 244-185.

All of the GOP representatives voted for the measure, while only five Democratic members of the House joined them. The latest splinter to fall is Jim Matheson – who is running in Utah, a tough spot for a Democrat.

Writing for the American Prospect, Jamelle Bouie isn't surprised by the booing of Mitt Romney at the NAACP given Romney's decision to stick to his talking points:

Simply put, Mitt Romney didn't attempt to speak to the concerns of the audience; the audience responded accordingly. Buzzfeed captured one particularly brutal reaction: "I believe his vested interests are in white Americans," said Charlette Stoker Manning, chair of Women in NAACP. "You cannot possibly talk about jobs for black people at the level he's coming from. He's talking about entrepreneurship, savings accounts — black people can barely find a way to get back and forth from work." It's good thing Romney doesn't actually need to win African American voters, or he would be in trouble.

A new poll from Marquette University sees little change in Wisconsin's political complexion, despite the excitement over the recall vote aimed at Governor Scott Walker:

In the presidential race, President Barack Obama leads former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 51% to 43%. In June, Obama had 49% to Romney's 43%. The presidential race has remained stable since late May when Obama also led 51%-43%.

So Republican hopes that Wisconsin could turn red in November don't appear to have been realised. Yet. Remember: Marquette got the polling for the Walker recall spot on.

In Wisconsin's US Senate race, what was meant to be a stroll in the park for Republican Tommy Thompson appears to have tightened, both for the nomination in August and for the general election in November.

The latest minutes of the Federal reserve's open markets committee – for last month's meeting – have been released, and it turns out there was the monetary policy equivalent of a knife fight complete with broken bottles and pool cues.

It may not seem like it but this is what a "heated debate" looks like inside the FOMC:

A few members expressed the view that further policy stimulus likely would be necessary to promote satisfactory growth in employment and to ensure that the inflation rate would be at the Committee's goal. Several others noted that additional policy action could be warranted if the economic recovery were to lose momentum, if the downside risks to the forecast became sufficiently pronounced, or if inflation seemed likely to run persistently below the Committee's longer-run objective. The Committee agreed that it was prepared to take further action as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability.

Just transport the scene to a bar full of off-duty sailors in San Diego and you're away.

The Advocate points out that amid the boos at the NAACP, Mitt Romney also repeated his opposition to gay marriage today:

Any policy that lifts up and honors the family is going to be good for the country, and that must be our goal. As president, I will promote strong families and I will defend traditional marriage.

Yet as the Advocate spotted, in the same speech Romney also promised as president to represent "every race, creed or sexual orientation".

Following Mitt Romney's address this morning, a statement arrives from NAACP chair Roslyn Brock:

We are pleased that Governor Romney addressed our convention today. This morning Governor Romney laid out his policy agenda for this nation. Unfortunately, much of his agenda is at odds with what the NAACP stands for – whether the issue is equal access to affordable healthcare, reforming our education system or the path forward on marriage equality. We appreciate that he was courageous and took the opportunity to speak with us directly.

Steve Benin at the Maddow blog discusses what he terms "Romney's unpleasant visit with the NAACP":

I've been following NAACP conventions for quite a while now, and I can't recall ever hearing such a lengthy, sustained booing. (The rest of the speech received polite applause, but the booing was obviously the most notable development of the morning.) The wonk in me feels compelled to mention that Romney's argument wasn't even coherent on its face – he said he wants to kill the Affordable Care Act to reduce the deficit, which is absurd since killing the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit. But I think it's probably safe to say that's not why Romney was booed.

So why was he booed? Maybe it was something to do with the seven million uninsured African Americans covered by the same Affordable Care Act that Romney wants to repeal.

Here's what the NAACP said after the supreme court upheld the healthcare reforms:

The NAACP has long supported the full and complete implementation of this law. Access to quality, affordable health care is a civil and human right that should not be reserved for the wealthy or the few. The 32 million American men, women and children covered under this law can now breathe easier.

This Factcheck.org piece from 2008 charts the recent history of African Americans voting for Republican candidates in US presidential elections:

Republican nominees continued to get a large slice of the black vote for several elections. Dwight Eisenhower got 39% in 1956, and Richard Nixon got 32% in his narrow loss to John F Kennedy in 1960. But then President Lyndon Johnson pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation in public places) and his eventual Republican opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater, opposed it. Johnson got 94% of the black vote that year, still a record for any presidential election. The following year Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15% of the black vote since.

Another fact from the piece: it wasn't until 1924 that African Americans were even permitted to attend Democratic conventions in any official capacity.

Finally Sarah Palin breaks her hours of silence to speak out on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign:

Romney, he has said before that he doesn't want to have to light his hair on fire. Well, there are a lot of his base supporters, independents who are saying, 'Well, light our hair on fire, then! Remind us how important it is that we get engaged in this presidential election because it is the election of our lifetime.

Obviously Romney staff at campaign headquarters in Boston were sitting around wondering what Sarah Palin would do.

It's that time of the political cycle when journalists start writing about the highly improbable possible outcomes of the presidential election:

Depending on how a handful of swing states fall on the battleground map, American voters may not choose the next president in November. Instead, that decision could be thrown into the House of Representatives, where, in all likelihood, Romney would become the next president.

Doesn't that sound dramatic? The chances of this actually happening are "more than a remote, theoretical possibility," according to the Los Anegels Times. That's almost correct: in fact it is slightly more than a remote, theoretical possibility – but that means it's still a remote, theoretical possibility.

Here's the video clip of Mitt Romney getting booed at the NAACP this morning, via BuzzFeed Politics:

"You know, there's a survey, a survey of the Chamber of Commerce..." will of course go down in history as a withering response. Not really.

Romney grins uneasily as NAACP crowd vigorously boos his anti-Obamacare line. — Molly Ball (@mollyesque) July 11, 2012

Once he regains his footing, Romney comes back pretty well. There's a slight rubato in his voice but he neatly gets back to his text. But he had an opportunity to engage with his audience and he didn't take it.

What will be overlooked in discussion of the booing of Mitt Romney is what he actually called healthcare reform: a "non-essential programme".

Here's the quote:

I will eliminate all the expensive non-essential programmes I can find, that includes Obamacare

Healthcare is "non-essential," is it Mitt Romney? Maybe that's what people were booing: the idea that federally-funded health provision for America's poorest such as Medicaid was "non-essential".

So was Mitt Romney deliberately trying to provoke boos from the NAACP, specifically by use of the term Obamacare to describe the recent healthcare reforms?

It's hard to say, of course, but you'd need to be quite cynical to assume that's what Romney was doing deliberately.

Partly because as a speaker Romney has a cloth ear and does come out with some rubbish lines even when talking to his own party. And partly because – let's face it – Obamacare has become a portmanteau term that has lost its perjorative sting. There's a list of Democrats as long as your arm who have used Obamacare in a positive way – and if you don't believe me then wait until the right-blogosphere starts posting the YouTube clips.

So after all that, the headline of Mitt Romney's appearance here will be the 10 seconds or so of booing that followed Romney's declaration that he will repeal "Obamacare" – and it may be the use of the mildly pejorative term as much as the policy that sparked it.

From Romney's point of view, it gives him something to buck up the GOP troops: 'look, I went to the NAACP and told it to them straight'. The question remains whether Romney and his campaign wanted it that way.

It would have been an excellent opportunity for Romney to explain what safety net he wanted to offer to replace the healthcare reforms with – but he didn't.

And in a shock move, Mitt Romney closes his speech to the NAACP with a quote from Martin Luther King:

Every good cause on this earth relies in the end on a plan bigger than ours. "Without dependence on God," as Dr King said, "our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest night. Unless his spirit pervades our lives, we find only what GK Chesterton called 'cures that don't cure, blessings that don't bless, and solutions that don't solve.'" Of all that you bring to the work of today's civil rights cause, no advantage counts for more than this abiding confidence in the name above every name. Against cruelty, arrogance, and all the foolishness of man, this spirit has carried the NAACP to many victories. More still are up ahead, and with each one we will be a better nation.

Other than those two episodes, Mitt Romney has been received politely by the NAACP audience, with plenty of applause at the appropriate places.

Romney invokes his father's impressive record on civil rights in the 1960s:

The Republican party's record, by the measures you rightly apply, is not perfect. Any party that claims a perfect record doesn't know history the way you know it. Yet always, in both parties, there have been men and women of integrity, decency, and humility who called injustice by its name. For every one of us a particular person comes to mind, someone who set a standard of conduct and made us better by their example. For me, that man is my father, George Romney.

At the NAACP convention, the booing quickly ended, by the way, and a veil of silence descended. But then Mitt Romney went back to his earlier "I know what's best for African Americans" position with this:

And I submit to you this: if you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him. [Boos] You take a look.

Well, that's chutzpah, if nothing else. Because it ain't much of a line anyway.

Updated: here's a YouTube clip of that bit.

Here we go – when Romney gets to the point about healthcare reform, there's an outbreak of booing, quite a loud one.

Here's what Romney said:

Our high level of debt slows GDP growth and that means fewer jobs. If our goal is jobs, we must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do this, I will eliminate all the expensive non-essential programmes I can find, that includes Obamacare....

Cue the booing. Romney sounds a little rattled although he gives a Cheshire cat grin, before launching into an unscripted response: "There was a survey of the Chamber of Commerce," he says. Ah yes, a brilliant masterstroke.

Actually that "survey" was an online-response done on the Chamber's website so entirely invalid for any purpose, and has been repeatedly refuted, but Romney keeps quoting it.

And here's Mitt, and he's sticking to the remarks issued earlier – Politico has the bulk of the text here.

Romney has delivered his enigmatic "if you understood who I truly am in my heart" line from his prepared remarks – but despite the promise of the remark itself, Romney delivers it without emotion, butchering it as if he was ticking off a PowerPoint presentation. Which in a sense he is.

Romney tells the audience that he's accused of being a candidate for the rich. "Nonsense," says Mitt. "The rich will do just fine whether I'm elected or not." Doh.

Mitt Romney to address the NAACP shortly. Despite what you might think, the aim of the Romney campaign appearing here isn't actually to win African American votes as such (although obviously they would be happy with that). It's to send a signal to moderate independents, who want to be assured they aren't voting for a closet racist.

More Mitt Romney remarks – and Mitt is shocked, like many others, that racism and inequality persists despite the election of a black president:

If someone had told us in the 1950s or 60s that a black citizen would serve as the forty-fourth president, we would have been proud and many would have been surprised. Picturing that day, we might have assumed that the American presidency would be the very last door of opportunity to be opened. Before that came to pass, every other barrier on the path to equal opportunity would surely have to come down. Of course, it hasn't happened quite that way. Many barriers remain. Old inequities persist. In some ways, the challenges are even more complicated than before. And across America – and even within your own ranks – there are serious, honest debates about the way forward. If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone. Instead, it's worse for African Americans in almost every way. The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average income, and median family wealth are all worse for the black community. In June, while the overall unemployment rate remained stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans actually went up, from 13.6% to 14.4%. Americans of every background are asking when this economy will finally recover – and you, in particular, are entitled to an answer.

The Romney campaign has released some remarks from his address to the NAACP – and they are breathtaking in one respect.

Here's what Mitt Romney will say, according to the campaign release:

I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families, you would vote for me for president. I want you to know that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help families of color – and families of any color – more than the policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for president.

This is an odd comment on so many levels: "if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American families". Is Romney saying here (a) that he can't fully communicate what he believes? and (b) that he knows what's in the "real" best interest of African Americans?

In other words: I have a secret plan that I' m not telling you but it's in your best interests so vote for me. Yes, that will work.

He does go on – but no details from the remarks released so far:

I am running for president because I know that my policies and vision will help hundreds of millions of middle class Americans of all races, will lift people from poverty, and will help prevent people from becoming poor. My campaign is about helping the people who need help. The course the President has set has not done that – and will not do that. My course will.

Mitt Romney addresses the NAACP's national conference in Houston, making a brave attempt to woo African American and moderate voters – as the allegations swirling over his financial records may be hurting Romney in the polls.

Speculation too is rife over Romney's vice presidential pick – with the rumour mill going into overdrive regarding the shortlist of candidates and the possible timing of the announcement.

Here's a round-up of the latest news:

• Mitt Romney is attempting to woo African American voters today with a speech at the NAACP's annual meeting in Houston, Texas. Romney is expected to frame the speech in terms of his economic agenda. With 14.4% unemployment among African Americans – significantly higher than the national average of 8.2% – the economy is certainly a key issue for black America. However, Romney is facing a voting demographic in which approximately 9 out of 10 support the president.

• Attorney general Eric Holder delivered a blistering speech to the NAACP in which he broke from his prepared comments to compare controversial state voter ID laws to the poll taxes of Jim Crow. "Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them," Holder said Tuesday . "We call those poll taxes." Holder has been a favorite target of the GOP, which recently held a vote to hold him in contempt of congress.

• House Republicans' latest attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act reaches a vote today. The repeal bill is expected to pass with the vote of the entire Republican caucus and a handful of red state Democrats, but the 31st attempt to kill or gut Obamacare is likely to go the way of the others: failure in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Democrats say the move amounts to political posturing on an issue that has been settled by the highest court in the land.

Mitt Romney addresses the NAACP's national conference in Houston, making a brave attempt to woo African American and moderate voters – as the allegations swirling over his financial records may be hurting Romney in the polls.

Speculation too is rife over Romney's vice presidential pick – with the rumour mill going into overdrive regarding the shortlist of candidates and the possible timing of the announcement.

Here's a round-up of the latest news:

• Mitt Romney is attempting to woo African American voters today with a speech at the NAACP's annual meeting in Houston, Texas. Romney is expected to frame the speech in terms of his economic agenda. With 14.4% unemployment among African Americans – significantly higher than the national average of 8.2% – the economy is certainly a key issue for black America. However, Romney is facing a voting demographic in which approximately 9 out of 10 support the president.

• Attorney general Eric Holder delivered a blistering speech to the NAACP in which he broke from his prepared comments to compare controversial state voter ID laws to the poll taxes of Jim Crow. "Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them," Holder said Tuesday . "We call those poll taxes." Holder has been a favorite target of the GOP, which recently held a vote to hold him in contempt of congress.

• House Republicans' latest attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act reaches a vote today. The repeal bill is expected to pass with the vote of the entire Republican caucus and a handful of red state Democrats, but the 31st attempt to kill or gut Obamacare is likely to go the way of the others: failure in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Democrats say the move amounts to political posturing on an issue that has been settled by the highest court in the land.