Suck on this, Cory Booker:
In the sustained flood of advertising, the one thing that stands out is how strong the reactions to Mitt Romney are– particularly in Ohio — where he has been defined as hurting workers in his work at Bain….
All the oh-noes-class-warfare concern trolls are in the pocket of Galtian overlords who don’t want their fee-fees hurt by mean tv commercials.
It’s as simple as that.
Hunter Gathers
The communal blowjob Jamie Dimon is getting right now is the strongest proof that I’ve ever seen that the entire planet needs to be firebombed out of existence.
flukebucket
Obama needs to tattoo “Bain” on Rmoney’s forehead.
Valdivia
The Village truly are the Bain of my Existence.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers:
Nuke it from space.
Only way to be sure.
Skerry
@Hunter Gathers: Hey, Dimon apologized. Doesn’t that make everything ok?
beltane
What gets me is how thin-skinned our tough-minded Galtian heroes are, almost like they have internal doubts about their own superiority. A true aristocrat couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the opinion of the peasantry.
Villago Delenda Est
@Skerry:
The only apology from the Dimon parasite I’m willing to entertain is a Captain Needa apology.
Spectre
This is the first time I’ve ever fully agreed with Metrosexual Black AbeJ. It’s an interesting feeling.
The Dangerman
@Hunter Gathers:
Reaching across the aisle is no longer in style, but reach arounds are still in vogue.
Roger Moore
@beltane:
Yeah, they’re afraid the whole house of cards will be knocked over by the tiniest breath of wind.
dedc79
Have made this point before but Booker’s position on Bain is about as unsurprising as the Mayor of Detroit’s position on fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry. Newark is a city hanging by a thread. It depends heavily on tax dollars from the financial and insurance institutions with offices downtown. Booker is a local not a national politician and he’s not going to go around bashing the industry no matter how much they deserve it.
So was it a mistake to make him a campaign spokesperson? Yes. But I think we should cut him a break.
Valdivia
I see from TPM that the Grand Master of the TeaParty, DeMented from SC had absolved Dimon.
Rock
Let us all appreciate the following:
1) Media describes Obama’s discussion of what Romney actually did at Bain as “unfair”.
2) Romney lies repeatedly and blatantly without censure from the media.
I’d like to believe it part of an explicit conspiracy because the alternative in which people actually think the truth is unfair and falsehoods acceptable implies a society that is insane.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
Was he made a campaign spokesman, or did he decide to appoint himself as one? And why should we cut him slack? If you’re trying to help the campaign but disagree with it on some point, you shouldn’t go announcing your disagreement far and wide. Tell the campaign about your reservations privately, and focus your energy on points where you and the campaign agree. Don’t publicly undercut the campaign by airing your grievance as widely as possible.
Spectre
@dedc79:
I’d say you have it backwards. Booker is pro-bankster, not because of Jersey, but primarily because he wants to be a national politician. He’s been a transparent careerist his whole life, and now he wants to use the Obama campaign to launch himself into a senate seat, and then the white house.
lamh35
@dedc79: funny, their are other surrogates of Obama that are also mayors of cities that have their own interest and yet they seem to be ok surrogates who don’t torpedo the campaign message just to up their own quotient.
Oh and btw, thanks to that lil episode Corey B will stay a local politician his national “street cred” is now shot. Before that I could have imagined Corey getting the keynote at the convention, or at least a televised speech, now I dont’ expect anything. Gov O’Malley needs to thank Corey for taking himself out of the prime spot consideration.
amk
@Roger Moore: Bingo. bory cooker’s one-upmanship turned him from a hero to zero within a week. fucking idjit..
amk
@Rock: Shorter msm – Obama stating facts – OMG, OMG. mehmney spouting lies 24×7 – meh. Fucking occupiers had wrong targets. They should have chosen media first.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@flukebucket: A backward “B” would suffice, IMO.
Valdivia
@lamh35:
I am personally a big fan of O’Malley. What do you make of him?
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@amk: This. I’ve said this many times myself. =)
Anoniminous
If the pigs are squealing you know you’re doing something right.
Valdivia
The Grey Lady doing its best to give Romney a hand too.
BB
So, two things that relate to the “vulture capitalism” of Bain: first, Goldman Sachs is taking over the University of Virginia, and will convert it to a for-profit model — the board has been packed with McDonnell Republicans, and they staged their coup this weekend, ousting an incredibly talented woman. Goldman Sachs is deeply involved, and the transition will likely be quick and ruthless. Here’s a story that outlines what is happening. It’s only a matter of time before most public education winds up the same way.
Second, the Times-Picayune, a profitable (!) paper, has been gutted. Pierce wrote about it in Esquire.
It’s Galt’s world — we’re just the useless byproducts of it.
EDIT: Dems need to connect and coordinate these things in their messaging. If people get a sense that vulture capitalism threatens all of their trusted institutions, it may hurt Romney.
MomSense
I love Gov. O’Malley. He was the speaker at our Maine Democratic Convention and he was fantastic.
shortstop
At one time I might have found this sentence too simplistic. That time is gone.
JenJen
Yup! Count me as one Buckeye who knew from the beginning that the Bain attack would work in my state.
And just this morning, I got to listen to Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace, et al bemoan the Bain attack once again, with an additional new argument that this President just doesn’t understand or care about business, not one bit.
When they start howling like that, you KNOW it’s working!
lamh35
@Valdivia: from what I’ve seen and heard about him (admittedly through clips and articles) he comes off as a genuinely good guy and a great surrogate. Steadfast in his support of POTUS, knowledgeable and telegenic.
Plus his constituents that I know of really seem to like him as a person.
dedc79
@lamh35: I think Booker has already had ample opportunity to run for state office (or maybe even federal office) but has decided to stay on and see his work through in Newark. That doesn’t mean he won’t try for it later on, but I think he is genuinely interested in getting Newark back on its feet.
And to be clear, i’m not saying it wasn’t a screw-up. I’m just saying that Booker has done a ton of good things for Newark and for New Jersey – more than many national politicians accomplish in a lifetime. It would be a shame if this statement now becomes the thing he is known for.
Valdivia
@lamh35:
that was my impression too and I am glad I wasn’t wrong about him. I hope he gives the Keynote.
japa21
@JenJen: So true. If the Bain ads were really likely to backfire or be ineffective, they would probably either never mention them or just mention them in passing.
dedc79
@Spectre: ” a transparent centrist his whole life” What does that even mean in the context of being a mayor of an exceedingly poor and crime ridden city? His responsibilities were and are to the people of Newark. There is no real democrat/republican divide in Newark – the issues are as local as they come – and a mayor is evaluated simply based on whether the city is in better shape than when he took office.
burnspbesq
@BB:
There is clearly something odd going on at UVa, but your description of it is deeply disingenuous, counter-factual, and biased. “Goldman Sachs is taking over the University of Virginia” is, simply put, a lie.
The BOV is not “packed with McDonnell Republicans.” Dragas, the rector who apparently played the lead role in Sullivan’s ouster, is a Kaine appointee. A more accurate description of how the BOV is constituted can be found in this article from the C’Ville Daily Progress.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/12/bovs-motives-sullivan-decision-remain-unclear-ar-1983827/
The unavoidable reality is that all public universities are facing unprecedented financial strains. Support from state budgets is evaporating, most such schools don’t have sufficient endowment income to replace the missing state funding (ironically, UVa is one of the most heavily endowed public universities; if it could goose the yield on its endowment by 100 basis points, it would have an additional $50-60 million to play with), and there are limits to public universities’ ability to raise tuition. You don’t have to like that reality, but you don’t get to deny it.
Those budget gaps have to be filled somehow, or, alternatively, deep and painful program cuts will have to be made.
If the Darden School is capable of being self-sufficient, and it almost certainly is given the loyalty and affluence of its alumni, it should stop sucking money out of the overall trough. The Anderson School at UCLA is looking at a similar decision.
There is no doubt that Sullivan is a fine scholar, and would have been an outstanding successor to Casteen in a more normal environment. In this environment, however, it is not unreasonable for the BOV to determine that a more entrepreneurial leadership is required.
kay
@dedc79:
It isn’t the same, though.
Mitt Romney lied. He said what he did at Bain was to “create jobs.” Obama simply took Romney’s own claim and examined the Bain jobs record. That is so far in bounds I have no idea what media and conservatives WOULD find acceptable in an attack. It’s flat-out ludicrous to claim that Romney can continue to tell this huge lie, and we all have to swallow it. No, we don’t.
If Booker wants to defend private equity, fine, but do it honestly.
Explain what they do. Explain that, in fact, their main objective is not to “create jobs”. They’ve set it up that they “create jobs” and we “take jobs”. We’re the takers. They’re the makers. That’s just wrong. It’s incredibly disrespectful towards most working people, besides being a lie.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dedc79: I have never been on TV and don’t want to be, but I have a hard time imagining it would have been difficult to say “There’s nothing wrong with what Mitt Romney did at Bain, but it has nothing to do with public policy or a governing philosophy”, which has the benefit of being true and makes it pretty easy to pivot to discussing Romney’s trickle down economic policy. Booker’s MTP performance was an embarrassingly desperate audition to be the Joe Lieberman of a new generation, David Gregory’s go-to guy anytime DG wants someone to say, with theatrical regret but the force of admirable conviction, “I have to disagree with my fellow Democrats…” If he’s really too stupid to know how big an axe he was swinging at Obama’s back, we’re better off without him. But no Democrat ever suffered for sucking up, however sweatily and clumsily, to Wall St and Village CW. I’m sure we’ll be stuck with Booker for a long time
Chukwu
@dedc79: Booker’s mayorship has followed the pattern of the Giuliani/Bloomberg administrations in New York. While I’ll acknowledge that Booker is in no way the next Sharpe James or anything like that, most of the benefits of his administration have been directed to the city’s wealthier inhabitants or people who come to Newark for work. A lot of Newark remains unemployed.
That’s not to mention the dangerous precedent that Booker is establishing with Newark’s public schools; Newark is one of the nation’s leaders in embracing the charter school movement. While Newark charters are generally of high quality, the last thing America needs is another advocate for divesting from truly public education.
Yutsano
@kay:
Kay Kay Kay. You know full well it is always and forever uncouth for a liberal/Democrat to ever attack and if they do it is uncivil and, dare I say it, shrill. Democrats must be well-behaved patsies at all times. To do otherwise is completely unserious and dismissed by the media. Thus spoketh Teh Narrative.
Maude
@Chukwu:
Exactly. And Bory took money from Bain. Oh, oops.
Newark deserves better.
Max Bialystok
Romney, party of 7… Romney, party of 7… Your tumbrel is ready.
catclub
@JenJen: The stock market is up 60-80% since its low in March, 2009. Profits are at record highs….
and they claim Obama hates business and is sabotaging the country (projection again). Hence, if someone who knows business –like an MBA/CEO president– had been in office, the markets would be up eleventy billion percent.
Like they were during the 8 years of misrule under GWBush.
Roger Moore
@kay:
A different target.
BB
@burnspbesq: You are incorrect. The Washington Post reported that eight of the current sixteen BOV are recent McDonnell appointments, and you’re conveniently ignoring the fact that Dragas — who is a prominent VA Republican — has her place as rector only because McDonnell refused to reappoint Kaine’s pick for rector, precisely BECAUSE Kaine’s pick was a Kaine supporter, and in contrast, Dragas was a big Republican donor. This is a political dogfight, and you’re waiving your hands about budgets. UVA has a $4 billion endowment. This is an excuse for a coup, and has been long coming. Thanks for your Broderesque apologetics, though!
Spectre
@dedc79: I called him a “Careerist” not a centrist. Booker has always been about Booker. Self-promotion is his whole scam, and he doesn’t care how many unions he has to bust, or how many liberals he has to sell out, in order to get more power.
Captain C
@kay: @kay:
Something along the lines of:
“Please sir, you’re not beating me enough. You’re not working me hard enough. You’re paying me too much. You’ve let me keep a few possesions.”
rikyrah
@dedc79:
Booker has always had his eye on something else. You obviously think better of him than I do, because I’ve never ‘ felt’ his commitment to Newark.
rikyrah
if Booker had just been on the tv, say, like a Harold Ford, Jr., spouting that nonsense of his, nobody would have cared.
BUT…
he was sitting on Meet the Press
AS AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN
and, he chose to betray The President of the United States on national television.
fuck Cory Booker.
Elie
@dedc79:
No way Jose do I give Borey Corey a break… He is a first class moron who needs to pay the price for this two faced back stabbing of the President — on Sunday morning teevee. If he will stab the president in the back, he will do anyone. Not to be trusted, verbal clod who deserves a hard ride to oblivion. Just my opinion but he has a long way to come back. A VERY long way.
Calouste
@Elie:
As they say, if you aim at the king, you better not miss. I suspect B00ker’s career will be in a holding pattern until Obama is no longer in the White House at least.
burnspbesq
@BB:
I trust the Progress, which as the local paper covers UVa on a daily basis and almost certainly has more and better sources within the University because of that, more than I do the Post. So should you.
Broderesqe hand-waving? Seriously? The facts are what they are; unlike you, I don’t refuse to take the actual facts as the starting point in my analysis.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
I can assure that that the citizens of Newark “feel it.”
gene108
@Valdivia:
Maryland is a speed trap.
The whole state is now wired with cameras that mail you tickets for running red lights to speeding on the highway.
Plus they still have local cops and state troopers waiting to hand out speeding tickets as they do everywhere else.
Elie
@Calouste:
A long time after that, also. If he is a primary, he is going to get a good stiffy from any decent Democratic opponent —
What is so so stupid about it is that it was completely the result of poor tone and choice of words. He could of soft pedaled a message of the need for the President to take some caution without going with the words he chose — that the President’s message made him want to vomit. Why were those words even near his brain?
He has no respect, deserves and will not get any. Maybe he can go work for Bain as official bootlicker.
James E Powell
This Romney & Bain thing provides another depressing contrast between the two national parties. If Romney launches any kind of attack on Obama, on that day and for the next several days every Republican mouth in the nation repeats and amplifies, often to ridiculous degrees, that attack. Usually, they use the exact same words to help the message penetrate.
In contrast, with few exceptions, when Obama launches an attack on Romney, Democrats are either silent or eager to get on TV and say it ain’t so.
You cannot win many games with a team like that.
BB
@burnspbesq: Take a look at this. It’s simple as day. http://www.annemarieangelo.com/?p=40
FlipYrWhig
@James E Powell: But actually we’ve just seen message static on the Republican side, with Scott Walker contradicting Romney on public employees and Jeb Bush noting Republican extremism. And yet the media does not rush to cover those as REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY! stories. Republicans tend to mouth the party line, I agree, but even when they don’t it doesn’t become a meta-story the way it does for Democrats. It’s screwy.