In an article describing how Romney and friends at Bain managed to screw the Italian government to the tune of a billion dollars, several quotes stuck out:
That’s because Bain Capital, under Romney as chief executive officer, made about $1 billion in a leveraged buyout 12 years ago that remains controversial in Italy to this day.
Twelve years ago was the year 2000, when Romney claims he was not associated with Bain. Then this:
As Bain’s CEO from 1984 to 2001, Romney was personally involved in the deal at various points, including the initial decision to invest. He attended at least one meeting about it in Boston, according to a participant. When Bain sold the directory business in 2000, Romney, while still holding the title of CEO, was in charge of preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Romney has contended that he gave up management control of Bain in February 1999 to run the games.
They are now straight up calling him a liar. I hope Glenn Kessler doesn’t faint from such blunt talk.
Punchy
Ouch. I suspect The Rude State Trike Farce is going to send dead flowers to….Bloomberg. Or pictures of large floating ice. Or fornicating penguins. Who the fuck can read Erik’s mind?
El Cid
__
Are they calling him a liar by this? Or is this just one of those difficult things which can’t be understood properly yet?
Like, how could those things both be true? It’s a wonder.
After all, physics hasn’t really got a strong theory of time and unidirectional causality worked out yet, so, how do we know those can’t be true?
Mitt Romney has a wave nature, until he is interfered upon himself and collapses into a single arrogant prick.
Cassidy
Man, this is what happens when you don’t have a tire swing on your multiple properties.
@El Cid: And don’t forget, we don’t know where elctricity comes from. It could come from the sun. it could just be there.
MattF
Yeah, oooh, Romney might get an additional Pinocchio. Thing is, it’s really not at all cute, in the Disney-character sense, that Romney is a liar. And a coward. And et cetera. You’d think one of those media types would reflect, “Hmm, liar, coward, affectless bully… Could this be a problem?” A dream, I know.
...now I try to be amused
At first glance I thought I read that Rmoney did a leveraged buyout of Italy.
Dork
@Punchy: Leave Sid Crosby out of this.
What does Bloomberg know about buisnesses? Just a liberal website with a liberal gay agenda trying to pimp liberal agendi from liberal agenda’ers.
trollhattan
@Cassidy:
Redshift
@El Cid:
The Romney campaign seems to be the first to make heavy use of quantum mechanics. If no one observes his tax returns to collapse the wave function, exactly what he paid in taxes remains indeterminate. Likewise, if they shield him from any direct questions, his personal wave function can continue to encompass all sides of most issues.
He’s happy to allow observers after he is elected. Until that, he’s not hiding anything, he’s just keeping it literally unknowable.
General Stuck
Being personally involved could mean a lot of things if you are Mitt Romney, that could well include not being personally involved with such involvements.
Linda Featheringill
Bloomberg, yet. Wow.
Uh . . . That’s probably not good for Team Red.
Ben Franklin
Well, as the wingerz say, ‘it’s Bloomingbirds’ so, so what?
Plausible Denialists insist the Deficit is Obamas…
Prevarication is a virtue to Republicans
Karmus
Romney did no such things at the time. It all happened retroactively.
Hill Dweller
The Romney campaign lies because they think, perhaps rightfully so, that the media won’t call them on it.
They are currently shamelessly lying about Obama’s campaign suing to reinstate early voting in Ohio, but the media is treating it as ‘both sides’.
That said, Bloomberg has been great over the last few months hammering Romney.
Dennis SGMM
Does anyone actually believe that this will hurt Romney’s chances?
The right will tout it as a sign of his business acumen and an example of how there’s real money to be made by privatization.
The left will be accused of envy and partisanship for even mentioning this.
Besides, Bill Clinton ran dope and he got a blow job so they all do it and shut up, that’s why.
LanceThruster
@General Stuck:
As it is clear you need Will-LIAR-d’s clarifications to clarify clearly what he was making himself clear on, I give you this —
ROMNEY: “I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I’ll stand by what I said, whatever it was.”
The Moar You Know
@General Stuck: I had understood he was governor of Massachusetts for a time, but apparently the state just ran itself, he personally had nothing to do with it. He was actually managing a Hot Dog On A Stick in Phoenix during that time.
aimai
@Dennis SGMM:
No one cares about Italy being screwed out of a billion dollars. I’m sorry to say that but there is going to be no “smoking gun” when it comes to Romney because none of this signifies anything to his potential voters. He’s “not obama” and that’s good enough. Everything else is just camoflage.
aimai
pragmatism
I have received 3 emails from wingers attaching Frank Bruni’s column saying, “ZOMG the burden is on Reid to prove that Romney paid no taxes!”
Anoniminous
GOP insiders rallied behind Romney during the primaries because he was their best hope to beat Obama.
Pitiful, ain’t it?
JPL
John, I have to give this statement 4 pinocchios because Glenn will not admit to printing falsehoods.
SRW1
This doesn’t count. Them guys that got screwed were furiners.
ETA: So there are potentially even more awkward places for Mittens to visit than the UK and Poland?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Heard something in passing this morning on BBC radio that linked Romney with erroneous beliefs among German voters about bailouts for Spain and Italy. Have I missed another foot-in-mouth incident?
scav
Stealing Euros from Yupeans is probably a top-ten virtue in their eyes. All he need do is start throwing in some brief mentions of the “Axis” next to his existential threat of the USSR / Ruskies setting fire to our forests. “And their English was Perfect!”.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Are you confident of that? I don’t think any of Romney’s policies, including on transparency, can be determined right now.
General Stuck
Speaking of tap dancing, the pro lefters at WAPO are too busy nursing the vapors to ask why Romney won’t release his tax returns. It’s the evil Harry Reid’s fault for Mitt not releasing those returns, and the fainting couches are filling up fast.
It’s always special when the newspaper guy calls out anyone for not naming sources, and impinging on the right of the press to print anonymous sourced bullshit.
Richard Cohen – senile? I heard it through the grapevine.
Then the Cherry on Top
Cohen should get a Hiatt manicure and blowjob for that one.
Retard
trollhattan
Chait continues yeoman’s work ferreting out Willard’s lies. Today it’s a 2004 video of a press conference where he discisses Bush’s lack of responsibility for the bad economy. He can’t help himself from saying, “poppycock” like Monte Burns.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/video-proves-mitt-knows-whole-campaign-is-a-lie.html
Alex S.
That’s what happens when a multi-millionaire meets a billionaire…
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
It’s strange to me how Bloomberg is anti-Romney, but very pro-Scott Brown. There’s not much daylight between Romney and Brown, to the point where they share campaign staff in Boston. (Brown and Romney also share the same –shall we say– ‘stealthy’ approach to politics).
Kinda pissed at Bloomberg for interfering in my state’s politics: The Warren/Brown race is so close, that with Bloomberg pushing the notion that Brown is an independent Republican, it might be just enough to tip it over.
Jay C
@Redshift:
So what’s Mitt’s choice for the next White House Pet? Schrodinger’s cat?
Haydnseek
@General Stuck: There are the involvements that we know are involvements. Then there are the involvements that we don’t know are involvements, then there are the unknown involvements that we don’t know are involvements.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Redshift:
__
Actually Nixon and Roger Ailes pioneered this technique during his bid for the WH in 1968, including the use of fake or friendly-only press to cover up the fact that his scripted campaign events ruthlessly excluded anybody who might disrupt the narrative.
__
Romney is trying to do the same thing but he isn’t nearly as good at it as Nixon/Ailes were 44 years ago, so he ends up looking like a stage magician who trips as he comes on stage and drops his tophat and lets the hidden bunny spill out of the secret compartment, for anybody to see who wants to look.
__
The unfortunate part today is that many in the audience, including most of our press corps, prefer to look away when this happens rather than witness something which might spoil the show.
Turgidson
The media decided that Romney being nailed to the wall as a lying sack of shit was a boring story. And they found other dogs with puffy tails to chase down the street, notably (and somewhat understandably, if you accept the premise that they can’t cover more than one story at a time) the Olympics and now two separate acts of deranged domestic terrorism.
Maybe this will rekindle the flame but I doubt it. Though I’m sure they’ll keep covering the Reid/Romney throwdown because it resembles a food fight between 11 year olds, which is right up their alley.
PeakVT
Italy’s national debt is something on the order of €2.4 trillion dollars, so privatizing €10B worth of whatever won’t do jack for the debt. It won’t even do much to plug the budget deficit, which is around €70B. However, it is likely to enrich an insider, which is what disaster capitalism is about.
Bubblegum Tate
@SRW1:
Not just furiners, but Italians. Those terrible, lazy people with their soshulist trains.
Bizono
@Dennis SGMM: I agree – this won’t even move the needle on his chances, but not because of the state of the US news media.
First, short of Mitt confessing to the murder of Nancy Reagan, it won’t convince partisan Republicans to vote for the target of all their hatred.
Second, the average undecided voter seems to have only a vague understanding that there is an election campaign going on.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Punchy:
if you were to try that, I think you’d just get the message “Damaged SD Card”.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@General Stuck:
The response to Reid’s Gambit, to me, is the best Bullshit Detector devised yet this year.
I’ve spent nearly 4 years hearing lie after lie after lie, with nary a peep from MSM… Obama’s a Mooslim. He’s a Soshulist. He wasn’t even born in this country! And Democrats have a Secret Plan to Take All Your Guns(tm).
But Reid resorts to hearsay on the Senate floor, and he’s suddenly History’s Greatest Monster? (Especially among the libertarians like Mataconis or Weigel, for whatever reason).
That’s some fine vintage Bullshit, that right there.
Michael G
In C. Romneygomery Burn’s honor, I’m going to try to use the word “poppycock” today without getting called on it. We’ll see how it goes.
JPL
Mitt paid all the taxes required of him.
hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahaha
scav
@trollhattan: “Poppycock”?!
I’m sure Babs was involved somewhere.
mmmph. ‘scuse that lapse. I somehow doubt the above statements proves MittBot knows his campaign is a lie as I’ve no reason to suspect he meant it at the time. Truth-speaking module never known to be installed, never responded to pings.
gbear
@General Stuck: All mentions of Romney not paying any taxes for 10 years are good mentions of Romney not paying any taxed for 10 years, even when fainting couches are involved. Mission accomplished Harry.
dr. bloor
@Redshift:
Schroedinger’s candidate?
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
WTF? I can’t believe even someone as stupid as Richard Cohen could have written that. Your career as a journalist would last about two seconds if you went around identifying confidential sources. Richard Cohen must have never worked as a journalist.
pacem appellant
@Dork:
Argh. My brain. Don’t. Please. Just don’t.
General Stuck
@Bizono:
Granted, it won’t make any difference to the GOP base of up to 45 percent of the vote. But the media at large loves to find a nugget of resistance of a candidate slipping by on something that is usually done by a POTUS candidate. Especially one that represents the sole selling point of creating jobs of a challenger over an incumbent. This issue isn’t going away, and at some point will be at the forefront of themes for the election.
Swing voters are not paying attention much right now, but will after Labor Day, when they start putting random info into a decision process for who to vote for. That will no doubt be shallow and low info. Which is why the tax return issue should matter and stick, as it is easy to grasp and repeat by dems, and matches up with Romney’s claim he can create jobs. And overall run the economy better.
Prez candidates have to cross a minimum threshold of credibility, or they won’t win. And that is why this issue is important, even to many republicans, who won’t vote for Obama, but could well stay on the couches on election day.
SRW1
@pacem appellant:
Agendae was already taken.
trollhattan
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Willard probably can’t rock the pink leather shorts like dreamboy. Not that there’s anything….
TheOtherWA
Let that sink in. Somehow Romney made $50-60 million on one deal that according to his own story, he wasn’t the CEO at the time of the deal. I hope Glenn Kessler does faint. And hits his head on something on the way down just hard enough to knock some sense into him. (No real damage, ok? I don’t actually wish him harm.)
Ira-NY
There is a perfectly good explanation for this. It is that it occurred before Mitt retroactively resigned.
Duh!
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@trollhattan:
I wonder if those Special Masonic Underpants come in fuschia?
Roger Moore
@pacem appellant:
Do you also object when the hoi poloi stand on the rostrum?
General Stuck
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
The over the top response by the wingnuts overall, could likely be also equal to their fear of this issue sinking their candidate. So out comes the big artillery to smear Reid, with desperate hope it will Innoculate Mitt to slip by without releasing his tax returns. It won’t work, because every time someone like Reid throws the issue out there, the ravenous press turns the news cycle onto those tax returns with the question building into suspicion that Romney is hiding something that is vital to his claims of being a better president than BO.
victory
Bloomberg just went Priebus all over Romney.
Rule 34.
Roger Moore
OT: Lightning strikes outside NASCAR race, kills 1. I await claims from religious leaders that this shows God is punishing NASCAR fans for their depravity.
gbear
Romney just can’t stop it (via Benen)(& apoligies to The English Beat):
They claimed the value of their house had dropped so much that they should get a nice big property tax break. City of San Diego told them to stuff it.
joes527
@TheOtherWA: He was the sole investor at the time, so even if his story was true, he still would have made piles of money from Bain during that period.
Lex
IANAL, and I don’t play one on the Interwebz, but apparently there’s a legal doctrine called “missing evidence instruction,” or something similar, that basically says that if one party has control of a certain piece of evidence and didn’t produce it, the jury can be instructed to assume that that evidence would be harmful to the party who controls it.
So, no, in this case, the burden of proof is not on Reid, for what that’s worth.
Calouste
@Mark S.:
Reid’s not going to identify the source. He’s challenging the press corpse to get off their arses and do some work and identify the source for themselves. Reid’s already said that his source is a big Bain investor and that it would be obvious why the source knows what they know once we heard the name. Can’t be more than a few dozen people fitting that bill.
burnspbesq
Superficially, it looks like a hell of a deal. Put up $40 million and get back $1.5 billion. But the Bloomberg article is a little light on details. And it’s entirely possible that Telecom Italia overpaid not because of any nefarious behavior by Romney and his confederates, but simply because it was anticipating synergies with its existing businesses.
It’s a farily typical example of how that business works. (1) find an asset that the market appears to undervalue. (2) Buy it using lotsa leverage. (3) Sink some cash into it to make it even more attractive to a prospective buyer. (4) Find a bigger fool to sell it to. There is always a bigger fool out there. Typically, as here, it’s a so-called “strategic buyer” who believes in synergy, which is another word for unicorn.
Litlebritdifrnt
Oh BTW I was called a liar by Someguy in the other thread for saying that page two of Bachmann’s letter mentions Sikhs. I have been waiting for the link from the person that I got it from.
Here is a link to the letter dated June 13, 2012. First paragraph on page two
http://bachmann.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ig_letter_doj.pdf
Specifically mentions “Muslims and Sikhs” I will be waiting for my apology.
mechwarrior online
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
What masonic underpants?
TheOtherWA
@joes527: Ok, that makes a bit more sense. But it’s still an obscene amount of money to be made off a deal where Bain was the broker.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
Ooh, meta-wave function!
I agree there’s no reason to believe he’s telling the truth about when he’ll tell us. It would have been more accurate to say that he’s said he’ll allow the wave function to be collapsed after he’s elected. The tax returns will no doubt remain hidden after the election if he manages to avoid releasing them before that, but at least some part of his policies would have to become observable, if he decides to have any policies at all.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
It’s not always a synonym for unicorn. Sometimes it’s a synonym for restraint of free trade. Regulatory agencies are supposed to stop that kind of synergy, but we all know how thoroughly
bought offineffective they are.Litlebritdifrnt
@Lex:
I believe that is known as “spoliation” if a party in a lawsuit either conceals or destroys evidence (a police dash cam video for instance) the jury can be instructed to assume that it was damaging to the party that witheld or destroyed it.
Tonal Crow
@El Cid:
Romney’s Paradox (n). A situation in which a person is both solely to credit for his successes, and entirely without fault for his failures.
—
Tag: Romney’s like Sarah Palin, but with worse morals.
Soonergrunt
@Cassidy: Fucking magnets! How do they work?
MikeJ
O Canada!
Yutsano
Any predictions on who will do the lament for the death of bipartidanship?
EconWatcher
The Mittster could quite possibly be nearing the tipping point, where he is regarded as a universal joke. Not quite there yet, but you can see it coming.
burnspbesq
And then there’s this.
Romney is a Mormon. Gambling is somewhere between frowned-on and anathema in Mormon doctrine. Romney is taking gazillions of dollars of Sheldon Adelson’s money.
Even setting aside the high likelihood that Adelson’s company is going to get indicted for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it makes its money how?
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/embracing-sheldon-adelson/
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
Things will change, but there will still be substantial uncertainty about his policies. That is to say that there will be policies, but Mitt will claim there’s uncertainty about whether they’re his or somebody else’s until there’s a lot of evidence about whether they’re popular and successful.
scav
@Yutsano: Anybody going to bring up that only doing deals and working intimately with your own Party is Homopartial behavior?
PeakVT
@Calouste: Someone in an earlier thread pointed to this guy as a possibility.
Mark S.
@Calouste:
Ha! That would be hard work. It’s much easier to type “Both sides do it” and hand out Pinocchios.
burnspbesq
@Litlebritdifrnt:
In tax law, it is as Lex described it. It’s known as the Wichita Terminal presumption, after a Tax Court case from the 1940s.
ETA: And it doesn’t require proof of spoliation.
Litlebritdifrnt
@TheOtherWA: Or put it another way, several years ago here one of the members of the Hospital Authority Board got wind in a meeting that they were looking for a piece of property to house their financial offices. The property they were looking at was an old BOA building in a shady part of town. Some minor investor (on a whim no doubt) picked up the piece of property up for a song, he then sold it to another investor for a handsome profit, who then sold it to the Hospital Board member’s company for another handsome profit, who then sold it to the final owner before it was sold to the hospital authority for TEN TIMES its original selling price. The property changed hands five or six times within the space of six weeks and it doubled in price every time it did. They couldn’t get the Hospital Board member for anything because TECHNICALLY his company had not sold the property to the Hospital Authority. This is how these fuckers work.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Calouste:
__
The scene: A dark corner of the dank and moldy parking garage located underneath a popular Washington, DC area Applebees:
__
[Sen. Reid, disguised in trenchcoat and sunglasses]: Yes, that’s exactly what my latest source told me. That Mitt didn’t pay any taxes at all for 10 years. It was all offset..
__
[Reporter]: But I can’t print that. Not without a source.
__
[Sen. Reid]: This source is solid. He/she can be trusted.
__
[Reporter]: Which source?
__
[Sen. Reid]: The one I told you about yesterday. We’ll use a codename. Call her ‘Salad Bar’. She knows where all the green has been, and what time of day they disinfect the sneeze guards, if you know what I mean. Follow the money…
Litlebritdifrnt
@burnspbesq:
I say Tomahto you say Tomayto :)
danielx
@Punchy:
I think it was little bags of rock salt, for some reason. or maybe sand…that particular episode of Erick Son of Erick has grown mercifully dim.
@Mark S.:
You are correct, sir! You win the cement bicycle and a free trip to Dallas. Richard Cohen is not a journalist, but rather a) a Villager in excellent standing and b) a columnist, in that order. Villager rules clearly state that if you want to remain (a), then do not commit actual journalism as part of your role as (b). As in, you are paid to emit high-sounding centrist bullshit, and you’d fucking well better remember upon which side your bread is buttered. We don’t need no steenkin’ facts here at Pravda…er, the Kaplan Daily.
Not that Richard Cohen has gotten any journalistic dirt under his well-manicured fingernails in the past three decades or so.
Nina
I say the source is McCain. He saw Romney’s tax returns and picked Sarah Palin as the better candidate. He won’t make an open break with the Republican Party, but he’s perfectly willing to ratfuck the current nominee because McCain knows how to hold grudges.
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
AFAIK (and IANAL) it’s only spoilation if the evidence is actually destroyed; otherwise it’s only failure to produce. And adverse inference is only one of the possible sanctions, and one judges are sometimes reluctant to impose because it can so easily be dispositive if the evidence is important. That said, it’s clearly a reasonable approach to take in response to Mitt’s tax returns, both because it’s a generally sound position and because Mitt and his surrogates have stated outright that he’s stonewalling because he thinks Obama will use the tax returns against him.
Gin & Tonic
@Nina: Ideas, intrigued, newsletter, &c
Lee
OT but news:
Fire at a mosque in Wisconsin
Yutsano
@MikeJ: What did one of my ancestral countrypeople accomplish??
EconWatcher
@Nina:
Interesting theory. But does McCain have reason for any particular grudge against the Mittster (I mean, beyond the fact that all other Republican candidates apparently loathed Romney, both in 2008 and in this cycle)?
chopper
this is some goldman-level bullshit here. way to go, mittens, you’re really associating yourself with the type of moneymaking bullshit people in this country truly respect.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@mechwarrior online:
The Mormon ‘Garments’ are said to be inscribed with symbols that Joseph Smith cribbed from the Masonry of his era.
Prophet Smith was a Mormon early in his life… He seems to have (ahem) “adapted” many aspects of Masonry as he created his new religion.
Maude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I was waiting for you to do this. Good on you.
Bizono
@General Stuck: Mitt lying about not being at the reigns of Bain Capital between 1999 and 2001 won’t move the needle (my comments were referring to this), regardless of how close we get to election day.
But yes, his refusal to release his tax returns will lose him a significant number of votes, something that he cannot afford given the electoral math and Mitt’s very narrow chances.
It’s shocking to me that the GOP establishment allowed this to happen. Perhaps that is why we see so many of them openly criticizing Mitt lately?
El Cid
@Nina: Also, Mitt Romney is a HUUUUUUUUGE fucking prick, and everyone who he’s around hates him. This was a theme which was constant in the various nomination fights in 2004 & 2008. He’s no champion of the maniacal ego-monster like Gingrich is, but he is a much better cold, alienated sociopath.
TheOtherWA
@Litlebritdifrnt: The bastards take care of their own, don’t they?
shortstop
@EconWatcher: Other than the fact that McCain hates everyone except Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham? Dude is the Grudgemaster.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: At the half, US 0 Canada 1. My comment was when they scored.
mechwarrior online
@shortstop:
Nah, that’s BS.
In 2008, Huckster, Ron Paul, 9/11 9/11 9/11, McCain, Thompson, all hated Romney’s guts. You could see it when they talked to him.
Which is why he can’t win, his own party hates him.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Duh.
lonesomerobot
@Roger Moore: Mitt’s policies will be what the Mormon Church, Chamber of Commerce and NRA tell him are his policies.
Litlebritdifrnt
@TheOtherWA: The thing is no one knew it was happening, it was all going on behind the scenes. So when the Hospital Authority eventually bought the building for something like 2.5 million (the original investor got it for something like 250K) an enterprising reporter from the local paper went to the Register of Deeds office and found all of the records, there was a huge stink when he published his report showing, if I recall, that it changed hands twice in one day on one occasion the general public could see what a huge damn fraud the entire thing had been and mores the point who was getting rich off it.
Mark S.
Aside from that troll (UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH) we used to have, I don’t know anyone who genuinely likes Romney. It’s kind of bizarre.
shortstop
@mechwarrior online: What’s BS? McCain can’t hate lots of people because everyone hates Romney? The two situations are hardly mutually exclusive.
I have no idea who the source is (and don’t really care); I was responding to Econ’s wondering if McCain has something against Romney. McCain does in fact hate Romney and pretty much everyone who’s ever run against him, as well as two-thirds of Congress, including his own caucus.
gogol's wife
@Mark S.:
He didn’t like him either. Did you ever see him say anything about Romney’s personal qualities or professional qualifications? I didn’t.
Roger Moore
@lonesomerobot:
No, no. Those will be the US Government’s policies while Mitt is President, but they’ll only be his policies if they turn out well. Otherwise they’ll be somebody else’s policies that just happened to take place under Mitt’s watch. It’s the same way that
RomneycareMasscare isn’t really Mitt’s policy even though it was implemented while he was governor of Massachusetts. It isn’t popular with the Republican base, so it’s somebody else’s policy retroactively.Litlebritdifrnt
@Maude:
Thanks it was so frustrating not being able to respond earlier because I couldn’t find the damn link.
shortstop
@Litlebritdifrnt: I reposted it in that thread with a demand that he kiss your ass. ;)
Litlebritdifrnt
@shortstop:
Thanks. Doubt he will though :)
El Cid
O/T, but intensely bad-ass: Mars Orbiter captured a photo of the Curiosity rover on the way down with its supersonic parachute deployed.
scav
@Litlebritdifrnt: Count your blessings. You don’t (or don’t want to) know where his lips have been.
different-church-lady
@Hill Dweller:
When I renegotiate my contract with Cole, I’m going to get paid by the FTFY.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT but Olbermann tweeted something interesting today, he is reading the book The Last Gunfight (about the gunfight at the OK corral) and he said “they had more gun control in Tombstone than we do today”. My boss happens to be reading the same book and his response to that was “exactly”. How fucked up is that? They had more gun control in the wild fucking west!
lonesomerobot
@Roger Moore: You’re ready for your executive level position at Bain with that kind of mastery of the retroactive undo.
lonesomerobot
@lonesomerobot: or rather the retroactive never did.
trollhattan
@Mark S.:
He’s lucky enough to remain
whitenot Obama, which is qualification enuf. But you’re right, I simply don’t read much less encounter, “He’s dreamy” comments re. Willard. Not even any 737 landing strip observations.Honeymoon ovah before it even began.
Also, too, I felt candidate Governor GWB was a complete hump at the time, so my predicteratin’ isn’t always reliable.
Roger Moore
@lonesomerobot:
You forgot to use the edit feature to make that correction retroactively.
MikeJ
Holy moley! Hat trick!
If you aren’t watching the women’s football game you’re cheating yourself.
eemom
@General Stuck:
Maybe someone has mentioned this already, but it ain’t just the WaPo. Even the impeccably esteemed Ta-Nehisi Coates has gone all finger-waggy concern troll on Harry Reid.
Fuck. That. Shit.
El Cid
I think the more important point about Bain not being under Romney’s control when it did bad / Bain under Romney’s control when he wishes to say it was is not that the media or thug crew will suddenly hate Romney for lying or for hypocrisy, it’s that it makes it a lot more difficult for him to state in a debate that he had a lot of business acumen thus can run the nation without having it thrown at him that he never actually seems to have been running it when he says he was.
So, when did he learn all these awesome business principles? He says he did, but when? During any specific time period, he both did and didn’t run Bain, and was and was not responsible.
It is the Romney Wave-Sociopathical duality: only that bit of information emitted by the Romneytrino is true at that moment; any attempt to detect simultaneously present information will be blocked by colonic entanglement.
samson141
This should be Rmoney’s theme song:
http://www.pandora.com/#/will-kimbrough/americanitis/i-lie
El Cid
@eemom: As long as Reid and others don’t yield to such whineymongering, it’s even better.
Because Republican Theories of Reality are dependent upon Democrats not doing anything which seems like the tough sorts of politics they think only they’re permitted to do.
“Chicago Style Politics” is a charge Republicans make because they don’t actually believe Democrats will engage in “Chicago Style Politics”.
samson141
This should be Rmoney’s theme song:
http://www.pandora.com/#/will-kimbrough/americanitis/i-lie
eemom
@El Cid:
I gotta say it absolutely boggles my fucking mind that any ACTUAL liberal, as opposed to a Jon Stewart, has got their panties in a wad that a Democratic leader has grown a pair of balls for once. I mean it INFURIATES me to no end.
burnspbesq
Extra time at Old Trafford.
Turgidson
@eemom:
Lame. Anyone trying to call Reid out for slimy tactics should read Booman’s post on the topic.
As soon as a high-ranking duly elected Republican officeholder gets accused of some combination of things like this, by prominent media personalities and/or actual elected officials:
-not being born in America
-having a secret plan to confiscate all guns
-having a “Kenyan anti-colonial agenda”
-hating America
-having his loving wife referred to as a baby-momma
-having the acts and beliefs of 60s radicals be attributed to him despite his not even being 10 years old yet at the time of the bad acts
-wanting to create a socialist utopia
-hating “success”
-apologizing for America
-being too stupid to speak without a teleprompter
-secretly being a Muslim
AND/OR
-running a drug ring out of the white house
-murdering Vince Foster
-being impeached for lying about an indiscretion in his personal life
-see, generally, “black helicopters”
(and other whoppers I’m omitting)
…they can claim with some amount of credibility to be the victim of sleazy politics.
So, yeah, Harry Reid making presently-unverified but entirely believable accusations about the amount of taxes Mittens paid…yawn. As Cole tweeted last week, many of the same people getting the vapors over this had a straight face eight years ago when they were accusing a true-blue war hero of shooting himself in some sinister plot to get undeserved purple hearts.
It’d be great if we lived in a world where these campaigns were free of ad hominem and personal taunts, and revolved around an informative debate about policy and issues. Then Reid’s gambit might deserve scorn. But when one side can say whatever. the fuck. they want. about their opposition and never be called on it, well, I can’t be convinced to care if someone on “my side” beats them at their own game once in a while.
Joel
@eemom: To be fair, Coates is having it taken to him in the comments.
Politics ain’t bean bag.
Seanly
@El Cid:
That is chock full o’ win.
WaterGirl
@eemom: I was disappointed to see Steve Benen do the same thing in one of his posts today, too.
Usually when I say “what the hell is wrong with these people”, I am not talking about people on our team!
burnspbesq
High drama!
eemom
@Turgidson:
Excellent. That post should be front-paged.
Turgidson
@WaterGirl:
Benen too – though he’s at least keeping his eye on the bigger picture when he tsk tsks Reid. He’s saying a somewhat more defensible thing, which is “look, I think Reid’s being a slimeball, but let’s not forget how big an issue Romney’s tax shenanigans are.”
which is still much too mealy-mouthed for my tastes, but at least still has its eye on the ball.
WaterGirl
@Turgidson: Agreed.
I think Benen has maybe lost some of his edge since going to Maddowblog.
Shawn in ShowMe
@WaterGirl:
History shows us that the people who defend the system are part of the problem, political sympathies be damned. If the revolution happened tomorrow, the new Jacobins would have to line up Coates, Benen and Jon Stewart against the wall with the rest of the traitors. Sorry guys, nothing personal.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Turgidson:
Perpetuating the “both sides do it” meme is never defensible.
Turgidson
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Agreed, though Benen almost never does it, and is only somewhat doing it here.
He’s not drawing a simple false equivalence and walking away patting himself on the back for being so fair and nonpartisan like most of the sockpuppets in the media do. He is pointing out that he’s not comfortable with Reid’s gambit, which I think is silly given that top Democrats get accused of much uglier things, with no evidence, every single fucking day, usually with no pushback. But I wouldn’t say he’s perpetuating the false equivalence narrative exactly.
TenguPhule
Its Romney’s Dog Paradox.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@burnspbesq: The Mormons forbid gambling, but they’re not prohibited by doctrine from working in Nevada’s casinos. So that pretty well fucks that argument up, no? If they can deal blackjack for a paycheck and tips, they can take Sheldon Adelson’s money, no?
WaterGirl
@Shawn in ShowMe: I have high hopes (well, maybe not all that high) that Benen and Coates will come to their senses before then. Steward, not so much.
Edit: I want to see Coates on Up with Chris Hayes, once the olympics are done, and I want to see Chris Hayes challenge Coates on that position. I’ll be watching and hoping. I really miss Chris Hayes.
schrodinger's cat
@eemom: I am not surprised, he is Mr Goody-two-shoes, plus he is an up and coming Villager.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Evolving Deep Southerner: God damn it. Just a few innocent words about games of chance.
schrodinger's cat
@Shawn in ShowMe: Jon Stewart wants to be cool more than anything else. I lost all respect for him, when I realized that he sucks up to Republican Grandees when they are guests on his show, see his interviews with Grover Norquist and Rumsfeld and Yoo, lobs them soft balls and is insulting if Nancy Pelosi or Obama show up.
geg6
@eemom:
Read the fucking comments over there. It is enough to make you puke. I swear I’m not going there ever again until he writes something about the Civil War. The commentariat over there is too stupid to live and so convinced of their mental and moral superiority Third Way brilliance, they are the poster children for pretentious douches. Never again will I venture into that particular swamp.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I read a ton of comments on that post earlier, and it seemed like 50% of the folks were disagreeing with Coates.
shortstop
@WaterGirl: Benen’s losing his edge is what GOT him the gig at Maddowblog. He started writing for the sole purpose of getting a MSM job. It worked.
Lord Jesus Perm
@WaterGirl: It is/was. Not sure what thread geg6 was reading.
slightly_peeved
I wonder if it will get to the point where everyone but Romney just assumes he was bullshitting when he said he wasn’t at Brain after 1999. Because it would be very interesting if some people pointed out that, according to renowned fact checker Glenn Kessler, Romney committed a felony by lying to the FEC.
WaterGirl
@shortstop: I guess I didn’t pick up on that at the time. Can you say more?
WaterGirl
@geg6: How are you all doing after the Otis scare? I read about it a day later. I already knew Otis was okay by the time I read your original comment, and it was still scary. I had to stop and take a breath before I finished reading.
My dog fell down a ravine once. She was okay, but it was a long time before I could walk in that park and not fear she was going to go over the edge. I used to walk her in that park without a leash, but never again did I walk her there without a leash. I just couldn’t shake the “we almost lost her’ experience with the ravine.
amk
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
massholes already fucked up twice by electing mittbot and gifting away ted kennedy’s seat to that poster boy. will they become a three-time loser?