Originally Posted By ecdc So today the Romney campaign was asked who ran Bain from 1999 to 2002? They couldn't say. I mean, maybe they're just incompetent and don't know, but wouldn't you think they'd have that exact information ready to go, given the attacks of the last week? Instead, the response was, "Check with Bain, but it wasn't Mitt Romney."
Originally Posted By ecdc Conservatives sure suddenly seem to love the Washington Post. Remember, the Post a few days ago rated the Obama campaign's ads saying Romney ran Bain after 1999 were false. What they are ignoring is the context (shock!). The columnist for the Post's factchecker blog issued a follow-up where he clarified that he was only rating the attack ads. He stated he holds attack ads to a high standard and the evidence just isn't there to support the claim that Romney was heavily involved in Bain after 1999. I would agree - the attack ads overreached, as did the Obama aide who stated Romney may have broken the law. The columnist, however, is not arguing that Romney had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it or that absolutely no questions remain. Quite the contrary, the point has been all along that Romney is not remotely transparent about any of this. He's in etch-a-sketch mode. More evidence may emerge linking Romney to Bain. More may not, but we'll never know what was going on because Romney just won't say beyond "I wasn't running the company." Then why were you signing documents for it?
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Apparently Romney even outsourced his own job -- running Bain Capital, after 1999. Good thing corporations are people, my friend. Because they can run themselves.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>Meanwhile, what's Romney proposing?<< More of the same policies that have served to destroy the middle class. Which is why I won't vote for him.
Originally Posted By ecdc In one of those strange, coincidental ironies of politics, the release of "The Dark Knight Rises" will almost certainly give the Bain story more legs. There's already mockup posters and YouTube videos of Mitt Romney with Bane's mask on. The jokes over "Bane Capital" will only swell.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Don't have any links, but the new GOP tactic is to tell Obama to "be more American" and "not act so foreign". John Sununu, who looked like a cow in a suit, led the charge telling Obama to be an American, while Romney himself led the "foreign" attack. The obvious point is to imply he's Kenyan, socialist, blah blah blah. I hope a large vat of vomit gets dumped on these people. Truly. It's as disgusting as they are.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Here: <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/" target="_blank">http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/</a> I dare somebody to say Sununu doesn't remind you of a mooing Hereford. The Romney piece is further down the link. Some Jindal nonsense is also in there.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Then there's this gem: McCain says Palin was a better VP candidate than Romney and Pawlenty in 2008. Oy vey. <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/17/mccain-palin-was-better-vp-choice-than-romney-in-2008/" target="_blank">http://politicalticker.blogs.c...in-2008/</a>
Originally Posted By dshyates I bet money that both Mitt and Tim can name at least one newspaper. They win.
Originally Posted By ecdc Like only he and the scalpel-wielding writers of the Daily Show can, Jon Stewart pinpoints the problem many of us have with Mitt Romney and his tax returns. "Nobody cares that Mitt Romney is rich. It's Romney's inability to understand the institutional advantage that he gains from the government's tax code largesse that's a little offensive to people, especially considering Romney's view on anyone else who looks to the government for things like...I don't know...food and medicine."
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Sumoomoo has apologized, sort of. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/17/romney-surrogate-says-obama-should-learn-how-to-be-american-draws-rebuke/" target="_blank">http://www.foxnews.com/politic...-rebuke/</a>
Originally Posted By Vic Sage "John Sununu, who looked like a cow in a suit" "I dare somebody to say Sununu doesn't remind you of a mooing Hereford." Don't these kind of statements violate community standards? Why are they allowed?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Sumoomoo has apologized, sort of. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politic...-rebuke/>" target="_blank">http://www.foxnews.com/politic...uke/></a> Instructive to look at that article, as the second paragraph states: "John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor, made the comment in response to President Obama saying Friday that businesses owe their success to others, and largely to the government." That is, of course, not what Obama said. But foxnews states it as fact.
Originally Posted By andyll Here's a pretty good opinion piece speculating on what Romney might be hiding in his tax returns. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/18/opinion/kleinbard-canellos-romney-tax/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/18/...t=hp_bn7</a>
Originally Posted By Dabob2 From the link: "Second, Romney's $100 million IRA is remarkable in its size. Even under the most generous assumptions, Romney would have been restricted to annual contributions of $30,000 while he worked at Bain. How does this grow to $100 million?" I actually never thought of this before. I heard Romney had an IRA worth $100M, and I just thought "Well, he's mega-rich." I didn't think about the fact that there are annual restrictions about how much you can put into an IRA. They started at about $2,000 IIRC when IRA's were invented, and are now up to something like $6,500. I'm not sure where the authors got the 30k figure (Mitt plus Ann plus ???), but even given that figure, it IS extraordinary that it could have grown to 100 million freaking dollars. They go on: "One possibility is that a truly mighty oak sprang up virtually overnight from relatively tiny annual acorns because of the unprecedented prescience of every one of Romney's investment choices. Another, which on its face is quite plausible, is that Romney stuffed far more into his retirement plans each year than the maximum allowed by law by claiming that the stock of the Bain company deals that the retirement plan acquired had only a nominal value. He presumably would have done so by relying on a special IRS "safe harbor" rule relating to the taxation of a service partner's receipt of such interests, but that rule emphatically does not apply to an interest when sold to a retirement plan, which is supposed to be measured by its true fair market value." So, in other words, he could be at best skirting the law by undervaluing his own stock to the IRS. Or perhaps he plain old broke the law but just hasn't been caught. There's much more in the link (thanks, andyll). Suddenly, Mitt's refusal to release his records looks less like political tone-deafness and more like self-preservation.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan He's got a butler named Ira, who is worth $100 million. He has a gardener named Vince, however, who ain't worth a damn.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Put another way: Lots and lots of people have been contributing to their IRA's since the 80's. Some have even been contributing the maximum amount every year. I highly doubt any of those people now has an IRA worth 100 million dollars. Seriously - how does that happen? Mitt is just an individual US citizen, subject to the same annual maximum contribution as anybody else... wasn't he?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Put yet another way: I remember when IRA's came out. They were sold with the idea that if you contributed the max, and the stock market did well, you might even end up with a million dollars at retirement. Of course, a lot of things would have to go well, particularly avoiding any major market downturns, but we were told that could happen. So how does Mitt's IRA do better than even that optimistic projection? By a hundred-fold?
Originally Posted By Vic Sage "DFTSP" Do you think my ignoring my questions you can continue to live in your illusion that Democrats are good and right and Republicans wrong and evil? Do you think you can continue to ignore bad behavior on the part of the Democrats and exaggerate and even lie about the behavior of the Republicans? What will you do when your illusion collides with reality?
