progressive politics and regressive entertainment. like peanut and butter.
November 24, 2012 Leave a comment
The November 19th issue of The New Yorker contains an interesting “Talk of the Town” piece entitled “Seeing Spots,” which is about Priorities USA ads such as “Stage.” You may remember “Stage.” It’s the ad about workers whose lives were severely damaged by the unethical practices of Mitt Romney’s private-equity firm Bain Capital.
July 16, 2012 2 Comments
Mitt Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” the GOP candidate “retroactively” retired from Bain Capital after the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics began.
Mr. Romney retired retroactively,
Cleaning up his CV quite attractively.
GOP: “You can do that? Who knew?
Brilliant move! Can we vote that way, too?”
July 13, 2012 4 Comments
I think it’s smart of Mitt Romney to demand that Barack Obama apologize for Romney’s lies about when Romney left Bain Capital. It’s straight from the Karl Rove playbook of accusing your opponent of your own crimes. For example, George W. Bush ran away from serving in the Vietnam war, so he accused the war hero John Kerry of being unpatriotic. So long as the media doesn’t do its job investigating and reporting on the facts, the truth gets obscured in the minds of those who don’t follow politics closely.
Romney’s current problems concerning his lies about when he worked at Bain Capital don’t reside in the lies themselves, but with the possibility that the media might actually report these lies. Rachel Maddow certainly engages in actual reporting, including a conversation with Shannon O’Brien, who lost the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race to Mitt Romney in part because Romney denied any association with Bain’s unethical activity after February 1999. Despite being paid, you know, $100,000 per year by the company. Nice work if you can get it…
July 12, 2012 Leave a comment
Earlier tonight Rachel Maddow spoke with Boston Globe DC bureau chief Christopher Rowland about Mitt Romney’s attempt to claim he wasn’t working at Bain Capital when he was still their CEO and sole stockholder. The fact that Mitt Romney lies without qualm is no longer news, but this is an important issue because for years he has been trying to run away from Bain’s record of destroying jobs. I would like to point out that there actually is some consistency when it comes to Romney. He seems to have a spine when it comes to the moneyed elite. That’s his prime constituency, then and now. Romney is as insufferable as his “Is there a VIP entrance?” supporters, and I would bet that he doesn’t care about his lying as he simply doesn’t believe that people such as himself should follow the rules. Only I’m not a wealthy man, so my bet would have to be $10, not $10,000.
Note that many of Romney’s SEC filings contradicting his public statements were originally unearthed by David Corn at Mother Jones and Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.
March 19, 2012 5 Comments
In the March 19th New Yorker, Louis Menand takes a look at Mitt Romney’s business background. Romney, of course, makes much of the fact that his ability to acquire more money than other people makes him more fit to be President. There’s a certain kind of logic to it, that having more money and power means that one should have more money and power. Call it the Doctrine of the .01%.
Mitt Romney - The King of Bain (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)
January 15, 2012 1 Comment
Talking Points Memo put together a video mash-up of Mitt Romney’s dwindling job creation claims, which began at over one hundred thousand, became tens of thousands, and now stands at thousands. Meaning that the truth is…?
