Presidential Politics

I've been watching on TV (admittedly just this show) a bit about superPACS and they're going to have an even bigger impact in smaller fry senate and congressional elections. In an election race where little is known about either candidate, a multi-million dollar smear campaign a few days out from election day will just obliterate the opponent. Apparently the American Bankers Association has put together their own superPAC (the "friends of bankers" superPAC), not to endorse any candidate, but to go after "opponents"...

Factoid: The the top-five republican SuperPACs have raised over $94 million in the primaries, and over half of that figure was from just 7 people. Welcome to the all-new US plutocracy.

(And poor old Elizabeth Warren must be regretting her college days at the moment)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2012 06:03PM by Tony Leggett.

DPBD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST2K4U_XQ5Y

Um, novel ad there, Jeff Barth...

Nah, So far my favorite... um... Lame Ad is

Joe "The Plumber"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiRNsDLsAlg

So... Taxes pay for Parks and stuff? Really? Hrm... That's odd, that's not what your Tea Party told me.

Morg "Taxes should be used to punish slackers and women who want to have sex without procreation, duh!" anti

Yeah, I saw that, and it's an odd thing to have a TPer admit!

Not getting why the Democrats don't just keep the "the money's in your house... and your house..." scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" on auto-repeat across the States,

ddt

Mitt Romney was born in Kenya. Pass it on.

Mitt Romney failed spelling. Pass it on.

ddt

Quote

President Bill Clinton veered sharply off message Thursday, telling CNN that Mitt Romney's business record at Bain Capital was "sterling."

"I don't think that we ought to get into the position where we say 'This is bad work. This is good work,'" Clinton said. "The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."

Clinton also went on to say that Romney's time at Bain Capital represented a "good business career."

http://politi.co/N3tQih

Good for Romney and Bain, for sure.

Bad for many of the people who worked at the companies Bain bought.

For me, Romney epitomizes the valuation of capital over labor. That's why I won't be voting for him.

How about a higher level question... How does Mitt Romney's ability to come into a company, cut a bunch of jobs, streamline or eliminate a bunch of positions, take loans against the companies earnings, etc. make him be able to "create" jobs? I dont see that. Every description I've seen as to what Bain was doing in its WORST or BEST days was "creative destruction". I just don't see that as a reasonable precursor to the Presidency.

Morg "And that's not even mentioning the "skim" that Bain got getting for doing this, whether it works or not..."

Et tu, Bill Clinton?

Quote
Tony Leggett
Et tu, Bill Clinton?

No, but according to this, he may have been et Wed.

It's not that Bain just came in and cut a bunch of jobs. Inevitably, they would buy just the capital and management of the company. Then, they'd create another company to hire the workers back, avoiding honoring labor contracts, and busting unions.

The high level of it is that Bain was and is anti labor and pro capital, which consistently caused the same problems for workers at almost every company they touched despite whether they were able to make more money for the shareholders or not.

Romney was basically a Gordon Gecko, quintessentially epitomising everything wrong with unfettered capitalism.

People like him are why Lehman Bros etc happened.

(and Obama - with all his chummy "ooh! we've reformed wall st!" buddies - is barely any better)

The alternative, the truth, is "We are too ineffective to change Wall Street!" It doesn't play as well on the news.

And nobody wants to take the necessary steps to reform lobbying and campaign financing, which would go a long way to solving that problem.

ddt

Not ineffective, impotent. They are their corporate overlords and paymasters, after all...

I don't know if you've watched the documentary "Inside Job" but there's this bit where Ronny Reagan is addressing Wall St (from that balcony with the bell) just after winning the 1980 election - it may well be his victory speech but at one point one of his corporate sponsors (I think either the head of Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch) tells him to "speed it up", and Reagan then duly complies...

Telling moment.

Haven't seen that movie, Tony, but I did interview Ferguson about his first movie. That dude is serious and intense. Do _not_ try to make a joke in his presence.

In other news: I have to admit I read an article at The Weekly Standard and enjoyed it immensely. Sadly for Mokers and other Dartmouth alums, it's a fab takedown of right-wing-welfare baby Dinesh D'Souza. I wonder what finally was the "now THIS is too far" element in D'Souza's rantings; his sloppiness, inaccuracies, and fatally flawed stabbings at logical structure seem no more pronounced than in his first book.

ddt

Nice work there, ddt.

Matt Damon is the narrator for Inside Job (that's either a bonus or a minus depending on what you think of him). Definitely worth a watch and more informative than Michael Moore's effort on the same topic.

Just learned from Stephen Colbert that the Texas state GOP platform includes a plank opposing the teaching of critical thinking skills. Looking for the next generation of leaders, I guess.

Did anybody else get phone spam message from the NRA today?

You know; WITHIN HOURS of a mass shooting - lobbying for the NRA!

I knew it was phone spam and then heard who the message sponsor was; and then hung up.

But I now I wish I hadn't hung up; because I am curious about their message.

Was the timing coincidental? Or was this really the NRA defending itself after a mass killing?