Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Romney has locked up the W vote. In what the daily caller calls the least enthusiastic endorsement of all time:

Bush said, verbatim, “I’m for Mitt Romney,” as elevator doors closed on him.

That endorsement will play well in the Maldives.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Yes. Yes we will.

These guys aren't capitalists, Fresh, they're just predators. They don't make anything anybody wants. They just gamble with other people's lives. They're scum.

Awesome.

Bain's initial investment was $30 million. It cashed out $342 million—more than 1,000 percent of what it originally paid, yet the company still went bankrupt and nearly 1,000 Florida workers lost their jobs.

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Always amused by when the righties start calling for fairness in political adverstising. Didn't Mittens repeat the Sarah Palin line that ratifying the new SALT treaty (you know, the stuff that Reagan supported all the time) would leave the US unable to defend itself in case of a nuclear attack?

Bain capital ads will be devastating. They already were when he ran for Senate, and job anxiety is a lot worse now in most of the country than it was in Massachusetts in 1994. Unless you are a fat cat Republican, nobody likes an outsourcer. I am in no way blaming Romney for his actions back then as his job was to make money for his investors. However, good luck to him explaining to people who got laid off that they're better off now that those jobs are sitting in China. Lets hope that exchange comes complete with videotape!

Yup, simply devastating.

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Yes, all those minimum wage retail jobs are capitalism at its best. He can put that in his campaign ads as a response! I can see it now, a smiling Mittens surrounded by uniformed Staples workers saying how happy they are to be working for 7 bucks an hour part time with no benefits....

As opposed to collecting unemployment benefits?

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Awesome.

The ladies of the chorale are in fine voice today. Who's got the pitchpipe?

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

The ladies of the chorale are in fine voice today. Who's got the pitchpipe?

Just wanted to thank you for reminding me again and again how hopeless everything really is.

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Just wanted to thank you for reminding me again and again how hopeless everything really is.

I get the same feeling every time you cough up a hairball.

[walrus]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

No wonder Obama is paying attention to JP Morgan,
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/o...213119081.html

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

And in the "best state in the union," the fun continues. It gets worse everyday for Fauxcahontas. Now the Boston Globe, her ardent supporter, has to admit that she's (wait for it) NOT AN INDIAN IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. And that they relied on phoney or non existant documents when they rushed into print defending her. 'Course this admission came buried on the corrections page, where none but the most sharp eyed types would notice. Oh well, maybe I can find a good recipe for corn pudding in my dog eared copy of "Pow Wow Chow."

http://freebeacon.com/warren-not-a-native-american/

[Kepler]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

No wonder Obama is paying attention to JP Morgan,
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/o...213119081.html

Considering all his financial people are from JPM, I'm shocked.

This is not the Socialist I was looking for.

[joecct]

I wonder when we'll see The Mittster and W campaigning together. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with that?

Ask the Mayans.

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

These guys aren't capitalists, Fresh, they're just predators. They don't make anything anybody wants. They just gamble with other people's lives. They're scum.

Funny thing to say, coming from someone who defends evolution by natural selection against creationsim elsewhere...and I thought you knew something about statistics as well!

When people support positions I support yet use dopey reasons I challenge them, because I don't want their nonsense to pollute the receptivity others might have for "my" positions if they hear the "dopey" reasons first and close their minds, so that their minds become inaccessible to better reasoning afterward.


Pretend for a minute you are running a cancer treatment center. People who already have cancer in the first place are the only ones who come to you. Some of them die. Shall we excoriate you for the heartless way you take people's money to provide treatment, yet the treatment failed? or do we look at the additional longevity you provide these people, even though they did die, do we look at the palliative care you provided, do we look at those people who did respond to treatment and now have cancer in remission? how would you evaluate a cancer treatment center anyway?

Private equity isn't much different. Private equity firms select companies that are already in trouble, and try to turn them around. If the company wasn't in trouble to begin with, they wouldn't be in play. Some of these companies fail anyway; yet many of them either remain in business longer than they otherwise would have, or they completely succeed. The ones that remain in business longer than they would have otherwise, generally provide a transition period for the employees to find work elsewhere that they would not have had otherwise.

Statistically, then, the "deck is stacked" against the private equity firm....they do not start with any old regular company, they start with troubled companies, and no one is 100% successful all the time. A steel company failed? how shocking....a textile firm failed....really? name one US-based textile firm that survived. It's easy to cherry-pick the extreme outliers and pile on. How about a balanced assessment across the entire portfolio? Sorry, it doesn't fit our political agenda, and so we'll merely take the most egregious failure and pretend that it's representative, while the other side will take the most spectacular success and pretend that it is representative, and we'll merely reinforce our existing beliefs and learn nothing useful whatsoever when it comes to policy prescriptions.





It's not only the companies that are "turned around" by private equity that save or create jobs, it also is all the additional incremental jobs in the supply chain and the shipping companies as well. Staples alone created hundreds of thousands of incremental extra jobs, yet we won't hear much about that.


So, sorry, your judgment that these people are scum carries about as much weight as it would if you were ranting about all the cancer deaths that occur at a cancer treatment center. You can be morally outraged over superficial, deliberately slanted statistics while knowing little about the overall picture.

[Rover]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Private equity isn't much different. Private equity firms select companies that are already in trouble, and try to turn them around. If the company wasn't in trouble to begin with, they wouldn't be in play. Some of these companies fail anyway; yet many of them either remain in business longer than they otherwise would have, or they completely succeed. The ones that remain in business longer than they would have otherwise, generally provide a transition period for the employees to find work elsewhere that they would not have had otherwise.

Statistically, then, the "deck is stacked" against the private equity firm....they do not start with any old regular company, they start with troubled companies, and no one is 100% successful all the time. A steel company failed? how shocking....a textile firm failed....really? name one US-based textile firm that survived. It's easy to cherry-pick the extreme outliers and pile on. How about a balanced assessment across the entire portfolio? Sorry, it doesn't fit our political agenda, and so we'll merely take the most egregious failure and pretend that it's representative, while the other side will take the most spectacular success and pretend that it is representative, and we'll merely reinforce our existing beliefs and learn nothing useful whatsoever when it comes to policy prescriptions.





It's not only the companies that are "turned around" by private equity that save or create jobs, it also is all the additional incremental jobs in the supply chain and the shipping companies as well. Staples alone created hundreds of thousands of incremental extra jobs, yet we won't hear much about that.


So, sorry, your judgment that these people are scum carries about as much weight as it would if you were ranting about all the cancer deaths that occur at a cancer treatment center. You can be morally outraged over superficial, deliberately slanted statistics while knowing little about the overall picture.

This is fine in la-la land. The problem which the Obama campaign is going to drive home often is that its not simply a choice between saving a company going under by cutting some jobs to save the rest of them. The issue is do you make 20M dollars by sending the jobs to China vs 10M by keeping the jobs in the US. Mitt Romney as head of Bain capital would choose the 20M, because that maximizes the return to his shareholders. Great, but is he going to campaign in Ohio on that? Best of luck. The bottom line is, there is no good response. The qualities that made Romney a fine CEO of a private equity company would make him a terrible President. Simply put, and this is a point far too many a conservative doesn't understand, but outsourcing US jobs to China does not benefit the US economy.

PS - As far as textiles go, Joseph Abboud makes their mens suits and pants out of a factory in New Bedford, MA. Company is doing well and the quality is top notch. Check it out and as always, buy American whenever you get the chance.

[geezer]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

PS - As far as textiles go, Joseph Abboud makes their mens suits and pants out of a factory in New Bedford, MA. Company is doing well and the quality is top notch. Check it out and as always, buy American whenever you get the chance.

No thanks. He sounds Muslin.

[Bob Gray]

Re: Elections 2012: You must choose the lesser of two weevils

Funny thing to say, coming from someone who defends evolution by natural selection against creationsim elsewhere...and I thought you knew something about statistics as well!

I always thought that was a funny inconsistency with some folks. They swear by natural selection/evolution in one area, saying nothing else could be on the table, but in other places they rail against anything looking remotely like natural selection.