the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

no it's a sign we're all fucked, and some grayhaired Obama stan doesn't know what radicalism is.

also that is your biggest foreheadclap post of all time, Mordy

u don't want to become so principled that u start spelling your name in lowercase and join the confederation of states

you guys are doing it wrong

aw c'mon guys President Romney picking a 40 year old version of Scalia to replace Ginsberg would not matter one whit

i just think it's silly. obv it's true that a more fully republican stacked supreme court would be worse for more people in the united states than the current makeup. like self-evidently true i don't even know why you'd need a breakoff OWS group to learn that, and i don't know why once you've learnt that self-evident fact you'd instead complain that the OWS'ers aren't radical enough. u could say that it's true but it's doesn't matter bc x,y,z collapse of civilization anarchy revelation of real in moment of violent resistance etc. of course all those things would make things worse for more people too.

I think where I differ the most from Morbs is that if Romney wins, liberals aren't going to get heard by anybody but other liberals for the foreseeable future, whether they march or not. It didn't matter in '68 and it will matter less so now. If Obama is a hypocrite for talking about change and progress and not delivering, a Romney victory will mean that change isn't coming, no-one cares and the press (and hence, the national ethos) will react accordingly.

aw c'mon guys President Romney picking a 40 year old version of Scalia to replace Ginsberg would not matter one whit

― it's smdh time in America (will), Tuesday, July 17, 2012 10:20 AM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how much is a 'whit'

supreme court appointments was the only reason i voted for gore over nader in 2000 ;_;

goodbye, youthful optimism

I'm not talking about repeating '68. I'm talking about things that will never happen, I gave up in 1984, why the fuck am I on these threads, etc.

because you are a nihilistic political evangelist

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1eaqmEbj2tU/TwSwVuq1CuI/AAAAAAAAAUI/13UwEV_0AYs/s1600/1984.gif

bc you're bored on a tuesday?

when will this Obama-appointed Freedom Court overturn the USA PATRIOT Act and indefinite detention btw?

oh u didn't hear? they did that yesterday

nihilistic political evangelist

"Have you heard the meaningless news?"

The Mehspel...

because you cant understand how two things could be different even tho you dislike them both

they are slightly different, just not worth picking btwn in the long run

sure tell it to all the people killed and maimed in iraq

or in Pakistan?

yeah, i'm not that bored to get back into this argument

its morbs central credo, if youre not going to engage w/it then just ignore him

Morbz no like math

In more mundane inside the beltway patter we get this today from the W. Post's Dana Milbank:

A better strategy would be for Romney to get back in the time machine and eliminate the phrase “retired retroactively” from the record. While in the past, he might also pause long enough to take his dog Seamus off the car roof.

isn't Seamus one of the Romney kids

Romney is the sort of guy who'd name a kid Seamus

"If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?" - Al Gore, 2006

2006 was a year when Democrats were still willing to ask that question.

isnt that the guy who was no different than george bush

there are good men and women in prison, there are young men and women clearing landmines in the desert, there are kids trying to eat, and then, there is dana milbank

nice dodge, icey

There are good men and women who want to tie a stick of dynamite around Dana Milbank's neck.

Wait wait did Mitt Romney name the family dog after the Pink Floyd song about a dog? Because the implications of that are v.v. important.

Comfortably Rom

Romney is the sort of guy who'd name a kid Seamus

Wait, he's Irish?

nice knowing you guys

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/17/bernanke-fed-not-planning-further-action/

Economic data coming out is still all over the chart

"Maremont explains that when Bain bought a company, it wouldn’t just create debt and equity. Instead, there would be debt, equity, which was known as A shares, and then a kind of preferred equity called L shares. As far as the debt holders were concerned, the A and L shares together were the equity holders. And anybody with equity in the company received the same ratio of A shares to L shares. But A shares were much riskier, and had much more upside than L shares: holders of equity in Sealy, for instance, got a total gain of roughly 4X, where the L shares doubled in value and and A shares wound up worth 34 times what they were originally valued at."

If I summon all my powers of concentration, I can sort of follow that. But unseemly investments are much more concrete.

Was that addressing the issue of the $100 million dollar IRA? The Vanity Fair article brought the subject of the A and L shares up because they were questioning what value was assigned to the A shares and whether they were totally lowballed. Romney's tax returns would provide that information.

my understanding is and granted this is layers of speculation deep is as far as mitt ira what couldve happened is he forms a new company which is basically worth nothing at that point, puts some of the shares into his ira valuing them at less than $5k, then goes out and raises money for the company to invest mostly form other companies hes involved with too lol and suddenly the company that was just worth zero is worth $20m or w/e, then the company does its job and invests that money and makes more money and so on and so forth while those shares sit in mitts ira tax free

No, these were from companies that Bain purchased. The question is whether they valued the risky shares using questionable methods.

yeah but those are not likely the shares that are in his ira is what you were asking

The long quote came from this piece:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/16/did-romney-put-bain-capital-shares-in-his-ira/

Just making the general point that that stuff is hard to follow for laymen like myself--or at least, hard to have the necessary patience to stick with it till it does start to make sense. On the other hand, that was the initial feeling about Watergate, too.

No, I wasn't asking that. The VF article calls it a "likely explanation" and proposes two questionable ways that the shares could have been valued so low:

One is to use standard options models to price the shares—then feed inappropriate assumptions into those models. Romney could alternatively have used a model called liquidation valuation, which Kleinbard says would have been “completely inappropriate.”

or he couldve just put them in there before the company was worth anything

Veto power over campaign staff quotes.... Bam's idol Reagan would be proud! Yesterday's NYT:

The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.

They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name....

The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article....

Reporters who have covered the Obama presidency say the quote-approval process fits a pattern by this White House of finding new ways to limit its exposure in the news media. . . . Under President Obama, the insistence on blanket anonymity has grown to new levels.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/17/inept_stenographers/

Presumably, the companies they acquired were worth something. The point is that they assigned values to the risky shares and we don't know whether they did so appropriately.

lol @ comparing current media landscape to Reagan era well done old man

xp

yeah we dont really know anything xp

but that's exactly what Reagan's WH did, Shakes.

but BUT under the scenario i was talking abt where romney put worthless shares in his ira they were worthless because it was before that company acquired any other companies or raised any money