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

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

I know they did, and I'm not saying I approve, but it's an apples-to-orange comparison. media sources/cycles/outlets are totally different now. I can't remember the last time I bothered to parse an official White House quote, they're largely irrelevant to understanding what's actually going on.

xp

Reagan would die (again) to be able to have the stage-managing capacity as the contemporary Imperial Branch, SMC, and my God are you getting tiresome.

The Inept Stenographers ft. Feist.

I have to admit, combined with Morbs' interest in baseball, I always think of the kid on the Flintstones clubbing things with a giant baseball bat, yelling BAM! BAM! when the anti-Obama jibes start rolling

my God are you getting tiresome

pot:kettle etc

Morbs why do you keep punching yourself in the face

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

2012 is still a year when Democrats are willing to ask that question! Had Gore taken office, he'd have wiretapped to his heart's content and explained how the reality on the ground called for extraordinary measures, etc. Yr gettin' soft if you think Gore wasn't also an evil villain!

no youre getting it ll wrong he lost and grew a beard

Tipper was around for years before that

oh, the way Gore acted whenever he was holding office doesn't guarantee to me an obvious deviation from W's path, to answer the Nader Fallacy's eternal obsessives.

but he could talk a great game from the outside, kinda like a community organizer I remember.

reminds me of someone else, who could it be...

dunno

i wonder what happened in the parallel universe where nader won the election

let's stick to Our Masters, shall we, not messageboard dickholders like you & me. xp

I wonsder what happened to your sister.

he took big donations from the anti-seat belt lobby and outlawed them in all new vehicles xp

heh

yeah all of us who voted Green thought he was gonna win! Eat the peanuts outta my shit.

cool it morbz, i voted for him too!

Dr Civet

but i do kinda wonder wtf a principled, conscientious person would do as pres in the aftermath of 9/11

Dr. Poo-Poo Mouth

didn't you go away?

Dr Civet

― PITILESS LIVE SHOW (DJP), Tuesday, July 17, 2012 2:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loll