One news item today.

[never too sharp]

So let me see if I understand your criticism here. 100% of the business which Bain works with are headed for bankruptcy, Bain steps in and saves 90% of them from going under, and only 10% can't be saved.100% were dying, Bain saved 90%, and 10% were beyond hope.
And you REALLY want to use THIS as an example for criticism? Really? THANKS!!

So it's your contention that unless they were 100% successful they are evil, vulture, crooks?

I thought my point was clear, maybe I should have put it in big red letters:

...That's a 90% success rate. It's the 10% that is troubling. One bad apple spoils the bunch. They were in it to make money, and a successful company generally makes more money than an unsuccessful one.

They had a good success rate. Good for them. However, some of the companies they acquired were dispatched in a rather troubling manor. Outside capital is pumped in giving the illusion of solvency. Loans are taken out on the premise that the company is solvent. The loans are used to pay the shareholders, and the company declares bankruptcy, defaulting on said loans. Bain makes mucho dinero and alot of workers lose their pensions, etc., etc. I know, bleeding-heart liberal blah, blah, blah. Save it. This country doesn't need a hatchet man at the helm. But that is neither here nor there, because on the off chance(way off) that he gets elected, he'll turn into a moderate, just like Obama, just like G.W. Bush. And Paul Ryan would be beating his pretty little head against the wall because Washington will NEVER voluntarily make itself smaller. But at least he wouldn't have to vote against his own budget again.

Another perfect example of the slimy hit-and-run smear tactics the left likes so much. If the "case could be made", then why wasn't it? Just like it was so easy to say that Romney "didn't pay any taxes for ten years". The left consistently shows no regard for the truth when they find something that can be made to sound bad about the right or Romney.

The same could be said of the right, and again, the examples are many.

[timcsaw]

I thought my point was clear, maybe I should have put it in big red letters:

No, I got your point; Bain had a 90 percent success rate at keeping companies from going bankrupt. Again, thanks for pointing that out to everyone.

[Triton]

They had a good success rate.

Not just a good success rate, a fantastic success rate. The fact is that Romney has been very successful in turning around failing businesses and failed ventures like the SLC Olympics. Now compare and contrast to the obama who hasn't turned anything around at all.

However, some of the companies they acquired were dispatched in a rather troubling manor. Outside capital is pumped in giving the illusion of solvency. Loans are taken out on the premise that the company is solvent. The loans are used to pay the shareholders, and the company declares bankruptcy, defaulting on said loans.

Is that what really happened, or was an attempt made to save a company which still ended up failing? What makes investors more money?

Bain makes mucho dinero and alot of workers lose their pensions, etc., etc. I know, bleeding-heart liberal blah, blah, blah.

I'm unsure why you wish to focus only on the 10% of the time that Bain was unsuccessful. It would appear to me that Bain is vastly better at keeping and growing employment then our current resident of the Whitehouse with no government resources involved. Why are you not focusing on the obama's failures to create jobs a la Solyndra instead if that's really what you care about?

This country doesn't need a hatchet man at the helm.

So rather than a "hatchet man" who creates jobs and saves companies you want a guy who has never created nor saved anything except more government debt and government dependency?

[never too sharp]

You're like a broken record, man.

[timcsaw]

You're like a broken record, man.

Quoted for brilliance, content, and excellence in point-by-point rebuttal skills!

[never too sharp]

Is that what really happened...

That's exactly what happened.

[timcsaw]

That's exactly what happened.

Link please.

[Triton]

That's exactly what happened.

Really? Let's see some proof. Show us something that proves that the idea all along was to pump up the company in order to pay everyone off and then declare bankruptcy.

[Triton]

You're like a broken record, man.

Oh come now, you can do better than that. You claim that you are concerned about jobs and people being unemployed, but you only want to focus on what by any realistic metric is Romney's very successful record instead of the obama's dismal failure in the same category. Why?

[jdm61]

Just so we are clear, Bain's success record wasn't just good. It was arguably unprecedented in that business.

[OliverH]

Just so we are clear, Bain's success record wasn't just good. It was arguably unprecedented in that business.

Which has how much to do with whether a guy can govern the country? I'll cheerfully concede Romney's ability as a financial engineer in the private sector, but I don't see how that really translates all that much to being a political leader. There is of course his stint as governor of Massachussets, but to judge from the way his partisans talk about him, it's as if that never happened.

[jdm61]

Huh? Took the deficit down and left a surplus. People talk about bad job creation. That is an issue of the place not being a friendly environment for business or people with money. How many Massholes are moving across the border to places like New Hampshire and Vermont every year? LOL Bottom line is that he did a LOT more in his time as governor than Obama has done as Prez........or US Senator.........or state senator for that matter. Romney did turn around another public boondoggle, the Salt Lake Olympics. Go back and read about how much trouble that was in when he took over.

Which has how much to do with whether a guy can govern the country? I'll cheerfully concede Romney's ability as a financial engineer in the private sector, but I don't see how that really translates all that much to being a political leader. There is of course his stint as governor of Massachussets, but to judge from the way his partisans talk about him, it's as if that never happened.

[OliverH]

Huh? Took the deficit down and left a surplus. People talk about bad job creation. That is an issue of the place not being a friendly environment for business or people with money. How many Massholes are moving across the border to places like New Hampshire and Vermont every year? LOL Bottom line is that he did a LOT more in his time as governor than Obama has done as Prez........or US Senator.........or state senator for that matter. Romney did turn around another public boondoggle, the Salt Lake Olympics. Go back and read about how much trouble that was in when he took over.

Comparisons between Mass governor and POTUS are not very easy, nor can any governor or president take full credit for what happened on their watch. For instance, when passing his universal health care plan, Romney didn't have a bunch of lunatic right-wing ideologues standing in his way. Again, I'm glad to give Romney credit for what he did in the Olympics, but how relevant is that to what he would need to be doing as president?

Though governmental experience seems absolutely critical, I don't think there is any other job that compares--certainly nothing in the private sector, which is like a whole different world--so for myself, I look for temperament and intelligence and knowledge of how government works and a capacious understanding and a set of policies I can get behind. All the crap about business experience or what a good family man somebody is or how much they gave to charity and how they are nice to stray animals and go to church every Sunday just amounts to so much feel-good hogwash. Really, looking back over the presidents in my lifetime, the guy who had the closest thing to a "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Leave it to Beaver" family was Richard Nixon. More recently, GW Bush was by most accounts a really nice regular guy, but he was also shallow and ignorant and unreflective and in way over his head, and he governed us into a nasty hole. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was (and is) somebody I would not trust to be alone for more than about 2 minutes in the company wife or daughter, or for that matter, a good looking golden retriever bitch, but the guy is brilliant and deeply knowledgeable and a real political operator and for the most part was a pretty effective president. This is not to say that there's a negative correlation between somebody's correspondence to middle-class middle-American notions of proper behavior and their performance in office, but there's not much of a positive correlation, either.

[timcsaw]

Yes, best to denounce business experience, private sector success, a moral foundation and political record since "your guy" doesn't have any of those.

[OliverH]

Yes, best to denounce business experience, private sector success, a moral foundation and political record since "your guy" doesn't have any of those.

Well, I guess if you consider being president for four years means a lack of political record. The crack about "lack of moral foundation" is just cheap dishonest insult, and even you should know that.

At any rate, nobody's "denouncing" any of that stuff, or mom and apple pie, either. Or even belittling it. There are two points to be made: One is that those various items just don't correlate so well to somebody's performance in public office. Truman was a famously bad businessman, but is generally remembered as a pretty decent president. Thomas Jefferson spent his life pissing away his inheritance doing cool stuff instead of looking after his own personal finances, and had his entire estate foreclosed on when he died. (Including his slaves, one might uncharitably point out.) Herbert Hoover, on the other hand, made a huge fortune in mining before going into public service. He is not remembered so fondly, though to be totally fair, he was dealing with circumstances that were probably beyond his control and took the blame for a lot of stuff he couldn't have done much about. Still, the point stands. It's not that some of the skills learned in administering a large business aren't helpful or don't translate at all to being a political executive, but there is really a lot more involved. Nor does it follow whatsoever that a successful businessman in the private sector necessarily turns into a political leader who can make the economy hum (as if any of them really can). In the same way, a good doctor might turn out to be a terrible hospital administrator.

The other point to be made is that such majoring in such mostly irrelevant talking points is stupid anyway, and the way Republicans especially have tried to use the same tactic with an ever-shifting set of virtues in the last few election cycles proves it. This year being a good faithful family guy and having proved his business smarts are supposedly what makes Romney the natural choice. Four years ago when the adulterous and lifelong government employee John McCain was the candidate, such considerations were nowhere in sight. Instead, what really mattered was whether a candidate had military experience. With the pacific Mitt carrying the banner this year, we're not getting any guff about how the troops can't possibly trust somebody who hasn't been in their boots to send them into harm's way, yada yada yada. Also four years ago, the non-opposable-thumb segment of Republicans sneered at Obama's Harvard career because it proved he was part of that evil elite. With fellow Harvard grad Romney as his opponent, suddenly having been an Ivy League guy is no longer automatic cause for rejection. And so on.

Especially given the way it's presented in soundbites of "our guy has X peripheral qualification and your guy doesn't, nyah nyah," it's just childish cheap distraction that any serious person neither pushes nor gives credence to.

[MVF]

Hmm, kind of like how last election, not having any experience running anything didn't matter?

Of course, now we have almost 4 years of incompetence- I mean experience to judge him by.

[Triton]

Hmm, kind of like how last election, not having any experience running anything didn't matter?

Of course, now we have almost 4 years of incompetence- I mean experience to judge him by.

That's precisely what we were told. Apparently in liberal land, it is better to have zero experience then to have experience. Or at least the "wrong" kind of experience, i.e. experience actually creating jobs and doing something in the private sector.

[jdm61]

Remember what the Progresssives say. Change/progress is GOOD........unless evil capitalists are successful at bringing about change/progress/success because then it is not really progress.

That's precisely what we were told. Apparently in liberal land, it is better to have zero experience then to have experience. Or at least the "wrong" kind of experience, i.e. experience actually creating jobs and doing something in the private sector.

[Turbo Tension]

Umm, yeah- that's 2010- how about prior to 2008?

This is some LOL stuff right here.