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#377 Jan 13 2012 at 3:57 AM Rating: Excellent
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Wow, Gbaji's love for Romney has given him some pretty Pollyanna ideas on how capitalism works and what's possible Smiley: laugh

Also, "Well, Gbaji?"
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#378 Jan 13 2012 at 8:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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The South Carolina Primary should be fun to watch, not so much to see who wins (duh), but how many votes Colbert takes away from Romney. Which reminded me that Trump was threatening to run Independent, and that'd essentially do the same thing. Is Trump still doing that, or did someone loosen that squirrel on his head's grip enough for him to think straight?
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#379 Jan 13 2012 at 12:54 PM Rating: Good
Trump's not going to run, it would take him away from his fake reality TV show. He's just an attention *****.
#380 Jan 13 2012 at 12:58 PM Rating: Good
Huh, Obama just announced a plan to merge like six federal agencies and create a single point of contact for trade. (No time to link, look at Google News.)

Is he trying to one-up the Republicans?
#381 Jan 13 2012 at 1:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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Nah, he was discussing something similar back with his jobs bill and last State of the Union. Remember (probably not) his example of how many agencies were involved in getting a salmon from Alaska to a can in the supermarket? Hey, in fact,
The Hill, talking about this six-agency thingie, wrote:
He repeated what he called his "favorite example" of absurdity in government, first mentioned in last year’s State of the Union address. "As it turns out, the Interior Department is in charge of salmon in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in saltwater," he said to laughter from the audience of small-business owners.
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#382 Jan 13 2012 at 2:57 PM Rating: Decent
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You sure he's not going to create a new department and name a Salmon Czar?
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#383 Jan 13 2012 at 3:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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Debalic wrote:
You sure he's not going to create a new department and name a Salmon Czar?

Sounds fishy to me.
#384 Jan 13 2012 at 3:21 PM Rating: Excellent
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Don't be a cod, puns are Kao's shtick.

Fish shtick.

Edited, Jan 13th 2012 4:22pm by lolgaxe
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#385 Jan 13 2012 at 7:09 PM Rating: Decent
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#386 Jan 13 2012 at 8:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
You acknowledge that 30% at this point in the primary process is not only not weak, but is pretty strong for a front runner?

No, was I supposed to?

For reference, at the point in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Clinton was running in the mid-40s.


Um... Source? A quick wiki link seems to indicate otherwise. There's a whole list of different polls taken in early January, but the pretty common trend for all three candidates is sub 30% polling leading up to Iowa. New Hampshire kinda runs all over the map with some showing Obama above 30%, and some giving that ground to Clinton. Clinton doesn't really takes a strong lead until Michigan though, which was Jan 15 (and still only in some polling).

So if you meant to say "after the third primary", you'd have a point. However, given that my "let's see in 2 weeks" happens to time well to the third primary this year, it's a pretty weak one.
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#387 Jan 13 2012 at 8:28 PM Rating: Decent
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Omegavegeta wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
As does anyone who actually reads what you just wrote (which is a parrot of rhetoric being tossed around). How do you think someone saddles a company with debt and then sells it for "massive profit"?


They sell their stock in the company before it implodes, duh.


Except that's not the case with Bain Capital. They invested in companies which were failing. Meaning that absent their interaction (or that of another similar company), all those people would have lost their jobs anyway, their pensions would have disappeared, whatever other negatives which occurred would have happened anyway, etc. Bain then attempted to streamline those companies to make them profitable. This certainly could (and likely did) involve some trimming of benefits and laying off of employees. However, when it worked the remaining employees still had jobs and benefits and the companies recovered (and Bain made money). When it didn't, the same effects which would have happened anyway happened and Bain lost money.

What's happening is a bit of misdirection (and in some cases, outright falsehood). They say that Bain caused those companies to fail. They didn't. They claim that Bain "made money from companies failing". They didn't. They made money because most of the companies didn't fail (over 3/4ths didn't). So on total, they made more money than they lost because on total they saved more companies than they didn't. But the suggestion is that somehow the process of failing to prevent those companies from failing allowed Bain to make profits and that is absolutely false.



It's like some people don't bother to do their own thinking. If you honestly believe that there's some magic that allows an investment company to actually make tons of money by deliberately causing the companies they invested in to go bankrupt, don't you think that they'd have done this to 100% of them? Why bother saving any of them? A tiny bit of common sense and logic should allow you to conclude that they made money by saving companies, but they weren't always able to do this. Sure they "made money" while some single specific companies failed, but they didn't make money because of those failures but rather because at the same time they were invested in other companies which didn't fail.


But hey! Don't let logic get in the way of absurd rhetoric. Wouldn't want to actually think for yourselves after all. It's so much easier to just parrot what some talking head on TV said.

Edited, Jan 13th 2012 6:30pm by gbaji
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#388 Jan 13 2012 at 8:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
They made money because most of the companies didn't fail (over 3/4ths didn't). So on total, they made more money than they lost because on total they saved more companies than they didn't.]


You seem pretty confident in this.

Please list every company Bain invested in and their +/- for each.

You do have that info, right? To back your statement up?
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#389 Jan 13 2012 at 9:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
For reference, at the point in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Clinton was running in the mid-40s.
Um... Source?

Source
CBS News Poll wrote:
Among Democratic primary voters nationwide (from a total sample of 1,038 adults).
"Who would you like to see the Democratic Party nominate as its presidential candidate in 2008: [see below]?"
Responses for 1/9-1/12 2008:
Barack Obama: 27%
Hillary Clinton: 42%
Other: 0%
Unsure: 14%
John Edwards: 11%
Dennis Kucinich: 4%
USA Today/Gallup wrote:
"Next, I'm going to read a list of people who are running in the Democratic primary for president. After I read all the names, please tell me which of those candidates you would be most likely to support for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, or if you would support someone else...."
Responses for 1/10-1/13/2008
Hillary Clinton: 45%
Barack Obama: 33%
Mike Gravel: 1%
Someone Else: 1%
None: 5%
John Edwards: 13%
Dennis Kucinich: 1%


And so on... Pew Research had her at 46% for this period.

Well, Gbaji? WELL?!?!?!?!?!

Edit: Maybe you should have been looking at national polling instead of statewide polling Smiley: laugh

Edited, Jan 13th 2012 9:10pm by Jophiel
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#390 Jan 13 2012 at 9:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
It's so much easier to just parrot what some talking head on TV said.

By "talking head", you meant the rest of the GOP candidate field, right? Because that's who has been bringing this stuff up.

Is it so hard for you to admit that and you needed to run crying under the "Evil scary media!!" covers again? Smiley: laugh
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#391 Jan 13 2012 at 9:15 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
They made money because most of the companies didn't fail (over 3/4ths didn't). So on total, they made more money than they lost because on total they saved more companies than they didn't.]


You seem pretty confident in this.

Please list every company Bain invested in and their +/- for each.

You do have that info, right? To back your statement up?


Huh? No. I don't. But neither do those who are repeating claims that Bain somehow deliberately caused companies to fail in order to somehow make a profit in some undefined manner. Um... But it's not like the broad strokes aren't readily available to anyone who bothers to do the tiniest bit of research instead of just repeating what they heard.

22% of the companies they invested in failed at some point after Bain got involved. 8% failed completely, causing Bain to lost its entire investment.

Most of the companies Bain made money off were turned around and became successful. And among those which accounted for the greatest amount of dollar profits most of those remained successful even after Bain stopped managing them. Less than half failed later anyway, but *after* Bain was no longer involved with them. We can speculate that Bain somehow sabotaged them and got out before the collapse happened, but we could equally speculate that those companies were successful while Bain was managing them, and then after selling the investment off (at a profit) to someone else, that other person made changes which were stupid and caused them to fail.


The point being that they were in the business of investing in risky ventures which appeared to be failing. This meant that some of the companies failed anyway. But some of those they turned around made big money for them. Enough to more than offset the losses.


Basically, I see nothing wrong with what this company did. And frankly, it's a great analogy for exactly the sort of fiscal action which voters have been clamoring for. They want a government that will make those hard choices. One that will cut programs, even if they are popular (or strongly protected by those who want them to continue), because they are not cost effective. Everyone who argues that extending unemployment is a bad idea is making a case for exactly the sort of methods Bain Capital used. Everyone who argues that it's wrong to raise taxes on the productive parts of the economy to make up the gap in costs needed to provide benefits for the unproductive parts is also making that same case. What do you think Bain did? They made the hard choice to cut things which weren't necessary to economic success. And in most cases, it worked.


Isn't that *exactly* what many people (especially those on the right) have been demanding? Again, anyone who opposes big government spending as a solution to an economic downturn is effectively arguing for the same methods that Bain used in the private sector. It's the same philosophy at work. And while it's easy to use rhetoric to make it sound "mean" or "hurtful", the reality is that it's what is needed for us to turn this economy around, just as those methods were needed to turn those companies around.
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#392 Jan 13 2012 at 9:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
But it's not like the broad strokes aren't readily available to anyone who bothers to do the tiniest bit of research instead of just repeating what they heard.

WSJ wrote:
Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost.

Another finding was that Bain produced stellar returns for its investors—yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.

Some of those companies, too, later ran into trouble. Of the 10 businesses on which Bain investors scored their biggest gains, four later landed in bankruptcy court.
[...]
The Journal's findings could provide fodder for both critics and supporters of Mr. Romney's presidential ambitions and of his role at Bain. Some experts, while conceding that available studies don't provide a direct comparison, said the rate at which the firms Bain invested in ran into trouble appears to be higher than experienced by some rival buyout firms during the era.

That notion could undermine a central thrust of Mr. Romney's campaign message: that his private-sector experience building companies makes him the best candidate to turn around the ailing U.S. economy.

Works for me Smiley: grin
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#393 Jan 13 2012 at 9:25 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
They made money because most of the companies didn't fail (over 3/4ths didn't). So on total, they made more money than they lost because on total they saved more companies than they didn't.]


You seem pretty confident in this.

Please list every company Bain invested in and their +/- for each.

You do have that info, right? To back your statement up?


Huh? No. I don't.


Here's a crazy thought: If you can't back up a flat, declarative statement DON'T MAKE IT.

In case you're missing the point, I could give two ***** about Bain's profit/loss.

I do care when people make statements they claim to be true and can't back them up. Where I'm from, that's called "making things up"...or - y'know - lying.
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#394 Jan 13 2012 at 10:28 PM Rating: Excellent
#395 Jan 15 2012 at 9:39 PM Rating: Excellent
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Romney is set to pick up another 75 voters.

Political Wire wrote:
Jon Huntsman told his advisers that he intends to drop out of the Republican presidential race, the New York Times reports.

He will endorse Mitt Romney's bid for the Republican nomination this week.


Guess leaving that Ambassador to China gig wasn't such a great idea after all, huh?

Edited, Jan 15th 2012 9:40pm by Jophiel
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#396 Jan 16 2012 at 12:18 AM Rating: Excellent
Poor Huntsman. Too sane for the modern GOP.

Obama just breathed a sigh of relief, actually. Huntsman was really the only candidate he was afraid of. He's been expecting and prepared for Romney, but on the off chance Huntsman managed to gain momentum, 2012 would have been a lot tighter.

As it is, I suspect David Axelrod just popped a champagne cork.
#397 Jan 16 2012 at 7:51 AM Rating: Good
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Ya Obama is pretty safe I think. It doesn't seem like the country is ready for a rich white man to be President.
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#398 Jan 16 2012 at 8:08 AM Rating: Excellent
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catwho wrote:
Huntsman was really the only candidate he was afraid of.
Maybe in the generic sense. Most everyone was already giving the nod to Romney since like ... June? Something like that. Which kind of works for Obama's handlers. Gives them more time to research and strategize and such.
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#399 Jan 16 2012 at 8:32 AM Rating: Good
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That Gingrich PAC that did the Bain video had some pro-Gingrich commercial on the radio during my morning commute. Struck me as a bit odd since Illinois isn't going to vote for him, the nomination will be sewn up before Illinois and the Chicago media market isn't exactly a cheap place to throw around your cash for the hell of it. I suppose they just want to drum up some contributors?
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#400 Jan 16 2012 at 10:38 AM Rating: Excellent
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Considering all the scheduling fiascos involving Gingrich, I can't say I'm all that surprised that even his PACs lack any foresight.
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#401 Jan 16 2012 at 10:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
catwho wrote:
Huntsman was really the only candidate he was afraid of.
Maybe in the generic sense. Most everyone was already giving the nod to Romney since like ... June? Something like that. Which kind of works for Obama's handlers. Gives them more time to research and strategize and such.



And save a metric assload of money, letting his own side tear him down.

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