GhostFish: That's absurd beyond belief.

so are the comments under this article.

marvel at the contortions in this singular example:

Look, I'm no Romney fan. I didn't support him in the primary this year, nor 4 years ago. I think he's a slimy politician and I don't trust him.

But then I realized:

My biggest problem with Barack Obama is not that I disagree with him on policy issues. It's a democracy - you win some, you lose some. My problem with Obama is that he is completely unqualified for the job of President, and does not appear to have engaged in any particular degree of on-the-job training over the past four years. He is totally incompetent, and time and time again demonstrates that he lacks the basic institutional knowledge and executive experience to successfully fulfill the role.

I am not a Romney fan. It is unlikely that I will make phone calls or knock on doors on his behalf. But I will vote for him, because I believe that he has the skills and background necessary to sucessfully execute the Office of President of the United States. Regardless of our policy differences and the fact that I think he's slimy, this is clearly a step up from the current situation.

This is a democracy. Everybody votes, and the winner governs. Each of us doesn't "deserve" to have our guy win, and nor do we "deserve" to have our policy preferences enacted at every turn.

What we do all deserve is a President with the skills, knowledge, and experience to execute the office faithfully. Obama clearly does not. I believe that Romney does.

Therefore, I vote for Mitt Romney.

the slimeball i don't trust for shiat is the guy i trust to execute the office faithfully. the guy who's been president for 4 years lacks the experience for the office. my brain is a hair, your argument is toaster strudel.

Corvus: Bontesla: wademh: wademh: It's sort of true.
In reality, the people who are making the biggest deal out of Bain are those that would never have voted for RMoney regardless. And likewise, birthers don't really care about Obama's birthplace, they just think they have a gotcha issue.

Corvus:
No, polls are showing independents do care about this.

That surprises me. Then again, I'm not understanding undecided independents right now.

I really doubt there are any actual undecided independents and I also doubt this will actually change votes.

Well the polling say it has. So if you want to believe your hunch over numbers no one can stop you. I think it is ignoring reality but if you want to ignore reality I can't stop you.

Obama's numbers have got better in swing states where he is hitting this hard.
More people are now saying Romney's business experience is a BAD thing.
The Republican's are in complete fear about this.

To me that seems like this is making a difference.

The numbers aren't a committed vote. The numbers also may vary. I would be interested in looking into it on Monday to see their MOE.

I've seen other polls that support my suspicion. This isn't me insisting reality is wrong.

Undecided voters will not be voting for Obama. They're just undecided against Romney. Nearly every recent poll regarding their indecision supports this. The most that the Bain scandal should do is decrease voter participation. It shouldn't technically convert votes in any statistical manner.

So, as much as you'd like to pretend that I'm afraid of my shadow, you're simply an idiot for assuming you know anything about how my conclusions are formed.

Weaver95: Cubansaltyballs: Weaver95: ...
There's just so f*cking much to attack about Romney. You can go for the free-throw of "flip-flopper" or you can shoot 3-pointers all day long when you show who he really is... the boss/CEO we've all worked for. The one that f*cked our happy, profitable company into a heap of ashes, just so he could he add an extra zero to his year's salary. Seriously, we've all seen it, and we all despise it. All Obama has to do is show people that Romney is THAT guy.

I guess. That's way more appealing to me. But I'm not exactly going to vote Romney. Just think back to 2004, though. George W. Bush was reelected as president (by winning just enough of the same independent voters that Romney and Obama are fighting over) with the words flip-flop and swift boat.

/Less is more?

the thing that i find strange is that romney could provide documentation (his tax return, presumebly) that would put this whole thing to bed if he wanted to.

why doesn't mitt romney want to simply stop this issue? what is in those documents that he is so afraid of people seeing????

Bain is a massive company. They probably stripped assents in 3/4 of the states.

Couldn't a tailored ad be made in virtually every state where most voters would know someone, or at least a friend of a friend, who was laid off in a local company? That would be pretty brutal.

Weaver95: Bungles: I saw a good 10 minutes of Fox News today, waiting for a takeaway.

Their line is "Idiots who dislike Romney are jealous of personal financial success".

That's their entire line.

yup. that and 'Obama is a liar and should apologize'. I find the GOP response to bain capital ads to be...puzzling. well, and amusing as well but mostly puzzling.

It's not puzzling. We've seen this building up for awhile now. Romney is now effectively running for President in an alternative reality, alongside our own, where everything is made up and the facts don't matter.

Abstinence only sex education - it works.
Evolution - doesn't exist. Same for climate change.
Saddam did have the WMDs we were looking for.
Obama's place of birth is Kenya.
Gingrich is a morally upstanding person, Romney's a relatable everyman, and Sarah Palin is smarter than Stephen Hawking.

ApatheticMonkey: YouWinAgainGravity: Get back to me when the Bainers are arguing about a conspiracy that can only be explained by time-travel.

OK, OK. I think I got this one. Right uh.. The whole issue surrounds SEC documents that say that he was in charge of Bain during some period of time in the early 2000s, right? But at the same time, Romney is saying that he had left the company by then. So let's say that BOTH are true. How does that work? Temporal superposition. At some point in the future, Romney gets his hands on a time machine - possibly Obama's - and for whatever reason, he goes back in time to the year 1999 and takes over Bain from his past self. So at that point, 1999 Romney is no longer part of the company, and what 2012 Romney is saying is true. He DID leave Bain at that point. HOWEVER - future Romney was at the helm at that point, which is why his name shows up on the SEC documents. As to why nobody questioned why he looked different when he showed up to work after quitting? He's a Robot, remember? HE DIDN'T LOOK DIFFERENT.

/Unless... They built another Romneybot to control Bain while this one did the Governor thing!

Mr. Romney has a far better use for President Obama's time machine.

jcb274: Cubansaltyballs: Weaver95: sure, Romney will take a hit...but its WAY early in the game. plenty of time to recover. letting this issue build up a momentum of its own is stupid.

Kerry never shook the flip-flop moniker, and Romney won't lose his smarmy salesman moniker, either.

I don't understand why Romney hasn't been plastered with the flip-flopper moniker to the degree Kerry was yet.

Rinse, repeat (from the wikis):

"Romney campaigned as a pro-choice candidate who would protect a woman's right to an abortion, and he rejected the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a pro-life organization.

He is flip-flopping with a too high frequency for the "detectors" (=news cycle time). He exceeds the available news bandwidth. New alorithms are in place (e.g the internets, Google etc.) that can track this flip-flopping, but the followers are not interested in facts... yet...

Cheer up Red State. You only have to face being embarrassed on a daily basis by your nominee for 3 and a half more months. Of course at the end of that you have Obama's second term waiting for you....

First, let's dispense with the bull shiatake mushrooms.

And that's when i stopped reading. If you are going to write as an adult for adults, write like an adult and avoid using goofy childish euphemisms. If you're gonna 'cuss', cuss; otherwise, avoid it altogether.

Lenny_da_Hog: Bontesla: No, the author is an idiot for comparing the Bain scandal to the Birther absurdity.

You'd think they'd be worried about alienating the Birthers.

As I understand it, birthers identify themselves as crusaders on behalf of those unable to admit publicly their birtherism. They're martyrs, willing to be thrown under the bus, because there's a secret hypothetical handshake.

So, in that vein, this would just be another closeted birther trying to overtly establish credibility by denouncing birtherism.

Bainer Boehner Boner BonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBoner BonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBoner BonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBoner BonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBonerBoner Boner

Cubansaltyballs: except the Bain theory isn't based on a racist idea

Done in this many.

Here's my serious question:

Lets assume Mitt Romney is a terrible human being and an example of why Marx wrote what he wrote or why Marie Antoinnette lost her head.

Why, instead of celebrating that "Yay, my side is going to win this election!" are you not demanding public servants and political officers who are not storybook evil? From the democratic side as well as the republican? Even if you disagree with the long or short term political goals, do you not want a dutiful, skilled leader?

Is it a free market American thing that "Well, he's rich, insane, possibly sociopathic but since he's got money let him run?"

Or are politics just so... gone that it is actually irrelevant the quality of the person anymore? That a popularity contest run for billions of dollars and millions of voices yelling and contradictin each other is all that it has come down to?

Pharque-it: jcb274: Cubansaltyballs: Weaver95: sure, Romney will take a hit...but its WAY early in the game. plenty of time to recover. letting this issue build up a momentum of its own is stupid.

Kerry never shook the flip-flop moniker, and Romney won't lose his smarmy salesman moniker, either.

I don't understand why Romney hasn't been plastered with the flip-flopper moniker to the degree Kerry was yet.

Rinse, repeat (from the wikis):

"Romney campaigned as a pro-choice candidate who would protect a woman's right to an abortion, and he rejected the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a pro-life organization.

He is flip-flopping with a too high frequency for the "detectors" (=news cycle time). He exceeds the available news bandwidth. New alorithms are in place (e.g the internets, Google etc.) that can track this flip-flopping, but the followers are not interested in facts... yet...

This whole election is frustratingly silly. Going into the election season, I assumed Romney would win the election because the runner-up in the GOP primary always seems to get the next crack at the race. But after the first GOP debate I thought, _{"Romney? Really?"} then the succession of ridiculous anyone but romney candidates "Really?", then to douche-tastic after douche-tastic oops moment, "Really?", and now after every poll that shows both candidates more or less within the margin of error of each other I just keep thinking, "Really?". I would just feel better about my country if Nate Silver's chance of Obama winning reelection was really the popular vote projection.

ArcadianRefugee: First, let's dispense with the bull shiatake mushrooms.

And that's when i stopped reading. If you are going to write as an adult for adults, write like an adult and avoid using goofy childish euphemisms. If you're gonna 'cuss', cuss; otherwise, avoid it altogether.

there's at least some humor to be had in the site you posted this on further editing an already childish substitution. on a daily basis, we're reduced to shiat, biatch and other words having random A's inserted into them, as that apparently makes them OK.

jcb274: Pharque-it: jcb274: Cubansaltyballs: Weaver95: sure, Romney will take a hit...but its WAY early in the game. plenty of time to recover. letting this issue build up a momentum of its own is stupid.

Kerry never shook the flip-flop moniker, and Romney won't lose his smarmy salesman moniker, either.

I don't understand why Romney hasn't been plastered with the flip-flopper moniker to the degree Kerry was yet.

Rinse, repeat (from the wikis):

"Romney campaigned as a pro-choice candidate who would protect a woman's right to an abortion, and he rejected the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a pro-life organization.

He is flip-flopping with a too high frequency for the "detectors" (=news cycle time). He exceeds the available news bandwidth. New alorithms are in place (e.g the internets, Google etc.) that can track this flip-flopping, but the followers are not interested in facts... yet...

This whole election is frustratingly silly. Going into the election season, I assumed Romney would win the election because the runner-up in the GOP primary always seems to get the next crack at the race. But after the first GOP debate I thought, "Romney? Really?" then the succession of ridiculous anyone but romney candidates "Really?", then to douche-tastic after douche-tastic oops moment, "Really?", and now after every poll that shows both candidates more or less within the margin of error of each other I just keep thinking, "Really?". I would just feel better about my country if Nate Silver's chance of Obama winning reelection was really the popular vote projection.

And to clarify, by election I mean primary election.

Fuzzmosis: Or are politics just so... gone that it is actually irrelevant the quality of the person anymore?



what is this 'anymore' you speak of?

Fuzzmosis: Here's my serious question:

Lets assume Mitt Romney is a terrible human being and an example of why Marx wrote what he wrote or why Marie Antoinnette lost her head.

Why, instead of celebrating that "Yay, my side is going to win this election!" are you not demanding public servants and political officers who are not storybook evil? From the democratic side as well as the republican? Even if you disagree with the long or short term political goals, do you not want a dutiful, skilled leader?

Is it a free market American thing that "Well, he's rich, insane, possibly sociopathic but since he's got money let him run?"

Or are politics just so... gone that it is actually irrelevant the quality of the person anymore? That a popularity contest run for billions of dollars and millions of voices yelling and contradictin each other is all that it has come down to?

The system is too far gone for anything better. We're just doing the best we can with what we've got until it all collapses out from underneath us. A lot of people may not agree with that, but they're delusional.

NewportBarGuy: acefox1: farm9.staticflickr.com

I've seen that image dozens of times... That's the first time I noticed there's a guy stuck on the bow. Wow, that had to suck.

Yeah each time I see that guy holding on for dear life I imagine that this boat-drop must have been the slowest and scariest 3 seconds in his life.

Corvus: Bontesla: wademh: wademh: It's sort of true.
In reality, the people who are making the biggest deal out of Bain are those that would never have voted for RMoney regardless. And likewise, birthers don't really care about Obama's birthplace, they just think they have a gotcha issue.

Corvus:
No, polls are showing independents do care about this.

That surprises me. Then again, I'm not understanding undecided independents right now.

I really doubt there are any actual undecided independents and I also doubt this will actually change votes.

Well the polling say it has. So if you want to believe your hunch over numbers no one can stop you. I think it is ignoring reality but if you want to ignore reality I can't stop you.

Obama's numbers have got better in swing states where he is hitting this hard.
More people are now saying Romney's business experience is a BAD thing.
The Republican's are in complete fear about this.

To me that seems like this is making a difference.

Correlation is not causation. I'm not claiming you're wrong about causes, but you need to be more sceptical. And you definately need to lose the attitude about having "proven" anything with a few polls that are 2nd cousins to the issue of Bain.

heap: ArcadianRefugee: First, let's dispense with the bull shiatake mushrooms.

And that's when i stopped reading. If you are going to write as an adult for adults, write like an adult and avoid using goofy childish euphemisms. If you're gonna 'cuss', cuss; otherwise, avoid it altogether.

there's at least some humor to be had in the site you posted this on further editing an already childish substitution. on a daily basis, we're reduced to shiat, biatch and other words having random A's inserted into them, as that apparently makes them OK.

On here, I think it's less about censorship and more about taking the fight out of the words. Keeps the mood lighter and all that.

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR THIS WALL O' TEXT

Meet the Bainers - they are the members of Team Obama demanding proof from Mitt Romney that he is a liar or a felon. Next they'll ask when he stopped beating his wife.

Not really. The main problem with the loaded question "when did you stop beating your wife?" is that it presupposes the answer that the person has ever beaten their wife. It's a perfectly valid question to ask of somebody in, say, abuse treatment.

Much in the same vein, asking Mitt Romney if he's a liar is a perfectly valid question when he claimed something that we have material evidence is false.

Even FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are unpersuaded by Team Obama's hyperbole.

So? Is FactCheck.org any more or less reliable than any other person checking the facts? For a person who whines about logical fallacies (well, misidentifying a legitimate question as a loaded one, but still, he can clearly conceive of a logical fallacy), why the appeal to authority?

For example, from FactCheck.org:

On a media conference call about the Globe story, Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, said the story proves that Romney had "full control" of Bain during this time and "therefore directly responsible"

Romney is indeed listed as, and I quote the SEC filing, "the controlling person of Bain Capital".

The Washington Post's Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, rebutted the Boston Globe story in a July 12 piece. "Just because you are listed as an owner of shares does not mean you have a managerial role," Kessler writes. We agree.

Of course you do. And of course, anybody would. Merely holding shares doesn't give anybody decision making power. Are they voting shares? Non-voting shares? Did you vote against the majority for these major decisions?

The trick here is minimization. Just because you are listed as an owner [first minimization: an owner, not the owner, as a sole shareholder is] does not mean you have a managerial role.

Of course, that isn't W. Mitt Romney's only listing in the SEC filings either:

Bain Capital, Inc., a Delaware corporation ("Bain Capital"), is the sole
------------
managing partner of the BCIP entities. Mr. W. Mitt Romney is the sole
shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain
Capital and thus is the controlling person of Bain Capital.

Mr. W. Mitt Romney isn't simply a shareholder. He's the shareholder, along with being the sole director, which is a managerial capacity and a managerial capacity no other person shares, the Chief Executive Officer, giving him final decision over other officers of the company, as well as the president. And the controlling person, as noted before.

Notice how those bits went unmentioned?

In fact, if you go to the Washing Post article FactCheck.org mentioned, and press CTRL-F and type in any of the following:

- Director will return no results.
- President will return three results, two about how Mitt Romney is a presidential candidate and one a side bar about the 2012 election, none of them as the president of Bain.
- CEO will only appear in the comments section of the article.
- Chief (as in Chief Executive Officer) will return zero results.
- Controlling (as in controlling person) will return zero results.

If that seems fishy to you, it's because it is. It is, as mentioned, textbook minimisation -- which is, indeed as Wikipedia mentions, a form of deception.

It's a woman calling her boyfriend violent for punching her in the face (which, for our example, he did do), while omitting that the reason he punched her in the face was to get her to stop stabbing him with a knife (which, for our example, she also did, but she's deliberately leaving it out). By selecting which facts we focus on, and then exaggerating the impact of those facts (JUST BEING A SHAREHOLDER DOESN'T MAKE YOU A MANAGER) while omitting other, very, very relevant facts is not the truth.

It's not a half truth, or a technical truth.

It's a lie.

To make it even more recursive and meta and weird, check this out. Remember above, where I quoted FactCheck.org citing WaPo as evidence that FactCheck's original filing was correct?

In that same FactCheck article, they say this:

"If that really mattered to investors, they might consider that a civil liability, but we wouldn't be talking about a felony," she said.

Huh, wait a minute. 'Cause when I follow FactCheck to WaPo's article, I see WaPo saying this:

FactCheck.Org, July 2, 2012
.

If the Obama campaign were correct, Romney would be guilty of a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999....

And that links back to FactCheck's article here:
FactCheck to Obama Camp: Your Complaint is All Wet
Romney Committing Felonies?

If the Obama campaign is correct, then Romney is guilty of lying on official federal disclosure forms, committing a felony. But we don't see evidence of that.

Well now, hold on a second. See this? See what FactCheck is doing here? They're citing WaPo as evidence their original conclusion is right, and WaPo is citing something FactCheck said that says their original conclusion is wrong.

So which is it, FactCheck? Would Romney be or not be committing a felony? Because it appears you're walking back your statement.

And, for that matter, how come you didn't FactCheck yourselves?

If I can't rely on you to correctly conclude that Romney wouldn't be guilty of a felony on July 12th, why do you expect me to rely on you to correctly conclude that he would be on July 2nd?

For that matter, how rigorous is your "FactChecking", and what you expect your readers to believe, if you offer two mutually contradictory conclusions on two different days citing yourself through a proxy source as being right?

If your July 12 article is right, then perforce your July 2 article is wrong. If your July 2 article is wrong, then what reassurances do I have that you've stepped up your rigour in fact-checking? If your July 2 article is wrong about this felony accusation against Romney, and you can't even get the law right, then why should I trust you that you've properly scrutinized the SEC filings? We've seen conclusively that you omit mention of anything other than his shareholder status, so I have to wonder if you displayed the same laziness in reading the SEC filings for your July 12 story as you did the SEA law for your July 2 filings. Which is it? One, or both? Because at this point, it certainly can't be neither.

Cubansaltyballs: your average cop isn't going to question the Huxtables

i don't trust any family with 14 horn playing grandfathers.

GhostFish: heap: ArcadianRefugee: First, let's dispense with the bull shiatake mushrooms.

And that's when i stopped reading. If you are going to write as an adult for adults, write like an adult and avoid using goofy childish euphemisms. If you're gonna 'cuss', cuss; otherwise, avoid it altogether.

there's at least some humor to be had in the site you posted this on further editing an already childish substitution. on a daily basis, we're reduced to shiat, biatch and other words having random A's inserted into them, as that apparently makes them OK.

On here, I think it's less about censorship and more about taking the fight out of the words. Keeps the mood lighter and all that.

remember work place filters? that's the only reason i've ever seen given - fark would be blocked from work places if we were allowed to put the word 'bit' and 'challenging' next to each other without bad regex taking over.

i know it's tangential as balls, but...when somebody decries childish substitutions for real words, and *even that childish substitution* is filtered here, i get to chuckle at that. it's in the bylaws.

Cubansaltyballs: Fuzzmosis: Why, instead of celebrating that "Yay, my side is going to win this election!" are you not demanding public servants and political officers who are not storybook evil? From the democratic side as well as the republican? Even if you disagree with the long or short term political goals, do you not want a dutiful, skilled leader?

Because one is clearly on the side of the people and one is on the side of Financial Ted Bundyism. One of them wants to build America into something better, and the other wants to capture its prey, rape it, then kill it and bury it in the woods where no one will ever find it.

And somehow your idea is that we should treat them both equally and be equally cynical of both of them. It doesn't work that way... the same way your average cop isn't going to question the Huxtables on their way to grocery store with the same veracity as the guy in the VW Bug with his pants down, blood and dirt on his hands while handcuffs, duct tape and a shovel are on the front seat.

So vote for the guy in the VW Buggy....