The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Romney's IRA: Unearthing the Golden Goose.

    In an interview on CNN, Steve Rattner, Obama's auto industry turnaround chief and by background a "private equity guy", said that Romney had used "every trick in the book" He then referred specifically to Romney's $100 million IRA, revealing that he had talked to his fellow industry people and, "None of us had even known that there was a possible trick, if you will." Damn, Mr. Rattner, I wasn't born yesterday. Give it up!

    tmccarthy0's picture

    Going Solar By Day

    Donal has written a number of amazing blogs on solar energy projects in his area. Those blogs convinced me it would be a good time to try talk to my husband about investing in a solar electric system for our house.  He agreed immediately thinking it was an excellent idea so in the next three months we are going solar by day. We signed the contract yesterday.

    Romney and His Ugly Randian Candidacy

    I am wondering if Romney's candidacy may provide about as good an opportunity as may be had to expose the ugliness and wrongheadedness of the Randian worldview upon which that candidacy is based, centered as it is on worship of the presumed "job creator" class whether in particular cases its members create, destroy or outsource jobs. 

    A timely but possibly too mature and adult work that confronts this worldview head-on with one grounded in reality is The Self-Made Myth, and the Truth about How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham, published this year.  It features mini-bios of many successful entrepreneurs who, unlike the Romneys and the Donald Trumps of the world, retain the awareness, character and honesty to acknowledge many essential factors beyond their own hard work, commitment, and talent--including specific forms of support made possible by, yes, their government--without which they would not have succeeded. 

    Romney stapled his one-page resume.

    I spent the better part of a decade commuting to work in an executive recruiting firm in Manhattan.  We focused on senior management assignments, including in the finance industry. In ten years I had lived the corporate suite vicariously and any yearnings I might have had to play the executive role were well sated.  After I left I spent fifteen years in artistic and teaching pursuits and then founded a small manufacturing services business which today keeps me off the streets.

    One seldom hears about the really fine executives. But somewhere along the line the top tier began to be confused with actors and are essentially loudmouths---encompassing three prototypes: The flamboyant; the super hero; and those who are simply boorish and full of themselves. Trump, Dimon and Romney.

    Actually there is a fourth type, the seedy. In my former lifetime we once introduced an uptown candidate with a public persona of squeaky clean, upstanding family man. Nice guy, really. But he wasn't right, either for L.A. (his wife would never have moved) or for a job in Hollywood. The Chairman who interviewed him was a cigar chomping, crude individual (think casino magnate). When our candidate asked about benefits the Chairman's face screwed up and he chewed half way through his cigar. "The benefits are a pension program, health plan and all the show girls you can eat." Seedy doesn't quite nail it, does it?

    The disgustingness seems to never end...

    Disgraced pol Weiner eyes mayor or public advocate run.

    Really.

    One might, if so inclined, go here to "Write Weiner" ( Yes, really: "Write Weiner".  He has no clue: why not "Contact Anthony"? because life is, apparently, one dick joke after another) and offer him an opinion.

    Not even for dog catcher.

    I'm retroactively retiring to a decade ago.

    One of the advantages of a business guy like Willard Romney running for President is that despite the rude public dissection of his career, an ordinary member of the rank and file such as myself can learn business methods which would normally be kept in secret files. If Romney loses the election, and because he no longer has any active involvement in any of his businesses, he will most likely write a book and advertise it on Bloomberg---something like, "Business is a Fiscal Cliff---How to walk right up to the edge without going to Jail!". I'm not waiting for Romney's chapter on Retirement. I retroactively retired over the weekend.

    I emailed my stock broker to retroactively withdraw the sale order for a thousand shares of Apple Computer I gave him in March, 2002, when Apple shares dropped from $25 to $23 in one day. I expect that my broker will change his records appropriately, will so inform the registrars of Apple common shares, and I look forward to seeing that $600,000 appear on my July statement. I can't wait to show the wife that statement because if she's said it once, she's said it a hundred times, "...if you just hadn't sold that Apple stock when you did, we could be retired by now."  Well, now we are retired and maybe she'll shut up about Apple.

    stillidealistic's picture

    Strangling the Republic

    I'm tempted to write a post on this subject, but due to time constraints, I'm hoping y'all will be willing to read the article that prompted my concern and discuss the work of others, rather than my own views on this alarming subject.

    I posted it under the "In The News Section" but I'm not sure how much attention those articles get.

    http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/20/strangling-the-republic/

    I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

     

    Israel Jumps the Shark, Splits the Baby

    Israel astounded international observers this week as former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy announced in effect: "Israel never occupied nobody!" Imagine a President Romney asking Justice Scalia to provide a definitive interpretation of the Obamacare decision. The results could hardly be more unsurprising.

    Fox, meet chicken coop. Chicken coop, meet fox. With Netanyahu assembling / stacking this committee of like-minded thinkers to come up with a way to prove their settlements were legal, they creatively fell back on familiar ground: the West Bank was already Israel's so they could build wherever they want anyway.

    cmaukonen's picture

    Cold War - Hot Profits

    Anyone who was here state side during WWII can tell you of the rationing that went on. Everything was rationed. From bread to tires. They can also tell you that no matter what industry you were in, you were doing defense work. WWII took this country from nearly 30% unemployment to 0 unemployment over night. New businesses formed overnight to meet the demands. Struggling businesses like Willys Motors became major contractors.

    MrSmith1's picture

    Happy 100th Birthday, Woody!

     

    To America's folk-singer, Woody Guthrie on what would have been his 100th Birthday.


    www.Woody100.com

     

    A haiku for Woody Guthrie:

    Ain't got 'do, re mi?'
    All they'll call you's deportees,
    This land belongs to ...?

    Global-Tech has got legs.

    The story about Romney's investment in the Chinese firm—Global-Tech AppliancesIN 1998 has so many legs it might become the nexus-centipede of Bain, Romney, Outsourcing, China, Telling Lies, and the flawed Republican presidential campaign of 2012.

    Heretofore Romney has been able to muddy the record on his direct involvement in outsourcing because some previous outsourcing claims were fudged by the question of whether Romney was still at Bain Capital during the period 1999-2002. The "story" that Romney was not involved in Bain during that period is unraveling by virtue of SEC filings in which he claimed to be Sole Owner, Chairman and CEO of Bain, and also by testimony to the Massachusetts Ballot Commission that his full intention was to return to Bain—the latter rationale he absolutely needed to qualify for a run at the Governorship. Despite facts to the contrary, the story of "how" involved he was can be one of those never ending run-abouts. But the story about Global-Tech is much more damning to Romney than a debate about how connected to Bain he was in the 1999-2002 time period.

    Romney's guest appearance at the NAACP

    I wrote a sarcastic bad piece about Romney's NAACP appearance and deleted it when I realized that to stoop to Romney's level of disingenuousness in such an article is to mimic what I hate, thereby indirectly partaking of it and glorifying it. 

    cmaukonen's picture

    The Pursuit of Happiness.....

    Warning. This diary does not contain any slams against republicans or democrats.

     

     

    It has been said that the two biggest motivations of humans are to obtain pleasure and to avoid pain. I believe with some variations, this is mostly true. Add into this our instinct for survival and you can probably explain most behaviors. But I am just guessing here, I suppose.

    This was a whole lot simpler when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s and even into the 1970s. We had to live with a very real - to most Americans and I would say also Russians - threat of global annihilation. I am not going into the propaganda factor here, because at the time this was not a consideration. For the people then it was very real. We had seen it right before our very eyes.

    coatesd's picture

    The Unfinished Business of the Obama Administration: The Foreclosure Crisis

    Administrations are invariably criticized for things they do right, for things they do wrong, and for things they fail to do at all. They are invariably criticized for doing too much and criticized for doing too little. Conservative critics of the current Administration tend to do the former. Liberal, by contrast, would do well to focus on the latter. For thus far, this Administration’s failures – in domestic policy at least – are more the product of doing too little too late, than of doing too much too soon. Nowhere is that failure clearer than in the Administration’s inept handling of the home foreclosure crisis.[1]

    The Obama Administration did not invent or create the foreclosure crisis. It inherited it, just as it inherited a major financial crisis and a looming recession. But unlike the financial meltdown, the home foreclosure problem inherited by the Obama Administration was in its infancy as the new president took office. The housing crisis then played itself out predominantly on Obama’s own watch; with the numbers of foreclosures soaring as they did only because the Administration failed to act with a speed and an effectiveness appropriate to the occasion. It is a failure that may yet bring a heavy electoral price.

    jollyroger's picture

    PTSD: If you don't come home with it, you might be a psychopath

    Consistent with my social circles, I encounter very few individuals who are thinking about joining the armed forces. Nonetheless, on the rare occasions when I do, Along with advice to keep your head down so it will not get shot off, I ask if they have thought through the creepy things they will be obliged to do as part of their job.

     

    cmaukonen's picture

    Typical Republican Tea Party Trick - Worst TB outbreak in 20 years kept secret.

    A big H/T to a facebook friend for bringing this to my attention. This story from The Palm Beach Post epitomizes the kind back handed governing that the tea party/republican governors engage in. PR and money over people.

    Obama/Romney: Nathanael Greene vs. Lord Cornwallis

    For the life of me I can't see Willard Romney as the leader of a Republican Party which in body, mind and spirit embraces teavangelicals masquerading as colonial rebels. Romney is oh, so much more like a Redcoat than a Lexington, Massachusetts militiaman. And Obama---even though he in many ways is an elitist for whom the teavangelicals have as much visceral hatred as the real colonial rebels had for their British overseers---Obama seems much more of an everyday American to me than Romney ever will.

    FactCheck.org Adds to Their Greatest Hits

    tmmcarthy recently did a nice blog on FactCheck and facts.

    Here, I present the FactCheck.org Greatest Hits, then and now:

    (1) FactCheck September 23, 2004: "Kerry Exaggerates Cost of Iraq War" in pre-election ad. FactCheck says the war cost 'is still under $120 billion' whereas Kerry said it was $200 billion. Important information for the public from FactCheck....? By 2008 the cost of the war was extimated to exceed $3,000 billion ($3 trillion) and beyond by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist. Thanks for that fact check, FactCheck, it helped us a lot.

    25 year nostalgia: The Montreal Protocol

    Imagine the 2 leaders of the world's Conservative movement agreeing that industry is destroying the environment, and taking decisive, concerted action to stop it.

    That in effect is what happened in 1987 when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol, to ban CFCs, which took effect less than 2 years later and had drastically beneficial effects on the Ozone Hole. 

    Of course it wasn't just conservatives who pushed this measure, and it was based on science that evolved over a decade, but from the view of 2012 it's still amazing. Now the conservative official line is that man can't really affect the environment, which rather than relying on the "6000" history of the world, simply denies confirmed reality of 25 years ago. Work across the aisle for the sake of the Environment? Pshaw. Rio? D.O.A.

    MrSmith1's picture

    Hey Kids, What Day Is It?

     

     

    Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Dagbloggers!

     

     

    Arrggghhh

    tmccarthy0's picture

    Fact Checking Factcheck.org

    Factcheck has released yet another ridiculous truth-o-meter on the President and how he is selling the newly Constitutional PPACA. I think their points are worth refuting.

    Fact Check States in their summary: Obama reiterated his “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” refrain, despite the fact that at least a few million workers won’t keep their employer-sponsored plans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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