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

    Ron Paul Defends Romney on 'Firing people'

    By NCD on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 8:02pm |

    In an exclusive interview outside a Manchester polling place, Ron Paul lashed out at fellow Republicans for making unfair and ignorant attacks on Mitt Romney's business record.  "I think they're wrong. I think they're totally misunderstanding the way the market works," Paul told me. "They are either just demagoguing or they don't have the vaguest idea how the market works"...."I think they're way overboard on saying that he wants to fire people, he doesn't care, Paul said.  "You save companies, you save jobs when you reorganize companies that are going to go bankrupt. And they don't understand that." link

    Ron Paul is informed and understands, other Republican candidates aren't and don't. They are demagogues, Paul and Romney are not. According to Paul, when Romney said ‘I like being able to fire people who provide services to me’, he didn't mean it.

    Ron Paul breaks new ground on the mission of Bain Capital. No one, except Paul, has claimed Romney and Bain Capital had a practice of 'saving companies' from bankruptcy.  If that was the objective though, they didn't do a very good job, as the WSJ reports 22% of Bain takeovers led to bankruptcy, while the global average for LBO bankruptcies over that period was 5-8%. As the same WSJ article points out, putting money into Mitt Romney's pockets, and saving companies, were not coupled or affiliated outcomes. Companies went bankrupt and Bain made a killing on them. Bain Capital made most of it's millions on 10 companies, 4 of which went into bankruptcy after Bain worked their free enterprise magic. For Ron Paul, that aspect of 'how the market works' is apparently as unknown, or as guarded a secret as a Mitt Romney tax return.

    Comments

    Anyone who purports to mistake Ron Paul for a money maven, should be offered the chance to place his mother's life savings under Paul's management...(sorry bout your luck, ma)..those who are sincere in their complimentary evaluation will deserve the next twenty years of recriminations.  

    I mean, by the way, to say that any Ku Klux Klown who paid into the supposed million dollar take for the newsletters is deservedly broke today, except we all know it was no kind of "financial" advice...


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 8:11pm

    My mother's life savings was spent on cheap whiskey. hahaahahah

    Ron Paul is terrible. But compared to the pricks running against him, he is the new Christ!

    hahahaha


    by Richard Day on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:24pm

    It's bringin' back t'me, y'are, when me sainted Mither would look me serious in th'eye, and say "Sonny, never say "no" to booze, sex, or drugs.  If you do, you'll come to regret it some day for sure...maybe not right away, but some day you will..."


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:35pm

    Yeah, I think we are seeing some consolidation of many of the GOP leaders joining together to put a big pox on Gingrich's attempt to go populist on the anti-Wall Sreet front, a "no no no, bad Newt, we aren't going to go there, we are a pro-capitalism party."

    Elsewhere I just posted a piece outlining some of the other participants, including Rush Limbaugh

    And the Paul's, both pere & fils, do appear to be onboard. Was checking out Fox News a half hour or so ago, the reporter @ Ron Paul headquarters said Rand Paul couldn't be there but put out a press release saying something along the lines of the bashing of capitalism in the party that has been going on has to stop. So I was looking for more on that, and then I found your post, a bit of proof of that pudding!

    This is kind of a kick in the teeth to some tea partiers, isn't it? I'm pretty sure they'll get over it, though (that's why I suggested our own "Tokyo Rose" might want to razz GOP voters a bit on it)

    I am not surprised at Rush Limbaugh being agreeable to rant on Newt's new populist ploy, it goes back to Rush's roots; he built his show/popularity in the 80's as a proseltizer of the "masters of the universe" Gordon Gekko types, and all his callers back then seemed to be masters-of-the-universe wannabes.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:46pm

    Okay now I am pretty sure that this whole thing is talking points coming down from quite high, above Rush.

    While I was typing that last comment, I saw Mary Matalin (who met her husband playing dueling talking points, so she's been doing them for a very long time) on CNN yammering about: attacks on Mitt's capitalism = very bad, not Republican.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:50pm

    attacks on Mitt's capitalism = very bad, not Republican.

    Which is almost verbatim of what Sununu was saying on MSNBC earlier tonight.


    by Elusive Trope on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:57pm

    Well there you go, working together, we don't need no stinkin' memo to figure out what the talking points are wink


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 10:06pm

    GOP 'lockstep' behavior reminds me of an incident the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn related in The Gulag Archipelago.

    It was an incident in the 1940's. Stalin had concluded a speech to a select group of important Party members, and they rose in a standing ovation. As the applause continued, it became clear that no one in the audience had the courage to stop clapping. It went on and on.  As they kept up the applause, many began to sweat as they looked at one another in fear. No one wanted to be the one who stopped first. The Party member who finally did may have gotten a one way ticket to the Gulag, or summary execution, I can't recall. Newt seems to be in the same position, he better pack his bags. The GOP does not stand for candidates who question the doctrine of the Party, or who criticize the man who may become 'the new improved Decider'.


    by NCD on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 11:39pm

    Kinda what "Talking Points" are designed to do, get everyone on a team talking in lockstep? It is for the marketing effect, though, if people hear basically the same thing said by many different voices; in that it's less like diktat fear, more like the Propaganda Bureau.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 10:46am

    Yeah, God forbid Democrats coordinate messaging - that would make it seem like there was an organization or a plan, which as all the trappings of fascism. (godwin godwin godwin godwin godwin godwin godwn gdwn gdwngdwngdwngdsw....)


    by PeraclesPlease (not verified) on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 10:57am

    Sununu, when on Fox, also said: Sheldon Adelson = bad and dumb, very dumb, for biting the hand that feeds you


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 10:33am

    I think they were choked with outrage when Newt implied a theoretical level of profit beyond which entrepreneur turns into bust-out artist, but he failed to connect the dots.

    He should have said "any level of profit is fine if it doesn't kill the business-by definition a levereged buyout that kills the business is a mob bustout."

    By letting it seem to turn on the amount of profit rather than the outcome, he shot himself in the foot.

     


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 9:57pm

    The Rush Limbaugh narrative lecture version, transcript from yesterday: Making Sense of Republicans Attacking Capitalism

    (Warning for those with extreme scruples : the link will take you to his website)


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 11:59am

    Seems Rush is getting twisted as a GWB pretzel with supporting Rmoney. Now its 'Rmoney will just fire gov't workers, isn't that good', Obama was the one who 'created' OWS to attack Rmoney.  So,  Rmoney is Wall Street, Wall Street is Real America, rich guys from Wall Street are Main Street's best buddies? Huh?

    Conclusion, it may be impossible to get even the most delusional, reality challenged denizens of the right to believe a super-rich bloviating radio host that a super-rich Wall Street guy with 5 knock off the ole chickenhawk, trust fund sons, who loves to fire people, is 'one of them'.


    by NCD on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 12:25pm

    Rmoney.. that is awesome. In fact, from now on, I will only refer to him as Rmoney. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 12:31pm

    Maybe with a hyphen, like R-Money.  I think the kids will like that one.


    by DF on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 1:12pm

    Oh yes! The kids will love it even if they think he is a rapper or J-Lo's newest fling. But it makes me want to do a blog called R-Money and the Hunt. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 1:18pm

    This was really helpful analysis for me of what Rush was doing in that segment/post, NCD.

    Things are developing so fast with people talking about this topic everywhere on this site (and elsewhere,) though, that I ended up linking to it in a reply over on Oxy's thread here.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/12/2012 - 4:02am

    We should not get so caught up in the substance that we ignore the style-

    One could as well (better, really) convey Romney's inner syntonic state at experiencing himself in control of his choice of supplier, by saying "I like to be able to shop around".

    His language betrays, in programming terms, that he is writing a function, "firing", and not an object oriented bit of code, where he would designate a class "fired" and would have had a linguistically mandated moment of empathy.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 01/10/2012 - 10:24pm

    There you go again with the E-word, hippie.  You know they don't allow that sort of thing in God's Own Party.


    by DF on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 2:01pm

    That is correct.  Empathy is socialist...or maybe socialism is empathic, I forget which.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 4:22pm

    Chicago fundraises off Romney 'fire' line
    By Maggie Haberman, Politico.com, 1/11/12 9:34 AM EST

    From the inbox just now, this email from President Barack Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, explicitly hits the Mitt Romney "fire" line in a fundraising appeal: [....]


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/11/2012 - 10:51am