My son is listless and has a stomach ache this morning, and his temperature is registering about a degree and a half low. He says he’s shaking, but “on the inside.” I’ve let him go back to bed and I want to keep a close monitor on him.
So for now, feel free to entertain yourselves in a manner you see fit. Sorry for any inconvenience. I realize that news doesn’t just summarize itself, after all, and I apologize for leaving you all hanging like this.
— Though it hardly matters in the long term. The big government, anti-Reagan architect of a socialized medicine program is to be the presidential nominee of the Party that represents the conservative base. Because it’s his turn, and that’s just the way it’s done.
Inevitability.
Sadly, I think in this instance, I think that word means exactly what they think it means.
It’s like you love the kid more than you love us. That really stings, man.
A huge depressing front is moving in, with scattered infuriating.
You’re all welcome.
His Inevitableness didn’t even win Dixville Notch outright.
Hate to do it:
The Bain crap is a tremendous opening for Romney vs. Obama in a debate. Obama will be talking about how Romney likes to fire people.
He cut over 20% of the fat from Bain’s portfolio and turned an eye popping profit and got net- more people working when it was all said and done.
Obama did Solyndra. Check and mate.
As an Ohio delegate for Perry it pains me to write this, but Perry has come out against Bain and that’s just dumb.
You lost your job with a company that Romney’s Bain took over and now you’re mad and helping the Dems? It seems like a stretch.
Here’s a quote for you Mr. Disgruntle: What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.
Edgar Z. Friedenberg
All Romney has to do now is talk about the 20% or more Fed workers who cracked the 6-figure salary mark during Obama’s tenure. There’s no shortage of fat that needs trimming in D.C.
Again, this was painful.
Actually, all this talk of Romney’s mercilessness & ruthlessness at Bain has made me feel a bit more sanguine about the prospect of him as POTUS.
FTFY.
Newt and Perry are toxic now after their weirdo proggy whinings about private equity.
Rich “Sam” Lowry wants to appear to unendorse his man Romney, he of the well-oiled political machinery. Ramesh Ponnuru could not be reached for spontaneous combustion.
feets has now handily demolished the entire Team R roster. He’s like a Guide for Dummies that way.
they all suck ass Mr. Howard
ass is what they all suck
Like I say.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The first state that secedes, we’re picking up and moving there. Unless it’s States #51-57, because unicorns smell funny.
It’s been an odd cycle. Geraghty’s whining like ‘feets about the anti-capitalist screeds and the writing Obama’s attack ads for him absurdity of it all. This would be the same Geraghty* that, when Newt imploded over Iowa, was arguing that Romney’s surrogates weren’t doing anything now that Obama’s wouldn’t do later; that if Newt couldn’t handle the pressure now, he surely wouldn’t be up to the task of beating the Mediacrats.
All of the sudden it’s terrible that we’re eating out own.
What do the gods first do to those whom they would destroy?
*Unless I have him mixed up with another NR regular —they’re mostly reading alike these days.
I thought the whole purpose of each Republican’s Presidential campaign was to fire Obama and his administration.
Geraghty on 1/2/12 Morning Jolt.
And today’s.
Too bad they’ve conflated it with “electability.”
JG – Hope Satch feels better soon! Sickness seems to be everywhere in this neck of these woods.
Thank you geoff. I delete the Jolt after I read it. And after this morning’s I’m thinking about unsubscribing.
The difference here is that Newt, Perry and Huntsman are attacking Romney for engaging in free market capitalism. I expect that from the proggs. From the Republican field, it’s repulsive and the fact that Obama will do it too is not reason for supposed capitalists to do it.
I’m down to Santorum, 3rd party or a write in at this point. I hadn’t ruled Perry out until now.
I on the other hand try to save everything, since storage is now in the terabytes, which leads to the problem of finding that item from months or years ago.
There’s plenty out there to attack Romney over. This is conceding ground to the Progressives out of political expediency/spite.
Pablo, I agree that what Bain does is as important to a healthy economy as carrion-eating scavengers are to a healthy ecosystem. But that doesn’t mean I can’t call a vulture a vulture.
For what it’s worth, I’d be more receptive to Romney if he was running as a hatchet wielding corporate raider.
I’d still support Perry and maybe Newt, but right now Santorum seems the best bet.
draft draft Rudolph Sarah save the tea-party!
That would make sense if Bain was primarily a vulture. It wasn’t and it isn’t. It composted what spoiled, but it was built for growth.
There’s plenty out there to attack Romney over
Starting with his promise to balance the budget and refusal to rule out a VAT, which I find rather Obamaesque
Yeah, I have to admit, when you read the entire sentence (not just the “I like to fire people”), it actually gave me a little hope. You MUST be able to fire people to be a decent executive. 3/4 of the problem with the federal government these days is nobody can be fired, so they do shit work. Hell, I’d love to see Romney fire some people- how about the entire justice department? How about the EPA? I can’t believe Perry and Gingrich are stupid enough to jump on this anti-capitalist bandwagon. Ok, I take it back – I can’t believe Perry would jump on – Gingrich will say or do anything to retain his tenuous grasp of power.
I think it’s mostly a case of history repeating itself —farce and everything— than Perry being stupid or Gingrich being greedy.
This is interesting:
The Republican establishment and the conservative intelligentsia seem to be worried about the wrong things.
The first one that says, “He don’t like firing people as much as I like firing people, by God! I can’t wait for you to put me in the White House so I can show you how much I like firing people!”
The first one that says that gets my vote.
I figure I will probably be staying home.
The Bain crap is a tremendous opening for Romney vs. Obama in a debate. Obama will be talking about how Romney likes to fire people.
Now THAT would be amusing. Who would this appeal to who isn’t already a committed Obama voter? Union folks and slackers.
Everyone else accepts the idea that people, occasionally, need to be fired.
I thought Obama is in process of firing tens of thousands of service personnel? And then, there’s Andrew Roberts reminding us that the US in 1939 had the 13th largest armed force in the world. What could go wrong, right?
Further on the subject of (humorous) historical parallels, Roberts notes that Churchill applauded — in the House of Commons — the failure of the 20th July 1944 bomb plot because Hitler was such a bad strategist that he was helping the Allies. We too, in a similar fashion, may ought to give thanks we’re up against a God-child ideologue of such remarkable stupidity.
Ernst how we could possibly be in the position we are in with numbers like those (2:1 re-elect worry) is just beyond me.
We are now way down my list of possible ways to save this.
Option Q. Work for a brokered convention. Draft Petraeus. No question on qualifications. No time to Alinsky ridicule. Previous bipartisan support. Clearly he understands how to think strategically and how to win (though Obama may throw those victories away). Our blank slate. No social issue record, and the understanding that the right candidate can stiff-arm all of those bullshit distraction questions Stephaluffagus et. al want to talk about rather than the real issues confronting the US. Hopefully he’d be a Coolidge, at worst an Eisenhower. To guard against that we would also need to keep the House and take the Senate. I believe he would see the debt, deficit, and unfunded liabilities as an existential threat to the US and act accordingly.
I am running out of letters.
If he’s so god-damned stupid, and we’re still losing, what the hell does that say about us?
What does “and we’re still losing” mean Ernst? Looks to me that Obama (and his ideology with him) is going down, independently of whatever may or may not replace him and his. But then, what does it say about us that we didn’t want or vote for him in the first place, but saw his destructive efforts coming years away from his accomplishments?
By “we” I mean the Republicans specifically, and all the various forms of anti-democrats more generally.
That concerns me.
Look, the easiest way to run is as the “I’m not Obama” candidate. Now, what kind of mandate is that? The same one Obama took into 1600 Penn. Ave. as “I’m not Bush.” The easiest way to be not Obama isn’t to undo Obamacare et. al., it’s to find the money to actually pay for this stuff. That’s what I was getting at about Romney’s promise to balance the budget without promising to rule out the VAT.
We’re sleepwalking into a return to the mid-twentieth century political concensus: Democrats propose, Republicans dispose, which is to say that the Democrats keep building the welfare state, while Republicans content themselves with managing it when the Democrats screw it up, as they do all too frequently.
hell with that.
Of course there is a bigger race to come. I am all for savaging each other (legitimately) in the primaries, but it is critical this guy loses. The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Why Obama’s Other Tea Party (Wondergate) Matters.
Defeating Obama is neccessary but insufficient, because Obama himself is only a part of the larger problem.
Without cutting and pasting the whole thing in here, the lyrics to Genesis’ Squonk seem to be metaphorically applicable to so much of the race.
Taking things up as I come to them, it concerns me too. But, I won’t be the determinate of the final outcome, so won’t be wringing my hands in despair any time soon. Instead, I’ll just be plugging along here attempting to understand the wide wide world. It isn’t mine, in other words, to defend whatever stupidities the Republicans may commit.
Ernst, what does it say about us? That the legions of those in favor of a constitutional republic with enumerated powers are greatly outnumbered. Or perhapos that Rousseau’s chickens are roosting comfortably in a coop made from the bones of Locke.
Nor mine. But we don’t find ourselves where we are in 2012 because Obama is an idiot.
Perhaps. But Obama does. (Find himself where he is because he’s an ideologue pursuing stupidities)
I’d throw in the bit about Aristotle (or Polybius, I don’t remember) being right about Republics degenerating into democracies too.
This guy Montesquieu might work just as well:
OT: Bad news for lovers of tasty snack cakes. Hostess is filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Pink tits! Oh, murder, what will we do?
Tasty Kake is the future, sdferr. No more pink ta-tas in the lunch pail. EVER!
Hostess is filing bankruptcy? Good. Pumping out those unhealthy snacks, practically forcing poor kids to get morbidly obese on them, the hunger-profiteering, probably-white one percenters deserve it. Dammit, why’s my Five Guys takeout taking so long to get here?!?
.
.
.
Whoa. Sorry, Michelle Obama invaded my brain for a minute.
Hostess in Chapter 11?
What did Mitt Romney know, and when did he know it?
motionview:
alpha*: stop voting for candidates and start voting for delegates, again
*You’ll have to imagine the Greek symbol is there
I like Geraghty’s “Morning Jolt” most times, but during campaign seasons I have to drop it until the toxic cloud of post-mortems has dissipated.
No more Hostess? That means all we have is Peggy Noonan calling Newt an “Angry Muffin.” Not very nurishing.
In case you care:
Karl Rove makes his picks for NH
Sadly, I think in this instance, [inevitability] means exactly what they think it means.
You think they think Romney is the best candidate to lose to Obama too?
Wow, CONCENSUS!
I just listened to Robinson’s 2008 interview with Peter Thiel: in particular want to cite the last, or 5th, part, (though it’s interesting that they begin by looking back at a 1967-68 French book, The American Challenge, which projected the economic future into our time, then compare that projection with the economic facts on the ground [so to speak], in 2008; where we can look back at Thiel’s notions of how the next few years — our years, 2009-2012 and out — in the US political economy would go, and with them Obama’s choices, and with those, his current political prospects). Obama’s choices, I’d assert, have been much worse than Thiel expected they might be, at least from what Thiel understood as what would be in Obama’s political interests might go. Anyhow, it has a resonance. I’d call that difference as due primarily to Obama’s ideological thickness.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz does her NH predictions.
I guess it is ultimately more important to regain the House and to take the Senate, so as to box in Obama or force The Inevitable One to the right. But that presupposes that in option 1, lame duck Obama doesn’t go all nuclear on the Constitution and that we survive four more years as a Republic. Option 2 may be just slowing down as we head to the cliff.
Unfortunately, in this little deep blue state, my President, Senate and House votes mean diddly-squat. Time to relocate to Dixville Notch.
link
“retain”
This commenting thing ain’t as easy as it looks.
I feel your pain, RI Red. If there’s any bright side, at least I’m likely to be redistricted out of the 1st and into the 2nd by then. It’s going to be nice to have a Congressman I’m not thoroughly ashamed of. It’s also going to be new and different.
Oh no, we need to regain the House too.
Or at least talk Boehner and Cantor into letting us borrow it.
Jon Huntsman unloads on Ron Paul…
I thought regain was quite appropriate. Just because the GOP controls the House, doesn’t mean “we” do. As for Teh Won deciding to do to the Constitution what his people always accused Bush of doing, well, I maintain that we’ll win that fight. Let the House and Senate pass a bill that abolishes the Internal Revenue Service as their last act before His Imperial Majesty dissolves the Legislative Branch. That should make things interesting.
Let the House and Senate pass a bill that abolishes the Internal Revenue Service as their last act before His Imperial Majesty dissolves the Legislative Branch. That should make things interesting.
Ooh! ooh! RUMP CONGRESS!!
The House? When was the last time we had it?
I vote Ron Paul most likely to giggle inappropriately at the conclusion of the Solemn Decapitation ceremony.
Greg Sargent validates my upthread indignation:
Nice job, assholes. None of you three chuckleheads is getting the nomination. Thanks for shitting on capitalism and making Obama’s campaign ads for no fucking reason whatsoever.
1932, I believe.
Actually we did pretty well 1995-97, and got rewarded with a second Clinton term for our efforts.
Upon which they more or less said the hell with it and started trying to entrench themselves like Democrats.
300 million people and this is what we have to choose from.
Think about how fucking insane that is for a moment.
barack hussein gingrich
link
B. Moe,
It took 100 years of progressivism and 60 years of cultural marxism to achieve this decadence.
January 10, 2012, 6:37 PM
96% of Negative Super PAC Spending Since Iowa Has Targeted Gingrich
I believe we are down to two conservatives, and one questionable(Santorum, Perry, and with the fence splitting his gonads, Gingrich). Of the three, two are too entrenched in the corporatism of the party establishment, I think they understand conservatism, but are “at risk” when it comes to being staunch with the principles. The only ones that were really ever on “our” side were Cain, Bachmann, and Santorum.
Santorum wasn’t my first, or even second choice, but he’s all that’s left. If anyone else wins the race, it will be a Republican, not a dependable conservative.
Too bad Santorum is so weird. What with his litter of kids, Christian values, and zany tax plan.
weird and hateful like a chupacabra
“and hateful”
mr. rickys doesn’t hate anyone except for mahdi morons in tehran. the hate stuff is leftard speak.
Yeah, but you know who else is weird.
So if Santorum starts criticizing Romney from the right and gains traction for doing so, he might, just might be
bulletRomney-PAC proof.and you owe me a tasty cake for having to look up chupacabra
I would be greatly heartened if they all spent more time telling us what they intend to do, detail their vision of the place they want to lead us, instead of criticizing each other. I mean, I see the need to contrast themselves, but can we get a little focus please.
cake is 2011 this year is mostly leaves and poultry
it mostly tastes ok once you get hungry enough
There is still Hostess in the zombie apocalypse, but Hostess can’t survive an Obama administration.
http://trooperyork.blogspot.com/2012/01/michelle-obama-destroys-another-great.html
Ernst, I’ve always known I was weird, but I’m starting to resent how high the bar is getting.
I’m down to Santorum and a set of reservations I can live with, myself.
To be honest (normally followed by a lie), I’m not down with OWS, loose talk of “bankstahs”, or populism itself.
That’s not to say that I’m down with those who are sometimes cynically attacked in this manner either.
So, in summary: Santorum and nebulous concerns. And, as a back-up plan, I’ve changed my write-in candidate from Rollie Fingers or Squid over to Live Extinguishing Meteor.
slightly o/t
http://www.eversostrange.com/2011/02/21/pearlfish/
Ughhh. Live=Life, above.
no mulligans
The fact that Hunstman is even making a showing just shows how screwed we are.
Bring on the Life-Extinguishing Meteor.
“cake is 2011 this year is mostly leaves and poultry”
cupcake is 2011, ‘Cuz it’s not too big to fail.
Nobody really cares about little cake…
the huntsman surge is real peeps. all hale cnn
Fox has declared Mittens the winner. Shocker.
Mittens just declared that tonight they made history. Right.
Senor Pablo, too bad RI really needed to spend $ on a customized gerry-mandering program when there was actually, you know, free software to do it. After all, we wouldn’t want little David Cicciline to be a one-term rep. After thoroughly f’ing up Providence as Mayor. But be of good cheer – a little birdie told me that Merrill Sherman, she lately of Bank RI fame, may be mounting a (D) primary challenge. BTW, thanks for waving the RI flag all these years. Thought you could use some reinforcements.
Herr Schreiber, spot on. We only have the House in name only. Too bad we don’t have the 1994 Newt as Speaker.
Mr. Calamari(mmmm!), abolishing the IRS and instituting a flat tax is really the only way out of this mess. Therefore, the odds of it happening are Slim and None. And Slim just left town.
open primaries: who’s idea was that?
There is a 1.6% chance we will be extinguished by a asteroid in 2025, which, coincidentally, is about the same chance I give that Romney isn’t the Republican candidates in 2012…
Life-Extinguishing Meteor/Cthulhu 2012!
Because seriously… we’ve finally earned it.
there’s no reason newt couldn’t be speaker of the house in 2013
We’ll need t-shirts, bh.
Allow me to add Comment 100.
Cranky, maybe here.
They’ll fly off the shelves, cranky. I think we should initially offer them as freebie on your premium cudgels in select markets.
Then, when people see someone swinging a high quality cudgel on the news or youtube, they’ll be all, “Did you see that sweet t-shirt?” We’ll own free social media marketing.
On the bright side, Red, their little plan to save Vacciline may one day turn Langevin’s seat red. Take South Providence out of the district, and it suddenly becomes plausibly winnable. All the cities in one district and all the ‘burbs in the other? Let’s do it. If Little Dave gets primaried, all the better. God knows there’s plenty of reason for Providence to despise him.
Old Hampshire has to be laughing its ass off about now.
Plausible, indeed, Pablo. Even RI has potential, witness the (D) General Assembly bucking the unions’ antipathy toward pension reform.
The problem, however, is the same as nation-wide – the low information voter. I have 30 people in my office. Exactly 4 have political leanings (evenly split), the rest have a blank stare. The Founders had it easier – 1/3 revolutionaries, 1/3 Tories and 1/3 blank stares.
nor luap is babbling
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-hampshire-2012-primaries-called.html
oh my nor luap is going full kookcinich
Ron Paul, as I live and breath, just made an analogy between the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and the US going into Afghanistan. This too will pass? Soon, please the meteor.
Hostess went bankrupt today Mr. Lee
not that you’ll read about it in the let’s move obamawhore media
at this point i’m hoping roemer beats perry
I feel like the slow kid in class, but what is “nor luap”?
“Hostess went bankrupt today Mr. Lee”
via wiki
what gm and chrysler should have done.
LBascom: Spell the words backwards.
spin the record backwards
“Hostess went bankrupt today Mr. Lee”
I blame Michelle with two l’s
Somebody who comments on another blog uses “Luap Nor” instead. It sounds like what the Cardassians used to call Deep Space Nine.
It’s not always easy keeping up with the Cardassians.
Ahhh, thanks guys…
but nooo union whores wanted some fresh baracky money
I had long wondered when old friends at the NYT or WSJ would get around to actually looking at what private-equity is, within the context of fact-checking Romney’s claim of being a “businessman.”
(warning: inside baseball from my time on Wall Street and a decade covering it to follow.)
Look, narrowly, Romney has a valid claim to assert himself as a job-creator. He took Bain from a few guys around a desk to what it–broadly-is today: a repository of maybe 200-300 exceptionally highly compensated people around the globe. So, you know, respect. He earned it, fair and square.
But what the MSM–and the dildos in both parties (you know that without Street bucks Obama is arguing about cloture with Hatch or Lindsay Graham, right?)–just got around to figuring out is HOW he did it.
You make money in private equity (PE) by buying an asset using debt and using asset sales and its cash flows to pay off the debt. What usually happens is that PE’ers, who are all ex- Street investment bankers, which is to say they are deal-makers first, second and third and have no managerial vision, financial worldview or disciple, let alone operating experience, usually resort to giving themselves lush dividends and paring costs to the bone. With an asset stripped down to the bone (albeit one that’s sending 30%-40% of its income back upstream to the PE firm), the “Mothership” waits for a bull-market to resell the company to the public (re-IPO) or to a competitor, hopefully at a multiple of what they paid for it. Barring that, they often chop a company up and sell it piecemeal.
Bain, and 99% of the top-flight PE shops, turnaround nothing because they add nothing. They are, in the clearest sense of the word, cashflow vampires. To the extent they do anything beneficial–or arguably beneficial–for a company it is enhancing its cashflow, but again, this is usually done by asset stripping and cost-cutting.
A worker at a company owned by a name brand PE shop has a zero sum existence.
For a Bain, with its portfolio of billions in endownment capital, it is that zero sum. Smaller PE shops can buy smaller units or companies, and spend the time and effort, coupled with some expertise, to turn assets around.
Bain does nothing like that since turning things around takes time and weighs on internal rates of return for too long.
So Romney’s claim that he is a job creator is bit afield. If i was him, I’d stick to “I understand capital flows and returns really well, and certainly better than the POTUS,” it being the truth and all.
the foxnews is eager for the john huntsmann soundbite
“So Romney’s claim that he is a job creator is bit afield.”
staples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staples_Inc.
As I recall, GM and Chrysler did go bankrupt, but the fix was in and they immediately came out with a Ch.11 plan that screwed the bondholders and unsecured creditors (read, car owners with warranty claims, among others) and gave the companies to the union pension funds. A true bankruptcy would have rejected the union contracts, down-sized the companies, sold off unprofitable pieces and allowed the creative destruction of capitalism to form new companies. Which then had an opportunity to succed or fail on their own, without government putting its finger on the scales of winners and losers.
Roddy, are those assets not normally failing at the time they’re acquired?
well two cheers for mittens because a “ruthless capitalist” is what is needed to pare down the fed gov’t.
nor luap = ron paul
How about a “ruthless Constitutionalist”? I forget which President routinely sent bills back to Congress saying that he could find no constitutional basis for the proposed laws.
[My bold…] …and also my disagreement.
Existing management often ranges from incompetent to downright corrupt. And, in those cases, private equity serves its function. And, in my opinion, for the best most often.
Why are firms a target? A bloated structure? Cash? Assets? Existing management could, in order, fix that org chart, return as a dividend or buyback, or prove those assets to be worth more as a future cash flow.
“How about a “ruthless Constitutionalist”?”
nice thought
link
All I’m really saying is that I’ve done some M&A work that has convinced me that just about every concern could use an outside threat every five years or so, Roddy.
go rick s
go newt
From the link @#130:
I did really like Perry’s proposal for a part time congress…
That last sentence was meant to spray with every “P”.
Over 10 laws a day. Do we really have that many problems that will be resolved by new laws?
go ricky p fight the romney
Pablo,
No. Bain and its rivals just have oceans of endownment and pension money so they can take out anything with positive cash flow. Better still, in the credit boom, Goldman and Citi could add billions of debt–and the ratings agencies would fail to take into account the mountains of new debt plus increased dividends–so it was all really easy.
BH,
Your point, especially the second one, is very, very well made and note that I take it. It’s why some of the smaller PE shops are very beneficial. I would generally say that in a credit boom like we just had, concerns about management’s ability to generate increased share prices was moot in the face of the broker-PE (aka financial sponsor) awesome capacity to raise capital to take companies private.
I would note that through 1984-85, many of the initial PE deals WERE excellent in that they forcibly aligned complacent managements to their investors interests. Certainly, for the record, I am a huge proponent of constantly reminding management’s they are stewards, not Kings (also called the “Agency Dilemma.”)
Roddy and bh: So, does Bain Capital mainly engage in hostile takeovers?
I likewise take your point, Roddy. Easy money often equaled too much takeover debt and only marginally better management (or, sometimes, the same management).
” Easy money often equaled too much takeover debt and only marginally better management”
hello baracky
“Hostile” is sometimes a misnomer when it involves private equity, Leigh. Many times existing management is the prime mover in taking a company private. As in, they have the books, they know what can be done better but hasn’t yet. So… they recommend selling at slightly above perceived market value while taking equity stakes that will move towards true value later.
It’s often a misnomer as a public acquisition, too, of course. For somewhat similar reasons.
Heh, I know, Roddy. I’m a fan of your investigative work. (Not kidding. I am.)
bh, so in taking a public company private, are they in essence buying treasury stock, regrouping and going later going public with a re-IPO? Or am I sounding like I didn’t pay too much attention in fianancial accounting class?
strike on of those “going”s there
OK, I think I’m voting for Buddy Roemer.
I don’t quite follow what you’re asking in the first sentence, leigh. But I wouldn’t characterize that as you not paying enough attention in class. I just don’t follow.
I’m voting for Buddy Roemer’s funny staffer, Pablo.
I’m voting for Wall Street Romney in the general against Obama cause of my little country could use a little losing more slowly right about now.
I would characterize it as me not paying enough attention in class. Accounting always seemed backwards to me. Anyway, I know that companies will acquire or buy back their own stock, I think it is refered to as treasury stock.
My question is probably all wrong, so disregard it. I was thinking that by buying back their treasury stock, they were taking the company private. I’m confused about where a PE company like Bain fits in if it is not as a hostile (I know it is not hostile hostility) takeover.
When Bain or a like company becomes involved, does the original company retain partial only ownership? Or no ownership at all?
Happy, I too am voting for Mittens in the General because I’m a patriotic American like that.
god bless America I say
Okay, let’s look at that. The original company is bought. From whom? Its owners. So, the average shareholder, he agrees to an offered price (as a group, by his own vote or a proxy). But, let’s imagine you’re in management and you have some shares, a good bit of expertise and knowledge of what’s going one day to day. They want to keep you. Well, the buying party can offer you cash for your shares or an equity stake (old public company shares translated to new private company shares). If you’re management, you might want to take an equity stake because you believe the company is worth more than it was bought for. If you’re the new owner, you might want to offer equity because it decreases the buy price you’re trying to finance.
Overall, the old company doesn’t retain any ownership. It no longer exists. But, people who ran the place might still own a good deal of it and sit in the very same offices they did when it was called something else or was traded publicly.
Losing more slowly is still losing. Maybe if we started losing faster, more people would chose winning over losing.
Of course that implies some candidate willing to say “here’s what we have to do to win” and do so unapologetically and without worrying about the inevitable name calling sure to follow.
I know, crazy talk.
Herman Cain acknowledged giving some woman on the skids some dough. And taking phone conversations from her, too. Him, I liked, because he got it. Ah well, splat. Tough luck to them’s as did. Better luck to Mrs. Cain.
But. This Bain stuff isn’t even all that, is it? Romney, I don’t like, because he doesn’t get it. And here’s Gov. Perry saying Romney ass-reamed hundreds of people in South Carolina. Kee-reist. Better luck to Texas.
I think that’s actually Buddy, bh. The campaign feed is here. I can’t imagine he turned his feed over to a staffer and told him to yuk it up. It’s pretty funny, either way.
Meanwhile, Mark Maremont has dredged up some Romney/Bain deets over at WSJ.
h/t: Harsanyi
“I’m voting for Wall Street Romney in the general against Obama cause of my little country could use a little losing more slowly right about now.”
Like when Hitler gave Rommel command of the seventh to guard the Atlantic Wall!
OK, it may not be a perfect analogy. But then, I’m drinking Patron early in the week, so fuck it.
bh, thanks! It’s all murkily coming back to me now.
Lee, maybe from the Allies point of view, a better analog might be more akin to Stalin’s disappearance for a few weeks at the launch of Hitler’s invasion to the East, ultimately, if accidentally, sucking the Wehrmacht inward toward the embrace of Mother Russia’s winter, and to its death.
I think I need a different avatar. I’m gonna work on that…
Can we still take the Allies point of view at this point?
We need to start a veep pool, rather than crying over what might have been.
Chin up, y’all!
We’d have to take the Allies point of view, if “losing more slowly” means losing something while gaining something, with the final outcome still in doubt (in this analogic scenario, not decided until roughly 1989-91, to the extent it was decided: but, ha!, then came Obama to put it all back in play!).
And more importantly…wall street Romney/RommelAtlantic wall…
OK, some analogies aren’t as solid as others
buddy my friend
Do you now have eclectic interests or was that what you were mainly listening to back then, ‘feets?
Mr. Lee Wall Street Romney is the future like India and Nina Dobrev and Garden-Lites Vegetable Souffles
don’t blame me I wanted Mitch
that’s a really nice song glad y’all remindered me
Mitch is still the man. Maybe he can be veep.
I like stuff what I click and find
this is the most charming thing I found this whole “winter”
… so far.
Also I like disposable music where you play it over and over and then you’re done. That’s how I blew through example this fall.
Here’s a song I enjoyed greatly at New Year’s. A friend of mine, she put it on and then lip synced it with great theatrical flair. Which she also did out of the blue about 20 years ago at a Bob’s Big Boy.
Good times, both of ’em.
bob’s big boy where where where?
no one will ever go to the one here in our zone with me
i love sophie she deserved more longevity
here was a kinda sorta related song from that moment
huh?
who knew
oh. also it says Miss Sophie has a new cd out next month
This was the Bob’s Big Boy in Fond du Lac, Wi in ’92. They had a brownie fudge desert that the girls liked and a jukebox for some reason.
Here is a song you might have heard in my Datsun around then.
Ha! My friend is also keen on the girls and surprisingly conservative now. Her and Sophie both.
That’s sorta weird. I wonder if it’s the song that makes this happen.
So Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman split the Democrat vote, is that about right? With Romney and socialized medicine / the need for government involvement in human exhalation taking the lion’s share of the GOP vote?
We are a moribund country. The moment it was born it started to die.
I’m out of the GOP for good. I need to find another party, even if it’s just me and a few friends with a platform written on the inside lid of a pizza box.
hah here she is being all loud and proud
her friend doesn’t look like she puts on a dress for just anybody
hah! emf here’s the song what always came on after that one when you were listening to friday night radio in houston
We’ve been floating a “pray for the meteor” party, Jeff.
the GOP is whiskers on kittens next to Obama
How’s the kiddo, Jeff?
So at the end of these two early contests Romney will have about an 6 to 8 delegate lead over Santorum. I’m assuming here that it is not a typographical lead but an actual “solid” 6 to 8. Whooo! Only 1100 more to victory. sarc/>
We need a new chart showing the dollars spent per delegate gained.
He went back to sleep, then woke up two hours later feeling better, leigh, thanks for asking. Just caught him up with a flashlight building a Lego Hogwarts. We’ll see in the morning.
Not really.
the low hanging fruit is there to be plucked, cause of Obama has raped and pillaged so wantonly… and if Romney picks a Rubio then blammo slammo we’re back in the game
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/dnc-chair-debbie-wasserman-schultz.html
Post election: Debbie does the truth…
… we hope Rubio says no?
I’m moving to the “put the most conservative people possible into the House and Senate” plan. And plant lots of vegetables that can be pickled. And finally buy a reloader.
Maybe SC and Florida can bring some relief. We could use it.
I just saw most of the movie “Network” for the first time. It was beautifully cynical.
Somebody other than Romney has to take one of those two and both would be best. They are the only winner take all contests till April. If Cain was still in he would have had a good shot at SC.
If Romney takes both he will be hard to stop as then he will have “won” the first 4. Quotes are because Iowa was a “typo” victory. Some one else taking at least one of those two will take some steam out of “Mr. Inevitable”.
I think the “Pray for the Meteor” party is well on its way to being something.
Or.
Money and power, money and power. Freedom gets just lip-service on the left.
Got a Great Horned Owl just outside. Nice to hear.
Before we can take Newt et al to task for “attacking capitalism” we really need to define the difference between “capitalism” and “corporatism”, the system we’ve had for at least 40 years, where buying a Congresscritter or six and creating / capturing a regulatory agency to hamstring your competition is waaayyy more important than the ability to make something useful at a profit. From what I’ve seen, Bain might have been born from the former more than the latter, but not entirely.
Oh, and geoff, freedom gets lip service from roughly 80% of the country; of course, the Founders proved pretty conclusively that 20% with guns and will makes an effective majority.
Here’s the problem with low-hanging fruit:
The really good stuff is higher up the tree,
but you’ll never find that out if you’re too lazy/scared/complacent to try for it.
And here’s the problem with the vice-presidency:
It’s where political careers die,
unless the President dies first.
but all we have to work with is Wall Street Romney Mr. Ernst
when Wall Street Romney goes all good stuff he ends up raping people with his socialist health cares and his global warmings and his general lack of principle
Hence the problem with low hanging fruit.
Why is Romney a better hold your nose pick than Huntsman?
Huntsman doesn’t appear viable at all plus he’s an ardent global warming whore whereas Wall Street Romney is only a global warming whore when it helps him politically
Okay then,
Ann.
He isn’t. But Huntsman’s odds of getting the nod are just slightly better than mine.
I am looking over his position page and not seeing anything I can’t live with.
http://jon2012.com/issues
That doesn’t sound like global warming whoring to me. In fact, it sounds alot like you, ‘feets.
Would you share, SDN? I can see that with the current day Bain behemoth, not so much with the upstart, Romney era Bain.
If you want to ding Huntsman, (and hey, whadya know? I do!) you could start by pointing out the the first part of Huntsman’s energy plan (Breaking Oil’s Monopoly) isn’t fully compatible with his plan’s second part (Increasing Domestic Energy Production) or even internally consistent (eliminating subsidies).
Unless you inferr that what he means by “eliminating” subsidies to Big Oil is making Big Oil subsidize it’s competitors —for teh fairness, naturally.
He goes into more, and clearer, detail here, Ernst.
http://jon2012.com/issues/jobs-economy-energy-independence
Huntsman is today’s notRomney? The guy whose presidential bid was announced and applauded by Obama?
I’ve got no interest in anything the guy who’s positioned himself as the moderate/independent alternative to Mitt Romney has to say B. Moe.
Sorry, but there it is.
Is it possible to have a fucking political discussion that doesn’t immediately disintegrate into a pissing match of pigeon-holing, demogoguery and purity tests?
Mr. Moe Huntsman is not really in the race per se … there was never any reason Gary Johnson wasn’t in his slot on the stage except that the media wanted him there cause he’s their kind of R and he’s eager to attack Team R on democrat terms
B. Moe, is it possible to have a discussion in which ALL OF US are allowed to express our opinions?
If you prefer to ignore mine re Huntsman, do so.
Well, I am going to make lemonade out of lemons and embrace Mr. Romney’s candidacy should it come to pass.
Nothing would make me happier than seeing Obama flailing like the fool he is all summer and into the fall and, one hopes, to crushing defeat.
I’ll bbl. I need to go watch my boy wrassle. They became District champs last night so, On to State!!
buenos suerte
What’s foolish is spreading the notion that Obama is a fool flailing around incompetently because he’s in over his head, when the notion we should be spreading is that he’s an ideologue with an agenda.
Or is that too divisive and upsetting to the tender sensibilites of the all-holy moderates and independents whom we must not offend?
No. Such is intrinsic to politics. Read your Aristotle.
Repeating someone else’s opinions aren’t the same as expressing your own.
This time four years ago I was told repeatedly that Fred Thompson wasn’t serious, that Hillary was a lock, and Obama had no chance. Pardon me for not accepting what I am told today and actually looking below the surface.
I look at Huntsman’s position pages and read his history and he sounds more like a classic liberal than Romney to me, What exactly makes Huntsman a moderate, other than everybody saying he is?
You want to make a case for Huntsman, B Moe, by all means do so. If it’s persuasive, I’ll consider changing my mind. But right now, my mind’s made up and reading Huntsman’s position papers seems to me a waste of time. That’s all I was saying.