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Mitt Romney, liar.

tyr_13 said:
Which is a different argument than Romney is making.
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Not inconsistent with his platform at all, only in your mind. I'm also for keeping jobs here, and growing job opportunities in the USA. But I know that some industries have moved offshore for good reasons and will continue to. That's little different than saying we need to farm, but let's farm in that gently rolling valley with lush grass instead of the rocky hillside.

I think what's hard for guys like you to accept is that we will add jobs. We'll just add them in the fracking fields and not the greenie fantasy energy field. So guys like you, who advocate clamping down on the pipeline, limiting offshore drilling, putting regulatory hurdles in the way of all drilling....aren't you anti-jobs?

I know this doesn't fit with the narrative, of course. But isn't that a problem? The narrative needs to be at least slightly grounded in reality.
 
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Romney was both born and not born in Kenya, I'm telling you. His refusal to release is proof that he's a secret Muslim.
 
And for the record, Romney is wrong when he accused Obama (or even the Obama campaign) of being a liar for calling him a felon. They didn't call him a felon. They said either he lied to American people or he lied to the SEC which might be a felony.

They are, of course, entirely correct. There is no way, in conventional use of language that the statements in the 2000-2001 SEC filings are consistent with Romney's claim to have "left any role" with Bain in 1999.

And again, in regular ordinary language, Romney is trying to have it both ways: to take credit for everything Bain ever did that can be put in a positive light, but pretend he isn't responsible for decisions that created jobs overseas rather than in the U.S.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
And for the record, Romney is wrong when he accused Obama (or even the Obama campaign) of being a liar for calling him a felon. They didn't call him a felon. They said either he lied to American people or he lied to the SEC which might be a felony.

They are, of course, entirely correct. There is no way, in conventional use of language that the statements in the 2000-2001 SEC filings are consistent with Romney's claim to have "left any role" with Bain in 1999.

And again, in regular ordinary language, Romney is trying to have it both ways: to take credit for everything Bain ever did that can be put in a positive light, but pretend he isn't responsible for decisions that created jobs overseas rather than in the U.S.
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Obama is quite familiar with the legal strategy of argument in the alternative, and Obama has provided us with a textbook example.

In argument in the alternative, you present the different alternative interpretations of events, and in doing so, attempt to show that theory you are trying to prove stands up under all interpretations, or failing that, that no scenario provides a favorable outcome for the opposition.
 
Puppycow said:
And other members of the press strongly disagree with that assessment.

He was "legally" the CEO, and as far as I'm concerned that means he was the ultimate guy responsible.
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The delicious irony in all of this is that Romney started out by using his time at Bain to demonstrate what an awesome leader he was. What a brilliant financial strategist. How his personal brilliance led to prescient investments in awesome ideas.

Now he's trying to tell us that from 1999-2002, Bain operated as a ghost ship and basically ran itself with no input from any John Galt CEO at all.
 
Unabogie said:
The delicious irony in all of this is that Romney started out by using his time at Bain to demonstrate what an awesome leader he was. What a brilliant financial strategist. How his personal brilliance led to prescient investments in awesome ideas.

Now he's trying to tell us that from 1999-2002, Bain operated as a ghost ship and basically ran itself with no input from any John Galt CEO at all.
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Which of course means that it never noticed when he left. Which implies that his role was always insignificant. If it were true that he had left it without a master at the helm.
 
BenBurch said:
Obama is quite familiar with the legal strategy of argument in the alternative, and Obama has provided us with a textbook example.

In argument in the alternative, you present the different alternative interpretations of events, and in doing so, attempt to show that theory you are trying to prove stands up under all interpretations, or failing that, that no scenario provides a favorable outcome for the opposition.
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In this case, it's particularly effective because Romney's rebuttal to the original attack ads (that Romney was responsible for offshoring jobs) was to argue that he had no role whatsoever in the company.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to respond to that by saying, if you're not lying now, then you lied to the SEC.

In this way, it's similar to argumentum ad absurdum (which, contrary to the belRomney's responief of several JREF posters I've conversed with, is not fallacious) in that it follows the premises your opponent has proffered to their logical conclusion.

Really, the Obama campaign is pointing out a stark contradiction between statements Romney made to the American people and statements made in SEC filings (signed by Romney acting as CEO of Bain).

Since there is no logical way the conflicting statements can be made consistent, Romney simply lashes out against a strawman, largely ignoring the actual problem.
 
Ziggurat said:
What on earth are you talking about? Citizens United merely restored what had always been the case prior to 2003. That's not uncharted waters, that's almost the entirety of our history. McCain-Feingold, not Citizens United, was the uncharted waters.
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No. There is a long history of precedent for corporate personhood, but the Citizens United ruling confers upon corporations a new and enhanced legal stature by declaring them to be the equal of human beings under the First Amendment free speech clause.

The full implications are not yet clear, but it was just two months after that ruling that the US D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, taking that logic one step further, found that it was a violation of both its and its donors' free speech rights to require SpeechNow.org to register, report, and be subject to contribution limits, and that "Disclosure requirements also burden First Amendment interests because compelled disclosure, in itself, can seriously infringe on privacy of association and belief". The FEC followed up the SpeechNow decision with two rulings in 2010, permitting the creation of what the Commission called "independent-expenditure-only" political action committees -- and a never-before-seen entity emerged upon the US political scene: the Super PAC.

This presidential election is very much an experiment to see how that's going to work. If the Koch brothers and their ilk can buy enough "free speech" to put Romney's Bain genie back in its bottle, we'll know that the corporatization of US politics is essentially complete, and that the only kind of speech that really matters is not only not free, but so expensive as to place it beyond the means of all but the wealthiest. Unfortunately, it will be too late to do anything about it.

That's the trouble with learning from experience: sometimes the test comes first, and the lesson afterward.
 
BenBurch said:
Which of course means that it never noticed when he left. Which implies that his role was always insignificant. If it were true that he had left it without a master at the helm.
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In an interview I saw (just a clip played on the McLaughlin Group--but I didn't notice where it came from originally), the interviewer asked him how it is he can have it both ways: taking credit but not responsibility, Romney's answer was (not in these words) that since he founded the company, all the good things the company ever did are feathers in his cap.

I was frustrated that the interviewer didn't challenge that statement, pointing out that if we are to give him credit for everything Bain ever did simply because he founded the company, then why can't we also hold him responsible for everything Bain ever did for the same reason?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
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Since there is no logical way the conflicting statements can be made consistent, Romney simply lashes out against a strawman, largely ignoring the actual problem.
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And like an animal thrashing in a trap, wounds himself more deeply by the moment.

Now, one caution; Such animals are dangerous. Best to stand off and let them thrash rather than administer the coup de grace.
 
Dymanic said:
No. There is a long history of precedent for corporate personhood, but the Citizens United ruling confers upon corporations a new and enhanced legal stature by declaring them to be the equal of human beings under the First Amendment free speech clause.
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I'll side with Zig on this point. Citizens United said nothing about corporate personhood, or making corporations somehow more human-like.

It was pretty much only a First Amendment case. The freedom of association (the right of individuals to pool their resources to do speech acts as a group) had already been recognized as integral to First Amendment free speech rights.

If the court would have ruled that Citizens United couldn't show the Hillary movie, then the same thing would have to apply to Michael Moore movies and so on.
 
BenBurch said:
And like an animal thrashing in a trap, wounds himself more deeply by the moment.

Now, one caution; Such animals are dangerous. Best to stand off and let them thrash rather than administer the coup de grace.
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I don't know. I think Romney's strawman attack was quite effective. Virtually every news story I read points strongly to the conclusion that Romney is right, and that the Obama campaign was wrong to say he is a felon--even though they never said that.

Even two fact-check sites have dug in their heels to defend Romney. I'm not sure why. The contradiction is stark. They seemed also to be evaluating a claim that wasn't made (that Romney is a felon) rather than looking at the explicit contradiction in statements.
 
Dymanic said:
So you see us having simply returned to, what, the pre-2003 Super PAC era?
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No. We are in 2012, and a lot has changed other than McCain-Feingold. But I disagree with your characterization of the Citizens United decision. It did not say what you claim it said.
 
Trying to change the subject now; http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/07/romneyworld-changes-the-subject-129030.html

The Republican presidential nominee is out this morning with a flurry of releases focusing attention away from Bain Capital. Ingredients include: a polling memo from Neil Newhouse arguing that Obama's attacks aren't working, a web video reviving the "crony capitalism" line of attack against Obama and a softball "Fox and Friends" interview in which Romney got to stick to his narrow talking points on all of the above.

<SNIP>
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JoeTheJuggler said:
No. We are in 2012, and a lot has changed other than McCain-Feingold. But I disagree with your characterization of the Citizens United decision. It did not say what you claim it said.
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I'm not sure what you think it did say, but it's unfortunate (in my opinion) that the D.C. US District Court of Appeals chose to interpret it the way they did.
 
BenBurch said:
...a softball "Fox and Friends" interview in which Romney got to stick to his narrow talking points on all of the above.
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"The Obama campaign people keep on wanting more and more and more, more things for their opposition research to pick through and make a mountain out of."

Romney just openly admitted that those tax returns contain information that could be used against him.
 
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