It's only a harvest boom

Not an earthshaking revelation, but another chip off the myth that private equity has anything to do with job creation. In this 1985 clip, where he's pitching investors Romney makes clear Bain was about harvesting profits.



Unsaid, but understood, by harvesting he means, bleeding the company dry of assets and walking away with all the money.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

We're so sorry, Mr. Romney

I'm so old I remember when the Mittster was disdainfully condoning deceitful, out of context clips in his own campaign ads and the juvenile heckling at Obama's events originating from Romney's own campaign staff. Because, that's politics baby. But given a taste of his own medicine...

So you want an apology Mr. Romney? As the kids say -- Boom!



I'm beginning to wonder if I should dust off my old favorite conspiracy theory. I mean, these people aren't stupid so it's getting harder to believe the Rmoneybot is not deliberately trying to throw the race with this lamebrained response to the ongoing Bain/tax return problem. I know it's still early, but Mother of God, the Rmoney campaign has become a walking disaster area.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Turn me on tonight, cause I'm retroactive

This turned out to be meme of the day to the great amusement of the social nets. Romney's spokesmouth informed the Sunday morning bobblehead crowd Romney can't be held responsible for Bain for a vewy good reason.

GREGORY: He was still financially linked to Bain. And of course, a lot his fortune is due to his time with Bain. Even when he was on leave, does he stand by the business decisions that were made by the firm he created?

GILLESPIE: He actually retired retroactively at that point. He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actually retired from Bain.

Brilliant. We could apply this to so much that ails us. As I said earlier on the twitter, everyone with an underwater mortgage because of predatory lending practices can tell the bank they ‪retroactively‬ refuse the deal after all. Foreclosure problem solved.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Willard Romney looks worried

So it seems the Mittster is all worn out from his whirlwind denial tour on the MSM last night and he's back at his beachfront estate in New Hampshire. Buzzfeed has the photos. I particularly liked this one.

Looks like he's praying: Oh please, please, please [Mormon God] make Bain go away!

[Photos by Evan Vucci - AP]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Mitt explains Bain

Only two weeks ago the Romney campaign was boasting it didn't need the lamestream media:

…The governor will no longer allow the mainstream media to dictate the terms of this debate. This is just the beginning… We are witnessing the rise of the center right media.

And by center right they mean the Zombie Breitbart task force, Tucker's vanity project and the various other far fringe screechers of Wingnutopia.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the wingnut revolution. The dreaded MSM got interested in Bain and suddenly Willard was just dying to give those irrelevant mainstream networks and a couple of the cables a round robin of interviews. You can get the coverage and transcripts here but CNN's summary pretty much covers the gist of every single one.

On five different occasions in the first few minutes of the interview, Romney said he had “no role whatsoever” at Bain Capital after February 1999.

Well of course, there is a mountain of evidence that suggests otherwise leaving the Romneybot to explain that just because he's listed as sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president, and was paid $100K+ a year for holding those titles, it doesn't mean he actually was in charge of anything. In fact he has absolutely no idea what those people were doing while he was so busy running the Olympics that he just didn't have time to so much as set foot outside of Utah.

Needless to say, none of his media interrogators pressed him on why he testified differently to the ballot commission when he was defending his residency requirement to run for governor. As I recall he claimed at the time he was maintaining a residence in his son's basement. They just let him mumble something and moved on.

All this could be easily cleared up if the Rmoneyman would just release a few more back years of his tax returns, but you know that's not going to happen:

“I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more. And you know, we’re putting out what is required plus more than that is not required,” Romney said.

Referring to the 2010 and 2011 returns, Romney could not be more clear about his plans. “And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that’s – that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand about my finances,” he added.

Actually, no it's not. If that was enough there wouldn't be all these questions about conflicting legal filings. But clearly he's going to do his best to keep everybody in the dark because, it would be bad if anyone figured it out. He's running for president for Pete's sake.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]