Scott Audette/Reuters
"Ixnay abortionway alktay easeplay"
So much for fading into the sunset. To the dismay of the entire Romney campaign, Rep. Todd Akin is keeping the "legitimate rape" story alive by staying in the Senate race and continuing to do interviews.
In a chat with NBC’s Matt Lauer this morning, the congressman said Republican vice presidential candidate personally "advised" him to step down. Ignoring those pleas, Akin said running for office isn't about him, "it's about trying to do the right thing and standing on principle."
Why yes, principles! Akin and Paul Ryan share a lot of them, it turns out. Most notably, Ryan cosponsored a bill to redefine rape — using the nonsensical term "forcible rape" — alongside the embattled Missouri lawmaker in order to limit the number of abortions covered by federal funding. This chain of events further exposes Ryan's extremely conservative views on social issues at time when Republicans are desperately working (and failing) to win over women voters.
Try as he might to distance himself from Akin’s redonkulous comments, Ryan got peppered with questions over his own pro-life stances on abortion, which do not include exceptions for rape and incest.
"I'm proud of my record. Mitt Romney is going to be president and the president sets policy. His policy is exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother," Ryan told reporters on Wednesday during a brief news conference on his plane. "I'm comfortable with it because it's a good step in the right direction." (P.S. The GOP platform committee did not get that memo).
On Tuesday, Ryan called Akin's statements "outrageous" and "over the pale." He continued, "rape is rape period, end of story."
Team Obama isn't ready to let this drop yet. "[Ryan] may hope that American women never learn about this record, but they deserve an answer to why he wanted to redefine rape and remove protections for rape victims," said an Obama campaign spokeswoman according to TPM.
Akin earned The Last Word's infamous #batcrapcrazy hashtag by suggesting women who are victims of "legitimate rape" can shut down their bodies in order to stop from getting knocked up. A reminder folks, this is a sitting member of Congress.
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What are we up to...15 post topics on this one bizzare congressman running for the Senate in the Bible Belt state of Missouri's ignorant and offensive statement? Really.
Seems the head of the Congressional Budget Office testified today in D.C. that if the President and the Congress don't get to work and resolve the issues of the extension of all the tax cuts of the past 12 years, and finds a way to resolve in a less harmfull manner the failed to act previously mandated sequestration funds meant for domestic and defense spending, we will be look at another recession early next year, and an over 9% Unemployment Rate by the end of 2012. He didn't add, but I will, another probable downgrade of the US credit rating also.
And on the sly, President Obama has reached out to a very unlikely quarter to get his failed economy out of the mud his policies have mired us in...by enlisting the help as a staff member a former consultant to BAIN CAPITAL. Only you wouldn't know it, as for political purposes after all his attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital (an 85% successful private equity investment firm turningaround failing companies in troubled industries), he insisted on that Bain Capital consultant expunge any reference to his work with Bain from his resume. What a hyprocrite Obama is!
Uh Grandpa, I think you overlooked David Letterman... Rachel Maddow is on his show right now, and even David's #1 on his top ten list referred to Achin' Akin...
You ought to head over to her blogs and try some of the stuff you pass off here. Those ladies over there need you...
Anyway, Bain Capital was not a "turn around" operation; it used "leveraged buy-outs" to acquire companies, imposed their own management style, often with a threat of outsourcing jobs to China to gain employee concessions...
This first article isn't written by a fan of Barack Obama, incidentally... You can verify that one with the last paragraph where he notes that the banking crowd hasn't had much to complain about while he has been in office. In Mitt, though, they see a whole gaggle of golden geese, I suppose...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Real-Bain-Capital-Stor-by-Michael-Collins-120719-501.html
The article about Bain Capital features stories that most of the readers of The Agonist should know about, because we've been writing about these circumstances for years now. This is all about the equity extraction business, which is Bain Capital's bread and butter and Mitt Romney's fundamental business experience. In classic Republican hypocrisy mode, Mitt Romney has been saying that Bain Capital is proof that he knows how to create jobs. This is, in a way true -- it's just that the jobs he creates are all in India and China, which really means he's running for CEO of the wrong country. What the Bloomberg article shows is that the greatest "success stories" at Bain Capital were all about using leverage -- excessive debt in other words -- to buy companies, pay huge dividends to Mitt Romney and his fellow investors, and in the process destroy the companies at the cost of thousands of lost American jobs.
In the next four years, Bain, now in complete control of the company, tripled Dade International's debt from $300 million to $902 million. Some of this debt was used to retire previous expensive debt and to expand the company by purchasing a German competitor, but $242 million was used to buy out one-half of Bain Capital's equity interest in Dade International. In other words, in just four years, Bain claimed that $85 million in equity had magically turned into $484 million in equity. The company at this stage was private, so the capital could be whatever Bain claimed it to be, within reasonable accounting parameters. It just seems very unlikely that the equity in the company grew six-fold in such a short period of time, when net income wasn't anywhere near this amount. What seems much more likely was that Bain did to Dade International what it did to nearly 80 companies when Mitt Romney was in charge -- it loaded the company up with debt for the purpose of declaring magical, gargantuan returns for itself and its partners.
Grandpa tries to spin this one with the claim that the actual bankruptcy occurred after Romney left Bain, but that only suggests the coup de grace was applied at that point. The patient was already terminal...
If Mitt Romney were a real capitalist, what would have happened is that after the first such experience, he would have said: "Wait a minute, here!" Bankruptcy is a failure with very high costs, and Romney should have looked at his business model and seen instantly that the leverage he was using was ultimately destroying economic value. He would have abandoned his model, or at the least drastically reduced the leverage to give his companies a fighting chance. That he didn't do so is a towering testimony to Mitt Romney's greed, because you don't keep repeating the Dade International experience over and over unless your sole objective is to maximize the amount of profit you are earning from each investment, and damn all the other consequences.
There is, in the end, nothing capitalistic about Bain Capital or Mitt Romney at all. It is not even clear he has the skills to run a company long term, because his whole game was to get in and out of the situation as quickly as possible, usually a year or two before bankruptcy became inevitable.
And then there's Ampad... Fuzzy has dissolved in hysterics in the past over this one, and if past behavior is any predictor...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/21/1093461/-Mitt-Romney-s-Bain-Capital-took-20-profit-for-every-dollar-invested-in-Ampad-Creditors-got-0-002
Do you really expect I would take the education quitter and alcholic Cab Drivers explanation drawn from one of his rabid left wing blogs over the rationale and knowledeable assessment of individuals like ex President Bill Clinton, ex Governor Ed Randel of Pernnsylvania, Governor of Massachusetts (where Bain Capital is headquarted) Patrick Duval, Mayor Cory Booker, and Obama Auto Czar Ed Rattner (Democrats all) who advised Obama that his campagin was wrong to attack the record of Bain Capital and Romney's work there as its CEO as, in words of Bill Clinton, Romney and Bain had a sterling reputation of success as a private equity investment firm.
You seem to have missed the news that now even Obama has come around to realizing those attacks were amiss....as his popularity ratings sunk in the polls due to them, and he has lost his 2008 level of Business and Finance Institutions; donations to his campaign for re-election. And that is evident in his having hired a former BAIN CAPITAL consultant to help him steer a path of obtaining a turnaround in the moribund and sinking private sector now! You DRANK the KOOLAIDE of the lying attacks on Bain Capital, and now your are poisoned...only the truth will help you now, Cab Driver. Better take your medicine.
Minnesota House DFL minority leader Paul Thissen is calling for Duluth Rep. Kerry Gauthier to end his campaign for reelection to the Minnesota legislature after his sexual encounter last month at an interstate rest stop.
Gauthier, a Democrat, was questioned by police on the evening of July 22 at the Thompson Hill rest area off Interstate 35, where he met a 17-year-old boy for sex.
The two arranged the meeting on Craigslist, and the teen admitted he had told Gauthier he was 18 when responding to the post from the 56-year-old state lawmaker
Sorry to burst your bubble, Steven, but maybe you'd better check this out:
Lawrence, A friend of mine recently coined a much classier sounding word for one of your favorites to describe the neo-Republicans. "Guano-psychotic" = "Bat**** crazy. The best part is that you CAN say it on the air. Think it'll catch on?
Chris,
A friend of mine recently coined a new version of your favorite way of describing the neo-Republicans-"guanopsychotic"= Bat*** crazy. The best part is you can say it on the air. Think it'll catch on?
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The interesting thing about the bill Paul Ryan refers to on the bus, received 251 votes only AFTER person-hood was removed. Second he calls Romney's position, "a good start." Did no one else catch this?
Why are you liberal leftwingnuts so eager to distract from the one post topic in three days that actually deals with the problems of our fiscal situation and hence, our economy? There are at least 15 other post topics in the last three days of this blog that focuses on your silly little attempts to pin the bizzare and offensive statements of one candidate in the Bible Belt state of Missouri from last week to the Republican ticket running a campaign on the econonic and fiscal and energy and entitlement and tax reforms necessary to turn this nation around. Do you realize how petty and ignorant you appear to other when you do that?
I thought you might want to read this, if you haven't already. Although I am Canadian, I watch you, Ed and Rachel nightly to keep up with what is happening south of the 49th parallel. Thank you for keeping me informed. I hope the link shows up. If it doesn't, it is Raped, Pregnant and Ordeal Not Over, by Shauna Prewitt, special to CNN
http:// edition.cnn.com/2012/08/22/opinion/prewitt-rapist-visitation-rights/index.html?iref= obinsite