Bill Clinton Will Reportedly Play Major Role At Democratic National Convention

The breadth of clinton love is a sad commentary on the ability of our electorate to evaluate anything more intense than tawdry and superficial flecks of data (e.g. "he had a surplus!").



The man did some things that had to be done - closing military bases, curtailing military spending, and increasing taxes - and rightly deserves some credit for dealing head-on with those unpopular tasks.



However, once the courageous acts were done in the first couple years, he rolled into bed with the ultra right wing and super-charged the weaponization of the financial markets and "free trade." The clintonistas molded and supersized K-Street and defanged the DNC by creating the DLC in order to consolidate their power. Since we still don't have enough people with any courage in the White House or Congress, the devastated economy that we have since the detonation of the forces of the wealthy and powerful against the 99.9% remains a wreck with no plausible hope of recovery.



I'm not saying clinton was worse than reagan or dubya because I don't think he was. However, I am saying that his unrepentant heroics for the wealthy should give his hero worshipers some pause before gushing. The price we are paying today for the deals made to maintain his megalomaniacal pursuits has been too high to get a free pass.
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Think Different: What Apple Can Teach America

I haven't read the article to which you refer. But it appears to be ignoring an awful lot of history in order to reach a conclusion that has little, if any, accuracy - let alone relevance to the economy.



Saying Apple got it right with the ipod because they know when to build consumer devices is wrong on face.



First, everyone hated buying CDs because you could never easily preview songs to know if the whole collection is worth the purchase. Consumers who bought music - virtually any genre - represented a massive amount of pent-up demand for a different paradigm for getting music.



Apple's brilliance here had NOTHING to do with 'hey, let's build gadgets!' as the article implies. It was ALL about bringing a new way to buy music.



Second, Apple's first personal gadget was 1993 when they introduced the Newton. It was a great little tool and failed miserably, squandering $100 million in investment. The market didn't exist for a tough-to-connect small, low-powered computer as expensive as the Newton. They blew it and the imitators that followed also failed.



And before someone says that the Newton is proof that Apple was the purist innovator here, those of us who have messed around with a Compaq iPaq (introduced in 1998) know where the silly concept of the little "i" in front of all of Apple's small products came from. If you're that innovative, can't you come up with your own small vowel name prefix?!?
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Mitt Romney 'Legally' Bain Capital CEO Until 2002, Former Partner Says (VIDEO)

No, the reason we have the problems we have in this country is due to low-gear thinking that buys into preposterous, illogical nonsense like that which romney has been putting out on this topic.



The weak cover story that this Conrad guy offers is laughable. They negotiated for a "retirement" package for three years?!? Every day these 'intense negotiations' dragged on while romney supposedly had absolutely NO control whatsoever over the company was another day where the "partners" could have made a mistake and tanked the company - killing his chance at getting a sweetheart deal for the company.



romney can't be that foolhardy to just up and walk away from bain - and THEN start negotiating a deal! There is no way anyone locks himself out of his own company without a separation deal already done. To believe otherwise is to accuse rmoney of being naive beyond comprehension.



romney signed articles of incorporation for new bain companies after 1999. He was CLEARLY in charge and calling the shots for at least the bigger deals. It's the only conclusion that passes the giggle test.



What's more likely is the "partners" didn't like dealing with him long distance and made some offers to buy him out in 2001. Then later when things looked ugly in the rear view mirror, they came up with ways to rewrite history. And now they've gotten caught in the lie.
About Barack Obama
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/business-is-not-economics

Maybe I'm too hung up on terms here, but I disagree with assessment of Obama's words being "exactly right."

Specifically, I object to the inaccuracy of characterizing the job of a private equity firm as "part of the American way."

Private equity and hedge funds are "legal" and maybe the origin of those entities had altruistic intentions. But PE and HF organizations, in modern practice, are parasitic and destructive.

So when the President LITERALLY rolls them into the same league as "Mom and apple pie," it makes my flesh crawl. In the process of making such an absurd characterization, the credibility of all the President's 'complements' are soiled.

This penchant of the President to go to almost hyperbolic extremes while speaking in order to placate the emotions of people with whom he may disagree on a matter continues to amaze me. Those who disagree with him jeer gay soldiers, cheer the deaths of the uninsured, tell his wife she's not welcome to visit their schools, and call for his impeachment because he's Muslim.

It's not chivalrous to try to 'connect' with those folks. It's not bipartisan or polite. It's a sign of weakness that belies the atrocious and irresponsible "compromises" that the President has made in his term. The fact that he faces a gold-plated straw man in this election and STILL tip-toes around offending people is testament to his complete lack of courage.

His job is to lead - not try to make everyone like him. There will be no change until 2016 at the earliest.

Couldn't you have just said, "The President's comments are getting on the right track," instead of he's "exactly right"?

Siding With the 1%?

"Appalled by eight lost years during which the rich had gotten richer and the poor poorer, ..., progressives worked the phones, knocked on doors, and gave generously to bring about change they could believe in."



Funny how the author skipped over the fact that, although many of gave generously, worked, etc. for change, by the author's count, we're now up to 11+ lost years where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.



Truth be told, we're at around 32 straight years of rich getting richer and everyone else either getting poorer or standing still. Bubbba was supposed to fix that, but now that all of the data is in, we can see he was no better than the republican presidents (but a special asterisk for signing the repeal of Glass-Steagal!!) before him or since.



It's about time people recognize that Obama hasn't put the slightest dent in the "rich getting richer at everyone else's expense" trajectory AT ALL. And don't forget that Dem senators voted in huge numbers to appoint Scalia and the rest of the activists on the court that the author appropriately derides.



The system is the problem. And Obama decided to embrace the system. People are free to judge if he's tried to use that system for good or not. But the bottom line is that the system is 100% unchanged since his arrival.



And the impacts of his inability to change it continue to be extremely harsh.
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America For Sale: Obama's Leaked Doc Exposes Foreign Corporations' Radical New Powers

Not sure what your background is, but it takes months of brutally tedious planning and coordination to 'get troops out of iraq.' And if you think that the military hadn't been working on plans to move everyone out since before Obama got into office, you effectively sp1t in the face of military leaders.



And because of that, the President could have pushed for an earlier withdrawal by shifting the planning priorities. But he failed, like he does with most things, to push for what is right.



You and far too many others don't just support the President. You literally worship him and are virtually incapable of attributing any human failing to him - despite the vast amounts of documented proof of deficiency and poor performance. Megadeth's "Symphony of Destruction" opening lyrics relate to the wrongness of the phenomenon: "You take a mortal man, and put him in control. Watch him become a god. Watch people's heads roll."



On the question of who's better between romney and Obama is like asking if it's better to be fatally poisoned or shot. They are either part of the elite who are destroying this country or terrified of and too incompetent to take on the elite who are destroying this country. It's a lose-lose choice.
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