The Watering Hole, Wednesday, May 2, 2012: Corporate Person Hood, Part IV

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"Tweeter," our investigative journalist hard at work.

Once again, The Zoo has learned exclusive inside information into the developing story of Corporate Person Hood. According to sources deep inside the executive branch, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., has convened a secret grand jury for the purpose of seeking indictments for First Degree Murder against Bain Capital.

This stunning development began shortly after Presumptive Presidential Candidate Mitt, Corporations are People, Romney stated, in public, that Corporations are People. With that admission, investigators sprung into action.

“We’re focusing on the period from 1984 to 1999” an insider revealed. That’s when Romney ran Bain, driving 17 companies into bankruptcy or complete closure. “The bankruptcy cases don’t interest us right now. That’s kind of like sending a Corporation Person into ER, and they recover. We want the cases where the Corporation Person ceased to exist because Bain sucked all the life out of it. That’s murder, and there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

Sources also indicate the DoJ is looking to indicte Romney as a co-conspirator with the Corporation Person Bain Capital. “He may well be the master-mind behind the whole thing,” another anonymous insider stated. The insider then added, off the record, that the indictments are being planned for the week of the Republican National Convention.

The Zoo stopped by Romney’s headquarters for comment, but staffers there were too busy shaking Etch-a-Sketches to speak. One harried staffer paused just long enough to say, “look, we’ve got thousands of Etch-a-Sketches to shake…one for each of Romney’s positions he has held over his entire political life. We don’t have time to respond to every little rumor about Romney killing this Corporation Person or that Corporation Person.” With that, a moving van arrived. “Oh God, it’s his Stances on Women Etch-a-Sketches – they’ve finally arrived.” The staffer ran screaming into the headquarters, “A LITTLE HELP HERE!!!”

THIS IS OUR OPEN THREAD.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
IF BAIN CAPITAL SHUT DOWN KELLOGS, WOULD IT BE A CEREAL KILLER?

109 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Wednesday, May 2, 2012: Corporate Person Hood, Part IV”

  1. IF BAIN CAPITAL SHUT DOWN KELLOGS, WOULD IT BE A CEREAL KILLER?

    No, they would plead an insanity defense claiming they had “Gone coo coo for Cocoa Puffs”

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  2. For whatever reason, I was awake for a spell in this morning’s wee small; it was one of those times when sleep eludes because of all the “thinking” going on. Without going off the deep end in description, I confess to pondering, for some unknown reason, the concept of Wealth, what drives the accumulation of it, and the consequences thereof. I found myself asking a simple question over and over again: what do those who assemble great wealth contribute to society? Who really contributes more to society, the wealthy man or the pauper? Who from the 18th century, e.g., do we still remember most fondly: the occupant of the Austrian royal palace or the man of the same era who is buried in a pauper’s grave, the composer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? In today’s reality, is the world, the USA in particular, really any better off because Mitt Romney has lived and become hugely wealthy in the process? Who really contributes more to society in general: the pauper or the rich man? Who does all the real work? Who does basically nothing but find ways to play the reverse Robin Hood by stealing from the poor and keeping it?

    Everything is backwards; wealth would be meaningless were it not for the immense contributions of the paupers. A society that bases its impression of worth on accumulation of money is a society not worth the powder to blow it up. And Mitt Romney is, therefore and as defined by the size of his net worth, truly one of the most useless humans to ever have lived. Can anyone offer the barest shred of evidence to the contrary? I doubt it.

    Midnight “genius” (??) at work.

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    • It wasn’t till several hours after my attack of midnight “genius” when I watched this, Rachel interviewing Paul Krugman. It appears that some ideas which crossed my mind in the wee small have found traction elsewhere. The rich ARE different: ain’t worth the powder to blow ’em to hell. And back!

      The time to return to a ninety-plus percent tax rate on the filthy (rich) is NOW!

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      • I agree, frugal. There is a world of differences and consequences between someone having “enough” money (or even slightly more) and having “way more than enough” money. In Monopoly, when one person has all the money and properties, the game is over. The Super Rich, however, seem to think that when that happens, they can just change the rules slightly, reset the game, and give everyone else just a little bit less than they started the game with the last time. but reality doesn’t work that way.

        Capitalism only functions when the money is circulating. It’s okay to have more than you need for the time being, but eventually you have to return that money back into circulation or else the gears start grinding to a halt elsewhere. Take it to its extreme and you can see what happens. If a few people have all the money and there isn’t any left in circulation for others to use, then nobody else will be able to run the businesses that will sell the things the rich people need to survive. And if they have a self-sustaining farm that produces its own food, water and electricity (and assuming they can make their own clothes or don;t mind going naked), then they don;t need any money at all. So you have to let the money circulate and not accumulate in the hands of a few people.

        By some ballpark estimates, there is about $4000 cash available in the money supply for each person in the US. So every billionaire is hoarding the potential cash supply of about 250,000 people. (Mitt Romney and his family are only hoarding about 1/4 of that, so they’re only making paupers out of about 62,500 people.) The question these billionaires need to ask themselves is this: Do I really need to have all this money, or is it just that I want to have all this money? The answer to the first part of the question should almost certainly be “No,” and if the answer to the second isn’t “Yes,” they’re lying.

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    • I am probably an awful mother. Instead of pushing my children towards society’s definition of success (wealth, fame, power), I encourage them to define success for themselves. They seem to have figured out that happiness has nothing to do with having stuff. I suspect that the rich folks who can never be satisfied that they have enough are very unhappy people. I also believe that my contribution to society, beautiful flowers, tasty tomatoes, and excellent pork chops, is at least as valuable as running a firm like Bain.

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      • I also believe that my contribution to society, beautiful flowers, tasty tomatoes, and excellent pork chops, is at least as valuable as running a firm like Bain.

        Much more valuable! Sustenance!

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    • Aristotle had some of the smartest things to say about the virtues and vices of wealth some 2400 years ago in his Nicomachean Ethics. For example, persons with great wealth have great things expected of them: It is not enough that they be good, they must be “magnificent.” They must engage in grandiose, spectacular public works in which they lavish their wealth upon their community (without which they could not even survive, much less be wealthy), and in turn they will be lavishly honored by the community they have so greatly endowed.

      Great honors are the right of great resources, but to be so petty and vicious as to hoard one’s wealth for one’s self only is utterly despicable.

      (by the bye, “virtue” is to “virtuous” as “vice” is to “vicious.” Hence, my use of the term above was quite deliberate.)

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  3. What we need to ask is: How are they going to try to steal this election?
    Assuming that they cannot pull it off and we maintain our current President, what sort of obstructionism are we going to be faced with?
    I cannot envision Mitt as POTUS.
    To me it’s an absurd idea.

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    • First layer, voter ID laws designed to prevent fraud that wasn’t happening.
      Second layer, millions or billions of corporate attack money blitzkrieging the airwaves demonizing all things working class.
      Third layer, if the polls still show Democrats leading in key races, they’ve always got good old Diebold.

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    • The only way they can win is by stealing it. The “base”, for the most part, believe that they are the majority voice in America, but their handlers know better. Conservatives have almost always won due to low general turnout and high “base” turn out. Their hopes will be pinned on cheating, and tons of money to discourage those who are not disenfranchised. And prolly a little Diebold on the side.

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  4. Sexual frustration. Well this is, uhh, revealing:

    “The Arab world’s median age is 22, Iran’s is 27; Western Europe’s, by contrast, is near 40. High levels of Internet and satellite television penetration, with their pervasive pornography, coupled with the region’s youthful demographics, have accentuated the Muslim Middle East’s fraught relationship with sexuality. Google Trends, which monitors searches from around the world, shows that of the seven countries that most frequently search the word “sex” on Google, five are Muslim and one (India) has a large Muslim minority. Google Insights, another trend spotter, shows that the most rapidly rising search term for Iranians so far in 2012 has been “Golshifteh Farahani,” a popular exiled actress who in January posed topless for the French magazine Madame Figaro.”

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/the_ayatollah_under_the_bedsheets?page=full

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  6. How ironic that Bain Is the topic today at the Zoo along with Kellogs in the comments. HOW ABOUT DOMINO’S PIZZA? Bain bought Domino’s for ONE BILLION in 1998. Guess who was CEO? Since I don’t have Critter status, I was preparing to contact Zooey about a guest blog. This was yesterday and again how ironic ole Bain is the opener for today! More later, Zoosters.

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    • Heard in a RMoney campaign HQ hallway…

      “Somebody go back and get a shitload o’ Etch-A-Sketches!”

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    • That would be a moving van load of course!

      http://www.alliedvanlines.com/

      Looking at the pictures of the trailer reminded me of my days manufacturing truck bodies. I build a 22′ long truck body for a local Allied affiliate and painted it orange. The lettering was done by hand by a local sign painter. Using a blueprint supplied by Allied, the painter made a full size “pounce”, sheets of paper with holes punched in them that left an outline when a bag full of chalk dust was tapped over the holes. As you can see in the two pictures, the “road” is at the front on both sides but I noticed my painter had the road at the back on the drivers side of my truck body. Fortunately the paint was still wet enough to wash off without hurting my orange paint.

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  10. Quotes of the Day:

    “I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book. Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!” – George Zimmerman, on a now discontinued MySpace page.

    “The media portrayal of George as a racist could not be further from the truth,” – George Zimmerman’s father.

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    • He’s racist — even against those who look like him.

      I guess he knew something about himself worth hating, long before he murdered Trayvon Martin.

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    • He grew up in Prince William County, VA, where the immigrant population exploded very quickly and a hot bed of anti-immigrant sentiment. They’ve had a local law similar to Arizona’s law for some years. It has not been a good place to be a Mexican. I’m glad I moved out in ’85.

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    • From which Hispanic group is Zimmerman descended? Not all Hispanics are the same (which may lead to some problems for the Republicans should they decide to go against all better judgment and pick Sen Marco Rubio as their VP nominee.) For example, Cuban-Americans are quite different culturally and politically from Mexican-Americans, who are different from other Hispanic peoples in Central America. So which “flavor” of Hispanic is George Zimmerman?

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  13. What Your Klout Score Really Means | Epicenter | Wired.com

    ast spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications. But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.

    The interviewer pulled up the web page for Klout.com—a service that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100—and angled the monitor so that Fiorella could see the humbling result for himself: His score was 34. “He cut the interview short pretty soon after that,” Fiorella says. Later he learned that he’d been eliminated as a candidate specifically because his Klout score was too low. “They hired a guy whose score was 67.”

    Partly intrigued, partly scared, Fiorella spent the next six months working feverishly to boost his Klout score, eventually hitting 72. As his score rose, so did the number of job offers and speaking invitations he received. “Fifteen years of accomplishments weren’t as important as that score,” he says.

    The article goes on to mention that retailers, airlines, and the hospitality industry are surreptitiously using the Klout score to give perks to people with high scores.

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      • I’m afraid to check, it wants to connect to my twitter or facebook account to check. And given that facebook is my real name, and zxbe is obviously a nom de plume, I suspect that won’t help me much in the score; as my activities are split.

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  14. Romney Pays Surprise Visit to his Money in the Caymans
    No Timetable for Withdrawal, Says Presumptive Nominee

    CAYMAN ISLANDS (The Borowitz Report) – In an uncharacteristically emotional scene for the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney today paid a surprise visit to his money in the Cayman Islands.

    Speaking in a bank vault surrounded by stacks of cash, Mr. Romney praised his money for “the brave work you have done in the never-ending fight for freedom from Federal income tax.”

    “Thanks to your hard work, losers around the world are envious of me,” he added. “For that I salute you.”

    Stressing that his money’s mission in the Caymans was “far from over,” he refused to set any timetable for withdrawal.

    In a reference to his bid for the Presidency, Mr. Romney told his money, “It would be an honor and a privilege to have my face on you someday.”

    After plunging into the stacks of cash to touch many of the dollar bills individually, Mr. Romney boarded his private jet to pay a surprise visit to Switzerland.

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  15. Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein’s reality check has been pinging around the blogs and NPR the past few days. Money quote:

    “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html

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  16. Hey everyone. Got to New York for a week holiday. Trying to avoid the raindrops!! We went to the MoMa today and tonight we are off to see the Yankees play. God I love this city!

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  18. The weekend of the 12th I will be on the road out to SW Utah for a week of work. Long drive but it beats flying.

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  20. My pc has really been acting weird and is shutting down frequently, even while rebooting. I’ve been watching a lot of movies from my collection (3000+) on VHS. I’ve been viewing films in my Alan Arkin collection since last night and have Catch 22 on right now. A scene with Art Garfunkle talking to an old Italian man caught my ear:

    “How long do you think your country (America) will last? Rome was destroyed. Greece was destroyed. Persia was destroyed. Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed, why not yours? How much longer do you think your country will last? Forever?”

    On a different note, in a later scene the doctor asks Arkin to lay in bed and pretend to be dying so the parents of a soldier who had already died could say goodbye to him. The actor who played the father was Liam Dunn who also played the man in “Young Frankenstein” that Gene Wilder kneed in the nuts. He also played the judge, Barbara Streisand’s father, in “What’s Up Doc”.

    And yeah, that’s the excitement in my life right now. 😦

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  21. TPM

    JOSH MARSHALL MAY 2, 2012, 4:22 PM 3914

    Starting later this week, TPM will shift over to using Facebook comments as our core commenting system. This is a major change. And almost anything tied to Facebook courts controversy. So I wanted to take a moment to explain what we’re doing and why.

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    • Josh wrote about that several weeks ago and I re-registered my user name pachydiplax with TPM thinking I’ll still be able to post with it. If I have to use Facebook I guess I’ll have to use my last name too, longipennis!

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  22. I heard that Kate Upton shut down the internet today …… now I know how Frothy felt when he met Lindsay Lohan. Mind you I’ve no reason to think Kate Upton is anything like bad girl Lilo and I’ve no reason to think I’m anything like Frothy…..

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  23. Oh — per the “two degrees of Herman Cain” comment above. I had a flat out, gobsmacked, head asploded moment today. Per the article below, the lady Alex McNear is someone I knew at Occidental Colleger (“Oxy”) back when I attended (’80 — ’83. BA Philosophy.) We went to see a movie or two together — I specifically remember Gorky Park — and had some intense late night coffee shop conversations. But I was far too catastrophically shy to move the relationship to the next level, damnit. (She was a very attractive, very smart lady, who defined her own style. I’m guessing she still is, but it has been over 30 years since we had any contact.)

    At the time I knew her, she was briefly lover and longer correspondent with fellow Oxy alum, Barrrack Obama.

    One.
    Degree.
    Separation.

    F#ck me …

    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/06/young-barack-obama-in-love-david-maraniss?mbid=social_retweet

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  24. From a live-blog of Gingrich’s “campaign suspension”:

    12:22 PM: This is basically a blowhardy version of Gingrich wagging his fist at the press and bellowing “YOU’LL ALL BE SORRY! I AM A GENIUS!” He quotes a favorable column published today that posits Gingrich’s best days are ahead of him. I think he might start literally masturbating in a minute or two, because all this figurative masturbation is obviously getting him hot. Gingrich says he’s going to work on energy independence. “If we do it right, we actually will not only create energy independence…we will create trillions of dollars in royalties” to help reduce the national debt. Gingrich also promises to go to college campuses to encourage Social Security privitization, as they do in Chile, and he wants to “re-emphasize the work ethic.” There’s no reason, Gingrich says, to give people pay for 99 weeks “for doing nothing.” That’s his legacy, right there.

    12:27 PM: Gingrich will also focus on “what a post-Obamacare” health care system would be like. He points out that he’s the “longest-serving teacher of one-and-two star generals.” I have no idea what that means. “I think it’s time to realize we do not have a grand strategy” in dealing with the Middle East, he says. Now he’s talking about nanotechnology. “I am cheerfully going to take back up” the issue of outer space. He says Callista has pointed out “approximately 219 times,” give or take 3 times, that talking about the moon base was a mistake. “This is not a trivial area,” he says. Space is about the future. “I happen to think it’s a better future than methamphetamine and cocaine” for our nation’s children. He’s turning into a cartoon mad scientist, which is adorable…

    http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/05/02/live-slogging-newt-gingrichs-last-campaign-speech

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  26. Romney Pays Surprise Visit to his Money in the Caymans

    No Timetable for Withdrawal, Says Presumptive Nominee

    CAYMAN ISLANDS (The Borowitz Report) – In an uncharacteristically emotional scene for the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney today paid a surprise visit to his money in the Cayman Islands.
    Speaking in a bank vault surrounded by stacks of cash, Mr. Romney praised his money for “the brave work you have done in the never-ending fight for freedom from Federal income tax.”
    “Thanks to your hard work, losers around the world are envious of me,” he added. “For that I salute you.”
    Stressing that his money’s mission in the Caymans was “far from over,” he refused to set any timetable for withdrawal.
    In a reference to his bid for the Presidency, Mr. Romney told his money, “It would be an honor and a privilege to have my face on you someday.”
    After plunging into the stacks of cash to touch many of the dollar bills individually, Mr. Romney boarded his private jet to pay a surprise visit to Switzerland.

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  30. Water Guns Banned, Handguns Allowed at GOP Convention

    By Amy Bingham | ABC OTUS News – 6 hrs ago
    In the politically-charged and likely protest-filled streets of Tampa, Fla., during the Republican National Convention in August, water guns will be strictly prohibited. Concealed handguns, on the other hand, will be perfectly legal.
    Florida Gov. Rick Scott said this week that banning handguns from downtown Tampa during the convention, as the city’s Mayor Bob Buckhorn requested, “would surely violate the Second Amendment.”….
    ….James Davis, a spokesman for the Republican National Convention, said party officials are not worried that concealed handguns will create security problems…..

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    • “Earth attempting to contact the repub party…”
      They are in a different universe.

      Water guns are the debbil///

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    • If we are really lucky, they kill each other off. For once the gun nuts stay among themselves, why shouldn’t they use their right to stand their ground. OK Corral scenes between tea partiers and the rest … so sweet.

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