White House "Explains" the Difference Between Bain's Failures and Solyndra's

Courtesy of The Daily Caller, here's White House Spokesman Jay Carney answering a reporter's question about Solyndra's bankruptcy: "How is that different from Romney's argument on Bain Capital, which is that many succeeded and a few failed?"

Oh, of course.

Gov. Mitt Romney launched an attack ad today against President Barack Obama over the Solyndra scandal, which I critiqued earlier.

Comments

[joshua corning]

So the difference is that Bain did not go belly up and Solyndra did....

[Rich]

No, ... Bain is *delicious*!

[WWNGD?]

racist!

[Zombie Jimbo]

Boy's about as sharp a a sack of oatmeal.(/foghorn off)

[SmokeyBehr]

That boy, I say, that boy is about as sharp as a sack of wet mice...

[sloopyinca]

This is not a winning argument for the White House. They need to cut and run post haste if they don't want it to be an albatross come November.*

*Of course, they'll probably just drop a bunch of bombs on Syria or Iran in the fall and campaign on "don't change horses in the middle of a war" or "we're killing mooslems!!!"

[Bam!]

Maybe Obama will pull a "wag the dog" and fake a war with his Hollywood buddies. The girl who directed "The Hurt Locker" could produce it.

[sloopyinca]

Odd that you would bring her up in that context.

[Tman]

I feel sorry for his liver tonight, cause it's gonna take a sizable amount of booze to wash away that particular stench of an answer.

I still don't know how this guy sleeps at night.

Also, good to know the government CARES when you get laid off by the government!

[Paul.]

They've said the same thing about every Whitehouse Spokesperson since... since I can't remember when.

[John Thacker]

Most of the Press Secretaries are, however, actually good at their job of seeming to answer questions without really doing so.

[WWNGD?]

Ever since he got rid of his hipster glasses he just can't answer the questions.

[PapayaSF]

It's one thing to be a lying politician, but it does somehow seem worse to be a "spokesman" whose job it is to defend those lies with more lies and and misdirection and incoherent babble.

[Ska]

And that's what this guy does for a living?

[Episiarch]

Good enough for government work, right?

[Fist of Etiquette]

I don't care how much elbow grease you use, some turds just won't shine up.

[A Serious Man]

It's different because fuck you, that's why.

OR: Crony capitalism and corporatism is okay when a Democrat does it because Republicans hate the poor. (/Tony off)

[SmokeyBehr]

You mean it's different because Shut Up, that's why.

[John Thacker]

Pretty sure that the Solyndra employees got laid off too.

It's amazingly stupid that Carney wouldn't have a response for this. Is EVERYONE in the Obama White House so stupid that they couldn't foresee this question? Are they all blinded by the assumption that "private equity" (and capitalism) must be more evil than government investment that they couldn't stop to anticipate this question?

[wareagle]

I choose option 3, though you only provided two: they have no clue about business, economics, or much of anything else and Carney's answer makes that crystal clear. Along the way, they count on a significant part of the electorate being equally clueless and/or so beholden to Team Obama that Jay could actually say "fuck you, that's why" and that would be reasonable to them.

[Brandon]

Yeah! Fuck those evil republicans! Bout time somebody said it! What a visionary!

[Bee Tagger]

I think receiving the barest minimum of difficult questions during your term doesn't help when a reporter with a backbone finally asks one.

[Brett L]

Yes. They've all been promoted from single A to the bigs without any seasoning. Sure they can get around on a hung slider, but any movement on a pitch and they whiff.

[Jim Treacher]

It's arrogance. They're used to getting their way and not being questioned about it by the press.

[mad libertarian guy]

Fuck.

Many press reports seem to start with some variation of "even ardent supporters of Obama are flabbergasted that they voted for someone they thought would change horrible Bush policy yet haven't seen dick", yet they still go ahead and openly fondle Obama's balls and show their support. And, of course, every MSM writer who acts like they're critiquing him now will vote for him lock-step with the others.

Fucking idiots.

[Tulpa the White]

I'm floored by the same question about unpreparedness. We all know they're incompetent at governing, but campaigning is supposed to be their forte.

[WarrenT]

Speaking of nonsense I'm watching my local small-market news cast with the closed captions on and I have to wonder why did they hire a hard of hearing retarded person to do the transcribing.

It's like a whole other language. What the hell is "dink" driving?

And apparently someone in my community is named Wareg-Rito-Del Spastimo complete with the hyphens.

[sloopyinca]

What the hell is "dink" driving?

It's where you let this woman let behind the wheel before Auric Goldfinger has her killed.

[A Serious Man]

By Oddjob. Fortunately for Bond, he didn't have to deal with his two sister Blowjob and Handjob.

[sloopyinca]

I notice you left out his adopted sister, Rimjob, who had a penchant for murdering people with her acid enema.

[WarrenT]

The Woman with the Golden Anus.

[Bam!]

Sure it isn't computer-translated?

[Stormy Dragon]

Not that since the news cast isn't pre-recorded, the close caption person is typing it in as the anchor is saying it on the air, and if they make a mistake, they can't go back to correct it or they'll fall behind.

You try typing everything someone is saying in real time without ever making typos.

[sloopyinca]

It's days like this that I really miss Tony Snow. (R.I.P.)

[Brett L]

Shit, these guys make Scott McClellan look like a consummate pro.

[Tulpa the White]

As bad as Dana Perino? Now that would be an insult. Not sure I'm ready to go there yet.

[John Thacker]

I suspect that Jay Carney thinks that the very fact that the government lost money is evidence that it was trying to help the workers (losses mean workers win!) whereas the fact that Bain Capital made profits indicates that they must have raped workers.

[PapayaSF]

Good point, but it's more that government losses from attempting to do The Right Thing are Good, because good intentions are very important to leftists, while private profits are proof someone got exploited.

[Espantapajaros]

The coda on Solyndra was that the administration pressured the company to postpone the announcement of layoffs until after the midterm elections.

[Concerned Citizen]

Why did the video end when he finished? There had to be laughter from the audience. That was f'ng Olympic grade ineptitude.

[sloopyinca]

He needs to take lessons from Emmett Fitz-Hume.

[Phrygian]

I always think of this when I see carney.

On the flip side, it just makes me sad. Chevy Chase was amazing before he went crazy.

[Jim Treacher]

Or Professor Irwin Corey.

[Sevo]

"White House "Explains" the Difference Between Bain's Failures and Solyndra's"

The difference, you fucking idiot, is that no one pulled a gun and made *ME* pay for whatever Bain did.
Unlike Solyndra.
You fucking idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

The President is your national daddy and it's his responsibility to make sure you have unemployment benefits, job retraining, and a warm nappy to snuggle up in, unlike those heartless fuckers at Bain Capital.

And while Barry is busy attending to the unemployed, who's preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States of America?

[SmokeyBehr]

When you add up the number of jobs that have been lost when companies funded by government handouts, you'll find that Bain lost fewer net jobs than Obama. When you add all the people that have lost their jobs since the 2009 budget was passed (when Obama and the Democrats became owners of the Economy) you'll find that the number climbs exponentially.

Of course the MSM and the DNC won't admit that one of Obama's biggest contributors and bundlers is the current CEO of Bain Capital.

[Killazontherun]

Comments on this forum are hilarious:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosieg.....-polish-ou

Obama's followers can't wrap their heads around the idea that it is Polish people outraged by Obama so they react exactly as they would if republicans attacked him.

My own take, in American English, Polish death camps can refer merely to the location without reference to who is responsible for them, like say, Oregon death camp doesn't mean that Oregonians created it but that is where FEMA put it. I wonder if the word and modifier filtered through a Polish language native mind assumes a tighter relation between the two words. Had a Polish friend once, recall she was quite the literalist.

[wareagle]

Look, TOTUS displayed the words Polish death camps. What do you expect Obama to read?

[Killazontherun]

If you can listen closely, you'll hear a scream -- 'TOTUS!!!'

That's coming from the upstair quarters of the White House.

[Sevo]

Almost posted a link to the kerfuffle; it's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for the devil.
What I do know is that the Poles certainly helped the Nazis round up Jews during the war and ran returning Jews out of the country after the end of WWII. It seems there's a bit of a defensive response to any mention of Polish anti-semitism.
Looks like Obama's ignorance of history bumped into a sensitive nerve. If anyone can find a good guy in there, I'd like to see it.

[Killazontherun]

Polish anti-semitism is definitely real, but let's not be too hasty to judge. They were betrayed by many, and had the misfortune of the worse geographical luck of all being between Germany and Russia. As a result they suffered worst than any nation in WW2 who wasn't directly responsible for that war.

[Killazontherun]

the worst geographical luck

[Killazontherun]

As a result they suffered worse than any nation

crimmeny -- that's why I thought I corrected it in the original -- switched out the wrong one!

[Sevo]

Starting in '39, the Poles got it from the Nazis and the Russians, then the Nazis again, then the Russians again, and all *that* was before the war ended. After the war they took it in the butt from the Russians once more, with "allied" complicity.
None of which excuses helping the Nazis *and* the Russians round up Jews, nor killing/running off the returning Jews after the war.

[Sevo]

To be fair, please read "Soviets (Stalin, that asshole)" for Russians in above comment.

[Killazontherun]

BTW, Sevo, to be fair, that first paragraph above was nothing short of awesome.

[Sevo]

Thank you. Context matters, to some degree.

[Killazontherun]

Desperation makes people do terrible and, yes, inexcusable things. If I were hiding Anne Frank and the Nazis were walking around outside with bags of ham and cheese sandwiches offered in exchange for a Jew, and I have had nothing to eat in several hours and it would be a lot of trouble to fix something from the kitchen, well, there would be one less occupant in my house. Inexcusable, indeed. Lesson, you probably would be better off asking some one else to hide you besides me or the Poles.

[Sevo]

Killazontherun|5.29.12 @ 10:45PM|#
"Desperation makes people do terrible and, yes, inexcusable things...."

I hope that I would do otherwise, but there's no evidence of that. We're stuck with examining what a certain population did.
Your reference to Anne Frank is interesting in that the Dutch (and other) population(s) tended toward defiance. No doubt there was peer pressure in those populations as there is everywhere.
Unfortunately, for all of the grief the Poles got, that popular peer pressure seems to be pretty much the opposite.
Gotta make clear that this is no condemnation of Polish guy A or gal B, but for someone speaking for Poles in general, well, you're in the same boat as a Japanese 'spokesman' whining about Hiroshima while ignoring Nanking.

[Sevo]

One other note:
Hungary managed to avoid sending the Hungarian Jewish population to the death camps until they were occupied by the Nazis toward the end of the war.
The French? Not so much.

[Killazontherun]

Any speculation why Anti-Antisemitism is strong in the Poles? I can't think of any aspect of their history where it made more sense to blame Jews than Russians and Germans for their troubles.

[Killazontherun]

Disregard the first anti- misapplied spellcheck correction after the -.

[Sevo]

Killazontherun|5.29.12 @ 10:54PM|#
"Any speculation why Anti-Antisemitism is strong in the Poles?"

Not sure Poland is still strongly anti-semite, but in the '30s, Poland was largely an ag economy, and pretty poor also. I'm guessing it had to do with the Jews concentration in urban, professional (relatively) successful occupations.
And, per 'we caused the problems with laws, let's try another law to fix it' the Jews really didn't have a lot of choices. They'd been forced off the lands of the 'pale' by the Russians and took what jobs they could.

[Killazontherun]

Some of the nastier remarks in that forum are being made by a piece of work named Mark Mosk who brings up the matter of pogroms that occurred after the war. I've long heard that this was Soviet propaganda, and so I checked into it. The Wikipedia entry tends to support this, though sporadic violence against Jews for being Jews did occur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....land,_1944?194

Analyzing Kielce pogrom for years, author Krzysztof K?kolewski (Umar?y cmentarz), came to the conclusion that Russian NKWD had planned the pogrom in Kielce ahead of time. As he pointed out, there were two very important occasions to be considered that day. In the Nuremberg tribunal, the Katyn massacre committed against the Polish officers was being investigated, a Russian war crime which the Russians held Germans responsible for. Also, there was a celebration of the United States Day taking place, attended in Warsaw by many foreign officials and journalists.

cont.

[Killazontherun]

It was a perfect time for the NKWD to paint a picture of Poland as being antisemitic, and to blame the Home Army (AK) for the violence. At the time of the pogrom in Kielce, K?kolewski was 16 years old and lived just few hundred meters from the crime scene. He claims that it was impossible for people to gather out on the street; the police immediately approached any group of 3-4 persons for identification. Furthermore, K?kolewski claims that the ordinary people were turned away by an army unit that set up a street blockade. The second part of the same building housed members of the communist party, most of them of Jewish origin, who were not attacked at all. K?kolewski emphasized also that there were more than 300 members of the secret police and army, present at the scene, of whom many were wearing civilian clothes, not to mention some Russian-speaking soldiers that participated in the pogrom. The fact that the high ranking officials from NKWD were in the town at the moment would also support this theory. Of the 12 persons who faced trial, 9 were sentenced to death. According to K?kolewski, none of them was responsible for the crime; they have been picked up from the watching crowd by the secret police.[44][45]

[Sevo]

Killazontherun, gimme a bit.
I'll read it and see how it compares to other sources.

[Killazontherun]

No problem. Wikipedia is a great resource, but should be no one's definite source.

[Sevo]

OK, that's a mess.
The Soviets were ducking tu quoque charges by the Nazis at Nuremburg. Suckered by propaganda, quite a few of the Soviet-sponsored 'Polish government' officials (who had spent the war in Moscow) were Jewish and they ignored the Soviets' anti-semitism in Poland (to their later regret; they were ousted/shot).
I'd guess it was both Soviet propaganda and Polish anti-semitism, and wonder if there was a good guy in there.

[Killazontherun]

I'd guess it was both Soviet propaganda and Polish anti-semitism, and wonder if there was a good guy in there.

After reading a second Wikipedia article (making a list of root sources) I was wondering the very same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community in the city of Kielce, Poland on July 4, 1946, perpetrated by a mob of local townsfolk and members of the official government forces of the People's Republic of Poland. Following a false tale of child kidnapping, including allegations of blood libel[1] which led to a police investigation, violence broke out which resulted in the killing of around 40 Jews. Polish courts later tried and condemned nine people to death in connection with the incident.

There is general academic agreement that the massacre was instigated by Soviet-backed communist security forces, possibly for propaganda purposes to discredit Poland and maintain totalitarian control over the country. Because the top-secret case files were destroyed, there is ongoing academic inquiry and debate about whether the violence spread because of anti-Semitism or ongoing coordination by the authorities.

[sloopyinca]

Too bad Marion Barry isn't a WH staffer. I would have loved to hear Obama refer to the "Polack Def Camps."

[Drake]

They should play music and make him tap dance during the answers.

[sloopyinca]

RAAAAAAAA-

Oh, you mean Carney?

[sloopyinca]

That's RAAAAAAAAAAA-

Oh wait, are you talking about Carney?

[sloopyinca]

Man, that's RAAAAAAAAAA-

Oh, were you talking about Carney? nevermind then.

[ertdfg]

"...how is that different from Romney's argument on Bain Capital, which is that many succeeded and a few failed?"

Under Obama "many" didn't succeed.

Next question?

[ertdfg]

"...how is that different from Romney's argument on Bain Capital, which is that many succeeded and a few failed?"

Under Obama "many" didn't succeed.

Next question?

[Sevo]

Doesn't matter.
Bain investors were free to invest or not.
That asshole Obama pulled a gun and told me I had no choice about Solyndra; my money or my life.

[sweeterjan]

Taking lots of LSD too often made me crazy, too. But it was much subtler. My bad idea filters started failing. But they never made me do violent or dangerous stuff. http://www.ceinturesfr.com/cei.....-c-16.html Just stupid. I've seen one guy get violent, but he settled down after a while. Never, anywhere have I see someone actually endanger their life or the lives of someone else.

[Sevo]

Wrong thread...

[sloopyinca]

She must be tripping balls to post that on here, man.

[Killazontherun]

One local guy in the 80's was found stuck up a tree naked. Firetruck ladder was necessary to get him down. When asked about it, he said he took a few hits of LSD and he 'actualized' himself up in the tree. I guess his clothes didn't teleport with him.

[Hazel Meade]

Easy answer.

Bain risks it's own capital. Obama risks other peoples'.

[sloopyinca]

Untrue. All capital belongs to the state, therefore all capital invested is invested in the state, by the state and for the state. Bain Capital is lucky the state grants them license to do business.

[Torontonian]

Hazel,

Technically speaking, you're wrong.

Bain Capital (like almost all private equity firms) put very little of their own capital at risk.

A typical LBO acquisition (say for a $1b company) will be ~60% debt (mostly borrowed from bank syndicates... Citi, JPM, BAML, etc.) and ~40% from equity.

That $400m of equity will be 98% from limited partners (mostly pension funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds... CalPERS, Stanford University, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, etc.) and only 2% from Bain Capital, the general partner.

However, despite putting in only a tiny fraction of the total investment ($8m of $1b), Bain will collect ~20% of whatever profits are generated. If the company is eventually sold for $2b, Bain gets around $200m in "carried interest" (20% of the $1b gain) plus $16m profit (2% of the remaining $800m gain) on their $8m investment. Private equity's a good business if you can get into it.

Anyway, like Obama, Bain Capital also risks other people's money. The difference is, Bain's investors had a choice on whether or not to commit their capital. Obama didn't offer that choice.

[Paul.]

Bain's investors had a choice on whether
or not to commit their capital. Obama didn't offer that choice.

Torontonian,

Technically speaking, you're wrong.

Anyone who paid even the slightest attention to Obama back before 2008 would have known he was totally in the tank for spending other people's money. When the time came, "we" could have voted "no". And yet he sits poised to win again in 2012... You know, so we can experience his true legacy. (first edit, swype put in "true menace"--irony? You decide)

Biden 2016!

[widget]

sovereign wealth funds... CalPERS

Seriously, Torontonian?

[buntpunt]

That makes no senseat all to me edude. WOw.

http://www.Anon-Software.tk

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