Sssh! Obamabot "Bainwashing" Session in Progress

M2RB - George Harrison



 

Brainwash you while you're sleeping
While in your traffic jam
Brainwash you while you're weeping
While still a baby in your pram

Brainwashed by the military
Brainwashed under duress
Brainwashed by the media
You're brainwashed by the press

Brainwashed by computer
Brainwashed by mobile phones
Brainwashed by the satellite
Brainwashed to the bone

Sssh!  Obamabot "Bainwashing" Session in Progress

"What they’re saying is, on the basis of the facts available to us, untrue."

- Jonathan Chait

Sssh!  Jonathan Chait of  New York Magazine, you'll make them cry!

By Jonathan Chait


The debate over Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is strange and discomfiting because it is a nonsense argument within a nonsense argument. The original nonsense argument is Mitt Romney’s claim that his business experience lends him unique insight into solving the economic crisis. In fact, the considerable skills Romney displayed in business tell you nothing about whether his economic policies would address the recession. Rather than make that complicated point, President Obama and his allies instead have attacked Romney’s record itself. And what they’re saying is, on the basis of the facts available to us, untrue.

Given the centrality this has taken within the campaign, I wish I had focused on it sooner, because the most narrow point here is the most important: The ads attacking Romney are based on pure conjecture. Obama has an ad saying of Romney, “he shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” But Bain Capital did those things after Romney stopped running the company. It would be accurate to say that Romney’s firm did those things, and fair — in my opinion — to hold Romney largely responsible for his firm’s work. But Obama isn’t saying Romney’s firm shipped jobs overseas, he’s saying Romney shipped jobs overseas.

That depends on showing that Romney was more involved in the company than he says, and that his former partners say. Reporting by Talking Points Memo, Mother Jones and the Boston Globe has shown that Romney’s formal ties to Bain Capital did continue  even after he took a leave of absence, and the Huffington Post today shows that Romney participated in board meetings of a Bain-owned firm. Romney has so far refused to say whether he held meetings or made decisions after officially stepping down. But the best explanation so far is the one Intel Kevin made yesterday (and was bolstered by John King’s reporting): When he officially stepped down, Romney remained the titular head of Bain Capital, legally responsible but not making any managerial decisions.

The existence of a “larger truth” does not justify the Obama campaign’s ads that assume a role that they haven't proven and probably isn't accurate. But there is a larger truth here. Ben Wallace-Wells’s narrative about Romney’s business career explains how pivotal a role he played in reshaping the face of the American economy. (The piece is extremely fair and in many ways flattering to Romney — National Review’s Reihan Salam praised it fulsomely.) In the quarter century after World War II, the economy grew rapidly and also grew more equal, and workers grew accustomed to job security in a world where social ties bound executives (like George Romney) from ruthlessly paring their workforce or paying themselves exorbitantly. Ben quotes Neil Fligstein, an economics-sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who told him that Romney and his Bain colleagues “were agents of the shareholder value revolution.” This is a way of saying they helped transform the economy into a place where the owners of capital were able to extract every last drop of value from their firms, which made the face of the business world both more productive and more cruel.

Now, what this development tells you about governing the country is another matter altogether. My conclusion is that, as businesses found they either didn’t need to or could no longer afford to carry the burden of social responsibility to their communities they once carried, the job of doing so has to fall upon the government. That is, you can be a pro-Bain liberal. There are other conclusions one could draw, of course, as Romney seems to have done. But the main point is that the role of business is different than the role of government — even if you deny that businesses have social responsibilities, government still does. (That's a point Obama himself made yesterday.)

Romney’s political problem is that the changes to the business world he helped unleash are unpopular. Whether or not the old world of benevolent corporations of the sort his father ran are justifiable or can survive in a global economy, people liked them. The notion that businesses have no obligation save making money for their shareholders is a hard sell, both conceptually and in the practical outcomes it creates, like mass layoffs. Romney is attempting to portray his business experience as “creating jobs,” but he was actually in the business of creating wealth. Obama has every right to expose that contradiction. He doesn’t have a right to make things up in the process.

As lawyer and blogger John Hinderaker notes, those claiming that Romney committed any crimes or perpetrated fraud in 1999 is simply ignorant of the law. 

…the fact that Romney was a “controlling person” for purposes of securities laws has nothing to do with whether he was running the company; nor is his status as a shareholder or director -- Romney owned the company until a buyout was completed in 2002 -- relevant. And whatever titles may have been recited in the filings shed no light on whether he made the investment decisions that the Obama administration now wants to criticize.

Sadly, while The Times keeps spinning Obama's narrative for him, they are allowing the truth to go unreported.

Brainwashed - George Harrison

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
And brainwashed by all their rules
Brainwashed by our leaders
By our Kings and Queens
Brainwashed in the open
And brainwashed behind the scenes

God God God
A voice cries in the wilderness
God God God
It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Brainwashed by the Nikkei
Brainwashed by Dow Jones
Brainwashed by the FTSE
Nasdaq and secure loans
Brainwashed us from Brussels
Brainwashed us in Bonn
Brainwashed us in Washington
Westminster in London

God God God
You are the wisdom that we seek
God God God
The lover that we miss
God God God
Your nature is eternity
God God God
Your are Existence, Knowledge, Bliss

The soul does not love, it is love itself
It does not exist, it is existence itself
It does not know, it is knowledge itself
How to Know God, pag 130

They brainwashed my great uncle
Brainwashed my cousin Bob
They even got my grandma
When she was working for the mob

Brainwash you while you're sleeping
While in your traffic jam
Brainwash you while you're weeping
While still a baby in your pram

Brainwashed by the military
Brainwashed under duress
Brainwashed by the media
You're brainwashed by the press

Brainwashed by computer
Brainwashed by mobile phones
Brainwashed by the satellite
Brainwashed to the bone

God God God
Won't you lead us through this mess
God God God
From the places of concrete
God God God
Nothing's worse than ignorance
God God God
I just won't accept defeat

God God God
Must be something I forgot
God God God
Down on Bullshit Avenue
God God God
If we can only stop the rot
God God God
Wish that you'd brainwash us too

Namah Parvarti Pataye Hare Hare Mahadev
Namah Parvarti Pataye Hare Hare
Namah Parvarti Pataye Hare Hare

Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Hare Hare Hare Hare Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva

Namah Parvarti Pataye Hare Hare
Namah Parvarti Pataye Hare Hare
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva