Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

I know it’s wrong…

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I know it’s wrong−I know I shouldn’t enjoy it—I know that it’s a result of the Citizens United case and that these kinds of ads are bad for democracy, etc. …

But wow! King of Bain, the 30-minute ad released by Newt Gingrich’s super-PAC and financed by Sheldon Adelson, is a masterpiece of the genre.

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    • HuffPo offers this snarky substitute “We Watch the ‘King if Bain” Attack Ad So You Don’t Have To”.

      Samples:

      Lights up on a shot of sky, clouds billowing, piano tinkling wistfully. The camera switches to generic depictions of industry and thrift as a voice-over narrator assures us that “Capitalism made America great” and has been a part of “American dreams.” Yes, for as long as we can remember, there has been stock footage attesting to this, and a lot of it is in this movie. But in the wrong person’s hands, we are told, “some of those dreams can turn into nightmares.” Sudden percussion sound and a dark filter? Yep. Sudden percussion sound and a dark filter.

      …

      Well, the violins quicken to a frenzy and the voice-over testimonials grow to a desperate tone, and we’re given a chance to imagine what a Romney White House would look like — broken windows, lonely windmills, derelict buildings, a lone piggy bank falls and shatters. A crowd chants “Wall Street greed.” The phrase “the almighty dollar” is spoken aloud with a disparaging snort. And not for the first time, you think, “Wait. This is being disseminated by a Republican?”

      Much more in this vein…

  3. According to the WaPo fact-checker, this film is pretty much a hatchet job. Sadly, these fact-checkers have seriously harmed their credibility over the Medicare business, but still, worth considering.

    • With a few exaggerations. All in all, it doesn’t grapple with the really worrisome aspects of Romney’s character and policies. Really, it’s most like a mild reproach from a concerned teacher who wants a favorite pupil to do better.

    • My favorite little irony comes from the Fortune Magazine fact-check…

      Turns out the Flordia UniMac plant — the opening feature of the documentary — was not closed by Bain.

      It was shut down later — by the Canadian Teachers Union (through its pension fund).

      • for hundreds of millions in profit, and then they shut it down, probably at a loss. What’s up with Bain somehow getting the Canadian Teachers Union to pay them so much money for a shell of a company? Seems fishy. What did the Canadian Teachers Union get out of it?

  4. This tasty little morsel just gets more and more delicious.

    It turns out that not only is it an attempted body-slam to the only GOP candidate who has a remote chance of winning the national election, and not only is it in “support” of the most vicious over-the-hill attack dog of the GOP (Newt Gingrich), who has ZERO ability to win, but here comes the best part: most of it is false. Trumped-up (no pun intended), distorted, out-of-context horse manure.

    In another words, typical Republican fare.

    To paraphrase the old lawyer-joke:
    Q: How do you know when a Republican is lying?
    A: Their lips are moving

      • Seeking an investment firm that is an “honest dealer” is, in my experience, tantamount to seeking a prostitute who is a virgin.

        Private equity firms make their money by exploiting weak companies. The companies may be weak because they are new, they may be weak because they are underfunded, they may be weak because they have grown too fast. It doesn’t matter. Venture capital firms are not far behind — they aren’t called “vulture capitalists” for nothing.

        It doesn’t matter how many layers of perfume and paint anybody sprays on this pig, corporate financing and investment banking is about greed. It is about making as much money as possible in as short a time as possible, and everything else takes a distant second.

        The naive idea that somehow this can be dressed up and paraded as a blessed-by-God path to righteousness, freedom and prosperity is, in addition to being a hollow echo of the corporatist nonsense of the eighties, as divorced from reality as the Wonder-bread Beaver Cleaver fantasies of the fifties were (has anybody noticed that Hostess is going bankrupt again?).

        I’m confident that Bain Capital is not an “honest dealer”, whether or not Mitt Romney is involved. I’m also confident that the Sun will rise in the East and set in the West.

        • Bain under Romney was regarded as having worse ethics than other venture capital firms by other venture capital firms. They made high bids which they then chopped down after all the competitors had been dismissed.

          For those who don’t come to the table convinced that VC firms are bad guys, that’s an interesting piece of oppo.

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