Michael Medved: The Media Grudge Against Romney

[Zakuska]

Stay away from politics or the thread will be closed.

Skylla

Me and Politics...

[Stargazer]

What is a conservative. You keep using well poisoning inflammatory worthless blanket labels.

It's only well-poisoning if you're using a negative label, or?

You seem to think that the term "conservative" is a pejorative. Perhaps to a liberal it is, but...

I once knew a guy who didn't like calling people who were Jews, Jews. Because he was convinced that "Jew" was a pejorative. It isn't. And neither is conservative or liberal. They merely describe general positions on issues. That some people use either term as a pejorative is beside the point.

[Stargazer]

Stargazer:

That was a lot of overly broad generalizations about the Left. I can't think of a single person on the Left who doesn't like a paycheck. From my perspective it is not Capitalism persay that is the problem but Preditory Capitalism as exemplified by Romneys' Bain Capital that is the problem.

Ps. Apparantly the voters of Louisiana think the same. "Early exit polls Saturday night showed Romney losing by near-double digits overall. But it also showed him losing basically every demographic group in the state, with one notable exception: voters making more than $200,000 per year".

There is left and then there is LEFT. The lefter someone is the more strident they are against those perceived to be on the right. And probably vice-versa. Like heaven, with its many mansions, left and right is a spectrum, not a single shade of color.

Or do we have to define "IS"?

The thing about Bain Capital being "predatory" is that virtually the only source for this canard is, excuse me, the Left. Define "predatory".. Then see if Bain's actions qualify under the definition. Unfortunately, depending upon your definition, you can accuse ANY company of being predatory. In this very thread was a claim of belief that if a company merely made a PROFIT that constituted predatory (I guess under that kind of definition, the only virtuous/non-predatory company is one that is losing money hand over fist and about to go bankrupt). Some people use skewed or slanted definitions to confer a false legitiimacy upon their positions. We see this when Evangelical Christians seek to claim Mormonism isn't Christian, and advance a highly skewed definition of "Christian" in order to do so. "Predatory" is a word that needs to be defined before it can be used to communicate intelligibly.

If you lost your job because in the process of saving a company from bankruptcy you were laid off, then perhaps you might have a reason for claiming "predator!" But it would be highly subjective.

So what is your objective definition of "predatory"?

Incidentally, in order to try to answer your objection here, I went to check out the Wikipedia article on Bain Capital, having known little about it previously. I read through the entire thing, and I didn't find any reference to any predation. I did find that Romney started out with Bain & Company before Bain Capital was founded as a completely separate firm, and that Romney later left Bain Capital to return to Bain & Company as the CEO, and saved it from failure, later saving the SLC Olympics from failure. I think I would rather have a turnaround artist operating on the nation's economy instead of a lawyer, by the way. But aside from a Democratic talking point (and one of Newt's, too, come to that), how does Bain qualify as predatory?

[KevinG]

I am perfectly moderate. Everyone else is too far right or left.

[Stargazer]

I am perfectly moderate. Everyone else is too far right or left.

And the correctness of anyone else's position on issues depends upon how closely it agrees with mine. That is absolutely moderate. I AM the center.

Of the Universe.

[KevinG]

I AM the center.

Of the Universe.

Aren't we all.