sometimes a reporter reports behind the mere "he said, she said" . . .

Hunter, at Daily Kos, states Kudos to Jake Tapper. I cannot disagree . . .

ABC's Jake Tapper reports on the latest political ad produced by the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity (a.k.a. The People Who Own You), and in the process completely dismembers it:

Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group that promotes lower taxes and fewer regulations for businesses, is unleashing a $6 million ad campaign against President Obama leading up to the State of the Union on January 24, ABC News has learned.

The ad contains claims that are not tethered to facts. [...]

The 60-second TV ad seems an attempt to muddy the waters amidst the charges against GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney and his tenure at Bain Capital, a firm that engaged in leveraged buyouts of companies that sometimes cost American workers their jobs, a fact that Romney’s opponents both Democrat and Republican are pouncing upon. In the new AFP ad, the president is depicted as backing $535 million in loan guarantees to Solyndra because campaign contributors ran the company. [...]

That White House officials “knew all along” that Solyndra would have to fire their workers isn’t true. [...]

The ad features George Stephanopoulos asking President Obama in an October 2011 ABC News/Yahoo interview if he regretted holding up Solyndra as a model for jobs and clean energy.

In the ad, the president replies, “No I don’t…overall it’s doing well.”

The full quote is: “No, I don’t, because if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees that have been provided– overall, it’s doing well.”

That's actual reporting, right there. A report on a major political ad buy (the point at which most news reports would end), coupled with an analysis of which claims in the ad are clearly and objectively false. Both are important information for readers.

locust capitalism . . .

Here's a little background on Romney's claim to be a job creator.

So, doesn't the fact that Romney made money on these busts mean he's a great businessman? Well, it does if you can get past the quaint notion that a "successful businessman" was one that kept businesses operating as going concerns. Once it was discovered that "business success" could mean nothing more than getting as many dollars as possible, there was no point in keeping a business that did things open at all. The only business worth having was the one that entitled you to the keys to the bank vaults.

So that's what Mitt Romney built for himself. A corporate safe-cracking engine. Buy a company, put yourself on the board, vote to max out its credit line and award yourself the cash. Then when they're all out of money, you say, "Oh well, company's broke," fire everyone and shut the doors. That's called a "bust-out," if you're a fan of Goodfellas or The Sopranos. But in real life (and in court, if necessary), it's just called "bad business judgment," provided you went through the niceties of making your financial control of the company a matter of public record first. People who control and plunder companies through secret, off-the-books loans are "legitimate businessmen" (in the old movie gangster parlance). People who control and plunder companies through regular loans are legitimate businessmen. Even if the intent was always to bust it out. You just can't say so in open court.

Gangsters can only pull this stunt on targets of opportunity, though they surely work hard to create opportunities. ("Hard work! They deserve to be rich!") Locust capitalists have made it a replicable business model. You use the cash you siphoned out (paid to you as "management fees"—a great tool that gets you paid to do what regular company owners call "running your damn business") to buy the next company you can find that has a healthy credit line. Remember, it doesn't matter if the companies you buy survive. All that matters is that they have access to cash or credit that you can extract. Like locusts. They don't care if the farmer goes bust when they descend on his crops. He has crops! Eat them! Eat them now!

some scary notions . . .

Hunter over at Daily Kos has some scary notions about Replublican presidential views and choices . . .

There is a hunger for mean, among the conservative base, and a hunger for punishing the nebulous other, whether that means the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old, union workers, public sector workers, immigrants, disaster victims, Muslims, or anyone else. Rick Perry may suit them in a way that a Bachmann, Santorum, or Cain could not. He is just as fringe as any of those tea party favorites, but he has something each of them lacks: He looks like a Republican president. Specifically, he looks like their most recent Republican president.

irony, as a building material

Okay, look, I know that not everyone, not even everyone I happen to like and respect, shares, or even appreciates, my political junkie-ness (stop groaning, you know what it means even if you don't think it's a "real" word) - where was I?, oh yes - even if "everyone" is not on board this boat (and its floating, not sinking....); however, if you've been paying attention at all, this bit of inspired editing is as funny as, oh, I don't know, say Jon Stewart (my first choice is actually Richard Pryor but some in my small circle of acquaintances pretend not to remember any of his bits - or worse, omigawd, don't really know if he was at all), or whoever you may think is politically acute and witty (witty in the Shakespearean sense as well as the "funny" sense). This is from today's Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up by Barbara Morrill aka BarbinMD from Daily Kos wherein she redacts, with wit, a quote from today's Karl Rove column in the journal (you are on your own to look for the link to the column) - I don't don't link to Karl Rove columns (at least not in this post).

Anyway, the witty bit:

Team Obama Bush -- aided by Clintonistas Bushites Paul Begala, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg Dick Cheney and Bob Novak -- decided to attack Rush Limbaugh Joe Wilson after poring over opinion research Wilson's report on Niger. White House senior adviser David Axelrod Karl Rove explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Scooter Libby assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Ari Fleischer gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh Joe Wilson.