Free Republic

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32 in 323 B.C., his once unbeatable army began a 2,900-mile withdrawal from India and headed home to Macedonia. As they retreated, the empire they had created collapsed behind them. To prevent pursuit, Alexander's royal cavalry and infantry dealt viciously with all internal dissent, destroyed cities and burned bridges. The Russians employed a similar scorched-earth tactic against Napoleon in 1812, as did the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It's a maneuver now being employed both domestically and internationally by Barack Obama. The...

Private equity has been the focal point of this year’s presidential campaign. Democrats and the White House have used Republican Mitt Romney’s past private-equity deals to paint the image that Bain Capital helped destroy companies and put Americans out of work. Still, President Obama is closely aligning himself with supporters who have PE deals in their own closets with less than stellar results for Americans while the investors profited handsomely. Obama National Campaign Co-Chair Federico Pena led a buyout of a rural telephone company that looks very much like the criticized Romney deals, but has received little attention. Obama last...

Oops! Here’s a little something that must have slipped out while David Axelrod and the rest of the President Barack Hussein “kill list” Obama reelection campaign committee weren’t looking. The Obama reelection campaign blamed Mitt Romney for the failure of GST Steel company in 2001. A May, 2012, TV ad focuses on the Bain acquisition of GST Steel, and it shows workers at a shuttered plant blaming Romney and Bain Capital for the closure and job losses. But there are two facts about this situation that the Obama campaign would rather that you not know. First, GST Steel failed in...

If you believe the Democratic Party, Bain Capital is nothing but a bunch of vampire capitalists. They outsource jobs to other countries, close steel mills and take lollypops from little babies. According to Open Secrets, during the present election cycle these Democratic Party candidates took a total of $340,750 from Bain, its lobbyists and employees. Even the Obama re-election campaign took money from Bain Capital. So if the Democrats believe Bain is so evil, why are these candidates taking their money? Note: The Barack Obama contributions are not from open secrets but directly from the FEC here and here. Candidate...

The Obama campaign blamed Governor Mitt Romney for the demise of GST Steel company in a video they released in May. The plant closed in 2001. Mitt left Bain in 1999. Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 5:43 AM Obama and top campaign bundler Jonathan Lavine from Bain Capital. The Obama campaign blamed Governor Mitt Romney for the demise of GST Steel company in a video they released in May. The plant closed in 2001. Mitt left Bain in 1999. For some reason the Obama camp forgot to mention this… Obama’s top bundler Jonathan Lavine was in...

“We didn't know who the hell Mitt Romney was when all that stuff started," says former GS Technologies steelworker Donnie Box of Kansas City, Missouri. "It wasn't until later we found out who Romney was. We just knew he was just another guy with money. It wasn't until his boys came and started gutting the place that we found out he was an xxxxxxx.” The media has lavished much attention lately on whether Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was in charge of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002, largely because Bain closed the steel plant where Donnie Box worked in...

Did Mitt Romney and Bain Capital help office-supply retailer Staples create 88,000 jobs? 43,000? 252? Actually, Staples probably destroyed 100,000 jobs while creating millions of new ones. Since 1986, Staples has opened 2,000 stores, eliminating the jobs of distributors and brokers who charged nasty markups for paper and office supplies. But it enabled hundreds of thousands of small (and not so small) businesses to stock themselves cheaply and conveniently and expand their operations. It's the same story elsewhere. Apple employs just 47,000 people, and Google under 25,000. Like Staples, they have destroyed many old jobs, like making paper maps and...

In Batman, the good guy and the rich guy are one and the same.

The left continues to pile on Mitt Romney for allegedly outsourcing jobs while at Bain Capital. Yet the mainstream media seem curiously uninterested in reporting on “outsourcing” by the Obama Administration, which has (1) outsourced stimulus monies to create jobs in foreign nations, (2) outsourced U.S. foreign policy to U.N. and (3) outsourced our kids and grandkids financial future to pay for his unprecedented spending binge. The Obama Stimulus has turned out to be an exercise in Venture Socialism . Unlike Venture Capitalism, in which investors risk their own capital to help companies launch and grown, Venture Socialism is when...

Now they're trying to say that Romney lied to the SEC (a felony) about when he left Bain. This has been pretty well dispensed with as false (here and here), but this isn't stopping liberals, or the Obama campaign, from calling him a liar and criminal.If they persist with this it's going to turn into a birther type problem for them, but with less substance.I know how we can resolve this...

David Corn has a report out this morning that pushes the continuing attacks on Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital forward not just because of the business it involves — disposing of aborted fetuses — but because it extends the length of time he worked at Bain. According to Securities and Exchange Commission documents, Romney was involved in Bain's investment in a company called Stericycle in late 1999. What did Stericycle do? Well, it was a fast-growing, profitable medical waste company. But it also had some problems, such as getting fined for keeping body parts and dead animals in unmarked...

Could somebody please get Barack Obama to shut up about “outsourcing” until some undergraduate aide has explained to him what the word means? As it stands, the president is showing himself an ignorant rube on the subject, and that is to nobody’s advantage. The Obama campaign, as you probably know, has been running ads denouncing Mitt Romney’s role at Bain Capital, in which Romney made various business deals that had the effect of making a whole lot of money for Bain’s customers while also allowing a lot of dirty foreigners to eat, and God knows the world would be better...

New documents shed new light on his ties to a leftist party in the 1990s. On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward...

When the Obama campaign sent popular, telegenic, man-of-action Newark Mayor Cory Booker out to do a little surrogate-advocacy on their behalf last month, something happened that the Democrats certainly did not intend: Cory Booker made a very public display of intellectual integrity (I know, I know ... a rare beast in politics, but it can happen). On "Meet the Press", Booker said that Team Obama's attacks on Mitt Romney's record at private-equity firm Bain Capital and other such petty campaign tactics were "nauseating" and made him "very uncomfortable." And it felt so good.But the Democrats didn't take kindly to Booker...

The House Democrats pushing for a steep hike in the minimum wage could face an unlikely foe: their own leadership. Behind Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.), almost two dozen liberal Democrats endorsed legislation this week to raise the federal minimum wage immediately from $7.25 to $10 per hour, the first such increase in three years. The lawmakers think they’ve found a winning issue in an election cycle that’s featured the rise of the Occupy movement, criticism of Mitt Romney’s path to wealth and a class-centered fight over the Bush-era tax rates. But no Democratic leaders have endorsed the measure, and...

Paul Krugman: 'It's Terribly Unfair Obama's Being Judged on the Failure of the Economy' By Noel Sheppard Created 06/03/2012 - 3:22pm Readers are strongly advised to remove food, fluids, and flammables from proximity to their computers prior to reading any further. You've been warned! New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on ABC's This Week Sunday, "It's terribly unfair that [President Obama is] being judged on the failure of the economy to respond to policies that had been largely dictated by a hostile Congress" (video follows with transcript and commentary): PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Can I just -- these...

With friends like this.... If he could somehow get hold of his hair, Barack Obama would surely be pulling it out right now. Obama has made it clear that the direction for his re-election campaign is to attack Mitt Romney on Bain. Obama camp doubles down on Bain attacks (CBS News) Attempting to drive home the message that Mitt Romney is a corporate executive concerned with the bottom line and not American jobs, the Obama campaign released a new video on Monday attacking Romney and Bain Capital for laying off workers at an Indiana office supply factory. It's a loser....

Industrial Policy: At the NATO Summit, President Obama said his opponent's private equity success vs. the administration's failed industrial policy was what this election was all about. Speaking at the bankrupt Solyndra headquarters, his GOP opponent agreed. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. The photo of Mitt Romney holding a surprise press conference in front of the headquarters of the bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra poster may just be worth a good portion of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory in November. "Two years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this...

THE DEAD BABY MEDIA If the text on that one is too small for you, it's a CNN piece headlined, "Why the Syrian regime is killing babies." There's not much to add to that. The Syrian regime may be killing babies, but CNN killed journalism. With some help from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC. Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East knows quite well that parading around dead bodies is part of the Muslim ceremony of rallying for the next attack. These aren't funerals, these are corpse parades and the corpses are often...

Bill Clinton: Praising Romney's business record doesn't connote endorsement By Rodney Hawkins (CBS News) PATERSON, N.J. - Former President Bill Clinton, seeking to contain the political damage from his earlier praise of Mitt Romney's "sterling" business background, said on Friday that his remarks shouldn't be construed as an endorsement. Appearing on CNN on Thursday, Clinton said of Romney: "A man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold." Conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh crowed that the former president had "basically endorsed" the presumptive GOP nominee. But at a rally in Paterson to support Rep. Bill...