Today on the Dish we had another busy day of Bain coverage. In this post, Andrew cornered the Romney campaign for being unable to quell two major concerns: why he made a six figure salary for three years while claiming to have no active involvement in Bain and why he told the SEC in 2001 that he remained the CEO. Here we brought more bloggers into the inquiry and asked pro-Romney Catholics if they were comfortable with a candidate who had invested in a company that disposed of dead fetuses. Here and here we clashed with WaPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler over his continued support for Romney's version of events. Here we did the same with Factcheck.org. Here we featured Dish readers with legal expertise and here we highlighted a reader with especially wise words. Late in the day, Andrew took stock of the situation in light of new damning evidence and then reacted to Romney's vehement but vacuous words against Obama. For its part, the Obama ad team made hay of the Bain story.
Zooming out, Obama's slight lead in the Gallup poll came down to an uptick in non-whites, and the president's general likeability endures, in spite of his approval ratings. Readers lent perspective on Romney's NAACP speech with a shudder-worthy roundup of white Democrats pandering to black audiences, Andrew argued that the most offensive thing about Romney's speech was the suggestion that 40 million Americans' access to insurance is "unnecessary," and the rumored Condi-as-veep idea would seriously compromise Romney's pro-life position. Joel Alicia explored Roberts' conservative bona fides, while others wondered whether the liberal love affair with Anthony Kennedy would finally die. And George H W Bush asked "who the hell is Gover Norquist, anyway?"
Readers added nuance to yesterday's discussion about the Mormon enthusiasm for profit and pushed back on Marriott's motivations for abandoning hotel porn. In economic coverage, we saw evidence that outsourcing doesn't kill American jobs, showed how the Olympics brings a mixed bag of economic benefits to host countries, and examined the sale of Digg that went for a fraction of its former worth. Tiny apartments in NYC might see a resurgence soon and it's increasingly illegal to rent out your home.
In assorted coverage, a California ballot measure to ban capital punishment framed it in budgetary terms, a NYC food truck offered a conspicuous consumption-tastic burger, and Margaret Talbot found that sex-segregated classrooms are hard to justify. Andrew, in a video for Big Think, proclaimed that Abraham Lincoln was one of the two greatest gay Americans (the other: Walt Whitman). If the disenfranchisement of felons, which disproportionately hurts African-Americans, ended, Florida would no longer be a swing state. This post explained how liquids tossed at airport security are disposed of, a little perspective on shark attacks here, and 3,000-year-old peat-bog mummies left scientists scratching their heads. We commemorated mad poet John Clare on his birthday. MHB here and VFYW here. Try not to hold your nose at this FOTD.
The rest of the week after the jump:
