…is not Mitt Romney’s handling of Bain Capital, or anything Mitt Romney has done. The biggest mistake was the one made by Barack Obama on Friday, when what you might call his now-familiar “Declaration of Interdependence” went completely off the rails. Obama’s “we’re all in this together” bit has been a feature of his speeches during the past year, as he cites the government-led activities that have made this country better—land-grant colleges and infrastructure and the social safety net. It sounds kind of uplifting, which is why he likes to say it, and it fits his general message of a country in which government plays a central role for the good of all.
But when he extended it to personal and private endeavor, the president revealed the danger of this message—to him. ”If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” Obama said. “Somebody else made that happen.” Aside from the fact that this isn’t even remotely true—if you’re a taxpayer and government funds were used to “make something happen,” then by definition you paid for it—it was profoundly stupid politically. In 2007, the last year for which we have data, according to the Census Bureau, there were 21.7 million businesses in the United States with no employees—meaning they were sole proprietorships, or free-lance businesses employing only their owner. Of the six million remaining businesses in the U.S., more than 3 million had 1 to 4 employees, and 1 million had 5 to 9. So, all in all, small businesses run by one person employing fewer than ten numbered an astonishing 25 million.
This is probably the matter of greatest pride for each and every one of the people who runs that business. He or she views himself or herself as a hard-working, go-getting, scrappy individualist. And it’s likely that many of them—many, many of them—are independent voters. Certainly that was the case 20 years ago when Ross Perot scored 20 percent of the vote, overwhelmingly from small businessmen who were angered by George H.W. Bush and yet couldn’t pull the lever for Bill Clinton. America is different demographically, but the class of people to whom Perot appealed is far larger than it was then.
And a man running for national office just said of their own businesses that they “didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” This statement is a colossal opportunity for Mitt Romney and will prove a suppurating wound for the president, who revealed a degree not only of condescension but of contempt for the very people who are going to decide this election.
And if there’s one thing people recognize, it’s when they are being viewed with contempt.
This notion that "if you've got a business you didn't build that; someone else made that happen" is one of the principle MORAL justifications for one of central assumptions made by the Left; the assumption that all wealth and income are rightfully COLLECTIVE rather than INDIVIDUAL property, to be disposed of by "society" (the State) as it sees fit. n nObama (and Elizabeth Warren) were essentially just repeating what amounts to an unquestioned and unquestionable Leftist quasi-religious dogma.
Excellent observation. It is no wonder that there is such little distinction between the U.S. Communist Party website and Obama's rhetoric.
True, but it is worse than that. This theory, if taken to its logical conclusion, says that you essentially owe your life to the gov't, because it gives you safety after all. Elizabeth Warren has said something along these lines, too. The real basis of Leftism is that you owe your wealth and YOUR LIFE to the state. And thus you should be happy when the state lets you keep either of them even a little. This is really the root of all leftist ideologies.
Podhoretz did not listen to the President's comments. Additionally, Warren's statements respond to a fundamental incoherence in understanding how business functions. Without start-up funding through government, a university, inheritance from daddy, extraordinary sacrifice and saving, or the corner juice loan there is no business. Without customers there is no revenue and the business dies. Venture capital usually supports businesses already showing promise. No business operates in isolation. No successful business is the work of a single individual in contact with no others. That's what the President meant and that's what Podhoretz failed (miserably) to comprehend.
The whole argument Obama, Warren and you are making leads inexorably toward gov't ownership of everything. After all, without the gov't, we'd all be dead, poor or both. So we owe it all to the gov't.
So how do you know what he meant? Is he so smart he can’t say what he means? You see he has never earned anything himself be it money or position. His fawning environment has lifted him along all along. He thinks that is the way success in America works. Look past his winning smile. He ain’t pretty and what he has done to your country is worthy of your grief.
If you all would have just listen to Ron Paul the end of America just might not be happening. You have been warned over and over again.
Without people working for you or people buying your product you wouldn't survive is the message, I run a business and if I did not have anyone to purchase my products i would not be successful.. GET it? So the President was right some folks are just too thick to understand..Do you think if you opened a business and no one came into your store or purchased your products your business would survive? God how dumbed down are we? Romney made his money by closing down businesses here in this country where I live and sent them to countries overseas and left our people out of work.. Is that not easy to comphrend?
In other words, a successful small businessman is just a different kind of welfare recipient?
That’s not what Elizabeth Warren said–and Obama was essentially paraphrasing her, given how the liberal Dem base had already fallen in love with her words:
Elizabeth Warren: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
The word “customers” does not appear anywhere in what she said.
What she said was that there is a “social contract” in which she will *allow* you to “keep a big hunk” of your business–but the rest of it belongs to the government to dispose of as it sees fit.
Would you like to come up with a different interpretation of her words?
I nominate for another campaign mistake by the Obama team, hilary's answer in Jerusalem when she was asked about Pollard's case at a press conference. In my view, her response was cold, legalistic, punitive. None of that supposed liberal warmth for suffering humanity. No milk of human kindness. nThe next question after her response about Pollard should have been: Is Sec'y Clinton aware that several other persons sentenced for spying for the USSR around the same time as Pollard were sentenced to much milder sentences of a just a few years [Boyce, Walker family, etc]. Yet Pollard was convinced of spying for a friendly country. Moreover, several persons were sentenced for spying in that same period for other friendly countries and their sentences were light. Such as an Egyptian immigrant to the US who was spying for Egypt. nI'm saying that the grounds for the harsh sentence against Pollard should be challenged. nSomebody who was at the press conference said that she took no further questions after the one on Pollard and it seemed that her answer shocked into silence even the usually cyncial journalists there.
Pollard has his life sentence for good reason. Yes, he spied for Israel, but Israel traded that information to the USSR, and effectively traded the lives of US spies in Russia (who were executed) for Jewish emigration. Pollard deserves to rot.
not true. I think the sophisticated word for this is cow flop. The source for this meme is none other than renown anti-Semitic conspiracy tin-foil hat nut …Seymour Hersh. Who recounts that he got this gleaming nugget from someone who got it from someone whose Aunt Ethel got it from CIA's Bill Casey on a Ouija board. Jewish emigration was encouraged openly by Gorbachev and the devil jooz didn't have to get U.S. gentile blood on their hands for the rescue of Soviet Jews. Pollard was used as a beard for American Christians who willingly walked out the door to give American secrets and agents away to the Russkies such as John Walker, Ronald Pelton, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hansen.
This comment by BHO should be run by Romney's campaign a zillion times, as well as BHO's statement that the country is as bad off today as 4 years ago(to paraphrase). How one man can be allowed to "transform" our country is beyond my mental capacity to understand!! Where have the Republicans been to stop him??!!! Where! where! where!! And for John Roberts to ignore our Constitution. I believe this country is in dire crisis. Big troubles.
Republicans where the minority party for the first two years of BHO's presidency! Thanks GOD for the Senate fillibuster!
Some coincidences are remarkable, even startling. For instance, that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the Fourth of July, and not only on the Fourth of July but on the same Fourth of July, and not only on the same Fourth of July but on the Fiftieth Fourth of July, the golden anniversary of the Fourth, well, that's truly remarkable. n nHere, however, is another "coincidence" that is anything but remarkable: B. H. Obama and E. Warren both hawking that smelly old nobody-succeeds-without-help platitude. Ladies and gents, if anybody knows about succeeding with help and ONLY with help — a whole lot of it, too — it's that pair of twenty-four-carat government parasites. Both of them are now, and always have been, dedicated palms-out, sign-me-up affirmative-action push-alongs crammed into whatever "opportunity" the government or Academe could create for them — Performance? Pray, what is THAT? — for as long as anyone can recall anything about them worth mentioning. Obama and Warren either believe that settling comfortably into an effortless, ever onward, ever upward career mandated by government decree is how everyone else must be getting on; or they are two of the most unprincipled and cynical snakes ever to escape from the reptile house into the Democratic Party since Aaron Burr. n nThese two must be made to admit that, hard as it will be for them to accept it, not everyone achieves advancement because the government in effect sends his employer a letter saying promote this idle hack, this awful jobsworth, or you are going to be party to a lawsuit.
I nominate for another campaign mistake by the Obama team, hilary's answer in Jerusalem when she was asked about Pollard's case at a press conference. In my view, her response was cold, legalistic, punitive. None of that supposed liberal warmth for suffering humanity. No milk of human kindness. nMoreover, I read just lately that Obama took contributions from BainCapital. If Bain was so bad as he now says, why did Obama take money from them? n n
Pollard made a huge mistake and should have thought long and hard before discovering that the Israeli Embassy's extraction plan was to lock the embassy gates off Van Ness and tell him "la-la-la-we can't hear you…"
> This statement is a colossal opportunity for Mitt Romney n> and will prove a suppurating wound for the president, who revealed n> a degree not only of condescension but of contempt for the very people n> who are going to decide this election. n nI have been reading these kinds of predictions in Commentary for the past twelve months. Obama has made yet another horrible mistake, his administration is imploding, his political support is collapsing etc. etc.. And yet, out in the real world, the opinion polls do not seem to be moving in Romney's direction at all. n nMaybe the ones out there who "jsut don't get it" are neocon pundits such as Podhoretz? n n nMARCU$
"I have been reading these kinds of predictions in Commentary for the past twelve months. Obama has made yet another horrible mistake, his administration is imploding, his political support is collapsing etc. And yet, out in the real world, the opinion polls do not seem to be moving in Romney's direction at all." n nThat is an example of the cheapest form of rhetoric: exaggeration. Find for us — I defy you — one post here at Commentary where it is stated that Obama's administration is "imploding" or that his "support is collapsing." I repeat, I defy you. YOU COULD NOT DO IT TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. You scribble such rubbish, I suspect, because it allays your OWN fears that Zero-Bama's support is imploding, collapsing, etc. No one here has EVER underestimated what it will take to send this scoundrel back to the precincts of mediocrity he inhabited most of his life, at least so long as he may absolutely count on the bulk of the media, print and broadcast, and hacks such as yourself to fence with shadows and then to claim victories that never occurred. n nAs for the polls, they have definitely moved in Romney's direction and ONLY in his direction from six months ago. Simply examine the Real Clear Politics average of two-dozen or so polls since January That the polling has not reached the point at which one may conclude that Romney will likely be the winner, no one here has ever denied.
You are indulging in exaggeration if you believe polls are moving in Romeny's direction. Romeny did not even get past the Primary process until May, he got his biggest bounce then, with a couple polls reporting him ahead, and has been steadily dropping ever since, including a double-digit loss reported by the Bloomberg poll less than two weeks ago.
Check the RealClearPolitics poll analysis. Romney has moved forward in at least 12 of the battleground states over the past 30 days. Nationally, he's in a statistical tie with Obama. You need facts, Fast Eddie, not wishful thinking.
The Bloomberg poll is a rubbish poll that assumes the voter demographics of 2008 in weighting the results, which is preposterous. Look at Rasmussen, which polls only likely voters, to see the clear trend toward Romney. Obama was up by 5-6 points during the winter; it's now down to 2.
Actually Romney is up 47-44. Obama is done.
To be fair the polls aren't particularly moving in anyone's direction. And Romney's speeches are getting more direct and effectively delivered and the Prez is relying a little too much on being a down-home folks-to-folks communicator. Narrow-casting the message with some focus won't hurt him.
owebamao campaign was spending significant money in just 6 battleground states 6 months ago…now they are up to 10…..ther are three stated that have moved from lean obama to toss-up – including michigan and new hampshire…..romney has momentum and for every poll that you see "registered voters", add 5 points to romney's total for the "real" score.
> Find for us — I defy you — one post here at Commentary where it is stated that Oabma's n> administration is "imploding" or that his "support is collapsing." n nA few headlines, linking to Wehner: n"Why Upholding ObamaCare Will Badly Damage Obama's Reelection Chances" — June 29, 2012 n"Obama's Summer of Discontent Continues" — June 26, 2012 n"Obama Presidency May Never Fully Recover" – June 22, 2012 n"Barack Obama’s Awful June Just Got Worse" — June 21 2012 n"Obama Is Simply Overmatched by Events" – June 2, 2012 n"Obama's Disastrous Political Overreach" — May 1 2012 n"Obama Not Even Creative in His Deceit" — April 5 2012 n"Barack Obama: Desperate and Demagogic" — April 3 2012 n"Watching a Presidency Fall Apart" – December 8, 2011 n"The Administration´s Expanding Scandals" – October 6, 2011 n nJust reading those headlines, one would think Obama's job approval would make Jimmy Carter blush! Yet he actually seems to be emulating George W. Bush's reelection campaign right now, i.e. solid if unspectacular job approval while trying to lead country in difficult times, facing weak challenger from Massachusetts… n nMARCU$
Why on earth did you bother? Not one of those headlngs claims that the Obama administration is imploding, collapsing, or undergoing any reasonable synonym thereof. They don't even imply it. The closest one is the third headline, and it's not very close because it is couched subjunctively. The rest, apart from being true, in my opinion, are irrelevant to the claim you actually made.
Well, punsters get caught short on the punt. They also praised BIbi's surprise coalition with the Kadima party's Mofaz as a clever masterstroke that would put Bibi in an unassailable domestic and international position to deliver the always-around-the-corner blow to Tehran. But it was a domestic coalition partly based on the magical thinking, expedience, and improvisation always brimming away in Israel's political kitchens and just as quickly has dissolved.
Say what?
> As for the polls, they have definitely moved in Romney's direction and ONLY n> in his direction from six months ago. Simply examine the Real Clear Politics n> average of two-dozen or so polls since January n nNonsense. nIf you go back and recheck the RCP (or Pollster.com) horserace polls, you will note that Obama actually was trailing Romney in August 2011. Bur from that point on the margin has constantly been about 2 or 3 points in Obama's favor (although O was doing slightly better than that in early 2012, then slightly worse in April-May as the GOP primary ended). nAnd if you examine the state polls, it's the same story. Romney is solid in the McCain states as well as in IN. He will *probably* win NC and FL is a tossup. But he keeps trailing elsewhere…OH, VA, PA, MI, WI, CO, NV, IA, NH. Heck — even if you only include Rasmussen polls Mitt does not reach 270! n nIt's now T minus 3.5 months. What is supposed to be the great game changer for your guy Mitt in case the economy does NOT implode?
Marcus — there is no need for a game changer. The game is already set. Never in the history of the USA has a President been re-elected with unemployment over 8%. And it won't happen this time. That is THE issue of this campaign, and it's not going away between now and November.
The margin has not "constantly been 2 or 3 points." That is simply false.
This is ridiculous. August 2011? When the Republican field was 10 deep? Even faux "head-to-head" polls mean nothing a year before the nominating process is complete. The reality is that ALL polls have inherent systemic polling bias based on their methodology and weighting system, so you can't compare. The best tracking polls measure Likely voters (Rasmussen), and the best Registered voter polls are by Gallup. In both of those polls, the slight trend has ticked a few points toward Romney…and it's not even CLOSE to convention time yet. Obama, meanwhile, has spent $50-100 million in the PAST MONTH ALONE IN SWING STATES to try and knock Romney down – because he desperately knows the challenger will typically get a 4-10% bounce after the convention. If Obama is NOT ahead by 6-8 points going into the Republican convention he know he is toast. Meanwhile, Romney is breaking fund-raising records and will have $100 million more to spend in the last two months.
An excellent summary.
This arguing about polls and predictions is boring. Just recently this site was full of essays crowing that Obamacare would be overturned 5-4. Nope. None of the scribblers had any more info than you or I. The same is true here in a slightly different way. A very large number of voters won't decide until literally the last week or last day, or, hey, even the last minute. We'll just have to wait and see.
I do believe that this is Mr. Obama's Achilles heel: he honestly just doesn't get it. And if he can't understand why this is such an error, he will not avoid similar errors over the course of the campaign. Look at his history: He played off of his race — and occasionally off of his "foreign born" falsified status — for entry into just about every major group in his life. He managed to become editor of the law review without ever penning a law review article (the equivalent of heading the AMA with a degree in horticulture). He was elected president as a legislator who never proposed any legislation. He never ran a business. He never even held a job. Even his wife got a no-show job because of his political connections. He has less than no understanding of what it takes to succeed in a business and less than no appreciation for that type of accomplishment. Because everything he ever achieved has been through his status and not through his effort, he understands only the value of status — and that status is defined always in terms of what one can "get" from institutions. His genius is his demise. Let's just hope he gives many, many more speeches.
Obama has made a classic mistake of believing his own press releases. He's in the meetings, he knows the truth, but he seems to think that just by being there and being Him, that he succeeds. If nothing succeeds like success, then Romney is your guy. If nothing stings like failure, well that smell is coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
What you say is correct. I've posted here that the president is literally a stranger. I've posted this on other sites as well. It's a guaranteed way to infuriate liberals who just don't want to hear it. Maybe Obama is our national "Manchurian Candidate". Do you think he got brainwashed and programed by Mom who was his Marxist handler in Indonesia?
I went to grade school, high school, college and grad school. But I didn't study anything or learn anything. Somebody else did it. Maybe Lincoln did it because he started the land grant colleges. Give him the diploma. I don't deserve it. Jonathan D.
Way to check your facts, John. Or maybe you did and didn't care? Either way, here are Obama's ull remarks, which clearly show you took his statement way out of context and ran with it. n n“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
Your point is? I'll grant you the teacher influence: which is a service you pay for via your taxes. But the business-people are the primary source of the tax money that builds that infrastructure. Everyone has access to those public assets. Does everyone therefore run Microsoft? Of course not. The successful in business do something different than the rest of the world: they work their rears off and use their brains. They deserve credit: nobody handed it to them, or everyone would have the same success. nThis is a straw man argument. It assumes that business-people deny the value of the infrastructure they pay toward. Who ever said they did? But that does not correlate to Mr. Obama's statement that they are given their success by someone else. That is a logical fallacy.
". . . you took his statement way out of context and ran with it. " n nClaims about "context," like claims about "mistakes in judgment," are mostly crap and crafted to obfuscate. Yours is just another one. n nPray tell, what was the "context" of Obama's little sermon? Simply citing another sentence or two does not establish "context." n nWell I'll tell you what the "context" was, the ambience, the circumvailing rhetoric, the overall message that he intended for his resentful lumpen audience to take away — that's what is meant by "context," by the way — and it was this: "I'm going to tax the s**t out of wealth holders because they're not THAT smart and haven't worked THAT hard to justify their keeping one penny more than I say they may." n nThat is "context" you can break a tooth on.
There are three problems with this approach. One is that the first line of help for an entrepreneur, even the self-employed are their business employees, contacts, and suppliers etc., not necessarily the government. Second, those successful folks, pay roughly the same percentage in taxes as they get for their success. The top 1 percent get 46 percent of the national income and, surprise, it is they their very selves who are paying, yes, 46 percent of the freight for those schools, bridges, roads, etc. As for the Internet, it would be a valid point, it started out as a Defense Department DARPA project. Sadly however, for reasons that cannot be explained rationally except through ulterior (and not in a good way) motives, Obama himself has engineered a $500 billion cut to be followed by $500 sequestration to the defense and national security research technologies. It's one thing to succeed, it's another to "do things together" like engineering Russian and Chicom hegemony. Those things we don't need done.
For me, this was a new low in the Democratic Party. Not only are they anti-accountability (that's old news), they are now anti-responsibility. That's the shift that Obama's remarks marked. It's not enough to withhold blame from people who do little to improve their own lot in life; it's now mandatory to blame those people who do. It's sick, and why I'm voting straight GOP this year. This is not the Democratic Party I could once vote for with pride.
So what about the substantial majority of people – the ones who don't have businesses they "didn't build". Why not? They never had a "great teacher"? (Quite possible in America's public school system.) They are ignorant of the existence or utility of roads and bridges? "This unbelievable American system" has never been called to their attention? Or is it that the all powerful "somebody else" just doesn't like them? I am puzzled. Surely Mr. Obama knows whereof he speaks. The fact that he's never had a business or even a job in the private sector in no way compromises his insightful understanding of how it's done. n nI am also curious to know which roads and bridges the 50% who don't pay taxes have "invested in." It strikes me that the "somebody" who created the American system is rather more likely to be found among our veterans and our entrepreneurs than among our welfare class or our government bureaucrats. And, having spent a life in engineering, I have yet to meet an engineer named "Government Research" and am frankly shocked to discover that he single-handedly invited the internet (we've been solemnly assured that Al Gore did that). n nWhy do we keep electing these arrogant losers? n n
The "non-tax payers" pay road tolls, sales and personal property taxes that go into roads and bridges as well as FICA Social Security taxes that have been diverted into general revenues (including transportation) lo these many years. But yeah, the government research of the Pentagon invented a heck of a lot of things in the pioneering days of computing and probably still do. Internet was DARPA Pentagon, starting out as the ARPAnet packet switching proof of concept.Then again, after Obama's next turn, the Pentagon could be into solar panels and self-esteem workshops.
"The "non-tax payers" pay road tolls, sales and personal property taxes that go into roads and bridges as well as FICA Social Security taxes that have been diverted into general revenues (including transportation) lo these many years." n nGood point. The non-income tax payers appear to have money after all. Quite a bit of it, in fact, that they spend on cars and gasoline and goods. And where do they get that money? There are three sources. Many of them get it from the government, directly through welfare or indirectly through government employment, in which case their funds comes directly from those who pay "real" taxes. The same "somebody" pays his own taxes and theirs as well. Second, they have jobs in the private economy, in which case their taxes are paid from funds provided by the folks who have "businesses they didn't build." The same "somebody" pays his own taxes and theirs as well. The third possibly is that they steal it, but then "somebody" or his financial dependents are the only people who have money to be stolen. At least in the last case they can claim to be emulating Liberals in government, who do precisely the same thing. n n"But yeah, the government research of the Pentagon invented a heck of a lot of things in the pioneering days of computing and probably still do. Internet was DARPA Pentagon, starting out as the ARPAnet packet switching proof of concept." n nOnce again we have the emergence of this great engineer "Government Research." Have you ever met or seen him? I have not, and I was there when the ARPAnet was a baby, But what you are expressing, of course, is not a respect for that good ol' boy GR, but applause for the government's provision of funds to make critical research possible. n nThere is some merit to that, but less than you imagine. The vast majority of government research expenditures are about as useful as Obama's "stimulus." They put vast funds into the economy while accomplishing almost nothing. This is not only true, but trite and obvious since these funds are dispersed by politicians and government bureaucrats. (Let me admit that there are, in fact, a few real superstars in the sad swamp of government funding for science, but they are so few and far between.) n nWhile that good ol' boy "Government Research" has yet to invent a single damned thing, it is true that government funding occasionally finds its way into the hands of motivated and creative individuals, who do great things. "Government Research" promptly takes credit. I suggest you do an informal survey of members of the Academy of Engineering. Most will be delighted to tell you that they had to fight like dogs to get whatever government funding they had for their unpopular ideas. I can name a couple who were, in effect, fired by the bureaucrats only a year or two before their accomplishments were recognized by the Academy (at which point "Government Research" promptly took credit for the work they fired them for doing). In fact, I think you would begin to realize that almost all of these people would have found a way to accomplish their goals even if "Government Research" were a thoroughly chilled corpse. n nApologies for the rant, but this issue touches a nerve. n n"Then again, after Obama's next turn, the Pentagon could be into solar panels and self-esteem workshops. n nIf Obama is re-elected they most certainly will be. May God have mercy on us! n
Really if Podhoretz thinks Romney misquoting something the president said is the turning point of the election what can one say about Podhoretz's sense of reality.
Alex Gale: What's out of context? He said clearly: "if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Someone else made that happen." You can't chalk this up to semantics or being taking out of context. He honestly believes entrepreneurs don't build their businesses — that someone else builds it for them. And he said it out loud in public. He can't run away and hide from his words as his campaign is trying to do today.
I agree with the author that this comment by Obama was a huge mistake. My question is whether the Romney campaign will be fast enough on the "trigger" to quickly make an issue of it – so the coverage and the downside to Obama take effect. The mainstream media will ignore the comment and the issue because it works against Obama. Republicans need to turn this into a point of discussion – fast.
Right on, Alex! The article and most of the comments are knee-jerk ideology. Obama was not even placing particular emphasis on government. He was responding critically to the mistaken point of view that business success is solely attributable to what the owner or manager of a business does. He was referring to the social, economic, and political environment without which businesses success would be impossible. Although his point should be obvious, it is often taken for granted and overlooked. After all, there are businesses that do everything right, yet do not succeed due to unfavorable circumstances beyond their control. And, there are business that make serious mistakes, yet succeed because of favorable circumstances. What if orderly markets did not exist? What if there were no police protection? What if contracts could not be enforced? What if corruption ran even more rampant than it does? "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive," Obama said. Yes, "someone," but he did not imply that it is always, or even primarily government.
I am no fan of Obama. I think he has done an awful job and his re-election could cause huge damage to the country. However, I think this author and most other people are misunderstanding his comment. When he said a business did not build “that,” I think he was referring to the roads that he had just mentioned.
"Somebody else made that happen". Well if anyone knows anything about that it's Obama, 'cause it sure wasn't him.
"And if there’s one thing people recognize, it’s when they are being viewed with contempt." n nUmmm, not quite! Some do, some do not. Obama views the poor and the black with utter contempt, fit only to sell their votes to Obama for a mess of pottage. The big city ghettos of Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles have been dominated by Democrats for decades, and keep getting worse. The black unemployment rate keeps getting worse. The only big city that has significantly improved is New York, under Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, a Republican
here's Obama exact quote in context… (John Podhoretz may need to look up the meaning of the word context). n n"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help," Obama said. "There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."
John Podhoretz Obama was arguing that businesses needed infrastructure investment to succeed. n nQuote: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help," Obama said. "There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen." n nThe antecedent to "that" is not the business, but "roads and bridges," as well as the "American system" as a whole.
This article describes an Obama mistake. Romney made his biggest mistake some time ago – his promise not to reappoint Bernanke. A grave strategic error. Bernanke is the 2nd most powerful man in the entire Government, and he has the power to make or break Presidents. Now Bernanke has nothing to lose by going all-in for Obama and doing whatever it takes to get him reelected.
Well, I suggest that small business owners find a smashmouth superpac and start “investing”. These guys are dangerous. If 500k of those small operations threw in the equivalent of what the spend on paper supplies… Consider it part of the cost of doing business.
Tell you one thing. Nobody gets born without somebody's help and you can take that to the bank. Funny thing, dying alone turns out to be a lot easier.
Not a mistake – a slip. Mistake implies something you regret doing. He slipped up – anyone who talks as much as he does will eventually say something he really means. This wasn't a mistake, he has said the same thing hundreds of times, in a more nuanced way.
"…anyone who talks as much as he does will eventually say something he really means." n nExactly. My thoughts all well. Though I did laugh.
I despair , I never knew that the roads the Eisenhower administration built were the reason for what success I've had as a small business person for 32 years . I despair that my youngest son leaves for China in a few days because he sees more opportunity there than in his own back yard . I despair that the President imagines that his two beautiful daughters owe the success in their future to the state . Or will he ?
Like all the right likes to do…I ask what was the context in which this statement was made? I want to see the whole thing, not one sentence, please. I could be that the discussion was about how one goes about building a business. It requires capital, or investors, even if you are a single proprietor. It then requires clients or customers, or you would have no business to build. These are true statements, it required this to build the business. So show me the context.