http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-gets-aggressive-against-obama-wants-americans-ashamed-190113055.html
Who makes arguments like this? And if you say "me" under your breath, I will go to your home and slap you. :)
"Somebody helped to create this
unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive,"
Obama said Friday, citing the teachers and people who build "roads and
bridges." He continued: "If you've got a business, you didn't build
that. Somebody else made that happen." Romney seized on Obama's comment,
calling it "foolishness" and "insulting to every entrepreneur and every
innovator in America."
Typical individualist bias. Of course
people like Romney are winners just because they are personally so
awesome, right? They deserve all the credit. It didn't have anything to
do with the facts that he:
- Was born the son of a governor, and grew up in a peaceful community, stable home, and with good role models
-
Was born a white, heterosexual, Christian, rich male with no major
physical or mental handicaps (except for being lame and boring to a
clinical degree)
- Was born in an advanced nation with functional institutions, rule of law, and markets
- Attended elite schools (through merit and connections)
- Didn't have to go to Vietnam
You're
a stellar guy Mitt, but other people made you who you are also. Don't
act like it's not true. You got so much help on the way up (on top of
the people you stepped on or out-competed in order to win), it's not
even funny. That's why more average Americans can relate to your
opponent, a half-black guy who grew up on tropical islands and has the
middle name of Hussein. He actually had to struggle against
disadvantages to reach the pinnacle of success (with some luck along the
way too), and never forgot to thank the people who made it possible. He
wants to use his time in office to give more people a fair chance, not
to help the rich get richer like you want. That's why you can't connect
to the average voter. Ignorant frustration over the economy and media
misinformation are the only things keeping you in this race.
"I'm ashamed to say that we're seeing our president hand out money to
the businesses of campaign contributors," Romney said at one point.
Wow, like that's never happened before, especially under Republican leadership.
"President Obama attacks success. And, therefore, under President Obama,
we have less success," Romney said. "I will change that." ...
But Romney largely focused on the larger picture of what he called
Obama's hostility toward business—which he argued has been a setback to
efforts to revive the economy and has, in turn, made life tougher for
struggling Americans. He accused Obama of "crushing economic freedom" in
the country with burdensome regulations.
Increasing access to college, extending the Bush tax cuts, and enacting
several new private sector tax cuts of his own were such terrible
attacks on success. Hostility
towards business huh? That must be why the S&P500 has risen 50% over
the last 3 years under Obama (not that the president controls stock
prices, but you'd think a leader who is so anti-business wouldn't
preside over such huge equity growth). And which is it Mitt? First you
say Obama is giving $ away to his allies' businesses, and now you say
he's anti-business?
And I think the abuses enabled by
3 decades of steady deregulation have made life tougher for struggling Americans than any
new regs Obama has pushed through (most of his campaign proposals didn't
pass Congress of course).
"I'm convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success," Romney
declared. "I want Americans to welcome and celebrate success and to
encourage people to reach as high as they can. … I don't want government
to take credit for what the individuals of America accomplish."
Great deductive logic. No comments needed here, the guy is just a textbook d-bag.
--------
Follow-up to this thread from the 7/25 Daily Show:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/wed-july-25-2012-joseph-stiglitz"Mr. Romney, hanging your attack on a person's
slight grammatical misstep is what people do in
an argument when they're completely f**ked and they know they have no argument!" - Jon Stewart
Basically
the DS described how the MSM misrepresented Obama's recent comments
about society enabling individual businesses to succeed, presumably to
reduce the significance of Romney's private sector success record and
legitimacy of his minimal government model for prosperity. They made it
sound like Obama was suggesting that business owners don't get credit
for their success, as it was due to the government only. Anyone with
half a brain would know that Obama would never make such a claim, and
the confusion was due to a "slight grammatical error" as he chose to say
"You didn't build
that" instead of "
those" (referring to
roads, bridges, internet, and other state-funded infrastructure that
enable commerce). "That" could be misconstrued as Obama claiming that
businesspeople didn't actually build their businesses, which of course
doesn't make sense. And if you read or listen to the speech uncut (see
link at end), you can grasp the context of his comments and would never
jump to that erroneous conclusion. But of course the conservatives and
Romney campaign pounced on it hard. The president is saying that the
government is the economy, not the small business owners! Apparently the
Romney camp is even selling shirts and other merchandise saying "I
built my business, Mr. President!"
So the Romney campaign is showing its true colors (and FNC too - by
busting out their "big guns" interview with child lemonade stand
owners!). They don't have a legit plan for improving the economy and
employment for the sub-rich, so they are resorting to misrepresenting
the president's words (or should I say word
singular, out of the
thousands of words he has uttered about the economy over his short
political career) in order to make him look like an anti-business,
Marxist a-hole. Unfortunately many people do not see through this, and
may even buy their argument.
I was surprised that "The Ticket" by Yahoo! News (source of the
article I cited originally) was no better than Faux News. They failed to
provide context for Obama's quote, and did not include his key summary
statement of, "The point is when we succeed... we succeed from our
individual initiative, but also because we do things together." Why
exclude a sentence starting with "The point is..."!?! Actually that
sentence was all they needed to show, and there wouldn't have been any
criticism (actually Romney said basically the same thing during a
campaign speech too). But they didn't, because twisting the message
makes this a more juicy, buzzworthy story. I doubt that was part of a
big anti-Obama, Koch-funded conspiracy, as probably the author just
wanted to ignite a fire where there isn't even smoke. Still, it's
reprehensible and shameful "journalism". It's also a sad reflection on
the MSM that we needed the Daily Show to point this out. However,
despite Y! News not providing context for the Obama quote, I could
clearly understand what the president was trying to say. It's not
exactly cryptic or novel. So the conservatives actually had to exert a
lot of effort to twist his statement into something offensive and
untrue. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised. They're resorting to
desperation attacks yet the polling is enigmatically neck-and-neck.
Maybe if Obama's lucky, they'll swing for a home run with the VP pick a
la Palin style, and select a total loser like Jindal or something.
Obama's unedited comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=192oEC5TX_Q&feature=related It's
actually kind of sad that in 2012 Obama still has to explain the
obvious, but laissez-faire classical propaganda has been working hard
since the Guilded Age.
Right wing media's take:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK19WEwOIOo&feature=related FNC
host: "[Obama's statements are] all in an effort to justify increasing
taxes on the so-called 'rich' in this country... Joining me now for a
'fair and balanced' debate..." She then introduces the panel guests, of
course a hot blonde conservative chick who hosts another FNC program and
a black small business owner (see the GOP is diverse!) vs. an old,
ugly, meek liberal former Clinton-Gore strategist (and she even
pronounces his name wrong, despite him being a repeat FNC guest a.k.a.
self-hating Democrat punching bag).
Argh typical crap from their playbook... I haven't watched FNC in
years so I forgot how bad it was. #1 cable news network, booyeah!!
