Does he think middle America like to hear stuff like this?
OBAMA: [L]ook, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
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. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.
Does he have to diminish their sacrifice, their investment, their sweat… ? None of us would be here without our parents so do we all owe our success to our parents? Our computers wouldn’t work without electricity, power plants wouldn’t work without oil so do successful businesses owe their success to Exxon? Stop with the success precursors…
What a bunch of crap from Obama! Some guy/woman saves their money to buy a small business, risks it all and makes it. HOW does that person get any help? The roads and the country infrastructure is available to all Americans as we all pay for it (at least the 50% of Americans who pay taxes). Somebody else helped them… get off it! Is it so hard to give people credit for making it? finding it? Discovering it? Inventor Ben Franklin… no biggie if out wasn’t for Archimedes of Syracuse. Can’t Obama see these incredible people making a killing as doing it on their own?
Obama is missing the point about personal success and the initiative and desire which drives individuals. Go take your 401K money out and start a business, take that gamble and if you succeed then you did it. Be proud… I would be proud of you. But don’t confuse this working hard with a guy digging a ditch as working hard. The ditch digger is just labor. Hard work is over rated, I’ll take smart work over hard work any day!
Of course we are a nation and we do many things together. 911 is a great example of how we can come together when we have to. Sadly, it takes something as terrible as 911 to make this happen.
…not to mention very supportive of small business. For that matter he wasn’t really talking about small business in this speech anyway. Classic liberal philosophy that we are all in this together. Some people get ahead of others – that’s fine, but that doesn’t excuse them from obligations to society. Plus that 50% who pay taxes is bogus since there are other taxes and that ratio counts children. The President’s proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts on the first 250K applies to 97% of small businesses. You also devalue hard work, but that is almost always required for those who do what you call smart work to be successful. It looks like he is taking a page from Elizabeth Warren, who DOES say entrepreneurs should “keep a big hunk” of what they make, and I for one hope he continues. Frankly, I have a hard time interpreting your anger as anything, but selfishness, but then you’ve always come across as rather self-centered. Definitely points out what I often say is the key difference between conservatives and liberals. The former say, “What’s in it for me?”; the latter say, “What’s in it for us?”
Nice title, huh? I don’t think you hate your country, but I wanted to highlight how dumb this post is.
The fact of the matter was that Obama was taking about our system and how it allows businesses to thrive.
Taking things out of context to make a pretend point is silly, sad and pathetic. I thought you wanted to add debate, but this ridiculousness makes me think otherwise.
He could have talked about how businesses thrive without stealing their thunder. This was politics, plain and simple. If he really wanted business to thrive, he’s get roadblocks out of the way, he’d lower their taxes, he’d reduce regulatory activities, reduce excessive permiting. Put a plan together to help people get back to work and help companies hire people. Be bold, take someone off unemployment and let them get hired but still pay half of their unemployment while the employee pays the other half. Do that for 39 weeks and see if the employee will keep them full time after it runs out. Before anyone rips that apart, it’s just an idea. Do something to get things moving in this economy.
that was what he was talking about.
He can’t have a discussion on that? Is that what you are saying.
Maybe something like…
[L]ook, if you’ve been successful, Congratulations. Great job! I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. Well, I guess you are smart! You worked hard, you invested your time and your money. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there who wish they could be as successful as you.
Stop trying to spin it.
you would have answered your own question.
Let me try it… Obama has screwed everything up and wasted 3 and a half years doing nothing instead of fixing our economy. But the point is… I think he’s a great family man and appears to be a great Father.
that’s just not there. Sorry.
Too warm out anyway. Stay cool and enjoy a cold one. Cheers!
I drink Yuengling, I believe Prez. Obama does as well. Yuengling is the oldest beer in America, too bad it is not sold in New England. You know what else is good? Schlitz!!! They went back to the 1960’s formula, tastes pretty darn good and cheap.
Not going to do it. I’ll take a nice cold Wachusett Blueberry Ale with a handful of fresh blueberries floating on top. Otherwise I like a cold Chimay Red.
Try Narragansett beer, fresh made in R.I. Ever have Yuengling?
And then you gave your opinion on what you want others to think he meant.
His actual words = fact.
Your opinion = opinion.
In your world, fact + opinion = fact?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/18/report-fox-news-spends-two-plus-hours-distortin/187202
johnd, looks like you’re just a victim of propagandists who are much, much, much smarter than you. Wise up, and don’t be fooled again!
No really, this is a serious question. The only answer I can figure is a need to hear yourself talk – an ego thing. You certainly don’t have anything useful, factual, or even marginally interesting to contribute.
I’m all for debate with the “other side” and it makes us all stronger to have to compete in the world of ideas, but you don’t have any real ideas, just unrelated malarkey. Go post at Red Mass Group. You’ll get your ego stroking done so much more effectively there.
Unless your ego loves being stroked the wrong way, of course, like a freaky cat. I mean, to each his own, but I find that more than a little disturbing from a psychological view.
Today’s Democrats say “Pay your fair share”(except pigs like Harvard) and we, the government, will allow you to keep a “chunk” of it, whatever that means.
Obama loves companies that donate to his campaign, but if you dare to donate to Felon Mitt, then you go on an enemies list, to be harassed by people who have no life, thus your business suffers.
There was a time when conservatism linked to civic values, with small business an integral part of same.
When you said:
…you were rebutting your own point. Those whose efforts create enterprise do not do so in a vacuum.
Historically American conservatism supported governmental intervention and subsidies, e.g. canals, the telegraph, railroads, tariffs, etc.
Many so-called “liberal” policies derive from the conservative canon.
Adam Smith supported a graduated income tax; Andrew Carnegie supported a heavy inheritance tax.
The issue here is not conservatism versus liberalism; the question is whether there can be an honest debate at a time of structural collapse and cultural decadence.
The infrastructure you so easily dismiss derives from the aptly-named American School of Economics, of whom the exemplars are Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln. Such infrastructure is a precondition for small (and large) business success, as are regulations such as antitrust legislation.
I would submit to you that your post was premised upon a false dichotomy.
nt
You make some good points, some very good ones. I may have come off rebutting some of my own points. I was trying to agree with Obama by saying of course we all succeed based on the progress of the people before us. I drive on roads that were paved by our parents before I was alive… we utilize existing technology to develop newer technology… I understand that and I agree (as I said). BUT… we do not typically develop a new software algorithm which may solve a sophisticated scientific problem and give credit to the person who invented the first computer.
My point was Obama seems to try to go overboard to take away the credit of the successful people who made it by saying they “only accomplished this on the backs of others”. It’s almost like he’s giving a motivational speech to a crowd of losers who need to get pumped up and instead of pumping them up high, he has to drag down the successful people.
AS for infrastructure, I acknowledge that those before us have given us much, far more than we are giving the ones behind us. I would be a huge supporter of a infrastructure initiative by ANYONE (Congress, POTUS…) since it not only improves things but gets people back to work. Of course we just saw how lax and inefficient the TARP money was used to do infrastructure as we had people getting paid huge amounts of money to put up mile markers every 2 tenths of a mile on highways (even though they already had mile markers). So if I was “easily dismissing” that infrastructure it was in context to it being used to drag down current accomplishments and not in general. I would love to build another Hoover Dam but I fear it would cost $100 Billion, take 25 years including EPA studies, Environmental impact studies, relocate spotted turtles, permits and be union boondoggle well beyond the Big Dig. Oh, and it would fall down in 5 years.
The switching of liberal and conservative views seems consistent. It seems like every decade or so, conservatives want to squelch speech under some reason such as morality, decency… and then a few years later liberals want to squelch speech due to hatred, ideology, political correctness. Wars are supported by one crowd one year and then by a different crowd the next year.
In summary thanks for your criticism and remarks but I maintain that Obama came off as someone who was diminishing the success of people who invest their life’s savings in order to fulfill their dreams and was ginning up support for his reelection by making less successful people feel better about themselves.
Both ideas are abstractions but which one is useful?
You need to work really hard to start a business and nobody would ever do what it takes in the name of the collective good.
I would bet that successful businesses benefit the collective good just by the services they provide far more than they take in infrastructure or educated workers and so on.
Obama like Warren is barking up the wrong tree here. Why does he say this stuff? Because he believes it and he’s around a bunch of people who do very well off it and don’t work that hard. They probably think they created ipods and the internet and so on.
Because they come from academia where everything is a theory, or government, where taxes or deficits allow them to kick the can down the road.
I heard this on the radio today. While Mitt was building a company, Obama was attending Columbia, doing his thing (some drugs, studies, girls, etc). And he has the unmitigated gall to question Romney on who knows how to better manage an economy? Warren, 100% academia, why she feels the same way.
It’s a bit over the top, though. Not even the most Limbaugh’ed of whackadoodles could really believe this silliness.
What? Nothing about GPAs at Columbia? Or any other Birther crap????
How did this garbage get promoted to the front page. I was under the impression that a post needed some merit and/or relevance to get from “Recent Posts” to the “Front Page”. Does promoting racist, birther garbage somehow create the fiction that this is bipartisan?
PLEASE keep this crap off the front page.
Racist birther garbage??? WTF? Front page? Did you take your meds today? Go back to sleep…
It’s neither been promoted nor recommended. In JohnD’s defense this post WAS about differing philosophies and issues as opposed to conspiracies such as birtherism and Columbia which JohnD is actually generally pretty good about not stooping to.
Thanks for the backhanded compliment. LOL
JohnD post from yesterday:
Wasn’t that what the Tea Party said about Obama’s Birth Cert? (2 Replies)
Is this the new standard we can ALL use in future campaigns? Ask any opponent to produce confidential information and when they don’t accuse them of hiding something? Where does it end?
How many years of Kerry’s tax returns did he produce? Where was your inquiring mind then?
Anwser is Kerry released 5 years of returns during his presidential run and years of returns as senator
But he didn’t do so all at once during his presidential run. He had been releasing returns for years during his various senate runs, so 20 years’ worth of returns were available when he ran for president in 2004. From HuffPo:
She released zero returns. Should she have?
Why should she have release her returns? She wasn’t running for president, for Pete’s sake…
So what you are saying, if Mitt put Bain in his wife’s name, paid himself $100k per year, and millions each year to Ann and put all the dough in her name, and they filed separate returns, you would just brush it off?
is release his tax returns from 1998 to the present and this whole thing will be cleared up – unless he is hiding something.
The next time Teresa Heinz runs for POTUS we’ll get her tax returns. Promise.
I agree, Mitt should release his returns, along with his college transcripts. Obama should do the same, agree?
…
The first part (“Is this the new standard we can ALL…”) is a quote of a comment of JohnD. The second part (“All the Mittster has to do …) is a response.
I’m not sure why you’ve cited this exchange. JohnD asked a snarkily-worded question. Whosmindingdemint answered it.
What’s your point?
More likely a Romney.
..or maybe it’s the heat..or maybe I can think of another excuse…my error.
(said with tail between legs)
It happens to me too.
moron
human.
capable of errors.
..
the king of personal attacks.
reminds me of the “toughest guy on the phone”.
I was the King of spin. My dominion grows.
Don’t get the phone call reference, but I’m sure it has meaning for you.
Let’s not forget, James Stuart was King of England and King of Ireland, as James II, and King of Scotland as James VI.
You may have further royal attributes yet to be discovered.
and the phone reference?
pretender to the crown of Alsace-Lorraine a la bobby Newport.
nt
Romney has probably decided that it is better to withhold his returns than share them.
Likely with good reason.
Sharing them has many benefits. Sharing must also have many downsides. The best he can expect is that his returns contain nothing outright disqualifying. More likely, his returns contain lots and lots of juicy details. David Corn, William Greider, David Cay Johnston, and similar journalists plus readers of TPM and contributors to Daily Kos can study Mr Romney’s returns closely and surely they’ll uncork controversy after controversy. The election campaign will end up being nothing but a review of an overcompensated man’s 1040s and attached schedules.
Nothing good can come from releasing them. Even if they are squeaky clean, a multi-million dollar bonus or some other type of entry will send Liberals through the roof. Mr ED and Maddow will spin any detail from his returns into huge controversies.
I hope he holds the line and relies on average Americans to treat him like other POTUS candidates were treated.
I hope he releases them. He should release them.
First off, no other POTUS candidate has gotten away with not releasing them. So in the interests of fairness, he should and should be required to — by public pressure. Ron Paul, your thank you note is in the mail.
Secondly, there is valuable content to what Mr Ed & Ms Maddow will uncover. (More the latter than the former, I’d expect. You can listen to Mr Ed? I can’t.) The content is this: Polling seems to show that lots of American think that they’re upper class, on the way to being in the upper class, or even in the “one percent” already. Talk about low information voters. Geesh! Mr. Romney’s tax returns, therefore, have loads of educational value. Mr. and Mrs. Unfounded Aspiration will get to see in detail the difference between the kinds and quantities of assets they hold and the fabulous and mysterious assets Mr Romney has. I, for one, I’m dying to know what funds he selected to attain such magnificent returns.
on his 401k
It appears that he invested his heavily-leveraged retirement accounts in overseas accounts, and used “blockers” to protect him from the UBIT that would otherwise apply to his significant gains.
The bottom line is that he used offshore accounts to avoid a multi-million dollar tax bill that he (and the rest of us) would otherwise pay (in spite of his protestations to the contrary).
I think this deserves to be a “huge controversy” — it exemplifies the kind of tax advantages available to the already wealthy that Mr. Romney and the GOP so relentlessly pursue and exploit.
Romney is nothing if not calculating. He has been running for President for 10 years. He knows what is in there.
After running a respectable but losing campaign to McCain, he submitted them to the campaign for VP vetting, and the campaign chose to go instead with a green loose cannon governor of Alaska.
I think there is most likely something in there, and Romney has decided that whatever it is is worse than whatever he has gotten for the last week. I think he is hunkered down, waiting for something in the news to happen to get this out of the news.
I loved John McCain’s first explanation for why he chose Sarah Palin — that she was a “better candidate”. Talk about damning with faint praise.
I also think Mr. Romney’s 2009 tax forms might be a problem for him. He, like most other wealthy investors, may have taken a beating in the crash of 2008. He was, after all, fond of leveraging.
It could be that his capital losses in the 2008 offset his gains and resulted in him having NO federal tax obligation for his 2009 returns. Like so many other aspects of his finances, I don’t doubt that it is perfectly legal. I think the optics are, however, terrible — and I think he knows it.
Our alleged Walthamite really does seem to have a problem with marriage.
John Kerry was and is wealthy in his own right, he is an heir to the Forbes family fortune. He and his wife have a prenuptial agreement, they’ve been married since 1995. Like most wealthy families, it is absurd to describe either as a “bread winner” — both John Kerry and Teresa Heinz have been eating cake all their lives.
I guess this is another of those marriages that Danny doesn’t “get” — two wealthy and successful people who love each other and marry.
I did not know that. Nice dodge on my example if Mitt put Bain and all the assets in Ann’s name, paid himself a paltry salary, and filed separate returns, you would not demand to see Ann’s returns?
Why do we only have one tax return released from Romney? Why?
He wants this election to be about who is best capable at creating private sector jobs and lowering the deficit (if that is a concern). The other camp wants to demonize the rich strategy and avoid discussing our real problems, like creating more people receiving SS disability than actual new jobs.
Google is your friend. Steve Forbes is from the family that publishes Forbes Magazine. John Kerry is from the (different) Forbes family of Massachusetts.
If Mitt Romney is asked whether he has stopped beating his wife, how shall he answer?
We’re descending.
I know, I know, you’re right of course.
I just figured we’d become more familiar, based on his July 16 comment.
…nothing backhanded about it. I believe that it is very low of people to get into questioning the President’s birthplace, etc. I noted approvingly that you were discussing actual issues, even if we strongly disagree on conclusions.
the birther issue makes me cringe whenever I hear it. Your side should ignore it and my said should tell our brethren to drop it.
If there are no edits, then why is the following missing?
I added italics where your quote actually begins, mid-sentence, hence the backeted “L” on “Look”. This entire post is a fraud!
The complete actual “Un-Edited” quote can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/did-obama-say-if-youve-got-a-business-you-didnt-build-that/
Like $500 billion in Medicare, according to Mitt. Are these cuts real? Are they in 2016 and beyond? Or are they proposed cuts? Just curious.
but not curious enough to look it up on his own.
You can’t name any. Only true candidate who cuts the deficit was Ron Paul.
Maybe that’s trollspeak for saying “I don’t believe”.