Wait, remember, he’s certain that he is right. So someone must have said those things, right?
I don’t think he’d be making things up.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but just wanted to add that Obama didn’t insult them in anyway, but even if he did they deserve it, he’s perfect.
Of course there’s a safety net for entrepreneurs–the same one everybody else has. If you take a chance and put everything into your business and it goes bust–as so many do–your kids are not going to starve to death or (for the most part) go without medical care. I’ve read plenty of startup-on-a-shoestring stories that involved food stamps and other forms of government assistance.
In fact, I’d say that without that “safety net” a lot of businesses wouldn’t get started. Even if you have to start over from zero you’re not risking quite everything (since your family will still eat), and that little bit of difference means a lot. It’s one of the many ways that the government helps the business owner, and one that’s particularly easy to take for granted.
POP QUIZ: Who said this, and when?
“I know that you recognize that a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the banks, the investors. There’s no question your mom and dad. Your school teachers. The people that provide roads, the fire, and the police. A lot of people help. … There are a lot of people in government who help us and allow us to have an economy that works and allow entrepreneurs and business leaders of various kinds to start businesses and create jobs. We all recognize that. That’s an important thing.”
[LIST=A]
[li] Barack Obama on July 13, 2012, in the same speech when he said, “If you’ve got a business … you didn’t build that” (because he clearly hates business and thinks everyone else in the world should get credit for your success).[/li][li] **Karl Marx **on February 21, 1848 in The Communist Manifesto.[/li][li] I don’t know because I only get my news from Fox and they didn’t cover this quote.[/li][li] Mitt Romney on July 18 2012; at an Ohio town hall (As if).[/list][/li][spoiler] Uhm, D. Duh. In the same breath that he criticized Barack Obama for saying:
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“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. …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.”*
… which, for all intents and purposes, is the exact same thing.[/spoiler]
Yes.
Let me share my own story here.
But do understand that I am not American.
Neither of my parents finished high school. Growing up, we were very rural. My father was out of work for a period of about 6 months just as I was entering my teen years. We survived on govt charity.
I went to a free school - had I needed to pay, I wouldn’t have been able to go.
I started working part time at the age of 13. At 16 I left my rural area to go to the nearest city for my Pre U year of school. I did well at school. A school that was provided by the govt. I had natural intellect on my side, and scored in the top 20% of the country.
Working my way through university (20+ hours a week on top of a full course load) I dropped out for a few years, worked, went back and completed my degree.
Started my own business, it made a profit before I sold it.
Today, at age 38 I have a “good” Job, my wife and I own two houses. We have almost enough money set aside to retire now.
I consider that I have “done well” so far. I have worked hard for what I have, as has my wife.
But to claim that any of it would have been possible without all the help I had growing up, without the govt support, without the great mentors I had at the start of my career and without the environment created by a good govt is outright insane.
Anyone that says they can do it without any support, without a good govt, without a good teacher, education, mentor or whatever is fucking insane.
Anybody that thinks they owe their success solely to themselves is so deluded they should be committed.
Coming back to the athlete analogies - I have never seen an athlete claim that their success is all them. Anyone that does is derided as being an arrogant fuckwad.
Even someone like Tiger Woods, thanks people like his coach for getting his swing in order. We do quite regularly see quotes like “the harder I work the luckier I get”, which is also true.
I am a rugby fan - here there are 15 men on a team, plus a coach that brings the best out of them. The team I support has perhaps the best fly half in the world - even he recognises that he is only as good as the forwards in front of him and the backs behind (fly half is kinda like your quarter back in some ways - if his blockers are crap, he has no space to work, and if his catchers are crap his passes aren’t going to be any good).
If any business owner feels offended by Obama’s words - perhaps it’s because they see a kernal of truth in them. We’ve all seen that arrogant arsehole that doesn’t recognise the help and support that he has inevitably received on his road to success.
Further, while I love the idea that I am better at selecting how my money is spent, and how I would rather choose who I support and to what extent, I really really don’t want to have to rely on convincing some wonderfully generous person to fund my education so that I have even the opportunity to work hard and succeed.
So all in all, I would rather the “government” does it - I am intelligent enough to realise that such help is important, and dispassionate enough to realise that stuff like education, a strong regulatory environment, support for new ideas etc etc are good things - even if I do need to “pay” for them. These are the things that have got me to where I am today - to deny that opportunity to someone else would be the absolute height of hypocrisy.
Actually, no, it’s not. Romney was giving a litany of things that are a “given”, not trying to glorify them. Make believe Romney started the whole thing off with “Of course…”. Because if you listen to him speaking, that was clearly the attitude.
Also, you may want to provide a more honest, less misleading transcript next time. I fixed it for you. The blue parts art what you missed. Notice how it changes what selectively stitched together?
Bwaaahahahahaha!!!
1.) The omissions are utterly irrelevant and change nothing in either tone or content of what he said. “By the way” is a tone-changer? HAHAHAHAHA!
In fact, the mocking of the president is what makes the parts that flank that mocking so goddamn hilariously hypocritical. They said the same thing!
2.) You, calling out selective editing of quotes when that’s exactly what Romney did in order to try to make it sound like President Obama said something he didn’t even remotely say.
Bwaaaahahahahahahahahahaha!!! ::wipes tears:: That’s so rich.
You say that like it’s a bad thing…
mmm.
What’s that phrase one phrase screeched during reasoned requests for an increase in social spending?
Oh yeah, the deficit.
Here, this website may be enlightening.
Perhaps you missed this:
Actually, no, it’s not. Romney was giving a litany of things that are a “given”, not trying to glorify them. Make believe Romney started the whole thing off with “Of course…”.
They were making opposite points. The community organizer was glorifying them and the businessman was acknowledging them as “givens”. And the crucial part you chose to omit was what came right before "By the way and started with “But”.
But don’t you worry, I’m not going to be surprised one iota if you really can’t understand the difference.
If you’d like to be taken seriously, you might want to craft an actual argument. I’ll just comment on the first link, because it’s so absurd. Go back and read the exchange. The poster, I forget who, made the point that they were counting on marketing to push the product—THE IPOD. I pointed out that that was ridiculous, because it would mean the Jobs invested all the time and money in man-hours for all those engineers in the hopes that a marketing campaign that would get people excited about it WOULD MAGICALLY COME TO FRUITION before the product hit the shelves. The iPod was released in 2001. The commercial you cited ran in 1984.
Do you see how ridiculous that site of your is now? But let me help you, on a a scale of 1 - 10 it’s a about 92,817. And something tells me that the rest of your “counterarguments” (:rolleyes:) will reveals themselves to be equally cogent. Can you please try a little harder?
Isn’t the conservative argument that we are paying for stuff with borrowed money? It seems to me, then, that Romney is being inconsistent here because he says that “we’re paying for those resources we receive [with taxes].” However, the problem is that the taxes being collected aren’t enough to pay for those resources. Maybe we should do something about that.
Incredible that he doesn’t even hear himself when he talks. He has no clue that he’s just made the same argument President Obama did, which he inexplicably criticized him for right in the middle of affirming every word he said, then contradicts his party’s own policy of starving government and turning everything over to the profitizers, praising and “glorifying” the people we pay to do that work, after recently saying we don’t need all those government workers.
Heh. I just gave myself an idea for an image.
I laughed my ass off at magellan, but I can’t bring myself to laugh quite as hard at Romney because he’s just too damn frightening.
If you’re asking if we should cut spending, yes.
I’ve explained the very real difference in what they were saying to you once. Here itt is again: Actually, no, it’s not. Romney was giving a litany of things that are a “given”, not trying to glorify them. Make believe Romney started the whole thing off with “Of course…”.
They were making opposite points. The community organizer was glorifying them and the businessman was acknowledging them as “givens”.
Those aren’t close to being the same thing.
See how simple it is? If you just add something that wasn’t there, the difference in meaning becomes clear.
It’s even clearer if you make believe Obama started his comment with “Capitalist pigdogs,…”
And I declined to engage in answering you.
Why, yes, you’ve got me. The SDMB isn’t literally a “hivemind” in that it’s not actually a Borg-cube like collective of thought. :rolleyes:
Yes, the many posters here who think that Obama and Romney’s comments are equivalent and Obama wasn’t being insulting to small business owners are likely blinded by partisanship.
I appear to be partisan in this thread simply because I’m not blinded by the partisanship that most posters here suffer from. I am looking at the comments without allowing my reverence of Obama to blind me to just how dumb his comments were.
As I said before, I’d admit it if Romney said something similarly insulting.
So you just made it up. Retraction and apology is the usual routine at this point. Go ahead. I’ll be holding my breath.
That’s true, you are blinded by a completely different kind of partisanship.