Posted on 09/03/2012 12:32:51 AM PDT by Innovative
After being pummeled for days at the Republican National Convention for his remark that business owners "didn't build that," President Obama heads to the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina this week facing mounting questions about how he will respond to charges that he is hostile to free enterprise.
On Sunday, senior Obama advisers suggested that they will not address the anti-business allegations directly but will instead try to turn the tables on their GOP rivals by accusing them of being dishonest about what Obama meant.
Nevertheless, there are signs that they see a vulnerability. Obama has not repeated the words that sparked the controversy, and he has toned down the broader argument - that government help is essential to business success - in the six weeks since he ad-libbed the line near the end of a long campaign swing.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Those roads and bridges were built with bonds and debt. That entire business model requires future profits from taxation to eventually pay the bonds or debt.
Not only that, but most of the actual roadbuilding was done by private contractors. In my work at Mississippi DOT (over 20 years), even the shadiest, corner-cutting contractor did a better job than your average MDOT roadbuilding crew. Now, with some jobs becoming "Design-Build" (where the Contractor actually designs the road and builds it, instead of taking the plans DOT gives them and having DOT inspectors looking over their shoulders at everything), the government has even LESS involvement in building roads and bridges.
Try listening to Les Paul/Chet Atkins and get back to me. (I'm a guitar player myself, since I was nine....I'm now sixty one.)
FMCDH(BITS)
They've been trying to do this for weeks. Most of the "fact-checks" involve saying the GOP contention has been debunked, then wanders into vague wordplay as their "proof".
It’s also almost always the way any communist screed starts - by ripping capitalism.
“Obama has not repeated the words that sparked the controversy, and he has toned down the broader argument - that government help is essential to business success “
Ha Ha Appears that Obama’s handlers pulled him into the back room and gave him 30 lashes for going off teleprompter. In fact, it looks like they put both Obama and Biden back in chains and on a short leash.
John Kenneth Galbraith, Wm. F. Buckley's friend and great liberal golem who once was FDR's wartime wage-and-price czar (he confessed -- although he didn't see it as a confession -- to having been seduced by all that power), became famous in the 1950's with a book that described how businessmen performed exactly the feat you describe over and over again in the 40's and 50's. Galbraith complained about it -- he felt, apparently, that artificial demand like that was illegitimate somehow, and that said businessmen were somehow unjustly enriching themselves and unnecessarily complicating life for everyone. "Typical liberal."
Just like Van Jones. Man opened his mouth, and a doctrinaire, Marxist-Leninist Communist popped out.
He probably meant that businesses don't build infrastructure -- but that isn't entirely true, either. Governments don't just dream up an Erie Canal or a Transcontinental Railroad like Zeus birthing fully-armed Athena from his forehead. Neither did the federal government dream up, on its own, the Tariff of Abominations and the Morill Tariff that precipitated disunion and civil war.
Regarding the latter alternative, a couple of questions will suffice to test the thesis.
Hostile media, unified and under the command of a committed political claque (similar in some ways to the Baath Party), is a threat to the sanity of the nation.
Barry Commoner ran a third-party, uberliberal campaign for president in 1980 on the platform of socializing the economy by trumping proprietary rights by law.
His theory was that the government shouldn't attack property rights directly, but rather leave them undisturbed in principle while asserting full control by law and regulation.
His orating on the subject was greeted by fellow liberals with hisses of shut up, Barry -- you're spilling the beans! Liberals did not want this stuff discussed in front of the children at all.
"My Muslim faith..."
So that’s how he kept from being Hollywierd-ized!
Okay, you are right. No doubt that Les Paul and Chet Atkins are up there at the top. As I recall Chet could really do 'some pickin' and Les Paul, well what can ya say. His name is enough.
So I guess I should have clarified that Rolling Stone Poll about 'the greatest' -- it was about Rock and Blues guitarists, not overall musicians. An 'average' concert guitarist could prolly plays rings around Clapton (I know that Eric plays a couple things 'the wrong way' - technically speaking).
Then again, that person couldn't do Layla like Eric. Or burn up the fretboard doing licks to Matchbox with Carl Perkins (love rockabilly, it started it all, and thank God for YouTube - Carl Lee Perkins, etc, still live on. And man-oh-man did Sam Phillips ever have Solid Gold at his little label).
an aside: I've got a 'couple years' on you, but you started playing 'a few' years earlier. Anywho - hi there fellow guitar player. :-)
ps: Sure you heard this one (or a version thereof):
the difference between a Jazz & Rock Guitarist is that a Jazz Guitarist learns 500 chords to play in front of three people, while the Rock Guitarist learns three chords to play in front of 500 people.
Someone should denegrate Obama and call him the most insulting president ever. He insulted every business person who was willing to take a risk in starting a business without government help. All the employees of those businesses should be insulted too for without that business owner taking a risk, they’d be on the dole.
Hahaha! I understand that, my fellow guitarist.
Thank you for the reply.
FMCDH(BITS)
"This foreign-born non-citizen was helped by many corrupt politicians to usurp the US Presidency, which when (finally) discovered led to the quick and utter demise of the Democratic Party."
HF
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