Context, my balls
So, the nonsensical rebuttal to Obama saying “you didn’t build that, someone else made that happen” is about context. Anyone who buys that is a moron. Or Stop claiming Obama said what he said, just because he said it
The mask slipped and people noticed.
July 27th, 2012 at 10:01 am
Obama was born “out of context”.
July 27th, 2012 at 10:53 am
You know, I shudder when I think where we would be without the Internet/blogosphere/independent media.
When I think of how the MSM (weakened as it has become) can successfully bury or dampen stories that hurt Obama, one has to marvel at the miracle of Reagan’s victory in 1980 (when the MSM was the only game in town).
July 27th, 2012 at 11:57 am
Not that I have *any* sympathy for that bastard (obama) but his statement was: “…Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” That can *very* easily be parsed as him saying “… — you didn’t build those roads and bridges. …”.
But his “rebuttal” ad is just so much of what the bull left behind. Most people (including me) think he actually believes that nobody really built anything without the “help” of the smart people in government telling them what they needed. Whether they agree or not.
Not that the world needed another example, but Obama is a good example of why the powers a government is allowed to exercise should be very limited.
July 27th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
The Chief Executive’s seat warmer has an interesting quandary now: if Bill Ruger, Sam Colt, Oliver Winchester, John Browning, Messrs. Wesson & Smith, etc. didn’t do what they did mostly on their own – which is most definitely paying off in spades right now, being one of the few industries to be raking in the cash lately – then obviously it is the government that wants us the citizenry to have a thriving gun business available top the free market. So, over time “they” built us one and are making “it” happen.
Ergo, Mr. Obama is directly to blame for the Aurora thing.
Natch.
July 27th, 2012 at 12:35 pm
To, not “top”.
Sorry.
July 27th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
No parsing required…as that is in fact what it’s clear he was saying, if you not reading this with your wookie suit on.
But I guess if you’re determined to read this as “no, really, he was saying nobody can take credit for growing a business”, there’s no amount of pointing that out that’s going to get you to unfuck yourself.
July 27th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
He would have said “you didn’t build THOSE” if that is what he meant. Unless he doesn’t understand the difference betweem singular and plural. Or maybe he was trying to speak some form of unknown ebonics in deference to the crowd he was addressing.
He was stuttering and carrying on, which means he was “off-prompter”. His stuttering usually preceeds bullshit, so it all lines up.
July 27th, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Furthermore, it doesn’t even matter which way you take it. It means the same thing. He either meant to say it, or he meant to imply it.
Whichever you ascribe to, he said one of the two following: 1) “You didn’t build your business, others made it happen”, or 2) “You couldn’t have built your business without roads and bridges, which others made happen.”
Take your pick. It doesn’t make any fucking difference at all.
July 27th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
If you thought “Out of context” was dumb, check out what Jonathan Chait wrote at New York magazine.
Hint: Racism!
July 27th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
@Mike
It’s really sad, but I get my news exclusively from independent sources. You really can’t trust mainstream media, whether it’s pushing the template of it’s liberal agenda or fighting the conservative fight against the red scourge of America.
July 27th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
That can *very* easily be parsed as him saying “… — you didn’t build those roads and bridges. …”.
That parsing is far more disturbing than the more direct and forgiving take that he was saying that “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that [alone].”
Any good business literally thanks every customer for their patronage and the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services… and it goes that a fair defense (from a certain capitalistic perspective) of Obama’s words would have stressed that mutual benefit.
The disturbing aspect is that Obama’s best defense is that a private citizen cannot mind their own business without some Commissar ‘investing’ in the road out their front door which allows them to go to the corner market to buy bread.
July 27th, 2012 at 10:55 pm
@HL. You didn’t direct your comment at me specifically but I’d like to point out that most (all?) of his apologists claim he meant your “2)” — see Sebastian’s comment for one example. I happen to think that your conclusion is correct: it doesn’t matter either way — he clearly believes that *anyone’s* success is at least partially due to the work of others. And maybe most importantly: without those “others”, *you* would NOT be successful.
@Sebastian. You said “No parsing required…”. An inability to get the *simple* things right is not very helpful when you are trying to convince people you are “right” about complicated things (I’m thinking “climate”). There has *never* been a sentence uttered by a human being that did not require parsing to extract meaning from the utterance. And a substantial portion of all human language statements are ambiguous and can be parsed “correctly” in multiple ways — sometimes leading to vastly different meanings.
As George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
A big problem for those who want to “defend” Obama’s statement: there are plenty of people out “there” who have built very successful business’ building roads and bridges. They, quite literally, *did* “build that”.
As HL said: “Take your pick. It doesn’t make any fucking difference at all.” And he (she?) is right. Unless you want to make the argument about just one sentence instead of the meaning of the speech in the larger context of what Obama has obviously stood for for many years. In which case you might want to work on that “unfuck[ing] yourself” thing.