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Obama to business owners: "You didn't build that." [W:417]

zstep18 said:
I was going with the "you didn't build that". But, you're stepping away from my point.
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If you want to re-arrange words, or focus on one part of the speech and ignore the rest, fine, that's up to you. But realize you are doing exactly what you claim the other side is doing. Some, like AdamT would just rearange his words to mean something else entirely...at least you aren't doing that.

The fact is, Obama has never been in business, he doesn't have any idea what it takes to make one succeed. He has been in govt, and so approaches it from that perspective. Do I take his comments to mean that he wants to nationalize all American businesses? No, but I do take them to mean that he feels that govt has, or should have, a bigger role than it does. Both things I do not want my govt to have. I would rather someone have an understanding of management and success before they become CEO of my govt.
 
Neomalthusian said:
What? Ahem. Is something more (than currently) owed by the successful person back to the collective by virtue of the successful person's success?
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Not sure what you're trying to get at here. Mere understanding would be a start.


Abso*******lutely. I've read and listened to the entire speech and gained a firm grasp on his main point from the get-go. His main point is "vote for me, I'll take from the successful if you want me to" mixed together with "get ready successful, I may take from you because you're only successful in the first place because of us, who have come to take from you..."
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I'm not convinced you do. SOme here played a 56 second clip and started to protect what he thought his face expressed. I see a lot of that on these boards, and I think you're doing some of the same.

As for me, yes, people helped me. As I have said, this takes nothing away form my effort or role in that success, but it would be a lie to say I did it all on my own. I explained this earlier.

I agree. I immediately sought meaning underneath Obama's mickey-mouse obvious statements that private business owners did not build public bridges (derp!), and figured out a compelling ACTUAL reason he would speak this way to the owners of business.
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Notice your language. This suggests you went seeking with a predetermined POV. Kind of defeats the purpose of you looking.
 
Moot said:
Nyyyew but its you who are the uniformed one heeeeeere. Neener, neener, neener. We're not talking about roads in subdivisons or condos here. Get a clue.
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Why exclude any types of roads?
 
mac said:
If you want to re-arrange words, or focus on one part of the speech and ignore the rest, fine, that's up to you. But realize you are doing exactly what you claim the other side is doing. Some, like AdamT would just rearange his words to mean something else entirely...at least you aren't doing that.

The fact is, Obama has never been in business, he doesn't have any idea what it takes to make one succeed. He has been in govt, and so approaches it from that perspective. Do I take his comments to mean that he wants to nationalize all American businesses? No, but I do take them to mean that he feels that govt has, or should have, a bigger role than it does. Both things I do not want my govt to have. I would rather someone have an understanding of management and success before they become CEO of my govt.
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Exactly! President Obama has had zero executive experience, his career until elected has been to concoct or concur with platitudes within a bubble of like-minded academia. He's not only uncomfortable with decision making, he becomes emotionally flustered when his rhetoric is challenged. This can be the only explanation for the flubbed comment he made, and the multitude of other statements like the "clingers" and "energy prices necessarily skyrocketing" comments. In a confrontational environment such as a political message board, not even Obama's most ardent sycophants would make such silly assertions.

They just pretend Obama meant "something else" other than what he said.
 
zstep18 said:
Cause I'm looking at the overall message of his speech?
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No, because you're saying, in essence, that Obama didn't say what he did--that actually, although he said them, that's not what he meant. If you've done any significant public speaking at all, then you know how easy it is to be carried away when you're in your groove. That's what happened, I think, to the President. He said what he said, and call it a "slip of the tongue" or argue that what he said is being taken out of context as you please, but he did, in fact, say those very words.
 
tecoyah said:
Pot...meet kettle.
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Excuse me, no. I am simply repeating what the President said, and earlier in this thread, I provided a link to the video and the 0:47 point at which he said them. That's not "cherry-picking"; that's being literal.
 
nota bene said:
I don't. Admit it because it happens to all of us: Obama was swept away by his own rhetoric and went too far. His words were, "If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. “Somebody else made that happen.”...
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those were NOT all of his words, and you're cherry-picking is dishonest and symptomatic of a movement that prefers dishonest quote-mining over honest criticism of his policies & beliefs.
 
nota bene said:
Excuse me, no. I am simply repeating what the President said, and earlier in this thread, I provided a link to the video and the 0:47 point at which he said them. That's not "cherry-picking"; that's being literal.
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Excuse Me...Yes.


"Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.[1]"

So...Taking a line, out of an entire speech to support your position, while dismissing the context it was placed in....would be called what exactly?

Selective Quotation?
Minimally interpretive word selection?
Creative Sentence Manipulation?

In my opinion...that is the perfect example of Cherry Picking.
 
tecoyah said:
Excuse Me...Yes.


"Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.[1]"

So...Taking a line, out of an entire speech to support your position, while dismissing the context it was placed in....would be called what exactly?

Selective Quotation?
Minimally interpretive word selection?
Creative Sentence Manipulation?

In my opinion...that is the perfect example of Cherry Picking.
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and its symptomatic of a movement being either horrible desperate..or horribly lazy.

or both.
 
tecoyah said:
Excuse Me...Yes.


"Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.[1]"

So...Taking a line, out of an entire speech to support your position, while dismissing the context it was placed in....would be called what exactly?

Selective Quotation?
Minimally interpretive word selection?
Creative Sentence Manipulation?

In my opinion...that is the perfect example of Cherry Picking.
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You can obfuscate Obama's thesis all you want, we know he is no Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek. He's a Keynesian with socialist tendencies whose epistemology has never been challenged within his academic bubble. Which is why he makes such highly exploitable flubs in speeches. His "clingers" comment, the "energy prices will necessarily rise" silliness..are all symptoms of his sheltered and frail intellect.
 
zstep18 said:
So, then you're acknowledging that he didn't word it in the best way then?
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first words....
so, then....redundant, you only need one of those words.
last word....then
again you are redundant.

IOW, you didn't word your statement in the best way.
 
Romulus said:
You can obfuscate Obama's thesis all you want, we know he is no Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek. He's a Keynesian with socialist tendencies whose epistemology has never been challenged within his academic bubble. Which is why he makes such highly exploitable flubs in speeches. His "clingers" comment, the "energy prices will necessarily rise" silliness..are all symptoms of his sheltered and frail intellect.
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Didn't I ask you to support a claim you made earlier?
 
Aberration said:
Why exclude any types of roads?
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Because if you're arguing that only government can get infrastructure built, you can't count anything the government doesn't get built to be "real" infrastructure.

Funny how many places are named after people who built this stuff themselves, though. Places like Sneads Ferry, Harpers Landing, Miller's Bridge, Snow's Cut, all named after infrastructure built by private individuals (who then charged tolls for public use).
 
Romulus said:
You can obfuscate Obama's thesis all you want, we know he is no Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek. He's a Keynesian with socialist tendencies whose epistemology has never been challenged within his academic bubble. Which is why he makes such highly exploitable flubs in speeches. His "clingers" comment, the "energy prices will necessarily rise" silliness..are all symptoms of his sheltered and frail intellect.
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more like an abundance of ignorance, AKA inadequate knowledge...

intellect is not the same thing as knowledge, altho a case can probably be made for both being in short supply when it comes to politicians.
One would think that a politician with intellect would know better than to attempt to discuss a topic about which they have no knowledge.
 
nota bene said:
If you've done any significant public speaking at all, then you know how easy it is to be carried away when you're in your groove. That's what happened, I think, to the President. He said what he said, and call it a "slip of the tongue" or argue that what he said is being taken out of context as you please, but he did, in fact, say those very words.
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Have you ever heard of the phrase, "Winning isn't everything; its the only thing"? Now, if someone were to say that quote , I could just take the first part, "Winning isn't everything" and say the same thing you're saying now, that they, "did, in fact, say those words". Quoting out of context is a logical fallacy.
 
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Romulus said:
You can obfuscate Obama's thesis all you want, we know he is no Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek. He's a Keynesian with socialist tendencies whose epistemology has never been challenged within his academic bubble. Which is why he makes such highly exploitable flubs in speeches. His "clingers" comment, the "energy prices will necessarily rise" silliness..are all symptoms of his sheltered and frail intellect.
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It truly is astounding that people still cling to such feeble and disproven comments to debase the President. Even more amazing would be the self imposed projected ignorance these comments paint. One can assume either pure ignorance, or something far worse.
 
tecoyah said:
Even more amazing would be the self imposed projected ignorance these comments paint. One can assume either pure ignorance, or something far worse.
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Well, he apparently believes there's a non-trivial number of his opponents who argue against having any government at all, paying any taxes at all, and/or are against the basic functions of government, like police, courts, basic infrastructure, etc., in order to have said all this.

That, or he knows there isn't, and he's swatting intentionally at strawmen.

So, given his very premise, it IS ignorance, or it's dishonesty.
 
tecoyah said:
It truly is astounding that people still cling to such feeble and disproven comments to debase the President. Even more amazing would be the self imposed projected ignorance these comments paint. One can assume either pure ignorance, or something far worse.
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willful ignorance, the essence of stupidity....
 
Harshaw said:
Well, he apparently believes there's a non-trivial number of his opponents who argue against having any government at all, paying any taxes at all, and/or are against the basic functions of government, like police, courts, basic infrastructure, etc., in order to have said all this.

That, or he knows there isn't, and he's swatting intentionally at strawmen.

So, given his very premise, it IS ignorance, or it's dishonesty.
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That is funny -- you erecting an enormous strawman to accuse the president of same. :lol:
 
tecoyah said:
It truly is astounding that people still cling to such feeble and disproven comments to debase the President. Even more amazing would be the self imposed projected ignorance these comments paint. One can assume either pure ignorance, or something far worse.
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I only "cling" to guns and agnosticism. Obama's lack of leadership skills are observable and evidenced by his vacillation during crises such as the Gulf oil spill, uprising in Iran, the failed surge in Afghanistan, our looming debt crises, the EUs looming debt crises, ICBM and nuclear development in Iran and N. Korea, and Hillary's snuke among many many others. His lack of intellectual prowess is exhibited when he makes snobbish remarks (such as the subject of this thread) that should only be uttered under hushed tones in the living room of a humanities professors and unrepentant Marxist terrorists (Ayers reference).

The number one issue right now?

Unemployment.

What has Obama done about it?

Ignored His Own Jobs Council For Six Months

I rest my case.
 
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AdamT said:
That is funny -- you erecting an enormous strawman to accuse the president of same. :lol:
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And what strawman is that?

What's your estimation as to why he felt the need to address the point? (For the umpteenth time, along with others, such as Elizabeth Warren.)
 
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