Maggie's Farm

Thanks for the link. I read the entire speech. You can find his remarks that "You didn't get there on your own" very close to the end of the text. I don't have the patience (or skill) to deconstruct the entire text, but for just that section it is worth asking what he meant by his comment. Whenever I read an Obama speech, I invariably find it to be illogical and also self-contradictory. This one is no exception.

Let's agree with Obama that if you succeed in life you probably did get some sort of help along the way, perhaps "from a great teacher somewhere in your life." For that, the teacher was paid; it was his/her job. OK, maybe "somebody invested in roads and bridges." Well, your taxes contributed to that, and of course everyone who paid the taxes that built the bridge got back some benefit....or else the bridge wouldn't have been built, right? That's the way free markets work: people want something, other people have something, they trade, they buy and sell, and collectively they create the things they need or want.

OK, so you are grateful for the help, you never said otherwise, but what is Obama's point? Does he think you are ungrateful? Does he think you (or your parents) didn't pay the taxes that paid your teacher or built the bridge? Does he think your business is returning nothing to the community in which it thrives?

Read the following paragraphs in his speech. He says we accomplish good things when we work together, but we already know that: if we weren't working together at all, our businesses would fail because you and I wouldn't be selling and others wouldn't be buying, etc. And we also know that this "working together" to accomplish things for the most part is done person-to-person or business-to-business and doesn't directly involve the government; in fact, too often things get done in spite of the government. So what's his point? The markets have worked (despite Obama's lies and distortions in this speech about that), the economy has prospered, many great things have been built by private enterprise, and every once in a while some things are done by government that get paid by the people who build the economy that pays Obama his generous salary.

At this point in the speech we're left to fill in the blanks. Apparently all that private economic cooperation that generates so many good things like roads and bridges isn't good enough for Obama. I guess he thinks we should hand over more of the money we earn to government, but for what purpose he doesn't say. Rather, he changes the subject and launches a personal attack on Republicans, something he relishes doing. Can't get too specific, you know, someone might ask whether it's wise for us to hand over our savings to a President who's already blown a national treasure of trillions of dollars on solar panel companies that go bankrupt in the night and electric cars that no one wants to buy.

By the way, I find Obama's brief remarks in this speech about his mother thoroughly misleading. He tries to give the impression that she struggled for many years to raise her children as a single mom while she was going to school to get her advanced degrees. In fact, however, she was in this self-made situation for only one year, 1962, right after Obama's birth, when she was separated from Obama Sr. and left Hawaii to go to college in Washington state. She returned to Hawaii the following year. From then on she was either married or else her parents took responsibility for bringing up her children while she---self-centeredly I might add---pursued her own education and career.

You are amazingly obtuse, aren't you. If your replies were gunshots, you'd miss the side of the barn every time.

It doesn't surprise me that Obama misses the point (he's clueless like every other Marxist), but it does surprise me that Krauthammer misses the point that successful businesses, as they grow and prosper, pay all manner of taxes, and those taxes help to build those roads and other infrastructure that President Dumpfkop refers to. Successful businesses are not free-riding, nor are they freeloaders. President Affirmative Action and his wife are freeloaders, having made a career of living high and vacationing off the public dime, and his most ardent political supporters---both the corporate crony ones and the welfare class---are freeloaders, but successful businesses are equal opportunity taxpayers who pay for those things that dumb people seem to think are "free". Half of all Americans pay none of the federal income taxes that keep the government operating. You want to talk about "freeloaders," Obama? Let's have a debate about those folks.

Pardon my pidgin form of German. The correct spelling is dummkopf. Knew it didn't look right or sound right.....