Posted on 07/28/2011 6:12:38 AM PDT by Hojczyk
President Barack Obama's conduct during the debate over the debt ceiling has divided the country and will inflict damage that will last well after the battle is over, former New York Stock Exchange director and Wall Street stalwart Ken Langone said.
While he believes a debt deal will get done and in fact favors a plan closer to what the Democrats are proposing, Langone told CNBC that Obama's behavior has been "unpresidential."
"He is dividing us as a nation," Langone said. "He's not bringing us together. He's willfully dividing us. He's petulant."
The co-founder of Home Depot [HD 35.625 -0.765 (-2.1%) ]sharply criticized the president for promoting class warfare through his repeated attacks against "fat cat" business executives and his targeting of tax loopholes.
In sum, the behavior is symptomatic of Obama's disrespect for the office he holds, Langone said.
"Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on—that's how much he revered the presidency," he said. "This guy worked like hell to be president...Behave like a president. Let me look at you as a model to how we should behave. What does he say? Fat cats, jet airplanes. What is the purpose? Us versus them.
"The thing I fear the most about the future of America is...divide us, we all lose. This has got to stop."
Langone said people with his wealth should pay more taxes, but the debate shouldn't be framed as rich against poor.
"He is not acting presidential. He is behaving in a way designed in my opinion to divide us, to make us look at each other with skepticism, with suspicion. That is the end of America as we know it," he said. "The destruction he is inflicting by his behavior will carry on long after we settle the debt limit."
On a side note another version:
The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
There are Different Morals
OLD CONSERVATIVE VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN LIBERAL VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food..
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green..’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Chris Matthews that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugsand, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2012
Dito Harry Reid. Ditto Debbie Shultz. Ditto every democrat in congress.
He’s simply a COMMUNITY ‘ORGANIZER’, a street thug- rabble rouser. That is ALL he will ever be. It’s ALL he’s been trained to do and all he’s qualified for.
Plain and simple. America goofed and will have to deal with the consequences.
American “goofed”?
To the contrary, 0bama is the culmination of generations of communist chess moves.
Then let him and any others whom are guilty about their Wealth voluntarily pay more. It should be made law, seems Mass. does this for State taxes (remember hypocrite Kerry wasn't paying the higher rates, yet calling for tax increase during his 2004 campaign.
I need a new weed wacker. Does anyone know what the head of Lowes thinks?
And a lazy one at that.
Thanks for posting the Ant&Grasshopper story...worth saving and forwarding once again....
It's a good thing that my wife can't stand the chump either.
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See if you can find a local hardware store and give them your business. I stopped big-box hardware/gardening/painting purchases a few years ago. It might cost 5% (sometimes) more but I'd rather see the little guys stay open and I do appreciate the fact that by now they know my name when I walk in.
This can be a surprise to NO ONE who watched “O” campaign for President. Did anyone actually think he was big enough to be President of ALL America?
I didn't... and “O” has since done nothing to convince me otherwise
“O’s” administration bears the same taint as Clinton's. It was obvious from the beginning that the job was bigger than he was and that goes double for “O”.
Both these guys express a smallness of character and spirit with every word they utter and everything they do! Both are selfish, small and immeasurably base.
I’m going to my locally-owned ACE Hardware. Their boss works, and doesn’t have time to chat on TV.
These big box morons seem to be out to lunch far too often.
You mean us bitter clingers?
What's stopping him? He could do a short form, but I'd be willing to bet he pays thousands of dollars to accountants and tax advisers to lower his tax burden by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then he goes and complains that he should pay more. What a blithering idiot. He deserves Obama. I bet he voted for him. I bet he contributed the maximum to his campaign.
Could such behavior be knowingly and intended not only by Obama but by his enablers also? Let’s stop pussyfooting around about what this man is all about. He is old time junkie taken with enablers which are out to make the USA a servant Nation instead of being the exceptional one the Founders created. The records of history will show many likely culprits there are for such intentions. If we don’t call a spade a spade we as a Nation will not even be in the game.
Yup
Limousine liberals say this publicly every chance they get, the purpose being to deflect envy, while privately hiring the brightest CPAs to find every tax dodge possible. The whole motivation for limousine liberalism is to deflect envy, appease the mob, so they can keep as much as their wealth as possible. As Barky inflames envy, rouses the mob, and attempts to either take their wealth or destroy it, limousine liberals cringe. It damages their entire public motif, negates all their posturing and image management.
The rich fear the mob, the Democrats. They do not fear conservatives. Because the rich are greatly outnumbered they take an appeasement strategy of befriending the beast. Normally the strategy works wonderfully, but when it fails, it fails spectacularly.
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