[Clint N. Suhks]

Obligatory “rhymes with”...

[Raycpa]

I see a trap in arguing this point too much because there is some truth in Obama’s statement. We have created an environment that encourages and supports business creation and development. Arguing that this existing environment does not contribute to successful businesses and that success comes solely from the entrepreneur then we weaken the argument that government regulations and taxes will have a major impact on these folks. After all, they do not government.

[uncommonsense]

I've read one of Lakeoff’s books on breaking down the implied conceptual model based of the words used to communicate (like “I hear you” vs “I see what you mean”). It was actually insightful and entertaining.

[mjp]

George Lakoff - No One Got Rich On Their Own

The making of a fortune requires that an individual have the ability, power,and willingness to use the ingenuity and take the the actions that are required to build a great fortune. He must earn a high rate of return on capital and then constantly and continuously reinvest almost all of it so that the high rate of profit rapidly compounds of a period of many years.He hires workers to help him and pays taxes for legitimate functions of government to provide an environment of freedom and respect for private property that is conducive to earning and investing.It is when government uses force and confiscatory taxation and pro-union legislation that hampers the market that businessmen and capitalists object to.

[loveliberty2]

So-called "progressives," in their overwhelming desire to re-interpret the Declaration of Independence's emphasis on Creator-endowed (therefore, unalienable by government) individual rights, go even further with their outright misinterpretation of the Declaration's stated role of "We, the People."

While the President and his surrogates attempt to portray "We, the People" as some sort of collective who are helpless without the guiding and controlling hand of a large and powerful government master, America's Founders saw "We, the People" as masters of their government, who retain sovereignty over that government by the provisions and limitations of their own Constitution for controlling elected representatives in that government.

There is a huge difference in outcomes between the two concepts. America's Founders were clear in their understanding that economic progress, for instance, relied on the degree of individual freedom which existed, and they stated it clearly:

"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson

"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison

". . . the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." The word "benign" takes on special meaning today, when almost every person understands the implications of the word "malignant"--a word which might be used today to describe the kind of debilitating and destroying government "influence" we encounter at every turn.

No wonder so-called "progresssive" leaders like the Democrats who represent the current Administration must use misleading semantic maneuvers in order to sell their misleading and counterfeit ideas.

1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson

(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. . . possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

"Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." (end of excerpt)

[oldbrowser]

George Lakoff - No One Got Rich On Their Own

To me this is just an expansion of the "it takes a village" philosophy. You know, you are not qualified to raise you own child and should be under the guidance of licensed professionals. Children must be brought up to understand that the government knows best and parents are just other citizens to whom you happen to be born.

The expansion would be that you are not really the builder of your business. You are merely a person who has taken advantage of the opportunities that where provided to you by the government and the citizens who came before you and laid the groundwork that allowed you to have a business.

The collective has provided the business to you and therefore the business belongs to the collective.

resistance is futile.

[bramps]

As the campaign starts to tank for Obama because of his statements and actions it is a stark realization that my theory about liberals and progressives is passing the lab tests. LIBERALS SUFFER FROM A MENTAL ILLNESS. They also have a serious problem of DYSLEXIA OF TRUTH, FACTS, COMMON SENSE AND MORAL VALUES. Watch and listen to the panic in the campaign rhetoric from the left and you have to agree that the theory is very evident.
I believe that a few years ago the court maintained that you couldn't incarcerate an individual in a mental institution without their consent. They were releasing themselves from the determination they knew at the time they all had.
What else could describe their actions and speech??

[Isabel C.]

This morning I made a cake. But I must admit that I didn't raise the chickens that laid the eggs that I used. And I didn't grow the wheat that provided the flour that I used. And I didn't grow the sugar cane that provided the sugar that I used. And I didn't make the bowl, or the hand mixer, or the baking pan, or the oven, or the cake platter.

Obama would say "You didn't make that cake".

[Starstruck]

OBAMA: If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be because I was just so smart." There are a lot of smart people out there. "It must be because I worked harder than anybody else." Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

This may appeal to the masses, but my observation after being in the work force for 50 years is that there are an awful lot of lazy-assed people out there too. And some of them of them even become President.

[Terry Mross]

If new roads are a neccessity for building a successful business, how did Wells Fargo get started? They sure weren’t running those stage coaches on interstate highways.

[piasa]

To sum it up:

Obama's mission is to break America's spirit.

[Right Wing Assault]

If his new ad campaign manages to convince more people that he was talking about "roads and bridges," it still doesn't make sense. Of course the people who run small businesses didn't build the older roads and bridges but they sure as hell are rebuilding the old and building the new. Where does Dick Obama think that money comes from?

Furthermore, the people who kept yelling "Thass right!" all during his rant probably don't pay any income tax so they aren't supporting the infrastructure anywhere near as much as the business owners and their employees.

I hope the Repubs are getting their response ready and that they remind people that the Evil Businesses and the Evil Rich people are the VERY ONES who paid the taxes and are still paying most of the taxes that built and are maintaining the "roads and bridges" and infrastructer that Dick Obama wants to say they DIDN'T build.

Yeah, then he'll say, "some union laborer built them At which point, most of the country will say, "Oh, shut up and go get an ice cream cone."

[detective]

Lackoff may have been the one Obama copied but the concept that entrepreneurs and others do not create value or contribute to society is the essence of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Lenin said those who work hard and create value need to have what they have earned forcibly confiscated by the state because they didn't earn it legitimately. Everything Obama learned he was taught by communists. That is Obama’s mindset. Obama believes in government confiscation of private property and the elimination of individual rights. Obama believes people who own guns and have sincere faith are evil and must be punished.