Exclusive: L.A. Times Turns Editorial Control of Its News Pages Over to Obama Campaign Staffers
It can be revealed this morning that, in a startling experiment that will be debated for years to come, the editors of the Los Angeles Times have temporarily ceded control of their web site and front page to staffers working directly for the re-election campaign of Barack Obama. According to insiders with knowledge of the plan, the pilot program, initially slated to last 24 hours, may be significantly expanded as the 2012 Presidential election approaches.
The staffers’ initial gambit is to take a standard pro-entrepreneurial speech by Mitt Romney and portray it as xenophobic and frightening. The Obama campaign intends to use the pages of the L.A. Times to suggest that Romney is invoking debunked “birther” claims, despite the complete lack of any reference to birthers in the actual words of Romney or anyone linked to him. The staffers’ article is a bold and daring move that is certain to grab attention due to its sheer audacity and shameless dishonesty. Whether readers will buy the hoax is another story.
This all-important first article is designed to defuse Obama’s recent gaffe in which he claimed “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.” Mitt Romney took full advantage of Obama’s goof in a speech today that lauded the American entrepreneurial spirit:
Here’s how the Obama campaign staffers chose to portray Romney’s speech in their new position at the L.A. Times:
By Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times
July 17, 2012, 8:06 p.m.IRWIN, Pa. — In remarks that played on debunked assertions about President Obama’s birthplace, Mitt Romney on Tuesday said that the current administration resembled foreign governments and one of his chief surrogates said the president needed to “learn how to be an American.”
OK, Patterico here, to say: I’m just kidding. My post so far is a goof. Of course it’s not really true that actual Obama campaign officials have been entrusted with the news pages of the L.A. Times. It’s even worse than that! In a terrifying development, the paper remains under the control of the same cabal of leftist lunatics who have published this rag since before I first started lining bird cages with it in 1993.
To see just how far divorced from reality these nutcases are, let’s take a look at the proof of their frankly insane claim that Romney is appealing to birthers. This claim is based primarily on an assertion that Romney claimed yesterday that “the current administration resembled foreign governments.”
Well, the entire transcript of the speech is available in this post at Hot Air. First let’s get a flavor of what the speech sounded like in general. Again, it is a clear response to Obama’s “successful people didn’t get there on their own” remarks. Here is Mitt Romney:
The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn’t build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it’s wrong. [Applause]
. . . .
I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a President of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America.
OK, but didn’t he compare the Obama administration to “foreign” governments? Well, I searched for the word “foreign” in his remarks, and came up with these two passages, which I will place in their proper context:
You understand, of course, what’s going on. What he is saying is his justification for raising taxes higher and higher, because government needs more. What he is saying is his justification for Obamacare, which says that we need 2,300 pages of legislation to have government more intrusive in your life. What he is saying is his justification for a larger and larger government. This is very different, by the way, than the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton that said that the era of big-government was over, that reformed welfare. You heard that story by the way, he is trying to take work out of welfare requirement. It is changing the nature of America, changing the nature of what the Democrats have fought for, and Republicans have fought for. In the past, people of both parties understood that encouraging achievement, encouraging success, encouraging people to lift themselves as high as they can, encouraging entrepreneurs, celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating, makes America strong. That’s the right course for this country. His course is extraordinarily foreign. [Applause]
Now, Joe, Joe got it right. Where did Joe go? He, there he is right here. Joe got it right. He said somethingabout what would happen if President Obama were reelected. And I don’t think that’s going to happen. But if he were reelected, I want you to know that what you’ve see for the last three and a half years, you’d be seeing for the next four and a half years. And what that means is: chronic high levels of unemployment, it means low wage growth to negative wage growth, declining median incomes in this country, and it means putting America on the door to fiscal calamity.
BIRTHERISM!!!!!
Not seeing it yet? Well, just wait until you see the next passage!!
And so I see that entrepreneurial spirit and that innovativeness of the American people and our willingness to work hard in whatever role we have and to lift and to improve our lot and to improve the lot of the enterprises we work in—I see that as driving this economy to be the most powerful in the history of the Earth. It has already; it will again. The course we’re on right now is foreign to us. It changes America. This is a vote for what kind of America we’re going to have, and for me I vote for freedom and free people. [Applause]
Let me just end with this thought: this is an important choice. This is a defining choice. This is a choice about what America’s going to be. Not just for the next few years but for a century. This is a choice which will determine what kind of future our kids are going to have. And, in fact, it also determines what kind of future the world’s going to have. America plays an unusual role in the world—I think we understand that. Some in some circles tend to brush that aside. But those that have fought in world wars and other conflicts recognize the greatness of America and our unique role in the history of the earth. [Applause]
BIRTHERISM!!!!!
But but but . . . John Sununu said Obama needed to learn to be an American! Well, let’s look deeeeeep in the article to see what he actually said:
In a conference call arranged by the Romney campaign, Sununu assailed Obama’s roots in the “political-slash-felon environment” of Chicago and attacked the president’s recent statement that business leaders who had succeeded had help from government, in the form of teachers or road construction workers, among others.
Those business leaders, Sununu said, “are the people who are the backbone of our economy, and the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea how the American economy functions. The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses — their businesses, from the ground up — is how our economy became the envy of the world.”
He added: “It is the American way, and I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”
Asked later whether he could clarify that remark, Sununu said Obama “has to learn the American formula for creating business.”
BIRTHERISM!!!!! He said Obama was born in Kenya!!! You heard him! Right? That was what he said, kinda . . . sorta . . . OK, not really. But . . .
Look. It has to be obvious to anyone reading these passages that Mitt Romney is not being a race-baiting racist obsessed with race who is a racist birther preying on xenophobic racist tropes of Obama being a black black foreign non-American guy. Romney is praising the entrepreneurial spirit. He is decrying the erosion of traditional values of American rugged independence by a nanny-state government that seeks to replicate the failed policies of Social Democrats in the crumbling empire of Europe.
Ah, who am I kidding? He’s just being a racist. The hell with capitalism, free markets, and the American way.
Honestly, the actual situation is worse than if Obama’s people had written this as a press release themselves. At least if it really were Obama staffers in there, there would legally have to be some kind of “I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message” disclaimer on the bottom of this blatant advertisement for Obama’s candidacy.
As it stands, it’s just more claptrap from the L.A. Times. And some idiots fall for it. They really do.
I use plastic bags to pick up my dog’s poop and I have no bird cage to line. This paper serves no purpose any more.
Die, L.A. Times. Just die already.
Just when I think I am past getting angered by this paper…
Patterico (feda6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 12:50 amI love how some are passing Obamas comment on as a gaffe when he clearly meant it
EricPWJohnson (e4e3a6) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:07 amKinsley gaffe.
Patterico (feda6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:10 amYou can still use it as a fish wrapper.
mg (44de53) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:16 amObama didn’t gaffe. He meant what he said. I have not seen him or his campaign try to take that back…although it is quite possible they did and I missed it.
Dustyn H (e17fcc) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:17 amMeanwhile, they don’t dare report on a real birther; Sheriff Joe. That might mean they actually would have to repeat some of what he’s said and that’s too scary for them to contemplate.
They don’t dare quote him for fear something he said will resonate or that people will attempt to find out more of what he’s said.
They can’t even make too much fun of him for fear it will give the story legs.
How many pages is the daily afternoon down to these days?
jcw46 (52886b) — 7/18/2012 @ 2:04 amI use plastic bags to pick up my dog’s poop and I have no bird cage to line. This paper serves no purpose any more.
You could get another puppy.
Your kids could make some things out of paper mache’.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:27 amWow, just wow.
dfbaskwill (c021f2) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:46 amI use plastic bags to pick up my dog’s poop…
If I found the LA Times on my lawn, I’d use a plastic bag to pick it up; don’t want all of that stupid getting into my pores.
Old Coot (6417f5) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:54 amIt’s the headlines that will be used in Obama ads, not the articles. Just a few days, even two, is all they need so they paint the headline then, in that tiny font, ref. the LAT. Better, big, big LAT with the headline.
cedarhill (2fab74) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:55 amIt shouldn’t surprise us anymore how the MFM is so willing to simply make stuff up, as they are unchained from reality, free to create facts to fit their narrative. Larry Reilly demonstrates this every time it comments.
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:45 amSheriff Joe said Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. He didn’t mince words.
ropelight (873ad5) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:07 amThat’s amazing obvious lying. How does this rag have any credibility, even among the left?
Have they done any recent reports about how the sky is red and the grass is blue or that EastAsia has always been at war with Oceana?
QuadGMoto (3eb042) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:16 amI win, Patterico, the speech never happened here;
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/17/2899884/bye-bye-marco-rubio-in-romney.html
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:42 amLong before the SWATting…
Long before Brett Kimberlin…
Long before Weiner…
Long before Intentionalism…
…there was Patterico’s struggle against the LA Times.
It’s like coming home. 🙂
Pious Agnostic (7c3d5b) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:53 amThe Carlos Slim Daily focuses mostly on Sununu’s retraction, rather than the point of the speech
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/us/politics/romney-and-obama-resume-economic-attacks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&gwh=AE1D446E59AD095F45304564292E47B1
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:57 amIf I found the LA Times on my lawn, I’d use a plastic bag to pick it up; don’t want all of that stupid getting into my pores.
I unsubscribed a few years back (after a declining relationship of about 40 years). The delivered it anyway for 6 more months, to show me what I was missing. HAH! Who needs that kind of anger in the morning. Eventually, I called them and asked them to stop littering. To their credit, they did.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:16 amJust the same, though, Romney has a tough road to hoe if the media are going to put this kind of wall between him and the people. Putin would be so proud.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:18 amthis is the same propaganda whore what started the meme awhile back that Romney had said “Keep America American” when what he’d said was “Keep America America”
happyfeet (3c92a1) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:28 amI got some weak sauce “out of context” complaints re Obama’s very sincere scold to private enterprise.
But it was not out of context. It is his life’s context, it is everything he’s ever done’s context
SarahW (b0e533) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:38 amThis is a stretch for the LA Slimes. What they are doing is twisting the meaning of it to try to make Romney look bad.
Obama’s statement that successful people didn’t do it on their own implies that “we” can take their success from them. This is a concept to which the liberal writers strongly agree. In fact, they probably think Obama was referring to journalists when he said successful people had a great teacher.
This election will decide whether American values will survive. And yes one value that is one the way out is free market capitalism.
Obama’s speech has touched off a big response from conservatives. Has the Slimes addressed this issue about how people earn money with their ideas and hard work? No, it chose the birther spin.
Having good teachers, roads and a government built infrastructure didn’t go very far for the USSR or China.
The funny thing is that when it is time to build a road, the government bids it out to private contractors.
AZ Bob (1c9631) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:40 amThat headline is indicative of lazy, convoluted, partisanship resulting in a lie, like when Ed Schultz said he knew what Rick Perry ‘really meant’ when he spoke of a “black cloud” over America. It’s as if WHILE writing it they’re thinking that “truth” is defined by what percentage of people believe that the lie is plausible.
Would you buy a used car from this reporter?
Icy (fdc2b0) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:48 amIt’s not a lie if you believe it.
AZ Bob (1c9631) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:55 am–George Costanza
As cedarhill pointed out above, it’s the headlines that are most valuable to them at this point– headlines they will use in Axelrod ads with the imprimatur of the LA times briefly flashed across the screen. You could even have a relatively balanced story by a relatively credible reporter, but if the headline writer is in the tank for Obama, that’s what people see and remember.
elissa (741144) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:04 amThe AP is the only source I can spot in a half dozen papers, that really mentions the speech;
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/romney_pushes_attacks_against_obama_DKbtKvnnV9ACtRqkFa5T6N
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:06 amCan’t let narciso shoulder the burden alone:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/oops-obamas-top-bundler-jonathan-lavine-was-in-charge-of-bain-during-gst-steel-layoffs/
Bane meme founders in open water.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:24 amLook, I know, the next clown’s Shih Tzu has to eat too, but the biggest problem in Amerikkka is the screaming horsesh*t everyone feels empowered to toss about.
No, J.Lo is not ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, CA does not possess the grooviest places in Amerikkka, and neither will your pension be there when you kick.
WTFU.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:32 amUnfortunately I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times–gotta read the sports section. But most of the rest of the paper isn’t even good enough to use to pick up dog droppings in the back yard. Can’t tell the paper from what you’re trying to pick up is the problem.
Comanche Voter (29e1a6) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:36 amThe British press makes little pretension to being impartial. It would be better if the American press had the same attitude. They ARE biased and should be more forthright in admitting it. Fox News unfortunately has moved in a leftward direction in recent times, and has done so for no good reason. It was the only major network to present the news from a center-right perspective, in contrast to EVERY other network’s leftward slant. By turning their back on the ones who brung them they are doing nothing to bring balance to journalism as a whole.
Reggie1971 (b2bd27) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:43 amHonestly, the actual situation is worse than if Obama’s people had written this as a press release themselves.
Who says they didn’t?
It may very well be a laundered attack.
http://www.americablog.com/2012/07/breaking-romney-campaign-accuses-obama.html
That post is dated 7/17/2012 12:59:00 PM
This is probably too late to be the actual source for the LA Times, but also probably too early for the LA Times to be its source.
At least if it really were Obama staffers in there, there would legally have to be some kind of “I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message” disclaimer on the bottom of this blatant advertisement for Obama’s candidacy.
Only in paid for advertisements, and only broadcast advertisements.
But nobody pays for newspapers to run press releases
Sammy Finkelman (244b5e) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:46 amIf the LA Times succeeds, it WILL be because someone in government helped them.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:53 am_____________________________________________
but if the headline writer is in the tank for Obama, that’s what people see and remember.
I still recall dropping by the LA Times website around the time of the scandal with Bill Clinton and Monica and finding a headline that was so absurdly, ridiculously biased, I did a double take. I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was so extreme that I knew the person managing their website at that moment must have been the biggest partisan hack on two feet. So much so that if Clinton had raped a woman and been caught on camera, the LA Times employee likely would have penned a corresponding headline along the lines of “President Affirms Support of Women’s Rights.”
Die, L.A. Times. Just die already.
Regrettably, and interestingly or oddly enough, there still are huge portions of the print media that no matter how bad they are, even today, somehow manage to hang on. Look at all the variations of throwaway neighborhood papers, or traditional alternative papers like the LA Weekly, that may not necessarily be thriving, but they do keep their doors open year after year.
Then there are the esoteric publications that cater to the left (Mother Jones) or right (National Review) that have always lacked much advertising support but still hang on due to a sort of non-profit type of business plan.
It’s like a peculiar aspect of our economy in which certain businesses are able to board the gravy train and take an indefinite, leisurely ride. Of course, much of the public sector is like that to an even greater degree.
Mark (a346be) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:56 amUsing plastic bags for dog poop? How ungreen!
The LA Times along with most metro dailies will be gone as print vehicles in 5 years according to a recent USC/Annenberg School study.
“It’s likely that only four major daily newspapers with global reach will continue in print: The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive, as well as the Sunday print editions of metropolitan newspapers that otherwise may exist only in online editions.”
The LA Times wants to go out in a blaze of glory for the Democratic Party cause, kamakazi style. So be it.
Corky Boyd (c2186d) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:57 amYou might recall that this same reporter took a Romney speech out of context in early December, 2011 to make it appear that he said “Keep America for Americans” in a manner that was racist.
Quilly Mammoth (1f3e7d) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:58 amThis is the Journal, which follows through with a process story
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577533212633124788.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_6
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:01 amThe Houston Chronicle is as bad as the LATimes. Before they bought and closed the Houston Post, we at least had some competition and usually more honest reporting. And I could read the Post’s editorial page without screaming. Now hubby doesn’t even leave the paper at home anymore. He got tired of my indignant phone calls!
TexasMom2012 (cee89f) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:01 amWell, they can’t discuss the content of the speech, because it’s a blistering, effective takedown of Obama’s policies! So bring in the clowns…
On the up side, more people will watch the entire speech and be as thrilled as I was with said content.
And the LAT won’t die, until people like the Ford Foundation stop giving them millions of dollars.
Patricia (e1d89d) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:05 am____________________________________________
At the other extreme, local weekly newspapers may still survive
I read that many small newspapers that serve suburban communities still do surprisingly well, or better than their larger brethren are doing. Part of it is because local throwaways have both a greatly reduced overhead and, even in this age of the Internet, an ability to dig up support from neighborhood businesses. That merely illustrates how facets of our economy are almost non-profit in nature, or where businesses have arrangements with other businesses that are based on pure sociability only.
Mark (a346be) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:10 amseema.mehta@latimes.com
— That’s the reporter’s email for anyone wishing to respectfully share their opinions on this story.
Icy (fdc2b0) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:12 amThis piece at reason was also pretty good: “Obama Descends into Self-Parody”
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:21 amComment by narciso — 7/18/2012 @ 8:06 am
Yesterday’s Special Report had the AP* WH correspondent on the panel –
it was like listening to Jay Carney but with a better haircut.
*Administration Press
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:23 amComment by Corky Boyd — 7/18/2012 @ 8:57 am
I doubt that USA-Today could survive in a competitive environment absent the give-aways in hotels across the nation; just as CNN would be toast if the channel was changed in all those airport terminals, and bank lobbies.
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:29 amAnd you people think we have problems:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175277/Germans-laugh-Olympic-disaster-magazine-brands-2012-Games-big-soggy-mess.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174733/This-humiliating-shambles-MPs-aghast-G4S-chief-insists-taking-57m-management-fee.html
It’s probably nothing.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:36 amDon’t assume Obama was wingin’ it in Roanoke. Consider his rhetorical technique. He starts off in the singular.
From here on out, it’s not somebody else who made it all happen for you, it’s all we, we, we, till he makes his closing Kumbaya pitch, and combines his opening singular you didn’t get there on your own with his concluding plural you’re not on your own, we’re in this together.
The man is a two-faced scoundrel and he’ll say one thing now and the opposite thing tomorrow, and he’s got both hands in the till up to his elbows, and he’s doing everything he can to squeeze the Middle Class into near extinction, and he’s not smart enough to write his own speeches, but whoever does his writing and rehearses him for his public performances is pretty darn good at peddling snake oil.
ropelight (873ad5) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:42 am______________________________________________
This piece at reason was also pretty good: “Obama Descends into Self-Parody”
Based on certain recent polls, there is so much idiotic liberal sentiment throughout the public, that in one way I can understand why Obama will judge that as indicating it’s not his policies that have floundered but his not selling them and himself better.
The lunacy of his leftism is duplicated to varying degrees in far too many people that just about all of us must observe on a regular basis, including among family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. For example, Patterico has said or implied that his wife is a staunch liberal/Democrat. So as much as I want to hold ideological idiocy against the guy now in the White House, the following also hovers over everything in general:
^ And that dynamic goes double, triple or quadruple for people in nations like France, Greece, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, etc.
Mark (a346be) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:48 amThat’s the truth.
Dustin (73fead) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:58 amWe face a bleak immediate future with JPMorgan-Chase forecasting only 1.3% growth in the economy through the end of 2013,
and the reports that CalPers is only receiving 1.5% ROI on their Retirement Fund Portfolio, when their business-plan was written with a 7.5% ROI.
With tax-receipts at best able to hold steady, and (at least here in CA) the requirements of State & Local governments to pony-up additional funds to make up for the ROI shortfalls in their retirement funds, taxpayers will be faced with increases in all sorts of fees and taxes (and declining service) as gov’t at all levels is required to maintain PE retirement as previously contracted (see: North Las Vegas).
We may very well survive Obama, but digging our way out of the hole the Blue Social Model has dug for us will be long, painful, work that cannot be outsourced/off-shored.
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/18/2012 @ 10:10 amLet’s see how Mr. Obama’s communitarian model works when it gets down to “dog eat dog”.
MD, most major metropolitan areas have free left wing daily or weekly rags you can pick up at news stands.
So you don’t need to pay for it, and you don’t need it fouling your lawn, if those are your only uses for a paper.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 10:42 amNow you know why I have to read this crap here.
Mike_K (326cba) — 7/18/2012 @ 10:43 amThey claim Sununu made an apology. As far as I can find, he simply clarified his remarks so that those not playing much attention would get it.
PC14 (87cbf8) — 7/18/2012 @ 11:09 amPat, I knew you were being sarcastic in the opening paragraphs. I actually heard the voice of Walter Winchell in my head as I read it. Bravo!
(What? Who’s Walter Winchell? Here, kid, click on this.)
L.N. Smithee (d4881b) — 7/18/2012 @ 12:00 pmI just sent Ms.(@LATSeema) Mehta a tweet.
L.N. Smithee (d4881b) — 7/18/2012 @ 12:15 pmWOW! At least they are out of the closet now. They stopped doing journalism, being a healthy newspaper and abandoned American citizens a looooong time ago, and chose their path with La Opinion. The LA Times’ circulation and advertising has been on a death spiral for over two decades. Stop buying the rag and hasten the terminal demise.
gzerman (e3a0c8) — 7/18/2012 @ 12:39 pmI give the LA Times a 3.5 for execution of this 4.6 degree of difficulty dive.
I predict future dives will be of a higher degree of difficulty, though with declining quality.
East German Judge (2fd7f7) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:13 pmThey’ve been out of the closet for some time. There wasn’t any room for them and their Clinton/Gore, Gore/Lieberman, and Kerry/Edwards campaign memorabilia. Then they filled the garage with Obama/Biden crap. Now they’re decorating the outside of house with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro murals while lighting up the sky over neighborhood with searchlights that project that stupid “O” symbol.
Remember this post?
MSNBC’s Tamron Hall goes nuts on Tim Carney over the “Mitt Bully” story
When she was getting in his face about how, “you’re going to talk about the non-story I want to talk about because you’re in my house now,” I thought it would’ve been perfect if Carney retorted, “I know; I noticed everyone wearing the Che t-shirts with Obama 2012 buttons pinned to them.”
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:15 pmEveryone I know fully understood what President Obama said about “you didn’t create it” (speaking of the supporting National infrastructure and not about the underlying private business), but yet you keep on misrepresenting what he said, post after post. We’re not that stupid you know
Now you’re moaning about the coverage of Gov. Romney and starting off by making a false claim that the LA times committed an unethical act. How can I take whatever you write next seriously when it is not beneath you to title your post and begin it as well with a lie?
I’m really not liking the tone and direction of many of the conservative blogs where non-stop faux outrage, victomology and paranoia has replaced reasoned, principled and respectful conversation and argument.
I’d like to hear instead about Gov. Romney’s economic plan for example. Perhaps you could compare and contrast it with President Obama’s. I’m particularly interested in knowing the details about their tax plans.
What about Drug policy? Illegal migration? What does Romney have to offer? Of interest is the strategy to deal with the spiraling of Mexico into a failed state due to the activities of the Drug Trafficking Organizations there, the outgoing Mexican President’s crackdown on them and the influx of cartel elements and influence into American cities.
Personally I’d like to know what Romney’s plan is to accelerate the deportation of narco or gang related illegal migrants and their families (No dream act for narcos for me, thank you!). I’m especially unhappy with the Feds not cooperating with Arizona given that pivotal role the state plays in Mexican drug and people trafficking.
There are tons of other topics that conservatives like me want to read about but yet folks are stuck in this rut of “Woe is America/Obama is a ‘foreigner'” and “the media is out to get us”.
Come on… more information, more reason, less hysteria!
Cheers.
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:52 pmHehehe
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 1:57 pmRe: #56
I vote that Patterico should post whatever the heck he wants to and you do the research, and get back to us.
MikeHu (1a2353) — 7/18/2012 @ 2:11 pm“ModRepublican”, you misspelled your nickname, it is spelled “MobyRepublican”.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 2:37 pmOh, and “MobyRepubican” ? I’ll tell you about Obama’s economic plan. He created a commission on job creation. It has not met for six months.
That’s Obama’s economic plan, hoping the American electorate can be distracted from his failed economic policies.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 2:38 pmSPQR, alright woe is America, right?
My company is raking in tons of work, the stock has been doing very well and we have multi-million dollar orders in the pipeline.
Not everyone is doing that good though but we’re definitely doing much better than in late 2008 when President Obama had not yet taken office.
So all this “Woe is America” crap falls on deaf ears for me.
America has difficulties but nothing that we can’t solve if we put our minds to it. Whether it is deficit reduction, cutting spending, growing the economy and still taking care of our people, it is all doable.
The American dream is very much still alive and moaning like it is the end of the World when the stock markets are doing well and many people are better off now than four years ago means that you have very little credibility when it comes to addressing all the other big issues that interest me.
Decades ago it used to be the environmental leftists that had the lock on the shtick that everything is wrong, “woe to America” and the world is coming to an end! Conservatives were the optimists and the “can do” folks. Fast forward twenty years and what has happened? Now conservatives are the ones screaming about the end of the world, feel like victims of racism , moaning about class warfare and how the “media” is conspiring to get us.
None of this moaning interests me. I want to know about the positive things that Conservatives can bring to the table. I want to know what the solutions to our problems are. I don’t care for this “victim with paranoia” mentality that is pervading conservative media. All outrage all the time. Come on…
Of course you are free to go back to your third-grade taunts and delusions of persecution if talking about Conservative ideas and solutions are not your thing.
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:02 pmMobyRepublican, no where on this thread is it said that “Obama is a ‘foreigner'”. You copied that from Democratic talking points. That’s how I know you are not a conservative, but instead a Moby troll.
JP Morgan lowered its predictions for Q3 GDP. Its not me that is saying “woe”, its the economic statistics themselves.
The US economy can recover. When the Democrats have been thrown out of office.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:06 pmEffin dishonest transparent Moby
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:11 pmCrony socialism works for some selfish types feeding form the public trough, MobyRepublican.
You won’t get any argument on that score.
If you’re an Obama crony or otherwise connected you can score big. That’s the Chicago way.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:17 pmAs a family, we really appreciate the LA Times paper…its texture saves us a mint on bathroom tissue and it doesn’t clog up our commodes.
G. (7ce408) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:17 pmMobyRepublican is welcome to tell us which private company he describes. Maybe a bankruptcy law firm.
Mike_K (326cba) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:18 pmNoted for the record. You could give a rat’s a** about all the people Obama has put out of work.
Again, noted. Like your hero you’re in it for yourself.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:18 pmFree markets, smaller government, and the good sense not to listen to obvious concern trolls.
That’s the solution, Moby.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:23 pmUh huh. And what exactly does “[your] company” do? It would be very instructive for us to know how your firm has thrived in “the great recession,” and to see if your competitors in your field have done as well as you have.
Don’t chicken out.
L.N. Smithee (d4881b) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:27 pmRight there in the post by Patterico are numerous instances of Gov. Romney or his surrogates questioning whether America or its traditions are foreign to President Obama.
to wit:
‘He added: “It is the American way, and I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”’
That is John Sununu while promoting Gov. Romney.
I also read many Conservative blogs and websites and the whole “Not American” meme is present on most of them.
Like I said earlier, Republicans can either talk about Conservative Ideas and Solutions or they can continue to scream and shout about the President and the claimed destruction of America and its way of life.
Many of us who are moderate Conservatives see that these claims are outlandish and do not match our experiences in the real world. We also can observe how disrespectful, hateful or intolerant these voices are and we can choose whether to take these raging voices seriously or not.
We all also get one vote each in the fall whether or not we own or publish blogs.
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:27 pmRighto, Moby. But you can’t observe the whiner-in-chief and his surrogates calling Romney a felon or a vampire capitalist.
Or any of the other outright lies that he’s telling.
In order, precisely, to keep Romney from getting his ideas out. Because the media constantly turns any attempt to do so right back to Obama campaign talking points.
And you’ve got the time to troll conservative websites but you don’t have the google skills or the time go to the source.
Look, troll, you can come here spouting Obama talking points. And demonstrate your deaf and blind. Is your next excuse going to be that you’re too stupid to figure our where Romney stands on the issues and what his proposals are? Or the GOP for that matter.
Instead you’re so stupid you need it spoon fed to you by the media, and too stupid to figure out that they’re not going to do that as that would help Romney?
Look, if you have time to post comments on these blogs merely to descend into infantile liberal rants then don’t expect anybody to take your claims about anything seriously.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:39 pmInteresting: MobyPub can somehow misinterpret the very-clear words of President Obama, and then also completely misrepresent the equally clear words of Gov. Romney and John Sununu.
Both misinterpretations both go the same way: in Obama’s favor, and against Romney.
Isn’t that odd?
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:40 pmAnd for those who deny that Birthers are all the rage here and on many Republican oriented sites I visit, look at comment 12 on this post:
/===
Sheriff Joe said Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. He didn’t mince words.
Comment by ropelight — 7/18/2012 @ 6:07 am
======/
I noticed not a single person attempting to bully me now even bothered to respond to it.
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:42 pmThe private sector is doing fine.
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:44 pmNot odd at all. All these people who spend time posting how they need Romney to talk about x or y and criticizing him instead for “raging” against the outrageous Obama campaign smears are all cut from the same cloth.
They are simply liberal trolls. You can find this story on just about any blog that criticizes Obama and the sycophantic press praetorian guard that enables him. The same thing, right down to how business is really booming. What a great job Obama is doing. How Romney never talks about the issues.
Lies that the Obama campaign can’t employ openly.
MobyAstroturf has to do it for them.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:45 pmYou racist bullies. How dare you question the lying dishonest lifelong Christian conservative who will vote for Obama, his first Dem vote of his life, because of the bullying, racisms, intolerance, and Obama’s great economy that has made many better off than during the evil Bush years. That is all.
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:47 pmMobRepublican-I’ll quit screaming and shouting when obama,reid pelosi,frank,dodd,holder and many more are in leg irons.
mg (44de53) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:49 pmRacist!!!!!
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:50 pmhttp://ironicsurrealism.com/2012/07/07/obama-2004-31000-jobs-5-6-unemployment-rate-not-good-enough-video/
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:51 pmRe: #12
MobyPub, do you know who is referred-to when ropelight wrote “Sheriff Joe”? It’s not like we believe anything Biden says….
Perhaps you aren’t aware how much Conservative non-Birthers enjoy seeing Libs twist themselves into knots trying to react to that crazyness.
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:55 pm“ModRepublican”–
Patterico welcomes all who come to his site who want to argue/discuss issues and who express their pov in reasonable sentences. Most regular commenters here also enjoy spirited debate with others and especially so if those with whom they argue are intelligent posters, have something new to say, and come in good faith.
Had you been candid when you arrived, had you chosen a different/honest handle and started to engage discussion over the 2012 candidates gradually –exploring a specific issue at a time, appearing for a series of give and take threads (rather than immediately posting a litany of recognizable lefty talking points) you might have been surprised at the reception you would have received and you might have come much, much closer to succeeding in your goals to “influence”.
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:57 pmModRep
“Many of us who are Moderate Conservatives”
First, you cant be both, choose either “Moderate” or “Conservative”
its like a liberal calling himself a “Serious Progressive”
Second, I’m dying to know when you were elected as a spokesperson for this group
EricPWJohnson (e4e3a6) — 7/18/2012 @ 3:59 pmI have a hard time believing that a guy who’s so smart his company is doing so great in the Obamaconomy would be so wounded by responses to his comment that he would call it “bullying.” Maybe ModRepublican is the grown up Linus Van Pelt, and he holds his blanket and sucks his thumb in the privacy of his corner office.
L.N. Smithee (d4881b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:01 pmelissa, as usual you are a patient and even-tempered voice in this raging maelstrom.
Ok, it’s not really a maelstrom. I just wanted to type that.
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:05 pmEricPWJohnson,
Or a Republican Presidential nominee calling himself “Severely Conservative”? lol
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:08 pmComment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 3:27 pm
It is Democratic talking points that Romney’s apt criticisms of Obama are then to be [mis]interpreted as saying that Obama is a foreigner.
And we spent many many months on this very blog four years ago debunking Birther nonsense.
So again, MobyRepublican, you are just a Moby troll.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:09 pmNot even a good one, SPQR.
JD (318f81) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:11 pmL.N. Smithee ,
“Maybe XXX is the grown up Linus Van Pelt, and he holds his blanket and sucks his thumb in the privacy of his corner office”
I think you miss the irony of posting your comment on this post which starts a victim-fest for Gov. Romney all because some unfavorable articles were written about him by the LA Times.
Boo Hoo indeed! Poor Romney, right?
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:17 pmHell MobyPub, Romney can take care of himself.
The topic of the post is the LA Times, and their rapid and accelerating transformation into the very antithesis of an honest newspaper.
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:20 pmThere was another person here for a short time who equated having his poorly formulated positions challenged with being “bullied”. Who was that again?
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:24 pm“Severely Conservative”
LOL? are you saying you are a liberal?
EricPWJohnson (e4e3a6) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:26 pmI think I’ve gotten my point across. Good luck all of you as you wail inconsolably about the economy, commies, birth certificates, President Obama’s “destruction of America”, left-wing Internet plots and Glen Beck style worldwide conspiracies involving the Media.
Just remember that everybody has a vote — even those who don’t and won’t believe all the crazy stuff above.
I’m over and out for now.
L.N Smithee, check your freepmail!
ModRepublican (4fbe6b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:27 pmNotice how the teleprompter-in-chief is still presented as a genius communicator. Yet now he tells us his real problem with the voters is that he never told a good story.
He’s given literally thousands of speeches and interviews since he was inaugurated. And now he says he just didn’t talk to us well or enough times.
And he can’t formulate a simple articulate thought.
Fortunately for him, he’s got willing minions like MobyAstroturf to surf the net and lecture people that he never actually said what everyone heard.
(That last part makes me chuckle; it’s like seeing a 300lb girl at the mall wearing a t-shirt that says “foxy.” If you have to say it…)
Yeah, Moby, I’m sure everyone at your local Organizing For America office “understood” exactly what Obama said. Once you got the memo from Obama’s campaign HQ telling you what words to use to try to walk this back.
You see, unfortunately for Obama your claims are inane. You want us to believe he wasn’t talking about the underlying business while he was talking about the underlying business.
It isn’t just that idiocy alone, Moby. It’s also that you don’t understand he’s talking about people who have already compensated for their time. Such as that teacher. That teacher is owed nothing by the successful entrepreneur. That teacher took employment and that teacher’s compensation was specified in the contract. It wasn’t contingent on the future success of the the pupil. Otherwise teachers would owe a lot of people refunds for failing them. Successful people certainly don’t owe teachers anything for their success. Or firefighters. Who are well compensated as well.
When he knows what he thinks he knows what he’s talking about at all. Which he doesn’t when he talks about the internet. Which was not a creation of government funded research designed for commercial purposes. It was a DoD project intended to provide secure computer-to-computer communications for defense purposes only. Private enterprise, without government funding of any kind, created commercial uses for the technology all on it’s own.
So, let’s review with the idiocy of this statement as well as anyone who’d try to defend it. Particularly posing as a conservative of any stripe.
1. It’s a straw man argument on the most superficial level as no one has ever argued that we don’t need infrastructure. This dishonest rhetoric is classic Obama. He needs to argue against what no one is saying as he can’t argue against what people are actually saying.
2. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the relationship between private enterprise and government. Government is entirely dependent on private enterprise. Government owes private enterprise, but those engaged in private enterprise owe government nothing. Without private enterprise no wealth can be created. No one can hire anyone to build roads, or fund them, unless they create wealth. Private enterprise does that, not government.
3. It is a misunderstanding based entirely on a Marxist concept of the value of labor. Only a Marxist would imply that those people who had already been compensated were owed anything further unless that person believes the capitalist system exploited that worker.
Obama reveals that’s his understanding of America and our economic system. You, mobyastroturfer, reveal yourself as a fraud as both a conservative and businessman. You are neither.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:27 pmYou did, MobyAstroturfer. So did your socialist master when he originally made the remark.
It just wasn’t the one you thought you could make. You weren’t up to it. Again, like your man-god.
Thanks for he unintentional comedy.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:29 pmDie, L.A. Times. Just die already.
A lot of newspapers are going digital. In Detroit. New Orleans. Maariv in Israel.
The problem in LLa is taht the Los Angeles Times doesn’t have any competition. Newspaper readership can decline, but this cvan’t go to another newspaper.
Unless, maybe, the Wall Street Journal decides to come out with a West Coast edition, that will include local and loca sports news.
I suppose you also get the weather.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:29 pmModDem – people tend to be kinder when you don’t lie to their f@cking face from your very first comment. I love how trolls inevitably get the vapors over lack of civility, but have no problem with their own aggressive dishonesty. Also cute is how it wails, rends it’s garments, and gnashes it’s teeth over how nobody will address it’s substantive points, yet ignores all that have done so.
This is poorly done performance art.
JD (5dbd3c) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:31 pmShorter MobyPub: I work here is done.
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:34 pmMobyRepublican, your point? The only point you got across was that you Democrats will lie about anything.
But we already knew that.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:49 pmJD, I do know its been four years, but you do recall just how much time we spent here debunking Birther nonsense, don’t you?
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:50 pmToo bad. MobyAstroturfer was just getting fun.
Another one of his problems would be that this isn’t the first time Obama’s said exactly the same thing.
Obama: “None Of Us Make It On Our Own” Without Government Help – Orlando, Oct 12, 2011
Since this has been a constant theme of President “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” Obama, it’s pretty hilarious when those high school or college kids working summer jobs at OFA try to pose as conservatives and businessmen and argue we’re deliberately taking Obama’s quote out of context.
Here’s a newsflash: President “now is not the time for profits” Barack Obama has been providing us with exactly the context for over four years, counting the campaign.
We’ve got the context down. As well as his meaning. I suppose for the baby ducks who support Obama, for whom every day springs anew and the fact the sun comes up and goes down pretty much in the same places comes as a surprise, it’s a shock when others don’t just fall in line with their “who are you going to believe, me, or your own lying ears, eyes, memory, and all the lying reams of track record you can find on that lying internet that Obama brags is such a wonderful gift from the government” sales pitch.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 4:54 pmI posted this in the other thread, a great response to Obama’s speech.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:05 pmModRepublican – How could you leave out the hateful Republican War on Women from your laundry list of memes? #trollfail
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:10 pmI think this particular eruption may have been related to the fact that this thread is vigorously dissing the LA Times. The Republican’s stage entrance occurred shortly after Icy posted Ms. Mehta’s email address and Mr. Smithee mentioned he had tweeted her.
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:11 pmhttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/18/of-canards-and-canaries/
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:13 pm“We’re not that stupid you know”
ModRepublican – An unsupported and doubtful assertion, but keep telling yourself that.
Let me know how that works out.
Maybe somebody from the Obama Administration will give you a gold star for your forehead, you know, for participating.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:15 pmelissa – 99% of Democrats make the rest look bad.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:17 pmIt’s usually amusing when teh Mobies crawl out from under their rocks… fascinating sometimes.
On this occasion, it’s merely pathetic.
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:17 pmThere is a study that shows that Liberals cannot correctly describe Conservative positions, while Conservatives more often correctly describe Liberal positions.
The Moby troll above demonstrates that. He couldn’t make a comment that didn’t instantly tell us all that he was a liberal pretending, badly, to be republican.
Moby troll fail, indeed.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:18 pmTeh Cowbell Presidency…
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/Obama_Poster_Cowbell.gif
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:20 pmObligatory, now are you going to tell us Aristotle was Belgian,
http://movieclips.com/a8Vq-a-fish-called-wanda-movie-dont-call-me-stupid/
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:21 pmyear’s Biggest Mistake
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:23 pmBarry’s “Declaration of
Interdependence”
I blame the evil ubiquitous unbelievably wealthy Koch Brothers.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:26 pmSPQR — 7/18/2012 @ 5:18 pm
I thought the exact thing; he wore the hat and the fake nose, so how could we have pierced his cunning disguise?
Pious Agnostic (ee2c24) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:26 pmBush… Cheney… Halliburton… Koch Bros… No blood fer oil… Hallicheney… Bush Bros… glub, glub… yada yada…
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:29 pm0bama lied and America sighed…
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:30 pmRaaaaaacists!
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:32 pm“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that… I did…. yeah… I built that business into what it is… yeah… that’s the ticket.”
– President Barack “Tommy Flanagan” 0bama
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:33 pmMeanwhile, all those businesses that Obama has been “helping” succeed? Failures.
All the “green” subsidies in the stimulus? Failures as company after company goes bankrupt after receiving crony capitalist funding from Obama.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:42 pmFWIW: If you thought that perhaps he chose to answer my inquiry about what his business does, I checked my freepmail, which I haven’t done in years. There’s nothing in my inbox more recent than this past May, and it’s not from him.
L.N. Smithee (d4881b) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:44 pmHeh, good one, Mr, Frey.
ras (be1e0d) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:46 pmObviously, ModRepublican has not visited Romney’s web site, watched ANY of the 127 or so Republican debates, or even so much as viewed the video at the top of this post.
The substantive issues that he purports to be “concerned” about have been discussed ad infinitum by the Republicans. That the LA Times/NY Times/WaPo etc have not carried the debate is not Romney’s fault.
Rather it is ModRepublican’s lack of attention to the debate that is the problem.
Or would be, if he were legitimate and not just another troll. BTW, he’s a concern troll rather than a Moby.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:54 pmSmithee, I still think he is prolly a headline writer or reporter or plastic bag supplier for the LATimes. If so, he might be lyin’ about raking in tons of work, the stock doing very well and having multi-million dollar orders in the pipeline.
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 5:57 pmI mean, he did streeeetch the truth on a few other things.
“But when he [Obama] extended it to personal and private endeavor, the president revealed the danger of this message—to him. ”If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” Obama said. “Somebody else made that happen.” Aside from the fact that this isn’t even remotely true—if you’re a taxpayer and government funds were used to “make something happen,” then by definition you paid for it—it was profoundly stupid politically. In 2007, the last year for which we have data, according to the Census Bureau, there were 21.7 million businesses in the United States with no employees—meaning they were sole proprietorships, or free-lance businesses employing only their owner. Of the six million remaining businesses in the U.S., more than 3 million had 1 to 4 employees, and 1 million had 5 to 9. So, all in all, small businesses run by one person employing fewer than ten numbered an astonishing 25 million.
This is probably the matter of greatest pride for each and every one of the people who runs that business. He or she views himself or herself as a hard-working, go-getting, scrappy individualist. And it’s likely that many of them—many, many of them—are independent voters. Certainly that was the case 20 years ago when Ross Perot scored 20 percent of the vote, overwhelmingly from small businessmen who were angered by George H.W. Bush and yet couldn’t pull the lever for Bill Clinton. America is different demographically, but the class of people to whom Perot appealed is far larger than it was then.
And a man running for national office just said of their own businesses that they “didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” This statement is a colossal opportunity for Mitt Romney and will prove a suppurating wound for the president, who revealed a degree not only of condescension but of contempt for the very people who are going to decide this election.
And if there’s one thing people recognize, it’s when they are being viewed with contempt.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/17/the-biggest-mistake-of-campaign-2012/
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:00 pmchronic haplessness
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:07 pmsums up 0bama’s essence
give sumb*tch teh b00t
Kevin M., he’s a Moby not a concern troll. And if you don’t agree with me, I’m going to hire Finkelman to write a 10,000 word blog comment to prove I’m right.
😉
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:11 pmNoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Not teh Sammy!
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:17 pmYes, but his cronies made out like bandits from the deals.
On another thread I mentioned Obama reminded quite a bit of John Edwards, two America’s and all.
In this case one of those two America’s his cronies inhabit. His bundlers et al who pay to play. His cronies didn’t lose out on the deals. They were first in line to be made whole, illegally ahead of the taxpayers.
In this America your profit is private, but failure is socialized.
The other America is inhabited by the unconnected. They don’t pay to play. They owe the government, as well as all it’s bought and paid for dependants who vote for bigger slices of other peoples’ pies, a chunk of their success if their business becomes a going concern. Pay up, suckers.
In this second America your profit is socialized, but your failure is private.
Forward!
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:26 pmDo you think Princess Warren knows any Cherokee rain dances? Did her paw paw teach her some? The drought here in the corn belt this summer is getting seriously scary. No joke.
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:27 pmMoby, no doubt whatever.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:27 pmStennis is returning to Persian gulf years ahead of rotation, cutting layoff short. That will make it 5 carrier groups in theatre.
If you were thinking of taking up Farsi as a career specialty, reconsider.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:30 pmHey Mod do you have any defense of the LA Times article asserting that Romney is promoting the birther theme or not? That was actually the point of this post.
I don’t know what this alleged “hysteria” is either.
Gerald A (b00ac1) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:30 pmI finally cancelled “Florida Today” early this year and it felt so good to be rid of that nasty, liberal rag. I was getting very tired of supporting their obnoxious views with my money. No more.
One of the deciding moments was when they published a full page story on that travelling anatomy show with people with no skin on. I opened my paper that morning and almost… Well anyway, I miss my comics sometimes, and the occasional hometown story, but nothing else was lost except my money supporting that stinky stuff. Yuck.
Larry Geiger (653a02) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:30 pmThe drought here in the corn belt this summer is getting seriously scary. No joke.
Comment by elissa
Here’s yo huckleberry…
http://t.co/XZLa5q8p
Colonel Haiku (b61252) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:31 pmDog has now fallen behind with registered voters nationwide, and outside margin of error in swing states.
All the undecideds who darken polls doors, nominally 4% will go Codpiece versus Bongwater.
Then we have Democrats who loathe Republicans, especially those feigning alpha-wave activity who nonetheless know Sh*t4Brains is bad for species survival, and anyway they’d rather choke the life out of him than vote for the Maggot.
Like 20% of the under 30 crowd.
I got a fiver Il Douche hangs in state just like Fascist Mussolini.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:39 pm4%, will*
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:41 pmRemember, these are the same people who argue it’s offensive to fly the US flag.
The “vagina monologues,” “piss christ,” or “elephant dung madonna?” That’s art, you philistines! It requires public support via the NEA or else it’s right wing censorship.
A Nativity scene at Christmas or a memorial cross commemorating our war dead on public land? An obscenity! It must be destroyed.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 6:43 pmSo do the Senate Democrats. So they are now, no s***, using debates on the Senate floor to call for a boycott of Koch industries to punish them their politics:
Lautenberg: Boycott My Constituents!
As they point out at Powerline, the only reason to name these men and their products is to invite a boycott.
He’s the Senate’s Brett Kimberlin, publicly outing them and smearing them to hurt their businesses and expose them to death threats.
Really, is there any doubt that bullying is a standbye tactic of the Democrats? One of the very few arrows in their quiver besides fear mongering and lying?
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:01 pmSteve – that is remarkable.
JD (318f81) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:06 pmTHe ADP millionaire, criticizes the Koch millionaires for transparency,
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:13 pmPostal Dept. will miss a $5.5 Billion payment into its pension fund Aug. 1.
Think I’ll be buying stamps at the Drug store from now on.
Sorta wish we had that $100 Billion blown on Green Shoots stimulus, and DNC campaigns, about now.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:20 pmCompton, CA next to wear the barrel.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:24 pmKevin M., he’s a Moby not a concern troll. And if you don’t agree with me, I’m going to hire Finkelman to write a 10,000 word blog comment to prove I’m right.
That short?
Anyway, a moby is someone who pretends to espouse ultra-fringe beliefs in order to tar the other participants. E.g. Attending a Tea Party rally in a Klan hood.
A concern troll is one who claims to share your goals, but is concerned about this or that wedge issue, which he then tries to get you to argue about. AKA “the lifelong Republican” syndrome.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:29 pmHow about mendoucheous twatwaffle?
JD (318f81) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:31 pmJD- Consider the source. Lautenberg is 88 and currently the oldest senator. His bio on the senate website does not mention his birth date. Hmmm. I wonder why. I’m sorry, there is no 88 year old on the planet that should still be legislating at that age.
A while back I saw a chart somewhere that listed the U.S. senators and the congresspeople by age and then again by party and age. As I recall the Dem average age was considerably older than the Republicans. There are so many outstanding 30 and 40 year old Republicans emerging in national and state politics. The Dems really do not have much of a farm team at all. Who are their up and comers? (Weiner, Wasserman-Schultz, LOL?) The Dem leadership in Washington and the statehouses are almost all leading edge boomers or greatest generation. I find transition planning to be very important for businesses. One would think this would be as issue for the Dems– yet their elders like granny rictus, Boxer, Rangel, and Lautenberg hold on and on.
elissa (65233d) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:31 pmRemember he was the Torch’s replacement, a dozen years ago.
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:34 pmOK, reading further, there are so many definitions that it’s pretty meaningless to try to distinguish. Never mind
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:34 pmWho are their up and comers? (Weiner, Wasserman-Schultz, LOL?)
ROTFFLMFAO
JD (318f81) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:34 pmI wish it were so. Unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s the natural extension of Democratic party thuggery.
Prop 8 opponents got ahold of lists of donors, then started a phone campaign threatening their livilihoods. The Obama campaign has tried to get dirt on the Koch brothers and other major GOP and Romney donors. Hell, officials illegally released Joe the Plumber’s information to intimidate anyone else who might be tempted to embarrass Da Won if he ever tried to stumble an stutter his way through another unplanned, live public encounter. With impunity I might add.
Laughtenberg’s stalin act is just a small step up from these other attempts to intimidate donors who don’t support Democratic party politics. Even worse than his stunt, the whole purpose of the DISCLOSE act is to expose contributors to 501(c)(4) entities such as the one organized by the Koch brothers to the same public outing and threats to their livelihoods and even lives Lautenberg indulged in against the Koch brothers.
Lautenberg is just a single thug. He’d like it to make it the law to expose more people to an army of thugs.
Incidentally, note this statement:
By “secretive” he means private. But as King Putt informs us, it’s not really private. The Koch brothers didn’t build it. Others made it happen. So their money isn’t really their private property, it’s public.
How dare they spend it on political causes the dems don’t like.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:47 pmIf it is so secretive, how does that geriatric Senator know about it?
JD (318f81) — 7/18/2012 @ 7:55 pmKevin M., I was just having fun with you, my friend.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:09 pmJD, they probably know about the Koch brothers secret money and secret corporate holdings the same way they know about Romney’s secret, tax-dodging off-shore accounts where he hides his money from the IRS.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:34 pm______________________________________________
That’s how I know you are not a conservative, but instead a Moby troll.
Comment by SPQR — 7/18/2012 @ 3:06 pm
I still laugh at what a sucker I was when it came to another recent new poster here who, at least to me — but, to your credit, not to you — and at the outset, sounded like he (or she) was trying to be a reasonable, sincere contributor to this forum.
I might buy into the notion that a supposed “moderate” is ambivalent about both Romney and Obama if the former, at the very least, was as far to the right as Obama is far to the left. But no US presidential election in history has ever involved a person with the absurdly leftwing (eg, a buddy of Jeremiah Wright, etc), or ultra-liberal, background and history of an Obama, while Mitt Romney is typical of various past presidents who were very ideologically and culturally mainstream — certainly by the standards of over 40 years ago — or, if anything, philosophically squishy.
Mark (a346be) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:36 pmComment by Colonel Haiku — 7/18/2012 @ 5:30 pm
0bama lied and America sighed…
Al Gore sighed when Bush hadn’t lied.
He was hoping for backward reasoning. “If Gore is sighing, Bush must be lying.” Or wrong, anyway. Obviously wrong.
It wasn’t natural. It was very calculated. And Gore did at points where he felt Bush had said something he didn’t want people to credit.
Sammy Finkelman (764cfe) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:39 pm___________________________________________
Compton, CA next to wear the barrel.
Such places are a daily reminder that no matter how screwed up a community or society becomes, far too many people in such areas will be as foolish, gullible, naive or self-destructive as they’ve ever been. That’s why my sympathy for places (and people) like that has dropped considerably through the years.
It’s one thing to see humans trying to make a go of it and failing or struggling in spite of their effort to be as down-to-earth and sensible as possible. But when I see such people embracing nonsensical leftism, year after year, decade after decade, and — at the same time — being stuck in the middle of the most messed-up neighborhoods or societies, I can’t help but go “pffft!”
Mark (a346be) — 7/18/2012 @ 8:45 pmSheriff Joe sory in the Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-arpaio-obama-birth-certificate-fraudulent-20120718,0,596040.story
He added: “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House.”
The catch is, that’s probably true for everybody’s birth certificate!
The original birth certificate, which Obama probably lost in the course of time, no longer has any legal standing. One reason is, there is such a variety of formats, no official charged with using them to verify facts, could have any idea what’s real or not. They are not an FBI lab.
The only thing that has any validity now are state certified copies.
….which, I think it is safe to say, were all issued after the advent of desktop publishing.
One thing that the change has done is that it has enabled changes in birth certificates. Not only of parent’s name, but also even of sex.
http://www.drbecky.com/birthcert.html
Sammy Finkelman (764cfe) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:04 pmBirth certificates used to be proof of citizenship (naturalized citizens used citizenship papers) and identity, but they are no longer proof of identity but only proof that somebody with that name and age exists.
Sammy Finkelman (764cfe) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:08 pmYou couldn’t make this up;
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/17/obama-in-texas-makes-the-least-self-aware-second-most-revealing-comment-of-his-presidency/
narciso (ee31f1) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:20 pmYou do realize, Sammy, that Obama couldn’t have lost that one as Hawaii kept and archived that document.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/18/2012 @ 9:46 pmIt was very calculated. it’s not happening by natural.geriatric Senator was already know about this.if it is a secret how would he know about this.
Business Development (019c7d) — 7/18/2012 @ 10:36 pmComment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 1:52 pm
Everyone I know fully understood what President Obama said about “you didn’t create it”
— Perhaps you should venture out beyond the walls of the “Sycophants For ‘the PERFECT Husband & Father’*” club and try to meet a more diverse group of people.
[* according to Chrissie Legtingle]
(speaking of the supporting National infrastructure and not about the underlying private business)
— Say there, ModSquish, from WHERE do you suppose the government acquired the funds used to build the infrastructure? Me, I’m guessing that they got it from the taxes collected from private business.
but yet you keep on misrepresenting what he said, post after post. We’re not that stupid you know
— Are you sure? ’cause evidence is mounting to the contrary, including (but not limited to) “misrepresenting what he said, post after post.”
Now you’re moaning about the coverage of Gov. Romney and starting off by making a false claim that the LA times committed an unethical act.
— ‘Ethical Lying’. Do not let it be said that leftists never invent anything new.
How can I take whatever you write next seriously when it is not beneath you to title your post and begin it as well with a lie?
Icy (66b07f) — 7/19/2012 @ 12:17 am— Make you a deal: PROVE your allegations; then, and only then, will we take your next post seriously.
You’re misunderstanding Sheriff Joe. They’re saying the electronic image released to the public does not have any physical counterpart at all, whether or not it’s an original – at least not one that’s identical to the electronic image. They have not released the actual physical copy. A bunch of experts have concluded that the original image of the physical document was digitally altered. I’m not aware that anyone has refuted their analyses.
Combined with the fact Obama won’t let anyone look at the physical copy, logically I have to conclude that the image released to the public is a fake. They did let people look at the short form that was released in 2008.
Gerald A (138c50) — 7/19/2012 @ 6:32 amHoly Carp, are you telling me therereally is a Sheriff Joe?
I thought that referred to Biden.
On one hand, I am embarrassed to have made such a silly mistake upthread.
On the other hand, I’m proud that my knowledge of Famous Birthers is so faulty.
Pious Agnostic (7c3d5b) — 7/19/2012 @ 7:00 amDon’t tell me you’ve never heard of AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arpaio-says-obama-birth-record-is-fraudulent/2012/07/17/gJQAHcARsW_video.html
Gerald A (138c50) — 7/19/2012 @ 7:20 amComment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 1:52 pm
I’m really not liking the tone and direction of many of the conservative blogs where non-stop faux outrage, victomology and paranoia has replaced reasoned, principled and respectful conversation and argument.
— Well then, by all means, feel free to wander over to the liberal blogs where you can participate in some non-stop genuine outrage.
I’d like to hear instead about Gov. Romney’s economic plan for example.
— Go to Romney’s official website. It’s all there.
Perhaps you could compare and contrast it with President Obama’s.
— We already did that. Where were you?
I’m particularly interested in knowing the details about their tax plans.
— Is you mods too dumb to use the Internet w/o help? I think I’m gonna stick w/ rockers.
What about Drug policy? Illegal migration? What does Romney have to offer?
— Are you requesting information? or accusing Romney of not having a plan?
There are tons of other topics that conservatives like me want to read about but yet folks are stuck in this rut of “Woe is America/Obama is a ‘foreigner’” and “the media is out to get us”.
Icy (66b07f) — 7/19/2012 @ 7:47 am— So, “Mod” doesn’t stand for ‘moderate’? What DOES it stand for? “modern”? “model”? “modular”? “motel 6”?
Comment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 3:02 pm
My company is raking in tons of work, the stock has been doing very well and we have multi-million dollar orders in the pipeline.
— Good for you! Unfortunately, not every business is doing so well.
we’re definitely doing much better than in late 2008 when President Obama had not yet taken office.
— Some businesses prosper during tough economic times; however, don’t take your good fortune to be a sure sign that things overall aren’t as bad as they’ve been portrayed to be.
So all this “Woe is America” crap falls on deaf ears for me.
— You don’t seem all that compassionate towards the struggles facing your fellow man. If Obama’s tax plan is successfully implemented you might find yourself right down there, struggling your own self.
Comment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 3:27 pm
Right there in the post by Patterico are numerous instances of Gov. Romney or his surrogates questioning whether America or its traditions are foreign to President Obama.
— Because America is capitalist, and Obama is capitalist-lite; and that’s being charitable about it.
I also read many Conservative blogs and websites and the whole “Not American” meme is present on most of them.
— Probably has something to do with him acting like a European Socialist.
Like I said earlier, Republicans can either talk about Conservative Ideas and Solutions or they can continue to scream and shout about the President and the claimed destruction of America and its way of life.
— Those of us with talent can do both.
Many of us who are moderate Conservatives see that these claims are outlandish and do not match our experiences in the real world.
— I thought you were a ‘moderate Republican’. Did you forget which mask you were wearing today?
We all also get one vote each in the fall whether or not we own or publish blogs.
Icy (66b07f) — 7/19/2012 @ 8:25 am— And this means what? Group discussions are fruitless endeavors?
I think you miss the irony of posting your comment on this post which starts a victim-fest for Gov. Romney all because some unfavorable articles were written about him by the LA Times.
Comment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 4:17 pm
— This thread is about an ‘unfavorable article’ in the LA Times that is based on an outright lie. You don’t find that disturbing?
Comment by ModRepublican — 7/18/2012 @ 4:27 pm
I think I’ve gotten my point across.
— If your point is that you are a Moby troll, then you could’ve saved yourself a lot of typing time by stopping after that very first paragraph you wrote.
Good luck all of you as you wail inconsolably about the economy, commies, birth certificates, President Obama’s “destruction of America”, left-wing Internet plots and Glen Beck style worldwide conspiracies involving the Media.
— A REAL moderate conservative would know how to spell “Glenn Beck”.
Just remember that everybody has a vote — even those who don’t and won’t believe all the crazy stuff above.
— You just be sure to vote for the most conservative candidate. We wouldn’t want you to violate your principles.
I’m over and out for now.
Icy (66b07f) — 7/19/2012 @ 8:48 am— Keep your tin-foil Bluetooth tuned to this frequency and await further instructions.
_______________________________________________
– I thought you were a ‘moderate Republican’.
He (or she) is likely a poseur, trying to get cred by describing himself as something he isn’t. However, there truly are people out there who are so deluded about their innate biases — or perhaps are surrounded by so many ultra-liberals (eg, a non-leftist living in a place like San Francisco) that in the warped context of that — they do fall for the idea that they’re “moderate.” I don’t mind that, but I do mind when such people therefore believe that liberal tendencies somehow imbue one with an extra dose of compassion, tolerance, generosity, humaneness and sophistication.
Mark (a346be) — 7/19/2012 @ 9:18 amThis slaps down the claim conservatives are misrepresenting what Obama said.
How “You didn’t build that” became “He didn’t say that”
Also, I’m not sure who the “you” is supposed to be. This post by Patterico is about what the LA Times said about what Romney said. Mod has nothing at all to say about that. Is “you” Romney (since Pat quotes from Romney’s speech)? Or is “you” Pat for quoting Romney or what?
Gerald A (138c50) — 7/19/2012 @ 10:07 amHe or she was definitely a poseur. There’s no doubt about it. Let’s look at what it tried to assert at the start.
Let’s ignore the obvious fact Obama clearly was talking about private business. Let’s just look at what was said.
Moby asserts that what the successful business owners didn’t build is the infrastructure.
Well if they didn’t, who did? They sure as hell paid for it to be built. And for the most part governments don’t build roads or bridges. They hire contractors to do that. In other words, businesses.
So government only acts as a conduit. It extracts money generated solely by private enterprise, and builds infrastructure by letting other private enterprises bid on the contract.
In Obama’s view we have a government based economy and a bunch of ungrateful rich people living the easy life off the fruits that government based economy produces, unwilling to “give back.”
No conservative, or businessman who claims to be a Republican of any stripe, would fall for that formulation.
We have a market based economy that pays the government to do everything it does.
We’ve seen government based economies. They fail. They either abandon that formula, and bring about market reforms to allow free enterprise like China, or the people end up eating boiled tree-bark and thistle soup before starving to death like North Korea.
As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about when he spouts off about the moonshot or internet. Our space program wouldn’t have been possible without private companies, nor would the internet. The government issues the requirement, and private enterprises fill it.
The government doesn’t even build it’s own ships and aircraft. Lockheed-Martin, GE, Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Beechcraft, etc., do.
I’d wager if you looked at who actually built ARPANET, the DoD ancestor of the internet, you’d see companies like IBM’s fingerprints all over it. It’s this system of free enterprise that allowed us to beat the pants off the Soviet government-based system. They could design and build excellent hardware, make no mistake, but not at a cost they could sustain.
Often, these government funded projects succeed despite the government. Even if we limit ourselves to the proper role of government such as defense, not indefensible unconstitutional boondoggles like green energy.
The USAAF had two of the best designs in the world going into WWII in terms of fighter aircraft. The Lockheed P-38 lighting and the Bell P-39 Airacobra. And these designs would have been the best fighters, had the government allowed these companies a free hand build and alter them instead of requiring them to modify and build them according to rigid Army requirements.
Let’s start with the P-39 Airacobra. As designed by Bell, it exceeded all the requirements. It was an excellent fighter capable of speeds in excess of 400mph and outstanding high altitude performance. As produced, it was one of the worst fighters of the war. The British tested it and concluded going into combat in one against an ME-109 was tantamount to suicide.
Why? Because the Army dictated that all their aircraft engines would use exhaust driven turbochargers as power adders. Piston aircraft engines lose power as the altitude increases. To maintain power you have to compress the air so the cylinders are stuffed with more than enough oxygen for the fuel to burn whether you’re at sea level or 30k feet. Theoretically turbocharging was the way to go. But as it was driven by hot exhaust gases it requires very expensive metals, production processes, machining, etc., to survive.
The manufacturers couldn’t build enough turbochargers as a consequence, so the Army decreed all turbo-equipped engines would be reserved for B-17 and B-24s and P-38 fighters. The P-39 was stripped of the engine that made it a superb performer in trials and equipped with an engine that made it a deathtrap in production.
P-38s with turbos faired no better in Europe. Because although theoretically superior, the difficulties of building them in the late ’30s and early ’40s made them extremely unreliable.
The simple fix was to do what the Europeans were doing; use dual stage superchargers. To operate at altitude, you need to compress the air in two stages. Intially to a certain pressure, then the second stage takes the already compressed air and compresses it further. The Army wouldn’t admit their requirement was wrong. So all we had were single stage compressors, like the one on the production Airacobra, which made it a dog above 15k feet and a deathtrap.
So the Army had to withdraw the P-38 from the European theater and let the bombers fly unescorted over Europe, lying to the public we had no long range fighters that could escort them (of course the P-38 was an excellent long range fighter as it proved shortly by executing the Yamamoto operation over the Solomons). Not until we got the P-51.
And who built the P-51? North American Aviation. And who asked them to build it? The British. They wanted NAA to build P-40s (a Curtiss product) on license but NAA told them they could build a better plane and have it ready sooner then they could tool up to build the other company’s design.
It’s widely remembered now as the best fighter of WWII. Because it eventually used the NAA design built for the British and a version of the British Rolls Royce engine. Equipped with a two-stage supercharger that the US Army had adamantly insisted their suppliers not use.
The best fighter of WWII and the USG had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, would have prevented from ever happening had they been involved. While the USG took arguably the best fighter in the world before the war and screwed it up until it was hated by every US pilot who ever had the misfortune to fly it.
That’s what the government does when it produces stuff. It produces crap (just look at the skill level of our public school systems). The internet, from an entrepreneurial POV was built despite the USG.
Obama’s the guy who screwed up the Airacobra, demanding that USAAF pilots “give back” what they “owe” for having the opportunity to fly it.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 10:44 amAnd for Barack Obama that would have been a teacher at Panahou Academy. A private, not public, prep school. Or Occidental College. A private, not public, college. Or Columbia University. A private, not public, university. Or Harvard Law School. A law school at a private, not public, university.
And for his kids that would be a teacher at Sidwell Friends. A very expensive private, not public, shool.
Seriously, where does this blithering idiot get off demanding that successful businessmen “owe” the government for providing services that are so crappy he won’t even use them?
One of the reasons businesses outsource jobs is to access an educated workforce. Our public employee unions make a fortune demanding more and more money for not teaching kids. Soon we’ll be like Greece, where public school teachers run lucrative side businesses off the books so they don’t have to pay taxes as tutors. They deliberately don’t teach at their day jobs so they can charge extra later to let kids actually learn something.
Of course, supaah-conservative business genius MobyAstroturfer didn’t pick up on that. Which means he’s never run a business. Because if you have and tried to hire someone you know it’s rare to find someone with reading, writing, and math skills.
Just wanted to correct my previous “wall of text” post. Government doesn’t always act as a conduit. Sometimes it actually builds the infrastructure all by itself. And creates a sewer instead.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 11:11 amAmericans will never learn that the real plan is keeping us schmucks divided and bickering, and watching sports and reality TV? This plan allows the media to profit enormously while the other elites, Wall St, and corporations hold carrots out for and pull the strings of both Parties to do their bidding.
We (average joes) always lose while they (the elite, politicos, both Parties, media, pundits, corporations) always win, and that is a fact of life. All the bickering about politics is a diversion.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/19/2012 @ 12:58 pmThere’s a post up in the Green Room at Hot Air that says perhaps better what I’ve been trying to say.
Context of Obama’s “You didn’t build that” line makes it worse
I’d just add one thing. What makes this even worse than what even the author of this piece points out is his. Markets are where people collaborate and cooperate. Without force. Again this is a Marxist view that Obama is stating. There is nothing outside of leviathan government forcing people to do its bidding. No free markets, no civil society, nothing.
For the Democrats, for MobyAstroturfer, to come here and try to put this into such context simply shows they don’t even know what a market economy is. They don’t know what collaboration or cooperation are. All they know and love is government coercion.
Which I hope gets us back to the topic. Romney needs to get the message out that not only is Obama a marxist, but his defenders in the press and his party defending his marxist statement are merely ever more clueless marxists.
This statement of Obama’s is so awful on any level there is not context you can put it in that makes it remotely sane let alone reasonable. You can’t “misrepresent” it.
So naturally the press running interference won’t let Romney’s message get out. They’ll just keep up with the ever more unreasonable, insane Obama defense coalition talking points.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:12 pmPrivatization and capitalism ca: 2012 always comes with either a bill for, or a gift from taxpayers, courtesy of a crooked politician writing big cardboard checks using other people’s money, all while expecting his own revolving door handout via his back door campaign fund.
American business is no longer about taking risks and being rewarded. Its about owning politicians. We have evolved into a country as crooked as the former USSR and Mexico, where government pols and bureaucrats trade favors from “businessmen” on the receiving end of handouts of our taxes (or of special tax breaks that we the people must make up).
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/07/13/opinion/doc4fff8c939c948763600793.txt?viewmode=fullstory
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:13 pmIs that the next Obama campaign talking point that’s supposed to divert our attention from King Putt’s blatant, naked marxism, apolitical1?
We’ve gone from talking point a)”Obama didn’t really say what you all heard” to b) “who cares, they’re all the same.”
Great. Stay home and give up.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:16 pmThat’s because of all the “average joes” demanding the gub’mint DO SOMETHING! Regulate those fat cats.
All business regulations are merely ways for pols to squeeze money from corporations.
There’s an old saying, “no one hates capitalism like a capitalist.” Companies and corrupt pols have figured out that regulations are a way to pick winners and losers and stifle competition. Even company execs that don’t want to pay to play are forced to deal. Remember Al Gore illegally shaking down companies with fund raising calls from his VP offices back during the Clinton years (before Assistant AG Holder came up with the “no controlling legal authority dodge)? Companies that don’t pay to play willingly either see their competitors’ lobbyist writing bills that squeeze them out or face IRS audits or SEC investigations. Or, now in the case of Gibson Guitar, DoJ/USFWS raids to sieze inventory legally imported from India and Madagascar.
The “average joes” demanded the gub’mint do something. And they’ve done it:
Privatization isn’t the problem. It’s the cure. Only regulation makes that sort of corruption possible because over-regulation requires that people pay off bureaucrats just to operate. There are places, like Chicago or SF, where it is literally impossible to legally operate a business. You have to keep paying off inspectors enforcing a mass of incomprehensible, vague, arbitrary, and constantly changing codes and laws.
It’s funny, apolitical1. You probably wouldn’t recognize a free market.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:28 pm“Privatization and capitalism ca: 2012 always comes with either a bill for, or a gift from taxpayers, courtesy of a crooked politician writing big cardboard checks”
apolitical1 – Sure, it’s always that way in your mind, while if it’s a government run program, the money stays with the people who confiscated it from us in the first place, right? Way more better.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:33 pmapolitical1 – Do you prefer your rich cooked medium or medium-rare?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:35 pmPrivatization and capitalism ca: 2012 always comes with either a bill for, or a gift from taxpayers, courtesy of a crooked politician writing big cardboard checks using other people’s money, all while expecting his own revolving door handout via his back door campaign fund.
Your statement almost makes sense. However, “privatization” was what gave you away as another Moby.
What you describe is crony capitalism, played to large amount by both Democrats and Republicans in power, but the Obama administration has seen how a trillion here and there can magically disappear into their cronies pockets.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/19/2012 @ 1:57 pm==American business is no longer about taking risks and being rewarded. Its about owning politicians==
I just picked up the dry-cleaning. I decided to ask the hard working Korean-American owner who morning to night is always behind the counter which politician she “owned”. She acted like she didn’t even know what I was talking about.
elissa (4fe1f3) — 7/19/2012 @ 3:15 pmComment by daleyrocks — 7/19/2012 @ 1:35 pm
What’s the old saying – You can’t be too rich, or too thin.
Without very much “marbling” from being so thin, they need to be marinated for an extended period, and then slow-roasted over a low fire, preferably on a slow-turning spit.
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/19/2012 @ 3:26 pmAlso, if they are from the Hard Left, there’s not much left to cook after they’ve been dressed.
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/19/2012 @ 3:28 pm“Its about owning politicians”
Harry Reid seems to own a lot of politicians, particularly on zoning commissions in Nevada.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/19/2012 @ 3:29 pmPrivatization where users and taxpayers are given the right to make an ultimate decision on funding or purchasing a product based upon our needs is as it should be.
Conversely a politician making a deal with an overpaid CEO to forcibly extract my taxes for their benefit doesn’t ever equate to a free market. It always means corruption.
Political Party ideologues are the problem not the solution. Forget libs and cons and instead think ethics and USA first.
I will chose paying government employees to do a job that is about serving the public before I ever chose a deal between politicians and private enterprise that forces taxpayers to subsidize their profits.
The deciding factor between privatization vs government should be simply one factor: Are taxpayers being given a choice to pay or not pay, or are they forced to pay a private CEO (and typically many times what they are worth) because a deal was cut with politicians? Example, if we had a private military or education system would we be given a choice to fund or would the politicians have made the deals that demanded our taxes? Bureaucrats do not bribe politicians. CEOs do.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/19/2012 @ 4:33 pmapolitical is a liar. Just like the ones that came before it, and those that will follow.
JD (318f81) — 7/19/2012 @ 4:36 pmIs there some reliable way to tell if a globalist Wall Street banker that favors China, etc first is lying? Answer: Yes their lips are moving on CNBC and their palm is down trying to hide the eternal bribe they give to those US politicians with the power to steal your money. Judd Gregg promoted his public servant position to a high paid job at Goldman Sachs.
These political thieves that we pay should be forced to retire and write books but restricted from ever leveraging their position for personal gain. Instead of signing a no new tax pledge for the rich on behalf of Norquist, they should sign a pledge of honesty and ethics to the USA.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/19/2012 @ 4:48 pmapolitical1 wrotes: “Privatization where users and taxpayers are given the right to make an ultimate decision on funding or purchasing a product based upon our needs is as it should be. ”
Did you learn English from tye?
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/19/2012 @ 4:50 pmThere is a reliable way to tell you are lying. apolitical my arse. Standard leftist dogma wrapped in class warfare, envy, and a little a pox on both houses nonsense.
JD (318f81) — 7/19/2012 @ 4:51 pm== Bureaucrats do not bribe politicians. CEOs do.==
Do you have thoughts about where unions fit into this scenario? Daley may be able to hep you if you’re stuck.
elissa (4fe1f3) — 7/19/2012 @ 5:05 pmI for one am glad apolitical1 is apolitical. He’s incoherent. So he should remain apolitical and just stay home on election day.
Who am I kidding. He’s incoherent, so he’s a leftist troll. He’s so incoherent, for all we know he could be Barack Obama.
We’ll know if he’s Obama if another Moby from OFA comes along to say we’re taking apolitical1 out of context.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/19/2012 @ 8:20 pmIt’s good to have Patterico back.
Amphipolis (d3e04f) — 7/20/2012 @ 9:31 amWhat you describe is crony capitalism, played to large amount by both Democrats and Republicans in power, but the Obama administration has seen how a trillion here and there can magically disappear into their cronies pockets.
Comment by SPQR — 7/19/2012 @ 1:57 pm
I concur completely. Crony corruption / capitalism goes on while brain dead partisans typically deny that their team is ever the culprit.
The number of unaffiliated American voters is rising because they see both Parties as dirty. Parties are the problem not the solution. Eliminate them and it would eliminate much of the lame-brained group think that goes on in Congress. Instead of Congress having an R or D after their name, they should be required to wear patches that pictorially define their sponsors just as do NASCAR drivers.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/20/2012 @ 10:48 amWhy is it that the “a pox on both houses” folks always spit out boilerplate leftist drivel?
JD (459580) — 7/20/2012 @ 10:53 amYes, just what we need is an electorate that has no core principle or belief to defend and advance.
He who believes in nothing will believe in anything!
AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92) — 7/20/2012 @ 10:57 amWrong again. Parties aren’t the problem. The voters are.
There’s a large portion of the electorate who would rather vote themselves a living than work for one. They could care less if the pols are on the take as long as they get enough crumbs from the table to live comfortably in dependency.
Then there’s another large portion of the electorate that would hold the government within strict constitutional limits. That would demand that fiscal sanity reign.
Neither one is large enough to constitute a majority.
Then there’s another large portion of the electorate that can’t be bothered to care until they feel the squeeze. Or the flush of “free money.” They are largely apolitical. If it’s the squeeze they feel, they blame both parties. If it’s “free money” in the form of transfer payments disguised as “tax cuts” they join the first group.
There’s job security for pols in paying off voters with freebies. And you’re right, both parties do it. In Illinois they call the political machine “the combine.” The state GOP is happy to be the junior member. GWB’s “compassionate conservatism” was in large part a philosophy of convenience that justified giving people benefits at someone else’s expense. The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac implosion was entirely predictable. You simply can’t have the government buying houses for people who can’t afford them forever. But neither party had the guts to turn off the spigot.
Essentially, our current economic mess (and I’m not saying it’s entirely due to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, just using it as an example of one facet of it) isn’t a failure of free markets. We were, in the immortal words of Ted Kennedy, regulated into it.
Due entirely to the fact that one party is ideologically committed to a centrally directed economy and wealth redistribution. And another who sees that the majority of voters either are on board with the program, aren’t really on board with the program but are happy to vote for it if they see Treasury Dept. checks in their mailbox, or simply care more about their local football team or who’s winning on “American Idol” than they do about politics. So they compete on the same “compassionate” terms as the vote buyers because they figure it’s in their own career interests to do so.
The parties have just responded to the incentives the voters have given them. Blaming party politicians for that is like blaming a crocodile for eating a swimmer.
What the hell did that swimmer expect? It’s a crocodile.
What the hell did the voter expect? It’s a politician.
As long as the voters or demand or tolerate that these parties conduct themselves the way they do, then they have no reason to change their behaviors.
Face it, apolitical1; people don’t just get the government they deserve, they get the political parties they deserve.
And I still think you’re Barack Obama in mufti. He blames everyone else, too.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/20/2012 @ 11:16 amConservatives have been hoodwinked by overpaid media and Party pundits to think and vote with a corporatist agenda instead of conservative.
Conservative is not corporatist.
The hallmark of conservative philosophy is a bent towards fiscal prudence, self sufficiency, a priority towards local and state government (i.e. states’ rights), small business, strong ethics, accountability and transparency in government, putting family, country (and God) as a priority, helping neighbors in need, and defending our national sovereignty. Translated that means that conservatives support much of what a corporatist despises.
Corporatists are globalists who view the issues of sovereignty, borders, states’ rights, transparency, country first as philosophies that annoy and will either weaken the profits of their global companies. They prefer dealing with a strong corrupt unified central government, open borders, and putting their profits not country first, and forcing taxpayers to subsidize their business.
Privatization is an off shoot of corporatism. The road to privatization always leads through the evils of graft, cronyism, and corruption, and always with the same result ……where your tax dollars and public assets are handed over to political cronies. The politicians can be counted on to take their cut too and will then sell our assets cheap, just as they did in Russia to their oligarch buddies.
Both Parties are inherently corrupt, corporatist, and crony capitalist at the top levels and do not currently put USA peoples’ interests first (yep those “people” that our founders mentioned in the US Constitution).
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/20/2012 @ 11:40 amPrivatization is an off shoot of corporatism. The road to privatization always leads through the evils of graft, cronyism, and corruption, and always with the same result ……where your tax dollars and public assets are handed over to political cronies. The politicians can be counted on to take their cut too and will then sell our assets cheap, just as they did in Russia to their oligarch buddies.
Your false flag trolling is exposed with this nonsense, apolitical1. We know you are another Moby.
SPQR (26be8b) — 7/20/2012 @ 11:45 amTo learn more about Holmes, I think we need to look at his younger years in California. The former MSNBC now News on NBC News reports Holmes graduated from UC-Riverside before he went to Denver:
Of course she thinks he’s weird now, but that doesn’t tell us much unless she thought then that he was so weird she should report it to someone.
NBC News also describes the gunman as “very deranged” and say many of the 59 wounded were critically injured. Since they didn’t say either of those things in the press conference, either NBC News has an inside source or it’s using creative license.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 7/20/2012 @ 11:47 amYou, sir, are an idiot if you think it’s the conservatives who’ve been hoodwinked. Mussolini’s fascist Italy was the prototypical corporate state. Mussolini, one side of the coin of the mutual admiration society that consisted of him and New Dealer Roosevelt. Patron saint of modern liberalism. Obama’s role model.
Or you are a liberal. But I repeat myself.
In other words, the modern American liberal. Typified by Obama. What the hell do you think those EuroSocialists gave him that Nobel Prize for? You just described his vision for the country. They understood that, and gave him the Peace Prize as an advance. Like for his fictional autobiographies.
But only one embraces the essence of Italian fascism while saying, “Hey, look over there! Those rethuglicans are Nazis.”
SPQR is right. You are a Moby. And I still think you’re Barack Obama his own self.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/20/2012 @ 12:09 pmBack in college on my first day of class in PoliSci 101 the prof said, (paraphrase) “Always remember that millions of dollars are not spent on political campaigns so that the winning candidate can earn a few thousand dollars in salary and benefits and be a champion of the citizenry.”
Yeah, he was a realist and a great professor. State and national politics is always about power and money and influence and who gets it. We regular peeps are really just along for the ride as we vote for the guy or gal on the ballot who seems to think most like us and who might be more likely to move things in the direction we’d like than the other candidate would.
elissa (280618) — 7/20/2012 @ 12:55 pmR.e. my post number 137.
An update. The Obama administration has started a new chapter in Liberal thuggery:
Strassel: Obama’s Enemies List—Part II
This is precisely why the Democrats want to pass the DISCLOSE act. So they’ll know who to send their goons after.
Welcome to Stalin’s Amerikkka.
Steve57 (65d29f) — 7/20/2012 @ 1:04 pmIt is rather disgusting, Steve. And rather transparent.
JD (318f81) — 7/20/2012 @ 1:16 pmWhat I disrespect most about political partisans is not their lack of intellect or their penchant for being judgmental; it is simply that they disrespect all who do not think exactly like themselves.
It makes no difference whether they consider their peer group as “libs or cons” they will “diss” anyone who doesn’t think exactly the same.
I stumbled onto this blog accidentally only based upon my belief that the media (LA or otherwise) should represent us all and ferret out corruption and not serve politicians. Instead I found myself serving as target practice from foolish partisan puppets.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/20/2012 @ 4:34 pmapolitical1 – You mad bro?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 7/20/2012 @ 4:37 pmapolitical1 – You mad bro?
Nah? I have a degree of compassion for partisans because they lack the ability to have independent thought. Neither political Party represents most Americans, at least those with the insight to think for themselves and those who don’t have lobbyists knocking on their door.
Partisans represent the lemmings who follow the pied piper over the cliff, with “the cliff” being what has happened to the USA middle / working class economically since the 50s-70s.
The strongest most economically advanced manufacturing powerhouse in the world (the USA) was intentionally sold out to China etc by our own politicians so that a few Wall St bankster thieves and overpaid CEOs could be made much wealthier.
I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about elected “public servants” that would willingly sell out the USA while receiving the best taxpayer funded healthcare, long term medical, and lucrative pensions and generous bribes and cushy jobs, that really bugs me and I can’t explain it.
I might stop by again on occasion if I could see some independent discussion. I have never enjoyed sitting in the same park bench every day reading the same newspaper over and over (like Limbaugh), but some do.
apolitical1 (4dd784) — 7/21/2012 @ 4:33 pm==Partisans represent the lemmings who follow the pied piper over the cliff, with “the cliff” being what has happened to the USA middle / working class economically since the 50s-70s….I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about elected “public servants” that would willingly sell out the USA while receiving the best taxpayer funded healthcare, long term medical, and lucrative pensions and generous bribes and cushy jobs, that really bugs me and I can’t explain it==
OK, so you say “a pox on all their houses”. Fine. Most pols suck and hang on too long. Check. Lobbyists represent groups of people, unions, and business interests and try to influence legislation. Yep. Sometimes large amounts of taxpayer money is wasted. Shocka. Is there a broader point you wanted to make? Is there a solution you propose right now because if so, I missed it in all your writings.
There’ve been several lively discussions on this site recently (that I don’t remember you participating in) which dealt with the idea that many Americans do feel disconnected from both parties. But, those discussions always end the same. They end with the realization that there are two candidates running for the presidency in 2012–Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. One of them will be elected.
elissa (c20277) — 7/21/2012 @ 5:01 pmHey There. I found your blog using msn. This is a very neatly written article. I’ll be sure to bookmark it and come back to learn extra of your useful info. Thanks for the post. I will certainly return.
loan (6ea388) — 7/29/2012 @ 1:38 am