Their (Republicans) basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I've taken from this country... I wasn't born wealthy. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. I went to college on scholarships. There was a time when my mom was trying to get her Ph.D. where, for a short time, she had to take food stamps. My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security. Their notion is: Despite the fact that I've benefited from all these investments, somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me.
-Barack Obama
So many fallacies, so little time! First he starts: "no matter how much I've taken from this country". Now if he is speaking for himself, he might be referring to the salary he collected as a state senator, voting "present" or his salary as President, considering all the vacations and golf outings since he assumed office.
We won't go into whether or not his mother might have been committing welfare fraud while she was a post grad student, although it seems apparent that Obama was living with his grandparents while this "investment" was taking place. Were the scholarships he used for college publicly or privately funded? The pricey private school his grandparents sent him to was not a government "investment". I received both private and public scholarships when I went to college. Actually, that's not quite true. I qualified for a California State Scholarship, but never used it. I suspect that Obama's scholarships were more private than public. He could release the records, along with his transcripts and prove me wrong. Don't hold your breath waiting.
"My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security". This has been debunked elsewhere. His grandmother was vice president of a bank in Hawaii. His grandfather managed a furniture store in Kansas and came to Hawaii for a "better opportunity". They were upper middle class. They sent their grandson to private school. I doubt that they "relied" on Social Security and Medicare to the extent that most people do.
But, if he is building the straw man that Republicans think that everyone who is successful has "taken" something from the country, then he is quite mistaken.
Bill Gates, love him or hate him, did not become successful by "taking" anything from the country. He marketed a computer operating system that people willingly parted with their hard earned money to obtain. Other than its freedom and opportunity, what did Bill Gates "take" from America?
Can we cut through some of the clutter? Shorter Obama:
Their (Republicans) basic view is that no matter how successful I am... somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me.
Where in the world would you get such a preposterous statement that people who pay their taxes (and whose charitable giving far exceeds those of Democrats and other liberals) believe they have "no obligation" to the less fortunate?
It is true, that in the face of overwhelmingly massive deficits, Republicans are trying to cut back on non-essential spending. According to Obama and his fellow libs, there is no government program so bloated or wasteful or a duplication of other agencies, that it can be cut. It is demagoguery of the worst sort to say that any cut in the federal budget will starve seniors and children. Are there no programs in the entire federal budget (other than the military, which the libs would love to savage), which liberals would cut before programs for seniors or the poor?
And the problems of Social Security and Medicare, among others, have been demagogued for so many years, they are long overdue for reform just to remain solvent. To allow those programs to collapse of their own weight in the near future is far more dastardly than trying to correct them today.
And can we look at how Obama describes entitlement programs? "Investments". I can remember my dear sainted mother talking about how she was going to "invest" in some new curtains for the house. Was she getting it ready to sell? No. It just made "spending money" more palatable is she called it "an investment". Beware the individual who wants to take a lot of your money by calling things that are not an investment, an "investment".
What is the "return" on Obama's investments"? From wiki:
Investment is putting money into something with the expectation of profit. More specifically, investment is the commitment of money or capital to the purchase of financial instruments or other assets so as to gain profitable returns in the form of interest, dividends, or appreciation of the value of the instrument (capital gains).[1] It is related to saving or deferring consumption.
Does everyone on food stamps go on to be President? Does everyone on food stamps even go on to be a productive member of society? Not necessarily. Support for the less fortunate is an expense. It is a compassionate expense, but it is not an "investment". If you believe, as Obama appears to, that feeding the poor is an "investment", next time you go shopping for groceries, tell everyone how you "invested" in a dozen eggs and a box of Fruit Loops. How you thought of "investing" in a bunch of bananas, but they looked a little green.
Just like his "kinetic military action", good liberals find that they can persuade you better, if they either change the words they use to describe things, or use the same words, but give them different meanings.
1984 was apparently the liberal's "hornbook".
Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.
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