Fox Hosts Outraged Over Out-Of-Context Obama Quote

[Swede]

Conservative media outlets were up in arms Monday over a portion of President Obama’s Friday campaign speech in Roanoke, Va., in which he suggested successful business owners often got where they are thanks to help from others.

As the screen introduced viewers to Obama’s “war on success,” an aggrieved Fox Business host Stu Varney detailed the president’s “shocking point of view”:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said. “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/fox-outrage-obama-quote.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

[muntrv]

1. Here's a response to those morans.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A REPUBLICAN
By John Gray

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot
full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for
minimum water quality standards.

He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His
medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure
their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers
medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their
employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares
his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to
eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing
industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is
properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents
because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting
on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and
takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-
hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our
air.

He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to
work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation
fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public
transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a
contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay,
medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some
liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.
Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't
want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker
compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think
he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some
bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some
liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who
ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below
market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that
Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and
earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at
his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to
dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal
fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live
in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers
didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electric until
some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and
demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still
be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social
Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could
take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. After his visit with dad
he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals
are bad and conservatives are good (He doesn't tell Joe that his
beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit
Joe enjoys throughout his day). Joe agrees, "We don't need those big
government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I'm a self-made man
who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I
have."


The Reich-Wing Republican Joke Page

[patrice]

2. Here's the FB link to that & the thread in which they deleted my comment:

The FB group is called R.E.V.E.L.A.T.I.O.N.S.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=388659477863524&set=a.154349667961174.33970.151120888284052&type=1&theater

My deleted Comment (which I also created a FB Note for):

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." attributed to Barack Obama.

Out of context as usual.

This is called Demand Side Economics. That's probably what PO was truly talking about.

Do you all seriously want us to think that BO says that the work a business owner does is nothing?

Isn't that just a little absurd?

HOW could anyone think such a thing? It isn't possible to say, TTE, "Your work is 0" and yet someone wants us to believe that it is what PO said. This is just like saying we should believe the moon is made out of cheese, because because we saw it on Face Book.

Demand Side Economics: No matter how much work a business owner does, no matter how good that work is, it FAILS if there is no one with the money to BUY the product, or, perhaps, without the right kinds of enterprises in the business' supply chain, or no people with the skills necessary to do what the business owner needs done in order to stay in business >>> Do you deny this? Do you deny that by far most business owners can build NOTHING by themselves?

Put this quote back into the authentic context from which it came and I bet we'd see that what I have sketched above is the subject that this excerpt relates to.

Google: Demand Side Economics and google Supply Side Economics, compare the two and then I'd love to see your comments here again on the TRUTH.

The only situation in which, all the business person has to do is make stuff available and they will succeed as a business, i.e. Supply Side Economics, the only time that is the "reality" is when the business man is in the business of producing 0s and 1s, stored in various privately owned magnetic media, managed in unique custom designed private accounting processes, and shunted back and forth between privately owned computers. Think fractals here, of nothing but digital code, 0s and 1s . . .

for example . . . LIBOR - the London Inter-Bank Offering Rate which has been discovered to be a scam, btw. What consumers were paying for the product, money/loans, was not what the product actually cost, and the producers were privately pocketing the difference and then pumping those 0s and 1s back into creating more 0s and 1s. That's the ESSENCE of Supply Side Economics for you.

[Jim Lane]

3. The actual context, with the antecedent to Obama's "that"

From the linked article:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” Obama said. “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

The right-wing poutrage is apparently based on "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that," as if Obama meant you didn't build your own business. Obviously, though, "that" means "this unbelievable American system", including the roads and bridges.

There's no business owner in the country who built the system that enables his or her business to thrive.