We can't help but notice what Barack Obama said in Missouri -- at a pep rally intended to cheer people up -- a few days before his health care reform projects were made law. It is either a moment of intense honesty or of intense dullness -- or both.
Now, there’s been a lot of discussion about government over the last several months -- and let’s face it, people have lost faith in government. They had lost faith in government before I ran and it’s been getting worse.
It stuns, really.
Mr. Obama's last sentence could be amended without changing its meaning by simply adding the word "things."
They had lost faith in government before I ran [things] and it’s been getting worse.
Blinding.
Faith in government has been getting worse ever since Mr. Obama came to office, or so he proclaims. That is precisely what he said at a pep rally while allegedly pumping up his supporters, isn't it? If not, what is he saying?
"Let's face it," indeed.
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13 comments:
He's acknowledging people like you, and you insult the guy. This is why I think he's a moron for bothering to reach out to whiney conservatives.
Ginx, just so you know, its people like me, dismissed with an ad hominem "whiney conservative" appellation, who provide support for, at last count, sixteen families and who, has borne the burden of the recent economic downturn completely on his own shoulders, without any of it being shared by his employees.
That's about to change, thanks to a government that cannot seem to grasp any correlation between regulations increasing my labor costs and my willingness to either, a)employ more people or b)pay more in salary and benefits or c)refrain from increasing the price of my services.
In the meantime, while some of us are working 60 hour weeks to make sure our employees remain employed, there are those who sit about employing Utopian fantasies in pursuit of ever more frenzied sessions of "progressive" onanism.
Here is the grim truth. When you open your eyes, Ginx, you're still in your parents' basement. Grow up and get a job.
Wah wah wah, cry me a river bitch. Did I call you a name and dismiss you? Take it like a man for 8 years like the liberals did, and maybe get your shit together in the meantime.
Living in my parent's basement, are you fucking serious? I'm married and will be buying my first house this summer. Some of us worked 80 hour weeks so that we could make anything of ourselves in this economy, while you 40 hour a week people bitch and moan about how high taxes are on your 70k+ salaries.
The grim truth is you will die a retarded old fool without ever having seen how the real world operates. You think with your gut because your head is up your ass.
Ginx,
In essence, you prove RS's point. Do you REALLY think you've a better grip on how the world works than RS? Do you not see, too, that you've just hurled a bunch of rather crude insults at someone without positing anything that remotely looks like a counter-argument? You've just submitted several argumentum ad hominem -- abusive fallacies in a row; RS suggested this was your modus operandi. Doesn't this latest comment of yours work against you? Don't you care you come across as irrational (fallacies are inherently irrational) and just plain mean?
RS's comments were powerful; he lives in the very real world. In fact, he has surely done something Mr. Obama (and many of Mr. Obama's peers) has never done: employed people, people like you and me. You are free to disagree with RS; you are free to disagree with me. And we are free to disagree with you.
It is disappointing that you come across as having thick skin -- you seem to expect others to be tough -- and yet you've let your pride get so easily pricked here: you are not as tough -- emotionally and intellectually -- as you project. I don't get it. Seriously. You seem a decent chap, but you seem angry about something that has nothing to do with this conversation or RS's remarks.
If I am not mistaken, no one -- not once! -- has thrown a significant insult your way at this blog. Until today. Just one little barb. However, you constantly chuck bricks here; you called me a "whiney conservative" without the courtesy of presenting an argument defending that assertion. Notice how you've reacted; compare it to how you've been treated at this site.
Please note this: If you write a comment here like this again, I will have to delete it, and I guess I'll have to block you out. It's not because I want to censor you, it's that I want my readers to feel safe at Contratimes. All of my readers. You included.
I hope this works for you.
Peace.
BG
Mean people get their way. Republicans taught me this, and only this.
Here is the grim truth. When you open your eyes, Ginx, you're still in your parents' basement. Grow up and get a job.
His comments were powerful, huh Bill? His *insert latin rhetorical device* is brilliant? I didn't address his points because I know that it can be difficult to start a business in this country. He attacked me and you ran to his aid because you're afraid he's not a big boy who can take care of himself. If he wants to attack me and thinks I'm some sort of mooching bum, he can take care of himself.
You want people to feel safe here? A nice little pro-conservative circle jerk where no one dare challenge the Reaganite ideals that bankrupted our nation, huh?
If you want me to just leave you to wallow in your self-reinforcement project, just say so. You don't have to dance around it under the guise of decency.
Come on, Ginx. Where's your levity? Brevity is over-rated. LEVITY is the soul of wit.
Listen. I believe this is true: this is the first time I've typed in the name Ronald Reagan at this blog. I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. I've been at this for quite a few years now and not once have I sung the praises of Ronald Reagan -- or his principles.
Yes, Ginx, RS's comments are powerful because he has directly given hope, home, and financial solvency to 16 families. His words are not written in abstraction, but in reality, in hard, fiscal physicality. His is a noteworthy achievement. He has inside knowledge I will never acquire.
As for my coming to RS's aid, I hardly think so. He is more than capable of defending himself, and you know it. I am really coming to the aid of everyone, including you, who posts here: I want to protect a forum that I believe is undeniably safe because I am safe. That may be a huge boast, but I will make it without flinching. I am as safe as safe can be.
I am sorry you've been abused by Republicans. I've been abused by people from all walks of life. I especially have been abused by people who claim to be decent, liberally decent.
Of course, I can't say I've seen a pervasive meanness within the Republican Party. I simply haven't. But that's maybe because I am not a member of that party; being in NH, I am one of many who choose to maintain independence from party identification.
Ginx, if you have any proof that I've shied away from criticism in this forum, please, present it. I've not shied away from you, or SE, or old RUSS, or some of the others who used to come here (my hiatus has lost me many readers, as has my lack of writings on Christian topics). Do you think I need confirmation of my ideas, or opinions, or beliefs? I am a pretty strong guy, Ginx, and I don't need approval (as you suggest in your crude metaphor) for what I do here. I am not saying approval isn't nice. I am merely saying that it is clear -- utterly clear -- that I DO NOT maintain this blog out of some need for approval.
Peace.
Ginx, I responded to your four line comment in kind. For that I apologize. The last paragraph was my feeble attempt at an extended metaphor and diminished the conversation. For that, I apologize to our host.
You will excuse me, however, for being dismayed at the fact, that anyone who poses objections to the progressive agenda, which consists almost entirely of demonizing people like me without evidence, is attacked as being somehow immoral.
As I point out above, (and most certainly not to gain your sympathy; I neither need it nor want it) I provide jobs. I have guaranteed job security. I'm not rich. I don't have a lot of stuff. I protect my employees to the best of my ability.
Yet, I am denounced as immoral because I wish to preserve some of what I make in income to give my family a better life.
Query, Ginx: What is the moral baseline? Where is the point where my check-book balance tips over into the "immoral" blackness?
True fact: Years ago, my employees voted to forgo health insurance in favor of increased contributions to their retirement and increased wages. I may have to change that contrary to their wishes.
True fact: I know to the penny what my labor costs are. If they get too high, I have to do something. My employees have not suffered during this downturn. I've carried the burden with my partners.
Do I get "moral points" in your world for the above, or are your ways the "narrow path" to salvation?
I'm sick of being lectured by people who don't know what I know; who've never experienced the daily worry about meeting a payroll or trying to find something extra to help out an employee because of some personal problem.
And for the record, I've worked sixty to eighty hour weeks since 1987 when I graduated from college and law school, which I paid for myself by working in lead mines, a lead smelter, grocery, bookstores, garbage collecting and teaching German.
I've seen the world. It's a harsh place. I've done my best to ameliorate that harshness for those within my reach. If you require the sacrifice of my own family to appease your progressive gods, then I will draw the line, however. I don't wish you ill. In point of fact, I wish you and your spouse long and happy lives. I wish you the happiness that I've experienced. I suggest only, that before you label and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you, you perhaps contemplate what they may have contributed to the society you profess to desire to protect.
Regards.
After thinking about it, I'm most pissed at the fact that my opinion is being dismissed almost solely for my age. Older generations will never see what I'm seeing, which is many people my age going to college, being driven into debt whether they graduate or not, not being abel to afford healthcare, and then going into lifetime servitude to pay off health debts should anything happen to them.
Maybe if your generation hadn't mismanaged your retirements, we wouldn't be in this mess. I just showed up, so don't even dare blaming me for anything. I came to the party at 3am and the keg is tapped, and you guys are handing my generation the mop. Thanks a lot, hope you had a blast.
Ginx, believe it or not, you and I may be in agreement about something, even if we disagree about the solution.
You are absolutely correct that you have a mess in front of you. I have three children, one of whom is trotting off to college in the fall. I worry for her and my boys every day.
I worry for the people in my employ every day. Time and space does not permit me to give you the reasons why I think we find ourselves in the "here and now." Suffice it to say, I used to be a Democrat. Actually, I didn't stop paying my dues until about the end of Bush the Younger's first term.
I did so, because I saw that the Demos were consistently moving toward class-warfare, such that there was no place for me in the party.
True story: In 1968, I was eight years old and my father asked me who should be President.
My response: Eugene McCarthy.
Look him up. You'll be surprised at what you find.
My apologies again. I'll buy you a beer if we're ever in the same bar.
After all, it's we "whiney conservatives" who've got the full wallets.
:)
Cheers.
RS
Are you kidding me? Geenks blames you for the bad economy and he gets a beer. I think it's your fault for global warming and the holocaust. How many beers is that worth?
feeno
Feeno, I'm perfectly happy to pony up a half-barrel. Lord knows, that's how I enticed 19 and 20 year old girls to my house during my German grad school days.
(This was, of course, before I met my lovely wife of now 23+ years. She's German, so she needed more beer. I'm still working on it.)
Cheers ('Hic).
Ginx,
Your last comment looks surprisingly like something I said when I was your age. It also looks a lot like something I could have written yesterday.
Do you have any idea what RS and I inherited? Do you not realize the mess our forebears left us? All through childhood I heard nothing but worries regarding this nation's debt. Do you think any of us had what you have? We grew up at a time when, at 20 years old, we REALLY had to pay for our health care out of pocket -- or turn to our parents for help. Your "generation" has it far easier in so many ways, I can't believe you think you've had it hard. What, are you whining? Do you have any idea how long it took me -- or RS -- to payoff our own student loans?
And what do you mean, "our generation"? If the Obama administration is set on doubling, perhaps even tripling this nation's debt liabilities, many of us have your generation to thank for such horrors, as the youth vote put him into office. And they are horrors, Ginx. You've no idea what chaos is looming; we are talking numbers that are so exorbitant they have lost their meaning (and they cannot ever be paid.) Right now Medicare/Medicaid has over $30 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and you are complaining that you've had a hard time affording health care, though you've just been promised something neither RS nor I have ever been given?
As for dismissing your opinion because of your age, I have to ask, "Are you kidding me?" No one has dismissed you because of your age; no one here even knows how old you are. Listen, Ginx. Life is hard. I get it. Do you want to know my sorrows, my personal poverty? Will that help? Sorrow, difficulty, grief, hardship, despair: these pay no attention to age. They are endemic to all people, in all places. Life teaches us one thing: No one has a right to a happy ending. No one. You should know that.
I resist utopian illusions, at least those manufactured by quasi-intellectual abstractionists, mere theorists in political garb. I am utterly dystopian compared to Mr. Obama and his ilk. I have not wavered from my cynical, pessimistic view since childhood. I simply believe that the best way to keep envy at bay -- and it is all about envy -- and the best way to distribute wealth and goods, is to let people compete in a free and self-governed market. This is not MY version of utopia. This is my simple view regarding how people marooned on a planet with finite resources, who are waiting for God to return, can best manage things.
I find Mr. Obama and his counsel to be utterly daft. I am embarrassed to say he and I are the same age. He strikes me as not merely amateurish, but petulant, a mere child, looking desperately for approval.
So maybe you are right. It is about age. And it may even be about the last age.
You know I wish you well; you know RS does, too. Egads, the last thing you could say about either of us -- ever -- is that we are uncaring.
Peace to you.
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