the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

I feel like there's no uniting the US rhetorically at this point but 'we' built the roads, 'we' built the internet, etc. Same 'we' that starts the preamble to the constitution of the United States. It doesn't matter whether you're broke, an entrepreneur, a homeowner, a renter, sick, healthy, or whatever else, you're in the same pool of people using the same resources and supporting the same system.

I mean, except the rich, they take their money out of the system, right?

moral of the story is that obama needs to go through speeches and take out the parts where he says "you got something? you didn't make it happen" and change it to "you got something? someone helped you"

WE THE PEOPLE

and Mitt Romney

WHICH DO YOU STAND WITH

Oh, sorry, yeah, I get it. Is that bad, by the way, did I take up too much of everybody's time when I put the quote in? How about now? Is this taking too long? Definitely by now. Yeah. Going on too long now for sure.

lol

Voters won't give a fuck about how many j's Obama rolled in college.

however if his rolling technique is revealed to have been bogus some of us will clown him so badly that he will never recover

I feel that if Obama gave a speech that began "I built this country...on rock and roll!", all the people who presently hate him would fall in love with him.

Clinton didn't even inhale, whatever man, no credibility in my eyes, ever.

"Did you ever own a 'bong' sir? A 'bong' with a skull on it, like the one I'm holding here?"

god i saw the first fifteen minutes-ish of Political Animals and while most of it was just clumsy, shameless exposition based on Hilary Clinton there was one part where she and the younger jerk who beat her in the primary started dancing together on stage at a campaign rally and it was like "yeah, i don't know whether it'd be better or worse if she and obama really did that"

I feel that if Obama gave a speech that began "I built this country...on rock and roll!", all the people who presently hate him would fall in love with him

You overestimate our affection for Starship.

I'd be happy as long as they fell into the band pit

xp

now if he were to bust out some "count on me" me by J. Starship

xpost

It's no lie. After pretending to inhale Clinton pretended to be high.

morbz, i'm confused - do you like politicians or not?

If he can punctuate the Starship quote with an emphatic rock and roll hand gesture, though, I think it'll work.

http://wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/beast-obama-devilhorns.jpg

That's a Hawaiian "hang loose," LOL Canadians.

(I kid, I kid.)

that's a shop. actual photo is of Obama flipping the bird

do you like politicians or not?

IF they're properly cooked

to be fair judging from the url wonkette has misinterpreted the shaka as well

I expect more from clemenza than I do from wonkette. Hmph.

Taking just:

"If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

which are the infamous fourteen words that tore the hearts out of American entrepreneurs everywhere la la, out of:

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. 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 Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

Is Deliberately Fraudulent Quotation, making it sound like he said "you didn't build your business." Extremely clear from the context that he was talking about all the other things in America that didn't emerge from the forehead of John Galt, not your blessed business itself.

Buncha crap, and there's no way to protect yourself from that except to expand upon these notions. Retreat would be a very stupid move.

― Vic Perry, Wednesday, July 18, 2012 8:35 AM (7 minutes ago)

"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 Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

the longer passage is just as colossally tone-deaf and nearly as damning as the "unfair" single-sentence reduction, imo. at the same time, it's factually valid and does fairly represent obama's apparent intent. the problem is the oppositional stance. the president is pinning the medal for "your" success not on "us" - the american collective in all its manifestations - but specifically on the federal government. the bit about the origin of the internet makes this clear.

true or not, this is just fucking stupid. obama could easily have stuck with the inspirational suggestion that we all, in various ways, collectively work together to make our individual successes possible, and that our government is a part of this. the president could have limited himself to a "we" that includes even his own administration. but instead, at least for a moment, he went out of his way make the shitty, divisive, needle-sticking point that "you", the business owners of america, you owe your success to big government. it's no surprise that people reacted badly, even if his overall message was laudable.

well, we had the reductive analysis of that speech, now we have the interpretative one

I'm pretty sure this line of reasoning from Elizabeth Warren and Obama is why tax rates were as high as 90% for rich folks back in the day. 'We hooked you up, now give back'

not sure what's being debated here. does anyone really doubt that obama is unimpressed and cynical about aspects of America? occasionally he's going to hit a tone that suggests he thinks he's smarter than half the country, because he is and most of us think we are too. like the "guns and religion" bit in '08 this is just a reminder to check for that, esp if you want to be a "uniter".

yup, esp esp as missteps like this go a long way towards "proving" that obama really is the success-hostile pocket-picker the right so desperately wants paint him as

in the end i don't think it will be an issue. Nobody who voted for Obama in 08 didn't know he was a smug liberal who smoked weed as a kid, and he's not going to do a press blitz friday saying "yes, america, you should credit your success to big brother."

last night he was going on about Obama's mentor back in Hawaii, Frank Marshall Davis.

According to this article about conservative author/commentator Jack Cashill, Davis also figures heavily into Cashill's various conspiracy theories about Obama. (Cashill, incidentally, is a friend of my dad's from grad school and apparently wasn't always a crackpot.)

ha cashill is the guy who 'proved' ayers wrote obama's books. because both their memoirs used really unique words like "gleamed" or something.

"Baleful"! A word Cashill had never heard of!

Romney campaign going ham on Obama's "youthful transgressions"/conspiratorial associations will endear him to the base and alienate everyone else. I say go for it dude, I need more lolz this summer.

From Hannity's website:

The Untold Story Of Obama's Mentor

Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College joined Sean in the show's second hour to discuss his new book, "The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor." In his memoir, Barack Obama omits the full name of his mentor, simply calling him "Frank." Now, the truth is out. Obama was referring to Frank Marshall Davis. Never has a figure as deeply troubling and controversial as Frank Marshall Davis had such an impact on the development of an American president. Although other radical influences on Obama, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, have been scrutinized, the public knows little about Davis, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, cited by the Associated Press as an "important influence" on Obama, one whom he "looked to" not merely for "advice on living" but as a "father" figure.

If Obama is lucky, he'll get a lot of that and less of this.

"Now, the truth is out."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5c4_DrMg0BI/TYobAGsxXTI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/n9v7xSTO2Vg/s400/X-Files.jpg

Quoth Obama in 'Dreams of my father', "It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had created."

I'm pretty sure this line of reasoning from Elizabeth Warren and Obama is why tax rates were as high as 90% for rich folks back in the day. 'We hooked you up, now give back'

― johnathan lee riche$ (mayor jingleberries), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 9:50 AM (7 minutes ago)

yeah, one of the strangest things about american politics, to me, is how little public attention we devote to this. over the last 30 years, there's been this radical shift in our sense of the obligations of the wealthy to the nation in general, and no one talks about it (when it happened, why and how it happened, whether or not it's a good thing, etc). at least not in public...

discounting the brief and inevitable drop that accompanied the great depression, the max rate was at least 50% for 7/10ths of the 20th century! the bold, wealthy, strong, "free", future-making and world-dominating america that conservatives lionize was built on extremely high tax rates for the rich, and no one seems willing to admit it.

Yeah nobody talks about it because poor people don't own the media, rich people do.

yeah not so worried about the latter Clemenza, average voter stops processing info at this phrase: explaining the global perspective of the ultra-rich business elite to the struggling U.S. worker

Adam OTM it's pretty obvious why that doesn't get traction

i suppose that's so, but rich people have always owned the media, even during the era when contemporary income taxation came into being (1913) and the maximum rate rose from 67% (1917) to 92% (1953).

re: Phil's link

Ambassador Trentino: Now will you tell me what happened on Saturday?
Chicolini: I'm glad you ask me. We follow this man down to a roadhouse, and at this roadhouse he meet a married lady.
Ambassador Trentino: A married lady?
Chicolini: Yeah, I think it was his wife.

But the media has never been so consolidated as it is now.

media has never mattered less than it does now

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Paul-won-t-get-speaking-slot-at-GOP-confab-3711298.php

sayonara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nl23nB5w90

What's today? Can't imagine whom ads will be invoking by October.

I like that Romney is allegedly trying to attack Obama as a teenage drug user. What percentage of americans were teenage drug users, even adult drug users? gotta be like 50%

prob all democrats too, lol

But the media has never been so consolidated as it is now.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 11:05 AM (10 minutes ago)

is this really true? in the teens and 20s, the big radio and newspaper chains were owned by just a few ultra wealthy men, right?

I want the Obama campaign to respond to the drug thing w/ lots of talk about how Romney can't drink wine or beer

even john kerry could *in theory* have a beer w/ you

"Which candidate would you have a beer with? DON'T ANSWER YET BECAUSE CHECK THIS OUT."