Now Obama says he didn't say "you didn't build that"

[Guest]

"Mitt Romney will say anything," the ad concludes. It turns out, he'll even say Obama's words when quoting him.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-ad-accuses-romney-launching-false-attack-quoting-obama_648762.html

Could this be the new "I was for it before I was against it"?



Not one week after he said it, Obama now denies he said it. Or perhaps the choom gang in charge of his ads made a BIG mistake? One thing's for sure, you can bet Obama wishes he didn't say that.

His whole campaign is just like his book; full of claims that didn't actually happen.

[_Drifting]

Bc...I hope this isn't too personal a question...but...who will you be voting for?

[_MeDotOrg]

It always helps to look at the entire quote, which you can see at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjPI6no5ng

Obama says. "If you were successful somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere along the line in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads an bridges - if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

What Obama is saying is that success doesn't happen in a vacuum. For example, if you own a trucking company, you benefit from the transportation infrastructure that government built. Romney (and the American Standard) deliberately take the quote of context to mislead people about what the President is actually saying.

[_krose]

Only an idiot would believe he meant "your business" when he used the word "build," considering that whole riff was about things like roads and bridges. "Build" is kind of a strange word to refer to a business, but it certainly isn't when talking about the bridges and roads that were mentioned in the very same breath.

And only an opportunistic liar would jump on an awkwardly worded phrase with all the glee of a homeless guy on a dropped pizza, while knowing full well what was intended by it. What honest person really thinks that Obama believes someone else created my business?

But what should we expect from a guy who made an ad with a sound bite that he blatantly edited to make it say the opposite of what it originally did? Remember how they cut out the "McCain said" part, so the remaining part was, "if we talk about the economy, we lose"?

Yet this habitual liar probably answers the temple question about honest dealings without even feeling a twinge of guilt.

[_richardMdBorn]

Only an idiot would believe he meant "your business" when he used the word "build," considering that whole riff was about things like roads and bridges. "Build" is kind of a strange word to refer to a business, but it certainly isn't when talking about the bridges and roads that were mentioned in the very same breath.

And only an opportunistic liar would jump on an awkwardly worded phrase with all the glee of a homeless guy on a dropped pizza, while knowing full well what was intended by it. What honest person really thinks that Obama believes someone else created my business?

James Taranto answers this argument.

The Obama campaign hotly disputes Romney's contention that the president meant what he said. A "fact check" from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" (formerly Attack Watch) claims that Romney "is taking President Obama's words out of context" to produce "a complete distortion." Here is the full context, as presented by the Truth Team:

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. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The Team then explains: "The President's full remarks show that the 'that' in 'you didn't build that' clearly refers to roads and bridges--public infrastructure we count on the government to build and maintain."

That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he should have said, "You didn't build those."

Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444873204577535053434972374.html

[_richardMdBorn]

What honest person really thinks that Obama believes someone else created my business.

What honest person thinks that, "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." It's not good for the person whose wealth is redistributed. How high does Obama want marginal rates to go. 50%? 70%? 90%? Would Obama like it if we redistributed 95% of his wealth. I think it would be fairer. I suspect that he would disagree with this.

I have an acquaintance who built the first cesium atomic clocks in orbit (they were launched in NTS-2). He's still working in his late 70s in his small company in Danvers MA. Would he still be working if the government took most of the wealth. No. As taxes rise, the incentive to be an entrepreneur diminishes.

[_grindael]

Imagine if President Obama said this:

There are a lot of people in government who help us and allow us to have an economy that works and allow entrepenuers and business leaders of various kinds to start businesses and create jobs. We all recognize that. That's an important thing.

Or if he said this:

I know that you recognize that a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the banks, the investors. There's no question your mom and dad. Your school teachers. The people that provide roads, the fire, and the police. A lot of people help.

Republicans would go nuts, right? Fox would go on a 72 hour nonstop bender on the evils of Obama's socialism. Rupert Murdoch would be tweeting in fear from the safety of Dick Cheney's bunker.

But those aren't President Obama's words. They're Mitt Romney's. And they aren't from a few weeks ago or a few months ago or a few years ago. He said them today, and he said them while falsely accusing the president of having said that "if you've got a business, you didn't build that." President Obama said no such thing. His actual words:

Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

So "that" was "roads and bridges." Not your business. The larger point he was making, in his own words:
When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
Things like investing in roads and bridges, creating fire departments and police forces, and having public schools. In other words, the exact same things that Mitt Romney talked about today. But don't expect President Obama to demand an apology from Romney for stealing his words. After all, there's still that whole Obamneycare thing they need to work out. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/1 ... businesses

Romney bungles it again.

[_palerobber]

Only an idiot would believe he meant "your business" when he used the word "build" [...]

yeah, you could tell right away that the snipped quote FoxNews was trying to sell was bogus because it's not just impolitic, it's nonsensical:
"if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen"

even successful politicians may occasionally let the mask slip a bit, but they certainly do not animate full blown opposition-party caricatures. least of all in prepared remarks.

no one outside the rightwing cocoon is concerned by this.

[_krose]

That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he should have said, "You didn't build those."

If you listen to the audio, you'll hear there isn't even a pause between "bridges" and "if," where the campaign cut the quote apart. I'm sure it was difficult to make that precise an edit.

Do you have any idea how many times the president has made these comments on the stump? How often has he expanded on Elizabeth Warren's original speech about everyone having the responsibility to contribute to the greater good, and no one created all their wealth themselves?

So this one time, instead of completing the thought, and saying "that infrastructure," he leaves out the object of the clause, and the cackling hyenas attack.

Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.

Bitter much, Richard? The sarcasm is noted, and while I realize the right believes Obama cheated his way through school and only got ahead through affirmative action, surely you will grudgingly admit (as Ben Stein eventually did) that he is reasonably intelligent -- not as a "real American" is smart, but at least fairly smart as a politician.

And yet you appear to believe that he thought it would be a good idea to get up on a stage and tell business owners that we didn't create our businesses. Right.

[_Analytics]

Imagine if President Obama said this:

There are a lot of people in government who help us and allow us to have an economy that works and allow entrepenuers and business leaders of various kinds to start businesses and create jobs. We all recognize that. That's an important thing.

Or if he said this:

I know that you recognize that a lot of people help you in a business. Perhaps the banks, the investors. There's no question your mom and dad. Your school teachers. The people that provide roads, the fire, and the police. A lot of people help.

Republicans would go nuts, right? Fox would go on a 72 hour nonstop bender on the evils of Obama's socialism. Rupert Murdoch would be tweeting in fear from the safety of Dick Cheney's bunker.

But those aren't President Obama's words. They're Mitt Romney's. And they aren't from a few weeks ago or a few months ago or a few years ago. He said them today, and he said them while falsely accusing the president of having said that "if you've got a business, you didn't build that." President Obama said no such thing. His actual words:

Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

So "that" was "roads and bridges." Not your business. The larger point he was making, in his own words:
When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
Things like investing in roads and bridges, creating fire departments and police forces, and having public schools. In other words, the exact same things that Mitt Romney talked about today. But don't expect President Obama to demand an apology from Romney for stealing his words. After all, there's still that whole Obamneycare thing they need to work out. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/1 ... businesses

Romney bungles it again.

Exactly. It is quite clear what his actual point was. So why is it so important for the Republicans to think his point was something else? My best guess is that they have absolutely no ideas of how to actually improve the country. With no ideas, they need to run against Obama, rather than in favor of their own ideas.

The truth of the matter is that Obama is basically center-right: he beefed up border security, promoted big tax breaks, continues to strengthen the military, and even adapted Romneycare on a Federal level. So the Republicans can't attack his record, and they can't run on their own ideas. Thus, they need to paint Obama as a Kenyan-born Muslim who hates America and wants to turn it into Cuba. Their biggest problem is that he never actually says or does anything to support this boogy-man they want to run against, so when something like this comes up, it's the closest thing they've got, so they just tell Obama what he meant over and over and over, and the folks who want to hate Obama believe it because they want to, not because it is true.