Filed under: Election 2012, Humor, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: campaign ad, Caption Contest, Obama, Straw Men
I decided it’d be brilliant to mock Obama’s incessant use of straw men in the form of a campaign ad; unfortunately the brilliant punchline escapes me. So, I turn to our brilliant readers.
Ideally, I’d love to mock an actual Obama quote, campaign slogan, or soundbite — like this one — but it doesn’t have to; blurt out whatever comes to mind! It’s a brainstorm, not a test.
The best caption will win absolutely nothing of course — except credit, thanks, and a tiny modicum of eternal glory!
Have at it in the comments!…
Addendum: Someone on Twitter asked me what I meant by ‘straw men’. Good question! A ‘straw man’ is a type of fallacious argument that Obama uses very frequently. A ‘straw man’ argument misrepresents or outright lies about an opponent’s position (setting up the straw man), so that the person (Obama in this case) can easily knock it down. (Here’s the Wiki explanation).
Example: “My opponents want to make the poor and needy fend for themselves, but I think we can do better! My plan would make it possible for everyone to get affordable health care.” Obama sets up his straw man (a blatant lie about the Republican position), so that he can knock the straw man down. He does it virtually every day.
My only thoughts for captions so far were: “My opponents say…” (with Obama’s signature and the two pictured straw men). Or simply: ‘Setting ’em up & knocking ’em down”.
Hope that helps!
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Statism | Tags: Straw Men, The Price of Gas, Who Gets Taxed?
The average price of gas according to AAA is $3.86, nearly $1 more than it was a year ago. The president, in don’t-blame-me mode, laid out his own plan on Saturday. He said “You see people trying to grab headlines or score a few points. The truth is, there’s no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away.”
The president laid out his own plan for controlling prices: ending price gouging, and calling for an end to the $4 billion in federal subsidies for oil and gas firms. How ending subsidies would bring down prices is a complete mystery, but in line with the Obama genius for advocating the wrong remedy. I’m not sure who he thinks is “price gouging” but “speculators” — also unidentified— are the latest straw man.
“This is what politicians do when they want to do nothing, yet look like they are doing something, they appoint a blue ribbon committee , or go to the U.N., or assign some cabinet member to look into the problem and report back to the President —hoping that the issue will be forgotten by the time he reports back,” observed Tom Sowell.
Obama suggested last Thursday that his lagging poll numbers are due to the high gas prices nationwide. Budget? What budget?
He did imply in his budget speech that he would cut spending by $750 billion over the next twelve years. That’s sounds like more than it is— a little less that $63 billion a year. or about what the federal government borrows every eight days. The president does not want to cut spending. He wants more. More spending, a bigger government, and higher taxes.
In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce in February, President Obama said that “the role of government is to support the economic foundation by spending public money to improve transportation, education and communication systems.”
The public (53%) believe that the primary purpose of government is to protect individual liberties and freedom. Only 10% believe that managing the economy is the government’s primary role, and only 24% see the government’s role as insuring social justice. That’s a pretty big gap in understanding the nature and business of government.
Americans consistently believe in lower taxes and lower government spending. Yet Democrats are really pushing for more taxes for the rich. All the Democrat yammering about “tax cuts for the rich” during the Bush years seems to have convinced, at least the Democrats, that the Bush tax cuts involved an unfair tax cut for the wealthy. Everybody got a tax cut, and “the rich” got the smallest percentage cut of all.
If Congress imposed a 100% tax, taking all of the earnings above $250,000 a year, every last cent, it would yield the massive sum of $1.4 trillion. Sounds like a lot, but tit would keep the government running for 141 days. And who pays for the remaining 224 days? Corporate profits? Another 40 days. Well, lets just take all the net worth of America’s 400 billionaires — that gets us to the middle of August. And now that the billionaires are on the dole — you just took everything they had, you’ll have to chip in to provide for them.
The government has no money of its own. Revenue comes from taxation. And guess where the big pot of money is. The Middle Class! You didn’t believe Obama when he promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, did you? Maybe you should think hard about the desirability of cutting back on spending after all.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics | Tags: Democrat Demagogues, False Narratives, Straw Men
Politics is a strange world. There’s the territory “inside the beltway” and then there’s — the rest of the country. Washington D.C. is often described as a bubble where people live and operate with no contact whatsoever with those folks out in flyover country. Think of the slightly sneering reference to a major part of America as “fly over country,” unimportant, unrecognized, until election time when it becomes, temporarily — “the heartland.”
“Inside the beltway”is composed mostly of Democrats these days, and they are marveling at Obama’s “success,” effectiveness and political standing. Obama aides (and there are 1,700 full-time White House aides, the most in history) are enthusiastic about his foreign-policy successes, job growth, health care and lower-than-expected costs for the bailout. Foreign policy success? Job growth? Lower-than-expected costs for the bailout?
They seem to grasp that there is some, um, unrest about health care; but the answer is for the president to get out there and sell it. The answer is always, always, more PR. Another appearance, another speech, but no one seems to recognize that the pleasant words Obama uses to describe the health care bill bear no relation whatsoever to the actual contents of the bill.
Longtime NBC science correspondent Jay Barbree, speaking from the Space Center, said that during the campaign Obama came to the Space Center, and told the 15,000 workers that he would preserve NASA’s cutting-edge science and engineering expertise, and if they would vote for him he would protect their jobs Now 9,000 of them are about to lose their jobs.
Obama has returned to the Space Center to try to build support for his efforts to revamp the nation’s space program. He spoke before 200 or so people, by invitation only. He has not invited a single space worker from the space port to attend. It’s only academics and other high officials. Jay Barbree was stunned at the president’s duplicity.
MSNBC’s Alex Witt responded “I will say, on behalf of the Obama administration, they contend that 2500 new jobs will be created, even more, they say, than the 2012 Constellation would have created, that program.
Nice to know that Ms. Witt speaks for the Obama Administration. That clears up a little about MSNBC.
Elsewhere, it has been noted that Obama’s poll numbers have been falling because — he hasn’t been blaming Bush enough. The theory seems to be that the portrayal of the Bush years as a disastrous time of anti-regulation, tax-cutting policies that led to the 2008 meltdown has faded from public memory. Possibly because it was another lie to begin with.
The Obama team has remarkable skills in creating straw men, false narratives, and blaming everyone but themselves. America is in trouble, and the people want the transparency promised by the president that never seems to arrive.
The levels of spending, increases in government size and control over the most minute elements of American life are deeply troubling. The stock market is up, but cities and small towns are filled with empty storefronts. The only place where there is vigorous hiring is in the federal government, and hiring is frequently limited to union members. Stimulus money went to supporters — the blue states, while fly over country was ignored. Crony capitalism.
Perhaps Obama could get away with blaming Bush for everything during the campaign, though that narrative wasn’t true even then. This has been Obama’s show for fifteen months. Blaming his predecessor at this late date simply makes Obama seem like an irresponsible whiner.
American Elephants 