Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems.
This is the biggest honor you’ve won since Time magazine named “you” the Person of the Year.
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Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the ranks of George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, Wall Street fat cats, and other luminaries, both living and merely anthropomorphized.
Last week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Obama explained, “We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.”
The White House and its proxies insist that Obama wasn’t talking about Americans per se. He just meant we’ve been lazy about attracting foreign investment.
We’ll come back to that in a minute. For now, let’s take him at his word.
Still, you can understand the confusion. In September, the president reflected in an interview that America is “a great, great country that has gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.”
Shortly after that, he told rich donors at a fundraiser that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.”
So, Obama thinks Americans lack ambition and are soft, but don’t you dare suggest that he also thinks they’re lazy.
The point of all this is pretty obvious. Obama has a long-standing habit of seeing failure to support his agenda as a failure of character. The Democratic voters of western Pennsylvania refused to vote for him, he explained, because they were “bitter.” He told black Democrats lacking sufficient enthusiasm for his reelection to “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.”
And in the context of the country’s economic doldrums, Obama sees a lack of ambition, softness, laziness, etc., in anyone who doesn’t support his agenda. He has spent several years now exhorting Americans about how we have to “win the future” by doing what he says. He has told us repeatedly that this is our “Sputnik moment” when all Americans must drop their selfish, cynical, or foolish objections to his program. People who disagree aren’t putting their “country first.”
He’s constantly stoking nationalistic and quasi-paranoid fears of China to goad Americans into supporting ever more “investments” in green energy and high-speed white elephants.
I agree with the point of this article (i.e., that Pres. Obama feels that if we were all smarter, more charitable, and harder working, we would all be 100% on board w/ his plan -- whatever it is this week). However, I do think that in this instance, that I also agree with the President's remarks somewhat.
There IS a bit of a lazy streak in the populous of this country. It's evident most clearly in the OWS crowd that wants the government to pay for their shiftless, stay-in-school-forever lifestyle. It's evident in the pro-"undocumented workers" support groups when they speak of jobs "Americans won't do". When I hear ivory tower socialists, who have sucked up more government largesse than they will ever contribute back to society, rail against tax base expanding businesses, then, yeah, "lazy" comes to mind.
Agreed. I think Obama is just upset the right is not working harder so that he and the left (i.e. union slobs, academic creeps, perpetual student sloths, government parasites, "artist" hacks, etc.) can do even less then actual productive work than now.
robot, the ows does NOT represent the majority of americans as was apparent in the dismal turn out of protesters yesterday and the " pro-"undocumented workers" support groups " do NOT represent the majority of americans as was apparent when over 60% of americans supported the arizona immigration reform. it is the (self) proclaimed (self) righteous intellectual superior progressive elite few that claim amercians are fat, stupid, lazy scum and will not/can not do the jobs that their illegal and legal slaves do.
out of one corner of their mouth they say we are an aging population so we MUST bring (legal) foreign youth in to do the jobs and out of the other side they say that unemployment among our youth is the highest in history. If you question them on this they will explain that american youth are stupid lazy scum while foreign youth are hard working intellects without adding the fact that these pure, righteous holy intellectual superior foreign youths work for half of what our fat, stupid, lazy american youth scum will. it is the worse with illegal, who have no protection under our labor laws, who are touted by our intellectual superiors as hard working good people doing the work that the fat, stupid, lazy american scum will not do without adding the fact that these hard working good people are no more than modern day slaves who they think should be grateful to lick our boots
So, the President criticizes the whole nation for the failings of socialists?
Interesting, though, that the laziest people in the country are Obama's most ardent supporters (except for the guy who shot through his windows with a long gun).
correct, no one in our righteous msm seem to want to mention the fact that the construction of our super highways, the hoover dam and the golden gate bridge would not be possible under today’s government/epa regulations
President Obama and his party have "hooded the eagle".
"Unhood the Eagle" would make a great campaign slogan. We could show a hunter pulling off the hood (close shot of eagle's head) then a slight crouch before it leaps of his arm. The commercial would end with the eagle flying high in the skies with "Vote Republican 2012" at the bottom of the screen; great bumper sticker also.
Later on for fun we could have it swooping down and grabbing up a Chevy Volt in its talons and dropping the midget clunker into a nest of hungry babies.
I think Goldberg means "deficit" not "debt" in the penultimate paragraph.
Anyway, Obama's scolding should be reiterated over and over. Clearly, the people and the President don't see eye to eye; we should ask rhetorically whose fault that is -- his or ours? -- and ask who is ultimately more easily replaced.
Probably not. The going to church bit was all to get his street cred up during the organizer days. When those days were done, he was on the political train and needed to get those creds in. Besides, I don't think he was ever an every Sunday in the pew kind of guy.
While he might agree with the repellent reverend, I doubt he'd spend the time away from the golf course listening to him in the future.
Of course, there is always the possibility that, if Obama suffers the fate of fools and loses the election, out of anger for the nation he has always despised he will go back to his special childhood home of Indonesia.
Nothing would make his wife happier than to leave here, although she'd probably prefer Madrid or Brussels.
Bad enough that Republican politicians lie. Now Jonah's lying too.
Yeah, I woke up this morning and lost all my desire to make some calls, get some friends together, give the lawyers the go-ahead to work on the documents, and build the next Hoover Dam.
I have also lost all my personal passion to complete the Saturn V I've been constructing in my backyard for my private return trip to the moon.
Worst of all, I have no current plans to hop on a plane and buttonhole some Chicoms to get them to invest in the United States.
There is no reasonable interpretation of Obama's words that does not comprehend state action.
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