Obama in an interview with an Orlando TV station*:
“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”
Interesting perspective. I wonder where America could have lost its competitive edge. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with a government that blows billions on green energy boondoggles while making it harder to drill for oil while trying to make electricity rates “skyrocket.” It couldn’t have to do with extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks (and rising), or to bailouts or perhaps advice like this offered by Michelle Obama:
“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”
Or maybe it has something to do with the influence of tough leaders like Nancy Pelosi who said Obamacare was a jobs bill because:
“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
Thank goodness we have Obamacare now so we can compete with the Chinese at photography.
Now in fairness Obama did take back the soft thing a bit:
Despite his concern, Mr. Obama said he wouldn’t trade positions with any country on Earth. “We still have the best universities, the best scientists, best workers in the world; the most dynamic economic system in the world,” he said. “We just need to bring all those things together.”
Translation: If government can just be allowed to “bring all of those things together,” then we’ll be competitive again. Because the people who want you to become a social worker or a freelance artist are exactly the people who know how to hone America’s competitive edge.
Update: Video here.
Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?
* I originally wrote he was interviewed in Orlando.
I continue to be amazed that this man has ever been called a rhetorical wizard. "This is a great country that had gotten a little soft..." Truly, his is a dizzying intellect...
Btw, full disclosure, I left the corporate world to "teach" in a for-profit venture. But I left the corporate world of crony capitalism, fraud, waste and abuse. i.e. government contracting. Michelle O. would hate me too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI know. It's hard to believe that the guy with such amazing slogans, hope, change, and yes we can, has devolved into the guy who says things like, "Stop your whinin', Stop Complaining, take off the slippers and put on your marching boots". Has there ever been a worse campaign slogan than, "stop your whinin'"? I don't think so.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think a lot of people look back on 2008 like a regretful one night stand...blinded by beer goggles.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's an interesting article over on "What's Up With That" about beetles and beer bottles, in the land down under. You might enjoy it.
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow. Ummmm.... Nope. Not gonna comment. Not gonna do it.....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd some of us are the bemused roomate, standing there laughing as they try to gnaw their arm off to escape.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wish that artist - free everything thingee been tried. It sounds so avant garde! Oh Wait! It has been tried and the giant sucking sound from the general direction of the Atlantic is the ECB begging Geithner for a hand out.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo, when everybody leaves the corporations, who pays for all the people working for the government? He doesn't seem to understand that you either create wealth our you're overhead.....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah, this post is exactly right. Kudos.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis makes me insane.
Americans are not soft. We are hindered because the crony capitalists win, while those of us who try to do it on our own are left out.
I don’t want Carnahan money ($107m) or Pelosi money ($737m). I just want a chance without government sucking all of the economic oxygen out of the room and regulating success.
Obama’s economic policies reward sloth and impede industriousness. If we are soft, it is because that is the outcome the Obama administation and Democrats seek.
This more than offensive for those of us who we work hard and play by the rules.
Disgusting and disrespectful. Obama has to go.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse...a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison? So? McCain's a crybaby for whining about being tortured, isn't he, if he and your crowd seem to think waterboarding and all the other lovelinesses of the Cheney Era weren't torture. Please that old fool irresponsibly foisted Palin upon this country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSeriously? You are conflating water boarding, which does no physical harm to the recipient with the physical abuse John McCain suffered? Broken arms, maimed shoulders so he can't even raise his arms to shoulder level. Regular beatings. Really? Seriously? You truly are that stupid? Foisted Palin? With her superb track record? Wow, you REALLY need to get out more.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRC, don't let him get to you.
Look at the post. He can't refute Jonah's point so he goes to change the topic (trying to bring up the EIT = torture meme) and his PDS is showing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Japanese were prosecuted for waterboarding in WWII. It's outlawed under the Geneva Convention, quaint as that document may be to you. Crybaby McCain seemed to have done all right for himself despite a broken arm. So it must be OK for America to have lowered itself to the level of the Viet Cong, the Imperial Japanese and other thugs from earlier times. YOU keep on upholding those values. be proud. And be doubly proud to be a supporter of a political hood ornament from Alaska.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI love the way those on the left keep repeating lies, long after they have been disproven.
The waterboarding that was done by the Japanese bares no relationship to what was done by the US. The Japanes tied a person to a board and put a funnel in either his nose or mouth and poured water directly into the victims lungs. Under the US version, a sheet is placed over the victims face and water poured over the sheet. At no time does water actaully enter the victims body.
Water boarding is not outlawed in the Geneva convention, torture is. Waterboarding, as it is practiced by the US, is not torture.
As to your characterization of Sen. McCain, he's 10 times the man you are, on your best day and his worst.
At least McCain never felt the need to lie about others to make a point. Wish I could say the same about you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah, you guys love to wrap yourselves in that Geneva Convention flag, don't you? Let's illustrate another provision you always seem to overlook...
Newkirk: The wedding dress looks like it's just about LeBeau's size.
LeBeau: Let me do it Col. With this disguise I know I can make through with the documents.
Hogan: Don't be a fool, LeBeau. Out of uniform you'll be shot as a spy!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSplashing water in someones face is torture? How about playing Christina Aguilera at high volume (okay that IS torture)? And Palin WOULD be a huge step up from the inexperienced Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama is a bigger fool for whining that he's not as popular as he used to be.
And tell your lefty friends that name-dropping Palin or Cheney or Bush isn't going to work anymore. We're wise to your pathetic little tricks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Socialists" is too polite and generous a word for these clueless children.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah,
I suppose it never occurred to President Obama that we may have gone "soft" from a competitive business angle because of the trial lawyers, environmental regulators, safety regulators and hosts of others that over the last decades have become an inevitable part of trying to do business in America? Or perhaps the unions that hobbled once great titans of American business?
If we are talking about Americans becoming "soft", I don't suppose the trial lawyers and safety regulators on the playgrounds, and the champions of "sensitivity", political correctness and "diversity" in our schools have anything to do with that? Nor the nanny state regulators who want to supervise and protect us from cradle to grave?
No, it probably never occurred to President Obama because these folks and trends are almost exclusively creatures and creations of the left. In fact, as you point out our first Community Organizer President was in fact one of them.
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