Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘carter’

Obama's malaise speech

Posted by Richard on October 27, 2011

At a fundraiser in San Francisco Tuesday evening, President Obama delivered his version of Jimmy Carter’s infamous malaise speech, blaming the American people for the mess he’s created:

We’ve lost our ambition, our — our imagination, and — and — our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam and unleashed all the potential in this country.

Joe Newby has a roundup of critical reaction from Rush Limbaugh and others. Steven Birn noted that “Limbaugh and others are missing the biggest point” — that this speech reveals Obama as the socialist he is:

It’s fascinating to watch the socialist mind in action. When he declares that Americans have lost their ambition, in his mind ambition means building bi[g] government funded projects. …

Obama has America all wrong. In his mind America is great because of large, overpriced infrastructure projects. In his mind America’s jobs and prosperity come from the government. The reality is that American prosperity comes not from government but from private individuals. It isn’t the Golden Gate bridge that was a great innovation, it was the automobile and the assembly line that were great. It isn’t the Hoover Dam that made America prosperous, it was the telegraph and telephone.

Obama’s default is government. If government isn’t spending big money on infrastructure we’ve somehow lost our ambition and our imagination. Notice those two things require the collective to act. He doesn’t praise individual innovation, only collective action. The truth is the opposite. We’re prosperous not because the government runs things but precisely the opposite. Cars, airplanes, telephones, refrigerators, freezers and most recently computers are all things that were innovated for use not by the government but by private individuals with a profit motive. Steve Jobs and Apple Computers had an IPO in the late 70′s or early 80′s where Wall Street invested $120 million in their business. Jobs died worth $7 billion. That’s innovation, that’s ambition, that’s imagination. It’s the opposite of a government funded bridge.

The Carter comparison is certainly apt, as are Birn’s comments. But I was struck by something else regarding that speech: the Obama administration is allegedly chock-full of the best and the brightest, right? So how could they be so tone-deaf and stupid? Wasn’t there even one person on the White House staff who read that speech and said, “Mr. President, you don’t want to say that — it will draw unflattering comparisons with President Carter”?

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Dissent = racism?

Posted by Richard on September 17, 2009

Jimmy Carter — America's worst president (so far), the man who helped Hugo Chavez steal an election, the vicious anti-Semite whose hateful and dishonest book about Israel has been endorsed by Osama bin Laden, the man who never met a left-wing dictator he didn't like — has declared that both Rep. Joe Wilson's heckle and the "overwhelming majority" of other criticisms of the President are rooted in racism.

And Carter is far from alone. That claim has been echoed by a growing number of Democratic politicians, Chris Matthews, ABC "News," NBC "News," Maureen Dowd, … the list is long.

So if the 55% of Americans (and 65% of doctors) who oppose government-controlled health care are overwhelmingly racist, how did a black man get elected President? If Republicans and conservatives are all racists, how is it possible that Obama got more Republican votes and conservative votes than John Kerry got? Did they only notice his skin color after the "stimulus" package, nationalization of the auto companies, massive spending increases, and attempt to take over health care?

The charge of racism has become the left's all-purpose weapon to stifle criticism and put their opponents on the defensive. But it's grown tiresome and annoying, and I think they've gone to that well once too often. According to a new Rasmussen poll, only 12% of voters agree that most opponents of government-controlled health care are racists. Even among Democrats, only 22% agree. Predictably, 88% of Republicans reject the idea, but significantly, so do 78% of those unaffiliated with either party.

I suspect the left's attempt to smear all opposition as racist will backfire. But in the meantime, it does serious harm to the public discourse in this country. They should be ashamed.

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Was the Iranian election rigged?

Posted by Richard on June 15, 2009

I must admit I'm confused. 

Everything I know about Iran suggests the election results are completely bogus. Massive demonstrations throughout the country leading up to the vote and widespread discontent over the growing domestic problems created by the government's national socialist economic policies (a major issue in the elections) make it extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that Ahm-a-doin-a-jihad received such a landslide of support.

On the other hand, if this was yet another example of a corrupt autocratic regime rigging a sham election, why wasn't Jimmy Carter there to bless the results?

UPDATE: I just learned that on Saturday, Ayatollah Khamenei attributed Ahm-a-doin-a-jihad's victory to "divine intervention." So it's pretty clear that the election was rigged — the question is by whom. 

But where the heck is Jimmy Carter?

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