Obama Speech at the site of Teddy Roosevelt Speech

[Boltfan]

Thoughts?

One of the first comments on the marketwatch website summed it up pretty concisely for most of the members of this forum. You are either in the camp who throws up at this speech or in the camp that laps it up.

Curious to see what middle ground folks will find here. Doubtful, but curious.


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oba...?siteid=YAHOOB

Article:

By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out his economic philosophy, saying that banks, businesses and government must help the middle class get back on its feet.
“This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class,” Obama said in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas.
The town, about 60 miles southwest of Kansas City, was chosen for the speech because President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a famous economic address calling for economic regulation social justice in Osawatomie in 1910, according to the White House. Read Roosevelt’s speech.




Obama blamed the financial crisis and subsequent recession on a philosophy that left everyone to fend for themselves. “We simply cannot return to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country,” he said.
The president also said there is a “deficit of trust” between Main Street and Wall Street, and that big banks must “go the extra mile” to close it. Read Obama’s full remarks.
Obama suggested that banks could do more to help struggling homeowners refinance into more affordable mortgages and give unemployed homeowners more time to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their houses.
In the same vein, America’s largest companies must realize that “their obligations don’t just end with their shareholders.”
American executives should think about bringing back workers from China and other foreign countries “not just because it’s good for business, but because it’s good for the country that made their business and their personal success possible.” he added.


The United States “has never just been about survival of the fittest. It’s been about building a nation where we’re all better off.”
Over the longer term, Obama called for a turn to high-tech manufacturing and said he would support a “rethink” of the tax system.
“We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high-tech manufacturing, or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country?” he asked. “Because we can’t afford to do both.”

Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.

Here is a link to find the original comments by President Obama. At posting time whitehouse.gov had not yet updated to include today's speech.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-r...es-and-remarks

[JONBALLS]

just more classwarfare BS from a dick

[i'va biggen]

the middle class has carried this country for years,with the higest taxes,and spending their take home pay on necessities,and frills.soon there will be only the rich and the poor.

[Jackie S]

Didn't you know that under the new Democrat Guidelines, just about anybody with a job is "rich".

[TheDaliLama]

Originally Posted by Boltfan

Thoughts?

One of the first comments on the marketwatch website summed it up pretty concisely for most of the members of this forum. You are either in the camp who throws up at this speech or in the camp that laps it up.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by Boltfan

Curious to see what middle ground folks will find here. Doubtful, but curious.

Middle ground...here? Bawhahahhaha!!!

[Boltfan]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

Middle ground...here? Bawhahahhaha!!!

I can dream can't I?

I know for sure my post won't get nearly as many hits as a Marshall or Whirlaway post as I am not here to be a cheerleader for either side and I am not here to incite. What will be the best part is some post in the near future I will be called a Republican by WE and told I am always hating on Obama.

Just thinking NOT along party lines. It is a disease.

[I B Hankering]

Obama noted that Theodore Roosevelt was called a "radical, a socialist, even a communist" for putting forth ideas in his last campaign such as an eight-hour work day, a minimum wage for women, unemployment insurance and a progressive income tax.

Left unsaid: Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign in 1912 failed to return him to the White House.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1132050.html

[Munchmasterman]

President Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out his economic philosophy, saying that banks, businesses and government must help the middle class get back on its feet.

I disagree with this statement. It was more to the tune that these 3 entities were the ones fucking the middle class. Did anyone read his entire speech?

I love the "middle ground" statement from boltfan. It rings so sincere when it follows the statement” You are either in the camp who throws up at this speech or in the camp that laps it up.”

I suppose that because I disagree with the conservative analysis of Obama's speech I can't be in the middle.

Where is the middle ground between puking and lapping again?

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by Jackie S

Didn't you know that under the new Democrat Guidelines, just about anybody with a job is "rich".

I have had a job ever since I got out of the Army in 1973. I have never been fired or laid off and the 3 times I quit or retired from a job, I left one job on a Friday and started a new job on Monday. For the past 15 years, I have lived quite comfortably and I am at the point in my life where I have very few bills.

But I have never heard of any Democrat or read "the new Democrat Guidelines" that tried to make the claim that I am "rich." Please post "the new Democrat Guidelines" that you were referring to! I would like to see if I am a "rich" Republican!

[Boltfan]

Not that it will convince you of your own ignorance or illiterate reading skills (not sure which was displayed here) munchmaster, but I shall lay out the facts for you:

#1 - I included a link to the speech for people to read the speech. It is a post to whitehouse.gov where I would think an unedited version would be archived. Yes, I read the speech and I did not post any comments of my own. Which leads me to...


#2 - The "one side or the other" was plainly noted to be a comment on the marketwatch website that a reader there posted. I reposted it because so many here are to such extremes and even made a joke with Chica Chaser about the fact that so many here are to the extremes that a request to discuss the middle ground would be lost.

#3 - Chica Chaser was right, people like YOU cannot possibly have a rational discussion about this topic because you are so blinded by your hate that you cannot comprehend when a request for logical debate is presented. Shouting "I am right" is not debate. I guess you just missed the part where I was curious if any middle ground could be found.

Originally Posted by Boltfan

Thoughts?

One of the first comments on the marketwatch website summed it up pretty concisely for most of the members of this forum. You are either in the camp who throws up at this speech or in the camp that laps it up.


Here is a link to find the original comments by President Obama. At posting time whitehouse.gov had not yet updated to include today's speech.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-r...es-and-remarks

[CuteOldGuy]

I don't hate anyone, but I kind of agree with Munch, if I read him right. The middle class is dying from all the people trying to "help" it. Leave the middle class alone, and they will do fine.

[TexTushHog]

One of my favorite speeches by Teddy Roosevelt, given 101 years ago. It could have been written for this year's Presidential campaign. Here is my favorite part.

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.....Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.

I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit.

We must drive the special interests out of politics.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done....It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.

Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/l...p?document=501

[CuteOldGuy]

Dammit, TTH, it is a great speech. It was written before the onset of Big Unions, which I suspect Teddy would have included. But either way, it was, and remains, a great speech.

[Boltfan]

Thank you TTH for your worthwhile contribution to this thread.