Thread: Barack Obama flops in Knox: the president’s speech was a disaster

Barack Obama flops in Knox: the president’s speech was a disaster

By Nile Gardiner US politics Last updated: July 24th, 2013
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President Obama – still in campaign mode


It’s been a rough few weeks for Barack Obama. A wave of scandals has undermined trust in the White House, and a series of major polls has hammered the president in the first year of his second term. Support for Obama has dropped to its lowest level in two years, with widespread public dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy. A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this morning showed the president’s approval level at just 45 percent, with 50 percent disapproving. 56 percent of Americans are “pessimistic” or “uncertain” in “their feelings about how the president will do during the rest of his term,” and only 17 percent of Americans surveyed are “optimistic.”
Today’s speech at Knox College, Illinois, was supposed to be the president’s come-back moment, the first of a series of addresses aimed at retaking the initiative by the White House. Instead it was a train-wreck. In an hour-long address, which seemed to last forever (and par for course started 15 minutes late), the president spoke in deeply partisan terms, often with bitterness and anger, lambasting his political opponents, dismissing criticism of his policies, and launching into his favourite theme of class warfare, attacking the wealthy and what he calls the “winner takes all economy.” In a display of extraordinary arrogance (even by his standards), he condemned what he called “an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals,” a direct reference to the Congressional investigations into the IRS and Benghazi scandals, which most Americans don’t see as phony. He also defended his increasingly unpopular Obamacare proposals, attacking what he calls “a politically-motivated misinformation campaign,” while failing to acknowledge that moderate Democrats are “steadily turning against Obamacare” as The Washington Post reported today.
This was a highly defensive speech, with President Obama in full campaign mode. There were no fresh ideas, just a tired rehash of earlier campaign rhetoric. It was also another love letter to big government, with a clarion call for yet more federal spending on environmental measures, infrastructure, manufacturing, and a laundry list of liberal pet causes. There was not a word about reducing the burden of government regulation, and getting bureaucracy off the backs of entrepreneurs. His speech promised more government spending at a time when America’s national debt is approaching a staggering $17 trillion. He rejected tax cuts, and bashed the rich, at times sounding more like Francois Hollande than the leader of the free world.
Once again, Barack Obama demonstrated why he has built an unenviable reputation as a perpetual campaigner in chief, with an overwhelmingly partisan agenda. Obama is no Ronald Reagan, who always sought to bring the country together based on the common ideals of the Founding Fathers. President Obama’s message will do nothing to reassure a sceptical American public. With unemployment still above 10 percent in 27 major US metropolitan areas, and nearly one in six Americans living on food stamps, the economic record of this administration leaves much to be desired. Today in Illinois, President Obama spoke the language of decline, promising more of the same left-wing policies that have weakened US competitiveness, eroded economic freedom, and have saddled the world’s superpower with historic levels of debt. Americans deserve better than the failed statism that has bankrupted cities like Detroit, and threatens to do the same to the rest of the country.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Big Government, economy, Knox speech, NBC/Wall Street Journal


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ni...a-train-wreck/

Obama's Speech: Forget About Individual Liberty, Focus on Collective Responsibility

07/25/13


From Breitbart:

President Barack Obama will be making a major speech on the economy at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, a site with deep historical significance.

Knox College was the location of the fifth of seven debates between Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, often known as the “Little Giant” for his small size but large influence in American politics, and Republican Abraham Lincoln.

In his 2005 speech, Obama attacked the “ownership society” and made an argument for the collective good of government action. This philosophy is opposed to the individual liberty philosophy of the Founding Fathers and of Abraham Lincoln.

Obama said that Americans must have a “sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity.

Obama was building up to the “you didn’t build that,” creed that became a key issue during the 2012 presidential campaign. This economic philosophy is fundamentally based on the principle that since individual success relies on the work of others, one owes the rest of society in [COLOR=#FF001E !important]the form[/COLOR] of high taxes.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

In essence, Obama has twisted the government “of the people, by the people, for the people” into a government that owns you.

http://www.reagancoalition.com/artic...ollective.html

Morning Bell: 3 Whoppers from Obama’s Big Economic Speech

Amy Payne
July 25, 2013 at 7:06 am
(20)

Zbigniew Bzdak/MCT/Newscom

President Obama sure was excited about his speech yesterday. He talked for more than an hour in sweeping, grandiose terms about everything that’s happened since he became President, and everything that’s still going to happen.

If only more of it were true.

Here are three major whoppers Obama tried to sell yesterday.

1. Obamacare is going great.

He’s said this before, and each time, it’s actually less true. To hear the President tell it, Obamacare is all about security, free things, and discounts.

But the daily march of Obamacare is bringing higher premiums, new taxes, and fewer choices. The Obama Administration has already delayed the employer mandate—only the latest in a string of delays and failures to implement the law.

In his speech yesterday, Obama said, “There are folks out there who are actively working to make this law fail.” Nope, the law is failing just fine on its own. And that’s why Congress should not fund it with taxpayer dollars.

2. I cut the deficit in half.

This was one of Obama’s big first-term promises, so he would like to show that he’s delivered on it. But this claim ignores the huge deficit he ran up during his first few years in office.

Congress had to pass Obamacare before we could see what was in it. Maybe Obama had to run up the deficit before he could cut it?

“Public debt doubled under his watch,” says Romina Boccia, Heritage’s Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs. “Deficits projected at $642 billion by the Congressional Budget Office for this year are ‘low’ only when compared to their trillion-dollar-plus levels over the past four years. The U.S. deficit and debt situation actually worsened since before the recession.”

3. Middle-class income is stuck in the ’70s.

The President paints himself as the savior of the middle class—and it’s the nefarious 1 percent he’s going to save us from, so he has to drive a wedge between the classes.

His claim: “The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.”

But in fact, incomes across the board have been rising. Heritage’s David Azerrad dispatches Obama’s falsehood:

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, after-tax income has risen for all Americans, albeit by very different margins, during this timeframe. For those in the middle three quintiles—i.e. the “typical families”—income has increased by almost 40 percent.

As Ron Haskins and Scott Winship of the Brookings Institutionconclude: “There is no disappearing middle class in these data; nor can household income, even at the bottom, be characterized as stagnant, let alone declining.”

American workers today are more productive and better compensated. Their problem is a lack of jobs. And for that, we have President Obama’s policies to thank.

Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/25/...onomic-speech/

Obama Casts Republicans As Deadbeats

Posted on 25 July, 2013 by Jim






Posted by Lou Dobbs Staff at 7:00 PM

Day two of President Obama’s speech tour proved to be just as partisan and scornful as his Wednesday speeches in Illinois and Missouri.

Speaking from a port warehouse in Jacksonville, Fla., President Obama scorned Republicans who might choose to use this fall’s debt and spending negotiations as an opportunity to exact cuts to the federal budget.

“Shutting down the government just because I’m for keeping it open – that’s not an economic plan,” Obama said. “Threatening that you won’t pay the bills in this country, when we’ve already racked up those bills, that’s not an economic plan – that’s just being a deadbeat.”

Obama also used his port prop as an example of why the federal government needs to increase spending on rebuilding our infrastructure.

“We need modern ports so we could move more goods made in America out to the rest of the world,” he said in his 26-minute speech.

“New super-tankers are going to start coming through the Panama Canal, which can hold three times the amount of cargo,” he said. “We want those super tankers coming here to Jacksonville.”
He added that, “If we’ve got more supertankers, that means more jobs…more contractors…more money to spend at the restaurant and that means the waitress has more money to spend on her iPod.”

However Republicans don’t appear to be intimidated by Obama’s renewed attacks on their economic policies and reluctance to give in to the president’s political wish list.

From the Senate floor on Thursday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it’s time for the president to realize the campaign season is over.

“At some point, campaign season has to end and the working-with-others season has to begin,” McConnell said. “At some point, you have to stop promising an ‘ocean of tomorrows’ and start actually working with the representatives of the people.”

However a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that the American public is losing faith in both the legislative and executive branches of government.

According to the Journal/NBC poll released earlier this week, President Obama’s job-approval rating fell to just 45%, its lowest level since late 2011. Public opinion of Congress however is even worse. 83% of those polled disapprove the job Congress is doing. That’s the highest disapproval rating ever recorded by the Journal.

http://www.loudobbs.com/b/Obama-Cast...014963943.html

http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/07/2...-as-deadbeats/