“I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” a woman told President Obama at a town hall.
“My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?,” she added.
H/T – This comment by Old Trooper was just simply too good to leave buried deep in the Weekly Open Thread.
It’s heartening to see SOMEONE in the black community who understands Obama is taking this country in the wrong direction. This is real truth to power and not the pseudo truth to power the MSN floated during the Bush administration.
I’m sorry. I could not bring myself to listen to doofus’s reply. I sincerely hope he did not convince this woman of the rightness of his policies.
The entire town hall meeting is well worth watching. This was far from the most difficult question put to the President and far from his most detailed answer. In general, his comments were well received and frequently applauded.
The New York times will be posting the 1 hour video here, later today:
Of course he was well received Greg, do you honestly believe that this was an audience choosen on neutral gounds?? Do you honestly believe that the questions where not well vetted and the answers prepared and pre-determined. No wonder you march to whatever this guy says. You have the IQ of a plant!!
@Common Sense, #4:
Those carrying megaphones and Tea Party signs were likely denied admission. Otherwise the audience looked to me pretty much like a cross section of middle America. The questions weren’t slow pitches. The answers weren’t evasions.
I have to wonder if this lady will get the ”Joe the Plumber” treatment.
You all remember, right?
The Dispatch.
The Dispatch
One the day after the debate where Joe the Plumber came up, ABC News said this:
Just think what Obama can do to the lady in the video if he so desires.
@ Greg, I did not see any SEIU T-Shirts or New Black Panther Party thugs carrying night sticks or wearing combat boots either but you know that the attendees were screened like all of the gatherings that POTUS does. No gals wearing Burkas either. Not exactly a fair cross section.
No Bikers or Goth Chicks. No ten gallon hats, Homeless or Military either. Wow!
Nope, it was not exactly a cross section.
The expression on Obama’s face is priceless; he has that sly smile on his face but you can bet behind the smile is a “Who the hell allowed this woman to ask me a question” and a mental note to can the guy taking the questions.
As to Hillary running, yeah, I think she will. But remember she was also a fan of Saul Alinsky, writing her senior thesis on Alinsky, and remaining friends with him until the day he died. Hillary is simply more stealth in her support for socialism and not as blatant as Obama, but she is a socialist just the same. I find it amazing that those that support socialism are always the ones who are so rich that it would not affect them.
Our elected officials were never meant to be career politicians. George Washington knew that when, although he was begged to stay, he served only two terms. Benjamin Franklin even suggested that those elected to Congress not be paid, thinking that a salary would cause them to serve for all the wrong reasons.
It is time to elected those who want to serve for all the wrong reasons, not because it allows them to have four rent controlled apartments and tony beach properties, not because they can amass a fortune that becomes greater with each year in office. But because they believe in our Consitution and understand what it means.
@ retire05, #8:
In general, I admire politicians to about the same degree that I admire divorce and personal injury lawyers. I’m not sure, though, that the government of a country as complex as the United States can be effectively administered by an ever-changing assortment of temporarily empowered amateurs. We wouldn’t even be able to hold the periodic threat of voting the bums out over their heads.
Looks like the old Reverend Wright was right. The chickens are coming home to Roost! Tough questions, no answers.
Sounded like the questioner had a better command of her comment, than the receipient did with his answer. What a smuck.
Me, I’ll take the Ducati.
Plant.
It appeared that one was a public service worker and one aspired to be a public service worker. While the lawyer lamented the lack of a future high-paying job, neither seemed to be aware that Obama’s plans for the country include skyrocketing electricity rates and de-development.
Great, Now He’s the Rewarder-in-Chief
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/09/21/22865/
posted at 1:30 pm on September 21, 2010 by J.E. Dyer
In the frenzy over the townhall questioner’s question yesterday – “Are hot dogs and beans my new reality?” – Obama’s response has been widely missed. Yes, the response was dismissive and lame, discursive and yet virtually content-free. But it contained a brief and perfect encapsulation of his philosophy of government, which is the philosophy of government toward which the political left spent the last century trending. Video is here.
And this is the money passage:
The life you describe, one of responsibility, looking after your family, contributing back to your community – that’s what we want to reward.
I was driving and heard this on the radio – the clip was played endlessly yesterday – and my immediate thought was, “Who’s ‘we,’ keemosabe, and who died and made you God?”
The idea of a winning style of life being selected for us by a central authority – and being encouraged by “reward” – is a central tenet of Western leftism. Back when I was in college, during the Cold War, campus leftists always assured us that when we implemented this kind of authority, it would be about rewards and voluntarism, as opposed to the unfortunate practice in all existing Communist countries of making it about coercion and punishment. (They always had to be brought up short by a questioner about the “excesses” of Communist zealotry, because they never pointed it out themselves.) Obama – a close contemporary of mine in age – no doubt heard the same things from campus leftists.
But this is a collectivist idea, period. It cannot be rationalized in any political system in which individual freedom is the priority. It’s antithetical to the American political idea of limited, constitutional, republican government. Government anointing itself to set a schedule of lifestyle rewards for the people is government conceiving itself to be far too big, too intrusive, and too much aligned with a collectivist ideology.
Government does have proper functions, but as a servant of the people and with a limited charter. There is literally no one of us with the competence to prescribe how others should live and then supervise them, with the power of the state behind us, in that project. Government is just other people, whom we have handed a gun and authorized – for a very limited set of purposes – to point it at our heads.
The truth is, moreover, that government can achieve an effect only through one or more of the following: punishment, taxation, purchase, and favoritism. Government can’t work through lifestyle reward; it can only enforce conditions that allow the natural rewards of positive lifestyles to accrue to the people unhindered. This truth is why the Communist proposition always – always – degenerates into punishment for nearly everyone and favoritism for a few. It’s because those are the tools government has. Government doesn’t have inspiration, hope, or the synergy of innovation and market dynamics in its toolbox; and it can’t make the rest of humanity reward each of us, on an artificial basis, as humanity is naturally inclined to reward us if we live in certain, well-established and positive ways.
Government actively gets in the way of reward by trying to design it or fine-tune it – because government’s only tools for carrying that program out are punishment, taxation, and favoritism (with purchase thrown in under the favoritism heading, as when government creates new dependencies by subsidizing or buying the products of uneconomic industries). The more things government is doing, the more punishment, taxation, favoritism, and purchase (at taxpayer expense) are going on. Government literally cannot work through other means, because it’s government.
So when Obama talks about the behavior “we want to reward,” think managerial government on the European model – but think also of Lenin and Stalin, of Castro, and of Mao. If you didn’t learn about their use of punishment and favoritism in school, think about the lifestyle autocrats you did learn about. When Obama says he wants to reward the people for behavior, he’s speaking like Oliver Cromwell, or like a European monarch of the Middle Ages with sumptuary laws and courts of religious inquiry, or like a Roman emperor offering to reward peoples who were willing to subject themselves to Rome with citizenship, administrative subordination, Roman troops on their soil, and Roman control of their trade.
In referring to government choosing the behavior it wants to reward, Obama is merely aligned with one of the perennial patterns of humanity. Today’s leftists have slapped a different label on it, but it’s the same old urge to autocracy. America’s very essence is the proposition that government need not and should not be autocratic: that the people have not just the right but the authority to tell government, “Do this for me; but that’s too much.” Of course we can say that to government.
After all, as a well-known president used to say, we’re Americans.
Hugh Hewitt:
I think this lady has a lot of nerve to get on television and tell us that she has two children in private school and now she is eating hot dogs and beans. I can’t afford to put my child in private school and I don’t eat hot dogs and beans unless I want some. I say, take the children out of private school and you will be able to eat like the rest of us. And, she have additional money in her pocket.