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Neil Cavuto had a couple of very young girls on his show on Faux Noise to punch home the meme that President Obama is un-American and doesn’t understand how businesses work or something. He asked these darling kids if they built their lemonade stand all by themselves. First they said yes, and then after a little bit, the older one admitted that her dad had helped quite a bit.
And right there Cavuto missed the whole point. He went off on a rant about how the girls had built this “business” all by themselves with no help from the government or anyone else – completely missing dear old dad. But that’s not all he missed. The dreaded guv’mint was in there as well. Let me count the ways….
One little lemonade stand. Two little girls. How much help did they have?
A sidewalk to sit the lemonade stand on. (government supplied)
A street for cars to drive by to bring customers. (governmnent supplied)
Water to make lemonade. (Probably from a municipal water source – government supplied)
Lemons. (A farmer. Some migrant workers to pick the lemon. Some government inspectors to check the lemons to make sure they aren’t contaminated with bad stuff. A truck driver to bring them to the store. A store clerk or two to put them on the shelf, check-out the purchase, etc., mom or dad to help make the lemonade)
Sugar. (A farmer to grow the sugar cane or beets, copy the whole list for the lemons again.)
Ice. Copy the water list.
Add a miner digging up ore to make metal. A factory worker building a refrigerator. Another truck driver bringing it to a store, and then to their home.
A sign. Cardboard – start with trees. Loggers cut the trees down. Truck drivers carry the trees to a sawmill or chipping operation. Workers in a paper mill. More workers in another factory making crayons or markers. Yet more workers making tape or tacks or whatever is used to hold the sign in place.
Workers making glasses to put the lemonade in.
Workers making a pitcher to put the lemonade in.
Workers making a table to sit everything on.
More workers making chairs to sit in while they wait for customers to arrive.
Yet more workers making an umbrella for shade.
Oh, I almost forgot. Money. (government supplied of course.)
But Cavuto and all the rest of the TEAGOP and Faux Noise and Mittens and the rest are absolutely correct. All the businesses out there did build their businesses all by themselves with absolutely NO HELP FROM ANYONE ELSE AT ALL!!!
Yeah. Riiiiiiight.
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And school! So they could write Fresh LEMONADE $1 on their sign and then count their dollars at the end of the day. And who did they learn how to make the lemonade from? Mom? The Internet?
Does Neil Cavuto have any idea how his show happens? Probably thinks he does it all himself.
The other thing that gripes me is that probably 80-90% of new start-up small businesses do not own the buildings they are in. They are renting or leasing space in buildings that someone else built.
So what is this crap of “I built this business all by myself”?
My daughter and I “built” a spa business. In a building someone else built. No way we could have afforded to build a building ourselves. We barely could afford to remodel the space! Did a lot of the labor ourselves, but we had loads of help from tons of really nice people. No way we could have ever gotten the doors open without them. Or had the business without our employees, our suppliers, and most importantly, our clients.
Obama’s exact quote is available on YouTube:
The word “that” in the last sentence is an anaphoric construct with a slightly ambiguous referent. But context certainly resolves that ambiguity and makes it clear that this occurrence of “that” refers to “this unbelievable American system [including its} roads and bridges.” Such constructions may be beyond the GOP’s ability to parse or (in their opinion) the American voter’s ability to parse.
It is pretty similar to Elizabeth Warren’s statement.
It’s generally felt that Obama was channeling Elizabeth Warren when he start in with that populist pitch. And, he doesn’t do it nearly as well as Warren does. That’s what got him into trouble.
CAVUTO=real numb nutz,empty vessel to spew right wing 1% garbage,whenever his button is pushed.
poor,poor America fed this lousy information on infinitum
Hey Rupert hows your BFF Rebecah doin?
bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hope your next
ad infinitum……oopsie
“Ice. Copy the water list.”
Not exactly. The water part is OK, but water doesn’t become ice by wishing. Electricity. People born in the last half of the 20th century all assume that electricity is made by private corporations, and sold on the open market, like M&Ms.
The government took the lead in bringing electricity to people’s houses. Emminent Domain acquisition of powerline right of ways, government guaranteed loans, and where no corp. could picture a profit in the offing there was (still is in Etoile, Texas) an outfit called the Rural Electrification Authority (REA) that is a government sponsored non-profit like the US Postal Service.
I expect that some of the other activities you mention would reflect a similar evolution if we looked at it historicly.
Thanks lokywoky, wigwam and msmolly. I like POTUS’s statement (and wigwam, the GOP mouthpieces know perfectly well how contextual interpretation works, they just enjoy to obscure anything Obama says.) But hey msmolly, it ain’t fair to compare him to Elizabeth Warren; she’s in a league all by herself.
historically. Damn, I knew that.
Excellent quote!