Barack Obama: Welfare sugar daddy

This is one of the many reason why I'm voting straight Democratic this time around. Sometimes you win by losing. The GOP needs a serious revamping from the bottom to the top. It is time to cut our losses and rebuild the party for 2010.

Rod: "But honestly, how else can you interpret this ad except as a pretty naked appeal to racial resentment?"

Et tu, Rod? Re: your comment, it is something I might expect from Jonathan Alter ... or Rachel Maddow ... or Howard Dean. But from Rod Dreher?

Earlier today I read Ross Douthat's take on the false charge of racism directed at the McCain campaign -- and specifically against this ad. Douthat is right and Dreher is wrong.

As a white dude that has one foot firmly in black culture, I can confidently tell you that black people don't say "everbody" but "errybody". It was a typo.

Welcome to today's Republican Party, which makes me feel like I stepped in something soft and disgusting whenever I encounter it. I have already mailed in my absentee vote for Obama.

Rod: "[H]e [Ross Douthat] said that it [the ad] did lend plausibility to the otherwise silly charges of race baiting."

OK, that point is well taken. But "lend plausibility" is a very, very, very far cry from the assertion that you made in your post above. We want the Republican Party and conservatives to be above reproach and so I appreciate your insistence on high standards. But as for your criticism of this ad as being racist, it doesn't hold water.

Your assertion is a stretch, especially about the sloppy spelling of "everybody." If anything, THAT suggests that the folks who produced this ad just rushed this thing out ... and are working at breakneck speed (with little sleep) at the end of a long, brutal campaign.

Okay, I missed the white sheets and jackboots in the ad.

I had to watch it three times to see "everbody".

Is THAT supposed to be the race card?

Gimme a break.

I aks you, you never made a typo?

Or are we to conclude that only white fo'k pay taxes?

What gives?

Rod, I'm hardly a McCain fan, but I think you're reading too much into the ad. It's inaccurate, but it's not racist. Those who would percieve to be would be (1) pundits and (2) those who happen to hold some preconceptions about who receives welfare and who pays taxes along racial lines.

With spell check we seldom have typos, but on occasion one will get off our desks. When they do our post supervisor, assistant editor or editor usually catch them in the edit, or our post coordinator catches it in titling, or our director or agency representative catch it in their rough cuts, or the machine room engineer or qc engineer catch it as they make and check our master, or the executive producers catch it as they screen their viewing copies, or our broadcasters catch it as they check it before they air it.

These things are watched frame-by-frame dozens of times before you ever see them.

Either this ad is the result of incompetence or it is a producer's choice. That choice can only be defended by the positive it brings to the ad, in this case a white guy's play on eubonics.

One other possibility just came to me, the producer could have argued that the intended audience would never notice the error so it wasn't worth fixing. That would make it malpractice, not incompetence.

The level of ridiculousness increases exponentially as the campaign approaches. Absolute insanity will reign for the next 4 days.

I agree with Reaganite and the others who say, "It's a typo" and the ad's not racist. I live in South Carolina, and the only people I ever hear using the pronunciation "everbody" are rural, uneducated, WHITE folks. If there's any strategy being employed here, I'd say it's aimed at them, not blacks. So maybe you can accuse the McCain campaign of class warfare, but not racism. (Personally, I'd go with incompetence!)

David J. White writes: "What really gets me about all these working class people who resent "redistribution" is that, for the most part, they are going to be the ones BENEFITTING from "redistribution". I mean, when the government collects tax money and uses it to build roads and bridges and schools that benefit the whole community -- guess what? That's redistribution!"

David, it is possible to know you'll benefit from something an still oppose it... on principle. My experience with working class white people is that they have a lot of pride and do a lot of "standing on principle." There was a time in this country when most of us agreed that the government had a responsibility to do a few specific things, and that we should be taxed for those – things like roads, schools, national defense, etc. – but that taxing high wage earners for the express purpose of sending a check to low wage earners (or "redistributing the wealth") was not some place we wanted to go. We called it socialism, and we believed it was an overstepping of the government's role... that it saps initiative, breeds lifelong dependency on the state, punishes excellence, rewards mediocrity, and chips away at freedom. Some of us still believe that, and yet, in this current environment, we're treated like "crazies" or racists or people who just don't "get it"... even by people like Rod.

And by the way... I'm an educated white person and a small business owner. I will benefit from Obama's tax plan.

Obama won't answer questions about his tax plan. The threshhold has dropped variously from $300K to $150K, and he won't be firm if that's joint or single filers. He has said 95% of Americans will get a tax cut, but 35% of Americans pay no tax at all. That means he's going to take money from some 65% of the population who pay taxes and simply give it in a check to the nontaxpaying 35%, many of whom do not work, and are already supported by various government programs that do nothing but encourage more poverty and government dependence like welfare, WIC, food stamps, EITC, Section 8 and public housing, Medicare,etc. And Obama wants to expand those programs dramatically and extend them to illegals. Yeah, gimme that!

Crazy us working class Americans-we've seen the War of Poverty was idiocy we were forced to fund. We've paid for 40+ years of moronic spending on social programs that do not work and do nothing to foster any real underclass advancement.In fact these programs spawned more resentment and entitlement,the likes of ACORN, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Plus all that great rap music, black studies and ebonic fun knocking The Man, Whitey , The Cops and Acting White. Yes, Obamamessiah, sign us up for MORE OF THAT on OUR DIME.

So this is it? Even here, anyone who speaks ill of The One will be called a racist. Just great. Words without profanity fail me here.

Pray to God you never get sick as I did.After 25 years in business and with 5 employees depending on me,I was diagnosised with kidney cancer.Oh! By the way there were 3 blacks and 3 whites in my staff if it makes a difference to any of you.After being forced to close my business,I lived on my savings for 2 years hoping to be cured.Now 4 years later I'm waiting for another operation am on disability and yes I get food stamps.So you blessed ones who can continue to work thank your lucky stars.Some just have no choice in the matter !!! It's in Gods hands.

MargaretE: "They don't like the idea of being taken care of by the government any more than they like "taking charity." It goes against every fiber of who they are. Honestly, I think this a cultural thing, and the elites, as well meaning as they may be, just don't get it."

Andrew: "I'm waiting for another operation am on disability and yes I get food stamps.So you blessed ones who can continue to work thank your lucky stars.Some just have no choice in the matter"

And those "no government assistance" working class people also just don't get it. If one of their family members comes down with a catastrophic illness, or serious mental illness, or suffers a disabling accident, if a special needs child with autism or Down syndrome or cerebral palsy is born in their family, if a parent or grandparent or spouse needs nursing home care, they will most likely have no choice but to accept government help, and will be glad to do so. That's what a safety net is for.

I wish and pray Andrew gets well.

So now socialized medicine will be the great panacea of all our health care problems. Yes, the same government that's managed the mortgage industry into a ditch will now run a wonderful health care bureaucracy. SURE!Get ready to get put on a list to get that cancer operation, as my wife's aunt in Liverpool found out. If the cancer is really advanced, good luck. May be as in Ireland, we'll soon have churches and charities sponsoring clinics and test facilities, because the government-run ones are slow, inefficient and simply bad at what they do. And I suppose that the rampant fraud in state medicare programs as in New York will magically dissappear when the governement is headed by The One, who so far has run nothing as big as his mouth.

Yes, we do have a health care crisis. It's about poor, poorly-educated and illegal immigrants using the local ER instead of proper nutrition, exercise, preventive care, and a regular physician. There are indeed problems with insurance companies. But the idea that socializing the health care system is going to solve evrything has been disproven in Europe, Massachussets and Hawaii. All the sob stories in the world aren't going to make socializing medicine better medicine.

I see nothing wrong with this ad. It is absolutely true and it makes me sick. This is not the America I know and I fear we tread down a path that will change this country forever. The self-reliance, individualism, Horatio Alger, "pick yourselves up by the bootstraps" way of thinking is not valued anymore. At least, not by Washington elites who are so out of touch with rural and middle America it's pathetic. Who in the h*** are they to take my money and give it to poor people? I work d*** hard for my money and if I want to share it with those in need, that is my prerogative. Maybe if there were less welfare hand-outs, more people would be motivated to get up and work.

On a personal note, to help explain how my life experience has shaped my opinions, I used to be pretty liberal. I attended a liberal arts college and was taught by very left-leaning professors. After college, once married with 2 children and pregnant again, my husband lost his job and we were broke. Over the last eight years, we have qualified for every welfare program there is and have refused them all. We have worked two or three jobs a piece, juggling as needed to avoid utilizing daycare. We remained committed to homeschooling the kids, (now numbering four), and have worked odd hours to accomodate that, sometimes going for days without seeing each other except in passing. We own our very modest home, still have excellent credit, and never take vacations. We are probably still considered "needy" based on poverty guidelines, but we choose to work very hard instead of taking the hand-outs. While in college, I never expected that this would be my life. But things are what you make of them.

So forgive me if I have no patience or sympathy for people who won't get off their butts and work. And forgive me if I don't want to give my hard-earned money to those people.

Disclaimer: I am talking here about chronic welfare cases - generations of families mooching off the rest of us. Those people who cannot work because of health or other issues are not a part of this rant. Lord knows we are one serious illness away from losing everything ourselves.

"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: Whose?"

-- Donald Robert Perry Marquis

Registered Republican four years ago (but didn't vote for Bush) because I was tired of the Democrats, and wanted to try on for size the party to which my father belonged for most of his life.

The Republican Party, and John McCain's, tactics in this election have made me so ill that I am changing my registration to independent after this election. Never again, until the Party decides to stop this demagoguery. I don't like demagogues like Reverend Wright, and I don't like demagogues on the Right, either.

I would not hesitate to listen to John McCain talk about his experiences as a P.O.W. but with all due respect, I have a really a hard time taking “pulling yourself up by your bootstrap lessons” from a political party headed by a man who was a third generation legacy admission to Annapolis, who married a woman who’s fortune was inherited, a man who has been on tax payer/publicly financed health care for virtually all of his adult life even if it’s deserved.

Rob G wrote: "This is why I don't believe welfare recipients should have the ballot. "

Would you support applying that on a state-by-state level as well?

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1397.html

If not, how would you justify it on an individual level?

Giving poor people the vote is cheaper than giving them anything else. Especially when so many of them vote against the government's giving them anything else (whether or not they regret it afterwards).

Well, Rob G, I will support your idea of yanking welfare recipients off the voter roles if it also includes yanking social security and medicare recipients off the roles.

" 'Average federal receipts during the Bush years have been 18% of GDP vs. 19% during the Clinton years. Average federal outlays? 19.9% under Clinton and…19.8% under Bush.'

Which only goes to show that Bush was no conservative, as some of us have been saying for quite awhile."

O.K., how about this one then? Average federal outlays were 22.1% of GDP during Reagan's second term. Was Reagan not a conservative, too?

One of my points is that the entire smaller-government meme on which the conservative momement has based the last 28 years of its sales pitch has not amounted to much of anything, in practice, except borrowing money in order to reduce the tax rate on those in the higher brackets. The government hasn't gotten smaller and won't get smaller without major changes to the programs targeted at our older citizens. Welfare is a miniscule target by comparison.

Until someone is willing to touch that one, we either raise taxes or continue to mortgage the accumulated wealth and hard assets of the nation by borrowing abroad to keep going. Which does everyone prefer?

I have never noticed "everbody" as an ethnic pronunciation of "everybody".

The ad has "everybody" in the caption for Obama's line, then the typoed "everbody". The announcer distinctly says ever***Y***body while the typo is on the screen. If they were trying to send a message to the rednecks, you would think they would make it more obvious.

There are other very reasonable explanations for the typo. Maybe it was a rush job. Maybe this is just more proof that our educational system is failing. Or maybe the ad was worked on by someone who pronounces the word "everbody".

Finally, Rod, your comment contains a racial slur and racism accusation which IMHO does not even meet your own rules of conduct. It is inappropriate.

I don't see that the ad is racist.
But once again I have to say that there is very little difference between the parties. Both sides are fully owned by big business. If you dig into it, and follow the money, you will surely come to the same conclusion that I have. (Unless you are a weak minded partisan and you are intellectually bankrupt/brainwashed)

ALL of them should be thrown out on their asses. They SUCK. Their stupidity and greed has destroyed a once great country. I'm not sure that we will ever recover.