Here's a interesting and funny collection of lolcat-style pictures via Jeremy Lott. At the end of the piece, Lott writes "The only thing I did not see was an anti-Obama lolcat, but the day is young!"
Your wish is my command-
However, I'm not sure if the president deserves quite the beating-up he's been getting. Let's revisit his ill-phrased speech. Speaking of black cats, he gave this bad boy on Friday, July 13th.
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. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
Had the president added "on your own" to "You didn't build that" he would be on solid ground. A certain amount of infrastructure is needed to make things go; I recall a cartoon where a Tea Partier was hitting one pothole too many and a pro-gas-tax wag is on the sidewalk saying "Thumped enough already?"
Also, there are stakeholders like customers and suppliers and employees that factor in; his gal at Foggy Bottom might even say that it takes a village to grow a business.
However, the sound bite is out there, just like Romney's "I like being able to fire people" line from earlier in the year. He was making a valid point of being able to get rid of suppliers who didn't do their jobs well, but the out-of-context sound bite played into the Outsorcerer meme. It took Romney a while to live that down this winter and Obama will take a while to live this faux pas down as well.
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