By Mark Rhoads -
Yesterday I asked a very good high school English teacher about President Obama's speech in Roanoke when he said "You didn't build that." and his complaint that his words were distorted and taken out of context. It depends on what the antecedent of the word "that" was. Did "that" mean the successful business in the very same sentence or did if refer back to previous remarks Obama made about infratructure several sentences before? Recall that Obama is supposed to be some sort of articulate wonderkind who apparently is not articulate enough to avoid confusion.
I asked the teacher if the word "that" was an indefinite article and she said no, it was a pro-noun with an "unclear reference." The word "unclear" seems to accurately describe many too-cute-by-half Obama remarks that he thinks will later give him the out of plausible deniability. If you read all the Roanoke remarks, his comments were very much in context and revealed much about his view that government plays a more central role in the success of a business than individual iniative does.
Another example of deliberate fuzzy language was on display with Nancy Pelosi on Aug. 6 when she said, "Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him. It is a fact," Mitt Romney can release his tax returns and show whether he paid taxes." It is deliberately unclear if Pelosi means that it is a "fact" that Romney did not pay taxes for ten years or it is a "fact" that "someone" told this tale to Harry Reid who repeated it without revealing who is imaginary freind was.
In a perfect world, maybe Gov. Romney should have prepared last year to release several years of tax returns but then he knows whatever returns he ever releases will never be enough to satisfy the demands of the Obama team. It is now the year 2012 and President Obama has been in office about three and one-half years and he has NEVER disclosed any of his college records from Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard Law School. Obama stonewalled for several years on the release of a simple certified birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. Well what if "someone" told me that Obama almost never attended classes while he was a student at Columbia and that is a "fact?" Do I mean it is a fact that he never attended class and no fellow classmates in his own field knew who he was or do I mean it is a "fact" that someone told me that story? If he seldom attended class as an undergraduate, then how would his grades be good enough for Obama's admission to Harvard Law School? That is a good question that few reporters even ask and no one can answer as long as Obama keeps all his college transcript under seal. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, all Obama needs to do in order to clear up the matter of his college records is release them for all his undergraduate and graduate years. Do you hear the main stream media clamoring for the release of those records? No. The reason is that like in 2008, the lazy MSM sees its role as an official cheer leader for Obama and an official slander machine to punch Mitt Romney.
