Sep 10 2009
The Magic Wand Of President Obama – Does It Work?
Alternate Title: Does The Lying Work?
I feel at times the Democrats live in a Disney movie, where everything in the kingdom is perfect, or will be if we just let the wizard do his/her thing. After last night’s speech of fantasy fiction, I wonder how much of America does as well. We shall see in the coming days with the poll numbers and the viewership ratings. I have no clue which way it will play out. (My live blogging post on the President’s Health Care speech can be found here).
The big thing I saw in many of the reactions last night was a lack of credibility. There was just too much fantasy. The two best ‘fact checkers’ I ran across where the AP and Powerline. First the AP:
President Barack Obama used only-in-Washington accounting Wednesday when he promised to overhaul the nation’s health care system without adding “one dime” to the deficit. By conventional arithmetic, Democratic plans would drive up the deficit by billions of dollars.
…
OBAMA: “Don’t pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut. … That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.”
THE FACTS: Obama and congressional Democrats want to pay for their health care plans in part by reducing Medicare payments to providers by more than $500 billion over 10 years. The cuts would largely hit hospitals and Medicare Advantage, the part of the Medicare program operated through private insurance companies.
Although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That’s particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage.
The President and the Democrats went into last night with serious credibility problems, especially with seniors. Having the AP come out with a laundry list of exaggerations and misinformation is not going to reverse their growing credibility problem. If anything, transparent attempts to BS America will further erode faith in this seriously troubled group of leaders in DC. AP lists many more issues – all related to the deficit spin.
Powerline notes so many disconnects with reality and shading the truth one wonders how long the White House spent creating this tissue of spin. This level of word crafting must have taken weeks to put together. After all, it is a pure piece of fiction. I think the worst lie was the first lie – about how those of us (80+%) with insurance will not be ‘required’ to change plans or go into government rationed health care:
assume most people noticed how, in tonight’s speech, Obama’s assurance that we will not lose our present insurance coverage has been scaled back. This was after thousands of critics pointed out that under the Democrats’ proposals, many people (more than 100 million according to some estimates) will in fact lose the insurance coverage they now have:
[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.
That’s true, of course. No one ever said it did. What the Democrats’ plan does do, however, is give employers the opportunity and, depending on pricing, the incentive to terminate their employees’ plans and dump them into the public system. And whether private insurance companies can compete with the public “option” depends on whether Obama keeps his pledge that the public program won’t be subsidized.
To me this Clintonesque half truth was the final straw, the final act which destroyed the image of Obama the visionary – verses Obama the political double speaker. President Obama used to pretend there was no chance your current insurance would be affected or taken from you. He tried last night to bait and switch us, claiming it is not required to take your coverage away from you.
He fibbed a huge fib. He spoke in Clintonese, where you have to question and follow the meaning of every word. There is no trust, just verify.
That act of trying, one more time, to sneak something by America with fancy words in a deliberate act of false impression is surely the last straw. We heard all his lofty promises on jobs and the economy. As Jim Geraghty noted the rescue is always just around the corner. Does anyone outside the pool of desperate Democrats facing elections still believe this tripe?
Our young and inexperienced President came out and claimed he turned the economy around and his overhaul of the US health care system would have no impact on people who have coverage. Those must have been the two biggest whoppers ever uttered to Americans by their President.
One of the dirty parts of your job AJ is to have to sit through vaudeville performances such as the one put on by our entertainer in chief. I have no such ability and especially could not bear to listen to bobo’s lies with the two next most incompetent Americans sitting in the background (makes me wonder who is number 4 in succession).
While I fully agree with your assessment of him as “young and inexperienced”, I feel his more important personality traits are his ignorance and arrogance which he has so ably demonstrated in not understanding how government legislation is supposed to work (I guess not fully serving your Senate term and when there not doing one damn thing explains that) and demonizing those who would challenge his divine intelligence (he went to Harvard after all).
And to have the cahones to lie about something that he either hasn’t read and thus doesn’t fully understand and expect people to believe him when he has no real world experience to speak of. And was this his plan or wasn’t it—with all the background chicanery and dealmaking the American people figured it out.
What I find interesting is the current people in power were the ones who said don’t trust anyone over 40 and now those people who were the targets and are now senior citizens are turning the tables and saying “Don’t trust the hippies”. Ah…how history repeats itself.
Obama: ‘If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out’
Joe Wilson (R-SC) returns the favor … calls out Obama
Democrats get their collective “tit in a ringer”
The problem with a young, inexperienced person that Obama is, he sought experience of the wrong people. Remember that he had all of these meetings with the best experts in their fields, such as economists?
Well, the expertise sought came from the Keynesian economists.
People should have seen through this right from the beginning.
This Joe Wilson did not need to apologize.
You need to read this at FREEREPUBLIC, THE PRESIDENT DOES NOT SPEAK THE TRUTH.
“The President’s manipulation of pre-existing conditions”
It is difficult to create credibility within a speech when you begin that speech by manipulating the facts surrounding a health insurance companies right to cancel coverage and the application of Pre-existing conditions. Last night, President Obama did both and within two minutes of the start of his speech he set the stage of a statistically inaccurate and misleading presentation of the facts surrounding health care.
The President and congressional leaders have continued to create the perception that evil health insurance companies will cancel your coverage if you have sizable claims or are suffering from ongoing health problems. Yet, the Health Insurance companies have no such right as there are federal and state laws that protect against such actions. The president last nigh used the case of an individual diagnosed with cancer who subsequently had his coverage canceled because he had previously had gall stones that he wasn’t aware of. The president unfortunately manipulated the facts surrounding the situation and failed to mention key elements of the case.
THE PIECE I MENTIONED ABOVE GOES ON TO SAY…….
It is illegal in all 50 states for any Health Insurance company to either single out an individual for a premium increase or to cancel coverage based upon claims. That is an indisputable fact. There are only two times in which a health insurance company has the right to cancel coverage: If an insured fails to pay premiums or if the insured committed fraud by failing to disclose health conditions on an application which would have otherwise led to company not issuing the policy.
Health insurance companies follow stringent underwriting standards and federal and state law allows them to access an individuals medical records to protect the company against insurance fraud. If an insurance company discovers a pre-existing condition, which would have resulted in them not originally issuing coverage, then they can cancel an individuals coverage so long as they can prove one fact. The insurance company must have evidence that the insured was aware of the health condition and knowingly failed to disclose that information. In addition, this law only applies to individual coverage, not group policies.
The mantra for the socialist party was 47 million people are without health care, now we are told it’s only 30 million. I guess in just a matter of a few months 1/3 of those who were uninsured found the insurance plan of their liking with the help from the “one”.
In all seriousness what Rep, Wilson did in the chamber was wrong, if Pres. Obama wishes to distort the truth to the American people it’s his legacy but middle America will see through his BS and the consequences for him and his party will be extreme as history has shown us before.
Just get the Dims PET Pug to sit down and shut up. He is directly responsible for giving us the Nightmare. McCain had enough dirt to possibly bury this Liar-In-Chief. It was his duty to use all his ammo to defend us.
Owl,
I completely agree with you! McCain needs either step up and help us against this Liar-In-Chief or shut up.
As I listened to the speech ,which broke very little new ground besides the song and dance avoidance of Tort Reform, all I could see was a combination of Alinski tactics and Chicago Thug Politics.
I was an example of one of the worst instances of a lack of Presidential bearing and conduct that is becoming a hallmark of this administration.
“nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”
But if you are a NEW worker just entering the work force from college or the military, you will have no choice. Not “already having” a plan, you are forced onto the public option. It is against the law for an employer to put that new worker on their private plan.