Posted on 07/23/2009 8:50:05 AM PDT by yoe
There was an overwhelmingly fictional quality fo President Obama's (press conference) ast night from his opening remarks on. Promoting his notional health care reform plan, whatever it is, he endlessly asserts a set of talking points that would be demonstrably false if we had the text of a plan to check it against, such as the House's thousand-page monstrosity.
When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a tell-tale sign. He prefaces it with "let me be clear" or "understand this." Last night he achieved such "clarity" twice in his opening remarks. First:
[L]et me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we don't act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day.
Translation: My plan -- whatever it is -- will of course add markedly to the record spending and related deficits we are already racking up, not to mention the tax burden that the federal government will impose on the economy.
Next:
[L]et me be clear: This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day and the stories I hear at town hall meetings.
Translation: This is all about me. I seek to make my mark as the Democratic president who achieved the socialist scheme previous Democratic presidents have only dreamed of. I mean to put them in my shadow.
In his (Ethics),Spinoza sought to prove his philosophy through the use of the method Euclid applied to his geometric theorems. (The original title of the Ethics is Ethics Demonstrated In Geometric Order.) By the same token, one could apply the method to disprove the veracity of Obama's endlessly repeated talking points regarding his notional plan.
Vastly enlarging the federal health care entitlement is necessary to get the budget under control. It will be done without increasing budget deficits through taxes on "the rich." And if you like your health care insurance, you will be able to keep it (this despite the incentives created for employers to dump their employees into the federal "health care exchange"). It will decrease the cost and increase the quality of health care. Two-thirds of the expense of the program will be covered by funds "reallocated" from elsewhere. Of all the goods that it is possible for such a plan to do, there is no good it will leave undone. The fictional quality of Obama's talking points is akin to that of a fairy tale for children.
Children, consider the question brought up by the left blogger in the telephone conference call with President Obama noted here by the Heritage Foundation blog. Investor's Business Daily has made the case that the House health reform bill will essentially outlaw the private insurance market, and earlier this week it (restated its argument). It is at the least highly plausible, sufficiently so that the lefty blogger wanted the president's reassurance on the point. The lefty blogger asked Obama, is this true?
Obama responded: "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about." Yet later in the call Obama reiterates his usual talking point: "If you have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it. Period."
As Spinoza might put it, any relationship between Obama's health care talking points and the truth is purely accidental. The talking points that Obama endlessly yammers are poll-tested attributes of a plan that the public would support. They do not subsist in any Democratic plan being written in Congress or that will be supported by Obama.
UPDATE (link corrected): Grace-Marie Turner makes related points in the New York Post column
his questionable approach springs from a complete lack of conscience
The lie is the weapon used most often by the criminal.
..doesn’t have any....
” When he is about to unleash a whopper of special magnitude, Obama emits a tell-tale sign. “
His lips start moving.....
The Obama presser went exactly as I anticipated.
He was off his game and seemed logically incoherent. He rambled, telling one obvious whopper after another. He promised to give us the sun, moon and stars and avoided talking about how to pay for it. He admitted he didn’t know what the House and Senate were actually cooking up but promised that all we had to do was trust him one more time and he would take care of us somehow.
He did NOT come off as at all reassuring. Especially not to his REAL audience—the wavering dem congresscritters.
Black Nationalism with a pretty face. What do you think Rev Wright was teaching for the 20 years Obama sat there in the church listening to the sermons “White man’s greed runs a world in need”?? Isn’t that the kernel of all that has to be ‘put right’?
What Obama says is a flat out lie. All you have to do is go through some of the bill.
Obama repeats the lies over and over as though they are a fact.
They clearly are not.
The stupidity of liberals never fails to astound me. They can’t concede that Obama is a miserable failure so they blindly support his ideas hoping that they can get one positive point to justify their support. And now Obamacare. They rally under the idea of “free healthcare” completely unaware that ‘nothing is free’ and ‘anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.’ The idea that they can get healthcare without paying for it is so profoundly stupid I wonder how liberals got the mental capacity to get out of bed, go out, and vote in the numbers they did.
November of 2010 seems so far away...
Yes to all those things. And, to add insult to injury, he was even more boring than usual. He reminded me of a salesman trying to sell a product he didn't particularly believe in, or even understand.
I wasn't entirely convinced that health-care "reform" was going to die this summer. But, after that performance, I'm fairly confident that Obama just killed whatever chance it had. For that, we should all be grateful. Maybe a standing Wednesday-night Obama presser is exactly what this country needs.
He also frequently peppers his speaking with, "As I have said before.." or "As I have always said..." as if by virtue of the mere fact that he is repeating himself, the words he utters are the unvarnished truth. It is an excerise in false authority.
His rhetoric is so full of these kinds of 'setups' that I cannot imagine him gettng better than a 'C' from a college speech professor. It has always puzzled me why he is lauded as such a great speaker. That is demonstrably not true to anyone who actually listens to him for content.
It is surreal to see the United States of America come to the point it has with this wicked man and party having taken over and destroy everything and bring on their totalitarian ways with their press accomplices. It is proven that Joseph McCarthy was right and people are going to come around, as they are trending towards now, to know they have unleashed these demons and what they have done to our country.
He has no ethics.
He's not a great speaker. He's an adequate "speech reader". But, as an extemporaneous speaker, he's damn-near miserable making it obvious why he didn't attempt to make it as a trial lawyer. He didn't pursue "community activism" because of his benevolent, magnanimous heart. He chose that path because he thought he'd starve as a practicing attorney. He was right.
Obama is saying 14.000 people are going to lose their jobs every day. Wonder why? /s
A pig in a poke? Reminds me of something from Back in the Day...
Tom Tom the Piper’s Son, stole a pig and away he... oops!
Fed: Whadda ya got in the bag?
Tom: It’s sort of a pig.
Fed: You got a permit to pack a pig?
Tom: Well, no, I, uh...
Fed: Better come along with us. You know it’s a felony to pack a pig over state
lines?
Tom: No!
Fed: Pig-napping.
Tom: But it’s a pig in the poem.
Fed: Bought a pig in a poke, huh?
Tom: Not poke, ‘poem’... pig in the ‘poem.’
Fed: Pig poem?
Tom: Not so big, it’s about...
Fed: You making fun of the way we talk?
Tom: No! But it’s catching!
Fed: Name?
Tom: I’m Tom Tom the Piper’s Son.
Fed: Alright, Piperson, what were you going to do with the pig?
Tom: Well, the poem, it says ‘the pig was eat’, but...
Fed: Gonna eat it, huh?
Tom: No...
Fed: On a platter?
Tom: No!
Fed: Apple in its mouth? Like that?
Tom: Certainly not!
Fed: Alright, Piperson, you can go. But don’t leave town.
Tom: Thanks, can I have my pig back?
Fed: No. Evidence.
In 1964 under LBJ - when there were 2 Democrats for every 1 Republican, He decided that medicare would become the focus of his administration.
They came up with a plan that was 100% self funded by payroll taxes and health care premimums it was called “ElderCare.” It isn’t going to cost the tax payer anything other than the payroll deduction is the way they sold it. It will stay self funded by adjusting the payroll tax and the premimums they crowed.
In committee when asking the Social Security Actuarian to use the same math model and applying it as if medicare had started in 1959 and work forward to the present day, if they would have achieved the success of it being self funded. The actuarian said he would have to work that out.
A week later the Actuarian came back and said that no - it would not have met the criteria it would right now be underfunded by at least 50% and in some estimations up to 100%.
So when a Democrat tells you it is going to create Jobs, Jobs,Jobs,Jobs or it will not increase the deficit you better plan on an increase of 80% and a loss of jobs.
However this President thinking he and God have at least one thing in common - (No birth certificate) and perform miracles, and in any case he can send out his Chicago thugs and Acorn to shut the opposition up and use black mail to shut the politicians up, is bold enough to Lie to the American people without even a blink of his teleprompter eye. Then come out a few days later and say something totally opposite but since he says it so smoothly people don’t even care.
He reminds me of a magician I once saw at a carnival(not the cream of the crop) who talked to the audience about himself so that they wouldn’t notice what he was doing with his hands. He was very clever at it and had you looking around the room instead of at him - one thing wrong, in just three sentences he went from being 40 to 55 in two different sentences and born in Chicago to born in New York. They were close enough together that most people caught him at it.
In the end, Those that followed his directions as he spoke thought he was a good magician that lied, and others who alternated between his hands and his directions thought he was a lousy magician but basically honest.
The few that kept their eyes on his hands and listened to his words thought he was a lousy liar and an even lousier magician.
Obama is counting on the fact that Americans can’t watch his hands and listen to his words at the same time so he can alternate between lying and picking our pockets without provoking a firestorm of rage from a majority of people.
I think it’s a mistake to state that leftists in general don’t have “ethics” or “values”.
They just don’t have values that they can honestly reveal.
When you have to constantly cover up what you truly believe, you’re going to appear to be stumbling about and unable to think clearly.
Excellent points.
RE: “That is demonstrably not true to anyone who actually listens to him for content.” ABSOLUTLEY. Since last summer I get ill at the sight or sound of that SOB!!!
He was a lousy writer also, his books are not written by him, apparently there is some good reasons to think Bill Ayers had a hand in............
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