Posted on 01/11/2010 4:59:32 AM PST by IbJensen
The rulers of ancient Egypt are known by the pyramids they built. The present “ruler” of modern America will be known by the pyramid he is building, but it is not one of stone; it is a pyramid of lies … not just lies, but bald-faced lies. They are too numerous to catalog here in any comprehensive fashion, but it is a useful exercise to put some of them on display together to better communicate the character of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party that now control the Congress.
We are indeed in crisis when Mr. Obama and his Democratic followers practice leadership by lies and deception.
The health-care bill, ObamaCare, the 2,000-page plus legislative monstrosity, the “legislative train wreck,” or whatever you want to call it, is being sold by one of the greatest collection of lies in the history of American political discourse. Its final form will depend on how the Senate and House bills are melded together, but there are important conclusions that can be reached about its content and the process that led to its formulation.
From the get-go, I’ve written that Mr. Obama is one of the great frauds, phonies, four- flushers, fakers, and fibbers in history, but I must say he is even outdoing my wildest expectations. He and the people working with him tell one lie after another and keep repeating them after they’ve been carefully exposed as lies seven ways to Sunday. It should be clear there is no connection between what Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, David Axelrod, and Robert Gibbs say and what is reality. They seem to be all disciples of the great community organizer, Saul Alinsky, who wrote that the end justifies the means. Alinsky is one of the many important influences on Mr. Obama that made him what he is today along with that infamous line-up that is headed by the racist, bigot and America hater, Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright along with many others.
For a name for this catalog of Obama lies, perhaps we should use variations of Mr. Obama’s books and their titles: Lies the Chicago Corrupt Machine Taught Me to Tell, or how about The Audacity of Bald-Faced Lies.
Let’s start with one of the lies which is practically Mr. Obama’s trademark. Remember how he said a million times that he will reach across the aisle and operate on a bipartisan basis. He had a million variations of this rhetoric. For example, we are not blue states or red states but the United States.
In practice he has done the opposite. The Congressional Republicans have been shut out of the legislative process. Their bills and suggestions have been ignored. Rather than being bipartisan, Mr. Obama and his Congressional minions have been strictly partisan. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., says Mr. Obama has the most partisan administration he has seen in his over 20 years in the Senate. Mr. Obama and his team pay lip service to bipartisanship, but in practice, the Obama people are the most highly partisan operators you could find. The highly partisan Obama of his days in Illinois is exactly what we have now. What’s worse, he is so entombed in his egotism and narcissism that he is unable to handle criticism or tough questions, perhaps explaining his inability to reach across the aisle.
And what about Mr. Obama’s claim that he will head the most transparent administration in history? Everything will be done in the open. Negotiations, according to Mr. Obama’s words, will take place on C-Span for all to see what deals are made. Bills will be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before a vote. All that is pure Obama baloney and the usual Obama lies. His administration is as transparent as a 10-foot thick wall of lead. And, as the old joke goes, you can assume he’s lying whenever he moves his lips.
One health-care bill now before Congress, of which the Senate version was drafted in secret in Senator Reid’s (D-Nev.) office, there were even Democratic leaders who were kept in the dark about what went on behind those closed doors. For example, on Friday, December 17, 2009, the bill was still secret, yet it was voted on and passed on Christmas Eve. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pointed out, the vote on Christmas Eve was a deliberate attempt to act while Americans are distracted by the Christmas holidays. He adds that if the Congressional Democrats were proud of what they were doing, they wouldn’t be doing it behind closed doors and in the dead of night.
And what about the “old politics” that Mr. Obama was to do away with? Well, he did that, but instead of operating under the “old politics,” Mr. Obama initiated a new-new politics for Washington, adopting the corrupt thuggery of Chicago politics and of the corrupt Cook County political machine. To get favorable votes on ObamaCare, they bribed Senator Mary Landrieu, the Democrat of Louisiana, with a $300 million deal for her state (the so-called Louisiana purchase). More recently, they bribed Senator Ben Nelson, D-Neb., by giving his state special perpetual exemption from Medicaid financing of additional people covered by virtue of ObamaCare (the so-called Cornhusker Kickback). The list of bribes is a long one, and we’re not even sure how many are yet undiscovered. And we have reports that the Obama administration is willing to bargain away our national security for political purposes. According to these reports, the White House told Senator Nelson that if he didn’t vote for ObamaCare, the White House would attempt to close Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, the old home of the Strategic Air Command, and now a major employer in Mr. Nelson’s Nebraska. This fits into the patterns of the corrupt Chicago thug politicians.
Another example of the new-new politics came when Senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., asked for an “additional moment” to finish his remarks on the Senate floor. This kind of request, in the past, has been routinely granted. Yet, this request was rejected by Senator Al Franken, D-Minn., who was then presiding over the Senate. Still another example is the way the Democratic leadership in the Senate has just been ignoring long-standing rules, precedents, and procedures of that body. Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said this was just typical of what the Congressional Democrats are doing to jam the health-care bill down the throat of the American people.
This is not just a defect in the Senate procedure. As Senator DeMint said, “This verges on tyranny.” Mr. Obama and the Congressional Democrats are destroying our democratic institutions and procedures. Their substantive proposals and legislation are restricting our liberty and freedom, as their practices and procedures do likewise. Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid and the Democratic Party have turned the greatest deliberative body in the world into an assembly of thugs, with little regard for established procedures and precedents and the traditions of the Senate.
Another king-size lie is that your health-insurance premiums will go down under ObamaCare. This, as usual, is the exact opposite of the truth. Studies from non-partisan groups agree that premiums will go up, not down. Of course, an earlier lie that premiums will go down $2,500 is an even more outrageous lie than the latest version.
You don’t need an actuary or a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out premiums are going up under the new law. The law requires all kinds of new coverage and protection. You can’t be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. You can’t be subject to annual or lifetime limits on the amount of coverage. You will get all kinds of preventive care without out-of-pocket expenses. And they’ll be one of the over 100 regulatory bodies established by the bill that can require other provisions in coverage. They’ll be around 30 million new insureds increasing demand and, consequently, driving up insurance premiums. This has got to drive up costs, and everyone will be paying more. Contrary to another Obama lie, the cost curve is bent, but it is bent up, not down. Contrary to Mr. Obama, there is no free lunch.
Another constantly repeated lie is that you’ll be able to keep your insurance plan and your doctor if you like them. You can’t possibly make that promise stick. When you reorganize the health-delivery system and radically transform one-sixth of our economy, you can’t be sure the same doctors and insurance companies will even be players. Investor’s Business Daily published its study showing that 45 percent of doctors will quit the practice. Mr. Obama, in almost the same breath, says he’s cutting funding for Medicare Advantage, which will kill that coverage for about ten million seniors, while also saying you can keep your coverage if you like it. Mr. Obama is willing to say anything to sell ObamaCare.
Still another major lie is that the bill is deficit neutral. That’s based on an out-and-out fraud, brought about by postponing benefits for about four years, while immediately instituting new taxes and fees. Using that kind of accounting gyration, you can make anything deficit neutral for the first ten years. This is budgetary gimmickry worthy of Bernie Madoff. Another related fraud involves the Medicaid maneuver. Part of the deficit is being hidden by pushing costs onto the states, by bringing 15 million more people into Medicaid. This can virtually break some states, throw them into deficit positions and, yet, it doesn’t show up when only federal deficits are considered.
There’s also the question of rationing and death panels to determine who gets care and who doesn’t. As author Dick Morris points out in detail in his book Catastrophe, when you start covering many millions of the uninsured without providing for more doctors and other providers, there has to be a shortage of health-care delivery. This means there will have to be some form of rationing and a need for death panels to decide who gets coverage and who doesn’t. Mr. Morris also points out that rationing will flow from the Medical Review Board, which will decide on what treatments will be approved. This will mean certain expensive treatments will be denied to some patients. As we all know this is what goes on under government insurance in Britain, where certain expensive cancer drugs are not approved. This demand/supply relationship also points to another lie – that care will be more accessible to Americans. With a new shortage of health-care delivery providers, coverage will be less accessible, not more accessible. We will have what all socialized medical systems have – bureaucrats deciding what care you get and what care you don’t get. Do you want that White House crew of czars that believes in compulsory sterilization, abortion with no limitations, and the like making your medical decisions?
And, speaking of the bill coming out of the Senate – now 2,500-pages long with the “Manager’s Amendments”, remember all those promises about not raising your taxes if you make less than $250,000 a year? Well, that book-size monstrosity is loaded with new taxes, amounting to half a trillion dollars, penalties, and fees that will hit people of all income levels. These taxes are especially pernicious, as they tax essential medical products, such as the tax on medical devices, which will be passed to the final users of such equipment. Another tax applies to the so-called Cadillac of insurance plans, which many workers now have through their unions. When Senator McCain proposed taxing employer-sponsored plans, Mr. Obama attacked him during the campaign. Now Mr. Obama supports exactly the same tax previously denounced.
Of course, Mr. Obama and his team have tried to assure senior citizens that their Medicare benefits will not be cut. Yes, despite about a half a billion-dollar cut in Medicare, this, it is falsely claimed, will not impact benefits of Medicare recipients. On its face, that’s a mathematical impossibility. A related lie is that ObamaCare will save Medicare and it would be in trouble without it. It already has a huge unfunded liability and will soon run out of money. So, you fix that by whacking half a billion dollars out of its budget. And, bear in mind, there is double counting of Medicare savings, creating more deception on the bottom line.
As I pointed out in my last two columns, Mr. Obama is well on his way to destroying America, as we know it (See The Bulletin, “Wake Up Before Obama Destroys the U.S.” (Dec. 12); “Obama and His Appointees Dismantle U.S.” (Dec. 18)). We have to do everything we can to slow him down and stop him. Here’s one more suggestion. It’s time to start thinking about impeachment. The out-and-out bribery of Senators Landrieu, Nelson, and others has crossed the line and is not politics as usual but bribery pure and simple. That’s a crime and one that justifies impeachment. Americans better wake up to the Obama campaign to destroy America while there still is an America.
After my brother Mike, an orthopedic surgeon in California, read the above, he summarized it perfectly: “The biggest lie is that they passed a health-care bill when they bribed an earmark and pork barrel bill. The second lie is they are saying what it will do when they do not even know what they passed, how it will work, where it will lead or how much it will cost. Mr. Obama is not building consensus in Congress but is going against the consensus of the American public. Mr. Obama and the Democrats are giving money, tax relief and bailouts like they are campaign funds, not to benefit the American people. It is many concentric lies, one being bigger than the previous one. It is forming one big bubble.”
Then just send the Federal Marshals and remove him from the White House.
IMPECACH BUMP!
Pardon the typo. I was so excited that this article is even out here in cyberspace.
I second your motion
Impeach before State of Union speech!
Obama lied, got people to trust him, they elected him. Since he cannot truly be bi-partisan he resorts back to thug tactics.
Hell yes he should be REMOVED from office!
They’re not going to impeach him, no matter what kind of crook he is. He’s the Golden Child. You know - it’s not his fault - it’s everybody else causing the problems (ahem).
But - SHOULD he be impeached? Yes, more than Nixon and maybe even Clinton.
What’s the plural of “Impeached”?
This will come too late. Healthcare will already have been passed.
Someone needs to think of something to stop that NOW..not in a year from now.
The legislature and the executive were never intended to work in lock step, but to oppose each other and balance each other out.
When you have the pretender and the legislature working as one entity you have tyranny.
Half the MORONS who voted for ObaMarx didn’t have a frickin’ clue what they were voting for. Okay, that’s in the past, but NOW you have a president (he’s not my damn president) who is trampling all over the Constitution, which he is sworn to uphold. GET HIM OUT.
Someday there will be a list of those who support Obama and what he did to the American people. In the same way that there is a list of the people who support Polanski and what HE did. It is comparable.
You are absolutely correct. Hussein Obama was put into office by an uneducated and misinformed (or for that matter uniformed) voting electorate.
All with the assistance of a the willing accomplices in the State-run MSM.
Bump. See tagline.
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