It’s Friday, November 15th, 2013…and here are the only two questions which should have been asked after Der Obafuhrer’s proposed “fix” to the Unaffordable Care Act:
(1). Under what constitutional authority can you arbitrarily change a law duly passed by Congress?!?
(2). What happens a year from now…
…let alone in 2016?!? Here’s the juice:
Oh…and so much for all the concern about those “substandard plans” foisted upon an ignorant public by “bad-apple insurers.”
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, for more on the what was perhaps the most deliberately misleading speech delivered from the White House since Clinton redefined oral sex, we turn to Guy Benson at Townhall.com:
President Obama had three goals coming into today’s press conference: First, to shift responsibility for the Obamacare fiasco onto insurers by saddling them with mid-implementation changes. Second,to quell Democratic panic on Capitol Hill. And third, to nudge the media toward turning the page on his healthcare debacle. He accomplished none of these things. Indeed, he made things worse — sinking his presidency to a new nadir…
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/11/14/recap-obamas-catastrophically-bad-press-conference-n1746709
Even Chuck Todd managed to extricate his nose from The Obamao’s hindquarters long enough to recognize this as a full-blown disaster-in-the-making:
Earth to Chuck: the Dims ALREADY VOTED ON IT!!!
As the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel notes…
Succumbing to the growing panic over his health law, the president on Thursday moved to throw his party a political lifeline. As rescue apparatuses go, it is likely to do more harm than good.
Mr. Obama took to the podium in the White House briefing room to explain that yes, some Americans may indeed now keep the health-care plans they like. Maybe. If insurers can undo three years of work in a few weeks. If state regulators can move at similar lightning speed. So long as the old plans come with new warning labels. And with the understanding that those Americans lucky enough to receive a renewal option can only keep the plans they “like” for a further year. Those giant caveats aside, the president wishes you good fortune.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304243904579198223229925250?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
Had the GOP leadership the least bit of political savvy, let alone a killer instinct, this lying hypocrite and all his minions would be toast.
Welcome to the White Bread Party! P.S. We hope we’re wrong.
Since we’re on the subject of the polar opposite of George Washington, courtesy of the WaPo via AEI, Marc Thiessen offers his thoughts on…
The intelligence Bush was given on WMDs was wrong. But Bush did not “lie.” By contrast, as I point out in my column this week, Obama’s own advisers told the Wall Street Journal that they knew Obama’s promise that Americans would be able to keep their health plans “no matter what” was untrue. But he said it anyway. Dozens of times. As recently as this past September. Obama did not misspeak. He lied.
http://www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/executive/white-house/obamas-defenders-and-presidential-lies/
In a related item, James Taranto exposes the Left’s latest attempt to redefine prevarication:
A Noble Lie?
Why ObamaCare is worse than just a case of pathological altruism.
This column has been following with amusement the various equivocations and rationalizations supporters of ObamaCare have offered to avoid acknowledging plainly that Barack Obama’s central premise–“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it”–was an out-and-out fraud. “Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that” is how a New York Times editorial put it last week. The Times’s news side seems to have settled on “incorrect promise.”
But if the Times editors are in the market for talent, they ought to find out who wrote Sunday’s editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This thing is a masterpiece:
First of all, this is a problem of the president’s own making. He did repeatedly say that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. He was three words short of the truth. All he had to add was “in most cases.” (Heaven forbid he might have told the unvarnished truth!)
It’s unlikely that this extra frankness would have hurt the political effort to sell the legislation. People understand that not everybody can be left unaffected by such a sweeping change, and Mr. Obama should have been careful not to embellish the assurance.
Was it a lie? He should have known the facts. By definition, a lie is a deliberate misstating of the truth; it is not simply something that was wrongly stated with good intentions, in this case perhaps, to make the complicated simple for public consumption. Those who believe the worst of this president will conclude that he lied; those who do not will be more charitable.
This is savory for multiple reasons. For one, adding a weaselly phrase like “in most cases” does not constitute “extra frankness”. Quite the opposite: It turns a shining promise into a foggy assurance with no clear meaning. Imagine if Obama tried that with his wedding vows:
Jeremiah Wright: Will you, Barack, take Michelle to be your wife, to love, honor and cherish, forsaking all others, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?
Obama: Yeah, most likely.
The Post-Gazette’s claim that “it is unlikely” such equivocation “would have hurt the political effort to sell the legislation” is supportable only if one assumes the enactment of ObamaCare was not the close-run thing it seemed at the time–in other words, that Harry Reid would have been able to command 60 votes and Nancy Pelosi 218 even without whatever political cover the fruadulent promise provided the Democratic members of their respective chambers. If that is true, however, then the entire “political effort to sell the legislation” was a sham: The fix was in, and Congress was prepared to act with complete disregard for public opinion.
Now for the best part: “By definition, a lie is a deliberate misstating of the truth; it is not simply something that was wrongly stated with good intentions, in this case perhaps, to make the complicated simple for public consumption.”
This is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Wall Street Journal established a week earlier that the pledge was the result of careful deliberation between “White House policy advisers” concerned about accuracy and “political aides,” who prevailed because, as the Journal paraphrased a comment from an unnamed former official, “in the midst of a hard-fought political debate, ‘if you like your plan, you can probably keep it’ isn’t a salable point.”
So this was a deliberate misstating of the truth. By raising the possibility of “good intentions,” the Post-Gazette editorialists seems to be suggesting that it was a sort of noble lie. “The furor of the supposed great lie is an embarrassment to Mr. Obama,” they concede in conclusion, “but it obscures the larger and more important truth that the Affordable Care Act remains good policy.”
That evaluation seems increasingly delusional with every passing hour, but let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that ObamaCare was a well-intended policy: that Obama pushed for it out a sincere desire to help people. That would make its failure an example of what the scholar Barbara Oakley calls pathological altruism.
That seems to us, however, to give Obama too much credit. For one thing, it takes more than altruistic motives to justify lying. Suppose one could establish that Bernie Madoff sincerely wanted to make his clients wealthier. Would that mitigate his guilt for defrauding them?
Further, good intentions are not the same as pure intentions. People often have altruistic and selfish motives for the same action. Even if we assume Obama honestly wanted to help people and made his fraudulent promise in pursuit of that goal, it would be silly to deny he also made it in pursuit of his own aggrandizement–of the approbation that comes with a “legacy” of substantial “achievement.”
Of course, that’s not working out so well for him now. Whether or not this is a case of pathological altruism, it definitely is pathological narcissism.
And most definitely perpetrated by a…
Meanwhile, looking ahead to 2016, we join Sherman and Mr. Peabody in the Wayback Machine for quick jaunt back to 2007, courtesy of Wink Martindale and Dick Morris, who reminds us truth, justice and the American way haven’t exactly been Hillary’s strong suits:
Bill Clinton Leaves Some Things Out of Hillary’s Biography
Go to www.hillaryclinton.com and check out Bill Clinton’s syrupy five minute ad for Hillary. He introduces the commercial by saying that wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary’s background. His version of her biography is about as reliable as if it appeared in Pravda!
So, I wanted to make a few corrections.
Bill says: Hillary never wanted to run for public office, but she did want to work at public service.
The facts are: When Clinton was considering not running for another term as Governor of Arkansas in 1990, Hillary said she would run if he didn’t. She and Bill even had me take two surveys to assess her chances of winning. The conclusion was that she couldn’t win because people would just see her as a seat warmer for when Bill came back licking his wounds after losing for president. So she didn’t run. Bill did and won. But there is no question she had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.
Bill says: In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.
The facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.
Bill says: Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children’s rights project for poor kids.
The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.
Bill says: Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.
The facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected governor.
Bill says: President Carter appointed Hillary to the Legal Services Board of Directors and she became its chairman.
The facts are: The appointment was in exchange for Bill’s support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy. Hillary became chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter’s choice to be chairman.
Bill says: She served on the board of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
The facts are: Yes she did. But her main board activity, not mentioned by Bill, was to sit on the Walmart board of directors, for a substantial fee. She was silent about their labor and health care practices.
Bill says: Hillary didn’t succeed at getting health care for all Americans in 1994 but she kept working at it and helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance.
The facts are: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. I helped to negotiate the deal. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals’ tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with either source of funds.
Bill says: Hillary was the face of America all over the world.
The facts are: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them
Bill says: Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children’s and women’s issues.
The facts are: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives through Alzheimer’s or other conditions. And two were routine bills to aid 9-11 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation. (Those are “substantive“?!?)
Imagine that: a Clinton…lying!
On the Lighter Side…
And with no disrespect whatsoever intended towards MLK, there’s this timely Veteran’s Day missive, courtesy of Carl Polizzi and Jim Gleaves:
Finally, courtesy of Jim Crilley and the Religion of Pieces, we close out the week with the Religion Section…
Tiny Muslim minority in Maryland fails to force holidays on everybody else
Public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland won’t close for two major Muslim holy days because attendance records show the increase in absences among all students on those days is completely negligible. The issue has been festering for several weeks now. On Tuesday, a group of Muslim families spoke at a meeting of the Montgomery County Board Of Education, reports CBS DC. They and other supporters of the calendar modification want to add Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr as official school holidays.
Eid al-Adha occurs in the fall and honors Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s command. As part of the holiday, Muslims who can afford it are expected to sacrifice their best domestic animal (cow, goat, camel, sheep, etc., depending on the region). Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan and has no set date. Both holidays change dates every year because they follow the lunar calendar of Islam.
Muslim speakers at the meeting compared Eid al-Adha — the Feast of the Sacrifice — to Yom Kippur or Christmas — two of the holiest days in the other Abrahamic religions. School board members said they approved a 2014-2015 calendar which doesn’t give students the day off for Eid al-Adha because public schools can only close for religious holidays if problems such as absenteeism would otherwise arise.
This year, Eid al-Adha occurred on Oct. 15, a school day. The district monitored student absences for several days before and after that date, according to The Gazette, a local newspaper. The absentee numbers were very low. A letter from school district superintendent Joshua P. Starr to a county councilman indicated that approximately 5.6 percent of students and five percent of teachers took Eid al-Adha off this year. On the same day of the week the previous week, just over three percent of all students and just over four percent of all teachers were absent.
As The Gazette notes, Montgomery County schools accommodate Muslim students already by prohibiting testing on Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr, and by excusing Muslim student absences. Some members of the Muslim population in Montgomery are not satisfied with this policy or the school board’s decision.
Dissatisfied Muslims?
Really? No, seriously!
In closing, here’s a video forwarded by Mike McKee which demonstrates not only mindset of Muslims, but the idealist “tolerance” of the Coexist crowd which borders on stupidity:
And if loved these guys, wait until The Dear Misleader gives Iran The Bomb!
Magoo
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