For starters, let's take another quick look at Joe Wilson, the guy who accurately accused Obama of lying during the big hoo-rah speech last week. Though the media and the Left soundly condemned Wilson -- and the House is considering officially censuring him -- the White House has grudgingly admitted Wilson was, in fact, exactly correct:
The controversy over Republican Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouting out “You Lie!” at the President over his claim that illegal immigrants wouldn’t benefit from health-care reform apparently sparked some reconsideration of the relevant language. “We really thought we’d resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President’s speech last night we wanted to go back and drill down again,” said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats in the talks after a meeting Thursday morning. Baucus later that afternoon said the group would put in a proof of citizenship requirement to participate in the new health exchange — a move likely to inflame the left.MSNBC puts it this way:
The question, as we all know, arises from the Wilson "You lie" outburst, and the core claim that notwithstanding specific bill language barring illegal immigrants from participating in the "exchange," as a practical matter, there is no way of verifying the citizenship of applicants -- which is the current state of play. Republicans say that then means illegal immigrants would end up being enrolled in plans -- bill language or no bill language.First of all, what editor at MSNBC was asleep on the job and let some real reporting slip through? He should be fired. More importantly, doesn't this mean that Obama should actually apologize to Wilson for demonizing him...? I mean, the situation we have here is basically that the White House is now fixing a loophole that they said didn't exist in the first place! How much more 1984 can we get??
Today, for the first time as far as we know, the administration is backing a provision that would require proof of citizenship before someone could enroll in a plan selected on the exchange.
Here, the administration also concedes that hospitals would be compensated with public funds for the care of undocumented immigrants.
Gateway Pundit helpfully adds that the cost of health care for illegal aliens in California is already over $1 billion annually. Can you imagine what it'll cost to throw in every illegal alien in the country? Remember, you will be paying that bill!
Interestingly, there is a second provision that deserves some scrutiny. Remember Sarah Palin's death panels? Here's what Obama had to say on that:
A lie, huh? If that's true, then why are some Democrats now fighting hard to keep that non-existent provision in the bill?? Again, this is like 1984 in real life.
Possibly completing the trifecta is this new mention of banning abortion:
Again...wasn't this strictly prohibited already? If so, why is it being done again? 1984 anyone?Here’s an exchange from ABC’s “This Week,” between Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and host George Stephanopoulos.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Sebelius, what’s wrong with that, making it explicit in the bill that no public funding should go toward abortions?
SEBELIUS: Well, I think that’s what the president intends to do.
Obama likes to say that health care reform is about the people, not him. Really? Bill Kristol would disagree, and intelligently:
Well said! Hot Air adds this about the same statements:In his 60 Minutes interview to be aired tonight, President Obama apparently says, "I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it....I'm the one who's going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right."
No, Mr. President. It’s not about you. If legislation passes, you don’t own it.
We all own it. Any health care bill will become part of the U.S. Code, not simply an item on the Obama White House web site. We will all feel its effects. We are all responsible for the future of our country. Here the people rule.
Which is why it is wrong to jam through a 1,000+ page legislative act in such a rush that its defenders can’t even give a coherent account of what it will and won’t do, and in order to deal with a situation that the president himself acknowledged Wednesday night is not a crisis (“But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future -- and that is the issue of health care.”).
If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about ‘health.’ As I’ve written before, the appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, et al., is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture — one in which elections are always fought on the Left’s issues and on the Left’s terms, and in which ‘conservative’ parties no longer talk about small government and individual liberty but find themselves retreating to one last pitiful rationale: that they can run the left-wing state more effectively than the Left can…And that, my friends, is the true heart of the matter. This issue is not about health care at all, but about control of American citizens. If the government controls all health care decisions -- via its control of the costs and availability -- then it controls the people. That's why the radical left is so adamant about getting this passed. When Obama talked during his campaign about 're-making' America, this is exactly what he meant!My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.”
Something I'm sure you have heard in the MSM is that Wilson's opponent has been raking in the campaign contribution dough because there are *ahem* so many people in this country who simply won't tolerate Wilson's brand of vitriol and disrespect. What you likely haven't heard is that Wilson has actually raised even more campaign cash than his opponent from all of the real people in this country who are sick of Obama's lies and government takeovers.
On another subject, President Obama is decrying his opponents for using scare tactics. You mean like this one that you used in your speech, Mr. President?
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.I think a clarification is needed on exactly what kind of statement crosses the threshold of a 'scare tactic'. Oh, and once again, no one is saying we should do nothing. That's his favorite straw man argument to use to set himself up as being right on the issue because none of his actual policies resonate with a majority of the American people. He has to frame the debate as him being the only one who wants to fix things in order to persuade the public to go with his plan when they normally wouldn't. Yes, it really is that simple.
And don't believe any of the spin that says ObamaKennedyDeathCare will be anything other than a government takeover of health care. RedState:
The Obama Administration inadvertently confirmed that the president’s plan will begin a slow take over of the health care system by the federal government. How else could this be interpreted?Look past the spin and into the guts to see the truth. The Obama administration is depending on the American people being too lazy, too busy, or too stupid to do that, but we as a nation simply cannot afford to ignore what this really is, no matter what words they use to describe it.“Undocumented immigrants would be able to buy insurance in the non-exchange private market, just as they do today. That market will shrink as the exchange takes hold, but it will still exist and will be subject to reforms such as the bans on pre-existing conditions and caps.”
In other words, as the federal exchange takes hold, plans not complying with the federal government’s standards will start to disappear. Eventually, it won’t make any sense for any company to offer health insurance as the federal requirements will make the business of providing health insurance far too expensive, and the premiums far too expensive for the insured.
The result will be that everyone will wind up with no other “choice” than the so-called public option, just as the Administration has planned all along. It took Wilson “calling out” the president’s “misinformation” and “lies” to finally get the Administration to admit it.
After Obama's big speech last week, he appears to be getting the expected small bump in his ratings:
President Barack Obama is doing better in the approval rating game, but he's still behind. According to Rasmussen Reports:And, as we've already discussed, he didn't bring anything new to the table in that speech. He simply set up his typical straw man arguments and knocked them down again with the same old lines. The details haven't changed one bit, and that means he still disagrees with most of the country about this issue.The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 34% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -4. That's the President's best Approval Index rating in over a month (see trends).
It doesn't bode well for him if his well-delivered speech didn't move him into positive territory. He's almost certainly irretrievably lost the fiscal issue, and budget arguments will reassert themselves after the glow fades from his talk. On both health care and cap and trade, he loses as soon as the discussion goes from general (reform) to specific (tax and regulate).
And that shows. Despite the momentary bump, Democrats are still skittish, downplaying the public option idea because they know it is completely toxic to the American people. The worst RINOs are backing away from this plan, too, and that's a killer, especially now that Ted Kennedy's death has left the Democrats at only 59 votes. If the GOP holds together, the Dems no longer have the votes to break a filibuster, so Obama needs to peel off at least one Rep.
But it's not just the common man type of citizens who oppose this. Last week, the night after Obama's speech, a crowd of doctors gathered to protest the government take over of health care:
Not that you would have seen that on the mainstream media, of course. And hey, what do doctors know about health care? I mean, really, can we trust doctors to make decisions about health care? Come on...
Seriously, though, the unrest in the public right now is incredible. Probably the biggest thing you haven't heard about over the weekend is the 9/12 protest project. On 9/12, as many as 2 million people marched on Washington to protest what is going on in this country right now. But, since they were Right-wingers, conservatives, and such, the media almost completely ignored it. Here's the proof of the media's absolute failure to be unbiased:
Those who did cover it called this a gathering of as little as 'thousands', or perhaps 'tens of thousands'. Hah! Though no one is going to have an accurate head count, we can be reasonably sure it was at least 1 million from these plans made public for Barack Obama's own inauguration:
The so-called silent majority is making itself heard in America right now! Incidentally, remember how it looked after the inauguration, with that huge crowd of Obamaphiles rejoicing that their savior had been elected President? Here's a reminder:
Well, here's how it looked after our side had a gathering of equal (or greater) size:
Remind me again of which side is the environmentally friendly one again...?
And now, for the big question...will the Democrats invoke the 'nuclear option' -- aka reconciliation -- to pass ObamaKennedyDeathCare?
The White House is looking increasingly likely to shove ObamaKennedyDeathCare into law by
By offering Republicans olive branches during his address to Congress on Wednesday, Obama has set up a win-win situation. If GOP lawmakers embrace compromise, a healthcare bill would pass Congress easily. But the more likely scenario is that Republicans will continue to oppose Obama’s plan, and the president later this fall will be able to note he tried to strike a deal with the GOP but could not.We've discussed reconciliation before (here, here), so I won't go into it again. If you're unfamiliar with the process, check out the links to learn the basics of what it is. For more in-depth analysis on how this scenario might play out, go here. This is an excellent breakdown of the process, how it works, and the possible ramifications if the Democrats try it. In short: it would be political suicide.
That will set up a Democratic argument that Senate leaders have been forced to use a partisan budget tool known as reconciliation to pass a health bill through the Senate by a simple majority, instead of 60 votes. Under the budget plan they passed earlier this year, Democrats could invoke the reconciliation process on Oct. 15.
I believe Barack Obama is willing to commit that political suicide to get this done. Will enough Congressional Democrats go along with him? That remains to be seen.
But, once again, this is where you and I come in. We need to pound the phone lines, fax numbers, and e-mail inboxes of all of our elected representatives to demand they oppose all attempts at a government takeover of health care. There are plenty of Republican alternatives (here, here, here, for example) that would be far better. But we need to force our representatives to listen to us, and not be rolled by the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. This will require a concerted effort to inform ourselves of the issues, and then to reach out and contact them with our opinions. Especially if you have a Democrat rep, you need to be contacting them regularly to find out their position and offer your thoughts.
This is the only way ObamaKennedyDeathCare can be defeated. The radical Left is in charge of the American government...but are they in charge of America?
We'll see.
There's my two cents.
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