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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Beldar summarizes Obama's health care address to Congress
Once upon a time — on a magic day when the calendars all said "Oh, nine! Oh, nine! Oh nine!" — King Canute rode on his Magic Pony down the aisle of the Wizards' Castle until he reached the pretty blue carpet at the bottom. Even though he wasn't at the seashore, when he climbed down from his pony, the waves and waves of applause made King Canute think he was. So he ordered the sea to cease its lapping at the shore, for its waves to stop rolling, and for the government operation of health care — through Medicare and through the King's "public-option plan," and through all the other ways that government has regulated and will regulate the rest of the health care industry — to be perfectly efficient and effective. Perfect! Yay! The Democrats all cheered and gave him many standing ovations to demonstrate their belief that indeed, the sea will soon go absolutely still, and our government will now and forever after do superbly that which no government before, including our own, has managed to do even adequately even for one day.
The King announced that henceforth, because he and his Magic Pony are very smart and will show us how, everyone can get more of everything, and everything will be better than it is now, but it will all cost less money than even just some of us are spending now. Brave, clever King Canute! No King will ever again have to worry about the sea moving, or about health care. Why didn't we make him the King way back when Good King Ronny was getting old? Oh yeah, now I 'member: It's 'cause King Canute was still doing cocaine back then, when he was just Prince Barry. It's good that he stopped that, and that he learned to think and speak so clearly now, especially about how to save money! Yay! Nobody is more believable than King Canute when he promises to save money and cut government spending!
King Canute said that there are "details still to be worked out" — drawing an appreciative laugh from the other politicians present, who sympathized with the King for his gigantic mistake of accidentally going off-script to tell the truth for a moment. But the TelePrompter of the United States regained control over the scene and the speech, and so there were no further accidental encounters with reality. Thank goodness for the TOTUS!
And the King's "public-option plan" will be especially clever, since it will be better and cheaper than everything the private companies offer ('cause the Magic Pony will pay all its expenses and won't take away any profits). But don't worry — the King promised that the public-option plan will only be available to those without insurance! Thus did the King solve the old problem of those who complain when others pee in the pool. Now surely only people who really feel the need to pee will decide to pee in the pool, and now surely no companies or individuals that are having trouble paying for insurance will decide to become "without insurance" so they can get into the government-subsidized public-option plan. Therefore, no one in the pool needs to worry about ever being touched by pee, nor to worry about the public-option plan turning into a government health-care monopoly with single-payer socialized medicine like they have in Merrie Olde Englande. "Whee whee whee!" shouted the happy Democrats, "Slippery slopes are fun!" ("Pee pee pee," muttered the grumpy Republicans, "We see where this is going.")
Thereupon King Canute did a happy dance to make everyone feel happy, and then he acknowledged the many cheers, and he remounted his Magic Pony and rode back up the aisle. Most of those on the right side of the aisle, and even a few of them on the left, noticed that the Magic Pony had left behind a steaming, fragrant gift on the pretty blue carpet. Most of them on the left thought the gift was dessert, so they gobbled it up while insisting that it was really, really yummy. But they saved a piece for you. Do you want it?
Posted by Beldar at 08:37 PM in Congress, Current Affairs, Obama, Politics (2009) | Permalink
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Comments
(1) Michael J. Myers made the following comment | Sep 10, 2009 8:21:33 AM | Permalink
What a cynic! A steaming fragrant gift on the carpet! I'm laughing my head off. Good piece. And I've got to go find my own magic pony which will let me be debt free forever--so long as I can keep shoving hay in its mouth.
(3) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Sep 10, 2009 12:14:18 PM | Permalink
Dear Mr. Dyer: No, you aren't doing badly at all. I do think, for all the merits of this piece Tigerhawk outdoes you by noting "what is it with guys named Joe Wilson? Do they all accuse Presidents of lying?" I would add that the timing of this speech is an attempt to drown out sorrowful memories of another attack on this nation 8 years ago, by substituting another horror in its place. It isn't so bad as September 11. Conversely, we must keep working to defeat it
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
(4) Robert Creger made the following comment | Sep 10, 2009 1:12:26 PM | Permalink
Letting Illegal Immigrants Sink Health-Care “Reform”
by Hans Bader
August 24, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Mickey Kaus, who voted for Obama and wants universal health-care, wonders why Obama is damaging his credibility and endangering his health-care reform proposals by lying about whether ObamaCare will cover illegal aliens. He chides Congressional Democrats for trying “to sneak de facto health care for illegals through while showily saying the opposite,” and Obama for offering “carefully-crafted phrases designed to offer false assurance” that illegals will not be covered.
Kaus notes “that illegal immigrants will too get health insurance under the current Democratic proposals. They’re technically not eligible, maybe–but their eligibility probably won’t be verified. And Dems have rejected amendments to require verification. (Illegal immigrants aren’t technically eligible for jobs either, but they get them.) . . .The President has gone on radio twice in recent days to assure voters that the bill wasn’t ‘designed to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants’ . . . When it turns out that these are carefully-crafted phrases designed to offer false assurance about what would actually happen, what will people believe about Obama’s other assurances? As with the ‘death panel’ rebuttals that have failed to calm seniors’ ‘not entirely irrational’ fears of rationing, it’s almost worse to offer sweeping denials that are only 90% accurate than not to offer them at all. . .Liberals went through a similar, politically devastating, process with welfare. Year after year, decade after decade, they would assure Americans that welfare recipients were actually required to work. See, it says so right in the legislation! There’s a ‘work requirement’! The voters never believed this, and took it out on Democrats at the polls. Eventually it became common knowledge, even among the well-informed, that the ‘work requirements’ were riddled with loopholes. Only with Clinton’s 1996 reform did the Democrats put a tourniquet on this wound. Now they’re opening another one.”
(Of course, as Kaus earlier noted, Obama’s stimulus package largely repealed the 1996 welfare reform law, giving states’ new incentives to expand welfare rolls and welfare-dependency).
Many other scholars, commentators, lawyers, and journalists have concluded that the President is lying when he says that ObamaCare will not cover illegal aliens (although they will be exempt from its fines and penalties).
If illegal aliens do sink ObamaCare, it will be no loss, since his health-care proposals are so bad that they are even worse than the status quo.
As I explained earlier, Obama’s health-care proposals won’t give us a national health-care system that works as well as in European countries like France or Switzerland. And ObamaCare will cost more than any other health-care system in the world, while adding more than a trillion dollars to the national debt.
ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. (ObamaCare also contains lots of waste and subsidies for politically-correct things like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia).
Obama’s credibility is further undermined by his long line of broken promises, such as his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he broke through budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.
(Countries that refused to adopt stimulus packages modeled on Obama’s costly $800 billion stimulus package have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worse in the recession. The stimulus package was a costly failure that substituted welfare for productive investment).
Obama’s own advisors have called into question his claims about how ObamaCare will supposedly let you keep your health coverage while cutting costs.
“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says one of Obama’s own advisers, Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.
Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health-care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health-care.
Feldstein, a Harvard professor, warns that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes.
As a CNN commentary earlier noted, Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” including the freedom to choose your doctors, the freedom to choose what’s in your plan, the freedom to keep your existing plan, the freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, and the freedom to choose high-deductible coverage.
Earlier, we described how Obama’s health-care plan would destroy many affordable health-care plans, raise taxes on the middle class, and break Obama’s campaign promises, as well as his recent pledge that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
(5) Gregory made the following comment | Sep 11, 2009 12:52:55 AM | Permalink
This is an unfair comparison between King Canute and President BHOmbastic.
King Canute was a devout Christian who knew jolly well that he was a limited man with limited powers. Check out http://www.northseatrail.org/show_single_article.php?article_id=2956&lang=uk for more details.
A quote from His Majesty: "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name but God."
As for President BHOmbastic, well...
(6) Dai Alanye made the following comment | Sep 11, 2009 11:15:52 AM | Permalink
Why-oh-why did you leave out the part about little Joe W crying out, "But the King isn't wearing any clothes, Ma!"
(7) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 12, 2009 3:42:31 PM | Permalink
[The following was posted by Beldar to replace a comment eaten by TypePad's software on or about Thu 9/10/09 @ 10:56 p.m. and subsequently emailed to me by its author, Sandy Smith. — Beldar]
I feel our President is either misinformed and forgetful, or he is choosing to mislead the American people. After last night's speech I am now sure the latter is true.
I will never pay a penny into a system that would kill innocent babies. And for many, many other reasons I will never carry a National Health Card. The government can fine me, call me out, take me out or whatever else they give themselves the power to do. They may as well have cells ready for the other Millions of Grandmothers that feel this way. I have not been this serious in years. Please listen. Ask your representatives to vote NO on this health care bill and please work on fixing the small percentage of uninsured Americans.
Seven Reasons Abortion is in the Health Care Overhaul:
1. The House bill specifically includes it. The Capps amendment explicitly allows abortion coverage in the public health plan and subsidizes health plans that cover abortion. (Passed 20 – 28 in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, July 30.
2. Senate Democrats admit it. “(The health care bill) would include, uh, it would include, uh, Planned, uh, Parenthood clinics.” (Sen. Barbara Mikulski, July 9, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee meeting – Planned Parenthood is the No 1 U. S. abortion shain.)
3. Senate Democrats refused to ban it. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah): “Madam Chairman, would you be willing to put some language in (about) not including abortion services? Then I think you would have more support.”
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.): “…No, I would not, uh, be willing to do that at this time.” (July 9, Senate HELP Committee meeting)
4. House Democrats promote it.
“…(A)bortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the health care plans available to Americans, and I think it should be.” (House Representative Zoe Logfren (D-Calif.), August 12, San Jose, California Townhall meeting)
5. The mainstream media confirms it. (“Government insurance would allow coverage for abortion.” (Associated Press, August 5, 2009).
6. The Obama administration includes it in its definition of reproductive health care. “Reproductive health care includes access to abortion.” (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, April 22, House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing)
7. Every amendment to exclude it from health care legislation was defeated by the liberal sponsors. The following is a list of pro-life amendments that would have prevented abortion funding or prohibited abortion mandates for covered services.
-Rep. Sam Johnson Amendment in the Ways and Means Committee (July 16
-Rep. Eric Cantor Amendment in the Ways and Means Committee (July 16)
-Rep. Mark Souder Amendment in the Education and Labor Committee (July 17)
-Rep. Joe Pitts Amendment in the Energy and Commerce Committee (July 31)
-Sen. Orrin Hatch Amendment #227 in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (July 13)
-Sen. Mike Enzi Amendment @277 in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (July 13)
It will be a huge mistake - one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the Democratic Party - if this bill is passed. Think about it this way - the majority of Americans whether your representatives believe it or not, or whether they put themselves in a position to hear the people or not, are absolutely against this bill. If your representatives surround themselves with 'yes' men it is a danger for them politically. By the way, the abortion issue is just one issue in which we are being misled. But on that issue alone the latest polls show that 71% of Americans do not want to pay for the murder of innocent children.
May God Bless America.
(8) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 12, 2009 3:49:50 PM | Permalink
Gregory (#5): You're absolutely correct that I libeled the historical and very wise King Canute by comparing him with Obama. Moreover, I did so knowingly, under the belief that the shallow and 180-degrees backward portrayal of him as the acme of kings who falsely and foolishly (but sincerely) believed themselves omnipotent would best make my political point about President Obama. Obama's towering ego thus defies my ability to find fair comparisons. I plead guilty to your charge, and I take a coward's thin refuge in the fact that the good King, being dead, can't sue me, but I'm in fact much relieved that you've exposed my libel down here in the comments. Thanks.
(9) Gregory made the following comment | Sep 13, 2009 10:34:20 PM | Permalink
Beldar: I don't blame you. I figured that you probably understood who King Canute was. And in fact, it would have been difficult for you to find any proper comparison of any king or emperor to President BHOmbastic.
Most kings and emperors, Christian, pagan or otherwise, are far too smart to actually believe in the divine right of kings. At least, if they had to work even the least bit for their thrones. Witness Caesar Augustus, who at the word that he had been apotheosised, remarked "Oh, great, now what the hell do I do when someone prays to me to cure his goat?"
President Obama, unfortunately, seems to think he really was given a divine mandate, just as the ancient Chinese emperors were. Someone should tell him what happened when the Chinese people believed that Heaven had withdrawn the mandate.
(10) Dai Alanye made the following comment | Sep 15, 2009 9:41:44 AM | Permalink
Is it ironic or merely typical that the news media and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) are making more of Wilson's brief outburst of honesty than Obama's series of lies? When will we hear an apology from the Pres for his deliberate attempt to mislead the American people?
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