“You Lie!”

/in , /by

I spent a good part of a book beating up on George Bush for lying in an address to Congress in an effort to generate support for a policy that was being challenged on the merits.

So while I’m not suggesting that protecting a secret deal with health insurance companies is as despicable as starting a war of choice by crafting careful lies to Congress–it’s nowhere close–when I read BT’s piece…

We now know that the White House, in secret negotiations with industry lobbyists, quietly killed the public option in July 2009. But when the President gave a nationally-televised, joint address to Congress on September 9, 2009, he implied that the public option was still on the table.

…an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear – it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up. […]

It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

It’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight.

… I couldn’t help but remember Joe Wilson’s accusation, right in the middle of that address to Congress, “You lie!” Wilson got the individual assertion wrong, but he called the theater for what it was.

All of which, in turn, reminded me of discussions noting that the bloggers who were most supportive of Obama’s health care reform were the same bloggers who had been most credulous about Bush’s claim for the necessity of war with Iraq.

Again, just on the basis of expanding Medicaid to millions of new people and smart changes to Medicare, there’s absolutely no comparison between Obama’s health care reform with the merits of the war Bush was pushing with his lies.

But it does make me wonder why this theater ever works at all anymore, as Presidents continue to taint their once-cherished soap boxes with false statements that quickly become exposed as such.

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  1. Teddy Partridge says:

    So…. the sentence “Joe Wilson was right!” applies to both this president and his predecessor?

  3. lysias says:

    When Wilson said this, I was puzzled by his wording. If he was accusing Obama of telling one lie, then “That’s a lie!” or “You’re lying!” would have been much more idiomatic English.

    On the other hand, if he was accusing Obama of being a habitual liar, then “You lie!” is indeed idiomatic English.

    So I suppose that must have been what he really meant.

    • BoxTurtle says:

      If they’re looking for a supportive audience, the ads should read:

      Wanted: Adult executives, bankers and insurance agents for town Hall with the president. Provide recent photo and list of political donations. Party affilation irrevelent.

      Boxturtle (outside of those groups, he’s got friends where?)

      • cbl2 says:

        (outside of those groups, he’s got friends where?)

        what’s left of the cultists can be found losing it on Jane Hamsher’s twitter feed :D

        hey EW – Welcome Home Lassie !

  5. econobuzz says:

    the bloggers who were most supportive of Obama’s health care reform were the same bloggers who had been most credulous about Bush’s claim for the necessity of war with Iraq.

    EXACTLY.

  6. BoxTurtle says:

    I know it’s been proven that Obama isn’t from Kenya, but….is it possible he’s not from Hawaii but really from Texas?

    Boxturtle (Somebody needs to ask him about evolution, just to be sure)

  7. Cujo359 says:

    Again, just on the basis of expanding Medicaid to millions of new people and smart changes to Medicare, there’s absolutely no comparison between Obama’s health care reform with the merits of the war Bush was pushing with his lies.

    It’s fair to say, though, that many if not most of those 45k a year who are dying right now thanks to not having access to medical care will still be dying. It’s important to remember the cost of Obama’s lies here, even if those were people who would have been dying had nothing been done.

  9. sporkovat says:

    … I couldn’t help but remember Joe Wilson’s accusation, right in the middle of that address to Congress, “You lie!” Wilson got the individual assertion wrong, but he called the theater for what it was.

    hmmm beside right-wingers, can you recall anyone else saying the whole Obamacare thing was a charade?

    rack yr brains . . . . it’ll come to you . . . wait for it . . . oh yeah! the whole Single Payer contingent, who were deemed non-people during FDL’s “Public Option” advocacy!

  11. Michael Kwiatkowski says:

    Oh, it gets “better.” Medicaid is administered at the state level, and that is being cut in many states. This means that the mandate forcing people to buy health insurance they can’t afford will result in a lot of tax penalties on the backs of poor people that won’t even benefit them because they won’t be able to get on Medicaid. I’ll give you three guesses as to where all that unpaid Medicaid money will go, and the first two don’t count.

  12. fuckno says:

    “In the end, our bubble economy will not just deflate, it will burst. The dollar will collapse, consumer prices will skyrocket, real credit will completely evaporate, millions more will lose their jobs, and our economy will change in ways few of us can imagine. Our standard of living will plummet and legions of middle- and upper-class Americans will be impoverished. It is not a pretty picture, but unfortunately, it’s the one our government is painting. Unfortunately, we are running out of time to change artists. ”

    http://www.europac.net/commentaries/hail_mary

  13. davidmizner says:

    it does make me wonder why this theater ever works at all anymore, as Presidents continue to taint their once-cherished soap boxes with false statements that quickly become exposed as such.

    Well, it does work — Bush got his war and Obama got his crappy health care bill — and the lies aren’t “quickly exposed.” It’s been many months since Obama lied and kept lying, pretending still wanted the PO, and even now, with the lies exposed, they’re not getting much attention outside the DFH outposts.

  15. Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle says:

    All of which, in turn, reminded me of discussions noting that the bloggers who were most supportive of Obama’s health care reform were the same bloggers who had been most credulous about Bush’s claim for the necessity of war with Iraq.

    People like MY are paid to believe whatever they are told(99% of the time).

  16. tjbs says:

    How about after being sworn in he turned around and had phony wheelchair ridden limp dick and phony cowboy all hat no cattle DETAINED as required by the CAT.

    The big 0 was Mr 11 dimensional chess constitutional scholar after all , wasn’t he?

    Would it have resulted in a huge uproar that tore the country apart?
    Wrong. It would have resulted to returning to the over riding rule of the rock of our country , the constitution.

    History will record that he knew of torture at Abu Graib and became an accessory after the fact, by hiding the photos, in covering up war crimes, becoming a war criminal in that decision.

    The thrill of an unaccountable murder was too much ,even for Mr 0.

    If you watched Mr. 0 take the oath and not focus on the reckless disregard for the constitution in former years you knew which way the wind blows.
    He make believes Torture / Murder / Treason didn’t happen and your conversation today gives me the ibegebees that Durham could issue a report a the 0 could hide it, again, becoming an accessory to Torture /Murder / Treason.

  17. bigbrother says:

    Credibility is the bedrock of leadership. If you are not credible who will follow. Your opponents will always attack your credibility. When your base attacks your credibility you are toast. Rahm Emmanuel saw that and found a way out and still say in the political game.
    With a jobless recovery, 50 million and more unemployed and uninsured unlike the 48 recession when many were till on the farm where they could subsist, this urban society has no safefty net.
    Finally the mortgage fraud has gone mainstream thanks to Ohio AG and US Rep Alan Grayson the construction industry is toast for a decade along with manufacturing (rust belt) the demise of the almighty dollar reported by Goldman Sachs today and the record gol prices moving toward $1,400 an ounce. Krugman says there is no daylight for the forseeable future. What does Obama and Pelosi/Reid have to run on? Broken promises is not going to get it. We need a Progressive Party.

  18. tremoluxman says:

    Why do they continue to do this and risk tarnishing their Presidencies and legacies? Simple. They are arrogant sons of bitches who hold the electorate in general and their supporters in particular in contempt. They besmirch the office they are entrusted with and are privileged to hold.

    • tjbs says:

      We gave the 0 all glory, power and honor and in return got….

      All I could think about is how my daughters would judge me, if I was in his position.

  19. jaango says:

    Here in Arizona, I can only speak for myself, but Chicanos, in general have long known that the Arch-Conservatives, Neo-Con on the Right and the Neo-lib on the Left, are, as a matter of fact, arch-conservatives. Now, in the run-up to the Presidential nomination contest in 2007 and 2008, Obama was a Neo-lib, and yet, no one had the gumption for espousing that Obama was an Arch=Conservative, other than Chicanos and Native Americans. Consequently, white America was a virtually established as being overwhelming a Society for the Criminally Stupid, and starting with Bush and Cheney, and continues to this day. To wit, Obama is quietly laughing behind his fist.

    And of course, it’s for this reason that Chicanos and Native Americans advocated for “Open Access” to the VA, Medicare, and Indian Health Services. As such, the “Public Option” was going nowhere fast, and ultimately,it did, and into the political trash can. And at the end of the political day, Obama did what he wanted from the outset, and which would not include the “public option”. And we, the communities of Chicanos and Native Americans, we got “nothing” with the usual expectation that we would get just that, “nothing”.

    And in closing, I am now being preached to by the likes of the Conservative “expert” and whom goes by the name of Froma Harrop, for the Latinos lack of enthusiam for voting next month. To wit, her argumentation is, at best, nonsensical because she begins to repeat the PEW Center. Now, is she were to come out to Arizona, the Future of the Democratic Party and it’s wealth of candidates, are not overly important, since the Arch-Conservatives gave us our Birthday Present in the form of SB 1070 and HB 2281, and next year we will be receiving our challenge to our ‘birthright citizenship’ and quickly followed by an “officialized” Schematic in which gun zealots, after a week of weak training, will be searching for us, the Brown People, and with guns “locked and loaded”. Of course, this Schematic will be called the Homeland Security Command Force. Consequently, the long term Agenda For Two Generations, simply means that America’s Arch-Conservatives will be packing the bags and after being ‘defined and designated’ as “America’s Documented Immigrants”, and with the usual expectation and caveat that Canada will take them in. Moreover, in Two Generations, our national debt will ‘range’ in the neighborhood of between $28 Trillion and $32 Trillion.

    Jaango

  21. bigbrother says:

    Disparity between rich and poor have grown since Regan…so what does the new “Decider” do gives the public treasury to the rich banksters who have been making millions homeless. Change? Hope? No one is held responsible for the worst economic crisis in world history.
    Imagine the banks balance sheets if they declare the underwater mortgages they are holding…Obama will bail them through the Fed buying these worse than worthless paper and we will have more National debt and Repub advocates of deficit reduction will support it. Then the argument we can’t have a safety net.

  22. donbacon says:

    Obama has eschewed absolute truth:

    From Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope:
    “It’s not just absolute power that the Founders sought to prevent. Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.”
    http://www.handfulofsand.com/blog/archives/003113.html

    • emptywheel says:

      That position is utterly consistent–laudably so–with philosophical (as opposed to political) pragmatism.

      Unfortunately for Obama (though he is of course responsible for this), his White House has organized itself such that a few men who believe they have the ability to discern truth absolutely serve as gatekeepers for those who can present their opinions to Obama. Thus, the whole beauty of pragmatism, the philosophy, rots in service to Rahm’s political pragmatism.

      • R.H. Green says:

        “Thus, the whole beauty of pragmatism, the philosophy, rots in service of Rahm’s political pragmatism.”

        I disagree. That beauty does not rot, rather I think it goes ignored. Further, I’m not persuaded that the ignoring is limited to Rahm, Axelrod, Sunstein, and the other handlers and gatekeepers, but is Obama’s failure as well. The remarks cited by donbacon (@ 28) of rejecting the rightness of any idea that could drive minorities into a gulag, rings hollow coming from the mouth of one who has committed exactly that.

        If the view of the lofty one, concerned with a philosophical basis of governance were applicable, one is faced with the question of how the philosopher has surrounded himself with such characters as his agents? An answer that arises suggests some form of Faustian bargain. A simpler answer is that the high-flown rhetoric of the scholar is mere camouflage. In fact, the rejection of any Truth, as defined by some ideology, is convenient cover for one embarking on a cynical compaign of mass deception.

        PS. I hope no one mistakes these remarks as a dispute with Philosphical Pragmatism. (What the heck; this is probably headed for EPUville anyway).

      • bobschacht says:

        I’m glad this thread is still alive because I’ve been wanting to respond to your comment.

        Many here at the Wheel(er) House (such as me, for one) are Constitutionalists– that is, we take as our Prime Directive protecting and defending the Constitution of the U.S. I’ve taken refuge in that ever since Watergate. But as I think you show (if I understand correctly), as a pragmatist, Obama is not committed to Constitutionalism. I think that partly comes out of his understanding of the context of the Constitution, which did not originally provide suffrage to women or Blacks, Jefferson’s lofty words in the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding. In fact, I think he understands the Constitution that was so flawed that it required at least 20 amendments. So I think he understands the Constitution as a work in progress. I think this is why he has taken such a leisurely attitude towards prosecution, and why his view of the Constitution at present is a bit more jaundiced than most of ours.

        I’m not particularly happy with that, but it helps me understand his POV better.

        Bob in AZ

        • bmaz says:

          There is a hell of a difference between believing in an evolving Constitution and blowing the thing to smithereens by neglect and abuse. Obama is a fucking appalling Constitutional nightmare.

  23. JohnLopresti says:

    Abelson in NY Times wrote of healthcare reform implementation carveouts for some employers and insurers. For example, McDonald*s hamburger outfit threatened to cancel all insurance for the health maintenance of its 30,000 hourly restaurant employees if bound to comply with the health insurance upgrades in the new law. It was reminiscent of the NRA carveout in the political advertisement authorship legislation. Some of these folks are much more equal than others, it appears.

    • PJEvans says:

      I was reading about that at TPM yesterday evening. (Nanny software at work, so I only have evenings and weekends for the real world now.)