Well, you know, I got to go talk with the president and senior officials at the White House this week...Access!
... and this topic came up. Their position is, look, ObamaCare inherits all the problems of health care generally, but no one was promising that everyone was going to be [in the] executive suite at the Mayo Clinic.We paused right there and discussed logical fallacies. We've been reading "76 Fallacies," and it makes you want to name the fallacy, which I'm sorry I can't do.
But look what Williams did there (purporting to convey the White House message). Obama made promises he knew he wasn't going to keep, and he did it to get the law passed, and people are outraged over that. The White House talking point is to state a promise that Obama didn't make, as if to shift responsibility to the imaginary people who imagined they'd get that imaginary promise met.
The idea is that you had people who were uninsured, people who were underinsured, and what the Affordable Care Act does is it sets minimum standards for networks, to make sure people have someplace to go, and there were so many people who had no place to go, and that's what they were addressing in trying to put in place this program.Yeah, so they had a problem they were aiming at, but they caused havoc throughout the system even for people who were not part of the problem. The White House message is that we should only judge their actions by the effect on what they targeted, even though there were big spillover effects.
Also, they're saying they only tried to ensure "someplace" for everyone to go, and "place" meant a place with "minimum standards," but those "minimum standards" are actually rather high (higher than those plans that you might have liked and believed you'd be allowed to keep).
And yet I mean, the attacks, I think this is just, again, more attacks coming from Republicans who don't like the plan.Come on! I know the name of this fallacy. It's ad hominem. The attacks should be disregarded because of who is making them: Republicans. And, too, the attacks aren't just from Republicans.
Guess what? I've gotten that message.Williams is saying "I," indicating his oneness with the administration, which had him over to receive an injection of talking points. I think he noticed that slip with the pronoun "I," because the next thing he said was:
I think the president and the White House has gotten it, they don't like it.See how he restated who's gotten the message? It's the White House. They don't like it. Williams's "I" is repositioned in front of the verb think, which I find humorous, since he's not thinking for himself. He's delivering talking points.
It's what the White House now calls the original sin. They cannot work or expect Republicans to work with them to fix the plan.Wow. The Republicans are exiled from the Garden of Legislating. They cannot be worked with, for they have committed The Original Sin.
The hell?!
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74 comments:
Own the serpent in the Garden, Democrats. Own it!
Juan Williams is despicable. There I said it.
Redistribute the guilt.
The first one is a Straw Man fallacy.
He sets up the straw man of how people accuse the President of making a "you'll all have executive access" type promise and then handily vanquishes it by showing that Obama never promised anything like it.
The Republicans didn't eat the apple. The Dems did.
If there is "sin," it is with the Democrats.
You mean, ignoring a party and passing it against their protests with literally ZERO support for them might lead to them not liking the bill permanently? Shocking.
Obama promised savings in premiums. Mine went up 33% this year alone. He promised you could keep your plan. That was a lie. He promised you could keep your doctor. He lied about that too.
Screw anybody defending this.
I may have missed something, I cannot help but wonder, Professor, given your many recent blistering critiques of Obama, if you now regret voting for him.
And yes. Juan Williams is despicable.
And a douche to boot.
If ever there was a masochist who gets continuously mugged by his own side, it's Juan Williams. It's like he gets off on the punishment. But as long as the White House invites him over for a little stroking to take the pressure off and give him some sweet, sweet release to go with the pain, he's cool with it.
"Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on."
It all makes sense if you see Obama as the God King.
The Republicans said 'no' to the God-King and turned their backs on him. Therefore, they're cast out of the garden. They can't be redeemed until they, or someone else, makes reparations to him....
How long will the 'Republicans won't work with us to fix it' talking point last as the numerous other unworkable elements are revealed?
They should have just expanded medicaid to subsidize pre-existing condition pools with insurers, and maybe rejiggered bankruptcy law to help those that land there due to healthcare costs (I know, easier said than done, but less ambitious than ACA).
The dems seemed to embrace an inertial theory with the ACA. That it would debut, would be wonderful and instantly enshrined as a righteous entitlement, and that it would develop a mass that couldn't be moved. Weird that they didn't really even build a bureaucracy to anchor this. It's really just a website. It doesn't work, and it can be turned off with the flick of a switch. Epic failure.
If only everyone worshiped Obama as much as Williams, America would have been a great country. Alas, USA is not a perfect country and it makes obama's life very difficult. This is why Obama is so angry, American people have failed him.
rehajm "How long will the 'Republicans won't work with us to fix it' talking point last as the numerous other unworkable elements are revealed? "
As long as the press continues to cover for this man.
Accountability is sooooo 20th century.
Jeez, Juan, if you let the White House have their way with you so easily, I hope they at least bought you dinner.
Whatever happened to "I Won"?
They should have just expanded medicaid
What *they* really want is to expand Medicare to all. But Medicare is unsustainable as it is now. But it's a sweet deal for seniors, which I will be in a couple months. I can't help but think Obamacare will bring the whole thing down eventually.
The Republicans are guilty of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Democrats are the serpent who offered the fruit.
Payback: Juan Williams' son, Raffi, is a Republican.
The point is the White House tried. They tried to address real problems with real solutions, and Republicans wouldn't help them, which prevented the solutions from being implemented in the fashion Obama demanded.
What more can anyone ask of them? They tried hard. Obama personally held meetings every single month in the lead up to the October 1st debut.
They are human beings, not all-knowing and all-powerful Gods.
Sheesh. No need to get all wee-weed up. If you die because you can't keep your doctor or insurance, you will be spoken of as one who helped their countrymen and people will say the world has shown no greater love than that which you gave to your fellow Americans.
Is that really so bad?
Obama is convinced that he is still big, it's the American People that got small.
Obama the 2008 candidate knew he needed some Republican support to achieve his legislative agenda. The original sin was kicking Olympia Snowe out of the Obamacare negotiation room. But who did that, President Obama or Senator Reid?
The tree of knowledge is a dangerous thing. The President knows what Senator Snowe wanted. We do not. And unlike us, he has to live with the knowledge of that decision.
Juan Williams is a nice man. Dense but nice.
Poor Juan Williams, he knows his shilling for Obama would be most effective if he never revealed he was one of Obama's chosen "journalists". But Juan is like a teenager in love, he just has to tell everybody about his boyfriend Barry.
Obama took the ideas, ideas from deeply, staunchly conservative Republicans, and tried to help folks.
Republicans, acting like itsy bitsy children, wouldn't help with the roll-out (instead they made racist drug jokes) because Obama is black.
Why else wouldn't Republicans support ideas that they had put into place in MA?
Racists, straight up.
This conversation is over.
So we now have the first salvo from the secret cabal of liberal pundits who were invited to the White House to be briefed on the approved talking points. No need to invite conservatives, because they didn't want any truth tellers attending. We'll see more of this theme in the days ahead.
So we now have the first salvo from the secret cabal of liberal pundits who were invited to the White House to be briefed on the approved talking points. No need to invite conservatives, because they didn't want any truth tellers attending. We'll see more of this theme in the days ahead.
What engineers know that lawyers and politicians often don't is that in the world of things, as opposed to people, there's no escaping the sharp teeth of reality.
The technological realities rendered it defenseless. The economic realities will kill it.
What fun would Fox and friends be without the dazed, liberal, cannon fodder to beat up on? Juan is articulating what many of my lefty friends are saying now. The republicans are mean for not drinking the hemlock the democrats are being forced to drink after unilaterally passing obamacare, THE LAW OF THE LAND, BITCHES!.
Juan Williams is not "despicable."
It is his job at Fox News to provide "balance" and defend the indefensible.
However, he is not that good at it, and I wonder a bit at Ailes' motives for giving him that role.
Lisa Simpson's new friend is a Republican!
Apparently, of the Tea Party variety!
I am so tired of the constant call of racism from Obama supporters. Are they deluded enough to actually believe Conservatives supported or would support Romneycare given a choice? Sarcasm follows: sure I would support Communism if a WHITE MALE Republican politician proposed it. The only reason I don't support Obama increasing the size, scope, power and intrusion into all our lives of government is I am a racist. It's that simple. End of sarcasm.
Really good, vnjagnet!
Gloria Swanson was two years younger when she made Sunset Boulevard than Barack Obama is now.
Republican Party secret meeting in Mr. Burn's mansion!
Unleash the hounds!
Yes, original sin calls for a Messiah.
If anyone has any doubt about the totalitarian wave within the Democrat party, this should eliminate it. They want what they want and if you don't want that or want to negotiate a middle ground, you're the obstructionist. Worse, you will soon be branded a criminal. As a criminal, you are not allowed to vote or possess fire-arms and must turn them in. However if you do turn them in, you'll be arrested for having possessed them.
How much of a stretch is this, now?
Kristalnacht 2014
"Obama took the ideas, ideas from deeply, staunchly conservative Republicans, and tried to help folks"
I assume this is sarcasm. The Heritage program that became, greatly modified, Romneycare was the concept of a mandate for a mimimal catastrophic policy.
The Obama White House's Original Sin: A Failure of Effective Management
Oct 24 2013
It's like the accusation of failure stung too much and they just couldn't get over it until they used the same phrase to describe the Republicans.
The transcript doesn't seem to me to match your interpretation in this post's title, Ann--it sounds to me like the White House is calling the IYLYPYCKYP lie the original sin.
The bigger issue to me, though, is the whole idea of the government setting minimum standards for health insurance networks and the likelihood that these minimums will eventually, through rationing, become maximums--and then, that the maximums will have to be lowered, and lowered, and lowered to control costs. But it will be fair. Equality of outcomes and all that.
Is Obama's glitchy website rollout his 1918 influenza scandal?
Blogger garage mahal said...
"Is Obama's glitchy website rollout his 1918 influenza scandal? "
What was the "scandal" about the influenza epidemic ? Actually, I've studied and written about it but there was no scandal. We just didn't understand the physiology of lungs.
A lot of the seeming fallacies go away once you realize that liberal-Democrat arguments nearly all have an additional premise, never stated out loud: Republicans have an obligation to help us get our way.
They're putting on airs making a reference to God and sin and all of that. This is more like one clique telling another clique to stay away from their lunch table.
Let's see now--other examples of Obama's sort of thinking:
"We had to burn the health insurance village to save it."
"I love the smell of burning policies in the morning."
"We want to get that one guy riding in the bus--he needs to be "fixed" so we'll put a Hellfire missile through the bus window and kill everybody on board".
Juan as the 1960's Chicomms might have described you, you've become a running dog of Obama.
They cannot work or expect Republicans to work with them to fix the plan.
Isn't the key word "fix"? The White House never expected to ask for a fix. Asking for the Republicans to help them with a fix is like the coach going to the referees. Hey, give me a call. Give me a call. Whattya mean, the ruling on the field stands?.
They're the soccer player faking the flop and hoping for the card.
They're Billy Martin kicking dirt.
They're Woody Hayes punching Charlie Bauman.
God, these guys are losers.
Original sin.
Wait a minute.
Which political party is in thrall to religious zealots? Which political party uses religious phrases as political slogans?
I've lost my scorecard on religious rhetoric. Is it speaking truth to power, or is it despicable mixing of religion with politics?
The word is "fix". They're Lou Reed, Waiting for the Man.
Diogenes,
"sure I would support Communism if a WHITE MALE Republican politician proposed it"
Same here; that's why we all love Bill Ayers so much!
@SJ,
Oh, SJ, do try and keep up. Now, Brother Obama's gonna take the House & Senate Republican caucuses down to the Potomac Tidal Basin, for a mass baptism to take away their sins, original and otherwise. Do you remember all the verses to Shall We Gather at the River? Do you, brother SJ?
I don't blame Juan Williams. Everyone has to make a living. He is a miracle worker. When the White House invites someone from Fox over to get the inside information, that is a miracle.
When one considers the implications of the statement about "original sin" it is hilarious. What megalomania. The hubris of someone who made that statement is delightful. I wonder if the White House really used those terms or if it was Juan Williams' characterization of their conversation?
Blue Cross canceled my policy because of Obamacare. BLUE CROSS CANCELED MY POLICY BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE.
It would be a lot easier to be sympathetic towards the GOP if they had a real alternative health care reform AND exiled the religious nuts from the party.
God Save these poor souls thrown onto Medicaid! It is indeed, NOT the executive suite at the Mayo Clinic!
I can't believe garage has the balls to show up here.
The "original sin" was disobedience to God (you remember: The Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, the serpent). So if the Republicans' original sin was opposing Obamacare, that makes Obama . . . I think I get it now.
MY POLICY COVERED TWO ADULTS AND FOUR CHILDREN. BLUE CROSS CANCELED IT BECAUSE OF OBAMACARE.
The good news on Fox News is William Kristol seems to be gone for good. The bad news is dopey Juan Williams has a year or so left on his $600K per year contract.
It would be a lot easier to be sympathetic towards the GOP if they had a real alternative health care reform AND exiled the religious nuts from the party.
That's so stupid. Only a superior intellect could conjure that level of total stupidity.
Alex said:
"It would be a lot easier to be sympathetic towards the GOP if they ... exiled the religious nuts from the party."
If the GOP exiled the "religious nuts" they would be left with the antireligious nuts. At that point it would be hard to distinguish the two parties since they would both be dominated by antireligious nuts.
I think it's important for the long-term health of the republic to have a new political party that represents rational ideas. Neither the Democrats or Republicans ever will.
Politics is not about "rational ideas."
That's what dumb eggheads want it to be about.
In reality, politics is about the competing self-interests of the varied constituencies that comprise the electorate.
But, that bit about "rational ideas" does explain your previous mental fart.
"Blogger Alex said...
It would be a lot easier to be sympathetic towards the GOP if they had a real alternative health care reform AND exiled the religious nuts from the party."
It would be easier to believe in the sanity of the Democrats if they had a rational health plan and got rid of the global warming religion from the party.
The Republicans were exiled from the Garden of Legislating back when Obamoses proclaimed the Ten Thousand regulations of Obamacare from Mount Iwon.
Now that High Priest Sebelius has produced a turd sandwich out of the president's gold in the healthcare.gov bonfire and ruined the Democrat orgy on the Ark of the Government, Republicans are supposed to help re-make the divine tablets?
seems to me that they have drunk from the wellspring of liberalism. Look, we make fun of millenials who confuse effort for achievement. The administration and the Democrat Party and their propaganda organs would have us believe that everything is ok, because they tried. It's also interesting to note, that the Party that has done so much to tear down the civic institution of churches keeps so many religious and even Christian ideas.
The original sin was passing the ACA without Republican support and in violation of the Moynihan rule: "Twenty years ago, when he was trying to persuade Bill and Hillary Clinton that universal health care was a politically unrealistic goal, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan repeated one insistent warning: Sweeping, historic laws don’t pass barely.’They pass 70-to-30,’ he said, ‘or they fail.’ [Rahm Emanuel gave President Obama similar advice.]" (from Politico)
At least the administration picked a safe analogy that won't get people worked up over. It's not like they picked a controversial analogy like rape.
Hyphenated American said...
If only everyone worshiped Obama as much as Williams, America would have been a great country. Alas, USA is not a perfect country and it makes obama's life very difficult. This is why Obama is so angry, American people have failed him.
You should read a history of Germany to see what other Leader felt that the populace had failed him, and his actions thereafter.
NotquiteunBuckley said...
Obama took the ideas, ideas from deeply, staunchly conservative Republicans, and tried to help folks.
Republicans, acting like itsy bitsy children, wouldn't help with the roll-out (instead they made racist drug jokes) because Obama is black.
Why else wouldn't Republicans support ideas that they had put into place in MA?
Racists, straight up.
This conversation is over.
yeah, took ideas from a conservative think tank that had been rejected. interesting to note that your defense of obamacare includes the admission that the Democrat Party doesn't have ideas of its own, they can only pick from the GOP's discard pile.
What Juan Williams is saying is, "Hey, look, we had and we still have really good intentions."
And therefore, because their intentions were good, we should be forgiving.
This reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote I read on the anniversary of his death.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
The interesting conceit in all of this, and the real original sin, so to speak, is the conviction by liberals that everyone's health insurance is awful and that they are making it better.
Among other things, they fail to understand that most people like their insurance coverage, they just dislike dealing with the insurance company. Getting reams of paperwork with prices and discounts which seem completely made up is also frustrating, but a side effect of government regulation and tax laws more than anything else.
Dear all those who favor a "government solution" to any problem:
Have I done something morally wrong? No? Then you may not harm me while "helping" someone else.
You may pass laws to stop fraud, because engaging in fraud is morally wrong, so harming someone for doing that is acceptable.
I have health insurance. Is that morally wrong? No? Then you may not harm me while trying to "help" those who don't have health insurance.
You can't help them without hurting me? Then stop, and do nothing, because it is evil of you to harm me in that situation. And if you proceed anyway, you are not a good person making the world better, you are viscous scum engaging in evil, and making the world worse.
You don't like that all these people are hurting? Fine, feel free to give as much of your own time, money, and effort to help them.
But take nothing from me, or from anyone else, in order to advance your agenda.
For RecChief:
"You should read a history of Germany to see what other Leader felt that the populace had failed him, and his actions thereafter"
Don't worry about me, I read the history of Germany, thank you very much. What you should do though. Is pick up a dictionary, and look up the definition of the word "sarcasm".
RecChief:
I know German history pretty well, thank you very much. What you need to do is pick up a dictionary, and look up the word "sarcasm".
Oh and one more thing. In case you are wondering, I was very loosely quoting bertold breht:
"After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another? "
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