“I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness,” Mr. Obama told a multidenominational group of pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders who support his goal to remake the nation’s health care system.Bearing false witness? Breaking the 9th Commandment? So his opponents are sinners. I'm trying to imagine the separation-of-church-and-state freakout if George Bush had taken this approach to arguing for one of his policies.
According to the lede paragraph in the linked NYT article:
President Obama sought Wednesday to reframe the health care debate as “a core ethical and moral obligation,” imploring a coalition of religious leaders to help promote the plan to lower costs and expand insurance coverage for all Americans.Strangely, the context of that quote — "a core ethical and moral obligation" — is missing from the body of the article. Was something cut? Was it too embarrassing? Too Bush-y? I have to go elsewhere:
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: OK, for some, that public option has gone over like a lead balloon. So how about plan B, morality? Is that the secret weapon strategy to get health care reform? President Obama went on a conference call today with thousands of religious people, arguing health care reform is a moral issue. The president also argued against what he calls "ludicrous lies" made up about his health plan.Now, we know that Barack Obama doesn't "keep" his actual brother — we remember George Hussein Onyango Obama, the brother who lives a hut — and it's clear that what he means is that government has the moral obligation to regard all citizens as brothers and sisters — I'm coining the word sibizens — and to care for them.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation. That is that we look out for one other, that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. And in the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.
I'd really like to find the full text of what was — if I'm to believe Van Susteren — a big telephone call. It's not on the White House website. There's a bit more here (at ABC):
Mr. Obama called on the religious leaders to help him share the good word about health care reform and set the record straight.Sharing the "good word"? Good Lord! Is this the Gospel? Mark 16:
“I need you to knock on doors, talk to your neighbors. I need you to spread the facts and speak the truth,” he said.
Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.Obama says believe. Believe or be condemned as sinners. And go forth into the world. Preach the good news. Speak the truth.
He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."
"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."Talk about the blue pill! Just wait until the government lays its hands on you. In Barack's name, you will get well.
Government as religion — it's a poisonous notion! But drink it, drink it. Believe! It will not hurt you at all!
ADDED:
"We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama said, according to [Rabbi Jack] Moline (paging Sarah Palin...), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided "who shall live and who shall die."
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240 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 240 of 240Dust Bunny,
You make an excellent point - asking about risk.
I have an actuarial friend who says that spotting non-paying-company compliance in real time, will end up more like looking for economic correlations in a house in fire (the economy as the house on fire). Compliance at best, sucked down the drain of red tape, for awhile. Until real actuarial sorts of analyses come forth.
I question this actuarial point.
My point about risk is that if you’re a frugal manager/owner, and you’ve got questions about your fiscal fitness for compliance (see below), then the bargain is not a bargain. Not if your best ecological strategy is not to hire poor people; but, to redefine your labor pool, excluding them. Or go ahead, take the 8% hit, hiring the poor (the “otherwise” not insured), but to cut work hours, cut other benefits, and squeeze workers in terms of production (see next).
In this economy: I recently had a case involving poor clients against a corporation cutting lunch hours, cutting breaks, pushing some unpaid overtime. To up production. With fewer workers. Not compensating workers for this time - besides the federal infractions, it's unjust enrichment (the quasi-moral overtones), I’d say. Who gives a damn about compliance until you get caught? And who among the pool of poor can complain?
Don’t comply. Pay the fines. Rotate the labor pool if needed. Hire poor who won’t complain. Fire those who do for other reasons. Squeeze those you do hire: to up production. Cut everywhere else you can.
Unless I misunderstand you about jobs lost in droves, I think we’re saying the same thing?
This legislation could turn into the Red Queen in chase - the chase, that is, not to comply. Or, to cut jobs; squeeze the poor. No-pay can look like a better bargain than 8%.
Obama seems off-direction. Distracted. Furtive.
but, to redefine your labor pool, excluding them. Or go ahead, take the 8% hit, hiring the poor (the “otherwise” not insured), but to cut work hours, cut other benefits, and squeeze workers in terms of production (see next).
Yes, your point is exactly mine. Businesses will do what they can to survive and the people that will be hit the hardest are the poorer and less skilled workers who will be forced into the government option which likely they won't be able to afford.
Business owners that I deal with are already hiring part time, temporary or seasonal so that they can make ends meet. Squeezing the work force as you stated.
Those who don't or can't offer a plan now will be forced to take an 8% fine and this will also result in less jobs, less hours and less pay and the employees will still have no employer coverage and be forced onto the government option
The Unions, who get special treatment from this Administration, and larger companies that can work with the volume of scale might be able to keep their existing plans.
Either Obama knows this and doesn't care or he is too stupid and ideologically driven to see the unintended consequences. Either way, he is frightening
DB, thanks. A good exchange. I see your point.
I really should finish reading the HR ... ! But, I’d rather have my toenails pulled out, through my throat.
St. Barry's Prayer
Obama, make me an instrument of your single payer system,
Where there are elderly, let me sow hospice;
where there is injury, hospice;
where there is cancer, hospice;
where there is heart failure, hospice;
where there is blindness, hospice;
where there is a hip fracture, hospice.
O Great Leader, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to die quickly and get of the way;
to be healed as to decline treatment;
to be cured as to die.
For it is in taxing that we receive care, until age 65;
it is in rationing that we are released from this earth;
and it is in dying that we are making room for the productive.
jprapp said...
Potential consequences for the poor concern me.
Then let the system be solely set up for them. Oh wait. There are any number of government vehicles that address the issues for the poor, but guess what, as you should know they are woefully corrupt and mismanaged, no? Now we are being asked to swallow an entirely new program that hopes to address the needs of 47 million allegedly uninsured by encompassing 300 million people to do it. A shotgun used to kill a fly in effect. And we already know how government does such a great and optimal job to save money at the tax payers expense.
Frankly, the amount of money that has been spent on the poor would have been better administered if you had written them a straight check and given it to them for all the trillions that have been spent on them, but guess what, they will most likely find themselves destitute because they are incapable of managing their lives much less their money which netted them into the circles of poverty to begin with.
WV = quindi = a queer hindi
Chip and I worked on Obama kneeling before the altar of healthcare as part of the religiosity that Obama sees as being government. Hey Chip can you share that with everyone?
Government is government, nothing else. It's not society, it's not culture, it's not nation.
Countries that have nothing but government holding them together are sorry places.
hdhouse wrote: "what else do you say about liars? i think the "false witness" is a nice way of saying you are a lying sack of shit and you are lying on purpose.
its the truth isn't it."
Wow. Wow. Lower case "i" as the personal pronoun. The use of "its" when the poor soul meant "it's". Sad to see such a post from a liberal - it confirms our suspicions that one has to be profoundly stupid or ill to be a liberal.
fls wrote: Sorry, you can't prove me wrong simply by moving the goal posts. Judd Gregg's analysis leaves out more than a third of our total debt ....
Sure. Never mind that I contradicted you with a fact check from Politifact.com that concludes: "Gregg is on solid ground, relying on projections from the CBO, a highly respected, nonpartisan arm of Congress, about the long-term debt-to-GDP ratios."
Never mind that the comparative percentages would not be affected by adding in the debt that you incorrectly claim should have been included.
You just can't play it straight, can you?
Why yes, Methradas @5:56, my pleasure.
Obama and healthcare
Methadras: Late, but your diagnosis seemed more on the mark. Chillingly.
Good one Pogo:
But I think by "hospice", you mean Obama will "throw them out behind the bard with the rest of the corpses".
So think up a suitable phrase like "barn dance".
Is Obama the anti-Christ?
Looking more and more like it.
Well, some on this thread will remember when Reagan was president and there were people saying that he was the Antichrist because each of his three names (Ronald Wilson Reagan) were six letters apiece. Now, fast forward to last fall, when there were a lot of NOBAMA posters out there. If you alter BHO's name to be Barack Hussei Nobama, you get your "666" again.
(I'm being silly, of course, and I don't really think BHO is the Antichrist--although it's troubling how many people seem to see him, or government in general, as some sort of messianic figure. My own take on government was just expressed beautifully upthread at 6:09 by John Lynch.)
No Jeremy, no Alphaliberal to defend Obama? What's up with that?
VW: diesses
Chip,
You are a multi-talented stud. You should run for public office. Seriously.
Wow.
If this was Broadway, they'd be taking the marquee down already.
Three years and change left.
I bet Bill Clinton is looking forward to being replaced in the books as the Democrat president who lost the most seats in a midterm...
Sure would be nice if I had a party to vote for.
Well, I was just perusing to see what the latest posts were....and I have nothing anymore to say except that the verification word was so good....I couldn't pass it up
The vw is actually sort of fun.
"hoggess"
Obama should perhaps take note of what, exactly, Jesus was saying when he implored people to give of themselves to others.
The core of Christian morality is not that the poor BE FED. Anyone with a big enough sword or gun can facilitate that, at least until they run out of producers to rob. Then they can still distribute the squalor equally.
The core of Christian morality is not that the poor be fed, but that YOU feed them. This is a concept that horrifies modern liberals, because it requires taking responsibility and undergoing personal sacrifice in direct proportion to how good a person you wish to consider yourself.
In short, the difference between Christianity and modern liberalism is the difference between donating to the Salvation Army and being robbed on the way there.
He didn't spend all those years listening to Jeremiah Wright without learning how to demagogue religion.
How about this one?
Isaiah 5:20 -
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
At least let the man borrow as much to rebuild America as W. spent to rebuild Iraq.
Jesus is happier that we spent the money on a poor country full of our enemies. Ask your liberal Christian friends, they'll know what I'm talking about.
Dave --
"I've said NOTHING about the bill. Nothing."
You don't have to, directly. Hence 'seem'. Fine. Do you, or don't you?
"Please show me where the many, many liberals are."
Uh, read. Here, for example.
"... and to say you did not know health care reform was on its way if Obama won."
Reform != rend asunder. I believe I said that.
wv: resion - something lacking in this 'health' bill.
See? And people think my church is crazy-backwards just because we're snake-handlers, but it's RIGHT THERE IN THE BIBLE people.
But damn well improve your reading skills
Improve your fucking spelling first. The school is NOTRE Dame. I was making a joke off your Norte Dame = Northern Lady. Sorry you didn't get it.
Well, no I'm not.
What bugs me most is the doubling down on calling his opponents liars.... while using religious references... considering how disingenuous, deceitful, and out and out full of lies his own pitch is... including how the left is misrepresenting so much of their opponents arguments.
I’m actually a little ok with making the morality pitch in and of itself (I reject it in this case as an argument, but I don't mind it being brought up)…. But linking care for the uninsured with the public option / insurance exchange / take over of healthcare is another deceit.. They're two seperate issues.
Obama: "I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."
Sorry Bambi, I don't want to be kept by the likes of you and your benevolent master Government.
No you fool. Is the use of the term fatwa a religious dig at something or a racial stereotype. either way you used it on purpose and it stinks and you know it
Yes I did use it on purpose. It pissed you off and now I can sleep the sleep of a newborn.
Now go call your nurse and have her change your diaper. Sounds like you shit yourself again.
Tell us, bright boy, what is your fuckin' solution? got one? got game here? doubtful.
medicare is a highly functional program. you don't like it because you are paying for it but when your time comes you'll love the daylights out of it.
Actually henhouse, if you bothered to actually read beyond your spittle flecked computer screen my 'fuckin solution' is to extend Medicare to the uninsured. I never said I didn't like it you stupid fuck. Maybe stop projecting for two seconds, you'd not use up your diapers so fast.
This is apparently how Congress works. The inefficiency of the legislative process in no way implies that Obama has sinister motives.
Well considering his big two house majorities it tells me the man has zero leadership skills. Rather than take the lead and demand a streamlined solutiion he sits in the wings waiting to take the credit. Sounds familiar.
You know, the very fact that you admit that the legislative process is inefficient should be plainly evident to even the most obtuse that we don't need these people tinkering with health care. No?
In NY city, scores of car dealers quit using the cash for clunkers program because they did not get reimbursed by the government.
And this same government wants to take over all of our health care, who will, similarly, find ways not to reimburse hospitals and clinics.
And in the wealthiest nation on earth right now....
Right now? Did he really say that? I guess even Obama admits that his Administration and his Congress are quickly toppling the U.S. from its position as wealthiest nation on Earth.
A year or two from now, and this part of his argument will be even more absurd.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 8/21/2009, at The Unreligious Right
Bearing false witness? Breaking the 9th Commandment? So his opponents are sinners. I'm trying to imagine the separation-of-church-and-state freakout if George Bush had taken this approach to arguing for one of his policies.
That's just a nicer way of calling people liars, because for some reason we're not allowed to call people liars in polite company. And also, the difference is whereas in this case Obama's critics are lying, in Bush's case it probably would've been Bush lying. I know that's a tiny little technicality, but it's probably worth mentoning.
Never mind that the comparative percentages would not be affected by adding in the debt that you incorrectly claim should have been included.
You just can't play it straight, can you?
You claim that ignoring 1/3 of the National Debt will not change our debt to GNP ratio, and I'm the one who can't play it straight?
I'm done with you.
"And also, the difference is whereas in this case Obama's critics are lying, in Bush's case it probably would've been Bush lying. I know that's a tiny little technicality, but it's probably worth mentoning."
Not really since the statement itself is "false witness." I mean... a lie.
Obama's critics are not LYING. Him saying they are doesn't make it so. Obama, OTOH, has lied repeatedly... I mean, given false witness, about the health reform bill.
He's lied about how it will be paid for. He's lied by promising that anyone who likes their present insurance can keep it. He's lied about his commitment to single payer.
He's also uttered doctrinal falsehoods when he implied that there is anything whatsoever in the concept of Christian Charity that involves State compulsion.
I'd like to call dibs on coining "retardizen".
Bearing false witness? Breaking the 9th Commandment? So his opponents are sinners .
Yes. Because they are relentless liars.
Synova, deep in the delusion:
Obama's critics are not LYING. .
Oh what nonsense!
They are talking about a "government takeover of health care." NOT ON THE TABLE. Health insurance companies, hospitals, clinics will all remain in business and in the same hands they are today.
They are saying Obama wants to kill Grandma. More bunk.
Oh forget it. you guys are so deluded by your diet of FoxNews and Town Hall, you're beyond hope.
AL, those arguing that this is the first step in a health care take over and that it will affect what care is available, will involve rationing and government boards, will destroy private insurance, and *will* need to be funded... explain how they believe this will progress from what is in the various bills.
NOT lying.
Obama, on the other hand, does not explain how he can promise you will be able to keep your present coverage, does not explain how rationing will not happen or how there won't be panels to ration care, does not explain how it won't impact the free market options, does not explain how this *can not* be the first step toward the final goal of single payer.
Taking just one point... Obama's frequent assertions that anyone who likes their current health insurance can keep it.
Complete lie.
A lie on any measure except for one extremely narrow one, that the bill allows private insurance and "grandfathers" current insurance.
Grandfathering isn't necessary for ANYTHING that is not being TAKEN AWAY.
And not even the grandfathering can promise that people can keep their insurance if the insurance company or their employer changes policies.
Obama is promising something he's got no control over. That alone makes his promise a lie.
But it is also a lie because he implies that people will be able to GET private insurance that they want, not just KEEP it. But the bill explicitly outlines severe limitations on private insurance that will be enacted.
Obama is a liar on this. A bamboozler. And there is no reason to trust him on anything else he has said.
Government health care may not be ON the table... but there is good reason to think that it is UNDER it.
This sort of language will only work with the sort of people who already worship the ground Obama walks on. The rest of us, it either puts off or pisses off.
But when you hire a two-bit political hack, this is what you get. The shakedown and the hustle.
@fls:
These funds would be in a lot better shape had our leaders not replaced the cash with $4.3 Trillion worth of IOUs.
This "cash" to which you refer was the difference between SS taxes collected and SS benefits paid over those years.
What should the government have done with that money?
Kept in in a vault and allowed to diminish to one-tenth its value (due to inflation)? Put in a bank (and give banker's taxpayer's money for free to invest as they see fit--wish I could get in on that)? "Invested" it with (politically connected) corporations?
A tax is a tax is a tax is a tax. The Social Security "Fund" is just a promise that the government makes to take you taxes now and pay you benefits later.
It is no different from any other government program--the money it spends now is the money it collected the year before! It's just been CALLED a fund. But it's not the same thing as you putting money away for your own retirement.
If the government lets people take taxpayer money to invest on its behalf, we call that "crony capitalism".
You are saying that the government should have taken in huge sums of money which it couldn't use, for decades, and done nothing with it.
Even if that money magically appeared tomorrow, the day of reckoning would be put off for only a decade or so. When the ratio of people supported by the government to people supporting it gets high enough, either taxes have to go up, money has to be borrowed, or benefits cut.
I can't believe you have put so little thought into this.
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