ObamaCare, Born of 15 Untruths & Broken Promises

While Obama prepares to speak before the Joint Session of Congress, prepare yourself for the now known lies regarding the government run healthcare bill. Prepare yourself to be told he inherited this mess, and, best of all, prepare yourself to be told how Democrats and Republicans worked together on this bill.

RedState writes:


ObamaCare, Born of 15 Untruths and Broken Promises
by Dan Perrin, September 6, 2009

A few months ago, a Republican U.S. Senator told me that he pleaded with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to pressure the HELP Committee Democrats to let the Republicans negotiate and help shape the bill, since the Democrats were not listening or including the Republicans in any discussions. Senator Kennedy’s staff told the Republican Senator to take a hike. No one told Senator Kennedy’s staff otherwise. (Senator Dodd was torn between helping his dying friend and letting Kennedy’s legendary staff be his legendary staff.)

On the House side, Chairman Waxman gave the Blue Dogs on his own Committee, and Blue Dogs outside the Committee the closed mouth, no information treatment. Forget about influencing the bill, he did not tell them what was in it until it was too late. The Blue Dogs told Chairman Waxman what they wanted, he just ignored them.

All the while President Obama was publicly “reaching out” to Republicans — while his Leadership colleagues in Congress ignored Republicans, and ignored Democrats in their own party.

Thus was born ObamaCare, of a strategy to allow the far left (Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Waxman) to design the plan and ignore those who disagreed, while publicly and repeatedly the President said he wanted to work with Republicans.

In doing so, President Obama has managed to inflame the passions of every elected official — the Republicans who were left out, the center which was left out, and the liberals whose hopes were raised about having a public option, and now can’t understand why they have to compromise when the Dems control the White House, the House and the Senate.

The only Democratic Senator attempting to include the Republicans was Senator Baucus, who was pillared within his caucus and by the White House for taking the time to negotiate. All the while the liberals’ bill advanced into ever intensifying and withering fire.

Meanwhile, the public detecting the left wrote the bill lost faith and began to look at the bill, and the more they looked the less they liked. The net result is that the American public are polling at 52% for Congress to do nothing on health care. 55% want Congress to work on the economy. (Can you imagine?)

Lost faith is probably putting a happy face on what the public is feeling.

Plain and simple: the public has been repeatedly told the most outrageous and unbelievable things (as in they do not believe them when they hear them):

1. Cutting $500 billion from Medicare will not hurt care or cut benefits for seniors.
2. Spending $1 Trillion will save money.
3. Spending $1 Trillion will not increase the deficit.
4. If you like your plan you can keep it, except in five years every insurance plan design for everyone will be dictated by the federal government design requirements.
5. You can buy any insurance plan from any insurer you want. But you can only buy the government designed, government approved plans — its like saying you can buy the same house from any builder, but the builders all have the same set of plans and can only sell that house.
6. This is not a government take-over of the health care sector.
7. There will not be any rationing.
8. Campaign promises made explicitly by the President that he would not cut any deals with “the drug companies” only to do exactly that in return for Phrma spending million in ads to prop up the sagging ObamaCare this summer.
9. Abortion is not a covered benefit (despite the fact that the Democratic House pro-life leaders say it covers abortion, and more than 20 Democrats have told their leadership in writing that they will not vote for any bill that covers abortion.)
10. Seniors will not be steered in the direction of dying to save money — but most of the public knows that the most expense in health care is in the last six months of life — making seniors think Obama’s promises sound hollow. Seniors, it turns out, do not want the government to make the decision about when that last six months starts.
11. The President is against a single payer system and ending employer provided health care. All those videos of the President saying that he is for a single payer system and for ending employer provided health care, well, they are “misleading.”
12. Except that your employer may decide to put you in a government designed plan, so your employers will be taxed less than it costs to give you your insurance. Your employer will save money by putting you in the government-run Health Information Exchange — and you can never leave!
13. This bill’s purpose is insure the uninsured and do “insurance reform.”
14. President Obama promised no mandate in his health plan, but it has an individual mandate and an employer mandate.
15. If you don’t buy health insurance and you earn more than $19,000, you will be taxed 2.5 percent of your total income. The no tax increase pledge for families earning $250,000 or less does not apply, of course, to ObamaCare.

When President Obama keeps making promises and statements that cannot be true, you wonder, what does the President think of the public, that they will believe anything he says? Or (even more dangerous) does he really believe what he is saying?

So the President who insists untrue things are true is going to insist some more untrue things are true, before a joint session of Congress and this will change the politics of ObamaCare?

The heavens will open up, the sea will part and ObamaCare will pass. The President will have SPOKEN.

OMG! Did you hear?

The Air Force was tracking Santa Claus in his sled on Christmas Eve. They had Santa and his reindeer on radar. It true, we have the tapes and we can play them and everything.

Really?

I DIDN'T ATTEND SENATOR KENNEDY'S FUNERAL

In commoration of all our fallen heros, the Patriot Guard Riders perform a great service for our brave Military. These are the men and women who truly serve our country.

From RedState:


I Didn’t Attend Senator Kennedy’s Funeral
By Russ Martin, August 30, 2009

I didn’t go to Senator Kennedy’s funeral. I attended another one instead. Actually, the funeral I attended was on Friday – the day before Senator Kennedy’s.

The funeral I attended was for Staff Sergeant Clayton P. Bowen, 29 of San Antonio, Texas. SSG Bowen and another soldier, Pfc. Morris L. Walker, 23 of Chapel Hill, N.C. were killed on Aug. 18 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle. SSG Bowen’s funeral was held at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

I am proud to ride motorcycles with an interesting assortment of individuals called the Patriot Guard Riders (“www.patriotguard.org”). We attend funerals to honor current and former members of United States Military. Most of us are veterans. Some still serve on active duty. Many are just caring civilians who want to pay tribute to the service and sacrifice of veterans.

I happened to be listening to my IPOD while riding in SSG Bowen’s funeral procession. As we approached the National Cemetery at Ft. Sam, I heard Johnny Cash’s rendition of the Tom Petty song “I won’t back down”. You’ve probably heard the song – it goes “Well I won’t back down, no I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I wont back down.”

As I listened to those lyrics, I started to think about the type of service that SSG Bowen and his comrades render to our country. I started to contrast SSG Bowen’s service to that of Senator Kennedy’s.

I have never been a fan of Senator Kennedy’s politics; however it was clear that he was widely respected as a senator and legislator. Over the last several days, I have heard and read numerous stories about his illustrious career in the United States Senate. Fellow senators and pundits have lined up to offer stories and anecdotes about Senator Kennedy’s legislative skills. Senator Kennedy seemed to be singularly adept at the art of reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans in order to get “important” legislation passed. All to often, in my opinion, it lead to incrementally larger government, higher taxes, and redistribution of wealth, but politics aside, Senator Kennedy provided long and outstanding service to the country.

As I rode past the white gravestones of the Ft. Sam National Cemetery, it struck me that Senator Kennedy’s service was of a different kind than SSG Bowen’s. Senator Kennedy’s service involved suits and ties and press conferences. SSG Bowen’s service involved desert camouflage and after actions reports. Senator Kennedy took tax payer-funded congressional junkets to Europe and South America. SSG Bowen travelled to and around Afghanistan on C-130s and UH-60’s, also at the expense of the taxpayer. Senator Kennedy held power lunches in fancy restaurants and attended cocktail parties with the Washington elite. SSG Bowen ate MREs heated up on the hood of a HUMVEE while dreaming of the next opportunity he’d have to share a beer with the guys in his platoon. Senator Kennedy was born into a wealthy and privileged family and didn’t seem to have to take responsibility when he strayed off the straight and narrow. SSG Bowen was born into a middle class family and like his comrades, had to answer to the Code of Conduct and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Senator Kennedy devoted most of his long life to the senate. SSG Bowen selflessly gave his short life to his countrymen. Senator Kennedy was famous for compromising with the opposition in order to pass legislation. Just like in the song, SSG Bowen stood at the gates of hell and never backed down.

People serve in their own manner. Police, firefighters and first responders do their thing each and every day, 24/7/365. Rarely do we show them the appreciation they deserve. Volunteer poll workers, most often senior citizens, do a thankless job, but one critical to our democracy. Every day, millions of caring people volunteer their time at hospitals, rest homes, meals on wheels, churches, civic organizations, etc. Selfless service to others is one of the things that truly separates our country from so many others.

But as I watch the countless hours devoted to memorializing the service of a career politician, I can’t help but think that some of that attention and adoration might be misplaced.

SSG Bowen stood at the gates of hell and he didn’t back down. His comrades are standing there right now. As I tuck my children into bed each night, I thank God that they won’t back down either.

WE GET THE LEADERS WE DESERVE

The loss of a child is unimaginable, and the pain incomprehensible. It certainly is nothing to joke about, which is what Kennedy used to ask -- heard any new Chappaquiddick jokes lately?

Dec.24, 2003: Joseph Kopechne, Mary Jo's father, dies alone on Christmas Eve 24 years after losing his only daughter

Dec.20, 2007: Gwen Kopechne, mother of Mary Jo, dies alone in a nursing home 38 years after living with her only child's death

This piece is from PajamasMedia:



We Get the Leaders We Deserve
The people deserve blame for giving Kennedy's homicide a pass.
By Andrew Klaven, August 26, 2009

At the age of 38, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge into a pond. He escaped the car, leaving 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne trapped inside under seven feet of water. I would guess he was drunk; I would guess she was his adulterous date for the day. He denied both accusations.

What was undeniable was that he waited ten hours to report the incident – all the long night. Even the next morning, he was seen chatting casually with an acquaintance at his hotel. There is evidence to suggest that Miss Kopechne was alive in the car for quite some time after the accident, breathing the last of the air caught inside.

Bad men can support good ideas. We can’t condemn liberalism itself on the strength of Kennedy’s character. It’s only a coincidence that the man who left Miss Kopechne to tap, tap, tap against the Oldsmobile window while he apparently tried to establish an alibi and otherwise cover his ass also spent a lifetime promoting policies that have endangered our freedoms, harmed our economy and damaged the lives of the poor people they were presumably intended to help.

What is no coincidence, however – what is criminal really – is that such a man spent nearly fifty years in the Senate of the United States. Fifty years in office – or 47 plus, I think it was – but in any case, longer than the longest-serving tyrant-for-life in the worst third world dirt puddle you can think of. Whose fault is that? Ours, of course. We the people allowed the courts to give his homicide a pass – he got a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident. We voted him back into office again and again, knowing what he was. Blame Massachusetts alone if you want to, but we, all of us, have failed to demand the term limits and the end to gerrymandering that would keep our representatives from devolving into entrenched toadies of special interests and unscrupulous slaves of their own ideologies. We have failed to demand the reforms that would keep our republic vital and true to its ideals. We get the leaders we deserve and God help us.

Ted Kennedy is dead at 77. Mary Jo Kopechne, rest in peace.

WHERE IS MARY JO KOPECHNE'S EULOGY?

It has been more than 40 years since the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne on July 18, 1969. She was only 28 years old, and was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future.

An op-ed in VANITY FAIR:


WHERE IS MARY JO KOPECHNE'S EULOGY?
By Henry Rollins, August 27, 2009

Not Far Under The Surface. Let’s say I am driving myself and a passenger in my car at night. I accidentally drive off a bridge into the water below. I am able to get out of the submerged vehicle but for some reason, I am unable to free the passenger.

I gather two friends, a relative and my lawyer and return to the scene. We are unable to rescue the person trapped in the car. Several hours later, myself nor the two others I took to the site have called the authorities. In fact, it’s two fishermen who find the car the next morning as even then, no one has been called to the scene.

The car is removed from the water and it is determined that its occupant is dead. This tragic incident is made international news by my circumstances. I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life.

That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness?

I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean?

After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life?

You wouldn't forget about her, would you? That would be negligent.


Boston.com has an excellent video:

HARRY REID WINS THE PRIZE

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Kennedy family, as they mourn the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy. And while the left uses Kennedy to advance their horrendous government run health care bill, and eulogize him beyond recognition, my thoughts are also with a few other families.

My thoughts are with the Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork families who suffered as Kennedy demonized them during their Judiciary Committee hearings. My thoughts are with the Mary Jo Kopechne family, who suffers to this day for the loss of their loved one because of reckless actions of Kennedy. Chances are, these families are re-living those days today, and our thoughts and prayers go out to them.

RedState continues:


Harry Reid Wins the Prize
Posted by RS Insider, August 26, 2009

Well, we all pretty much knew that this was coming:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said that both the Kennedy family and the Senate have “lost our patriarch” and vowed Congress would renew the push for the cause of Kennedy’s life, health care reform.

Out of respect for my RedState colleagues, I have delayed the posting of this post for several hours, but it is worth noting that MSNBC had already reported that Reid (always a classy guy) uttered these words before I made it in to work this morning. In other words, before Kennedy’s corpse was even cold. Now, a wise man once coined the maxim de mortuis, nil nisi bonum, and we here at RedState have always made an effort to let even the death of even the most contemptible of our political foes pass without a word of criticism.

However, given that Reid, et al are apparently going to use this fundamental aspect of Republican decency in order to push a political legislative agenda (rather than, say, allowing the family to grieve privately and quietly, if that is their desire), it sadly becomes necessary to wonder aloud whether Kennedy as a man was worth emulating at all.

Dan McLaughlin has already noted that Kennedy’s “personal life ranged from alcoholism to debauchery to sexual harrassment to (sadly, uncharged) second-degree murder[.]“ However, it is also worth noting that Kennedy was personally and politically a hypocrite, that he wilfully slandered men more honorable than he in the service of legalized abortion (and in so doing poisoned the judicial confirmation process in this country, probably forever), and that he built a political career out of provoking class warfare despite having been been born with a diamond spoon in his mouth and having everything he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter. Insofar as he was a man of any religious faith at all, he was nominally a Catholic, a faith he besmirched repeatedly with the grave sin of scandal: a cornerstone of Kennedy’s entire public career centered upon using his position of leadership and prominence to present abortion (categorically defined by the Catholic church as a mortal) sin as good and normal, to say nothing of Kennedy’s many other failings which those who looked to him for example might follow. In the later stages of his career, Kennedy was not content to rest upon his laurels, but spent most of his time making the world safer for terrorists. Although, to his credit, it might be fairly said that defending terrorists was a lifelong pursuit - Kennedy was supporting IRA terrorists long before any of us heard of Al Qaeda.

Indeed we find precious little to commend ourselves to the life of Ted Kennedy, the entirety of his success and notoriety owing to the circumstances of his birth into a pre-existing family of wealth and influence - circumstances which ordinary Americans (even Americans who work hard to earn more than $135,000 and thus become targets of Ted Kennedy’s class warfare demagoguery) cannot hope to duplicate. It would be better for this country if the Democrats had not opened the salvo of using Ted Kennedy’s legacy as a political football; both because it would allow his family to grieve his passing appropriately, and also because it would not teach the youth of this country that such a man as Ted Kennedy can live the debaucherous life he lived and yet be hailed publicly by a prominent political party in this country. However, the Democrats having begun the process, Republicans should not preemptively surrender the contest and allow his last legislative monstrosity to come to fruition. Ted Kennedy’s legacy, such as it is, is already full enough.