Naturally, the New York Times, which immediately after 9/11 focused like a laser on the inequity of the Augusta National Golf Club, and ran front page stories on Abu Ghraib for 34 out of 37 straight days and only once mentioned Rev. Wright’s “God Damn America” speech, six months after the story broke elsewhere in 2008, and did its best to ignore Kermit Gosnell’s horrors earlier this year, maintains its brilliant sense of what’s newsworthy. (Link safe, goes to Twitchy, which spotted the Times’ quote):
Congressional Republicans have stoked consumer fears and confusion with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want. That, they say, violates President Obama’s pledge that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it.
Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that.
And he mispoke over and over and over again. Somewhat astonishingly, given the source, across town, New York magazine produces the “‘If You Like Your Plan…’ Supercut,” featured at the top of this post.
Note that New York magazine is not saying that they’ve assembled the complete collection of every time the president has uttered the phrase. I wonder if the total list would stretch to 18 and a half minutes, making Mr. Obama the Bizarro World’s Rose Mary Woods?
In contrast to the Times’ dismissal of Mr. Obama’s lies, Kyle Smith of the New York Post is brutally straightforward. “How Americans see President Obama changed in an important way this week. It’s because there is a huge difference between lies and bulls – – t:”
He said he would close Guantanamo but that was just campaign blather for suckers — an applause line, not a serious policy proposal. As any student of the matter knew, there wasn’t a better alternative, and nobody really cares about Guantanamo detainees anyway. It was just opportunistic Bush-bashing.
This week was something new. It was the week Obama was revealed to be a stone-cold liar.
Some 10 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.
On June 15, 2009, Obama said, in one of hundreds of similar statements, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
This wasn’t just bulls – – t. This was a lie.
This was a direct, specific detail that left no wiggle room. It couldn’t be excused as “campaign rhetoric” because he wasn’t running for anything in 2009. It wasn’t a gassy generality. It wasn’t a pie-in-the-sky platitude.
It was credible, concrete and important.
Even devoted members of the Barack Obama fan club are forced to concede that the president wasn’t telling the truth. “I think what he could have made is a more nuanced, accurate statement,” said James Carville. “The administration turns out to have misled the public,” admitted liberal columnist Jonathan Chait, a personal favorite of Obama’s. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, who usually retails pro-Obama spin under the label “fact checker,” gave Obama four Pinocchios.
Buried in a Washington Post article that like the Times, similarly attempts to excuse Obama’s lie is the reason why the above collection of quotes assembled into video form by New York magazine exists:
Obama “was sort of overlearning the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s time on health care. What destroyed Hillary Clinton’s plan was that people became convinced they were going to lose their health care,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a White House aide at the time and now heads the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management.
“The one lesson that was learned about messaging was that you had to guarantee people that nothing will change,” she said.
And speaking of Obama and Hillary, at Black & Right, Bob Parks produces a helpful “Flashback of the Day,” in which as a presidential candidate in a debate against Hillary, as Bob notes, Obama argues against the ObamaCare mandate, in a debate against Hillary in February 26, 2008:
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In “Double Down,” journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann say that Obama followed up his presidential debate by conducting a “dismal” mock debate with then-Sen. John Kerry.
“If we don’t fix this, we could lose the whole f*ing election,” Obama advisor David Plouffe reportedly said following the mock debate.
Obama’s advisors attempted to shift his tone and approach in advance of the second presidential debate, leading Obama to respond, “I can’t tell you that ‘Okay, I woke up today, I knew I needed to do better, and I’ll do better.’ I am wired in a different way than this event requires. … I just don’t know if I can do this.”
For her part, Michelle Obama reportedly did not suffer from the same reservations as her husband, telling a group of female Obama campaign donation bundlers that the president had only lost the first debate because “Romney is a really good liar.”
Presumably, the First Lady, like her husband, a fellow devotee of the Book of Saul, meant that as a compliment.
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