The Lie that Hangs over the State of the Union

[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”70832″]

“When people stop trusting you, they stop listening to you as well,” former GWB speechwriter Marc Thiessen writes at the Washington Post:

Obama’s biggest problem is that his lie of the year in 2013 — “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” — hangs over his speech and will continue to haunt him in 2014.

Thanks to that false promise, half the country now says Obama is not “honest and trustworthy.” When people stop trusting you, they stop listening to you as well.

Worse still, his lie will be front-and-center in voters’ minds in 2014, because a second wave of health-plan cancellations has begun. Last week, Target announced that it has “decided to discontinue part-time health insurance coverage for our stores’ part-time team members beginning April 1, 2014.” Why? Because Obamacare “provides new options for health care coverage that we believe our part-time team members may prefer.” Translation: Why pay for health coverage when Target can dump its employees into the government-subsidized Obamacare plans, which cost it nothing? Target is not alone. Trader Joe’s and Home Depot have announced that they are canceling plans and scaling back health benefits. How do you think the state of the union feels to those workers?

These employer cancellations will expose a second Obama lie. Back when millions of Americans were losing their individual-market plans last October, Obama declared, “Keep in mind that the individual market accounts for 5 percent of the population. So when I said you can keep your health care, I’m looking at folks who’ve got employer-based health care.” But now its “folks who’ve got employer-based health care” who are losing their coverage as well. It’s not just big employers. Small businesses, who buy in the small-group market, are set to start canceling plans this year as well, with the bulk of the cancellations coming in October — right before the midterm elections.

Which is why, when it comes to the president, Allahpundit writes at Hot Air that the majority of country is “Giving up: Nearly 60% now uncertain or pessimistic about the rest of Obama’s term:”

Whatever the exact cause, I can’t get over that second table showing how much negativity has grown since 2011. We went from a spread of -12 in January of that year to nearly three times as much now. And the dips and bounces you’d expect along the way aren’t there. If gridlock was driving the pessimism, I would have predicted a surge in negative words in January 2012, after a full year of divided government and four months after the first debt-ceiling standoff triggered a downgrade from S&P and nearly caused a technical default. Nope. The 2012 spread is nearly identical to a year before. Likewise, I would have expected a modest decline, if any, in January 2013 since Americans typically respond hopefully about the next four years after a presidential election. Nope. That’s when the bottom drops out in terms of negativity. A roaring economic recovery can cure all political ills, but short of that happening in the next three years, I think we’re staring at O’s political legacy here. Division and deterioration.

Of course, there’s still one group who are happy with Mr. Obama and his palm greasing via taxpayer funds — the Kronies — they’re Konnected!

[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”70829″]

As Jim Treacher writes, “it is a work of genius. Crappy ’80s cartoons, meet crappy 21st Century reality…This is by Emergent Order, the same guys behind those awesome Hayek vs. Keynes rap videos.”

I’ve been meaning to link to that video since Friday; it’s truly a brilliant job in all areas — the ’80s style animation, the live action footage, the soundtrack, the toys, and the concept itself. More please.

Oh and speaking of the SOTU, our friendly neighborhood Vodkapundit will be drunkblogging it tonight; I hope he doesn’t employ Greg Gutfeld SOTU Drinking Game Rules however — I’m not sure that even Steve’s titanium liver would survive the evening.

(Via Besty Newmark.)