Truthtelling Regarding Funding for Abortion in Health Care Reform Bills
Lies, demagoguery and distortion, misinformation. These charges wouldn’t be so bad if Obama wasn’t lying himself in calling others liars, at least according the Annenberg Foundation’s Fact Check website.
“…we take no stand on whether all abortions should or should not be covered. As for the House bill as it stands now, it’s a matter of fact that it would allow both a "public plan" and newly subsidized private plans to cover all abortions.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/abortion-which-side-is-fabricating/
Honestly, I liked the ideas Obama presented at first and thought if he could have just been honest about the facts of the bills presented, then his speech would have been much more effective. Especially disconcerting is Obama saying his door is only open to those who are honest about the facts… while calling people who are honest according to third party sources liars. He sounds as bad to me as the scaremongers on the side when he stoops so low… of course, nobody at PBS could catch that misinformation because they are pretty much just a bunch of misinformed liberals who don't expose themselves to enough conservative commentators or even nonpartisan fact checkers to spot a lie. As the PBS commentator just stated to her national audience, “If the goal if this speech was just to clear up misperceptions, he at least succeeded in that.” Well, for some things yes. When it comes to public funding of abortion, hogwash, to put it nicely.
2 comments:
Obama has great generalisms but the devil is in the details. In that vein, it might help the debate if he put forth some actual legislation rather than ethereal guidance.
I thought Wilson's outburst followed by Pelosi's evil eye was fun. For an ever-so-fleeting moment I hoped for an impromptu debate on the likely effects of specific legislation. Pft.
That actually seems to be the nature of Obama's most frequent "lies" -- he prevaricates around the likely effects of his reforms that are not explicit in the bills, leaving enough room to argue to some that it is not part of his reform and to others that it is an eventual effect.
Yet despite his disingenuousness and dubious logic, Obama still comes across as sincere and capable to me; it's pretty remarkable. But there seems to be unspoken caveats to his every statement. I'm reminded of a VC post by Jim Lindgren that provides a similar analysis of a related survey: Answering the Questions in the Indiana Health Care Myth Survey.
In terms of solutions, Charles Krauthammer's recent articles make more sense to me.
Kevin
I would say that Obama has been more honest than many regarding healthcare reform, and would agree that most of his statements are generalizations that without specfics are tough to debate (assuming I am understanding your point).
However when it comes to life issues, and specifically the concerns of pro-life voters and legislators, Obama has lied outright so many times that I can't imagine it being accidental.
Thanks for the link to the Volokh blog and Krauthammer. The journalist and professor seem to have some well functioning grey matter beneath their craniums.
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