President Barack Obama's Health Speech

[_richardMdBorn]

Sorry to post and disappear but I'm giving a talk on Monday on the Left Coast (LA area). I am hoping to meet for dinner tomorrow one of the pioneers of the space program in Santa Barbara. I may add some comments when I return to Daleyland.

[_JAK]

Post Reference

bcspace

“Expedition” is an example of falsely representing what the war on Iraq has been. It has been deadly for thousands of Americans and American allies. It was based on a lie: “We know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction”- Bush/Cheney. The Iraq War has cost many countries in life and treasure. It has been rightly observed that truth is the first casualty of war. “Expedition” is not what the Iraq War has been. Your attempt at comparison is distortion.

Neither Germany nor Japan are in the slightest parallel to the Iraq War.

Second, you distort the facts as articulated by President Obama in his speech to Congress September 9, 2009. In part, the president said this:

“Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves.

“So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down. And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly – by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.

“Insurance executives don't do this because they are bad people. They do it because it's profitable. As one former insurance executive testified before Congress, insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill; they are rewarded for it. All of this is in service of meeting what this former executive called ‘Wall Street's relentless profit expectations’."

"Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. The insurance reforms that I've already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear – it would only be an option for those who don't have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.” White House website.

The above is directly from the released speech delivered by Obama to the joint session of Congress.

Third, Hannity misquoted Obama to falsely accuse him of breaking promise.
Source

Read the following transcript of Sean Hannity responding to quotes made by Barack Obama. Any sane person will see how insane Hannity’s thought process must be to come to these conclusions…

OBAMA: If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

HANNITY: He honors the national day of prayer behind closed doors. Now, on his Middle East apology tour, the President calls the U.S. a “Muslim nation.”

OBAMA: We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens, who are bound by ideals.

HANNITY: The same president who insists the U.S. is not a Christian nation is now calling us a Muslim nation.

It’s absolutely true that the U.S. is one of the largest countries based on Muslim population. It is not true that Obama said the U.S. is a Muslim-only nation, or that the majority of the U.S. population is Muslim. Source

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bcspace wrote:
I'd say the majority of those deaths can be placed squarely on the shoulders of left wingers like yourself who politicized the war thereby giving aid and comfort to the terrorsists (terrorists) whose strategy was to cause more death so they'd get YOU, their best allies, to spout more of the same.

It was the Bush/Cheney administration who invaded Iraq. It’s Bush/Cheney and their surrogates who are responsible for the deaths in the Iraq War. They started it in a military attack from air and ground on that country. Your comment is false. In fact, terrorists are emboldened by the very policies of Bush/Cheney. The US under the Bush administration did not make friends by bombing the cities of Iraq based on the lie that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. That lie and subsequent attack motivate terrorists.

In addition, the attack on Iraq was after the 9-11 attack of terrorists on the US. Your distortions are typical of the right-wing as represented by such people as Hannity, Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter.

JAK previously:
46,000,000 Americans have no health care presently. That costs this nation in a multitude of ways.

bcspace responded:
A highly misleading figure. Most of those can either buy insurance if they want to or have access to medicaid (Medicaid) but for whatever reason choose not to.

No, its accurate. Your claim: “if they want to or…” is misleading. What’s your number of uninsured?

By Associated Press
September 11, 2009

The number of people without health insurance in America is rising.

The Census Bureau says in 2008 46.3 million people went without health insurance. That's up by more than half a million in 2007. Source The Census Bureau

See further documentation that the 46,000,000 is accurate regarding the number of people without health insurance.

Additional source with the same number 46,000,000

What’s your source for the above claim?

Post Reference 2

I addressed examples of Hannity’s distortions. He is clearly established as a right-wing ideologue who distorts and misquotes.

JAK

[_dartagnan]

It’s absolutely true that the U.S. is one of the largest countries based on Muslim population.

No it isn't. There are probably less than 4 million Muslims in the United States. That means there are at least 30 other countries with a higher number, and a much higher percentage.

The United States cannot be considered a "large" Muslim nation by any stretch of the imagination, let alone one of the largest.

But Hannity did lie, as is so often his wont. When I was working in the US over the summer I wanted to punch the radio every time he spewed his BS about the housing crisis. A year ago he started this horse crap lie that it was caused because democrats "forced" banks to give loans to poor people. This has long since been proved to be a lie, and yet he continues to say it every day becuse it dovetails well with his bigotry.

He is also a threat to the country by creating this nationalistic, divisive mentality in everyone he comes across. If you disagree, you're a bad American. If you call in and support him, you're a "great American." If you dare support the PResident on anything, you're a wannabe socialist and a tritor. Just look at what this poison has done to BCspace's mind. Pretty sad.

[_Dr. Shades]

Hi dartagnan,

Good to see you again. You wrote:

A year ago he started this horse**** lie that it was caused because democrats "forced" banks to give loans to poor people. This has long since been proved to be a lie, and yet he continues to say it every day becuse it dovetails well with his bigotry.

I thought that that was indeed the reason. If it isn't, then what's the real reason for the housing pickle?

[_EAllusion]

Mainly

1) Extremely cheap credit - fueled in part by the Fed's low prime rate and in part by overeager Chinese investment due to their high savings rate.

2) Investors having intense demand for mortgage backed securities because of the steady, high rate of return without properly assessing risk and/or using questionable financial instruments to hedge their risk leading to

3) This creating intense demand for housing loans that in turn completely crippled the banking industry's loan standards. There was no need for any standards due to the ability to turn a profit either by 1) selling the loan into a MBS or flipping the property for a profit due to the quickly rising prices. Give a loan to anybody = money for the people doing it at the moment. Of course, this lead to an unsustainable bubble that collapsed in a financial apocalypse, but the commissions were pretty sweet for a time.

Government programs that incentive banks to provide low-income housing loans were a very minor factor.

This This American Life episode explaining the matter has a much deserved reputation for being great:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_E ... pisode=355

[_JAK]

Post Reference
-----------

Muslim numbers difficult to quantify

Fact Check ABC News

Contexts (Muslims in America)

JAK

[_bcspace]

Yet another testament against the Obama plan....

Obama's anti-American 'Health Care' Plan

Try again JAK and KG. Neither of you addressed the claims I made instead preferring the use of the strawman. For example, KG erroneously claims that I am part of the if you disagree then you are a traitor crowd. In fact, I'll bet there is no such crowd. And JAK failed to notice that I did not disagree with the 46 million figure. With the cognitive skills displayed by these two, it's no wonder the world is going pot...



Frankly I'm suprised at KG who usually has his ducks in row.

[_JAK]

JAK

[_dartagnan]

bcspace, it is really sad to see what you've devolved into. This is a sad phenomenon I have recently witnessed with several of my Mormon friends. They'll go all out and call the President an evil liar and even the anti-Christ, based on what evidence? Their ridiculous Glenn Beck sermons they try to pass off as their own reasoning. Dude, you backed up nothing. You base your paranoia on a bunch of assumptions that come straight from the Hannit talking points. Nothing new here. You have not and cannot substantiate anything you said to be true. If you could, you would have. Obama's got a slew of economists who support him, and in fact the majority of economists don't share your hysteria. I guess they're all idiots too? Or maybe worse.. they're all part of the "anti-American" conspiracy!. I mean that's got to be it right? Either that or Hannity and Beck are wrong. No, can't be! You're right, Obama must be that evil. He probably eats babies for midnight snacks. This makes so much more sense than entertaining the possibility that you're psychoanalytical skills are crap.

Now you deny accusing others of being traitors, while ironically posting something called Obama's "anti-American" plan. Good grief man. The idiots on the far right think they have special rights to whats American. You've been listening to way too much Glenn Beck. "You're a great American" Hannity says.... only if you agree with him. This is the divisive mentality that eats at our society.

Now you asked for an example of Hannity lying, and I gave you one. You went on a psychoanalytical rant about what you think Obama's "lying" and "evil" intentions are, and pretend it deserves a response. Who can respond to that? There is nothing of substance there, just irrational rhetoric. You go on a rant with all these assertions and assumptions about what Obama's plan MUST do and what the results MUST be, without anything backing it up. You're so desperate to call him a liar, you have to perform all kinds of games, semantic and rhetorical, to find a way to make him a liar when we all know he was saying federal dollars would not fund the program. But all I see is deception on YOUR part, if you continue to use this as your proof that he is a liar.

And now you want to blame the democrats for the deaths in Iraq? Good grief you've gone over the edge.

Shades,

Analytics explained this in detail a while back and EA just provided an excellent summary of the cause. Unfortuntely none of this informtion mattered to people like Beck and Hannity. this BS explanation about the Democrats FORCING banks to give money to the poor, was just too juicy. It sounds too anti-American" for them to pass up, so they just ran with it. But none of it is true.

I'm not really "back." I pop in maybe once a week. I'm back in Brasil and starting this school has been much more time consuming that I orginally thought.

[_Brackite]

The Text of President Barack Obama’s Health Care Speech is Online at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_off ... alth-Care/

And at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/0 ... 81265.html



And The Text of the National GOP Response to President Obama’s Health Care Speech is Online at:

http://boustany.house.gov/index.cfm?sec ... itemid=437

And at:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 98243.html