45 Minutes of BS

I've been busy all day making protest signs for the March on DC, so I'm a little late on posting about Prez BO's health care joint session of Congress.  (I'll show you the signs when I do my post on the march.)

We watched it, just like thousands of other Americans who forced themselves to listen in the slim chance anything new was to be said.  45 minutes of BS.  He mis-represented the House plan with the same talking points he's been using all along.  Hopefully, this will be his last speech on the subject, because his credibility is in the toilet.

Of course, he had to get the "bash Bush" line in at the beginning of the speech:

Excerpt from transcript (my words in red):
When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse...But we did not come here just to clean up crises.

(No, you came here to make it worse.)

I did notice that Prez BO was still in full campaign mode from yesterday.  He targeted everybody and their grandmother who didn't agree with his health care reform plans. He even had the audacity to call Sarah Palin a liar.  Watch:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians (aka -Sarah Palin), that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple. (The only person I heard telling lies was him.)

My favorite part was when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, yelled, "YOU LIE". Of course, we didn't know who it was at the time, and Joe and Nancy almost fell out their chairs looking over trying to figure it out.  That was the highlight of the night for me.  Did you see that sour face on Nancy...sweet.

Obama did try to sweeten the pot a little for the Republicans by mentioning tort reform.  He's going to authorize testing it out in a few states to see how it goes. 

Finally, many in this chamber – particularly on the Republican side of the aisle – have long insisted that reforming our medical malpractice laws can help bring down the cost of health care. I don’t believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I have talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So I am proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush Administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these issues. It’s a good idea, and I am directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on this initiative today.

Why is he only testing the Republican idea, but pushing through everything else?  Don't answer that.

He been calling everybody who dared criticize parts of the House health care bill as "fear mongers" and then he says this:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.

(I screamed when I heard that line.)

And I knew this was coming...he pulled the "Teddy Card"...

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed – the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.

I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be delivered upon his death.

In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to the love and support of family and friends, his wife, Vicki, and his children, who are here tonight . And he expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform – “that great unfinished business of our society,” he called it – would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that “it concerns more than material things.” “What we face,” he wrote, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

There are those words again..."social justice"...spreadin' that wealth around.

Read the full transcript below:
transcript

What is really unbelieveable is an AP article that Gateway Pundit posted where they've done a Fact Check on the speech.  It's worth a read (below):

Fact Check: Obama Uses Iffy Math on Deficit Pledge
By CALVIN WOODWARD and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writers

Bottom line...
I think President Obama thinks we are all idiots. He spouted the same old rhetoric, added a little tweak hear or there, and made the same promises that we all know are not true because we've had all summer to learn about what's in the House bill (whether he says they're lies or not, it's in writing). The public plan was not taken off the table, as many had hoped, so that will be a deal breaker with many.  He says he will not sign a bill that adds a dime to the deficit, but anyone can see that is impossible. He says the reform won't go into effect until 4 years...very convenient...it goes into effect after the 2012 election. He gets relected before the sh*t hits the fan and is well out of office when it explodes.

I don't know if anyone will be swayed by the president's speech tonight.  His demeanor at times was not presidential and his arrogance was on display, as usual.

It would have been interesting if the teleprompter went wacky like it did when Clinton he made his health care speech. Imagine Prez BO ummm, ummmen through it for 45 minutes.