Ah, what’s $868 billion…
Obama boasted Monday that Democrats’ health care proposals would cut deficits by $1 trillion “over the next decade,” a flub that inflated the actual estimate by $868 billion.
This did not appear to be an ad lib, either; it was a scripted moment (here’s the text of the speech). So either Obama doesn’t know an extremely important fact about the HCR bill, or he is purposely lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, this is just business as usual for Obama.
The White House explained that the president meant to refer to the CBO estimate for the second decade after HCR reform rather than the first. That doesn’t sound especially convincing. But even if it were, the real CBO estimate is pretty much garbage in, garbage out, since it rests on a bunch of assumptions that are extremely iffy. As the CBO itself says of the second-decade projections, “A detailed year-by-year projection for years beyond 2019 … would not be meaningful, because the uncertainties involved are simply too great.” Well, the same is pretty much true of the first ten years as well.
Here’s another whopper from Obama’s speech:
I know a lot of people view this as a partisan issue, but both parties have found areas where we agree. What we’ve ended up with is a proposal that’s somewhere in the middle — one that incorporates the best from Democrats and Republicans, best ideas.
This particular distortion has two parts. The first is that Obama talks about “a proposal” rather than “a bill.” Most likely, he is referencing his own health care reform proposals made after the big “bipartisan summit.” But these are not included in the bill he’s pushing; they have nothing to do with any legislation in the hopper. Then there’s the fact that even those irrelevant and unincluded proposals of his represent only a very minor effort at incorporating very reduced versions of a couple of Republican ideas. “Somewhere in the middle?” Hardly.
And in the same speech Obama repeats his favorite lie of all, ” If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Maybe for about five minutes you can. But not for long.
[NOTE: This post was supposed to be published yesterday. Actually, it was published yesterday—as you can see by the date of the first comment. But then for some reason it went into a mode where it looks published to me but is actually private (i.e. only I can see it). I’ll try to be more aware of this phenomenon in the future and catch it; I think I’ve figured out what caused it.]
He might just be saying what he thinks at the time would sound most convincing. Narcissists often have no past and no future, only the moment.
Regarding our discussions of narcissist vs. sociopath, that would be an overlapping symptom that could go with either.
At the link below, Matt Welch addresses the President’s tendency to be . . . shall we say, creative . . . with the truth, and grapples with one of the questions about his character that regularly bedevils us here — that is, does he believe what he says, or does he know he’s lying? And which would be worse?
http://tinyurl.com/ybj6egx
The end justifies the means so whatever he says is in service of his ‘noble’ ends.
I’ve reached the conclusion that Obama is a narcissistic leftist and a true believer in his ideology. An ideology fundamentally opposed to the founding principles of America.
He’s willing to use whatever methods are needed to achieve his goals, including lying, misdirection, hypocrisy and the ‘chicago way’ when necessary because again, the end justifies whatever method is needed to get to his goals.
Because he’s so willing and ready to lie and engage in hypocrisy, he frequently contradicts himself but of course he could care less and, having no allegiance to the concept of intellectual honesty he simply moves on in pursuit of his goals.
In Obama, we’re dealing with an amorality in which the only ethical standard is that of the collective goal and in this Artflgr is entirely correct in his assessment.
That said, he’s not a Lenin with the requisite combination of ruthlessness and intellect necessary to pull off a coup in which he seizes power from the American people.
Nor is our country 1917 Russia or 1949 China. Which is why he (and his fellow leftists and their useful idiots the liberals) shall fail.
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Calling President Obama narcissistic is being charitable. It’s time to start calling him what he is…a liar.
We rubes just aren’t nuanced enough to know that THIS govenment program won’t go ten times over budget and do half of what it was touted to do like all the others.
John S.,
The two characteristics are not mutually exclusive. He is a narcissistic lier and I so indicated.
There are many reasons to dislike the HCR Bill. (At least what details we have.) However, there is a very cogent single argument against it that, IMO, shines a light on what is wrong with the way Congress and the dems go about their business. Any “law” that reaches the size of a phone book is no longer a law. It is an incomprehensible set of regulations, which will have innumerable unintended consequences. Consequences that even Solomon who, in all his wisdom, could not foresee. Laws should simple so they can be understood, agreed to and accepted by most of the citizens. This HCR mishmash does not meet that test.
To read an excellent essay on just that (HT Shrinkwrapped), I recommend you go here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/10/the_tea_party_spirit_104699.html
@J.J. I think this is intentional, so no one CAN know or understand.