Obama Launches The Worst Kinds of Lying Attacks That Undermine Americans’ Hope for Universal Health Care
By SusanUnPC on February 23, 2008 at 8:50 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Democrats, Health Care, Hillary Clinton
“Shame on you, Barack Obama!” Hillary Clinton lowers the boom on Obama’s phony speechifying in which he says one thing at his big rallies, and then launches odious, anti-Democratic-party attacks — ATTACKS on universal health care. She really goes at him. Good for you, Hillary! (Taylor Marsh has plenty to say too.) And the MSM had better wake the fuck up, and call out Obama for the lying politician he is who uses underhanded tactics while lying through his teeth with his bullshit rhetoric. That phony “Bamboozler“!
Jerome Armstrong, who co-authored Crashing the Gate with Kos, but is far more mature, pithily summed it up like this today in a front-page story at MyDD.com:
On Shame
by Jerome Armstrong, Sat Feb 23, 2008 at 07:16:16 PM ESTClinton on Obama: “Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal healthcare.”
Obama on Clinton: “The government would force you to buy healthcare.”
As Alexander Cockburn wrote about Obama: “I used to think Sen. Joe Lieberman was the man whose words I’d least like to be force fed top volume if I was chained next to a loudspeaker in Camp Gitmo, but I think Obama, who picked Lieberman as his mentor when he first entered the U.S. Senate, is worse. I’ve never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.”
There’s your “liberal” for you, people — a conniving, dishonest trickster who picks Joe Lieberman as his mentor, and stabs the Democratic party and the American people in the back by attacking universal health care. He’s got the “latte elites” and the MSM drunk on his phony rhetoric. But he is a FALSE Messiah with rightwing economic plans that will harm Social Security, Medicare, and any hope for a real economic recovery that reaches down to the struggling average American.
Here’s what the Fact Hub has to say in response to Obama’s lame, dissembling response later today in “Independent Voices: Obama Tactics Resurrect Harry and Louise“:
(Not indented for easier reading, and because I can’t do double-indents in this software.)
At his media availability earlier today, Senator Obama implied that the only health care experts who have criticized the Obama health plan’s failure to provide universal health coverage were Hillary supporters:
Senator Obama: “There are many people who support Senator Clinton, health care experts, who believe in mandates who didn’t like the characterization of it, but there wasn’t anything inaccurate in what was said.”
Senator Obama’s suggestion is false. Many independent experts who have not endorsed Hillary have criticized the Obama health plan and the Obama campaign’s Harry & Louise tactics.
INDEPENDENT EXPERTS ACKNOWLEDGED AND CONDEMNED OBAMA’S USE OF HARRY & LOUISE STYLE ATTACKS
Harbage, 2/23/08: “As Senator John Edwards former Healthcare Advisor and a currently unaffiliated healthcare reform proponent, I think that anyone familiar with the Harry and Louise campaign from the early 1990s would immediately recognize the similarity between the insurance industry’s attacks and the Obama Campaign’s mailer. This attack simply drives the debate to the lowest common denominator of generating fear.”
Ezra Klein, American Prospect: “When I say that Obama is demagoguing universal health care, this sort of campaign literature is what I’m talking about…The Obama campaign kept their hairstyles and barely even changed their clothing — which is really quite unfair to Harry and Louise, who probably let go of the plaid years back. What’s worse is that the argument they’re making is applicable to any kind of universal health care arrangement, including the arrangements Obama himself will eventually have to adopt.”
Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2/1/08: “Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don’t buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed…I know that Obama supporters want to hear no evil, but this is really, really bad.”
Factcheck.org 2/4/08: “We agree that there is a resemblance between the photo on the Obama mailer and the [Harry and Louise] TV spots. In those ads actors portraying a white, middle-class couple expressed grave concerns about how the Clinton administration’s health care plan would affect them. The ads were part of a $17 million campaign by the insurance industry that was widely credited – rightly or wrongly – with contributing to the defeat of the Clinton plan, and the ads still anger many advocates of broader government efforts to provide health insurance.”
Trudy Lieberman, Columbia Review of Journalism, 2/4/08: “[Obama’s] new mailer attacking [Senator Clinton’s] proposal resurrects the ghosts of Harry and Louise, the infamous pair in TV commercials sponsored by the insurance industry, which helped sink Bill Clinton’s efforts at reform. In those ads, a man and woman seated at the kitchen table worry that under his plan they wouldn’t be able to choose their doctor. The message: “If we let the government choose, we lose.” In Obama’s mailer, a man and a woman are seated in the same positions at a kitchen table—the woman even has the same long, blonde hair. The message: “Hillary’s plan forces everyone to buy insurance even if you can’t afford it. Is that the best we can do for families struggling with high health care costs?”
Fact Check: Hillary’s Plan Would Make Health Care Affordable For Everyone
Today an Obama spokesperson released the following statement: “And [Hillary Clinton] herself has said that under the Clinton health care plan, she would consider “going after the wages” of Americans who don’t purchase health insurance, whether they can afford it or not.
This is false and misleading. Hillary has never said she would make Americans purchase health insurance they can’t afford — The Obama campaign is taking her words out of context in an effort to mislead voters and the press.
First, Hillary’s plan contains more generous subsidies than the Obama plan. As a result, independent experts — including Emory University’s Ken Thorpe — have concluded that, under Hillary’s plan, everyone would be able to afford coverage.
Second, Hillary has consistently said she would consider a range of ideas to ensure everyone was covered, including automatically enrolling people who use hospitals and other government services, and working with employers to enroll uninsured employees and go after a small portion of their wages to cover the cost of healthcare. This is similar to the withholding structure that many employees use for their 401(k)s.
Third, while criticizing Senator Clinton, Senator Obama himself has said he would fine parents to enforce his mandate on kids and would fine sick people if they don’t get health care coverage until their sick.
More details HERE.
Obama Campaign Distributes Two Dishonest Mailers In Ohio
The Obama campaign is distributing two dishonest mailers in Ohio. The first mailer falsely claims that Hillary said NAFTA was a “boon” to the economy. Hillary never said that. The Obama campaign is basing the quote on a 2006 Newsday article that characterized her views this way without any substantiation. In fact, Newsday recently said that the Obama campaign’s use of their article was “misleading.” The Politico called the Obama campaign’s use of the quote “bogus.“
The second mailer from the Obama campaign mimics Harry and Louise ads that the health care industry used to scare people into opposing universal health care. The ad claims “Hillary’s health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it.”
Here are the facts:
Sen. Obama fails to mention Hillary’s plan cuts costs just as aggressively as Sen. Obama, if not more so.
Hillary’s plan contains more generous subsidies than the Obama plan. Noted health expert Ken Thorpe of Emory University concluded that under the Hillary plan, everyone will be able to afford coverage.
The Obama plan leaves 15 million people out, which drives up costs because everyone else ends up subsidizing their emergency care.
Paul Krugman called the mailer “ugly” and “destructive.”
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GET THE PICTURE? This phony it’s-all-about-me-and-winning-and-money, on-the-take-from-mobsters-and-terrorists politician is not only lying about Hillary Clinton’s health plan but he’s also sowing the seeds of destruction for GENUINE universal health care.
Lying sack of shit.
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