Today’s Qs for O’s WH – 8/12/2009

picked randomly from what database? Sara Palin is in control of the administrations health care initiative
What a country

I have heard today that prenatal babies with spinal bifita ( SPELLING ) COULD BE FORCED ABORTTED.

TAPPER: But is this one of the reasons he wanted it passed before the August recess?
Bingo!
According to Gallup health care reform has lost 21 points of support in one month. In July 56% wanted their rep to vote FOR. Now it is 35%.

TB asks a very good question. What database did they randomly select “townhall” attendees from to discuss Obamacare? Does the administration keep a database at the whitehouse of all the residents of each state? Did they get the names and addresses from submissions online? Did they get them from the state? This brings up some privacy concerns if it was anything other than submissions online, and if it was that, did everyone have an equal notice and opportunity to sign up? The fact that he took questions from those who raised hands is a questionable claim as well, but that would be a matter of trusting the admin to tell the truth.

i see everyone that is pro obama healthcare reform saying you can keep your present healthcare.yes if your employer does not figure out it is cheaper to pay the fines and or payroll percentage than it is to keep paying private insurance .oh i get it a business will pay higher rates for the privalage of keeping their private plans rather than save money for their owners and stockholders.yea and i have some oceanfront property for sale here in beautiful seaside phoenix.

The right wing is reduced to attacking children.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
More like the White House is reduced to having to call on children in order to find a supporter. I hope she at least gets another invite to the WH Easter egg party.

Jake did you really say, “We’ve called the death panels false. I don’t know what more you want from us.”
What more do they want from you? Dude, why are you taking such a servile position?

The right wing is reduced to attacking children.
I guess it must be frustrating when the “I’m just a concerned mom” town hall attendee is exposed as a Republican official.
Posted by: Ryan C | Aug 12, 2009 1:56:43 PM
I guess it must be frustrating to not be able to defend the President’s HC Plan so you have to keep attacking commenters as a straw man.

Ryan, why no concern about the little girl who was put in the media spotlight by her Obama supporting mother to ask such a silly question.
A question that Obama didn’t even bother to answer?
Why do liberals use their children as political props?
She was so obvious a plant that there were leaves all around her (or was that Soylent Green?).

GIBBS: The — let me sort of — let me split these up a little bit. I think there’s a tremendous amount of disinformation that’s out there. We — we’ve — we’ve seen it.
And, look, let’s be honest. You all, the media, tend to cover, “X said this, Y said this,” but some of you — but not everyone — does an investigation about whether what X said is actually true. Now, that’s not — I’m not — that’s not a blanket statement. Not every one of you is that.
Gibbs is the poster child for… well, never mind.

We’re winning the debate. Obama is losing. Ordinary citizens are speaking truth to power, and it is exciting to behold.
His agenda is toast. I’m very happy.

“If the president wants to have a forum in which he can take take the serious concerns of opponents head-on, how about a 60 or 90 minute conversation with republicans with a good grasp of the health care issues,”
or if he is afraid of politicians, how about John Stossel?

Obama-Gibbs would do well to pay attention to “scare tactics” and “wild misrepresentations” coming FROM the White House.
The fury of the present protestors is going to look like a high school debate, when rank-and-file DEMOCRATS figure out the liars of the “leadership” have ALREADY reduced the “public option” to a bad joke (and are likely to “negotiate” it away at the end).
The only reason there’s ANY apparent support for Obama’s pig bill is that many people — Obama dupes — still THINK there’s an actual “public option” to be defended.
These gutless geese have seized the engines of er democracy. Possibly to distract people from what the simpering soldier-cultist is up to in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“I’d PAY to watch. Put it on Pay-for-view.”
He may make it through a whole term, but it’s difficult to imagine that ANYone will ever believe another word He says.
Just WAIT till the Democrats outside DC figure out what these wusses have done to the “public option”.

You know, Jake, there may not be anything in the bill called “DEATH PANEL”, but when Ezekial Emanuel, one of Obama’s foremost health care policy advisors, and brother to his chief of staff publishes this sort of stuff:
“Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.”
it kinda makes you wonder just exactly how ObamaCare will reduce costs.

Hilarious to see the same zealots on here day after day clamouring to see the President damaged – and posting the same gibberish over and over.
The Democrats and Obama will be around long after your sneering negativity.
Posted by: davedillon | Aug 12, 2009 4:34:00 PM
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Not saying two wrongs make a right, but the Bush bashing was any better? I mean seriously?

“Hilarious to see the same zealots on here day after day clamouring to see the President damaged – and posting the same gibberish over and over.
“The Democrats and Obama will be around long after your sneering negativity.”
________________________________
It’s the same old borderline ‘hate and destroy’ posting day after day by the same small group of zealots.
Bush is long gone and he took the Republican party with him.

This death panel commentary is not doing justice to the issue. Obviously, Ms. Palin used that term to get people’s attention. But I am surprised that our intelligent media types cannot see that the issue is about ranking human beings according to some measure of societal worth. Why consider this an issue? Because advisors close to the President hold the view that “the hippocratic oath is applied to the extreme” and society cannot afford to pay for heroic measures for everyone in the struggle to stay alive. Now the crux of this is that when you go down the road toward “pulling the plug on granny”… if you even dare consider one baby step down that road… you are entertaining the idea of state control over life and death. This is what concerns people. I, for one, do not want Rahm Emanuel’s brother deciding it is in society’s best interest to feed me morphine to “keep me comfortable” as I am being prepared for the soylent green factory. (Pardon the hyperbole.) There is much in what Obama has said and what others who advise him have written that lead many of us to distrust this administration and this congress. Why the media intelligentia cannot see this and why they refuse to examine the background of this issue remains a mystery to me.

“feed me morphine to “keep me comfortable” as I am being prepared for the soylent green factory”
Yet more fear mongering from the zealots. This type of hyperbole is extremist and unacceptable no matter how much you may try to exucise it.

Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.
“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.” (YEAH RIGHT)
Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.
“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”

KMDay . . .
Your facts about Democrats pale in comparison to the lies told to the American people by the previous administration.
As you know Scooter Libby was already convicted and sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury, contempt and more – crimes committed while serving in the office of the Vice-President, Richard Cheney.
American people know what real crimes are. Next in line would seem to be Karl Rove -from the President Bush’s office. The questions remain – is Cheney next? Will it actually reach Bush?
You are grasing at straws

Yes Briget, lies and hyperbole spread by hysterical zealots – ‘death panels’, ‘kill granny’ – all reprehensible lies and scare tactics to try to stop health care reform. Same as your attempts to make implications out of President Obama’s statement.

So, granny’s fears of being thrown under the bus by ObamaCare (and Palin’s for her disabled son) are not unfounded. We may debate whether or not the rest of us ought to be taxed to pay for end of life heroic measures for the terminally ill, but don’t stifle the debate by pretending the issue is nothing but a “wild misrepresentation”. It is neither wild, nor a misrepresentation.

“Hyperbole?
Barack Obama, April 2009:
“The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here.””
–> Couple this with His over-emphasis, during the campaign, with His own supposedly-superior DNA, and you find … a eugenicist in a birthday suit.

Government is going to bring back the estate tax and take half of what you have when you die anyhow. Why do we need to be counsiled on it?
End of life counsiling should be left to the families, not tax payers. I mean heck, wheel a computer into the room and go to that online website that does legal wills or whatever. Government is trying to do too much good with something that shouldnt be this hard to do good in. If it’s this hard to articulate then just get rid of it till you can.

You are grasing at straws, but anyone who posts here can see through the thin veil to the heart of the corrupt Republican party – and the atrocities committed while they held office.
Posted by: davedillon | Aug 12, 2009 5:10:28 PM
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Are yo serious? You give me Scooter Libby with what I gave you?
Karl Rove has done nothing? The only issue at hand with him was his role he played in the firing of US Attorney generals, which by the way the President is allowed to do this.
The person they have been questioning blatantly said she does not recall Rove ever telling her to fire them….next!
Bush……what is he on the hook for, the war? You mean where there or hours of FBI tapes of Saddam admitting he lied about having WMD to keep Iran from invading/attacking Iraq? Where other countries were given or giving the same intel?? ……next?
Chenney……do tell? The war also? LOL……again, see previous post…….next!
What else?
Oh, the Clinton’s and Whitewater Controversy?
William Jefferson Clinton- Impeached by the House of Representatives over allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice, but acquitted by the Senate.

As a matter of fact, I am inclined to agree with both Obama and Emanual. I don’t want heroic end of life measures for myself, and I don’t want my kids authorzing it on my behalf if I’m not capable. I certainly don’t want to be taxed to pay for other people’s kids to authorize heroic end of life care for them. But I prefer to have this debate frankly and openly, not avoided by pretending that it’s nothing but lies and hyperbole and wild misrepresentations.

“I don’t want heroic end of life measures for myself, and I don’t want my kids authorzing it on my behalf if I’m not capable”
This is clearly what was outlined in the ‘counselling sessions’ described in the ammendment put in place by the Republican representative. These counselling sessions allow you to consider the various options and make your own choice.
This has nothing to do with ‘death panels’, or ‘kill granny’ or any of the other fear tactics unethically spread by the zealots on the right attempting to scare people out of reform.

” … I don’t want heroic end of life measures for myself, and I don’t want my kids authorzing it on my behalf if I’m not capable. I certainly don’t want to be taxed to pay for other people’s kids to authorize heroic end of life care for them. But I prefer to have this debate frankly and openly, not avoided by pretending that it’s nothing but lies and hyperbole and wild misrepresentations.”
–> Yes.
We can suppose, in fact, that MOST actually-dying people would prefer not to be tortured — or to have their survivors bankrupted — by “heroic” (boy, is THAT the wrong word for what it really is!) measures, some of which actually are research.
Still, Obama’s apparent surprise and dismay that it’s elders and “chronically-ill” people who need the most medical care is either just disingenuous, or repellently simple-minded.

“This has nothing to do with ‘death panels’, or ‘kill granny’ or any of the other fear tactics unethically spread by the zealots on the right attempting to scare people out of reform.”
–> On the other hand, if someone is lying helpless and fearful in a hospital, and his/her MEDICAL personnel are steering his/her “choices”, they can easily, even without actual coercion, elicit whatever the desired response may be.
Why in heaven’s name would the government specify supposedly-scarce MEDICAL personnel to perform a paralegal counseling function, ANYway?

“You’ve been clamoring for anything you can use against the President for months. You had pre-judged the President long before he did anything.
And it didn’t really matter what the President did or does, you attack him. It’s a lot like the little boy who cried ‘wolf’.”
“Leave Britney ALONE!” :^|
Another way to look at it: every time Oblabla wants another “win” for His corporate sponsors, and for His perpetual campaign and insatiable ego need, He claims it’s vitally necessary to the salvation of the “economy” that the Congress, without examining the legislation, throw em a few trillion more buckaroos.
If anybody’s “crying wolf”, it’s Der Won, and His chorus of dissemblers.

I really see Gibbs point about some media just reporting he said or she said but not doing the actual investigative journalism to report if anyone is lying. With the crazy stuff the far right is saying about health care reform, it would seem very obvious investigation was needed.

“Pity the poor trust fund baby who has to make due with only his 1st million from Daddy as tax free.”
Wait till your cash gets grabbed.

What kind of heartless person scares grandma in order to move their agenda? It takes a real low down, scum of the earth person to not care about what you’re doing to seniors and continue to make them believe their government wants them dead.
I hope America and the media wakes up to what kind of person would do this to the most vulnerable in our society and start calling them what they are.
Opportunist scam artist with no regard for who is a casualty in the path to their cause. What worst, some of these people claim to be evangelicals. Would God approve of lying, scaring grandma just to advance an earthly cause?
Not the God I serve…

“I’m not waiting for Daddy’s money to make my mark in life.
And if my kid can’t get by indeed thrive with a million bucks tax free then being taxed at 55% of what I leave him than I have done something wrong as a parent.”
Don’t be bitter because you don’t work for Goldman!

Okay, which one of you is Danita? I know she’s in there somewhere. Maybe davedillon?

I really see Gibbs point about some media just reporting he said or she said but not doing the actual investigative journalism to report if anyone is lying. With the crazy stuff the far right is saying about health care reform, it would seem very obvious investigation was needed.
Posted by: Lydia | Aug 12, 2009 6:56:30 PM
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I agree. IMO, Tapper often stays on the superficial level. Here, he says, “We’ve called the death panels false. I don’t know what more you want from us.” Well,for crying out loud, there are lots of other big lies out there as well as valid questions that can be asked and more valid, less misinformed and misleading, criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress– why not cover the ones with merit rather than the ones that are simply the most sensational? As Dan Pearlstein of WaPo puts it: “The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage.” Call a spade a gardening utensil! Some of the more thoughtful conservatives and moderates here — yes, there are a — have made valid points and offered up good ideas beyond the standard “tort reform”. And what about questions that might come from a small business owner that wants coverage to move away from an employer-based system, or those in favor of single payer, or what in the heck about Wyden Bennet?? If that’s a bipartisan bill why aren’t we talking to Obama more about that?
I get frustrated… obviously. I think the conversation that actually needs to take place has been hijacked, and it ticks me off. Not at Obama, btw. I’m shaking my head at some of the ridiculous tangents here.
Some of you are still talking about the death panels. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday told an Anchorage crowd that “critics of health care reform, the summer’s hottest political topic, aren’t helping the debate by throwing out highly charged assertions not based in fact.”
“It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there’s these end-of-life provisions, these death panels. Quite honestly, I’m so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn’t (in the bill). There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill.”

“This has nothing to do with ‘death panels’, or ‘kill granny’ or any of the other fear tactics unethically spread by the zealots on the right attempting to scare people out of reform.”
Posted by: davedillon | Aug 12, 2009 5:56:04 PM
I never said it did.

In tomorrow’s questions, maybe somebody can ask the great prevaricator why the “stimulus” money for weatherization projects (for the un-rich, natch) has been hung up all summer in bureaucratic hassle (see msn).
It’s now mid-August. Obama still hasn’t taken His turn on Martha’s Vineyard, but come September, it’ll be getting pretty COOL in Montana, and Michigan, and Chicago. Then it will start to rain in California, and snow everywhere else, and presto! no weatherization work till NEXT year.
What a great administration. They bungle everything, except getting the trillions to the corporations. Probably a coincidence … it’s so EASY to open the Treasury to corporate raiders, so COMPLICATED to decide how much to pay freaking weatherization laborers to work on the hovels of the unrich. Sheesh.
Remember how Austin Goolsbee was opposed to the low-income energy assistance program? Probably just a coincidence …

They were picked “randomly”! I’m going to laugh myself to sleep tonight.

I read Mackey’s article, moderate, and it is indeed wonderful.

“I have actually been surprised that the president has focused his remarks on end-of-life care so frequently in his health care reform promotion.”
Yep: it sure looks like He’s aiming to hustle the contentious Baby Boomers into the Great Beyond a little early, by screwing up Medicare. AND aiming to blow off the almost-entirely-imaginary “public option”.
And, of course, to pretty much annihilate the Democratic Party as a populist or “progressive” force of any kind. Just what we needed after Bush: a closet conservative who makes no pretense of compassion for His subjects, or for the hapless populations who are the targets of His stupid military adventures.
Bonuses for bankers? What bonuses?
This is not gonna end well, howEVER it ends.

Tapper- Why aren’t you and the press using the house plan to ask questions like the town hallers?

The participants for the *town hall* meeting were chosen *randomly by computer* and there was no follow up asking about the data base?
*Disinformation* is used interchangeably with *misinformation*.?
How about plain talk; minus the jargon: and answering questions directly.
People think they have been had. They see Obama and his entourage as just more of the same 80′s. 90′s bunch of arrogant,*entitled*, elites talking down to the rest of us; the *joe six packs*; *soccer moms*; *ordinary folks*; *talent*; *human capital* and what other moniker elected and appointed office holders use to describe American citizens who are their employers.
Has it ever occurred to any administration that the American citizens should be the ones to decide whether or not to open our country to illegal and sanctioned aliens who use our institutions of health care; education; and public safety as well as our jobs without concern for the rights of the people who pay for them.

I would suggest that anyone who is serious about health insurance reform should read the piece in the WSJ today by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. He talks about what Whole Foods does right, and what should be done to reform health care, and it is wonderful.
. . .
Posted by: moderate | Aug 12, 2009 9:29:22 PM
I finally read this as I am serious about health reform and I find Mackey very interesting. He’s a Friedman and Rand praising libertarian, as I once was (long ago) BUT, to his credit, he rightly disagrees with Friedman’s argument that corporations don’t or shouldn’t have any ulterior social responsibilities– so, if you’ve read articles by or about him, you definitely come aware with the impressions, he’s a fresh thinker in many ways.
Nonetheless, I think I like Ezra Klein’s take better than Mackey’s– and it’s so good I’m going to post the funny part here:
“Food is more like health care than it is like cable television. We worry if people don’t have enough food to eat. We worry quite a lot, in fact. So we have a variety of programs meant to ensure that people have sufficient food. If you don’t have much money, you rely on these programs…”
“The insight that people need food has not led us to simply deregulate the agricultural sector… or change the tax treatment of food purchases or make it easier for rich people to donate to food banks, which is what Mackey recommends for health care. It’s led us to solve, or try and solve, the problem directly by giving people money to buy food. And that works. These programs, as every Whole Foods shopper knows, haven’t grown to encompass the whole population or set prices in grocery stores. If you have more money, you shop for food on your own. And if you have a lot of money, you shop at Mackey’s stores. That’s pretty much the model we’re looking at in this iteration of health-care reform. We’re also laying down some rules so grocery stores — excuse me, health insurers — can’t simply refuse to sell you their product, or take it away after it’s already been purchased.”
“Mackey, playing to type, has offered a Whole Foods solution for health care: It makes the system even better for the rich and the young and the educated — the sort of people who shop at Whole Foods, in other words — and doesn’t do a lot for those who really need help.”

Quote of the Week: “I don’t know what more you want from us.” – Jake Tapper, Independent Journalist. (Not sure how I could take that out of context – but delete the comment anyway, right?)

Mackey’s answers for health care reform, while tickling a few wet-behind-the-ears Ayn Rand and Libertarian dilettantes here, was a hapless and perfectly awful attempt to scale up what isn’t really working with is low paid employees to the rest of us. Try buying health care on the open market if you had cardiac issues or colitis or migraines: it s s total nightmare that doesn’t work. ONLY in those states where the individual market has some strong oversight is it even remotely acceptable, and eve theere the expense is terrible.
I realize a few silly kids reading the Ayn Rand blogs might think this is wonderful. To them I have to ask how many boards to the head do they need before they come back to the real world. We just tried teh Ayn Rand financial system. and poor Old Alan Greenspan and his gold dust fellow bankers had to be bailed out by taxpayers.
This crap does NOT work, health care is NOT a commodity, and no where in the world is there a decent system modeled after Mackey’s.
To add insult, he railed like Joe the Plumber about “socialism”‘ where it doesn’t exist. I a tired of this kind if idiocy in my nation wrecking progress and I a going to teach Mr. Mackey a lesson. I spend probably $8-9,000 a year in Whole Foods. Now it will be — and I could not walk into that store again and feel clean — ZERO. So you can adjust your projections accordingly.
Wow, if I ever thought the left wing talk about corporate corruption and abuse was overdone, this lifted the scales from my eyes.
What I am supporting with my money? Not John Mackey. EVER. I”ll be headed elsewhere. A Union shop for one.