PERFECT Example of FACTS vs. FEEEEEELINGS

I was reminded of this clip from last August just this morning on Twitter. It's a perfect example of what happens when facts meet feelings. Michelle Malkin, discussing her 400 page book packed with example after example of how Obama hasn't met his own standard of "clean" politics is met with "But what about Bush-What about Bush-What about Bush" They are completely incapable of offering any rebuttal on the merits of the facts before them. It's all, as Malkin says, moral equivalency, which is the refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.

Sanctimony on OVERDRIVE... and WRONG

I try to do my due diligence and watch "the other side" to see what they are saying in the hope that I might actually learn something or at least be better able to focus my side of the debate, but I never learn anything, and usually end up drowning in the sewage of emotion they think is reason. I literally had to change the channel last night when Crazy Larry was doing this piece it was so over the top wrong. The sanctimony needle was pinning way to the right and damn near burst the glass... Thank GOD Michelle Malkin was able to stomach it to write what needed writing here...

Doing the health care anecdote-vetting the Left won’t do

By Michelle Malkin  •  March 16, 2010 11:27 PM

Here is Larry Scary O’Donnell — who can usually be seen frothing at the mouth with bulging neck veins as he melts down on MSNBC — sloooowly reading a teleprompter as he chastises me, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for “attacking” 11-year-old Marcelas Owens. Nice to see your Valium is working Larry:

As usual, he gets basic facts wrong — like accusing Rush and me of being “desperate to catch up” with Beck. Actually, he’s got the timeline upside-down, as the enraged Media Matters chronology correctly lays out here.

My syndicated column raising inconvenient questions about Owens’ case appeared was published on March 10 and my follow-up post on Harry Reid hiding behind Owens was published on March 12.

Rush addressed the Democrat exploitation of Owens on March 12.

Beck then discussed the case on March 15.

Also wrong: At 3:28, O’Donnell falsely claims I called the parents of S-CHIP poster child Graeme Frost “spoiled brats” — a misattribution which he alsoregurgitated from Media Matters.

Also moronic: At 6:45 in the video, O’Donnell says conservatives can’t find a single person on Medicaid or Medicare who is unhappy with his/her coverage. Ahem, meet NYTimes columnist Nick Kristof’s favorite health care poster boy, John Brodniak.

Facts, schmacts.

At 7:25 in the video, liberal columnist Chris Hayes of the Nation decries the tendency of conservative pundits to “raise questions and point out errors.” God forbid we do that. Doing the health care anecdote-vetting the Left won’t do? FASCISTS!!!

O’Donnell dubs our analyses of Owens and his left-wing activist grandmother’s claims “childish attacks.” But it’s immature demagogues like O’Donnell who refuse to grow up. I repeat what I said about the NYTimes’ shoddy, gullible, unquestioning coverage of the story four days ago:

The Times fails to mention that Owens’ grandmother and family have been longtime activists for the left-wing, single-payer advocates of the Washington Community Action Network or that the boy and his grandmother traveled to Washington with sponsorship from the Astroturf lobbyists of the Health Care for America Now outfit, which characterized Marcelas as an “insurance abuse survivor.”

Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence that any health insurer ever “abused” Marcelas. Never mind that the family has made no claim that Marcelas himself has survived without insurance (in Washington state, low-income children have been covered either through Medicaid, SCHIP, or the SCHIP expansion program Apple Health for Kids). Newsbusters is also covering the MSM’s soft-shoe coverage of the Democrats’ use of the Owens’ kiddie shield here, here, and here.

Not that gullible health care sob story coverage is anything new to the Times. See: Unbelievable update: The crappiest NYTimes column on Obamacare just got crappier; Update: Kristof’s disingenuous non-response.

The usual hyperventilating from the Left — horrible conservatives “targeting” poor, innocent kid! conservatives “assault” poor, innocent kid! — just proves my point. Despite President Obama’s repeated admonition that health care reform is a “complex issue that can’t be reduced to snippets,” it’s exactly what Reid, Murray, Schumer, and his Owens’ grandmother propped up young Marcelas to do. Anyone who questions the narrative and absolute moral authority of the kiddie human shield is a heartless, right-wing stalker who should be vilified, if not arrested.

As always, the current ruling majority is incapable of holding an adult discussion on the costs and consequences of its plans.

(Makestickers.com)

***

Attacks on Fox News for vetting President Obama’s Ohio poster patient, Natoma Canfield, in 3, 2, 1…

Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.

Natoma Canfield’s battles with cancer and with insurance companies have become a centerpiece of President Obama’s campaign to pass a health care system overhaul.

Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.

Though Canfield’s sister Connie Anderson said her sibling is afraid she’ll lose her house and Obama warned at an Ohio rally Monday that the patient is “racked with worry” about the cost of tests and treatment, she is already being screened for financial help.

Lyman Sornberger, executive director of patient financial services at the Cleveland Clinic, said “all indications” at the outset are that she will be considered for assistance.

“She may be eligible for state Medicaid … and/or she will be eligible for charity (care) of some form or type. … In my personal opinion, she will be eligible for something,” he said, adding that Canfield should not be worried about losing her home.

“Cleveland Clinic will not put a lien on her home,” he said.

Obama, like JFK jr. Hiding under The Desk

Obama didn't get healthcare in 2009 because he lacked the political courage to pass such a sweeping piece of legislation with no Republican cover.  He knew it was unpopular.  He knew it would remain unpopular.  He knew it would grow more and more unpopular as it aged.  There was absolutely no legislative reason whatsoever, with the Democrat supermajority, that, if he LED, he couldn't have had it.  There was no legislative reason.  There was a character reason.  He lacked the courage of his convictions. Further, his breathtakingly unrelenting narcissism carried him aimlessly aloft from issue to issue, echoing the frenetic domestic policy activity of Clinton in his first year in the White House, only Obama presented a kind of global a.d.d.. One country's soul was too small to contain The Handy Man's Fix.  Everybody got the velvet hammer.

He tried to vote "present" again to get healthcare. That can work with 99 other Senators to carry you over the finish line.  It can work when the coin of the realm is compromise and all the little ways you sold your soul are hidden in the arcane matrix of legalese. Unfortunately for Obama, in the very first job he has ever held in his entire life where others expect and demand that he actually make a decision, and stick to it, there's only one chair and one desk in the Oval Office, and it's all, totally, absolutely, 100% his.  Unless you are a young John Kennedy, playing at the feet of your father, you can't hide under it.


The Republicans should demand transcripts of every word uttered in every meeting having anything whatsoever to do with healthcare to this point before word one is spoken on camera in this bipartisan circus Obama has set up for Thursday.  Michelle Malkin's idea to ask for those transcripts is absolutely brilliant, because if done, it would reveal the democrats to be the party of "no" that the GOP is accused of being.  "No" to everything except $300,000,000 bribes...


The last time we had very small children in the White House was President Kennedy, and it was charming, and lovely, and wonderful, even if, as the intervening years have revealed, an illusion.  What a totally natural, familiar sight it was to have young John playing there with his father.  We won't revisit was Clinton had going on under that desk, except to say that it was a kind of arrested development.  Obama has not been forthcoming with the American people about what he wants vis-a-vis healthcare, because depending upon which videotape you reference, the one from 2007, 2008, or 2009, his core concerns change depending upon who he's talking to.  When confronted with this, Obama reverts back to the childlike belief that even though a thing is there, right there, and everyone can see it, touch it, hear it, the simple act of saying it isn't so makes it not so.


Do we have another child under the desk?