I had not intended to watch it, but switched on FoxNews at about 5:40 and was surprised that he was still in the middle of it. And he’s still going. He seems quite angry, shouting the speech rather than giving it. (And it seems others agree with me as a blogging friend observed as his Facebook status, “Why is the President yelling at us?”
“If you misrepresent what is in this plan, I will call you out.” Um, so does that mean he will be calling himself out?
UPDATE: Stephen Green drunkblogs to similar effect: “The president is LECTURING people he needs to win over. How’s that gonna go over, you think?” His summary:
Obama will see a brief spike in the polls, but not enough. He delivered a divisive speech to a divided nation — and that’s no way to spur a divided Congress into action.
I agree. Read the whole thing.
UP-UPDATE: Please note I include this post in the “Dishonest Democrats” category because of the way he misrepresented his plan and his critics. Hope to address this in a subsequent post.
UP-UP-UPDATE: Jim Geraghy also thought he “shouted” the speech:
Tonight, we saw a surprising amount of “shouting” delivery, and a lot of promises. A lot. A big reason the public skeptical is that they doubt any plan passed by Congress will meet the litany of pledges Obama offered this evening.
lol. We said almost exactly the same thing. If only some Republican had the balls to stand up and shout, “Obama, I’m calling you out!”
Keep nagging and lecturing us, Mr. President I Won. It ain’t playin’ in Peoria. The Republican landslide is coming. The American people are going to call you out.
Will Obama call himself out for telling porkies over the cost of having a foot amputated?
A speech full of feel-good platitudes that few can disagree with. Win them over with vagueness!
He freakin sucks at politics. “Hmmm… My policy of demonizing opponents hasn’t worked all these months, so I guess I’m going to say they are ‘against health care reform at all costs’ and they use ‘lies plain and simple’ and I’ll quote someone who isn’t elected to any government position on any level to represent them.”
Good job with that. I can already see that all–including those within your own party–who were skeptical about government-run non-option healthcare are now going to support you because you convinced them with your eloquent line about “lies plain and simple.”
They’d do a better job if Barack hid under a rock for two months.
And when he was called a liar, he seemed to try to convince himself. He said illegal aliens wouldn’t be covered, then a Rep. shouted, “That’s a lie,” and Barack said in a self-assured voice, “It’s not true.”
You can also see Biden shaking his head. Even Biden knows Barack is failing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0PqBiNUyqU&feature=email
Let me play Dan’s favorite game.
Imagine if a Democrat had yelled out “you lie” to a Republican president addressing Congress.
Time to earn some credibility guys….
OK guys, here are the numbers you all have been waiting for…LINK
{From Tano’s link, “The audience for the speech appears to be more Democratic than the U.S. population as a whole. Because of this, the results may favor Obama simply because more Democrats than Republicans tune into the speech.” From a post I penned earlier today:
Emphasis added. In fact, Stephen Green said the same thing in the post above (“brief spike in polls”). So, please, Tano, once again, read the posts before weighing in. Thanks, Dan]
Um, Tano, did I or any of the commenters defend the heckler? I agree it was in very poor taste.
LOL! Didn’t they NYT and CBS try to push similar poll as absolute proof just a mere few months ago?
Did I miss it? I was watching The Dish.
Dan, I just discovered in another thread that it helps Tano’s reading problems about 1/3 of the time if you put something in *bold stars*. Little kids are into that sort of thing, I guess.
Let me see if I understand President Obama’s speech…
Health care is an devastating crisis that is destroying our nation, but if you already have insurance, nothing will change, except that it will cost you less, and if you have Medicare, you won’t lose a single benefit, and if you’re among the 30–45 million people who don’t have health insurance, we’ll give it to you through the Public Option, which will essentially be paid for by the government finally eliminating all fraud and waste from Medicare and Medicaid, but as mentioned, without eliminating a single benefit from either program, and any worries or fears that someone might have about these health reform bills are simply a product of evil scare tactics for vile partisan gain, because Republicans want to kill health reform and maintain the status quo, even though the health reform bills actually include many Republican ideas, which is strange, because President Obama says he’s still waiting for “serious” Republican ideas, which the Republicans apparently don’t have but which somehow are already in the health reform bills, because the president is a postpartisan uniter, even when he’s blaming irresponsible Republican spending on the Iraq War and tax cuts for that $1 trillion deficit he says he inherited, and let’s not talk about that other $8 trillion in deficits from his own spending over the next 10 years, because we’re here to talk about health reform.
Did I miss anything?
I agree it was in very poor taste.
No more in poor taste than the shitty attacks on Republicans by the POTUS. Folks are fed up with these lame-ass straw men too.
BTW, I thought about watching the speech and got to the point when the cabinet entered. Then I realised I had an update to iTunes 9 available.
No, Democrats dont have the courage or the character to do it themselves. so THEY give their tickets to code pink demonstrators to come in and do it for them.
liars AND cowards.
Paraphrasing the speech:
Obama: Republicans lie, republicans lie, republicans lie, republicans lie
Republican: You lie!
Democrats: how DARE you!
And we should remember that Barack Obama and the Obama Party called screaming at the President and calling him a liar “saying truth to power”.
One would think Barack Obama would try to earn some credibility himself before trying to demand it of others. But then again, when you live in a world of racists like “Tano” in which your skin color means you don’t have to follow the law or pay taxes, you do such patently stupid and hypocritical things.
I’ll gladly defend him. Nor should he have apologized
I’ll gladly defend him. Nor should he have apologized
Yo, man.
Wesley: Perfect 🙂
Someone said imagine what would happen if a Dem heckled Bush like in 2005?
You sound just like the Kos. Indeed, the Kos ran that same story.
Apparently the GOP would launch a resolution against him or something and force him to resign.
Why don’t you just stick with the facts at hand, and say it was wrong for a Repub to say it, instead of, it would be wrong if a Dem did?
The con bloggers do this a lot too, and often it gets annoying.
I mean lets stick with the facts: Joe Wilson said something he shouldn’t have said, Barack said a whole lot of shit he shouldn’t have said, Barack is pushing bad policy, so in conclusion, we should vote against Barack’s bad policy and possibly criticize Joe Wilson (one individual rep).
I’m going to try an Obama tactic an Obama way with words…..
When I heard the heckle from the crowd of Congressmen I flashed back to the last speech by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He was telling the revolting masses how great a dictator he was and to go home in peace, he ordered them to obey. A rumble went throughtout the crowd and they finally began shouting back, shaking their fists at the detached dictator. Ceausescu was stunned, expecting rousing cheeers for him not against him. Finally a state police member comes to his side and tells him it was time to escape, they couldn’t guarantee his safety anymore. The couple took too long. Waiting until the next morning. And the revolution was well under way. They were captured and it was over.
http://www.ceausescu.org/ceausescu_media/ultima-audio.html
Hear for yourself.