President Obama Healthcare Speech

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Professor, the part in the speech where it was inturrupted by a "you lie" shout.. was Obama lying? To me the racism doesn't come in what is being argued, its how its being argued. Its being led by a lot of misguided hate and fear mongering.

Was he technically lying? No. Was he either ignorant of deceitful in the realities of the HR 3200, which I assume was what he was referring to since it was the only bill that passed anything at that point, YES. And I explained how earlier, but I'll do so again.

While the bill states that no healthcare can be provided to illegals, there is no policing in place, and when amendments to the bill were introduced to police the policy they were shot down.

So according to HR 3200, it's basically a don't ask/don't tell policy that says one thing but refuses to enforce it making the "ban" worthless and ineffective. The fact that efforts to enforce the ban were shot down on multiple occassions leads us to the obvious conclusion that it is intentionally worthless and ineffective

It's this type of intellectual dishonesty that makes people yell things at inappropriate times...

Where were all the animated protests when Dick Cheny famously said "deficits don't matter"? Where were the congressmen yelling out "you lie" when Bush was linking Iraq to 9-11? Why weren't people standing outside of Bush town halls with their guns? Why is Obama constantly called a racist?

Ok, there is a lot in there, most of it a bit rediculous, but I'll take them one at a time.

1) Deficits - To compare the Bush deficits to the Obama deficits is the equivalent of comparing Pike's Peak to Mount Everest. Look at the numbers. In any case, I think Cheney was wrong and there has always been conservative resistance to spending, just not Republican party resistance, and that was a big mistake on their part because they valued pork/re-election instead of doing the right thing. You've certainly never heard me say that spending isn't a problem. Spending was a huge problem when the Republicans were in control under Bush, and is 10 times the problem now under the democrats.

Is there some hipocrisy from Repubs on spending, absolutley, but I would chalk that up to political gamemanship rather than "racism".

2) The "You lie" fiasco was a violation of protocol, not message. I remember a TON of Dems calling Bush a liar throughout his 8 years with even less to go on than Wilson did. They just never made the mistake of doing so in session. So were they racists as well, or does being member of the Democrat party absolve one of racist belief? So do you think it's the location of the accusation that is racist? If so, what locations are racist locations to voice dissent?

3) Town halls and guns - If you want to concentrate on the handful of unfortunate protesters who brought weapons, feel free, and by the way one of the people mentioned in those reports was a black man, but how is that necessarily racist? Are guns racist? Do guns hate black people? Could they have been reacting more to policy they hate? These are wild, illogical leaps you are making.

4) Obama is constantly called a racist? I remember Glenn Beck saying that once (maybe Rush but I'm not sure as I don't listen to him and rarely to Glenn), but constantly? And by who besides Glenn/Rush? Has a former president called Obama a racist, like Carter called the opposition? At best I'd say that the left and right are tied in the racism accusation competition, if that.

Looking at your comments, I'll just assume that now that Democrats are in power you view dissent as racism. It's a lazy and stupid argument and honestly you're better than that.

As for the media, where were they with the whole ACORN issue? You have days of filmed proof that a publicly funded community organization group is teaching people to avoid taxes and break the law in outrageous ways... and only FoxNews carries it? Regardless of political opinion or who broke the story, wasn't that news worthy of broadcast? Where was NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, etc.?

No. They were too busy concentrating on Joe Wilson breaking protocol (regardless of the apology or the fact Pres. Obama accepted it) to cover real news.

There is no such thing s journalism anymore, at least not how it was taught to me in school. If you want the truth, find it yourself and question everything.



EDIT: Looking back on this thread, I see exactly how effective the race card can be. Are we talking about Healthcare reform anymore and it's merits/pitfalls? No. Instead we're talking about whether or not people's motives are racist and attacking PEOPLE instead of discussing IDEAS. It's called "ad hominem". Objective achieved, I guess. So much for honest public discourse. Socrates is rolling over in the his grave right about now (and Saul Alinski is cheering wildly)...