In case you missed it, non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact has weighed in on Representative Joe Wilson’s commentary. You can click here to read it – http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/09/joe-wilson/joe-wilson-south-carolina-said-obama-lied-he-didnt/ - or you can scan the bottom line right here:
“You lie!” (in response to President Obama saying health reform would not insure illegal immigrants.)
Joe Wilson on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 in the audience at a joint session of Congress
Joe Wilson of South Carolina said Obama lied, but he didn’t
….so who’s the liar now? Please, let’s all recognize that there’s no other way to spin this: Representative Wilson may have been impassioned and emotional, but he got the facts wrong and he chose the wrong avenue to lodge his complaint. Many people have written to political sites today to support Wilson, because they say he “spoke truth to power”. Well, if it WAS truth he was speaking, then we might take that into consideration. But his anger was based on his personal interpretation of language in the bill, and from all objective accounts, there is no intent on either side to provide government-funded health care coverage to illegal immigrants. If the language in the bill is still ambivalent on that point, then Representative Wilson and others who share his concern can hammer those details out before the final measure is written, and they can vote against any bill which they feel they cannot support. That’s how to solve the problem – not shouting out in the middle of a speech.
More importantly, his intentions do not excuse his actions. We cannot, and should not, throw civilized discussion out the window because we believe that the end justifies the means. Why should Representative Wilson get a pass for being out of order during a joint session of Congress? He’s there to do a job, and the halls of Congress are his workplace. Just like any other workplace, Congress has certain guidelines for conduct. If you break the stated rules regarding conduct at any job, you get a warning, at the very least. Representative Wilson should be no different and anyone who wants to excuse his error is just inviting a huge, unruly mess. If spontaneous, disrespectful outburts are OK for him, then it needs to be OK for everyone else to do the same. His supporters have to tell America, straight out, that there is no longer any room for rules, manners, decorum, tradition, order or common courtesy in American government. It’s a free-for-all, and everyone who is angry enough about something can just yell at everyone else until the cows come home.
That’s great, but just remember, it’s not just conservatives or republicans that get angry. Liberals were angry when we organized in support of Barack Obama’s campaign. We were angry when we pulled in a record number of young voters, Hispanic voters, and other voters who had not traditionally chosen to vote (or to vote for Democrats) in previous elections. We were angry when we raised record sums of money for the campaign. We were angry when we rose up as a majority and asked the Republican party to get out of the White House before they started any more wars based on false information, ran up any more foreign debt, burned bridges with any more of our former allies and took away any more of our civil liberties. We were angry – and we won. We won BIG. Not by trying to shout down the opposition, but by outworking them, and by addressing people’s concerns instead of stoking people’s baser instincts. It was a good strategy then and it’s a good strategy now, but if those on the right simply cannot keep their rage in check long enough to do the work that’s needed for their side, as we did last year, they will not be able to connect with the majority of Americans.
So if conservatives are changing the rules of the game, and declaring that it’s all about who can shout the loudest from now on, they should remember that they are not the only ones with something to shout about.
He says there’s no death panels, but death by bureaucrat care denial is there.
He says there’s no additional spending, but its there according to non-partisan CBO.
He says there’s no one will lose their current health care because of his public option but they will when it drains the private market with unfairly priced government competition.
And he says no illegal immigrants will be covered, but there’s no verification to stop that from happening. Your own Politifact citation says exactly that as well.
Is there specific language saying any of these are allowed? No.
But only an irrational person will say you are telling the truth when you can see the practical outcome is exactly the opposite.
That is why Obama was called a Liar.
By: Philospher on September 11, 2009
at 2:44 am
*sigh* OK, what’s actually irrational is to defend an indefensible point. Regardless of the intent of Representative Wilson’s outburst, it was wrong for him to make it in the manner he did – a fact which he himself has already expressed more than once. Go to his website and watch his new video message to constituents – he starts off by pointing out that his actions the other night were wrong. He stands by his beliefs about health care reform, which he’s absolutely entitled to do, but he acknowledges that he was wrong to heckle a president during an address to Congress. If he can admit that simple point, why can’t you?
As for your other points, regarding the semantics of the bills, here’s a couple of things to consider. First, the president is not going to sign off any ANY of the bills that are currently floating around Washington. His aim is to come up with one single proposal which will incorporate pieces of these various bills, and this final reform package will distill all the work done by the various committees up to this point. When that bill – the actual, real bill – is completed, then the language of it needs to be carefully examined to determine what it provides for, what it allows, and what it does not. Your assumption about the “practical outcome” is a bit premature because the whole thing is still half-finished and nobody is 100% sure how it will look when it is on the table.
Secondly, let’s not kid each other. No piece of legislation is completely iron-clad, no matter what the “specific language” of the legislation may be. During the last administration, folks like Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo found ways to “reinterpret” the Geneva Convention and the Constiution, and in so doing, they created a virtual monarchy for George W. Bush. If a document as fundamental and sacred to American democracy as our Constitution can be bent and stretched in order to suit the agenda of a sitting president, then it shouldn’t be a shock to realize that most Congressional legislation does have the potential to be “reinterpreted”as well. I would like to think that the potential for loopholes will be kept to a minimum and I will have to see the final proposal before I know if that’s the case or not.
But as to the question of whether the president was lying in his address, he was not. The bills, as they are currently written, do not provide for government insurance for illegal immigrants. At best, the specifics of the proposal need to be tightened up, but to call President Obama a liar about this point is to ignore the facts as they currently stand. What ends up in the final version of the bill remains to be seen, and I will expect that they will at least try to clean up any remaining ambiguous language about this point, especially given the amount of focus that has been placed on it over the past week.
By: wideawakeinamerica on September 11, 2009
at 2:10 pm
Uh, wrong. They’ll be covered indirectly. Just not by the bill… but if you pay taxes you’ll be paying for their health care (as you do now) because where are they going? To the emergency room, that’s where. That is until Obama and gang grant them amnesty and then they’ll be on the public plan. Because by then every employer will pay the penalty for not offering insurance (because it’s cheaper) and we’ll all be on the public plan. Just like Obama told the SEIU… everyone will be on universal health care… it just might take a few years.
See you in line.
By: bassackwards on September 11, 2009
at 3:47 am