No, I did not watch Obama's speech

Obama didn’t say anything new, as we all figured he wouldn’t. Same sales pitch, different day.

The only interesting point was when a Republican Rep stood up to say what we were all thinking.

As a baseball fan you should read “Miracle Ball” by Brian Biegel – if you haven’t already. As a couple people have commented, “It proves baseball is a Catholic sport and God is a fan” (I paraphrase.) Great story. Check it out.

I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I had laundry to do. So, to paraphrase, “Tepid political theatre is no match for clean underwear.”

We had to listen to the Rockies- Whew! They pulled another one out! Waaay more important than listening to the same old tired talking points.

Of course it was all humdrum stuff. You overlook two facts though.

Firstly, his intended audience want & need humdrum stuff, & will respond positively. Just as the Cairo speech wasn’t for the benefit of western intellectuals & rationalists, this one went down well with the people it was supposed to go down with.

Secondly, as with everything Obama does (again, you know this as much as I do) it had a political element. He is laughing his head off at all the hysteria & fury that came from elements of the right. Joe & Josephine Average are going to think “what, people got enraged over that?” & because these are the public face of Republicans, & whatever Steele & co say is generally ignored, it will have a negative impact in this department.

You’re not up against an impotent weakling, you’re up against a Chicago politician who knows how to do over his opponents.

I spent my time reading. I’ve decided that I will not watch any politicians until they quit looking down on us.

I love baseball, but I’m a Cardinals fan. I think I’d like Mr. Jeter better if he’d quit dating starlets and settle down.

I was at church when President Obama addressed the nation last night, but then, I work in healthcare and am totally convinced that the feds need to get their hands out of it. They are too far away to see what solutions are needed locally, in my opinion. When you make policy for 300 million people, it’s very easy to lose sight of the individual patients those 300 million people are. It’s easy to say, deny treatment “y” to patient “x” because of cost, until you’re the one who has to tell patient “x” that they can’t have it.
The system needs reform, but it needs LESS bureaucracy, not more. And, unless that reform is everyone gets an HSA and a catastrophic policy, that reform MUST include selling insurance across state lines and forcing insurance to cover pre-existing conditions for a higher premium. You should have to pay more into the insurance pool if you know up front that you’re going to be taking more out of it. If you have an HSA that you have to fund to cover your own treatment for, say diabetes, up to $10,000 each year, you will take better care of yourself to lower those costs and you and your doctor will make the best decisions on how to use that $10,000 without anyone else’s input. That’s my two cents from my side of the desk, where I’ve been waiting for a state pension to cut me a check for patient care since last December. I bet someone lunch the other day that it will come at the first of the new fiscal year in October.

I didn’t watch it either. But I rarely watch any political speeches. I had a quiet evening with my wife and daughter.

From what I can tell the big hubub today is some congressman called him a liar during the speech. Nobody appears interested by the fact that he called his political opponents liars in his prepared text.

(Do I need to say it was inappropriate and wrong for the congressman to yell out “LIAR!” like that? OK, it was inappropriate and wrong for him to do that. What has happened to civility is our country?)

When was the last time, if ever, a President of the United States called his political opponents liars in a nationally televised address before a joint session of congress?

It does not surprise me that you did not watch it, just as I was not surprised when you abstained from commenting on the vicious and discourteous attacks on Obama’s speech for schoolchildren–all of which, once again, were about things your cohorts just made up.

I’d have thought the better of you as a political blogger if you had abstained from commenting on this, given how little of substance and how much of snark you have to say about something you went out of your way not to witness personally.

Vicious is the word. And it describes the public behavior of your cohorts both in print and in public forums for at least the last sixteen years.

Now I’ve gone past the point where I care two buttons about anyone’s opinions on health care reform. I don’t even care any longer about your cohorts’ complete abandonment of the world of fact for a public life completely made up of innuendo, fantasy, and rumor–a world where there is no difference between political disagreement and public personal insult.

Maybe your view will prevail on the issue and nothing will get done. If so, I will make absolutely sure that I congratulate you for winning, whatever I may think about the eventual outcome for the country.

But maybe the Democrats in Congress will finally show some backbone and force the filibuster, and maybe even break the fillibuster in the bargain. If they do so, I don’t think there is a single commenter here who would have the grace to congratulate me.

Grace is not a long suit of Conservatives. They were graceless and rude to all who do not think as they do when their party was in power and they are graceless and beyond merely rude to them now that their party is out of power. Their behavior in those so called Town Hall meetings was that of a members of a mob. And the behavior of their spokespersons, including yourself, was that of tacit approval of that mob.

I am not talking about the adolescent fringe which any party acquires. I am talking about serious adults at the heart of the Conservative point of view like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and now a Congressional representative from South Carolina. And I am talking about the people, such as yourself who will not condemn such rude behavior merely because you don’t like the man targeted by it.

No. Given the tone of your post above I’d have to say that it is more than dislike. I’d have to say that it is personal contempt. If Derek Jeeter means so much to you, why gratuitously drag Obama or Pelosi into the post at all, other than to display your contempt for them?

No one, NO ONE, in Congress behaved like that in any way toward George W. Bush when he spoke there. They respected the office even if they personally dislike the man, which many of them did.

I have no children. But if I did, I would want them to emulate the grace of the man who currently holds office as the President. I would want them to respect the office of President. Do you think that South Carolina representative is a sterling example of how you would like your children to behave in school, or in public?

Maybe you do. Your silence on the matter is telling.

And I would want my children to follow the advice he gave them in his speech to them. It was objectively good advice, not Liberal advice, not Conservative advice, and presented in a style of unaffected grace. Just as it was when Laura Bush gracefully said similar things.

Personal grace in public is one of Obama’s long suits and it means something. It means a lot, even if those who have absorbed themselves in opposition to Obama, or to me, or to any Democrat in or out of public life can’t comprehend the meaning.

It means Obama behaves in public like a responsible citizen who values public disagreement unattached to public spleen, and not like some yahoo in an overheated South Carolina mob.

[You're free to read whatever you like into my silences, Joseph, if you don't mind presuming a lot -admin]

When I listen to the president speak I have an image of the snake in the Jungle Book movie, you know the scene when his hypnotizing eyes mesmerize little Mowgli…..it is becoming a little creepy.

Joseph, please try to show some of the charity and grace the Anchoress (who needs no defenders) has shown to you on this blog. Because of her, I, a South Carolina “yahoo-in-exile”, have been holding you up in prayer.

No one, NO ONE, in Congress behaved like that in any way toward George W. Bush when he spoke there.

You have a short memory, Joseph. Bush was heckled and booed during his State of the Union speech. Talking about Iraq, you ask? Denigrating his political opponents? No, warning about Social Security bankruptcy and saying that it needed reform. That’s how seriously Democrats take entitlement accountability.

But to your general point: Obama didn’t say anything new. Same sales pitch, different day, as I said above. He is grandstanding, trying to soak up the publicity as though he is still the campaign rock star, and it’s getting old. That’s just the way it is.

I was more offended by the sight of Charlie Rangel beaming and clapping, front and center, than by heckles. The Dems need to clean the house before they expect anyone to respect their theater.

I too gave a miss to the President’s speech in favor of a Red Sox game. Ever since I found I can get the games on my desktop computer I’ve pretty much given up television. And though I grimace as I say this, congratulation to Derek Jeter on his fine accomplishment. He is one heck of a ballplayer!

I was going to ask for a moment of indulgence to react to Joseph Marshall’s inflammatory troll-bomb but Gina beat me to it, and hit it out of the park – if I may coin a phrase.

the death panel stuff was a flat out lie

**”We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.”
**”But, look, the first thing for all of us to understand is that we actually have some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care.”
**”And all we’re suggesting — and we’re not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care; a lot of that is going to have to be we as a culture and as a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves. But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know, and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help, maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”
**”I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care.”
**”Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question.”
**”So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, 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. . . . I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”

Yeah, all this talk about death panels is a flat-out lie, especially given Obama’s repeated and constant emphasis on “end of life care” and “evidence-based care,” with government “experts” passing on that evidence.

Woe to those who call the truth a lie and the lie the truth.

Bender, thanks for putting all those quotes together. I get so tired of all these Bobfan/Ken/Glenns, which I know is just what he/they are aiming for. Either we’ll all shut up, or say something that he/they can purse his/their lips at and point that everlasting finger claiming what poor christians we are for nothing more than telling the truth, and not lying down like lambs for the slaughter.

Re. death panels and the like, the left protesteth too much. As with the Van Jones debacle, the one thing they cannot abide is to be caught saying something that they actually believe. The unvarnished truth has to be slapped back under the cover of varnish, furious and hard.

Meantime, we have all heard the President in his own words talk about a “difficult democratic conversation” that needs to take place surrounding end-of-life care and its costs. I’m wondering when that difficult democratic conversation is going to begin? After the outcome has already been mandated by law?

Bender, Obama’s just talking common sense. Everyone knows that doctors order all sorts of CYA tests and drugs, and that a lot of people don’t plan sensibly for what kind of care they want.

Here’s more of Obama talking about those difficult moral issues:”when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about-maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that-you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible. And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just-you know, things fell apart.

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life-that would be pretty upsetting.”

The fact you guys never address is that the cost of health care is escalating rapidly, and fewer and fewer people can get that hip replacement. Given that even a public option couldn’t cover every desired procedure for everyone, rationing is a reality whether Obama gets a bill or not. Given that fact, it makes sense to provide for, for example, people who have families to provide for, before the “terminally ill.”

Omaba envisions saving money by pulling the plug on grandma? Yes, Bender, that’s a bald face lie.

We’re all ‘terminally ill’. The fact that a lot of money is spent on health care right before people die is a red herring. We do not know who will and will not die next week so on what basis do we begin to deny care? Based on age?

That’s the unexplained context of Obama’s story about his grandmother. Obviously if I *know* grandma is going to die in 10 days I am not going to want her to go through a traumatic surgery today – I’d much rather keep her comfortable and have her spend her last few days in peace. But we don’t *know* when grandma is going to die, we cannot and never will. Denying her care then is cruel, it is evil.

I had heart surgery in May. The hospital bill was $162,000 and the surgeon’s bill was about $34,000. So roughly $200k. It would be very easy for a medical board to look at my case and say “well, he’s X years old, declining in life, no point in spending $200k on him.”

Silly me, but the idea of that is very troubling.

Oh yeah. Prescription drugs. I don’t mind subsidizing Africa and the like, but others like Europe can pay their fair share.