Instapundit has some links on President Obama’s bizarre new-found religion. If George Bush had done this, the howls from the left would have been deafening.
[Update late morning]
Just how stupid do they think we are?
Stupid enough to think that a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is just the thing to restore the country to fiscal health.
Stupid enough not to know that almost every entitlement known to man has cost more than originally estimated, with a congressional committee in 1967 underestimating by a factor of ten Medicare’s cost by 1990.
Stupid enough not to realize that it is through budget trickery — the taxes begin immediately, the spending is put off for a few years — that the program in the House shows “only” a $239 billion deficit over the first ten years.
Stupid enough not to focus on how the gap between the House plan’s revenue and spending steadily grows after the first ten years, making it a long-term budget buster.
Stupid enough to think increased preventive care will save the government money, just because Pres. Barack Obama constantly repeats it, despite all the independent studies to the contrary.
Stupid enough to believe that a program with no cost controls that can be discerned by the Congressional Budget Office will control costs.
Stupid enough not to worry that Obama’s proposed superteam of technocrats operating outside normal political controls — the so-called Independent Medicare Advisory Council — will resort to rationing when costs continue to spiral upward.
Stupid enough to consider it wise to use several billion dollars in cuts from Medicare to create a new entitlement rather than to forestall Medicare’s own looming insolvency, currently projected for 2017.
Stupid enough not to notice that the “public option” was explicitly designed by the Left as a stealthy path to single-payer, even as liberals continue to talk and write about its ultimate purpose openly.
There’s a lot more.
[Early afternoon update]
Barack Obama’s twisted faith.
Of course he’s not a Christianist! They believe in something greater than themselves.
Obama in general is just sounding more and more like a preacher.
Someone whose public policy is steeped in theft and covetousness shouldn’t be lecturing preachers on virtue.
I wonder if those on the left will ever come to the realization that you cannot trust anything that Obama says.
So Obama is now the chief pontif, interpreting and transmitting God’s will to his flock. Coming from the “separation of Church and State” crowd, I find this particular tack extemely offensive. If Mr. Bush had tried this the MSM would have been well into mass hysteria by now.
On a more positive note, I suspect this will backfire on “the One” as well. I’m sure there were more than a few clergy on those calls who were just as shocked and appalled. But I’m sure to BO this was just another way to “organize” the community.
Business as usual from Planetary Personality One.