Obamacare and Big Lies

Tuesday, I was charitable toward Obama.  Yes, I do that on occasion.  I left the door open to the possibility he was not lying when he said on numerous occasions from 2009 to 2012 that if we like our health plans, we can keep them:

This means one of two things – Obama willfully told us a Big Lie about Obamacare supposedly letting us keep our health insurance plans, or he is so clueless and detached that he did not know what his own signature law and his own administration was doing.  If he was that clueless and really cares about the situation, he will soon come out and insist that Obamacare be administered so that his promise will be somehow, in a fashion, kept.

Well, yesterday we found out Obama’s response to insurance cancellations and other Obamacare problems – doubling down on Big Lies.  And that in turn lets us know he was lying in the first place.

I heard so many lies from Obama and Sebelius and allies yesterday, I cannot even pretend to be able to keep up with them.  But that is part of the Big Lie technique, to tell lies over and over until they become common “knowledge”.

One big whopper told by Obama himself is that what the insurance cancellations really were was transitioning people from inferior plans into better plans.  Lie.  And one repeated by Obama’s hacks.  David Frum’s (well deserved) experience is typical:

Now our protagonist has become “one of the hundreds of thousands of people whose insurance coverage was canceled for not complying with the terms of the Affordable Care Act,” the euphemism for ObamaCare. “As a result, not only will I pay more, but I have had to divert many otherwise useful hours to futzing around with websites and paperwork.”

Before ObamaCare, he paid $668 a month for a high-deductible plan. He actually managed to get through to his “state” exchange (he lives in the District of Columbia) and price a more or less comparable plan. It’s $865 a month, and the deductibles are higher, by $600 within the plan’s network and $1,200 without. By our calculations that means he will pay $2,364 more a year in premiums, and a total of $4,164 more if he maxes out on the deductibles.

In other words, higher premiums and higher deductibles.  (But, but Obama told us premiums would go down!)  That’s what most of those who are dealing with cancellations are facing.  And the cancellations are not the insurance companies’ fault as Obama and allies would have us think.  The cancellations are caused by Obamacare and the Obama Regime’s writing of the Obamacare regs as reported by (even) NBC.  And that can’t be blamed on Republicans either.  Yes, Democrats are doing that as well.

I could go on.  But again, that Obama and allies’ response to  health plan cancellations is to tell Big Lies pretty much proves that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” was a Big Lie in the first place.  And now, even the Washington Post’s fact checker agrees, with 4 Pinocchios no less.

But, of course, that Big Lie was necessary to pass Obamacare and re-elect Obama.

Joe Wilson was right.

Downfall XVI: Obama Administration Knew Millions Would Lose Their Health Insurance (says NBC!)

I never thought I would see a story like this from the likes of NBC News.  But now even liberals are catching on to what us radical terrorist racist bigoted extremist right-wing tea partiers have been telling you for years about Obamacare.

In short, the Obama Administration has known “for at least three years” that Obamacare would cause millions to lose their health insurance plans. Yet…

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

And millions losing their plans is not a bug, it’s a feature, courtesy of Obama and Obamacare:

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

This means one of two things – Obama willfully told us a Big Lie about Obamacare supposedly letting us keep our health insurance plans, or he is so clueless and detached that he did not know what his own signature law and his own administration was doing.  If he was that clueless and really cares about the situation, he will soon come out and insist that Obamacare be administered so that his promise will be somehow, in a fashion, kept.  If.

But, for now, the Big Lie technique is the modus operandi:

FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.
— Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) October 29, 2013

Which lie is already debunked, mocked, and derided as noted at the Ace of Spades:

This idea was getting resoundingly mocked last night on Twitter, even among lefty journos I know. The thing about lies is they have to be at least plausible. The only people buying this are people who know nothing about what Obamacare actually does; now that includes a lot of low-info voters . . . but not a lot of people covering the law.

And one reason I am including this post in my Downfall series is that it now appears even the “Mainstream” News Media – even NBC! – is getting tired of drinking and dispensing Obama’s kool-aid.  Instead of continually assisting Obama in his cover-ups and spin, they are beginning to commit actual journalism. Should that continue and increase, it will not be good for the future of the Obama Regime.

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Downfall is an ongoing series anticipating and tracking what I expect will be the self-destruction of Obama.

The first post may be found here.  The series may be found here.

Highland Park Presbyterian Votes to Leave PCUSA

Highland Park Presbyterian Church (HPPC) has voted to leave the mainline PCUSA by a 1337 to 170 margin.

The irony of this is that back in 1991, that congregation split practically down the middle over whether to stay in the PCUSA.  Those determined to leave formed Park Cities Presbyterian Church.  So today’s Highland Park Presbyterian are the descendants (spiritually at least) of those who decided to stay behind in the mainline Presbyterian Church.

Yet even they have had enough and are now leaving the PCUSA.  Needless to say, that says volumes about how far gone is the mainline Presbyterian Church.

(By the way, I find this particularly interesting as I irregularly attended HPPC as a child.)

GAFCON Bishops Endorse Boundary Crossing

Without dissent, the bishops at GAFCON have just approved the following resolution:

To affirm and endorse the position of the Primates Council in providing oversight in cases where Provinces and Dioceses compromise biblical faith, including the affirmation of a duly discerned call to ministry. This may involve ordination and consecration if the situation requires.

Yes.  Boundary crossing.  Horrors!  (Hmm, maybe I should scare libchurchers this Halloween by going out as a boundary crosser.)

And I heartily approve and am glad to see this was passed with no dissent.  This is in the spirit of Athanasius, who did not recognize the legitimacy of Arian bishops and ordained orthodox clergy to witness in their territories.

Apostate bishops are no bishops.  Their unfaithfulness should and does forfeit their bishoprics.  And the unfortunate in their dioceses should have orthodox shepherds appointed over them to guide them and protect them from heretical wolves.

ACNA BCP: The Summary of the Law

Now I will nitpick make further comments on the working ACNA Book of Common Prayer.  (You will recall that I began by commending its revised treatment of the filioque.)  Again, downloads of the new BCP may be found here.

In looking at the Holy Eucharist, the first thing that stood out to me was . . . an article, in the Summary of the Law which reads as follows:

Jesus said: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

Leaving aside, at least for now, the issue of modern language, “a second” struck me as odd.  Now I looked and did notice that good Bible translations differ on whether to render Jesus’ words “the second” or “a second.”  I’m no Greek scholar, but I suspect that is because the original Greek implies articles more than spells them out as in English.  But “a second” is a legitimate translation.

But the traditional Book of Common Prayer renders it “the second,” and I think that much preferable.  The context of Jesus words clearly indicates he was not talking about merely a second commandment in numerical order or a commandment among several secondary commandments.  He was stating that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the second most important commandment.  “The second” better reflects that than “a second”.

Plus “the second commandment” parallels and sounds better paired with “the great and first commandment”.  And the sound and structure of liturgical language should always be a consideration if a secondary one.

I was not privy to the discussions behind the working ACNA BCP, but I see little good reason to depart from the traditional BCP rendering, “the second commandment.”

White House Knew Obamacare Website was NOT Ready

More keeps coming out about the Obama Regime knowing the Obamacare website was not ready.  And Obama’s line yesterday that heavy traffic was the problem? LIE.

From the Washington Post of all people (with emphasis mine):

Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.

Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.

And that in spite of informed pleas not so to do:

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency in charge of running the health insurance exchange in 36 states, invited about 10 insurers to give advice and help test the Web site.

About a month before the exchange opened, this testing group urged agency officials not to launch it nationwide because it was still riddled with problems, according to an insurance IT executive who was close to the rollout.

It is *Anglican Understatement Alert* not good that the Obama Administration had three years to get the web site ready and failed.  But what is outrageous is that they knew it was not ready, yet went ahead anyway and gave us a prolonged Shutdown in order to push out this pile.  House Republicans compromised and passed a bill opening the federal government in return for a one year delay in the Obamacare individual mandate.  We now see all too well that delay was needed.  But Obama and the Democrats said no anyway and prolonged the Shutdown and risked going past the debt ceiling deadline.

So Obama shut down in order to cram down our throats an unready Obamacare.

And then he lies about it to boot.  Now even some in the snooze media are waking up:

Mark Halperin, the “Game Change” coauthor and a regular on [Morning Joe], called the rollout “unacceptable” and added that “the secrecy is unacceptable,” accusing the administration of withholding information about how many people have signed up.

His fellow panelist, liberal commentator Mike Barnicle, ratcheted up from there: “They’re lying about it now,” he said. “They’re not depriving us of information, they are outright lying.” The former Boston Globe columnist called the administration’s conduct “unacceptable.”

Yes, lib’ruls and I do agree on occasion.  That this is just a “glitch” or two is just Obama spin.  And that is putting it nicely.

ACNA Restores the Filioque

Back in June, I expressed concern about the draft ACNA Book of Common Prayer reducing the filioque of the Nicene Creed to a footnote.  I noted that greater unity with our Orthodox friends motivated the draft but that I thought it a step too far that would harm overall Christian unity more than help it as unhappiness at the time was indicating.  I instead advocated retaining the filioque but in parentheses. 

Well, the working ACNA BCP has been released.  And I am glad to see the revised BCP does just that.  Kudos to those overseeing the process for this wise decision.

The ACNA BCP is now a working document subject to input and revision.  So I intend to do my part and look it over and comment.  I may post some comments here.