Just about anyone who isn't a member of the mainstream media or a diehard "hope and change" cultist realizes that Barack Hussein Obama speaks regularly out of both sides of his mouth: promises made and reneged upon; positions taken and walked back from; flip-flops on vital issues; phony pledges of support and loyalty to allies who are then thrown under the bus; and plenty of just plain outright lying, e.g. the current denial that the debunked claim about Buffett and his secretary is really nothing more than the same-old "class-warfare" campaign rhetoric that we became used to in the days of Joe the Plumber.
But the latest double-speak has me baffled, at least if I read correctly what the reliable Wall Street Journal reports on the front page of its Tuesday edition.
Says the Journal:
President Barack Obama threatened Monday to veto any bill that cuts Medicare benefits without increasing taxes on corporations or the wealthy, setting his sharpest boundaries yet in negotiations over reducing the federal deficit.
Now, the implication is clear that those nasty GOP types must be trying to cut back on Medicare benefits (put granny out to die is how the left often phrases it) without simultaneously agreeing to big tax hikes. Did I miss the reports, I wonder, of the Republican plans to slash the benefits we Social Security recipients now receive or to cut back on the coverage we get under our Medicare insurance plans? Where is that benefits-cutting bill; what is its HR or S-number? Who are its sponsors? To what committees has it been referred? Has there even been such a proposal?
A few paragraphs later, the Journal provides the answer. It isn't the Republicans who threaten to slash Social Security and Medicare; it's Obama himself:
Mr. Obama's plan wouldn't leave Medicare untouched. Changes to that program and Medicaid-in large part coming from cuts in payments to drug companies and long-term care providers-are part of $580 billion in proposed cuts to mandatory spending programs.
In addition to the proposed tax increases, Mr. Obama's plan calls for big spending cuts. He proposed reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending by $320 billion over the next 10 years, with a large portion coming from cuts in payments to drug companies and long-term care providers.
But the plan also called for new Medicare beneficiaries to pay higher deductibles for doctor services starting in 2017, and it would increase premiums by about 15% for Medicare patients who earn about $85,000 to $200,000. It called for a $100 co-payment for new Medicare beneficiaries for certain home health services starting in 2017.
It isn't John Boehner who wants to do all this; it isn't Mitch McConnell, nor even Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, or Michele Bachmann. The bogeyman Obama is trying to scare you with is Obama himself - and his team of Reid-Pelosi collaborators. He is the One he has been waiting for.
One side of the Obama mouth spews words intended to scare us old folks; the other side pictures the dastards who want to do our benefits in; and - is there possibly a third side? - then same mouth is the one demanding the cuts being defended against so vociferously by the first side.
I get it, and I'm sure you do too. Why are the print and broadcast media not making this clear to their readers and viewers? Why are the GOP candidates not exposing this in every speech and TV appearance? Not even the usual bloggers seem to be hammering away at this treacherous triples-peak coming out of the White House. It's scary.
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