Defensive much? Obama gives rambling, incoherrent 17 minute response to concern about being ‘overtaxed’ | Washington Examiner

Defensive much? Obama gives rambling, incoherrent 17 minute response to concern about being ‘overtaxed’ | Washington Examiner

By: MARK HEMINGWAY
Commentary Staff Writer
04/03/10 9:30 PM EDT

We constantly hear about the President’s supposedly cool demeanor and unflappability, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Keep that in mind as you read this Washington Post account:

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. “Well, let’s talk about that, because this is an area where there’s been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I’m going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have,” the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

But wait, there’s more!

Always fond of lists, Obama ticked off his approach to health care — twice. “Number one is that we are the only — we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance,” he said.

A few minutes later he got to the next point, which seemed awfully similar to the first. “Number two, you don’t know who might end up being in that situation,” he said, then carried on explaining further still.

“Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you’ve got health insurance you don’t always know what you got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you’re not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what’s happening is, is you’re going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you’re covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it,” Obama continued, winding on with the answer.

Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned.

But Obama wasn’t finished. He had a “final point,” before starting again with another list — of three points.

“What we said is, number one, we’ll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage,” he said, before launching into the next two points, for a grand total of seven.

Again, please remember this episode next time a liberal pundit tells you Obama’s speechifying “is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/defensive-much-obama-gives-rambling-incoherrent-17-minute-response-to-concern-about-being-overtaxed-89850972.html#ixzz0k8J3VU4p

Poor Journalism by Tagata Pasifika on Easter/Religion

by Vinepa Aiono
(Images TVNZ website)


It's Easter Sunday, the day memorialised by most Pacific and other christians around the globe as the 3rd day that Jesus the son of God conquered death by his resurrection following his crucificion. I awoke to a discussion on the TVNZ Tagata Pasifika programme on the relevance of religion to Pacific people, given the declining number of Pacific youth and young families now opting for the charismatic style of praise and worship instead of attending the traditionally based church groups such as the Presbyterian, Catholic and Methodist sects. So stop - is that reflective of the growing irrelevance of religion. Not really or so I thought. In fact it only reinforced the shift not decline in religious experiences. The rest of the programme involved a facilitated discussion led by Adrian Stevanon with a select panel of 2 traditional church ministers, one charismatic church attendee and Radio NZ Pacific issues reporter Richard Pamatatau trying to validate the notion that spirituality could be anything other than compliance with christian religious doctrine.
What a shambles the programmes was!!! Adrian Stevanon did not have an intelligent grasp of the definiton of religion. It became progressively worse as the panelists voiced their own definitions of religion and Stevanon failed to extract the differences and limited the discussion to a narrowly driven understanding of religion being church attendance. What might have been a lively and informed discussion that had the potential to influence positive attitudinal changes on the religious and social front for many of our Pacific families fell flat.

It has become common place to expect the usual lack of informed understanding by most conservative journalists when facilitating debates on TV1's Close Up or TV3's John Campbell involving christian based ideology and practice on subjects such as child discipline, abortion or the now popular tithing issues. On issues of the economy the media have become financially savvy and ask pertinent questions, if its about Treaty issues, certainly there will be no tom foolery over the significance of taonga. But on issues of Biblical concern the christian community is subjected to a shallow unresearched journalistic treatment of Biblical scriptural material that is often misquoted and misunderstood. Couple that with those invited by the media who lack the depth and scholarship of Biblical tenets and principles like the guests on TVNZ Tagata Pasifika today. Tithing had different meanings to everyone on the panel and Stevanon failed to identify that.

What was learned from today's Tagata Pasifika episode? What was Tagata Pasifika's social responsibility in reporting upon the religious topic? For me -it was to explore the truth. The truth is uncovered when journalists equip themselves with an understanding of the issues at hand. Religion is such an integral part of NZ Pacific settler history and it deserved to be handled with care and integrity. Rather than presuming religion is only about going to church, the first question ought to have been - what is the definition of religion for NZ Pacific people of today? Is there one single definition?

The responsibility for Pacific journalists to address Pacific issues with reverence for research of the complexities inherent within Pacific communities is fundamental to ensuring we are perceived honestly and respectfully by the wider community. Tagata Pasifika need only remind itself that it wasn't long ago when attempts to cut it's viewing time was once a reality.