Behold “liberal” cartoonist/columnist David Horsey’s latest horsey—- in the Los Angeles Times.
It is no wonder Florida Sen. Marco Rubio needed to grab a bottle of water in the middle of delivering the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. The speech he was given to recite was like a hunk of stale, dry sourdough and it surely caught in his throat….
Rubio tried to portray the president’s address as just another crazy liberal, tax-and-spend, big-government screed. That only made it more obvious that his own speech had been written well before Obama spoke. When Rubio chastised the president for failing to address the financial problems of Medicare, he looked a bit silly, because Obama had, in fact, spoken about creating a bipartisan plan to fix Medicare, one that will demand compromise from Democrats. [emphasis added.]
Here’s what the president actually said (cue the straw man argument):
Yes, the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms. Otherwise, our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children and jeopardize the promise of a secure retirement for future generations….
Poor Rubio. Who could compete with fresh ideas like that? Now cue the laugh track (emphasis added):
And that’s the approach I offer tonight. On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.
Hahahaha. Stop it, Mr. President, you’re killing me. Ah yes, Simpson-Bowles. Let us count the ways the president enacted its recommendations. (You can stop at zero.)
Bonus laugh:
Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.
Now, pace Horsey, let’s revisit the bold approach to Medicare that the president proposed in his 2012 SOTU:
As I told the Speaker this summer, I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.
But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. (Applause.)
And here’s his Medicare cite in the 2011 SOTU:
The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.
This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs, which is part of why nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. Still, I’m willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.
That was preceded by Obama’s fresh, bold idea from 2010:
Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (Applause.) Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t. And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will. (Applause.)
And now, to bring the laughter back full circle, here’s how Horsey closes:
Rubio shouldn’t have been reaching for a mere bottle of water. What he really needed was a stiff drink chased with a big dose of reality.
If this is what constitutes reality, then Obama really has been the transformational president he aspires to be.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The LA Times is the newspaper that broke the Bell City scandal (politicians in small city voting themselves outrageous compensation) about 15 years late, in very self-congratulatory terms. Had they been reporting on it, say, ten or even five years ago, the savings to the taxpayers would have been in the millions. So don’t expect them to be any more timely with a reasoned analysis of Obama’s speeches, much less those of any of the opposition.
I wouldn’t be adverse to having somebody ask Mr. Horsey directly whether he watched Obama’s speech, and whether he had watched Mr. Rubio’s. His inaccuracies about both speeches may be due to simple reliance on word-of-mouth (blog?) about what they contained, rather than direct knowledge.
This dialogue seems to me to miss the one important point. That the current president was schooled in marxism by his early associates, and practices marxist politics. The Lame Stream media, socialistic itself, aids and abets him in this activity.
Bill Maher’s latest comment shows that ultimately, for the left, ideology is thicker than blood …
… and Horsey’s unflushable floating turd is lighter than water, but ne’er a conducive solution.
LukeHandCool (who tries to limit himself to one chemistry-themed poetic piece a day)
Interesting…
Just got done reading a stellar piece at TheOtherMcCain. The whole piece is a must read. However, one line stood out to me:
Such childish credulity — a stubborn refusal to examine evidence that contradicts fashionable belief — is nowadays considered the epitome of enlightenment
http://theothermccain.com/2013/02/18/about-paul-ehrlich-and-the-most-spectacularly-wrong-book-ever-written/
Now, I get creeped out-
In the comments:
“In the late 80s he (Ehrlich) developed a theory that we in the West needed New Minds that we not rational or logical and today his associate John Holdren is to be in charge of a 10 year project looking into the nature of the brain and consciousness.”
Then, I remember this from Drudge this morning:
Obama Plans Decade-Long Effort to Map Human Brain…
(link goes to NYT)
I saw that too, was equally creeped, and I asked a friend about it who is tenured at NC State. He confirmed my belief that there are already a great many research efforts in ‘brain mapping’ in the private sector. I asked her why the government would duplicate efforts already underway and she said that sometimes the political wing of a given government doesn’t like the way certain research is pointing so they’ll fund their own, no doubt to end up with the ‘correct’ findings, wink wink.
Obama is looking for ‘scientific’ evidence of something that would support some part of the machine agenda. The mind boggles as to what this might mean. No doubt some putative physical inequity which can only be $$$ fixed $$$ with a $$$ government $$$ program $$$.
My NC State professor friend is a she, not a he/she, NTTAWWT.
*sigh*
“Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.”
LOL. According to whom, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?
Because according to the CBO, the ironically-named Affordable Care Act is going to cause health care costs to go up — significantly. And according to the IRS, it’s also going to cause health insurance premiums to go up — significantly.
But Barry Obama has never been one to let any actual facts spoil his preferred narrative. Next year, perhaps we should just call the State of the Union speech what it really is: Obama’s Wishcasting.
A case of the cart before the Horsey maybe???
[[[groan]]]
The guy’s a horsey’s ass.
He doesn’t draw too well, either.
His self-caricature talents are second to none.
Rubio may have committed the “Crime” of drinking Water during a speech, but the people supporting Obama have drunk the kool-aid.
Horsey started his cartoonist career on the Univ of Washington Daily. And he was very good, and surprisingly evenhanded in his bashing. But peer groups got to him, and he found that social approval and approbation in Seattle is a vast lode, easily mined, on the left side of the intellectual iron curtain, and but a rare mineral on the right, and he has tailored his bashing further and further left since the good old 1970s. The Post-Intelligencer went broke on his watch, but kept him on for its continuing online crusades for the lefties.
His Rubio cartoon is a long reach from his former humor. It’s mere attack-doggery, and there’s nothing funny about it, except perhaps in the minds of jeering ‘Occupy’ yokels.