Redstate: Obama Lied, No One Died

The dopes at RedState are definitely my favorite conservatives.  While some conservatives are just badly informed because they only have a cursory interest in learning the truth, the RedStaters have it as their mission to really know what they're talking about.  And as such, they're filthy fucking liars who have to engage in copious amounts of self-deception on a daily basis to continue to believe what they believe.

But of course, labeling someone a "liar" is difficult, as it's hard to know what someone truly believes.  But self-deception is still lying, and there are definitely a few tells which give it away.  And one of those tells is when someone repeatedly makes an aggressive claim which they insist is true, but when a better claim arrives, they latch onto the new story and say "See?  I was right after all!"

And so it is with their support of Joe "You Lie" Wilson.  While I'm sure there are lots of folks in Limbaughland who truly believe that Wilson was right, the RedStaters know it's not true.  Deep down, anyway.  And you can see the self-deception in this post defending Wilson, in which they have to confuse the issue by pretending as if allowing illegal immigrants to purchase their own insurance is the same as taxpayers funding it.  From reading that post, you'd think these were the same thing, and all their commenters are on-board with that too.  And instead, they act like it's a no-brainer that doctors should force people to prove citizenship before they can be treated, and use the lack of this provision as proof that Obama lied.

And hell, if illegals using our emergency rooms without paying is a huge problem for us (and conservatives insist that it's one of our biggest problems), then why wouldn't we want them to buy their own insurance?  This makes no sense.  But we're talking RedState here, so it doesn't need to make sense.  It just has to hate liberals.

They Got Proof

But all the same, they firmly wanted to believe that Wilson was right and Obama was lying, so they repeated the claim all the same.  But now (ah ha!) they have proof that he really was lying.  You see, Obama told a story about a guy who had his insurance rescinded because he had an unrelated gallstone that he hadn't known about, and that he died for lack of insurance.  And this is a story that had been reported in the media.

But (ah ha!) the guy hadn't died.  His sister fought the recission and got the Illinois Attorney General involved and the insurer ended up reinstating his insurance three weeks later, after the Attorney General sent them a nasty letter.  And this leads to Erick Erickson's gloating post:
Barack Obama Did Lie in His Speech: He Got the Facts Wrong In His Tear Jerker Story.

See?  Because Obama's speech contained an error that had been reported in the media without correction, he's a "liar."  Erickson's got the proof.  Joe Wilson was right, even if he was wrong about his specific claim.  And yes, a president is now "lying" if he doesn't have his people fact check every anecdote that they read in the media.  I wonder if this is the same standard for lying they use when they declare that Bush didn't lie about WMD's in Iraq.  I'm sure it is.

Erickson Lies!

Oh, and just so you know, nowhere in Erickson's post does he mention that Obama was repeating a story that had been reported in the media, or mention that the insurer had rescinded the guy's policy.  In fact, he lied to his readers by pretending that the entire story was false.  I quote:

There’s just one problem. The story Obama told is not true.

Obama aides say the president got the essence of the story correct. Mr. Raddatz was dropped from his insurance plan weeks before a scheduled stem-cell transplant.

Except not really. Mr. Raddatz’s sister testified before Congress that Mr. Raddatz got a life saving treatment that extended his life for three years. And the insurance company covered it.

Except...not really.  Raddatz really WAS dropped from his insurance plan weeks before his stem-cell transplant, and it was only because his sister got the Attorney General to complain to the insurer that "the insurance company covered it." 

In other words, YOU LIE!, Erick Erickson.  And that's the funniest part: This guy's life was extended for three years due to government intervention, while Erickson misleads his readers into believing that it wasn't necessary because the insurer hadn't tried to screw this guy out of coverage.  Perhaps Erickson thinks it's cool to spend three hectic weeks fighting your insurance company to stay alive, but I doubt he'd feel the same way if it were him.

And just to be clear, all this is in the article he quoted from, so he definitely knew about it.  But he had to leave it out because it ruined his story.  Erickson even mocks the Whitehouse's claim that they "got the essence of the story correct," without noting that they did get it right. The point of the story wasn't the death, but the rescission; whereas the death of the man accentuates the story by making it more powerful.  But Erickson can't mention any of that, as it would ruin his point.  So he's sticking with his new "You Lie" claim; at least until a better lie comes along.

And yes, he derisively referred to this story as a "tear jerker" in the title, as well as in the post.  Lovely people, conservatives.