Wesley Donehue would be disappointed in me if I let one of his Joe Wilson releases go by without commentary. An excerpt from today’s:
Nearly two years ago I made national news when I voiced your outrage at the misrepresentations being perpetuated by the Obama administration. The media and Obama’s liberal allies attacked me for only pointing out the truth that ObamaCare would cover illegal immigrants.
Yesterday, my point was vindicated when the Department of Health and Human Services announced its newest ObamaCare grant. CNS News reported:
“Because the health care centers receiving $8.5 million in ObamaCare money ‘to target services to migrant and seasonal farm workers’ will not check the immigration status of the migrant workers who seek their services it is inevitable that they will serve illegal aliens.”
The president specifically promised the American people that ObamaCare would not cover those who are here illegally. He misled all of us.
Let’s go back to your initial assertion. No, Joe. You weren’t “attacked” for “only pointing out the truth.” You weren’t attacked, or criticized, for any sort of point you may have been trying to make.
No, you were criticized for the gross indecorum of shouting “You lie!” in the House chamber, at the President of the United States, while he was speaking to you. You “made national news” not for making some pithy, pertinent point, but for startlingly rude behavior.
You know that. You know it was wrong. You apologized. You’re not normally the kind of guy who does stuff like that, and you knew better.
Everybody slips up. But please, please stop going about with this martyrdom act pretending you were somehow a victim in this.
It is NOT a defense, it does not excuse the inappropriateness of the act, for you to say now, “But he WAS lying.” For the purpose of judging whether YOUR behavior was right or not, that doesn’t matter.
Let’s say you were sitting there listening to a speech by a president whose parents were not married when he was born. It would STILL be inappropriate for you to interrupt him by yelling, “You’re a bastard!” And it would be even less seemly, a year or two later, for you to send out a press release showing documentation of his illegitimacy in order to moan about how unfairly YOU have been treated.
OK?
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Oh, I forgot to mention. This was an appeal for money.
But you already realized that, right?
These naked bids to enrage people at the awful, dishonest opposition, are always appeals for money.
Oh, and Joe — it wasn’t MY outrage you were voicing.
Thanks for thinking of me, though…
and illegals have always been able to go to hospital emergency rooms for treatment, and if they get some pandemic kind of illness, their immigration status won’t stop it from spreading…but they won’t be “covered” in the normal sense of the word under “Obamacare”–they won’t get ID cards and the like–they will get necessary medical treatment–which I want in a humane society.
Obama said yesterday that any other country would be glad to trade places with the US–I think Canada might beg to differ on that, and one big part of that is its health care system!
Now THAT was pithy. 🙂
Good points, Kathryn. But you know, it wouldn’t even occur to me to come up with such points, because it wouldn’t occur to me to examine the value of the irrelevant argument (irrelevant to the point of what Joe did wrong, that is) he is trying to present now.
What if he were RIGHT that Obamacare would cover illegal aliens (which, as you say, he probably is not)? What does that mean? That you should not have the health care program at all? What a ridiculous objection.
If you asked me to make the decision, I would say no, you do NOT bring people who are here illegally into such a system. That would be wrong. But suppose the system did have such a flaw. Would you therefore be against it, in spite of the need of all the millions here legally that you’re trying to address?
No, you would not. Not if you were a reasonable person with any sort of sense of perspective.
But I don’t want to get into all that. The point here is that Joe is trying to misrepresent why he got all that negative attention. And I believe he’s a decent person, and knows better.
So really our choice is a) subsidize critical treatment of illegals through federal grant, or b) subsidize their care through higher medical costs for everyone at the point of care.
Hmmmm. What a non-issue.
The stupid part (at least to me) is that 15% of Americans have no health coverage, but people are only complaining about subsidizing the “illegals”.
I don’t know why you bother. He’s a complete scoundrel. I’ve seen him in conferences where he was 100% refuted and he still kept right on with his phony baloney talking points. Not sure why you give him as much credit as you do. All I see is a politician with really bad manners and even worse politics.
When Joe continues with his talking points, it’s not that he’s being rude. He just doesn’t know how to do anything else.
I met him in front of the Saxe Gotha polling place at the primaries last time, and said how disappointed I was in his statement. He said he had ‘apologized’ to the President. I didn’t think he had then, and he as much as has admitted here.
By the way, Joe has sent out another one, in the same vein. An excerpt:
“Deceit. And we knew it all along. President Obama’s health care plan does cover illegal immigrants… and WE have to pay for it. The Department of Health and Human Services issued an ObamaCare grant that will cover those who are in the country illegally, something that the President swore to the American people would not happen.
“We were able to catch this deception, and I called out the President for what it was. Because I stood up for the truth, Pelosi and her liberal allies tried to manipulate the 2010 election by pouring millions of out-of-state dollars into the district I represent to defeat me.
“That didn’t matter, though, and with your support and financial donations we were able to keep this district in conservative hands.”
Pretty shameless, huh?