An Oba-Oops, Or Just a Lie?

Um, I nodded off and missed the speech but from a tip, the text and Google - it seems fair to question this bit on health care.

For that same reason, we must also address the crushing cost of health care. This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes.

That could be called a gross exaggeration ... well actually, more like a lie.

Putting aside that it now seems impossible to lose your home in Oba-land, a bankruptcy every 30 seconds equals 2 a minute, = 120 an hour =  2889 a day = 1,051,200 a year.

According to the WaPo on January 4, 08 and CNN Money for 08 and 09 projected, while it likely justifies his annual number, health care isn't even listed in the items. It's all about credit abuse - a topic about which Obama now has no room to talk, thanks to his stimulus plan. Linking health care to personal bankruptcy right now seems to amount to taking advantage of the economic crisis. Like Rahm suggested, you can't let a good one go by without change. But his numbers combined with the health care reasoning don't come close to adding up. And History has shown a president willing to lie about facts could prove to be the biggest crisis of any one administration.

More than 800,000 personal bankruptcy filings were made in 2007, compared with more than 573,000 in 2006 -- the lowest level since 1998, according to data collected by the National Bankruptcy Research Center and published by the American Bankruptcy Institute, a research group in Alexandria.

 Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, said in a statement that the trend is likely to worsen this year as consumers' high debt loads are "made worse by the home mortgage crisis."

Personal bankruptcy filings for most of this decade had been much higher -- around 1.5 million annually. But after an eight-year campaign by banks, retailers and credit card companies, Congress in 2005 passed the biggest changes in U.S. bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century, mandating an income test to measure a debtor's ability to repay obligations.

Current and projected via CNN.

Personal bankruptcies filed in the federal courts totaled 934,009 from June 2007 to June 2008, up more than 28 percent from the 727,167 petitions filed in the same period a year earlier, according to the latest figures from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The reasons for the sharp uptick? Rising consumer debt coupled with the mortgage meltdown left many consumers saddled with too much debt, Williams explained, and an increasing number turned to bankruptcy protection.

And with rising interest rates and a slowing economy, the number of filings will likely get even worse. "I expect bankruptcies in 2008 to exceed 1.2 million filings," Williams said. Next year, bankruptcy filings could increase by another 15% to 20%, he said, as personal income is outpaced by inflation.

Comments

[AJ Lynch]

Remember this name: Elizabeth Warren. She is a Harvard prof and is chair of the TARP review panel. She is well known for pushing studies that claim a high percentage of bankruptcies are due to medical bills. The flaw in her claim is she uses a cut off of only $1,000 in medical bills as a determinant whether the medical bills were a significant cause of the bankruptcy.

Bottom line is she is a far left Harvard liberal hag who has Obama's ear and probably wants to bring socialism to America.

Glad I could help.

[mark l.]

he just deployed 17k troops to afghanistan.

good luck finding a note of the 'specific' deployment in his speech. Considering the initial announcement was made by paper release, Obama is doing his best to disown a war he is simultaneously putting his stamp on.

[GOP08_DOA]

wahhhhhhhhh......... uh,uh wahhhhhhhhh.

[WBestPresidentEver]

"With the deficit we inherited"
THAT ONE...could not resist saying this in his speech.
And when he did Chuck Schumer jumped with joy !
I think he got a tingle up his leg.
What an ahole !
These democrats make me sick !
One day they will all pay for their crooked politics, their lies and their theiving ways and deceit.
In one way or another, they will get theirs, no doubt in my mind.

[riggword]

Money Money Money, for everybody, it's a liberal world!

So another President another first 30-days-speech.....yawn!!!

I have never bought into the idea that slick talk out ways true substance. Bill Clinton charmed and denied his way into the hearts of Americans. Obama is using his silky strong teleprompter skills to win the allegiance of millions of Americans.

[mark l.]

what was pelosi chewing on?
pickled baby foreskin?

[Beat you in 08 and will do it again]

So he maybe should have said "every 60 seconds" or maybe "every 90 seconds". Or not. Whatever.

Liar! Liar! Impeach him!

This ain't the 90's, Skippy. Try and keep up. You're not as clever as you think.

[WBestPresidentEver]

I see the trolls are out in force on many pages here.

[Mark Turner]

Didn't watch the speech but it sounds like he didn't have his facts straight, which is not a surprise.

[Drider]

Here comes the Reagan comparisons when in truth, Obama is the anti-Reagan.

When Reagan spoke, nobody could question that he spoke straight from the heart and in a purely American dialect.

When Obama speaks, it's after they ran numerous polls to flesh out what Americans want to hear and then they have their speech writers craft a speech from there.

Reagan brought this country out of the doldrums using fact, logic and reason, there isn't so much as a whiff of any of that in our current Administration no matter what comes out of their mouths.

[brian]

Bob Lonsberry expresses my sentiment exactly- FUBO. Get your bumper stickers and t shirts now- Let everyone know what you think!

http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=2569&go=4

[DavidAK]

I'm just astounded by 1) the amount of vicious anti-semitism expressed by so many contributors of comments here, and 2) the ignorance displayed of Jewish history and middle eastern history in general. It seems that so many here just sound off, based on opinions they received either from blatant propaganda or from nasty prejudices nurtured in childhood. Too bad.

[DavidAK]

Oops -- the above comment was supposed to be posted on the article "I wouldn't want to be Israel right now."

[oops]

AJ LYNCH: Actually, Elizabeth Warren's primary methodology was to simply ask people what factors contributed to their bankruptcy, and about half of them checked a medical factor. The different thresholds of medical expenses, $1,000, $2,000 or more were part of a supplemental analysis.

[No Oil for Pacifists]

Obama's assertion is clearly unsupported and likely wrong:

http://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com/2009/03/obamas-14-words.html