Bill Kristol's whopper:

From his post-Obama-speech observations: (emp add)

So President Obama invited himself into our living rooms tonight...why? Not to address questions of war and peace -- even though we are fighting two wars overseas, and even though an avowed enemy and terror sponsor is rushing towards nuclear weapons. Not to address the economy -- even though unemployment continues to rise, the deficit is at an all-time high, and we face a truly worrisome debt burden in the years ahead. And not to rally the nation in the face of some other crisis.

But isn’t health care a crisis? No.

Indeed, the president acknowledged it isn’t: “But we did not come here just to clean up crises. We came to build a future. So tonight, I return to speak to all of you about an issue that is central to that future -- and that is the issue of health care.” In other words, health care -- unlike, say, the financial system a few months ago -- is not in a state of crisis.

So there is no health care crisis. (...)

Obama said:

We did not come here just to deal with X. We came to do Y.

Kristol asserts that Obama is saying that X is not the case, but the formulation "we did not come here just to deal with X" means that X is the case, we will deal with X, and more.

Kristol is engaging in eighth grade sophistry. I guess that's his audience.

Kudos to the Washington Post and Fred Hiatt for putting out this high-quality analysis.


posted by Quiddity at 9/10/2009 01:24:00 AM