"It is a lie, plain and simple"

One of the problems with Joe Wilson's You lie outburst — a double standard, actually (yet another) — is that Barack Hussein Obama has been, directly or otherwise, consciously or other, been using the same epithet against the Republicans for years.

Let us not even go into the fact that during George W Bush's 2005 State of the Union, he was booed by Democrats. There was no "you lie" (that, or the equivalent thereof, came for after his speech was over and he had exited the halls of Congress), true, but on the other hand, that was multiple members of the opposition dissing the president, not just by one…

Just the same day and over the previous week, the Apologizer-in-Chief had been speaking of "bogus claims", falsehoods (both of which are equivalent to saying lie, in — granted — a polite way) and "bickering" (which says that other people's arguments are not arguments, but simply misinformation — lies? — because "true" opinions can only be from the left) as well as "all the misinformation that has been spread over the past few months". So BHO never seems to call anybody liars, but… it's pretty close…

In fact, right before the South Carolina representative's outburst — what undoubtedly led to it, in fact — Obama said:

There are those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false.

You're right. That does sound — that is — more refined than Joe Wilson's outburst. However, with BHO's history of so — yes, let us call it that — denigrating the opposition, more of us should take a closer look at the subtext of his, and other leftists', message (which was summarized in Van Jones' epithet).

In fact, less than 45 seconds before Joe Wilson's outburst (2:13), Obama said, unreservedly and to Democratic applause, about one of the conservatives' talking points, "It is a lie, plain and simple" (1:30, another, ahem, viewpoint here, incidentally). True, BHO never says "YOU lie" or "YOU, Such-n-Such, are a liar", but the general effect, after a history of uncountable repetitions, is the same…



Update — from Charles Krauthammer:

Obama doesn't lie. He merely elides, gliding from one dubious assertion to another. This has been the story throughout his whole health care crusade. …

Obama doesn't lie. He implies, he misdirects, he misleads -- so fluidly and incessantly that he risks transmuting eloquence into mere slickness.