I don’t know how President Obama could get more surreal. At this point,

it’s hard to tell whether he’s more dishonest or delusional.

At Obama’s news conference Thursday, CBS’ Major Garrett pressed him,

essentially, to admit he’d flagrantly lied when he promised Americans that

with the advent of Obamacare, they could keep their health care plans and

their doctors if they liked them.

Though Obama did pay lip service to admitting he shouldn’t have made the

promise “unequivocally,” he quickly degenerated into a disjointed string of

meaningless verbiage involving nuances, grandfathering, great-grandfathering

and whatnot, all designed to confuse us and excuse himself. Besides, he

insisted, many congressmen made the same “sincere” pledge that he made

concerning keeping their plans. “They did it, too, Mommy.”

The unequivocal truth is that Obama made the claim unequivocally not

through excess passion born of selfless magnanimity but as a calculated

maneuver to sell his unpopular plan. It was not, as he stated, sincere. Had

he not made the claim unequivocally, he wouldn’t have been able to cram the

bill through, even with the unconscionable level of arm-twisting he engaged

in.

It’s beyond offensive that he blithely waved off his premeditated lie as a

bare misstatement.

Obama not only was not forthcoming in accepting (SET ITAL) actual (END

ITAL) responsibility for his fraud but mouthed a number of other specious

arguments to distract from his culpability and blame his opponents.

Like a jet fighter pilot sending out chaff and flares to divert a

heat-seeking missile, Obama tried desperately to disguise this colossal

failure as mostly a website problem. How many times did he use the term?

His propaganda ministers were careful in the words they chose for him.

Obama said he “fumbled the rollout.” Fumbles are, by definition, accidental.

Plus, he deserves credit for the good things he’s wrought. “There are a

whole bunch of things about (the rollout) that are working really well which

people didn’t notice … because they weren’t controversial.” Controversial?

Try nonexistent.

Having changed the subject, he clumsily positioned himself as an outsider

again, just as frustrated and injured by the technical problems caused by

his executive incompetence as the rest of us. Even here, he didn’t fully

concede the full-on failure of the website. He took pains to describe how

complex the task his IT team has undertaken, thus implying it is

understandable they are having so many problems. (That should make some

late-night skits.)

Obama also blamed the website problems on the lack of government IT

procurement overall. Never mind that this mini-despot doesn’t need to depend

on government procurements. He just orders what he wants — in this case,

hundreds of millions. But I guess that isn’t enough for this mind-blowing

complexity. But hey, if you were allowed to say anything you wanted without

fear of contradiction for five years, you might say ludicrous things, too.

Obama further comforted us with the dubious assertion that a million people

have accessed the website but just haven’t gotten around to picking their

plans yet.

After discharging all his chaff, fighter pilot Barack prepared his

sidewinder missiles to fire back on Republicans, without whose obstruction

Obamacare and its rollout would presumably be running swimmingly. After all,

progressives have been trying to make this happen for a hundred years, and

he is not about to let mere catastrophic failure disrupt his signature

socialist achievement.

If it just weren’t for the shutdown… And if every state governor would

follow the lead of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and just sign up hundreds of

thousands of more people into Medicaid, all would be wonderful. … And if

Republicans hadn’t refused to offer their own ideas (which they have), we

wouldn’t be suffering through this rollout.

Having regained his confidence through the sheer power of his own rhetoric

to convince himself, he shifted to his usual righteous indignation mode. No

matter what kind of problems we may be experiencing, he assured us that he

isn’t going back on his promise of providing affordable care to everyone.

No, America the ugly is the only rich nation in the world that doesn’t

guarantee its citizens health insurance.

He went right back to using his fraudulent number of 40 million uninsured

(after having been shamed into backing away from it before) and saying he

won’t walk away from their chance to get health insurance for the first

time.

I can’t get over the fact that no one, especially in news conferences,

challenges his false premises about the uninsured or points out that his

beloved Affordable Care Act, even if it works as planned, will leave

millions of uninsured, giving the lie to this entire sordid scheme.

But in my estimation, the most disturbing announcement Obama made during

his news conference was that he will allow “insurers to continue offering

individual insurance plans for another year even if they do not comply with

the law’s rules for minimum benefits.”

Have Americans gotten so numb to his glib violations of the Constitution

that they don’t even flinch anymore when he presumes to unilaterally change

his formerly sacrosanct “law of the land” through administrative order?

This must not stand.

If Republicans, collectively, have any moral courage left, they will not

yield to his lawless “fixes” or cooperate in legislatively salvaging this

law, not for partisan reasons but because anything that helps save this law

helps destroy America’s health insurance and health care system.