Obama and His Mother

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I cannot find the post written, I suspect, at the beginning of Obama's first term, in which I prognosticated that the political mood in America was soon going to experience a depressive dent from stark disillusionment about the character of Obama and his policies. Much later than I had expected the disillusionment seems to be setting in.

Remember President Barack Obama's mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with his vow "If you like your plan . . ." I keep remembering Obama's account of his mother being denied coverage by her insurance company as she lay dying of cancer.

The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a "pre-existing condition" and refused to pay for her treatment. In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: "For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that."

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president's mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan that would have paid some of her other expenses.

The White House did not deny Scott's account, but shrugged it off as something that had happened long ago. Not so long that it couldn't be milked one last time though, for a 2012 campaign film. In "The Road We've Traveled," the message remained unchanged -- a greedy insurance company had cut off Obama's mother at her moment of maximum vulnerability, and it cost Dunham her life.

The source.

The dupability and the almost non-existing vetting standards with regard to Obama's presidential aspirations are simply astounding.

 

An example of puffery is the description of Mr. Obama as a former "professor of constitutional law." Mr. Obama was a part time instructor at the University of Chicago law school, without the title or status of professor. And, according to blogger Doug Ross, he wasn't very popular with the real professors.

"I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back," Mr. Ross wrote in March 2010. "According to my professor friend, [Obama] had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. ... The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified,"

The source.

 

See also The Community Organizer Giveth, and the Community Organizer Taketh Away, The Healer - America's Telocratic President, and (in particular for his reputation at the University of Chicago - watch the segment between time marks 0:23 and 2:18) A Ship with the Engine Off.