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Sep 11, 2009 02:39 PM

Tell me sweet little...

by Michael Weiss

The name Joseph Wilson was already associated in the minds of political obsessives with unscrupulousness and flamboyance, albeit at the ambassadorial and central intelligence levels, but I doubt if the Congressman who is not Valerie Plames husband could have anticipated the instant notoriety he’s attained simply by calling the president of the United States a liar. A politician who accuses another politician of dishonesty is being heroic and hypocritical at the same time. I think I.F. Stone or Yogi Bear said that.

In Rep. Wilson’s case, given his neo-Confederate affiliation, he’s surely guilty of something else, too, but it’s an outburst—barely audible on television though apparently loud enough make Nancy Pelosi look as if someone just took a sip of non-fair-trade coffee—that’s said to be distracting us now from an important national “conversation” about healthcare. That such a conversation has seemed more a bipartisan séance of stupidity, led by mediums Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, is beside the point.. The real health we should be worried about, says The Hill, is that of Rep. Wilson:

Wilson took caffeine pills in 2007

By Jordan Fabian - 09/10/09 06:21 PM ET

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who shouted "you lie!" at President Obama during his Wednesday night address to Congress, admitted to regularly consuming caffeine pills in 2007.

It is unclear if Wilson still takes NoDoz, a brand of pill that contains 200 milligrams of caffeine a pop. By comparison, a seven ounce cup of drip coffee contains 115 to 175 milligrams of caffeine.

A source told The Hill in 2007 that the congressman ingested the tablets “like candy," but Wilson insisted he was not addicted despite the fact that he had been taking them since high school.

"I love coffee, but I don’t have time to drink it and I don’t have access to it," Wilson said at the time.

The fifth-term Republican said he shared his NoDoz use with his doctor, who Wilson said assured him that the over-the-counter pills are not dangerous unless you get addicted.

Wilson interrupted the president yesterday night after he said that his health reform plan will not insure illegal immigrants. He quickly apologized for his outburst last night but maintained that Obama was lying in a radio interview today.

So that explains it. The over-the-counter amphetamine of choice for delinquent thesis-writers is to blame for the kind of incivility that greeted Obama in his prime time explainer session on public options and death panels. What right-wing boor heckles a president during his own speech, anyway? Meanwhile, as Reason’s Matt Welch helpfully points out, the American left seems to have forgotten that the man in charge is not above suspicion himself:

The lies last night began in Obamas opening paragraph. "When I spoke here last winter," he began, "credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse." In fact, Obama spoke on Feb. 24, at least six weeks after credit markets began to thaw, and one week after he proclaimed that the passage of his $787 billion stimulus marked "the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans." Obamas speech that day wasnt about staving off a collapse, it was about cleaning up the mess and tackling long-ignored issues. Such as health care.

Its never encouraging when a politician who desperately needs to convince skeptical Americans of his fiscal sobriety starts off by slurring his words. As you might then infer, Obama was just warming up. "Insurance companies," the president announced, "will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies," in part because such prevention "saves money." Looks like someone forgot to tell the Congressional Budget Office, or other non-White House sources that have analyzed the cost-benefit of prevention.

Again and again last night, the presidents numbers didnt add up. "There may be those—particularly the young and healthy—who still want to take the risk and go without coverage," he warned, in a passage defending compulsory insurance. "The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still dont sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those peoples expensive emergency room visits." No, it means that, on balance, the healthy young dont pay for the unhealthy old. The whole point of forcing vigorous youth to buy insurance is using their cash and good actuarials to bring down the costs of covering the less fortunate.