Doth Protest Too Much

Obama's 17-minute, 2,500-word response to woman's claim of being 'over-taxed'

quote:

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package.

"We are over-taxed as it is," Doris said bluntly.

Obama started out feisty. "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have," the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map").

This is the same technique used by cults to indoctrinate new members. They are typically bombarded with a huge amount of non relevant details that they are forced to sort out until they reach the point of information overload. This is also accomplished by using certain rhythms and tones that create the speech patterns. There were probably a lot of glassy eyes in that room when he was done, and in the end he probably did not answer the question.