Just … wow. The lengths to which the lapdog press will go to cover for the God of All Things astounds. Take this Associated Press effort today:

President Barack Obama’s early efforts to boil down an intricate health care law so Americans could understand it are coming back to haunt him, leaving a trail of caveats and provisos in place of the pithy claims he once used to sell the law.

Why, you stupid, stupid people; he tried to speak in simple enough terms for you to understand and you screwed it up! Can’t you tell between a “pithy claim” and a lie?

The pithy claim — which will compete for Euphemism of the Year alongside other journalists’ attempts to decorate Obama’s oft-repeated lie, such as “misspoke” (New York Times), “clearly overpromised” (Los Angeles Times), “overly simplistic guarantee” (New York Magazine), “sweeping generalizations that can be contradicted by individual experiences” (Politico), and “promises that they were hoping the insurance companies were going to keep” (MSNBC) — refers of course to

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people:

If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.

If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Period.

In this woe-begotten age without a handy Memory Hole for plusgood political reporting, the president is aggravatingly still on record (egad, even video record) of making that claim at least 29 times.

Aside:

Dear AP and Politico, are y’all comparing notes? AP today:

It sounded so simple. Too simple, it turns out.

President Barack Obama’s early efforts to boil down an intricate health care law so Americans could understand it are coming back to haunt him, leaving a trail of caveats and provisos in place of the pithy claims he once used to sell the law.

Politico Oct. 29:

President Barack Obama’s soundbites are coming back to bite him.

As he attempted to sell a complex health care reform plan to skeptical voters during the 2008 campaign and his first year in office, Obama boiled down the benefits to a series of pithy promises

Incidentally, I wonder if the word “pithy” has had a sudden spike in usage over the past week.

Scratch that: I wonder if the word “pithy” has had a sudden spike of incorrect usage over the past week. The adjective means “terse and full of meaning or substance“; i.e., full of pith, “the important or essential part; essence; core; heart.” It certainly doesn’t mean “slapdash, slipshod, imprecise, half-assed, and lacking substance.”