Liveblogging Our DVR Recording Of Bamz's Affordable Care Act Speech In Boston

Oh, Barry, that's a hell of a nice way to handle hecklers: "You're at the wrong rally! The climate change rally was back in June!" And hey, hecklers, good chanting! We kind of understood you, which is a step up for presidential speech-hecklers, so that's kind of a win, too. Everybody's a winner! That was easily the most interesting moment in the speech, which was a refreshing counterpoint to the death march of terrible  Wizard of Oz jokes at this morning's grilling of HHS SecretaryCruella DeVilleKathleen Sebelius. So with the magic of our tax-deductible DVR, a bit of post-liveblooging!

There are World Series jokes! Barry wanted to grow a beard, but Michelle would not let him! Why so emasculated, Barry, hengghhhh? Also, you should have turned to one of the women behind you and made her promise not to faint. 

Growly Barry promises he will not let those website issues stop him. He will make the website get fixed. He even remembers when there were no websites, and has the onion on his belt to prove it.

Barry also addresses the "you lied!" accusation here, pointing out that a lot of the plans that are being cancelled are, as we have mentioned, just plain crap. And Obama is saying now what he should have said all along -- if people have a private-market plan that gets cancelled, the ACA requires insurers to provide replacements that will be actual insurance, not just a money drain that doesn't really cover policyholders in a health emergency. Not that it will do anything to quiet the "Obama is kicking 7 million people off insurance" crowd -- but at least he's not buying the rightwing narrative. Most of those old plans sucked, and the new ones are far better, and often (no, not always ) less expensive.

Barry chose a fine place to talk about the ACA, in Massachusetts, where they have some experience with getting a similar system up and running. We liked the woman behind him, nodding when he mentioned that Massachusetts didn't get its system running perfectly the first year -- "they even had problems with the website" -- but that by the end of the first year, 36,000 people were covered, up from the mere 123 people who signed up in the first month.

And get ready for some howls of outrage at Barry's extremely offensive jokes! He told the story of a guy whose wife's coverage was dropped -- under that wonderful old system that's gone now -- halfway through her chemotherapy, leaving both without insurance. She's now on Medicare, but he's had no insurance since. Until he signed up online -- but here's the terrible joke: Barry rolled his eyes and said, "probably after several tries." How dare he laugh about that! Now the guy has insurance, and wrote that he's never been so happy to pay a bill. Still, it's an awful shame that Barry socialismed him into getting affordable insurance, isn't it?

It was a pretty good speech. We have Upbeat Barry back, and we like Upbeat Barry a lot. Also, we think we accidentally deleted last night's Daily Show. 

[ YouTube copy of the speech / NYT ]