We have asserted from the outset that Obama’s Obamacare sales job was a variety of fraud. Every word of it was a calculated lie, including (as Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman’s oeuvre) the words “a” and “the.”

Over the past three weeks we have seen Obama’s categorical assurance — “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period” — explode into public consciousness as a lie. Did Obama know at the time that he was saying the thing which was not? John provided a detailed, devastating answer in “Lies of Obamacare, documented,” based on the administration’s written assessment set forth in the Federal Register.

Jake Tapper dug out out the video below of Obama and Eric Cantor addressing the issue in January 2010, at the so-called health care summit that Obama staged for Republicans. Tapper broadcast broadcast the opening exchange on CNN and Bret Baier picked it up as well on Special Report this past week, where I saw it.

Over at the Breitbart site John Nolte provides a transcript of the relevant portion:

CANTOR: …Because I don’t think you can answer the question in the positive to say that people will be able to maintain their coverage, people will be able to see the doctors they want, in the kind of bill that you are proposing. OBAMA: Since you asked me a question, let me respond. The 8 to 9 million people you refer to that might have to change their coverage — keep in mind out of the 300 million Americans that we are talking about — would be folks who the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, estimates would find the deal in the exchange better — would be a better deal. So, yes, they would change coverage because they got more choice and competition.

Here Obama concedes Cantor’s point and falls back on the line he peddled until it became — what is the word? — unsustainable. The video shows Obama’s three-year sales shtick, continuing up to his non-apology of last week, to be a lie of the cold-blooded variety — of the variety that would land him in jail if he were a businessmen peddling his wares instead of a politician appropriating power.