There are lies, damn lies, and then there is politics.

Read President Obama's lips: No new taxes for the middle class. Well, OK, maybe there will be revenue enhancers, levies, tax penalties and fines, as well as mandatory purchase of insurance policies that consume more than 10 percent of your income. But, hey, no new taxes.

You have to feel sorry for a politician who is trying to sell that product.

The cumulative weight of the political fibs is beginning to weigh on our president.

Read President Obama's lips: Health care reform won't pay for abortions. Except that FactCheck.org has confirmed that the pro-lifers are not hysterical: New government subsidies are likely in the bills before Congress. When the government mandates all of us buy an insurance policy (or, if you don't, taxes you for a public option that may include abortions), that's public funding of abortion by any reasonable definition.

The latest poll from Rasmussen shows how badly the Democrats' underhanded push for taxpayer financing of abortion plays in the public. Forty-eight percent of voters want a prohibition on abortion in any government-subsidized program, while just 13 percent want a mandate requiring abortion coverage.

Listen, underhanded is the only way for Democrats to please their extremist pro-abortion base while promoting policies so repugnant to voters generally. The cost of this backhanded strategy to the public trust in their party and leader? To be determined in November of 2010.

What next for a president who has promised his more liberal supporters that the rhetoric of moderation is the pathway to radical victories? This week, President Obama is trying to rally his myriad base of young fans to the cause. Time magazine calls young adults "young, invincible -- and the key to his health care reform."

Why are young folks so key? Well, one-third of them are uninsured. They are the prime beneficiaries of ObamaCare, right?

Not really. It turns out that young people are the key because they are needed to pay for us old people's medical care: "Young people's willingness to forgo insurance, it turns out, is a major problem for the entire health-care system, which needs them on the rolls to help spread out risk and keep older Americans' premiums from going even higher," Time declared with refreshing clarity. The Washington Post headline put it even more bluntly, "Health Costs Could Fall to Young Adults: They Stand to Benefit From Reform Bills, But Will Also Likely Play a Major Role in Funding It."

There is a lot of actuarial truth in that statement. But politically it is the hardest of sells.

In the latest Rasmussen poll, Americans who feel strongly about the issue are opposed by a 2-to-1 margin (44 percent strongly opposed to 24 percent strongly in favor).

To me the most astonishing statistic to come out of the latest round of health care polling is that 35 percent of the uninsured oppose ObamaCare. Even more startling: Among those with strong opinions, the uninsured are almost evenly split with 30 percent strongly in favor and 26 percent strongly opposed.

And that was before The Associated Press' Fact Check column this week announced bluntly, "Memo to President Barack Obama: It's a tax."

What will happen as more of the young uninsured realize that "reform" means hundreds deducted from their paychecks each week to pay for health care for the middle-aged?

"Drafting young adults into any health care reform package is crucial to paying for it," the Post reported. But is being drafted really what most of Obama's young supporters had in mind?