Wednesday, October 23, 2013

WATERLOO, COULDN'T ESCAPE IF I WANTED TO.

J. Christian Adams at PJ Media:
Ted Cruz Won
Tell us about it, Mr. Adams.
Deal-making and compromise have pushed the country toward fiscal catastrophe. Only Cruz and his supporters stood fast, and Americans noticed.
I'll say they have! The debacle even seems to have more kindly disposed the people toward the ACA. But how is this good for Ted Cruz?
Second, now is the time to wreck Obamacare. Some in the GOP think they can win a couple of elections over the next few years and unravel the program once the GOP gains the White House. This ignores the shrinking attention span of the body politic. It also ignores the fact that many in the GOP are part of the problem. 
So, you can't count on the ADD American People, the Democrats, or the Republicans: What's left?
What about support to delay Obamacare’s implementation? That’s a ploy to save Obamacare. 
Pay attention who is calling for a delay. Partisans like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Stewart, Wolf Blitzer and Robert Gibbs know a delay today means preservation tomorrow. That’s why they support it. It is the modern Rope-a-Dope. Muhammad Ali famously employed his Rope-a-Dope to delay the fight, wear down, and eventually knock out his opponents. Focusing on Obamacare’s delay, and not its destruction, is an effort to preserve Obamacare.
They're just late to the party: The Tea Party Republicans already tried to save Obamacare by delaying it a year weeks ago. They couldn't do it, yet Obamacare miraculously persisted. Some people think that's because it's a federal law, passed by Congress and signed by the President, but to Christian it's clearly a form of witchcraft.
Some in the GOP were annoyed by Ted Cruz leading the fight to defund Obamacare. They claimed that if Cruz didn’t muddy up the debate, the failures of Obamacare would have been cleanly on display during the program’s rollout. Right. 
The failures have only gotten worse now that the shutdown is over. 
So have at it. Let’s see if they’re right. 
The failures of Obamacare couldn’t be worse. Obamacare has become a punch line, a joke, a catastrophic catastrophe, squared. So have at it. Prove that a shutdown-less environment could lead to killing off the program. Go win the narrative you said you could win.
This actually sounds, in a whining way, like an admission of total defeat -- that even if the world understands Obamacare to be a failure because the website doesn't work, it will still go on making America socialist or whatever. In closing Christian grows still more cryptic:
But we may learn that the Cruz-led fight focused the nation on the failures of Obamacare in a way that no pundit or consultant will be able to match. If the Cruz-less narrative fails to win the field and end Obamacare, then Cruz wins yet again.
So, the nation gets a health care program, and Ted Cruz gets to tell people he tried to stop it. Another such victory... but let that wait until Obama or somebody proposes a national minimum income. Then we can do this all over again.

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee:
This is like Reverse Wingnut Zeno's Paradox or something. 
The trend in this instance may be traced to Jonah Goldberg's post-collapse invocation of the "it just doesn't matter" scene from Meatballs. Goldberg seems unaware that the happy denouement of that film was created by screenwriters, not fate.

112 comments:

  1. BigHank5310:42 PM

    So I clicked on over and read the whole thing...man, that's just...weird. He hates the ACA and wants it destroyed, but offers no conceivable tactics.He loves him some Ted Cruz, even though Ted Cruz utterly failed in his attempt to destroy the ACA. No, wait: he doesn't say that. As a matter of fact, he won't hear a single bad word about Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a perfect Senator. Ted Cruz may be the only honest man--the only real American--in all of Washington, DC. Senator Cruz is dreamy---

    Sweet holy fuck, it's a mash note.

    http://cdn.pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/files/2013/10/Capture1-223x300.jpg

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  2. Spaghetti Lee10:47 PM

    This is like Reverse Wingnut Zeno's Paradox or something. The more Obamacare is delayed, the closer it is to being enacted. And Ted Cruz couldn't kill Obamacare when he was in charge, but if he fails to kill Obamacare when he's not in charge, it means he retroactively did kill it the first time. Oh, and a CNN talking head, a comedian, the (almost three years removed) ex-WH Press Secretary and the most conservative Democrat in the Senate are all that's holding it up. The fact that any attempt at immediate destruction would run into the president's veto pen for at least 3 years has nothing to do with it. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because some Republicans lack the guts...actually, in spite of all this 5-dimensional pretzel logic, it all leads back to the primordial mantra of wingnuttery: We didn't fail, we were betrayed! And success will be ours if we just purge the traitors and scream louder next time! Would have been simpler to just type that, no?

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  3. Only Cruz and his supporters stood fast, and Americans noticed...Second, NOW is the time to wreck Obamacare.

    Shorter Captain Edward Smith: "Sure we crashed the boat and sank it. We meant to do that! The time was not yet ripe for our success!"

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  4. Haystack11:01 PM

    And if Obamacare succeeds, leading to an unstoppable clamor for true single payer and the sidelining of the present medical insurance industry, and bankruptcies fall, and quality of life improves, and the economy recovers, and the Democrats win both houses and the next four presidencies....


    TED CRUZ WON!


    You can't take that away from him.

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  5. AGoodQuestion11:10 PM

    The PJ Media site, which seems more like the Fox News for the less talented all the time, plugs Adams' book "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department." So it sounds like Adams is on top of this ooga booga craze I've heard so much about. Even with that in mind, though, for him to blame "deal-making and compromise" for fiscal catastrophe when his non-compromising Tea Party studs have nearly caused default just leaves your jaw hanging open.

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  6. mortimer200011:12 PM

    The comments to that post are prime. The despair is palpable. Couple of favorite excerpts:
    ----
    Personally, I can't believe how deeply, soul-deadeningly disappointed I am in John McCain. He really has no idea what Sarah Palin did for him. He would have lost by twice what he did without her.
    ----
    I could give a good crap if they stay in office, get booted out, whatever. Doesn't matter to me now...they've set it up so we're going to have a giant economic and possibly social and/or political upheaval no matter what we do. All chance of my daughter coming into adulthood in the same country I did is gone...because of THEM.
    They will not get another damned dime from me. They will not get my hours on the phone banks. They will not get ANY word of mouth advocacy. They simply will not get any THOUGHT from me anymore. I'm focusing on preparing myself and my family for the probable calamity that THEY have arranged for us.
    ----

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  7. RHWombat11:19 PM

    I wonder what colour THEY are?

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  8. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume11:31 PM

    The failures of Obamacare couldn’t be worse. Obamacare has become a punch line, a joke, a catastrophic catastrophe, squared.


    I'm just looking for some clarification here, so forgive me if I ask an ignorant question: this is the law that goes into effect next year, correct? Thanks in advance.

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  9. Haystack11:38 PM

    Well by then it will be a a catastrophic catastrophe, cubed.

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  10. FMguru11:38 PM

    "The tide is turning...the enemy is suffering terrible losses...." - Gen Geo. A. Custer

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  11. tigrismus11:41 PM

    Needs more cats and strophes.

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  12. DocAmazing11:44 PM

    Obamacare is a punchine inside a joke wrapped in a catastrophic catastrophe.


    Sounded better from Churchill.

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  13. Clio's Bitch11:46 PM

    Shorter J. Christian Adams:

    If you strike me down, I shall become more derpy than you can possibly imagine.


    Incidentally, vaguely monastic (as in smelling of dried semen and ostentatious self-privation) bathrobes are de rigueur amongst rightbloggers.

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  14. BigHank5311:48 PM

    Time-cubed, more like.

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  15. Spaghetti Lee12:05 AM

    They will not get ANY word of mouth advocacy.


    The family, friends, and coworkers of this patriot, wherever they are, just breathed a giant sigh of relief.

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  16. PersonaAuGratin12:20 AM

    What's all this fuss about cats' apostrophes?

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  17. montag212:29 AM

    Hmm. We're gone from anger, to depression, to denial. Some have even edged into bargaining. Still, I suspect that death will catch up with the rest long, long before they reach acceptance.

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  18. montag212:43 AM

    Americans noticed, alright. They seemed to get a whiff of the Grand Shutdown Ploy and said, "eeew, what a stinkeroonie!"


    About the only thing that's up is Cruz's campaign contributions. And in Texas, a politician can be indicted on child sex trafficking and campaign contributions would go up based on increased name recognition alone. (I'm thinking of an old Molly Ivins story, where she'd just come back to Texas from working at the NYT, and ran a positively scathing piece about some retrograde state politician in the Texas Observer, and saw the old guy coming at her outside the State House, figuring that he was going to stab her with a fork or something, and he grinned ear to ear and thanked her--"yew got mah name in yore newspaper!")

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  19. montag212:45 AM

    "You can't take that away from him."


    Why not? I kinda like to see wingnuts absolutely deflated by reality.

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  20. montag212:55 AM

    Oh, dear: "He really has no idea what Sarah Palin did for him."


    That's some industrial-strength denial, that is. (Y'know, I just realized that I could make a fuckin' fortune if I could just figure out how to do quick-and-easy brain enemas.)

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  21. nanute5:00 AM

    It's the "Paradox of Grift."

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  22. and his supporters


    I read that as disciples.
    One problem though, Ted would never be a martyr.

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  23. Smut Clyde5:59 AM

    Deal-making and compromise have pushed the country toward fiscal catastrophe.


    Good to know that the complaints about Obama's failure to compromise or negotiate are going to stop now, in the light of this change of priorities.

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  24. IncongruousAmoeba6:15 AM

    Cats' ass trophies?

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  25. I can't speak to the Pantload's spiritual beliefs, but nearly all wingnuts claim to be religious, so they DO believe there is a Great Screenwriter in the Sky penning happy endings for them all (despite their rascally behavior).


    This might account a bit for their bizarre inattention to actions and consequences.

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  26. Derelict7:33 AM

    For all our laughing and pointing at the denial of reality on display here, we fail to truly appreciate the danger this represents. In the heads of the true believers, Cruz DID win, traitors within the party DID cause the attempt to fail, Obama really would have signed away everything including Obamacare and any conservative wishlist whatever if only real conservatives would have been true to the cause and crashed the world economy.

    These hoseheads really, truly believe this stuff, and the reality WE live in does not exist for them. As they grow more detached and more desperate, they're going to become more violent. Just listen to Cruz's little laugh-a-thon at the Values Voter Summit. Or the "Second-Amendment Remedies" crowd that Sharon Anggle was talking to--and that continues to gain strength.

    How long before one or more of these people decide they're best solution to save their freedoms is to start shooting politicians they don't like?

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  27. You know, I haven't heard a single cogent argument on why the program "must be destroyed" from the folks setting fire to the curtains. --they just know it must be destroyed.

    Their grousing about their team's "failure" to oppose the will of the American people to provide a basic level of security for everyone sounds a lot like the bitter criticisms fans aim at their team for not scoring a winning touchdown. The OTHER team beat their asses, so fuck it all--it's always the incompetent coaches, the overpaid (black) athletes, the cheating other team, the biases referees, etc.--there is absolutely no sign of any awareness of actual issues or principles involved or that maybe we are all on the same team.

    The radioactive levels of immaturity and deliberate ignorance on display are astounding. I often wonder at the extremely unlikely run of lucky incidents, geographic isolation, and miscellaneous unknowns that allowed this nation to not only survive past the 18th Century but actually grow into the bullying rich teenager who threatens human survival today.

    I suppose that's something remarkable.

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  28. TGuerrant7:52 AM

    Dreamy AND anointed...


    In a sermon last year at an Irving, Texas, megachurch that helped elect Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as "kings" to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the "Seven Mountains" mandate, and "bring the spoils of war to the priests", thus helping to bring about a prophesied "great transfer of wealth", from the "wicked" to righteous gentile believers. - Alternet

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  29. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps7:53 AM

    The requirements for martyrdom have been greatly downgraded in the GOP. All you need is to be hurt by a bad name or maybe cut yourself shaving.

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  30. redoubt8:10 AM

    Only thing is, the "free" civics lesson that the shutdown represented was their opportunity to show America how much better their alternatives were. Their "alternative" was a temper tantrum. America saw that. This is what losers sound like.

    And we've already had a discussion about the attempted violent overthrow of the American government. The "Juan Birch Society" doesn't have that option, and they know it.

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  31. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps8:24 AM

    "Partisans like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV),"


    Joe Manchin?? The most Republican Democrat in the house? The one who's obsessed with bipartisanship (i.e. agreeing to whatever the Republicans want)? The one working with Republicans right now to delay the individual mandate? He's now the face of dangerous partisanship?

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  32. anonymous coward8:41 AM

    This is good news for Ted Cruz. Hey, that has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

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  33. glennisw9:11 AM

    That's pretty hilarious, but when you unpack it, it's even funnier. So John McCain got a benefit from having the Snowdrift Snooki on his team? The historical footnote next to his name will be that he made a colossal error in judgement by picking an unqualified running mate, but - please tell me, what benefit could he have possibly gained? Is his reputation BETTER for it, even with people who are Palin fans? They hate him even more than Democrats do. In what universe does McCain benefit from picking Palin?

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  34. glennisw9:14 AM

    Righteous gentile believers indeed. I believe that's referring to two brothers named Koch.

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  35. chuckling9:20 AM

    "So, you can't count on the ADD American People, the Democrats, or the Republicans: What's left?



    The military. That's what it always comes to with those who have been betrayed, not defeated, thus allowing liberals to maintain their illegitimate hegemony.

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  36. JennOfArk9:26 AM

    My thought exactly.


    We're 3 weeks into a 6 month enrollment window with a website that's not functioning properly. If the website was the only component of the ACA, which as the wingers like to remind us is over two thousand pages long!!!, we could call the clusterfuck on the website a "catastrophe." As it is, it's a nuisance pain in the ass, one which can be fixed. If it takes two months to fix, they can just extend the enrollment period by the same amount of time to give everyone the opportunity to enroll. And let's not forget that perhaps the biggest reason for the problems with the site is that over 30 states have Republican governors/legislatures that sat on their hands, thinking that if they refused to set up exchanges that they could stop Christmas Obamacare from coming at all. A federal exchange website that was only handling traffic from 10 to 15 states wouldn't have the complexity or the traffic pressures that this one does. And I sure wish more people in a position to be heard would say so. People need to know that a good part of the reason they're having trouble getting signed up for insurance is because of Republicans in the states throwing temper tantrums.

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  37. montag29:32 AM

    I dunno, maybe in that backwards, upside-down ninth dimension where stupidity is revered and McCain lives part-time.


    Regardless of what this bozo from Planet X thinks, in the long view of history, McCain just plain fucked the big black mean dog when he chose Palin.

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  38. M. Krebs9:34 AM

    Lost Causes are what they're all about.

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  39. Some in the GOP think they can win a couple of elections over the next
    few years and unravel the program once the GOP gains the White House.


    This would also be known as "the legal, Constitutional way to enact your legislative preferences," you stupid seditious fuck.


    This ignores the shrinking attention span of the body politic.


    Actually, based on the current polling, a short attention span would appear to be an essential component of the GOP winning a couple of elections (and the White House) over the next few years, you stupid seditious fuck.


    It also
    ignores the fact that many in the GOP are part of the problem.


    "Many in the GOP are part of the problem" with winning elections, including presidential ones? We're finally in agreement on something, you stupid seditious fuck. Apropos of which, by all means get behind a presidential run for a first term senator, born outside the US (which doesn't matter as long as his mother was a US citizen)**, who has literally been described as an anointed one by his supporters. Half-assed distorted imitation is the sincerest form of stupid seditious fuckery.


    **The way that Cruz birthers are run off with that devastating rejoinder makes me glad that irony didn't live to see this day.

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  40. About the only thing that's up is Cruz's campaign contributions.

    So Ted Cruz does win, in the way he cares about.

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  41. tigrismus9:38 AM

    I suppose that's something remarkable.


    Exceptional, even.

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  42. I kinda like to see wingnuts absolutely deflated by reality.


    Hypothetically, so would I. Now, if you'll excuse me, my father sent me Jerome Corsi's latest diatribe about Obama's phony Connecticut Social Security number.

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  43. montag29:40 AM

    M'self, I would have pled for more alliteration, as in "stupid seditious suckery."

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  44. montag29:48 AM

    Mine is still ranting about how the Turks prevented the 4th Division from intercepting Iraqi WMDs being sent to Syria....

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  45. I could see how that would make the final remark flow better, but consistency would have then required referring to J-Christ' as a "stupid seditious suck." Which ... Hmm. If only Skylla had been the whirlpool one; "stupid seditious Kharybdis of suck" doesn't help the alliteration problem. Nice meter and internal rhyme, though.

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  46. Halloween_Jack9:55 AM

    How long before one or more of these people decide they're best solution to save their freedoms is to start shooting politicians they don't like?


    Well, the short answer to that is, "Ask Gabby Giffords." The longer answer is that these guys may have learned something from the nineties, when Timothy McVeigh's attempts to do a street theater version of The Turner Diaries got him the big needle.

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  47. Halloween_Jack9:59 AM

    "He would have lost by twice what he did without her." Someone doesn't understand binary states; being a little bit not-President is like being a little bit pregnant.

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  48. BigHank539:59 AM

    Better to die pure, holy, and alone than to make a deal with Satan.


    No, really: this is what they think. And then they wonder why ordinary people think they're crazy.

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  49. XeckyGilchrist10:02 AM

    Yes, and I keep meaning to put him on my Christmas card list for that, along with Rush Limbaugh for helping the Democrats take the Senate in 2006.

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  50. XeckyGilchrist10:02 AM

    I suspect that mouth will be plenty busy annoying them with other things, sadly.

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  51. montag210:09 AM

    "How long before one or more of these people decide they're best solution
    to save their freedoms is to start shooting politicians they don't
    like?"


    I'm guessing they'll start with the neighbors they think are liberal and work up from there.

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  52. Halloween_Jack10:11 AM

    Mercy me:

    It certainly isn’t the performance in 2012 where an unpopular incumbent saddled by economic malaise crushed a Republican known for compromise and civility.

    Fighters win these days, and Obama knows how to fight.



    Not like the days of old, when the right sort of chap was just given the office, eh wot?


    I suppose that Mittens might have been "known for compromise and civility" when he was the chief executive of a state that expected that sort of thing, but in '12 he'd taken the Kochs' shilling and was at pains to establish his Strong Dad bona fides versus his opponent, who was still being treated by Republicans as some errant street kid who didn't know his place. In fact, the only time that Romney seemed anything like a legit contender is when he brought his A-game to the first debate (aided greatly by Obama failing to do so). Mitt was visibly (at times, embarrassingly so) trying to be a fighter, he just didn't have that much fight in him.


    Frankly, I don't know that Cruz does either. Despite some significant differences from Sarah Palin (having gone to a real school, for example), they're birds of a feather, I think: they've basically got one trick, which has taken them farther than they really ever expected to go, and when that trick doesn't work, they're really at a loss.

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  53. susanoftexas10:18 AM

    I think "being a little bit pregnant" is the Palin family motto. It's on their crest, along with a wine cooler and a moose, rampart.

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  54. montag210:22 AM

    Civility? At the moment when he thought the cameras weren't on him, Rmoney took a giant dump on half the country, just to score points with his fatcat friends. If that's civility, I'm a fucking astronaut.

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  55. montag210:29 AM

    Oh, I think Franklin Graham, Rafael Cruz, John Hagee and Jonathan Falwell, not to mention Scary Sarah and One-L and a bunch of others, will have their hands out for their ten percent as the Great Transfer takes place. By the time that money gets down to the meek, it's going to buy a pizza--if the whole block chips in.

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  56. montag210:32 AM

    Eggs-zackly.

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  57. Mr. Wonderful10:39 AM

    There's more truth than poetry in this. Their plutocratic masters aside, this is the party of resentment--which is to say, the party of people who start each day feeling victimized. By what? "Whattaya got?" Not for nothing do they love Jesus "The Only Deity Defined By His Unfair Persecution and VIctimization" Christ.

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  58. They miss the friggin' point, McCain lost, in part, BECAUSE HE PUT HER ON THE TICKET!

    Here's how it really went down:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=PLAE66C0EE46CAA6B2&v=d-QevraCQUc

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  59. montag210:48 AM

    And a .50 caliber Browning Automatic with 100-round rotary magazine, helicopter and dead wolf.

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  60. StringOnAStick10:50 AM

    For all forms of "civility" that actually mean "servile-ity"; used specifically when Rmoney dealt with fellow moneyguys.

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  61. StringOnAStick10:52 AM

    A friend of mine used to be a river rafting guide; he said the worst clients by far were the groups of Christian kids because the hormones of youth combined with a Jebus-will-always-save-me attitude made for some scary, scary rides.

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  62. ChrisV8210:59 AM

    If Obamacare fails, Ted Cruz wins. If Obamacare succeeds...Ted Cruz wins! "No matter what you do, Superman, you are powerless to stop me! Bwahaha!" A catastrophic catastrophe, indeed.

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  63. montag211:05 AM

    No, sorry, the rollout failed because the government picked a bunch of professional fuck-ups to give the contracts to for doing the front end, the back end, the middle and the database interfaces. This is one more example of privatization gone horribly fucking wrong. The firms getting these contracts are the same ones getting intelligence/surveillance/security/data mining contracts who've been milking the taxpayers for a decade without actually doing anything of real worth. And, they figure if they really fuck things up, they'll have a job for decades. Hell, these are people so fucking bad at what they do, they bribed Duke Cunningham and still didn't get anything.


    Nope, this is nothing more than neoliberalism hard at work, making government look bad.

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  64. Magatha11:06 AM

    But they don't believe in reality. "Reality" is just some annoying conspiracy-fantasy-propaganda-nonsense thing we libtards keep yammering about. We are so very tiresome.

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  65. bulletsarepeopletoo11:14 AM

    I'm betting that Rafael & Ted Cruz's definition of "great transfer of wealth" is the poor & middle class giving to the rich.

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  66. ChrisV8211:25 AM

    Space porn.

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  67. Derelict11:39 AM

    Or perhaps some random symbol of the overbearing government--just like McVeigh's target was supposed to incite the rebellion he longed for.

    I fear their ignorant zeal.

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  68. Derelict11:40 AM

    Sure, but modern [Republican] Jesus ain't the pussy version found in Beatitudes--now he's sporting an AK-47 and a flaming tongue and he's pissed!,/I>

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  69. montag211:47 AM

    And believes in supply-side economics and trickle-on down theory, don't forget, and he sits at the right hand of the father, Ronald Reagan.


    (That I can even make fun of this as I do is a very strong indication of just how badly we've been fucked up in the last thirty-odd years, I admit.)

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  70. Halloween_Jack12:11 PM

    True, although this was already (IIRC) after he'd thrown his own very successful healthcare program under the bus, repeatedly and with great vigor.

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  71. BigHank5312:14 PM

    As they grow more detached and more desperate, they're going to become more violent.


    Sadly, there's no shortage of detached and desperate folks around these days, thanks in large part to our deranged public policies. They've mostly been choosing to shoot up their workplaces or the local school or the nearest cop or their ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Going after a politician requires planning and forethought, not notable qualities of the paranoid right. I'm not seeing that change anytime soon.


    As depressing as that is, it's good news. People attempting murder are criminals, and we have a lot of redundant systems for dealing with them. Wannabe fascists, particularly clear-spoken, well-dressed ones like some members of the Tea Party, are things our national immune system has a harder time dealing with. Look at how far things went under Bush: the White House spokesman was warning members of the press to be careful what they said. And everyone's pants were still so soiled from 9/11 they went along with it.


    Rigid authoritarians want (need, really) everyone to participate in their delusion. Humor can break people out of it. Mocking Ted Cruz and the excuses for humanity that cheer him on is fun, but it's fun with a point: ridiculous ideas deserve ridicule before their consigned to history's dustbin. When I laugh at Mr. Adams' fanboy slobbering over Ted Cruz, I mean it.

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  72. Budbear12:40 PM

    You're braver than I am today. Every time I get out of the boat I come back with deep regret, a headache and a need to stand in a hot shower for an hour, scrubbing myself continuously with a brush and strong soap, desperate to wash the memory away.

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  73. RogerAiles12:41 PM

    Onward Christian soldiers
    Writing as to bore
    With Ted Cruz and Jesus
    And a misused metaphor

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  74. satch1:20 PM

    It was head-bangingly annoying to listen to Cruz, back in Texas after his failure squared, telling his supporters how happy he was to be out of Washington and back in "America". Good Christ... with all due respect to John Wayne, Fess Parker, Billy Bob Thornton, and the real Davy Crockett, where is Santa Anna when you need him...

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  75. timb1171:33 PM

    This bigoted tool, J. Christian Adams, last seen angrily stomping away from the Justice Dept after no one would listen to him whine about how "the lack of proof of voter fraud is THE proof of voter fraud," is being parroted right now by King Oxycontin himself. Is J. Christian a writer for Limbaugh?

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  76. redoubt1:50 PM

    The way you wear your (tricorne) hat
    The way you bag your tea
    The way you run from that
    Oh, they can't take that away from me

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  77. glennisw1:57 PM

    unpopular incumbent saddled by economic malaise crushed a Republican known for compromise and civility.
    Funny how that worked, isn't it? Maybe the incumbent wasn't so unpopular.

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  78. ADHDJ1:59 PM

    "The Greatest, Bestest, Freest Cultural Revolution In The History of Man That God Has Bestowed Upon Us"

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  79. glennisw2:00 PM

    Apparently - and I did not notice it at the time, so sue me - the roll-out of Bush's Medicare Prescription changes was plagued by an equally bad website, and at the time, Republicans were all, "so what's the problem, a few glitches are just to be expected!"

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  80. GregMc2:05 PM

    I cannot be the only one who has considered the work of the great Jay Ferguson in the context of the honorable Senator.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJVl6Iuiy00

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  81. redoubt2:15 PM

    Onward Koch-Paid Army, to the Streets of Wall
    "Unemployment rising? We don't care at all"
    Bigots, frauds and fascists, all one body we
    Sworn to drown Obamacare in a tub of tea

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  82. Mr. Romney is very civil. He offered to lube up his Koch stick with Grey Poupon before shoving it up the ass of America, and that is a mark of a true gentleman.

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  83. Howlin Wolfe2:42 PM

    I like the way you transliterated the Greek, there, mds.

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  84. JennOfArk3:06 PM

    I'll agree that private contractor fuck-ups are the largest part of the problem. But some large part of it is the fact that people in over 30 states are all being funneled into the same website thanks to their governors/legislators refusing to get with the program (for which federal funds were made available). A state exchange handling a million inquiries would not only be much easier to design, it would also be much less likely to crash under the weight of 30 million people all trying to log on on day one.

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  85. sigyn3:25 PM

    Not to mention every blogger, journalist, and curious monkey's uncle in the country cluttering up the website "just to see..."


    sigyn

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  86. smut clyde3:37 PM

    I lost track. Boots on the desk -- good manners or bad manners?

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  87. and at the time, Republicans were all, "so what's the problem, a few glitches are just to be expected!"


    As were all of the "centrist" journos currently declaring the current situation a complete disaster that could doom Obamacare entirely.

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  88. Gromet4:00 PM

    You damned Alinskyite!

    I had forgotten about the violent Ari Fleischer crackdown on free speech; in the interests of being qualitatively better than our opponents on the right, I'll put this piece of Let's Be Reasonable here: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/09/fear_factor.html

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  89. M. Krebs4:01 PM

    I have to leave this here.

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  90. Gromet4:14 PM

    But even AK-Jesus is still doomed to lose every battle until the final one -- which is of course the one where he beats everyone who ever beat him, and gives it to 'em much worse than he ever got. Crucified and buried in a rich man's tomb? Ha, try eaten by a dragon and burning forever, libtard! Bet now you're sorry you voted for health care and thought I was racist!

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  91. Gromet5:03 PM

    Cowboy boots okay, but none of those arugula-tipped loafers.

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  92. Gromet5:23 PM

    I haven't heard a single cogent argument on why the program "must be destroyed"
    Who needs cogency? Just accept that somewhere in that 2,000 pages you'd find Death Panels, a government takeover, and the Kenyan Pretender's long-range plan to stifle innovation and end Freedom. If anyone asks for an actual argument about how requiring insurance stifles innovation -- don't get drawn into their elitist games! Just tell them they're naive. Or into tyranny -- whichever seems most applicable; use your best judgment. Maybe ask a rhetorical question like "Did the boys of Pointe du Hoc die so that we could stifle innovation with a government takeover of the sacred relationship between patients and doctors?" No matter what they say, shake your head sadly, then pull the pin on any grenades you might be carrying.

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  93. M. Krebs5:56 PM

    You can't?

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  94. smut clyde5:56 PM

    now he's sporting an AK-47 and a flaming tongue

    Best Sriracha advertisement evah.

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  95. John E Williams7:37 PM

    Partisans like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Stewart, Wolf Blitzer and Robert Gibbs

    AHA! I knew that black Green Lantern was no good.

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  96. I don't think that's Zeno's paradox--Zeno's Wingnut Paradox is that by halving the number of your supporters with every crazy shutdown and confederate flag showing you will eventually increase your numbers in such a way as to eventually fall over the threshold and win an election.


    You are talking about a Wingnut Heisenberg uncertainity principle or Schroedinger's Wingnut in a Box. Obamacare is always a disaster in the box (hidden) but when you open it and let it out it may succeed. Only by keeping it in the box can you destroy it. But you need to open the box to kill it.

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  97. Oh Texas, I'd rather be here with you than with the finest people on earth...

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  98. They will not get any THOUGHT from me anymore? When did they ever?

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  99. Not only that but the entire premise was gefucked from the gegetgo since your elderly parents had to painfully run through a complex set of formularies to determine whether their current medications would be covered and then guess at their future health issues and try to figure out what would be covered at that point. Plus the donut hole. So people at the time had to struggle not with a clear four tiered system with guaranteed minimums but a highly complex, random, marketplace in which they had poor information and no guarantees.

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  100. I really wish he'd stuck with the giant puppets and mimes.

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  101. Now that the marines are wearing gay hats, its all over for the military too.

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  102. And he totally would have cut our hair for free.

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  103. Smut Clyde3:46 AM

    That iceberg has fallen into our trap and now we have it exactly where we want it!

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  104. GregMc6:48 AM

    I clearly can. I shall suffer alone.

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  105. XeckyGilchrist9:47 AM

    Unfortunately, those seem to be a form of expression reserved to liberal protests.

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  106. merl14:48 PM

    I didn't realize that Jon Stewart was so powerful.

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  107. Matt Jones2:44 PM

    Shorter Adams: "Just wait till Cruz breaks out his amazing "my nuts to your fist" style!"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY

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  108. LittlePig11:20 AM

    I think the Wingnut Heisenberg is that desperately trying to squeeze the uncertainty out of their lives causes them to become more uncertain.

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  109. LittlePig11:29 AM

    +1 for Xanth reference.

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    Incidentally, vaguely monastic (as in smelling of dried semen and
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    ReplyDelete
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    Galaxy Life Cheats

    ReplyDelete