I knew she looked familiar!

Is there a rule that the GOP only welcomes women who are batshit crazy?

For those who may not remember.

The next evening guest host Ari Melber explained just how wrong Jennifer Stefano was during her insane rant.

Chris Hayes does his best to have a reasonable conversation about the ACA with a Koch brother funded crazy person. Does not go well.

Click exasperated expression to play video.

I watched this last night with my jaw hanging open.

It was like watching somebody try to chase down a greased pig and explain Obamacare to it.

Here let Raw Story give you the highlights:  

MSNBC host Chris Hayes clashed with a state official for the Koch Brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) on Wednesday after she claimed that extending the deadline to sign up for the Affordable Care Act by two weeks would have a negative impact on her childrens’ health care. 

“It continues to not allow people to go back and change this law,” AFP Pennsylvania State Director Jennifer Stefano told Hayes. “This law has made seven million people lose their insurance.” 

As Reuters reported earlier in the day, the deadline to sign up for Obamacare, as the law is commonly known, was extended until April 15 for people who have already begun the subscription process through the healthcare.gov website. As of March 17, more than 5 million people had signed up for coverage. 

“People without health care right now, who don’t have health care for their children, don’t want this law, Chris,” Stefano said. 

She did not mention that, in several instances, people who were refused coverage by their providers because their plans did not meet the minimum requirements set by the new law have in fact been eligible for coverage at a lower cost after factoring in government subsidies. 

“As a mother, I take real offense that women are being forced to have no choices to cover their children,” Stefano continued. 

“What are you talking about?” an incredulous Hayes responded, before arguing that much of the “heavy lifting” under the law would be accomplished by expansion of state Medicare programs, which have been frequently been opposed by conservatives. 

“Throw out the mandate, throw out the exchange,” Hayes then told her. “Bumping up Medicaid eligibility from 100 percent of poverty line to 133 percent of poverty line so that some working poor people can get some health insurance — what is the objection to that? Why does every conservative Republican governor oppose that? Explain that to me.” 

“Number one, not true,” Stefano answered. “Plenty of Republican governors, including Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, including [Ohio Gov. John Kasich], there are Republican governors that have expanded Medicaid. Please, please, please, spare me that this is a Republican-Democrat thing.”

Well of course it IS a "Republican-Democrat thing" because though there have been some Republican governors who have seen the  writing on the wall and expanded Medicaid, ALL of those who have not are in the Republican party.

At one point a little later in the conversation (Which was actually more like an air raid siren going off and one poor slob trying to find the off button.), Stefano actually claimed that raising the poverty level would mean that people making $94,000 a year would be considered to be living in poverty. And she repeated that multiple times.

Then when Hayes tried to reason with her, she took a comment he made COMPLETELY out of context and then raged that he was insulting her as a mother, and in fact was insulting all mothers.

Apparently this woman is from the Sarah Palin school of debate in which you misunderstand the conversation and then throw your children out in front of you like information deflecting sandbags while using white noise to pummel your opponent into submission.

I will hand it to Chris Hayes for at least trying to have a rational conversation with an irrational Koch supported Teabagger, but perhaps now he understand why others may not be quite as willing to do so.

Koch brother funded group uses free beer, Taco Bell, and gift cards to lure young people away from Obamacare.

Courtesy of the Miami Herald:  

As the battle over the healthcare law grinds on — Republicans no closer to victory than when they forced the government shutdown — a different fight was rising on a recent Saturday from inside Sharkey’s, a bar near the campus of Virginia Tech, 260 miles away. 

Lured by free beer, gift cards and the chance to win an iPad, 100 students heard a pitch from the young staffers of a group named Generation Opportunity: Obamacare is a bad deal, and you should opt out. 

With enrollment in the insurance marketplaces under way, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on a public-awareness campaign, critics are aiming a provocative counter-effort at a critical population: millennials, age 18 to 29, who may not feel the need or have the money for insurance. 

Because if too few young, healthy people sign up, Obamacare will be denied the financial blood to support older, more needy participants. So the race is on for the attention of 2.7 million people deemed necessary to enroll in the first year for Obamacare to be successful. 

Generation Opportunity, which formed in 2011 and gets funding in part from the conservative Koch brothers, is about to embark on a tour of 20 college towns nationally, including a Nov. 9 stop at the University of Miami. The pitch is that you shouldn’t feel compelled by the government to buy insurance, and that it may be cheaper outside the marketplaces. 

A blueprint for an upcoming tailgate calls for games such as beer pong and cornhole, free Taco Bell and beer. Pictures of people signing petitions to opt out would be sent over Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

The group, and more recognizable conservative organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, show how the fight has shifted from Congress to the grassroots. Young people are among the law’s most ardent supporters, but at the same time many are unaware of the benefits, providing an opening for critics. 

I knew this was coming.

The next best chance that the Republicans have to cripple the Affordable Care Act is to keep younger, healthier, participants from signing up. And with the deep pockets of some of these groups they could afford a hell of a lot of beer and Crunchwrap Supremes.

The Obama administration is going to have to really do some serious advertising, and possibly introduce some incentives of their own, to attract young participants.

Ultimately, much like very other desperate attempt, this petition thing will not do them much good. (After all what stops these kids from signing a petition, drinking their fill of beer, and then signing up for health insurance the next day?)

However I think it behooves all of us to keep a close watch on this kind of sneaky bullshit.

By the way the group responsible for this, "Generation Opportunity," are also the ones who brought us this ultra creep advertisement.

If ALL of their ideas are that bad perhaps the Obama administration won't have to try that hard to combat them after all.

Perhaps the most blatantly disingenuous anti-Obamacare ad EVER!

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The conservative group Americans for Prosperity is up with a new radio ad that decries the law as an impending disaster. Yet when you unpack the ad it’s actually more revealing about the strategic game plan behind this sort of political attack than it is about the law itself. 

The ad features a worried mother who says the following: “Two years ago, my son Caleb began having seizures…if we can’t pick our own doctor, how do I know my family is going to get the care they need?” 

FactCheck.org took a look at a previous version of this ad, and pronounced the claim that “we can’t pick our own doctor” under Obamacare to be false. What’s more, the invocation of a preexisting condition is a particularly audacious move in an ad that attacks a law that bans discrimination against people with preexisting conditions. 

But perhaps the most revealing thing of all is the ad’s warning of public confusion about the law. To buttress the impression that the ad is a catastrophe, the ad claims: “ABC News says confusion and doubt are prognosis for Obamcare.” 

And it’s true: The ABC News article in question does bear that headline. But the article actually presents this not as a sign that the law itself is flawed, but as a sign that the public remains ignorant about what’s actually in it. The article is about how many Americans, even those who stand to gain from the law, are not yet aware of its benefits. 

This neatly underscores the game plan behind ads like these: spread confusion about the law — in a deliberate effort to prevent folks from learning what’s actually in it — while simultaneously citing confusion about the law as evidence that it’s a disaster in hopes that folks will give up on it.

This is the kind of thing that we, as progressives, have to make our responsibility to refute at EVERY opportunity. 

The real flaw in the Affordable Care Act is not that it won't work, the flaw is that it won't work if not enough people believe in it and sign up for insurance, ESPECIALLY young people.

The conservatives are going to do EVERYTHING in their power to misinform the public and it is the duty of those of us who understand the incredible potential of the program to correct that misinformation.

As you know I do that quite often here at IM but we need to get it onto Facebook, Twitter, and every social media outlet there is in order to help make the plan a success.

Our success translates into lower insurance costs, lower medical future medical costs, and a healthier environment for our children. I cannot think of a more worthy cause right now.

P.S. Here is a resource for more information to help you access the program and also to provide information to help you shut down that Right Wing talk radio listener in the family.