Sunday, September 29, 2013

Ted Cruz on Meet the Press builds a case against the Affordable Care Act with lies, lies, and more lies.


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I watched this interview with growing agitation as Cruz made one false charge after another against Obamacare, and cited facts that were apparently freshly pulled out of his ass.

And perhaps even MORE upsetting was how many of them David Gregory let slide.

Here is but a sample:

Cruz: "The House last night, at 12:30 in the morning, voted to keep the government open, to fully fund the government. But at the same time, the House responded to the millions of Americans who are hurting under Obama Care. And I think the Senate needs to do the same thing."

Now in this case I will give Gregory a little credit for challenging Cruz on his facts.

Gregory: " You keep saying that the Senate and the House should listen to the American people. I looked at polling this week that shows, in a lot of quarters, the bill is unpopular, the law is unpopular. 56% want to uphold this law. So when you say, "Listen to the American people," they're not necessarily with you."

That was something, but considering how over the top Cruz's statements were I wanted more than that.

Later Cruz makes this statement: "I've spent hundreds of hours cris-crossing the state of Texas, traveling nationally. And people all over the country, they're losing their jobs, they're being forced into part-time work, they're facing skyrocketing health insurance premiums, and they're losing their health insurance."

NOBODY has been directly affected by the law as of yet because it has not been fully implemented, and  the parts that have seem to have been consistently beneficial. The only reason that companies might be laying off worker or moving them to part time is to create the impression they are suffering a hardship, and provide talking points to the conservative side of the argument, or are attempting to avoid having to provide health care for their employees. In other words this is a problem created artificially by certain businesses and NOT the direct result of Obamacare.

Then there was this exchange where Cruz tried to blame Harry Reid for the looming government shutdown: "Well, let's be clear what the Senate has done. So far, Majority Leader Harry Reed has essentially told the House of Representatives and the American people, 'Go jump in a lake.' He said, 'I'm not willing to compromise, I'm not willing to even talk.' (It must be noted that in Cruz's eyes a "compromise" would be to repeal the new law, defund the law, or delay the law for a year so that the Republicans can use it against the Democrats in 2014. Because once people know what it's about they will no longer have that in their toolkit. Can't imagine why Harry Reid won't go along with that!) His position is 100% of Obamacare must be funded in all instances, and, other than that, he's going to shut the government down. Now David, I hope he doesn't do that. If Harry Reed forces a government shutdown, that will be a mistake. I hope he backs away from that ledge that he's pushing us towards. But that is his position."

Once again Gregory does challenge him on it not very aggressively.

Gregory:  "But Senator, even Republicans that I've spoken to, your colleagues, say, 'Senator Cruz can't blame Harry Reed for shutting down the government. Senator Reed acted. He passed a bill to keep the government open.'"

I do like however that Gregory mentioned that Cruz does not represent the majority of the Republican party.

Later Cruz tries to pretend that his position has the support of the unions: 

Okay, look. The facts are becoming more and more clear that Obamacare isn't working. Every day, that's becoming more clear. There's a reason the unions are jumping ship. One union after another is saying, "Let me out." There's a reason why James Hoffa, the president of The Teamsters, said that he was writing on behalf of millions of working men and women, and he used "millions," not hundreds, not thousands. And he said Obamacare was destroying their health care. "Destroying" is his word. Now why is it that Harry Reed and the Senate Democrats are not willing to listen to the millions of working men and women whose health care is being destroyed?

This of course a gross misrepresentation of what Hoffa said, and just three days ago he expressed his anger at being used by the conservatives to further their agenda: 

"I call on Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. David Vitter and others to cease and desist from misusing our constructive comments in their destructive campaign to hobble the president and the nation," Hoffa said.

"Though we may have concerns with specific provisions of the ACA, we share the president’s goal of ensuring that every American has affordable access to top-quality health care," Hoffa said in the statement. "It is on this main point that we disagree wholeheartedly with the efforts of extreme right-wing Republicans to gut the ACA. Any suggestion otherwise is simply political posturing." 

There are many more examples just like this, and they are equally enraging to listen to.

However what I took overall from this is that it is proof positive in my eyes that, much like the Tea Party movement, this whole sham is funded by the Koch brothers and their ilk and that it more or less explains why not every conservative is on the same page when it comes to dealing with this new law.

Essentially if you are on the take, like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee you fight this thing with everything you've got. But if you are not receiving the payola then you try to do your job while also watching to see how this whole thing plays out so you are not on the wrong side of history.

Personally I think I can already determine how this is going to go down, and it does NOT benefit Cruz and his Teabaggers politically. However I have little doubt that Cruz has a cushy job waiting for him somewhere if this thing blows up in his face and costs him his reelection bid.

After all look how well being a paid shill worked out for Sarah Palin.

(Full transcript here.)

37 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:36 PM

    I heard Rand Paul criticize Obama today saying that he should be willing to compromise on Obamacare to avoid a government shutdown. I distinctly remember compromises to the ACA with the GOP were made at the time the bill was being discussed in Congress in 2009. Since ACA is now a law that has been upheld by the Supreme Court, this is a little late in the game for the GOP to be looking for compromises to the ACA.

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    1. Anonymous1:16 PM

      i remember the same thing too. Much of the goofy stuff in the final ACA is because of the GOP meddling in 2009. I sure wish that the "reporters" on these weekly Sunday love fests with the GOP members of Congress would involve a little "tough love" on the part of the media. At this point no one should dare lie about the contents of the ACA. Where are the Walter Cronkites, David Brinkleys and Chet Huntleys of the 21st century?
      Beaglemom

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:29 PM

      david gregory is the absolute worst..since tim russert died that show has become a joke. all I can think of when I look at gregory is him and rove dancing and rapping together...

      Delete
    3. Anonymous2:34 PM

      Awesome smackdown against the lies from MTP this morning: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/27/1241934/-AWESOME-Vanity-Fair-Piece-on-the-GOP-lies-about-Obamacare

      Delete
    4. Anonymous4:37 PM

      #ShutdownTheGOP
      Is trending on twitter right now :)

      Sarah fuck YOU and fuck Cruz control and fuck all your bagger friends YOU'RE TOAST!
      Y'all have finally done it.
      Like Cali next the Nation: Fire all Baggers and GOP

      #ShutdownTheGOP

      Delete
  2. Anonymous12:38 PM

    Corporate tool interviews corporate tool/shitbag. Expect fact free drivel.

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  3. Anonymous12:41 PM

    Someone interviewed former classmates of Cruz who remembered him as someone who loved to argue because he was sure that he was always right and had to prove it. That kind of person is dangerous because they have no room for any new facts. As scientific discoveries reveal new information, even those smart people adjust their thinking. To be that closed and arrogant is dangerous.

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  4. Caroll Thompson12:44 PM

    You are a better person than I, G. I tried to watch, but could not stand it after about two minutes. Had to turn it off. I can see why David Gregory's ratings are down. I miss Tim Russert. I watched Tim every Sunday without fail.

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  5. Sally in MI12:50 PM

    If the nation of Texas (Anita Perry said that "Only four countries allow abortion, and Texas is one of them!") relects this weasel, I pray Dems maintain control of the Senate and someone puts a muzzle on him. Remember how cocky Bachmann was four years ago, when she thought she was the perfect little candidate and could get away with anything? I suspect Cruz' hubris will also catch up with him. Daddy may call him "anointed" but no one else is.

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    1. Anonymous1:17 PM

      Only four countries allow abortion? What planet does Anita Perry live on?
      Beaglemom

      Delete
  6. Anonymous12:58 PM

    Rafael Eduardo Cruz will become an illegal alien to Sarah Palin if his posturing fails.

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  7. David Gregory is not Tim Russert. I quit watching Meet the Press shortly after Gregory took over and I observed his (non) attempt at challenging his guests. Our news media and journalists have become puppets controlled by the bottom line.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous1:04 PM

    Correction, Gryph: Paid SHRILL. Isn't she so godly and puttin' the Christ in everythang? Judas Priestess.

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  9. Anonymous1:12 PM

    GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to talk more about CGI in a bit, but we’ve got also some big news breaking this week. It looks like, for the first time since you were president, could be another significant government shutdown perhaps- even a default. And when you look at it- is that where we’re headed? And is there anything President Obama can do to stop it?

    BILL CLINTON: Well, I guess he could stop it but the price of- the current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine.

    GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: How so?

    BILL CLINTON: Well- the current price of stopping it is, we’re not gonna have any legislative process, no negotiations, no hearings, no evaluation of the consequences. Here are the draconian cuts we want you to adopt, including massive cuts in nutrition for the children of low-income working people, people working. The Republicans say, “You just haven’t given us enough cuts in the things we want to cut. And we’ve decided what we want to cut and we’ve decided what we don’t want to cut. We don’t want to negotiate with the democrats in the House. And we have no intention of doing what the law requires that we negotiate with the Senate, because the Senate has the Democratic majority. The Democrats in the Senate have already negotiated with the Republicans.”

    “So we want to just scrap all that. Give us what we want or we’re gonna shut the government down.” I think under those circumstances, the president has to take the position he’s taken, which is you, not me, you voted to spend this money. America is one of- maybe the only country in the world that requires two votes to spend money. First, they vote to spend the money. Then they got to vote again to issue the bonds to, in effect, bar the money from the American people to cover the spending they’ve already voted for. You can’t negotiate over that. And I think he’s right not to.

    Republicans want to defund the ACA so badly that they are willing to shutdown the government. Democrats are telling them to do it. A government shutdown won’t get rid of the ACA, but a group of House Republicans think that Democrats will buckle to their threat. As President Clinton pointed out, this is very unlikely to happen.

    The entire Republican strategy is based on the notion that Democrats love their country, and will do anything including delaying Obamacare to save it. However, what Democrats would have to give up, in order to “save” the country would be worse than letting Republicans shut the government down. Giving Republicans everything that it would take to both fund the government and avoid a default would be devastating for the country.

    House Republicans don’t get the fact that they have made this an easy decision for President Obama. They have chosen the worst possible option. Democrats fought for decades to for healthcare reform. They aren’t going to give it up, just because a few Republicans are stomping their feet and demanding it.

    http://www.politicususa.com/2013/09/29/bill-clinton-tells-obama-stand-firm-republicans-medicine.html

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  10. Anonymous1:15 PM

    Typical of the privileged, entitled spoiled brats that they collectively are, the House Republicans threw everything but the kitchen sink into their government funding bill. The bill, which purportedly was to stave off a government shutdown, was instead a big, fat sloppy kiss to all of the special interests that want to curtail average Americans' lives while enriching the top one percent even further.

    Telling, perhaps, that they were unable to do it without drinking heavily enough to be noticeable from the gallery. Putzes.

    The "funding" bill included a clause that for the puritanical and/or science ignorant Republicans, may be the king of unintended consequences: delaying funding for contraceptive care under ACA:

    --House Republicans included a so-called "conscience clause" in the government funding bill in a plan they approved early Sunday.

    The House voted 231-192 on a bill that would delay much of the 2010 health care overhaul for a year. It would also repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law. The measure would allow employers and insurers to opt out of providing health care services that they find morally or religiously objectionable. The addition reignites the debate over a portion of the health care reform law that requires most insurers to cover women's preventative health care, including contraception.--

    It's enough to make me want to nut punch a Republican member of Congress. Need I remind them once again that in addition to preventing unwanted pregnancies, contraceptives are used therapeutically as well for a host of women's health issues? Those "family-friendly" idiots will not be satisfied until Americans see an increase of abortions (oh, wait...), an increase in people applying for federal assistance due to the forced births (oh, wait...) or a bunch of motherless children, because their reproductive cancer treatments have been taken away from them. Ilyse Hogue of NARAL responds:

    http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/house-republicans-throw-birth-control

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  11. Anonymous1:36 PM

    Oh how I wish President Obama would call martial law and fix all their wagons but GOOD. Watch all of those dirty SOBs and the pee pond freak out.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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  12. Yeah, Mr. Cruz, covered by his wife's Goldman Cadillac plan, understands what the average American wants and needs. I can't decide who I hate more, him or $arah. I think him. $arah is just a stupid shill for the highest bidder. He' a true believer.

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  13. Beldar ACA Conehead1:56 PM

    Gryphen - if that's even your actual name, which I doubt but thankfully at least SOME people have the courage to blog and comment using their real names and don't cower fearfully behind OBVIOUSLY fake names like 'gryphen'. (what? you have something to say about MY name?)

    Anyway, by this time next week it will all be over. Your so-called President Obama will be impeached, removed from office, executed and imprisoned. Obamacare will be a forgotten defunded nightmare, government spending on the old, the sick, the young, the poor, and/or minority people will drop to zero (yay!), all regulations protecting the environment, food safety, consumer financial affairs, etc will be eliminated (YAY!!!) and government spending on subsidies to big business and bold military adventurism will rise three-fold (YAY!!!). Soon we'll be invading other countries all over the world again, as Jeebus intended. (YAY!!!!!!!!) Don't like it? TOUGH TITTIES!!! It's called "The Tyranny of the Minority" and it's in the Constitution AND The Bible! LOOK IT UP!

    But, ya wanna know the best thing about next week? Well, you and your handful of libtard deadenders still visiting this defunct blog wont like it, but very soon Amercia will be governed by the most AWESOMEST tea-baggin' ultra-uber-conservative MFM menage a trois the world has ever known!!!

    Let me introduce your NEW Presidential Triumvirate!!

    On lead guitar, we have Rafael "Ted" Cruz, the deadliest Canadian import since the diptheria epidemic of 1879! On bass guitar, please welcome "Ayn" Rand Paul, the thumpiest, funkiest bottom since the pipe organ accompanying the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was vandalized 3 octaves lower by musical pranksters! And on special-ed maraca, let's have a standing ovation AND a generous donation to her lifestyle PAC, THE SCREECHY WRETCH(tm)!!

    You'll learn more about our new leaders in the weeks, months, years and decades ahead, because they are Presidents For Life, baby, thanks to the NEW constitution that restores Amercia to the brutal christian theocracy our founding fathers always intended it to be!!! GET USED TO IT, BUDDY BOY!

    Remember this, also too: every time a poor person receives health care Jeebus didnt want them to have, an angel in heaven is anally raped.

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    1. Anonymous2:25 PM

      Geeez...what a bunch of BS you are spouting. Bet you claim to be a fine upstanding Christian who totes a gun everywhere he goes.

      Wonder how much you contribute to Palin and her ilk. You represent the worst of the worst of the tea baggers. Too bad the Repubs ever let the tea baggers get voted into office. They, and the rest of the country, are now paying the price.

      Get a life. By the way, this blog will be here long after you tea baggers lose what little control you have.

      Delete
    2. @Anonymous2:25 PM

      Our dear Beldar is Lord of the Snark. Please read it again. He is mocking the teabaggers.

      Sadly, no matter how over the top his posts are, they do in fact sound very much like what a 'bagger or Palin cultist would say.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous3:12 PM

      Wow. The evil just seeps from you. I hope you find somebody who loves you and turns your life around. You are sick.

      Delete
    4. Oh dear, 3:12 and 2:25--your Snarkometer is broken! You should get it repaired ASAP as it's dangerous to navigate the internet without it!

      Delete
    5. Anonymous3:40 PM

      Welcome to Beldar, Palin trolls, like you haven't met him before. EVIL is your golden calf Esther. We calls 'em as we sees 'em here. We're edumucated unlike youze.

      Delete
    6. fromthediagonal3:43 PM

      KUDOS to our resident God of Farce, one Beldar (fill in the blank) Conehead!
      You did it again, bamboozled those who have no comprehension of sarcasm. That was one finely crafted dystopian nightmare, my friend! Keep going!

      Delete
    7. Anonymous3:59 PM

      3:12pm

      Wow. The evil just seeps from you. I hope you find somebody who loves you and turns your life
      around. You are sick."

      We LOVES our Beldar!!

      Scarey that THIS is what a chunk of our population actually sounds like!

      Delete
    8. hedgewytch4:42 PM

      ...executed and incarcerated for life.....snort. Thanks for the laugh Beldar. Watching these tiny brains have a national temper tantrum would be much more fun if so many people weren't too stupid to understand the BS they are being handed.

      Delete
    9. Anita Winecooler5:59 PM

      Did you hear that, Beldar? You've been compared to a Palin Follower (Anon 2:25 and Palin herself and any member of Congress! (Anon 3:12)

      With ONE comment!

      Well Done!

      Please Proceed, Beldar.

      Delete
  14. Anonymous2:21 PM

    Cruz should buy some wine coolers and go to Alaska and get him some Palin pussy. Might take the edge off of him?

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  15. Anonymous2:28 PM

    Why anyone would watch David Gregory is beyond me. He is a horrible interviewer!

    And Cruz, the Cuban Canadian, is a slime bucket! He looks greasy and turns my stomach! I don't find him smart. He has no common sense is nothing more than an 'ugly American'!

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  16. Anonymous3:08 PM

    This is incredibly dangerous talk. Losing touch with reality to this extent does not bode well for Cruz’s future electability.

    Snark, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous3:54 PM

    Oh puh-leeze! Yes they are indisputable facts. They came from www.analorifice.org. Any website with ".org" is reputable as anyone with only half a brain knows. Stop spreading lies, and also too grow up! Your posts are so random. Once again you are slandering a people you don't know.

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    1. Anonymous5:15 PM

      LMAO!

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:21 PM

      @3:54
      ROFLMAO
      4:50
      Get a life, Maroon. Find your sense of humor.

      Delete
  18. Anonymous5:25 PM

    Gregory is in a race to the bottom........he wins!

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  19. Anita Winecooler6:11 PM

    Is MTP still on with Gregory as the anchor? That's seriously messed up.
    Keep yappin Cruze, Twisting President Obama's words and screeching about defunding, delaying and diddling with Obamacare isn't going to change anything.
    Love how he blames the senate. Wasn't it the senate that fixed Boehner's "Plan B" when they went on vacation? When the shoes on the other foot, all we get is lies and whining.

    Bill Clinton was on the George Stephanopolous show, did a fantastic job of explaining ACA and the effects the GOP's holding the economy hostage will have on our economy and our citizens.

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  20. Rafael Cruz is an illegal immigrant. Cruz's mother has no documents proving that she was born in the U.S. because she wasn't. When Cruz's father's student visa ran out, he located to Canada. Cruz and family then entered the U.S. illegally with fraudulent documents that showed Cruz's mother born in the U.S. Cruz's father never became a U.S. citizen until it was necessary to further his son's political career and Cruz was politically connected enough to pull strings to get his father citizenship.

    Cruz has admitted that his father was a communist terrorist and has made numerous lies and contradictions about not knowing he was a Canadian citizen. It would have been impossible for an immigrant family not to know their immigration status and citizenship status throughout the process of living in the U.S. under a visa and applying for citizenship status, and having gone to Harvard Law. Just impossible to not have known and continually fretted about since Cruz had such political ambitions.

    Everyone knows that Cruz is the biggest lying politician around and his ease at terrorizing the American public proves he has no loyalty to the United States.

    I'm going to prove that Rafael Cruz is an illegal immigrant and a fraud and guilty of espionage and I will get this freakin terrorist deported and jailed.

    ReplyDelete

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