Kool Aid is a powerful intoxicant.  So is celebrity.

So when Sean Hannity went looking for people who have been hurt by Obamacare, he easily found three well dressed white couples eager for a chance to go national with with ignorance and fear.

They each told the horrors of Obamacare.  A researcher quickly found  that this was typical:

First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C.  He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.

Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.

One couple even had an uninsurable child and was still paying $20,000 a year for health insurance.  The researcher writing the story easily discovered that they could get the same policy for $7,600 including their uninsurable child.  But, they said they are opposed to Obamacare and “that the president should have focused on tort reform as a solution to bringing down the price of healthcare.”

Hey, at least Hannity found the last person in American who thinks tort reform helps consumers.  He has that going for him.

I have a conservative acquaintance who is against anything progressive because she “knows stories.”  Food stamps?  She’s opposed to them because she has a friend whose mother’s aunt saw a lady in California buy cigarettes with food stamps.  Public education?  She’s against it because there’s a kid she knows in the fifth grade who can’t do multiplication.  Well, she doesn’t know him personally, but she’s heard about it.

You can’t argue with people whose knowledge is based on gossip, so I tried something. I made up bigger stories.  Food stamps?  I know a child who didn’t have any and he was walking down the street one day and his brains suddenly fell out all over the sidewalk and all the private school kids had to walk over them to get the class and most of them got real sick because these were malnourished brains.  So there.

She:  (skeptically) I did not heard about that.

Me:  It was in the Wall Street Journal.

She:  The Wall Street Journal?  That liberal rag?  Pluuuuzze.

See?  Kool Aid and Gossip are powerful intoxicants.

Thanks to Don A for the heads up.

A little seriousness.

Before I start this I want to make something very clear:  I oppose voter ID laws.  Completely.  Totally.  Without reservation.

That said, I think we should concentrate on important issues surrounding them and exploit loopholes when we can.  Running around hollering, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!” simply suppresses Democratic turnout and fulfills the Republican notion that we’re overreacting.

The latest complaint is that women are being targeted for voter ID because supposedly only 66% of women have an ID that reflects their current name.  Folks are saying that if your voter registration card doesn’t match the name on your driver’s license, you won’t be allowed to vote or that you will have to vote a provisional ballot.

That’s almost true.

However, when the Secretary of State conducted training for election judges in Austin, Texas, it was made very clear that if a woman’s driver’s license and her voter registration has the same first name, address, and DOB, she can sign an affidavit attesting that she is the same person and then she can vote a regular ballot.  I know that’s a hassle that women shouldn’t have to do and we should fight it.

Ask women to re-register to vote in the same name that’s on her driver’s license or give her the information she needs to vote a regular ballot.  But, please, pretty please, don’t tell her she can’t vote.  Unless she’s wearing a “Ted Cruz for God, Junior” button and then softly inform he that she’s going to hell.

Thanks for your cooperation.

So CNN is saying that 54% of Americans think it’s a bad thing that the GOP controls the House of Representatives.  The other 46% think there’s alien spacecraft buried under the Denver airport.  Of those, 76% believe that John Boehner’s skin color is “enchanting.”

Okay, I got carried away.  So sue me.

And in oh sweet irony bliss of life, there’s this news.

“Sixty-three percent of all Americans think that Boehner should be replaced as Speaker of the House, a view shared by roughly half of all Republicans.”

After Boehner did everything he could to appease Ted Cruz short of kissing him flat on the mouth on National TeeVee, everybody thinks Boehner is a wimp and needs to drag his whipped rear end back to Ohio.  He needs to go gone or go home.

And you know how Ted Cruz just loves to say that Obamacare is wildly, inhumanely, and grotesquely unpopular?  Maybe not so much …

But of those opposed, 38% say they are against the law because they think it’s too liberal and 12% say it’s not liberal enough. That means that 53% either support Obamacare, or say it’s not liberal enough.

Thank you, Ted Cruz, for kneecapping the GOP.  Nobody could do it quite as well as you could.  And all those trips to Iowa as a first year senator?  Keep it up, Babe.  Democrats are counting on you.

Ted Nugent cut his hair, put on a suit, and announced that he’s considering running for President.

I swear I am not kidding you.

When asked by the Washington Post, Nugent responded …

Hi, I’m Ted Nugent. I have nine children from seven women, and I’m running for president.” Nugent takes a sip of water, having delivered his potential slogan. “Yeah, I’m thinking about it.”

Well hell, I have a better slogan, “More women that Newt, more brains than Palin, and more guns than Cruz.”

Okay, it’s one thing for Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson to use the powers of his office to further his political career by holding a gun rally on the grounds of a Texas shine and graveyard.

It’s another thing to scare the crap outta tourists and little kids because you have a gun fetish.

.

But it’s a whole ‘nother thing to misuse scripture from St Paul and St Luke, dammit.  Luke quotes Jesus speaking metaphorically about the sword of the spirit.  Sweet Jesus was making an analogy about the rich and the poor, not about killing people.  And St Paul was talking about belonging to God in spirit  even if you are a slave.  St Paul was not opposed to government; he was opposed to heresy.  And gun rallies.

Okay, okay, so I made up the gun rally part.  However, I know one thing for sure.  If Jesus had come back yesterday in San Antonio throwing the money changers out of the temple would have looked like child’s play.

Thanks to Kathleen for the heads up.

The Texas Representative in the duckie pajamas, Blake Farenthold, wants more damn sacrifice from veterans.

Asked by the local tv station why most Americans say they are disgusted with government, Farenthold says it’s because of Benghazi.  Yeah, that’s it.

And then asked why his own popularity in his district  has taken a nose dive, Farenthold’s brain explodes.

We asked him about the people who say he’s lost their vote; people like retired veterans who were on the verge of losing their disability checks next month.

He said the stalemate in Washington was necessary to achieve party goals.

“I feel like my mandate when I was elected was to go reduce the size of government, lower taxes, and increase freedom, and freedom isn’t free, and sometimes you have to make a small sacrifice to move forward with what you’re after,” Congressman Farenthold said.

Farenthold, who originally said he would forego his own paycheck during the shutdown and then didn’t, does not have a personal relationship with sacrifice.  And, of course, he never served in the military.  Saving one donut out of the box of a dozen for his kid is the biggest sacrifice he’s ever made.

But here’s his comment that made my brain explode.

He continued by saying the reason Republicans finally caved in the negotiations was the debt ceiling, specifically that not being able to pay our bills would have been disastorous for the economy.

But yet he voted against it.

He’s fully admitting that he was willing to sacrifice veterans and the entire United States of Damn America economy “to achieve party goals.”

And then he ate the last donut.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.