I’ve long been a fan of awful rightwing political ads (some of my favorites are here and here and here).
So I particularly enjoyed these wretchedly unpersuasive videos urging young people to “opt out” of Obamacare, sponsored by groups funded by the Fabulous Koch Brothers.
The ads portray a dystopian future in which, apparently due to the government’s takeover of health care, prostate and gynecological exams are performed by someone in a creepy Uncle Sam mask.
Considering that “Uncle Sam” has been involved in providing health insurance to tens of millions of Americans for decades (through Medicare and Medicaid), it’s startling that this masked man has never been reported before. (Will the Koch Brothers also sponsor ads urging senior citizens to “opt out” of Medicare? Why not?)
What makes the ads even more ridiculous is that the audience they are aimed at– the so-called Millennial Generation– is more favorable to government than older generations. In fact they narrowly favor socialism over capitalism– which, if you know anything about American history and culture, is quite mind-blowing.
I don’t think those ads are going to change any minds.
But if Charles and David Koch want to throw their money away, who am I to say no?
Update: Texas Senator Ted “Wacko Bird” Cruz is engaged in an old-fashioned symbolic filibuster against funding of Obamacare.
Unlike his fellow Texan Wendy Davis– who filibustered in the State Senate against a restrictive abortion law– Cruz is allowed to wander as far off-topic as he chooses. So he read the entire text of Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham.”
Ted Cruz isn’t popular among his Republican colleagues in the Senate or the House. He doesn’t care. Ted Cruz isn’t going to be the Senate majority (or minority) leader. He doesn’t care. Ted Cruz isn’t going to be the GOP’s establishment pick for just about any office. He doesn’t care.
What Cruz does care about is that among the Republican base he is known as a populist outsider who cares about them and not the ways of Washington.
As a “populist outsider,” he has apparently undergone a remarkable transformation from his days at Harvard Law School way back in the 1990s, when he was an elitist snob.
A Harvard Law classmate claims that Cruz, a Princeton man, refused to study with anyone who hadn’t gone to Harvard, Princeton or Yale. “He said he didn’t want anybody from ‘minor Ivies’ like Penn or Brown,” Damon Watson tells the magazine.
