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Every time I think insurers have accepted reality when it comes to covering pre-existing conditions, someone proves me wrong. Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens has sipped deeply from their pitcher of Kool-Aid and is now sharing the lie with everyone else.

ThinkProgress:

Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens (R) has a message for the estimated 57.2 million Americans suffering from diabetes, asthma, cancer, genetic disorders, and other pre-existing medical conditions: it’s your fault.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered video of Hudgens from a November meeting at the CSRA Republican Women’s Club in Evans, Georgia in which he makes the case against the Affordable Care Act’s mandated coverage for Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. In fact, Hudgens compares requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions to requiring auto insurers to pay claims to any reckless drivers without comprehensive auto insurance who crash their cars...[Read on for the transcript]

I found some small measure of irony in just looking at the folks in the room, particularly Hudgens. I wonder if that dinner included lots of red meat and sugary desserts.

Ending that pre-existing conditions exclusion is really painful for insurers. I get that. But it's time for them to suck it up and acknowledge the mess they made when they started excluding people for just about everything, including babies and cancer patients. That is entirely their fault.

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President Obama took a few minutes out from his announcement about his "if you like it, you can keep it" fix to patiently explain to the Beltway media why it is that the Affordable Care Act was passed in the first place.

After taking responsibility for the difficult rollout, the President reminded everyone of the problems that existed before, and how insurers had taken advantage of the ACA to cover what they would likely have done if it hadn't been passed.

Addressing the small number of people who received cancellation notices who couldn't find better coverage with subsidies in the marketplace, the President said with regard to the one-year delay announced today, "the Affordable Care Act is not going to be the reason why insurers have to cancel your plan."

He went on to describe what might have happened if they didn't have the ACA to blame, saying "the insurance companies still may come back and say we want to charge you 20 percent more than we did last year, or we're not going to cover prescription drugs now. But that's in the nature of the market that existed earlier, and that's why I'm trying to fix it."

Bingo, Mr. President. Which is why tweets like this one confuse me:

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President Obama is giving a speech in Boston today about the Affordable Care Act, reminding everyone about what it is and why it's a good thing. Right at the beginning, he was interrupted by climate change activists who appeared to be protesting the Keystone pipeline, though it's hard to tell for sure.

After waiting for them to settle down he reminded them that they were at the wrong rally, telling them "The climate change rally was this summer. This is the health care rally!"

A pretty classy way to handle an interruption - not slamming people concerned about climate change while keeping the focus on health care.

Update: Yes, they were protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. Here's the press release:

BOSTON — Two youth climate activists today disrupted President Obama's speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston, calling on him to take on climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The activists, Sophie Robinson and Shea Riester, both of Boston, told the president, "Mr. President, Reject Keystone XL! Stop Climate Change! For our generation, Stop the pipeline!”

Rumors continue to circulate that the State Department is nearing completion of its environmental impact statement on the pipeline. The draft EIS erroneously concluded that the pipeline would have no impact on the climate, but independent analysis, including from the EPA, shows that the pipeline would meet the President’s test of having a “significant” effect on the climate.

The fight over the pipeline has become a test for President Obama’s commitment to dealing with the climate crisis and has helped to spark an international movement against the expansion of the tar sands industry.

In June, 145 former Obama staffers sent a letter to Obama, calling on him to reject Keystone XL. (1) and over 75,000 people have committed to peaceful, non violent civil disobedience to stop the pipeline from being built. (2) Activists are now working in their communities to share with the neighbors information on the climate impacts of the pipeline, preparing for another incomplete or wrong EIS.

Senator Ted Cruz defended his friends at ALEC during a Senate hearing on the Stand Your Ground laws Tuesday, while paying lip service to his deep regret that Trayvon Martin lost his life and found no justice because of those very same laws.

Describing ALEC as an "organization that promotes common sense legislation", Cruz entered "multiple letters that have been submitted to [him] by organizations concerned by the targeting of ALEC."

Who would those be, I wonder? Take your pick from this list. I'm guessing many of the letters came from those organizations. The idea that ALEC represents free speech is just absurd. There's nothing free about turnkey laws which are then forced into legislators' hands by the billionaires who write them.

Earlier Cruz indirectly rebuked at least two of the panelists in the room with his claim that there is absolutely nothing racist about these laws. In fact, Cruz argued that such laws somehow actually help people of color, using a law Obama supported in Illinois in 2004 as an example.

“The notion that Stand Your Ground laws are some form of veiled racism may be a convenient political attack, but it is not born out by the facts, remotely,” he added, noting that President Obama supported an expansion of a similar law when he was a lawmaker in Illinois. As has been pointed out in the past, the law Obama supported in 2004 is not as permissive as Stand Your Ground laws typically are, and notably does not permit the use of “deadly force” as Stand Your Ground does in Florida.

Following Cruz' remarks, Senator Durbin countered with a sharp retort of his own about the state of race relations in this country:

“This continued reference to inflaming racial tension, my friends, we’ve heard this before, over and over again,” he continued. “We have problems with the issues of race in America that we have to face squarely, and when people are being discriminated against, whoever wherever in America, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights is not going to back away.”

Cruz is one of those politicians who is quite skilled at whitewashing truth in favor of those who pay his bills, and I expect he had a debt to pay to the corporate backers of ALEC for his dangerous and disgraceful behavior earlier this month during the government shutdown, so he delivered the goods laced with pious faux concern for victims of these pernicious laws.

His billionaires must be so proud.

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Via TPM, news that a federal judge in Texas has overturned the draconian anti-abortion law Wendy Davis filibustered last June:

District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote Monday that the regulations violated the rights of abortion doctors to do what they think is best for their patients and would unreasonably restrict a woman's access to abortion clinics.

Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers brought the lawsuit, arguing that a requirement that doctors have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic would force the closure of a third of the clinics in Texas. They also complained that requiring doctors to follow the Food and Drug Administration's original label for an abortion-inducing drug would deny women the benefit of recent advances in medical science.

The Texas attorney general's office argued that the law protects women and the life of the fetus. Attorney General Greg Abbott was expected to file an emergency appeal of Yeakel's order to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

As Jeffrey Toobin notes in the segment with Jake Tapper, these laws are all heading for the United States Supreme Court, which is worrisome. The right wing is intentionally pushing the envelope on abortion with a goal to overturn Roe v. Wade. This case looks like it's heading down the fast track to that place, too, especially since the 5th Circuit is notorious for supporting right-wing legal causes.

Text of Judge Yeakel's ruling is here.

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Most of us already understand how right wing whacko conspiracies start and grow as the right adds them to the echo chamber and gives them some level of credibility by airing them on talk radio and Fox News. But this segment does a particularly good job of exposing them, using a brand new conspiracy theory as well as more commonly known ones to illustrate the fear gripping the entire right wing.

In the middle of the segment, Sharpton plays a short excerpt from a video from "Lady Patriots" making the claim that the woman who fainted during President Obama's health care event on Monday was faking it, because...why?

Wonkette:

Listen, Lady Patriot, this is stupid. You know why it is stupid? Because Prezzy O’Hezzy did not even catch that lady. He just sort of steadied her. If he is going to set someone up to pretend to faint, with a conspiracy of, like, dozens of people, shouldn’t he actually be the hero who catches her? After all, that is how Cory Booker did it, when he pretended to rescue that lady from that fire when she probably did not even exist at all!

I was curious about who Lady Patriots actually is. It is a group blog edited by Sharon Schuetz and Julia Sieben, a law student at the University of Mississippi.

Schuetz works out of Texas, where she runs the Tea Party Community page on Facebook, where all good conspiracy theories go for testing. Click into that page and you'll discover outraged claims that Facebook is silencing conservatives, Marco Rubio bashing, and more. I'm sure Ted Cruz lurks there, and I'm equally certain that Sarah Palin loves it.

Schuetz bills herself as an author and says she holds a PhD in Clinical Christian Counseling. She is a member of the Celebration of Life church in Houston. Evidently she is a counselor by day, and a conspiracy theorist in her spare time.

It's no accident that those who call themselves patriots while making up lies about the president do it because Barack Obama is black, and they're afraid. The real crime is that their fear is picked up by Sarah Palin who relays it to Rush Limbaugh, who relays it to Fox News, and suddenly a crazy, fact-free, made-up claim becomes something your crazy uncle is talking about at Thanksgiving dinner.

Protip for Dr. Schuetz: You'd be better off taking a close look at your own psyche and shedding that fear and anxiety rather than making up stupid conspiracy theories to smear the black guy in the White House.

In the theatre of the absurd (aka Monkey Court) that is the most recent Congressional hearing over the rollout of Healthcare.gov, Republicans are pretending they've never, ever seen a program roll out with any glitches like the ones that hang the health exchange website.

Watch Joe "Sorry, BP" Barton concern troll over the issues with the federal health exchange website, and contrast that with his reassurances back in 2006 when the Medicare Part D program rolled out.

Oh, how they do flip-flop, don't they?

TPM:

A few weeks into the launch of the most sweeping health care reform law in a generation, John Boehner declared that the implementation was a disaster.

"The implementation," the Republican leader said, "has been horrendous. We've made it far more complicated than it should be."

Boehner, of course, was talking about the rollout of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit -- known as Part D -- enacted in 2003 by President George W. Bush. He discussed the implementation woes during a Feb. 6, 2006 appearance on "Fox News Sunday," on his fifth day as House majority leader.

But did he want to repeal the benefit? No. The future Speaker soberly acknowledged the problems but saw potential in the law and called for improving it. "The good news is that the competition that's being created has lowered premiums significantly below where Congress thought they'd be when we put the bill together, so the competition side is good," he said. "I think the implementation side continues to need to be improved."

It was a rough time for the law's proponents. The soft launch was "anything but smooth," according to the Washington Post, marred by at least two delays along with other, deeper problems. Upon launch, the Bush administration admitted to receiving "tens of thousands of complaints by seniors, pharmacists and others" about implementation failures. Health and Human Services vowed to "fix every problem as quickly as possible."

Boehner was far from alone in pushing to fix the problematic law, rather than repealing or dismantling it. And his judgment was vindicated -- the Medicare Part D program turned out to be a success, expanding medical coverage for millions of seniors at a lower cost than many expected. Today it is a fixture of the Medicare program. Fortunately for Bush and his party, Democrats were a willing partner in tweaking and improving the law.

It also helps if one visits the right site. One representative related his story of visiting Healthcare.com, which is assuredly NOT Healthcare.gov.

Yeah, what a difference a little intellectual honesty makes. Remember these flashbacks when you see them polluting our airwaves heaving deep, odorous sighs and clucking about how the ACA just won't work. Because website glitches.

I confess. I have a bit of a crush on Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear after hearing him talk about Obamacare and why he sees it as a game-changer for the people of Kentucky. It might be the way he says things, but I'm pretty sure it's what he says that grabs me. When he speaks, he speaks for people. There's empathy there, and you really are left with the sense that in his heart of hearts, he does work for the best interests of the people in his state.

Contrast that with Ohio State Rep. Matt Lynch, who has joined with several other conservatives to sue Governor John Kasich for expanding Medicare. Chris Hayes had to push very hard to get past all of Lynch's process excuses and dig down to why he opposes the policy. Exasperated, Hayes asked Lynch why it was that he opposed freeing people from the "terror and uncertainty" of not having health insurance.

With classic Republican cold-hearted emptiness Lynch replied, "I drove from Dayton to Columbus last night and I didn't see anyone terrorized by lack of health insurance, or health care for that matter."

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Nick Gillespie appeared on Crossfire earlier this week representing the libertarian elite who not only hate the mandate but also think that poor people will somehow magically not be poor if we take every service they have away from them. In this little segment, he disingenuously cites an Oregon study with the claim that health outcomes for Medicaid recipients are no better than they would be without Medicaid.

That study has been debunked six ways from Friday, but that doesn't stop Gillespie from using it like gospel. Fortunately, Jon Perr looked more carefully at his 'evidence' back in May and fact-checked the claim.

This week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a major study of Medicaid in Oregonwhich has rapidly emerged of a Rorschach test of sorts. That is, partisans on either side of the political divide tend to see what they want to see in its results. While conservatives claim Medicaid expansion has been debunked by numbers showing little change in blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes over two years between those who did and did not gain access to Medicaid, liberals tout findings revealing "Medicaid improved rates of diagnosis of depression, increased the use of preventive services, and improved the financial outlook for enrollees.

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That didn't take long. During Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander's interview today with Jake Tapper on CNN, he made his contempt for President Obama apparent. In response to a question about the rollout of Healthcare.gov and ultimate responsibility for the difficult rollout, Alexander said "If [the President] isn't going to resign, he ought to decide who will."

It's no secret that Republicans have been calling for Sebelius' head on a platter, but it's all too convenient. Yes, there are problems with the site, but then this isn't your run-of-the-mill kind of website, either. For Alexander to concern troll over the problems which he and his state contributed to is, at best, disingenuous. Even suggesting that the President should resign because of this is just absurd.

Let's just review what was happening in the months leading up to the October 1st rollout. There was Syria, Congressional hearings over the IRS and Benghazi non-scandals, immigration reform, and budget battles. States were refusing to set up their own exchanges in order to make the rollout more difficult, and those same states were refusing the Medicaid expansion in order to leave those most in need with no options.

Nothing stops these cynical jerks from taking whatever shots they can at President Obama. Of course, they're pretty desperate at this point, so expect more nonsense like this before it's over.

Meanwhile, the Twitter fail whale makes a regular appearance on my computer screen, and Twitter only has one database to deal with, comprised of 140 character text messages. Quick! Cancel the IPO!