Gov. Shutdown?

[sklineho]

Most of the people I've encountered who oppose ACA either lie about the requirements or don't understand them. There have been many polls done on the individual components of ACA and most people like them except for the mandate.

To be fair, and this also responds to the previous post regarding Hannity, shows like Hannity are not news shows. These shows are meant to basically give viewers a warm and fuzzy feeling of affirmation. Basically it's "these people think like I think so I must be right." It seems ingenious but in reality it's basic psychology, and Fox is hardly the only network that does it. The people who watch Hannity or Rachel Maddow or any other political shout-show don't care if they're lied to, it's "don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up." Hannity does what these people out in the real world are usually too civil to do: he shouts down the people they don't like. The three couples on his show, well of course it's staged, that's the point. The moment Hannity says something off-script, his base will accuse him of being a liberal socialist communist fake. I personally like Hannity, and Maddow, and OReilly, and Limbaugh, and Olberman. These people found a niche and exploited it. Good on them. I'd do the same thing.

Which comes back to your point about people who oppose ACA lying: they're conditioned to lie about it. TV told them to, along with their friend and family on Facebook and anyone else they encounter. Anyone who says otherwise is "a liberal who hates America."

I personally think that what makes this worse is, the ACA really IS a bad law. It was rushed and not well thought out. The sad thing is that people really should oppose it, but for the real reasons that it's just not a well planned law. But that doesn't boost TV ratings if you simply state those facts, you have to create a boogeyman. In fact, if the GOP had any sense, they'd have simply let the law take effect and let the people end up not liking it. But that wouldn't have boosted Fox's rating and wouldn't have gotten Ted Cruz on TV.

Now I'll go into some downright tinfoil hattery: I don't think Fox News, Glenn Beck et al WANT the GOP to ever win the presidency again. Obama has been the boogeyman they wanted and he's raised their ratings and made them a ton of money.

And who is to blame for all of this? Not cable news networks or radio blowhards, no it's the general public that are to blame. We created this monster. We decided at some point that instead of thinking, researching, and otherwise informing ourselves, that we'd rather sit on our asses and let TV tell us what to think. I personally find the idea of getting any news from cable news networks to be laughable. I can learn far more with far less spin and flash by simply spending five minutes online than in thirty minutes of cable news (actual cable news, not even counting the commercials).