The White House spent most of the week trying to explain why the President didn’t say what he said.  Then they tried to explain that the problem was that people listened to what the President actually said rather than what the President was actually saying.  That didn’t work either.  So now the President said that he apologized that people lost their healthcare because they foolishly believed he meant what he said.  Or, at least I think that is what he said.  You can’t make this stuff up.

I am pretty sure a whole lot of Democrats are now scratching their heads asking one simple question.  “How could we have been so stupid?”  It is probably similar to how all those investors reacted when they learned the truth about Bernie Madoff.  All the warning signs were there.  The truth was out there for all to see, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t see.  They thought all those Republican complaints about Obama were just politics.  Now they know better.  But what can they do?  They can’t continue down this path because they know there is no chance it ends well.  There is no chance that Obama will come up with a solution.  There is also no realistic chance of getting rid of Obama for at least three more years.

The following article in Vanity Fair exposes the real Obama:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/11/barack-obama-loner-self-reliant-closed-off

It is an ugly picture.  The following quote proves that many supporters have known about Obama for a long time.   Now, this is so obvious that no one can continue to ignore it:

 It is impossible to know whether Obama’s go-it-alone approach is instinctual or learned, but he comes by it honestly—and painfully. From a far earlier age and to a far greater degree than is generally understood, Obama has always been alone. He was abandoned not only by his black African father, whom he later met just once at age 10, but also by his white American mother, who left him as a teenager with her parents in Hawaii to pursue graduate fieldwork in anthropology in Indonesia. At an age when most adolescents are grappling with how to break away from their families, Obama’s had crumbled away from him.

But even Vanity Fair totally missed the point:

Give Obama credit for figuring that out, and for rising beyond even the wildest imaginings of his self-reliant youth. If he had chosen to be a novelist or neurosurgeon, an airline pilot or an atomic engineer, the very qualities of self-sufficiency that even some of his strongest supporters find so frustrating would be an unalloyed asset. But in a politician—above all, in a president—such qualities are confounding and, at times, crippling.

The problem with this analogy is that is assumes that Obama is a brilliant man who would have been wildly successful at anything he tried.  The opposite is true.  Obama has zero real accomplishments, other than being pushed by others into positions he did not earn.  Upon attaining these positions he did absolutely nothing to effect real change.   His performance, at every level, was mediocre at best.  Obama has coasted through life fueled by his own sense of entitlement.  Substitute extreme narcissism for self-absorbed and you get a clearer picture of the man.  Obama lives in his own world, created by his own psychological needs and nothing is likely to change that.  He probably couldn’t change if he wanted to.

Obama can’t admit he lied because then he would be admitting that he lied.  He never accepts responsibility for his own actions and obviously that includes his own words.  This is remarkably similar to the man who was asked if he had ever made a mistake.  He said yes:  “once I thought I was wrong, but I wasn’t.”  Obama is the man who never was and no longer is.  I don’t believe Obama thinks he lied.  Obama lives in a world of his own creation.  Even when confronted with video tapes where he deliberately lied he can convince himself that he wasn’t actually lying.  I believe that if Obama was given a polygraph test asking him if he lied, he would say no and he would pass.

When I wrote this, I wondered if this was really possible.  Then I read the following article.  Chuck Todd interviewed Obama and he apparently reached the same conclusion.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/11/09/chuck-todd-obama-does-not-believe-he-lied

A lot of people are legitimately concerned about a President who lied so deliberately with such devastating results.  But it is a much bigger problem if this President is so detached from reality that he doesn’t even recognize the truth.

Sad!  I actually feel sorry for Obama.  But I feel even sorrier for the rest of us.

TDM

We used to say that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.  But sometimes it is also true in politics.  Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford in 1976.  Ford, the Republican Establishment candidate went on to lose to Jimmy Carter.  But the fact that Ronald Reagan came close to beating an incumbent President during a primary election set the stage for the Reagan revolution four years later.

Cuccinelli lost in Virginia, which is a bad thing.  It is hard to imagine a worse Governor than Terry McAuliffe.  But to people who study this objectively, this was a very bad result…for Democrats.  McAuliffe outspent Cuccinelli $34 million to $19 million.  In addition, by all accounts, Cuccinelli ran a terrible campaign.  He didn’t even know enough to respond to the endless personal assaults by McAuliffe.  In addition McAuliffe flew in all the Democratic heavy hitters to push him over the line.  This included Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.  It should not have been close.  But McAuliffe didn’t even get a majority of the vote.  He only won because an Obama bundler funded a “libertarian” candidate to syphon off votes from Cuccinelli.

What turned this around at light speed was ObamaCare.  Cuccinelli started to make this a referendum on ObamaCare over the last couple of days and the results were dramatic.  Against all odds, he almost pulled it off.  McAuliffe won by the skin of his teeth.  If the election had been delayed a week, McAuliffe probably would have lost.  Contrary to what you may read in the newspapers or hear on television every qualified Democratic strategist understands this.  Unless things change around overnight, Democrats are going to start deserting Obama at a pace that will stagger the imagination.

The disaster called ObamaCare has set off a political tsunami that came very close to sweeping Terry McAuliffe out certain victory.    That tsunami is growing stronger and wider every day and the devastation on the American political landscape will be beyond imagination.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, with one exception.  Sometimes, in politics, it matters very much indeed.

TDM

I do not know how to speak Russian.  I do know that “Do svidaniya!” means goodbye.  But then they say something else that I really don’t understand.  So I came up with the phrase Do syvidaniya! Virginia Sneaky.  I doubt that this is close to accurate, but it sounds good to me.  Please keep in mind that I am also hard of hearing so my chances of hearing anything correctly are rather marginal.  I do believe that ‘Virginia Sneaky” actually is a pretty good description of the governor’s election in Virginia.

Democrat, Terry McAuliffe will probably win by a big margin.  For one thing he has outspent his opponent by several million dollars.  In addition, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have traveled to Virginia to campaign for him.  Democrats have been running the traditional smear the Republican campaign against his opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  Democrats are convinced that once again the abortion issue will trump everything else.

Even the Republican Establishment is rooting for Cuccinelli to lose, because it fears a victory by him will inspire Tea Party Candidates to take on RINO Republicans.  The Republican establishment remains convinced that compromise is the pathway to victory.

As recently as this weekend, all the polls showed McAuliffe leading by a big margin.  A couple of recent polls have shown the race tightening “within the margin of error” but that almost always means the Democrat still wins.  So, it would be foolish to predict that Cuccinelli pulls this off.

But, recently, Cuccinelli has been running solely on the issue of ObamaCare.  He points out, correctly, that McAuliffe wants to expand it and as Attorney General Cuccinelli sued the federal government to try and stop it.

He has only been doing this for about six minutes, so this is the ultimate political “Hail Mary” pass and is unlikely to work.  But what if it does work?

This is one election where Republicans have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  If McAuliffe wins it will only show that money and a well-coordinated smear campaign can still win elections.  McAuliffe is the odds on favorite.  He is expected to win.  But if Cuccinelli wins it will send a shock wave throughout the country.  No one really expects Cuccinelli to come close.  It will tell every Democrat who voted for ObamaCare that they are in serious trouble.  It will send the same message to every RINO Republican in congress.

Seismic political events of this magnitude are impossible to predict because they are very rare.  I am hardly predicting it now.  But at soon, the disaster of ObamaCare will be so obvious that no one can ignore it.  At some point every Democrat who voted for this will pay a steep price.  We are not there yet, but we are getting close.  What Virginia will really tell us is “how close.”  It Cuccinelli somehow pulls this off, it will be proof positive that this is already happening and people will be stunned at the speed of the transformation.

TDM

I know many liberals who are totally convinced of things that are not possibly true.  Perhaps the best way to understand the liberal mind is to reflect on the lyrics of the Liberal hymn of faith:  Imagine by John Lennon:

Imagine there is no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one

Imagine is a beautiful song, until you realize that this is pure nonsense.  Imagine doesn’t describe a paradise, it describes a world filled with chaos and anarchy.  In 1790 Fletcher Christian anchored the HMS Bounty on Pitcairn Island with 9 other sailors, 6 Tahitian men and 11 women.  Here was the chance for the paradise longed for by liberals.  Pitcairn Island had been mismarked on the nautical charts.  No one could find it.  There was plenty of food, no country to kill or die for and no religion.  The only option was to live for today, because they had burned up the Bounty and there was no way they were leaving any time soon.

But they didn’t find paradise, they found chaos and murder.  By the time an American Whaler found the Island again in 1808 only one sailor was left.  All the other mutineers and all of the Tahitian men had been killed, mostly by each other. 

If we really lived in world set up according to liberal guidelines it would almost certainly end up closer to Pitcairn’s Island rather than the Garden of Eden. 

Liberals are used to lies.  They prefer a lie that agrees with their world view to an uncomfortable truth.  But there comes a time when a lie is so obvious and so destructive that it simply cannot be ignored.  When that happens it sends shockwaves through the residual elements of the liberal spine.  They are forced to finally ask a very vital question.  “What is really true?”  When liberals start actually seeking the truth, it is always a big shock.  They find themselves transported beyond imagination forced to accept the reality of the real world.    

The entire world now knows that Barack Obama is a bald-faced liar.  When he made those promises that people could keep their health insurance, that they could keep their doctors, he was lying.  It was a level of deception right up there with Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” moment.  But this is much worse.  This is much worse because Bill Clinton was only lying to protect himself from embarrassment.  Barack Obama was lying because it was the only way he could lull the American people into accepting the horror of socialized medicine. This is lying on a whole new level.  In case you wonder if I am overstating this, read the following opinion by Kyle Smith in the New York Post today:

http://nypost.com/2013/11/02/how-obama-crossed-the-line-from-bulls-t-to-dishonesty/

It is long past time at least some liberals move beyond imagination.

TDM

Perhaps I am wrong, but I am sensing real anger building up with regard to this administration.  That is not new.  But this time people are more than angry, this time they are seething with rage.  ObamaCare is impacting everyone in a way that is impossible to ignore.

I won’t go into details on the various problems with ObamaCare, because I have covered that before.  I will simply point out the obvious.  ObamaCare is a complete failure and nothing proposed by either Democrats or Republicans will fix anything.  If the individual mandate is delayed for a few weeks, it will make things worse.  If it is delayed for a year, it will make things worse.  If the individual mandate is repealed, it will make things worse.  If more people receive subsidies, it will make things worse.  If you think the website is bad, just wait until you see the finances.

There are millions of people who have just lost health care coverage they wanted and needed.  If they can manage to get enrolled in ObamaCare, they are instantly confronted with sticker shock and high deductibles.  There are news reports verifying that the Obama administration knew this would happen and they just lied about it.  There are all these videos of President Obama promising this would not happen.

In the meantime, Democrats are still pretending that this is all an illusion.  That the system is actually working and that if we just take two aspirin things will be better in the morning.  But the opposite is true.  It will be worse tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that.  There is no chance this will be anything short of an unmitigated disaster.

We are in the initial stages of this catastrophy.  Many people are still unaware of how bad it really is.  Others are still in a state of shock and denial.  But that will change and when it does, shock and denial will be replaced with seething anger.  We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.  At least since 9/11.  Perhaps going back as far as Pearl Harbor.  Only this time the people who attacked us and did all the damage were the people we trusted to protect us.  Can you feel it now.  Can you feel the anger.  You will!

TDM

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a million.  The following commercial is hysterical.   It is about a guy desperate to get rid of his loser cell phone, but he has to wait until his two year contract is up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejKCO28wfIE

The scene playing out in Washington is similar to this.  Imagine that the guy with the lousy phone is a Democrat in congress who suddenly realizes he is stuck with a really bad phone (ObamaCare).  He is desperate to get rid of it.

Imagine that the other guy is a Republican in congress.  He knows the Democrat is becoming desperate.

We could easily see a scenario where Democrats are almost pleading with Republicans for a delay in the individual mandate.

If there is a delay in the individual mandate, all of the Democratic gains over the government shutdown will disappear.  Even a short delay in the individual mandate will be a death blow for ObamaCare.

The Supreme Court did not uphold ObamaCare; it only upheld the individual mandate as a tax.  If you recall, many experts on both sides of the issue agreed that without the individual mandate, ObamaCare could not survive.  There were right.  The individual mandate is the ONLY enforcement mechanism for ObamaCare.  The government does not have the authority to require people to buy insurance.  The government does not have the authority to require people to sell insurance.  If there is no individual mandate, there is no requirement for anyone to offer ObamaCare or to purchase it. There will be millions of people desperately in search of health insurance with a government totally incapable of providing a solution.  They will not wait for the White House to get its act together.  The insurance industry can and will take care of these people.

So watch the video again.  Now imagine this is about ObamaCare.  Now, go ahead, smile!

TDM

Was the fainting incident at Obama’s recent press conference staged?  At first I dismissed this as just another wild conspiracy theory.  But then I watched the video and now I am not so sure.  I thought back on the times when I have seen other people faint.  It doesn’t look like this and people around them don’t respond like this.  When someone faints, they usually fall down.  They don’t just lean back, smile and keep on standing.  At a minimum, they sit down.  In addition people around them don’t just push them back up straight and then back off.  Just for snickers, here is the article in the Weekly Standard and the video:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/conspiracy-theorist-contends-obama-s-fainting-lady-was-faked_764596.html

Is this possible?  It is hard to believe that a President of the United States would stoop to such a silly stunt.  I mean really?  Does something think this will somehow help solve the ObamaCare problems?  If they did stage this, don’t they realize that the camera catches everything?  It is hard to believe they would do something this stupid, but the more I look at it, from this source and from other sources, the more suspicious this becomes.

Perhaps it will help if you watch a real video of someone fainting.  The following video shows a lot of people fainting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwXma6uaQvA

Notice that none of these videos resemble what happened here.  This woman actually looked better after she leaned back than before.  She smiled and then easily walked off the stage, with no assistance. At minimum this wasn’t much of a faint and President Obama hardly caught her.  The guy in back of her caught her.  All Obama did was stick out his hand and touch her and immediately announce that she is fine.  She smiles and agrees, then exits stage left.  In the meantime her friend, who had been holding her hand just a minute before, just stood there and smiled without a care in the world.    When you combine the obvious, with the things pointed out by the conspiracy theorists, you have to admit she’s got an argument.  Sadly, I think this President is fully capable of just such silliness.  How pathetic.

By the way, this symbol of people helped by ObamaCare isn’t enrolled in the program and actually doesn’t need the coverage.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/

TDM

President Obama, in an act of desperation, held a news conference today where he asked listeners to call 1-800-318-2596.  As one would expect, the system almost immediately crashed and people were told to call back over the weekend.  This is a sure sign that the White House is near panic about the ObamaCare roll out.

Incredibly Obama did not attempt to encourage the people he really needs.  He needs young healthy people between 19 and 35 to enroll and pay premiums.  He didn’t even mention them.  He appealed primarily to who don’t currently have insurance and who have been turned down because of pre-existing conditions.  That may sound good to a politician, but if a majority of people enrolling fall into that category, the plan will quickly go into a financial death spiral.

Based on every report I have seen, most people enrolling are ones who don’t actually have to pay premiums.  ObamaCare’s financial foundation is melting faster than Al Gores prediction about the arctic ice.  The next big fight is going to be an attempt by Obama to throw more money at this in a desperate rescue attempt and Republicans trying to block it.

In the meantime, call now, only don’t call now, because the phone number doesn’t work.

TDM

Democrats think they have scored a major victory over Republicans.  Obama thinks that ObamaCare is here to stay.  But the opposite is true. By launching ObamaCare before it was close to ready, ObamaCare has been exposed to deadly attack.  This attack won’t be by Republicans.  Oh they will attack ObamaCare, but that really doesn’t matter.  The more serious attack will come from a far more serious enemy.  It will come from the insurance industry.

Every disaster creates opportunity.  The ObamaCare disaster creates the opportunity of lifetime for people who dream of huge profits in the insurance industry.  This is already happening.  I own an insurance agency and in the last six months I get almost daily e-mails from insurance providers who believe they have the solution to ObamaCare.  There are wild differences between programs, but all are based on one simple reality.  They are certain that ObamaCare is a massive disaster and that millions of people will be desperate for an alternative.  They are certain that the first person to find a solution will make millions, if not billions.

Some are already investing enormous amounts of money.  Within a very short period of time we are going to start seeing “ObamaCare alternative” advertising on TV, on Radio and in the Newspaper.  All of these ads will start with a stark warning that ObamaCare is a disaster.  They will warn people that ObamaCare is bad medicine and they will offer help.

Some of these programs will be great.  Some will be awful.  Some will be scams.  But all of them will attack ObamaCare.  All of them will offer solutions to the problems created by ObamaCare and all of them are designed to exploit the insurance opportunity of a life time.  This will range from supplementary plans designed to make up for the gaps in ObamaCare to plans that offer full health care.   All will repeat the same theme:  “ObamaCare is a total disaster.  You need to take action.  We can help.”  

No amount of main stream media spin will overcome the effects of this advertising campaign. Arrogant liberal talking heads cannot compete with a determined assault by advertising professionals with unlimited budgets.   These people will not be impressed with main stream media spin.  They are driven by only profits.  History shows us that there is no more lethal force on this planet than a determined entrepreneur who sees an opportunity and figures out how to seize the day.

What is the administration going to do?  Are they going to try and ban such advertising?  Are they going to try and destroy any opposition?  They probably will try that, but I don’t think it is even possible.  It will be like playing the ultimate “Whack a Mole” game. Republicans in the House are totally pissed at this administration and they aren’t going to be anxious to help.

If any of these programs are remotely successful at enrolling a lot of people, the big boys in the insurance industry will abandon ObamaCare.  They reluctantly agreed to this fiasco only because they believed they had no choice.  They will not tolerate watching some new guy come in and take over their industry.  If the big insurance companies abandon ObamaCare and offer their own alternatives the results will be instant and devastating.  The ObamaCare failure will be total.

Liberals thought ObamaCare would result in the socialist goal of a single payer health care system.  Instead, the opposite is likely to happen.  ObamaCare is so bad that millions of people will demand an alternative.  The government is totally incapable of providing a solution, so private industry will step into the gap.  The private industry is ready, willing and able to respond.

This is already happening.  That will soon be obvious to everyone.  I don’t know exactly how this will play out, but I am positive that we are going to see a full-fledge assault on ObamaCare.  What I don’t see is any way this administration is going to be successful in defending against this.

TDM

In 1969 Odgen Phipps owned “Bold Ruler.”  He agreed to breed two mares owned by Penny Chenery, “Hasty Matelda” and “Somethingroyal.”  Instead of collecting the normal stud fee, they agreed to flip a coin.  The winner would get first choice of foals.  Phipps won the toss and he took a weanling foal from “Hasty Matelda.”  Penny Chenery was stuck with the offspring of “Somethingroyal.” The mare gave birth to a chestnut colt in March 1969.  That colt was named “Secretariat.”  Secretariat went on to win the Triple Crown and is considered to be one of the best races horses in history.  They even made a movie about him.

Odgen Pipps thought he scored big time when he won the coin toss.  Instead he got a filly no one remembers, while Penny Chenery hit the jackpot.  Peggy Chenery won big by losing that coin toss.

Democrats are celebrating because RINO Republicans caved and gave Harry Reid and President Obama a great victory.  It looks like the government shutdown will soon be history and the debt ceiling crisis will be kicked down the road for a few more days.   At first glance this looks really bad, because no one expects Republicans to grow a spine between now and January.  This is beyond embarrassing.  When you are beaten and humiliated by someone as inept as Harry Reid and Barack Obama, there is little room for optimism.

So we should all be depressed and discouraged, right?  The disappointment in the spineless Republican establishment is well earned.  But what exactly did Democrats gain and what did Republicans actually lose?

Republicans will get all of the blame for the government shutdown.  Democrats will get all of the credit for keeping the status quo. But the status quo sucks.   Democrats stood strong and tall in the face of adversity and saved the day.  Well, actually, they didn’t save the day, they saved ObamaCare.  They also spared Obama from cutting spending and reducing the deficit.  They weren’t fighting for truth, justice and the American Way; they were fighting for ObamaCare and irresponsible government spending.  Republicans are guilty of trying desperately to stop the madness.

If ObamaCare is a big success Democrats have won.  If the economy thrives, in spite of the tax and spend policies, Democrats have won.  If both those things are true, then Republicans deserved to lose and we are all better off.  But are they true?

What if Republicans were right?  What if ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster?  What if the computer system is so bad that it will take months and perhaps years to fix?  What if people find out that ObamaCare is horribly expensive?  What if there are horror stories about people who can’t afford health insurance anymore because of the increased cost?  What if people now have to pay a fine, because they can’t afford insurance?  All of these things are already happening.  It is a story so massive and compelling that it cannot and will not be ignored.

In addition, it is naïve to think that we can continue to increase spending and keep on borrowing indefinitely.  At some point we are going to have to put our fiscal house in order.  It is only a matter of time.  Democrats did not fix the problem, they didn’t even acknowledge the problem, they just delayed dealing with the problem.

The main stream media will continue to spin the news and try to avoid covering the massive ObamaCare failure.  But ultimately, they will have no choice.   This kind of disaster becomes too big to ignore.  There are already main stream media reports on ObamaCare that are devastating.  They just haven’t been given much air time because everyone was hyperventilating over the shutdown and the debt ceiling.  Now that this crisis is behind us, that will change.

Now think about this.  Alan Dershowitz was on Piers Morgan.  The goal was to get Dershowitz to argue that Ted Cruz “arguably” could have violated the constitution.  But Dershowitz did a lot more than that.  Piers Morgan asked Dershowitz if he remembered Ted Cruz as a student at Harvard.  I am sure that Morgan regrets asking that:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/10/15/dershowitz-very-strong-argument-what-ted-cruz-doing-deeply-unconstitu

PIERS MORGAN, HOST: See, you taught Ted Cruz at Harvard.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Well, I’m not sure how much I taught him, but I sat in the front of the class while he was in the class raising his hand, always his right hand, making very intelligent points, and really winning debates all the time in the class including winning debates with his professors.

MORGAN: One of the best students you’ve had?

DERSHOWITZ: One of the sharpest students I’ve had in terms of analytic skills. I’ve had 10,000 students in my 50 years at Harvard. I write all about that in my book “Taking the Stand,” and I write about my great students. He has to qualify among the brightest of the students

MORGAN: So we have to assume from that, just in the extraordinary piece of insight into him – because he’s come really from nowhere to many people – we have to assume from that this is all part of a strategy. What do you think his strategy is?

DERSHOWITZ: I think he deeply believes what he’s doing. I don’t think of him so much as a tactical or strategic thinker. He’s deeply principled. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing, and he’s very hard to get off that principled argument. I saw that years ago when he was a student. He was not a compromiser. He was not somebody who tried to make friends by accepting what was then the political correctness of the day. If you want to defeat Ted Cruz, you have to appeal to his principles not to his tactics

Now think about this.  We have one man who coasted through law school and went to work as a Community Organizer.  As far as I can tell, Alan Dershowitz doesn’t even remember Barack Obama as a law student.  The other man is one of the most brilliant men to ever attend Harvard.  He went on to argue cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.  He became Solicitor General of Texas, the type of position given to the very best trail attorneys.  He is a highly principled man who will not compromise regarding his core values.

Don’t be too quick to assume that Barack Obama was the winner in this exchange.

Cruz arranged for Obama to be offered a clean resolution that would fund the entire government, including ObamaCare if he would just delay implementation for one year.  Obama was outraged so instead he brought the government to the brink of default to get his way.  Now it is almost impossible for Obama to order a delay in anything.  Obama cannot do the one thing that might save ObamaCare.  If Obama orders any kind of a delay, Ted Cruz will respond with the ultimate “I told you so.”

Check back in November 2014.  Then decide who won and who lost.

TDM