Looking wounded and, at times, even broken, President Obama this afternoon addressed the ongoing disaster that is the implementation of his healthcare law. "I will work with Republicans and Democrats to make this work better,” the president announced generously, before moving quickly onto familiar territory and explaining that he would in fact just direct the executive branch to ignore the law...
Once again, Obama explained that he had no idea that the website’s was going to be so calamitous. Once again, he carefully chose his words when explaining why he promised something that was so clearly undeliverable. “You can’t blame me, I thought that the law would work!” he appeared to be saying. Rambling at times...
...Obama’s expansive and inchoate comments were gifts for an opposition that has long characterized him as being out of his depth and unaccustomed to the real world.This has two of the three essential ingredients for a wingnut Obamacare story: An assertion that, six weeks into enrollment, the program has already failed; and a portrayal of Obama as simultaneously a ruthless master criminal and a simpleton who can't run anything.
What's missing is the heretofore-traditional feigned concern for citizens who would be forced to transfer from their current plans to something with so much more coverage that it would suffocate their freedoms. Obama's latest plan removes this possibility, and they're really going to miss it. It had gotten to the point where the brethren were complaining Obamacare was forcing new plans on a "historically black college" (and what high-fiving must have gone on over this opportunity to show harm by overcoverage to black people! Who's a racist now, Kenyan Pretender!). Now they're reduced to prosecuting a crime without victims. Expect more yelling.
Obama better fix that fucking website, though.
Executive branch discretion, within reason, in the implementation of laws is pretty well established (it's like that's what the executive is for, or something) but that is not going to let CW Cooke, King of all Things Huffy and Pout-Based, to get his sulk hat on over it.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, he carefully chose his words when explaining why he promised something that was so clearly undeliverable
ReplyDeleteNo, you mendacious dipshit. I don't know what went wrong with ACA site and I'm not going to pretend to, but there's nothing fundamentally "undeliverable" about a web site that serves millions of people. Difficult to engineer and scale? Definitely. Impossible? Gee, I don't know, I wonder if there are any other websites that process massive amounts of data from millions of users. Sounds like science fiction to me.
But of course, in Wingnut Fantasy Land, such a feat might be within the grasp of private enterprise, but it's plainly impossible for the government to accomplish, because, uh, I don't know socialism or something. But I think it's safe to assume there's not a single solitary government site that functionally serves millions of Americans every day.
I don't want to get too philosophical here, but I think one might surmise that the executive's job is to successfully execute the law.
ReplyDeleteBut it's hard! You ever been to IT? It's all, like, cables and routers and microchips and USBs and shit, man. I don't understand it, The guy who fixes my computer when I get a virus doesn't understand it, the lady that sold me my cell phone doesn't get it - It's impossible. It's fucking wizardry, man. It's like year 3000 space technology shit we're dealing with.
ReplyDeleteClearly, we should do what private companies do when the website has a glitch and just close up shop. That is what businesses do, right?
Dude, you just blew my mind.
ReplyDeleteOh, the comments. Every one of them is convinced that the President is just going to scrap the law and do everything the Republicans want (People love policies that don't cover anything! Shitty policies for everyone). Seems plausible - after a long, agonizing summer of GOP intransigence and scaremongering, after pundit after pundit swore that the ACA would lead to horrors up to and including eugenics, after the Republicans took the administration to the Supreme Court, after a favorable election, after the GOP leadership threw a little fit over all the above and tried to kill the government (while blaming the President somehow)...after all of that, clearly a server error is what's going to make the President say "Oh, this is too much effort. Let's just throw it out."
ReplyDeleteI realize that this has become the conservative hill to die on, and therefore I understand why they have to seize on every opening. But seriously, this is getting into black knight territory, except they're hacking off their own limbs. If nothing else, I do find it funny that the dystopic nightmare scenario has gone from "OBAMA IS GOING TO MURDER YOUR GRANDMA!" to "OBAMA WON'T LET YOU KEEP INSURANCE THAT DOESN'T ACTUALLY COVER ANYTHING!" Man, guys, never write science fiction.
I mean, they do write science fiction all the time it just tends to be super rapey and full of guns that wouldn't work in reality.
ReplyDeleteLooking wounded and, at times, even broken
ReplyDeleteThey sure love to expose their fantasy lives.
I thought it was to be cute.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the fact that hundreds of thousands of people in states with exchanges are doing fine is ignored by the media, both right-wing and mainstream (so called). It's only the states with Republican governors that are having these problems.
ReplyDeleteNow people won't be forced to dump their shitty insurance plans?
ReplyDeletePlease proceed, baggers
The insurance regulator for Washington state is pushing back against the idea of allowing people to keep their shitty plans:
ReplyDelete"In the interest of keeping the consumer protections we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course," he said in a statement moments ago. "We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies. I believe this is in the best interest of the health insurance market in Washington."
This is a great example of the difference between an adult actually in charge of implementing policy and skree-filled pundits propagating obfuscation.
"I will work with Republicans and Democrats to make this work better,” the president announced generously...."
ReplyDeleteIf that's an accurate quote, all I have to say is, Charlie Brown, Meet Football. Yet again.
Now, I don't want to shout, but the Republicans do not want to make this work better. They want to destroy it, because... Obama. They want it to be a political football, and they do, indeed, want to yank it away at the last second. They want to make the problem even worse, because they think this will help them in 2014 and 2016. They do not give a fuck, I repeat, do not give a fuck about doing the public any favors.
It doesn't help that Obama and team bartered away the milk cows for some corporate magic beans early in the process, and it doesn't help that the rollout was rocky (that was almost guaranteed when the 2100 pages of the bill went through the second round of lobbying during the regulatory process), but, the worst aspect of this may be that Obama--at least publicly--is still trying to polish Republican turds. Without wearing hazmat gloves.
Once again, he carefully chose his words when explaining
ReplyDeleteWe're against him because one time years ago he didn't choose his words carefully! Now we're against him because he's choosing his words carefully! You can't trust him argrgghghgggggghhhhgghhh!!!!
I hope they keep their "exposure" to their fantasies; if they expose anything else the laughter will just make them angrier.
ReplyDeleteYou've been watching too much "Scandal."
ReplyDeleteThe only way these columns make any sense is if they really think they can win the future by dubbing the entire of an eight year Obama presidency. Do they really think that most Americans have absolutely no independent ability to see stuff on TV. Even if you think all your people watch is Fox do they really think they can make this stick?
ReplyDeleteBecause a dystopian future in which no one can afford health care and people are reduced to trying to get the pope to kiss them when they are covered with cancerous growths is just too scary. Plus less rapey. Or more rapey but you don't know which end you will be on.
ReplyDeleteOKAY, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR SHITTY HEALTH CARE PLANS. HAPPY?
ReplyDeleteI actually did the ACA site thing yesterday and, except for a few questions regarding what the heck they mean by "income" (adjusted gross actually) and a few creepy questions out of nowhere regarding my identity, it was fairly uneventful. Though I inexplicably had to delete my browser cookies before I could create a log in (WTF?).
Compared to current NJ plans, the policies are really lame for the massive amount of tax rebate money being shoveled at the insurance companies. To get similar coverage to what I have now would likely cost me more out-of-pocket, so I'll probably take the cheapest bronze plan and pray to god that I simply keel over dead when the time comes.
What we had before sucked, but for those who are self-employed health insurance was at least a direct write-off. I'm quite disillusioned by this whole thing.
So, you really think that when Obama says "HI, John[Boehner] how are you?" he really wants to hear all about Boehner's day? Also, when he says "pleased to meet you" he is really, really, pleased?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that at age 53 if my spouse and I had to go on the individual market instead of paying a fortune for employer sponsored health care we couldn't even get covered in the first place. My family has a history of colon cancer and I've had plenty of colonoscopies, my daughter has asthma--I'm grateful that thanks to Romneycare and the new ACA regs against denial we can get health care if we ever lose Mr. Aimai's employer plan.
ReplyDeleteYou would almost certainly be able to get individual health insurance in NJ, we've had pretty strong consumer protections in place for some time now (they can't deny you coverage, plans are standardized to a large degree, etc.).
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, our current individual plan is quite lame for what we pay. But these new choices seem worse, even if only looking at out-of-pocket. A tax rebate of over $800 per month for just little old me will be going straight to the insurance company, and this is the best they can do (huge co-pays, massive deductibles, horrid co-insurance, high maximums, no drug coverage, etc.)?
The Republicans would like him to execute the law by lethal injection.
ReplyDeleteOh, you're telling me. Earlier today, I was paging through some mil-tech novel by a Z-grade conservative blogger (who nevertheless has fans, apparently). Ostensibly it was about robot soldiers, but the part I read was mainly concerned with Corporal Mary Sue's idea to fight cybercrime by outing people's gay kids via Facebook. It was like the saddest attempt to write a Tom Clancy novel I've ever seen.
ReplyDeletethe website’s was going
ReplyDeleteObviously Obama's rambling, carefully worded, expansive inchoate speech broke this guy's brain.
I'm starting to be amazed by the gymnastics my conservative friends & family can perform. I just got an email today about how it's upsetting that Obama was so "inarticulate" in his press conference. Nevermind that Obama wasn't inarticulate (I'm assuming, I didn't hear it yet) -- the email came from a guy who happily voted for Bush twice.
ReplyDeleteI just applied for Social Security benefits on line. It was a breeze, and they called me in a few days to confirm everything. That's right. They called me. Government inefficiency is a myth.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I had to deal with the IRS over a misfiling once and they were incredibly friendly and pro-active. The problem was solved with 2-3 short phone calls and one questionnaire, and as I recall they followed up to make sure I was satisfied. And it wasn't a zillion dollars at stake, either -- more like $1,800. To this day I'm puzzled whenever anyone grumbles about the IRS. They're nice, and they gave us so many awesome R.E.M. records!
ReplyDeleteExcept on Scandal the executive's job is to be drunk and surly.
ReplyDeleteProbably it was just gas.
ReplyDeleteDid you try calling the telephone exchange?
ReplyDeleteI bet that if a reputable survey company did a sane survey, they'd find most Americans are not to perturbed by the Gov't website screwup- for the first 4 months or so anyway. Many probably decided to wait a bit before tackling the job via computer. Who goes to opening night of a blockbuster movie or the latest Harry Potter, and then complains 'cause it was so hectic and crowded.... as Georgette Heyer would say "a sad crush".
ReplyDeleteThe existence of an entire network of authors, publishers, and fachrissakes awards for fiction entirely based on adherence to "conservative principles" is an underexposed aspect of wingnut welfare. Literary worth? Entertainment value? Ideas that haven't been vetted by Glenn Beck? All can be discarded. The 'net has helped with the genre's growth, of course.
ReplyDeleteI used to read murder mysteries, with an emphasis on quirky locations and ethnic communities--for instance my absolute favorites were Robert van Gulick's Judge Dee series set in Tang dynasty China. But I gave up reading the genre about ten years ago when I stumbled on a nice looking series that was set somewhere like Colorado and where I discovered the author had a huuuuuuge chip on her shoulder about the evils of liberalism. I just came here for the idiosyncratic locale and maybe some information about B and B's or quilting, not for all that judgeymcjudmentalism.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about this particular NRO piece is that its tone only differs from mainstream coverage by subtle degrees. Cooke is more openly hostile, because as a NatRev blogger he can't really hide that. But no one, in the main, appears open to the idea that the exchanges may eventually work. "ACA a disaster" and "Obama mortally wounded" are what the media is going with. Of course Bill Clinton's baffling decision to pile on didn't help. Thought the man had read his Dale Carnegie.
ReplyDeleteThe mystery field is somewhat prone to this. A lot of the writers are autodidacts who break in by studying the market and giving it exactly what they seem to want, i.e. what people are already buying. This tends to breed a lot of anti-intellectualism, with the attendant politics. There are exceptions, though, and I think they're worth seeking out. The English author Simon Brett is really good.
ReplyDeleteNext week, we're having the "ACA meeting" on the job. I don't expect anything to change, but I haven't had a prescription written for me in over ten years.
ReplyDeleteThe "government inefficiency" soundbyte is just as hollow and meaningless as the term implies, and conservatives are so accustomed to repeating it within their echo chamber that if you actually ask them to explain why government is inherently less efficient, or to provide specific examples, or point out that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance, they're generally at a loss. (I've done this on Twitter, it was fun.) It's such "self-evident" conventional wisdom among small-government conservatives that they're not used to actually thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteIf they do manage to muster an example, it's usually "post office, DMV, hurf de durf." The post office one I'm just at a loss to understand, frankly. I've never had a difficult time with the post office. Not to mention that, on a macro scale, the fact that they can consistently deliver a letter from the East Coast to the West Coast in three days for 46 cents with a failure rate no higher than UPS or FedEx strikes me as pretty efficient.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never had a particularly bad experience at the DMV, either. The clerks there have generally been pretty polite to me, and I live in an area not particularly renowned for its politeness. And what the small government types seem to ignore is that I'd far, far, far rather wait in line at the DMV than spend any amount of time on the phone with Comcast or AT&T, to name just a couple companies.
So whenever some conservative spouts some line like, "Do you really want the same people who run the DMV and the post office handling your healthcare?" my response is generally, "Uh... yes? Sounds fine to me." But again, they're not accustomed to people not sharing their "conventional wisdom."
To be fair, I've seen tons of similar fiction written from a left-of-center stance as well (in fact, I saw some just last week). It's just that absent a Glenn Beck type to give it undeserved visibility, it tends to moulder in self-pub limbo. The problem is the same, though - once you've made literature subservient to your own political beliefs, you've already lost.
ReplyDeleteWell there's nothing inherently wrong with infusing a bit of politics into your literature, but as you said, if the politics take precedence, it does turn everything to shit. I'm certainly not aware of any groups that publish fiction or give out awards to fiction based solely on adherence to "liberal values."
ReplyDeleteIron Man (the RDJr. movie) is basically a conservative fantasy, but because it's a mainstream Hollywood production, it still has to stand or fall as a piece of entertainment. If it had been produced and directed by Glenn Beck, on the other hand, its entertainment value wouldn't have been a concern so long as it was suitably conservative.
His use of the word "inchoate" here is perfectly cromulent.
ReplyDeleteI know a guy who can help you out with that.
ReplyDeleteObama better fix that fucking website, though.
ReplyDeleteMeh. Website, schmebsite.
Somehow, in the olden days before intertrons and web-sites and such forth, the country managed to start programs like Social Security and Medicare. And I'd really like to hear Obama point this out. The website is a convenience, not a program. It really wouldn't be much of an issue at all right now if, on the first day it launched and they found out they had problems, they had set up a way for people to just sign up to have information about the plans available in their state emailed or mailed to them, or to have someone call them. How hard would it be to send out a mailer to everyone who logged in from Iowa showing them the plans available in Iowa, with instructions about how to log in to the Kaiser site that calculates how much of the premium the government will pick up? I kinda doubt it would have taken more than a couple of days to have those printed up and to start mailing them out - or to put up info pages for each state, with a separate subsidy calculator page. You wouldn't be able to sign up directly under such a system, but all you need to actually sign up is a fucking phone number to call at an insurance company. Once you get that far, they'd mail out the forms for you to fill in or whatever.
The Dead Kennedys were right: Give me convenience or give me death. Because that's really the choice here if the media and Republicans have their way - if we can't make the signup process ultra convenient, right this instant, then scrap the whole fucking thing and let people go back to having no insurance and dying as a result.
B^4 prefers the non-prescription meds.
ReplyDeleteThis may just be my obvious bias showing, but have you ever encountered a liberal author who just couldn't pass up the opportunity to vent their frustration at conservatives in their narratives? I can't say I have.
ReplyDeleteI started an Anne Rice novel a couple years ago ("The Witching Hour," to be exact), only to discover that she's very upset about 60s counterculture.
Whereas I've read many, many novels by liberal authors, but I've never found one that smacked me over the head with the author's opinion about, say, low capital gains taxes or the War on Drugs. Sure, there was a spate of anti-Vietnam War novels, but even when it was obvious that that's what Haldeman's "The Forever War" was criticizing, he didn't dwell on it to the point of pedantry.
Would that give me access to a different set of health care plans?
ReplyDelete"Iron Man is basically a conservative fantasy" - eh, kind of. But then there's the part where the guy realizes that his success as a military contractor, and his love of cool gadgets, have made life hell for lots of poor foreigners he never gave a thought to, so he sets out to destroy all the stuff he sold. And Stark's libertarian posturing is pretty sharply undermined in the second movie, where it's established that a) it is totally possible to become a super-rich captain of industry while also being a total idiot like the Sam Rockwell character, and b) Stark is demonstrably wrong about his positive effect on the world.
ReplyDeleteOne that is a little head-smacky, but that's nevertheless one of my favorite SF novels ever, is Thomas Disch's On Wings of Song. The first half takes place in the Midwest under a quasi-fascist regime that's a pretty clear extrapolation of the 1980s religious right, and there's a powerful businessman who is basically a cross between the Koch brothers and Scrooge McDuck, and the protagonist passes some hellish time in a laissez-faire privatized prison, and... well, the author's point of view on these things is not exactly ambiguous. It is bitterly funny though, and it's helped by the fact that the protagonist is entirely focused on survival and self-interest and romantic problems rather than righteous anger.
ReplyDeleteSo why is your current individual plan going away?
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, when Brett's A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM was made as a Michael Caine film in 1990, the script was written by noted right wing crank Andrew Klavan.
ReplyDeleteEven worse, I suspect the actual workforce at both the DMV and the post office is a bit more ethnic than what they're used to down at the suburban strip mall.
ReplyDeleteWell, one author who comes to mind is Sinclair Lewis, and he did win a Nobel Prize. But it's been a few years since then.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the religious hypocrite has been a reliable, oft-used subject in American literature since colonial days, and should really be considered a bipartisan object of scorn, although today's right wing Torquemadas don't seem to see things that way.
My favorite moments in Sherlock Holmes stories was when the bumbling Prof. Moriarty appeared. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteObama should not have made the claims he did without significant qualifiers, and they better fix the website, agreed. That said, it's fascinating to watch the double standard. I've seen conservatives shrieking that Obama didn't just misspeak, he deliberately lied, and in the same column insist that it's been proven that the Bush administration didn't lie on Iraq. And since when have conservatives been forced to prove that their policies work on anything? Putting aside climate change deniers and the free marketeers and the just-say-no-to-sex-and-you'll-never-get-pregnant crowd for the moment… For FSM's sake, every single goddam one of the Republican primary candidates last time around proposed even more tax cuts for the rich, budgets that did not work at all (except maybe in Bizarro World), yet rather than being laughed off the stage as charlatans or skewered as soulless monsters, they were mostly treated seriously. Call a crackpot, self-serving position an ideology and suddenly it's worthy of respect? I'm really sick of "I've got mine and I'm taking more, fuck you" being treated with deference or even lauded.
ReplyDeleteIt's not in the same league at all, but every time I watch Midnight in Paris I kinda regret that Woody Allen has tea party jokes in there. They're fairly funny, but to me they read as coming straight from an irate Woody Allen, not from the more mild-mannered character Gil (even though Gil's partially a Woody Allen surrogate, as are many Woody Allen protagonists). Obviously, the tea party and its rebranding of the same old conservatism deserve to be skewered, but I wish that were in a different movie. My chief concern is that that humor is topical and will eventually date the film, which is wonderful and otherwise has the timeless story about time travel thing going for it. (Oh, plus lots about art and inspiration.)
ReplyDeleteThe inefficiency thing bugs the fuck out of me. 'Efficiency' is a term that admits of more or less. So the market might be more efficient at this, and government at that. But, NO. We can't have nice things because of these goal-post-moving, black-and-white thinking dipshits. Business is efficient, full-stop, even if getting someone to help you, like for real, on a customer service line is like getting blood from a turnip. And government is inefficient (INEFFICIENT), because the Department of Motor Vehicles hasn't figured out how to supercede the laws of thermodynamics.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the good that Big Dog has done, I think that there might have been a bit of ego gone wild in his criticism of someone who actually got a health care plan passed.
ReplyDeleteYou're overlooking two big things here:
ReplyDelete1) Not all Republicans are the same; the recent shutdown proved this beyond a doubt. For that matter, and if you think that Obama didn't have this in mind then you literally don't understand the first thing about the man, he didn't say "Republicans in Congress."
2) Speaking of the shutdown, do you think that the GOP members who were humiliated and embarrassed by Pasty-Faced Ted and his merry little gang are going to want to form a united front with them any time soon?
Hey, I live near Wallingford, CT. I know some people who are inchoate right now.
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there.
ReplyDeleteDemocratic senators? I was thinking Daily Kos.
ReplyDeleteYour can call 1-800-318-2596, 24/7, and get info or be walked through the process. You can do it all over the phone in 30 minutes or so.
ReplyDeleteYou can also download the forms from healthcare.gov, fill them out, and mail them in and get the info back.
You can also meet in-person with "navigators" at hospitals and community health clinics: https://localhelp.healthcare.gov/
Finally, and the biggest one is, you're not required to buy your insurance through the marketplace. You can contact insurance companies directly for quotes. I'd assume you'd have to deal with the government afterwards to work out any subsidies you're eligible for. But people can just sign up independently.
Maybe the government has done a shitty job of letting people know about these other options but they've all been there since day one.
https://www.healthcare.gov/how-do-i-apply-for-marketplace-coverage/
Huh. I really liked that picture.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading The Bourne Ultimatum right now because I feel like I don't read enough genre fic, and there's a surprising amount of monologuing about the sinister nature of modern conservatism. Of course, that's sort of balanced by the 'fuck you feminists, women totally are weak and need the protection of men' monologues, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI used to think the DMV trope was bullshit, but after dealing with the one in my northeastern blue state, I'm willing to partially concede the point. I've had decent experiences in other states, but my most recent interaction with my current state DMV nearly turned me into burn it to the ground Tea Partier.
ReplyDeleteThe difference however, is that I think the DMV can actually reformed to make it function efficiently, since you know, it's demonstrably achievable. Sort of like how other countries manage to have universal healthcare at a lower cost.
Aimai:
ReplyDeleteRobert van Gulick's Judge Dee series set in Tang dynasty China.
Hmmm, verrrrrry interesting. Does Gulick go for historical accuracy, ala Steven Saylor's Gordianus the Finder (late Republican Rome) series? (I like that one so much I tracked down 11 of the 12 books in hardback for the bookshelf.)
Perhaps KatWillow's advice was meant to gently suggest that you went to heathcare dot com by mistake, which is the website of a Scottish landscaping company. And their rates are crap.
ReplyDelete(Alternatively, an actual human being on the telephone might be able to quadruple-check, e.g., whether there's a surprise silver plan within reach, especially with an $800 rebate to play with. In NJ, the gap between bronze and silver isn't always insurmountable, and it might allow you to put off keeling over dead for a few more weeks. Or you could just put the extra money into some lovely heather and gorse plantings instead.)
Victor Hugo.
ReplyDeleteIf you want somewhat more contemporary what about Sara Paretsky or Phillip Pullman?
Jack London. If we want to count him as a left.winger.
ReplyDeleteThere is also Wells who sold his talent for a pot of message.
You can also meet in-person with "navigators" at hospitals and community health clinics
ReplyDeleteThe ones that aren't being subjected to purely punitive massive Congressional committee document demands, or to onerous arbitrary state "licensing" requirements invented by Republican state governments just for navigators. God, but the GOP are irredeemably putrid shits.
So I take it the author is more of a Goldwater conservative.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the good that Big Dog has done
ReplyDeleteSuch as, uh... my mind's a blank.
No, one of the minor villains is a rise-of-the-conservative-legal-movement era Harvard law professor and Ludlum basically hit's you over the head with the fact that his job is basically to make arguments in favor of allowing the rich to steal from the poor that are basically intellectually bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, dude also has issues with women.
Didn't watch the speech, but I did read a few excerpts, and here's a good one:
ReplyDelete"On the website, I wasn't informed correctly," Obama said at the White House. “I don’t think I’m stupid enough to say this is going to be as easy as shopping around on Amazon....if I knew it wasn't working."
Way too close to "the buck never got here", for me, anyway. I bet that comes back to bite him in the polls. Nobody gives a rat's patootie how uninformed you were, except to the extent you should *not* have been.
People don't want to hear the Leader of the Free World™ making excuses. You apologize, take responsibility, promise to fix it. You don't get all "it wasn't my fault", even if it wasn't. Can't hardly blame Obama if he feels a bit shat-upon over this mess, but that pretty much comes with the job. If everything had gone smoothly, he'd be a hero (well, to some, anyway). It went bad, and he's the goat. I feel ya, Mr Preznit, but you knew the job was danjris when you took it...
He pissed off conservatives... nah, that's not really a satisfactory answer.
ReplyDeleteHe appointed Breyer and Ginsburg. Though apart from the fact that a dem president is less bad than a republican one he certainly didn't achieve all that much. (Oh and there was welfare reform, the bombing of that sudanese medical factory, Summers, Rubin and Greenspan etc.)
ReplyDeleteOh, John Ringo, No! Also Kratman and other Baen output.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember the title? I'm a bit of an aficionado for really bad books.
ReplyDeleteHuh, there are even conservative awards? I know only of the Prometheus Award for libertarian fiction, but it's an old hat.
ReplyDeleteThe DMV is also run by the state, not the federal government. The people who like to say that the government is always inefficient are also the most likely to demand "state's rights".
ReplyDeleteThe Handmaid's Tale isn't preachy or venting but it sure as hell has a point of view. One that gave me shivers down my spine because it could happen here and, as the author recently noted, is essentially happening in other places around the world.
ReplyDeleteAs a CPA I deal with the IRS on a fairly regular basis and have almost invariably found them to be polite, helpful and efficient. However several years back things were different and I have some horror stories from that era. But they did kind of a re-organization and decided they seriously needed to improve their image and their functioning. And it's worked so it is possible to make bad government work better!
ReplyDelete"I'm actually one of those freaks who hates to swallow pills."
ReplyDeleteYou're in good company. Lenny Bruce, when asked why he injected what he claimed were aspirin, said, "Cause I hate the taste!"
He looked kind of exasperated to me, I didn't watch it long, maybe his attitude changed.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if anybody else besides me has ever worked at a company when it put it's first minority or women supervisor foreman or executive in.
ReplyDeleteJames Burke usually includes a shot at GW Bush. Sometimes Reagan and GHW Bush, too.
ReplyDeleteHe really ripped on GWB in his book about Katrina.
"(even though Gil's partially a Woody Allen surrogate, as are many Woody Allen protagonists)"
ReplyDeleteYou have given me an entirely new lens, nay, an new electron microscope with which to view Mr. Allen's oeuvre! Heretofore, the autobiographical aspects have completely eluded me. Thanks.
Guys like him make me glad that I chose to live in WA. And Patty Murray, also.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, when the original PPACA bill came up for a vote in early 2010, before the teabaggers voted in their first group of leaping screamers, all 178 Republicans in the House voted against the bill.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, saying "he didn't say 'Republicans in Congress'" assumes something not in evidence. Republicans in Congress are the people he has to deal with. Sorry, but I think that's obvious--there is no 11-dimensional chess going on behind the scenes with Republicans outside of Congress that's going to make any genuine difference.
Welcome to the life of a Fed: people resent the fact that you have a job. That you get paid (sometimes poorly) out of their tax money. That you even exist.
ReplyDeleteBut enough about Congress. . .
You can also quickly compare premiums for ACA health exchange plans and prices for any zipcode at http://www.thehealthsherpa.com/
ReplyDeleteWell The Strength Of The Strong was written as a response to a right wing story, so you kinda have to give Jack an out on that one.
ReplyDeleteNot to great a tale, but a wonderful polemic along the lines of Animal Farm.
(People love policies that don't cover anything! Shitty policies for everyone).
ReplyDeletePeople are going to just adore the Bronze Plans, then.
Quite right: it is your obvious bias showing.
ReplyDeleteAs a general rule I think it's better to say what you yourself think, rather than nattering on about what you imagine others think.
Here you speculate about liberals' "frustration" with conservatives. This strikes me as extremely speculative. I assume that by "conservatives" you mean contemporary American reactionaries, and far from being frustrated it seems to me that American liberals are busily applying themselves to eradicating the creatures. Frustration is far from being the case.
This morning's papers report that the Kochs spent over $100 million dollars last year maintaining their pitiful astroturf front organizations. This is clearly not a hardy plant that flourishes with fertilizer and water: it is a dying weed at death's door, on very expensive life support as it goes.
-dlj.
Thing is, I'd have to pay way more out of pocket (currently ~$350) to get anything like what I have now. Which is absolutely no great shakes but at least they give me a bit of a buffer before the deductibles and coinsurance start kicking my ass. And I have a feeling my health insurance business tax write-off will disappear.
ReplyDeleteFor others it might be great, but personally I'm having a hard time finding a silver lining in all this.
I'm super late to this party, but "Obama’s expansive and inchoate comments"? Expansive and rudimentary comments? C'mon. "Incoherent" is already a word, which is what Cooke surely meant. It doesn't serve any purpose to use a fancy word and fail.
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