Must be doing something right

Jonah Goldberg indulges in a big dollop of schadenfreude today, observing that the Obamacare website couldn't be more like the "third-world experience" Henry Chao was desperate to avoid if it required customers to pay in chickens.  The exchange, as he says, rolled out "like a piano into a peat bog."

But that's just the chattering classes who live on the Internet.  What is the man on the street hearing about all this?  It was interesting to listen to a neighbor at dinner the other night describe the reaction of the workers at his small construction company, whose excellent healthcare policy is being taken off the market.  They weren't sure exactly what was going on, but every single one of them had gotten the news that the President lied to them about keeping their plans.

Turning now to the fever-swamp perspective, a cri de coeur from a Firedog Lake commenter who's evidently been accustomed to serve as an opinion leader on the jobsite:
This polling makes me sick!  Yesterday in the lunchroom, I was subjected to a bunch of moronic gibberish about how “I just wish the teabaggers would shut the damn government down permanently and let us govern ourselves at the State level”. 
I tried to talk some sense into these ‘people’, but all I got was a dozen or so neanderthals looking at me as if I, rather than they, were a lunatic. 
The Federal Family has been trying so hard to establish a truly fair and equitable society and yet the filthy and maniacal millionaires and billionaires who control the ‘media’ on behalf of the corporations continue to spew forth all these absurd lies cooked up by the “vast rightwing conspiracy” which so pervade our society. 
I’m sick of it! Apparently the same damn thing is happening all over the world! The ultra extreme far right just messes up EVERYTHING! 
I’ve got to go now, I can feel another onslaught of agonizing cognitive dissonance coming on.  I certainly hope that once Obamacare becomes effective, I can see a doctor, any doctor who will prescribe a medication that will stop this D*MN cognitive dissonance …  IT’S MAKING ME SICK!

8 comments:

Grim said...

You don't need a prescription for cognitive dissonance. Adequate amounts of vodka will take care of it (so I hear: I myself do not drink hard liquors other than the rare glass of Scotch, and never liked vodka even when I did).

Grim said...

Frank J today:

"Trust. That’s what civilized society is built upon, especially the relationship between the citizenry and the government. Well, no, the government doesn’t trust us. That’s why it has IRS auditors, forces us into Social Security, spies on us and will soon fine us if we don’t buy health insurance."

Anonymous said...

"The Federal Family has been trying so hard to establish a truly fair and equitable society …."

After one gets around the mind-bending concept of a Federal Family, one is confronted with the dismal results obtained from this administration.

Cognitive Dissonance is not cured with vodka, but with clarity. Here. It. Comes.

The reason the Federal Family has failed to establish a truly fair and equitable society is because it has enacted policies that have had the perverse results predicted by "these 'people.'"

The "neanderthals" have a point.

Valerie

Anonymous said...

The topic came up two weeks or so ago at Ye Mop Chop Shop where I get my periodic hair trims. The ladies were not entirely certain about the details, but they all knew that 1) no one could get through the computer systems and 2) not enough healthy people would sign up for the system to work. Everyone knew someone who was unhappy with the situation. Note that two of the hairdressers are Vietnamese and Burmese refugees. Those ladies may not speak perfect English, but they know economics and have finely tuned BS meters.

LittleRed1

DL Sly said...

Hey! You've found Julia's baby daddy!
0>;~}

raven said...

Either this is parody, or I am greatly heartened at the smegma that substitutes for brains in the enemy.

Grim said...

Goldberg does get a good line in, here:

The president may now claim that he knew nothing, but he must have wondered why Henry Chao, Healthcare.gov’s chief project manager, set the bar of success at sea level last March: “Let’s just make sure it’s not a Third World experience.” At this point, it could only be more of a Third World experience if Healthcare.gov required enrollees to pay with chickens.

raven said...

By the time Yellen gets done with us, a chicken will be a standard monetary unit....