http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/11/obamacare_is_it_time_to_gloat_yet.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebookNovember 14, 2013
Obamacare: Is it time to gloat yet?
Thomas Lifson
The must-read column of the day is Jonah Goldberg's hilarious take on the Obamacare belly flop in National Review Online. Acknowledging the "obligatory caveats" ("It is no laughing matter that millions of Americans' lives have been thrown into anxious chaos as they lose their health insurance, their doctors, their money, or all three," for example), Jonah wields a rapier (or is a stiletto?) on the big fat target of liberal hubris, as expressed in the president's "signature legislation."
If you can't take some joy, some modicum of relief and mirth, in the unprecedentedly spectacular beclowning of the president, his administration, its enablers, and, to no small degree, liberalism itself, then you need to ask yourself why you're following politics in the first place. Because, frankly, this has been one of the most enjoyable political moments of my lifetime.
A big part of the fun is the pompousness of Obama himself:
He's said that he's smarter and better than everyone who works for him. His wife informed us that he has "brought us out of the dark and into the light" and that he would fix our broken souls. The man defined sin itself as "being out of alignment with my values." We may be the ones we've been waiting for, but at the same time, everyone has been waiting for him. Or as he put it in 2007, "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."
Jonah makes the excellent point that it was Obama's hubris that prevented him from taking advantage of the GOP efforts to delay the implementation of Obamacare, something that, in retrospect, was necessary and which might have averted at least some of the website rollout disaster:
Obama desperately needed a delay of Healthcare.gov. In his arrogance, though, he couldn't bring himself to admit it. The other possibility is that he is such an incompetent manager, who has cultivated such a culture of yes-men, that he was completely in the dark about the problems. That's the reigning storyline right now from the White House. Obama was betrayed. "If I had known," he told his staff, "we could have delayed the website."
This is how you know we're in the political sweet spot: when the only plausible excuses for the administration are equally disastrous indictments.
There is much, much more, and the 4 pages are filled with dfelicious little asides and pop culture references, such as:
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.
and:
...every day Jay Carney looks even more like a little boy who put on his dad's suit. You have to wonder what goes on in his mind, as a former journalist, when he tells his former colleagues that "the American forces have been completely destroyed with minimal Iraqi casualties." (Oh, wait, that was Baghdad Bob. I get them confused.)
This is one column to savor. But don't read it with your mouth full of coffee or any other beverage. With your health care insurance going up, you don't want to have to buy a new monitor or keyboard.
