A comedy in three acts
ACT ONE: Where we be at now. The Obamacare signup software totally doesn’t work. It is possible that nobody has successfully made it through the signup process yet (the media don’t seem able to find anyone, not for want of trying).
This is pure fun to watch, this part. In some ways, this mess is a trivial sideline to the abomination that is Obamacare (though I’ve never seen an IT project this big and this fucked up get fixed successfully, have you?). My goodness I’m enjoying it.
ACT TWO: When it gets rolling — however they manage to make it work — that’s when the fun begins. The people at the bottom and the people at the top won’t see much change — I assume — but there are chitloads of people in the middle who will find their costs going up (sometimes dramatically) or coverage going down or both. Who knows how many people fall in here, but it’s likely to be many millions of really, really angry people. Lots of people in this age and class believe they can’t do without insurance.
ACT THREE: This is when the youngest, healthiest adults refuse to sign up, in droves. Obamacare is absolutely dependent on these people to fund the system. But young, healthy people don’t need doctoring (by definition), don’t have much money and believe themselves to be immortal. If the fines for not having insurance are smaller than the premiums, you’d be an utter moron to sign on. After all, if the law says they can’t turn you away for being sick, why not wait until you’re sick to sign on?
And then…well, no matter what PR hit the Wacko Birds may take right now for being obstructionist, there will come a day when they’ll be happy to say they did everything in their power to stand athwart O’care shouting halt. Which is nice and all, but what does it matter, if our entire healthcare system is a smoking crater?
p.s. Really sorry for that illustration. Brrrr, that’s creeping me out, man.
October 9, 2013 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 20
Here we go…
Ted Cruz. Still getting the hang.
Pretty sure I’m on Team Cruz in this thing. I can’t predict how this Mexican standoff will turn out — likely badly for the GOP, but that’s true of every single option that I can see. The media will make sure of it.
So, what the hell? Why not look like bomb throwing maniacs. My mother told me, first promote the notion that you’re a little bit crazy, then people will always be a little bit careful around you.
September 30, 2013 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 17
OMFG
Is it real? Well, it’s out there. Nobody’s taking responsibility as yet. I can just hear the brainstorming session, though:
“We need healthy young people to sign up for this thing. What do kids like?”
“Pictures of cute animals with funny captions?”
“GO!”
On a related note, we’re thinking of calling the kitten Buster. Short for Filibuster.
September 26, 2013 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 20
presidential
I had never seen this before. Had you? It’s a chunk of Hillary’s offical first lady portrait. I love the near randomness of her props. That’s a weenus picture of the White House, a blue glass…candle holder? A copy of It Takes a Village and a chair.
In the annals of royal iconography, that’s…probably not at all what she was looking for. Why not…oh, a paperweight, a gym sock, an onion and a stepladder?
Anyway, I was browsing pictures of Hillary because I noticed in today’s speech photo, she has a new ‘do. Made me wonder if this is her runnin’-for-president look.
I still think her Bond Villain getup is totally the way to go if she wants to be a world leader, but I’m not holding my breath. Hillary has had so many, many different hairs.
Incidentally, I’m all in favor of Kerry’s accidental gaffe/plan to put Russia in charge of taking stock of Syria’s WMD’s. Sure, it’s pointless — but pointless is a big improvement over all the other options. It would put an end to this thing, save face, extricate our military from this slow-motion clusterfuck and put Vlad on the hook if any more brown people get gassed.
I wonder if any of these bozos has the smarts to go for it.
September 9, 2013 — 11:01 pm
Comments: 21
Duck!
Last one. No, really, this was probably the last really hot day of Summer. Heavy rain tomorrow, then nice enough for the rest of the week, but ten or twenty degrees cooler and windy. That’s it. The end.
The Daily Mail says it was the hottest September day for seven years, but you know. Pff! The Mail. Still, it was pretty toasty.
So we packed a lunch for Bodiam Castle — that’s the really cool ruin with the big moat and the ducks and the steam trains. It’s a pretty easy trek for us (and takes us past our favorite Chinese takeaway), which makes this one of our best options on a hot day. Also, the kiddlets went back to school yesterday, so it was just us dessicated old people. Ahhhhh. Such a quiet, polite bunch.
I love the way the ducks and the fish totally ignore each other.
Oh, also — points to the Brits: I love it that we aren’t forbidden to feed either (throwing food into ponds was aggressively illegal in New England). Does the heart good to see people and nature enjoying each other so much — and so what if sandwich ends are not the optimum diet for any of us?
As for politics — help me out here, folks. I’ve wanted to talk about the Syria thing all week, but I just can’t work out the angles. Obama and Kerry both — especially Kerry — made their names in politics as totally anti war. So what is it about this one stupid bad-guys-versus-bad-guys civil war that’s got those two all revved up to put their whole careers on the line, just to lob a few pointless missiles in a vaguely menacing direction? I can’t make this make sense.
September 5, 2013 — 10:30 pm
Comments: 31
You see, it’s like this…
I suppose there’s no point having a friend in Old Blighty (that would be me) if you can’t get insight into current events out of it. Ummmm…so. A lot of American commentators are saying that Brits soured on the Iraq war after it went off badly.
Not so. They hated the Iraq war from the get-go and never wanted any part of it. Why should they? That it went badly was widely seen as inevitable, as the Brits (under both Labour and Tories) have cut their defense budget to the bone. They feel like they threw their boys into a meat grinder for no good reason.
Blair telling them they had to go to war or Saddam would use weapons of destruction right here in Britain was the kind of stupid scary story you tell kids to make them turn out the light and go to bed. That just added insult to death toll.
Oh, and speaking of insult, Barky started piling it on from “hello.” Forget the little things — the stupid bust of Churchill controversy, Her Maj’s iPod stuffed full of the Speeches of Chairman Obama — what really stings is the lack of support in the Falklands. Oh, and Kerry calling France America’s oldest ally tonight, that didn’t help.
So, without even going into Cameron’s failings, Syria was always going to be a hard sell.
I laugh whenever politicians talk about damaging the Special Relationship, though. They think it has something to do with them, and treaty obligations and shit like that. The Special Relationship is that we’re fundamentally the same people. Until almost the 19th C, we were fellow citizens. Well, subjects. We still watch each other’s TV and read each other’s novels in high school and follow each other’s newspapers.
This really happens: strangers hear my accent and come tell me about the vacation they took in Vegas or Disney Land or their kid who’s studying in Massachusetts. Politicians don’t own the relationship, and I get the feeling that pisses them off.
Right, then. Good weekend, all.
August 30, 2013 — 10:57 pm
Comments: 29
No, YOU wear it to town
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “you couldn’t wear that here.” I know that’s what you’re thinking, because we’re all thinking it, because you couldn’t safely wear this anywhere, not even here in the heart of all things historically Anglo Saxon. Especially not here.
I bought this at Sissinghurst on Sunday, at a booth for an organization called the Steadfast Trust, a group with the perfectly uncontroversial aim of preserving English history and passing it on to English children.
Ha ha! Just kidding! It’s incredibly controversial!
Last year when we walked up to this booth, someone was chewing out the nice blonde lady behind the counter. Because I think how it works is, one minute you teach childrens how to thatch a roof and the next thing you know, coloreds have separate drinking fountains. Word.
I’m surprised the show organizers have allowed these people in for a second year (whether they were here before that, I don’t recall). The Smallholder’s Fair is very aspirational, not to say a bit twee, and this sort of thing…isn’t a good fit.
Oh, here’s the thing…the folks we chatted with at the booth were very nice, very earnest people. But the Left has made the very idea of an identity group based on Englishness (for which read: whiteness) so off limits that most decent people are afraid to come within miles. So, over time, organizations like this one will genuinely skew to the weird.
It’s a damn shame, but you know what? I don’t have the courage to push back, beyond buying a lapel pin I don’t have the balls to wear.
August 21, 2013 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 32
Math is hard, let’s go to the mall!
I suck at math. I’m not proud of this. I have a feeling some of the most interesting stuff of all requires math and I resent that I can’t share. (My grandmother was an algebra teacher, can you believe? Which goes to show there’s a lot we don’t understand about heredity).
So the Obama years (including, to be fair, a big chunk of the Bush years) have been tough for me. All them big numbers. I could swear there was a time when a billion dollars was a lot of money. Why, we even got exercised over hundreds of millions. A few nervous nellies thought we shouldn’t waste money by hundreds of thousands, but who’re they kidding?
So with the US debt inching up to $17 trillion, I’m completely at a loss. I need a nice simple visual aid to help me wrap my brain around that number. Luckily, I found one.
Ready? The value of the United Kingdom — the whole thing — the land, buildings, cars, currency, oil, patents, livestock, bank accounts, even little chikkens is £7.3 trillion. That’s about $11 trillion in dollars (by today’s exchange rate. Have to watch that. If my calculations are correct — and they’re probably not — a penny difference in the rate amounts to $73,000,000,000).
The good news is, the chunk of US national debt that is held by the public is around $12 trillion. That means if you paid off your credit cards, you guys could pool your money and buy Great Britain. With a trillion in walking around money left over. And the good news is, it comes with its own fully socialized medical system, already in place!
You have all weekend to make this happen.
August 16, 2013 — 10:35 pm
Comments: 29
Lookit that face…
Just lookit those faces. The seated man with the umbrella and goggles (lookit his face!) is an anti-fracking protester, who has chained himself to…something. The standing man (just lookit his face!) is waiting for a saw (being handed to him, bottom right) to cut the silly young man loose.
This is the sleepy village of Balcombe in West Sussex. They aren’t even trying to frack there. Not yet, anyway. The oil company wants to dig an exploratory hole six inches wide to see what the situation is.
That was enough to bring the hippie circus to town. Protestors have also glued themselves together on site, and blocked access with an antique fire engine. Because, England.
It’s almost as if lefties hate cheap energy…
August 1, 2013 — 10:38 pm
Comments: 22
Reality trumps Photoshop, again
Now, I know I keep telling you people that I will never, ever tire of dick jokes, but I honestly do not know what to say about Anthony Weiner. All the good puns are taken. All the bad puns are taken, too. It’s not that I’m not enjoying the whole scandal, it’s just so much of it doesn’t add up. So, no comments. Questions:
What the hell is it with Huma Abedin? Why do people treat her like a superstar? (Slate’s Dave Weigel doesn’t get it, either). Okay, okay…slender, big dark eyes. But also: horseface.
Michele Bachmann wasn’t crazy — Huma has all kinds of Islamic-supremacist cred. So how did she get a top State Department clearance? And why did John McCain go nuts on Bachmann for being concerned? (And, just generally, what the hell is it with our ruling classes loving on the Muslim Brotherhood?).
And how did she end up marrying a liberal leftist Jew? I mean, even as a cynical careerist ploy, it doesn’t make complete sense.
And why speak out on his behalf now? After the first betrayal…okay, I guess. Maybe. But knowing he continued to send snapshots of his pee pee to strange women, even after it lost him his Congressional gig? Shoot, he won’t even say if he’s still doing it. Now is the time to step forward and vouch for him?
By the way, if his chubby temptress is to be believed, dude has a seriously dedicated masturbation regime.
If the Clintons are worried about Huma, why not pick up a phone? Why play this out in the news media for us all to enjoy? Especially if the Clintons are mad that they’re being compared to the Weiners.
That’s the best bit, isn’t it? That Hillary’s second try for the presidency is being splattered by a cheesy, ugly, low-rent cheatin’ husband, stand-by-your man, trailer park dick scandal.
No, wait — the best bit is, I didn’t Photoshop that picture at all.
July 30, 2013 — 8:18 pm
Comments: 41