Obamacare Schadenfreude

Townhall.com ^ | November 3, 2013 | Bruce Bialosky

[Kaslin]

As a civilized person, you know in your mind that you should not derive pleasure from the pain of others. But periodically it is simply appropriate to do so. That is why the word “schadenfreude” exists. That is what some of us feel about the spectacle of Obamacare unfolding before our eyes.

So you don’t have to go running to a dictionary, scha•den•freu•de is a delicious word of German derivation. It technically means a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people. But in reality it means so much more. And though some may think it is unbecoming (as our President has said about Republicans in his attempt to change the focus from his failings), to be transpicuous: we are relishing this moment and we have no regrets.

President Obama has provided so many points of justification they cannot totally be enumerated. It started with his arrogant and demeaning comment to Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA and now Majority Leader) that elections have consequences. In other words, I don’t care to hear your opinion. It can be that his signature law was passed with no Republican support and little support from the American public. It could be his lies about people being able to keep their doctor when the plans on the Healthcare.Gov website restrict the usage of doctors and hospitals. It could be his lie about how the average family was going to save $2,500 per year when every study shows most people will be paying significantly more for their premiums, not including their vastly-increased deductibles. Or maybe the lie about how people were going to be able to keep their insurance plans. Then his shock troops write regulations causing somewhere between 50% and 100% of 19 million Americans who have individual insurance plans to be cancelled because the plan they have does not meet the new requirements.

There is the lie of the rolled-out benefits. Sure, we are going to give you everything you want and it will not cost a thing. You can cover your children who cannot find a job in the Obama economy until they turn 27 years old. Women can have all the free contraception and tests they want – no cost. Pre-existing conditions: we will cover those like magic. Lifetime caps on your medical coverage magically gone. And because I am the Great Obama, you are not going to pay a dime extra Americans. Of course, until you are 27 years old, you must buy insurance you don’t want or need and pay twice as much as you would if none of these promises were made. Americans are finding out the old rule still applies: you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

And then there is Queen Kathleen (Sebelius) who has been endowed by her creator (Obama) with arrogance beyond what normal humans can endure. She has exempted her friends (mainly unions) from the rules of Obamacare because she is the omnipotent. Then, when she rolls out her failed website, she tells America it was because she only had three-and-a-half years (and now an estimated $1 billion of OPM) to create it. Poor Queenie says she needed five years to create it and a year to test it. But did you hear from Queenie when Republicans were suggesting a full-on delay of the law? No, because she says “There are people in this country who have waited decades for affordable health care coverage.” Sounds like she was on a mission from God, but it would be so passé for a leftist to invoke the name of the Heavenly Father.

Now she is telling Americans to forget that stupid website. You can call us. Since everyone agrees the entire plan hinges on young adults signing up, someone should inform Queenie they don’t make phone calls. In her little bubble she does not know every mobile phone company changed their pricing plans because her targeted fools use data (texting) and not live calls. You ask a young adult if they spoke to someone and they will tell they have, but what they actually did was exchange texts or tweets. And Queenie wants them to hang on the phone for hours to speak to one of her operators who must fill in the information on the exact same website that does not work in the first place. Or she suggests you can make application my mail. We mercifully resist even touching that one. There was a time when people like Queen Kathleen would resign for the good of the country, but that has become a quaint, antiquated custom.

Why would we after all this be experiencing schadenfreude? After they excoriated anyone who even suggested that this might not work. After the Republicans during the budget fight came with a final offer to delay the individual mandate for a year and get rid of the insipid medical device tax which is destroying the industry in America and has bipartisan support. No, “we will not negotiate” with terrorist and thugs. Those Tea Party people are just KKK members in different robes.

So when we are sitting on our couches watching the mainstream press finally do its job, using words like “debacle” and “disaster” to describe the rollout, how can we not chuckle? When experts say that it is not possible to reconstruct the website by November 30th, what does it mean when the new Czar (Jeff Zients) tells us the website will be working for most people by then? Does that mean if you are a Cardinals fan it will work and if you are a Red Sox fans it will not? When the President loses Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, he has lost the country.

Tell us truthfully: are you not sitting with a grin on your face thinking it could not have happened to a nicer group of people?

[yldstrk]

Hey I am not very active politically, but it is not for lack of trying

Nope, never noticed ya, but I have been on here forever, daily, and the fact you haven’t noticed me puts the lie to assertion

and yes, we are in despair

the country has been taken over by people who hate people and the “Republicans” are part of the depravity

In Kansas, I went to the elephant club lunch and said I was looking for conservatives and was coldly informed that they were Republicans. I can’t find more than one or two conservative, even in my Catholic church.

If you know where they are, pray tell before it’s too late. Everybody these days wants to be “popular” AND “kewl” and “forward thinking” and “leaning in”. What tripe— makes me want to throw up.

Nonetheless, leave nascarnation alone. His comment was true, not negative.

[eyedigress]

I’m sure after she was informed of what the title said, she was a bit miffed.

[Kansas58]

Understood.
Please read my profile.
Been there.
Done that.

I know this is hard, but lets stop it with the hand ringing. Even if we lose, I want to take out (politically) as many of these egotistical Leftists as we can in this battle.

DESTROY the ENEMY! That is what we need to focus upon!

[yldstrk]

A picture is worth a thousand words

[yldstrk]

why is Simple Sibelius dressed as a soldier

[Kansas58]

My comment was also true, and I will continue to get upset when depressing “we cant win” nonsense is posted here.

Leave me alone
or don't
I don't care.

But don't tell me that I have no right to my opinion, about the opinions and posts of others ok?

[AllAmericanGirl44]

Pay attention man, this fake war on women is losing steam and regardless of how they trot it out with that hag hillary, it’s doomed.

Tell me, what exactly do you admire about Gov. Palin? I’m curious.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

I’m with you Kansas, enough of the doom and gloom crap.
It’s time to focus and fight.

Getting caught in the morass of ‘we can’t fight this or that’ is defeating and useless.

[Blackirish]

You’re half right. I know Sarah is very popular here but not so much with the public.She won’t ever be president. That said we cannot afford anymore Akins or Santorums. Unless the RNC figures out a disciplined well tuned message to single woman we could permanently lose that voting block. And that’s not good. They come out and vote in the general.

[adgirl]

The whole website debacle is funny to watch; however, I don't think it will fix the deeply embedded “stupid” that most of the country has embraced. Today in the St. Paul Paper, a woman wrote in and blamed the whole website and health mess on the Republicans.
Her erratic thought process included the idea that since the Republicans have done nothing to fix a bill they didn't vote for, knew wouldn't work and didn't want—they owned the mess it created once it became a law.
That is what we are dealing with folks—at least in Minnesota home of Sen. Al Franken. Now (as Paul Harvey used to say) you know the rest of the story.
God help us.

[Kansas58]

Thanks!
I do not understand why defeatists want to even follow politics.
Take up knitting or gardening or do more fishing or golf or spend more time with family and friends.
Why spend so much time reading and posting if you think there is no point to it all?

The Left is counting on the Right to give up. Those on our side who do not want to fight are a bit odd, as they don’t mind fighting with those on the Right who do want to fight. They fight about our willingness to attempt victory.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

On the random days that I do feel defeated, I stay off the boards. There is zero value in spreading the ‘I give up’ mantra. It annoys the crap out of me and I too have called others out on it, on occasion. It’s that idiotic circular firing thing that burns me up! I’ll stand by you and fight along with you ~

[The Antiyuppie]

EACH AND EVERY liberal Obama voter who has been screwed by this, and other actions of the last five(+) years has permitted them a small window of opportunity to learn and understand the conservative viewpoint. They shouldn’t be laughed at. They actually have something like Stockholm Syndrome.

A Liberal is really a conservative who isn’t a victim or doesn’t realize that they have become a victim (yet).

[LMAO]

From the article...
Tell us truthfully: are you not sitting with a grin on your face thinking it could not have happened to a nicer group of people?

---

I am.

Except for thefact that they’re going to take everything down with them

[Reverend Wright]

I have to say that i am highly amused at how this is going for Obama and co.

anyone who has had any exposure to big or even medium IT projects knows how easily they can go off the rails

for IT projects larger than $10 million, 95% exceed budget and/or don’t perform to spec, and 40% are outright failures that are scrapped (with public sector projects having a higher failure rate than the average)

http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/why-do-big-it-projects-fail-so-often/240163186?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_ALL

there was never much doubt how the ACA system as a whole would turn out, and once they actually get the website up and running, and large numbers start to apply, they are going to actually perform the “volume” test that was not done before launch, and find a whole bunch more problems that are not going to be solvable in a month or even a year...

the new supposed saviour for Obamacare (Jeffrey Zeints) has no documented experience in leading large scale IT projects. I looked it up, but i didn’t need to. His statement that we will be up and running by Nov 30 shows he is clueless.

Even if all the changes were ready to go today, one month would not be long enough to properly test such a complicated system.

I think we are watching something big here, something consequential.

This isn’t just a big budget IT failure like the Air Force supply chain software, or the FBI case files.

It’s a liberal President’s core “achievement” and a supposed demonstration project for how government can improve people’s lives: and it’s going down in flames.

[The Antiyuppie]

“It’s a liberal President’s core “achievement” and a supposed demonstration project for how government can improve people’s lives: and it’s going down in flames.”

I am also hoping for this. It’s going to be an expensive lesson and there will be casualties (the people who are getting creamed by health care costs or the fools who “go bareback” and then are faced with bankruptcy), but I don’t think that it will be forgotten by the public until at least my family and I are out of the picture.

[Reverend Wright]

the destructive fallout to liberalism/big government: it doesn’t stop when the democrats give up and scrap or indefinitely delay the ACA.

millions of policies will be cancelled before that happens. All the insurance co’s have reprogrammed their systems to deal with the legal requirements of obamacare. the old policies are gone, they are not coming back

that’s why Shaheen, Landrieu wanting to grandfather existing plans will not work - it’s like trying to force GM to start selling Pontiac’s again.

for IT projects, you do not cancel the existing the existing system until the new is up and running.

Obama and co broke that basic rule, and they and millions of individual policy holders are going to find out the consequences of that on Jan 1, 2014.

[gitmo]

So you don’t have to go running to a dictionary, scha•den•freu•de is a delicious word of German derivation.

The English version of the word is todyaso. It's usually followed by the word dipstick.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

“As a civilized person, you know in your mind that you should not derive pleasure from the pain of others. But periodically it is simply appropriate to do so. That is why the word “schadenfreude” exists.”

Forget the substantive parts of the article — give the writer props for knowing the meaning of “schadenfreude”.

[gitmo]

for IT projects, you do not cancel the existing the existing system until the new is up and running.

I had a nationally recognized project manager tell me once on a huge project that I needed to take Cortez's approach. Cortez burned his ships when they landed in the new world, so there was no way to back out. He recommended a big-bang no-retreat implementation. I insisted on an incremental rollout with the legacy systems still in place.

The guy was implementing the same system I was, but from a different vendor and for a different company. His implementation failed miserably. Mine was a success: in fact it was the fasted company-wide implementation of the system ever.

If I were doing ObamaCAIR website, I would have implemented in a small state first after extensive stress testing. I would then have rolled out to possibly two additional states once the initial implementation was stabilized.

Even better, I hopefully would have turned the gig down once it became evident they weren't committed to the success of the project. (Then again, $600,000,000 goes a long way ....)