Ridiculous Super-Hack Ezra Klein: So Far ObamaCare Is Kind of Total Disaster, Huh?

When you've lost Ezra Klein, you've lost... Well I'll tell you who you haven't lost: Former "Wonkette" Ana Marie Cox.

Is that how she spells Ana? Tell a secret, I don't care.

Almost all the technical analyses I've read...

I don't know how many "technical analyses" she's read but I know how many she cites: Two. One from Slate, one from the Sunlight Foundation.

Well, if you've got Slate on board for a Democratic program, I guess that's gold standard.

Almost all the technical analyses I've read conclude the same way: the project was poorly tested and over-bureaucratized, but it'll probably straighten out. I am not sure conservative critics read to the end of these articles....

I'm not sure you read the beginnings.

...

All in all, proper coverage of the rollout would treat it not as "man bites dog", or even "dog bites man", but rather, "dog displays indifference to man, but man will be back later with beef jerky and some toys, hopes to create bond with dog that will last a lifetime."

Yes this is Wonkette instructing the media that they're insufficiently positive about Obama and ObamaCare.

Of course, it's that lifetime bond that makes critics so nervous. Their real fear isn't that ACA and its attendant infrastructure won't work; it's that it will.

If its structure was really so deeply flawed, why would conservatives be so suicidally intent on preventing it from taking full effect? For that matter, why are they so sure that the rollout's problems aren't exactly what the administration wants, bwahahahaha?

Is it 2002 again? Are we now back on to the "bwahahaha!" and "Mwhahahaha!" blog jokes? Does that elderly juvenalia still fly somewhere?

They weren't really good jokes back when they were, um, whatever they were. Au currant. If you can call them that, which I choose not to.

I guess it's still SOP for everyone to pretend they're younger and dumber than they are on the internet.

Even though I'm 29 (well, I will be 29, too soon!), I sometimes pretend to be a lad of 23.

...

It's not really that crazy a theory – at least, in so far as the next version of the exchanges problem will work exponentially better. And more distressingly to conservatives, it won't be too long until the ACA isn't a new and scary socialist plot, but just part of American life...

Conservatives, tech geeks, and comics had fun with the administration's attempt to smooth over commentary about the exchanges with a comparison to the introduction of Apples iOS7. The analogy does miss the mark...: To the extent that one can make an analogy between Healthcare.gov and consumer software or hardware, the ACA is the Apple Newton: a first attempt to get people to interact with their environment in a different way.

BTW, the Newton was a huge failure. I really don't know why she would bring that up. Yes, it was ambitious. And also, it completely failed. Newton promised it would recognize the user's handwriting (transferred to the screen via a stylus); it never did. I used to goof on a tech-loving friend for having bought it as an impulse buy; the thing wouldn't recognize basic words.

The thing was rolled out, in non-working condition, with the promise it would "learn" your handwriting; yeah, it didn't.

So I'm sure there were some promises of "exponentially better" later iterations too.

Which didn't happen.

You know what's sad here? I read a piece a long time ago where Wonkette felt the need to get away from the Wonkette blog, a superficial, juvenile snark-fest of hacktacular lefty politics. "Is that all there is to Wonkette?" the article said was her thinking, and her worry.

So she's now doing Wonkette crap ("bwahahahaha!") for the Guardian. So I guess that is all there is to Wonkette. I feel bad for writers who can't write their actual take, but always have to write precisely what their sub-sub-sub-market demands.

Meanwhile Ezra Klein is a huge hack, but he's not quite as big a hack as Bwahahahaha! Wonkette. I guess he's a more important and more confident writer, as he can occasionally confess obvious truths.

posted by Ace at 02:51 PM

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