"When I heard that the troubled Obamacare Web site was built by a Canadian company, of course I felt personally responsible," says Blitt (because he's from Canada). "I’ll be happy when the glitches are all worked out and everything’s running smoothly, so I can put this all behind me."
Nice drawing. The sentiment is rather stickily sweet for the circumstances, but it's The New Yorker, shoring up support for the once-beloved President.
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Who uses floppy discs anymore ? Could explain a lot about obamacare, the fiasco it is, and his defense of it. Hey, Blitt, how'd they make out with that gun registry ? And what about the costs and wait times for that Canadian healthcare ? Yea, uh huh.
Lunny - Floppy disc and the early 90s computer with the huge brick of a phone - it's making funn of the lack of good technology.
"I’ll be happy when the glitches are all worked out and everything’s running smoothly," like they do in Canada where you can schedule your cataract surgeries for next year, this year's quota are over subscribed since September; wait four weeks to test if you have cancer, you and your cancer may go away; wait half a year for your cancer surgeries or you can sneak south to Cuba to get them done.
If I hear the word "glitches" one more time, I may have to get another drink. To pretend it was a glitch and that it wasn't a massive failure of code (misspellings in the code? Really) not to mention all the easy ways it can be hacked (which they were warned about too).
If this was an APPLE or a GOOGLE roll out of software, there stock would plummet, news outlets would be declaring the end of their market dominance...Heads would roll, but this is the government. Accountable to no one.
Disaster is cute (and fun!) when Lefties are responsible for it.
Fascinating, the disconnect, between Left and Right.
Lead Talk of the Town piece, Oct. 28, 2013....
An article sympathetic to the plight of the IRS tax collector.
Stress has driven agents to Xanax. Their workload is up. Agents have been laid off. Taxpayers are hostile. Morale is down. They live paycheck to paycheck. They get food from food banks.
Then this..."The Republicans are winning, and have been for the past three years, if not the past thirty."
The deficit is in decline. Job growth anemic. "The dominant argument in Washington is over spending cuts, not over ways to increase economic growth and address acute problems like inequality, poor schools, and infrastructure decay."
Overall, though, somehow the NYer is not what it used to be. Rare are the long articles on beeswax and snuff. The cartoons? Leaden.
Funny. Guess the artist had Seibilus crossing her figures for luck getting the system to work. But on first glance I saw "It's not really lying if I cross my fingers."
Even the lofos are getting the news now. Obama is a klutz who knows nothing and everyone who ponders the question "Why hasn't anyone been fired?" will instinctively know. The guy in charge is a lousy leader!
The B: drive for the B team.
Sebelius, not Seibilus. And, yes, I cannot spell.
CatherineM, there is no "lack of good technology". Michelle O's Princeton buddy is unloading his outdated inventory on us, then he charges another billion to update the system that never works.
The phone appears to be a Motorola Dyanatac, which was (I think) in production from the beginning of cell service in the early '80s until about '93. Most early cell providers in the USA used some version of it.
The floppy appears to be the 5.25 inch size, which was mostly replaced by the 3.5 inch type ub the late '80s. Of course, the computer screen is a CRT.
I suppose they could have shown someone in the background with a tangled audio cassette (8-track?), but I think the artist got the point across about people fumbling about with long-obsolete technologies.
@CatherineM, I think you're right -- huge brick of a cordless phone, 1980's (not even 1990's!) vintage desktop, and 5 1/4 inch floppy disk. Either the artist isn't particularly current on his technology or he's making quite a statement about the technological backwardness of the Obama administration.
Especially loved the hammer. Even in the 1980's that was a tool one didn't much see in a technological setting.
I would have added Chewbacca in the window.
"South Park" nailed it again this week, although sometimes I think D.C. is making their job way too easy.
I'm pretty confident the cartoon writer is aware of current technology and the cartoon is meant to mock the botched Obamacare website roll-out. There hasn't been any shortage of criticism of Obama on this from liberals (in other words, from people who have credibility when it comes to discussing these issues), so the New Yorker cover isn't a shock. Unless, of course, you are a Tea Partier at war with the strawman version of liberalism, which is to say you are the average Tea Partier.
(in other words, from people who have credibility when it comes to discussing these issues)
In which universe do liberals have credibility in discussing technology issues?
Actually, this is an incredibly insightful image depicting Obamacare's fatal flaws: anachronous technology, anachronous paradigms. Obamacare is notoriously monolithic. As are its advocates.
Remember when human labor was regarded as a mere commodity? How far we have progressed to now regard human life as a mere commodity. An ordinary man or woman must question the direction and quality of our progress.
Every time someone calls them "glitches" I think of Gus Grissom in The Right Stuff: "It was a glitch! A technical malfunction! Why won't anyone believe me?"
CatherineM:
It's depressing to observe the emotional attachment between Obama, Reid et al and healthcare.gov, which is merely a clump of pages and scripts. I wonder when they will conclude it is a burden and abort it.
Gus Grissom? He died of glitches!
"Before its planned February 21, 1967 launch, the Command Module interior caught fire and burned on January 27, 1967 during a pre-launch test on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy, killing all three men. The fire's ignition source was never determined, but their deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal hazards in the early Apollo Command Module design and conditions of the test, including a pressurized 100% oxygen pre-launch atmosphere, many wiring and plumbing flaws, flammable materials used in the cockpit and the astronauts' flight suits, and an inward-opening hatch which could not be opened quickly in an emergency, and could not be opened at all with full internal pressure."
In which universe do liberals have credibility in discussing technology issues?
The one in which Silicon Valley is a Democratic bastion and in which conservatism is dead unless it shows up in the form of pro-choice, pro-gay marriage libertarianism. Which is why this website mess is so ridiculous. As Nancy Pelosi intimated, if the Administration used the California tech talent pool to begin with (and which it is doing now by reaching out to Google), things would have worked out better.
Heck, they could have done better if they had gone to Austin or the Research Triangle. In any case, from both a policy and tech standpoint, liberals have credibility that Tea Partiers lack and they are increasingly using that credibility against Obama these days, much to his chagrin. But conservatives don't have much to add to the conversation, given how they've conducted themselves since Obama became President.
YouTube has a recording of the astronauts during that Apollo I fire. One of the most horrific things I've ever heard.
or he's making quite a statement about the technological backwardness of the Obama administration.
Gee, the use old tech seems bloody obvious to me..are we so angry at him that we can't even get the humor?
But the problem is more than old tech, it's design.
His mocking the 20th century technology extends even to the parallel port printer connection.
Come for the cover art, poetry, literature and cartoons.
Stay for the social democracy.
Liberals have credibility ?
In the world of real things, concrete and steel, food and fuel, and most true employment, they don't. In the end thats where people actually live and die.
We are all choking in the Schumpeter paradigm of late stage capitalism, circling the drain to disaster, and both Obama and the leeches in Silicon Valley (who are mainly there making money off the bloating bureaucratization of everything) are the villains.
There is no salvation in liberals, even "high tech" and the rich ones in Wall Street. They are there to profit off the acceleration of collapse.
When we get there the idiotic tribal fetishes of gay marriage and abortion will be moot.
In which universe do liberals have credibility in discussing technology issues?
Hilarious, thanks for the laugh.
I wonder if Obama is saying into that "brick" phone: "Because it's wreckable, alright!"
What happened to all that burbling about how tech savvy administration was with the president and his Blackberry and all.
Is Blackberry still in business?
The website is just the visible user interface to the massive cluster guck that is ObamaCare. Any system developed from a 2000+ page piece of craptastic legislation and perhaps 20,000 pages of implementation regulation is going to be just as bad. Bad requirements result in bad systems.
It's making fun of CANADIAN technology or more specifically, their backwardness.
I can't believe that no one picked up on that.
I think Grissom in the quote was referring to the mishap when his Mercury capsule splash-landed and the door blew open.
He asserted that it just blew open, and that he had not pressed a button causing it to do so.
As a result of the door opening before the scuba team arrived to prepare a floatation collar around the capsule, it sank.
Grissom also almost drowned because his space suit was stuffed with coins (?) or some heavy objects he was planning to sell.
@somefeller, all the talent in Silicon Valley and RTP combined couldn't have implemented the system given the requirements creep and the fact that basic architectural decisions were still not finalized just weeks before go-live.
Prediction: Once the basic web site gets running, it will be discovered that its failures were masking even more serious failures inside the system itself.
After the glitches will come the yawning gulches.
The Barry Blitt cover drawing may be too clever by half.
The focus is on the technology. As if it all were a technological problem. Old phone, grandfather clock, old computer with CRT, floppy disc, and hammer/screwdriver.
If only there were some props that could so easily and cleverly define the ghastly cost numbers that underlie the entire concept of the Unaffordable Care Act.
Someone mentioned Grissom and the glitch.
I figured for sure there would be a youtube video of that.
I found the full movie but not that clip.
Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
Here is the link:
http://youtu.be/2F8XgJE4hA4
That would be the link to the clip, not the full movie.
"The dominant argument in Washington is over spending cuts, not over ways to increase economic growth ..."
Omitting the premise that excess gooberment spending is a drag on economic growth. Present day Democrat economics = hyper Keynesian-ism.
Unless, of course, you are a Tea Partier at war with the strawman version of liberalism, which is to say you are the average Tea Partier.
Please summarize the non-straw version of contemporary liberalism for us.
Gus Grissom? He died of glitches!
St. George said...
I think Grissom in the quote was referring to the mishap when his Mercury capsule splash-landed and the door blew open.
He asserted that it just blew open, and that he had not pressed a button causing it to do so.
As a result of the door opening before the scuba team arrived to prepare a floatation collar around the capsule, it sank.
Anne, the controversy about the late Gus G. is whether or not he panicked and opened his Mercury capsule hatch prematurely because the sea was choppy. Gus always denied that he did so.
... A man-thing sort of moot debating point.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke: If you think Obamacare is fucked up now, wait until you see what it's like when it's working.
Thanks for posting that clip, John.
Somefeller.
you keep sayinf that liberlas have credibility , but fail cite just what they've done to be credible.
The Canadian company that has put together our ACA website is the same company that put put together the canadian "gun registry" website for the Canadian government. It too was a monumental failure. As some wag put it. "It would have been far cheaper to just give every Canadian firearm owner $10,000 and trust them to comply."
Losers beget losers
"to"
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