CSotD: Nobody wants to go to the moon; look how few have
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Tom Tomorrow with a chatty but point-on commentary about the health care issue.
Speaking of JFK (and isn't everyone?), he used to quote an aphorism, "success has many fathers, failure is an orphan," and the piling on over the botched roll-out of a main portion of the Affordable Care Act has certainly been a stunning example of bandwagonism.
There have been some other cartoonists with the sense to separate the sign-up process from the rest of the law, mind you …
… and Stuart Carlson adds a seasonal tie-in …
… but I particularly like Tom Tomorrow's resigned admission that, whatever its flaws, anyone with half a brain realizes we need to just make the most of it. (Those with less than half a brain will trust promises of "Let us repeal it so we can give you something better!")
Robert Reich sums up the situation pretty well:
The initial problems with the website and the President’s ill-advised remark about everyone being able to keep their old policies are real. But they’re trifling compared to the wreckage of the current system, the modest but important step toward reform embodied in the Act, and the moral imperative at the core of the Act and of our society.
As I've noted here several times, much of the disappointment with Obama has come from people who had ridiculously unrealistic expectations of him in the first place. The people who hated him are delighted to see this failure, which is only to be expected, but there sure is a lot of piling on from the Peanut Gallery.
And by "Peanut Gallery," I mean people who are bandwagon types, who are more concerned with appearing to be "in the know" than they are with actually figuring out what's going on.
And, yes, I include those who obsess over whether they are Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers or Gen-Ys or Milennials, and who, a generation or two ago, used to follow the "In and Out" listings.
"In" and "Out" lists, O Best Beloved, were what we had before the Internet came along and helped us figure out how to be cool. (Oh, dear lord, it's still being compiled. Well, okay, but it is definitely "Out.")
But I've also noted that, foolish as all this is, once Jay Leno's hack writers start sinking their teeth into you, you are pretty much doomed. (Here's an example that is both relevant and makes me look intelligent.)
I'm less depressed, however, by the standup comedians than I am by reporters who continue to conflate being signed up with wanting to be signed up. If the problem is that people can't sign up, it's absurd to use low numbers as proof nobody wants it.
This appears to be a combination of credulously accepting the claims of Obamacare critics and the enumeracy common to journalists for whom statistics should be but is apparently not a required course.
Not everyone is knuckling under to all this, and All Things Considered had a story last night about Darryl Issa's sock puppet "hearings" on the ACA that included demonstrators outside accusing him of cherrypicking his witnesses.
But I wonder if it's too late for facts.
No place like home for the holidays, thank god
Pearls Before Swine got a large laugh this morning.
Back when my folks had the big house where we gathered for various events, there was a contingent of in-laws and even a few blood relatives who hid on the porch when game boards came out.
Not all of them, of course. Some enjoyed the spirited give-and-take that always ensued.
Sick bastards.
Juxtaposition of the day
Quick — Get over to DailyInk
Rip Kirby is starting a new adventure. His name came up in a conversation at the Billy Ireland, not just because Alex Raymond's art was so exquisite — though it was — but also because Rip was a such an ultracool, dapper hero.
The dude was James Bond before there was a James Bond. Here's the wrap-up strip from the last story arc. No, scanning a panel with cross-hatching doesn't always work well, but I rather like the resulting lack of detail. I can just imagine the submarine about to surface under them.
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