Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

President Obama really has a way with words, such as calling the problems that millions of people have had trying to sign up for ObamaCare “glitches.” When the Titanic sank, was that a “glitch”?

Thomas Sowell
November 26, 2013
Random Thoughts
[The government has said the website will be fixed by December 1, just four days from now. That will not be the case. The keel of that ship is broken and it’s headed for the bottom of the ocean. As I have been privately telling Barb L. they did not build the web site with security in mind. They tried to put security in as an afterthought.

Security as an afterthought is like attempting to put brakes on a car after it has been purchased. You end up with solutions like throwing a boat anchor out a window and holding on to the rope really tight. When it fails they put gloves in the car and tell you to use them when holding the rope.—Joe]

Share

15 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

  1. My favorite feature of the Obamacare website is the requirement to provide one’s personal information in full, before being allowed to see a subset of the healthcare options available.

    Why not show all the options, like Amazon or eBay, then narrow it down to ones for which a buyer is eligible? My guess is that knowing you are paying more for insurance than someone else would be off-putting to consumers. Plus, the ability to data mine you is lessened if they don’t first get your info.

    • They are actively trying to HIDE useful information from the user (voter) to avoid sticker shock. In doing so, they heaped a HUGE problem on their plate by trying to do all possible desired data input and the verification of all that data FIRST. With out a thought to the back end (details like security that Joe called out), but also without little details like building the PAYMENT SYSTEM. That’s right. They don’t have the system even nominally built to make payments to the insurers for their subsidies. Someone might sign in, pick a plan, put it in their shopping cart, check out, get a bill from their carrier, send them a check, have it cashed, and STILL not have coverage because the policy doesn’t get activated until they get payment IN FULL, and the FedGov doesn’t have the payment system written yet, yet alone tested.
      The first couple of people to get major health problems on a new and heavily subsidized plan come 01Jan14 will be in for a HUGE batch of excitement.

  2. Well, at least this quote doesn’t attempt to compare the the site to Katrina or Iraq as so many conservative pundits have done.

    • Yes, which is good, because the ObamaCare & Healthcare.gov fiasco will harm MANY more Americans than either of those two things, will cost more, be more damaging to our economy, the damage was totally self-inflicted, and it will have much longer-term consequences than either of the other two earlier problems.

      • So it’s good to trivalize the lives lost in Katrina due to Bush’s negligence and then add that to his lies in Iraq? Wow. Your “logic” is amazing.

        • Well, Lou, at least we know which end of the political spectrum you’re from.
          And that piece of information completely informs us of your view of ANY criticism of the current administration.

          Caveman would say more succinctly:
          Obama guuuud! Bush baaaad!

          • If you can pinpoint where I said “Obama is good” outside of this quote, I’ll agree with you.

            But I’m also not the one that trivalized the loss of soldier and civilian life by comparing it to a website.

            I pity those without a heart or a soul, their lives must be hell on earth.

        • Not at all. But Katrina was a natural disaster that was made worse by incompetence,at all levels of government, from NOLA to FedGov. Iraq was a human event, but I don’t recall any of the Iraqi people that were murdered by Saddam telling the world “no, don’t help us. We got this.” They were both bad, but they didn’t affect that many people directly.
          But the debacle that is ObamaCare and HealthCare.gov are 100% human created problems, where 99% of the problems were created purely by political decisions and technical incompetence at the top, not technical difficulty of implementation. The policy decisions were made for ideological reasons, and the incentives written into law are incredibly perverse and destructive to society, the economy, and civility. It will also be very disruptive, because if unchanged, it will directly negatively affect more than 200 million Americans. There will be a few winners – but they are “winning” by having the coercive hand of government take from others, much like a thief is the “winner” in a robbery. The magnitude of difference, in terms of numbers of people and cost, is HUGE.

        • Speaking of “logic.” Your first sentence has some pretty serious question-begging involved.

          • Standard meme from the oooobaaaamah crowd, Lou/

            ‘It’s Bush’s fault!’

            Like being associated with that?

          • Well, again, if you can point out where I say healthcare.gov was Bush’s fault I’d agree.

            But the aftermath of Katrina IS Bush’s fault. It was his administration his chosen -horse breeder- FEMA Director.

            It was Bush administration lies that got us into Iraq and killed soldiers.

            and to compare the two to a website is heartless and dare I say unpatriotic. You’re trivializing the loss of soldiers lives. I lost my soldier of a grandfather last year, it still pains me right now. To see comparisons like this breaks my heart and makes me wonder if there are any good conservatives out there.

          • First off, I haven’t compared anything to anything, check your aim Tex.

            Second, people not looking through the eyes of ideology are pretty much agreed that the aftermath of Katrina was so bad in large part because of initial missteps by the local government and the state. FEMA doesn’t come in and take charge, they are asked to respond by the locals. They then have to deal with the situation they are handed. In this case the evacuation and initial response was mishandled from day one by Mayor Nagin. The “lives lost” that occurred occurred in those first days due to those local failures. That FEMA didn’t do a perfect job cleaning up -after- the majority of lives were lost is hardly “Bush’s fault.”

            As for the Iraq war, “Bush lied, people died” is not only a puerile and politicized oversimplification at best, it also deliberately ignores the totality of the political situation at the time.

            Therein lies your question begging, you assume those statements are intrinsically true to buttress your “but, but, Bush” accusations of trivialization. In logic, you have to support your premises prior to using them to support your argument.

  3. Not to keep flogging that dead horse(ah heck, why not – lib/prog/soc/com/obungle voters sre so easy); BUT pretty much all of the Katrina problems were directly traceable to the absolutely (and dare I say it?)black corrupt(BIRM)democrat government operating in NO with large amounts of help from the female democrat sitting in the governor’s office.

    • Always funny when pointing out facts make you afraid that you will be called racist or sexist. Nagin wasn’t incompetent because he was black; he was elected because he was (MANY minority voters vote skin color first, competence second). Yet pointing out that someone of similar skill set who was white was exceedingly unlikely to ever get elected becomes controversial, because you are implying that many blacks are bigots (which isn’t PC to say) even though it’s totally cool for them to call whites racists and bigots all day long.

  4. I wouldn’t compare CommieCare to the Titanic. The Titanic wasn’t intentionally designed to sink.

Comments are closed.