Kathleen Sebelius: good party apparatchik
Either Kathleen Sebelius has a remarkably deadpan sense of humor, or she’s being serious in her piece in USA Today entitled, “HealthCare.gov simple, user-friendly.”
I doubt that even those who are in favor of Obamacare think the government website for the exchanges is “simple” or “user-friendly.” But Sebelius’ article is not meant as a joke, although she is not so stupid or deluded as to actually believe what she’s saying. It’s pap to placate the masses; she thinks we’re that stupid.
And perhaps she’s correct. Maybe we are just that stupid. After all, we elected Obama twice, the second time after he had pretty much revealed his character and modus operandi.
Sebelius wants to tell us that wait times at the website are shorter than they were before! Isn’t that fabulous? All the problems we had were merely because of high demand because Obamacare’s so great! She can name two actual people who are happier with their health insurance under the exchanges than what they had before!
Just think how much contempt Sebelius and company must have for the American public to be able to write at this point that the website is “simple and user-friendly, and the coverage is affordable.” Even the Obama administration’s mouthpiece CNN keeps finding huge problems. One might think that Sebelius and the administration would gain more credibility by admitting that the problems with the website are more serious than can be explained by high demand (a demand that could not possibly have been unexpected). But it’s important to realize why they want above all to avoid that perception, because if the government can’t manage to design a website properly with years of lead-in time, how can it even begin to handle a system as complex as Obamacare?
Probably the most shamelessly dishonest administration in history. But it works. Even folks smart enough to know better are true believers in the BS. Some of that is, I expect, an appeal to vanity; if you believe you are part of a superior, more intelligent crowd. But I think a larger part is due to the submersion of the individual in the group, which has its own reward. Group psychology is very different from individual psychology and I think it is less studied.
RUSH: You’ve got a media on your side, you can say whatever you want, and even if they know you’re lying, they don’t call you on it. But most of the time people like Sebelius will figure that he doesn’t know that she’s lying. So that stood on its own, and this is how Stewart ended the show, by concluding that she was lying to him.
STEWART: That’s our show. I still don’t understand why individuals have to sign up and businesses don’t, because the businesses, if she’s saying, well, they get a delay ’cause that doesn’t matter anyway ’cause they already give health care, then you think to yourself, well (bleep) why do they have to sign up at all? Then I think to myself, like, well, maybe she’s lying to me?
STEWART: There are people that will end up in difficult times having to spend money they would not have spent. Yes? To buy health care if they did not have it, if they did not want it.
SEBELIUS: There are people who will, yes, pay money, and many of them will pay less than they pay for their cable bill or their cell phone bill a month.
RUSH: She is just making it up as she goes here now. I haven’t heard this one yet. I heard $2,500 cheaper, but I didn’t hear less than your cable bill or your cell phone bill. Notice the two things she focuses on, because those two things are of paramount importance to the low-information crowd, their cell phones and their cable TV, their TV, whatever. And TV is becoming less important ’cause they can steal it and watch it all on their cell phones.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/08/sebelius_called_out_as_liar_on_daily_show
Chuck,
The Abilene Paradox. Not sure where you can view it.
Waidmann
I find it amazing that all those poor people who can’t manage to get themselves a voter ID are expected to be able to find a computer, sit down, submit an Obamacare application, and distinguish between all the various plans. This is when loads of high school grads can barely read, write, or do basic math.
Yup! Lies from top to bottom.
That’s easy ! There are Navigators for them! Fully as competent as those ACORN folks who were going to help that nice young man set up his underage prostitution business….
“Just think how much contempt Sebelius and company must have for the American public to be able to write at this point that the website is ‘simple and user-friendly, and the coverage is affordable.'”
neo, I know this is just a rhetorical assertion, but my response, and that of most of us neo-denizens, is: the contempt is very profound, very deep.
Going over to your Sowell post, yes, Democrats can sell a refrigerator to an eskimo faster than a Republican can sell a blanket to said eskino, because the Democrats are so much more willing to say whatever the eskimo/audience wants to hear.
[When Walter Mondale tried honesty — “I’m going to raise your taxes” — Democrats took serious note of the consequences of that sort of honesty.]
AND, they will have the enemedia to back them up when any audience member is sure the Democrat was saying something quite different just last week. It’s a reinforcing mechanism of sorts, about which you know a lot more than do I.
(Groucho) Marxism asks, “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” (“Duck Soup”, 1933) Too many sheeple are believing “me”. It really is unnerving.
Perhaps it’s beneath me, beneath the dignity (majesty?) of this site…but isn’t Sebelius the most snobby, bitchy, patrician person you’ve ever seen?
The kind of woman who would rather be dead than seen in a Wal-Mart.
Something about her bearing, her mein just rubs me all kinds of wrong.
er, “mien.”
You really need to install a way to edit comments, Neo.
Matt_SE:
Do you use the “preview” function?
Sometimes.
The point is moot anyway. If you decide to upgrade the comments software, all of America’s web designers are fixing the exchanges.
ALL.OF.THEM.
Reminds me of Kerry in drag.