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4A Daily News – Tuesday, October 29, 2013 Opinion Crashing glitching bores DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 One thing you can say about Republicans. They are focused. Like lasers. Or a puppy with a chew toy. Obamacare? No, sir. They don't like it. They don't like it so much, they have become interested in the Internet. They no longer refer to it as the interweb, riddled with tubes and tunnels and chutes and ladders. As we speak, hearings are being held. And held and held and held. Because the initial website to Obamacare was buggier than the insect house at the London Zoo, and someone has to eat their way to the bottom of the responsibility barrel. So now we're witness to an interminable tug of war between GOP and Democratic members of various committees who are providing the bulk of the talking during these hearings. The sight of these grandfatherly types who couldn't tell a glitch from a Sneetch pretending to speak conversantly about something they have the same familiarity with as a calico cat does with calculus makes keeping a straight face difficult. Especially consider- ing their extreme remonstrations of concern, which sound similar to cobras worrying that the mouse door is often unlocked. Thing is, they're perfectly right. The rollout went less smooth than a 40 foot square steel donut rumbling down a pressed tin bridge. Democrats agree the website technology for Obamacare is so outdated it looks like Health and Human Services rescued it from Compuserve's trash using a dial-up modem. There are at least six or 17 areas of this country where a class of fifth graders could have constructed a more navigable site during study hall. The ultimate techie nightmare. More crashes than Windows Vista through 27 stories of skylights. A health care portal with all the compassion and efficiency of the DMV. Coming soon: leeches. Although many claim that plenty of licensed barbers are already caucusing with the House majority. Face it, if the government created the Cloud, it would be called the Smog and leak antifreeze. The administration seems shutting down the govflummoxed. Started ernment in an attempt to suggesting folks with defund it, they are finalproblems might want to ly, reluctantly, on board. try signing up by phone And just want to or fax or snail mail or straighten things out by Pony Express or skyletting the American writing or Morse Code people know this is the on a telegraph wire or worst legislation in the smoke signals or by history of ever. slapping the ground and In other words, pounding their chests they've graduated to rhythmically. Hopefulcomplaining about the ly Obamacare can spur choice of the font on the lightning progress in Will menu and not the ingretelepathy. dients of the feast. Or Ted Cruz managed whether anybody gets to to get into the act, jokeat. Although that $24 ing that the Nigerian cheeseburger known as email scammers have the Silver plan is surely been quiet lately going to draw attention because they were hired down the line. And oh, to run the Obamacare website. This created the double by the way -- fries are extra. Way whammy of ticking off Nigerians extra. and giving the administration very Will Durst is a political bad ideas. But by focusing their attention comedian who has performed on the website, the GOP seems to around the world. He is a familiar be signaling they've accepted Oba- pundit on television and radio. Will at macare, at least in theory. After Email trying to repeal it 50 times then durst@caglecartoons.com. Durst Raging Moderate Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Checkin' on the government—FUBAR Supreme It was a toss-off line I heard in an episode of "Branded" on Saturday morning: "Since the government's checkin' on me, I'm gonna do a little checkin' on the government." Thankfully, our news media—always eager to dig dirt and sully conservatives or Republicans in the process—have rediscovered their collective "bloodhound" noses and are "checkin'" on the massive disaster of the Obamacare website rollout. Had they been equally eager to dig in the dirt of Obama's other massive government catastrophes like the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack, "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, the despotic unleashing of the IRS on Obama's political opponents, and the lies told by Obama mouthpieces, including the President—we might not have the Obamacare fiasco staring us in our collective faces. We had a glimpse into the cause for reticence by news media to report unflatteringly about Obama when CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello made a stunning, if cryptic, revelation. In a discussion over the firing of national security official Jofi Joseph, she agreed with another panelist's contention that the administration "can be thin-skinned." She said, "President Obama's people can be quite nasty. They don't like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they're not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job." The Obamacare website rollout foul-ups have been described as glitches, kinks, and so on, even by President Obama, but World War II sayings are better. One phrase, "Systems Normal, All (Fouled) Up," or SNAFU for short, would certainly apply. I believe, however, that the more appropriate one would be FUBAR, or "(Fouled) Up Beyond All Recognition" (originals substitute another word for "fouled"). If you don't see it that way, you are either paid to put a happy face on this fiasco, limiting yourself to evershrinking sources of Obamafriendly information, or are blinded ideologically by belief in Obama and his utterances (Obamacare: "It's really good"). In any case, such self-deception reminds me of "Baghdad Bob," Saddam Hussein's mouthpiece during the Iraq war, who uttered inanities to gathered reporters about how the American military forces weren't anywhere inside the city, while the split screen showed our tanks rolling through Baghdad streets. Later in the same "Branded" episode, Chuck Norris's character dresses down an ethically challenged rancher by telling him "You know, you have yourself an empire but you don't have a title." We now truly have a government and governing class that considers itself entitled, even endowed, by law, regulation and executive/judicial fiat, with the right to arbitrarily query, direct, restrict and punish otherwise free-born Americans. How else to take HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's astoundingly arrogant utterance, speaking of vocal critics of the disastrous Obamacare rollout under her watch, "I don't work for those people." Well, I happen to be one of "those people" whose collective taxes pay her salary and benefits and have quite a few criti- cisms of her job overseeing want insurers to know of mandatory covered health Obamacare. My health items before the 2012 care and health insurelection so that it ance is quite personal wouldn't leak to to me; I wouldn't put it reporters and the public past politicians in how much higher the Sacramento to decide monthly premiums to save the state bilwould be. We are now lions of dollars and seeing "sticker shock" move retired state from California to Illiemployees, their nois to Florida as indispouses and families viduals learn their polioff of current health cies are being canplans and dump them celled, and will pay 30, onto the kind graces of Don 50 or even 70+percent Obamacare exchanges. Obama's minIt happened decades Polson more.and mouthpieces ions ago when they reneged on assurances given The way assure us we'll have more health issues covworkers that, upon hitI see it ered—yeah, like the ting age 65, they elderly couple forced to would be able to keep pay for maternity care. their state-provided Then, as October 1 health insurance, rather than be forced into Medicare. Sounds a approached, they were deterlot like the smug (and ultimate- mined to force people to proly empty) assurances Obama vide personal information, uttered over and over about cross checked with other agenkeeping health plans and doc- cies, all to make sure applicants would only see their premium tors we like. About the website fiasco, it cost after the subsidy. SNAFU! may be possible to have it run- GOP Congressman Fred Upton: ning smoothly in the mid-to- "And unless the system gets late November time frame but fixed by Jan. 1, a lot of folks are I'm quite doubtful based on going to be very angry as what I've read. they're left out in the cold." Healthcare.gov's 500 million FUBAR, supreme! Africanlines of code are more than American pediatrician, Dr. Ben online vendors like Amazon Carson, said that Obamacare is and Apple combined. In April, "the worst thing since slavery," HHS predicted consumers for the intrusive, controlling would need less than a half an and despotic nature of the law. From "Les Miserables": "Do hour to complete online registration—not half a day or half a you hear the people sing? week (Sam Batkins, American Singing a song of angry men? It Action Forum: "time spent is the music of a people, Who online has ranged from seven will not be slaves again!" hours to several days." Don Polson has called Red It also turns out that crass politBluff home since 1988. He can ical considerations entered the timeline for putting the web portal be reached by e-mail at together: Obama's people didn't donplsn@yahoo.com.