It seems that even after the 60 minute fiasco to latch on to one of the right wings ridiculous bubble memes, reporters still think they can play the FOX News "fair and balanced" game and somehow capture some of the right wing Waco-birds.
Now, I really like Ezra Klein and follow his twitter feed so I can read his blog posts, but his relentless attacks on HealthCare.gov have crossed over into the Fox News absurdities.
I lost my temper at the mess that HealthCare.gov was in the first week of operation, and there was absolutely no excuse for it. The administration needs to track down how this happened and get it fixed. But I've been watching the progress they've been making on the site and have written a couple of blogs about the big progress they've been making lately.
It's one thing to criticize the unnecessary mess that HealthCare.gov was, but to spin every story into a wing nut version of what a disaster it still is, even after they've made some really remarkable progress, is just playing to the Tea Party bubble nuts.
Here's today's blog from Ezra entitled, Uh-oh. Obamacare may not be fixed by Dec. 1st. Nothing like ringing the alarm bells. Let's see what dire consequences Ezra has in mind.
"The administration is obviously putting its neck on the line here," wrote Jon Chait. "If it fails to hit the deadline, all political hell will break loose."
Axe? Meet neck.
...
Officially, the White House denies that the Web site will still be buggy for most users come December 1st.
Ok, so broken will be defined by, most users unable to use the website without any big problems by Dec. 1. Sounds reasonable to me. So Ezra states the consequences of not meeting the deadline like this;
Blowing through the December 1st deadline obviously creates huge political problems for the White House. But does it create correspondingly huge policy problems for the law?
Yep, that's pretty serious all right. So how bad are the problems that the site is still facing? Let's look at an article from Ezra's own paper, the Washington Post,
Troubled HealthCare.gov unlikely to work fully by end of November.
The insurance exchange is balking when more than 20,000 to 30,000 people attempt to use it at the same time — about half its intended capacity, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal information. And CGI Federal, the main contractor that built the site, has succeeded in repairing only about six of every 10 of the defects it has addressed so far.
Huh? We went from almost nobody being able to use the site in the first week of Oct., to 20,000-30,000 using it at the same time?! Think about that. If 20,000-30,000 people can get on the site at the same time, and it takes an hour to sign up, that means there's a potential to sign up over a half million people a day! That may not reach the goal of letting 40,000-60,000 people on at the same time, but if HealthCare.gov is signing up even anywhere near 100,000 people a day, nobody in their right mind is going to be able to claim this is a failure!
Obviously the administration didn't come anywhere near it's goal of signing up 500,000 people by Oct 31, but if they have anything even close to the capacity of handling 20,000-30,000 people at the same time, they're going to EASILY make up those numbers in a few weeks.
So if your sources tell you the site will only be able to manage a few hundred or a couple thousand people at the same time, then go ahead and sound the alarm bells. But if your own paper is telling you the site will handle 20,000-30,000 people at the same time, do a little arithmetic before you go after those Tea Party nuts that you have no chance of getting anyway.
I don't know why journalists haven't learned that bowing to the right wing propaganda machine can only get you tangled in the deceptive web of fiction that it spins, but if you feel you've got to do it, I hear there may be a job at 60 minutes opening soon.