Two of My Favorite Writers On the Obamacare Rollout Fiasco--Eating Jalapenos Edition

UPDATE: IS HEALTHCARE.GOV OUR NEWEST BIG DIG?

FIRST, WESLEY PRUDEN, EDITOR EMERITUS OF THE WASHINGTON TIMES, AND WRITER/THINKER EXTRAORDINAIRE nails it again with his piece Putting the Shutdown in the Shade:

Hard times, as a wise old friend of mine was fond of saying, will make a monkey eat red pepper. That’s why Democrats, who only yesterday vowed to hold the Maginot Line forever against Republican demands to delay the implementation of wise and wonderful Obamacare, are lining up now to burn their tongues with a dash or two of jalapeno. We can expect to see Barack Obama join the jalapeno line soon. His health care scheme is crashing around him, with debris falling on friend and foe alike, and the White House is in full panic mode. It’s fun to watch, even if it’s not nice to say so.

SECOND, STUART SCHNEIDERMAN @ HAD ENOUGH THERAPY WRITES ANOTHER NEAR-PERFECT PIECE, Kirsten Powers Lets Fly in which he points out how interesting it is to watch and read about the liberal Powers' anguish in seeing her high hopes for Big Government fixes come crashing down----no pun intended---with the failed rollout of the miserable online healthcare exchange:

Kirsten Powers is fast becoming every conservative’s favorite liberal. She has unimpeachable integrity and always tells it like it is. Yesterday, she explained the stakes in the Obamacare website fiasco. Only a true liberal could experience the anguish Powers feels when she sees that her faith in big government is being discredited by ineptitude. Powers wrote:

The rollout of the insurance exchange that is central to the success of the Affordable Care Act has been nothing short of a disaster. This failure is a double whammy: it puts the future of Obamacare in even greater peril while placing Obama’s case for activist government on life support. If the government can’t build a functioning website to support the most important initiative of the president’s administration, then how can it be trusted to do anything? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told The Wall Street Journal that the botched launch of the $400 million website was “another challenge that’s no worse than the near-death experiences” the health-care law has seen over the past three years. But it is a million times worse, because it’s self-inflicted. This time, Obama can’t blame Republicans.

Indeed, finally into his second term our intrepid yet inept president has finally succeeded in backing himself and his administration into such a corner, that he simply can't blame any Republicans this time.  Obamacare
is his signature legislation and with it comes the inescapable duty of taking responsibility, the inability of not passing the buck and the possibility of national awakening of epic proportions on the limits of good intentions and of what bureaucrats in Washington can and cannot do.

Is Obamacare mortally wounded?  Probably not, at least not yet.  However like an injured chicken that's pecked to death by its fellow-chickens---no pun intended in the symbolism, or is there?---this grandiose law and massive intrustion by the nanny federal government may be chronically or even terminally ill.  We may not know the prognosis for a while.