Thank God It’s Friday, Not Saturday

I thank God for not making me a computer scientist.

Daniel Bernstein (born 1971), American mathematician, cryptologist

You may like Friday because it’s the last day of the work week.

You may like Friday it precedes the weekend.

You may like to celebrate Friday by eating out at a  “Thank God, It’s Friday” restaurant.

As a retailer, you may choose to call it “Black Friday”, the day you finally turn a profit.

If you’re one of these people, you may think of Friday as “Good Friday,” a day in which you have something to cheer about.

Two Exceptions

But this year, there may be  two exceptions to the Cheerful Good Friday Club.  For these people, Good Friday may become Black Saturday.

These exceptions are: ObamaCare  officials  and their High Tech followers .  You  two are responsible for  healthcare.gov’s  second launch.  This second launch   follows  the aborted October 1aunch pad crash.

·          As a administration  official, you like to announce  bad news on Friday. Why? Because people tend to forget  bad news over the weekend.  By Monday, all is either forgiven or forgotten.  But this year, you have no choice because of your self-imposed Saturday,  December 1 deadline. 

On Satruday,  you said things were going to   get “better,” 80% better, better enough to accommodate 50,000 users all at once. You picked Saturday as the magical Witching Day when everything was going to go smoothly  for all of  those logging in to pick a health plan.

 

The first Witching Day was Tuesday,  October 1. Then times were different.   That was before  5 million health plan cancellations. These cancellations  now outnumber the 50,000 officially enrolled by 10:1. This time the stake are higher.  It’s Make or Break Time for ObamaCare.  You’re  in the Public Opinion Crosshairs.

·         But maybe not.  You can always move the goalposts. You can always delay tje mandate for small business by a year.   You can always extend the sign-up period.  You can always lower expectations  by saying you didn’t really mean what you said the first time.  And you can always blame somebody else –  the health plans, Republicans,  even  your very own computer team.  Its members include those digital nerds,  those pernicious programmers, those guys and gals who wrote those millions of lines of unconnected code.   They may have seen those glitches coming, but they should have warned you  louder and harder. It’s their fault. They should have told you  everything that could go wrong would go wrong.   They should  have known a technical drop-dead date was not the same as a political drop-dead date.

But they didn't  under your political pressure to deliver  on your October 1 promise.  That’s ancient history now.  This year,  history comes on Saturday.

TGIF (Thank God, It’s Friday), not MGIF (My God, It’s Saturday).   You still  have  another day to untangle the Web you   weaved when you deceived yourselves and the public.

Tweet:  This Friday  isn’t TGIF (Thank God, It’s Friday),  it’s TGINS (Thank God, It’s Not Saturday)