Jon Stewart On Comparisons Between Obamacare and Katrina. The New Normal

The National Lunacy has shifted America's political center to the right of Attila the Hun. The fox is not in charge of the hen house. The crazies are in charge of the national discussion.

By Arturo Garcia
Tuesday, November 19, 2013

While Jon Stewart went to town on Monday on media outlets for parroting Republicans and comparing the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) troubled implementation to Hurricane Katrina, he stopped for a second to address Fox News Chris Wallace for saying Katrina “ended within a week,” while the new law could affect people “for years to come.”

“Are you out of your –” Stewart began to say, before stopping once he heard his audience’s collected groan. “Do you know you’ve disappointed our audience? They think you might be out of your f*cking mind.”

While he had no intentions of polishing the “.turd” that was the government health care exchange website healthcare.gov, Stewart said, he also mocked Republicans for being offended by the comparison, and pointed out that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refused to allow his state to take part in one of the new health care exchanges offered as part of the ACA while accusing the White House of “bullying” Louisiana.

“Bullying?” Stewart asked incredulously. “The feds were gonna pay for the Medicaid expansion. How was that bullying? ‘Hey, four-eyes, you need to see an opthamologist, we can cover that. How is that bullying?’”

Frustrated, Stewart turned to his correspondents to find the proper George W. Bush-era debacle to link to “Obamacare,” with Samantha Bee choosing the debate over waterboarding political prisoners.

“Healthcare.gov is the towel Obama is wrapping around our faces,” Bee explained. “And the board is the failed promise of universal healthcare.”

“What’s the water?” Stewart asked her.

“I don’t know, water’s water, Jon,” Bee replied. “What am I, Robert Frost?”

Meanwhile, Al Madrigal reached back further and compared the new law to the second war against Iraq.

“When I think ‘glitchy website,’ the first thing that comes to my mind is, ‘decade-long war started under false pretenses,’” Madrigal said.

Watch Stewart and his panel discuss the failed “Obamacare” analogies, as posted online on Monday, below.