Yesterday MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that, due to the government shutdown, surviving families of US servicemen and servicewomen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq would have to wait until later to receive the $100,000 death benefits to which they were entitled.

Within hours political pundits and politicians from both parties were howling that this was an outrage. Yet neither of them proposed to do anything meaningful to ameliorate it.

This post is directed to those of you who are 17 or 18 years old, and who might have a passing thought to join the US military: don’t. This is why.

Not only is becoming a paid – low-paid – assassin for the US military immoral, it is stupid. When they’re done with you, they throw you away. That’s why the rates of poverty and suicide among veterans is sky high and going up all the time.

At bare minimum, you have the reasonable expectation that they will take care of your family if you pay the ultimate price for your role as a cog in the imperialist war machine, but no. Even when you think about it, $100,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to even a working-class American’s lifetime expected earnings. But when push comes to shove, they don’t even pay that out.

Frankly, there really isn’t any excuse anymore to claim ignorance about this sort of thing. The US military has cheated its veterans going back to the Revolutionary war, when land grants that were promised in the then developing West didn’t materialize. World War I veterans cheated of pay formed the famous Bonus Army in the 1930s, which was wiped out by federal troops as they camped out on the Washington Mall. And anyone who lives through the 1970s and 1980s saw the detritus of the heroes of the Vietnam War littering the streets of New York City and other major metropolises.

Don’t be an idiot. Don’t sign up.

Listening to NPR just now, Pres. Obama was quoted saying that one negative repercussion of the current standoff between House Republicans and the White House over the federal budget and the debt limit is “missed opportunities” such as the inability of the United States to pimp a free trade deal in Asia.

Given the effect of such free-trade deals in the past, such as NAFTA and the WTO, which have cost Americans millions of jobs and have helped cripple the US economy more than anything else in recent memory, that can only be considered a good thing.

Let’s not get into the fact that Pres. Obama infamously promised to revisit NAFTA while running into 2008, only to cavalierly announce 2009 that that was just one of the things that he had said to get elected.

Talk about spin:

“This fast pace of sign-ups shows that New York State’s exchange is working smoothly with an overwhelming response from New Yorkers eager to get access to low-cost health insurance,” said Donna Frescatore, the executive director of the state exchange.

We’ll see later this week whether I can finally snag some insurance.

For this week’s syndicated column, I’m going to continue my adventure with Obamacare (spoiler alert: it’s a disaster). Here’s a sneak preview:

Miracle of miracles, I was finally able to comparison shop on New York State’s healthcare marketplace.

If you’re like me, and you have a suffix (Sr., Jr., III, IV, V) in your name, the website does not know what to do. It kind of explodes.

All the plans offered by New York State do not allow you to go “out of network” for healthcare. In other words, you have to use a doctor in each private insurer’s list, or they don’t pay a cent of reimbursement. But — Catch-22 — there’s no way to find out whether your doctor, or your local hospital, or clinic — is on the list because the site’s primitive search function is “disabled” “due to overwhelming response.” Call me underwhelmed.

So that’s that.

Then there’s the rates: not low. Not affordable. Not, as Obama said, comparable to your cellphone bill.

New York State’s healthcare plans range from Fidelis Care’s “Bronze” plan at $810.84 per month to $2554.71 per month for something I didn’t bother to look up because if I had $2500+ a month to spend on doctors, I’d buy a doctor and have him/her live with me and dole out pills like I was Michael Jackson.

The deductibles — the amount you pay out of pocket every year before you the insurer has to give you anything at all — are outrageously high. Fidelis Care Bronze has a $3000/year deductible per person. I’m in pretty good health; it’s a rare year I spend that much on doctors.

After the $3000/year deductible, they pay 50% of your bills. So if you rack up $5000/year in medical bills, you pay $4000 and they pay $1000. Pretty damned crappy.

Worst of all, and contrary to the Obama Administration’s claims that we’d be able to apply for subsidies to offset these high insurance rates, there’s no sign of how or where you do that on New York State’s website.

This experience reminds me of Obama’s Make Home Affordable scheme, the voluntary refinancing plan the big banks used to avoid refinancing mortgages for distressed homeowners. I knew Obamacare would be bad, but I seriously had no idea it would be this bad.

It’s Day 6 of Obamacare — and the healthcare exchange websites still aren’t working. Wanna know how not working they are? Here’s how much not: Google officially lists New York State’s healthcare marketplace as “Site Currently Unavailable.” Check it out:

This, President Obama + Obamabot defenders, is not a “glitch.” This is a fuckup. And it prompts some questions, like:

1. How many people will get tired of this shit and simply stop trying? If 47% of web users abandon an e-commerce website if it fails to load in 3 seconds, how many will give up and eat the $75 fine if it fails to load in 6 days?

2. Given that the available time to sign up is being eaten up by these inexcusable delays in implementation, will Americans get an extension, extra time to enroll?

Medium.com rewards cartoonists whose readers click and share their work. So…My cartoon about how the Internet kills creativity – or at least creators – is at The Nib. Please check it out. It’s free for you, pays for me.

I’m going to be on the BBC world service radio program at about 4:15 PM Eastern time today. We will be discussing the government shutdown and how cartoonists and other humorists are covering it and analyzing it – or not.